CHAPTER XVI

Preparing for the Loggin’

Next morning at break of day Paisley and Boy, laden with rat-traps, struck out toward the creek. Big McTavish accompanied them as far as the stable and gave them a parting send-off.

“If I had the chores done I’d go along and show you fellers how a real trapper sets a trap,” he said banteringly, “but I hear old Buck and Bright askin’ for their breakfast, so I can’t go. I want that pair of oxen to be the best at Declute’s loggin’. They have a reputation to keep up.”

“Don’t think you can drive oxen any better than you can set rat-traps,” returned Paisley. “Jim Peeler says his oxen can out-haul Buck and Bright any day.”

“And Declute says he never caught a single rat in the traps you set for him,” scoffed Boy.

“Get along with you, you scamps,” laughed the big man.

He passed into the stable and, slapping the hungry and expectant oxen lovingly, spoke to them as was his habit.

“Buck, you moon-eyed old beggar, I want you to pull to-morrow like you never pulled before. You heard what Bill said about Peeler’s oxen? Well, Peeler can’t out-pull us. I guess not.” He reached across the stall and patted Bright’s broad shoulder.

“As for you,” he said, “course you’ll do your best. If you don’t, Brighty, I won’t feed you any corn for a whole day.”

He filled the mangers with fragrant fodder and passed outside. The glorious morning was shooting up above the fringe of Point Aux Pins. From the pine woods a billion dull-red arrows of light were glancing, and, striking the bosom of Rond Eau, darting upward again toward a sullen arch of cloud where they clung and mingling with it painted a glorious border of orange and crimson. A rooster, high on a stack of cornstalks, flapped his wings and proclaimed his gladness. Down in the second-growth beeches a brood of feeding quail were whistling, and out above the creek a blue king-fisher stood poised, then dived, a streak of turquoise on the air, for the fish his bright eyes had sighted.

McTavish looked about him, smiling and whispering to himself. At the dog-kennel he paused and accosted the setter.

“So you’re tied up, eh? Wanted to follow the boys, did you, Joe? Well, we’ll let you free now to go where you please.”

He unsnapped the dog’s chain and Joe sprang up and left a wet caress on the man’s cheek. Then with a low whine of welcome he bounded away.

“Get down, Joe, you good-for-nothin’ dog, get down,” commanded a voice, and McTavish turned to see Mrs. Ross and Mary Ann coming up the path.

“Good-mornin’, good-mornin’,” he shouted. “Well, well now, but you two are early visitors. Isn’t it a grand mornin’? Come up to the house—the little ma’ll be glad to see you both.”

“How is she to-day?” Mrs. Ross, rather out of breath from fighting off Joe, set her basket down on the grass and leaned against a tree.

“I can’t say as she’s any stronger, widder.”

“Verily, ‘all flesh is as grass,’” sighed the good woman, shaking her head dolefully.

The man glanced up quizzically.

“Ma is quoting scripture,” explained Mary Ann. “She says we all should work according to some text in the Bible.”

“That godly man, Mr. Smythe, has taught me much, Daniel,” proclaimed the widow, stooping for her basket, “not sayin’ but what I was disbelievin’ that flesh was anythin’ like grass till Mr. Smythe pointed out them very words in Lukeronomy, 8th verse. My, but it’s wonderful things the good Book teaches us.”

McTavish looked at Mary Ann. The girl was smiling and her black eyes were dancing with more than the zest of life. He took the basket from the woman’s hand and they passed up the path toward the house.

“I can’t just understand what’s wrong with ma,” said McTavish. “She don’t seem to suffer any, just grows weaker day by day. She’s too weak to be carried a long distance to see a doctor, and it’s too far here for a doctor to come. I wish I knowed what to do.”

Mary Ann laid her hand on his arm.

“Why not get old Betsy to come and see her?” she suggested.

“Mary Ann!” The widow stood still on the path and eyed her daughter sternly. “Are we cannibals of the disenlightened ages to allow superstitious rubbage to mold our ways? What does the good Book say about witchcraft but that it’s ’red in the cup and stingeth like a snake in the grass’?”

“You’re thinkin’ of the verse as cautions man against strong drink, widder,” corrected McTavish kindly: “‘look not upon the wine when it is red.’ Do you know,” he went on slowly, “I’ve been thinkin’ as maybe Betsy can cure people. We know she cured some of our people right here in Bushwhackers’ Place.”

