Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 29

"There ye be, at last, hey?" snarled the old man, who was evidently just as angry as he could be. "Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour."

"That's stretching it some," laughed Tom. "That tree hasn't been toppled over an hour."

"Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!" declared Toby. "I was right here when it happened."

"Goodness!" gasped Nan.

"Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when she fell."

"My!" murmured Nan again.

"That's how I got inter this muck hole," growled the old lumberman. "I jumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here."

"Why don't you wade ash.o.r.e?" demanded Tom again, preparing in a leisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled on the timber cart.

"Yah!" snarled Toby. "Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax fool questions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go the branch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the whole blamed tree'll come down onter me. Ye see how it's toppling?"

It was true that the fallen tree was in a very precarious position. When Toby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made the head of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man would be thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhung his body.

"Let go of it, Toby!" called Tom, accelerating his motions. "Catch this!"

He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking tree groaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could have been heard much farther than his previous cries.

But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man out of the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmer ground, and then the road itself.

Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. The huge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, in an instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completely covered by the interlacing branches of the uprooted tree.

"Close squeal, that," remarked Tom, helping the old man to his feet.

Toby stared at them both, wiping the mire from his face as he did so.

He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gut Nan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow.

"Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy," said Toby Vanderwiller. "He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son and Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn," he muttered.

Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped that Toby would feel sufficient grat.i.tude to help Uncle Henry win his case against Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak of it.

When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quite as excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, but it was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fire against the clouded sky.

"I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in," Toby said. "But if you want to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand times obleeged to you."

"That's what I came this way for," said the young fellow briefly. "Hop on and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible."

They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching the flames in the tree top from the porch of the little house on the island.

Nan ran to them to relate their adventures, while Toby got out the plow and Tom hitched his big horses to it.

The farm was not fenced, for the road and forest bounded it completely.

Tom put the plow in at the edge of the wood and turned his furrows toward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire was near; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother and father would be vastly anxious about Nan.

The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of downpour, at least.

Old Mrs. Vanderwiller had made supper, and insisted upon their eating before starting for Pine Camp. And Tom, at least, did his share with knife and fork, while his horses ate their measure of corn in the paddock. It was dark as pitch when they started for home, but Tom was cheerful and sure of his way, so Nan was ashamed to admit that she was frightened.

"Tell yer dad I'll be over ter Pine Camp ter see him 'fore many days,"

Old Toby jerked out, as they were starting. "I got suthin' to say to him, I have!"

Tom did not pay much attention to this; but Nan did. Her heart leaped for joy. She believed that Toby Vanderwiller's words promised help for Uncle Henry.

But she said nothing to Tom about it. She only clung to his shoulder as the heavy timber cart rattled away from the island.

A misty glow hung over the sawdust strip as they advanced; but now that the wind had died down the fire could not spread. Beside the road the glow worms did their feeble best to light the way; and now and then an old stump in the swamp displayed a ghostly gleam of phosphorus.

Nan had never been in the swamp before at night. The rain had driven most of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now and then a sudden rumble "Better-go-roun'!" or "Knee-deep! Knee-deep!"

proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen with the yellow vests.

"Goodness me! I'd be scared to death to travel this road by myself," Nan said, as they rode on. "The frogs make such awful noises."

"But frogs won't hurt you," drawled Tom.

"I know all that," sighed Nan. "But they sound as if they would. There!

That one says, just as plain as plain can be, 'Throw 'im in! Throw 'im in!"

"Good!" chuckled Tom. "And there's a drunken old rascal calling: 'Jug-er-rum! Jug-er-rum!'!"

A nighthawk, wheeling overhead through the rain, sent down her discordant cry. Deep in a thicket a whip-poor-will complained. It was indeed a ghostly chorus that attended their slow progress through the swamp at Pine Camp.

When they crossed the sawdust tract there was little sign of the fire.

The dead tree had fallen and was just a glowing pile of coals, fast being quenched by the gently falling rain. For the time, at least, the danger of a great conflagration was past.

"Oh! I am so glad," announced Nan, impetuously. "I was afraid it was going to be like that Pale Lick fire."

"What Pale Lick fire?" demanded Tom, quickly. "What do you know about that?"

"Not much, I guess," admitted his cousin, slowly. "But you used to live there, didn't you?"

"Rafe and I don't remember anything about it," said Tom, in his quiet way. "Rafe was a baby and I wasn't much better. Marm saved us both, so we've been told. She and dad never speak about it."

"Oh! And Indian Pete?" whispered Nan.

"He saved the whole of us--dad and all. He knew a way out through a slough and across a lake. He had a dug-out. He got badly burned dragging dad to the boat when he was almost suffocated with smoke," Tom said soberly.

"'Tisn't anything we talk about much, Nan. Who told you?"

"Oh, it's been hinted to me by various people," said Nan, slowly. "But I saw Injun Pete, Tom."

"When? He hasn't been to Pine Camp since you came."

Nan told her cousin of her adventure in the hollow near Blackton's lumber camp. Tom was much excited by that.