CHAPTER VII

Where the Brook and River Meet

Big McTavish walked slowly back to the house. In the doorway stood Gloss awaiting him.

“Is he gone?” she asked.

“Yes, Glossie, he’s gone.”

McTavish picked up the ax which was leaning against the ash-block and turned toward the bush.

“You might just keep your eyes on the soap-fire, Gloss. I’m goin’ down to the swale to cut some sassafras for the yearlin’s—they seem ailin’. While I’m down there I might as well mark some basswood saplin’s that’ll make good sap-troughs. Promised myself last sugar-makin’ that I’d have new troughs before another syrup-boilin’.”

“The potatoes must be about ready to dig,” said the girl.

“Yes, Boy’s over to Paisley’s after a fork, and when he gets back we’re goin’ to start in on ’em. There’s this satisfaction about raisin’ taters,” he laughed, “—the squirrels and crows don’t molest the crop any like they do the corn. It does seem we can’t keep them out of the corn, though.”

“It looks fine since you’ve got it cut and shocked up,” declared the girl; “and it does seem so good that we’re gettin’ such a nice piece of land cleared. Granny was tellin’ me what that man who just left wanted you to do, and I had to laugh when I thought how he could be so foolish as to think we’d be willin’ to leave Bushwhackers’ Place. ‘Why, Granny,’ says I, ‘what do we want of a farm in Clearview when we’ve got one right here?’”

The big man’s face lit up.

“You’re sure good medicine, Gloss,” he said. “Yes, we are gettin’ quite a nice plot of ground cleared, and I look for quite a nice yield this year, both in corn and taters. Trappin’ don’t seem to promise much for this winter, though. The noise and clatter of Hallibut’s mill seems to be drivin’ the mink and rats across the bay.”

“Can’t we make him take the mill away from Lee Creek?” asked the girl. “I hate the sound of it. Its noise drowns the song of the birds and its smoke hides the blue of the sky between the trees. What right had he to put that mill there, uncle?”

“Well, he owns a strip of bush on Totherside,” explained McTavish. “It comes right up to Lee Creek. So you see the mill is on Hallibut’s own property.”

“Oh, look, uncle,” cried the girl, “there’s some black squirrels crossing the corn-stubble now—five of them. I do believe aunty would relish a bit of stewed squirrel. I meant to tell Boy to shoot one or two for her this mornin’, but he was gone before I was up.”

Joe, the setter, broke from the thicket and loped across the cornfield. All summer he had acted as custodian of the field, and even now the squirrels stood in mortal terror of him, and the crows cursed him in guttural croaks from the tops of tall trees beyond the danger-line.

As the squirrels took to a lone hickory in the center of the field, Boy McTavish came quickly around the corner of the house. He stood the clumsy hand-made fork he carried up against the lean-to, and mopped his face with his sleeve.

“Whew!” he whistled, “but it’s turned out a fine day after all. Never knowed Injun summer to hang on so long. Hope it keeps up, dad, and we’ll get the corn all husked yet before trappin’-time. Suppose we have a bee and a dance at night, same as we did at the wood-bee? Declute is goin’ to have a loggin’-bee soon.

“Hello, Gloss,” he called, catching sight of the girl, “how’s ma this mornin’?”

“Better, and hungry for squirrel,” she answered, her eyes on the treed blacks.

She ran into the house and returned with a rifle. She handed Big McTavish the powder-horn and, bracing her feet, cocked the gun.

“How far?” she asked, throwing it to her shoulder with a practiced hand.

“Sixty yards, anyway,” answered Big McTavish.

“Nigher eighty,” asserted Boy. “Too far, Gloss; you’ll miss sure.”

A gleam of mischief shone in the gray eye sighting along the brown barrel. Then the rifle cracked, and a black ball detached itself from the hickory and went swinging down to earth in tiny circles. The dog gave a low whine and came bounding forward, the squirrel in his mouth, and allowed Boy to take it from him.

“Right between the eyes,” said Boy proudly.

Big McTavish reloaded the rifle and handed it back to Gloss. His face was wrinkled in a grin of mingled surprise and admiration.

“Neither you nor me could do any better, Boy,” he said hesitatingly by way of admission.

“The one on the left next,” motioned the girl, and the rifle spoke once more.

“Missed,” gasped the man. “Can’t always make a bull’s-eye, Glossie.”

“Missed nuthin’,” cried Boy; “there he comes now.”

The second squirrel spun about on the limb a couple of times, then went crashing through the branches.

“As Bill Paisley would say, ‘that’s remarkable shootin’,’” chuckled McTavish. “That distance is well over eighty yards, else I don’t know distance.”

