A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Part 35

As to the others, it was hard to say, there in the night and storm, what we ought to do for them. In the woods a horse with a broken leg is little better than dead, and in mercy is usually put out of its misery.

We knew that the four horses lying there were very seriously injured, and Asa thought that we ought to put an end to their sufferings. But Addison and I could not bring ourselves to kill them, and we went to ask Tommy's advice.

The old man was pottering about the scoot, trying to recover his traps and gun. He hobbled down to the brink of the chasm and peered over at the disabled animals; but "I vum, I dunno," was all that we could get from him in the way of advice.

At last we brought the horse blankets from the scoot and put them over the suffering creatures to protect them from the storm. In their efforts to get up, however, the animals thrashed about constantly, and the blankets did not shelter them much. We had no idea where the horses were that had run away.

At last, about midnight, we set off afoot up the trail to the nearest lumber camp. Asa led the way with the lantern, and old Tommy followed behind us with his precious traps. The camp was nearly six miles away; it proved a hard, dismal tramp, for now the snow was seven or eight inches deep. We reached the camp between two and three o'clock in the morning, and roused Andrews, the foreman, and his crew of loggers. Never was warm shelter more welcome to us.

At daybreak the next morning it was still snowing, but Andrews and eight of his men went back with us. The horses still lay there in the snow in a pitiful plight; we all agreed that it was better to end their sufferings as quickly as possible.

We then went in search of the runaways, and after some time found them huddled together in a swamp of thick firs about two miles down the trail. We captured them without trouble and led them back to the scoot, which we reloaded and sent on up to camp with Asa. Addison and I put bridles on two of the horses,--Ducie and Skibo,--and rode home to the farm.

It was dark when we got home, and no one heard us arrive. After we had put up the horses, we went into the house with our dismal tidings. The old Squire was at his little desk in the sitting-room, looking over his season's accounts.

"You go in and tell him," Addison said to me.

I dreaded to do it, but at last opened the door and stole in.

"Ah, my son," the old gentleman said, looking up, "so you are back."

"Yes, sir," said I, "but--but we've had trouble, sir, terrible trouble."

"What!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"We've had a dreadful time. Some bears came out ahead of us and scared the horses!" I blurted out. "And we've lost six of them! They ran off the ledges into Saddleback brook and broke their legs. We had to kill them."

The old Squire jumped to his feet with a look of distress on his face.

Addison now came into the room, and helped me to give a more coherent account of what had happened.

After his first exclamation of dismay, the old Squire sat down and heard our story to the end. Naturally, he felt very badly, for the accident had cost him at least a thousand dollars. He did not reproach us, however.

"I have only myself to blame," he said. "It is a bad way of taking horses into the woods--leading so many of them together. I have always felt that it was risky. They ought to go separate, with a driver for every span. This must be a lesson for the future."

"It is an ill wind that blows no one any good," says the proverb. Our disaster proved a bonanza to old Tommy Goss; he set his traps there all winter, near the frozen bodies of the horses, and caught marten, fishers, mink, "lucivees," and foxes by the dozen.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

CZAR BRENCH

The loss of Master Joel Pierson as our teacher at the district school the following winter, was the greatest disappointment of the year. We had antic.i.p.ated all along that he was coming back, and I think he had intended to do so; but an offer of seventy-five dollars a month--more than double what our small district could pay--to teach a village school in an adjoining county, robbed us of his invaluable services; for Pierson was at that time working his way through college and could not afford to lose so good an opportunity to add to his resources during the winter vacation.

We did not learn this till the week before school was to begin; and when his letter to Addison reached us, explaining why he could not come, there were heart-felt lamentations at the old Squire's and at the Edwards farm.

I really think that the old Squire would have made up the difference in wages to Master Pierson from his own purse; but the offer to go to the larger school had already been accepted.

As several of the older boys of our own district school had become somewhat unruly--including Newman Darnley, Alf Batchelder and, I grieve to say, our cousin Halstead--the impression prevailed that the school needed a "straightener." Looking about therefore at such short notice, the school agent was led to hire a master, widely noted as a disciplinarian, named Nathaniel Brench, who for years had borne the nickname of "Czar" Brench, owing to his autocratic and cruel methods of school government.

I remember vividly that morning in November, the first day of school, when Czar Brench walked into the old schoolhouse, glanced smilingly round, and laid his package of books and his ruler, a heavy one, on the master's desk; then, coming forward to the box stove in the middle of the floor, he warmed his hands at the stovepipe. Such a big man! Six feet three in his socks, bony, broad-shouldered, with long arms and big hands.

He wore a rather high-crowned, buff-colored felt hat. Light buff, indeed, seemed to be his chosen color, for he wore a buff coat, buff vest and buff trousers. Moreover, his hair, his bushy eyebrows and his short, thin moustache were sandy.

