Chapter C: G. D. R (3)

"That's so," he acknowledged, gloomily. "'Course I ain't. An' I s'pose I hadn't oughter said what I did."

Then he relapsed into silence. For half a mile he slouched on without a syllable, save an occasional word of command addressed to the team. Coming to another boggy bit of road, he seated himself dejectedly on the cart, and apparently would not presume to again press unwelcome assistance upon his fellow-way-farer. Quite uncertain whether to interpret this action as excess of humility or as a severe rebuke, the girl picked her way as best she could, flushed with a sense of injury.

When the mud was passed, the young man absent-mindedly, kept his seat. Beginning to boil with indignation, the girl speedily lost her confident superiority, and felt humiliated. She did not know exactly what to do. She could not continue to walk humbly beside the cart. The situation was profoundly altered by the mere fact that the young man was riding. She tried to drop behind; but the team had an infinite capacity for loitering. At last, with head high in the air, she darted ahead of the team, and walked as fast as she could. Although she heard no orders given by their driver, she knew at once that the oxen had quickened their pace, and that she was not leaving them behind.

Presently she found herself overtaken; whereupon, with swelling heart and face averted, she dropped again to the rear. She was drawing perilously near the verge of that feminine cataclysm, tears, when Fate stepped in to save her from such a mortification.

Fate goes about in many merry disguises. At this juncture she presented herself under the aspect of two half-tipsy commercial travellers driving a single horse in a light open trap. They were driving in from the Settlement, in haste to reach the hotel at Bolton Corners before nightfall. The youth hawed his team vigorously till the nigh wheels were on the other side of the ditch, leaving a liberal share of the road for them to pass in.

But the drummers were not satisfied with this. After a glance at the bashful face and dejected attitude of the young man on the ox-cart, they decided that they wanted the whole road. When their horse's head almost touched the horns of the off ox, they stopped.

"Get out of the way there!" cried the man who held the reins, insolently.

At any other time Jim-Ed would have resented the town man's tone and words; just now he was thinking about the way Liz had changed.

"I've gi'n ye the best half o' the road, mister," he said, deprecatingly, "'n' I can't do no better fer ye than that."

"Yes, you can, too," shouted the driver of the trap; "you can give us the whole road. It won't hurt your old cart to go out in the stumps, but _we_ ain't going to drive in the ditch, not by a jugful. Get over, I tell you, and be quick about it."

To this the youth made no immediate reply; but he began to forget about the girl, and to feel himself growing hot. As for the girl, she had stepped to the front, resolved to "show off" and to make very manifest to the city men her scorn for her companion. Her cheeks and eyes were flaming, and the drummers were not slow to respond to the challenge which she flashed at them from under her drooped lids.

"Ah, there, my beauty!" said the driver, his attention for a moment diverted from the question of right of way. His companion, a smallish man in striped trousers and fawn-colored overcoat, sprang lightly out of the trap, with the double purpose of clearing the road and amusing himself with Liz. The saucy smile with which she met him turned into a frown, however, as he began brutally kicking the knees of the oxen to make them stand over.

The patient brutes crowded into the ditch.

"Whoa, there! Gee, Buck! gee, Bright!" ordered the youth, and the team lurched back into the road. At the same time he stepped over the cart-beam and came forward on the off side of the team.

"Ye'd better quit that, mister!" he exclaimed, with a threatening note in his voice.

"Give the lout a slap in the mouth, and make him get out of the way," cried the man in the trap.

But the man in the fawn-colored overcoat was busy. Liz was much to his taste.

"Jump in and take a ride with us, my pretty," said he.

But Liz shrank away, regretting her provocative glances now that she saw the kind of men she had to do with.

"Come, come," coaxed the man, "don't be shy, my blooming daisy. We'll drive you right in to the Corners and set up a good time for you." And, grasping her hand, he slipped an arm about her waist and tried to kiss her lips. As she tore herself fiercely away, she heard the man in the trap laugh loud approval. She struck at her insulter with clenched hand; but she did not touch him, for just then something happened to him. The long arm of the youth went out like a cannon-ball, and the drummer sprawled in the ditch. He nimbly picked himself up and darted upon his assailant, while the man in the trap shouted to him encouragingly,--

"Give it to him pretty, Mike."

But the young countryman caught him by the neck with long, vise-like fingers, inexorable, and, holding him thus helpless at arm's length, struck him again heavily in the ribs, and hurled him over the ditch into a blueberry thicket, where he remained in dazed discretion.

Though of a lamb-like gentleness on ordinary occasions, the young countryman was renowned throughout the Settlement for the astonishing strength that lurked in his lean frame. At this moment he was well aroused, and Liz found herself watching him with a consuming admiration. He no longer slouched, and his pale eyes, like polished steel, shot a menacing gleam. He stepped forward and took the horse by the bridle.

"Now," said he to the driver, "I've gi'n ye half the road, an' if ye can't drive by in that I'm a-going to lead ye by, 'thout no more nonsense."

"Let go that bridle!" yelled the driver, standing up and lashing at him with the whip.

One stroke caught the young man down the side of the face, and stung. It was a rash stroke.

"Hold the horse's head, Liz," he cried; and, leaping forward, he reached into the trap for his adversary. Heeding not at all the butt end of the whip which was brought down furiously upon his head, he wrenched the driver ignominiously from his seat, spun him around, shook him as if his had been a rag baby, and hurled him violently against a rotten stump on the other side of the ditch. The stump gave way, and the drummer splashed into a bog hole.

