Part 5

He rigged line and hook, nicked a long worm upon the point, and without so much as shaking an alder branch thrust his rod through and swung the baited hook and dropped it lightly in the very center of the pool, full fifteen feet from shore. Then he swung upward with a strong steady movement, for he had seen a great trout strike as the worm touched the water, had seen the chewing jaws of the fish mouthing its titbit. And as he swung, the gleaming body came into the air, through an arc above his head, into the brush behind him, where he dropped on his knees beside it and gave it merciful death with the haft of his heavy knife, and dropped it into his basket.

Fly fishermen will laugh with a certain scorn; or they will call John Evered a murderer. Nevertheless, it is none so easy to take trout even in this crude fashion of his. A shadow on the water, a stirring of the bushes, a too-heavy tread along the bank--and they are gone. Nor must they be hurried. The capture of one fish alarms the rest; the capture of two disturbs them; the taking of three too quickly will send them flying every whither.

John, after his first fish, filled and lighted his pipe, then caught a second; and after another interval, a third--fat, heavy trout, all of them; as much as three people would care to eat; and John was not minded to kill more than he could use. He covered the three with wet moss in his basket, and then he crept back through the alders and lay for a long time watching the trout in the pool, absorbing the beauty of their lines, watching how they held themselves motionless with faintest quivers of fin, watching how they fed.

A twelve-inch trout rose and struck at a leaf upon the pool’s surface, and John told himself, “They’re hungry.” He laughed a little, and got an inch-long twig and tied it to the end of his line in place of hook. This he cast out upon the pool, moving it to and fro erratically. Presently a trout swirled up and took it under, and spat it out before John could twitch the fish to the surface. John laughed aloud, and cast again. He stayed there for a long hour at this sport, and when the trout sulked he teased them with bits of leaf or grass. Once he caught a cricket and noosed it lightly and dropped it on the water. When the fish took it down John waited for an instant, then tugged and swung the trout half a dozen feet into the air before he could disgorge the bait.

“Hungry as sin,” John told himself at last; and his eyes became sober as he considered thoughtfully. There were other men about, as good fishermen as he, and not half so scrupulous. If they should come upon this pool on such a day----

He did a thing that might seem profanation to the fisherman who likes a goodly bag. He gathered brush and threw it into the pool; he piled it end to end and over and over; he found two small pines; dead in their places among their older brethren; and he pushed them from their rotting roots and dragged them to the brook and threw them in. When he was done the pool was a jungle, a wilderness of stubs and branches; a sure haven for trout, a spot almost impossible to fish successfully. While he watched, when his task was finished, he saw brown darting shadows in the stream as the trout shot back into the covert he had made; and he smiled with a certain satisfaction.

“They’ll have to fish for them now,” he told himself.

He decided to try and see whether a man might take a trout from the pool in its ambushed state. It meant an hour of waiting, a snagged hook or two, a temper-trying ordeal with mosquitoes and flies. But in the end he landed another fish, and was content. He went back through the swamp and up to the farm, well pleased.

Moving along the brook he saw other pools where smaller fish were lying; and that night he told Ruth what he had seen. “You can see all the trout you’re minded to, down there now,” he said.

The girl nodded unsmilingly. She had not yet learned to laugh again, since her sister’s death. They were a somber household, these three--Evered steadily silent, the girl sober and stern, John striving in his awkward fashion to win mirth from her and speech from Evered.

The early summer was to pass thus. And what was in Evered’s mind as the weeks dragged by no man could surely know. His eye was as hard as ever, his voice as harsh; yet to Ruth it seemed that new lines were forming in his cheeks, and his hair, that had been black as coal, she saw one afternoon was streaked with gray. Watching, thereafter, she marked how the white hairs increased in number. Once she spoke of it to John, constrainedly, for there was no such pleasant confidence between these two as there had been.

John nodded. “Yes,” he said, “he’s aging. He loved her, Ruth; loved her hard.”

Ruth made no comment, but there was no yielding in her eyes. She was in these days implacable; and Evered watched her now and then with something almost pleading in his gaze. He began to pay her small attentions, which came absurdly from the man. She tried to hate him for them.