Beaming on us with his smiling blue eyes, he rubbed his hands gently as he warmed them.

"I hope we are going to have a pleasant term of school together," he said, in a tone as soft as silk. "And it will not be my fault if we don't have a real quiet, nice time."

We learned later that it was his custom always to begin school with a beautiful speech of honeyed words--the calm before the storm.

"Of course we have to have order in the schoolroom," he said apologetically. "I confess that I like to have the room orderly, and that I do not like to hear whispering in study hours. When the scholars go out and come in at recess time, too, it sort of disturbs me to have crowding and noise. I never wish to be hard or unreasonable with my scholars--I never am, if I can avoid it. But these little things, as you all know, have to be mentioned sometimes, if we are going to have a really pleasant and profitable term.

"There is another thing that always make me feel nervous in school hours, and that is buzzing with the lips while you are getting your lessons, I don't like to speak about it, and there may be no need for it, but lips buzzing in study hours always make me feel queer. It's just as easy to get your lessons with your eyes as with your lips, and for the sake of my feelings I hope you will try to do so.

"Speaking of lessons," he went on, "I don't believe in giving long ones.

I always liked short, easy lessons myself, and I suppose you do."

In point of fact he gave the longest, hardest lessons of any teacher we ever had! We had to put in three or four hours of hard study every evening in order to keep up; and if we failed--

By this time some of the larger boys--Newman Darnley, Ben Murch, Absum Glinds and Melzar Tibbetts--were smiling broadly and winking at one another. The new master, they thought, was "dead easy."

Later in the morning, when the bell rang for the boys to come in from their recess, Newman and many of the others pushed in at the doorway, pell-mell, as usual. Before they were fairly inside the room the new master, calm and smiling, stood before them. One of his long arms shot out; he collared Newman and, with a trip of the foot, flung him on the floor. Ben Murch, coming next, landed on top of Newman. Alfred Batchelder, Ephraim Darnley, Absum Glinds, Melzar Tibbetts and my cousin, Halstead, followed Ben, till with incredible suddenness nine of the boys, all almost men-grown, were piled in a squirming heap on the floor!

Filled with awe, we smaller boys stole in to our seats, casting frightened glances at the teacher, who stood beaming genially at the heap of boys on the floor.

"Lie still, lie still," he said, as some of the boys at the bottom of the pile struggled to get out. "Lie still. I suppose you forgot that it disturbs me to have crowding and loud trampling. Try and remember that it disturbs me."

Turning away, he said, "The girls may now have their recess."

To this day I remember just how those terrified girls stole out from the schoolroom. Not until they had come in from their recess and had taken their seats did Master Brench again turn his attention to the pile of boys. He walked round it with his face wreathed in smiles.

"Like as not that floor is hard," he remarked. "It has just come into my mind. I'm afraid you're not wholly comfortable. Rise quietly, brush one another, and take your seats. It grieves me to think how hard that floor must be."

There were at that time about sixty-five pupils in our district, ranging in size and age from little four-year-olds, just learning the alphabet, to young men and women twenty years of age. It was impossible that so many young persons could be gathered in a room without some shuffling of feet and some noise with books and slates. Moreover, boys and girls unused to study for nine months of the year are not always able at first to con lessons without unconsciously and audibly moving their lips.

Buzzing lips, however, were among the seven "deadly sins" under the regime of Czar Brench. Dropping a book or a slate, wriggling about in your seat, whispering to a seatmate, sitting idly without seeming to study and not knowing your lesson reasonably well were other grave offenses.

Because of the length of the lessons, there were frequently failures in cla.s.s; the punishment for that was to stand facing the school, and study the lesson diligently, feverishly, until you knew it. There were few afternoons that term when three or four pupils were not out there, madly studying to avoid remaining after school. For no one knew what would happen if you were left there alone with Czar Brench!

He seemed to care for little except order and strict discipline. He used to take off his boots and, putting on an old pair of carpet slippers, walk softly up and down the room, leisurely swinging his ruler. First and last that winter he feruled nearly all of us boys and several of the girls. "Little love pats to a.s.sist memory," he used to say, as he brought his ruler down on the palms of our hands.

Feruling with the ruler was for ordinary, miscellaneous offenses; but Czar Brench had more picturesque punishments for the six or seven "deadly sins." If you dropped a book, he would instantly cry, "Pick up that book and fetch it to me!" Then, when you came forward, he would say, "Take it in your right hand. Face the school. Hold it out straight, full stretch, and keep it there till I tell you to lower it."

Oh, how heavy that book soon got to be! And when Czar Brench calmly went on hearing lessons and apparently forgot you there, the discomfort soon became torture. Your arm would droop lower and lower, until Czar Brench's eye would fall on you, and he would say quietly, "Straight out, there!"

There were many terribly tired arms at our school that winter!