Love of the Wild. Archie P. McKishnie
it’s a strip of sandy loam between Bridgetown and Lake Erie. It’s too light even to grow Canada-thistles. Well, I guess maybe Watson would be willin’ to swap that sand for our place. I don’t like that man Watson. I can’t say why, unless it’s on account of some things I’ve heard of him and that other feller, Smythe, who’s a partner of his in some way.”
“You mean the Smythe who keeps the store at Bridgetown?”
“The same. You know him pretty well, I guess. He cheated you out of a dozen mink-hides, didn’t he?”
“He tried to,” answered Boy with a smile.
“Mr. Watson’ll find that we’re not wantin’ to trade farms,” affirmed the father.
“There’s Gloss,” suggested Boy. “If she was where there was a good school——” He hesitated and looked at Big McTavish.
The man laughed.
“Why, bless your heart,” he cried, “you couldn’t drag the girl away from this bush. She loves it—loves every nook and corner of it.”
Boy sighed.
“She sure does,” he agreed. “She sure does.”
The father brought a pine board from the wood-box and began to whittle off the shavings for the morning fire-making. This done, he gathered them together with a stockinged foot, glancing now and then at the boy, who had resumed his old attitude.
“Watson and Smythe want to get hold of our property for some reason,” said the father, “and I reckon it’s pretty easy to guess who they’re trying to get it for. It’s that big landowner, Colonel Hallibut, who has his mill on Lee Creek. I hear that Colonel Hallibut swears he’ll own every stick of timber in Bushwhackers’ Place.”
“That’s what troubles me,” returned Boy quickly. “You know what them rich Englishmen are like, dad. They have always got hold of everythin’ they wanted, and now this one is goin’ to try and get our place. But we ain’t goin’ to let him,” he cried, springing up. “We’ll fight him, dad; we’ll fight him off, and if he tries to take it we’ll——”
“Hush, Boy; there’s no reason to take on that way. What makes you think he’ll try to drive us?”
Big McTavish stood up straight. Something of the boy’s spirit had entered into him for an instant.
“You see, dad, we’re poor. That is, we have no ready money, though we have everythin’ we need for comfort. Then we’re lackin’ in that somethin’ called sharpness among businessmen. We’ve never learned it. We are like the other wild things that creep farther back into the woods before what they can’t understand. We don’t know their ways. I tell you, Hallibut would steal this bushland from us, and he’s goin’ to try. It’s valuable. There’s enough walnut and oak and the highest class of timber on this place to make us rich—rich, d’ye know that, dad? And ain’t Hallibut and his agents tryin’ to get every other Bushwhacker under their thumbs same as they’re tryin’ to get us? But, dad, listen—they won’t get us, by God; they won’t get us.”
The lad was trembling and his face was white and perspiring.
“Boy,” chided the father sternly, “you mustn’t swear. Watson nor Hallibut nor any other man is that bad. You’ve let the woods get into you until you’re fanciful. Read your Bible, and pray more.”
“I didn’t mean to swear, dad. I’ve swore more to-day than I have for years. I can’t stand to think that them men will steal this beautiful spot that is ours now, and cut and cripple it and drive its wild things away.”
“Hallibut’s sawmill is runnin’ nights,” said the father thoughtfully. “He made French Joe an offer for his timber through Watson the other day, but I guess it wasn’t much. Joe owed him money.”
“Well, us Bushwhackers are goin’ to hang together,” said Boy. “We own over two thousand acres of the best timber in Ontario. We can keep it by fightin’. If we don’t fight——”
He turned and walked toward the door.
“Boy,” warned the elder man, “don’t you do anythin’ you’ll be sorry for. Just forget all about Watson and Hallibut for a time, ’cause I want to tell how we all come to be in this place we love so much.
“Before you were born, Boy, I lived in the States; ranched it in Arizona. And there was a man down there who as much as stole everythin’ I had in the world. It was because of a woman that he lived to enjoy it all for a time. That woman was his wife, your ma’s more’n friend, little Glossie’s mother.”
Boy looked up quickly, then dropped his head again.
“That woman was a lot to me and your mother. She was a lady, every inch of her, and educated, too. She taught your ma to be the scholar she is, and she was the kindest-hearted, sweetest woman that could be found in the world. Seems as she run off from a fine home and rich people to marry that man. He was a bad ’un, her man; bad in every way a man can be bad, I guess. He drank and he abused her——”
Big McTavish caught his breath hard.
“ ’Course,” he went on, “we might have killed him—lots of us there would have done more’n that for his wife. But you see that woman stuck to him in spite of all he did to make her life hell; so we let him alone. Your ma worshiped her, or as near it as mortal can worship mortal, and they were a lot together. Women are not very plentiful on the Plains, Boy. When I lost everythin’ to her husband, through his cheatin’ me on a deal, and made up my mind to quit ranchin’ and strike for some new country, she promised us that after her baby was born she’d come to us, no matter where we might be. You see it had come to such a pass that she simply couldn’t live with that man no longer.”
The big man paused to light his pipe, and Boy asked:
“Did she come?”
“No. We came direct here to Ontario and settled in this hardwood, me an’ your ma and Granny McTavish. All we had in the world was the clothes we wore and three hundred dollars in money. I took up as much land as the money would buy from the Canadian Government and started in to cut out a home. You was born soon after we’d settled here. Peeler came and he settled alongside us and soon after that Declute came.
“We wrote to the poor little woman out West and told her the latch-string was out for her whenever she could come. You see I’d built this house by then, and we all felt tolerably happy and well-to-do. We never got an answer to our letter, and the followin’ spring I left you and your ma and Granny with the neighbors and struck the back trail for Arizona. I found that her man had been killed in a quarrel with a Mexican, but nobody seemed to know where she and her baby had gone. I hunted high and low for them, but at last had to give it up. I thought maybe she had gone back to the home of her people, ’cause I learned that her husband had left some money behind him. When I got back here I found two babies where I’d left but one. You had a little girl companion sleepin’ in your hammock beside you, Boy. Your ma picked her up and put her in my arms and she cried a good deal, your ma did, and by and by she showed me a little gold locket that she had found tied about the baby’s neck. I opened one of the doors and a tiny picture lay there. Then I knowed at once whose baby it was that God had sent to us, and I knowed, too, that the baby’s mother would never come now. An old Injun was there, and he told me how a man in Sandwich had given him money to tote the baby down to us. He couldn’t tell us much about the man. We called the youngster Gloss, ’cause that was the name the old Injun gave her.”
McTavish arose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“Now you know how we all come to be here, Boy,” he said gently, “and you know why old Injun Noah seems so near to us all. He was the man who brought our girl to us.”
Boy did not speak, and the father quietly left the room. At the door he turned and looked back. The boy was sitting with his chin in his hands. Outside, the moon was