Once John sought to comfort his father, spoke to him gently of the dead woman; and Evered cried out, as though to assure himself as well as silence John: “She was tricking me, John! Leaving me. With Semler, that very day.”

He would not let John reply, silenced him with a fierce oath and flung away. It might have been guessed that his belief in his wife’s treachery was like an anchor to which Evered’s racked soul clung; as though he found comfort and solace in the ugly thought, a justifying consolation.

X

John went no more to the brooks that summer; but what he had told Ruth led her that way more than once. Westley, the game warden, stopped at the house one day, and found her alone, and asked her whether John was fishing. She told him of John’s one catch.

“Swamp Brook is full of trout,” she said; “penned in the holes and the shallows.”

Westley nodded. “It’s so everywhere,” he agreed. “I’m dipping and shifting them. Tell John to do that down in the swamp if he can find the time.”

She asked how it should be done; and when Westley had gone she decided that she would herself go down and try the trick of it if the drought still held.

The drought held. No rain came; and once in early August she spent an afternoon along the stream, and transported scores of tiny trout to feeding grounds more deep and more secure. Again a week later; and still again as the month drew to a close.

It was on this third occasion that the girl came upon Darrin. Working along the brook with dip net and pail she had marked the footprints of a man in the soft earth here and there. The swamp was still, no air stirring, the humming of insects ringing in her ears. A certain gloom dwelt in these woods even on the brightest day; and the black mold bore countless traces and tracks of the animals and the small vermin which haunted the place at night. Ruth might have been forgiven for feeling a certain disquietude at sight of those man tracks in the wild; but she had no such thought. She had never learned to be afraid.

She came upon Darrin at last with an abruptness that startled her. The soft earth muffled her footsteps; she was within two or three rods of him before she saw him, and even then the man had not heard her. He was kneeling by the brook and at first she thought he had been drinking the water. Then she saw that he was studying something there upon the ground; and a moment later he got up and turned and saw her standing there. At first he was so surprised that he could not speak, and they were still, looking at each other. The girl, bareheaded, in simple waist and heavy short skirt, with rubber boots upon her feet so that she might wade at will, was worth looking at. The man himself was no mean figure--khaki flannel shirt, knickerbockers, leather putties over stout waterproof shoes. She carried pail in one hand, dip net in the other; and she saw that he had a revolver slung in one hip, a camera looped over his shoulder.

He said at last, “Hello, there!” And Ruth nodded in the sober fashion that was become her habit. The man asked, “What have you got? Milk, in that pail? Is this your pasture land?”

“Trout,” she told him; and he came to see the fish in a close-packed mass; and he exclaimed at them, and watched while she put them into the stream below where he had been kneeling. He asked her why she did it, and she told him. At the same time she looked toward where he had knelt, wondering what he saw there. She could see only some deep-imprinted moose tracks; and moose tracks were so common in the swamp that it was not worth while to kneel to study them.

He saw her glance, and said, “I was looking at those tracks. Moose, aren’t they?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“They told me there were moose in here,” he said. “I doubted it, though. So far south as this.”

“There are many moose in the swamp,” she declared.

He asked, “Have you ever seen them?”

She smiled a little. “Once in a while. A cow moose wintered in our barn two years ago.”

He slapped his thigh lightly. “Then this is the place I’m looking for,” he exclaimed.

She asked softly, “Why?” She was interested in the man. He was not like John, not like anyone whom she had known; except, perhaps, Dane Semler. A man of the city, obviously. “Why?” she asked.

“I want to get some pictures of them,” he explained. “Photographs. In their natural surroundings. Wild. In the swamp.”

“John took a snapshot of the cow that wintered with us,” she said. “I guess he’d give you one.”

The man laughed. “I’d like it,” he told her; “but I want to get a great many.” He hesitated. “Where is your farm?”

She pointed out of the swamp toward the hill.

“Near?” he asked.

And she said, “It’s right over the swamp.”

“Listen,” he said eagerly. “My name’s Darrin--Fred Darrin. What’s yours?”

