Part 12

"If I had known it was you," he said, "I should not have followed those very inviting twigs I saw dangling from the oziers and moose-vines."

"Lined deadfalls are thoroughfares to woodsmen," she answered, defiantly. "You are as free as I am in these woods--but not more free."

The defiance, instead of irritating him, touched him. In it he felt a strange pathos--the proud protest of a heart that beat as free as the thudding wings of the wild birds he sometimes silenced with a shot.

"It is quite true," he said, gently; "you are perfectly free in these woods."

"But not by your leave!" she said, and the quick color stung her cheeks.

"It is not necessary to ask it," he replied.

"I mean," she said, desperately, "that neither I nor my father recognize your right to these woods."

"Your father?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Don't you know who I am?" she said, in surprise.

"I know you sing very beautifully in church," he said, smiling.

"My name," she said, quietly, "is the name of your father's old neighbor. I am Jessie Jocelyn."

His face was troubled, even in his surprise. The line between his eyes deepened. "I did not know you were Mr. Jocelyn's daughter," he said, at last.

Neither spoke for a moment. Presently Gordon raised his head and found her brown eyes on him.

"I wish," he said, wistfully, "that you would let me walk with you a little way. I want to ask your advice. Will you?"

"I am going home," she said, coldly.

She turned away, moving two or three paces, then the next step was less hasty, and the next was slower still. As he joined her she looked up a trifle startled, then bent her head.

"Miss Jocelyn," he said, abruptly, "have you ever heard your father say that my father treated him harshly?"

She stopped short beside him. "Have you?" he repeated, firmly.

"I think," she said, scornfully, "your father can answer that question."

"If he could," said Gordon, "I would ask him. He is dead."

She was listening to him with face half averted, but now she turned around and met his eyes again.

"Will you answer my question?" he said.

"No," she replied, slowly; "not if he is dead."

Young Gordon's face was painfully white. "I beg you, Miss Jocelyn, to answer me," he said. "I beg you will answer for your father's sake and--in justice to my father's son."

"What do you care--" she began, but stopped short. To her surprise her own bitterness seemed forced. She saw he did care. Suddenly she pitied him.

"There was a promise broken," she said, gravely.

"What else?"

"A man's spirit."

They walked on, he clasping his gun with nerveless hands, she breaking the sapless twigs as she passed, with delicate, idle fingers.

Presently he said, as though speaking to himself: "He had no quarrel with the dead, nor has the dead with him--now. What my father would now wish I can do--I can do even yet--"

Under her deep lashes her brown eyes rested on him pitifully. But at his slightest motion she turned away, walking in silence.

As they reached the edge of the woods in a burst of sunshine he looked up at her and she stopped. Below them the smoke curled from her weather-racked house. "Will you have me for a guest?" he said, suddenly.

"A guest!" she faltered.

A new mood was on him; he was smiling now.

"Yes, a guest. It is Thanksgiving Day, Miss Jocelyn. Will you and your father forget old quarrels--and perhaps forgive?"

Again she rested her slender hands on his dogs' heads, looking out over the valley.

"Will you forgive?" he asked, in a low voice.

"I? Yes," she said, startled.

"Then," he went on, smiling, "you must invite me to be your guest. When I look at that partridge, Miss Jocelyn, hunger makes me shameless. I want a second-joint--indeed I do!"

Her sensitive lips trembled into a smile, but she could not meet his eyes yet.

"Our Thanksgiving dinner would horrify you," she said--"a pickerel taken on a gang-hook, woodcock shot in Brier Brook swales, and this partridge--" She hesitated.

"And that partridge a victim to his own rash passion for winter grapes," added Gordon, laughing.

The laugh did them both good.

"I could make a chestnut stuffing," she said, timidly.

"Splendid! Splendid!" murmured Gordon.

"Are you really coming?" she asked.

Something in her eyes held his, then he answered with heightened color, "I am very serious, Miss Jocelyn. May I come?"

She said "Yes" under her breath. There was color enough in her lips and cheeks now.

So young Gordon went away across the hills, whistling his dogs cheerily on, the sunlight glimmering on the slanting barrels of his gun. They looked back twice. The third time she looked he was gone beyond the brown hill's crest.

