For a moment Gordon hesitated, then he threw his gun smartly over his shoulder and motioned his dogs to heel. But his step had lost something of its elasticity, and he climbed the hill slowly, following with troubled eyes his own shadow, which led him on over the dead grass.
The edge of the woods was warm in the sunshine. Faint perfumes of the vanished summer lingered in fern and bramble.
He did not enter the woods. There was a fallen log, rotten and fragrant, half buried in the briers, and on it he found a seat, calling his dogs to his feet.
In the silence of morning he could hear the pine-borers at work in the log he was sitting on, scra-ape! scra-ape! scr-r-rape! deep in the soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except the white-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticed no birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drab butcher-bird staring at him from a dead pine.
At first that inert oppression which always came when the memory of his father returned to him touched his fine lips with a gravity too deep for his years. No man had ever said that his father had dealt unfairly with men, yet for years now his son had accumulated impressions, vague and indefinable at first, but clearer as he grew older, and the impressions had already left the faintest tracery of a line between his eyebrows. He had known his father as a hard man; he knew that the world had found him hard and shrewd. And now, as he grew older and understood what the tribute of honest men was worth, even to the dead, he waited to hear one word. But he never heard it. He had heard other things, however, but always veiled, like the menacing outbreak of old man Jocelyn — nothing tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became morbid, believing he could read reproach in men’s eyes, detect sarcasm in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing now, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where his father and his grandfather’s father had been born. Yet even here among the Sagamore Hills he had found it — that haunting hint that honor had been moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men.
He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. The bird’s cruel eyes regarded him steadily.
“You wholesale murderer,” thought Gordon, “I’ll just give you a charge of shot.”
But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burst into an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush’s melody, and, spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the sunshine.
“That’s a new trick to me,” said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear such music from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sake of its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush.
The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; he smelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentians wistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could ever unseal.
In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layers of jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenly west, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behind him his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gun under his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, driving blindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood’s depths.
Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning.
When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motioned to heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunks glimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a few dainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrel scolded incessantly.
As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier, something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig, freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark.
After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into the thicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig, freshly broken, hanging by its film of bark.
An ugly flush stained his forehead; he set his lips together and moved on noiselessly. Other twigs hung dangling every few yards, yet it took an expert’s eye to detect them among the tangles and clustering branches. But he knew what he was to find at the end of the blind trail, and in a few minutes he found it. It was a deadfall, set, and baited with winter grapes.
Noiselessly he destroyed it, setting the heavy stone on the moss without a sound; then he searched the thicket for the next “line,” and in a few moments he discovered another broken twig leading to the left.
He had been on the trail for some time, losing it again and again before the suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who had either seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astray with false “lines” that would end in nothing. He listened; there was no sound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begun growling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on and followed. A moment later both dogs barked sharply.
As he stepped out of the thicket on one side, a young girl, standing in the more open and heavier timber, raised her head and looked at him with grave, brown eyes. Her hands were on the silky heads of his dogs; from her belt hung a great, fluffy cock-partridge, outspread wings still limber.
He knew her in an instant; he had seen her often in church. Perplexed and astonished, he took off his cap in silence, finding absolutely nothing to say, although the dead partridge at her belt furnished a text on which he had often displayed biting eloquence.
After a moment he smiled, partly at the situation, partly to put her at her ease.
“If I had known it was you,” he said, “I should not have followed those very inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines.”
“Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen,” she answered, defiantly. “You are as free as I am in these woods — but not more free.”
The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt a strange pathos — the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as the thudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot.
“It is quite true,” he said, gently; “you are perfectly free in these woods.”
“But not by your leave!” she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks.
“It is not necessary to ask it,” he replied.
“I mean,” she said, desperately, “that neither I nor my father recognize your right to these woods.”
“Your father?” he repeated, puzzled.
“Don’t you know who I am?” she said, in surprise.
“I know you sing very beautifully in church,” he said, smiling.
“My name,” she said, quietly, “is the name of your father’s old neighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn.”
His face was troubled, even in his surprise. The line between his eyes deepened. “I did not know you were Mr. Jocelyn’s daughter,” he said, at last.
Neither spoke for a moment. Presently Gordon raised his head and found her brown eyes on him.
“I wish,” he said, wistfully, “that you would let me walk with you a little way. I want to ask your advice. Will you?”
“I am going home,” she said, coldly.
She turned away, moving two or three paces, then the next step was less hasty, and the next was slower still. As he joined her she looked up a trifle startled, then bent her head.
“Miss Jocelyn,” he said, abruptly, “have you ever heard your father say that my father treated him harshly?”
She stopped short beside him. “Have you?” he repeated, firmly.
“I think,” she said, scornfully, “your father can answer that question.”
