CHAPTER XIV

Paisley Reconnoiters

The early autumn twilight had fallen when Bill Paisley stepped from the wood into the fallow. He dropped the long muzzle-loading rifle into the hollow of his arm and peered down through the gathering dusk toward Totherside.

“Why, there sure is a light at widder Ross’s,” soliloquized the man. “Now, it might be that I’d find out some things we should know if I’d just drop over there casual-like. What I’ve heard concernin’ Watson, and Peeler seein’ him and the teacher on the trail together, has roused my suspicions to the boilin’ point. I hope he’s at the widder’s to-night; I want to ‘get to know him better,’ as Boy put it.”

Paisley leaned against a tree and laughed silently.

“He don’t like me very much. I could see that the other night. And I suppose it’s natural that I shouldn’t think much of him.”

He walked on, his feet making not the slightest sound upon the sward that now gleamed gold-brown beneath the moonlight. At the edge of the creek he stepped into a skiff and with one movement of the paddle sent it sweeping into the rushes on the farther shore.

Widow Ross’s home was built much after the style of the homes in Bushwhackers’ Place. It was long and low and constructed of logs. The chinks between the logs were filled with yellow-blue clay. Paisley approached the place cautiously, once or twice hesitating as if he would draw back. He opened the door gently in response to a loud “come in,” and peered about the room as though in search of somebody. A tall, angular woman, dressed in native homespun, and working a huge spinning-wheel, turned as he entered, and, without taking her pipe from her mouth, said shortly:

“Shut that door, Bill Paisley. And you, Tom Ross, stop terrifyin’ that cat.”

A freckle-faced lad of about nine arose from a corner and, administering a last wholesome kick to a sickly looking pussie, came shuffling forward.

“Hello, Bill,” he said, “what’s new! I heard that you and the rest of the Bushwhackers was actin’ balky with Colonel Hallibut for wantin’ to buy your timber. What’s the matter!”

“Want to keep our timber to make bows and arrows with,” answered Paisley dryly. “How’s things at the mill, Tom? Runnin’ overtime, I see.”

“We’re expectin’ old Hallibut down soon,” said Tom. “I heard the boss sayin’ that the Colonel was comin’ in with a boat. Says he’s goin’ to have all your timber before the bay freezes over.”

“Yes?—He’ll get it when Hell freezes over.”

“Bill Paisley,” frowned the woman, taking her pipe from her mouth, “no swearin’—not here, if you please, sir.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Ross,” said Bill from behind his hat.

Tom kicked the visitor gently with his bare foot, and Mrs. Ross, resuming her smoke, went on:

“We are feelin’ the influence of education and refinement since Mr. Simpson has been boardin’ here. No home that contains a teacher is a place for perfanity. Mr. Simpson says: ‘Perfanity,’ says he, ‘is the most useless sin of all sins. No gentleman swears.’”

Mrs. Ross snorted and turned her swarthy face toward her visitor.

“Livin’ in daily intercourse with an educated young man has its advantages. Look what Mr. Simpson has done for our Tom. Look at him, Bill Paisley, and tell me, don’t you see a difference in that boy?”

“I do,” said Bill slowly; “I sure do, widder, now you speak about it.”

“That young man of education did it,” said the widow. “The teacher did it all.”

“Great Christopher Columbus! but he’s smarter than I thought him,” grinned Paisley. “Wonder if he’d cut mine?”

The widow turned her black eyes upon him.

“Cut _yours_?” she repeated. “What be you talkin’ about?”

“Why, my hair,” said Bill. “I said I wonder if he’d cut mine, seein’ he’s made such a good job of Tom’s.”

Tom tittered and the woman turned her back on the two.

“Swine,” she muttered; “bushwhacker swine.”

“Where’s the teacher to-night?” asked Bill blithely.

“Him and Mary Ann——” commenced Tom.

But his mother, turning, quickly advanced upon him, and catching him by the collar with one powerful hand, administered with the other such a cuff that young Tom went spinning to his corner. The mangy cat sneaked over and crept under Paisley’s chair.

