Читать книгу The Settler - Whitaker Herman - Страница 11

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A tall Irishman of the gaunt Tipperary breed, Flynn straightened as Carter reined in, and thrust out a mighty paw. "Ye're welcome, ma'am; an' ye've come in season, for the woman's just called to dinner. Just drive on an' unhitch before the door."

"Yes, it's a fine stand of wheat."

Walking beside them, he replied to Carter's comment: "Too foine. It's a troifle rank to ripen before the frost." A wistful shade clouded his face, extinguished the mercurial twinkle in his eye. "It 'll freeze, shure." The accent on the last syllable was pitiable, for it told of long waiting, hope deferred, labor ill-requited. It was the voice of one who bolsters himself that the stroke of fate may not utterly kill, who slays expectation lest it betray him. Yet in its pessimism dead hope breathed. "Yes, it 'll freeze," Flynn assured the malicious fates.

At close range the house was not nearly so picturesque. A motley of implements strewed the yard: ploughs, harrows, rakes, a red-and-green binder, all resting hap-hazard among a litter of chips, half-hewn logs, and other debris. The stables were hidden by huge manure piles. The place lacked every element of the order one sees on an Eastern farm—rioted in the necessary disorder of newness. Flynn's generation were too busy making farms; tidiness would come with the next.

Not realizing this, Helen was drawing unfavorable parallels from the pervading squalor, when Mrs. Flynn, who was simply Flynn in petticoats, came bustling out with welcomes. Miss Morrill must come right in! It was that long since she, Mrs. Flynn, had set eyes on a woman's face that she had almost forgotten what they looked like!

"An' you that fond av your glass, mother?" Flynn teased.

"Glass, ye say?" Mrs. Flynn retorted. "Sure an' 'twas yerself that smashed it three months ago. It's the bottom av a milk-pan he's been shaving in ever since, my dear," she added.

Flynn winked. "An' let me advise you, Carter. If ivir ye marry, don't have a glass in the house an' ye'll be able to see ye'self in ivery tin."

Out at the stable the merriment died from his face, and facing Carter he asked: "Phwat's up between ye and Hines? I was taking dinner with Bender yesterday, an' while we was eating along came Hines.

"'There's a man,' he says, spaking to Bender av you. 'There's a man! big, impident, strong. Ye're no chicken, Bender, but ye couldn't put that fellow's shoulders to the ground.' I'm not needing to tell you the effect on Bender?" Flynn finished.

Carter nodded. He knew the man. Big, burly, brutal, Bender was a natural product of the lumber-camps in which he had lived a life that was little more than a calender of "scraps." Starting in at eighteen on the Mattawa, he had fought his way to the head of its many camps, then passed to the Michigan woods and attained the kingship there. He lived rather than loved to fight. But, though in the northern settlements Carter was the only man who approximated the lumberman's difficult standard in courage and inches, so far fate had denied him cause of quarrel.

"The coyote!" Flynn exclaimed, when Carter had told of Hines's attempt on Morrill's hay-slough. "An' him sick in bed, poor man. I wouldn't wipe me feet on Hines's dirty rag av a soul. But he's made ye some mischief. 'Ye're a liar, Hines!' Bender growls. 'I can lick him er any other man betwixt this an' the Rockies.'

"Hines didn't like the lie, but he gulped it. 'Talk's cheap,' he snarls.

"'Carter's a good neighbor,' Bender answers. 'But if he gives me a cause—'

"'A cause?' Hines cackles, laughing. 'Why, him an' Morrill have grabbed all the best hay in Silver Creek an' defy anny man to touch it. Run your mower into their big slough an' ye'll have cause enough.'

"That made Bender hot. 'I'll do it!' he roars, 'this very day.' But," Flynn finished, "he had to run out to the blacksmith's to fix his mower sickle, so he won't get out till to-morrow morning."

"If ye need anny help—" he said, tentatively, as Carter pondered with frowning brow. Then, catching the other's eye, he hastily added: "Ye'll pardon me! But Bender's a terr'ble fighter!"

His alarm was so palpable that Carter laughed. "Don't bother," he said. "I'm not going to roll, bite, chew, or gouge with Bender."

"Look here!" Flynn interposed, with additional alarm. "Ye'll not be after making anny gun-plays? This is Canada, ye'll mind, where they hang folks mighty easy."

