Ruth was left in a sorry plight, so suddenly bereft of the strong arm she had leaned upon, without a thought that it could ever be taken from her. Now she had only her son, a st.u.r.dy lad, indeed, but of an age to be cared for rather than to care for others. Toombs had proved better than he looked, kind enough, and a good worker, and familiar with the needs of the farm. When his time was out she had no means to pay his wages nor could she well get along without him. So he staid on, taking a mortgage, at length, on the premises in lieu of money, and becoming more and more important in Ruth's estimation, though regarded with increasing dislike and jealousy by her son, who found himself less and less considered.

Months pa.s.sed, dulling sorrow and the sense of loss, and bringing many a bitter change. The bitterness of Nathan's life was made almost unbearable presently. His mother, of a weak and clinging nature, inevitably drifted to a fate a more self-reliant woman would have avoided. Worried with uncomprehended business, and a.s.sured by Toombs that this was the only way to retain a home for herself and children, yet unmoved by the kindly advice of Seth's honest friends and neighbors, as well as the anger and entreaties of her son, she went with Toombs over to the Fort, where they were married by the chaplain stationed there.

With such a man in the place of his wise and affectionate father, Nathan's life was filled with misery, nor could he ever comprehend his mother's course. Though bestowing upon Martha and his mother indifferent notice or none at all, towards the boy the stepfather exercised his recently acquired authority with severity, giving him the hardest and most unpleasant work to do, and treating him always with distrust, often with cruelty.

"I hate him," he told Ruth. "He's sa.s.sed me every day since I come here, and I've got a bigger job 'an that to settle, one that I'd ha' settled with his father, if he hadn't cheated me by gettin' killed."

"Oh, what do you mean?" Ruth gasped. "I thought you and Seth was always good friends."

"Friends!" he growled, contemptuously; "I hated the ground he walked on.

Look here," and Silas pulled out his leather pocketbook and took from it a soiled paper which he held before her eyes.

She read the bold, clear signature of Ethan Allen, and, with a sickening thrill, that of Seth Beeman under it.

"Yes, Ethan Allen and Seth Beeman and his neighbors whipped a man for claimin' his own, and your boy went and gethered 'em in. Mebby you re'collect it."

"I couldn't help it," she gasped. "I didn't see it. I run and hid and stopped my ears."

"Well, 'Rastus Graves 'ould ha' settled his debts if he'd ha' lived. But he died afore his back got healed over, and afore he died he turned the job over to his brother, that's me, Silas Toombs, or Graves-they're the same in the end."

Ruth stared at him in dumb amazement and horror, while he proceeded, pouring forth his long concealed wrath.

"Well, I've got Seth Beeman's wife, and, what's wuth more, his farm, an'

his childern right 'nunder my thumb. I hope he knows on't. And now, ma'am," lowering his voice from its pa.s.sionate exultation, "you don't want to breathe a word o' this to your nice neighbors or to your young 'uns. It wouldn't do no good and it might be unpleasant all round. You don't want folks to know what a fool you be."

After this disclosure, Ruth lived, in weariness and vain regret, a life that seemed quite hopeless but for looking forward to the time when her son could a.s.sert his rights and be her champion. Her nature was one of those that still bend, without being broken, by whatever weight is laid on them.

CHAPTER X-REBELLION

One day Nathan was gathering ashes from the heaps where the log piles had been burned and storing them in a rude shed. Close by this stood the empty leach-tubs awaiting filling and the busy days and nights when the potash-making should begin. It was hard, unpleasant work, irritating to skin, eyes, and temper. It was natural a boy should linger a little as Nathan did, when he emptied a basket, and quickly retreated with held breath out of the dusty cloud. He looked longingly on the shining channel of the creek, and wished he might follow it to the lake and fish in the cool shadows of the sh.o.r.e. He wished that Job would chance to come through the woods, but Job lately rarely came near them, for he was vexed with Ruth for mating with this stranger, and the new master gave no welcome to any of the friends of the old master. His hands were busy as his thoughts, when he was startled by his stepfather's voice close behind him.

"You lazy whelp, what you putterin' 'bout? You spend half your time a gawpin. You git them ashes housed afore noon or I'll give ye a skinnin', and I'll settle an old score at the same time," and Toombs switched a blue beech rod he held in his big hand. After seeing the boy hurry nervously to this impossible task, he went back to his chopping.

