As Jimmy began to approach his own cabin a long, mournful howl reached him and he threw up his head like an animal, scenting danger.
More howls. He stood motionless, listening. For a moment there was silence, and then the howling began again. It was not growing nearer.
“Timber wolves,” he muttered. “It’s been a hard winter and they’re coming nearer the settlements. I wonder what they’re after. Sounds as if they were near the cabin.”
He went forward briskly. They might have come about the cabin to see if they could find anything in the traps. One of
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them might even have tumbled into a turkey trap. They did not stop howling, but the howls grew more and more distinct as Jimmy advanced.
“They’re round the cabin, as sure as judgment,” he said, as he hurried along. “Some fool trapper’s gone and jerked some meat up against the wall too high for them to reach it. Well, I’m not going to stay outside to favor all the wolves in Ohio.”
He was within a hundred yards of the cabin. He knew it by the fallen maple that he clambered over, as he had done a hundred times. The wolves were certainly at the cabin. Between their howls he could hear them snarling amongst one another and scratching like dogs against the bark-covered walls of the hut.
Suddenly he heard a shot. A sharp howl of rage answered it.
“There’s one gone,” he muttered. “That
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fool trapper’s tired of listening to ’em.” He mechanically fingered his own gun.
He listened, expecting to hear another shot when the trapper had had time to reload, but there was none. The wolves were silent.
“Scared ’em away,” he thought, advancing cautiously from tree to tree. “If only he don’t have the idea of shooting me, this is the time for me to get in.”
He stopped again. A thrill of horror shot down his spine. He felt his hand lose its grip on the rifle. The wolves had broken out snarling and snapping, but the sound that sickened him was the cry of a man in deadly peril. Not a cry for help, since he could not know that there was help anywhere to hear. But simply the cry of a human animal at bay, and then the thick blows of the gun-butt on the heads of the attacking wolves.
“I’m coming!” shouted Jimmy, clutching
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his rifle, with more than his own strength returned to him. “Hold hard there! I’m coming!”
Even after he was close enough to get a sight on the black mass that snarled and fought together, he dared not shoot for fear of hitting the man he was trying to save. Then he made him out, a taller shadow than the rest, pinned against the wall of the cabin, holding off the wolves with the thick blows of his gun-butt.
Aiming at the outer mass, Jimmy cocked his rifle and fired. Two of the grotesque shapes sprang high into the air and fell back dead. There was an immediate fight over the carcasses.
“Run round to the back, and push in the window!” cried Jimmy. “They’ll be at you again in a minute. Make haste.”
“Can’t move. Leg’s broken.”
Jimmy gave a cry of dismay.
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“Fire into ’em,” said the man against the wall.
Jimmy loaded quickly and fired again. As the third wolf fell the others drew away, dragging one of the carcasses with them. The man against the wall now sent a bullet after them and they broke into flight.
“Quick,” said Jimmy, “before they come back!” He ran to the man and put a shoulder under his arm.
“That’s my good leg,” said the man, dryly; “come the other side.”
“Well, hurry,” said Jimmy. “Here’s the door. There ought to be a staple about here. Steady a minute. Land sakes, man, don’t faint yet. Wait till we’re inside. So—careful of the sill. Don’t trip. You’re all right now. drop down anywhere. I must get the door fastened. You can’t strike a light?” He fumbled hurriedly with the staple and tongue inside the
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door. Then he drew a breath of thankfulness.
“Queer,” he said, controlling his excitement, “we haven’t had any wolves here this winter. Did you bring them with you, sir?”
But the stranger had fainted.
Jimmy made a light and set a torch burning in a socket against the wall. Then he examined the stranger’s broken leg. Then he looked around the cabin. It was as bare of restoratives as an empty cornfield.
He shook the stranger. “Wake up,” he said. “You’ve got to tell me what to do.”
The man groaned, and finally opened his eyes and shivered. “Make a fire,” he said.
It was an unwritten code that whoever used the cabin would leave wood for the next comer to start a fire with, and Jimmy
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soon had a blaze crackling. Then, under the stranger’s direction, and with nothing more than a couple of splints torn from the bunks against the wall and some rags of elk-skin from the man’s coat, Jimmy bound up the broken leg.
A sickly light was coming in at the little cabin window by the time this task was finished. The wolves had not been heard again, but as Jimmy pushed the door open and looked out, he saw that the carcasses of the three dead wolves had been dragged away, leaving only the bloody traces of their presence in the trampled snow.
“I’ve a dead horse somewhere down by the branch,” the stranger said, “and a few rations. I don’t know if you could find the place.”
“That’s all right,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got some lye hominy hidden here, if no one’s discovered it.”
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He pulled out the corn shucks that made a mattress for one of the bunks, lifted a plank and drew out a bag of corn. From the same recess he brought a long-handled spider.
“You’re mighty at home here,” the stranger commented.
“It’s the only home I’ve got,” said Jimmy, with sudden fierceness. “It’s mine.”
The stranger looked at him curiously.
“Well,” he said at last, “I’m mighty glad you happened along just when you did. I rode by here about sundown, and hailed, but there was no one here. Then my horse fell through a hole down by the branch and broke his neck and my leg, and it took me the balance of the night to crawl back here, only to get set on by those timber wolves. Law, they were famished.”
“What were you doing in this piece of
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woods,” Jimmy asked, “so far off the roads?”
