Moosemeadows/Chapter 2
II
TELL me about this Thomas Deblore," I said, with pardonable curiosity, considering all this information and the letter in my pocket from him.
"Sure; but we'll have another snort first. Tom had been away so long, an' unheared of so long—so the folks thought—that they reckoned he was dead. Well, he wasn't. He come home with a letter from Henry wrote only a few days before somewheres in Maine, an' a lawyer from downriver. That wasn't more'n a week after Henry had flew the coop. He made the folks who'd carried off the livestock—him an' the lawyer—look like a bunch of fools. They had to take the hosses an' horned cattle an' sheep back to Moosemedders. Tom had the papers, some in his pocket an' others produced from a secret hidin' place in the old house, provin' him his pa's heir. Hen had cheated 'im out of it all them years; but the two of them had been writin' to each other all the time, off an' on. Tom had been a sailor mostly, in foreign parts; an' he'd lived in Brazil quite a spell, folks say—but he ain't a talker, an' all they tell about him is mostly what they guess. He's younger'n Hen—but old enough, at that. But for his nose an' shape, you'd never take 'im for one of that stinkin', dangerous breed. But he's got the beak an' the shape. The folks looked for trouble from him, like they'd had from Henry, an' from all the Deblores for generations, but they didn't get it. Nor they ain't had it since. Once they put the livestock back in the stables an' pens, everything was lovely. He's a decent, peaceful old man, this Tom Deblore, as far as anybody knows hereabouts. He keeps to himself, with old Sol Bear to help with the farmin' an' old Amy Bear to cook."
I felt vastly relieved by his commendations of Thomas.
"Who are Sol and Amy Bear?" I asked.
"Injuns," he replied.
HERE'S Wicklow Crick," said my new friend, Stack Glashner, hoisting himself out of the seat as the train lurched to a standstill. "I git off here. Pleased to of met you."
"It's where I kick off, too," I said.
We detrained, with our dunnage, onto an unsheltered platform. Glashner eyed me inquiringly.
"To be quite frank with you, I'm for Moosemeadows Park," I said.
"What's old Tom been an' done?" he asked anxiously.
"Not a thing that I know of, except invite me to live with him."
"The hell you say!"
"Is it as bad as all that?"
"Be you kin to that—that family?"
"Yes—but it was long before Henry's day. One part of my blood out of thirty-two parts is Deblore—and there was nothing wrong with it when it started my way."
The big bushwhacker looked relieved. "I guess that's so," he said. "I hope yer name ain't Deblore."
"No, indeed," I said. "It is Gidwicke Swayton."
"I reckon you know yer own business better'n I do," he said reflectively. "Queer notion, it seems to me, comin' here." He pushed back his cap and scratched the red top of his head. "I got to cross the river, but there's no special hurry. I don't mind goin' upstream with you, if you don't. The road would be bad—full of honey-pots—but we could git a canoe right here in the village. It's quite a spell up to the old house—twenty-two mile, I calculate—an' heavy water. We could stop the night at Mis' Burt's an' set out bright an' early in the mornin'. What d'ye say?"
"But can you spare the time?"
"Sure I can! I got plenty of time, this time of year. Hey thar, Hercules Fortier! Come here a minute."
A mackinaw-clad driver left his two-horse sled and approached us.
"Will you sled this here dunnage up to Mis' Burt's for half a dollar?" asked Glashner.
"Seexty cents," said Mr. Fortier.
"That's all right! An' you got a good canoe, Hercules?"
"You bet!"
"I want it tomorrow. How much?"
"How long you want 'im?"
"Three days."
"T'ree dollar."
"That's all right, you old robber. Pitch her good an' tight tonight, for we're startin' at sun-up."
We went to Mrs. Burt's boarding-house, where we were given a huge supper of ham and eggs, hot biscuits, apple pie, doughnuts and coffee. We both filled our pipes from my pouch; and then Glashner asked me suddenly, "Was you a major or a colonel?"
"Neither," I answered, surprised. "I was a captain—twice. Infantry and eighteen-pounders. Why?"
"Well, I was a sergeant myself, six times—but always with the infantry. I was good at soldierin'. In the line I'd do anything I was told to, an' then some; but out of the line I wasn't so good. What they pinned onto my arm in the line, they always had to unpin when we come out."
"I've seen others like that," I said. "That's what puzzled me about you. You slouch—but your eyes give the lie to your shoulders."
