Chapter X

John went no more to the brooks that summer; but what he had told Ruth led her that way more than once. Westley, the game warden, stopped at the house one day, and found her alone, and asked her whether John was fishing. She told him of John’s one catch.

“Swamp Brook is full of trout,” she said; “penned in the holes and the shallows.”

Westley nodded. “It’s so everywhere,” he agreed. “I’m dipping and shifting them. Tell John to do that down in the swamp if he can find the time.”

She asked how it should be done; and when Westley had gone she decided that she would herself go down and try the trick of it if the drought still held.

The drought held. No rain came; and once in early August she spent an afternoon along the stream, and transported scores of tiny trout to feeding grounds more deep and more secure. Again a week later; and still again as the month drew to a close.

It was on this third occasion that the girl came upon Darrin. Working along the brook with dip net and pail she had marked the footprints of a man in the soft earth here and there. The swamp was still, no air stirring, the humming of insects ringing in her ears. A certain gloom dwelt in these woods even on the brightest day; and the black mold bore countless traces and tracks of the animals and the small vermin which haunted the place at night. Ruth might have been forgiven for feeling a certain disquietude at sight of those man tracks in the wild; but she had no such thought. She had never learned to be afraid.

She came upon Darrin at last with an abruptness that startled her. The soft earth muffled her footsteps; she was within two or three rods of him before she saw him, and even then the man had not heard her. He was kneeling by the brook and at first she thought he had been drinking the water. Then she saw that he was studying something there upon the ground; and a moment later he got up and turned and saw her standing there. At first he was so surprised that he could not speak, and they were still, looking at each other. The girl, bareheaded, in simple waist and heavy short skirt, with rubber boots upon her feet so that she might wade at will, was worth looking at. The man himself was no mean figure--khaki flannel shirt, knickerbockers, leather putties over stout waterproof shoes. She carried pail in one hand, dip net in the other; and she saw that he had a revolver slung in one hip, a camera looped over his shoulder.

He said at last, “Hello, there!” And Ruth nodded in the sober fashion that was become her habit. The man asked, “What have you got? Milk, in that pail? Is this your pasture land?”

“Trout,” she told him; and he came to see the fish in a close-packed mass; and he exclaimed at them, and watched while she put them into the stream below where he had been kneeling. He asked her why she did it, and she told him. At the same time she looked toward where he had knelt, wondering what he saw there. She could see only some deep-imprinted moose tracks; and moose tracks were so common in the swamp that it was not worth while to kneel to study them.

He saw her glance, and said, “I was looking at those tracks. Moose, aren’t they?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“They told me there were moose in here,” he said. “I doubted it, though. So far south as this.”

“There are many moose in the swamp,” she declared.

He asked, “Have you ever seen them?”

She smiled a little. “Once in a while. A cow moose wintered in our barn two years ago.”

He slapped his thigh lightly. “Then this is the place I’m looking for,” he exclaimed.

She asked softly, “Why?” She was interested in the man. He was not like John, not like anyone whom she had known; except, perhaps, Dane Semler. A man of the city, obviously. “Why?” she asked.

“I want to get some pictures of them,” he explained. “Photographs. In their natural surroundings. Wild. In the swamp.”

“John took a snapshot of the cow that wintered with us,” she said. “I guess he’d give you one.”

The man laughed. “I’d like it,” he told her; “but I want to get a great many.” He hesitated. “Where is your farm?”

She pointed out of the swamp toward the hill.

“Near?” he asked.

And she said, “It’s right over the swamp.”

“Listen,” he said eagerly. “My name’s Darrin--Fred Darrin. What’s yours?”

“Ruth MacLure.”

“Why you’re Evered’s sister-in-law, aren’t you?”

She nodded, her cheeks paling a little. “Yes.”

“I was coming to see Evered to-night,” he said. “I want to board at the farm while I work on these pictures--that is, I want permission to camp down here by the swamp somewhere, and get milk and eggs and things from you. Do you think I can?”

“Camp?” she echoed.

“Yes.”

She looked round curiously, as though she expected to see his equipment there. “Haven’t you a tent?”

He laughed. “No. I’ve a tarp for a shelter; and I can cut some hemlock boughs and build a shack; if you’ll let me trespass.”

“You could sleep in the barn I guess,” she said. “Or maybe in the house.”

He shook his head. “No roof for mine. This is my vacation, you understand. I can sleep under a roof at home.”

“You’ll be getting wet all the time.”