She came to her own door all of a tremble. Old man Jocelyn sat sunning his gray head on the south porch, lean hands folded over his stomach, pipe between his teeth.

"Daddy," she said, "look!" and she held up the partridge. Jocelyn smiled.

All the afternoon she was busy in the kitchen, and when the early evening shadows lengthened across the purple hills she stood at the door, brown eyes searching the northern slope.

The early dusk fell over the alder swales; the brawling brook was sheeted with vapor.

Up-stairs she heard her father dressing in his ancient suit of rusty black and pulling on his obsolete boots. She stole into the dining-room and looked at the table. Three covers were laid.

She had dressed in her graduating gown--a fluffy bit of white and ribbon. Her dark soft hair was gathered simply; a bunch of blue gentian glimmered at her belt.

Suddenly, as she lingered over the table, she heard Gordon's step on the porch, and the next instant her father came down the dark stairway into the dining-room just as Gordon entered.

The old man halted, eyes ablaze. But Gordon came forward gravely, saying, "I asked Miss Jocelyn if I might come as your guest to-night. It would have been a lonely Thanksgiving at home."

Jocelyn turned to his daughter in silence. Then the three places laid at table and the three chairs caught his eye.

"I hope," said Gordon, "that old quarrels will be forgotten and old scores wiped out. I am sorry I spoke as I did this morning. You are quite right, Mr. Jocelyn; the land is yours and has always been yours. It is from you I must ask permission to shoot."

Jocelyn eyed him grimly.

"Don't make it hard for me," said Gordon. "The land is yours, and that also which you lost with it will be returned. It is what my father wishes--now."

He held out his hand. Jocelyn took it as though stunned.

Gordon, still holding his hard hand, drew him outside to the porch.

"How much did you have in the Sagamore & Wyandotte Railway before our system bought it?" asked Gordon.

"All I had--seven thousand dollars--" Suddenly the old man's hand began to tremble. He raised his gray head and looked up at the stars.

"That is yours still," said Gordon, gently, "with interest. My father wishes it."

Old man Jocelyn looked up at the stars. They seemed to swim in silver streaks through the darkness.

"Come," said Gordon, gayly, "we are brother sportsmen now--and that sky means a black frost and a flight. Will you invite me to shoot over Brier Brook swales to-morrow?"

As he spoke, high in the starlight a dark shadow passed, coming in from the north, beating the still air with rapid wings. It was a woodcock, the first flight bird from the north.

"Come to dinner, young man," said Jocelyn, excited; "the flight is on and we must be on Brier Brook by daybreak."

In the blaze of a kerosene-lamp they sat down at table. Gordon looked across at Jocelyn's daughter; her eyes met his, and they smiled.

Then old man Jocelyn bent his head on his hard clasped hands.

"Lord," he said, tremulously, "it being Thanksgiving, I gave Thee extry thanks this A.M. It being now P.M., I do hereby double them extry thanks"--his mind wandered a little--"with interest to date. Amen."

THE PATH-MASTER

"The bankrupt can always pay one debt, but neither God nor man can credit him with the payment."

I

When Dingman, the fate game-warden, came panting over the mountain from Spencers to confer with young Byram, road-master at Foxville, he found that youthful official reshingling his barn.

The two men observed each other warily for a moment; Byram jingled the shingle-nails in his apron-pocket; Dingman, the game-warden, took a brief but intelligent survey of the premises, which included an unpainted house, a hen-yard, and the newly shingled barn.

"Hello, Byram," he said, at length.

"Is that you?" replied Byram, coldly.

He was a law-abiding young man; he had not shot a bird out of season for three years.

After a pause the game-warden said, "Ain't you a-comin' down off'n that ridge-pole?"

"I'm a-comin' down when I quit shinglin'," replied the road-master, cautiously. Dingman waited; Byram fitted a shingle, fished out a nail from his apron-pocket, and drove it with unnecessary noise.

The encircling forest re-echoed the hammer strokes; a squirrel scolded from the orchard.

"Didn't I hear a gun go off in them alder bushes this morning?" inquired the game-warden. Byram made no reply, but hammered violently. "Anybody got a ice-house 'round here?" persisted the game-warden.

