The Lady of Big Shanty Part 9

Thayor shrank behind the drift and uttered a yell. Almost every year someone had been mistaken for a deer and shot.

At this instant there rang through the forest the stamping splash of hoofs in the rapids above him; a moment more and he saw the spray fly back of a boulder. Then he gazed at something that obliterated all else.

A big buck was coming straight toward him. He came on, walking briskly, his steel-blue coat wet and glistening, a superb dignity about him, carrying his head and its branching horns with a certain fearless pride, and now that he had struck water, wisely taking his time to gain his second wind.

In a flash the buck saw him, turned broadside and leaped for the clump of nodding hemlocks.

_Bang! Bang!_ Thayor was shooting now--shooting as if his life depended upon it. His first shot went wild, the bullet striking against a rock. The second sent the buck to his knees; in a second he was up again. It was the fourth shot that reached home, just as the deer gained the ma.s.s of boulders and hemlocks. The buck sprang convulsively in the air--the old dog at his throat--turned a half somersault and fell in a heap, stone dead, in a shallow pool. With a cry of joy the trapper was beside him.

"By Goll! you done well!" Hite declared with enthusiasm. "By Goll!

friend, you done well! I knowed you had him soon's I heard the gun crack. Thinks I, he ain't liable to git by ye if he comes in whar I knowed he would. Well, he's consider'ble of a deer, I swan!" he declared, running his hand over the branching p.r.o.ngs.

"He's a beauty!" cried Thayor.

"Yes, sir, and he'll dress clus to a hundred and seventy. Must have made him think this perticler section was inhabited when ye was lettin' drive at him. Fust shot I know ye shot too quick. I warn't mor'n a hundred yards from him, then I knowed ye was gittin' stiddier when I heard ye shoot again."

"Hurrah, boys!" shouted a voice from the bank. It was Holcomb.

"There's our saddle for Randall," he cried as he leaped toward them.

"But, Billy, I came pretty near not getting him after all," exclaimed Thayor with a laugh. "I was trying to keep your friend in the runway across the brook from shooting me, but I forgot all about him when I heard the deer come crashing down stream. If he got a crack at him at all I didn't hear it, I was so excited. You ought to have told me, Mr.

Holt, you had somebody else watching out across the brook, or I might have let drive at him by mistake, or he at me." And Thayor laughed heartily. He was very happy to-day.

The trapper looked at him in wonder.

"Freme warn't down this way was he, Billy?"

Holcomb shook his head--a curious expression on his face.

"Oh, it wasn't Freme," retorted Thayor. "This man was half the size of Skinner, and a regular scarecrow. Looked as if he hadn't had anything to eat for weeks--but he could handle a gun all right. That's what worried me; I was afraid he would use it on me until the old dog lay down beside him."

The trapper gazed at the hound long and earnestly as if to read his mind, and then he answered thoughtfully:

"No--he warn't none of our folks, Mr. Thayor--one o' them gunners, I guess. They all know the old dog. And now," continued the old man, "I presume, likely, arter we've washed up a mite, we'd better be makin'

tracks for home. I'm gittin' hollerer 'n a gourd. How be you, friend; hongry?"

"Hungry as a wolf," returned Thayor, still beaming over his good luck.

The Clown now appeared, and drawing his heavy knife, began dressing the buck.

"Here, Freme," cried the trapper, when the deer had been quartered, "that's yourn," and he slung the forequarters over the Clown's neck.

"Ride nice?" asked the old man. "Kinder hefty, ain't it, Freme?"

"Wall, it ain't no ear-ring," laughed the Clown, shifting his burden to a finer balance.

"I'll take the hind quarters," said Thayor, straddling them across his neck, as the Clown had done, and with his own and Thayor's rifle spliced to the buck's head, the Clown led the way back to camp.

Some mornings after the hunt, during which Thayor had become so saturated with the life about him that the very thought of his work at home was distasteful, the banker called Holcomb to one side, and the two took their seats on a fallen tree, sections of which had warmed their tired and rain-soaked bodies more than once during his stay in the wilderness.

The open-air life--the excitement of the hunt--the touch of the cool woods, had removed from Thayor's mind every lingering doubt of his future plans. With the same promptness which characterized all his business transactions, he decided to return to New York the next day.

"Billy," began the banker, when he had settled himself comfortably, and lighted his cigar, "do you suppose Skinner can get a despatch out for me in the morning?"

"Yes, he might," replied Holcomb.

"Well, will you please see that he does then? And, Billy, one thing more--how many acres did you tell me the other day there was as far as we can see?" and he waved his hand to the stretch below him.

"About fifteen thousand, sir."

"Well, that will do for a beginning. I'm going to settle here, Billy, permanently--all my life. I want you to start to-morrow and find out who owns, not only this fifteen thousand acres, but what lies next to it. I'm going to buy if I can, and you're the man to help me."

"But, Mr. Thayor," faltered the young woodsman.

"No--there are no buts. I am not buying timber land, you understand, in the ordinary way, to destroy it. I want this beautiful country to be my own. No," he added smiling, "_our_ own, Billy. That's the better way to put it."

"I'll do my best," replied Holcomb simply, when he got his breath.

"It's a big purchase and I must go slowly."

"Then the sooner you begin on them, my boy, the better. I shall send my lawyer, Mr. Griscom, up to you immediately; he will see that we get fair play legally, but as to the question of what and what not to buy, I leave that entirely to your judgment; what money you need you have but to ask Mr. Griscom for."

"I'm afraid they will hold the tract at a high price, Mr. Thayor,"

said Holcomb.

"Whatever they hold it at within reason I'll pay," declared the millionaire.

"Then you'll have it," replied the young woodsman in a positive tone, "at the fairest figure I can get it for."

"I haven't a doubt of it, Billy. And now let me tell Holt and Freme--they are just inside the shanty. Ah--Mr. Holt, I was just telling Holcomb that I'm off in the morning, and before I go I want to tell you and Freme that I shall miss you dreadfully--miss you more than I can tell.

"Yes--so we mistrusted," answered Freme, in a regretful tone, "when we overheard ye talkin' 'bout telegrams."

"Goll! I hate to have ye go," declared the trapper, clearing his throat. "Seems 'ough you hain't but jest come, Mr. Thayor. But you got what ye come for, didn't ye? I dunno as I ever see a nicer deer."

"Yes, thanks to you and the old dog. But I'm coming back."

"Thar! what did I tell ye, Hite?" exclaimed the Clown.

"And when I do come back it will be to stay--at least during the summer months--perhaps for all the months."

The Clown and the trapper looked up with a puzzled expression.

"And as it is a decision which concerns all of us," Thayor resumed, "I want to tell you now that I have decided to buy Big Shanty Brook as far as we can see, and build a home here for myself and my family."

"Gee whimey!" cried the Clown. "I want to know!" The keen eyes of the trapper opened wide in astonishment.

"I have left the matter of purchase," continued Thayor, "entirely in Holcomb's hands. He will be my superintendent. I now ask your help, my friends, both of you; and so if you are willing you may consider yourselves under salary which Billy will settle with you, beginning from the morning I first saw this shanty. And now, Billy, if you don't mind, I want to see Big Shanty Brook once more before it gets dark.

Maybe we can pick out a place for the new camp."