“Ruth MacLure.”

“Why you’re Evered’s sister-in-law, aren’t you?”

She nodded, her cheeks paling a little. “Yes.”

“I was coming to see Evered to-night,” he said. “I want to board at the farm while I work on these pictures--that is, I want permission to camp down here by the swamp somewhere, and get milk and eggs and things from you. Do you think I can?”

“Camp?” she echoed.

“Yes.”

She looked round curiously, as though she expected to see his equipment there. “Haven’t you a tent?”

He laughed. “No. I’ve a tarp for a shelter; and I can cut some hemlock boughs and build a shack; if you’ll let me trespass.”

“You could sleep in the barn I guess,” she said. “Or maybe in the house.”

He shook his head. “No roof for mine. This is my vacation, you understand. I can sleep under a roof at home.”

“You’ll be getting wet all the time.”

“I’ll dry when the sun comes out.”

She asked, “Who’s going to cook for you?”

“I’m a famous cook,” he told her.

She had the rooted distrust of the open air which is common among the people of the farms. She could not see why a man should sleep on the ground when he might have hay or a bed; and she could not believe in the practicality of cooking over an open fire; especially when there was a stove at hand.

“You’ll have to see Mr. Evered,” she said uneasily.

So it happened that they two went back through the swamp together and up the hill; and they came side by side to meet Evered and John in the barnyard by the kitchen door.

They had their colloquy there in the open barnyard, while the slanting rays of the sun drew lengthening shadows from where they stood. Darrin spoke to Evered. John went into the house after a moment and built a fire for Ruth; and then he came out again while the girl went about the business of supper.

Darrin was a good talker; and Evered’s silence made him seem like a good listener. When John came out he was able to tell Darrin something of the moose in the swamp, their haunts and their habits. Darrin listened as eagerly as he had talked. He told them at last what he had come to do; he explained how by trigger strings and hidden cameras and flash-light powders he hoped to capture the images of the shy giants of the forest. John listened with shining eyes. The project was of a sort to appeal to him. As for Evered, he had little to say, smoked stolidly, stared out across his fields. The sunlight on his hair accentuated the white streaks in it, and John looking toward him once thought he had never seen his father look so old.

When Darrin put forward his request for permission to camp in the woodlot near the swamp, Evered swung his heavy head round and gave the other man his whole attention for a space. It was John’s turn for silence now. He expected Evered to refuse, perhaps abusively. Evered had never liked trespassers. He said they scared his cows, trampled his hay, stole his garden stuff or his apples. But Evered listened now with a certain patience, watching Darrin; and Darrin with a nimble tongue talked on and made explanations and promises.

In the end Evered asked, “Where is it your mind to camp?”

“I’ve picked no place. I’ll find a likely spot.”

“You could sleep in the barn,” said Evered, as Ruth had said before him; and Darrin laughed.

“As a matter of fact,” he explained, “half the sport of this for me is in sleeping out of doors on the ground. I’m on vacation, you know. Other men like hunting, and so do I; but mine is a somewhat different kind, that’s all. I won’t bother you; you’ll not see much of me, for I’ll be about the swamp at all hours of the night, and I’ll sleep a good deal in the day. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Of course, I don’t want to urge you against your will.”

Evered’s lips flickered into what might have passed for a smile. “I’m not often moved against my will,” he said. “But I’ve no objection to your sleeping in my ground. If you keep out of the uncut hay.”

“I will.”

“And put out your fires. I don’t want to be burned up.”

Darrin laughed. “I’m not a novice at this, Mr. Evered,” he said. “You’ll not have to kick me off.”

Evered nodded; and John said, “You want to keep out of the bull’s pasture too. You’ll know it. There’s a high wire fence round.”

Darrin said soberly, “I’ve heard of the red bull.”

“He killed my wife,” said Evered; and there was something so stark in the bald statement that it shocked and silenced them. Evered himself flushed when he had spoken, as though his utterance had been unconsidered, had burst from his overfull heart.

“I know,” Darrin told him.

John said after a moment’s silence, “If there’s any way I can help--I know the swamp. As much as any man. And I’ve seen the moose in there.”

