A Hero of Ticonderoga
Page 10
CHAPTER X--REBELLION
One day Nathan was gathering ashes from the heaps where the log pileshad been burned and storing them in a rude shed. Close by this stood theempty leach-tubs awaiting filling and the busy days and nights when thepotash-making should begin. It was hard, unpleasant work, irritating toskin, eyes, and temper. It was natural a boy should linger a little asNathan did, when he emptied a basket, and quickly retreated with heldbreath out of the dusty cloud. He looked longingly on the shiningchannel of the creek, and wished he might follow it to the lake and fishin the cool shadows of the shore. He wished that Job would chance tocome through the woods, but Job lately rarely came near them, for he wasvexed with Ruth for mating with this stranger, and the new master gaveno welcome to any of the friends of the old master. His hands were busyas his thoughts, when he was startled by his stepfather's voice closebehind him.
"You lazy whelp, what you putterin' 'bout? You spend half your time agawpin. 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 ablue beech rod he held in his big hand. After seeing the boy hurrynervously 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 fullbasket of ashes poised on the edge of the ash bin, Toombs appeared, withhis axe on his shoulder and the beech in his hand. "You know what I toldyou, 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 ofashes full at his head, and dodging behind the shed was in rapid flighttoward the woods, when his assailant emerged from the choking, blindingcloud, sputtering out mingled oaths and ashes. In a moment he caught theline of flight and followed in swift pursuit. The boy's nimble feetwidened the distance between them, but he was at the start almostexhausted with his severe work, so that when he reached the woods hisonly hope lay in hiding.
Silas, entering the woods, could neither see nor hear his intendedvictim. Listening between spasms of rushing and raging, he heard aslight rustling among the branches of a great hemlock that reared itshuge, russet-gray trunk close beside him. Looking up, he saw a pair ofdusty 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'tshoot 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 ofthe tree.
The boy only climbed the higher, and disappeared among the dark foliageand thick, quivering rays of branches. Parleying no more, Silas beganchopping so vigorously that the great flakes of chips flew abroad uponthe forest floor in a continuous shower, and soon paved it all about himwith white blotches. When the trunk was cut to the middle, he shouted upanother summons to surrender, but got no answer. Then his quick, strongstrokes began to fall on the other side, steadily biting their waytoward the centre, till the huge, ancient pillar of living wood began totremble on its sapped foundation. Standing away from it, he peered upamong the whorls of gray branches and broad shelves of leaves, but theydisclosed nothing.
"Hello! Come down! Don't be a fool! An' I won't lick you. The tree'scomin' an' it'll kill you." Still no answer nor sound, save the solemnwhisper of the leaves, came down from the lofty branches. "You're aplucky one, but down you come!"
In a sudden blaze of passion at being thus scorned, he drove his axedeep into the tree's heart. A puff of wind stirred the topmost boughs. Ashiver ran through every branch and twig. Fibre after fibre cracked andparted. The trunk tremulously swayed from its steadfast base. Thesighing branches clung to the unstable air. A tall, lithe birch, thathad long leaned to their embrace, sprang from it as in a flutter offear, and then, with a slowly accelerating sweep, the ancient pillar,with all its long upheld burden of boughs and perennial greenery, wentthrough its fellows to the last sullen boom of its downfall. Toombsbreathlessly watched and listened for something besides the shorteningvibration of the branches, some sound other than the swish of relievedentanglement, 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 thedensest tangles, then cleared them away with quick but careful axestrokes, dreading, in every moment of search, that the next would revealthe crushed and mangled form of the boy. Not till the shadows of nightthickened the shadows of the woods did he quit his fruitless search. Heknew the boy was dead, and, if found, what then? Well, for the present aplausible lie would serve him well enough.
"Your boy has run off, Mis' Toombs. You needn't worry. He'll git starvedout 'fore long and sneak back. And he'll work all the better when hedoes come. Boys has got to have their tantrums an' git over 'em." Thisdevice served so well to quiet any graver apprehensions that Ruthentertained, he the more insisted on it. "Like's not he's over to theFort. They'll make him stan' round, I tell ye."
He intended in the morning to renew his search, but when it came hedared not go near that fallen tree, the dumb witness and concealer ofhis crime. When, from afar, he saw the crows wheeling above the spot, orwhen at night he heard from that direction the wolf's long howl, heshook with fear, lest they had discovered his secret and would in someway reveal it.