Chapter VIII: The Queer Old Woman

Todhunter made the home trip safely, but not a day too soon. His work on the portages was doubled. Singlehanded, he had to go and come twice every time with the moose-meat and make a third round with the canoe. Strong as he was, he found the canoe a staggerer, for he had not yet acquired the trick of balancing it. He spent two days and several hours of a third in negotiating the reaches of rocks and white waters. But, once clear of the obstructed areas, he traveled with both speed and ease, running with the lively current and dipping the paddle occasionally with a twist or sweep. Rusty Trap Falls forced him ashore again to a short bout of carrying, but from that onward the way was swift and open. Following Mark's instructions, he descended Racket River to a point within twenty yards of the fork of the roads, there cached the canoe among the bushes and the meat in a tree and completed his homeward journey on foot.

It was night and bitterly cold, with a skin of ice along the edges of the river and over every pool of still water, and the white stars fairly snapping. Jim reached the Ducat house at nine o'clock, found the family at home, and Melchior Hammond and another young man present. At sight of Jim, Flora jumped to her feet and upset the album, laughed and sat down again; Peter and Sam went out to hitch up and go after the canoe and moose-meat; and Mrs. Ducat stopped her rocking and darning and said, "Flora, you get a good hot supper for Jim with cream to his preserves."

Melchior shook hands with Jim, inquired politely after Mark's health and whereabouts and then remarked that he guessed he might as well go along with the men as far as the fork of the roads.

"And you might as well take Homer along with you," said Flora. "It's late for him to be out and he's got a long way to go."

But Mr. Steeves didn't go. Melchior didn't urge him. He recovered the album from the floor without a word and glared at it in a lowering silence. Flora laughed, took Jim by the hand, and led him into the kitchen. Melchior followed them, donned his overcoat and hat and gloves, wished everybody a cheery good night and departed. Jim, standing awkwardly with his left hand still clasped by the girl's right hand, felt that there had been a peculiar significance in the smile which Melchior had bestowed upon him at the moment of closing the kitchen door. He looked at the girl, whose extraordinary eyes were already upon him.

"I believe you are trying to make Mel jealous," he said, smiling uneasily.

"Leggo the young man's hand an' git 'im his supper," said old Archie McKim.

Flora laughed and released Jim's hand. Jim blushed and seated himself at the table.

Flora fried bacon and potatoes and boiled coffee for Jim's belated supper. She spread the table with a white cloth for him and set out cream and strawberry jam and Washington pie. She placed the hot dishes before him, poured his coffee and then sat down opposite him with her elbows on the table and her vivid face and remarkable eyes shaded a little between her hands. Jim ate with a good appetite.

In answer to a few questions, Jim told the girl about the Kettle Pond country and the trips in and out and the shooting of the moose.

Homer Steeves appeared suddenly at Flora's elbow and scowled across the table at Jim.

"I thought you had started for home long ago," said the girl.

"I ain't gone yet," he replied sullenly.

"Well, that's your name, and you'd better live up to it--Homer."

"I know my name, an' I know other folks' names--but what I want to know is if I ain't got as much right 'round here as Mel Hammond."

"Why, of course you have: he hasn't any."

"Ain't he courtin' you, Flora?"

"Nobody's courting me."

"He comes here often enough, anyhow! What does he come for?"

Jim looked up, frowning slightly.

"Steeves, Flora is Mark Ducat's sister, and Mark is my friend and partner," he said. "You wouldn't bawl your ill-mannered questions at her if Mark were here, so don't do it now."

"Maybe I would an' maybe I wouldn't, but you ain't Mark Ducat," retorted the other. "Mark could eat three like you an' I could eat two! If you don't believe me, come along outside!"

"But Mark couldn't," said Flora.

Jim smiled at her and shook his head very slightly. Then he stood up and said quietly, "If I do, Steeves, I'll have to carry you in again and put you to bed, and that will be an inconvenience to both of us and to Mrs. Ducat."

