Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ And he liked Mick Otter, too. In short, he liked every one he had met in Gaspard’s clearings except Ned Tone. It was really wonderful how full his heart was of affection and how entirely he seemed to have finished with worldly ambition. He would make an early start on the morrow for Racquet Pond, to see how that amusing old Indian was getting along; and he would visit the clearings again on the day after that, for a game of chess. A fine game, chess—an old and romantic game—an ancient pastime of kings and queens. ”

“ The subjects of human vanity and ignorance did not touch their imaginations, and they were well content with the workings of the hand of Providence.
Tom left the house after breakfast, with a light pack on his shoulder. His heart was light, too, though the sky was gray and a cold and gusty wind blew smothers of icy rain across the clearings. Upon reaching camp he immediately built up the fire, which lay full length across the front of the lean-to, dried himself thoroughly and smoked a pipe. The heat and cheery light beat into the shelter, thrown forward by mighty back-logs. ”

“ Catherine had smiled at these questions and Gaspard had scowled at them. Neither had made the least pretence of answering them. Then Ned Tone had blustered and spoken in a large, loose manner of the might of the law; and old Gaspard Javet had confronted him with bristling eye-brows, flashing eyes and quivering whiskers and threatened to throw him out of the house. Then the stranger, the detective, had said, “Don’t lose your temper and do anything rash, old man. I represent the Law here.” ”

“ Catherine followed him from the house, and called to him just as he was climbing the brush-fence at the northern edge of the new clearing. He turned very willingly and lowered his pack to the ground.
“I have just thought of something,” she said. “Ned Tone is still dangerous, and we should be ready for him if he comes back. The danger of his seeing something, or hearing something, to cause him to suspect your identity, isn’t passed, you know.”
“I know it,” said Tom. “I realize that I am still in danger of discovery. That is the only thing that worries me now.” ”

“ Catherine and Tom were happy; but after that mutual declaration at supper on the night of Tom’s return from the north, they both avoided any further mention of the inspiration of their happiness. They knew that their position was not yet secure from the menace of the outside world. But they were not afraid, and they understood each other. Their brains cautioned them to keep a sharp look-out beyond the southern edge of the clearings and a firm grip on their dreams; and their hearts told them that their future happiness was as secure as if no fat colonel had ever been hit on the chin ”

“ She could not remember anything of her mother, Gaspard’s daughter, for she had been left motherless at two years of age; but her father, a son of the Crimean veteran, had often talked to her about Catherine Javet, whom he had met and married, cherished and buried in this wilderness. Hugh MacKim had been utterly lacking in worldly ambition; and though not a weakling in mind or body, he had possessed none of that particular blunt yet narrow variety of strength by which thousands of men force themselves successfully through life. ”

“ You’re not fit to name a man like Angus Bruce. You never saw him fight. You never saw anybody fight. A yellow streak? I have seen him go up alone after four of them! You’ll swallow that lie, Colonel Nasher, here and now!”
The colonel got to his feet, glaring. He was a large man with a large face. The only small things about him were his heart and mind. His eyes looked like polished gray stones in his red face.
“Your dead friend won’t get his cross and you’ll lose yours!” he cried, pointing a thick finger at the ribbons on the major’s breast. ”

“ The old men exchanged glances and approving nods; and Tom got hold of Catherine’s hand under the edge of the table.
Life continued to go forward sanely and delightfully in the secluded world of Gaspard Javet’s clearings. A spirit of cheer and security possessed the big log house and the brown barns. Gaspard read his Bible with more hopeful eyes than of old. ”

“ Gaspard lowered her head to the pillow and hastened from the room in his socks. He was in such a hurry that he left the door open behind him and took the short, steep stairs at a slide. He got outside in time to see the ’plane sink below the top of the dark wall of forest, flatten out and run on the sod. He raced Mick Otter to it, shouting as he ran.
The doctor went up alone to see Catherine; while Tom, Mick and Gaspard sat on the back porch and stared at the resting ’plane without a word. Tom still had his great gloves on his hands, his goggles on his eyes and his fur-lined cap on his head. ”

“ He was glad that he had not followed Mick Otter and the lure of peltries seven miles farther afield. He felt that the distance of six miles was quite far enough for any sane person to be separated from Gaspard Javet’s clearings.
He dined at mid-day on tea and bacon and Catherine’s bread and Catherine’s home-made strawberry jam. He fed the attentive moose bird with rinds of bacon and bits of bread soaked succulently in hot fat. The rain and hail ceased early in the afternoon. He left the shelter and worked his ax for an hour, felling and trimming selected trees for fuel. ”

