FRECKLES
Gene Stratton-Porter
To
all good Irishmen
in general
and one
CHARLES DARWIN PORTER
in particular
Characters
FRECKLES, a plucky waif who guards the Limberlost timber leases
and dreams of Angels.
THE SWAMP ANGEL, in whom Freckles' sweetest dream materializes.
MCLEAN, a member of a Grand Rapids lumber company, who befriends
Freckles.
MRS. DUNCAN, who gives mother-love and a home to Freckles.
DUNCAN, head teamster of McLean's timber gang.
THE BIRD WOMAN, who is collecting camera studies of birds for
a book.
LORD AND LADY O'MORE, who come from Ireland in quest of a lost
relative.
THE MAN OF AFFAIRS, brusque of manner, but big of heart.
WESSNER, a Dutch timber-thief who wants rascality made easy.
BLACK JACK, a villain to whom thought of repentance comes too
late.
SEARS, camp cook.
Contents
I Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired
II Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends
III Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born
IV Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way for
New Experiences
V Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships
VI Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight
VII Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail
VIII Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing
by the Encounter
IX Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles
Comes to the Rescue
X Wherein Freckles Strives Mightily and the Swamp Angel Rewards
Him
XI Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs
the Bird Woman
XII Wherein Black Jack Captures Freckles and the Angel Captures
Jack
XIII Wherein the Angel Releases Freckles, and the Curse of Black
Jack Falls upon Her
XIV Wherein Freckles Nurses a Heartache and Black Jack Drops Out
XV Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little
Chicken Furnishes the Subject
XVI Wherein the Angel Locates a Rare Tree and Dines with the Gang
XVII Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a
Broken Body
XVIII Wherein Freckles Refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable
Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it
XIX Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses
Her Heart
XX Wherein Freckles Returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More
Sails for Ireland Without Him
CHAPTER I
Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired
Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of
the Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a
tramp, but he was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to
belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise that
would furnish him food and clothing.
Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber
Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing
of the horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food.
A feeling of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening
wave. Without stopping to think, he turned into the newly made
road and followed it to the camp, where the gang was making ready
for supper and bed.
The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp
made a dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic
trees. The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed
tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in
deep content, the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch
head-teamster, lovingly wiped the flanks of his big bays with
handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he softly whistled, "O wha
will be my dearie, O!" and a cricket beneath the leaves at
his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and crackled
merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big black
kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his testing-fork,
gusts of savory odors escaped.
Freckles approached him.
"I want to speak with the Boss," he said.
The cook glanced at him and answered carelessly: "He can't
use you."
The color flooded Freckles' face, but he said simply: "If
you will be having the goodness to point him out, we will give
him a chance to do his own talking."
With a shrug of astonishment, the cook led the way to a rough
board table where a broad, square-shouldered man was bending over
some account-books.
"Mr. McLean, here's another man wanting to be taken on the
gang, I suppose," he said.
"All right," came the cheery answer. "I never needed
a good man more than I do just now."
The manager turned a page and carefully began a new line.
"No use of your bothering with this fellow," volunteered
the cook. "He hasn't but one hand."
The flush on Freckles' face burned deeper. His lips thinned to
a mere line. He lifted his shoulders, took a step forward, and
thrust out his right arm, from which the sleeve dangled empty
at the wrist.
"That will do, Sears," came the voice of the Boss sharply.
"I will interview my man when I finish this report."
He turned to his work, while the cook hurried to the fires. Freckles
stood one instant as he had braced himself to meet the eyes of
the manager; then his arm dropped and a wave of whiteness swept
him. The Boss had not even turned his head. He had used the possessive.
When he said "my man," the hungry heart of Freckles
went reaching toward him.
The boy drew a quivering breath. Then he whipped off his old hat
and beat the dust from it carefully. With his left hand he caught
the right sleeve, wiped his sweaty face, and tried to straighten
his hair with his fingers. He broke a spray of ironwort beside
him and used the purple bloom to beat the dust from his shoulders
and limbs. The Boss, busy over his report, was, nevertheless,
vaguely alive to the toilet being made behind him, and scored
one for the man.
McLean was a Scotchman. It was his habit to work slowly and methodically.
The men of his camps never had known him to be in a hurry or to
lose his temper. Discipline was inflexible, but the Boss was always
kind. His habits were simple. He shared camp life with his gangs.
The only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering
diamond stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one
of his fingers, and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he
rode between camps and across the country on business.
No man of McLean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been
overdriven or underpaid. The Boss never had exacted any deference
from his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of
them ever had attempted a familiarity. They all knew him to be
a thorough gentleman, and that in the great timber city several
millions stood to his credit.
He was the only son of that McLean who had sent out the finest
ships ever built in Scotland. That his son should carry on this
business after the father's death had been his ambition. He had
sent the boy through the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh,
and allowed him several years' travel before he should attempt
his first commission for the firm.
