Moosemeadows/Chapter 16

E LIVED in the barns while the men of the settlement and the village beyond, bossed by Deacon Amos Trim, built us a new house. At times there were as many as ten men at work, and at times as few as three. Stack Glashner hauled in a load of sawn lumber now and then, but he never remained for long. A new house was being built for the Jeanbards, too; and that was the job Stack worked on, I imagine. I did not see anything of the Jeanbards, but heard that Rose was visiting a friend in the village. I told Tom and the Bears of old Ruben Glashner's fate. To the rest of the people of the Wicklow Creek country it remains a mystery to this day. Tom Deblore made a swift recovery from the shock of his losses. The proud house of his fathers, the old books, the family portraits, the fine old furniture, and most of the ancient silver were gone. On the other hand, the fear of his past was gone; and the suspicion and envy and hatred of the countryside were gone. But when Trim wanted to level the fire-scarred walls and chimneys with dynamite, the old man would not consider it for a moment.

"Let time finish it," he said. "Let nature level it."

The building of the new house slowed almost to a standstill during haying and dragged along into harvesting. But Deacon Trim, who had four stalwart sons at home, stuck to the job. There were days when the deacon had only Tom Deblore and Amy Bear to boss on the job, while Sol and I toiled with the ripe oats. Tom became an expert nailing on shingles.

I visited the Jeanbards three times, only to find, each time, that Rose was still in the village. Jules and Jacques were grateful. They were full of gratitude. They seemed still to be staggered and awed by the realization that, but for Tom Deblore and me, the grass would be sprouting on three Jeanbard graves by this time. Jules never mentioned to me any incident of that night on which he had shot at the lantern out on the hardhack, that night on which he and Rose and Stack and I had all been in the woods together. Nor did I mention it, nor the death and burial of old Ruben's confederate. I left that up to him, also, naturally supposing that Stack had told him as much as I had told Stack.

The new house of Moosemeadows Park was finished at last, and even Deacon Trim departed. We finished the harvesting of our grain, potatoes, and turnips, and the palms of my hands became as hard and stiff as the soles of my boots.

We saw nothing of Stack Glashner. I had time now to make another call on the Jeanbards, but no clothes fit to make it in. My kit had been burned; and the clothes in which I had worked through the two fires and the harvests of hay and grain and roots were by now but little more than the patches of divers colors and materials with which Amy Bear had mended them. I had written to a tailor in town, however; and Sol, who was so superior to the vanities of dress that he never knew what he had on, drove to the post office in the settlement to inquire for parcels for me.

It was a long drive, and Young Bill was the horse, and I had worn my patches patiently for weeks; but Sol could not have been more than a mile on his way before I began to look out impatiently for his return. I felt that a call on Rose Jeanbard today was absolutely necessary, and I pottered about the barns, for from there I could keep an eye on the road.

A horse and rig appeared, approaching at a country jog. It was a gray horse, and one of the Jeanbard horses was gray. I went out to the road to meet it. Presently I recognized the driver as Jules Jeanbard, slouched all by himself on the seat of the ramshackly Concord wagon.

"It's quite a spell since you was last to see us, so I come up to make sure ye're still alive," he said.

I wanted to unhitch and stable the gray, but he said that he could not stay for long enough to make it worth while. He asked kindly, almost tenderly, after Tom. He looked through the new house and admired it greatly. He spoke pleasantly to Amy Bear, who was churning, and said something nice about Sol. He walked around the walls of the old house in silence, pausing frequently to look through a blackened window-hole at the black ruin within.

"There was good Deblores in the old days," he said. "Gentlemen. An' then come a bad breed; an' at last there was one livin' devil from hell. But Tom's a gentleman, like the early ones. Leave the dead rest. But I'll say this for the worst of 'em, he wasn't a coward. Cowards, I can't abide 'em. And a coward's mostly always a sneak. What's become of that old Ruben, d'ye reckon?"

"I'm sure he is dead in the woods somewhere," I replied.

"An' not the only one?"

"I buried his confederate myself, with his help—the man who shot at me from ambush."

"What killed him?"

"Blood-poisoning, from a wound in his hand."

"But—what about the bullet-hole in his side?"