“ Gaspard returned to the house, and Mick went to the barn in which he had shut the people from Tinder Brook and unlocked the door. The man and the woman were in a tremor of fear. The fierce song of the birdman’s flight, striking down at them through the roof, had chilled them with a nameless dread. Mick gave them provisions, blankets, a kettle and frying-pan, and told them to get out and travel quick. ”

“ Tom reflected that money might be useful in the future, although he had lived through these last three months without a cent. He could see no likelihood of ever being able to touch the few hundreds of dollars to his credit in the bank, in the distant world from which he had fled. Yes, he might need money some day; and furs of almost every variety brought a high price now, he had heard. So why not join Mick Otter in this venture? If their activities took them no farther afield than Pappoose Lake he would be able to visit the clearing twice or thrice a week—and oftener, with luck. ”

“ The only articles of furniture were a large chest and a bed. The chest was not locked; and Akerley rummaged through it in search of a razor. He found an ancient suit of black broadcloth, a leather wallet fat with ten and twenty-dollar bank notes, flannel shirts, rifle cartridges rolled up in a woolen sock, a packet of papers, cakes of tobacco, suits of winter underclothes so aggressively wooly that his back itched as he beheld them, a Bible, a cardboard box full of trinkets—and, last of all, a razor in a stained red case. ”

“ She and Tom felt no fear now of the old man’s recognizing Tom as the being that had swooped down from the sky; and Tom felt so sure now of Gaspard’s friendship and sanity that, but for the girl, he would have confessed the facts of the case to him. She would not hear of this, however.
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” she argued. “He is a dear, kind old man—but he is quite mad on that one subject of a visit from a devil. But, of course, if you want to be shot dead, if you are tired of life in this dull place, tell Grandad.” ”

“ Again he took himself to task for his foolishness.
“Your nerves are crossed, Tom Akerley,” he said. “Your wind is up in vertical gusts. Your brains are addled. You are so devilish lonely that you’ve gone dotty. You expect a girl who doesn’t know you from Adam to sit around and entertain you all the time and neglect her poor old grandfather; and it isn’t because you are used to it, old son, for no other woman ever neglected so much as a dog to entertain you. Buck up! Pull yourself together! Forget it!”
He filled and lit the clay pipe and sat on the top rail of the fence and smoked. ”

“ When Tom scrambled through the small doorway, his snowshoes still on his feet, he found the place full of smoke from the newly lighted fire. The fire burned in a chimney of mud-plastered stones that went crookedly upward against one rocky wall and vanished through the roof of poles. Tom remarked on Mick’s evident appetite for smoke, remembering the camp on Racquet Pond.
“A’ right pretty soon, you bet,” said Mick. “Coons make nest in the chimley, maybe, or maybe snow stuff him up. One darn good chimley, anyhow. He suck up smoke fine most times.” ”

“ Tom made a practice of climbing the look-out tree four times a day when the weather was clear. They refrained from firing the rifle; and they were careful to burn only the driest and least smoky wood on their subterranean hearth, except at night. Snow fell frequently and thickly. They were fortunate with their traps, taking a number of red foxes and one patch, a few mink, an otter and half a dozen lynx—all fine pelts; and with some very small traps from one of Mick’s caches they even managed to catch a few ermine.
In the clearings, Catherine and Gaspard carried on and hoped for the best. ”

“ Tom Akerley, known to old Gaspard as Tom Anderson, lived his new life from day to day and tried not to worry. His shoulder mended rapidly, and he worked about the farm with a will. He spent much of his time in Gaspard’s company, working in the crops, mending fences and clearing stones from the fields; and the fact that the old man’s rifle always lay or stood near at hand at once amused and irritated him. ”

“ A light set of bob-sleds were fitted with a light body and loaded with ten two-bushel bags of buckwheat and rations of hay and oats.
Tom was up at four o’clock next morning, to water and feed the horses. Breakfast was eaten half an hour later, by lamplight; and the horses were hitched to the sled and a start made well before six. The air was still and cold and the horses lively. For a few miles Tom led the way, breaking the cutting crust ahead of the eager horses, and Mick held the reins. Then, for a few miles, Mick broke the crust and Tom teamed. ”