“If he could,” said Gordon, “I would ask him. He is dead.”
She was listening to him with face half averted, but now she turned around and met his eyes again.
“Will you answer my question?” he said.
“No,” she replied, slowly; “not if he is dead.”
Young
Gordon’s face was painfully white. “I beg you, Miss Jocelyn, to answer me,” he said. “I beg you will answer for your father’s sake and — in justice to my father’s son.”
“What do you care—” she began, but stopped short. To her surprise her own bitterness seemed forced. She saw he did care. Suddenly she pitied him.
“There was a promise broken,” she said, gravely.
“What else?”
“A man’s spirit.”
They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breaking the sapless twigs as she passed, with delicate, idle fingers.
Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: “He had no quarrel with the dead, nor has the dead with him — now. What my father would now wish I can do — I can do even yet—”
Under her deep lashes her brown eyes rested on him pitifully. But at his slightest motion she turned away, walking in silence.
As they reached the edge of the woods in a burst of sunshine he looked up at her and she stopped. Below them the smoke curled from her weather-racked house. “Will you have me for a guest?” he said, suddenly.
“A guest!” she faltered.
A new mood was on him; he was smiling now.
“Yes, a guest. It is Thanksgiving Day, Miss Jocelyn. Will you and your father forget old quarrels — and perhaps forgive?”
Again she rested her slender hands on his dogs’ heads, looking out over the valley.
“Will you forgive?” he asked, in a low voice.
“I? Yes,” she said, startled.
“Then,” he went on, smiling, “you must invite me to be your guest. When I look at that partridge, Miss Jocelyn, hunger makes me shameless. I want a second-joint — indeed I do!”
Her sensitive lips trembled into a smile, but she could not meet his eyes yet.
“Our Thanksgiving dinner would horrify you,” she said— “a pickerel taken on a gang-hook, woodcock shot in Brier Brook swales, and this partridge—” She hesitated.
“And that partridge a victim to his own rash passion for winter grapes,” added Gordon, laughing.
The laugh did them both good.
“I could make a chestnut stuffing,” she said, timidly.
“Splendid! Splendid!” murmured Gordon.
“Are you really coming?” she asked.
Something in her eyes held his, then he answered with heightened color, “I am very serious, Miss Jocelyn. May I come?”
She said “Yes” under her breath. There was color enough in her lips and cheeks now.
So young Gordon went away across the hills, whistling his dogs cheerily on, the sunlight glimmering on the slanting barrels of his gun. They looked back twice. The third time she looked he was gone beyond the brown hill’s crest.
She came to her own door all of a tremble. Old man Jocelyn sat sunning his gray head on the south porch, lean hands folded over his stomach, pipe between his teeth.
“Daddy,” she said, “look!” and she held up the partridge. Jocelyn smiled.
All the afternoon she was busy in the kitchen, and when the early evening shadows lengthened across the purple hills she stood at the door, brown eyes searching the northern slope.
The early dusk fell over the alder swales; the brawling brook was sheeted with vapor.
Up-stairs she heard her father dressing in his ancient suit of rusty black and pulling on his obsolete boots. She stole into the dining-room and looked at the table. Three covers were laid.
She had dressed in her graduating gown — a fluffy bit of white and ribbon. Her dark soft hair was gathered simply; a bunch of blue gentian glimmered at her belt.
Suddenly, as she lingered over the table, she heard Gordon’s step on the porch, and the next instant her father came down the dark stairway into the dining-room just as Gordon entered.
The old man halted, eyes ablaze. But Gordon came forward gravely, saying, “I asked Miss Jocelyn if I might come as your guest to-night. It would have been a lonely Thanksgiving at home.”
Jocelyn turned to his daughter in silence. Then the three places laid at table and the three chairs caught his eye.
“I hope,” said Gordon, “that old quarrels will be forgotten and old scores wiped out. I am sorry I spoke as I did this morning. You are quite right, Mr. Jocelyn; the land is yours and has always been yours. It is from you I must ask permission to shoot.”
Jocelyn eyed him grimly.
“Don’t make it hard for me,” said Gordon. “The land is yours, and that also which you lost with it will be returned. It is what my father wishes — now.”
He held out his hand. Jocelyn took it as though stunned.
Gordon, still holding his hard hand, drew him outside to the porch.
“How much did you have in the Sagamore & Wyandotte Railway before our system bought it?” asked Gordon.
“All I had — seven thousand dollars—” Suddenly the old man’s hand began to tremble. He raised his gray head and looked up at the stars.
“That is yours still,” said Gordon, gently, “with interest. My father wishes it.”
Old man Jocelyn looked up at the stars. They seemed to swim in silver streaks through the darkness.
