Annie Roe Carr

“ Ten thousand dollars would certainly be a fortune for us; fifty thousand is beyond the dreams of avarice.”
“Oh, dear me!” said Nan weakly.
But Mrs. Sherwood merely laughed again. “The more the better,” she said. “Why shouldn't we be able to put fifty thousand dollars to good use?”
“Oh, we can, Momsey,” said Nan eagerly. “But, will we be let?”
Mr. Sherwood laughed grimly at that; but his wife continued confidently:
“I am sure nobody needs it more than we do.”
“Why!” her daughter said, just as excitedly, “we'll be as rich as Bess Harley's folks. Oh, Momsey! Oh, Papa Sherwood! ”

“ She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and axes sounded from higher up the ridge.
Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of the woodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantly Nan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside the path. ”

“ Nan could not take her eyes from her cousin after that. It seemed to be a race between Rafe and the charging log, to see which should first reach the foreman. Rafe, reckless and harebrained as he was, flew over the logs as sure-footed as a goat. Nan felt faint. Her cousin's peril seemed far greater to her than that of the foreman.
A step might plunge Rafe into the foaming stream! When a log rolled under him she cried out under her breath and clamped her teeth down on to her lower lip until the blood almost came.
“He'll be killed! He'll be killed!” she kept repeating in her own mind. ”

“ She was a rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed girl, with fly-away hair, a blue tam-o'-shanter set jauntily upon it, and a strong, plump body that she had great difficulty in keeping still enough in school to satisfy her teachers.
“Do behave, Nan,” begged Bess. “We're on the public street.”
“How awful!” proclaimed Nan Sherwood, making big eyes at her chum. “Why folks know we're only high-school girls, so, of course, we're crazy! Otherwise we wouldn't BE high-school girls.” ”

“ They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did not breed runts.
Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, and the scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in the Tillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size of these workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside the narrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills.
Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tom playfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that the two brothers smiled again at each other. ”

“ Sherwood looked startled indeed. He had no idea what the letter from Scotland contained, and he feared that his wife, who had already suffered so much, was for the moment quite out of her head.
“My poor Jessie,” he began, but her low, sweet laugh stopped him.
“Not poor! Never poor again, Robert!” she cried. “God is very good to us. At the very darkest hour He has shown us the dawn. Robert, we are rich!”
“Great goodness, Jessie! What do you mean? Exclaimed Mr. Sherwood, stumbling to his feet at last.
“It's true! It's true, Papa Sherwood!” Nan cried, clapping her hands. ”

“ Gedney Raffer, weazened, snakelike, sly, and treacherous, had doubtless wronged Uncle Henry deeply. But this fact could not excuse the huge lumberman's language on the platform of the Hobart Forks station.
Nan wanted to stop her ears with her fingers and run from the spot. The tough fellows standing around enjoyed the war of words hugely. Mr. Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latter dared not use his puny fists on the giant. ”

“ It was an entirely different atmosphere up here in the Big Woods from Tillbury, or even Chicago.
The train creaked to a stop. They leaped down upon the snowy platform. Only a plain station, big freight house, and a company of roughly dressed men to meet them. Behind the station a number of sleighs and sledges stood, their impatient horses shaking the innumerable bells they wore.
Nan, stumbling off the car step behind her uncle, came near to colliding with a small man in patched coat and cowhide boots, and with a rope tied about his waist as some teamsters affect. ”

“ One can excuse much that is rough in a character so lovable as that of Uncle Henry's.
The snow increased as the train sped on and the darkness gradually thickened. Uncle Henry took his niece into the dining car where they had supper, with a black man with shiny eyes and very white teeth, who seemed always on the broad grin, to wait upon them. Nan made a mental note to write Bess Harley all about the meal and the service, for Bess was always interested in anything that seemed “aristocratic,” and to the unsophisticated girl from Tillbury the style of the dining car seemed really luxurious. ”

“ I remember Uncle Henry,” cried Nan. “Such a big, big man!”
“With a heart quite in keeping with the size of his body, honey,” her mother quickly added. “And your Aunt Kate is a very nice woman. Your uncle has lumber interests. He might find something for your father there.”
“I'll write to Hen, Jessie,” Mr. Sherwood said decisively. “But a lumber camp is no place for you. Let's see, his mail address is Hobart Forks, isn't it? Right in the heart of the woods. If you weren't eaten up by black gnats, you would be by ennui,” and he chuckled. ”

