Silas Strong 17

Silas Strong 17

"An' Zeb he tore away an' took an' fastened on the

 

bear,

 

An' they rolled down-hill together, an' the critter

 

ripped the air,

 

An' I didn't dast t' shoot him for fear o' killin' Zeb,

 

So I clubbed my rifle on the bear an' mellered up his

 

head."

 

Moist with perspiration, Silas Strong rose and stood by the bedside and

blew. Fifty miles with a boat on his back could not have taxed him more

severely. He answered a few queries touching the size, fierceness, and

fate of the bear. Then he retreated, whispering as he left the door,

"Strong's ahead."

 

Zeb lay on the foot of the bed, and Socky, being a little timid in the

dark, coaxed him to lie between them, his paws on the pillow. With their

hands on the back of Zeb, they felt sure no harm could come to them.

 

"Do you love Uncle Silas?" It was the question of little Sue.

 

Socky answered, promptly, "Yes; do you?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Hunters don't never wear good clothes." So Socky went on, presently,

as if apologizing to his own spirit for the personal appearance of his

uncle. "They git 'em all tore up by the bears an' panthers."

 

"That's how he got his pants tore," Sue suggested, thinking of his

condition that day they met him on the trail.

 

"Had a fight with a 'kunk," Socky answered, quickly. He had overheard

something of that adventure at Robin Lake.

 

They lay thinking a moment. Then up spoke the boy. "I wisht he had a

gold watch."

 

With Socky the ladder by which a man rose to greatness had many rounds.

The first was great physical strength, the next physical appearance; the

possession of a rifle and the sacred privilege of bathing the same in

bear's-oil was distinctly another; symbols of splendor, such as

watches, finger-rings, and the like, had their places in the ladder, and

qualities of imagination were not wholly disregarded.

 

Sue tried to think of something good to say--something, possibly, which

would explain her love. It was her first trial at analysis.

 

"He wouldn't hurt nobody," she suggested.

 

"He can carry a tree on his back"--so it seemed to Socky.

 

"He wouldn't let nothin' touch us," said Sue, still working the vein of

kindness which she had discovered.

 

"He's the most terrible powerful man in the world," Socky averred, and

unconsciously twisted the soft ear of Zeb until the latter gave a little

yelp of complaint.

 

"He can kill bears an' panthers an' deers an'--an' ketch fish," said

Sue.

 

"He could swaller a whale," Socky declared, as he thought of the story

of Jonah.

 

"Aunt Sinthy has got a hole in her shoe." The girl imparted this in a

whisper.

 

Both felt the back of Zeb and were silent for a little.

 

"She blubbers!" Socky exclaimed, with a slight touch of contempt in the

way he said it.

 

"Maybe she got her feet wet and Uncle Silas Spanked her."

 

"Big folks don't get spanked," the boy assured Sue.

 

"Do you like her?"

 

He answered quickly, as if the topic were a bore to him, "Purty well."

 

Sue had hoped for greater frankness. Her own opinion of her Aunt

Cynthia, while favorable, was unsettled. She thought of a thing in

connection with her aunt which had given her some concern. She had been

full of wonder as to its hidden potentialities.

 

In a moment Sue broached the subject by saying, "She's got a big mold on

her neck."

 

"With a long hair on it," Socky added. "Bet you wouldn't dast pull that

hair."

 

Sue squirmed a little. That single hair had, somehow, reminded her of

the string on a jumping-jack. She reflected a moment, "I put my finger

on it," said she, boastfully.

 

"That's nothing," Socky answered. "Uncle Silas let me feel the shot what

he got in his arm. Gee, it was kind o' funny." He squirmed a little and

thoughtfully felt his foot.

 

Sue recognized the superior attraction of the buried shot and held her

peace a moment. Both had begun to yawn.

 

"Wisht it was t'-morrow," said Sue.

 

"Why?"

 

"'Cause I'm going to see the beautiful lady."

 

"An' the crow, too," Socky whispered.

 

They were, indeed, to see her sooner than they knew--in dreamland.

 

Zeb now retired discreetly to the foot of the bed.

 

After a little silence Sue put her arms about her brother's neck and

pressed him close.

 

"Wisht I was in heaven," she said, drowsily, with a little cry of

complaint.

 

"Why?"

 

"So I could see my mother."

 

"She's way up a Trillion miles beyond where the hawks fly," said the

boy, as he gaped wearily.

 

Thereafter the room was silent, save for the muffled barking of Zeb in

his slumber. He, too, was dreaming, no doubt, of things far away.

 

 

 

 

XIV

 

THEY were a timely arrival--those new friends who had found Edith

Dunmore. She was no longer satisfied with the narrow world in which her

father had imprisoned her, and had begun to wander alone as if in quest

of a better one. That hour of revelation on the shore of Birch Cove led

quickly to others quite as wonderful.

 

She had no sooner reached home than she told her grandmother of the

young man and the children who had come with him to the shore of

Catamount and of a strange happiness in her heart. It was then that a

sense of duty in the old Scotchwoman broke away from promises to her son

which had long suppressed it.

 

As they sat alone, together, the old lady talked to her granddaughter of

the mysteries of life and love and death. Much in this talk the girl

had gathered for herself, by inference, out of books--mostly fairy tales

that her father had brought to her--and out of the evasions which had

greeted her questioning and out of her own heart.

 

Her queries followed one another fast and were answered freely. She

learned, among other things, a part of the reason for their lonely

life--that her father was not like other men, not even like himself;

that their isolation had been a wicked and foolish error; that men were

not, mostly, children of the devil seeking whom they might destroy, but

kindly, giving and desiring love; that she, Edith Dunmore, had a right

to live like the rest of God's children, and to love and be loved and

given in marriage and to have her part in the world's history.

 

All this and much good counsel besides the old lady gave to the girl who

sat a long time pondering after her grandmother had left her.

 

In the miracle of birth and the storied change that follows dissolution

she saw the magic of fairyland. To her Paristan had been much more real than the republic in which she lived