Nothing cows a man more quickly than a shaking combined with a ducking. Without a word the drummer hauled himself out of the slop and walked sullenly forward. His companion joined him; and Liz, leading the horse and trap carefully past the cart, delivered them up to their owners with a sarcastic smile on her lips. Then she resumed her place beside the cart, the young man flicked the oxen gently, and the team once more got slowly under way.

As the discomfited drummers climbed into their trap, the girl, in the ardor of her suddenly adopted hero-worship, could not refrain from turning around again to triumph over them. When the men were fairly seated, and the reins gathered up for prompt departure, the smaller man turned suddenly and threw a large stone, with vindictive energy and deadly aim.

"Look out!" shrieked the girl; and the young countryman turned aside just in time to escape the full force of the missile. It grazed the side of his head, however, with such violence as to bring him to his knees, and the blood spread throbbing out of the long cut like a scarlet veil. The drummers whipped their horse to a gallop, and disappeared.

The girl first stopped the team, with a true country-side instinct; and she was at the young man's side, sobbing with anxious fear, just as he staggered blindly to his feet. Seating him on the cart, she proceeded to stanch the bleeding with the edge of her gown. Observing this, he protested, and declared that the cut was nothing. But she would not be gainsaid, and he yielded, apparently well content under her hands. Then, tearing a strip from her colored cotton petticoat, she gently bound up the wound, not artistically, perhaps, but in every way to his satisfaction.

"If ye hadn't gi'n me warnin', Liz, that there stun'd about fixed me," he remarked.

The girl smiled happily, but said nothing.

After a long pause he spoke again.

"Seems to me ye're like what ye used to, Liz," said he, "only nicer, a sight nicer; an' y' used to be powerful nice. I allow there couldn't _be_ another girl so nice as you, Liz. An' what ever's made ye quit lookin' down on me, so sudden like?"

"Jim-Ed," she replied, in a caressing tone, "ef y' _ain't_ got no paper collar on, ner no glas' di'mon' pin, I allow ye're a _man_. An' maybe--maybe ye're the _kind_ of man I _like_, Jim-Ed."

To even such genuine modesty as Jim-Ed's this was comprehensible. Shyly and happily he reached out his hand for hers. They were both seated very comfortably on the cart-beam, so he did not consider it necessary to move. Side by side, and hand in hand, they journeyed homeward in a glorified silence. The oxen appeared to guide themselves very fairly. The sunset flushed strangely the roadside hillocks. The nighthawks swooped in the pale zenith with the twang of smitten chords. And from a thick maple on the edge of a clearing a hermit-thrush fluted slowly over and over his cloistral ecstasy.

A Tragedy of the Tides.

This is the story of the fate that befell Lieutenant Henry Crewe and Margaret Neville, his betrothed, who disappeared from the infant city of Halifax on the afternoon of September 18th, 1749. The facts were gathered by one Nicholas Pinson from the mouths of Indians more or less concerned, from members of the Neville family, and from much sagacious conjecture; and woven, with an infinite deal of irrelevant detail, into a narrative which has been rigorously condensed in the present rendering. The industrious Pinson's manuscript, with all its attenuated old French characters, its obscure abbreviations, and its well-bred contempt for orthographical accuracy, might perhaps be found even yet in the Provincial archives at Halifax. At least, if any one be curious to examine this story in the original, just as M. Pinson wrote it, he may search the archives of Halifax with a reasonable surety that the manuscript is as likely to be found there as anywhere else.

There was a faint, opaline haze in the afternoon air, and in the still waters of the harbor the low hills, with their foliage lightly touched in bronze and amethyst and amber, were faithfully reproduced. Into a hollow between two knolls wooded with beech trees, ran a shallow cove, its clear waters edged with sand of a tender, greenish gray. Close to the water's edge stood the lovers, and across the silence they could hear, pulsating dimly, the hammers of them that were building the city.

"Listen," said the man, as he drew the girl closely to him and kissed her on the forehead; "those are the strokes that are making a home for _us_."

The girl lifted her lips for a kiss that never reached them. The man was seized from behind, a dark hand covered his mouth; and Lieutenant Henry Crewe, his sword unstirred in its scabbard, found himself pinioned hand and foot, ere he had time to realize that other arms were about him than those of the woman he loved. With her it fared in like fashion, save that before they covered her mouth she found time for one long piercing cry. It was heard by those who were working on the city palisades; but no man could tell the direction whence it came. Presently a search party set out for the thick woods lying a little north of west from the city; but in the mean time the Indians had carried their captives northeastward to the lakes, and were making all speed on the Fundy coast by way of the Shubenacadie trail.

Henry Crewe was a tall man, and well sinewed, and for a brief space he strove so fiercely with his bonds that his fair skin flushed well-nigh purple, and his lips, under the yellow mustache, curled apart terribly, like those of a beast at bay. Unable to endure the anguish of his effort, Margaret averted her eyes, for she knew the hopelessness of it. Like all the Nevilles of Nova Scotia to this day, the girl was somewhat spare of form and feature, with dark hair, a clear, dark skin, and eyes of deep color that might be either gray or green. Her terrible cry had been far less the utterance of a blind terror than a deliberate signal to the garrison at the fort, and so complete was her self-control that when Crewe presently met her gaze his brain grew clearer, he forgot the derision in the Indians' painted faces, ceased his vain struggles, and bent all his thought to the task of finding means of deliverance.

