Silas Strong 12

Silas Strong 12

"'But,' said I, 'you couldn't bring up your daughter in the woods.'

Buckhorn was then thirty miles from anywhere.

 

"'That's just what I wish to do,' he answered. 'The world is so full of

d------d spaniels'--I remember that was the phrase he used--and there's

so much infamy among men, I'd rather keep her out of it. I want her to

be as pure at twenty as she is now. I can teach her all I wish her to

know.'

 

"Well, I sold him the Buckhorn tract. He built his camp, and moved there

with the little girl and his mother--a woman of poor health and well

past middle age. He brought an old colored man and his wife to be their

servants, and there they are to-day--Dunmore and his mother and the girl

and the two servants, now grown rather aged, they tell me."

 

"They have never left the woods?" said Master, as if it were too

incredible.

 

"Dunmore goes to New York, but not oftener than once a year," Gordon

went on. "He has property--a good deal of property, I suppose, and has

to give it some attention. The others have never left the woods."

 

"Sends home b-big boxes, an' I t-tote 'em in," Silas explained.

 

"Do you mean to tell me that Dunmore's daughter has never seen the

clearing since she was a baby?"

 

Strong's interest was thoroughly aroused. He took off his coat and laid

it down carefully, as if he were about to go in swimming. He was wont to

do this when his thoughts demanded free and full __EXPRESSION__.

 

"B-been t' Tillbury post-office w-with the ol' man--n-no further,"

Strong explained. "Dunmore says she 'ain't never s-seen a child 'cept

one. That was a b-baby. Some man an' his w-wife come through here w-with

it from the n-north th-three year ago."

 

"Fact is, I think he feared for a long time that his wife would try to

get possession of the child," said Gordon. "Late years, I understand,

the girl has had to take care of the old lady. In a letter to me once

Dunmore referred to his daughter as the 'little nun of the green veil,'

and spoke of her devotion to her grandmother."

 

Gordon rose and went to his bed in one of the cabins. Strong and the

young man kept their seats at the camp-fire, talking of Dunmore and his

daughter and their life in the woods. The Emperor, who felt for this

lonely child of the forest, talked from a sense of duty.

 

"S-sail in," he presently said. "S-sail in an' t-tame her."

 

"I don't know how to begin."

 

"She'll be there t-to-morrer sure," Strong declared.

 

"So shall I," said the young man.

 

"C-cal'late she's w-wownded, too," Strong suggested. "B-be careful.

She's like a w-wild deer."

 

They were leaving the fire on their way to bed. The young man stopped

and repeated the words incredulously--"Like a wild deer!"

 

"T-take the ch-childem with ye," Strong advised. "She'll w-want t'

look 'em over."

 

 

 

 

X

 

SOCKY woke early next morning, and lay looking up at the antlers, guns,

and rifles which adorned the wall. On a table near him were some of the

treasures of that sylvan household--a little book entitled _Melinda_, a

dingy Testament, a plush-covered photograph-album, and a stuffed bird on

a wire bough.

 

Sinth and the album were inseparable. She sometimes left the dingy

Testament or the little book entitled _Melinda_ at her Pitkin home, but

not the plush-covered album. That was the one link which connected her,

not only with the past, but with a degree of respectability, and even

with a vague hope of paradise. What a pantheon of family deities! What

a museum of hair and whiskers! What a study of the effect of terror,

headache, rheumatism, weariness, Sunday apparel, tight boots, and

reckless photography upon the human countenance!

 

Therein was the face of Sinth, indescribably gnarled by the lens; a

daguerreotype of her grandmother adorned with lace and tokens of a more

cheerful time in the family history; faces and forms which for Sinth

recalled her play-days, and were gone as hopelessly.

 

Just after supper the night before, Socky had seen his uncle apply

grease to a number of boots and guns. The boy had been permitted to put

his hands in the thick oil of the bear, and, while its odor irked him a

little, it had, as it were, reduced the friction on his bearings. Since

then the gear of his imagination had seemed to work easier, and had

carried him far towards the goal of manhood.

 

Immediately after waking he found the bottle of bear's-oil and poured

some on his own boots and rubbed it in. He was now delighted with

the look of them. It was wonderful stuff, that bear's-oil. It made

everything look shiny and cheerful, and gave one a grateful sense of

high accomplishment.

 

Soon he had greased the bird and the bush, and the oil had dripped

on the album and the dingy Testament and the little book entitled

_Melinda_. Then he greased the feet and legs of Zeb, who lay asleep in

a corner, and who promptly awoke and ran across the floor and leaped

through an open window, and hid himself under a boat, as if for proper

consideration of ways and means. In a few moments Socky had greased

the shoes of his sister, and a ramrod which lay on the window-sill, and

taken the latter into bed with him.

 

Soon he began to miss the good Aunt Marie, for, generally, when he first

awoke he had gone and got into bed with her. He held to the ramrod and

sustained himself with manly reflections, whispering as they came to

mind: "I'm going to be a man. I ain't no cry-baby. I'm going to kill

bears and send the money to my father, an' my Uncle Silas will give me a

rocking-horse an' a silver dofunny--he said he would."

 

He ceased to whisper. An imaginary bear had approached the foot of the

bed just in time to save him, for the last of his reflections had been

interrupted by little sobs. He struck bravely with the ramrod and felled

the bear, and got out of bed and skinned him and hung his hide over the

back of a chair. He found some potatoes in a sack beside the fireplace,

and put down a row for the bear's body and some more for the feet and

legs. Then he greased the bear's feet and got into bed again, for Sue

had awoke and begun to cry.

 

"What's the matter?" he inquired.

 

"I want my Aunt Marie," the girl sobbed.

 

"Stop, Uncle Silas 'll hear you," said Socky.

 

"I don't care."

 

"I'd be 'shamed," the boy answered, his own voice trembling with

suppressed emotion.

 

Since a talk he had had with his father the day before, he felt a large

and expanding sense of responsibility for his sister. Just now an-idea

occurred to him--why shouldn't he, in his own person, supply the

deficiencies of the great man they had come to see?

 

"I'll be your Uncle Silas," he remarked. "I'm a man now, an' I've killed

a bear."

 

"Where is he?"

 

"Dead on the floor there."

 

She covered her face with the blankets.

 

"I'm going to have a pair o' moccasins an' a rifle, an' I'll carry you

on my b-back." He had stammered on the last word after the manner of his

uncle.

 

Just then they heard a singular creaking outside the door, and before

either had time to speak it was flung open. They were both sitting up in

bed as their Uncle Silas entered.

 

"I tnum!" said he, cheerfully.

 

Suddenly he saw the bird and the books and the table-top and the

potatoes and the ramrod and the hands of Socky. He whistled ruefully;

his smile faded.

 

"W-well greased!" he said, looking down at the books and the bird.

 

He found a gun-rag and wiped up the oil as best he could.

 

"She'll r-raise--" The remark ended in a cough as he wiped the books.

Then he covered them with an empty meal-bag.

 

The children began to dress while Strong went half-way up the ladder and

called to Gordon, still asleep in the loft above. Then he sat on the bed

and helped the boy and girl get their clothes buttoned..

 

"My little f-fawns!" he muttered, with a laugh.

 

He had sat up until one o'clock at work in his little shop by the light

of a lantern. He had sawed some disks from a round beech log and bored

holes in them. He had also made axles and a reach and tongue, and put

them together. Then he had placed a cross-bar and a pivot on the front

axle and fastened a starch-box over all. The result was a wagon, which he had arisen early to finish, and with which he had come to wake "the little fawns." Now, when they were dressed, he sat them side by side in the wagon-box and clattered off down the trail.