Carter laughed again. "There won't be any fight. Listen!"

And Flynn did listen. As he grasped the other's meaning, his face cleared and his hearty laugh carried to the house where Helen was making the acquaintance of the smaller Flynns. Six in number, bare-legged, and astonishingly regular in gradation, they scampered like mice on her entrance and hid behind the cotton partition that divided bedroom from kitchen. For a while they were quiet, then Helen became aware of a current of stealthy talk underflowing Mrs. Flynn's volubility.

"Ain't her waist small?"

"Bet you she wears stays the hull time."

"Like them mother puts on to meetin'?"

"Shore!"

"Git out; her face ain't red. Mother nearly busts when she hitches her'n."

"Ain't that yaller hair pretty?" This sounded like a girl, though it was hard to decide, for all wore a single sexless garment.

"Bet you it ain't all her'n. Dad says as them city gals is all took to pieces when they go to bed." This was surely a boy, and, unfortunately for him, the remark sailed out on a pause in his mother's comment.

"James!" she exclaimed, raising shocked hands. "Come right here."

He came slowly, suspiciously, then, divining from his parent's look the enormity of his crime, he dived under her arm, shot out-doors, and was lost in the wheat. After him, a cataract of bare limbs, poured the others, all escaping but one small girl whom Helen caught, kissed, and held thereafter in willing bondage until, after dinner, Carter drove round to the door.

Though they had rested barely an hour after their forty-mile run, the ponies repeated the morning's performance, to the horror of Mrs. Flynn; then, as though realizing that they had done all that reputation required, they settled down to a steady jog—in which respect, colloquially, they were imitated by their human freight. A little tired, Helen was content to sit and take silent note of the homesteads which now occurred at regular intervals, while Carter was perfecting his plan for the discomfiture of the warlike Bender. Slough, lake, wood-land, farm passed in slow and silent procession. Once he roused to answer her comment as they rattled by some Indian graves that crowned a knoll.

"To keep the coyotes from robbing the resurrection," he explained the poplar poles that roofed in the graves.

He spoke again when the buck-board ran in among a score of curious mud pillars. About thrice the height of a man, inscriptionless, they loomed, weird guardians of that lonely land till he robbed their mystery.

"Them? Mud chimneys. You see, when a Cree Indian dies his folks burn down the cabin to keep his spirit from returning, and as mud won't burn the chimneys stand. Small-pox cleaned out this village." Then, with innocent gravity, he went on to tell of a stray scientist who had written a monograph on those very chimneys. "'Monoliths' he called 'em. Allowed that they were dedicated to a tribal god, and was used to burn prisoners captured in war. It was a beautiful theory and made a real nice article. Why did I let him? Well, now, 'twould have been a sin to enlighten him, he was that blamed happy poking round them chimneys, and the folks that read his article wouldn't know any better."

Chuckling at the remembrance, he relapsed again to his planning, and did not speak again till they had crossed the valley of Silver Creek from which the northern settlement took its name. Then, indicating a black dot far off on the trail, he said:

"There comes Molyneux."

"Two in the rig," he added, a few minutes later. "A man and a woman. That 'll be Mrs. Leslie."

Unaccustomed to the plainsman's vision, which senses rather than sees the difference of size, color, movement that mark cattle from horses, a single rig from a double team, Helen was dubious till, swinging out from behind a poplar bluff, the team bore down upon them. Two persons were in the rig: a man of the blackly handsome type, and a stylish, pretty woman, who, as Carter turned out to drive by, waved him to stop.

"Monopolist!" she scolded, when the rigs ranged side by side. "Here I'm just dying to meet Miss Morrill and you would have whisked her by. Now do your duty."

"Captain Molyneux," she said, introducing her companion in turn. "A neighbor. We just heard this morning that you were coming and I was so glad; and I'm gladder now that I've seen you." Her glance travelled admiringly over Helen's face and figure. "You know there are so few women here, and they—" Her pretty nose tip-tilted. "Well, you'll see them. Soon I shall make my call; carry you off for a few days, if your brother will permit it. But there! I'm keeping you from him. Good-bye. Now you may go, Mr. Carter."

A touch of merry defiance in the permission caused Helen to glance up at her companion. Though Mrs. Leslie's glance was almost caressing whenever it touched him, he had stared straight ahead of him while she chatted.