Byram turned a non-committal eye on the warden.

"I quit that business three years ago, an' you know it," he said. "I 'ain't got no ice-house for to hide no pa'tridges, an' I ain't a-shootin' out o' season for the Saratogy market!"

The warden regarded him with composure.

"Who said _you_ was shootin' pa'tridges?" he asked. But Byram broke in:

"What would I go shootin' them birds for when I 'ain't got no ice-box?"

"Who says _you_ got a ice-box?" replied the warden, calmly. "There is other folks in Foxville, ain't there?"

Byram grew angrier. "If you want to stop this shootin' out o' season," he said, "you go to them rich hotel men in Saratogy. Are you afraid jest because they've got a pull with them politicians that makes the game-laws and then pays the hotel men to serve 'em game out o' season an' reason? Them's the men to ketch; them's the men that set the poor men to vi'latin' the law. Folks here 'ain't got no money to buy powder 'n' shot for to shoot nothin'. But when them Saratogy men offers two dollars a bird for pa'tridge out o' season, what d'ye think is bound to happen?"

"Shootin'," said the warden, sententiously. "An' it's been did, too. An' I'm here for to find out who done that shootin' in them alders."

"Well, why don't you find out, then?" sneered young Byram from his perch on the ridge-pole.

"That's it," said the warden, bitterly; "all you folks hang together like bees in a swarm-bunch. You're nuthin' but a passel o' critters that digs ginseng for them Chinese an' goes gunnin' for pa'tridges out o' season--"

"I'll go gunnin' for _you_!" shouted Byram, climbing down the ladder in a rage. "I am going to knock your head off, you darned thing!"

Prudence halted him; the game-warden, who had at first meditated flight, now eyed him with patronizing assurance.

"Don't git riled with me, young man," he said. "I'm a 'fical of this State. Anyway, it ain't you I'm lookin' for--"

"Well, why don't you say so, then?" broke in Byram, with an oath.

"But it's one o' your family," added the warden.

"My family!" stammered Byram, in genuine surprise. Then an ugly light glimmered in his eyes. "You mean Dan McCloud?"

"I do," said the warden, "an' I'm fixed to git him, too."

"Well, what do you come to me for, then?" demanded Byram.

"For because Dan McCloud is your cousin, ain't he? An' I jest dropped in on you to see how the land lay. If it's a fight it's a fight, but I jest want to know how many I'm to buck against. Air you with him? I've proofs. I know he's got his ice-box stuffed full o' pa'tridges an' woodcock. Air you with him?"

"No," said Byram, with a scowl; "but I ain't with you, neither!"

"Don't git riled," said the warden. "I'm that friendly with folks I don't wanter rile nobody. Look here, friend, you an' me is 'ficials, ain't we?"

"I'm road-master of Foxville," said Byram, aggressively.

"Well, then, let's set down onto this bunch o' shingles an' talk it over 'ficially," suggested the warden, suavely.

"All right," said Byram, pocketing his hammer; "if you're out to ketch Dan McCloud I don't care. He's a low-down, shifty cuss, who won't pay his road-tax, an' I say it if he is my cousin, an' no shame to me, neither."

The warden nodded and winked.

"If you he'p me ketch Dan McCloud with them birds in his ice-box, I'll he'p you git your road-tax outen him," he proposed. "An' you git half the reward, too."

"I ain't no spy," retorted Byram, "an' I don't want no reward outen nobody."

"But you're a 'ficial, same as me," persisted the warden. "Set down onto them shingles, friend, an' talk it over."

Byram sat down, fingering the head of his hammer; the warden, a fat, shiny man, with tiny, greenish eyes and an unshaven jaw, took a seat beside him and began twisting a greasy black mustache.

"You an' me's 'ficials," he said, with dignity, "an' we has burdens that folks don't know. My burden is these here folks that shoots pa'tridges in July; your burdens is them people who don't pay no road-tax."

"One o' them people is Dan McCloud, an' I'm goin' after that road-tax to-night," said Byram.

"Can't you wait till I ketch McCloud with them birds?" asked the warden, anxiously.

"No, I can't," snapped Byram; "I can't wait for no such thing!" But he spoke without enthusiasm.

