Kitabı oku: «Gulf and Glacier; or, The Percivals in Alaska», sayfa 8

“Do! It will do her good, I’m sure,” replied Winthrop warmly, glancing at his companion’s pretty face and sunny curls.

Puss blushed a little, and suddenly became very demure. “Here’s grandpa’s, where I live,” she said, pausing before an old, gambrel-roofed house. “Won’t you come in?”

All the houses in Taconic were pleasant inside and out. This one looked particularly so.

“Thank you; just for a minute,” said Winthrop, walking up with Puss between two rows of lilac bushes. The girl led him into a cool, old-fashioned parlor, which had shells on the mantel-piece, and great, irregular beams in the ceiling.

Mr. Rowan, a silvery-haired gentleman, with much stately dignity and kindly manner, soon entered, and talked pleasantly with the boy, of his uncle’s younger days and Winthrop’s own affairs. Altogether a half-hour passed very quickly, and Winthrop was sorry to feel obliged to take his leave.

Puss went down to the gate with him.

“Be sure to tell your sister I am coming to-morrow,” she said. “And you’ll call again here yourself, won’t you? I shall not soon forget how you took care of me!”

Winthrop drew himself up and lifted his hat in elegant city fashion; which, however, only made Puss laugh and shake her curls.

“It’s no use to be the least bit dignified with me,” she said merrily, “for I don’t know what to do back. We just shake hands, here in the country, and say good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Winthrop, taking her little brown hand with mock solemnity.

“Good-by,” laughed Puss, “that’s better. Don’t forget your message!”

As Winthrop walked rapidly toward his uncle’s house, he went over and over the exciting events of the afternoon. He had only arrived about a week before, but he had already come in contact with the three boys who had been amusing themselves by rudely teasing Miss Cecilia Rowan, the gentlest and prettiest girl in the village. They were notorious, he had soon found, for their ill-behavior and rough manners, and had even been suspected of certain petty thefts in the neighborhood. Winthrop could not help feeling that he should hear from them again.

The meeting between his sister and Puss Rowan took place the very next day, and the two girls were almost immediately warm friends. As Winthrop had predicted, Puss’s bright face and winsome ways won the heart of the pale city maiden at once, and “did her good,” too.

One or two pleasant afternoons they passed together, and several delightful trips were planned. One of these was a small lunch party, to a favorite spot for the village young folks, called “Willow Brook.” It was about four miles from Taconic Corner, and the road to it lay through deep woods, adding an enjoyable drive to and fro, to the pleasures of the day.

Willow Brook is a noisy little stream that comes dancing down from a spur of the White Mountains, finding its way through a heavy growth of spruce and fir, over half a dozen granite ledges, and so onward until it reaches the upper Taconic meadows, where it suddenly becomes demure and quiet; but, nevertheless, is all dimples when the wind whispers to it through the sedges, or teases for a romp under the shadow of the birch-trees that line its bank here and there. At length it reaches a small picturesque valley, where the hills, though by no means lofty, perhaps remind it of its mountain childhood; for there it pauses, and holds in its bosom the pictures of the gently rising uplands, with their peacefully browsing flocks of lambs – and gathers white lilies, and so rests a while from its journey. At times, it is true, a dimple of the old-time fun, or an anxious shadow as it hears the roar of machinery and busy life beyond, hides the treasured secrets of its heart, but as the ruffled brow smooths, you can see again in those quiet depths, lambs, lilies, fleecy clouds, alike snowy white and beautiful.

The mill had stood at the foot of “Lily Pond,” where the road crossed the stream, nobody knows how long. There was an old-fashioned dam, built of a few logs and a good deal of earth and rock, now overgrown with grass and bushes up to the very sluiceway of the mill. The waste-board, over which the water flowed in a thin, glistening sheet in the early spring when the pond was high, was scarcely more than ten feet long. About a hundred feet further down the stream was a shady grove of willows and other trees, growing down close to the water’s edge. Toward this spot Winthrop with his sister, Puss and her father rode merrily enough that hot July day. Mr. Rowan did not go down to the grove at once, but, having let the young people jump out with their baskets at the Lily Pond Bridge, drove on to a neighbor’s to transact some business, promising to join the party at lunch a half an hour later. Winthrop assisted his sister carefully down over a steep embankment to the willows, Puss springing ahead and calling to her companions that she had found “a lovely place right beside the water.”

