The Ledge on Bald Face Part 15

In a few minutes the whole party were sitting about the tiny stove, drinking boiled tea and munching crackers and mola.s.ses--the prisoner joining in the feast as well as his manacled hands would permit. At length, with his mouth full of cracker, the Deputy remarked:

"That was clever of ye, Dan--durn' clever. I didn't know it was in ye."

"Not half so clever as you seein' through it the way you did, Tug,"

responded the prisoner handsomely.

"But darned ef _I_ see through it _now_," protested Big Andy in a plaintive voice. "It's just about as clear as mud to _me_. Where's your wings, Dan? An' where in tarnation is that b'ar?"

The prisoner laughed triumphantly. Long Jackson and the others looked relieved, the Oromocto man having propounded the question which they had been ashamed to ask.

"It's jest this way," explained Blackstock. "When we'd puzzled Jim yonder--an' he was puzzled at us bein' such fools--ye'll recollect he sat down on his tail by that boot-print, an' tried to work out what we wanted of him. I was tellin' him to seek Black Dan, an' yet I was callin' him back off that there bear-track. _He_ could smell Black Dan in the bear-track, but we couldn't. So we was doin' the best we could to mix him up.

"Well, he looked up into the big maple overhead. Then I saw where Black Dan had gone to. He'd jumped (that's why the boot-print was so heavy), an' caught that there branch, an' swung himself up into the tree. Then he worked his way along from tree to tree till he come to the cave. I saw by the way Jim took on in the cave that Black Dan had been _there_ all right. For Jim hain't got no special grudge agin bear. Says I to myself, ef Jim smells Black Dan in that bear trail, then Black Dan must _be_ in it, that's all!

"Then it comes over me that I'd once seen a big bear-skin in Dan's room at the Mills, an' as the picture of it come up agin in my mind, I noticed how the fore-paws and legs of it were missin'. With that I looked agin at the trail, as we went along Jim an' me. An' sure enough, in all them tracks there wasn't one print of a hind-paw. _They were all fore-paws_. Smart, very smart o' Dan, says I to myself.

Let's see them ingenious socks o' yours, Dan."

"They're in the top bunk yonder," said Black Dan, with a weary air.

"An' my belt and pouch, containin' the other stuff, that's all in the bunk, too. I may's well save ye the trouble o' lookin' for it, as ye'd find it anyways. I was _sure_ ye'd never succeed in trackin' me down, so I didn't bother to hide it. An' I see now ye _wouldn't_ 'a' got me, Tug, ef it hadn't 'a' been fer Jim. That's where I made the mistake o'

my life, not stoppin' to make sure I'd done Jim up."

"No, Dan," said Blackstock, "ye're wrong there. Ef you'd done Jim up I'd have caught ye jest the same, in the long run, fer I'd never have quit the trail till I _did_ git ye. An' when I got ye--well, I'd hev forgot myself, mebbe, an' only remembered that ye'd killed my best friend. Ef ye'd had as many lives as a cat, Dan, they wouldn't hev been enough to pay fer that dawg."

V. The Fire at Brine's Rip Mills

I

When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine's Rip and set up a modest dressmaker's shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes in their direction.

Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration. Then he was at her feet--which was a pleasant place to be, seeing that those same small feet were shod with a neatness which was a perpetual reproach to the untidy sawdust strewn roadways of Brine's Rip.

Even Big Andy, the boyish young giant from the Oromocto, wavered for a few hours in his allegiance to the postmistress. But Mary was much too tactful to draw upon her pretty shoulders the hostility of such a power as the postmistress, and Big Andy's enthusiasm was cold-douched in its first glow.

As for the womenfolk of Brine's Rip, it was not to be expected that they would agree any too cordially with the men on the subject of Mary Farrell.

But one instance of Mary's tact made even the most irreconcilable of her own s.e.x sheath their claws in dealing with her. She had come from Harner's Bend. The Mills at Harner's Bend were anathema to Brine's Rip Mills. A keen trade rivalry had grown, fed by a series of petty but exasperating incidents, into a hostility that blazed out on the least occasion. And pretty Mary had come from Harner's Bend. Brine's Rip did not find it out till Mary's spell had been cast and secured, of course. But the fact was a bitter one to swallow. No one else but Mary Farrell could have made Brine's Rip swallow it.

One day Big Andy, greatly daring, and secure in his renovated allegiance to the postmistress, ventured to chaff Mary about it. She turned upon him, half amused and half indignant.

"Well," she demanded, "isn't Harner's Bend a good place to come away from? Do you think I'd ought to have stopped there? Do I look like the kind of girl that _wouldn't_ come away from Harner's Bend? And me a dress-maker? I just couldn't _live_, let alone make a living, among such a dowdy lot of women-folk as they've got over there. It isn't dresses _they_ want, but oat-sacks, and you wouldn't know the difference, either, when they'd got them on."

The implication was obvious; and the women of Brine's Rip began to allow for possible virtues in Miss Farrell. The post-mistress declared there was no harm in her, and even admitted that she might almost be called good-looking "if she hadn't such an _awful_ big mouth."

I have said that all the male folk of Brine's Rip had capitulated immediately to the summons of Mary Farrell's eyes. But there were two notable exceptions--Woolly Billy and Jim. Both Woolly Billy's flaxen mop of curls and the great curly black head of Jim, the dog, had turned away coldly from Mary's first advances. Woolly Billy preferred men to women anyhow. And Jim was jealous of Tug Blackstock's devotion to the petticoated stranger.