The captives were thrown into canoes and paddled swiftly to the head of the long basin which runs inland for miles from the head of the harbor. At the beginning of the portage their feet were unbound, and their mouths set free from the suffocating gags.

"Oh, Margaret! Margaret! To think I should have brought you to this!" exclaimed Crewe in a harsh voice, the moment his lips were free.

The girl had confidence in her lover's power to find some way of protecting her, in case no help should come from the city. Her sole thought now was to show herself brave, and in no way to embarrass his judgment. Before she could answer, however, the leader of the band struck Crewe across the mouth with the flat of his hatchet, as a hint that he should keep silence. Had Crewe been alone, bound as he was, he would have felled his assailant with a blow of the foot; but for Margaret's sake he forced himself to endure the indignity tamely, though his blue eyes flamed with so dangerous a light that the Indian raised his hatchet again in menace. The girl's heart bled under the stroke and at sight of the wounded mouth, but she prudently abstained from speech. Only she spoke one word in a low voice that said all things to her lover's ear, the one word "Beloved!"

To the chief now spoke one of the band in the Micmac tongue:--

"Why not let the paleface talk to his young squaw? It will be the more bitter for them at the last!"

"No," said the chief, grinning; "it is as death to the palefaces to keep silence. But they shall have time to talk at the last."

Throughout the long journey, which was continued till midnight under the strong light of a moon just at the full, the lovers held no converse save in the mute language of eye and gesture, and that only during the rough marches from one lake to another. The greater part of the journey was by canoe. At night they were lashed to trees some way apart, and separated by the camp-fire. Crewe dared not address a word to Margaret lest he should anger his captors into doing him some injury that might lessen his powers of thought or action, and the girl, seeing that no immediate gain could be had from speech, dreaded to be smitten on the mouth in a way that might disfigure her in her lover's eyes. Only at times, when a wind would blow the smoke and flame aside, she looked across the camp-fire into the young man's face, and in the look and in the smile of the steady lips he read not only an unswerving courage, but also a confidence in his own resourceful protection, which pierced his heart with anguish. All night he pondered schemes of rescue or escape, until his brain reeled and his soul grew sick before the unsolvable problem. He could move neither hand nor foot, and just before dawn he sank to sleep in his bonds. Then for the waking girl the loneliness became unspeakable, and her lips grew ashen in the first light of the dawn.

Late on the following day the band drew up their canoes on the banks of the Shubenacadie, where its waters began to redden with the tide, and struck through the woods by a dark trail. The next day the captives were tortured by the sight of a white steeple in the distance, belonging to an Acadian settlement. Crewe judged this to be the village of Beaubassin. The surmise was confirmed when, a few hours later, after a wide detour to avoid the settlement, the flag of France was seen waving over the foliage that clothed a long line of heights. By this time the band was traversing a vast expanse of salt marshes, and after crossing a little tidal stream near its head, they turned sharply southwestward toward the sea. Presently the raw red earthworks of Beauséjour rose into view some seven or eight miles distant across the marshes. There, among his bitter enemies, Crewe knew he might find sure succor, if only the gallant Frenchmen could be made aware of what was passing so near them. He saw Margaret's eyes fixed with terrible appeal upon the hostile works, wherein for her and for her lover lay safety; and agonized to feel his utter helplessness, he raised a long and ringing shout which, as it seemed to him, must reach the very souls of those behind the ramparts. Margaret's heart leaped with hope, which flickered out as she saw the Indians laugh grimly at the foolish effort. To be within sight of help, and yet so infinitely helpless! For the first time the girl yielded to complete despair, and her head sank upon her breast. In the Journal of the Sieur Carré, at this time a lieutenant at Beauséjour, occurs this entry, under date of September 20, 1749:--

"Noted this morning a small party of natives moving down the shores of the river Tintamarre. Too far off to distinguish whether it was a war party or not, but this their order of march seemed to suggest."

After skirting for perhaps an hour a red and all but empty channel, which Crewe recognized by hearsay as the bed of the Tantramar (or _Tintamarre_, "water of hubbub"), the savages suddenly led their captives down the steep, gleaming abyss of mud to the edge of the shallow current, which now, at low tide, clattered shrilly seaward over clods of blue clay and small stones rolled down from the uplands.

Margaret awoke from her despair enough to shudder disdainfully, as her feet sank more than ankle deep in the clinging ooze, and to wonder why the Indians should halt in such a place. She met her lover's glance, and saw that he was singularly disturbed.

The place was like a hideous gaping pit. A double winding of the channel closed it in above and below. Some forty or fifty feet over their heads, against a pure sky of loveliest blue, waved a shaggy fringe of salt grasses, yellowing in the autumn air. This harsh and meagre herbage encircled the rim of the chasm, and seemed to make the outer world of men infinitely remote. The sun, an hour or two past noon, glared down whitely into the gulf, and glistened, in a myriad of steely reflections, from the polished but irregular steeps of slime. There was something so strange and monstrous in the scene that Margaret's dull misery was quickened to a nameless horror. Suddenly a voice, which she hardly recognized as that of her lover, said slowly and steadily:--

"Margaret, this is the end of our journey; we have come to the end."

