That visit to the lumber camp was memorable for Nan Sherwood in more ways than one. Her adventure with the lynx she kept secret from her relatives, because of the reason given in the previous chapter. But there was another incident that marked the occasion to the girl's mind, and that was the threat of Gedney Raffer, reported to her Uncle Henry.
Nan thought that such a bad man as Raffer appeared to be would undoubtedly carry out his threat. He had offered money to have Mr. Sherwood beaten up, and the ruffians he had bribed would doubtless be only too eager to earn the reward.
To tell the truth, for weeks thereafter, Nan never saw a rough-looking man approach the house on the outskirts of Pine Camp, without fearing that here was coming a ruffian bent on her uncle's injury.
That Uncle Henry seemed quite to have forgotten the threat only made Nan more keenly alive to his danger. She dared not discuss the matter with Aunt Kate, for Nan feared to worry that good woman unnecessarily. Besides, having been used to hiding from her own mother all unpleasant things, the girl naturally displayed the same thoughtfulness for Aunt Kate.
For, despite Mrs. Henry Sherwood's bruskness and masculine appearance, Nan learned that there were certain matters over which her aunt showed extreme nervousness.
For instance, she was very careful of the lamps used in the house—she insisted upon cleaning and caring for them herself; she would not allow a candle to be used, because it might be overturned; and she saw to it herself that every fire, even the one in Nan's bedroom, was properly banked before the family retired at night.
Nan had always in mind what Uncle Henry said about mentioning fire to Aunt Kate; so the curious young girl kept her lips closed upon the subject. But she certainly was desirous of knowing about that fire, so long ago, at Pale Lick, how it came about; if Aunt Kate had really got her great scar there; and if it was really true that two members of her uncle's family had met their death in the conflagration.
She tried not to think at all of Injun Pete. That was too terrible!
With all her heart, Nan wished she might do something that would really help Uncle Henry solve his problem regarding the timber rights on the Perkins Tract. The very judge who had granted the injunction forbidding Mr. Sherwood to cut timber on the tract was related to the present owners of the piece of timberland; and the tract had been the basis of a feud in the Perkins family for two generations.
Many people were more or less interested in the case and they came to the Sherwood home and talked excitedly about it in the big kitchen. Some advised an utter disregard of the law. Others were evidently minded to increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicious tale-bearing.
Often Nan thought of what Uncle Henry had said to old Toby Vanderwiller. She learned that Toby was one of the oldest settlers in this part of the Michigan Peninsula, and in his youth had been a timber runner, that is, a man who by following the surveyors' lines on a piece of timber, and weaving back and forth across it, can judge its market value so nearly right that his employer, the prospective timber merchant, is able to bid intelligently for the so-called “stumpage” on the tract.
Toby was still a vigorous man save when that bane of the woodsman, rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in the tamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his joints stiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the gaunt wolf of starvation, more terrible than any timber wolf, waiting at his doorstone. His old wife and a crippled grandson were dependent on Toby, too.
Thus in desperate straits Toby Vanderwiller had accepted help from Gedney Raffer. It was a pitifully small sum Raffer would advance upon the little farm; but it was sufficient to put Toby in the usurer's power. This was the story Nan learned regarding Toby. And Uncle Henry believed that Toby, with his old-time knowledge of land-boundaries, could tell, if he would, which was right in the present contention between Mr. Sherwood and Gedney Raffer.
These, and many other subjects of thought, kept the mind of Nan Sherwood occupied during the first few weeks of her sojourn at Pine Camp. She had, too, to keep up her diary that she had begun for Bess Harley's particular benefit. Every week she sent off to Tillbury a bulky section of this report of her life in the Big woods. It was quite wonderful how much there proved to be to write about. Bess wrote back, enviously, that never did anything interesting, by any possibility, happen, now that Nan was away from Tillbury. The town was “as dull as ditch water.” She, Bess, lived only in hopes of meeting her chum at Lakeview Hall the next September.
This hope Nan shared. But it all lay with the result of Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's visit to Scotland and Emberon Castle. And, Nan thought, it seemed as though her parents never would even reach that far distant goal.
They had taken a slow ship for Momsey's benefit and the expected re-telegraphed cablegram was looked for at the Forks for a week before it possibly could come.
It was a gala day marked on Nan's calendar when Uncle Henry, coming home from the railroad station behind the roan ponies, called to her to come out and get the message. Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent it from Glasgow, and were on their way to Edinburgh before Nan received the word. Momsey had been very ill a part of the way across the ocean, but went ashore in improved health.
