The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

by Harold Frederic

  CHAPTER VI.

  A HOME IN THE WOODS.

  The pursuit of Mose Whipple had to be postponed, as it turned out,whether the deputy marshal relented or not.

  It was late, for one thing, before Moak returned from his quest aftersnow-shoes, and what was worse, he came back empty-handed. He haddriven about, over and through the drifted roads, for miles, directedby local rumors and surmise, to one after another of the isolatedfarm-houses scattered over the district, but had found no snow-shoes.

  He was too cold and stiff, and too much annoyed with the day'sexperiences, to listen to any further delay, but sat doggedly in thesleigh, out on the road in front of the Whipple house, until the deputymarshal, followed by Job, came out to him.

  "No, I ain't goin' to get out again, Norm," he said querulously. "I'vehad enough of this fool's errand. I'm froze solid now in one position,and I'm gittin' used to it. I don't want to climb out and limber up,and then have to freeze stiff all over again in some new shape. Justyou give it up for a bad job, and come along. We can get to Octavius bysupper-time if we look sharp."

  "I never got beat like this before!" growled Norman Hazzard, kickinginto the crust. "I hate to give up a thing this way. But," he addedafter a pause, "I s'pose you're right. It is a fool's errand, and Iguess we're the fools, sure enough."

  With a reluctant sigh he knocked the snow off his boots against therunner, as he was about to step into the sleigh. He seated himselfbeside Moak, and drew the buffalo-robe up over his breast, and said,"All right, go ahead!"

  Moak grinned, in spite of his ill-temper.

  "I didn't think it'd be as bad as that, Norm," he chuckled, "drivin'you clean out of your senses. Why, man, you're goin' away without yourovercoat!"

  "No. You mind your own business, Moak!" rejoined the deputy marshal,getting one of his shoulders under the robe.

  "Shall I run in and get it for you?" suggested Job, half-turning tohasten on the errand.

  "You mind _your_ business, too!" said Hazzard, with affected roughness,but with an undertone of humane meaning which both his hearers caughtand comprehended. "And look here, boy, if you and the old man findyourselves in need of help, why, you know where I'm to be found.Meanwhile you'd better take this." He handed something to Job.

  Mr. Moak cast a look of hostile suspicion at the urchin by theroadside.

  "Guess he's more likely to know where Mose Whipple's to be found!" Moaksaid. Then he drew the reins tight with a jerk, gave a loud, emphaticcluck to the horse, and the sleigh went dashing southward amid adefiant jingling of bells.

  The boy stood watching till the vehicle had become a mere dwindlingpoint of blackness on the sunlit waste of snow.

  Then he turned his attention to the greenback which the deputy marshalhad given him, and looked meditatively at the big and significant "5"on its right-hand corner.

  When he lifted his eyes again the sleigh had disappeared. The pursuitof poor Mose was at an end.

  When the spring of 1864 came slowly up on the bleak tablelands skirtingthe Adirondacks, it found the Whipple homestead undoubtedly better offthan it had been a year before. Neighbors from Juno Mills who drove by,after the road had settled into usable condition, noticed that theplace had been "spruced up," and looked considerably more shipshapethan it had ever done in Mose's time. There was even a report down atthe Corners that old Asa was going to borrow Taft's two-horsecultivator and put in some crops!

  People said "old Asa," but every one knew that this rumor, and allother comments upon the improved appearance and prospects of theWhipple place, really referred to young Job. Even in this hard-workingand tireless region, accustomed as it has always been to energetic andcapable boys, men talked this spring approvingly of what the "Parshallyoungster" had done, and bragged about having predicted from the startthat he had the right stuff in him.

  When one comes to set down in words what it was that Job had done, itdoes not sound very great. He had worked three days a week at thecheese factory, and gone to school the other three days--that is all.But the outcome of this was that April found old Asa Whipple once more,to all outward appearances, a hale and strong man for his years, andrevealed the young lad who had adopted him, so to speak, as anenterprising and efficient member of the sparsely settled community,who had plans for doing things, and worked like a beaver, and paidready money at the Corner grocery store.

  When the talk of the neighborhood drifted to the subject of MoseWhipple's desertion and his supposed flight to Canada, it ended usuallyin the conclusion that old Asa had made a good exchange in getting suchan industrious and go-ahead chap as Job Parshall in Mose's place.

  Asa Whipple and Job were at work in the field across the road from theWhipple house one afternoon in mid-May. Job had come back early fromthe factory to finish a job upon which he had expended all the sparelabor of a week. There was a patch of land, some rods square, fromwhich he had uprooted the black moss. He had ploughed and fertilizedit, and sown it with oats.

  He had resolved to put this reclaimed land to grass later on, and tothis end was now dragging across it a heavy tree bough, old Asafollowing behind him with a bag of grass seed, which he scattered overthe loosened earth as he walked.