Looking up she met Crewe's eyes fastened upon her with a gaze which seemed to sustain her and fill her nerves with strength. With the end of his uncertainty his will became clear, and his resolution perfect as tempered steel. An Indian had brought two stakes and thrown them on the mud at the leader's feet. Margaret looked at the rough-trimmed saplings, at the tide-mark far up the dreadful slope, then again into her lover's face. She understood; but she gave no sign, save that her skin blanched to a more deathly pallor, and she exclaimed in a voice of poignant regret: "Have we kept silence all these long hours only for this? And I had so much to say to you!"

"There will be time," he said gently, and his voice was a caress. "The flood tide has not yet begun, and it will take some hours. And it was well, dear, that we could not speak; for so you had hope till the last to support you, while I had none, having heard the Indians say we were to die, though they said not in my hearing when or how. Had you known you might not have had this high courage of yours, that now gives _me_ strength to endure the utmost. Dear, your heroic fortitude has been everything to me."

A faint flush of pride rose into the girl's face, and she stretched out her pinioned arms to him, and cried: "You shall not be deceived in me. I will be worthy of you, and will not shame our race before these beasts."

By this time the stakes were driven into the strong clay. They were placed some way up the slope, and one a little space above the other. To the lower stake they fastened Crewe. As the girl was being bound to the other, her arms were freed for a moment that the savages might the more readily remove her upper garments, and by a swift movement she loosened her hair so that it fell about her to her knees,--the splendid Neville hair, still famous in the Province. There was no bounty then on English scalps, and the horror of the scalping knife was not threatened them. When the savages had made their task complete, they laughed in their victims' faces and retreated up the steep and over the grassy rim.

"Are they gone?" asked the girl.

"No, they are lying in wait to watch us," answered Crewe; and as he ceased speaking a muffled sound was heard, and with a sudden hubbub that filled the chasm with clamor, the first of the flood-tide came foaming round the curve, and the descending current halted as if in fear of the meeting. The next moment the bed of the stream was hidden by a boiling reddish torrent, racing up the channel; and the tide was creeping by inches toward the captives' feet. For an hour or more the bright gulf of death was so loud with this turmoil and with the echoes from the red walls of mud, and the yellow eddies of foam whirled and swept so dizzily past their eyes, that the captives' senses were dulled in a measure, as if by some crude anodyne or vast mesmeric influence. When, however, the channel was about one-third full and the water now beginning to cover Crewe's feet, the flood became more quiet and equable, spreading smoothly over freer spaces. Presently there was a frightful silence, intensified by the steady sunlight, and broken only by the stealthy, soft rush and snake-like hiss of the tide. Then, as Margaret's brain grew clear in the stillness, a low cry, which tortured Crewe's features, forced itself from her lips. She realized for the first time why the stake to which she was bound had been set higher than her lover's. She would watch the cruel colored water creep over Crewe's mouth, then cover his eyes, and hide at last the brave head she had longed to kiss, ere it climbed to ease her own lips of life. She said: "Love, I will lay my face down in the water as soon as it is near enough, and I shall _not_ be far behind you."

A wide-winged gray gull, following the tide up the channel, gave a startled cry as he came upon the silent figures, and rose higher, with sudden flapping, as he turned his flight away across the marshes.

* * * * *

In the Journal of the Sieur Carré, in Beauséjour, there is a second entry under the date of September 20, 1749. It was added on a succeeding day. Translated fully it runs thus:--

"In the afternoon took a guard and marched across the Tintamarre to see what mischief the redskins had been at, having observed them to leave two of their number in the channel, and to linger long on the brink, as if watching something in the stream. It was within an hour of high tide when we reached the spot, the savages disappearing on our approach. Saw on the further shore a piteous sight, whereat our hearts burned to follow the redskins and chastise their devilish malice. A woman was bound to a stake, her face fallen forward in the water, and a wonderful luxuriance of dark hair spread about her and floating on the current. Swam across the river, with those of my men following who could, and, plunging beneath the tide, cut her bonds. But found the life had fled, at which we wondered; for had she held her head erect the water would not yet have been within a little of her chin. But presently we found, beneath the water, the body of a young man, bound likewise to a stake; and it seemed to us we thereupon understood why the poor lady had been in such haste to die. The lovers, for so we deemed them, were plainly English, and we took them with us back to the Beauséjour, purposing to give them Christian burial,--and more than ever cursing the hard necessity which forces us to make alliance with the natives."

At the Rough-and-Tumble Landing.

The soft smell of thawing snow was in the air, proclaiming April to the senses of the lumbermen as unmistakably as could any calendar.

The ice had gone out of the Big Aspohegan with a rush. There was an air of expectation about the camp. Everything was ready for a start down-stream. The hands who had all winter been chopping and hauling in the deep woods were about to begin the more toilsome and perilous task of "driving" the logs down the swollen river to the great booms and unresting mills about its mouth. One thing only remained to be done ere the drive could get under way. The huge "brow" of logs over-hanging the stream had yet to be released. To whom would fall the task of accomplishing its release, was a question still undecided.

The perils of "stream-driving" on a bad river have been dwelt upon, I suppose, by every writer who has occupied his pen at all with the life of the lumber-camps. But to the daring backwoodsman there seldom falls a task more hazardous than that of cutting loose a brow of logs when the logs have been piled in the form of what is called a "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. Along the inner side of these are laid horizontally a certain number of logs, to form a water front; and into the space behind are tumbled helter-skelter from the tops of the bank the logs of the winter's chopping. It is a very simple and expeditious way of storing the logs. But when the ice has run out, and it is time to start the lumber down-stream, then comes trouble. The piles sustaining the whole vast weight of the brow have to be cut away, and the problem that confronts the chopper is how to escape the terrific rush of the falling logs.

