The Backwoodsmen Part 8

"Well," went on Johnson, "we can't do nawthin' but take her on to the camp now. Mebbe the Boss'll decide she's got to go back to the Settlement, along o' the fun'ral. But mebbe he'll let the hands keep her, to kinder chipper up the camp when things gits dull. I reckon when the boys sees her sweet face they'll all be wantin' to be guardeens to her."

McWha again spat accurately into the crack of the grate.

"I ain't got no fancy for young 'uns in camp, but ye kin do ez ye like, Walley Johnson," he answered grudgingly. "Only I want it understood, right now, I ain't no guardeen, an' won't be, to nawthin'

that walks in petticoats! What I'm thinkin' of is the old cow out yonder, an' them hens o' Joe's what I seen a-roostin' over the cowstall."

"Them's all Rosy-Lilly's, an' goes with us an' her to camp to-morrer,"

answered Johnson with decision. "We'll tell the kid as how her daddy had to be took away in the night because he was so sick, an' couldn't speak to n.o.body, an' we was goin' to take keer o' her till he gits back! An' that's the truth," he added, with a sudden pa.s.sion of tenderness and pity in his tone.

At this hint of emotion McWha laughed sarcastically. Then knocking out his pipe, he proceeded to fill the stove for the night, and spread his blanket on the floor beside it.

"If ye wants to make the camp a baby-farm," he growled, "don't mind me!"

II

Under the dominion of Rosy-Lilly fell Conroy's camp at sight, capitulating unconditionally to the first appeal of her tearful blue eyes, and little, hurt red mouth. Dan Logan, the Boss, happened to know just how utterly alone the death of her father had left the child, and he was the first to propose that the camp should adopt her.

Fully bearing out the faith which Walley Johnson had so confidently expressed back in the dead man's cabin, Jimmy Brackett, the cook, on whom would necessarily devolve the chief care of this new member of his family, jumped to the proposal of the Boss with enthusiastic support.

"We'll every mother's son o' us be guardeen to her!" he declared, with the finality appropriate to his office as autocrat second only to the Boss himself. Every man in camp a.s.sented noisily, saving only Red McWha; and he, as was expected of him, sat back and grinned.

From the first, Rosy-Lilly made herself at home in the camp. For a few days she fretted after her father, whenever she was left for a moment to her own devices; but Jimmy Brackett was ever on hand to divert her mind with astounding fairy-tales during the hours when the rest of the hands were away chopping and hauling. Long after she had forgotten to fret, she would have little "cryin' spells" at night, remembering her father's good-night kiss. But a baby's sorrow, happily, is shorter than its remembrance; and Rosy-Lilly soon learned to repeat her phrase: "Poor Daddy had to go 'way-'way-off," without the quivering lip and wistful look which made the big woodsmen's hearts tighten so painfully beneath their homespun shirts. Conroy's Camp was a s.p.a.cious, oblong cabin of "c.h.i.n.ked" logs, with a big stove in the middle. The bunks were arranged in a double tier along one wall, and a plank table (rude, but ma.s.sive) along the other. Built on at one end, beside the door, was the kitchen, or cookhouse, crowded, but clean and orderly, and bright with shining tins. At the inner end of the main room a corner was boarded off to make a tiny bedroom, no bigger than a cupboard. This was the Boss's private apartment. It contained two narrow bunks--one for the Boss himself, who looked much too big for it; and one for the only guest whom the camp ever expected to entertain, the devoted missionary-priest, who, on his snowshoes, was wont to make the round of the widely scattered camps once or twice in a winter. This guest-bunk the Boss at once allotted to Rosy-Lilly, but on the strict condition that Johnson should continue to act as nurse and superintend Rosy-Lilly's nightly toilet.

Rosy-Lilly had not been in the camp a week before McWha's "ugliness"

to her had aroused even the Boss's resentment, and the Boss was a just man. Of course, it was generally recognized that McWha was not bound, by any law or obligation, to take any notice of the child, still less to "make a fuss over her," with the rest of the camp. But Jimmy Brackett expressed the popular sentiment when he growled, looking sourly at the back of McWha's unconscious red head bowed ravenously over his plate of beans--

"If only he'd _do_ something, so's we c'ld _lick_ some decency inter 'im!"

There was absolutely nothing to be done about it, however; for Red McWha was utterly within his rights.