Glashner nodded and gazed at the flame of the lamp. "Men sure got together at the front," he said. "It won't hurt you none, Captain, to know where you can find another old soldier—if you hitch up with that Deblore outfit. It ain't Tom, it's the name—and the idee. Folks'll be ag'in you. That's a fact—worse nor if you was a Glashner. There's always been good an' bad Glashners—none what you'd call real respectable, an' none ever suspected of worse'n stealin' sheep or maybe knifin' a man in a fight. But for generations of Deblores there ain't been a good one but Tom. There's more old soldiers hereabouts. There's Jacques Jeanbard at Guards Settlement. He's the nearest to you, I guess."
"Do you mean that the people will be unfriendly with me?"
"They might be. They'll put you down for a Deblore, Captain; an' you'll be about as popular as a skunk in Sunday-school."
"Is that so!" I exclaimed, with considerable heat. "The last Deblore to have anything to do with my breeding founded that settlement you spoke of. I've looked up his record; and it's good, to say the least of it. The ancestors of these people you talk about would have died like flies but for his generosity."
"That's right, but the folks hereabouts is natural-born knockers an' don't go any farther back in history than suits their own idees. All they want to remember is the Deblores who was bad, who've scart 'em an' ridden 'em an' robbed an' murdered 'em an' treated 'em like dirt for three generations. An' what riles 'em most is the fact that, for all their wastin' and wickedness, the Deblores ain't let go of one single acre of the original five thousand an' one hundred an' twenty."
"How much?"
"Eight square miles of land. Eight times six hundred an' forty acres, good an' bad. That's old Tom Deblore's farm—two mile on the crick an' four mile deep—five thousand an' one hundred an' twenty acres. It sure does rile 'em to think as how folks as bad an' disrespectable as them Deblores still has the right to chase em off eight square miles of country."
WE SET out in Hercules Fortier's canoe after an early breakfast, with my dunnage amidships. Glashner took the stern with such a matter-of-course air that I stepped into the bow without a word of protest. The banks were steep and the water was high, so poling was out of the question; we had to claw our way up that strong dark current with our paddles. It was hard work. For a few miles we kept close to the left bank, out of the full sweep of the water; and farther on, where the stream changed its curve, we crossed and skirted the right bank. Sometimes we paused and rested for a little while, clinging to overhanging boughs or the tops of partially submerged alders. Glashner took full advantage of every eddy and bit of backwater. By noon we had passed a few clearings and two isolated houses and reached the lowest farm of Guards Settlement. We went ashore, made a fire, boiled a kettle borrowed from Mrs. Burt and lunched. We were not disturbed by man or beast. Of human life we saw nothing but a blue feather of smoke from a chimney half a mile away; and of wild life, only a few crows flying and cawing and a mink swimming across from shore to shore. After lunch, I took the stern of the canoe; and I stuck to it all afternoon. I showed Glashner that I had not been river-born for nothing. We passed black woods, gray clearings, a gray house now and then. We saw a few moored dugouts, a man plowing, and three small boys fishing from a moored scow—and that was all of human life.
We passed the mouth of Deadhorn Brook before sundown. We made nineteen miles that day; and I felt as if I had pulled myself and Stack and the canoe fifty miles up steep stairs by my arms and shoulders and the back of my neck. We slept out that night on fir boughs, with a long fire at our feet. We breakfasted before the sun was clear of the black spruce-tops. Two hours later, Stack ran the canoe ashore against a deep-worn path which crawled up to and over the top of the bank between tangled willows and alders. Beside the path was moored an old dugout canoe of formidable proportions, and among the bushes beside it lay a bark canoe, patched, time-bleached and seamed with resin and tar.
"Here you are," said Stack. "Here's Moosemedders Park."
We unloaded; and then, to my astonishment, Stack Glashner stepped back into the canoe. "So long, an' good luck," he said.
"But you're coming up to the house!" I exclaimed. "And how much do I owe you?"
"Not this time, I guess," he replied, smiling. "An' you don't owe me a cent."
The canoe slid out of the tops of submerged bushes and swung to the current. "An' don't forget what I told you about the old soldiers," he called back over his shoulder. "Jacques Jeanbard's the nearest, an' there're three of us at Injun Ledge."
He faced his front and dipped his broad paddle, and I stood speechless on the steep path between the crowding brush, with my dunnage about my feet.