The Girl From Tim's Place. Charles Clark Munn
“The wilderness allus seems full o’ spectres ’n’ creepin’ crawlin’ panthers. Sometimes I think it’s God, an’ then agin, the devil.”–Old Cy Walker.
Tim’s Place, this refuge in the wilderness, cleared and colonized by Tim Connor, was neither better nor worse than such pioneer openings in Nature’s domain are apt to be. Tim, a hardy Irishman of sod-hovel and potato-diet ancestors, had been blacksmith for a lumber camp on this broad river and at its junction with a tributary called the Fox Hole years before Chip was born.
When all the adjacent lumber was cut and sent down this river, the camp was abandoned, and then Tim saw his opening. With his precious winter’s wages he purchased a large tract of this now worthless land, induced a robust Bridget, his brother Mike, and his consort to join fortunes with him, brought in cows, horses, pigs, and poultry, and began farming with the lumber camp as domicile.
Another log cabin was soon added, the first crop of potatoes sold readily to other lumbermen farther in the wilderness, the pigs in a sty adjacent to his own throve, the poultry multiplied, children came, and the red-shirted men coming into the wilderness or going out found Tim’s Place convenient.
With this added business came an enlargement in Tim’s ideas, the outcome of which was a framed house containing a kitchen and dining room and half a dozen others of closet-like proportions, furnished with box-on-legs beds. It was not a pretentious hostelry. Paint, shutters, and carpets were absent, benches served for chairs, the only mirror in it was eight by twelve inches, and used in common by Bridget and Mary. The toilet conveniences consisted of a wash-basin in the kitchen sink and a “last year’s” towel, used semi-occasionally. A long table bare of cloth and set with tinware served in the dining room, warmed in winter by a round sheet-iron stove; above it usually hung an array of socks and mittens, and a capacious cook stove half filled the kitchen. It was the crudest possible backwoods abode, and yet compared to the log cabin first occupied by Tim, it was a palace, and he was proud of it.
In autumn swarms of lumbermen halted there, content to sleep on the floor if need be. In spring they came again, log-driving down stream; later a few sportsmen occasionally tried it, and all fared alike.
There was no sentiment about Tim. If the citified fishermen objected to what they found, “Be gob, you kin kape away,” he readily told them. A quarter for each meal, or a night’s lodging, was the price, whether a bed or the floor was provided, and from early spring until frost came, all the occupants went barefoot.
When snow had made the sixty miles of log road to the nearest settlement passable, Tim invariably journeyed hither with horse and bob-sled for clothing and supplies.
No knowledge or news from the world reached here, unless brought by chance visitors. Sundays were an unknown factor, the work of clearing land and potato-raising became a continuous performance from spring until autumn; and the change of seasons, the rise and fall of the river, were the only measure of time.
An addition to Tim’s Place, other than babies and pigs, came one fall in an old Indian who, by ample presents of game, soon won Tim’s good-will and help in the erection of a log wigwam; but this relic of a vanishing race–reckoned by Tim as partially insane–remained there only winters, and when spring returned, disappeared into the wilderness.
There were also two other occasional visitors both meriting description. First, a beetle-browed, keen-eyed, red-haired man garbed as a hunter, whose speech disclosed something of the Scotch dialect, and who, presenting Tim with a deer and two bottles of whiskey as a peace-offering on his first arrival, soon obtained a welcome. He told a plausible tale of having been pursued for years by enemies seeking his life; how he had been robbed and driven away from the settlements; and how two of these enemies had even followed him into the woods. He had been shot at by them, had killed one in self-defence, a price had been set upon his capture, dead or alive, and, all in all, he was a sorely abused man.
How much of this lurid and fantastic tale Tim believed, is not pertinent to this narrative. The stranger, calling himself McGuire, was evidently a good fellow, since he brought good whiskey, and Tim made him welcome.
The facts as to McGuire, however, were somewhat at variance with his assertions. He had originally been a dive-keeper in a focal city for the lumbering interests of this wilderness, had entertained swarms of log-drivers just paid off and anxious to spend money, and when the law interfered, he retreated to a smaller town.
In the interval, strange to say, his moral nature–or rather immoral–suffered a brief relapse, during which he persuaded an excellent if confiding young woman to share his name and infamy.
His second business venture came to grief, however, and his wife deserted him and met with a fatal accident a few years after. In the meantime he had kept busy, exercising his peculiar talents and tastes in an individual manner, and evading officers, and his ways of money-getting were peculiar and diverse.
The Chinese Exclusion Act had just become operative, and the admission of Celestials into the land of the free, and of good wages, became a valuable matter. McGuire conceived the brilliant, if grewsome, idea of passing “Chinks” over the border line concealed in coffins. It worked admirably, and with accomplices on both sides to obtain certificates and permits, and take charge of the “corpses,” a few dozen almond-eyed immigrants at two hundred dollars each obtained admission.
In time, this budding industry met an official quietus, and McGuire, with several warrants out against him, took to the woods. He still continued business, however, in various ways. He smuggled liquor over the border by canoe loads, hiding it at convenient points, to exchange for log-drivers’ wages. He killed game out of season, and dynamited trout and salmon on spawning beds for the same purpose; and, handy with cards, did not disdain their use in lumbering camps.
In all and through all his various ways of money-getting, one purpose had governed him–that of money-saving. Trusting no one, as he had reason to feel no one trusted him, he continually emulated the squirrels and hid his savings in the woods. A trapper and hunter by instinct, as well as thief, dive-keeper, smuggler, poacher, and gambler, he had in his wanderings discovered a cave in a slate ledge upon the shores of a small lake far into the wilderness. It was while trapping here that he found this by the aid of a fox which, while dragging a trap, became caught and held in a crevasse while attempting to enter it.
The fox thus secured, McGuire made further investigation, and by removing a loose slab of slate, he was enabled to enter a roomy cavern, or rather two small ones partially separated by slate walls. A little light entered the larger one, through a seam crossing it lengthwise. They were free from moisture at this time–early autumn–and so secluded was the spot that McGuire decided at once to use this place as a hiding-spot for his money. The entrance could be kept concealed, its location served his purpose, and, fox-like himself, he decided to occupy what he would never have found without the aid of a fox, believing no one else would find it. It could also be used as a domicile for himself as well. A fireplace of slate could be built in it, an escape for smoke might be formed through the crack, if enlarged, and so this cave’s possibilities increased.
There were still several other advantages. This lake was surrounded by precipitous mountains; no lumbermen, even, were likely to operate there; the stream flowing out of it soon crossed the border line, finding escape into the St. Lawrence valley at a point some twenty miles distant; a short carry enabled him to reach the Fox Hole which flowed by Tim’s Place, and so this served as an excellent whip road in case of pursuit.
His transient asylum at Tim’s Place also served as a vantage point in another way.
Here all who entered this portion of the wilderness invariably halted,–officers and wardens as well,–and as by this time McGuire had become an outlaw murderer, with a reward offered for his capture, this outpost was of double advantage.
Caution was a strong point in his make-up, yet he was daring as well. He still visited the settlements occasionally, to sell furs