Hughey McElvey, the boss of the Aspohegan camp, swinging an axe (rather as a badge of office than because he thought he might want to chop anything), sauntered down to the water's edge and took a final official glance at the brow of logs. Its foundations had been laid while McElvey was down with a touch of fever, and he was ill satisfied with them. For perhaps the fiftieth time, he shook his head and grumbled, "It's goin' to be a resky job gittin' them logs clear." Then he rejoined the little cluster of men on top of the bank.

As he did so, a tall girl with splendid red hair came out of the camp and stepped up to his side. This was Laurette, the boss's only daughter, who had that morning driven over from the settlements in the back country, to bring him some comforts of mended woollens and to bid "the drive" God-speed. From McElvey the girl inherited her vivid hair and her superb proportions; and from her mother, who had been one Laurette Beaulieu, of Grande Anse, she got her mirthful black eyes and her smooth, dusky complexion, which formed so striking a contrast to her radiant tresses. A little conscious of all the eyes that centred upon her with varying degrees of admiration, love, desire, or self-abasing devotion, she felt the soft color deepen in her cheeks as she playfully took possession of McElvey's axe.

"_You're_ not goin' to do it, father, I reckon!" she exclaimed.

"No, sis," answered the boss, smiling down at her, "leastways, not unless the hands is all scared."

"Well, who _is_ goin' to?" she inquired, letting her glance sweep rapidly over the stalwart forms that surrounded her. A shrewd observer might have noted that her eyes shyly avoided one figure, that stood a little apart from the rest,--the figure of a strongly-built man of medium size, who looked small among his large-moulded fellows. As for Jim Reddin, who was watching the girl's every movement, his heart tightened with a bitter pang as her eyes thus seemed to pass him over. Having, for all his forty years, a plentiful lack of knowledge of the feminine heart and its methods, he imagined himself ignored. And yet had he not Laurette's promise that none other than he should have the privilege of driving her home to the settlements that afternoon?

"That's what we're just a-goin' to decide," said McElvey, in answer to Laurette's question. "But first," he continued, with a sly chuckle, "hadn't you better pick out the feller that's goin' to drive you home, sis? We're goin' to be powerful well occupied, all hands, when we git a start on them logs, I tell you!"

At this suggestion a huge young woodsman who was standing behind some of the others, out of Laurette's range of vision, started eagerly forward. Bill Goodine was acknowledged to be the best-looking man on the Big Aspohegan,--an opinion in which he himself most heartily concurred. He was also noted as a wrestler and fighter. He was an ardent admirer of Laurette; but his passion had not taught him any humility, and he felt confident that in order to gain the coveted honor of driving the girl home he had nothing to do but apply for it. He felt that it would hardly be the "square thing" to put Laurette to the embarrassment of inviting him right there before all the hands. Before he could catch her eye, however, Laurette had spoken what surely the devil of coquetry must have whispered in her ear. Undoubtedly, she had promised Jim Reddin that he should drive her home. But "let him show that he appreciates the favor," she thought to herself; and aloud, with a toss of her head, she exclaimed, "I'll take the one that cuts out the logs,--if he wants to come!"

The effect of this speech was instantaneous. Fully half the hands stepped forward, exclaiming, "I'll do it!--I'll do it, boss!--I'm your man, Mr. McElvey!" But Bill Goodine sprang to the front with a vigor that brushed aside all in his path. Thrusting himself in front of the laughing McElvey, he shouted, "I spoke first! I claim the job!" And, snatching up an axe, he started down the bank.

"Hold on!" shouted McElvey; but Goodine paid no attention. "Come back, I tell you!" roared the boss. "The job's yours, so hold on!" Upon this Bill came swaggering back, and gazed about him triumphantly.

"I guess _I'm_ your teamster, eh, Laurette?" he murmured. But, to his astonishment, Laurette did not seem to hear him. She was casting quick glances of anger and disappointment in the direction of Jim Reddin, who leaned on a sled-stake and appeared to take no interest in the proceedings. Goodine flushed with jealous wrath, and was about to fling some gibe at Reddin, when McElvey remarked,--

"That's all very well, sis; and has kinder simplified matters a lot. But I'm thinkin' you'd better have another one of the boys to fall back on. This 'ere's an onusual ticklish job; and the feller as does it'll be lucky if he comes off with a whole skin."

At these words so plain an expression of relief went over Laurette's face that Bill Goodine could not contain himself.

"Jim Reddin _dasn't_ do it," he muttered to her, fiercely.

The girl drew herself up. "I never said he dast," she replied. "An' what's Jim Reddin to me, I'd like to know?" And then, being furious at Jim, at herself, and at Goodine, she was on the point of telling the latter that _he_ shouldn't drive her home, anyway, when she reflected that this would excite comment, and restrained herself. But Reddin, who imagined that the whole thing was a scheme on Laurette's part for getting out of her promise to him, and who felt, consequently, as if the heavens were falling about his ears, had caught Goodine's mention of his name. He stepped up and asked sharply, "What's that about Jim Reddin?"

Laurette was gazing at him in a way that pierced his jealous pain and thrilled his heart strangely; and as he looked at her he began to forget Bill Goodine altogether. But Goodine was not to be forgotten.