“Come,” said Gordon, gayly, “we are brother sportsmen now — and that sky means a black frost and a flight. Will you invite me to shoot over Brier Brook swales to-morrow?”
As he spoke, high in the starlight a dark shadow passed, coming in from the north, beating the still air with rapid wings. It was a woodcock, the first flight bird from the north.
“Come to dinner, young man,” said Jocelyn, excited; “the flight is on and we must be on Brier Brook by daybreak.”
In the blaze of a kerosene-lamp they sat down at table. Gordon looked across at Jocelyn’s daughter; her eyes met his, and they smiled.
Then old man Jocelyn bent his head on his hard clasped hands.
“Lord,” he said, tremulously, “it being Thanksgiving, I gave Thee extry thanks this A.M. It being now P.M., I do hereby double them extry thanks” — his mind wandered a little— “with interest to date. Amen.”
Contents
THE PATH-MASTER
“The bankrupt can always pay one debt, but neither God nor man can credit him with the payment.”
I
WHEN Dingman, the fate game-warden, came panting over the mountain from Spencers to confer with young Byram, road-master at Foxville, he found that youthful official reshingling his barn.
The two men observed each other warily for a moment; Byram jingled the shingle-nails in his apron-pocket; Dingman, the game-warden, took a brief but intelligent survey of the premises, which included an unpainted house, a hen-yard, and the newly shingled barn.
“Hello, Byram,” he said, at length.
“Is that you?” replied Byram, coldly.
He was a law-abiding young man; he had not shot a bird out of season for three years.
After a pause the game-warden said, “Ain’t you a-comin’ down off’n that ridge-pole?”
“I’m a-comin’ down when I quit shinglin’,” replied the road-master, cautiously. Dingman waited; Byram fitted a shingle, fished out a nail from his apron-pocket, and drove it with unnecessary noise.
The encircling forest re-echoed the hammer strokes; a squirrel scolded from the orchard.
“Didn’t I hear a gun go off in them alder bushes this morning?” inquired the game-warden. Byram made no reply, but hammered violently. “Anybody got a ice-house ‘round here?” persisted the game-warden.
Byram turned a non-committal eye on the warden.
“I quit that business three years ago, an’ you know it,” he said. “I ‘ain’t got no ice-house for to hide no pa’tridges, an’ I ain’t a-shootin’ out o’ season for the Saratogy market!”
The warden regarded him with composure.
“Who said you was shootin’ pa’tridges?” he asked. But Byram broke in:
“What would I go shootin’ them birds for when I ‘ain’t got no ice-box?”
; “Who says you got a ice-box?” replied the warden, calmly. “There is other folks in Foxville, ain’t there?”
Byram grew angrier. “If you want to stop this shootin’ out o’ season,” he said, “you go to them rich hotel men in Saratogy. Are you afraid jest because they’ve got a pull with them politicians that makes the game-laws and then pays the hotel men to serve ’em game out o’ season an’ reason? Them’s the men to ketch; them’s the men that set the poor men to vi’latin’ the law. Folks here ‘ain’t got no money to buy powder ‘n’ shot for to shoot nothin’. But when them Saratogy men offers two dollars a bird for pa’tridge out o’ season, what d’ye think is bound to happen?”
“Shootin’,” said the warden, sententiously. “An’ it’s been did, too. An’ I’m here for to find out who done that shootin’ in them alders.”
“Well, why don’t you find out, then?” sneered young Byram from his perch on the ridge-pole.
“That’s it,” said the warden, bitterly; “all you folks hang together like bees in a swarm-bunch. You’re nuthin’ but a passel o’ critters that digs ginseng for them Chinese an’ goes gunnin’ for pa’tridges out o’ season—”
“I’ll go gunnin’ for you!” shouted Byram, climbing down the ladder in a rage. “I am going to knock your head off, you darned thing!”
Prudence halted him; the game-warden, who had at first meditated flight, now eyed him with patronizing assurance.
“Don’t git riled with me, young man,” he said. “I’m a ‘fical of this State. Anyway, it ain’t you I’m lookin’ for—”
“Well, why don’t you say so, then?” broke in Byram, with an oath.
“But it’s one o’ your family,” added the warden.
“My family!” stammered Byram, in genuine surprise. Then an ugly light glimmered in his eyes. “You mean Dan McCloud?”
“I do,” said the warden, “an’ I’m fixed to git him, too.”
“Well, what do you come to me for, then?” demanded Byram.
“For because Dan McCloud is your cousin, ain’t he? An’ I jest dropped in on you to see how the land lay. If it’s a fight it’s a fight, but I jest want to know how many I’m to buck against. Air you with him? I’ve proofs. I know he’s got his ice-box stuffed full o’ pa’tridges an’ woodcock. Air you with him?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1131