King Spruce Part 13

They were munching biscuits and bacon, nursing pannikins of tea between their knees, when Christopher c.o.c.ked an ear, darted a glance, and mumbled a mild oath as savor to his mouthful of biscuit.

"Set to eat a snack within a mile of Misery Gore and one of them crows will appear to ye. And that's the old he one of them all."

The old man who came shuffling slowly down the path was gaunt with the leanness of want, and unkempt with the squalor of the hopelessly pauperized.

"It's one of the Misery Gore squatters, Mr. Wade. All Skeets and Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger relations.h.i.+p. All State paupers, and no more sprawl to 'em than there is to a fresh-water clam."

Old Christopher, with Yankee contempt of the thrifty for the willing pauper, grumbled on in his scornful explanations after the old man sat down opposite them. Wade, accustomed to politer usages, winced before this brutal frankness. He plainly felt worse than the subject, who looked from one to the other, his blue lips slavering at sight of the food.

"It ain't no use to set there and drool like a hound pup, Jed," snapped old Christopher, cutting another slice of bacon. "We're bound in for a fortnit's explorin' trip, and we ain't got no grub to spare."

The patriarch of Misery Gore drew a greasy bit of brown paper from his ragged vest, unfolded it, and took out what was apparently a long hair from his grizzly beard. He pinched the thicker end between his dirty thumb and forefinger, stroked the whisker upright, and held it before his gaping mouth. The whisker slowly bent over towards Christopher.

"'Lectric!" announced the experimenter, in thick, stuffy tones, as though he were talking through a cloth.

Again he gaped his toothless mouth, and the whisker bent towards the uninviting opening.

"'Lectric!" He grinned at them, rolling his watery eyes from face to face to seek appreciation. It was evident that he considered the feat remarkable.

"Full of it! Er huh! Full of it!" He stroked his thin fingers down his arm and slatted into the air. "Storms, huh? I know. Fair weather, huh? I know. Things to happen, huh? I know. I can tell."

He hitched nearer, and looked hungrily at the bread and bacon which Christopher immediately and ruthlessly began to wrap up.

"Them wireless-telegraph folks ought to know about you," grunted the guide. "Don't pay any attention to the old fool, Mr. Wade. He don't have to beg of us. Rod Ide furnishes supplies to these critters. Law says that the a.s.sessor of the nearest plantation shall do it, and then Ide puts in his bill to the State. You needn't worry about their starvin'."

"You'd all see us starve on Misery Gore," wailed the old man. "You'd all see us starve!" His tone changed suddenly to weak anger. "Ide's an old hog. No tea, no tobarker."

"Yes, and he ain't been so lib'ral with turkeys, plush furniture, and champagne as he ought to be," growled Christopher, relis.h.i.+ng his irony.

"If there's anything that you really need, Mr.--Mr.--"

"Skeet," snapped the guide.

"--Mr. Skeet, I'll speak to Mr. Ide about it when--"

"Mr. Wade," broke in Christopher, "what's the need of wastin' good breath on that sculch? They get all they deserve to have. They're too lazy to breathe unless it come automatic. They let their potatoes rot in the ground, and complain about starvin'. They won't cut browse to bank their shacks, and complain about freezin'. The only thing they can do to the queen's taste is steal, and it's got so in this section that there ain't a sportin'-camp nor a store w.a.n.gan that it's safe to leave a thing in."

He began to stuff tins into the mouth of the meal-sack, glowering at the ancient pauper.

"They nigh put me out of bus'ness guidin' hereabouts. Stole everything from my Attean camp that I left there--and it ain't no fun to tugger-lug grub for sports on your back from Castonia."

When the last knot in the leather thong was twitched close and the bountiful meal-bag was closed, old Jed abandoned hope and wheedling. He brandished the whisker at Christopher, his moth-speckled hand quivering.

"Old butcherman!" he screamed. "'Twas my Jed. Off here!" He set the edge of his palm against his arm.

Christopher's face grew hard under his frosty beard, but his cheeks flushed when Wade gazed inquiringly at him.

"It's a thief's lookout when there's a spring-gun in a camp," he muttered. "There was a sign on the door sayin' as much. It ain't my fault if folks has been too busy stealin' to learn to read. If you ever hear anything about it up this way, Mr. Wade, you needn't blame me. They had their warnin' by word o' mouth. I'm sorry it happened, but--"

"What happened?"

"Young Jed Skeet joined the 'It-'ll-git-ye Club' a year ago with a fin shot off at the elbow."

Christopher swung his pack to his back, thrust his arms through the straps, and marched away. Wade followed with a new light on some of the accepted ethics of human combat in the big woods. Old Jed shuffled behind, a toothless Nemesis gasping maledictions in stuffy tones.

"We'll swing over the ridge and go through Misery Gore settlement, Mr.