Baskets and shawls were soon safely stowed away, and Winthrop, with the help of the girls, arranged a sort of shelter of boughs. When a small fire had been kindled on a flat rock just in front, Puss laughed with delight, and Marie’s delicate face showed a glow of healthy pleasure, which her brother noted with quiet satisfaction. Plainly Taconic life was bringing the frail invalid back to strength and health.

Leaving the girls to chatter over the beauties of the place and their plans for the coming weeks, Winthrop strayed down stream a few rods, following a cat-bird, whose whimsical calls led him to suspect a nest among the alders which lined the river at that point.

The bird kept persistently out of sight, but repeated its cry in a more and more distressed tone, until Winthrop reached the very heart of a thicket.

“I’ve got you now!” he said aloud, as he stooped and thrust aside a mass of foliage. Then he started to his feet. He had very nearly laid his hand on – not the pretty, rounded nest of the gray-winged thrush, but the evil, grinning features of Mort Lapham.

“I rayther guess we’ve got you this time, my Boston daisy,” said Mort, rising in his turn. “Tie him up, fellows!”

The ugly youth’s two boon comrades sprang forward from the rear, and before Winthrop could offer the slightest resistance, entangled as he was in the tough, slender stems of the alders, he was bound, hand and foot.

“What are you going to do with me, Phil Bradford?” asked the prisoner quietly, though his heart sank as the three cowardly assailants hurried him roughly through the underbush.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” growled the other, who had not forgotten the blow given in defense of the girl by the roadside. They emerged presently in a little opening that crowned a bluff, some half a dozen feet or more above the surface of the river, where it here made a sudden bend toward the steep bank forming at its base a deep, black pool, with here and there a few pine needles turning slowly in its eddies.

In all this time Winthrop had not uttered a cry. He would not alarm the girls unnecessarily, and might include them in his own dangerous situation.

“Now,” said Mort, with a cruel leer, “we’ll square up our accounts. The next time I’m having a little fun on my own account, I reckon you’ll mind your own business!”

With these words he proceeded to tie his victim firmly to a stout young pine that grew close to the edge of the bluff. They placed his face to the trunk, and clasping his hands around it, lashed them tightly together.

“I say,” interposed Dick, as he saw the cords cut into the captive’s wrists, “you needn’t pull ’em so tight! Don’t you see – you’re hurting him awfully!”

Winthrop set his lips together, and said nothing.

“Hurting him!” repeated Mort savagely. “I guess he’ll wish he wa’n’t hurt any more’n that, before I get through with him! Gimme that whip!”

“Don’t whip him!” cried Dick again. “We’ve scared him enough, now. You said you only wanted to frighten him, Mort.”

“Git out o’ the way, will you? I’m running this job, and this slim Sunday-school chap from the city has got to have a little more scarin’ yet.”

“But” —

“If you don’t want a taste yourself, you’ll keep quiet, Dick Stanwood. Phil an’ I’ll duck ye in the river, ’f you say much more!”

“All right,” said Dick, who evidently regretted his part in the matter. “If that’s all the thanks I get, I’m off!” And turning suddenly on his heel, he walked away through the woods.

“Hold on! Stop him, will you, Phil?” cried Mort angrily. But Dick had hastened his steps and was already out of sight.

Still Winthrop said never a word. His face was white, and the two guards thought he was too frightened to speak.

“Strip off his coat and vest,” commanded Mort, brandishing the whip. Phil obeyed his leader like a lamb, untying the captive’s hands cautiously, and, with Mort’s aid, fastening them again more securely than ever.

“Now, then, here’s one for interfering between me and the girl!”

Down came the leather lash across the thinly clad shoulders.