"Can't we make it a kind o' 'ficial surprise for him, then?" suggested the warden. "Me an' you is 'ficials; your path-masters is 'ficials. We'll all go an' see Dan McCloud, that's what we'll do. How many path-masters hev you got to back you up?"

Byram's face grew red as fire.

"One," he said; "we ain't a metropolipus."

"Well, git your path-master an' come on, anyhow," persisted the game-warden, rising and buttoning his faded coat.

"I--I can't," muttered Byram.

"Ain't you road-master?" asked Dingman, astonished.

"Yes."

"Then, can't you git your own path-master to do his dooty an' execoote the statoots?"

"You see," stammered Byram, "I app'inted a--a lady."

"A what!" cried the game-warden.

"A lady," repeated Byram, firmly. "Tell the truth, we 'ain't got no path-master; we've got a path-mistress--Elton's kid, you know--"

"Elton?"

"Yes."

"What hung hisself in his orchard?"

"Yes."

"His kid? The girl that folks say is sweet on Dan McCloud?"

A scowl crisped Byram's face.

"It's a lie," he said, thickly.

After a silence Byram spoke more calmly. "Old man Elton he didn't leave her nothin'. She done chores around an' taught school some, down to Frog Holler. She's that poor--nothin' but pertaters an' greens for to eat, an' her a-savin' her money for to go to one o' them female institoots where women learn to nurse sick folks."

"So you 'pinted her path-master to kinder he'p her along?"

"I--I kinder did."

"She's only a kid."

"Only a kid. 'Bout sixteen."

"An' it's against the law?"

"Kinder 'gainst it."

The game-warden pretended to stifle a yawn.

"Well," he said, petulantly. "I never knowed nothin' about it--if they ask me over to Spencers."

"That's right! An' I'll he'p you do your dooty regardin' them pa'tridges," said Byram, quickly. "Dan McCloud's a loafer an' no good. When he's drunk he raises hell down to the store. Foxville is jest plumb sick o' him."

"Is it?" inquired the game-warden, with interest.

"The folks is that sick o' him that they was talkin' some o' runnin' him acrost the mountains," replied Byram; "but I jest made the boys hold their horses till I got that there road-tax outen him first."

"Can't you git it?"

"Naw," drawled Byram. "I sent Billy Delany to McCloud's shanty to collect it, but McCloud near killed Bill with a axe. That was Tuesday. Some o' the boys was fixin' to run McCloud outer town, but I guess most of us ain't hankerin' to lead the demonstration."

"'Fraid?"

"Ya-as," drawled Byram.

The game-warden laboriously produced a six-shooter from his side pocket. A red bandanna handkerchief protected the shiny barrel; he unwrapped this, regarded the weapon doubtfully, and rubbed his fat thumb over the butt.

"Huh!" ejaculated Byram, contemptuously, "he's got a repeatin'-rifle; he can cut a pa'tridge's head off from here to that butternut 'cross the creek!"

"I'm goin' to git into his ice-house all the same," said the warden, without much enthusiasm.

"An' I'm bound to git my road-tax," said Byram, "but jest how I'm to operate I dunno."

"Me neither," added the warden, musingly. "God knows I hate to shoot people."

What he really meant was that he hated to be shot at.

A young girl in a faded pink sunbonnet passed along the road, followed by a dog. She returned the road-master's awkward salutation with shy composure. A few moments later the game-warden saw her crossing the creek on the stepping-stones; her golden-haired collie dog splashed after her.

"That's a slick girl," he said, twisting his heavy black mustache into two greasy points.

Byram glanced at him with a scowl.

"That's the kid," he said.

"Eh? Elton's?"

"Yes."

"Your path-master?"

"Well, what of it?"

"Nuthin'--she's good-lookin'--for a path-master," said the warden, with a vicious leer intended for a compliment.

"What of it?" demanded Byram, harshly.

"Be you fixin' to splice with that there girl some day?" asked the game-warden, jocosely.

"What of it?" repeated Byram, with an ugly stare.

"Oh," said the warden, hastily, "I didn't know nothin' was goin' on; I wasn't meanin' to rile nobody."