Nan was indeed happy at this juncture. Her parents were safely over their voyage on the wintry ocean, so a part of her worry of mind was lifted.
Meanwhile spring was stealing upon Pine Camp without Nan's being really aware of the fact. Uncle Henry had said, back in Chicago, that “the back of winter was broken”; but the extreme cold weather and the deep snow she had found in the Big Woods made Nan forget that March was passing and timid April was treading on his heels.
A rain lasting two days and a night washed the roads of snow and turned the fast disappearing drifts to a dirty yellow hue. In sheltered fence corners and nooks in the wood, the grass lifted new, green blades, and queer little Margaret Llewellen showed Nan where the first anemones and violets hid under last year's drifted leaves.
The river ice went out with a rush after it had rained a few hours; after that the “drives” of logs were soon started. Nan went down to the long, high bridge which spanned the river and watched the flood carry the logs through.
At first they came scatteringly, riding the foaming waves end-on, and sometimes colliding with the stone piers of the bridge with sufficient force to split the unhewn timbers from end to end, some being laid open as neatly as though done with axe and wedge.
When the main body of the drive arrived, however, the logs were like herded cattle, milling in the eddies, stampeded by a cross-current, bunching under the bridge arches like frightened steers in a chute. And the drivers herded the logs with all the skill of cowboys on the range.
Each drive was attended by its own crew, who guarded the logs on either bank, launching those that shoaled on the numerous sandbars or in the shallows, keeping them from piling up in coves and in the mouths of estuaries, or creeks, some going ahead at the bends to fend off and break up any formation of the drifting timbers that promised to become a jam.
Behind the drive floated the square bowed and square sterned chuck-boat, which carried cook and provisions for the men. A “boom”, logs chained together, end to end, was thrown out from one shore of the wide stream at night, and anchored at its outer end. Behind this the logs were gathered in an orderly, compact mass and the men could generally get their sleep, save for the watchman; unless there came a sudden rise of water in the night.
It was a sight long to be remembered, Nan thought, when the boom was broken in the morning. Sometimes an increasing current piled the logs up a good bit. It was a fear-compelling view the girl had of the river on one day when she went with Uncle Henry to see the first drive from Blackton's camp. Tom was coming home with his team and was not engaged in the drive. But reckless Rafe was considered, for his age, a very smart hand on a log drive.
The river had risen two feet at the Pine Camp bridge overnight. It was a boiling brown flood, covered with drifting foam and debris. The roar of the freshet awoke Nan in her bed before daybreak. So she was not surprised to see the river in such a turmoil when, after a hasty breakfast, she and Uncle Henry walked beside the flood.
“They started their drive last night,” Uncle Henry said, “and boomed her just below the campsite. We'll go up to Dead Man's Bend and watch her come down. There is no other drive betwixt us and Blackton's.”
“Why is it called by such a horrid name, Uncle?” asked Nan.
“What, honey?” he responded.
“That bend in the river.”
“Why, I don't know rightly, honey-bird. She's just called that. Many a man's lost his life there since I came into this part of the country, that's a fact. It's a dangerous place,” and Nan knew by the look on her uncle's face that he was worried.
Nan and her uncle came out on the bluff that overlooked the sharp bend which hid the upper reaches of the river from Pine Camp. Across the stream, almost from bank to bank, a string of gravel flats made a barrier that all the rivermen feared.
Blackton was no careless manager, and he had a good foreman in Tim Turner. The big boss had ridden down to the bend in a mud-splashed buggy, and was even prepared to take a personal hand in the work, if need be. The foreman was coming down the river bank on the Pine Camp side of the stream, watching the leading logs of the drive, and directing the foreguard. Among the latter Nan spied Rafe.
“There he is, Uncle!” she cried. “Oh! He's jumped out on that log, see?”
“He's all right, girl, he's all right,” said Uncle Henry comfortingly. “Rafe's got good calks on his boots.”
The boy sprang from log to log, the calks making the chips fly, and with a canthook pushed off a log that had caught and swung upon a small bank. He did it very cleverly, and was back again, across the bucking logs, in half a minute.
Below, the foreman himself was making for a grounded log, one of the first of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swinging broadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch with it and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result in much trouble for everybody.
Tim Turner leaped spaces of eight and ten feet between the logs, landing secure and safe upon the stranded log at last. With the heavy canthook he tried to start it.
