King Spruce Part 14

"There! Hear that?" growled Straight, in Wade's ear. "Put your common-sense calipers on this stand of human timber and see what ye make of it."

Wade, looking from face to face, as the frowsy population of Misery lounged closer about him, half in indolence, half in the distrustful shyness that the stupidly ignorant usually a.s.sume towards superior strangers, noted that though the men displayed an almost canine desire to fawn for favors, the women were sullen. The only exception was a very old woman who hobbled close and entreated:

"Ain't you got northin' good for Abe, nice young gentleman? Poor Abe!

Hain't got no friend but his old mother." She hooked a hand as blue and gaunt as a turkey's claw into Wade's belt and held up her spotted face so close to his that he turned his head in uncontrollable disgust.

"Your hands off the gentleman, Jule," commanded Christopher, brusquely.

"It's old Jule, mate of the old he one that has been chasin' us," he explained, with more of that blissful disregard for the feelings of his subjects that had previously shocked the young man. "There's old Jed and young Jed--old Jule and young Jule. They 'ain't even got gumption enough here to change names. And that's Abe--the choice specimen that she's beggin' for. Look at him and wish for a pictur'-machine, Mr. Wade!"

He had thought there could be no worse in human guise than those he had seen. But this huge, hairy, s.h.a.ggy, almost naked giant, cowering against the side of a shack with all the timidity of a child, marked a climax even to such degeneracy as he had quailed before.

"Mind in him about five years old, and will always stay five years old,"

said the guide, pointing to the wistful, simpering face. "Body speaks for itself. Look at them muscles! I've seen him ploughin' hitched with their cow. Clever as a mule. He's the old woman's hoss. Hauls her on a jumper clear to Castonia settlement."

"An animal!" Wade gasped.

"Not much else. Afraid of the dark, of shadows, and women mostly.

Strange women! Once a woman scared him in Castonia and he ran away like a hoss, draggin' the jumper. Old Jule hitched him to a post after that."

Cretinism in any form had always shocked Dwight Wade inexpressibly. He turned away, but the old woman was in his path, begging.

The next moment a tall, lithe girl ran swiftly out of a hut, seized the whimpering old woman, tossed her over her shoulder as a miller would up-end a bag of meal, and staggered back into the hut, kicking the frail door shut with angry heel. Wade got an astonished but a comprehensive view of this "kidnapper." There was no vacuity in her face. It was brilliant, with black eyes under a tangle of dark hair disordered but not unkempt like that of the females he had seen in Misery. Her lips were very red, and the color flamed on her cheeks above the brown of the tan. In that compost heap of humanity the girl was a vision, and Wade turned to old Christopher with unspoken questions on his parted lips.

"Don't know," said the guide, laconically, wagging his head. "No one knows. She's with 'em. But you and me can see that she ain't one of 'em.

She's always been with 'em as fur back's I know of her--and that was sixteen years ago, when she was in a holler log on rockers for a cradle."

"Stolen!" suggested Wade, desperately. The thought had a morsel of comfort in it. That a girl like that could belong by right of birth in this tribe, that a girl with--ah, now he realized why his heart had throbbed at sight of her--that a girl with Elva Barrett's hair and eyes could be doomed to this existence was a knife-thrust in his sensibilities.

And the toss of her head and the rebelliousness in the gesture--the defiance in the upward flash of the sparkling eyes--subdued in Elva Barrett's case by training--the mnemonics of love, whose suggestions are so subtle, thrilled him at the sudden apparition of this forest beauty.

Reason angrily rebuked this unbidden comparison. He bit his lips, and flushed as though his swift thought had wronged his love. Old Christopher put into blunt woods phrase the pith of the thoughts that struggled together in Wade's mind. The guide was looking at the closed door.

"There's lots of folks, Mr. Wade, that don't recognize plain white birch in some of the things that's polished and set up in city parlors. I've wondered a good many times what a society cabinet-shop, as ye might say, would do to that girl."

"They must have stolen her," repeated Wade.

Old Christopher tucked a sliver of plug into his cheek.

"That would sound well in a gypsy fairy-story, but it don't fit the style of the Skeets and Bushees. They're too lazy to steal anything that's alive. They want even a shote killed and dressed before they'll touch it. Near's I can find out, the young one was handed to 'em, and they was too dadblamed tired to wake up and ask where it came from.

They didn't even have sprawl enough to name her. I did that," he added, calmly. "Yes," he proceeded, smiling at Wade's astonished glance; "I was guidin' a sport down the West Branch just before they drove the tribe out of the Sourdnaheunk country--under old Katahdin, you know! I see her in that log cradle, and they was callin' her 'it.' So me 'n' the sport got up a name for her--Kate Arden, for the mountain. 'Tain't a name for a Maine girl to be ashamed of."

