At the Crossroads Part 53

The winter, with its continuous snow and cruel ice, had obliterated links; only certain centres glowed warm and alive, though even they ached with the pain of blows they had endured.

The Mines. The Point. The Inn. The Little Yellow House. These throbbed and pulsated and to them, more often than of old--or so it seemed--the bell in the deserted chapel sent its haunting messages--messages rung out by unseen hands.

"There's mostly lost winds this winter," poor Jan-an whimpered to Peneluna. "I have feelin's most all the time. I'm scared early and late, and that cold my bones jingle."

Peneluna, softened and more silent than ever, comforted the girl, wrapped her in warmer clothes, and sent her scurrying across the frozen lake to the yellow house.

"And don't come back till spring!" she commanded.

"Spring?" Jan-an paused as she was strapping on an old pair of skates that once belonged to Philander Sniff. "Spring? Gawd!"

It was a terrific winter. The still, intense kind that grips every snowstorm as a miser does his money, hiding it in secret places of the hills where the divine warmth of the sun cannot find it.

The wind, early in November, set in the north! Occasionally the "ha'nt wind" troubled it; wailed a bit and caught the belfry bell, and then gave up and sobbed itself away.

At the inn a vague something--was it old age or lost faith?--was trying to conquer Peter's philosophy and Aunt Polly's spiritual vision. The _Thing_, whatever it was, was having a tussle, but it made its marks. Peter sat oftener by the fire with Ginger edging close to the leg that the gander had once damaged and which, now, acted as an indicator for Peter's moods. When he did not want to talk his "leg ached." When his heart sank in despair his "leg ached." But Polly, a little thinner, a little more dim as to far-off visions, caught every mood of Peter's and sent it back upon him like a boomerang. She met his silent hours with such a flare of talk that Peter responded in self-defence. His black hours she clutched desperately and held them up for him to look at after she had charged them with memories of goodness and love.

As for herself? Well, Aunt Polly nourished her own brave spirit by service and an insistent, demanding cry of justice.

"'Tain't fair and square to hold anything against the Almighty," she proclaimed, "till you've given Him a chance to show what He did things for."

Polly waxed eloquent and courageous; she kept her own faith by voicing it to others; it grew upon reiteration.

Peter was in one of his worst combinations--silence and low spirits--when Polly entered the kitchen one early afternoon. A glance at the huddling form by the red-hot range had the effect of turning Polly into steel. She looked at Ginger, who reflected his master's moods pathetically, and her steel became iron.

"I suppose if I ask you, Peter, how you're feeling," she said slowly, calmly, "you'll fling your leg in my face! It's monstrous to see how an able-bodied man can use any old lie to save his countenance."

"My leg----" Peter began, but Polly stopped him. She had hung her coat and hood in the closet and came to the fire, patting her thin hair in order and then stretching her small, blue-veined hands to the heat.

"Don't leg me, Peter Heathcote, I'm terrible ashamed of you. Terrible.

So long as you _have_ legs, brother--and you _have_!--I say use 'em.

Half the troubles in this world are _think troubles_, laid to legs and backs and what not."

"Where you been?" Peter eyed the stern little face glowering at him.

"You look tuckered."

"I wasn't tuckered until I set my eyes on you, Peter. I've been considerable set up to-day. I went to Mary-Clare's. She is mighty heartening. She's gathered all the children she can get and she's teaching them. She's mimicking the old doctor's plan--making him live again, she calls it--and the Lord knows we need someone in the Forest who doesn't set chewing his own troubles, but gets out and does things!"

Peter winced and Polly rambled on:

"It's really wonderful the way that slip of a thing handles those children. She has made the yellow house like a fairy story--evergreens, red leaves and berries hanging about, and all the dogs with red-ribbon collars. They look powerful foolish, but they don't look like poor Ginger, who acts as if he was being smothered!"

Peter regarded the dog by his side and remarked sadly:

"I guess we better change this dog's name. Ginger is like an insult to him. Ginger! Lord-a-mighty, there ain't no ginger left in him."

"Peter, you're all wrong. There are times when I think Ginger is more gingery than ever. You don't have to dash around after yer tail to prove yer ginger, the thinking part of you can be terrible nimble even when yer bones stiffen up. Ginger does things, brother, that sometimes makes my flesh creepy. Do you know what he does when he can get away from you?"

"No." Peter's hair sprang up; his face reddened. Polly noted the good signs and took heart.