"Talk don't scare me," sneered Homer.

"He can have Mark's bed," said Flora reflectively.

Mr. Steeves eyed her questioningly, uncertainly.

"And there's still some of the same arnica we used on the last man who picked a fight with you, Jim," she added.

"Who was he?" asked Homer.

"A better man than you," replied the girl.

The two young men eyed one another searchingly for several seconds. Then Steeves turned away, took up his coat and cap from the big settle beside the chimney, and went out, Jim sat down and took up his spoon. Flora refilled his cup.

"Perhaps I should not have interfered," said Jim, glancing across the table. "Perhaps I had no right to, after all?"

"You said you had a right to, as Mark's friend and partner," she answered.

The Racket River country froze hard and deep that night and all the next day and yet harder and deeper on the following night. The river froze clear across, except in places of broken white water; and a third night of intense freezing sealed even the rapids, leaving only a steaming airhole here and there. Caught naked, without their white blankets of snow, the clearings and rocky shores and hardwood swales looked dead, as if the swift frost had struck home to their summer hearts. Then came the merciful snow, after a red dawn. The snow continued to fall throughout a day and a night.

Uncle Sam Ducat had engaged himself and a team of horses and a complete outfit of rigging for twitching and hauling to Henry Lunn for the winter. Mr. Lunn was operating on Ripping Brook, ten miles to the south and fifteen miles to the east of Piper's Glen; so Sam made an early start, muffled in a coon-skin coat, to a frosty jangle of bells, with dry snow puffing up from his horses' legs and the frozen vapor of their nostrils and the smoke of his pipe ascending in the nippy sunshine.

Half an hour after Uncle Sam's departure, Jim Todhunter hitched the strawberry colt Dexter to the red pung and set out for Millbrook to purchase steel traps and provisions. He followed Sam Ducat's track, but the going was heavy. He had no more than reached the fork and straightened out on the river road than he was forced to draw rein. Someone, a human being of some sort, stood fair in the center of the snowy track, motionless.

"Anything wrong?" asked Jim, standing up and looking over the tall colt at the obstruction.

He saw then that it was an old woman wearing a brown hood and bulky with much sombre-hued clothing. Her hands were in red mittens; in one she held a little basket and a long staff and in the other something lengthy wrapped in a shawl. She looked at Jim with bright eyes out of a shriveled face. She did not answer his question.

"May I have the pleasure of driving you to the village?" he asked.

"No, I thank 'e," she replied. "Ye got beautiful manners, but I ain't a-goin' that way."

She continued to stand motionless in the middle of the road, however, knee-deep in the dry snow between the hoof-tracks of Sam Ducat's team.

"Isn't there anything I can do for you?" he asked.

"Be ye carryin' a gun?--an' maybe some cartridges, Mister?"

"Yes. I thought I might get a shot at something."

The old woman advanced past the colt and stood beside the pung. She placed her basket on the seat of the pung, leaned her staff against it and removed the shawl from the longish parcel, thereby disclosing a single-barrel shotgun.

"I shot away all my ca'tridges yesterday," she said. "It ain't often I hit a rabbit, but I be thankful enough when I do."

Jim looked at the gun more closely and saw that it was a breechloading number twelve. He dipped into a pocket and brought up three cartridges and gave them to the old woman. She accepted them eagerly.

"Now are you sure you are quite safe here on the road?" he asked.

"Aye, Mister, safe enough, thank 'e," she answered, slipping one shell into her gun and the others into a pocket. She wrapped the shawl around the gun, took up the basket and staff and stepped back a pace. Jim shook the reins and the colt got into motion.

"Good hunting, Granny," called Jim over his shoulder.

"Thank 'e kindly, sir, an' God bless ye!" called the old woman after him.

Jim reached the village without further interruption and found Melchior Hammond alone in the store. He asked after the family and was told that all were well as could be expected under the circumstances.

"What circumstances?" he asked.