Rosy-Lilly, as we have seen, was not yet five years old; but certain of the characteristics of her s.e.x were already well developed within her. The adulation of the rest of the camp, poured out at her tiny feet, she took graciously enough, but rather as a matter of course. It was all her due. But what she wanted was that that big, ugly, red-headed man, with the cross grey eyes and loud voice, should be nice to her. She wanted _him_ to pick her up, and set her on his knee, and whittle wonderful wooden dogs and dolls and boats and boxes for her with his jack-knife, as Walley Johnson and the others did. With Walley she would hardly condescend to coquet, so sure she was of his abject slavery to her whims; and, moreover, as must be confessed with regret, so unforgiving was she in her heart toward his blank eye. She merely consented to make him useful, much as she might a convenient and altogether doting but uninteresting grandmother. To all the other members of the camp--except the Boss, whom she regarded with some awe--she would make baby-love impartially and carelessly. But it was Red McWha whose notice she craved.

When supper was over, and pipes filled and lighted, some one would strike up a "chantey"--one of those interminable, monotonous ballad-songs which are peculiar to the lumber camps.

These "chanteys," however robust their wordings or their incidents, are always sung in a plaintive minor which goes oddly with the large-moulded virility of the singers. Some are sentimental, or religious, to the last degree, while others reek with an indecency of speech that would shroud the Tenderloin in blushes. Both kinds are equally popular in the camps, and both are of the most astounding _navete_. Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen are not in the least ashamed. They seem unconscious of their enormity.

Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent "chanteys"

were dropped, as if into oblivion, from the woodsmen's repertoire.

During the songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps. Man after man would s.n.a.t.c.h her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her pink little ear. She would listen solemnly for a minute or two, then wriggle down and move on to another of her admirers. But before long she would be standing by the bench on which sat Red McWha, with one big knee usually hooked high above the other, and his broad back reclined against the edge of a bunk. For a few minutes the child would stand there smiling with a perennial confidence, waiting to be noticed. Then she would come closer, without a word from her usually nimble little tongue, lean against McWha's knee, and look up coaxingly into his face. If McWha chanced to be singing, for he was a "chanter" of some note, he would appear so utterly absorbed that Rosy-Lilly would at last slip away, with a look of hurt surprise in her face, to be comforted by one of her faithful.

But if McWha were not engrossed in song, it would soon become impossible for him to ignore her. He would suddenly look down at her with his fierce eyes, knit his s.h.a.ggy red brows, and demand harshly: "Well, Yaller Top, an' what d'_you_ want?"

From the loud voice and angry eye the child would retreat in haste, clear to the other end of the room, and sometimes a big tear would track its way down either cheek. After such an experiment she would usually seek Jimmy Brackett, who would console her with some sticky sweetmeat, and strive to wither McWha with envenomed glances. McWha would reply with a grin, as if proud of having routed the little adventurer so easily. He had discovered that the name "Yaller Top" was an infallible weapon of rebuff, as Rosy-Lilly considered it a term of indignity. To his evil humour there was something amusing in abashing Rosy-Lilly with the t.i.tle she most disliked. Moreover, it was an indirect rebuke to the "saft" way the others acted about her.

If Rosy-Lilly felt rebuffed for the moment by McWha's rudeness, she seemed always to forget it the next time she saw him. Night after night she would sidle up to his knee, and sue for his notice; and night after night she would retire discomfited. But on one occasion the discomfiture was McWha's. She had elicited the customary rough demand--

"Well, Yaller Top, what d'_you_ want?"

But this time she held her ground, though with quivering lips.

"Yaller Top ain't my name 'tall," she explained with baby politeness.

"It's Rosy-Lilly; 'n' I jes' thought you _might_ want me to sit on yer knee a little, teeny minit."

Much taken aback, McWha glanced about the room with a loutish grin.

Then he flushed angrily, as he felt the demand of the sudden silence.

Looking down again, with a scowl, at the expectant little face of Rosy-Lilly, he growled: "Well, not as I knows of!" and rose to his feet, thrusting her brusquely aside.

"Ain't he uglier'n h.e.l.l?" murmured Bird Pigeon to Walley Johnson, spitting indignantly on the stove-leg. "He'd 'a' cuffed the kid ef he da'st, he glared at her that ugly!"

"Like to see 'im try it!" responded Johnson through his teeth, with a look to which his blank eye lent mysterious menace.

