The Girl From Tim's Place. Charles Clark Munn
into the dark, gurgling water. Up above lay a faint ripple of silver. Here, also, she could see the moon almost at the zenith, and a few flickering stars.
A trifle of courage and renewal of hope now came. Her face and hands were scratched and bleeding, clothing torn, feet and legs black with mud. But these things she neither noticed nor felt–only that blessed bridge of logs that gave her safety, and the moon that bade her hope.
Then she began to count her chances. This landmark told her that five miles of her desperate journey had been covered and she was still alive. She began to calculate. How soon would her escape be discovered, and who would pursue her? Only Pete, her purchaser, she felt sure, and there was a possible chance that he might return to his cabin before doing so. Or perhaps he might sleep late, and thus give her one or two hours more of time.
All the goblin forms and hideous shapes of Old Tomah’s fancy were rushing and leaping about.
And now she began to review the usual morning movements at Tim’s Place–Tim the first one up, calling her, then going out to milking; the others, slower to arise, getting out and about their special duties. Pete, she knew, always slept in one of the two empty log cabins which were first built there. Her father slept in the other or in the barn. Neither would be called, she knew–it was get around in time for breakfast at Tim’s Place or go hungry. And so she speculated on her chances of early pursuit. Here on this bridge she now meant to remain until the first sign of dawn, then push on again with all speed. She already had a five-mile start, she was weary, footsore, and still faint from the awful terrors of her flight; to go on meant to rush into the swarm of spites once more, and so she lay inert on the hard logs watching, listening, calculating.
And now cheered by this trifling hope and lessening sense of danger, her past life came back. Her childhood in a far-off settlement; the home always in a turmoil from the strange men and women ever coming and going; the drinking, swearing, singing, at all hours of the night, her constant fear of them and wonder who they were and why they came. There were other features of this disturbed life: frequent quarrels between her father and mother; curses, tears, and sometimes blows, until at last after a night more hideous than any other her mother had taken her and fled. Then came a long journey to another village and a new life of peace and quietness. Here it was all so different–no red-shirted men to be afraid of, no loud-voiced women drinking with them. She became acquainted with other children of her own age, was sent to school and taken to church. Here, also, her mother began to smile once more, and look content. For two years, and the only ones Chip cared to recall, she had been a happy schoolgirl, and then came a sudden, tragic end to it all. Of that she never wished to think. It was all so horrible, and yet so mercifully brief.
The one friend life held, her mother, had been brought home, wounded to death amid the whirring wheels of the mill where she worked; there were a few hours of agonized dread as her life ebbed away, a whisper or two of love and longing, and then the sad farewell made doubly awful by her father’s frowning face and harsh voice. At its ending, and in spite of her fears and tears, she was now borne away by him. For days they journeyed deeper and deeper into a vast wilderness, to halt at last at Tim’s Place.
Like a dread dream it all came back now, as she lay there on this one flat spot of security–the bridge–and listened to the river’s low murmur.
The moon was lowering now. Already the shadow of the stream’s bordering trees had reached her. First the stars vanished, then the moon faded into a dim patch of light, finally that disappeared, a chill breeze swept down from a neighboring mountain, and the trees began to moan and creak. Then a fiercer blast swept through the forest, the great firs and spruces bent and groaned and screamed. Surely the spites were gathering in force again, and this was their doing.
Once more she began to hear them creeping, crawling, over the bridge. They spit, they snarled, they growled. The darkness grew more intense, no longer could the river’s course be seen, but only a black chasm.
All through her mad flight the wilderness had been ghostly and spectral in the moonlight; now it had become lost in inky blackness, yet alive with demoniac voices. All the goblin forms and hideous shapes of Old Tomah’s fancy were rushing and leaping about. Now high up in the tree-tops, now deep in the hollows, they screamed and shrieked and moaned.
And now, just as this fierce battle of sound and spectral shape was at its worst, and Chip, a hopeless, helpless mite of humanity, crouched low upon the bridge, suddenly a vicious growl reached her, and raising her head she saw at the bridge’s end two gleaming eyes!
CHAPTER II
Martin Frisbie and his nephew Raymond Stetson, or Ray, were cutting boughs and carrying them to two tents standing in the mouth of a bush-choked opening into the forest. In front of this Angie, Martin’s wife, was placing tin dishes, knives, and forks, upon a low table of boards. Upon the bank of a broad, slow-running stream, two canoes were drawn out, and halfway between these and the table a camp-fire burnt.
Here Levi, Martin’s guide for many trips into this wilderness, was also occupied, intently watching two pails depending from bending wambecks, a coffee-pot hanging from another, and two frying-pans, whose sputtering contents gave forth an enticing odor.
Twilight was just falling, the river murmured in low melody, and a few rods above a small rill entered it, adding a more musical tinkle.
Soon Levi deftly swung one of the pails away from the flame with a hook-stick and speared a potato with a fork.
“Supper ready,” he called; and then as the rest seated themselves at the table, he advanced, carrying the pail of steaming potatoes on the hooked stick and the frying-pan in his other hand.
The meal had scarce begun when a crackling in the undergrowth back of the tent was heard, and on the instant there emerged a girl. Her clothing was in shreds, her face and hands were black with mud, streaks of blood showed across cheek and chin, and her eyes were fierce and sunken.
“For God’s sake give me suthin’ to eat,” she said, looking from one to another of the astonished group. “I’m damn near starved–only a bite,” she added, sinking to her knees and extending her hands. “I hain’t eat nothin’ but roots ’n’ berries for three days.”
Angie was the first to recover. “Here,” she said, hastily extending her plate, “take this.”
Without a word the starved creature grasped it and began eating as only a desperate, hungry animal would, while the group watched her.
“Don’t hurry so,” exclaimed Martin, whose wits had now returned. “Here, take this cup of coffee.”
Soon the food vanished and then the girl arose. “Sit down again, my poor child,” entreated Angie, who had observed the strange scene with moist eyes, “and tell us who you are and where you came from.”
“My name’s Chip,” answered the girl, bluntly, “an’ I’m runnin’ away from Tim’s Place, ’cause dad sold me to Pete Bolduc.”
“Sold–you–to–Pete–Bolduc,” exclaimed Angie, looking at her wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”
“He did, sartin,” answered the girl, laconically. “I heerd ’em makin’ the bargain, ’n’ I fetched three hundred dollars.”
Martin and his wife exchanged glances.
“Well, and then what?” continued Angie.
“Wal, then I waited a spell, till they’d turned in,” explained the girl, “and then I lit out. I knowed ’twas sixty miles to the settlement, but ’twas moonlight ’n’ I chanced it. I’ve had an awful time, though, the spites hev chased me all the way. I was jist makin’ a nestle when I seed yer light, an’ I crept through the brush