"I said," he cried, in a loud voice, "that you, Jim Reddin, jest _dasn't_ cut out them logs. You think yourself some punkins, you do; but ye're a coward!" And, swinging his great form round insolently, Goodine picked up his axe and sauntered down the bank.

Now, Laurette, as well as most of the hands, looked to see this insult promptly resented in the only way consistent with honor. Reddin, though tender-hearted and slow to anger, was regarded as being, with the possible exception of Goodine, the strongest man in that section of the country. He had proved his daring by many a bold feat in the rapids and the jams; and his prowess as a fighter had been displayed more than once when a backwoods bully required a thrashing. But now he gave the Aspohegan camp a genuine surprise. First, the blood left his face, his eyes grew small and piercing, and his hands clenched spasmodically as he took a couple of steps after Goodine's retreating figure. Then his face flushed scarlet, and he turned to Laurette with a look of absolutely piteous appeal.

"I _can't_ fight him," he tried to explain, huskily. "You don't understand. I ain't _afeard_ of him, nor of any man. But I vowed to his mother I'd be good to the lad, and--"

"Oh, I reckon I quite understand, Mr. Reddin," interrupted the girl, in a hard, clear voice; and, seeing the furious scorn in her face, Reddin silently turned away.

Laurette's scorn was sharpened by a sense of the bitterest disappointment. She had allowed herself to give her heart to a coward, whom she had fancied a hero. As she turned to her father, big tears forced themselves into her eyes. But the episode had passed quickly; and her distress was not observed, as all attention now turned to Goodine and his perilous undertaking. Only McElvey, who had suspected the girl's sentiments for some time, said in an undertone, "Jim Reddin ain't no coward, and don't you forget it, sis. But it _is_ queer the way he'll just take anything at all from Bill Goodine. It's somethin' we don't none of us understand."

"I reckon he does well to be scared of him," said Laurette, with her head very high in the air.

By this time Goodine had formed his plans, and had got to work. At first he called in the assistance of two other axemen, to cut certain of the piles which had no great strain upon them. This done, the assistants returned to safe quarters; and then Bill warily reviewed the situation. "He knows what he's about," murmured McElvey, with approbation, as Bill attacked another pile, cut it two-thirds through, and left it so. Then he severed completely a huge timber far on the left front of the landing. There remained but two piles to withstand the main push of the logs. One of these was in the centre, the other a little to the right,--on which side the chopper had to make his escape when the logs began to go. This latter pile Goodine now cut half-way through. Feeling himself the hero of the hour, he handled his axe brilliantly, and soon forgot his indignation against Laurette. At length he attacked the centre pile, the key to the whole structure.

Everybody, at this point, held his breath. Loud sounded the measured axe-strokes over the rush of the swollen river. No one moved but Reddin, and no one but Laurette noticed his movement. His skilled eye had detected a danger which none of the rest perceived. He drew close to the brow, and moved a little way down the bank.

"What can he be up to?" wondered Laurette; and then she sniffed angrily because she had thought about him at all.

Goodine dealt a few cautious strokes upon the central pile, paused a moment or two to reconnoitre, and then renewed his attack. Reddin became very fidgety. He watched the logs, and shouted earnestly,--

"Better come out o' that right now and finish on this 'ere nigh pile."

Goodine looked up, eyed first his adviser, then very narrowly the logs, and answered, tersely, "Go to h--ll!"

"That's just like the both of 'em," muttered McElvey, as Goodine turned and resumed his chopping.

At this moment there came a sullen, tearing sound; and the top of the near pile, which had been half cut through, began to lean slowly, slowly. A yell of desperate warning arose. Goodine dropped his axe, turned like lightning, and made a tremendous leap for safety. He gained the edge of the landing-front, slipped on an oozy stone, and fell back with a cry of horror right beneath the toppling mass of logs.

As his cry re-echoed from every throat, Jim Reddin dropped beside him as swiftly and almost miraculously as a sparrow-hawk flashes upon its prey. With a terrific surge he swung Goodine backward and outward into the raging current, but away from the face of the impending avalanche. Then, as the logs all went with a gathering roar, he himself sprang outward in a superb leap, splashed mightily into the stream, disappeared, and came up some yards below. Side by side the two men struck out sturdily for shore, and in a couple of minutes their comrades' eager hands were dragging them up the bank.

"Didn't I _tell_ you Jim Reddin wasn't no coward?" said McElvey, with glistening eyes, to Laurette; and Laurette, having no other way to relieve her excitement and give vent to her revulsion of feelings, sat down on a sled and cried most illogically.

As the two dripping men approached the camp, she looked up to see a reconciliation. Presently Goodine emerged from a little knot of his companions, approached Reddin, and held out his hand.

"I ask yer pardon," said he. "You're a man, an' no mistake. It is my life I owe to you; an' I'm proud to owe it to sech as you!"

But Reddin took no notice of the outstretched hand. The direct and primitive movements of the backwoodsman's mind may seem to the sophisticated intelligence peculiar; but they are easy to comprehend. Jim Reddin quite overlooked the opportunity now offered for a display of exalted sentiment. In a harsh, deliberate voice he said,--

"An' now, Bill Goodine, you've got to stand up to me, an' we'll see which is the better man, you or me. Ever sence you growed up to be a man you've used me just as mean as you knowed how; an' now we'll fight it out right here."

At this went up a chorus of disapproval: and Goodine said, "I'll be d--d if I'm a-goin to strike the man what's jest saved my life!"

