The Backwoodsmen. Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ big branch, thus suddenly freed of Coxen’s substantial weight, sprang back with such violence that the bear almost lost his hold. Growling angrily, he scrambled back to the main trunk, down which he began to lower himself, tail foremost.

      From the business-like alacrity of the bear’s movements, Coxen realized that his respite was to be only temporary. He was not more than twelve feet from the ground, and could easily have made his escape while the bear was descending the other tree. But there below was the buck, keeping an eye of alert interest on both bear and man. Coxen had no mind to face those keen antlers and trampling hoofs. He preferred to stay where he was and hope for some unexpected intervention of fate. Like most backwoodsmen, he had a dry sense of the ridiculous, and the gravity of his situation could not quite blind him to the humour of it.

      While Coxen was running over in his mind every conceivable scheme for getting out of his dilemma, the last thing he would have thought of actually happened. The buck lost interest in the man, and turned all his attention to the bear, which was just now about seven or eight feet from the ground, hugging the great trunk and letting himself down carefully, like a small boy afraid of tearing his trousers. 76

      It is possible that that particular buck may have had some old score against the bears. If so, this must have seemed an excellent chance to collect a little on account. The bear’s awkward position and unprotected hind quarters evidently appealed to him. He ambled forward, reared half playfully, half vindictively, and gave the bear a savage prodding with the keen tips of his antlers. Then he bounded back some eight or ten paces, and waited, while the bear slid abruptly to the ground with a flat grunt of fury.

      Sam Coxen, twisting with silent laughter, nearly fell out of his fir-tree.

      The bear had now no room left for any remembrance of the man. He was in a perfect ecstasy of rage at the insolence of the buck, and rushed upon him like a cyclone. Against that irresistible charge the buck had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently after him.

      Before they were out of sight Sam Coxen slid down from his tree and made all haste over the fence. In the open field he felt more at ease, knowing he could outrun the bear, in case of need. But he stopped long enough to pick up the gun.

      Then, with one pathetic glance at the ruined cabbages, 77 he strode hastily on up the hill, glancing backward from time to time to assure himself that neither of his late antagonists was returning to the attack.

      78

In the Deep of the Snow

       Table of Contents

      I

      Around the little log cabin in the clearing the snow lay nearly four feet deep. It loaded the roof. It buried the low, broad, log barn almost to the eaves. It whitely fenced in the trodden, chip-littered, straw-strewn space of the yard which lay between the barn and the cabin. It heaped itself fantastically, in mounds and domes and pillars, over the stumps that dotted the raw, young clearing. It clung densely on the drooping branches of the fir and spruce and hemlock. It mantled in a kind of breathless, expectant silence the solitude of the wilderness world.

      Dave Patton, pushing down the blankets and the many-coloured patchwork quilt, lifted himself on one elbow and looked at the pale face of his young wife. She was sleeping. He slipped noiselessly out of the bunk, lightly pulled up the coverings again, and hurriedly drew on two pairs of heavy, home-knit socks of rough wool. The cabin was filled with the grey light of earliest dawn, and with 79 a biting cold that made the woodsman’s hardy fingers ache. Stepping softly as a cat over the rude plank floor, he made haste to pile the cooking-stove with birch-bark, kindling, and split sticks of dry, hard wood. At the touch of the match the birch-bark caught and curled with a crisp crackling, and with a roar in the strong draught the cunningly piled mass burst into blaze. Dave Patton straightened, and his grey eyes turned to a little, low bunk with high sides in the farther corner of the cabin.

      Peering over the edge of the bunk with big, eager, blue eyes, was a round little face framed in a tousled mop of yellow hair. A red glare from the open draught of the stove caught the child’s face. The moment she saw her father looking at her she started to climb out of the bunk; but Dave was instantly at her side, kissing her and tucking her down again into the blankets.

      “You mustn’t git out o’ bed, sweetie,” he whispered, “till the house gits warmed up a bit. An’ don’t wake mother yet.”

      The child’s eyes danced with eagerness, but she restrained her voice as she replied.

      “I thought mebbe ’twas Christmis, popsie!” she whispered, catching his fingers. “ ’T first, I thought mebbe you was Sandy Claus, popsie. Oh, I wish Christmis ’ld hurry up!”

      A look of pain passed over Dave Patton’s face. 80

      “Christmas won’t be along fer ’most a week yit, sweetie!” he answered, in the soft undertone that took heed of his wife’s slumbers. “An’ anyways, how do you s’pose Sandy Claus is goin’ to find his way, ’way out into these great woods, through all this snow?”

      “Oh, popsie!” cried the child, excitedly. Then, remembering, she lowered her voice again to a whisper. “Don’t you know Sandy Claus kin go anywheres? Snow, an’ cold, an’ the––the––the big, black woods––they don’t bother him one little, teenty mite. He knows where to find me out here, jest’s easy’s in at the Settlements, popsie!”

      The mother stirred in her bunk, wakened by the little one’s voice. She sat up, shivering, and pulled a red shawl about her shoulders. Her eyes sought Dave’s significantly and sympathetically.

      “Mother’s girl must try an’ not think so much about Sandy Claus,” she pleaded. “I don’t want her to go an’ be disappointed. Sandy Claus lives in at the Settlements, an’ you know right well, girlie, he couldn’t git ’way out here, Christmas Eve, without neglecting all the little boys an’ girls at the Settlements. You wouldn’t want them all disappointed, just so’s he could come to our little girl ’way off here in the woods, what’s got her father an’ mother anyways!”

      The child sat up straight in her bunk, her eyes grew very wide and filled with tears, and her lips 81 quivered. This was the first really effective blow that her faith in Christmas and in Santa Claus had ever received. But instantly her faith recovered itself. The eager light returned to her face, and she shook her yellow head obstinately.

      “He won’t have to ’lect the children in the Settlements, will he, popsie?” she cried. And without waiting for an answer, she went on: “He kin be everywheres to oncet, Sandy Claus can. He’s so good an’ kind, he won’t forget one of the little boys an’ girls in the Settlements, nor me, out here in the woods. Oh, mumsie, I wisht it was to-night was Christmas Eve!” And in her happy anticipation she bounced up and down in the bunk, a figure of fairy joy in her blue flannel nightgown.

      Dave turned away with a heavy heart and jammed more wood into the stove. Then, pulling on his thick cowhide “larrigans,” coat and woollen mittens, he went out to fodder the cattle. With that joyous roar of fresh flame in the stove the cabin was already warming up, but outside the door, which Dave closed quickly behind him, the cold had a kind of still savagery, edged and instant like a knife. To a strong man, however, it was a tonic, СКАЧАТЬ