Читать книгу The Oxbow Wizard - Theodore Goodridge Roberts - Страница 3

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Young Dan Evans lived in the back country on the Oxbow with his parents and his brothers and sisters. For as long as he could remember, his Uncle Bill Tangler, his mother’s brother, had been an irregular member of the household.

Young Dan obtained a meagre and intermittent schooling between his ninth and sixteenth years, at the Bend, three miles below his father’s farm. His terms were frequently broken by the weather, the conditions of the road and matters of domestic economy. Sometimes Uncle Bill helped him with his books. There seemed to be nothing that Uncle Bill did not know something about.

In October of Young Dan’s last year of school, Uncle Bill brought a sportsman from New York or London or Chicago or Montreal—from one of those outside places, anyhow—to Dan’l Evans’s house. Uncle Bill and the sportsman were on their way in to the former’s camp far up beyond the Prongs. They arrived, by canoe, just before dusk and were off again half an hour after sun-up.

Young Dan was sent by his mother to the spare bedroom, to make up the bed that had been occupied by the sportsman. In five minutes he was due to start for school. He had no more than crossed the threshold when he exclaimed, “He was smokin’ in bed!” On the chair near the dented pillow, about the base of the little lamp, lay two cigar butts and several deposits of ashes. Young Dan was distressed, for by what little he had seen of the stranger he had considered him to be a very superior person; and yet here was proof positive that he was possessed of a habit that was looked upon, in that household, as both low and reckless. He recollected a few of the words which his mother had addressed to Uncle Bill on the occasion of her finding that versatile bachelor smoking in bed. “It’s lazy an’ it’s dangerous an’ it ain’t respectable,” she had said—among other things.

Young Dan approached the bed.

“And him from a city full of street cars and schools,” he murmured. “He’d ought to know better.”

Then something caught his eye and distracted his attention from the tell-tale butts and ashes. It was a book with a green cover. It lay open and face down on the bright rag-carpet, just beneath the edge of the bed. He stared at it for a moment, then snatched it up and thrust it inside his coat. At one glance he had seen that it was a story book. Good! On the Oxbow story books were almost as rare as ropes of pearls; Young Dan was as unacquainted with fiction as a city alley-cat is with yellow cream. In this case discovery of the discarded book seemed to imply ownership and he appropriated the volume with the intention of exploring its pages undisturbed by his younger brothers and sisters who would be sure to demand a share in the volume once their eyes fell upon its bright cover.

Young Dan hurried through the task that had been set for him and started for the schoolhouse at the Bend, accompanied by Molly, aged eleven, and Amos, aged nine. His canvas-wrapped school books and the lunch for three were in his bag; and the book with the green cover was still inside his coat. Here, against his very ribs, lay an unknown treasure—a treasure of valuable information concerning far lands or the stars themselves, perhaps, or perhaps a treasure of magical entertainment. How was he to make an opportunity for investigating it unobserved?

Suddenly he thought of a plan. He suggested a race.

“You two go on to Frenchman’s Spring, and I’ll stop right here,” he said. “When you git to the spring, give a holler and keep right on a-goin’ as fast as you like and I’ll try to catch you up this side the school.”

“You can’t do it, and you know you can’t,” said Molly. “Even Amos will git there ahead of you.”

“That’s as may be,” replied Young Dan, with dignity.

So the others left him and hastened forward; and he immediately sat down beside the road and fished out the book. He opened it at the title-page with fingers a-tremble with eagerness. He began to read, running a finger from word to word, from line to line. Here were people of types and callings unknown to him, moving in the streets of a city unguessed by him, talking in a way foreign to the Oxbow of things unheard of even by Uncle Bill; and yet he read in a fever of intensity, with moving lips and wrinkled brows. A faint shout of childish voices, touched with a note of derision, came back, but it failed to reach the ears of Young Dan, whose whole attention was fixed on the magic under his eye. He had intended to keep his agreement, but he had completely forgotten Molly and Amos; he turned page after page slowly and so at last came to the end of the first tale.

“Gee, but that feller was smart!” he whispered.

He glanced up, observed the sun and jumped to his feet. He was late for school that morning and accepted the reprimand of Miss Carten, the teacher, and the jeers of Molly and Amos without turning a hair. At the conclusion of the afternoon session he managed to get away by himself and read another story.

With the green-covered book safe in his bosom and the secret of it in his heart, a change came over Young Dan. Molly and Amos were the first to notice it, but they could make nothing of it.

One evening, within a week of the passing of the sportsman, he appeared at the supper-table when the other members of the family were already in their chairs. After eating pancakes for a minute or two in silence, he said, “You set the table to-night, hey, Lucy?”

Lucy, aged six, replied in the affirmative, with evident pride.