"Why, he joins Mary-Clare's dogs and fetches the littlest children to the yellow house. Carries lunch pails, pulls sleds, and I've seen that little crippled tot of Jonas Mills' on Ginger's back. Ain't that ginger fur yer? I tell you, Peter, it's you as ails that dog--he's what you make him. I reckon the Lord, that isn't unmindful of sparrows, takes notice of dogs." Then suddenly, Polly demanded: "Peter, what is it, just?"

Polly drew her diminutive rocker to the stove and settled back against its gay cretonne cus.h.i.+ons--a vivid bird of Paradise flamed just where her aching head rested.

"Well, Polly"--Peter slapped the leg that he had lied about--"you and I came to the Forest half a century ago and felt real perky. We thought, under G.o.d, we'd make the Forest something better; the people more like people. We came from a city with all sorts of patterns of folks; we had ideas. The Forest gave me health and we were grateful and chesty. It all keeps coming back and--and swamping me."

"Yes, brother, and what else?"

"At first we did seem to count, under G.o.d, of course. We shut up the bar and fixed up the inn and we thought we was caring for folks and protecting 'em." Peter gulped.

"I guess the Lord can care for His own, Peter," Polly remarked fiercely.

"Then Maclin came!" Peter groaned out the words, for this was the crux of the matter.

"Yes--Maclin came." Aunt Polly wiped her eyes. "And I think, looking back, that something had to happen to wake us up! Maclin was a tester."

Peter gave a rumbling laugh.

"Maclin a tester!" he repeated. "Lord, Polly, yer notions are more messing than clearing."

"Well, anyway, Peter Heathcote, Maclin came, and this I do say: places are like folks--if their const.i.tutions are all right, they don't take disease. Maclin was a disease, and we caught him! He settled on us and we hadn't vim enough to know and understand what he was. If it hadn't been Maclin it would have been another. As things are I do feel that Maclin has cleared our systems! The folks were wakened by him as nothing in the world could have wakened them."

Peter was not listening, he was thinking aloud.

"All our years wasted! We felt so sure that we was capable that we just let folks fall into the hands of that evil man. Think of anything, bearing the image of G.o.d taking advantage of simple, honest people and letting them into what he did!"

"I never did think Maclin was in the image of G.o.d, Peter. All G.o.d's children ain't the spitting image of Him. And Maclin certainly did us a good turn when he found iron on the Point. The iron's here--if he ain't!"

"He meant to turn that and his d.a.m.ned inventions against us. Betray us to an enemy! And us just sitting and letting him do it!"

"Well, he didn't do it!" Polly snapped. "And it seems like G.o.d is giving us another chance; same as He is the world."

Peter got up and stumped noisily about the kitchen much to Ginger's surprise and discomfort.

"We're old, Polly," he muttered; "the heart's taken out of us. We led 'em astray because we didn't lead 'em right."

"I'm not old." Polly looked comically defiant. "And my heart's where it belongs and on the job. It's shame to us, Peter, if we don't use every sc.r.a.p that's left of us to undo the failings of the past."

"And that night!" Peter groaned, recalling the night of Maclin's arrest. "That's what comes of being false to yer trust. Terrible, terrible! Twombley standing over Maclin with his gun after finding him flas.h.i.+ng lights to G.o.d knows who, and then those government men hauling things out of his bags--why, Polly, in the middle of some black nights I get to seeing the look on Maclin's face when he was caught!"

"Now, brother, do be sensible and wipe the sweat off yer forehead.

This room is stifling. Can't you see, Peter, that at a time like that the Lord had to use what He had, and there was only us to use? Better Twombley's gun than Maclin's, and you know, full well, they found two ugly looking guns in Maclin's bag all packed with papers and pictures of the mines and bits of our own rock--what showed iron. Peter, I ain't a bloodthirsty woman and the Lord knows I don't hunger for my fellow's vitals, but I'm willing to give Maclin up to a righteous G.o.d.

The Lord knows we couldn't deal with the like of him."

"But, Polly"--poor Peter's humanity had received a terrible jog--"the look on Maclin's face--when he was caught!"

"Well! he ought to have had a look!" Polly snapped. "Several of us gave him looks. I remember that the Point men looked just as if it was resurrection day. They stiffened up and _I_ say, Peter Heathcote, their backs ain't slumped yet--oh! if only we could keep them stiff!

It was an awful big thing to happen to a little place like the Forest.

It's terrible suggestive!"