Chapter IV: The Road to Piper's Glen

Millbrook joins Racket River from the west, and the village of Millbrook lies about the junction of the two streams. The mill from which the brook derives its name was built by an early settler, generations ago, and is now no more than a broken wall of masonry on a bank, and a few slimy, silted timbers beneath the brown water showing where the dam has been. It had been a gristmill, but now no wheat is grown in that country and the settlers buy their flour in barrels from Amos Hammond and haul their buckwheat to Covered Bridge to be ground.

The Hammond household, considered as a whole, proved to be unlike anything Jim Todhunter had ever known or imagined. Mrs. Hammond, colorless and thin, with apprehensive, faded blue eyes, a furtive manner and the voice of a peacock; Melchior Hammond, loutish, high-colored, with eyes as dark as his father's but less closely set against his nose; Alice, who seemed at first to possess no distinguishing feature or characteristic save a wavering blush and a trick of drooping the eyelids; Jane, remarkable for two pigtails, freckles, and a sly smile; and Sam, a small boy with the most objectionable and forward manners imaginable. Of such materials was the domestic circle composed into which Amos Hammond introduced young Jim Todhunter, who had once dreamed of Yale, who had inherited an enthusiasm for adventure and the out-of-doors, but who had been brought up in an environment as different from all this as it was possible to be. And the setting of the Hammond household was as strange and astonishing to Jim Todhunter as were the people themselves.

Hammond took Jim over to the store.

"Mel, you show James 'round," he said to his son. "I got to write a few letters. Show 'im the stock an' learn 'im somethin' about the way we do business in this part of the world. I'll look out for customers."

Melchior led Jim to the back of the dusky store, out of earshot and eyeshot of his father.

"How'd ye get along with the old man?" he whispered.

"Not very well, I'm afraid," replied Jim frankly. "He seemed rather peeved with me several times."

Melchior's somewhat sullen face brightened.

"Maybe ye ain't scart enough of the Lord to suit 'im?" he suggested eagerly.

"I don't know about that, but he was all worked up about my playing black-jack with White at Covered Bridge. He was quite rude about it, and I'm afraid I told him where to get off at."

"Told the old man----!" exclaimed Melchior. "Played cards with Harvey White? Say, you'll do! You ain't the kind I expected. I been lookin' for some sort of a feeble-minded guy. Thought you must be to be fool enough to come way up here for the fun of helpin' run a store. How happened it, anyhow? You must have been took in by someone, you and the man that wrote about you."

"My uncle's friend did what he considered most useful in helping me come to a country that interested me," said Jim coldly. "He is a big business man. Stick to a subject you understand."

"I didn't mean to say anything to fuss ye up," returned Melchior hastily. "I was only sayin'--but I guess him an' you didn't know how things are done in this country, or he wouldn't of suggested you invest any money in any business of my old man's, or he wouldn't of sent you to Millbrook to learn it. But you won't learn it, not the way I size ye up."

"What's wrong with the business?" asked Jim anxiously.

"You keep yer eye skinned an' I reckon ye'll know soon enough; an' I reckon that's as much as I got any right to say," answered Melchior. "But I'll tell ye this much more, Jim. I wish ye'd keep a holt on yer money till you take a good look 'round. There are plenty better buys in this country than a chance to sweat yer everlastin' life out for Amos Hammond."

Jim was surprised and distressed by Melchior's talk. It startled him to hear a son talk so of a father; and yet he believed the son to be wise in his generation. He held no brief for the father. The high, bitterly high, moral tone of the trader's conversation had not fooled the youth from the South for a minute.

That night and the next day and the next night passed without any incident of startling significance in the Hammond household. On the morning of the second day after young Todhunter's arrival, there was a flare-up at breakfast between Hammond and his son.

"I'm goin' out Kingswood way to-day, an' you come along with me, Mel," said Hammond.

"I gotter tend store," returned Melchior, sullenly.

"No, you ain't. James can tend store by himself to-day, an' Alice will lend him a hand if business is rushin', which ain't likely."

"There's a man comin' to see me about tradin' rifles to-day."

"Even if that's so, ye won't make a trade when I ain't around to see you ain't cheated."

"I reckon I can do my own tradin'. I'd sooner get cheated on a gun-trade with a man than be seen with you 'round Kingswood."