“That's a good man, Tim Turner,” said Mr. Sherwood, heartily. “He's worked for me, isn't afraid of anything, Ha! But that's wrong!” he suddenly exclaimed.
Turner had failed to start the stranded log. Other logs were hurtling down the foam-streaked river, aimed directly for the stranded one. They would begin to pile up in a heap in a minute. The foreman leaped to another log, turning as he did so to face the shore. That was when Uncle Henry declared him wrong.
Turner was swinging his free arm, and above the roar of the river and the thunder of the grinding and smashing logs they could hear him shouting for somebody to bring him an axe. One of his men leaped to obey. Nan and Mr. Sherwood did not notice just then who this second man was who put himself in jeopardy, for both had their gaze on the foreman and that which menaced him.
Shooting across on a slant was a huge log, all of three feet through at the butt, and it was aimed for the timber on which Turner stood. He did not see it. Smaller logs were already piling against the timber he had left, and had he leaped back to the stranded one he would have been comparatively safe.
Mr. Sherwood was quick to act in such an emergency as this; but he was too far from the spot to give practical aid in saving Turner from the result of his own heedlessness. He made a horn of his two hands and shouted to the foreguard at the foot of the bluff:
“He's going into the water! Launch Fred Durgin's boat below the bend! Get her! Quick, there!”
Old riverman that he was, Uncle Henry was pretty sure of what was about to happen. The huge log came tearing on, butt first, a wave of troubled water split by its on-rush. Turner was watching the person bringing him the axe, and never once threw a glance over his shoulder.
Suddenly Nan cried out and seized Uncle Henry's arm. “Look! Oh, Uncle! It's Rafe!” she gasped, pointing.
“Aye, I know it,” said her uncle, wonderfully cool, Nan thought, and casting a single glance at the figure flying over the bucking logs toward the endangered foreman. “He'll do what he can.”
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. But Uncle Henry stood like a rock and seemingly gave no more attention to his son than he did to Turner, or to the men running down the bank to seize upon and launch the heavy boat.
Rafe was suddenly balked and had to stop. Too great a stretch of water separated him from the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold.
The man shot a glance behind him. The butt of the driving log rose suddenly into the air as though it would crush him.
Turner leaped to the far end of the log on which he stood. But too great a distance separated him from the log on which Rafe had secured a foothold.
Crash!
Nan heard, on top of the bluff, the impact of the great timber as it was flung by the current across the smaller log. Turner shot into the air as though he were flung from a catapult. But he was not flung in Rafe's direction, and the boy could not help him.
He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around and the great log was headed straight down the river again.
As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this. Rafe rode his wooden horse in masterly style.
There, ahead of him in the boiling flood, an arm and head appeared. Turner came to the surface with his senses unimpaired and he strove to clutch the nearest log. But the stick slipped away from him.
Rafe ran forward on the plunging timber he now rode the huge stick that had made all the trouble, and tried to reach the man in the water. No use!
Of course, there was no way for Rafe to guide his log toward the drowning man. Nor did he have anything to reach out for Turner to grasp. The axe handle was not long enough, and the foreman's canthook had disappeared.
Below, the men were struggling to get the big boat out from under the bank into the stream. Two of them stood up with their canthooks to fend off the drifting logs; the others plied the heavy oars.
But the boat was too far from the man in the river. He was menaced on all sides by plunging logs. He barely escaped one to be grazed on the shoulder by another. A third pressed him under the surface again; but as he went down this second time, Rafe Sherwood threw away his axe and leaped into the flood!
Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman. She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look.
Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those still remaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:
“Plucky boy! Plucky boy!”
Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scattering foam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm; his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his head above water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow.
The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of the greater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gave the victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life.
They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boat shouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat came alongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and the unconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat was at the shore again in three minutes.
By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out over the logs from the other shore, axe in hand, to cut the key log of the jam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logs had piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to be a bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly.
Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner had regained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding his head. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logs again lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of the drive.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Nan, referring to her cousin, “he ought to go home and change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold.”
“He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of the cold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that trouble over,” responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: “That's the kind of boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spoken and aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to do something when there's anything to do!”
“Oh, Uncle!” cried the girl. “I think Rafe is just the bravest boy I ever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he is away from home, he is so reckless.”
She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. Slow Tom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts, about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe.
It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan became personally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinner that day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went down to the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blackton drive.
The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbing about in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed.
“That's old Toby,” said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. “He don't see us. Le's creep up and scare him.”
“No,” said Nan, decidedly; “don't you dare!”
“Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun,” the boy growled. “Mag's bad enough, but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allus as cross as two sticks, anyway.”
“We won't make him any crosser,” said Nan, laughing. “What's the good?”
Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down the right sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper right arm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm.
“He's got hurt,” Nan cried to Margaret. “I wonder how?”
“Dunno,” returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she was not mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits of tenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strange girl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired her smooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She was positively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met.
Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. “Doll?” snarled Margaret with surprising energy. “A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it as far as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was all painted and rough.”
Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she considered herself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies.
Margaret Llewellen only liked people with fair faces and smooth complexions; she could not possibly be interested in old Toby Vanderwiller, who seemed always to need a shave, and whose face, like that of Margaret's grandfather, was “wizzled.”
Nan ran down to him and asked: “Can't I help you, Mr. Vanderwiller? Did you get badly hurt?”
“Hullo!” grunted Toby. “Ain't you Hen Sherwood's gal?”
“I'm his niece,” she told him. “Can I help?”
“Well, I dunno. I got a wallop from one o' them logs when we was breakin' that jam, and it's scraped the skin off me arm——”
“Let me see,” cried Nan, earnestly. “Oh! Mr. Vanderwiller! That must be painful. Haven't you anything to put on it?”
“Nothin' but this rag,” grunted Toby, drily. “An' ye needn't call me 'Mister,' Sissy. I ain't useter bein' addressed that way.”
Nan laughed; but she quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man's arm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over the abrasion under the rather doubtful rag that Toby himself supplied.
“You're sure handy, Sissy,” he said, rising and allowing her to help him into the shirt again and on with his coat. “Now I'll hafter toddle along or Tim will give me a call-down. Much obleeged. If ye get inter the tam'rack swamp, come dry-foot weather, stop and see me an' my old woman.”
“Oh! I'd love to, Mr. Vanderwiller,” Nan cried. “The swamp must be full of just lovely flowers now.”
The old man's face wrinkled into a smile, the first she had seen upon it. Really! He was not a bad looking man, after all.
“You fond of posies, sissy?” he asked.
“Indeed I am!” she cried.
“There's a-plenty in the swamp,” he told her. “And no end of ferns and sich. You come see us and my old woman'll show ye. She's a master hand at huntin' up all kind o' weeds I tell her.”
“I'll surely come, when the weather gets warmer,” Nan called after Toby as the old man dogtrotted down the bank of the river. But he did not answer and was quickly out of sight.
“It's nasty in the Tam'rack swamp; and there's frogs and, and snakes. Ketch me! And as fur goin' ter see Tobe and his old woman, huh! They're both as ugly as sin.”
“Why, Margaret!” exclaimed Nan, in horror. “How you talk!”
“Wal, it's so. I don't like old, wizzled-up folks, I don't, now I tell ye!”
“That sounds awfully cruel,” said Nan, soberly.
“Huh!” snorted Margaret, no other word would just express her manner of showing disgust. “There ain't no reason why I should go 'round makin' believe likin' them as I don't like. Dad useter take the hide off'n me and Bob for lyin'; an' then he'd stand an' palaver folks that he jest couldn't scurce abide, fur I heard him say so. That's lyin', too ain't it?”
“I, I don't believe it is right to criticize our parents,” returned Nan, dodging the sharp girl's question.
“Mebbe yourn don't need criticizin',” responded Margaret, bluntly. “My dad ain't no angel, you kin bet.”
And it was a fact that the Llewellen family was a peculiar one, from “Gran'ther” down to Baby Bill, whom Margaret did not mind taking care of when he was not “all broke out with the rash on his face.” The girl's dislike for any countenance that was not of the smoothest, or skin of the softest texture, seemed strange indeed.
Margaret's mother was dead. She had five brothers and sisters of assorted ages, up to 'Lonzo, who was sixteen and worked in the woods like Nan's cousins.
Aunt Matilda kept house for the motherless brood, and for Gran'ther and Mr. Fen Llewellen. They lived in a most haphazard fashion, for, although they were not really poor, the children never seemed to have any decent clothing to wear; and if, by chance, they got a new garment, something always happened to it as, for instance, the taking of Margaret's new gingham by Bob as a dress for old Beagle.
As the Llewellens were close neighbors of the Sherwoods, Nan saw much of Margaret. The local school closed soon after the visitor had come to Pine Camp, and Nan had little opportunity of getting acquainted with other girls, save at the church service, which was held in the schoolhouse only every other Sunday. There was no Sunday School at Pine Camp, even for the very youngest of the children.