“One more for the lick you gave me between the eyes!”

Again the stinging, burning blow. Still Winthrop did not cry out.

“You want some more, do you?” cried Mort, enraged at his victim’s silence.

The lash was raised again. As Mort raised and swung it, to give the full force of the blow, he stepped backward. The embankment, long ago undermined by the river, crumbled under the bully’s feet; with a shriek of terror he toppled over, and disappeared beneath the black eddies of the pool. Winthrop could not see what had happened, for his back, now smarting as if living coals were bound to it, was toward the bank. From the sound of the falling earth, the cry of his tormentor, and the loud splash that followed, he guessed what had occurred.

“Untie me, quick!” he shouted to Phil, who stood gazing stupidly at the whirling bubbles where his leader had disappeared. “No, cut the rope – take my knife out of my pocket!”

Phil, who was always ready to follow the party in power, obeyed mechanically. In a few seconds Winthrop was free.

“Can’t he swim?” he cried, kicking off the last coils of the rope, as Mort rose, screaming and splashing to the surface, and went under again.

“Not a stroke,” said Phil stoically. “Serves him right, don’t it? Say, Win, I’m awful sorry” —

But he was apologizing only to the pine-tree and the cut cords. Winthrop had sprung into the pool, and even now had his late assailant by the collar and was striking out for the shore lower down, where the bank was not so high.

“Don’t drown me!” yelled Mort, rolling up his eyes. “I didn’t mean” —

“Stop kicking – you’re all right!” gasped Winthrop. “There – put your feet down – can’t you touch bottom?”

“Winthrop, my lad! Here – give me your hand!” cried a new voice; and Puss’s father leaned perilously far over the bank to assist the boy. At the same time Phil and Dick – the latter of whom had brought Mr. Rowan to the scene – helped the choking, crest-fallen, dripping Mort to his feet.

“What does this mean?” demanded the older man sternly, surveying the cords and whip.

“O, Winthrop! – brother!” and the two girls came hurrying down to the river’s edge. Winthrop tried to toss on his coat, but did not succeed before the stains on his poor, smarting back told the story to his sister’s anxious eye.

Of course the picnic was ended for that day. The whole party hurried to the wagon and drove home. On the way, Winthrop begged Mr. Rowan not to have either of his late captors prosecuted, or punished in any way.

“I’m satisfied,” he said, “if they are.”

“Well, I’m not!” burst out Mort suddenly, “and I sha’n’t be, till I get square with you somehow!”

The girls turned and looked at him in new amazement and terror. But Winthrop understood him better.

“All right, old fellow,” he replied simply, holding out his hand to the other.

Mort grasped it and said no more.

“Good story, father!” called out Tom, whose voice, whether for approval or criticism, was never wanting. “I’d like to know how Mort got square with him, though.”

Mr. Percival laughed as he rose. “That is not of so much consequence. In such a case, ‘the readiness is all.’ Does that finish the paper, Mr. Editor?”

“It does,” said Selborne gravely. “And the publication of the ‘Tri-Weekly Chichagoff Decade’ is suspended until further notice.”

CHAPTER XIII.
HOMEWARD BOUND

The voyage southward proceeded without special incident. “Glaciers” were gradually left behind, but “gulfs” and bays, channels and narrow passages were still a part of the programme. The day following the reading of the “Decade” was Sunday. Mr. Selborne at the request of many of the passengers, preached in the cabin, the Percivals organizing a choir which led the singing with their clear young voices.

On Monday the Queen reached Nanaimo, a city and coaling-station for ships, on the east shore of Vancouver’s Island. Tom and Fred hired a team and drove half a dozen miles inland to a trout-brook of which they had heard. Tom could not walk about much, but he enjoyed the ride immensely, and when they reached the brook he limped along the bank to a shady spot, from which he shouted various comments, disparaging and otherwise, on his companion’s methods of angling and rather limited success. They returned tired but happy, with a dozen silvery little fish as trophies. In the late afternoon Randolph and Pet headed a party to explore the city, which they found a hot and dusty one, but, in its upper portions, abounding in wonderfully bright flowers.

