The Lady of Big Shanty Part 7

The trapper and the Clown strode clear of the brush and saw for the first time the man whose home they had been preparing.

Not the Samuel Thayor that Holcomb had talked to during that memorable luncheon at The Players, when he sat silent among Randall's guests; nor the Samuel Thayor who had faced his wife; nor the Samuel Thayor, the love of whose daughter put strength in his arms and courage in his heart. But a man with cheeks ruddy from the sting and lift of the morning air; all the worn, haggard look gone from his face.

"Wall, I swan!" shouted the trapper to Holcomb, as he came near enough to shake his hand, "you warn't perticler 'bout the way you come, Billy. If your friend ain't dead beat it ain't your fault."

"I hadn't any choice, Hite," laughed Holcomb. "You fellows must have been drowned out last night; the log over the South Branch is gone in the freshet; we had to get round the best way we could. Step up, Freme," he said. "I want you to know Mr. Thayor. This is Freme Skinner, Mr. Thayor, and this is. .h.i.te Holt, and there's no better anywhere round here."

Thayor stretched out both hands and caught each extended palm in a hearty grip.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Thayor," said the trapper, his great freckled paw tight in the white hand of the stranger. "By goll, you done well, friend. But what did ye let Billy lead you through sich a h.e.l.l-patch as he did, Mr. Thayor?" There was a certain silent dignity about the trapper as he greeted the new-comer. As he spoke the old dog sniffed at Thayor's knees, and with a satisfied air regained his resting place once more.

"Well, it was about all I cared to do for one morning," answered Thayor between his breaths, "but you see we found the old trail impossible. And so you received our telegram in time," he said, glancing in delight at the freshly thatched roof of the shanty.

"Oh, we got it," answered the trapper. "Joe Dubois's boy come in with your telegram to the valley, and as soon as I got it I dug out for Freme, and we come in here day 'fore yesterday to git things comfortable."

"Breakfus, gentlemen!" announced the Clown, for the bacon was done to a turn. "How do you like yourn, Mr. Thayor--leetle mite o' fat and lean?"

"Any way it happens to be," replied the millionaire, as he squeezed into his place at the rough board table next the trapper. "But before I touch a mouthful I want you all to understand that I don't wish to be considered as a guest. I'm on a holiday and I'm going to take my share of whatever comes."

"Thar, Freme!" exclaimed the trapper, "I told ye Mr. Thayor warn't perticler."

That night after supper the four sat chatting within the glow of the stove, while the old dog lay asleep. Possibly it was the persuasion latent in a bottle of Thayor's private reserve, that little by little coaxed the trapper into an unusually talkative mood, for until far into the night the man from the city lay on his back on the springy boughs, listening and smoking, keenly alive to every word the old man uttered.

"Most times now," he went on, as he leaned forward and patted the dog, "I let the old dog have his way--don't I, dog?--but then it warn't a week ago that 'twas t'other way. Me and him was follerin' a buck on Bald Mountin, and he got set on goin' by way of West Branch, 'stead of travellin' a leetle mite to the south, what would have brung us aout, as I figger it, jest this side o' Munsey's. Wall, sir, arter we'd been a-travellin' steady, say, for more'n four hours the old feller give in. Says he to me, 'I'm beat,' says he, julluk that, and he stopped and throwed up this gray snout of his'n to the wind and then he says, kinder 'shamed like, 'I led ye off consid'ble, hain't I?' says he. I see he was feelin' bad 'bout it, and I says, says I, 'It warn't your fault,' says I, 'we come such a piece; a dog's jest as liable to be mistook as a humin'; and arter that it warn't more'n an hour 'fore we was out to the big road and poundin' for home. Thar, now"--here he pushed the old dog gently from him--"lie down and take another snooze; ye're gittin' so blamed lazy ain't no comfort livin' with ye."

Thayor bent the closer to listen. Every moment brought some new sensation to his jaded nerves. This making a companion of a dog and endowing him with human qualities and speech was new to him.

The Clown now cut in: "And it beats all how ye kin understand him when he talks," he laughed, too loyal to his friend to throw doubt on the old trapper's veracity, "and yet it's kind o' cur'ous how a dog as old as him and that's had as much experience as him kin git twisted julluk some pusillanimous idjit that ain't never been off the poor-house road."

Thayor laughed softly to himself, not daring to bring the dialogue to a close by an intervention of his own.

"Now, there's Sam Pitkin's woman," the Clown continued with increased interest, "she's jest the same way; hain't never had no idee of whar a p'int lays; takes sorter spells and forgits which way't is back to the house. Doc' Rand see her last September when he come by with them new colts o' his'n. 'You're beat aout,' said he, 'and there ain't no science kin cure ye. Ye won't more'n pull aout till snow flies if ye don't give aout 'fore that'--so he fixed up some physic for her and she give him a dollar and arter he tucked up the collar o' that new sealskin coat o' his'n and spoke kinder sharp to Sam's boy what was holdin' the colts, he laid them new yaller lines 'cross their slick backs and begun to talk to 'em: 'Come, Flo! Come, Maudie!' says he.

'Git, gals!' and he drawed the lines tight on 'em, and Sam's boy says it jest seemed as if they sailed off in the air."

Thayor broke out into a roar of laughter, and was about to ask the Clown whether the physic had killed the pneumonia or the woman, when the trapper slanting his shoulders against the bunk broke in with:

"Ye ain't laid it on a bit too thick, Freme." "I knowed Sam's woman, and I knowed her mother 'fore she married Bill Eldridge over to Cedar Corners."

"That's whar she was from--I seen her many a time. My old shanty warn't more 'n forty rod from where Morrison's gang built the new one."

