As the captain handed over the schoolmaster’s inert form, he was too full of alarm to notice that the arms which received it were Jimmy Claiborne’s.
“Is he dead?” asked Jimmy, in a hoarse whisper.
Charlie Hoyt stared at him. “Dod rot!” he ejaculated. “You’re trembling! What’s the matter with you? The master’s not dead. Look at that.”
Then Jimmy saw the schoolmaster’s breath coming faintly like a frosty thread. He drew his own breath more freely.
“If you’re afraid to carry him, I’ll call Mose,” went on Charlie. “He’s hurt on
52
the head. If it weren’t for that we could leave him over there by the fire till he sobers up. I wonder where he got it. Stocked up at Marietta, most likely. Here’s part of a corn-bin cover, shot out of the fire. We can lay him on that. It will carry better.”
The long bin cover, with its charred edges, was a clumsy thing to carry, and the two stumbled slowly along the dark path to the Royce’s cabin. They set their burden down several times to rest and get a better hold. Once Charlie fell and the schoolmaster slid from his rude stretcher into the snow. Perspiring and breathless they picked him up again and went heavily on.
Several women had gathered at the Royce’s from the neighboring cabins. They were all brave women, used to the alarms and hardships of their wild life, and they received the little party, that looked so
53
much grimmer than it was, without excitement.
“It looks to me kinder like a fight,” said Charlie, when he had examined the master’s bruises carefully in the light of a tallow dip.
“It must have been a fight,” said Mrs. Royce. “That is never a blow from a flying timber. His eye is puffing up, too. He couldn’t have been lying long when you found him.”
The master roused a little. His arm went out as if to ward a blow. “They’ll drive—me—out,” he muttered. “How—tish y’se’f—cherished ’n my bosom—’n ye turn—’gainsht me.” His arm fell and he began to weep; a pitiable object.
Jimmy had taken no part in his resuscitation. He stood looking into the fire, beside the hearth. Now that he no longer feared that the schoolmaster would die, he was absorbed in his own sullen thoughts.
54
Milly Ayer saw his look, and his clenched hands, and went over to him.
“You didn’t come back to school,” she said. “We missed you.”
“I’ll never go back to that school,” he answered. She could see the flush creep over his dark face.
“Oh, Jimmy!” she said. “When there’s hardly a month more before everybody will be going off on the ark?”
“That’s why.”
Milly reddened. She had forgotten in the excitement of the fire the trouble of the morning that had brought the quarrel between Jimmy and Louis Gist. She was about to tell him that Marion would change his mind, when the door flew open and her brother Mose and Shadwell Lincoln burst in.
“The ark is all safe,” they both cried at once. “The men are going to stay about and watch, though. Everything’s
55
gone. All the flax, and the Hoyt’s corn, and the Claiborne whisky. And pretty near all the carpentering tools of the neighborhood.”
It was a grave loss. Tools were expensive and hard to get, and the rotted flax that had been stored in the shed had been intended to clothe the settlement for a year.
“Has anyone found out who started it?” asked Mrs. Royce, to turn the thoughts of the others from their common loss.
Moses threw a meaning look toward Jimmy Claiborne. “We haven’t found out,” he said, with hot-headed emphasis, “but everybody has a suspicion. It was done by someone who had a grudge agin the ark and wanted to set it afire to spite Marion Royce. The ark’s built of such heavy timber that it wouldn’t burn easily, but if the shed burned the ark was bound to go with it. And it would have gone, too, if Jonas and Marion hadn’t saved it.”
56
“No one in the settlement would have taken such a revenge as that,” said Mrs. Royce.
“Just you wait and see,” said Mose. He was boiling with indignation. Not that he had anything against Jimmy Claiborne, himself. He was simply a born partisan. Whatever came up, he must take sides and, usually, come to blows to settle it. Until a blow had been struck, Mose seldom considered a matter disposed of. He bore upon his person the evidence that he lived up to his point of view. “I guess whoever did it will be found out pretty soon, and ’pears to me Fish Creek won’t be the place for him after that.”
