Chapter XIV. AT THE LUMBER CAMP
Nan said nothing just then about her queer little visitor. Aunt Kateasked her when she came out of the east room and crossed the chilldesert of the parlor to the general sitting room:
"Did you have a nice sleep, Nannie?"
"Goodness, Auntie!" laughed Nan. "I got over taking a nap in the daytimea good while ago, I guess. But you come and see what I have done. Ihaven't been idle."
Aunt Kate went and peeped into the east chamber. "Good mercy, child! Itdoesn't look like the same room, with all the pretty didos," she said."And that's your pretty mamma in the picture on the mantel? My! Yourpapa looks peaked, doesn't he? Maybe that sea voyage they are takingwill do 'em both good."
Nan had to admit that beside her uncle and cousins her father did look"peaked." Robust health and brawn seemed to be the two essentials in theopinion of the people of Pine Camp. Nan was plump and rosy herself andso escaped criticism.
Her uncle and aunt, and the two big boys as well, were as kind to heras they knew how to be. Nan could not escape some of the depressionof homesickness during the first day or two of her visit to the woodssettlement; but the family did everything possible to help her occupyher mind.
The long evenings were rather amusing, although the family knew littleabout any game save checkers, "fox and geese," and "hickory, dickory,dock." Nan played draughts with her uncle and fox and geese and theother kindergarten game with her big cousins. To see Tom, with hiseyes screwed up tight and the pencil poised in his blunt, frost-crackedfingers over the slate, while he recited in a base sing-song:
"Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock The mouse ran up the clock, The clock struck one, An' down he come Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock,"
was side-splitting. Nan laughed till she cried. Poor, simple Tom didknow just what amused his little cousin so.
Rafe was by no means so slow, or so simple. Nan caught him cheatingmore than once at fox and geese. Rafe was a little sly, and he wascontinually making fun of his slow brother, and baiting him. Uncle Henrywarned him:
"Now, Rafe, you're too big for your Marm or me to shingle your pants;but Tom's likely to lick you some day for your cutting up and I sha'n'tblame him. Just because he's slow to wrath, don't you get it in yourhead that he's afraid, or that he can't settle your hash in fiveminutes."
Nan was greatly disturbed to hear so many references to fisticencounters and fighting of all sorts. These men of the woods seemed tobe possessed of wild and unruly passions. What she heard the boys saycaused her to believe that most of the spare time of the men in thelumber camps was spent in personal encounters.
"No, no, deary. They aren't so bad as they sound," Aunt Kate told her,comfortably. "Lots of nice men work in the camps all their lives andnever fight. Look at your Uncle Henry."
But Nan remembered the "mess of words" (as he called it) that UncleHenry had had with Gedney Raffer on the railroad station platform at theForks, and she was afraid that even her aunt did not look with the samehorror on a quarrel that Nan herself did.
The girl from Tillbury had a chance to see just what a lumber camp waslike, and what the crew were like, on the fourth day after her arrivalat her Uncle Henry's house. The weather was then pronounced settled, andword came for the two young men, Tom and Rafe, to report at Blackton'scamp the next morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team whichwas then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman;Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more thanmere muscle, makes the mighty woodsman.
"Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too,"said Aunt Kate. "That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly inthe morning?"
"Oh, I don't mind that," Nan declared. "I'm used to getting up early."
But she thought differently when Uncle Henry's heavy hand rapped on thedoor of the east chamber so early the next morning that it seemed to NanSherwood that she had only been in bed long enough to close her eyes.
"Goodness, Uncle!" she muttered, when she found out what it meant. "Whattime is it?"
"Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before westart," replied her uncle.
"Well!" said Nan to herself. "I thought the house was afire."
Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: "Sh!Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child."
"Like what?" queried Nan, in wonder.
"About fire. Remember!" added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought,as he went back to the kitchen.
Then Nan remembered what the strange little girl, Margaret Llewellen,had said about the fire at Pale Lick that had burned her uncle's formerhome. Nan had not felt like asking her uncle or aunt, or the boys,either, about it. The latter had probably been too young to remembermuch about the tragedy.
Although Nan had seen Margaret on several fleeting occasions since herfirst interview with the woods girl, there had been no opportunity oftalking privately with her. And Margaret would only come to the window.She was afraid to tell "Marm Sherwood" how she had lost the new dressthat had been given to her.