“And Molly fried the pancakes, because Ma was busy writin’ a letter to Gran’ma,” continued Young Dan.

“An’ what of it?” asked his father.

“Did you spy on us through the window?” asked his mother.

“No, I was over in the tool-house,” replied the boy; “and when I got nigh enough to look in at the window you was all set down to table.”

“Land’s sakes! How d’you know Lucy set the table?”

“Because everything’s so close to the edge. She ain’t tall enough to push ’em on very far.”

“But how’d you know Molly fried the pancakes?”

“Because most every one was cracked across, or messed about, when it was bein’ turned. You don’t do that, Ma, with the turner—but Molly always tries to turn ’em with a knife.”

“Sakes alive! That’s the livin’ truth! But how’d you come to figger out about me writin’ to Gran’ma?”

“There’s ink on your finger, Ma; and Gran’ma is the only person you ever write to.”

“Land’s sakes! That’s reel smart.”

“Seein’s how you’ve growed so all-fired smart so suddent, maybe you’ll tell me who went up the old loggin’ road t’other night and robbed me of nigh onto a cord of dry stove-wood?” said Dan’l Evans.

“Maybe I will, Pa. What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

“Give you? Nothin’! You don’t know, anyhow.”

“Don’t I know who’s got a horse that’s lame on the nigh fore-foot and a wagon with a hind wheel that wobbles? I see the tracks yesterday and studied ’em.”

“You figger it was Tim Swan stole the wood. Well, you’re wrong. I suspicioned him myself, the minute I see the wood was gone, because Tim’s a born thief an’ lives handy. But it warn’t Tim took the wood. I mooched round his place for over an hour an’ couldn’t find a stick of it. Maybe it was the tracks of a rabbit you studied so hard.”

“Maybe it was, Pa. Anyhow, I follered them rabbit-tracks along to Tim’s gate and past it and clear on to Widow Craig’s yard; and there’s the wood in her wood-shed; and she paid the rabbit three dollars for it.”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Evans.

A few days after the frying of the family pancakes by Molly and within two weeks after the passing of the sportsman in the care of Uncle Bill Tangler, seven of the scholars who attended the little school at the Bend came down with the mumps and on Thursday Miss Carten announced that the school would close for a week at least—and perhaps longer. The Evanses had escaped the epidemic, having been victims of the malady two years before. Molly and Amos went racing home, making the echoes repeat their whoops of joy. Young Dan walked more soberly behind them, for there were many things on his mind and he meant to use his time—while the mumps kept the schoolhouse closed—to test several theories that, ever since he had read the book with the green cover, had been simmering away in the back of his head.

But Young Dan got no leisure in which to test his theories—at least he was not able to try them in the exact manner he had planned—for a stirring and mysterious event that roused excitement in the whole Oxbow region occurred less than twenty-four hours after the vacation began. Miss Carten disappeared. She dropped from sight as completely and as mysteriously as if a silent airplane had swooped down at night out of a dark sky and had carried her aloft like a great-horned owl stealing a birdling. On Friday someone asked for Miss Carten at the Troller farm where she boarded.

“She went to a party over to Cameron’s las’ night an’ took her suitcase with her; I thought as how she’d stop the night with Lizzy Cameron,” said Mrs. Troller.

At the Cameron place, two miles away—as it developed later—Miss Carten had not been seen. No member of the family, in fact, had heard from her in the last twenty-four hours.

There was excitement on the Oxbow which extended down to the main river. Search-parties went into the woods, equipped with shotguns and lanterns and stimulants and dinner-horns. Ponds and likely pools were dragged. Justices of the peace, rural constables and game-wardens awoke to official activity from the Bend on the Oxbow all the way down to Harlow on the main stream. The days and nights passed—six of each—without bringing any degree of reward or encouragement to the searchers. Nothing was seen or heard of Miss Stella Carten, dead or alive, and no suspicious characters were discovered in the vicinity of the Bend. The lost lady had not been remarked on the road or on the river, nor had she called at any isolated farmhouse. She had not been seen at the village of Bean’s Mill, at the Oxbow’s mouth. She had not bought a railway ticket at Harlow. She had vanished, suitcase in hand.

Seven days after the disappearance of Miss Carten, at eight o’clock in the morning, Young Dan Evans encountered his Uncle Bill on the portage round Old Squaw Falls, seven miles upstream from the Evans clearings. Young Dan carried nothing but an axe and a small pack. He had left his leaky old basket of a bark canoe in the bushes below the falls, for it was too heavy for him to shoulder. Uncle Bill, coming from the other end of the portage, was bonneted by his long, green canvas canoe. The meeting was unexpected to both, but only Uncle Bill expressed astonishment.

“You, Young Dan!” he exclaimed, lowering his canoe to the trail. “What brings you ’way up here?”