"You needn't let _that_ worry you, Bill," replied Reddin. "We're quits there. I reckon you forget as how your mother, God bless her, saved my life, some twenty year back, when you was jest a-toddlin'. An' I vowed to her I'd be good to you the very best I knowed how. An' I've kep' my vow. But now I reckon I'm quit of it; an' if you ain't a-goin' to give me satisfaction now my hands is free, then you ain't no man at all, an' I'll try an' find some way to _make_ you fight!"

"Jim's right!--You've got to fight, Bill!--That's fair!" and many more exclamations of like character, showed the drift of popular sentiment so plainly that Goodine exclaimed, "Well, if you sez so, it's got to be! But I don't want to hurt you, Jim Reddin; an' lick you I kin, every day in the week, an' you know it!"

"You're a liar!" remarked Jim Reddin, in a business-like voice, as the hands formed a ring.

At this some of the hands laughed, and Goodine, glancing around, caught the ghost of a smile on Laurette's face. This was all that was needed. The blood boiled up to his temples, and with an oath under his breath he sprang upon his adversary.

Smoothly and instantaneously as a shadow Reddin eluded the attack. And now his face lost its set look of injury and assumed a smile of cheerful interest. Bill Goodine, in spite of his huge bulk, had the elasticity and dash of a panther; but his quickness was nothing to that of Reddin. Once or twice the latter parried, with seeming ease, his most destructive lunges, but more often he contented himself with moving aside like a flash of light. Presently Goodine cried out,--

"Why don't yer _fight_, like a man, stidder skippin' out o' the road like a flea?"

"'Cause I don't want to hurt you," laughed Reddin.

But that little boastful laugh delayed his movements, and Goodine was upon him. Two or three terrible short-arm blows were exchanged, and then the two men grappled.

"Let 'em be," ordered McElvey. "They'd better wrastle than fight."

For a second or two, nay, for perhaps a whole minute, it looked to the spectators as if Reddin must be crushed helpless in Bill's tremendous embrace. Then it began to dawn on them that Reddin had captured the more deadly hold. Then the dim rumors of Reddin's marvellous strength began to gather credence, as it was seen how his grip seemed to dominate that of his great opponent.

For several minutes the straining antagonists swayed about the ring. Then suddenly Reddin straightened himself, and Bill's hold slipped for an instant. Before he could recover it Reddin had stooped, secured a lower grip, and in a moment hurled his adversary clear over his shoulder. A roar of applause went up from the spectators; and Goodine, after trying to rise, lay still and groaned, "I'm licked, Jim. I've had enough."

The boss soon pronounced that Bill's shoulder was dislocated, and that he'd have to go back to the settlements to be doctored. This being the case, Laurette said to him benevolently, after her horse was harnessed to the pung, "I'm sorry I can't ask you to drive me home, though you _did_ cut out the logs, Bill. But I reckon it'll be the next best thing fur you if _I_ drive _you_ home. An' Jim Reddin'll come along, maybe, to kind of look after the both of us."

To which proposition poor Bill grinned a rather ghastly assent.

An Experience of Jabez Batterpole.

One February afternoon a tremendous snow-storm was raging about the camp on the Upper Keswick. The air was so thick with driving flakes that one could scarcely see five feet ahead of him. It fell dark in the woods by the middle of the afternoon, and the chopping and the hauling came to an end. Lamps were soon lighted in camp, and the lumbermen, in their steaming homespuns, gathered about the roaring stove to sing, smoke, swap yarns and munch gingerbread. The wind screamed round the gables of the camp, rattled at the door and windows, and roared among the tree-tops like the breaking of great waves on an angry coast. From the stables close by came ever and anon the neighing of a nervous horse.

Andy Mitchell had been detailing with tireless minuteness the virtues of his magnificent team of stallions, Tom and Jerry, and had described (as was his wont on all possible occasions) the manner in which they had once saved his life when he was attacked by a tremendous Indian Devil. This Indian Devil (as the Northern Panther is called in Canada) had been literally pounded to pieces under the hoofs of the angry stallions. As Mitchell concluded, there came a voice from the other side of the stove, and a tall Woodstocker spoke up. This was a chopper very popular in the camp, and known by the name of Jabe. His real name, seldom used except on Sundays, was Jabez Ephraim Batterpole.

"_I'll_ tell yez a leetle yarn, boys," said Jabe, "about a chap ez warn't _eg_zackly an Injun Devil, but he was half Injun, an' I'm a-thinkin t' other half must 'a' been a devil. I run agin him las' June, three year gone, an' he come blame near a-doin' fur me. I haint sot eyes on him sence, fur which the same I ain't a-goin' to complain.

"I'd been up to the Falls, an' was a-takin' a raft down the river fur Gibson. Sandy Beale was along o' me, an' I dunno ez ever I enjoyed raftin' more 'n on the first o' thet trip. Doubtless yez all knows what purty raftin' it is in them parts. By gum, it kinder makes a chap lick his lips when he rickolecks it, a-slidin' along there in the sun, not too hot an' not too cold, a-smokin' very comfortable, with one's back braced agin a saft spruce log, an' smellin' the leetle catspaws what comes blowin' off the shores jest ez sweet an' saft ez a gal's currls a-brushin' of a feller's face."

"_What_ gal's currls be you referrin' to Jabe?" interrupted Andy Mitchell.