Then he was ordered to southern Canada and Michigan to purchase
a consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to
Indiana for oak beams. The young man entered these mighty forests,
parts of which lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of
time. The clear, cool, pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. The
intense silence, like that of a great empty cathedral, fascinated
him. He gradually learned that, to the shy wood creatures that
darted across his path or peeped inquiringly from leafy ambush,
he was brother. He found himself approaching, with a feeling of
reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages of
sun, wind, and snow. Soon it became difficult to fell them. When
he had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to learn
that in the swamps and forests he had lost his heart and it was
calling--forever calling him.
When he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed
of it, and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence
in the outskirts of Grand Rapids. With three partners, he organized
a lumber company. His work was to purchase, fell, and ship the
timber to the mills. Marshall managed the milling process and
passed the lumber to the factory. From the lumber, Barthol made
beautiful and useful furniture, which Uptegrove scattered all
over the world from a big wholesale house. Of the thousands who
saw their faces reflected on the polished surfaces of that furniture
and found comfort in its use, few there were to whom it suggested
mighty forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big of soul
and body, who cut his way through them, and with the eye of experience
doomed the proud trees that were now entering the homes of civilization
for service.
When McLean turned from his finished report, he faced a young
man, yet under twenty, tall, spare, heavily framed, closely freckled,
and red-haired, with a homely Irish face, but in the steady gray
eyes, straightly meeting his searching ones of blue, there was
unswerving candor and the appearance of longing not to be ignored.
He was dressed in the roughest of farm clothing, and seemed tired
to the point of falling.
"You are looking for work?" questioned McLean.
"Yis," answered Freckles.
"I am very sorry," said the Boss with genuine sympathy
in his every tone, "but there is only one man I want at present--a
hardy, big fellow with a stout heart and a strong body. I hoped
that you would do, but I am afraid you are too young and scarcely
strong enough."
Freckles stood, hat in hand, watching McLean.
"And what was it you thought I might be doing?" he asked.
The Boss could scarcely repress a start. Somewhere before accident
and poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English,
even with an accent. The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet
and pure. It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue,
yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong
sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible
to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives
with which he was very familiar and which touched him nearly.
He was of foreign birth, and despite years of alienation, in times
of strong feeling he committed inherited sins of accent and construction.
"It's no child's job," answered McLean. "I am the
field manager of a big lumber company. We have just leased two
thousand acres of the Limberlost. Many of these trees are of great
value. We can't leave our camp, six miles south, for almost a
year yet; so we have blazed a trail and strung barbed wires securely
around this lease. Before we return to our work, I must put this
property in the hands of a reliable, brave, strong man who will
guard it every hour of the day, and sleep with one eye open at
night. I shall require the entire length of the trail to be walked
at least twice each day, to make sure that our lines are up and
that no one has been trespassing."
Freckles was leaning forward, absorbing every word with such intense
eagerness that he was beguiling the Boss into explanations he
had never intended making.
"But why wouldn't that be the finest job in the world for
me?" he pleaded. "I am never sick. I could walk the
trail twice, three times every day, and I'd be watching sharp
all the while."
"It's because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this
will be a trying job for a work-hardened man," answered McLean.
"You see, in the first place, you would be afraid. In stretching
our lines, we killed six rattlesnakes almost as long as your body
and as thick as your arm. It's the price of your life to start
through the marshgrass surrounding the swamp unless you are covered
with heavy leather above your knees.
"You should be able to swim in case high water undermines
the temporary bridge we have built where Sleepy Snake Creek enters
the swamp. The fall and winter changes of weather are abrupt and
severe, while I would want strict watch kept every day. You would
always be alone, and I don't guarantee what is in the Limberlost.
It is lying here as it has lain since the beginning of time, and
it is alive with forms and voices. I don't pretend to say what
all of them come from; but from a few slinking shapes I've seen,
and hair-raising yells I've heard, I'd rather not confront their
owners myself; and I am neither weak nor fearful.
"Worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and
steal timber is desperate. One of my employees at the south camp,
John Carter, compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious
reasons. He came here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded
in locating and marking a number of valuable trees that he was
endeavoring to sell to a rival company when we secured the lease.
He has sworn to have these trees if he has to die or to kill others
to get them; and he is a man that the strongest would not care
to meet."
"But if he came to steal trees, wouldn't he bring teams and
men enough: that all anyone could do would be to watch and be
after you?" queried the boy.
"Yes," replied McLean.
"Then why couldn't I be watching just as closely, and coming
as fast, as an older, stronger man?" asked Freckles.
"Why, by George, you could!" exclaimed McLean. "I
don't know as the size of a man would be half so important as
his grit and faithfulness, come to think of it. Sit on that log
there and we will talk it over. What is your name?"
Freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding
his arms, stood straight as the trees around him. He grew a shade
whiter, but his eyes never faltered.
"Freckles!" he said.
"Good enough for everyday," laughed McLean, "but
I scarcely can put `Freckles' on the company's books. Tell me
your name."
"I haven't any name," replied the boy.
"I don't understand," said McLean.
