Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 22

"Yes, sir," said Nan.

"Come right erlong this way?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did ye meet anybody?" demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.

"Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all."

"Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?" asked Toby, curiously.

"Not a word," replied Nan, honestly. "I'm afraid of him and I hid in the bushes till he had gone by."

"Huh!" sighed Toby, as though relieved. "Jest as well. Though Ged wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy."

"Never mind. I'm here now," said Nan, brightly. "And I want you to show me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller."

"Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye," said the man, briskly.

"'Tain't more'n a mile furder on."

But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp.

All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet deep, and there were acres of it.

"They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry holler, jest as it come handy."

"What a lot there is of it!" murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.

"I wish't 'twas somewhere else," grunted Toby.

"Why-so?"

"Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an'

she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a big wind and started the blaze to the surface."

"Oh!" murmured Nan, much interested. "Didn't my Uncle Henry live there then?"

"I sh'd say he did," returned Toby, emphatically. "Didn't he never tell ye about it?"

"No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick."

"Well, I won't, nuther," grunted old Toby. "'Taint pretty for a young gal like you to hear about. Whus.h.!.+ Thar goes a loon!"

A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or goose.

"Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?" cried Nan. "Rafe brought in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good, the way Aunt Kate cooked them."

"Well!" drawled Toby, slyly, "I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef 'twas cooked right. But I never tried it."

"How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?" asked Nan, interested in all culinary pursuits.

"Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process," said the old man, his eyes twinkling. "Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best.

Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day."

"Yes?" queried the perfectly innocent Nan.

"Then ye throw off that water," Toby said, soberly, "and ye put on fresh water an' let it cook all the next day."

"Oh!"

"An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's done!"

Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.

Chapter XXII. ON THE ISLAND

In the winter it was probably dreary enough; but now the beauty of the swelling knoll where the little whitewashed house stood, with the tiny fields that surrounded it, actually made Nan's heart swell and the tears come into her eyes.

It seemed to her as though she had never seen the gra.s.s so green as here, and the thick wood that encircled the little farm was just a hedge of blossoming shrubs with the tall trees shooting skyward in unbroken ranks. A silver spring broke ground at the corner of the paddock fence.

A pool had been scooped out for the cattle to drink at; but it was not muddied, and the stream tinkled down over the polished pebbles to the wider, more sluggish stream that meandered away from the farm into the depths of the swamp.

Toby told her, before they reached the hummock, that this stream rose in the winter and flooded all about the farm, so that the latter really was an island. Unless the ice remained firm they sometimes could not drive out with either wagon or sled for days at a time.

"Then you live on an island," cried Nan.

"Huh! Ye might say so," complained Toby. "And sometimes we feel like as though we was cast away on one, too."

But the girl thought it must really be great fun to live on an island.

They went up to the house along the bank of the clear stream. On the side porch, vine-covered to the eaves, sat an old woman rocking in a low chair and another figure in what seemed at a distance, to be a child's wagon of wickerwork, but with no tongue and a high back to it.

"Here's Gran'pop!" cried a shrill voice and the little wagon moved swiftly to the edge of the steps. Nan almost screamed in fear as it pitched downward. But the wheels did not b.u.mp over the four steps leading to the ground, for a wide plank had been laid slantingly at that side, and over this the wheels ran smoothly, if rapidly.

"You have a care there, Corson!" shrilled the old lady after the cripple. "Some day you'll break your blessed neck."

Nan thought he was a little boy, until they met. Then she was surprised to see a young man's head set upon a shriveled child's body! Corson Vanderwiller had a broad brow, a head of beautiful, brown, wavy hair, and a fine mustache. He was probably all of twenty-five years old.

But Nan soon learned that the poor cripple was not grown in mind, more than in body, to that age. His voice was childish, and his speech and manner, too. He was bashful with Nan at first; then chattered like a six-year-old child to her when she had once gained his confidence.

He wheeled himself about in the little express wagon very well indeed, old Toby having rigged brakes with which he moved the wagon and steered it. His arms and hands were quite strong, and when he wished to get back on to the piazza, he seized a rope his grandfather had hung there, and dragged himself, wagon and all, up the inclined plane, or gangplank, as it might be called.

He showed Nan all his treasures, and they included some very childish toys, a number of them showing the mechanical skill of his grandfather's blunt fingers. But among them, too, were treasures from the swamp and woods that were both very wonderful and very beautiful.

Old Toby had made Corson a neatly fitted cabinet in which were specimens of preserved b.u.t.terflies and moths, most of them of the gay and common varieties; but some, Nan was almost sure, were rare and valuable. There was one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of the thorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nan was almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she had read about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anything to old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have been found in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed to be an Old World moth.

Nan did say, however, to Toby that perhaps some of these specimens might be bought by collectors. The pressed flowers were pretty but not particularly valuable. In the museum at the Tillbury High School there was a much finer collection from the Indiana swamps.

"Sho!" said Toby, slowly; "I wouldn't wanter sell the boy's pretties. I brung most on 'em home to him; but he mounted 'em himself."