“Nearer a hundred, I should judge,” contended Boy. “She’s got all the rest of the McTavishes beat, dad.”

“Try another, Gloss,” suggested McTavish, placing the cap on the nipple of the rifle with clumsy fingers.

“I thought maybe two would be enough,” said the girl.

She took the rifle once again and glanced at Boy.

“Oh, go on, Gloss,” he encouraged, “only one more. Fact is I’m a bit hungry for corn-fed squirrel myself.”

“And I’m thinkin’ I wouldn’t turn up my nose at a plateful of stewed squirrel either,” seconded the father.

“All right, just one shot more, then, hit or miss,” laughed Gloss. “See that chap’s two ears and part of his head stickin’ up above the knot? I’ll take him this time, I guess, though it’s no easy shot.”

She fired, and the squirrel dropped from the limb. Another whine from Joe proclaimed it a clean kill.

Big McTavish, without so much as a word, took the gun inside. Boy held the animals up by their bushy tails and the girl who was watching him said:

“You ain’t carin’ much to see the blacks killed ever since the time you had Tommy for a pet, are you, Boy?”

“Well, I don’t know as I’m carin’ much either one way or t’other,” he answered slowly. “Tommy was a cute little beggar, but he wasn’t really a black. He was a gray squirrel. Grays are gentler and make better pets than blacks. Tom Peeler one time had a black for a pet, and used him mighty good for two years. But one day that black pretended he wanted Tom to play with him and tickle him as he was used to doing, and it gave him a bad bite. No, the blacks are too cross for pets.”

“Boy,” said the girl suddenly, “I meant to tell you before—old Injun Noah was tellin’ me yesterday that there’s a big gray fox who makes his home on the Point. Noah says he’s the biggest silver-gray he ever saw. Says he’s as big as a timber-wolf. But he is so cunnin’ nobody can get a shot at him.”

“Well,” smiled the boy, “I guess we needn’t go after that feller, and you needn’t worry about one little silver-gray. Just you wait a while and you’ll know what I mean.”

He winked mysteriously, and Gloss laughed. Then her face grew grave.

“That man Watson was over here this mornin’, Boy,” she said. “You know what he wanted and you know how he’d get it. Well, I guess him and uncle had words. I was hidin’ in a bunch of willows at the spring when he was goin’ back, and when he passed me he was swearin’ awful.”

“Was he ridin’ toward the trail or goin’ toward Totherside?” asked Boy, his face darkening.

“I watched him cross th’ creek, and when he got across he rode toward the schoolhouse.”

Boy turned away. Then he paused and looked at the girl.

“Boy,” she said wistfully, “I wish we didn’t have no school in this place. I wish Simpson would go away.”

“Why?” he asked quickly.

Slowly her eyes sank and her bosom heaved as her breath came in quick gasps.

He reached out and caught her, and for the first time in their young lives the girl struggled in his arms. He let her go and stood back, wondering. She looked at him and smiled. Her face was pale, and her long lashes did not conceal a look of dumb entreaty.

“Gloss——” he commenced.

“Boy,” she whispered, “we’re built for chums, and chums we’ll always be. But the old rompin’ days are over now. Boy, you mustn’t take me—you mustn’t hold me like that again. We ain’t boy and girl no more.”

He bent and picked up the squirrels. When he stood up again she had gone.

“‘We ain’t boy and girl no more,’” he repeated.

He walked to the spring repeating the words over and over—“‘no more.—Boy and girl no more!’”

From Totherside came the clang of the school bell.

“I wonder what she meant. I wonder why she wished that school—I wonder why she wishes Simpson——”

Suddenly he flung the squirrels from him, and, bending forward, gazed with hard eyes toward the white schoolhouse clinging to the hill.

“If he thinks harm to her, then God curse him,” he breathed, “and help me to kill him.”

A wee hedge-sparrow, drunk with the hazy Indian summer sunshine, perched itself on a branch above his head and poured out the simple little song that he had always loved above all other songs of wood-birds, because it was always the first song in new spring; the last in dreary fall. The little singer was about to leave the wood wherein he had nested and enjoyed a season’s happiness. He was about to fly far south, and was trilling a promise to Boy to come back again another springtime. And Boy listened to the simple song and wondered at the gladness in it. Nothing of the deep unrest of his own soul was there,—only the gladness of a heart brimful of God’s deep joy. Boy sat down on a log and watched the bird.