"Mel!" cried Mrs. Hammond, white to the lips. "Mel! Have a care what you say, for my sake!"

"Shut yer face!" screamed Hammond at the woman, with a black, jumping glare out of his eyes that looked like murder. She bowed her head. He turned to Melchior, trembling with rage. "Do you come along with me, or d'ye go yer own way from this time forrad?" he asked in a terrible whisper.

Melchior was silent, a picture of shamed and sullen defeat. He sat hunched in his chair, his head hanging, his face red as fire.

Hammond and his son drove off in a light wagon immediately after breakfast, to be gone all day. Jim Todhunter went to the store. The bright morning dragged slowly toward noon, but no customers came to buy, sell, or trade. Jim went to the front door and looked out rebelliously at the village, the river, and the hills. The village could be seen at a glance, for it was nothing more than a cluster of a dozen buildings from which ill-tilled farms receded up the valley and back among the hills. Beyond, on every side, the forests dipped and climbed, and drove wedges of dusky firs and glowing maples down between the clearings.

After the mid-day dinner, which was eaten in nervous silence, even young Sam seemed subdued. Jim took his shotgun from its case and filled a pocket with shells. Thus equipped, he returned to the store. For an hour he idled there, growing more deeply disgusted with himself and Amos Hammond and the store every minute. This lolling among barrels and bags was not what he had built his hopes upon, and Hammond was not what he had expected. At the end of the hour he locked up, took the keys over to the house and hung them on their nail just within the front door and walked away. He walked up the road, across the short bridge that spanned Millbrook, with the gun in the crook of his right arm. He walked fast, cleared the village in a minute, and was soon beyond the farthest of the inlying farms.

The brown river brawled with rocks and obstructing ledges on his right, and the wooded hills shouldered down on his left. The road was never level for more than a hundred yards at a stretch. On the rises it was overhung by big birches and maples and pines; spruces crowded it, and in the lowest hollows ancient cedars and hemlocks made a dusky tunnel for it.

Young Todhunter had gone about two miles when a covey of ruffed-grouse puffed up suddenly from the edge of the road and whirred off into the woods. Jim caught no more than a glimpse of short wings and hurtling bodies, but that was enough. His blood raced and his spirits lifted. Hammond's queer eyes and beastly temper, the crude commercial odors of the store, Mrs. Hammond's frightened eyes, the plush-covered chairs and the misinformation of his uncle's friend were all forgotten in the flash of the wild wings. Jim slipped two shells into the gun and went forward alertly.

An hour later, Jim came to a fork in the road and paused to consider his way. The straight road continued beside the river, the branch went off to the left at an angle of about seventy degrees. Both looked promising. The valley of the river was deeper and narrower now, the hills higher and more irregular, the forests less broken. The slosh and roar of white water came up from the river. The branch road led up a shadowed glen between abrupt hills; and down this glen a small brook sang over mossy rocks, slipped under a short bridge of logs and vanished among dense brush in its dive to the river. Both roads looked wild and inviting, but that branching to the left looked the wilder and the less used of the two.

Jim turned to the left and went up the glen. The pockets of his shooting-jacket bulged with the brace of birds he had killed. He had scored three misses, but he was pleased with himself, the birds, and the gun. Never had he seen harder flying birds than these big grouse that were locally known as partridges, and never had he shot under more difficult, more sporting, conditions. The odds were with the bird every time. A puff and whirr of wings, a glimpse of flight and he was lost in the screening foliage. It was the sort of shooting that appealed to Jim, who preferred the sport to the kill. His enthusiasm carried him on and on, and he lost all track of time. His nerves got a jolt once when several deer jumped the road close in front of him, in the gloom, and he realized it was very late. Indeed, so far had he traveled, and so gone was his sense of direction, that it was past eleven when he reached the Hammond house. All the doors were locked, front, side, and back, He was again conscious of that sudden core of heat in his chest. He was about to swing a leg and drive a toe of a substantial boot against the front door when a thought of Mrs. Hammond's frightened eyes caused him to change his mind.

There was a nip of frost in the air, but no wind. Jim passed the remainder of the night very comfortably half a mile above the village, at the edge of the river, beside a good fire of driftwood. He slept soundly until dawn, then swam for a few minutes in the swift, tingling river and returned to the house. The doors were unlocked. He entered the front hall, left his gun and birds there, brushed down his hair with his hands and walked into the dining-room, where the family sat at breakfast. All the Hammonds were present. All heads were raised and some were turned. All eyes were fixed upon the young man who had been out all night.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hammond. Good morning all," said Jim.

