He waited until he was sure Duncan would be at home, if he were coming for the night, before he went to supper. The first thing he saw as he crossed the swale was the big bays in the yard.
There had been no one passing that day, and Duncan readily agreed to watch until Freckles rode to town. He told Duncan of the footprint, and urged him to guard closely. Duncan said he might rest easy, and filling his pipe and taking a good revolver, the big man went to the Limberlost.
Freckles made himself clean and neat, and raced to town, but it was night and the stars were shining before he reached the home of the Bird Woman. From afar he could see that the house was ablaze with lights. The lawn and veranda were strung with fancy lanterns and alive with people. He thought his errand important, so to turn back never occurred to Freckles. This was all the time or opportunity he would have. He must see the Bird Woman, and see her at once. He leaned his wheel inside the fence and walked up the broad front entrance. As he neared the steps, he saw that the place was swarming with young people, and the Angel, with an excuse to a group that surrounded her, came hurrying to him.
“Oh Freckles!” she cried delightedly. “So you could come? We were so afraid you could not! I’m as glad as I can be!”
“I don’t understand,” said Freckles. “Were you expecting me?”
“Why of course!” exclaimed the Angel. “Haven’t you come to my party? Didn’t you get my invitation? I sent you one.”
“By mail?” asked Freckles.
“Yes,” said the Angel. “I had to help with the preparations, and I couldn’t find time to drive out; but I wrote you a letter, and told you that the Bird Woman was giving a party for me, and we wanted you to come, surely. I told them at the office to put it with Mr. Duncan’s mail.”
“Then that’s likely where it is at present,” said Freckles. “Duncan comes to town only once a week, and at times not that. He’s home tonight for the first in a week. He’s watching an hour for me until I come to the Bird Woman with a bit of work I thought she’d be caring to hear about bad. Is she where I can see her?”
The Angel’s face clouded.
“What a disappointment!” she cried. “I did so want all my friends to know you. Can’t you stay anyway?”
Freckles glanced from his wading-boots to the patent leathers of some of the Angel’s friends, and smiled whimsically, but there was no danger of his ever misjudging her again.
“You know I cannot, Angel,” he said.
“I am afraid I do,” she said ruefully. “It’s too bad! But there is a thing I want for you more than to come to my party, and that is to hang on and win with your work. I think of you every day, and I just pray that those thieves are not getting ahead of you. Oh, Freckles, do watch closely!”
She was so lovely a picture as she stood before him, ardent in his cause, that Freckles could not take his eyes from her to notice what her friends were thinking. If she did not mind, why should he? Anyway, if they really were the Angel’s friends, probably they were better accustomed to her ways than he.
Her face and bared neck and arms were like the wild rose bloom. Her soft frock of white tulle lifted and stirred around her with the gentle evening air. The beautiful golden hair, that crept around her temples and ears as if it loved to cling there, was caught back and bound with broad blue satin ribbon. There was a sash of blue at her waist, and knots of it catching up her draperies.
“Must I go after the Bird Woman?” she pleaded.
“Indade, you must,” answered Freckles firmly.
The Angel went away, but returned to say that the Bird Woman was telling a story to those inside and she could not come for a short time.
“You won’t come in?” she pleaded.
“I must not,” said Freckles. “I am not dressed to be among your friends, and I might be forgetting meself and stay too long.”
“Then,” said the Angel, “we mustn’t go through the house, because it would disturb the story; but I want you to come the outside way to the conservatory and have some of my birthday lunch and some cake to take to Mrs. Duncan and the babies. Won’t that be fun?”
Freckles thought that it would be more than fun, and followed delightedly.
The Angel gave him a big glass, brimming with some icy, sparkling liquid that struck his palate as it never had been touched before, because a combination of frosty fruit juices had not been a frequent beverage with him. The night was warm, and the Angel most beautiful and kind. A triple delirium of spirit, mind, and body seized upon him and developed a boldness all unnatural. He slightly parted the heavy curtains that separated the conservatory from the company and looked between. He almost stopped breathing. He had read of things like that, but he never had seen them.
The open space seemed to stretch through half a dozen rooms, all ablaze with lights, perfumed with flowers, and filled with elegantly dressed people. There were glimpses of polished floors, sparkling glass, and fine furnishings. From somewhere, the voice of his beloved Bird Woman arose and fell.
The Angel crowded beside him and was watching also.
“Doesn’t it look pretty?” she whispered.
“Do you suppose Heaven is any finer than that?” asked Freckles.
The Angel began to laugh.
“Do you want to be laughing harder than that?” queried Freckles.
“A laugh is always good,” said the Angel. “A little more avoirdupois won’t hurt me. Go ahead.”
“Well then,” said Freckles, “it’s only that I feel all over as if I belonged there. I could wear fine clothes, and move over those floors, and hold me own against the best of them.”
“But where does my laugh come in?” demanded the Angel, as if she had been defrauded.
“And you ask me where the laugh comes in, looking me in the face after that,” marveled Freckles.