“And how _is_ Mary Ann?” asked Bill after a time. “Ain’t seen her but once or twice for the last month. I suppose she often speaks of me, Mrs. Ross?”

“Indeed she doesn’t, then, so you needn’t flatter yourself. Mary Ann’s got no use for a Bushwhacker, let alone a worthless one who would make a joke at his own mother’s funeral. So, there.”

“If I ever made a joke at my mother’s funeral it was ’cause I was too young to know better,” said Paisley pensively. “My little ma died when I was born. I ought to be worth a whole heap, marm—I was bought at a big price.”

He picked up the cat and smoothed her crumpled fur with his big hand.

“That was nigh on to forty year ago,” he said, “and I’ve been wanderin’ about the bush ever since, exceptin’ a few years I was down in the Southern States, ranchin’ it. I picked up a lot down there, but nothin’ worth keepin’, I guess. What I was goin’ to say was, I never see a mother and her boy together without a big somethin’ I can’t name standin’ right out before me, and that somethin’ is what I’ve missed by not havin’ a mother.”

Widow Ross laid her pipe on the table.

“Tommy,” she commanded, “you go right down to the spring and bring up that bucket of milk, and don’t you spill it, or I’ll pull every one of them red hairs out of your head. I don’t suppose you’ve lost your appetite none lately, Bill?”

“Periodically only, marm. I ain’t got over my likin’ for brick-cooked bread and milk, particularly the bread of a lady I know to be the best cook on Totherside.”

Mrs. Ross showed two rows of white teeth in a pleased smile. Then her face grew stern again.

“Totherside,” she flashed, “why, I don’t take that as much of a compliment, Bill Paisley. Ain’t I the only woman on Totherside?”

“Beggin’ your pardon, I mean on the whole country-side—Bridgetown included,” retrieved Bill gallantly.

“What be you all goin’ to do about Hallibut?” asked the woman, sitting down at the spinning-wheel.

Bill shook his long hair and chuckled.

“I got scolded once for sayin’ what I thought about sellin’ our timber, so don’t ask me.”

The widow’s heavy brows met in a frown.

“Here you are forty years old, and that’s old enough for you to have some sense if you’re goin’ to have any. And I must say I don’t think you nor Big McTavish nor any of you Bushwhackers have an ounce of sense among you. Here you are fightin’ off a fortune, or at least keepin’ money, which you might have, out of your pockets. Bosh! I believe that Boy McTavish has got you all under a spell.”

“Boy is sure the strongest and bitterest fighter amongst us,” agreed Bill, “but we’re all of one opinion. We like the woods, and I guess we have reason to. It has give us all a mighty good livin’, and somehow wood-life has somethin’ about it that cleared land ain’t got—smells and sounds and silence and I’ll be——”

“Be careful now, you nigh swore again,” admonished the woman. “There you, Tom, set the pail down on the table; then go to the out-house and bring in the bread, the brick-baked loaf.”

“Mrs. Ross,” said Paisley, “you’re not only a good-lookin’ woman, but you’re a good-hearted woman. Once I hoped I might be your son-in-law and have all the brick-baked bread I wanted, and the corncake which only you can bake. But Mary Ann she seems to think different, and I’m thinkin’, after all, she had some reason, seein’ she is only somethin’ about twenty-two years old and me nearly twice that.”

The widow put her finger on her lip and glanced fearfully toward the door. Then she looked with commiseration at Paisley, and approaching him in a crouching attitude, whispered:

“Mary Ann is goin’ to marry the teacher.”

Bill’s stool, poised on two legs, came to the floor with a thump.

“Marry the teacher!” he repeated; “marry the teacher! Well now, I’ll be turkey-trapped. I didn’t think he was brave enough to ask her.”

“I ain’t sayin’ that he _has_ asked her, am I?” cried the widow. “But I’ve got two eyes to see with, haven’t I, Bill Paisley?”