The women who had joined in the growing disapproval of the Claibornes in regard to bringing a still into Fish Creek settlement found themselves embarrassed at having the prejudice taking such direct expression. They wished they had not all
57
spoken so openly before those who were too young to reason or be discreet. It was Milly who saved the situation.
“I ought to go home,” she said. “Mother and the children are alone. Mose, are you coming?”
“I can’t,” said Mose. “I’ve got to help Marion. He wants me to be on hand. Mebby to-morrow he’ll want us to start up to Marietta to help cut the lumber, if the new hands don’t get there from Pittsburgh. The new brig’s keeping everyone busy over to Marietta.”
“Jimmy,” said Milly, “will you take me?”
Jimmy reached for a rifle that stood among several muskets in a rude rack near the fireplace. The Ayers’ clearing was one of the farthest away, and while the neighborhood had been safe from prowling Indians for over a year the men still went about armed at night. He looked carefully
58
to the flint and priming, and taking it in his arm, waited for her while she said good night.
For awhile they trudged in silence. Mose’s ill-considered words were ringing in their ears. As they skirted the shipyard clearing they saw the men silhouetted against the burning heap of ruins. Jimmy gripped his rifle in a spasm of unreasoning hate. He wondered how little old Uncle Amasa could be among them; friendly, wise, harboring no resentment.
“Isn’t that Uncle Amasa, there by the maple tree?” asked Milly.
“Yes, that’s him,” said Jimmy. “’Twouldn’t be me, that’s certain.”
“It’s all a mistake,” said Milly. “You mustn’t think of what schoolboys say.”
“I guess they heard their elders say it. It wouldn’t have come popping into their heads alone.”
“You mustn’t mind,” she said.
59
“You don’t catch me minding,” said Jimmy, throwing his head back. “I’m not through with Fish Creek settlement yet.”
There was a long silence, broken only by their feet in the crusted snow. Milly thought pityingly of the thankless home that Maria Claiborne had made for Jimmy and his grandfather. She wished that Marion had not said so positively that he would not have Jimmy on the ark. She would talk to Marion to-morrow and try to win him over. Now that the Claiborne cargo was destroyed, he would be apt to reconsider.
“You may get a chance to go to New Orleans, after all,” she said. “You mustn’t blame Marion, Jimmy. Think of the responsibility he will have, every day and night of that long journey—and, perhaps, fighting.”
“Well, I guess I can hold up my end of the fighting,” said Jimmy. “I never failed to do it yet.”
60
“That’s the trouble,” said Milly. “You and Kenton and MacAfee are so quarrelsome.”
“I know what you mean, Milly,” said Jimmy, feeling his heart harden against even her friendliness. “You’re going to try to persuade Marion to take me. Well, I ain’t going to have you do it. I won’t go. Not that way. Marion’s got to take me because I’m as good a man as the rest of ’em, or I don’t go. And if he should happen to change his mind and want me, he’ll have to ask me mighty perticular. I won’t be hanging round having every one point to me as the boy that set fire to the building shed.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, anxiously. “Oh, Jimmy, promise me that it won’t be something you’ll be sorry for.”
“Sorry? I guess not. I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet,” he added. “I’m going down to my place and think about it, and mebby get some beaver skins. The last time I was down I saw signs of them on a little
61
creek. They’re mighty scarce now. Uncle Amasa says they won’t be a beaver between here and Cincinnati next year.”
Milly felt relieved. The place Jimmy spoke of was an almost unbroken strip of forest, about five miles away, on which Jimmy had made “tomahawk improvements”—girdled a few trees and planted a little patch of corn. He and Uncle Amasa had built a cabin there, and sometimes stayed there for weeks on end when Maria was more than usually fiery-tempered. Trappers knew the little cabin well.
“You won’t go till Marion gets through with the lumber sawing?” she asked. “There’ll be so few men at the settlement if they have to help saw lumber up at Marietta.”
Jimmy could not see her face, but her matter-of-course tone staggered him. He wondered if girls could really feel things—if they had real pride; if they understood
62
what it was to smart under a wrong until the pain cried for a sharp revenge. He shut his teeth on the hard words that came to him, and after a moment, said quietly:
“No, Milly. I can’t wait. I’ve got to get away. I guess I wasn’t made for civilization. I guess I don’t fit.”
