Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 16

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 of blue 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 out of the long, low bunkhouse now and making good use of the bright tin washbasins on the long bench on the covered porch. Ice had been broken to get the water that was poured into the basins, but the men laved their faces and their hairy arms and chests in it as though it were summer weather.

They quickly ran in for their outer shirts and coats, however, and then trooped in to the end of the cook shed where the meals were served. Tom turned away to look over his horses and see that they were all ready for the day's work. Rafe put up the roan ponies in a couple of empty stalls and gave them a feed of oats.

Uncle Henry took Nan by the hand, and, really she felt as though she needed some support, she was so stiff from the cold, and led her into the warm room where the men were gathering for the hearty meal the cook and his helper had prepared.

The men were boisterous in their greeting of Uncle Henry, until they saw Nan. Than, some bashfully, some because of natural refinement, lowered their voices and were more careful how they spoke before the girl.

But she heard something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled man in a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high among the logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and was busily 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 since then?"

"No."

"Wal, he was tellin' me that he'd got you on the hip this time, Hen. If you 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 all made out by Jedge Perkins. I seen it."

Uncle Henry walked closer to the old man and looked down at him from his great height. "Tobe," he said, "you know the rights of that business well enough. You know whether I'm right in the contention, or whether Ged'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 the wall, and at once went out of the shack.

Chapter XV. A CAT AND HER KITTENS

That was a breakfast long to be remembered by Nan Sherwood, not particularly because of its quality, but for the quant.i.ty served. She had never seen men like these lumbermen eat before, save for the few days she had been at Uncle Henry's house.

Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by the lumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a "main-stay"

on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery of any kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, and golden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it.

After riding twenty-five miles through such a frosty air, Nan would have had to possess a delicate appet.i.te indeed not to enjoy these viands. She felt bashful because of the presence of so many rough men; but they left her alone for the most part, and she could listen and watch.

"Old Toby Vanderwiller tell you what Ged's been blowin' about, Henry?"

asked one of the men at the table, busy ladling beans into his mouth with a knife, a feat that Nan thought must be rather precarious, to say the least.

"Says he's going to jail me if I go on to the Perkins Tract," growled Uncle Henry, with whom the matter was doubtless a sore subject.

"Yaas. But he says more'n that," said this tale bearer.

"Oh, Ged says a whole lot besides his prayers," responded Uncle Henry, good-naturedly. Perhaps he saw they were trying to bait him.

"Wal, 'tain't nothin' prayerful he's sayin'," drawled the first speaker, after a gulp of coffee from his thick china cup. "Some of the boys at Beckett's, you know, they're a tough crowd, was riggin' him about what you said to him down to the Forks, and Ged spit out that he'd give a lump of money to see you on your back."

"Huh!" grunted Uncle Henry.

"And some of 'em took him up, got the old man right down to cases."

"That so?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. "What's Ged going to do?

Challenge me to a game of cat's cradle? Or does he want to settle the business at draughts, three best out o' five?"

"Now you know dern well, Hen," said the other, as some of the listeners laughed loudly at Mr. Sherwood's sally, "that old Ged Raffer will never lock horns with you 'ceptin' it's in court, where he'll have the full pertection of the law, and a grain the best of it into the bargain."

"Well, I s'pose that's so," admitted Nan's uncle, rather gloomily, she thought.

"So, if Beckett's crowd are int'rested in b.u.mping you a whole lot, you may be sure Ged's promised 'em real money for it."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Uncle Henry. "You're fooling now. He hasn't hired any half-baked chip-eaters and Canucks to try and beat me up?"

"I ain't foolin'."

"Pshaw!"

"You kin 'pshaw' till the cows come home," cried the other heatedly. "I got it straight."

"Who from?"

"Sim Barkis, him what's cookin' for Beckett's crew."

"Good man, Sim. Never caught him in a lie yet. You are beginning to sound reasonable, Josh," and Mr. Sherwood put down his knife and fork and looked shrewdly at his informant. "Now tell me," he said, "how much is Sim going to get for helping to pay Ged Raffer's debts?"

"Har!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other man. "You know Sim ain't that kind."

"All right, then. How much does he say the gang's going to split between 'em after they've done me up brown according to contract?" scoffed Uncle Henry, and Nan realized that her giant relative had not the least fear of not being able to meet any number of enemies in the open.

"Sim come away before they got that far. Of course Ged didn't say right out in open meetin' that he'd give so many dollars for your scalp. But he got 'em all int'rested, and it wouldn't surprise him, so Sim said, if on the quiet some of those plug-uglies had agreed to do the job."

Nan shuddered, and had long since stopped eating. But n.o.body paid any attention to her at the moment.

Uncle Henry drawled: "They're going to do the hardest day's job for the smallest pay that they ever did on this Michigan Peninsula. I'm much obliged to you, Josh, for telling me. I never go after trouble, as you fellows all know; but I sha'n't try to dodge it, either."

He picked up his knife and fork and went quietly on with his breakfast.

But Nan could not eat any more at all.

It seemed to the gently nurtured girl from Tillbury as though she had fallen in with people from another globe. Even the mill-hands, whom Bess Harley so scorned, were not like these great, rough fellows whose minds seemed continually to be fixed upon battle. At least, she had never seen or heard such talk as had just now come to her ears.

The men began, one by one, to push back the benches and go out. There was a great bustle of getting under way as the teams started for the woods, and the choppers, too, went away. Tom hurried to start his big pair of dapple grays, and Nan was glad to bundle up again and run out to watch the exodus.

They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did not breed runts.

Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, and the scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in the Tillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size of these workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside the narrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills.

Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tom playfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that the two brothers smiled again at each other. Their recent tiff seemed to be forgotten.