The shadows crept steadily toward the north till they marked noontime, and still one gray ash heap confronted Nathan. As he stood with a full basket of ashes poised on the edge of the ash bin, Toombs appeared, with his axe on his shoulder and the beech in his hand. "You know what I told you, and Silas Toombs doesn't go back on his words; no, sir."

"I couldn't do it. I tried, but I couldn't get 'em all done!"

Silas strode toward him in a fury, when Nathan hurled the basket of ashes full at his head, and dodging behind the shed was in rapid flight toward the woods, when his a.s.sailant emerged from the choking, blinding cloud, sputtering out mingled oaths and ashes. In a moment he caught the line of flight and followed in swift pursuit. The boy's nimble feet widened the distance between them, but he was at the start almost exhausted with his severe work, so that when he reached the woods his only hope lay in hiding.

Silas, entering the woods, could neither see nor hear his intended victim. Listening between spasms of rushing and raging, he heard a slight rustling among the branches of a great hemlock that reared its huge, russet-gray trunk close beside him. Looking up, he saw a pair of dusty legs dangling twenty feet above him.

"Come down, you little devil, or I'll shoot you."

"I won't," said Nathan, half surprised at his own daring; "you can't shoot with an axe."

"I'm glad you made me think on't. Then come down or I'll chop you down!"

As an earnest of his threat he drove his axe to the eye into the boll of the tree.

The boy only climbed the higher, and disappeared among the dark foliage and thick, quivering rays of branches. Parleying no more, Silas began chopping so vigorously that the great flakes of chips flew abroad upon the forest floor in a continuous shower, and soon paved it all about him with white blotches. When the trunk was cut to the middle, he shouted up another summons to surrender, but got no answer. Then his quick, strong strokes began to fall on the other side, steadily biting their way toward the centre, till the huge, ancient pillar of living wood began to tremble on its sapped foundation. Standing away from it, he peered up among the whorls of gray branches and broad shelves of leaves, but they disclosed nothing.

"h.e.l.lo! Come down! Don't be a fool! An' I won't lick you. The tree's comin' an' it'll kill you." Still no answer nor sound, save the solemn whisper of the leaves, came down from the lofty branches. "You're a plucky one, but down you come!"

In a sudden blaze of pa.s.sion at being thus scorned, he drove his axe deep into the tree's heart. A puff of wind stirred the topmost boughs. A shiver ran through every branch and twig. Fibre after fibre cracked and parted. The trunk tremulously swayed from its steadfast base. The sighing branches clung to the unstable air. A tall, lithe birch, that had long leaned to their embrace, sprang from it as in a flutter of fear, and then, with a slowly accelerating sweep, the ancient pillar, with all its long upheld burden of boughs and perennial greenery, went through its fellows to the last sullen boom of its downfall. Toombs breathlessly watched and listened for something besides the shortening vibration of the branches, some sound other than the swish of relieved entanglement, but no sound or motion succeeded them.

"Nathan, Nathan," he called again and again.

He ran along the trunk looking among the branches. He felt under the densest tangles, then cleared them away with quick but careful axe strokes, dreading, in every moment of search, that the next would reveal the crushed and mangled form of the boy. Not till the shadows of night thickened the shadows of the woods did he quit his fruitless search. He knew the boy was dead, and, if found, what then? Well, for the present a plausible lie would serve him well enough.

"Your boy has run off, Mis' Toombs. You needn't worry. He'll git starved out 'fore long and sneak back. And he'll work all the better when he does come. Boys has got to have their tantrums an' git over 'em." This device served so well to quiet any graver apprehensions that Ruth entertained, he the more insisted on it. "Like's not he's over to the Fort. They'll make him stan' round, I tell ye."

He intended in the morning to renew his search, but when it came he dared not go near that fallen tree, the dumb witness and concealer of his crime. When, from afar, he saw the crows wheeling above the spot, or when at night he heard from that direction the wolf's long howl, he shook with fear, lest they had discovered his secret and would in some way reveal it.

