Love of the Wild. Archie P. McKishnie

you never will understand. You’re maybe all right in your own world, teacher, but you ain’t at home in ours. You don’t fit this place, and there ain’t no use of your ever tryin’ to understand it or us. Teacher, you take my advice—go back to the clearin’.”

      The boy spoke slowly, weighing each word and closely watching the face upon which the white moonlight fell. It was a young face, not many years older than his own. But it was weak and conceited. It grew sullen now, as the significance of young McTavish’s words became apparent.

      The man turned toward the path to the creek, and the boy stood tall and straight before him.

      “Of course, you understand why us Bushwhackers can’t just be friends with you, teacher,” said the boy. “It’s because you are one of them—and they are doin’ all they can to break into our little world.”

      He pointed toward the open.

      “Out there is where they belong; them and you. Go back there, teacher, and tell them to go. It’s best, I tell you—best for everybody.”

      Away down across the clearing on the far bank of the creek, a burst of yellow-red light fluctuated against the skies, and the metallic ring of a saw twanged out, silencing the whip-poor-will’s call. Colonel Hallibut’s mill was running overtime. All this stimulated that restlessness that had lately been born in the soul of the young Bushwhacker. He stepped out from the shadow and shook his fist at the red glow.

      “Damn ’em,” he cried. And paying no heed to the figure which stood, with bowed head, on the path, he stepped away across the clearing toward the pale light streaming from the log-house window.

CHAPTER II

       Glow and Gloss

       Table of Contents

      Boy opened the door and passed silently inside. Beside the wide fireplace the long gaunt figure of a man was bent almost double. He had a thick shock of sandy hair tinged with gray. His bewhiskered face was hidden behind tobacco-smoke. A time-stained fiddle lay across his knee, his sock feet rested on the hickory fender, and the ruddy glow of the log fire threw a grotesque shadow of him against the whitewashed wall. A pair of high cowhide boots, newly greased and shiny, rested on his one side, while a piece of white second-growth hickory, crudely shaped to the form of an ax-handle, lay on the other. In one corner of the room a bunch of rusty rat-traps lay, and across deer antlers on the wall hung a long rifle, a short one, and a double-barreled fowling-piece.

      The lad simply glanced at the man without speaking, and taking the dipper and wash-basin from the bench, passed outside again. When he re-entered, a girl of about eighteen years of age was pouring tea from a pewter pot into a tin cup. Her face was toward him, and a smile chased the shadow from the lad’s face as his eyes rested upon it. He dried his hands on the rough towel hanging on the door, and crossed over to the table. He drew back the stool, hesitated, and asked of the girl in a low tone:

      “Is she sleepin’, Gloss?”

      The girl shook her head. Her hair was chestnut-brown and hung below her waist in a long, thick braid. Her eyes were large, gray, and long-lashed like a fawn’s.

      “You’d best not go in yet, Boy,” she said. “Granny’s readin’ her the chapter now.”

      “I’ll just go in for a minute, I guess.”

      He entered the inner room and stood gazing across at the low bed upon which a wasted form rested. An old woman sat beside the bed, a book in her blue-veined hands. When she closed the book, Boy advanced slowly and stood beside the bed.

      “Are you feelin’ some better, ma?” he inquired gently.

      “Yes, Boy, better. I’ll soon be well.”

      He understood, and he held the hot hand, stretched out to him, in both his own.

      “You’re not nigh as well as you was this mornin’,” he said hesitatingly; “I guess I know the reason.”

      She did not reply, but lay with her eyes closed, and Boy saw tears creep down the white cheeks. He spoke fiercely.

      “He threatened as he’d do it, and he did——”

      He checked himself, biting the words off with a click of his white teeth.

      “I know just what he told you, ma. I know all he told you, and he didn’t lie none. I haven’t been to his school. I can’t go to his school. I’ve tried my best to stay ’cause I knowed you wanted me to. But I go wild. I can’t stay still inside like that and be in prison. It chokes me, I tell you. I don’t want more learnin’ than I have. I can read and write and figure. You taught me that, and I learned from you ’cause—’cause——”

      His voice faltered and feebly the mother drew him down beside her on the bed.

      “Poor old Boy,” she soothed tenderly, smoothing the dark curls back from his forehead; then sorrowfully, “I wonder why you should hate that for which so many people are striving?”

      “Don’t, ma—don’t speak about it. You know we talked it all over before. You called it enlightenment, you remember? I don’t want enlightenment. I hate it. I’ll fight it away from me, and I’ll have to fight it—and them.”

      He shuddered, and she held him tight in her weak arms.

      “Dear Boy,” she said, “it will be a useless struggle. You can’t hope to hold your little world. Now go, and God bless you. Kiss me good-night, Boy.”

      He bent and kissed her on the forehead, then springing up crossed the room. At the door he halted.

      “Yes, ma,” he said gayly, in response to her call.

      “Did you meet the teacher?”

      One moment he vacillated between love and truth. Once he had lied, uselessly, to save her. But he hated a liar. He went back to the bed slowly.

      “Yes, I met him, and I told him that he best be leavin’ these parts.”

      Her eyes rested upon him in mingled love and wonder.

      “I don’t like—I don’t trust that man,” said the mother earnestly. “Now go, Boy, and God bless you.”

      When Boy sought the table again the tea and meat were stone cold. He smiled at the girl, who was standing beside the fireplace, and she said teasingly:

      “I told you you better not go.”

      The man with the fiddle across his knees straightened up at her words, and he looked over at Boy with a puzzled expression on his face.

      “Thought maybe you’d joined a flock of woodcock and gone south,” he remarked. “Wonder you can leave the bush long enough to get your meals. Where’ve you been, Boy?”

      “Nowhere much,” answered the boy, looking hard at his plate.

      “Well, we had that teacher chap over again to-night,” said the father, “—smart feller that.”

      Boy glanced up quickly and caught a gleam of humor in the speaker’s blue eyes. Then he looked at the girl. She was laughing quietly.

      “The teacher says that you’ve been absentin’ yourself from school,” went on the man. “I asked him if absentin’ was a regular habit in scholars same as swappin’ jack-knives, and you ought to have seen the look he gave me.

      “ ‘It’s a punishable offense,’ says he.

      “ ‘Well, I don’t mind you whalin’ Boy some,’ says I; ‘I’m sure he needs it.’

      “ ‘I won’t whip a big boy like him,’ says he. ‘I don’t have to, and I won’t.’

      “