There was a certain eagerness in his voice; and Darrin said readily, “Of course. I’d like it.”

He said he would tramp to town and come with his gear next morning. John offered to drive him over, but he shook his head. As he started away Ruth came to the kitchen door, and he looked toward her, and she said hesitantly, “Don’t you want to stay to supper?”

He thanked her, shook his head. Evered and John in the barnyard watched him go; and Evered saw Ruth leave the kitchen door and move to a window from which she could see him go up the lane toward the main road.

Evered asked John: “What do you make of him?”

“I like him,” said John. “I’m--glad you let him stay.”

“Know why I let him stay?”

“Why--no.”

“See him and Ruth together? See her watching him?”

“I didn’t notice.”

Evered’s lips twitched in the nearest approach to mirth he ever permitted himself. “Ought to have better eyes, John; if you’re minded to keep hold o’ Ruth. She likes him. If I’d swore at him, shipped him off, she’d have been all on his side from the start.”

John, a little troubled, shook his head. “Ruth’s all right,” he said. “Give her time.”

Evered said, that wistful note in his voice plain for any man to hear, “I don’t want Ruth leaving us. So I let Darrin stay.”

XI

Darrin came to the farm. He made his camp by the spring where Mary Evered had loved to sit, and where she had been killed. John knew this at the time, was on the spot when Darrin built his fireplace in a bank of earth, waist high, and watched the other shape hemlock boughs into a rain-shedding shelter.

He did not remonstrate; but he did say, “Shouldn’t think you’d want to sleep here.”

Darrin looked at him curiously; and he laughed a little.

“You mean--the red bull?” he asked. And when John nodded he said, “Oh, I’m not afraid of ghosts. The world’s full of ghosts.” There was a sudden hardness in his eye. “I’m a sort of a ghost myself, in a way.”

John wondered what he meant; but he was not given to much questioning, and did not ask. Nevertheless, Darrin’s word stayed hauntingly in his mind.

He told Ruth where Darrin was camping; and the girl listened thoughtfully, but made no comment. John knew that Ruth was accustomed to go to the spring now and then, as her sister had done. He wondered whether she would go there now. There was no jealousy in John; his heart was not built for it. Nevertheless, there was a deep concern for Ruth, deeper than he had any way of expressing. The matter worried him a little.

They did not speak of Darrin’s camping place to Evered, and Evered asked no questions. Darrin came to the house occasionally for supplies, but it happened that he did not encounter Evered at such times. He was always careful to ask for the man, to leave some word of greeting for him; and once he bade them tell Evered to come down and see his camp. They did not do so. Some instinct, unspoken and unacknowledged, impelled both Ruth and John to keep Evered and Darrin apart. Neither was conscious of this feeling, yet both were moved by it.

John, prompted to some extent by his father’s warning, had begun in an awkward fashion to seek to please Ruth and to win back favor in her eyes. He felt himself uneasy and at a loss in the presence of Darrin, felt himself at a disadvantage in any contest with the other. John was a man of the country, of the farm, and he had grace to know it. Darrin had the ease of one who has rubbed shoulders with many men in many places; he was not confused in Ruth’s presence; he was rather at his best when she was near, while John was ill at ease and words came hard to him. Darrin took care to be friendly with them both; and he and John on more than one night drove deep into the swamp together on Darrin’s quest. John, busy about the farm, was unable to join Darrin in the daytime; but the other scoured through the marsh for tracks and traces, and then enlisted John to help him move cameras into position, lay flash-powder traps, or stalk the moose at their feeding in desperate attempts at camera snap-shooting.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, John knew that Ruth went down to the spring and talked with Darrin. Darrin told her of his ventures in the swamp; and she told Darrin in her turn the story of the tragedy that had been enacted here by the spring where he was camping. John, crossing the woodlot on some errand, came upon them there one afternoon, and passed by on the knoll above them without having been seen. The picture they made remained with him and troubled him.

