Part 9 (2/2)
”I dono!” answered Joe Tucker. ”I expect, if it's got to be did, you'll fetch it somehow. But I'm mighty glad 'tain't my job!”
Scott Peck thought Joe had good reason for joy in that direction before he had gone a mile on his homeward way! The trail was only a trail, rough, devious, crossed with roots of trees, brushed with boughs of fir and pine, and the horse was restive and unruly. By nightfall he had gone only a few miles, and when he had tied the beast to a tree and covered him with a blanket brought from Bartlett's for the purpose, and strapped on his own back all the way, the light of the camp-fire startled the horse so that Scott was forced to blind him with a comforter before he would stand still. Then in the middle of the night, a great owl hooting from the tree-top just above him was a fresh scare, and but that the strap and rope both were new and strong he would have escaped. Scott listened to his rearing, trampling, snorts, and wild neigh with the composure of a sleepy man; but when he awoke at daylight, and found four inches of snow had fallen during the night, he swore.
This was too much. Even to his practised woodcraft it seemed impossible to get the horse safe to his clearing without harm. It was only by dint of the utmost care and patience, the greatest watchfulness of the way, that he got along at all. Every rod or two he stumbled, and all but fell himself. Here and there a loaded hemlock bough, weighed out of its uprightness by the wet snow, snapped in his face and blinded him with its damp burden; and he knew long before nightfall that another night in the woods was inevitable. He could feed the horse on young twigs of beech and birch; fresh moss, and new-peeled bark (fodder the animal would have resented with scorn under any other conditions); but hunger has no law concerning food. Scott himself was famished; but his pipe and tobacco were a refuge whose value he knew before, and his charge was tired enough to be quiet this second night; so the man had an undisturbed sleep by his comfortable fire. It was full noon of the next day when he reached his cabin. Jean Poiton had tied his boat to its stake, and gone on without stopping to speak to Sarah; so her surprise was wonderful when she saw Scott emerge from the forest, leading a gray creature, with drooping head and shambling gait, tired and dispirited.
”Heaven's to Betsey, Scott Peck! What hev you got theer?”
”The devil!” growled Scott.
Sary screamed.
”Do hold your jaw, gal, an' git me su'thin' hot to eat 'n drink. I'm savager'n an Injin. Come, git along.” And, tying his horse to a stump, the hungry man followed Sarah into the house and helped himself out of a keg in the corner to a long, reviving draught.
”Du tell!” said Sarah, when the pork began to frizzle in the pan. ”What upon airth did you buy a hoss for?” (She had discovered it was a horse.)
”Buy it! I guess not. I ain't no such blamed fool as that comes to. That feller you nussed up here a spell back, he up an' sent it roun' to Bartlett's, for a present to me.”
”Well! Did he think you was a-goin' to set up canawl long o' Racket?”
”I expect he calc'lated I'd go racin',” dryly answered Scott.
”But what be ye a-goin' to feed him with?” said Sary, laying venison steaks into the pan.
”Lord knows! I don't. Shut up, Sary! I'm tuckered out with the beast.
I'd ruther still-hunt three weeks on eend than fetch him in from Sar'nac, now I tell ye. Ain't them did enough? I could eat a raw bear.”
Sary laughed and asked no more questions till the ravenous man had satisfied himself with the savory food; but, if she had asked them, Scott would have had no answer, for his mind was perplexed to the last degree. He fed the beast for a while on potatoes; but that was taking the bread out of his own mouth, though he supplemented it with now and then a boat-load of coa.r.s.e, frost-killed gra.s.s, but the horse grew more and more gaunt and restive. His eyes glared with hunger and fury. He kicked out one side of the cowshed and snapped at Scott whenever he came near him. Want of use and food had restored him to the original savagery of his race. Hitherto Scott had never acknowledged Mrs McAlister's gift; but Sary, who had a vague idea of good manners, caught from the picture papers and occasional dime novels the tribe of Adirondack travellers strew even in such a wilderness, kept pecking at him.
”Ta'n't no more'n civil to say thank ye, to the least,” she said, till Scott's temper gave way.
”Stop a-pesterin' of me! I've hed too much. I ain't a speck thankful!
I'm mightily t'other thing, whatever 'tis. Write to her yourself, if you're a mind tu. You can make a better fist at it, anyways. Comes as nateral to women to lie as sap to run. I'll be etarnally blessed ef I touch paper for to do it.” And he flung out of the door with a bang.
Of course Sary wrote the letter, which one balmy day electrified Harry and his mother as they sat basking in Southern suns.h.i.+ne:
”MIS MACALLISTUR: This is fur to say wee is reel obliged to ye fur the HOSS.”
”Good gracious, mother! Did you send them a horse?” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Harry.
”Why, my dear, I wanted to show my sense of their kindness, and I could not offer these people money. I thought a horse would be so useful!”
”Useful! in the Adirondack woods!” And Harry burst into a fit of laughter that scarcely permitted his mother to go on; but at last she proceeded:
”But Scotty and me ain't ackwainted So to speak with Hoss ways; he seems kinder Hum-sick if you may say that of a Cretur. We air etarnally gratified to You for sech a Valewble Pressent, but if you was Wiling we shood Like to swapp it of in spring fur a kow, ourn Being some in years.
”yours to Command, SARY PECK.”
But long before Mrs. McAlister's permission to ”swap” the horse reached Scott Peck, the creature took his destiny into his own hands. Scott had gone away on a desperate errand, to fetch some sort of food for the poor creature, whose bones stared him in the face, and Sary went out one morning to give him her potato-peelings and some sc.r.a.ps of bread, when, suddenly, he jerked his head fiercely, snapped his halter in two, and wheeled round upon the frightened woman, rearing, snorting, and showing his long, yellow teeth. Sary fled at once and barred the door behind her; but neither she nor Scott ever saw their ”gift horse” again. For aught I know he still roams the Adirondack forest, and maybe personates the ghostly and ghastly white deer of song and legend. Who can tell? But he was lifted off Scott Peck's shoulders, and all Scott said by way of epitaph on the departed, when he came home to find his white steed gone, was, ”Hang presents!”
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