Thayor's delighted ears drank in every word. The perfunctory discussion of a Board of Directors issuing a new mortgage was so many dull words compared with this human kind of speech.

"And now ye are here whar I kin get at ye, Billy," continued the trapper, "let me tell ye how bad I feel when I think ye never been over to see me, or stopped even for a night. Why it actually sets my blood a-bilin'--makes me mad, as the feller said--" Here he nodded toward Thayor--"Some folks is that way, Mr. Thayor."

"I'd like to have come," pleaded Holcomb, "but somehow, Hite, I never managed to get over your way. You see I live so far off now, and yet when I come to think of it, I must have pa.s.sed close by it when I was gunning last fall over by Bear Pond."

"Yes--I knowed ye was gunnin', and we cal'lated ye'd come in with them fellers what was workin' for Joe Dubois. Me and the old dog never give up lookin' for ye. The dog said he seen ye once, but you was too fur off to yell to."

"I want to know!" exclaimed the Clown, as he re-crossed his long legs.

"Goll--I felt sorry for the cuss; he took it so hard," Hite went on.

"Then he owned up--tellin' me that when he see I felt so lonesome and disappointed at ye not comin', he'd be daddinged if he could hold out any longer and see me so miserable; so he jest ris his ears and made believe you was a-comin' and that he see ye, and that there warn't time to let ye know."

"Say--don't that beat all!" roared the Clown as he slapped his leg at the thought of the old dog's sagacity. Here the old dog c.o.c.ked an ear and looked wistfully up into his master's face. Thayor could hardly believe the dog did not understand.

Hite paused in his narrative for breath. When these men of the woods, living often for weeks and months with no fellow-being to talk to, loosen up they run on as unceasingly as a brook.

"But dang yer old hide, Billy, what I got most again' ye is that ye ain't writ afore," and he slapped his young friend Holcomb vigorously on the back. "'Twarn't a night that pa.s.sed when I was to hum in the valley last winter, but what I'd kinder slink away from the store arter they'd sorted out what mail thar was, feelin' ashamed, julluk the old dog does when he's flambussled into a trout hole ahead of ye.

'Why, how you take it,' my old woman would say; 'like as not Billy's been so busy he hain't had time to write ye and it hain't come,' says she. 'No,' said I, 'if he's writ I'd had it 'fore this. United States mail don't lie,' says I."

"But I did write you," declared Holcomb earnestly.

"Yes, so ye did, for I hadn't more'n said it 'fore down comes Dave Brown and says: 'Eke says thar's a letter come for ye in to-night's mail,' 'Why, haow you talk!' says I, and I reached for my tippet and drawed on my boots and started for Munsey's. 'For the land's sakes!'

my old woman yelled arter me. 'Whar are ye a-goin' a night like this, Hite Holt?' 'Don't stop me,' says I, 'the old cuss has writ--the old cuss has writ--jest as I knowed he would. Most likely,' says I, 'he's broke his leg or couldn't git out to the settlement 'count the snow, or he'd writ 'fore this. Don't stop me,' says I, and aout I went and tramped through four feet of snow to the store and there lay yer welcome wad as neat as a piney in a little box over the caounter, and the lamp throwin' a pinky glow over its side, and that scratchy old handwritin' o' yourn I'd knowed three rod off. Thar it lay kinder laughin' at me and slanted so's I could jest read it. Gosh! but I was tickled!"

The trapper drew a sliver of wood from the stove, shielded its yellow flame in the hollow of his hand and re-lit his pipe.

Back in the shadow of the bunk lay Thayor drinking in every word of the strange talk so full of human kindness and so simple and genuine.

For some moments his gray eyes rested on the gentle face of the old trapper, the wavering firelight lighting up the weather-beaten wrinkles.

Soon he straightened up, threw the white ash of his cigar toward the stove and slid gingerly to the dirt floor, his muscles lame from the morning's tramp, and calling to Billy to follow him, went out into the cool air.

The banker made his way carefully through the tangle until he reached the edge of the ledge overhanging the boiling torrent below, white as milk in the moonlight. He selected a dry log and for some minutes sat smoking and gazing in silence at the torrent, whose hoa.r.s.e roar was the only sound coming up from the sleeping forest. So absorbed was he with his own thoughts that he seemed unconscious that Holcomb was beside him. His gaze wandered from the brook to the forest of hemlocks bristling from the opposite bank, their s.h.a.ggy tops touched with silver. Beyond lay the wilderness--a rolling sea of soft hazy timber hemmed in by the big mountains, flanked by wet granite slides that shone like quicksilver.

"Billy," he began at length.

Holcomb started; it was the first time the banker had called him "Billy."

Suddenly Thayor looked up, and Holcomb saw that the gray eyes were dim with tears.

"You're not sick, are you, Mr. Thayor?" asked Holcomb, starting toward him.

"No, my boy," replied Thayor huskily; "I've been happy for a whole day, that is all. Happy for a whole day. Think of it!"

"I'm glad--and you haven't found it too rough; and the things were comfortable, too?" ventured Holcomb.

"Too rough! Why, man, this is Paradise! Think of it, Billy--your friends have been actually interested in _me_--in _my_ comfort--_me_, remember!"

"Why, of course," returned Holcomb. "They think a heap of your being here--besides, there are not two better-hearted men in these whole woods than Freme and the old man."

Again the gray eyes gazed down into the torrent.

"What I want to say to you is this: I want you to let me know what you think would be right at the end of our stay, and I'll see that they get it."

Holcomb straightened and looked up with surprise.

"But they're not here, Mr. Thayor, for money; neither of them would accept a cent from you."