It suddenly occurred to Wade, gazing at the old man, that the quizzical s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-up of his eyes was hiding some deeper emotion; for Christopher's voice had a quaver in it when he said:

"Poor little gaffer! Some one ought to have taken her away from 'em. But it's hard to get folks interested in even a pretty posy when it grows in a skunk-cabbage patch."

He looked away, embarra.s.sed that any man should see emotion on his face, and uttered a prompt exclamation.

Threading their way in single file among the blackened stumps that bordered the Tomah trail to the north came a half-dozen men.

"That's Bennett Rodliff ahead, and he's the high sheriff of this county," growled the old man. "There's two deputies and two game-wardens with him--and old Pulaski Britt bringin' up in the rear. Knowin' them pretty well, I should say that it spells t-r-u-b-l-e, in jest six letters. I ain't a great hand to guess, Mr. Wade, but if some one was to ask me quick, I should say it was the same old checker-game that the Skeets and Bushees have been playin' for all these years, and that it's their turn to move."

CHAPTER VIII

THE TORCH, AND THE LIGHTING OF IT

"We know how to riffle a log jam apart, Though it's tangled and twisted and turned; But the love of a woman and ways of the heart Are things that we never learned."

--Leeboomook Song.

The sheriff and his men tramped into the little clearing and gave the usual greeting of woods wayfarers--the nod and the almost voiceless grunt. The Honorable Pulaski was a little more talkative. He was also in excellent humor.

"Hear you and Rod Ide have hitched hosses, Wade!" he cried. "Sheriff here was tellin' me. I'm mighty glad of it. That lets me out of thinkin'

I got you up here on a wild-goose chase. I was sorry to dump you, but it would take nine time-keepers to make a foreman like Colin MacLeod, and when he put it up to me you had to go. It was business, and business beats fun up this way."

The young man did not reply. Words seemed useless just then.

The Honorable Pulaski turned from him briskly and ran an appraising eye over the miserable huddle of huts. With the true scent of primitive natures for impending trouble, the population of Misery edged around this group of new arrivals--the men in advance and wistful, the women behind and sullen.

"Well, boys," said the Honorable Pulaski, "it's just this way about it, and we can all be reasonable and do business like business men." His air was that of a man dealing with children or savages. "As far as I'm personally concerned, I hate to bother you. But I represent the other owners of this towns.h.i.+p, and the other owners aren't as reasonable about some things as I am."

He paused to light a long cigar. No one spoke. He proffered one to Wade, who shook his head with a little unnecessary vigor.

Britt talked as he puffed.

"Now--pup--pup--now, boys--pup--you know as well as I do that you've squatted right in the middle of a lot of slash that we had to leave, and it lays in a bad way for fire. You ain't so careful about fire as you ought to be." He held up his cigar. "Here's my style. I don't smoke till I'm out of the trail. I--pup--pup--own land, and that makes a difference. You don't own land. I don't want to bring up old stories, but you know and I know that the prospects of six cents a quart for blueberries makes you forgetful about what's been said to you. You've started some devilish big fires. Here's the September big winds about due--and this one that's just springing up to-day is a fair sample--and all is, the owners can't afford to run chances of a fire that will stop G.o.d knows where if it gets running in this five thousand acres of dry tops and slash.

"Here's Mr. Ide's representative," he continued, flapping a hand towards Wade. "They've got black growth to the north, and he'll tell you just the same thing."

"Well, Mister Mealy-mouth," sneered young Jule, over the heads of the others, "git to where you're goin' to. We don't want no sermons. It's move ag'in, hey?"

"It's move," snapped the Honorable Pulaski, his ready temper starting at the woman's insolent tone, "and it's move d.a.m.n sudden."

Whether it was a groan or growl that came from the wretched huddle, Wade, looking on them with infinite pity, could not determine.

"I could put ye plumb square out of the county," roared Britt; "I've got land jurisdiction enough to do it. But you be reasonable and I'll be reasonable. I won't drive ye too far. I'll have four horses over from my cedar operation to tote what duds you want to take and haul the old women. Sheriff Rodliff and his men here will go along, and see that you have grub and don't have to light fires. In fact, everything will be arranged nice for you, and you'll like it when you get there."

"Where?" asked young Jed.

"On Little Lobster--the old Drake farm," said the Honorable Pulaski, trying to speak enthusiastically and signally failing.

"O my Gawd!" moaned young Jed; "most twenty miles to hoof it, and when ye git there no wood bigger'n alder-withes, and all the stones the devil let drop when his puckerin'-string bruk! Hain't a berry. Hain't northin'

to earn a livin'."

"You never earned your living, and you don't want to earn your living,"

retorted Britt. "You just want to stay up here in the big timber and start fires."