A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Part 10

"Come on, then," said he; and we put on our snowshoes again and prepared to start. But, though I questioned him with growing curiosity, he would not tell me what we were to see. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," he said.

Willis led off, and I followed. I should think we went as much as five miles through the black growth to the north of Willis's camp and came finally to a frozen brook, which we followed for a mile round to the northeast.

"I was prospecting up this way a week ago," Willis said. "I had an idea of setting traps on this brook. It flows into a large pond a little way ahead of us, but just before we get to the pond it winds through a swamp of little spotted maple, moose bush and alder."

"I guess it's beaver you're going to show me," I remarked.

"Guess again," said Willis, "But keep still. Step in my tracks and don't make the brush crack."

The small growth was so thick that we could see only a little way ahead.

Willis pushed slowly through it for some time; then, stopping short, he motioned to me over his shoulder to come forward. Not twenty yards away I distinguished the red-and-white hair of a large animal that was browsing on a clump of bushes. It stood in a pathway trodden so deep into the snow that its legs were completely hidden. In surprise I saw that it had broad horns.

"Why, that's an ox!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Willis, laughing. "His mate is round here, too."

"Willis," I almost shouted, "they must be the oxen Jotham lost two years ago!"

"Sure!" said Willis. "But don't make such a noise. There are moose here."

"Moose!" I whispered.

"There's a cow moose with two moose calves. When I was here last Thursday afternoon there were three deer with them. The snow's got so deep they are yarding here together. They get water at the brook, and I saw where they had dug down through the snow to get to the dry swamp gra.s.s underneath. They won't leave their yard if we don't scare them; they couldn't run in the deep snow."

We thought that probably the oxen had grown wild from being off in the woods so long. However, Willis advanced slowly, calling, "Co-boss!"

Seeing us coming and hearing human voices, the old ox lifted his muzzle toward us and snuffed genially. He did not appear to be afraid, but behaved as if he were glad to see us. The other one--old Broad--had been lying down near by out of sight in the deep pathway, but now he suddenly rose and stood staring at us. We approached to within ten feet of them.

They appeared to be in fairly good flesh, and their hair seemed very thick. Evidently they had wandered off from the logging camp and had been living a free, wild life ever since. In the small open meadows along the upper course of the stream there was plenty of wild gra.s.s.

And, like deer, cattle will subsist in winter on the twigs of freshly grown bushes. Even such food as that, with freedom, was better than the cruel servitude of Jotham!

On going round to the far side of the yard we spied the three deer, the cow moose and her two yearling calves. They appeared unwilling to run away in the deep snow, but would not let us approach near enough to see them clearly through the bushes.

"You could shoot one of those deer," I said to Willis; but he declared that he would never shoot a deer or a moose when it was snow-bound in a yard.

We lingered near the yard for an hour or more. By speaking kindly to the oxen I found that I could go very close to them; they had by no means forgotten human beings. On our way back to Willis's camp he reminded me of my promise. "Now, don't you tell where those oxen are; don't tell anybody!"

"But, Willis, don't you think Jotham ought to know?" I asked.

"No, I don't!" Willis exclaimed. "He has abused those oxen enough!

They've got away from him, and I'm glad of it! I'll never tell him where they are!"

We argued the question all the way to camp, and at last Willis said bluntly that he should not have taken me to see them if he had thought that I would tell. "You promised not to," said he. That was true, and there the matter rested overnight.

When I started home the next morning Willis walked with me for two miles or more. We had not mentioned Jotham's oxen since the previous afternoon; but I plainly saw that Willis had been thinking the matter over, for, after we separated and had each gone a few steps on his way, he called after me:

"Are you going to tell about that?"

"No," said I, and walked on.

"Well, if you're not going to feel right about it, ask the old Squire what he thinks. If he says that Jotham ought to be told, perhaps you had better tell him." And Willis hastened away.

But on reaching home I found that the old Squire had set off for Portland early that morning to see about selling his lumber and was not to return for a week. So I said nothing to any one. The night after he got back I watched for a chance to speak with him alone. After supper he went into the sitting-room to look over his lumber accounts, and I stole in after him.

"You remember Jotham's oxen, gramp?" I began.

"Why, yes," said he, looking up.

"Well, I know where they are," I continued.

"Where?" he exclaimed in astonishment.

I then told him where Willis had found them and about the yard and the moose and deer we had seen with the oxen. "Willis doesn't want Jotham told," I added. "He says Jotham has abused those oxen enough, and that he is glad they got away from him. He made me promise not to tell any one at first, but finally he said that I might tell you, and that we should do as you think best."

The old Squire gave me an odd look. Then he laughed and resumed his accounts for what seemed to me a long while. I had the feeling that he wished I had not told him.

At last he looked up. "I suppose, now that we have found this out, Jotham will have to be told. They are his oxen, of course, and we should not feel right if we were to keep this from him. It wouldn't be quite the neighborly thing to do--to conceal it. So you had better go over and tell him."

Almost every one likes to carry news, whether good or bad; and within fifteen minutes I had reached the Edwards farmhouse. Jotham, who was taking a late supper, came to the door.

"What will you give to know where your lost oxen are?" I cried.

"Where are they? Do you know?" he exclaimed. Then I told him where Willis and I had seen them. "Wal, I vum!" said Jotham. "Left me and took to the woods! And I've lost two years' work from 'em!"

For a moment I was sorry I had told him.

The next day he journeyed up to Willis's camp with several neighbors; and from there they all snowshoed to the yard to see the oxen and the moose. The strangely a.s.sorted little herd was still there, and, so far as could be judged, no one else had discovered them.

Jotham had intended to drive the oxen home; but the party found the snow so deep that they thought it best to leave them where they were for a while. Since it was now the first week of March, the snow could be expected to settle considerably within a fortnight.

I think it was the eighteenth of the month when Jotham and four other men finally went to get the oxen. They took a gun, with the intention of shooting one or more of the deer. A disagreeable surprise awaited them at the yard.

At that time--it was before the days of game wardens--what were known as "meat-and-hide hunters" often came down over the boundary from Canada and slaughtered moose and deer while the animals were snow-bound. The lawless poachers frequently came in parties and sometimes searched the woods for twenty or thirty miles below the Line in quest of yards.

Apparently such a raiding party had found Willis's yard and had shot not only the six deer and moose but Jotham's oxen as well. Blood on the snow and refuse where the animals had been hung up for skinning and dressing, made what had happened only too plain.

Poor Jotham came home much cast down. "That's just my luck!" he lamented. "Everything always goes just that way with me!"

CHAPTER X

BETHESDA

If anything was missing at the old farmhouse--clothes-brush, soap, comb or other articles of daily use--some one almost always would exclaim, "Look in Bethesda!" or "I left it in Bethesda!" Bethesda was one of those household words that you use without thought of its original significance or of the amused query that it raises in the minds of strangers.

Like most New England houses built seventy-five years ago, the farmhouse at the old Squire's had been planned without thought of bathing facilities. The family washtub, brought to the kitchen of a Sat.u.r.day night, and filled with well water tempered slightly by a few quarts from the teakettle, served the purpose. We were not so badly off as our ancestors had been, however, for in 1865, when we young folks went home to live at the old Squire's, stoves were fully in vogue and farmhouses were comfortably warmed. Bathing on winter nights was uncomfortable enough, we thought, but it was not the desperately chilly business that it must have been when farmhouses were heated by a single fireplace.

In the sitting-room we had both a fireplace and an "air-tight" for the coldest weather. In grandmother Ruth's room there was a "fireside companion," and in the front room a "soapstone comfort," with sides and top of a certain kind of variegated limestone that held heat through the winter nights.