But Mary Farrell knew how to manage children and dogs as well as men.

She ignored both Jim and Woolly Billy. She did it quite pointedly, yet with a gracious politeness that left no room for resentment. Neither the child nor the dog was accustomed to being ignored. Before long Mary's amiable indifference began to make them feel as if they were being left out in the cold. They began to think they were losing something because she did not notice them. Reluctantly at first, but by-and-by with eagerness, they courted her attention. At last they gained it. It was undeniably pleasant. From that moment the child and the dog were at Mary's well-shod and self-reliant little feet.

II

As summer wore on into autumn the dry weather turned to a veritable drought, and all the streams ran lower and lower. Word came early that the mills at Harner's Bend, over in the next valley, had been compelled to shut down for lack of logs. But Brine's Rip exulted unkindly. The Ottanoonsis, fed by a group of cold spring lakes, maintained a steady flow; there were plenty of logs, and the mills had every prospect of working full time all through the autumn. Presently they began to gather in big orders which would have gone otherwise to Harner's Bend.

Brine's Rip not only exulted, but took into itself merit. It felt that it must, on general principles, have deserved well of Providence, for Providence so obviously to take sides with it.

As August drew to a dusty, choking end, Mary Farrell began to collect her accounts. Her tact and sympathy made this easy for her, and women paid up civilly enough who had never been known to do such a thing before, unless at the point of a summons. Mary said she was going to the States, perhaps as far as New York itself, to renew her stock and study up the latest fashions.

Every one was much interested. Woolly Billy's eyes brimmed over at the prospect of her absence, but he was consoled by the promise of her speedy return with an air-gun and also a toy steam-engine that would really go. As for Jim, his feathery black tail drooped in premonition of a loss, but he could not gather exactly what was afoot. He was further troubled by an unusual depression on the part of Tug Blackstock. The Deputy-Sheriff seemed to have lost his zest in tracking down evil-doers.

It was nearing ten o'clock on a hot and starless night. Tug Blackstock, too restless to sleep, wandered down to the silent mill with Jim at his heels. As he approached, Jim suddenly went bounding on ahead with a yelp of greeting. He fawned upon a small, shadowy figure which was seated on a pile of deals close to the water's edge. Tug Blackstock hurried up.

"You here, Mary, all alone, at this time o' night!" he exclaimed.

"I come here often," answered Mary, making room for him to sit beside her.

"I wish I'd known it sooner," muttered the Deputy.

"I like to listen to the rapids, and catch glimpses of the water slipping away blindly in the dark," said Mary. "It helps one not to think," she added with a faint catch in her voice.

"Why should _you_ not want to think, Mary?" protested Blackstock.

"How dreadfully dry everything is," replied Mary irrelevantly, as if heading Blackstock off. "What if there should be a fire at the mill?

Wouldn't the whole village go, like a box of matches? People might get caught asleep in their beds. Oughtn't there to be more than one night watchman in such dry weather as this? I've so often heard of mills catching fire--though I don't see why they should, any more than houses."

"Mills most generally git _set_ afire," answered the Deputy grimly.

"Think what it would mean to Harner's Bend if these mills should git burnt down now! It would mean thousands and thousands to them. But you're dead right, Mary, about the danger to the village. Only it depends on the wind. This time o' year, an' as long as it keeps dry, what wind there is blows mostly away from the houses, so sparks and brands would just be carried out over the river. But if the wind should shift to the south'ard or thereabouts, yes, there'd be more watchmen needed. I s'pose you're thinkin' about your shop while ye're away?"

"I was thinking about Woolly Billy," said Mary gravely. "What do I care about the old shop? It's insured, anyway."

"I'll look out for Woolly Billy," answered Blackstock. "And I'll look out for the shop, whether _you_ care about it or not. It's yours, and your name's on the door, and anything of yours, anything you've touched, an' wherever you've put your little foot, that's something for me to care about. I ain't no hand at making pretty speeches, Mary, or paying compliments, but I tell you these here old sawdust roads are just wonderful to me now, because your little feet have walked on 'em.

Ef only I could think that you could care--that I had anything, was anything, Mary, worth offering you----"

He had taken her hand, and she had yielded it to him. He had put his great arm around her shoulders and drawn her to him,--and for a moment, with a little shiver, she had leant against him, almost cowered against him, with the air of a frightened child craving protection. But as he spoke on, in his quiet, strong voice, she suddenly tore herself away, sprang off to the other end of the pile of deals, and began to sob violently.

He followed her at once. But she thrust out both hands.

"Go away. _Please_ don't come near me," she appealed, somewhat wildly.

"You don't understand--_anything_."

Tug Blackstock looked puzzled. He seated himself at a distance of several inches, and clasped his hands resolutely in his lap.

"Of course, I won't tech you, Mary," said he, "if you don't want me to.

I don't want to do _anything_ you don't want me to--_never_, Mary. But I sure don't understand what you're crying for. _Please_ don't. I'm so sorry I teched you, dear. But if you knew how I love you, how I would give my life for you, I think you'd forgive me, Mary."

Mary gave a bitter little laugh, and choked her sobs.