“Aye, marm, to do whatever you like with,” answered Bill pleasantly, his own eyes on the loaf of bread which Tom had just brought in. Then noting the widow’s ruffled dignity, he smoothed it with: “I’d know who baked that bread by the appetizin’ smell of it. Says I to Big McTavish just yesterday, ‘There are some good bread-makers in this here place, but none of ’em quite like widder Ross.’”

“Time Big McTavish had his last loggin’-bee he sent for me to come and help with the cookin’,” said the widow, as she poured the foaming milk from the pail into the big earthen bowls. “I made a custard in the dishpan. There was forty-two eggs in it, and it was good, if I do say it myself. Not one man in the lot of ’em that set down to the table but asked for a second helpin’. Big Mac he told ’em all who made it, and since that I’ve liked him better than ever. I’m makin’ another just like it for Mrs. Declute, and if you’re at Declute’s loggin’-bee next Thursday you’ll be able to sample it. Big McTavish says that Ander’s loggin’ ’ll be a good ’un, all right, if I make a custard for it.”

“He’s one man in five hundred, marm, is Big Mac,” answered Bill. “Why, Mrs. Ross, there’s not an Injun in the bush, no, or on the Point either, who wouldn’t fight tooth-and-nail for him. He’s been mighty good to the Injuns, has Mac. Any time they want anythin’ he has, they go to him and get it. And Gloss, why she can simply tie them Injuns about her little finger. They all think the world of her.”

“I’d like to know who don’t think the world of Gloss. She’s a dear girl—bless her sweet face.”

Bill with a spoonful of milk-soaked bread well on the way to its destination, suspended operations for a moment.

“Widder Ross,” he said, “God never made a better girl, nor a better lookin’ one, unless it was your Mary Ann.”

His repast finished, he reached for his rifle.

“Must be goin’,” he said in answer to the widow’s invitation to ‘set longer.’ “I’ll call in on you again soon, widder. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” responded the woman.

She was lighting her clay pipe and did not so much as turn as Bill walked out.

Paisley skirted the scrubby walk and passed along the edge of the butternut grove toward the path across the fallow. A whip-poor-will was voicing its joys from the limb of a dead ash. The moon had sunk above the bay, and its wide splash of light lay across the fallow, a blanket of milky haze. Bill lifted his head and breathed in the clear wood-scented air. From the valley came the monotonous buzz of a saw. Suddenly Paisley dived into the hazel thicket. He had heard footsteps approaching, and rightly divined that it was the teacher and Mary Ann.

Not until the young people had passed through the grove and emerged into the interval beyond did Paisley step out from his hiding-place. Then he looked toward the sinking moon and sighed.

“She’s not for the likes of you, Bill,” he murmured as he turned to the path again.

Tommy stood before him.

“Bill,” he said excitedly, “I want to tell you somethin’. I’ve got to tell you, Bill, or I’ll bust.”

“Why, Tommy,” said Bill, “thought you’d gone to bed.”

“No, I slipped out and follered you, but I saw them comin’ too, and I ducked same as you did. Say, Bill, you don’t think much of Mr. Simpson, do you?”

Paisley laughed queerly.

“Well, Tommy, and what if I don’t?”

“Well, I overheard him and that Watson man plannin’ some things together the other day. I thought I wouldn’t tell anybody, but I can’t keep it any longer.”

He stood on tiptoe and whispered something in the man’s ear. Paisley gripped the lad’s arm.

“You’re dreamin’,” he cried.

“No, Bill, I heard ’em make it up between ’em,” gasped Tom. “An’ what I want to know is, what’s going to be done about it?”

“I don’t know,” answered Paisley dazedly. “I don’t know—I’ll have to study this thing out.”

His square jaw was set and he toyed with the lock of his rifle.

“You haven’t told anyone else, Tommy?” he asked.

“Nary a soul.”

“Then don’t. I’ll see you in a night or two. Keep your eyes on the teacher. Remember, if Big McTavish or Boy hear what you’ve told me they’ll kill him sure. You know what that will mean.”

“I won’t tell anybody, cross my heart,” promised the lad, and then darted away.