The Lady of Big Shanty Part 6

"Not seriously, of course, my dear friend--really not that sort of condition at present--only I deem it wisest to take precautions. I'm afraid if we wait it will--er--be somewhat difficult later.

Margaret must be taken in time; she is just the sort of temperament tuberculosis gets hold of with annoying rapidity--often sooner than we who have had plenty of experience with the enemy suspect. I have always said that the Fenwick child might have been saved had it not been for the interference of Mrs. Fenwick after the consultation."

"And you are really telling me the truth?" Alice gasped--her lips set, her breast heaving.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"Unfortunately--yes," was his reply.

Alice straightened to her feet, crossed to the mantel and stood for some moments with her forehead pressed against the cool edge of the marble, Sperry watching her in silence.

"Poor Margie!" he heard her say--then she turned to him with a strange, calm look in her eyes.

"You must go," she said with an effort; "it is late. Blakeman will be here in a moment to turn on the lights." She stretched forth her hands to him. For a second he held them warm and trembling in his own, then Blakeman's rapid step in the conservatory was heard.

"Good-night," he said in a louder tone, as the butler appeared. "I shall see you at the Van Renssalaer's Thursday--we are to dine at eight, I believe."

She smiled wearily in a.s.sent.

"And remember me to your good husband," he added. "I hope he will have the best of luck."

"They say hunting is a worse habit to break than bridge," she returned with a forced little laugh.

Blakeman followed the doctor to the door. Reverently he handed him his stick, coat and hat--a moment later the heavy steel grille closed noiselessly.

Blakeman stood grimly looking out of the front window, his jaw set, his eyes following the doctor until he disappeared within his coupe and slammed the door shut.

"d.a.m.n him!" he said. "If he tells that child that I'll strangle him!"

CHAPTER FOUR

In a deserted lumber clearing up Big Shanty Brook a chipmunk skitted along a fallen hemlock in the drizzle of an October rain. Suddenly he stopped and listened, his heart, thumping against his sleek coat. He could hear the m.u.f.fled roar of the torrent below him at the bottom of the ravine, talking and grumbling to itself, as it emptied its volume of water swollen by the heavy rains and sent it swirling out into the long green pool below.

"Was it the old brook that had frightened him?" he wondered. "Perhaps it was only the hedge-hog waddling along back from the brook to his hole in the ledge above, or it might be the kingfisher, who had tired of the bend of the brook a week before and had changed his thieving ground to the rapids above, where he terrorized daily a shy family of trout, pouncing upon the little ones with a great splashing and hysterical chattering as they darted about, panic-stricken, in the shallowest places.

"Perhaps, after all, it was only the creaking of a tree," he sighed, with a feeling of relief. Before he could lower his tail he heard the sound again--this time nearer--more alarming--the sound of human voices coming straight toward him.

Then came the sharp bark of a dog. At this the chipmunk went scurrying to safety along the great hemlock and over the sagging roof of the deserted shanty lying at its farther end, where he hid himself in a pile of rock.

There was no longer any doubt. Someone was approaching.

"If Billy Holcomb had only give us a leetle more time, Hite," came a voice, "we'd had things fixed up slicker'n they be; but she won't leak a drop, that's sartain, and if this here Mr. Thayor hain't too pertickler--"

"Billy allus spoke 'bout him as bein' humin, Freme," returned his companion, "and seein' he's humin I presume likely he'll understand we done our best. 'Twon't be long now," he added, "'fore they'll git here."

Two men now emerged into the clearing. The foremost, Hite Holt, as he was known--was a veteran trapper from the valley--lean and wiry, and wearing a c.o.o.nskin cap. From under this peered a pair of keen gray eyes, as alert as those of a fox. His straight, iron-gray hair reached below the collar of his coat, curling in long wisps about his ears after the fashion of the pioneer trapper. As he came on toward the shanty the chipmunk noticed that he bent under the weight of a pack basket loaded with provisions. He also noticed that his sixty years carried him easily, for he kept up a swinging gait as he picked his way over the fallen timber.