"I wish ye'd jailed the old man when ye had 'im cold!" exclaimed Melchior. "He ain't fit to live with--no, nor half-way fit! Ever since you caught 'im cold, right in front of Deputy-Sheriff Hart, tryin' to rob ye, he's been havin' prayers every mornin' an' noon an' talkin' murder every night."

"Where is he now?"

"Up-river somewheres. He went yesterday to put a crimp into some poor folks up that way who borrowed money from him at four hundred per cent. interest. He's havin' the time of his life, I bet!"

"Four hundred per cent.!"

"Sure--but it don't show on paper. That's how he did business with old Widow Wilson. Bein' his son is bitter diet, Jim! If I was worth a can of sardines, I'd of cleared out long ago!"

Jim made his purchases, refused an invitation to dinner, and set out on the homeward journey. He passed several teams bound for the village; and within a hundred yards of the fork of the roads he came face to face with Amos Hammond. He pulled out to the left to let the store-keeper go by, but, instead of taking advantage of the space, Amos drew rein. So Jim brought the strawberry colt to a standstill. Amos was in a sleigh, despite the fact that he must have left home on wheels yesterday, when there wasn't any snow; and Jim wondered at that. The explanation was simple. Hammond had traded the unseasonable wagon for the sleigh and robes and new harness with an unwilling countryman whose note was in his possession.

"D'ye ever see Melchior up this way?" asked Hammond.

"Pull out," said Jim. "I want my share of the road. I'm in a hurry."

"I asked ye a question."

"Which I have no intention of answering. Pull out!"

"Young man, answer my question. Have ye ever seen my son in that house of iniquity where you now make your ungodly home?"

"House of iniquity? What do you mean by that?"

"The Ducat house, that sink of cardplayin' an' blasphemy."

Jim was out of the red pung like a flash and at the head of Hammond's mare in a second. He pulled the mare to one side, not ungently, then jumped along to the side of the sleigh, struck Hammond such a terrific chop across the right wrist with his mittened fist that the reins were released, and yanked him out and down.

"You mad, dirty, lying cur!" he cried.

He shook Amos Hammond until hairs flew from his dog-skin coat. He slapped his face. He cuffed his ears. He rolled him in the snow. He bumped him and thumped him, then grabbed him up in both arms and flung him back in the sleigh.

"Get along home, you unspeakable cur, and thank God that I don't lose my temper!" he cried.

He jumped into the pung and put Dexter along the Glen road at a thumping trot. He was no more than around the first curve and over the first rise than he heard the report of a gun behind him. He looked back without drawing rein, but saw nothing. He drove on, wondering if Hammond had fired a wild shot after him, or if the queer old woman was still hunting rabbits in the vicinity of the fork.

Jim did not tell the Ducats of his encounter with Amos Hammond on his way home, but he spoke of his meeting with the old woman on his way to the village. Mrs. Ducat said that the queer old person with the basket and the staff must have been Widow Wilson from Kingswood Settlement, and the others agreed with her. Peter Ducat, who had been suffering increasing twinges of rheumatism all morning and half the night before, held forth at length and bitterly on the subjects of Widow Wilson's sad case and Amos Hammond's hypocrisy and cruelty.

After dinner, Jim decided to master the art of snowshoeing immediately, so as to be ready for the long cross-country journey to the Kettle Pond country before Mark's arrival. There were plenty of snowshoes in the house. Flora selected a pair for him and showed him how to arrange and tie the thongs. He fastened them to his moccasined feet there and, after a few preliminary shuffles and stumbles around the kitchen, to the peril and amusement of the grandfathers and the disgust of the suffering Peter, he flopped and staggered out into the snow. Flora could not accompany him, for it was baking day. He got clear of the farmstead in the course of half an hour, with the dogs leaping around him with yelps of encouragement and derision. After that he began to see how to avoid stepping on himself; and within the hour he was footing the white aisles of the forest, and surmounting white barriers where brush fences lay buried with astonishing ease and security. He kept at it until the sun was low.