“Yes,” nodded the woman, “she did, and it do seem strange that witchcraft could do anythin’ as is real good, don’t it?”

Gloss met the visitors at the door and clapped her hands with delight.

“Oh,” she cried, “we were all wishin’ you would both come over this mornin’. What d’ye suppose we are doin’, Mary Ann?”

“That’s easy to tell,” returned the widow, sniffing the appetizing atmosphere. “If them ain’t cookies you are bakin’ I don’t know cookies or bakin’. Dear heart, if there ain’t the sweet little woman herself!”

She crossed the room and bent over the willow couch.

“And so you got up early, too, deary,” she said, taking the thin hand lying on the coverlet in hers, and patting it caressingly. “Goin’ to help with the bakin’, eh?”

“My, if you’d only heard her bossin’ Granny and me around you’d think she was takin’ a hand all right,” cried Gloss, “and she’s that wasteful, Mrs. Ross; bound to use twice as many eggs as are needed, and she won’t let us use pork-fryin’s for short’nin’. We got to use pure lard, think of that!”

“They are contrary,” charged the invalid, her eyes resting tenderly on the tall girl who, with sleeves tucked up above the elbows, was cutting disks of dough with a can-top, “but I make them obey, Mrs. Ross—don’t I, Granny?”

“Aye, Mary, that you do,” smiled the old lady, placing a basket of newly gathered eggs on the table, “but we’ll na stand it fra lang, for in a wee bit you’ll be up an’ aroon an’ doin’ the cookin’ yoursel’. An’ then we’ll do the bossin’, won’t we, Bonnie?”

“We will,” cried Gloss, “we’ll make her do all the bakin’, Granny.”

McTavish entered, carrying a big golden pumpkin in either hand.

“Declute says he wants these punkin’-pies made accordin’ to ma’s orders,” he grinned. “Boy and me raised these punkins just so’s we could have a feed on ma’s pies, and Declute has been bangin’ around our cornfield all fall hintin’ mighty broad that we send him a pie when ma makes ’em. I guess three or four won’t come amiss at the bee, eh, Mary Ann?”

He piled the pumpkins in the girl’s lap and pinched her red cheek.

“Somehow I wish there was goin’ to be a weddin’ as well as a loggin’,” he teased. “Haven’t had a chance to play ‘Old Zip Coon’ weddin’ march since Peeler’s big Jake married French Joe’s little Marie a year ago. The old fiddle’ll begin to think this big bush place is gettin’ behind the times.”

“Mr. Simpson don’t take to fiddle-music,” observed Mrs. Ross with a sigh.

Gloss glanced quickly at Mary Ann, and the eyes of the bush-girls met in a look of mutual understanding.

“Bill Paisley loves fiddle-music,” cried Gloss, dropping the long pan of brown fragrant cookies on the table and reaching for the old violin. She placed it in McTavish’s hands and, catching up Mary Ann from her chair, wound her long arms about the girl.

“Play,” she commanded, and Big McTavish, sitting on a corner of the table, struck up the old tune of “Turkey in the Straw.”

In and out, up and down the room the girls flashed, every movement one of grace. The warm blood showed in their cheeks, the wild life in their eyes. Not many could gallop to the quick music of that old tune, but Gloss and Mary Ann had learned how.

Granny McTavish, in her corner, peeled the potatoes with quick, uncertain slashes, her head moving up and down to the inspiring strains of the fiddle. Widow Ross arose, clapping her hands in time with the music, her matronly face agleam with something akin to youth, her foot stamping the floor in regular thumps twice to each measure. As the music waxed faster Granny McTavish arose and with trembling hands removed her glasses. Big Mac, his face hugging the old fiddle, smiled as he noted the action, and nodding to widow Ross he changed abruptly to an old Scottish air. The sick woman had struggled up on the couch and tears of laughter were streaming down her face.

“Dance a Scotch four for me,” she begged, and Granny and widow Ross faced the two girls on the wide floor.