"I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you
wouldn't," said Freckles slowly. "I've spent more time
on it than I ever did on anything else in all me life, and I don't
understand. Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn
baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its
hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity
home, to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me."
McLean stared aghast. He had no reply ready, and presently in
a low voice he suggested: "And after?"
"The Home people took me in, and I was there the full legal
age and several years over. For the most part we were a lot of
little Irishmen together. They could always find homes for the
other children, but nobody would ever be wanting me on account
of me arm."
"Were they kind to you?" McLean regretted the question
the minute it was asked.
"I don't know," answered Freckles. The reply sounded
so hopeless, even to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify
it by adding: "You see, it's like this, sir. Kindnesses that
people are paid to lay off in job lots and that belong equally
to several hundred others, ain't going to be soaking into any
one fellow so much."
"Go on," said McLean, nodding comprehendingly.
"There's nothing worth the taking of your time to tell,"
replied Freckles. "The Home was in Chicago, and I was there
all me life until three months ago. When I was too old for the
training they gave to the little children, they sent me to the
closest ward school as long as the law would let them; but I was
never like any of the other children, and they all knew it. I'd
to go and come like a prisoner, and be working around the Home
early and late for me board and clothes. I always wanted to learn
mighty bad, but I was glad when that was over.
"Every few days, all me life, I'd to be called up, looked
over, and refused a home and love, on account of me hand and ugly
face; but it was all the home I'd ever known, and I didn't seem
to belong to any place else.
"Then a new superintendent was put in. He wasn't for being
like any of the others, and he swore he'd weed me out the first
thing he did. He made a plan to send me down the State to a man
he said he knew who needed a boy. He wasn't for remembering to
tell that man that I was a hand short, and he knocked me down
the minute he found I was the boy who had been sent him. Between
noon and that evening, he and his son close my age had me in pretty
much the same shape in which I was found in the beginning, so
I lay awake that night and ran away. I'd like to have squared
me account with that boy before I left, but I didn't dare for
fear of waking the old man, and I knew I couldn't handle the two
of them; but I'm hoping to meet him alone some day before I die."
McLean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but
he liked the boy all the better for this confession.
"I didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting
in me Home ones," Freckles continued, "for they had
already taken all me clean, neat things for the boy and put me
into his rags, and that went almost as sore as the beatings, for
where I was we were always kept tidy and sweet-smelling, anyway.
I hustled clear into this State before I learned that man couldn't
have kept me if he'd wanted to. When I thought I was good and
away from him, I commenced hunting work, but it is with everybody
else just as it is with you, sir. Big, strong, whole men are the
only ones for being wanted."
"I have been studying over this matter," answered McLean.
"I am not so sure but that a man no older than you and similar
in every way could do this work very well, if he were not a coward,
and had it in him to be trustworthy and industrious."
Freckles came forward a step.
"If you will give me a job where I can earn me food, clothes,
and a place to sleep," he said, "if I can have a Boss
to work for like other men, and a place I feel I've a right to,
I will do precisely what you tell me or die trying."
He spoke so convincingly that McLean believed, although in his
heart he knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business
for a man with the interests he had involved.
"Very well," the Boss found himself answering, "I
will enter you on my pay rolls. We'll have supper, and then I
will provide you with clean clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending
apparatus, and a revolver. The first thing in the morning, I will
take you the length of the trail myself and explain fully what
I want done. All I ask of you is to come to me at once at the
south camp and tell me as a man if you find this job too hard
for you. It will not surprise me. It is work that few men would
perform faithfully. What name shall I put down?"
Freckles' gaze never left McLean's face, and the Boss saw the
swift spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features.
"I haven't any name," he said stubbornly, "no more
than one somebody clapped on to me when they put me on the Home
books, with not the thought or care they'd name a house cat. I've
seen how they enter those poor little abandoned devils often enough
to know. What they called me is no more my name than it is yours.
I don't know what mine is, and I never will; but I am going to
be your man and do your work, and I'll be glad to answer to any
name you choose to call me. Won't you please be giving me a name,
Mr. McLean?"
The Boss wheeled abruptly and began stacking his books. What he
was thinking was probably what any other gentleman would have
thought in the circumstances. With his eyes still downcast, and
in a voice harsh with huskiness, he spoke.
"I will tell you what we will do, my lad," he said.
"My father was my ideal man, and I loved him better than
any other I have ever known. He went out five years ago, but that
he would have been proud to leave you his name I firmly believe.
If I give to you the name of my nearest kin and the man I loved
best--will that do?"
Freckles' rigid attitude relaxed suddenly. His head dropped, and
big tears splashed on the soiled calico shirt. McLean was not
surprised at the silence, for he found that talking came none
too easily just then.
"All right," he said. "I will write it on the roll--James
Ross McLean."
"Thank you mightily," said Freckles. "That makes
me feel almost as if I belonged, already."
"You do," said McLean. "Until someone armed with
every right comes to claim you, you are mine. Now, come and take
a bath, have some supper, and go to bed."
As Freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his
heart and soul were singing for joy.