The time soon came, however, when McWha resumed his old seat and his old att.i.tude on the bench. Rosy-Lilly avoided him for two evenings, but on the third the old fascination got the better of her pique.

McWha saw her coming, and, growing self-conscious, he hurriedly started up a song with the full strength of his big voice.

The song was a well-known one, and nothing in it to redden the ear of a maiden; but it was profane with that rich, ingenious amplitude of profanity which seems almost instinctive among the lumbermen--a sort of second mother-tongue to them. Had it been any one but McWha who started it, nothing would have been said; but, as it was, Walley Johnson took alarm on the instant. To his supersensitive watchfulness, McWha was singing that song "jest a purpose to be ugly to the kid."

The fact that "the kid" would hardly understand a word of it, did not occur to him. Rising up from his bench behind the stove he shouted out across the smoky room: "Shet up that, Red!"

The song stopped. Every one looked inquiringly at Johnson. For several moments there was silence, broken only by an uneasy shuffling of feet.

Then McWha got up slowly, his eyebrows bristling, his angry eyes little pin-points. First he addressed himself to Johnson.

"What the ---- business is't o' yourn what I sing?" he demanded, opening and shutting his big fingers.

"I'll show ye what," began Johnson, in a tense voice. But the Boss interrupted. Dave Logan was a quiet man, but he ruled his camp.

Moreover, he was a just man, and Johnson had begun the dispute.

"Chuck that, Walley!" he snapped, sharp as a whip. "If there's to be any row in this here camp, I'll make it myself, an' don't none o' you boys forgit it!"

McWha turned upon him in angry appeal.

"You're Boss, Dave Logan, an' what you sez goes, fer's I'm concerned," said he. "But I ax you, _as_ Boss, be this here camp a _camp_, er a camp-meetin'? Walley Johnson kin go straight to h.e.l.l; but ef _you_ sez we 'ain't to sing nawthin' but hymns, why, o' course, it's hymns for me--till I kin git away to a camp where the hands is men, an' not wet-nurses!"

"That's all right, Red!" said the Boss. "I kin make allowances for yer gittin' riled, considerin' the jolt Walley's rude interruption give ye! He hadn't no right to interrupt, nor no call to. This ain't no camp-meetin'. The boys have a right to swear all they like. Why, 'twouldn't be noways natural in camp ef the boys couldn't swear!

somethin'd hev to bust before long. An' the boys can't be expected to go a-tiptoe and talk prunes an' prisms, all along o' a little yaller-haired kid what's come to brighten up the old camp fer us. That wouldn't be sense! But all we've got to mind is jest this--_nothin'

vile!_ That's all, boys. We'll worry along without that!"

When the Boss spoke, he liked to explain himself rather fully. When he ceased, no one had a word to say. Every one was satisfied but Johnson; and he was constrained to seem so. There was an oppressive silence for some seconds. It was broken by the soft treble of Rosy-Lilly, who had been standing before the Boss and gazing up into his face with awed attention throughout the harangue.

"What did you say, Dave?" she piped, her hands clasped behind her back.

"Somethin' as shall never tech you, Rosy-Lilly!" declared Johnson, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the child and bearing her off to bed, amid a roar of laughter which saved Dave Logan the embarra.s.sment of a reply.

For a time, now, Rosy-Lilly left McWha alone, so markedly that it looked as if Walley Johnson or Jimmy Brackett had admonished her on the subject. She continued, indeed, to cast at him eyes of pleading reproach, but always from a distance, and such appeals rolled off McWha's crude perception like water off a musk rat's fur. He had nothing "agin her," as he would have put it, if only she would keep out of his way. But Rosy-Lilly, true to her s.e.x, was not vanquished by any means, or even discouraged. She was only biding her time. Bird Pigeon, who was something of a beau in the Settlements, understood this, and stirred the loyal wrath of Walley Johnson by saying so.

"There ain't nawthin' about Red McWha to make Rosy-Lilly keer shucks fer 'im, savin' an' except that she can't git him!" said Bird. "She's that nigh bein' a woman a'ready, if she _be_ but five year old!"

Johnson fixed him with his disconcerting eye, and retorted witheringly--

"Ye thinks ye knows a pile about women, Bird Pigeon. But the kind ye knows about ain't the kind Rosy-Lilly's agoin' to be!"