CHAPTER XI-ESCAPE

When the accidental shaking of the branch disclosed his refuge, Nathan wished he had taken the easier shelter of a hollow log or the tangle of a windfall. The more so, when he caught brief, swift flashes of the axe gleaming up through the dark foliage and felt the tree shiver at every st.u.r.dy stroke. But he had no thought of surrender. The trunk of the leaning birch, so slender that his arms and legs could clasp it, had given him access to this coign of vantage and now offered a retreat from it.

Toombs was intent upon his work, with his back turned squarely toward the foot of the birch, though barely six paces from it. Escape, if at all, must be made while the chopper was on this side of the hemlock.

Very cautiously he regained the birch where it hid trunk and lithe branches in the embrace of the great evergreen, and then worked downward, with an eye ever on his enemy underneath, making swiftest progress when the axe fell and its sound overbore the rustle of the birch's s.h.a.ggy, yellow mane, that his b.u.t.tons sc.r.a.ped along. At last his toes were tickled by the topmost leaves of a low, sprangling hobble bush, then lightly touched by the last year's fallen leaves and the soft mould. Then, as a flying chip struck him full on the cheek, he loosed his hold on the trunk and stole stealthily to the shelter of the nearest great tree.

The axe strokes ceased, but a glance showed him that Toombs was only wiping his sweaty brow on his sleeve, as he looked up into the tree and addressed its supposed occupant. As the futile chopping was resumed, Nathan crept off through the undergrowth till beyond sight and hearing, when he ran upright so swiftly that he was a mile away when the roar of the tree's fall came booming through the woods.

He sat down to get his breath and determine where to go, for so far he had only thought to escape his stepfather. Should he try for the Fort?

How was he to cross the lake without a boat, and, if there, on what plea that he could offer was he likely to be harbored, for Toombs was on very friendly terms with the commander! Not there could he find protection.

His old friend Job was the only one to whom he could look, and in his secluded cabin he might hope to escape detection.

With this determination he arose and went his way, too well skilled in woodcraft, for all his youth, to lose it while the sun shone. Pushing steadily on he saw at last the slanted sunbeams shining golden green through the woodside leaves, then saw them glimmering on the quiet channel of Job's creek, and following the sh.o.r.e upstream, presently emerged in the little clearing. It was as quiet as the woods around it, and seemed more untenanted, for through them the songs of the thrushes were ringing in flute-like cadences, while here nothing was astir.

Nathan made his way so silently to the open door that he stood looking in upon the occupants of the cabin before they became aware of his presence. Job was squatting before the fireplace engaged in frying meat, and a great, gaunt, blue-mottled hound sat close beside him, intently watching the progress of the cooking. Presently his keen nose caught a scent of the intruder, and he uttered a low, threatening growl that attracted his master's attention.

"Be quiet, Gabriel; what is't troubles you?" Then seeing his visitor hesitating at the threshold, "Why, Nathan, come in my boy, come in, the hound won't hurt you. Ain't he a pictur'? Did you ever see such ears?

Did you ever see such a chest and such legs? And he's as good as he is harnsome. I went clean to Manchester arter him and gin three prime beaver skins for him. He's one o' Peleg Sunderland's breed and'll foller anything that walks, if you tell him to, from a mushrat to a man. And as for his voice, good land! You hain't never heard no music till you hear it. That's what give him his name, Gabriel. But what's the matter with you, Nathan?" when, withdrawing his admiring gaze from his new acquisition, he noted the boy's wearied and troubled countenance. "You look clean beat out. There hain't nothin' the matter with your folks?"

Nathan told the story of his treatment since his mother's marriage to Toombs, and his unpremeditated flight, and all the particulars of his escape.

"I'd ha' gin a dozen mushrat skins to seen him when he got the tree down and didn't find you, and him like a fool dog a barkin' up a tree an hour arter the c.o.o.n'd left it. You done right to come to me, for he won't come here to look for ye right off. And then when he's had time to cool off and git ashamed of himself, you can go home."

"No," said the boy quickly; "I'll never go back till I'm old enough to lick him and make him sorry I come."

"Oh, well, you think you will. But you won't never. The rough edge'll be wore off afore you git round to it. Once I swore I'd thrash a schoolmarster I hed, and when I went to do it we jes' sot down and talked over old times, like ol' friends. But what'll your mother and sis do without you?"