“I’ll dry when the sun comes out.”

She asked, “Who’s going to cook for you?”

“I’m a famous cook,” he told her.

She had the rooted distrust of the open air which is common among the people of the farms. She could not see why a man should sleep on the ground when he might have hay or a bed; and she could not believe in the practicality of cooking over an open fire; especially when there was a stove at hand.

“You’ll have to see Mr. Evered,” she said uneasily.

So it happened that they two went back through the swamp together and up the hill; and they came side by side to meet Evered and John in the barnyard by the kitchen door.

They had their colloquy there in the open barnyard, while the slanting rays of the sun drew lengthening shadows from where they stood. Darrin spoke to Evered. John went into the house after a moment and built a fire for Ruth; and then he came out again while the girl went about the business of supper.

Darrin was a good talker; and Evered’s silence made him seem like a good listener. When John came out he was able to tell Darrin something of the moose in the swamp, their haunts and their habits. Darrin listened as eagerly as he had talked. He told them at last what he had come to do; he explained how by trigger strings and hidden cameras and flash-light powders he hoped to capture the images of the shy giants of the forest. John listened with shining eyes. The project was of a sort to appeal to him. As for Evered, he had little to say, smoked stolidly, stared out across his fields. The sunlight on his hair accentuated the white streaks in it, and John looking toward him once thought he had never seen his father look so old.

When Darrin put forward his request for permission to camp in the woodlot near the swamp, Evered swung his heavy head round and gave the other man his whole attention for a space. It was John’s turn for silence now. He expected Evered to refuse, perhaps abusively. Evered had never liked trespassers. He said they scared his cows, trampled his hay, stole his garden stuff or his apples. But Evered listened now with a certain patience, watching Darrin; and Darrin with a nimble tongue talked on and made explanations and promises.

In the end Evered asked, “Where is it your mind to camp?”

“I’ve picked no place. I’ll find a likely spot.”

“You could sleep in the barn,” said Evered, as Ruth had said before him; and Darrin laughed.

“As a matter of fact,” he explained, “half the sport of this for me is in sleeping out of doors on the ground. I’m on vacation, you know. Other men like hunting, and so do I; but mine is a somewhat different kind, that’s all. I won’t bother you; you’ll not see much of me, for I’ll be about the swamp at all hours of the night, and I’ll sleep a good deal in the day. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Of course, I don’t want to urge you against your will.”

Evered’s lips flickered into what might have passed for a smile. “I’m not often moved against my will,” he said. “But I’ve no objection to your sleeping in my ground. If you keep out of the uncut hay.”

“I will.”

“And put out your fires. I don’t want to be burned up.”

Darrin laughed. “I’m not a novice at this, Mr. Evered,” he said. “You’ll not have to kick me off.”

Evered nodded; and John said, “You want to keep out of the bull’s pasture too. You’ll know it. There’s a high wire fence round.”

Darrin said soberly, “I’ve heard of the red bull.”

“He killed my wife,” said Evered; and there was something so stark in the bald statement that it shocked and silenced them. Evered himself flushed when he had spoken, as though his utterance had been unconsidered, had burst from his overfull heart.

“I know,” Darrin told him.

John said after a moment’s silence, “If there’s any way I can help--I know the swamp. As much as any man. And I’ve seen the moose in there.”

There was a certain eagerness in his voice; and Darrin said readily, “Of course. I’d like it.”

He said he would tramp to town and come with his gear next morning. John offered to drive him over, but he shook his head. As he started away Ruth came to the kitchen door, and he looked toward her, and she said hesitantly, “Don’t you want to stay to supper?”

He thanked her, shook his head. Evered and John in the barnyard watched him go; and Evered saw Ruth leave the kitchen door and move to a window from which she could see him go up the lane toward the main road.

Evered asked John: “What do you make of him?”

“I like him,” said John. “I’m--glad you let him stay.”

“Know why I let him stay?”

“Why--no.”

“See him and Ruth together? See her watching him?”

“I didn’t notice.”

Evered’s lips twitched in the nearest approach to mirth he ever permitted himself. “Ought to have better eyes, John; if you’re minded to keep hold o’ Ruth. She likes him. If I’d swore at him, shipped him off, she’d have been all on his side from the start.”

John, a little troubled, shook his head. “Ruth’s all right,” he said. “Give her time.”

Evered said, that wistful note in his voice plain for any man to hear, “I don’t want Ruth leaving us. So I let Darrin stay.”