“I wouldn’t be so foolish as to laugh at such a manifest truth as that,” said the Angel. “Anyone who knows you even half as well as I do, knows that you are never guilty of a discourtesy, and you move with twice the grace of any man here. Why shouldn’t you feel as if you belonged where people are graceful and courteous?”
“On me soul!” said Freckles, “you are kind to be thinking it. You are doubly kind to be saying it.”
The curtains parted and a woman came toward them. Her silks and laces trailed across the polished floors. The lights gleamed on her neck and arms, and flashed from rare jewels. She was smiling brightly; and until she spoke, Freckles had not realized fully that it was his loved Bird Woman.
Noticing his bewilderment, she cried: “Why, Freckles! Don’t you know me in my war clothes?”
“I do in the uniform in which you fight the Limberlost,” said Freckles.
The Bird Woman laughed. Then he told her why he had come, but she scarcely could believe him. She could not say exactly when she would go, but she would make it as soon as possible, for she was most anxious for the study.
While they talked, the Angel was busy packing a box of sandwiches, cake, fruit, and flowers. She gave him a last frosty glass, thanked him repeatedly for bringing news of new material; then Freckles went into the night. He rode toward the Limberlost with his eyes on the stars. Presently he removed his hat, hung it to his belt, and ruffled his hair to the sweep of the night wind. He filled the air all the way with snatches of oratorios, gospel hymns, and dialect and coon songs, in a startlingly varied programme. The one thing Freckles knew that he could do was to sing. The Duncans heard him coming a mile up the corduroy and could not believe their senses. Freckles unfastened the box from his belt, and gave Mrs. Duncan and the children all the eatables it contained, except one big piece of cake that he carried to the sweet-loving Duncan. He put the flowers back in the box and set it among his books. He did not say anything, but they understood it was not to be touched.
“Thae’s Freckles’s flow’rs,” said a tiny Scotsman, “but,” he added cheerfully, “it’s oor sweeties!”
Freckles’s face slowly flushed as he took D
uncan’s cake and started toward the swamp. While Duncan ate, Freckles told him something about the evening, as well as he could find words to express himself, and the big man was so amazed he kept forgetting the treat in his hands.
Then Freckles mounted his wheel and began a spin that terminated only when the biggest Plymouth Rock in Duncan’s coop saluted a new day, and long lines of light reddened the east. As he rode he sang, while he sang he worshiped, but the god he tried to glorify was a dim and faraway mystery. The Angel was warm flesh and blood.
Every time he passed the little bark-covered imprint on the trail he dismounted, removed his hat, solemnly knelt and laid his lips on the impression. Because he kept no account himself, only the laughing-faced old man of the moon knew how often it happened; and as from the beginning, to the follies of earth that gentleman has ever been kind.
With the near approach of dawn Freckles tuned his last note. Wearied almost to falling, he turned from the trail into the path leading to the cabin for a few hours’ rest.
Chapter 12
Wherein Black Jack Captures Freckles and the Angel Captures Jack
As Freckles left the trail, from the swale close the south entrance, four large muscular men arose and swiftly and carefully entered the swamp by the wagon road. Two of them carried a big saw, the third, coils of rope and wire, and all of them were heavily armed. They left one man on guard at the entrance. The other three made their way through the darkness as best they could, and were soon at Freckles’s room. He had left the swamp on his wheel from the west trail. They counted on his returning on the wheel and circling the east line before he came there.
A little below the west entrance to Freckles’s room, Black Jack stepped into the swale, and binding a wire tightly around a scrub oak, carried it below the waving grasses, stretched it taut across the trail, and fastened it to a tree in the swamp. Then he obliterated all signs of his work, and arranged the grass over the wire until it was so completely covered that only minute examination would reveal it. They entered Freckles’s room with coarse oaths and jests. In a few moments, his specimen case with its precious contents was rolled into the swamp, while the saw was eating into one of the finest trees of the Limberlost.
The first report from the man on watch was that Duncan had driven to the South camp; the second, that Freckles was coming. The man watching was sent to see on which side the boy turned into the path; as they had expected, he took the east. He was a little tired and his head was rather stupid, for he had not been able to sleep as he had hoped, but he was very happy. Although he watched until his eyes ached, he could see no sign of anyone having entered the swamp.
He called a cheery greeting to all his chickens. At Sleepy Snake Creek he almost fell from his wheel with surprise: the saw-bird was surrounded by four lanky youngsters clamoring for breakfast. The father was strutting with all the importance of a drum major.
“No use to expect the Bird Woman today,” said Freckles; “but now wouldn’t she be jumping for a chance at that?”
As soon as Freckles was far down the east line, the watch was posted below the room on the west to report his coming. It was only a few moments before the signal came. Then the saw stopped, and the rope was brought out and uncoiled close to a sapling. Wessner and Black Jack crowded to the very edge of the swamp a little above the wire, and crouched, waiting.
They heard Freckles before they saw him. He came gliding down the line swiftly, and as he rode he was singing softly:
“Oh, do you love,
Oh, say you love—”
He got no farther. The sharply driven wheel struck the tense wire and bounded back. Freckles shot over the handlebar and coasted down the trail on his chest. As he struck, Black Jack and Wessner were upon him. Wessner caught off an old felt hat and clapped it over Freckles’s mouth, while Black Jack twisted the boy’s arms behind him and they rushed him into his room. Almost before he realized that anything had happened, he was trussed to a tree and securely gagged.