“Just looking round for a chance to preempt land. I’m on my way down the river, really. The rest of my party are about fifty miles below, and I’d calculated to join ’em, but now I suppose I’m laid up here for weeks.”
“It’s too bad,” said Jimmy. “I was going down the river—going down on a flatboat, you know, with the fresh. Marion Royce is getting his ark ready. I was going with him.”
“And ain’t you goin’?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “I ain’t going. Marion says he don’t trust me.” He wondered at himself as he said it.
The stranger was silent. Jimmy went out to get water, carrying his loaded gun in case the wolves came back. They did not show themselves, however, and he returned with water, his gun, and a turkey
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frozen solid and covered with a light coat of snow.
“Found him in one of my traps,” he explained.
The stranger, who had moved over with Jimmy’s help to one of the bunks, looked on at the preparations for breakfast with interest varied by twinges of excruciating pain. He was a small man, much bearded, with very blue eyes as sharp as gimlets. At Marietta Jimmy would have instinctively avoided him. But the fact that he had saved the man from a horrible death, and that the stranger was helpless with his broken leg, somehow discounted his intuitions, and he tried to keep him entertained so that he would forget his suffering. He told of the way he lived weeks at a time at the cabin, and trapped and dressed skins, and it was natural that in the course of his narrative he should mention Uncle Amasa, who so often shared his retreat.
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“Amasa?” exclaimed the stranger. “Amasa Claiborne?”
“That’s the one,—my grandfather.”
The man ripped out an oath. “You don’t mean it,” he added hastily. “Why, I knew your grandpa,—why, let me see, it was all of twenty years ago, I’m thinking. Yes, that’s what it was. Do you think he will be coming here?”
“I’m afraid he won’t. He’s helping Marion Royce,” answered Jimmy. “There’s a lot to be done yet, and not enough hands at Marietta to work the mill.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the stranger. “I’d of liked to see him, I tell ye.” His voice expressed more relief than regret, but Jimmy was too busy to notice it. “Then you’ll be James Claiborne’s son,” he added. “I’ll be durned.”
“Did you know my father?” asked Jimmy.
“Know your father?” repeated the
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stranger. “Do I know the back of my hand? Your father and me was together no longer ago than last spring on the Natchez trace.”
Jimmy wheeled round. “What!” he gasped. “My father—living?”
“If your father’s Jim Claiborne, son of old Unc. Amasa, he’s more alive than I came near being this night gone. What’s the matter with ye?”
Jimmy looked squarely into the light blue eyes. “Then why ain’t he come back?”
“Don’t ask me,” said the stranger. “Mebby he’s not wanted. I guess your Uncle Amasa would know where to look if he was sot on it.”
“Uncle Amasa is just pining to slip away and look for him,” said Jimmy.
“Is he going on the flatboat with that friend of your’n?”
“No, Marion thinks he’s too old,” said
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Jimmy. “Besides, he has to stay and take care of Ma.”
“Your friend seems to be full of prejudices,” said the stranger, thoughtfully. “Now, here’s what I’ve got to say. You can take it or leave it, and welcome. You’ve done me a turn that I’ll not forget. No, I ain’t thankin’ ye. But if you want to look atter me a spell, till I’m on my legs again, I’ll do this. I’ll take you down the river till we meet up with my party and then we’ll join your pappy. Mebby about that time your friends’ boat will be getting down the stream, and ye’ll have the satisfaction of hailing them from Cincinnati, or one of the settlements along the way. I’m a stranger to ye, but you’ll have the liberty of making up your mind without any pesterin’ from me. Ye’re free to follow the dictates of your own heart. It’s but a small return for a man to make, whose been saved from what ye saved me
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from; and, besides, on the roads two’s safer than one.”
The man with the broken leg had done some quick thinking. He had his own reasons for wishing to get down the river. With Jimmy to help and wait on him, he would be able to start much sooner than alone. And once among his friends, some convenient disposal of Jimmy would soon offer itself. He might even turn him over to his father. When the stranger said he knew James Claiborne, he spoke the entire and absolute truth.
“I’d like to see my father, if it’s true,” said Jimmy, slowly. “I’d go a good ways, and so would Uncle Amasa. I wish I could get word to him.”
“And leave me to shift for myself the time it would take ye to go and come?”
“I forgot,” said Jimmy, bent over the steaming hominy.
“The thing to do,” said the stranger,
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“is this: If Uncle Amasa don’t get out here before we’re ready to leave, write him a message on the wall that you’ve gone to find your pappy; then he’ll understand.”
A smile flitted over the man’s face, the first that had shone on it. It was the smile that a revengeful and unscrupulous man might wear as he wiped out an old and bitter score.
“I might do that,” said Jimmy, who had not seen the smile. “That’s a good idea. But most likely he’ll come.”
Uncle Amasa was busy at the shipyard, however, and as fear helped on the rapid setting of the broken leg, the stranger was able to hobble about on rude crutches within ten days.
Jimmy made a trip over to Marietta for him, and bought two horses, not without inward trepidation, for it was no light thing that he was venturing, even to find a father whom he had supposed dead.
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“I’ve got my gun,” he reflected. “Nothing can happen. As long as he’s crippled he’s my captive, I’m not his.” But even as he said it he knew that he was really captive to the man’s helplessness and dependence on him.
His hand shook as he wrote in charcoal on the rough log of the mantelpiece,
“I hev gon after my fathur.
“J. C.”