“ All this would be well enough if you never grew up; but you are grown up already. And your grandfather cannot live for ever. He is queer, anyway—with this crazy idea in his head about devils.”
“Here he is,” said Catherine.
Gaspard Javet stepped out onto the back porch and stood his rifle against the wall. He sat down and reflectively combed his beard with long fingers crooked with the toil of the woods. Then he looked at Akerley with a new interest, new curiosity and a distinct light of kindliness in his gray eyes.
“I found Ned Tone,” he said. ”

“ Mick Otter scouted cautiously around Racquet Pond and took up the two traps which had been left behind in the haste of the flight across the height-of-land. One of them, set near an air-hole in a brook, had evidently made a catch of a mink—but a fox, or a lynx, or perhaps another mink, had visited the trap ahead of the trapper.
Mick returned to the cave and showed the marked paper to Tom; so the two extended their line of traps and settled down to pass the time until the middle of January as comfortably and profitably as possible. They kept their eyes skinned, as the poet has it. ”

“ He glared at the big sow on his right and the small pigs on his left, who had dashed in from their yards at the sounds of his spading and were now sunk to the eyes and knees in their untidy breakfast.
“They’d better come home before that pot is empty,” he said. “If they think I’m going to cook for a bunch of pigs while they go fishing they’re everlastingly mistaken.”
The big field of oats spread completely around the barns, but from the barn-yard a fenced road led through the crop to a second clearing behind a screen of trees. ”

“ The spring where we cool our creamers and the one in the pasture are the beginnings of Indian River. But what will you say about yourself?—who you are and what you are looking for? And what kind of person will you pretend to be?”
“I’ll think of something to-night—but I wish your grandfather was more modern and rational. I know a good deal about the woods, though this part of the country is new to me; and I can use an ax, and manage a canoe in white water. So don’t worry. I’ll think up something pretty safe. But have you told him that the devil has cleared out?” ”

“ Smith, a lady of whose existence Mick Otter had not informed Tom.
Smith recognized Tom instantly, in spite of the beard, and welcomed him cordially.
“Dickon, this is Major Akerley, of whom I told you last night,” he said to his wife; and at the look of consternation on Tom’s face he laughed reassuringly.
“She is safe, major,” he continued. “She’d never peach on a good soldier. I first met her under bomb-fire; and she wears the Royal Red Cross when she’s dressed up.” ”

“ I have never seen a crowd of people. You have not known such loneliness as this—of endless woods, and empty clearings, and winds lost in everlasting tree-tops, and empty skies with only a speck of a hawk circling high up. ”

“ Akerley glanced at her, then back at his pipe and tobacco. He produced a knife and fell to slicing a pipeful.
“It is a fact,” he said. “Ever since I was a small boy I have had to drive all my brains and energy at other things. I have been only an onlooker at games of that sort, big and little; and as I didn’t know the rules, and couldn’t guess them by looking, I wasn’t an interested onlooker. But I have learned a great deal since I landed in this clearing; and this very morning Ned Tone tried to lose me in the woods simply to keep me away from here. ”

“ His father, Major Ian MacKim, who had been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor for his services before Sevastopol when an ensign in an infantry regiment of the line, had moved to Canada soon after his retirement from the active list of the army. Whatever the major may have been when operating against the enemies of his King and Country, he had proved himself an extraordinarily violent, stupid and difficult person in civil life. As a farmer he had made himself an object of terror and dislike to his neighbors and of fear and distress to his family. ”

“ He was familiar with every rise and dip and pond and brook of it; and when on the move he looked forward from each knoll and hill-top, as he gained it, with the clear picture already in his mind’s eye of what he was about to see; as a scholar foretastes familiar pleasures when turning the leaves of a beloved book.
Of late years, however, Mick’s trapping operations in this wilderness region of his own had been of a sketchy and indolent nature—had been just sufficient, in fact, to let other Maliseet trappers know that he was still in occupation.
He told this to Tom Akerley.
“But why?” asked Tom. ”

“ He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, in a silence so vibrant with deep and keen thought that Mick Otter respected it.
“They’ve got my money,” he said, at last, “and they’ll have the old bus, too, some day—but they’ll never catch me to hold a court on me. They’ll never get my decorations!”
“What you mean, bus?” asked the Maliseet.
“The machine. The ’plane. Do you know where I can get oil and petrol? Are there any gasoline engines in Timbertown?”
“Sure. Doc Smith got one, you bet, for to pump water. He got bath-tub, too; an’ one little Ford what can jump fence like breachy steer.” ”