"Where you been?" asked Amos Hammond, darkly.

"Out, as you know. Walked too far," answered Jim. "I found all the doors locked when I got back, so I slept down by the river."

"I lock the doors at ten o'clock sharp. This here's a respectable house, a God-fearin' home! Went away right after dinner an' come home later than that. Who give you leave to quit the store?"

"No one gave me leave to quit the store. I didn't ask any one's permission. I went away soon after dinner, as you say, and returned soon after eleven. I went shooting. What have you to say about it?"

"Well, that ain't the worst, maybe. It was all wrong, but I reckon it wasn't the worst. Where'd ye go to? That's what I wanter know."

"Is that all? Now listen to me, Hammond! I don't like you, your looks, your talk, or your manners! You're a four-flusher, and I suspect you of being a crook. You have a bad eye, and I rather suspect that your reputation is rotten. You and your old shop and queer business can go to the devil, for all I care! I am quitting right now."

"Damn you!" cried Hammond in a cracked voice, coming swiftly out of his chair with the bread-knife in his hand and murder in his eyes.

"That's no language for a man of your exalted moral qualities," returned Jim. "And remember the ladies! Put that knife down, or something unpleasant will happen to you."

Hammond slumped down on to the chair and dropped the knife, and some of the madness faded out of his black eyes.

"I'll have the law on ye for this!" he cried.

"What law?" asked the other, pleasantly.

"Get out!"

"I'll breakfast first," said Jim, seating himself at the table.

Hammond glared for a minute, speechless at last, then bolted from the room. Jim ate with a good appetite.

"Jim, you got the nerve!" exclaimed Melchior. "If I had half yer nerve I'd been out of this a year ago. But he'll do you, fer all yer nerve."

Jim smiled noncommittally and buttered a hot biscuit.

"Please don't go away," whispered Mrs. Hammond. "He-he seems to be scared of you. I feel kinder safer--an' the children, too--with you in the house, Mr. Todhunter."

Jim glanced at her and then across the table at Alice. The girl raised her drooping lids slowly and gave him a slow, wide-eyed, glowing, point-blank look.

"That's right," she said.

"But he has told me to go," returned Jim. "And I'll be delighted to."

"He didn't mean it," said Melchior. "He'll be beggin' you to stop forever as soon as he gets a holt on his temper. Let you go--a rich young feller like you!--before he's skinned you. Not much!"

"But I'm not rich. I'm poor."

"You poor! With that gun an' that rifle an' all those pairs of boots an' five fancy fishin'-rods! Tell another, Jim!"

"Please stop a spell longer," begged Mrs. Hammond. "You got a way with him I ain't seen in any one else, man or woman. It's like he was scared of you, or of yer folks in the States, or something. It's a great comfort to me, whatever's the reason of it."

So Jim promised to remain longer, if possible--but entirely on his own terms.

Jim and Melchior left the house and went over to the store. Amos was already there, talking to a customer. The young men retired to the back of the premises.

"Look at 'im now," whispered Melchior. "Would ye think he'd been mad enough to bite a chunk outer his own ear only fifteen minutes ago? Not on yer life! He's a wonder! Wait till Sunday and you hear 'im at meetin'. Say, it would make me laugh if I wasn't his own son. Wish I could handle 'im like you do. I noticed you didn't tell 'im where ye'd been last night, after all."

"No, I didn't, though he's welcome to the information," replied Jim. "I was shooting along a road up-river that turns off to the left--"

"Piper's Glen," interrupted Melchior. "Was you up to Peter Ducat's?"

"I wasn't anywhere. I had a time finding my way back. I met Mr. Merton on the road and went to his house. I dined there--that's all. But I like the looks of Piper's Glen."

"Sure you do--but you look out for Mark Ducat!"

"Who's he? And why should I look out for him?"

"Who's Mark Ducat? He's one of them Ducats of Piper's Glen who don't fear nothin' livin' or dead. He's old Peter Ducat's son an' the smartest man with his hands an' feet on Racket River; an' he's the lad who don't let no young feller he can't lick roam around his part of the country."

"I'd like to meet him," said Jim.

"You better not," returned Melchior earnestly.