It was now as black outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oillamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor andsitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burningbriskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortablygetting into thick woolen socks and big lumbermen's boots.
There was a heaping pan of Aunt Kate's doughnuts on the table, flankedwith the thick china coffee cups and deep saucers. Her uncle and theboys always poured their coffee into the saucers and blew on it to takethe first heat off, then gulped it in great draughts.
Nan followed suit this morning, as far as cooling the coffee in thesaucer went. There was haste. Uncle Henry had been up some time, and nowhe came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitchedin and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to thepung.
"We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie," he said. "The boyshave to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven."
They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then salliedforth. The ponies were just as eager as they had been the day Nan hadcome over from the Forks. She was really half afraid of them.
It was so dark that she could scarcely see the half-cleared road beforethem as the ponies dashed away from Pine Camp. The sky was completelyovercast, but Uncle Henry declared it would break at sunrise.
Where the track had been well packed by former sleighs, the ponies'hoofs rang as though on iron. The bits of snow that were flung off bytheir hoofs were like pieces of ice. The bells on the harness jingled avery pretty tune, Nan thought. She did not mind the biting cold, indeed,only her face was exposed. Uncle Henry had suggested a veil; but shewanted to see what she could.
For the first few miles it remained very dark, however. Had it not beenfor the snow they could not have seen objects beside the road at all.There was a lantern in the back of the pung and that flung a stream ofyellow light behind them; but Uncle Henry would not have the radiance ofit shot forward.
"A light just blinds you," he said. "I'd rather trust to the roans'sense."
The ponies galloped for a long way, it seemed to Nan; then they cameto a hill so steep that they were glad to drop to a walk. Their bodiessteamed in a great cloud as they tugged the sleigh up the slope. Darkwoods shut the road in on either hand. Nan's eyes had got used to thefaint light so that she could see this at least.
Suddenly she heard a mournful, long-drawn howl, seemingly at a greatdistance.
"Must be a farm somewhere near," she said to Rafe, who sat beside her onthe back seat.
"Nope. No farms around here, Nan," he returned.
"But I hear a dog howl," she told him.
Rafe listened, too. Then he turned to her with a grin on his sharp facethat she did not see. "Oh, no, you don't," he chuckled. "That's no dog."
Again the howl was repeated, and it sounded much nearer. Nan realized,too,
that it was a more savage sound than she had ever heard emitted bya dog.
"What is it?" she asked, speaking in a low voice to Rafe.
"Wolves!" responded her cousin maliciously. "But you mustn't mind alittle thing like that. You don't have wolves down round where you live,I s'pose?"
Nan knew that he was attempting to plague her, so she said: "Not forpets, at least, Rafe. These sound awfully savage."
"They are," returned her cousin calmly.
The wolf cry came nearer and nearer. The ponies had started on a trotagain at the top of the hill, and her uncle and Tom did not seem tonotice the ugly cry. Nan looked back, and was sure that some greatanimal scrambled out of the woods and gave chase to them.
"Isn't there some danger?" she asked Rafe again.
"Not for us," he said. "Of course, if the whole pack gathers and catchesus, then we have to do something."
"What do you do?" demanded Nan quickly.
"Why, the last time we were chased by wolves, we happened to have a hamand a side of bacon along. So we chucked out first the one, and then theother, and so pacified the brutes till we got near town."
"Oh!" cried Nan, half believing, half in doubt.
She looked back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern,a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shouldersnow and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder lookingbeast, she hoped never to see.
"Oh!" she gasped again, and grabbed at Rafe's arm.
"Don't you be afraid," drawled that young rascal. "I reckon he hasn'tmany of his jolly companions with him. If he had, of course, we'd haveto throw you out to pacify him. That's the rule--youngest and prettiestgoes first-----"
"Like the ham, I s'pose?" sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tomreached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by theshoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain.
Nan was almost as startled as was Rafe. In the half-darkness Tom's dullface blazed with anger, and he held his writhing brother as though hewere a child.
"You ornery scamp!" he said, almost under his breath. "You try to scarethat little girl, and I'll break you in two!"
Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. "I was onlyfooling her," snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom hadthe grip of a pipe wrench.
Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: "If I had a gunI'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He'salways running after sleds and yelling his head off."
Nan was glad the creature following them was not really a wolf; but sheknew she should be just as much afraid of him if she met him alone, asthough he really were a wolf. However, mostly, she was troubled by thepassionate nature of her two cousins. She had never seen Tom show anyanger before; but it was evident that he had plenty of spirit if it werecalled up. And she was, secretly, proud that the slow-witted young giantshould have displayed his interest in her welfare so plainly. Rafe satand nursed his shoulder in silence for several miles.
The cold was intense. As the sky lightened along the eastern horizon itseemed to Nan as though the frost increased each moment. The bricks attheir feet were getting cool; and they had already had recourse to thethermos bottle, which was now empty of the gratefully hot drink it hadcontained.
As the light gradually increased Nan saw Rafe watching her with suddenattention. After his recent trick she was a little afraid of Rafe. Stillit did not seem possible that the reckless fellow would attempt anysecond piece of fooling so soon after his brother's threat.
But suddenly Rafe yelled to his father to pull down the roans, and asthe ponies stopped, he reached from the sled into a drift and secured abig handful of snow. Seizing Nan quickly around the shoulders he beganto rub her cheek vigorously with the snow. Nan gasped and almost losther breath; but she realized immediately what Rafe was about.
The frost had nipped her cheek, and her cousin had seen the white spotappear. "The rubbing stung awfully, and the girl could not keep back thetears; but she managed to repress the sobs.
"There!" exclaimed Rafe. "You are a plucky girl. I'm sorry I got some ofthat snow down your neck, Nan. Couldn't help it. But it's the only thingto do when the thermometer is thirty-two degrees below zero. Why! Afellow went outside with his ears uncovered at Droomacher's camp oneday last winter and after awhile he began to rub his ears and one of 'emdropped off just like a cake of ice."
"Stop your lying, boy!" commanded his father. "It isn't as bad as that,Nan. But you want to watch out for frost bite here in the woods, justthe same as we had to watch out for the automobiles in crossing thosemain streets in Chicago."
With a red sun rising over the low ridge of wooded ground to the east,the camp in the hollow was revealed, the smoke rising in a pillar ofblue from the sheet-iron chimney of the cookhouse; smoke rising, too,from a dozen big horses being curried before the stables.
Most of the men had arrived the night before. They were tumbling outof the long, low bunkhouse now and making good use of the bright tinwashbasins on the long bench on the covered porch. Ice had been brokento get the water that was poured into the basins, but the men lavedtheir faces and their hairy arms and chests in it as though it weresummer weather.
They quickly ran in for their outer shirts and coats, however, and thentrooped in to the end of the cook shed where the meals were served. Tomturned away to look over his horses and see that they were all ready forthe day's work. Rafe put up the roan ponies in a couple of empty stallsand gave them a feed of oats.
Uncle Henry took Nan by the hand, and, really she felt as though sheneeded some support, she was so stiff from the cold, and led her intothe warm room where the men were gathering for the hearty meal the cookand his helper had prepared.
The men were boisterous in their greeting of Uncle Henry, until they sawNan. Than, some bashfully, some because of natural refinement, loweredtheir voices and were more careful how they spoke before the girl.
But she heard something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled manin a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high amongthe logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and wasbusily stoning an axe blade, looked up as Nan and her uncle approached,saying:
"Seen Ged Raffer lately, Hen?"
"I saw him at the Forks the other day, Toby," Mr. Sherwood replied.
"Yaas. I heard about that," said the old man drawlingly. "But sincethen?"
"No."
"Wal, he was tellin' me that he'd got you on the hip this time, Hen. Ifyou as much as put your hoof over on that track he's fighting you about,he'll plop you in jail, that's what he'll do! He's got a warrant allmade out by Jedge Perkins. I seen it."
Uncle Henry walked closer to the old man and looked down at him fromhis great height. "Tobe," he said, "you know the rights of that businesswell enough. You know whether I'm right in the contention, or whetherGed's right. You know where the old line runs. Why don't you tell?"
"Oh, mercy me!" croaked the old man, and in much haste. "I ain't goin'to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!"And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on thewall, and at once went out of the shack.