CHAPTER VII
Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail
Round-eyed, Freckles watched the Bird Woman and the Angel drive
away. After they were from sight and he was safely hidden among
the branches of a small tree, he remembered that he neither had
thanked them nor said good-bye. Considering what they had been through,
they never would come again. His heart sank until he had palpitation
in his wading-boots.
Stretching the length of the limb, he thought deeply, though he
was not thinking of Black Jack or Wessner. Would the Bird Woman
and the Angel come again? No other woman whom he ever had known
would. But did they resemble any other women he ever had known?
He thought of the Bird Woman's unruffled face and the Angel's revolver
practice, and presently he was not so sure that they would not return.
What were the people in the big world like? His knowledge was so
very limited. There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a
stilted, perfunctory kindness for their salaries. The visitors who
called on receiving days he had divided into three classes: the
psalm-singing kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy
in every feature of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and
jewels, and handed to those poor little mother-hungry souls worn
toys that their children no longer cared for, in exactly the same
spirit in which they pitched biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo,
and for the same reason--to see how they would take them and be
amused by what they would do; and the third class, whom he considered
real people. They made him feel they cared that he was there, and
that they would have been glad to see him elsewhere.
Now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's
best and were engaged in doing work that counted. They had things
worth while to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother.
With them he could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost
hand that every day tortured him with a new pang. What kind of people
were they and where did they belong among the classes he knew? He
failed to decide, because he never had known others similar to them;
but how he loved them!
In the world where he was going soon, were the majority like them,
or were they of the hypocrite and bun-throwing classes?
He had forgotten the excitement of the morning and the passing of
time when distant voices aroused him, and he gently lifted his head.
Nearer and nearer they came, and as the heavy wagons rumbled down
the east trail he could hear them plainly. The gang were shouting
themselves hoarse for the Limberlost guard. Freckles did not feel
that he deserved it. He would have given much to he able to go to
the men and explain, but to McLean only could he tell his story.
At the sight of Freckles the men threw up their hats and cheered.
McLean shook hands with him warmly, but big Duncan gathered him
into his arms and hugged him as a bear and choked over a few words
of praise. The gang drove in and finished felling the tree. McLean
was angry beyond measure at this attempt on his property, for in
their haste to fell the tree the thieves had cut too high and wasted
a foot and a half of valuable timber.
When the last wagon rolled away, McLean sat on the stump and Freckles
told the story he was aching to tell. The Boss scarcely could believe
his senses. Also, he was much disappointed.
"I have been almost praying all the way over, Freckles,"
he said, "that you would have some evidence by which we could
arrest those fellows and get them out of our way, but this will
never do. We can't mix up those women in it. They have helped you
save me the tree and my wager as well. Going across the country
as she does, the Bird Woman never could be expected to testify against
them."
"No, indeed; nor the Angel, either, sir," said Freckles.
"The Angel?" queried the astonished McLean.
The Boss listened in silence while Freckles told of the coming and
christening of the Angel.
"I know her father well," said McLean at last, "and
I have often seen her. You are right; she is a beautiful young girl,
and she appears to be utterly free from the least particle of false
pride or foolishness. I do not understand why her father risks such
a jewel in this place."
"He's daring it because she is a jewel, sir," said Freckles,
eagerly. "Why, she's trusting a rattlesnake to rattle before
it strikes her, and of course, she thinks she can trust mankind
as well. The man isn't made who wouldn't lay down the life of him
for her. She doesn't need any care. Her face and the pretty ways
of her are all the protection she would need in a band of howling
savages."
"Did you say she handled one of the revolvers?" asked
McLean.
"She scared all the breath out of me body," admitted Freckles.
"Seems that her father has taught her to shoot. The Bird Woman
told her distinctly to lie low and blaze away high, just to help
scare them. The spunky little thing followed them right out into
the west road, spitting lead like hail, and clipping all around
the heads and heels of them; and I'm damned, sir, if I believe she'd
cared a rap if she'd hit. I never saw much shooting, but if that
wasn't the nearest to miss I ever want to see! Scared the life near
out of me body with the fear that she'd drop one of them. As long
as I'd no one to help me but a couple of women that didn't dare
be mixed up in it, all I could do was to let them get away."
"Now, will they come back?" asked McLean.
"Of course!" said Freckles. "They're not going to
be taking that. You could stake your life on it, they'll be coming
back. At least, Black Jack will. Wessner may not have the pluck,
unless he is half drunk. Then he'd be a terror. And the next time--"
Freckles hesitated.
"What?"
"It will be a question of who shoots first and straightest."