"Suthin' finer 'n horse-hair, anyways!" was the prompt retort; and a laugh went round the camp at Andy's expense. Then Batterpole continued:--

"When we come to Hardscrabble it was sundown, so we tied up the raft an' teetered up the hill to Old Man Peters's fur the night. Yez all knows Old Man Peters's gal Nellie, ez there ain't no tidier an honester slip on the hull river. Nellie was purty glad to see Sandy an' me, ef I does say it that shouldn't; an' she chinned with us so ez she didn't hev no time to talk to some other chaps ez was puttin' up there that night. An' this, ez I mighty soon ketched onter, didn't seem nohow to suit one of the fellers. He was a likely-lookin' chap enough, but very dark-complected an' sallow-like, with a bad eye, showin' a lot o' the white. An eye like that's a bad thing in a horse, an' I reckon 't ain't a heap better in a man.

"Sez I to Nellie, sez I: 'Nellie, who's yer yaller friend over there by the windy, which looks like he'd like to make sassage-meat o' my head?'

"Nellie's eyes flashed, an' she answered up right sharp: ''T ain't no friend of mine. 'T ain't no sort of a _man_ at all. It's only somethin' the freshet left on the shore, an' the pigs wouldn't eat nohow.'

"You bet I laffed, an' so did Sandy. Ez I heern later on, the chap had ben a-botherin' roun' Nellie all winter, fur all she'd gin him the mitten straight an' sent him about his bizness heaps o' times. I reckon the feller suspicioned we was a-laffin' at him, fur he squinted at me blacker 'n ever.

"Purty soon Nellie got fussin' roun' the room, over nigh to where the yaller chap was a-settin', an' he spoke to her, saft-like, so ez we couldn't hear what he was a-gittin' at. Nellie she jest sniffed kinder scornful; an' then, _what_ would yez suppose that chap done? He reached out suddent, grabbed her leetle wrist so hard 'at she cried out, an' _slapped_ her--yes, slapped her right across the mouth. Nellie jest stood there white, like a image, an' never said one word; an' I seed the red marks o' the blackguard's fingers come out acrost her cheek. Next minit yaller face jumped fur the door,--an' me arter him, you kin bet yer life! He was a-makin' tracks purty lively, but I kin run a leetle myself, an' I was onter him 'gin Sandy an' the rest was outer the door. An' didn't I whale him, now? I twisted his knife outer his hand, an' I laced him till I was clean tuckered out. But the feller was grit, an' never hollered oncet. When I quit he laid still a bit. Then he riz up slowly, started to walk away, turned half round, an' hissed at me jest like a big snake er 'n old sassy gander:--

"'I'll--pay--_you_!'

"'Git!' sez I, an' he purceeded to git, joggin' along towards Woodstock.

"Well, now, how thet Nellie did look at me, proud an' grateful like, when I come back to the house; an' sez I to myself, 'Jabez Ephraim, you've ben an' gone an' put in the big licks there, old feller!' But I never sed nuthin' about it at all to Nellie, nor Nellie didn't to me. Now yer a-smilin', boys, so I may remark jest here, to save yez from interruptin' hereafter, thet I've ben to Old Man Peters's sence, on several occasions; an' nex' summer I hope to see yez all acceptin' the hospitality of Mrs. Jabez E. Batterpole! But _thet_ ain't no part o' this here story!

"Nex' day Sandy an' me hed a fine run down by Woodstock. The old raft rid kinder loose, however, an' we blamed up _an'_ down the fellers ez had pinned her together to the Falls. Howsumever, we tightened her up a bit, an' calc'lated she'd hold through.

"Ez we come in hearin' of the Meductic, Sandy sez to me, sez he: 'Jabe, old 'Ductic is a-hoopin' her up to-day. There's a big head o' water on, an' I'm thinkin' we'll hev to keep our eyes peeled. It'll take some skittish steerin', fur ef the old raft jest teches the rocks she'll go all to slivers.'

"'Right you be!' sez I. An' we braced up.

"Now, ez we soon seen, old 'Ductic _was_ jest a-rearin'. The big raft shivered like a skeered filly ez she ketched the first nip of them cross-currents, an' she commenced ter bulge an' sag like a nonsense. Sandy was on the forrard sweep, but obsarvin' thet, ez the currents was a-settin', he warn't no use forrard, I called him aft to help me. Ez I turned my head a leetle mite to holler to him I ketched a squint o' that yaller chap a-steppin' in behind a tree on the bluff.

"There warn't no time to be a-considerin' of yaller chaps, fur the raft was settin' dead onter the big rocks in the middle o' the rapid, an' Sandy an' me was a-heavin' an' a gruntin' on them sweeps to swing her cl'ar. 'She'll make it,' sez Sandy, 't last--an' that very minit there comes a ringin' shot from the bluff, an' I feels like it was a dash o' scaldin' water 'long the tip o' my shoulder-blade. Yez'll notice, I was leanin' forrard at the time.

"'I'm shot!' sez I; an' then I sees Sandy's sweep swing round, an' Sandy drops on the logs.

"I jumped cl'ar over to where he laid, but straightways he hops up an' yells, 'It's only me arm! Look out for the raft, Jabe!'

"_I_ looked out, boys, you bet! But she was jest sheerin roun' onter them rocks, an' no man's arm could 'a' stopped her. I looked up at the bluff, an' ketched a sight o' the yaller blackguard standin' there ez cool ez ye please, mind yez, a-loadin' up fur a fresh shot.