Chapter XV. A CAT AND HER KITTENS
That was a breakfast long to be remembered by Nan Sherwood, notparticularly because of its quality, but for the quantity served. Shehad never seen men like these lumbermen eat before, save for the fewdays she had been at Uncle Henry's house.
Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by thelumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a "main-stay"on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery ofany kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, andgolden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it.
After riding twenty-five miles through such a frosty air, Nan would havehad to possess a delicate appetite indeed not to enjoy these viands. Shefelt bashful because of the presence of so many rough men; but they lefther alone for the most part, and she could listen and watch.
"Old Toby Vanderwiller tell you what Ged's been blowin' about, Henry?"asked one of the men at the table, busy ladling beans into his mouthwith a knife, a feat that Nan thought must be rather precarious, to saythe least.
"Says he's going to jail me if I go on to the Perkins Tract," growledUncle Henry, with whom the matter was doubtless a sore subject.
"Yaas. But he says more'n that," said this tale bearer.
"Oh, Ged says a whole lot besides his prayers," responded Uncle Henry,good-naturedly. Perhaps he saw they were trying to bait him.
"Wal, 'tain't nothin' prayerful he's sayin'," drawled the first speaker,after a gulp of coffee from his thick china cup. "Some of the boys atBeckett's, you know, they're a tough crowd, was riggin' him about whatyou said to him down to the Forks, and Ged spit out that he'd give alump of money to see you on your back."
"Huh!" grunted Uncle Henry.
"And some of 'em took him up, got the old man right down to cases."
"That so?" asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. "What's Ged going to do?Challenge me to a game of cat's cradle? Or does he want to settle thebusiness at draughts, three best out o' five?"
"Now you know dern well, Hen," said the other, as some of the listenerslaughed loudly at Mr. Sherwood's sally, "that old Ged Raffer will neverlock horns with you 'ceptin' it's in court, where he'll have the fullpertection of the law, and a grain the best of it into the bargain."
"Well, I s'pose that's so," admitted Nan's uncle, rather gloomily, shethought.
"So, if Beckett's crowd are int'rested in bumping you a whole lot, youmay be sure Ged's promised 'em real money for it."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Uncle Henry. "You're fooling now. He hasn't hired anyhalf-baked chip-eaters and Canucks to try and beat me up?"
"I ain't foolin'."
"Pshaw!"
"You kin 'pshaw' till the cows come home," cried the other heatedly. "Igot it straight."
"Who from?"
"Sim Barkis, him what's cookin' for Beckett's crew."
"Good man, Sim. Never caught him in a lie yet. You are beginning tosound reasonable, Josh," and Mr. Sherwood put down his knife and forkand looked shrewdly at his informant. "Now tell me," he said, "how muchis Sim going to get for helping to pay Ged Raffer's debts?"
"Har!" ejaculated the other man. "You know Sim ain't that kind."
"All right, then. How much does he say the gang's going to split between'em after they've done me up brown according to contract?" scoffed UncleHenry, and Nan realized that her giant relative had not the least fearof not being able to meet any number of enemies in the open.
"Sim come away before they got that far. Of course Ged didn't say rightout in open meetin' that he'd give so many dollars for your scalp. Buthe got 'em all int'rested, and it wouldn't surprise him, so Sim said, ifon the quiet some of those plug-uglies had agreed to do the job."
Nan shuddered, and had long since stopped eating. But nobody paid anyattention to her at the moment.
Uncle Henry drawled: "They're going to do the hardest day's job for thesmallest pay that they ever did on this Michigan Peninsula. I'm muchobliged to you, Josh, for telling me. I never go after trouble, as youfellows all know; but I sha'n't try to dodge it, either."
He picked up his knife and fork and went quietly on with his breakfast.But Nan could not eat any more at all.
It seemed to the gently nurtured girl from Tillbury as though she hadfallen in with people from another globe. Even the mill-hands, whom BessHarley so scorned, were not like these great, rough fellows whose mindsseemed continually to be fixed upon battle. At least, she had never seenor heard such talk as had just now come to her ears.