"Oh, you wasn't, wasn't you?" said Byram, in a rage. "Now you can jest git your pa'tridges by yourself an' leave me to git my road-tax. I'm done with you."

"How you do rile up!" protested the warden. "How was I to know that you was sweet on your path-master when folks over to Spencers say she's sweet on Dan McCloud--"

"It's a lie!" roared young Byram.

"Is it?" asked the warden, with interest. "He's a good-lookin' chap, an' folks say--"

"It's a damn _lie_!" yelled Byram, "an' you can tell them folks that I say so. She don't know Dan McCloud to speak to him, an' he's that besotted with rum half the time that if he spoke to her she'd die o' fright, for all his good looks."

"Well, well," said the game-warden, soothingly; "I guess he ain't no account nohow, an' it's jest as well that we ketch him with them birds an' run him off to jail or acrost them mountains yonder."

"I don't care where he is as long as I git my tax," muttered Byram.

But he _did_ care. At the irresponsible suggestion of the gossiping game-warden a demon of jealousy had arisen within him. Was it true that Dan McCloud had cast his sodden eyes on Ellie Elton? If it were true, was the girl aware of it? Perhaps she had even exchanged words with the young man, for McCloud was a gentleman's son and could make himself agreeable when he chose, and he could appear strangely at ease in his ragged clothes--nay, even attractive.

All Foxville hated him; he was not one of them; if he had been, perhaps they could have found something to forgive in his excesses and drunken recklessness.

But, though with them, he was not of them; he came from the city--Albany; he had been educated at Princeton College; he neither thought, spoke, nor carried himself as they did. Even in his darkest hours he never condescended to their society, nor, drunk as he was, would he permit any familiarities from the inhabitants.

Byram, who had been to an agricultural college, and who, on his return to Foxville had promptly relapsed into the hideous dialect which he had imbibed with his mother's milk, never forgave the contempt with which McCloud had received his advances, nor that young man's amused repudiation of the relationship which Byram had ventured to recall.

So it came about that Byram at length agreed to aid the game-warden in his lawful quest for the ice-box, and he believed sincerely that it was love of law and duty which prompted him.

But their quest was fruitless; McCloud met them at the gate with a repeating-rifle, knocked the game-warden down, took away his revolver, and laughed at Byram, who stood awkwardly apart, dazed by the business-like rapidity of the operation.

"Road-tax?" repeated McCloud, with a sneer. "I guess not. If the roads are good enough for cattle like you, pay for them yourselves! I use the woods and I pay no road-tax."

"If you didn't have that there rifle--" began Byram, sullenly.

"It's quite empty; look for yourself!" said McCloud, jerking back the lever.

The mortified game-warden picked himself out of the nettle-choked ditch where he had been painfully squatting and started towards Foxville.

"I'll ketch you at it yet!" he called back; "I'll fix you an' your ice-box!"

McCloud laughed.

"Gimme that two dollars," demanded Byram, sullenly, "or do your day's stint on them there public roads."

McCloud dropped his hands into the pockets of his ragged shooting-jacket.

"You'd better leave or I'll settle you as I settled Billy Delany."

"You hit him with a axe; that's hommycide assault; he'll fix you, see if he don't!" said Byram.

"No," said McCloud, slowly; "I did not hit him with an axe. I had a ring on my finger when I hit him. I'm sorry it cut him."

"Oh, you'll be sorrier yet," cried Byram, turning away towards the road, where the game-warden was anxiously waiting for him.

"We'll run you outer town!" called back the warden, waddling down the road.

"Try it," replied McCloud, yawning.

II

McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs, listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a voice from the road below aroused him.

He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing his shabby coat mechanically.

Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as a precaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over the messed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rotting fence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a collie dog, both regarding him intently.

"Were you calling me?" he asked.

"It's only about your road-tax," began the girl, looking up at him with pleasant gray eyes.

"What about my road-tax?"

"It's due, isn't it?" replied the girl, with a faint smile.

"Is it?" he retorted, staring at her insolently. "Well, don't let it worry you, young woman."

The smile died out in her eyes.

"It does worry me," she said; "you owe the path-master two dollars, or a day's work on the roads."

"Let the path-master come and get it," he replied.

"I am the path-master," she said.