Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 15

"Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before we start," replied her uncle.

"Well!" said Nan to herself. "I thought the house was afire."

Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: "s.h.!.+

Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child."

"Like what?" queried Nan, in wonder.

"About fire. Remember!" added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought, as he went back to the kitchen.

Then Nan remembered what the strange little girl, Margaret Llewellen, had said about the fire at Pale Lick that had burned her uncle's former home. Nan had not felt like asking her uncle or aunt, or the boys, either, about it. The latter had probably been too young to remember much about the tragedy.

Although Nan had seen Margaret on several fleeting occasions since her first interview with the woods girl, there had been no opportunity of talking privately with her. And Margaret would only come to the window.

She was afraid to tell "Marm Sherwood" how she had lost the new dress that had been given to her.

It was now as black outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oil lamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor and sitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burning briskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortably getting into thick woolen socks and big lumbermen's boots.

There was a heaping pan of Aunt Kate's doughnuts on the table, flanked with the thick china coffee cups and deep saucers. Her uncle and the boys always poured their coffee into the saucers and blew on it to take the first heat off, then gulped it in great draughts.

Nan followed suit this morning, as far as cooling the coffee in the saucer went. There was haste. Uncle Henry had been up some time, and now he came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitched in and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to the pung.

"We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie," he said. "The boys have to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven."

They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then sallied forth. The ponies were just as eager as they had been the day Nan had come over from the Forks. She was really half afraid of them.

It was so dark that she could scarcely see the half-cleared road before them as the ponies dashed away from Pine Camp. The sky was completely overcast, but Uncle Henry declared it would break at sunrise.

Where the track had been well packed by former sleighs, the ponies'

hoofs rang as though on iron. The bits of snow that were flung off by their hoofs were like pieces of ice. The bells on the harness jingled a very pretty tune, Nan thought. She did not mind the biting cold, indeed, only her face was exposed. Uncle Henry had suggested a veil; but she wanted to see what she could.

For the first few miles it remained very dark, however. Had it not been for the snow they could not have seen objects beside the road at all.

There was a lantern in the back of the pung and that flung a stream of yellow light behind them; but Uncle Henry would not have the radiance of it shot forward.

"A light just blinds you," he said. "I'd rather trust to the roans'

sense."

The ponies galloped for a long way, it seemed to Nan; then they came to a hill so steep that they were glad to drop to a walk. Their bodies steamed in a great cloud as they tugged the sleigh up the slope. Dark woods shut the road in on either hand. Nan's eyes had got used to the faint light so that she could see this at least.

Suddenly she heard a mournful, long-drawn howl, seemingly at a great distance.

"Must be a farm somewhere near," she said to Rafe, who sat beside her on the back seat.

"Nope. No farms around here, Nan," he returned.

"But I hear a dog howl," she told him.

Rafe listened, too. Then he turned to her with a grin on his sharp face that she did not see. "Oh, no, you don't," he chuckled. "That's no dog."

Again the howl was repeated, and it sounded much nearer. Nan realized, too, that it was a more savage sound than she had ever heard emitted by a dog.

"What is it?" she asked, speaking in a low voice to Rafe.

"Wolves!" responded her cousin maliciously. "But you mustn't mind a little thing like that. You don't have wolves down round where you live, I s'pose?"

Nan knew that he was attempting to plague her, so she said: "Not for pets, at least, Rafe. These sound awfully savage."

"They are," returned her cousin calmly.

The wolf cry came nearer and nearer. The ponies had started on a trot again at the top of the hill, and her uncle and Tom did not seem to notice the ugly cry. Nan looked back, and was sure that some great animal scrambled out of the woods and gave chase to them.

"Isn't there some danger?" she asked Rafe again.

"Not for us," he said. "Of course, if the whole pack gathers and catches us, then we have to do something."

"What do you do?" demanded Nan quickly.

"Why, the last time we were chased by wolves, we happened to have a ham and a side of bacon along. So we chucked out first the one, and then the other, and so pacified the brutes till we got near town."

"Oh!" cried Nan, half believing, half in doubt.

She looked back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern, a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shoulders now and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder looking beast, she hoped never to see.

"Oh!" she gasped again, and grabbed at Rafe's arm.

"Don't you be afraid," drawled that young rascal. "I reckon he hasn't many of his jolly companions with him. If he had, of course, we'd have to throw you out to pacify him. That's the rule--youngest and prettiest goes first-----"

"Like the ham, I s'pose?" sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tom reached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by the shoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain.

Nan was almost as startled as was Rafe. In the half-darkness Tom's dull face blazed with anger, and he held his writhing brother as though he were a child.

"You ornery scamp!" he said, almost under his breath. "You try to scare that little girl, and I'll break you in two!"

Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. "I was only fooling her," snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom had the grip of a pipe wrench.

Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: "If I had a gun I'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He's always running after sleds and yelling his head off."

Nan was glad the creature following them was not really a wolf; but she knew she should be just as much afraid of him if she met him alone, as though he really were a wolf. However, mostly, she was troubled by the pa.s.sionate nature of her two cousins. She had never seen Tom show any anger before; but it was evident that he had plenty of spirit if it were called up. And she was, secretly, proud that the slow-witted young giant should have displayed his interest in her welfare so plainly. Rafe sat and nursed his shoulder in silence for several miles.

The cold was intense. As the sky lightened along the eastern horizon it seemed to Nan as though the frost increased each moment. The bricks at their feet were getting cool; and they had already had recourse to the thermos bottle, which was now empty of the gratefully hot drink it had contained.

As the light gradually increased Nan saw Rafe watching her with sudden attention. After his recent trick she was a little afraid of Rafe. Still it did not seem possible that the reckless fellow would attempt any second piece of fooling so soon after his brother's threat.

But suddenly Rafe yelled to his father to pull down the roans, and as the ponies stopped, he reached from the sled into a drift and secured a big handful of snow. Seizing Nan quickly around the shoulders he began to rub her cheek vigorously with the snow. Nan gasped and almost lost her breath; but she realized immediately what Rafe was about.

The frost had nipped her cheek, and her cousin had seen the white spot appear. "The rubbing stung awfully, and the girl could not keep back the tears; but she managed to repress the sobs.

"There!" exclaimed Rafe. "You are a plucky girl. I'm sorry I got some of that snow down your neck, Nan. Couldn't help it. But it's the only thing to do when the thermometer is thirty-two degrees below zero. Why! A fellow went outside with his ears uncovered at Droomacher's camp one day last winter and after awhile he began to rub his ears and one of 'em dropped off just like a cake of ice."

"Stop your lying, boy!" commanded his father. "It isn't as bad as that, Nan. But you want to watch out for frost bite here in the woods, just the same as we had to watch out for the automobiles in crossing those main streets in Chicago."