His companion, Freme Skinner, was a young lumberman of thirty, with red hair and blue eyes; a giant in build; clad in a heavy woollen lumber-man's jacket of variegated colours. One of his distinguishing features--one which gained for him the soubriquet of the "Clown" the country about, was the wearing of a girl's ring in his ear, the slit having been made with his pocket knife in a moment of gallantry. At the heels of the two men trotted silently a big, brindle hound.

They had reached the dilapidated shanty now and were taking a rapid glance at their surroundings.

"Seems 'ough it warn't never goin' to clear up," remarked Hite Holt, the trapper, slipping the well-worn straps from his great shoulders and staggering with ninety pounds of dead weight until he deposited it in the driest corner of the shanty. Then he added with a good-natured smile: "Say, we come quite a piece, hain't we?"

During the conversation the dog stalked solemnly about, took a careful look at the shanty and its surroundings and disappeared in the thick timber in the direction of the brook. The trapper turned and looked after him, and a wistful, almost apologetic expression came into his face.

"I presume likely the old dog is sore about something," he remarked, when the hound was well out of hearing. "He's been kind er down in the mouth all day."

"'Twarn't nothin' we said 'bout huntin' over to Lily Pond, was it?"

ventured Freme.

"No--guess not," replied the trapper thoughtfully. "But you know you've got to handle him jest so. He's gettin' techier and older every day."

Imaginative as a child, with a subtle humour, often inventing stories that were weird and impossible, this strange character had lived the life of a hermit and a wanderer in the wilderness--a life compelling him to seek his companions among the trees or the black sides of the towering mountains. All nature, to him, was human--the dog was a being.

The Clown swung his double-bitted axe into a dry hemlock, the keen blade sinking deeper and deeper into the tree with each successive stroke, made with the precision and rapidity of a piston, until the tree fell with a sweeping crash (it had been as smoothly severed as if by a saw) and the two soon had its full length cut up and piled near the shanty for night wood.

It was not much of a shelter. Its timbered door had sagged from its hinges, its paneless square windows afforded but poor protection from wind and rain, while a cook stove, not worth the carrying away, supported itself upon two legs in one corner of the rotting interior.

Stout hands and willing hearts, however, did their work, and by the next sundown a new roof had been put on the shanty, "The Pride of the Home" wired more securely upon its two rusty legs and the long bunk flanking one side of the shanty neatly thatched with a deep bed of springy balsam. Thus had the tumble-down log-house been transformed into a tight and comfortable camp.

The next morning (the rain over) dawned as bright as a diamond, its light flashing on the brook below, across which darted the kingfisher, a streak of azure through the green of the pines--while in a clump of near-by firs two red squirrels played hide-and-seek among the branches.

At the first sunbeam the Clown stretched his great arms above his head, whistled a lively jig tune, reached for a fry pan, and soon had a mess of pork hissing over the fire. Later on, from a bent sapling a smoke-begrimed coffee pail bubbled, boiled over, and was lifted off to settle.

"A grand morning ain't it, Hite?" he shouted in high glee, rubbing his eyes as he squatted before the blaze. "Yes, sir--a grand mornin'. Them deer won't hev' time to stop and make up their beds arter the old dog gits to work on 'em to-day. I'm tellin' ye, Hite, we'll hev' ven'son 'fore night if Mr. Thayor and Billy takes a mind to go huntin'."

"Mebbe," replied the trapper guardedly, "and mebbe we won't. There ain't no caountin' on luck, specially deer. But it's jest as well to be ready"--and he squeezed another cartridge into the magazine of his Winchester and laid the rifle tenderly on its side in a dry place as if fearful of disturbing its fresh coat of oil.

Suddenly the old dog, who had been watching the frizzling bacon, lifted his ears and peered down in the basin of the hemlocks.

"Halloo!" came faintly from below where the timber was thickest.

The Clown sprang to his feet.

"Thar they be, Hite!" he said briskly. "By whimey--thar they be!"

The trapper strode out into the tangled clearing and after a resonant whoop in reply stood listening and smiling.

"Jest like Billy Holcomb," he remarked. "He's took 'bout as mean goin'

as a feller could find to git here." Then he added, "But you never could lose him."

"Whoop," came in answer, as the tall, agile figure of Holcomb appeared above the tangle of sumac, followed by a short, gray-haired man in blue flannel, who was stepping over a refractory sapling that Holcomb had bent down.