At one garden they stopped and bought a great ball of nasturtiums. It was nearly twilight, and as the travelers leaned against the fence, idly watching the owner of the garden as he gathered the nosegay, they saw whole flocks of evening primroses opening their wings like yellow butterflies, one by one.

This gardener, it seemed, was a blacksmith, employed by day in a coal mine which ran out half a mile under the sea. His business, he said, was to keep the mules shod.

The shaft of this great mine came up in the outskirts of the town, and the Percivals, earlier in the day, had seen the huge buckets come rushing up from the bowels of the earth, six hundred and forty feet below, laden with coal and streaming with water.

The evening was memorable for a row in the harbor to an Indian burying-ground, where strange and hideously carved figures kept watch over the neglected graves.

Until a late hour, after their return from this boating excursion, the party remained on deck, talking over the events of the day.

“Do you know,” asked Tom, “how this place started?”

“Well?” said Mr. Percival, who was always pleased to have his boy thorough in looking up the history of a place.

“An Englishman named Richard Dunsmuir, was riding horseback along a trail back on the mountain. The horse stumbled, and when Dunsmuir came to look at the log or stone, it was coal. He started a big mine, with two partners who put in about five thousand dollars apiece. A few years later one of them sold out to Dunsmuir for two hundred and fifty thousand, and afterward the second one sold for seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Whew!” whistled Randolph. “I say, Tom, let’s give up Latin and go into the coal-mining business.”

“All right,” says Tom cheerfully. “You buy a horse and gallop through the woods till you both tumble down. Then I’ll pick you up, point out the coal – if it doesn’t turn out to be a stump – and we’ll go halves. Or I’ll sell out now for ten dollars and fifteen cents!”

Just as the steamer cast off her fasts and started her paddles, Selborne announced that the bright sky had, as usual, cajoled them into keeping late hours, for it was now nearly eleven, and in four hours it would be daylight again. Whereupon the deck party broke up.

Next morning they found themselves at Victoria, where they stopped long enough to complete their purchases of miniature totem poles and other Indian curiosities, which were displayed for sale upon the wharf.

All through that bright day the Queen ploughed her way southward through a blue, sunlit sea. It was Puget Sound, said Tom, the cartographer of the occasion. They touched at Port Townsend and at Seattle. At the latter port the ship left half her passengers, as the Excursion was too large to be quartered at one hotel. The rest, including the individuals in whom we are specially interested, kept on to Tacoma. Here they said good-by to the Queen– now as homelike as the “Kamloops” – and took up their abode in a large hotel which they found to be delightfully situated on high ground, with a broad, cool veranda overlooking the Sound.

Immediately after supper Tom rushed out to have his kodak refilled. He had already taken nearly a hundred pictures, and reveled in anticipation of showing them, especially the instantaneous and surreptitious views of his unconscious relatives and friends, together with many captive bears, to an admiring circle during the coming winter.

The following day was spent in riding about the city, the planked streets and sidewalks of which struck them as very odd, and in visiting the Indian reservation at Puyallup, a few miles distant. The country was very dry, and forest fires were smouldering all along the road.

At Seattle, the next stopping-place, the historian (“I’m a regular ‘Pooh Bah’ on this trip,” exclaimed Tom) was called on for statistics concerning the city.

“Be accurate, my son,” added Fred; “but above all, be brief.”

“Population rising forty thousand,” rattled off Tom, who had his lesson well this time; “twice destroyed by fire, the last time in 1889. Now nearly rebuilt again. Situated between a big body of fresh water called Lake Washington, and Puget Sound. Always fighting, good-naturedly enough, with its rival Tacoma.”

Oh! the dust, the dust. It lay in the streets four inches deep. It filled the air at every step, and powdered the pretty traveling dresses of the girls.

But it was a wonderful city, with its push and rush and fever of building and money-getting. To-day a vacant lot, to-morrow an eight-story bank building; to-day a peaceful bit of upland pasture, to-morrow a huge hotel, crowded with guests from all parts of the world.