  Job glanced over his shoulder from time to time to note the uneven wayin which the old man cast the flying handfuls to one side.

  "Seems to me I ain't ever goin' to make a good farmer of you," he saidat last, good-naturedly enough, but still with a suggestion ofimpatience in his tone. "You'll see that grass come up all in wads andpatches. Open your hand more, and try and scatter it regular like. Letme show you again."

  The old man stopped, and submissively lent himself afresh to the lessonwhich Job sought to teach; but at the end he sighed and shook his whitehead.

  "No, I'm too old to learn, Job," he said. "I never was cut out for afarmer, anyway. Besides, what's the use? The black moss'll be all backagin by next spring."

  "By that time, if we had good luck with this, we could be keepin' acow, and p'r'aps a horse to do the work," remonstrated the boy. "If Ihad a horse, I'd knock that moss endwise, or know the reason why."

  A noise from the road close behind them attracted their attention. Theyturned, screening their eyes against the declining sun to see who wasseated in the buggy which had halted there across the tumble-down railfence. Then old Asa pointed a lean forefinger toward the newcomer.

  "That's the reason why!" he said, bitterly.

  Job could make out now that it was Elisha Teachout who sat in thebuggy. The boy had not seen him since the eventful day of Mose's returnand escape, when he had gone over to the big farm-house toward dusk andgot his clothes and the money due him. This had not been so easy orpleasant a task that he was rejoiced now to see Mr. Teachout again.

  The rich farmer, thinner and yellower and more like a bird of prey thanever against the reddening flare of sunlight, looked over at the pairwith an ugly caricature of a smile on his hard, hairless face.

  "I happened to be drivin' past," he called out at last, snapping theshrill words forth with a kind of malevolent enjoyment, "and I jestthought I'd stop and mention that I'm going to foreclose on this placein four days' time. I've entered judgment for one hundred and sixdollars and seventy-three cents, countin' interest and all. I jestthought that mebbe you'd like to know. The sheriff'll be on hand herebright and early Monday mornin'. It jest occurred to me to speak of itas I was passin'."

  With these mocking words still on the air, Mr. Teachout turned anddrove down the road a few yards. A thought occurred to him, and hehalted long enough to call out, more shrilly than before:--

  "That Parshall boy needn't come back and whine around my place to betaken back! I won't hev him!" Then he put whip to his horse and wasoff.

  The two workers in the field looked each other in the face for one dumbmoment of bewilderment. Then old Asa took the seed-bag off his arm anddeliberately held it upside down, till the last grain had sifted out tothe little pile at his feet.

  "I don't sow for Elisha Teachout
to reap--not if I know myself!" heremarked, grimly.

  "Can he do it? Is it as bad as all that?" demanded Job.

  Asa nodded his head.

  "I s'pose it is," he said. "They ain't no use tryin' to buck against aman like him. He's got the money, and that means he's got the law andthe sheriff on his side. No, the jig's up. They ain't nothin' for itbut for us to git out Monday."

  Job had tossed the heavy bough to one side, and walked to the fence,where he was putting on his coat.

  "Oh, yes, there is," said he.

  "What do you mean, Job?" queried the old man, advancing toward him,"what else kin we do?"

  "Git out before Monday," answered the boy, laconically.

  They walked in silence across the road, and through the front yard tothe house, without exchanging further words. Once indoors, they beganto empty drawers, clear cupboards and shelves, and gather the portablebelongings of the household into a heap on the table in theliving-room. It was not a long task, and they performed it in silence.It was only when they rested upon its completion that the old man said,with a little quaver in his voice:--

  "Almost the last words _he_ spoke before he went was, 'And in thespring you must come and be with me in the woods.' Them was hisidentical words. You remember 'em, don't you, Job?"

  The boy nodded assent.

  "We'll kill the chickens--all five of 'em, and roast 'em to-night.They'll keep that way, and they'll see us through the whole tramp. Ifyou'll see to that, I'll sort this stuff over, and see how much of itwe really need. We can burn the rest.

  "His grandfather and my father," the old man went on, "started heretogether, both poor men. He's managed it so that he's got everythingand I've got nothing. But he can't prevent my bein' an honest man, andI'll go away not beholden to him for a cent. That was one of hischickens that my boy brought me here, when I was sick and pretty nighstarved to death. Very well, I'll leave one chicken in the coop when wego. It sha'n't be on my mind that I owe Elisha Teachout so much as apinfeather."

  Almost nothing was said between them, either then or during theevening, about Mose. Though they were starting to join him in themorning,--turning their backs upon civilization and the haunts ofmen,--the reserve which through all these months since hisdisappearance they had observed about him and his offence still weighedupon their tongues.

  But in the dead watches of the night--this last night to be spent underthe Whipple roof--Job woke up, where he lay wrapped in his blanket, andheard old Asa's voice softly murmuring, whether in his sleep or not theboy never knew: "In the spring you must come and be with me in thewoods!"