“Left my canoe below the carry,” replied the boy. “Just moochin’ round lookin’ for something.”

“Sit down,” said Uncle Bill.

They sat down, and the man lit his pipe and pushed his big felt hat far back from his forehead.

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

“Yep. Miss Carten disappeared a week back and I’m sorter lookin’ round for her.”

“You don’t say! Disappeared! And you think she’s maybe up here somewheres?”

“That’s how I’m figgerin’ it out, Uncle Bill. She ain’t downstream, anyhow. Some folks think she’s lost in the woods or been killed—but I don’t; I reckon she’s run away on business of her own; and as she ain’t gone downstream I guess she’s come up.”

“You don’t say! What makes you think so?”

“Well, she intended to go somewheres, because she took her suitcase packed full, and her money. She wouldn’t do that if she was just meanin’ to stop a night with Lizzy Cameron. And they ain’t found hide nor hair of her down river—but I’ve found her tracks, and more’n her tracks, up this way. Yep, I found the tracks two days back, about two miles below this, close to the edge of the stream. I knowed ’em by the sharp heels. I hunted both sides of the stream for a mile and dug into every pool, but didn’t find any more signs. But I found somethin’ else yesterday; and now I’m goin’ clear up the Prongs.”

“What did you find yesterday?”

Young Dan untied his blanket and disclosed to his uncle’s view a small frying-pan, a loaf of bread, a chunk of bacon, a book with a green cover and a cardboard box. He placed the box in the other’s hands. It was empty but had once contained chocolates.

“That’s what I found yesterday, just below the falls here,” he said. “Miss Carten was a b’ar on chocolates. She et ’em in school.”

Uncle Bill examined the box and returned it. He scratched his clean-shaven chin and regarded his nephew with a contemplative and calculating eye.

“Young Dan, you’re smart,” he said. “And you’re bold as brass. I am smart, too, though that is not the general opinion in these parts. The trouble with me is that I am shy. You are all for showing how smart you are, but I’ve always been for hiding my light under a peck-measure. You are doing something now that I couldn’t do. My natural shyness would make it impossible for me to follow a young lady who has run away of her own free will. That is how you have reasoned it out yourself—of her own free will! Yes, I am talking queer—not the way I talk at home. The truth is, Young Dan, I’m not the rube your Pa and Ma think I am; but I’ve always been too shy to let them know about it. I know more than which side to butter my pancakes on and how to pole a canoe.”

“I guess maybe you do,” admitted Young Dan.

“Your reasons for thinking Miss Carten was up here seem good to me!—good, but not conclusive,” continued Uncle Bill. “If she is the only person in this country who ever wears high-heeled shoes and eats chocolates out of a box, then you are dead right. Hullo! What’s the book?”

He reached over, picked up the book with the green cover and opened it.

“This explains your activities,” he continued, smiling. “Come on down with me and I’ll go back with you this afternoon—all the way back to my camp. And be your Doc Watson, going and coming.”

“Have you read that book, Uncle Bill?”

“Yes, years ago—and several more about the same smart feller. You come along down with me while I get some grub and mail a few letters, and I’ll buy you all the other books first chance I get. And I’ll bring you in again.”

Young Dan shook his head.

“I’m this far, and I’ll keep right on a-goin’ till I’m ready to quit.”

Uncle Bill looked at his nephew and saw determination in his face. “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll help you around with your canoe, anyway. You can pole right up to the camp—if that’s where you are bound for. I’d go back with you but for a couple of important letters I have to post.”

Together they carried Young Dan’s old canoe round the falls. Uncle Bill’s lean, dark face wore an unusually thoughtful expression as he watched his nephew embark.

“I’ll tell your Ma that I met you and that you will stay in the camp over night,” he said.

“But maybe I won’t, Uncle Bill,” said Young Dan. “I didn’t calculate on stoppin’ upstream over night unless I found somethin’ to keep me—an important clue or somethin’. They’re expectin’ me home.”

“I’ve just been thinking that I might not be able to get back till after dark. You promise me that if you go to my camp you’ll stop there until I come back, or there’ll be trouble. And the trouble will start now. You never saw me in a temper, Young Dan—and you don’t want to. Promise me that, or I’ll tie you up and take you downstream with me as helpless as a dunnage-bag. I mean it!”

Young Dan looked at his uncle and saw that he meant it.

“I promise cross my heart and honest Injun!—but you got to fix it with Ma, Uncle Bill,” he said, in a thin voice.

“Don’t worry about your ma,” replied the man, smiling. “And I’ll get you those books. If I find some mail that I have to answer I may not get back as soon as I planned. You stay right there at the camp, and don’t forget that I am one of the shyest men in the world. Off you go, Young Dan—and good luck to you!”