The men began, one by one, to push back the benches and go out. Therewas a great bustle of getting under way as the teams started for thewoods, and the choppers, too, went away. Tom hurried to start his bigpair of dapple grays, and Nan was glad to bundle up again and run out towatch the exodus.
They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did notbreed runts.
Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, andthe scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in theTillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size ofthese workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside thenarrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills.
Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tomplayfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that thetwo brothers smiled again at each other. Their recent tiff seemed to beforgotten.
Some of the choppers had already gone on ahead to the part of the tractwhere the marked trees were being felled. Now the pluck, pluck, pluck ofthe axe blows laid against the forest monarchs, reached the girl's ears.She thought the flat stuttering sound of the axes said "pluck" veryplainly, and that that was just the word they should say.
"For it does take lots of pluck to do work of this kind," Nanconfided to her uncle, who walked up and down on the porch smoking anafter-breakfast pipe.
"Yes. No softies allowed on the job," said he, cheerfully. "Some of theboys may be rough and hard nuts to crack; but it is necessary to havejust such boys or we couldn't get out the timber."
"But they want to fight so much!" gasped Nan.
"Sho!" said her uncle, slowly. "It's mostly talk. They feel the itchfor hard work and hard play, that's all. You take lively, full-muscledanimals, and they are always bucking and quarreling--trying to see whichone is the best. Take two young, fat steers they'll lock horns at thedrop of a hat. It's animal spirits, Nan. They feel that they've gotto let off steam. Where muscle and pluck count for what they do in thelumber camps, there's bound to be more or less ructions."
Perhaps this might be; but Nan was dreadfully sorry, nevertheless, thatUncle Henry had this trouble with Mr. Gedney Raffer. The girl fearedthat there had been something besides "letting off steam" in thechallenge her uncle had thrown down to his enemy, or to the men thatenemy could hire to attack him.
The timber sledges soon began to drift back, for some of the logs hadbeen cut before the big storm, and had only to be broken out of thedrifts and rolled upon the sleds with the aid of the men's canthooks. Itwas a mystery at first to Nan how they could get three huge logs, someof them three feet in diameter at the butt, on to the sled; two at thebottom and one rolled upon them, all being fastened securely with thetimber-chain and hook.
How the horses strained in their collars to start the mighty load! Butonce started, the runners slipped along easily enough, even through thedeep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice.Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river wherethe logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into thestream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet.
Tom managed his team alone, and unloaded alone, too. It was marvelous(so Nan thought) that her cousin could start the top log with the greatcanthook, and guide it as it rolled off the sled so that it should lietrue with timbers that had been piled before. The strain of his workmade him perspire as though it were midsummer. He thrust the calks onhis bootsoles into the log and the shr
eds of bark and small chips flewas he stamped to get a secure footing for his work. Then he heavedlike a giant, his shoulders humping under the blue jersey he wore, andfinally the log turned. Once started, it was soon rolled into place.
Nan ran into the cook shed often to get warm. Her uncle was busy withthe boss of the camp, so she had nobody but the cook and his helper tospeak to for a time. Therefore it was loneliness that made her startover the half-beaten trail for the spot where the men were at work,without saying a word to anybody.
None of the teams had come by for some time; but she could hear faintlythe sound of the axes and the calling of the workmen to each other andtheir sharp commands to the horses.
She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that thetrail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easyto descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only onesled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices andaxes sounded from higher up the ridge.
Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of thewoodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantlyNan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside thepath. It had tasseled ears, a wide, wicked "smile," bristling whiskers,and fangs that really made Nan tremble, although she was some yards fromthe bobcat.
As she believed, from what her cousins had told her, bobcats are notusually dangerous. They never seek trouble with man, save under certainconditions; and that is when a mother cat has kittens to defend.
This was a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she hadlittered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leavesblown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk.
The timberman driving through the hollow had not seen the bobcat and herthree blind babies; but he had roused the mother cat and she was now allready to spring at intruders.
That Nan was not the person guilty of disturbing her repose made nodifference to the big cat. She saw the girl standing, affrighted andtrembling, in the path and with a ferocious yowl and leap she crossedthe intervening space and landed in the snow within almost arm's reachof the fear-paralyzed girl.