Wade," said the old guide, after a time, divining the reason for his companion's silence. "It may spoil your appet.i.te for supper, but it'll prob'ly straighten out some of your notions about me and that spring-gun."

On the opposite slant of the ridge a ledge thrust above the hard-wood growth, and Christopher led the way out upon this lookout.

"There! Ain't that a pictur' for a Suss.e.x shote to look at, and then take to the woods ag'in?" he inquired, with scornful disregard for any civic pride the patriarch of Misery might have taken in his community.

The few miserable habitations of poles, mud, and tarred paper were scattered around a tumble-down lumber camp, relic of the old days when "punkin pine" turreted Misery Gore.

"I suppose the man who named it stood here and looked down," suggested Wade.

"It was named Misery fifty years before this tribe ever came here. I reckon they heard of it, and it sounded as though it might suit 'em.

They're a tribe by themselves, Mr. Wade. They've been driven off'n a dozen towns.h.i.+ps that I know of. Land-owners keep 'em movin'. I reckon this is their longest stop. This Gore is a surplus left in surveying Range Nine. Sort of a no man's land. But they hadn't ought to be left here."

There was so much conviction in the old guide's tone, and the contrast of utter ruin below was so great, its last touch added by the pathetic old figure in rags at the foot of the ledge, that the young man's temper flamed. He had been pondering the spring-gun episode with no very tolerant spirit.

"For G.o.d's sake, Straight, show some man-feeling. Is the selfishness of the woods down to the point where you begrudge those poor devils that wallow of stumps and rocks?"

Christopher received this outburst with his usual placidity--the placidity that only woodsmen have cultivated in its most artistic sense.

"Look, Mr. Wade!" He swept his hand in the circuit that embraced the panorama of ridges showing the first touches of frost, the hills still darkling with black growth, the valleys and the shredded forest.

"There she lays before you, ten thousand acres like a tinder-box in this weather, dry since middle August. You've seen some of the slash. But you've seen only a little of it. Under those trees as far as eye can see there's the slash of three cuttin's. Tops propped on their boughs like wood in a fireplace. Draught like a furnace! It's bad enough now, with the green leaves still on. It's like to be worse in May before the green leaves start. And about all those dod-fired Diggers down there know or care about property interests is that a burn makes blueberries grow, and blueberries are worth six cents a quart! They have done it in other places. They're inbred till they've got water for blood and sponges for brains. When the hankerin' for blueberries catches 'em they'll put the torch to that undergrowth and refuse, and if the wind helps and the rain don't stop it they'll set a fire that will run to Pogey Notch like racin' hosses, roar through there like blazin' tissue-paper in a chimbly flue, and then where'll your black growth on Enchanted be--the growth that's goin' to make money for you and Rod Ide? I tell ye, Mr. Wade, there's more to woods life than roamin' through and cuttin' your gal's name on the bark. There's more to loggin' than the chip-chop of a sharp axe or the rick-raw of a double-handled gas.h.i.+n'-fiddle. And when it comes down to profit, you can't be polite to a porcupine when he's girdlin' your spruce-trees, nor practice society airs and Christian charity with d.a.m.n fools, whether they're dude fishermen tossin'

cigar-stubs or such spontaneously combustin' toadstools as them that live down yonder eatin' the State's pork and flour. I'm up here with ye to tell ye something about the woods, Mr. Wade. And it ain't all goin'

to be about calipers, the diffrunce between the Bangor and New Hamps.h.i.+re scale, and how stumpage ain't profitable under nine inches top measure--no, s'r, not by a blame sight!"

There was no pa.s.sion in the old man's remonstrance, but there was an earnestness that closed the young man's lips against argument. He followed silently when Christopher led the way down towards the settlement. Old Jed took up his position at the rear.

The first who accosted them was a slatternly woman, her short skirts revealing men's long-legged boots. She rapped the bowl of a pipe smartly in her palm, to show that it was empty, and demanded tobacco. She scowled, and there was no hint of coaxing in her tones.

When Wade looked at her with an expression of shocked astonishment that all his resolution could not modify, she sneered at him.

"Oh, you think we don't know northin' here--ain't wuth noticin' 'cause we live in the woods, hey? Well, we do know something. Here, Ase, tell this sport the months of the year, and then let's see if he's stingy enough to keep his plug in his pocket."

Ase, plainly her son, lubberly and man-grown, roared without bashfulness:

"Jan'warry, Feb'darry, Septober, Ockjuber, Fourth o' July, St. Padrick's Day, and Cris'mus--gimme a chaw!"

Two or three men lounged out-of-doors--one with his arm significantly off at the elbow. But there was not even a shadow on his vapid face when he looked at Christopher, author of his misfortune.

"Ain't ye goin' to give me a piece of your plug, Chris?" he whined.

"Seem's if ye might. You 'n' me's square now--I got your pork and you got my arm."