“ Nan never missed human companionship when she was on the long walks she so often took in the woods.
She had learned now that, despite her adventure with the lynx in the snow-drifted hollow, there was scarcely any animal to fear about Pine Camp. Bears had not been seen for years; bobcats were very infrequently met with and usually ran like scared rabbits; foxes were of course shy, and the nearest approach to a wolf in all that section was Toby Vanderwiller's wolfhound that had once frightened Nan so greatly. ”

“ Kate and I will be mighty glad to have you here. Tom and Rafe are working for a luckier lumberman than I, and there's plenty of room here for all hands, and a hearty welcome for you and yours as long as there's a shot in the locker.”
“That's just like Hen,” Nan's father said. “He'd divide his last crust with me. But I don't want to go where work is scarce. I must go where it is plentiful, where a man of even my age will be welcome.”
“Your age, Papa Sherwood! How you talk,” drawled Nan's mother in her pretty way. “You are as young as the best of 'em yet.” ”

“ Kate and I always did hanker for a girl.”
“If you owned a really, truly daughter of your own, Uncle Henry, I believe you'd spoil her to death!” cried Nan, the next morning, when she came out of the fur shop to which he had taken her.
He had insisted that she was not dressed warmly enough for the woods. “We see forty and forty-five below up there, sometimes,” he said. “You think this raw wind is cold; it is nothing to a black frost in the Big Woods. Trees burst as if there were dynamite in 'em. You've never seen the like. ”

“ Poor old man! He attends three meetings each Sunday, all different, and lives on a farm at Wingate weekdays where he has to work and support his family.
“He doesn't get but fifty dollars a year from each church, it's not making him a millionaire very fast,” pursued Aunt Kate, with a soft little laugh. “Poor old man! I wish we could pay him more; but Pine Camp's not rich.”
“You all seem to have enough and to spare, Auntie,” said Nan, who was an observant girl for her age. “Nobody here is really poor.” ”

“ Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr. Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry. ”

“ Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. “I was only fooling her,” snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom had the grip of a pipe wrench.
Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: “If I had a gun I'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He's always running after sleds and yelling his head off.” ”

“ The storekeepers she saw through the frosted windows were dressed like storekeepers in Tillbury; and there were well dressed women on the streets, a few, at least.
But most of the men striding through the snow were as roughly dressed as her uncle, and not many were as good looking as Mr. Sherwood. Some who came out of the swinging doors of saloons staggered, and were very noisy in their speech and rude in their actions. Of course nobody spoke to Nan, or troubled her; Henry Sherwood was undoubtedly a man of standing in the settlement and highly respected. ”

“ So have Papa Sherwood and Momsey. What they can't do for me their own selves I wouldn't want anybody to do.”
“Why, that sounds awfully silly to me, Nan!” said Bess. “Why not take all you can get in this world? I'm sure I should.”
“You don't know what you are saying,” Nan returned seriously. “And, then, you are not poor, so you can afford to say it, and even do it.”
“Poor! I'm getting to hate that word,” cried Bess stormily. “It never bothered me before, much. We're not poor and none of our friends were poor. Not until those old mills closed. ”

“ He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gut Nan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow.
“Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy,” said Toby Vanderwiller. “He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son and Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn,” he muttered.
Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped that Toby would feel sufficient gratitude to help Uncle Henry win his case against Gedney Raffer. ”

“ Other people in the car gazed on the quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself.
“Uncle Henry,” she asked him once, “are all the men in the Big Woods as tall as you are?”
“Goodness me! No, child,” he chuckled. “But the woods don't breed many runts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan is near seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can't ever measure him,” and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledged laugh. “He's just as graceful as a length of shingle lathing, too. ”

“ Roughly estimated the fortune is ten thousand pounds. To be exact, it may be a good deal less at the start. Then, after the lawyers and the courts get through with the will and all, the remainder that dribbles into your pocket, Momsey, may be a very small part of ten thousand pounds.”
“Oh, how horrid, Papa Sherwood!” cried Nan. “We won't listen to him, will we, Momsey?”
“Oh, yes we will,” her mother said quietly, but smiling. “But we will still believe that the world is good and that God has given us great good fortune. Papa talks very sensibly; but I know that there is nothing to fear. ”

“ Pine Camp was in the midst of a vast huckleberry country, and at the Forks a cannery had been established. Beside, the Forks was a big shipping centre for the fresh berries.
Uncle Henry bought crates and berry “cups,” and sometimes the whole family picked all day long in the berry pasture, taking with them a cold luncheon, and eating it picnic fashion.
It was great fun, Nan thought, despite the fact that she often came home so wearied that her only desire was to drop into bed. But the best part of it, the saving grace of all this toil, was the fact that she was earning money for herself! ”