“Nobody can stop to walk, or even ride in carriages,” observed Bess. “It fairly takes away my breath here. You get into a cable car and whirl off at ten miles an hour, up hill and down dale. Do they ever sleep, do you suppose?”

The Percivals had a really enjoyable excursion to Lake Washington, where they sailed and steamed to their hearts’ content. A cable car took them to and from the lake, and beside the road they could see lots of land offered for sale at high foot-rates, with tall forest-trees still standing in them; others, partly built upon, and occupied by fine dwelling-houses, with the back yard full of charred stumps.

The busiest streets of the city, like those of Tacoma, were “paved” with four-inch planks. Electric cars, as well as those run by cable, dashed to and fro with startling speed. The air was so filled with smoke from forest fires that ships in the harbor could hardly be distinguished from the shore. A day’s ride through a wonderfully fertile country brought them to Portland, Oregon, where Randolph’s first move was to hunt up Bert Martin.

Bert and Susie were overjoyed to see their old friends. They lived in a pretty cottage not far from the railroad station, and Randolph had to bring Kittie, Pet, Tom, Fred and Bess to take tea with them.

When supper was finished, and the young people had talked over the dear old Latin School days, and the gay summer at the Isles of Shoals, Bert got a step-ladder and gathered handfuls of red roses from the trellis over the front door, where they grew in true Oregonian abundance.

Tom and Susie got on marvelously well together, and the former showed a singular eagerness to have Bert correspond with him, after he should have arrived home in the East.

From Portland the managers had provided their travelers with a little two-day side trip to the Dalles.

They rode in the cars all one afternoon along the southern shore of the Columbia, stopping to scramble up a steep hillside to the foot of the beautiful Multnomah Falls, and arriving at Dalles just after dark. Randolph and Fred were the only ones who cared to explore the town, which they conscientiously did, traveling miles, they averred, over the plank sidewalks, and hopelessly losing their way on several occasions; but turning up in good season at last at the depot.

The train was side-tracked here, and tooting and puffing engines, shifting freight cars, kept sleep from the eyes of most of the party. At daybreak they rose and made their way sleepily down to the river, where a steamer was waiting for them. Back they went, down the river to Portland. A thick fog hid the “mountainous and precipitous cliffs” and “bold headlands” which the guide-book promised them.

Wearily they boarded the cars standing ready at the Portland depot, and took possession of their comfortable compartments and drawing-rooms for their Eastward journey.

The next morning found them at Tacoma, and then on the Northern Pacific, striking across the new State of Washington. The Cascade Mountains – a long and insurmountable barrier between East and West – had to be crossed, and up went the train, curving, groaning and winding, as the Canadian Pacific had through the Rockies.

“Longest tunnel in America except the Hoosac!” screamed Tom above the din of the cars, as they plunged into the “Stampede.” “Nearly two miles from end to end, and half a mile above the level of the sea.”

And now came the most wearisome part of the homeward journey. The sun rose in a cloudless sky, and disclosed only hot, treeless, rolling prairie as far as the eye could reach. In the cars the mercury stood at ninety-six degrees, and linen dusters were once more brought to light.

In the evening they reached Spokane Falls, and set forward their watches one hour. It gave the travelers a queer sensation to arrive at a station at nine o’clock, stop half an hour, and start on at half-past ten.

The following day they recrossed the Rocky Mountains and descended the eastern slope, through a pleasant farming country, to the city of Helena. Here there was a stop of several hours, and the boys had a good swim in the great tank which was fed by hot springs.

When they were on board the train and in motion once more, Tom was called on for the “probabilities.”

“To-morrow morning,” he announced, “we shall be in Cinnabar, seven miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs. There we shall divide up into parties, and ‘do’ the Yellowstone Park in four-horse mountain-wagons, taking about five days for the job. It’s going to be one of the biggest things on the whole trip, too.”

But we must leave Yellowstone Park, surnamed “The Wonderland of America,” for another chapter.