"You don't like them?" the girl asked. "Why? She likes you."

His sternness vanished and he smiled down upon her. "Now, what made you think that?"

"I didn't think; I felt it."

"Funny things, feelings, ain't they? I mind one that took me fishing when I ought to have been keeping school. 'Twas a beautiful day. Indian-summer back East. You know 't: still, silent, broody, warm; first touch of gold in the leafage. I just felt that I had to go fishing. But when dad produced a peeled hickory switch that night he told me: 'Son, feelings is treacherous things. This will teach you the difference between thinking and knowing.' It did—for a while."

"But you don't like them?" she persisted, refusing to be side-tracked. Then she blushed under his look of grave surprise, realizing that she had broken one of the unwritten canons of frontier etiquette. "I beg your pardon," she said, hastily. "I didn't mean to—"

His smile wiped out the offence. Stretching his whip, he said, "There's your house."

Helen cried aloud. Nestling under the eaves of green forest, it faced on a lake that lay a scant quarter-mile to the south. North, west, and south, trim clump poplar dotted its rolling land and rose in the fields of grain. Here nature, greatest of landscape-gardeners, had planned her best, setting a watered garden within a fence of forest. Just for a second the house flashed out between two green bluffs, a neat log building, lime-washed in settler style, then it was snatched again from her shining eyes.

But Carter had seen a figure standing at the door. "Clear grit!" he mentally ejaculated. "Blamed if he ain't up and dressed to save her feelings." Then, aloud, he gave her necessary warnings. "Now you mustn't expect too much. He's doing fine, but no doubt pulled down a bit since you saw him."

Two hours later Carter stepped out from his own cabin. He and Morrill had "homesteaded" halves of the same section, and as he strode south the latter's lamp beamed a yellow welcome through the soft night. Already he had refused an invitation to supper, deeming that the brother and sister would prefer to spend their first evening alone together, and now ignoring the lamp's message, he entered Merrill's stable, saddled the latter's cattle pony in darkness thick as ink, led him out, and rode quietly away.

Now of all equines, your northern cross-bred pony is the most cunning. For three black miles Shyster behaved with propriety, then, sensing by the slack line that his rider was preoccupied, he achieved a vicious sideling buck. Well executed, it yet failed of its intent.

"You little devil!" Carter remonstrated, as he applied correctives in the form of quirt and spurs. "Rest don't suit your complaint. To-morrow you go on the mower."

"Hullo!" a voice cried from the darkness ahead. "Who's that cussing?"

It was Danvers, an English remittance-man, a typical specimen of the tribe of Ishmael which is maintained in colonial exile on "keep-away" allowances.

"Are you lost?" Carter asked.

"Lost? No!" There was an aggrieved note in Danvers' tone. "You fellows seem to think that I oughtn't to be out after dark. There's Jed Hines going about and telling people that I knocked at my own door one night to inquire my way."

"Tut, tut," Carter sympathized. "And Jed counted such a truthful man! You'll find it hard to live that down. But where might you be heading for now—if it's any of my darn business?"

"Morrill's. Heard his sister had arrived. I'm going to drop in and pay my respects."

"Humph! that's neighborly. They've had just two hours to exchange the news of three years; they'll shorely be through by this. Keep right on, son. In five-and-twenty minutes this trail will land you at Jed Hines's door."

"Oh, get out!" Danvers exclaimed.

"Sir, to you?" Carter assumed a wonderful stiffness. "I'll give you good-night."

"Oh, here!" the youth called after him. "I didn't mean to doubt you."

Carter rode on.

Ridden by a vivid memory of the jeering Hines, Danvers became desperate. "Oh, Carter! Say, don't get mad! Do tell a fellow! How shall I get there?"

Carter reined in. "Where? To Hines's? Keep right along."

"N-o! Morrill's?"

"Oh, let me see. One—two—three—take the third fork to the left and second to the right; that ought to bring you—to your own door," he finished, as he listened to the departing hoof-beats. "That is, if you follow directions, which ain't likely. Anyway," he philosophically concluded, "you ain't agoing to bother that girl much to-night."