Oh, such a dance as that was! The young girls could dance, and no mistake. But they could teach the older ones nothing when it came to executing that old Scotch dance. In and out they darted, faster and faster, their feet moving in perfect time to the exhilarating bars of the music until Big McTavish, unable to contain his joy longer, leaned back on the table and laughed until the very rafters shook and threatened to bring smoked hams and dried venison strips down upon the heads of the merrymakers. Then Granny, her wrinkled face working, slipped back to her pan of potatoes and widow Ross sank into a chair and reached for her basket.

“Sakes alive, dearest,” she panted, “I’m too fleshy to stand it any more.”

“Oh, it has made me feel so much better,” declared the sick woman. “I do love the fiddle, and it does seem so good to think that dear Granny has not forgotten the olden days.”

“When the little ma is well, which please God ’ll soon be,” said McTavish, “we’ll have a real old-fashioned dance here, with all the old boys and girls and all the young boys and girls right here together. And then, ladies, ma and me’ll show you how the minuet should be danced. We’ll have French Joe over to play. He’s a good fiddler, is Joe, almost as good as anybody I know.”

He hung the instrument up on its nail and, passing on to the couch, sank on his knee before it.

“Ma,” he said softly, stroking the heavy brown hair away from the little woman’s forehead, “there’s only one real shadder in all this big bright bush-world of ours, and God ain’t goin’ to let that rest there long. I’ve watched shadders long enough to know that they don’t last. When this one passes there’ll be happy times. You maybe can guess how much I miss you up and around, ma, so won’t you try and get better for my sake, and all our sakes?”

She caught the rough, strong hand in hers and held it against her face.

“Mac,” she whispered, “I’ll try even harder than I have been doing.”

He patted her cheek and made to rise, but she held him.

“And Mac,” she said, a catch in her voice, “you mus’n’t worry about me, or about anything, and you must show Boy that it is useless to worry about losing this bushland. Nobody can steal it, Mac, believe me; I know.”

“O’ course you know, ma.” He arose and hastily left the house.

Widow Ross, in white apron and bare arms, was dissecting one of the golden pumpkins on a block of wood outside.

“Ander’ll likely have a fine day for his loggin’ to-morrow,” she remarked as McTavish passed.

“There’ll be quite a crowd there, I bet,” returned the man. “I’ve sort of led ’em all to expect a good feed of custard, widder.”

“Oh, you go along, you blarney,” cried Mrs. Ross. But she cut into the pumpkin with renewed vigor and started to sing:

“_Oh, we’ll cross the river of Jordan,_ _Happy, happy, happy, happy,_ _Cross the river of Jordan,_ _Happy in the Lord._”

McTavish listened in wonderment, then with a chuckle made to pass on. The woman bade him stay a moment.

“I’m not just sure I done right in dancin’ in that Scotch four,” she faltered. “Mr. Smythe seems to think dancin’ wrong, same’s smokin’ and such.”

“Humph, well now, it seems as Smythe’s been preachin’ quite a lot to you, widder. See him often?”

“Pretty often,” answered the widow slowly. “He’s been over to my place some three or four times during the last few days. He’s a very nice man, and a good livin’ one.”

McTavish scratched his head and frowned.

“Humph,” he nodded, “quite so, widder.”

“Mr. Smythe is great at ‘leadin’ people to the light,’ as he puts it,” smiled the woman, wiping the pumpkin seeds off her hands against the side of the pan. “He’s converted me to true Christianity. He learnt me that hymn, ‘Cross the River of Jordan,’ that I’ve just sung.”

“Well, well,” grinned Big Mac.

“And I’ve give up smokin’, too,” confessed the widow. “It’s been awful hard to do it, but Mr. Smythe says it’s wrong for people, specially women, to smoke. I haven’t had a smoke for several days, Daniel.”

“God bless us,” murmured McTavish, “is that so?”

He picked up a sliver and broke it into small bits.

“You get quite a lot of comfort out of tobaccer, I suppose?”

“No one knows how much,” she sighed.

“Well, missus, maybe I’m wrong,” declared McTavish, “but I tell you what I think. I don’t believe I’d care to give up anythin’ I had, and was sure of, for a chance of gettin’ what a man like Smythe gave me his word I’d get in exchange.”

He laughed, and strode away across the cornfield. Widow Ross followed him with staring eyes.

“I wonder just what he means,” she muttered. “My, but I wish I could have a little smoke right now.”