Then three of the men resumed work on the tree. The other followed the path Freckles had worn to Little Chicken’s tree, and presently he reported that the wires were down and two teams with the loading apparatus coming to take out the timber. All the time the saw was slowly eating, eating into the big tree.
Wessner went to the trail and removed the wire. He picked up Freckles’s wheel, that did not seem to be injured, and leaned it against the bushes so that if anyone did pass on the trail he would not see it doubled in the swamp-grass.
Then he came and stood in front of Freckles and laughed in devilish hate. To his own amazement, Freckles found himself looking fear in the face, and marveled that he was not afraid. Four to one! The tree halfway eaten through, the wagons coming up the inside road—he, bound and gagged! The men with Black Jack and Wessner had belonged to McLean’s gang when last he had heard of them, but who those coming with the wagons might be he could not guess.
If they secured that tree, McLean lost its value, lost his wager, and lost his faith in him. The words of the Angel hammered in his ears. “Oh, Freckles, do watch closely!”
The saw worked steadily.
When the tree was down and loaded, what would they do? Pull out, and leave him there to report them? It was not to be hoped for. The place always had been lawless. It could mean but one thing.
A mist swept before his eyes, while his head swam. Was it only last night that he had worshiped the Angel in a delirium of happiness? And now, what? Wessner, released from a turn at the saw, walked to the flower bed, and tearing up a handful of rare ferns by the roots, started toward Freckles. His intention was obvious. Black Jack stopped him, with an oath.
“You see here, Dutchy,” he bawled, “mebby you think you’ll wash his face with that, but you won’t. A contract’s a contract. We agreed to take out these trees and leave him for you to dispose of whatever way you please, provided you shut him up eternally on this deal. But I’ll not see a tied man tormented by a fellow that he can lick up the ground with, loose, and that’s flat. It raises my gorge to think what he’ll get when we’re gone, but you needn’t think you’re free to begin before. Don’t you lay a hand on him while I’m here! What do you say, boys?”
“I say yes,” growled one of McLean’s latest deserters. “What’s more, we’re a pack of fools to risk the dirty work of silencing him. You had him face down and you on his back; why the hell didn’t you cover his head and roll him into the bushes until we were gone? When I went into this, I didn’t understand that he was to see all of us and that there was murder on the ticket. I’m not up to it. I don’t mind lifting trees we came for, but I’m cursed if I want blood on my hands.”
“Well, you ain’t going to get it,” bellowed Jack. “You fellows only contracted to help me get out my marked trees. He belong to Wessner, and it ain’t in our deal what happens to him.”
“Yes, and if Wessner finishes him safely, we are practically in for murder as well as stealing the trees; and if he don’t, all hell’s to pay. I think you’ve made a damnable bungle of this thing; that’s what I think!”
“Then keep your thoughts to yourself,” cried Jack. “We’re doing this, and it’s all planned safe and sure. As for killing that buck—come to think of it, killing is what he needs. He’s away too good for this world of woe, anyhow. I tell you, it’s all safe enough. His dropping out won’t be the only secret the old Limberlost has never told. It’s too dead easy to make it look like he helped take the timber and then cut. Why, he’s played right into our hands. He was here at the swamp all last night, and back again in an hour or so. When we get our plan worked out, even old fool Duncan won’t lift a finger to look for his carcass. We couldn’t have him going in better shape.”
“You just bet,” said Wessner. “I owe him all he’ll get, and be damned to you, but I’ll pay!” he snarled at Freckles.
So it was killing, then. They were not only after this one tree, but many, and with his body it was their plan to kill his honor. To brand him a thi
ef, with them, before the Angel, the Bird Woman, the dear Boss, and the Duncans—Freckles, in sick despair, sagged against the ropes.
Then he gathered his forces and thought swiftly. There was no hope of McLean’s coming. They had chosen a day when they knew he had a big contract at the South camp. The Boss could not come before tomorrow by any possibility, and there would be no tomorrow for the boy. Duncan was on his way to the South camp, and the Bird Woman had said she would come as soon as she could. After the fatigue of the party, it was useless to expect her and the Angel today, and God save them from coming! The Angel’s father had said they would be as safe in the Limberlost as at home. What would he think of this?
The sweat broke on Freckles’s forehead. He tugged at the ropes whenever he felt that he dared, but they were passed around the tree and his body several times, and knotted on his chest. He was helpless. There was no hope, no help. And after they had conspired to make him appear a runaway thief to his loved ones, what was it that Wessner would do to him?
Whatever it was, Freckles lifted his head and resolved that he would bear in mind what he had once heard the Bird Woman say. He would go out bonnily. Never would he let them see, if he grew afraid. After all, what did it matter what they did to his body if by some scheme of the devil they could encompass his disgrace?
Then hope suddenly rose high in Freckles’s breast. They could not do that! The Angel would not believe. Neither would McLean. He would keep up his courage. Kill him they could; dishonor him they could not.