Part 10 (1/2)

”Sho! You've got me there,” boomed his brother with a great laugh.

”But there aren't many reptiles like old Ged Raffer. And we can thank a merciful Creator for that. I expect there are just a few miserly old hunks like Ged as horrible examples to the rest of us.”

”What is the nature of your trouble with this old fellow?” asked Mr.

Robert Sherwood.

”We've got hold on adjoining options. I had my lines run by one of the best surveyors in the Peninsula of Michigan. But he up and died. Ged claims I ran over on his tract about a mile. He got to court first, got an injunction, and tied me all up in a hard legal knot until the state surveyors can go over both pieces of timber. The land knows when that'll be! Those state surveyors take a week of frog Sundays to do a job.

”I can't cut a stick on my whole piece 'cause Ged claims he'll have a right to replevin an equal number of sticks cut, if the surveyors back up his contention. Nasty mess. The original line was run years and years ago, and they're not many alive today in the Big woods that know the rights of it.

”I expect,” added Uncle Henry, shaking his bushy head, ”that old Toby Vanderwiller knows the rights of that line business; but he won't tell.

Gedney Raffer's got a strangle hold on Toby and his little swamp farm, and Toby doesn't dare say his soul's his own.

”Well!” continued the lumberman, with another of his big laughs. ”This has nothing to do with your stew, Bob. I didn't want to come to the house last night and surprise you; so I stayed at the hotel. And all the time I was thinking of this little nip, Beg pardon! This young lady, and how smart and plucky she was.

”And lo and behold,” pursued Uncle Henry, ”she turns out to be my own niece. I'm going to take her back with me to Pine Camp. Kate's got to see and know her. The boys will be tickled out of their boots to have a girl like her around. That's our one lack at Pine Camp. There never was a girl in the family.

”Seems that this was just foreordained. You and Jessie have got to go 'way off, over the water; can't leave this plucky girl alone. Her old uncle and aunt are the proper folks to take care of her. What do you say yourself, young lady?”

Nan had liked the big man from the very beginning. She was a sensible child, too. She saw that she must settle this matter herself, for it was too hard a question for either Momsey or Papa Sherwood to decide.

She gained control of herself now; but n.o.body will ever know how much courage it took for her to say, promptly:

”Of course I will go home with you, Uncle Henry. It will be fun, I think, to go into the woods in the winter. And, and I can come right back as soon as Momsey and Papa Sherwood return from Scotland.”

So it was settled, just like that. The rush in which both parties got under way on Monday made Nan's head whirl. Momsey was to buy a few necessary things in New York before she boarded the steamer. Nan had a plentiful supply of warm winter clothing, and she took a trunkful.

Mrs. Joyce was left to take a peep at the little, locked cottage on Amity Street, now and then. Nan could say ”Goodbye” only very hastily to Bess Harley and her other school friends. Her school had to be broken off at a bad time in the year, but there was the prospect of a change in Nan's method of education the next fall.

Momsey and Papa Sherwood took the train east an hour before Nan and Uncle Henry boarded that for Chicago. All went with a rush and clatter, and Nan found herself at last rumbling out of Tillbury, on her way to the northern wilderness, while a thin drive of fine snowflakes tapped on the car windows.

Chapter X. GEDNEY RAFFER

It was fortunate for Nan Sherwood that on the day of parting with her parents she had so much to do, and that there was so much to see, and so many new things of which to think.

She had never traveled to Chicago before, nor far from Tillbury at all.

Even the chair car was new to the girl's experience and she found it vastly entertaining to sit at a broad window with her uncle in the opposite chair, gazing out upon the snowy landscape as the train hurried over the prairie.

She had a certain feeling that her Uncle Henry was an anomaly in the chair car. His huge bearskin coat and the rough clothing under it; his felt boots, with rubber soles and feet; the fact that he wore no linen and only a string tie under the collar of his flannel s.h.i.+rt; his great bronzed hands and blunted fingers with their broken nails, all these things set him apart from the other men who rode in the car.

Papa Sherwood paid much attention to the niceties of dress, despite the fact that his work at the At.w.a.ter Mills had called for overalls and, frequently, oily hands. Uncle Henry evidently knew little about stiff collars and laundered cuffs, or cravats, smart boots, bosomed s.h.i.+rts, or other dainty wear for men. He was quite innocent of giving any offence to the eye, however. Lying back in the comfortable chair with his coat off and his great lumberman's boots crossed, he laughed at anything Nan said that chanced to be the least bit amusing, until the gas-globes rang again.

It seemed to Nan as though there never was such a huge man before. She doubted if Goliath could have looked so big to young David, when the shepherd boy went out with his sling to meet the giant. Uncle Henry was six feet, four inches in height and broad in proportion. The chair creaked under his weight when he moved. Other people in the car gazed on the quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself.

”Uncle Henry,” she asked him once, ”are all the men in the Big Woods as tall as you are?”

”Goodness me! No, child,” he chuckled. ”But the woods don't breed many runts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan is near seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can't ever measure him,” and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledged laugh. ”He's just as graceful as a length of s.h.i.+ngle lathing, too. And freckles and liver spots on his hands and face, well, he certain sure is a handsome creature.

”He went to town once and stayed over night. Wasn't any bed long enough at the hotel, and Sam had got considerably under the weather, anyhow, from fooling with hard cider. So he wasn't particular about where he bedded down, and they put him to sleep in the horse trough.”