“Little chap,” he murmured, “you’ve got a long ways to fly. I guess I know you about as well as anybody could know you, unless it’s Daft Davie, who’s wild like yourself, and I can’t understand why you should be glad when you’re leavin’ all this——”

He looked about him. “—All this big nestin’-place. The great woods has been mighty good to you, little feller—mighty good. There’s a nest you built here, and you’ve got to leave it behind.”

A shadow floated across the hazy sunlight and a cold wind swept in from the bay. With a last sweet note of good-by the bird sprang to wing, and beating skyward high above the trees, faded, a little darting speck in the somber clouds rolling up in the south. Boy watched it until its tiny gray body was lost against the sky’s gray fringe. Then he sighed, picked up the squirrels, and proceeded to strip them, deftly, of their glossy coats. This done, he washed them carefully and carried them to the house. Gloss was standing by the table in the kitchen and spoke to him as he entered.

He answered her almost rudely and strode outside. The hazy light of morning had vanished. The skies had darkened, and a low wind was shaking the dead leaves from the trees. Boy plunged down the path and into the wood. A shaggy dog, snoozing beside the ash-leach, watched him furtively from half-closed eyes. When Boy’s figure disappeared behind the slope the dog arose, shook himself, and with stiffened muscles trailed his master stealthily.

Deep into the woods, Boy paused before a small grove of baby maples. Beneath their spreading branches stood a playhouse built of rough bark and twigs. He and Gloss had built this house; she, girl-like, to play at mimic life therein; he, boy-like, that she might own her little joy. There stood the table, a basswood block, set for a feast, with broken bits of crockery and glass for dishes. It seemed but yesterday that he and Gloss had sat before that table and eaten an imaginary repast of earth’s luxuries from those broken dishes. It all seemed so poor, so lonely, and deserted now.

In the twig high-chair slept Peggy, the rag doll, her arms dangling, her whole attitude one of peaceful repose.

Boy crept in and shamefacedly swept the cob-webs from her poor little face. Then he sat down on the stump-chair, and, laying his arms on the table, rested his head upon them.

In the open the clouds scudded low above the trees, and it began to snow. Boy arose and walked about the little house, his eyes searching it for the small trinkets the girl had treasured there. A bunch of dead flowers rustled in the cracked cup on the bark shelf. They were tied with a gorgeous bit of red flannel, which, he remembered, Gloss had been careful to explain was watered silk. Boy smiled and pressed the knot between his fingers.

On the floor lay a home-woven straw hat. Its decorations, too, were of woodland flowers faded to ashes and scentless. Boy caught it up and held it at arm’s length; then he threw it from him and sprang out into the darkening wood again.

He hurried on, passing the tree-swing where he and the girl had played so many summers. He passed through the hickory grove where they had garnered the nuts for the winter’s cracking; through this and into the heavier timber and deeper shadow where the light was very dim and forest whispers stirred and vibrated. A fox glided across his path, switching into a clump of hazel-bushes. A cock grouse, drumming upon a decayed log, arose on thundering wing to dip into a clump of trees far to the left. Farther into the wood the cluck of a wild turkey sounded. Boy heeded none of these things. On and on he strode,—his an aimless goal; his one desire, to come up with that something urging and elusive,—something he feared though treasured and could not understand.

Later, he stood in the low-lying wilderness of the Elm Swamp. And there, perhaps, his great Mother pityingly solved for him the problem of a new unrest. There where day’s light wavered faintly like foggy starlight, his soul shook off its brooding, and the old glad fearless light came back to his eyes.

“No, we ain’t girl and boy no more,” he whispered; and lifting his arms high he laughed.

What he had received from the forest soothed his spirit as the starry snowflakes, falling on his upturned face, soothed his burning flesh.

At mid-day the setter crept back to his old place by the ash-leach and lay down. A little later Boy came up the path. He stooped down and patted the dog’s head, and noting his tangled hair, laughed softly.

“Joe, old pup, I thought it was me who had to roam among the briers and the burrs, but I see you’ve been there, too.”

And Joe looked up and yawned sleepily, just as if he had been awakened from his forenoon’s nap.

Boy ate his dinner in silence. When he arose he glanced at Gloss. She was standing before the window, and Boy saw her perfect face, crowned by a mass of heavy chestnut hair, clear-lined against the light of an outer world. Her great eyes were looking into space: she was dreaming. The young man sought the open with surging pulse. The whistle of Hallibut’s mill sounded its challenge, and, squaring his broad shoulders, he laughed. Something new had come to him. Not strength; though strength was of it. Not defiance; though it held the power to defy. Boy did not attempt to define that new thing: it was enough for him to know that he possessed it.