When Darrin had been some ten days on the farm and September was coming in with a full moon in the skies it happened one night that Evered drove to Fraternity for the mail and left John and Ruth alone together. When she had done with the dishes she came out to find him on the door-step, smoking in the moonlight; and she stood above him for a moment, till he looked up at her with some question in his eyes.

She asked then, “Are you going into the swamp with Mr. Darrin to-night?”

He said, “No. He’s out of plates. There’s some due to-morrow; and he’s waiting.”

She was silent a moment longer, then said swiftly, as though anxious to be rid of the words, “Let’s go down and see him.”

If John was hurt or sorry he made no sign. He got to his feet. “Why, all right,” he said. “It’s bright. We’ll not need a lantern.”

As they moved across the barnyard to the bars and entered the woodlot the girl began to talk, in a swift low voice, as though to cover some unadmitted embarrassment. A wiser man might have been disturbed; but John was not analytical, and so he enjoyed it. It was the first time they had talked together at any length since Mary died. It was, he thought, like the old happy times. He felt warmed and comforted and happier than he had been for many weeks past. She was like the old Ruth again, he told himself.

Darrin was glad to see them. He built up his fire and made a place for Ruth to sit upon his blankets, leaning against a bowlder, and offered John cigars. The man knew how to play host, knew how to be interesting. John saw Ruth laugh wholeheartedly for the first time in months. He thought she was never so lovely as laughing.

When they went back up the hill together she fell silent and sober again; and he looked down and saw her eyes, clear in the moonlight. Abruptly, without knowing what he did, he put his arm round her; and for an instant she seemed to yield to him, so that he drew her toward him as he was used to do. He would have kissed her.

She broke away and cried out: “No, no, no! I told you no, John.”

He said gently, “I think a lot of you, Ruth.”

She shook her head, backing away from him; and he heard the angry note creep back into her voice. “You mustn’t, ever,” she told him. “Oh, can’t you understand?”

Some hot strain in the man came to the surface; he cried with an eloquence that was strange on his slow lips, “I love you. That’s all I understand. I always will. You’ve got to know that too. You----”

She said, “Hush! I won’t listen. You--you’re your father over. He’s not content but he master everyone and every thing; master everyone about him. Break them. Master his beasts and his wife. You’re his own son. You’re an Evered.” Her hands were tightening into fists at her side. “Oh, you would want to boss me the way he---- I won’t, I won’t! You shan’t--shan’t ever do it.”

“I’ll be kind to you,” he said.

There was a softer note in her voice. “John, John,” she told him. “I’m sorry. I did love you. I tried to shut my eyes. I tried to pretend that Mary was happy with him. You’re like him. I thought I’d be happy with you. She told me one day how he used be. It frightened me, because he was like you. But I did love you, John. Till Mary died. Then I knew. He’d killed her. He made her want to die. And he had driven that great bull into a killing thing--by the way he treated it.

“Oh, I’ve seen your father clear, John. I know what he is. You’re like him. I couldn’t ever love you.”

He said in a hot quick tone--because she was very lovely--that she would love him, must, some day; and she shook her head.

“Don’t you see?” she told him. “You’re trying already to make me do what you want. Oh, John, can’t you Evereds see any living thing without crushing it? Mr. Darrin----” She caught herself, went on. “See how different he is. He goes into the swamp, and he has to be a thousand times more careful, more crafty than you when you hunt. But you come home with a bloody ugly thing across your shoulders; and he comes with a lovely picture, that will always be beautiful, and that so many people will see. He outwits the animals; he proves himself against them. But he doesn’t kill them to do it, John. You--your father---- Oh, can’t you ever see?”

His thoughts were not quick enough to cope with her; but he said awkwardly, “I’m not--always killing things. I’ve left many a trout go that I might have killed. And deer too.”

“Because it’s the law,” she said harshly. “But it’s in you to kill--crush and bruise and destroy. Don’t you see the difference? You don’t have to beat a thing, a beast, to make it yield to you. You Evereds.”

“I’m not a horse beater,” he said.

“It’s the blood of you,” she told him. “You will be.”

“There’s some times,” he suggested, “when you’ve got to be hard.”

“I’ve heard your father say that very thing.”