  Away in the recesses of the forest primeval, in a mountain nook linkedby a sparkling band of spring-fed streams and a chain of cascades tothe silent thoroughfare of the Raquette water, Mose Whipple had chosenhis hiding-place, and built for himself a log hut. Thither came to himnow, after a toilsome three days' journey,--by creek-bed and steep,boulder-strewn ravine, by lonely, placid, still water, and broad,reed-grown beaver-meadow, where the deer fed unalarmed on the lilypads, and the great tracks of the moose lay on the black mud,--old Asaand Job.

  There was an idyllic charm in the first few weeks of this reunited lifeto both father and son. Mose took an excited delight, after months ofsolitude, in this new companionship, and in the splendid renewal ofyouth and high spirits which the free life and air of the wildernessbrought to his father.

  Job showed his practical character in fixing up a well-built lean-to atthe side of the shanty, putting a new roof of spruce bark on the wholestructure, and constructing a fishing raft to float on the still waterup the outlet.

  One day in early July, a chance wanderer in the forest--a Canadian whowas looking about with a divining rod for minerals on the mountainrange, and who stopped at the shanty overnight--left behind him amonth-old copy of a New York weekly newspaper. In this paper, afterbreakfast, old Asa, sitting out on a log in the sunlight with his pipe,read the horrible story of the three days' fighting--one might saybutchery--at Cold Harbor.

  Mose and Job had already started out on a fishing excursion to newwaters across the divide. When they returned, along toward fouro'clock, they found awaiting them one who seemed scarcely recognizablefor Asa, so old and bowed had he once more become.

  The change was apparent as they entered the clearing, and beheld himseated by the doorway a full hundred yards away.

  "He's had a stroke or something!" Mose exclaimed, and they both startedon a run toward him.

  As they came up, the old man lifted his head and looked his son in theface, with a glance which the other dimly recalled as belonging to thatbitter December day when he had first come home.

  "Mose," cried Asa, holding the paper out as he spoke, "it's all wrong!There's no pretendin' it ain't! We've been enjoyin' ourselves here,foolin' ourselves into forgettin', but it's all wrong! There ain't beenso much as a word dropped sence the boy and me come here, about thisthing, and it seemed as if the whole affair had just slipped ourmem'ries--but it won't do. I've been sittin' here ever sence you wentaway, thinkin' it over--thinkin' hard enough every minute for the wholefive months--and it's all wrong. Here, you read this for yourself."

  Mose took the paper, and spelt his way through the long, blood-drenchednarrative, without a word. When he had finished he returned hisfather's glance, with a look of mingled comprehension and assent in hiseyes.

  "All right," he said simply. "I feel the same as you do about it. I'llgo!"

  Both seemed to feel intuitively that this great resolve, thus formed,could not wait an instant for fulfilment. Hardly another word wasspoken until Mose, his pockets filled for the journey and his blanketstrapped, stood ready in front of the cabin, to say good-by.

  "It's no good waiting till to-morrow," he said then. "The sooner it'sover the better. You can get along first-rate here by yourselves. Jobcan take in skins and so on, and a mess of trout now and then,--heknows the way,--and bring back ammunition and your tobacco and so on.You'll be all right."

  He paused a moment, and then took from his finger the little rubberring which Job had restored to him in Teachout's cow-barn monthsbefore, and handed it to Asa.

  "Here," he said, "that's a kind of keepsake. Good-by, dad. Good-by,Job."

  Half an hour or more had elapsed, and Asa still sat on the log by thedoorway, his head buried in thought. He could hear the strokes of Job'saxe, from where the boy was cutting firewood for the evening on theedge of the clearing. As they fell on the air with their sharp,metallic ring, one after another, the old man's fancy likened them tothe deadly noises of the battle-field, whither his boy was making hisway.

  But he regretted nothing--no, nothing, save that the act of reparation,of atonement, had not been made long before.

  There came with abrupt suddenness another sound--the unfamiliar soundof a stranger's voice addressing him. Asa looked up, rousing himselffrom his reverie with difficulty. He saw that two men with rods, andfishing baskets, and camping packs on their backs, were standing infront of him. Their faces were in the shadow, but he slowly made outthe foremost one to be the deputy marshal, Norman Hazzard.

  "So here's where you moved to, eh?" the deputy marshal was asking, byway of not unfriendly salutation.

  Asa stared hard for a minute at this astonishing apparition. Then hisbewildered tongue found words.

  "If you're lookin' for my son," he said proudly, "he's gone back tojine his regiment--to do his duty!"

  Hazzard stared in turn. "Gone!" he exclaimed, "when?"

  "This very day," rejoined Asa, "not an hour ago. He saw it was right,and he went!"

  The deputy marshal threw up his hands in a gesture of despairingamazement. "Why, man alive!" he cried, "they'll shoot him like a dog!"