Spurring Shyster, he galloped on, and in ten minutes caught Murchison, an Englishman of the yeoman class, out at his stables. Receiving a hearty affirmative, rounded out with full-mouthed English "damns," in answer to his question, he declined Murchison's invitation to "put in," and rode on—rode from homestead to homestead, asking always the same question, receiving always the same answer. Remittance-men, Scotch Canadians, Seebach, the solitary German settler, alike listened, laughed, and fell in with the plan as Flynn had done. He covered many miles and the moon caught him on trail before he permitted the last man to carry his cold legs back to bed. It was long past midnight when he unsaddled at Morrill's stable.

Softly closing the door on his tired beast, he stood gazing at the house. Far-off in the woods a night-owl hooted, a bittern boomed on the lake shore, the still air pulsed to the howl of a timber-wolf. Though born of the plains, its moods had never palled upon him. Usually he had been stirred. But now he had no ears for the night nor eyes for the lake chased in rippled silver. He listened, listened, as though his strained hearing would drag the girl's soft sleep breathing from the house's jealous embrace. Soon he leaned back against the door musing; and when, having inspected the cabin from one side, the moon sailed over and looked down on the other, he was still there.

As the first quivering flushes shot through the grays of dawn Bender came out of his cabin. He intended to be at work on Merrill's big slough at sunrise. But as he rammed home the sickle into its place in the mower-bar a projecting rivet caused it to buckle and break. That spelled another journey to the blacksmith's, and the sun stood at noon before the sickle was in place. Falling to oiling with savage earnestness, that an ancient Briton might have exhibited in greasing his scythe-armed war-chariot, Bender then stuffed bread and meat into his jumper, hitched, and drove off north, looking for all the world like a grisly pirate afloat on a yellow sea.

Half an hour's easy jogging would carry him to Merrill's big slough, but on the way he had to pass two smaller ones. The first, which had a hundred-yard belt of six-foot hay ringing its sedgy centre, tempted him sorely, yet he refrained, having in mind a bigger prey. At the next he reined in, and stared at a dozen cut swaths and a mower with feeding horses tied to its wheels.

It was Molyneux's mower, and to Bender its presence could only mean that the settlement was rushing the sick man's sloughs. "Invasion of the British!" he yelled. "What 'll Carter say to this? Remember Yorktown!"

He was still laughing when a buck-board came rattling up the trail behind him. It was Hines.

"Cut that slough yet?" he asked.

"Just going there," Bender answered; then gave the reason of his delay, garnished with furious anathema on the maker of sickles. "But ain't that a joke?" he said, indicating Molyneux's mower.

Hines whinnied his satisfaction. "Didn't think it was in the Britisher. But my! won't that gall the long-geared son of a gun of a Yank? Drive on an' I'll follow up an' see you started—mebbe see some of the fun," he added to himself, "if Carter's there."

Quarter of an hour brought them to the big slough, which, on this side, was ringed so thickly with willow-scrub that neither could see it till they reined on its edge. Both stared blankly. When Hines went by that morning a mile of solid hay had bowed in sunlit waves before the breeze. Save a strip some twenty yards wide down the centre, it now lay in flat green swaths, while along the strip a dozen feeding teams were tied to as many mowers.

"A bee, by G—!" Bender swore.

"Hell!" Hines snarled even in his swearing. "Bilked, by the Almighty!"

For a moment they stood, staring from the slough to each other, the lumberman red, angry, foolish, Hines the personification of venomous chagrin. Presently his rage urged him to a great foolishness.

"You an' your casting!" he sneered. "Scairt, you was—plumb scairt!"

Astonishment, the astonishment with which a bull might regard the attack of an impertinent fly, obliterated for one moment all other expression from Bender's face. Then, roaring his furious anger, he sprang from his mower.

Realizing his mistake, Hines had already lashed his ponies, but even then they barely jerked the buck-board tail from under the huge, clutching fingers. Foaming with passion, Bender gave chase for a score of yards, then stopped and shook his great fist, pouring out invective.

"To-morrow," he roared, "I'll come over and cut on you."

"What's the matter? You seem all het up?" Carter's quiet voice gave Bender first notice of the buckboard that had come quietly upon him from the grassy prairie. With Carter were Flynn, Seebach, and two others. Not very far away a wagon was bringing others back from dinner.

"We're all giving Morrill a day's cutting," Carter went on, with a quiet twinkle. "I called at your place this morning with a bid, but you was away. We're right glad to see you. Who told you?"

Gradually a grin wiped out Bender's choler. "You're damn smart," he rumbled. "Well—where shall I begin?"