"There wasn't any bullet-hole in his side. He died of poisoning in a wound in his left hand that I gave him before I ever saw him. A chance shot. You only nicked the top of his shoulder."

Jeanbard looked dumbfounded, desperate.

"He is dead—so what matter who killed him," I said. "And he is safe underground, out of mischief, whoever he is."

"But—but Stack Glashner, he tells it different!"

"Stack Glashner? All he knows about it is what I told him. There was no wound except the old one in the left hand. The clean little nick on the shoulder wouldn't have killed a kitten. Now that you mention Stack, I remember telling him to tell you to make your conscience easy concerning the dead man, for I had killed him. I was feeling sore, for it seems that you hadn't the same trust in my friendship as in Stack's that night. Stack is a good fellow—honest and well-intentioned and all that sort of thing—but so am I."

Jeanbard groaned. Then he cursed. He sprang to his feet.

"Honest?" he cried. "A liar an' a sneak!" He pulled out his watch and looked at it. "Too late," he said in a flat voice, staring miserably at the watch. "I wouldn't stop to see it—my girl married to a Glashner—but it's done now! I had cause to hate one Deblore, an' I tried twice to kill 'im—but if all the Glashners that was ever born had one neck among 'em I'd twist it quick as I'd spit on 'em!"

I got slowly to my feet. "Married?" I whispered, "Who's married?"

He did not answer immediately, but gazed helplessly around. At last he looked squarely at me, and there were tears in his eyes.

"A dirty sneak—an' a poor, scared, silly girl," he said.

WANDERED about in the woods. So that was the way of it! I had thought Stack stupid and honest. Perhaps he had been. And see now what desire for a girl had done to his honesty! I had pitied him. Well, I still pitied him—but my self-pity was more poignant. Why had they not trusted me, been frank with me, those Jeanbards? And I had saved her life!—for this.

Sol came home with my new clothes, which I threw aside, unopened.

We awoke to a storm of wind and rain two mornings later. The rain eased up by noon, but the wind increased. It blew a gale and shoved in one of the fire-cracked walls of the old house. That seemed to satisfy the wind, for it veered a few points and slackened its pace to a crawl at sunset; but then the rain came on again, with thunder and lightning. We were startled from our sleep at two in the morning by an ear-splitting, earth-shaking crash.

"What's that?" I cried.

"Nothing but one of the old chimneys, I guess," replied Tom, from his room. I heard a grunt from the Bears' room.

I lay awake, listening. The rain had ceased; the thunder was only muttering now, rolling off; and the lightning flickered farther and fainter. I left my bed quietly, pulled on my patched garments, went down stairs noiselessly and there pulled on my boots and lit a lantern. Outside, I was joined by the dogs. As we approached the ruins of the old house I noticed the smell of soot on the clean, cool air. Three walls and one of the chimneys were down. I sat on a butt of broken wall and lit my pipe, and the dogs hunted about over and among the jumbled stones and bricks. They found something of evident interest to them; so I scrambled over to see what it was, lantern in hand. It was a dead raccoon, crushed to shapelessness. The poor little beast must have been in the old chimney when it was struck.

Then I spotted something else and held the lantern close to it. It was of about the size and shape of a football, but bumpy. It was mildewed. I pushed it with my foot and found it heavy and hard. It was a sack of leather or some such material. I picked it up and carried it to the house and set it on the kitchen table. It was wound round and round at the neck with brass wire. I pried the wire off with a knife, and drew from the sack of cowhide a sack of oiled silk. The oiled silk was lined with birch bark. I pulled these away and found stout canvas. Each sack was tied individually at the neck. In the canvas sack I found a dozen or more packages of various shapes and sizes, each sewn up in soft Indian-tanned moose hide. Then a wild idea struck me.

"Come down here, Tom!" I shouted.

The old man came running, with Sol Bear close after him.

"What have you got there, Giddy?" he asked, staring. "I don't know yet," I answered. "Something out of the chimney that came down—the same chimney that I once saw old Ruben crawl out of. I told him that he was wasting his time up that chimney."

Tom took up one of the packages and a knife with trembling hands. He ripped the soft leather and shook out onto the table a gold snuff-box studded with diamonds. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair.

"So it was true, after all," he whispered.