Nan talked to Aunt Kate about that. Aunt Kate was the very kindest-hearted woman that ever lived; but she had little initiative herself about anything outside her own house. “Goodness knows, I'd like to see the kiddies gathered together on Sunday afternoon and taught good things,” she signed; “but lawsy, Nan! I'm not the one to do it. I'm not good enough myself.”
“Didn't you teach Tom and Rafe, and—and—” Nan stopped. She had almost mentioned the two older boys of her aunt's, whom she had heard were destroyed in the Pale Lick fire. Aunt Kate did not notice, for she went on to say:
“Why—yes; I taught Tom and Rafe to say their prayers, and I hope they say 'em now, big as they are. And we often read the Bible. It's a great comfort, the main part of it. I never did take to the 'begats,' though.”
“But couldn't we,” suggested Nan, “interest other people and gather the children together on Sundays? Perhaps the old gentleman who comes here to preach every fortnight might help.”
“Elder Posey's not here but three hours or so, any time. Just long enough to give us the word and grab a bite at somebody's house. 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.”
“Not unless he's right down lazy,” said her aunt, vigorously.
“Then I should think they'd build a proper church and give a minister some more money, so that he could afford to have a Sunday School as well.”
“Lawsy me, Nan!” exclaimed her aunt. “The men here in Pine Camp haven't been woke up to such things. They hate to spend that fifty dollars for Elder Posey, they'd get a cheaper man if there were such. There's never been much out of the common happen here at Pine Camp. It takes trouble and destruction to wake folks up to their Christian duty in these woods. Now, at Pale Lick they've got a church——-”
She stopped suddenly, and her face paled, while the ugly scar on her neck seemed to glow; but that may have been only in contrast. Aunt Kate turned away her head, and finally arose and went into her own room and closed the door. Nan dared not continue the subject when the good woman came out again, and the talk of a Sunday School for Pine Camp, for the time being, was ended.
There were hours when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed. Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penning long letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, did not fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself into that east room.
Sometimes she pulled down the paper shades and opened the clothes closet door, bringing out the long box she had hidden away there on the first day she had come to Pine Camp. In that box, wrapped in soft tissue paper, and dressed in the loveliest gown made by Momsey's own skillful fingers, was the great doll that had been given to Nan on her tenth birthday.
When girls went to high school, of course they were supposed to put away dolls, together with other childish things. But Nan Sherwood never could neglect her doll-babies and had often spent whole rainy days playing with them in secret in the attic of the little house on Amity Street.
Her other dolls had been left, carefully wrapped and shielded from the mice, at Tillbury; but Nan had been unable to leave Beautiful Beulah behind. She packed her in the bottom of her trunk, unknown even to Momsey in the hurry of departure. She had not told a soul here at Pine Camp that she possessed a doll; she knew the boys would make fun of her for sure.
But she often sat behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll and crooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the spring rocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no longer creaked.
She did not confide even in Aunt Kate about the big doll. They were all very kind to her; but Nan had a feeling that she ought to be grown up here among her backwoods relatives. How could she ever face roguish Rafe if he knew she liked to “play dolls?”
Fearing that even Margaret would tell, Nan had never shown the woods girl Beautiful Beulah. Once she was afraid Margaret had come to the window to peep in when Nan had the doll out of her hiding place; but she was not sure, and Nan hoped her secret was still inviolate. At least, Margaret never said a word about it.
Margaret's sisters had dolls made of corncobs, and rag babies with painted faces like the one Margaret had thrown into the river and drowned; but Margaret turned up her nose at them all. She never seemed to want to “play house” as do most girls of her age. She preferred to run wild, like a colt, with Bob in the woods and swamp.
Margaret did not wish to go into the swamp with Nan, however, on her first visit to Toby Vanderwiller's little farm. This was some weeks after the log drives, and lumbering was over for the season. Uncle Henry and the boys, rather than be idle, were working every acre they owned, and Nan was more alone than she had ever been since coming to Pine Camp.
She had learned the way to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road was passable for most vehicles.
The distance was but three miles, however, and Nan liked walking. Besides, nobody who has not seen a tamarack swamp in late spring or early summer, can ever imagine how beautiful it is. 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.
Hares, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and many, many birds, peopled the forest and swamp. In sunken places where the green water stood and steamed in the sun, turtles and frogs were plentiful; and occasionally a snake, as harmless as it was wicked looking, slid off a water-soaked log at Nan's approach and slipped under the oily surface of the pool.