"Then the only thing for me to do is to double the guard and
bring the gang here the first minute possible. As soon as I feel
that we have the rarest of the stuff out below, we will come. The
fact is, in many cases, until it is felled it's difficult to tell
what a tree will prove to be. It won't do to leave you here longer
alone. Jack has been shooting twenty years to your one, and it stands
to reason that you are no match for him. Who of the gang would you
like best to have with you?"
"No one, sir," said Freckles emphatically. "Next
time is where I run. I won't try to fight them alone. I'll just
be getting wind of them, and then make tracks for you. I'll need
to come like lightning, and Duncan has no extra horse, so I'm thinking
you'd best get me one--or perhaps a wheel would be better. I used
to do extra work for the Home doctor, and he would let me take his
bicycle to ride around the place. And at times the head nurse would
loan me his for an hour. A wheel would cost less and be faster than
a horse, and would take less care. I believe, if you are going to
town soon, you had best pick up any kind of an old one at some second-hand
store, for if I'm ever called to use it in a hurry there won't be
the handlebars left after crossing the corduroy."
"Yes," said McLean; "and if you didn't have a first-class
wheel, you never could cross the corduroy on it at all."
As they walked to the cabin, McLean insisted on another guard, but
Freckles was stubbornly set on fighting his battle alone. He made
one mental condition. If the Bird Woman was going to give up the
Little Chicken series, he would yield to the second guard, solely
for the sake of her work and the presence of the Angel in the Limberlost.
He did not propose to have a second man unless it were absolutely
necessary, for he had been alone so long that he loved the solitude,
his chickens, and flowers. The thought of having a stranger to all
his ways come and meddle with his arrangements, frighten his pets,
pull his flowers, and interrupt him when he wanted to study, so
annoyed him that he was blinded to his real need for help.
With McLean it was a case of letting his sober, better judgment
be overridden by the boy he was growing so to love that he could
not endure to oppose him, and to have Freckles keep his trust and
win alone meant more than any money the Boss might lose.
The following morning McLean brought the wheel, and Freckles took
it to the trail to test it. It was new, chainless, with as little
as possible to catch in hurried riding, and in every way the best
of its kind. Freckles went skimming around the trail on it on a
preliminary trip before he locked it in his case and started his
minute examination of his line on foot. He glanced around his room
as he left it, and then stood staring.
On the moss before his prettiest seat lay the Angel's hat. In the
excitement of yesterday all of them had forgotten it. He went and
picked it up, oh! so carefully, gazing at it with hungry eyes, but
touching it only to carry it to his case, where he hung it on the
shining handlebar of the new wheel and locked it among his treasures.
Then he went to the trail, with a new expression on his face and
a strange throbbing in his heart. He was not in the least afraid
of anything that morning. He felt he was the veriest Daniel, but
all his lions seemed weak and harmless.
What Black Jack's next move would be he could not imagine, but that
there would be a move of some kind was certain. The big bully was
not a man to give up his purpose, or to have the hat swept from
his head with a bullet and bear it meekly. Moreover, Wessner would
cling to his revenge with a Dutchman's singleness of mind.
Freckles tried to think connectedly, but there were too many places
on the trail where the Angel's footprints were vet visible. She
had stepped in one mucky spot and left a sharp impression. The afternoon
sun had baked it hard, and the horses' hoofs had not obliterated
any part of it, as they had in so many places. Freckles stood fascinated,
gazing at it. He measured it lovingly with his eye. He would not
have ventured a caress on her hat any more than on her person, but
this was different. Surely a footprint on a trail might belong to
anyone who found and wanted it. He stooped under the wires and entered
the swamp. With a little searching, he found a big piece of thick
bark loose on a log and carefully peeling it, carried it out and
covered the print so that the first rain would not obliterate it.
When he reached his room, he tenderly laid the hat upon his bookshelf,
and to wear off his awkwardness, mounted his wheel and went spinning
on trail again. It was like flying, for the path was worn smooth
with his feet and baked hard with the sun almost all the way. When
he came to the bark, he veered far to one side and smiled at it
in passing. Suddenly he was off the wheel, kneeling beside it. He
removed his hat, carefully lifted the bark, and gazed lovingly at
the imprint.
"I wonder what she was going to say of me voice," he whispered.
"She never got it said, but from the face of her, I believe
she was liking it fairly well. Perhaps she was going to say that
singing was the big thing I was to be doing. That's what they all
thought at the Home. Well, if it is, I'll just shut me eyes, think
of me little room, the face of her watching, and the heart of her
beating, and I'll raise them. Damn them, if singing will do it,
I'll raise them from the benches!"
With this dire threat, Freckles knelt, as at a wayside spring, and
deliberately laid his lips on the footprint. Then he arose, appearing
as if he had been drinking at the fountain of gladness.