They were entering the clearing about the Ayers’ cabin. Light came through the window, showing that the fire was being kept up and that those within were astir.
“I’ll watch you inside the door,” Jimmy said, halting in the path.
“Won’t you come in?” she begged. “You can sleep in Mose’s shake-down in the loft.”
A little shiver passed through him. “In Mose’s shake-down?” he repeated. “No, I’m obliged to you just as much. I’ll trouble you to keep this gun for Marion. It’s his. I won’t have a chance to return it.”
63
“Why, Jimmy, you aren’t going into the woods to-night?”
“Why not?” he asked. “Haven’t I been in the woods at night before this? Run in, now. Good night, Milly.”
The girl stood, helpless against the bitterness in his guarded voice.
“Good night, Milly.”
“Good night,” she faltered. “Oh, Jimmy, it’s perfectly terrible for you to go——.”
She moved slowly towards the door. He watched her indistinct figure blend into the shadow of the cabin wall. Then the door opened, letting a flood of light across the snow. Mrs. Ayer stood in the doorway a moment while Milly said something to her, and then she called:
“Jimmy Claiborne, come in this minute, child!”
Jimmy slipped behind a tree.
“Jimmy?”
64
Still he made no answer. The warmth and the sight of the two women waiting for him, with nothing but kindness and tenderness in their hearts, moved him strangely. He was so unused to it. But he did not answer, and after waiting a moment longer they stepped back inside and the door shut them from his sight.
Choking down something that smarted in his throat, he strode away from the clearing.
Twenty minutes later he had reached the Claiborne home cabin. He knocked sharply on the door.
“Let me in,” he shouted. “Ma! It’s me. I want to get my gun.”
No answer came from within. He pounded with both fists. “Ma!” he repeated.
After awhile he realized that his mother must be awake, and he changed his voice from a shout to a conversational tone. “I
65
only want my gun,” he said, persuasively. “There’s been a big fire at the shipyard, and all our whisky’s burned up. Let me in and I’ll tell you about it.”
He began to narrate the events of the night, taking heart as he heard a slight stir inside the cabin. He talked on, apparently telling the story to the panel of the thick, treenail-studded door. When he had finished he repeated his petition, “I only want my gun, Ma.”
The one window opened a crack and something struck Jimmy on the head. It was a powder horn. Then his gun came rattling after it, and the window shut decisively. Jimmy picked up his gun.
“I hope Uncle Amasa don’t calculate to come back to-night,” he reflected. “I guess Ma didn’t like his going off like that to the fire and leaving the cabin unprotected. But la, it would be a brave Indian that would break into Ma’s cabin when she didn’t want him to.”
66
With his gun in his arm he felt himself again. He struck briskly into the woods, following paths as familiar to him as the roads about the settlement. Nothing stirred the deep loneliness—but he was not lonely. He crossed the Ayers’ tract, the four hundred acres belonging to the Lincolns, the Hoyts’ improved lands, crossed a branch of the river and entered the unbroken timber. There was almost no wind. The frosty air still gave no hint of morning, and the occasional breaks in the trees showed a sky brilliantly crowded with stars.
The anger died slowly out of him. If he had turned back it would have flamed up again; but, as he drew steadily away from the scene of his wounded pride, his wrongs seemed to be left behind and he felt only the drowsiness of his long tramp. He would have been glad to crawl into the hollow of a rotten tree, but he was too wary, and he held on, crunching through
67
the untrodden snow, his feet moving in a sort of rhythm with the unformed thoughts that kept moving in his brain. The dim knowledge that it was good to be away from other human beings, who disapproved of his restlessness—for Jimmy’s outbreaks were always the result of restlessness—that it would be good to creep a little further into the wilderness, where the white men had never yet trod, and that this was what made Uncle Amasa dwell wistfully on the past when he had been a pioneer in the territory—all this and more slipped through his thoughts. The spell of the wilderness was on him, and he looked forward to the days he would spend in the hut, watching his traps and collecting pelts for the ark to take down to New Orleans. His face grew hard again as the thought of the ark crossed his mind. His fist clenched.
“I’ll pay them,” he muttered.