On the day Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw many wonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logs and stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heard of; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honey from every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds and marvelously marked butterflies.
The birds screamed or sang or chattered over the girl's head as she tripped along. Squirrels peeped at her, barked, and then whisked their tails in rapid flight. Through the cool, dark depths where the forest monarchs had been untouched by the woodsmen, great moths winged their lazy flight. Nan knew not half of the creatures or the wonderful plants she saw.
There were sounds in the deeps of the swamplands that she did not recognize, either. Some she supposed must be the voices of huge frogs; other notes were bird-calls that she had never heard before. But suddenly, as she approached a turn in the corduroy road, her ear was smitten by a sound that she knew very well indeed.
It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant one. It caused Nan to halt and look about for some place to hide until the owner of the voice went by. She feared him because of his harsh tones, though she did not, at the moment, suspect who it was.
Then suddenly she heard plainly a single phrase: “I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his!”
The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the words he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping did not deter the girl.
She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!
The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the rumble of a great church-organ.
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.
It was he who had said: “I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his.”
There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the other side of the buggy.
“I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in no land squabble. I ain't for neither side.”
It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.
Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as above. “Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll side with me,” he said.
“We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side with nobody,” grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.
“S-s!” hissed Raffer. “Come here!”
Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. “You see your way to goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it, Tobe.”
“Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose,” grunted the old lumberman, and Nan approved very much of him just then.
“Bah!” exclaimed Raffer.
“Bah, yourself!” Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. “I got some decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man, Ged Raffer!”
“Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?” demanded the eager Raffer.
“That's my secret,” snapped the old lumberman. “If I don't witness for you, be glad I don't harm you.”
“You dare!” cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned from the buggy seat.
“You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother,” repeated Toby, gloomily.
“Wal,” snarled Raffer, “see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for any man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and I oughter call in that loan.”
Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh.
“Well, Ged,” he observed, “it's up to you. If you take the place it'll be the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol' woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These here lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints.”
“Wal, wal!” snarled Raffer. “I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help you ef you won't help me?”
He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start, and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart. Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had ever seen.
Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of Gedney Raffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on his little farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contention with Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; but Uncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Under these distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was Toby Vanderwiller likely to serve?
This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired much to help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allow him to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey of the line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be, when?
Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first payment to the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected to pay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of the timber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felled before the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Every month they lay there decreased their value.
And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power to influence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests.
Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of the Perkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have to vacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cutting and hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Toby knew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, or timber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made, forty-odd years before.
It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might, summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter they had, what would become of them?
Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose.
“Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich,” thought Nan, “I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poor Toby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money from the courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off the mortgage.”
She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about the timber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must know it! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter.
But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowly shuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walked hastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot where he had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke his name.
“Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy,” he said; but added, nervously, “How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nan.
“Come right erlong this way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did ye meet anybody?” demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.
“Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all.”
“Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?” asked Toby, curiously.
“Not a word,” replied Nan, honestly. “I'm afraid of him and I hid in the bushes till he had gone by.”
“Huh!” sighed Toby, as though relieved. “Jest as well. Though Ged wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy.”
“Never mind. I'm here now,” said Nan, brightly. “And I want you to show me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller.”
“Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye,” said the man, briskly. “'Tain't more'n a mile furder on.”
But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp. All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet deep, and there were acres of it.
“They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry holler, jest as it come handy.”
“What a lot there is of it!” murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.
“I wish't 'twas somewhere else,” grunted Toby.
“Why-so?”
“Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an' she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a big wind and started the blaze to the surface.”
“Oh!” murmured Nan, much interested. “Didn't my Uncle Henry live there then?”
“I sh'd say he did,” returned Toby, emphatically. “Didn't he never tell ye about it?”
“No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick.”
“Well, I won't, nuther,” grunted old Toby. “'Taint pretty for a young gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!”
A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or goose.
“Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?” cried Nan. “Rafe brought in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good, the way Aunt Kate cooked them.”
“Well!” drawled Toby, slyly, “I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef 'twas cooked right. But I never tried it.”
“How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?” asked Nan, interested in all culinary pursuits.
“Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process,” said the old man, his eyes twinkling. “Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best. Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day.”
“Yes?” queried the perfectly innocent Nan.
“Then ye throw off that water,” Toby said, soberly, “and ye put on fresh water an' let it cook all the next day.”
“Oh!”
“An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's done!”
Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.