Part 29 (1/2)

”There ye be, at last, hey?” snarled the old man, who was evidently just as angry as he could be. ”Thought ye'd never come. Hearn them horses rattling their chains, must ha' been for an hour.”

”That's stretching it some,” laughed Tom. ”That tree hasn't been toppled over an hour.”

”Huh! Ye can't tell me nothin' 'beout that!” declared Toby. ”I was right here when it happened.”

”Goodness!” gasped Nan.

”Yep. And lemme tell ye, I only jest 'scaped being knocked down when she fell.”

”My!” murmured Nan again.

”That's how I got inter this muck hole,” growled the old lumberman. ”I jumped ter dodge the tree, and landed here.”

”Why don't you wade ash.o.r.e?” demanded Tom again, preparing in a leisurely manner to cast the old man the end of a line he had coiled on the timber cart.

”Yah!” snarled Toby. ”Why don't Miz' Smith keep pigs? Don't ax fool questions, Tommy, but gimme holt on that rope. I'm afraid ter let go the branch, for I'll sink, and if I try ter pull myself up by it, the whole blamed tree'll come down onter me. Ye see how it's toppling?”

It was true that the fallen tree was in a very precarious position. When Toby stirred at all, the small weight he rested on the branch made the head of the tree dip perilously. And if it did fall the old man would be thrust into the quagmire by the weight of the branches which overhung his body.

”Let go of it, Toby!” called Tom, accelerating his motions. ”Catch this!”

He flung the coil with skill and Toby seized it. The rocking tree groaned and slipped forward a little. Toby gave a yell that could have been heard much farther than his previous cries.

But Tom sank back on the taut rope and fairly jerked the old man out of the miry hole. Scrambling on hands and knees, Toby reached firmer ground, and then the road itself.

Nan uttered a startled exclamation and cowered behind the cart. The huge tree, groaning and its roots splintering, sagged down and, in an instant, the spot there the old lumberman had been, was completely covered by the interlacing branches of the uprooted tree.

”Close squeal, that,” remarked Tom, helping the old man to his feet.

Toby stared at them both, wiping the mire from his face as he did so.

He was certainly a scarecrow figure after his submersion in the mud; gut Nan did not feel like laughing at him. The escape had been too narrow.

”Guess the Almighty sent you just in time, Tom, my boy,” said Toby Vanderwiller. ”He must have suthin' more for the old man to do yet, before he cashes in. And little Sissy, too. Har! Henry Sherwood's son and Henry Sherwood's niece. Reckon I owe him a good turn,” he muttered.

Nan heard this, though Tom did not, and her heart leaped. She hoped that Toby would feel sufficient grat.i.tude to help Uncle Henry win his case against Gedney Raffer. But, of course, this was not the time to speak of it.

When the old lumberman heard about the fire in the sawdust he was quite as excited as the young folk had been. It was fast growing dark now, but it was impossible from the narrow road to see even the glow of the fire against the clouded sky.

”I believe it's goin' to open up and rain ag'in,” Toby said. ”But if you want to go on and plow me a fire-strip, Tommy, I'll be a thousand times obleeged to you.”

”That's what I came this way for,” said the young fellow briefly. ”Hop on and we'll go to the island as quickly as possible.”

They found Mrs. Vanderwiller and the crippled boy anxiously watching the flames in the tree top from the porch of the little house on the island.

Nan ran to them to relate their adventures, while Toby got out the plow and Tom hitched his big horses to it.

The farm was not fenced, for the road and forest bounded it completely.

Tom put the plow in at the edge of the wood and turned his furrows toward it, urging the horses into a trot. It was not that the fire was near; but the hour was growing late and Tom knew that his mother and father would be vastly anxious about Nan.

The young fellow made twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of downpour, at least.