Freckles

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FRECKLES

By Gene Stratton-Porter




To all good Irishmen in general
and one CHARLES DARWIN PORTER
in particular



Characters:


FRECKLES, a plucky waif who guards the Limberlost timber leases and
dreams of Angels.

THE SWAMP ANGEL, in whom Freckles' sweetest dream materializes.

MCLEAN, a member of a Grand Rapids lumber company, who befriends
Freckles.

MRS. DUNCAN, who gives mother-love and a home to Freckles.

DUNCAN, head teamster of McLean's timber gang.

THE BIRD WOMAN, who is collecting camera studies of birds for a book.

LORD AND LADY O'MORE, who come from Ireland in quest of a lost relative.

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS, brusque of manner, but big of heart.

WESSNER, a Dutch timber-thief who wants rascality made easy.

BLACK JACK, a villain to whom thought of repentance comes too late.

SEARS, camp cook.




Contents:


I Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

II Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

III Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born

IV Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way for New
Experiences

V Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships

VI Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

VII Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail

VIII Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing by the
Encounter

IX Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles Comes to
the Rescue

X Wherein Freckles Strives Mightily and the Swamp Angel Rewards Him

XI Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs the Bird
Woman

XII Wherein Black Jack Captures Freckles and the Angel Captures Jack

XIII Wherein the Angel Releases Freckles, and the Curse of Black Jack
Falls upon Her

XIV Wherein Freckles Nurses a Heartache and Black Jack Drops Out

XV Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little
Chicken Furnishes the Subject

XVI Wherein the Angel Locates a Rare Tree and Dines with the Gang

XVII Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a Broken
Body

XVIII Wherein Freckles Refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable
Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

XIX Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses Her Heart

XX Wherein Freckles Returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More Sails for
Ireland Without Him




CHAPTER I

Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the
Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he
was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and
to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and
clothing.

Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber
Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the
horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. A feeling
of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. Without
stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and followed it to
the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper and bed.

The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a
dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees.
The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired
horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content,
the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch head-teamster, lovingly
wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he
softly whistled, "O wha will be my dearie, O!" and a cricket beneath
the leaves at his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and
crackled merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big
black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his
testing-fork, gusts of savory odors escaped.

Freckles approached him.

"I want to speak with the Boss," he said.

The cook glanced at him and answered carelessly: "He can't use you."

The color flooded Freckles' face, but he said simply: "If you will be
having the goodness to point him out, we will give him a chance to do
his own talking."

With a shrug of astonishment, the cook led the way to a rough board
table where a broad, square-shouldered man was bending over some
account-books.

"Mr. McLean, here's another man wanting to be taken on the gang, I
suppose," he said.

"All right," came the cheery answer. "I never needed a good man more
than I do just now."

The manager turned a page and carefully began a new line.

"No use of your bothering with this fellow," volunteered the cook. "He
hasn't but one hand."

The flush on Freckles' face burned deeper. His lips thinned to a mere
line. He lifted his shoulders, took a step forward, and thrust out his
right arm, from which the sleeve dangled empty at the wrist.

"That will do, Sears," came the voice of the Boss sharply. "I will
interview my man when I finish this report."

He turned to his work, while the cook hurried to the fires. Freckles
stood one instant as he had braced himself to meet the eyes of the
manager; then his arm dropped and a wave of whiteness swept him. The
Boss had not even turned his head. He had used the possessive. When he
said "my man," the hungry heart of Freckles went reaching toward him.

The boy drew a quivering breath. Then he whipped off his old hat and
beat the dust from it carefully. With his left hand he caught the right
sleeve, wiped his sweaty face, and tried to straighten his hair with
his fingers. He broke a spray of ironwort beside him and used the purple
bloom to beat the dust from his shoulders and limbs. The Boss, busy over
his report, was, nevertheless, vaguely alive to the toilet being made
behind him, and scored one for the man.

McLean was a Scotchman. It was his habit to work slowly and
methodically. The men of his camps never had known him to be in a hurry
or to lose his temper. Discipline was inflexible, but the Boss was
always kind. His habits were simple. He shared camp life with his gangs.
The only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering diamond
stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one of his fingers,
and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and
across the country on business.

No man of McLean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been
overdriven or underpaid. The Boss never had exacted any deference from
his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of them ever had
attempted a familiarity. They all knew him to be a thorough gentleman,
and that in the great timber city several millions stood to his credit.

He was the only son of that McLean who had sent out the finest ships
ever built in Scotland. That his son should carry on this business after
the father's death had been his ambition. He had sent the boy through
the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, and allowed him several years'
travel before he should attempt his first commission for the firm.

Then he was ordered to southern Canada and Michigan to purchase a
consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to Indiana for
oak beams. The young man entered these mighty forests, parts of which
lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time. The clear, cool,
pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. The intense silence, like that of a
great empty cathedral, fascinated him. He gradually learned that, to
the shy wood creatures that darted across his path or peeped inquiringly
from leafy ambush, he was brother. He found himself approaching, with a
feeling of reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages
of sun, wind, and snow. Soon it became difficult to fell them. When he
had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to learn that in
the swamps and forests he had lost his heart and it was calling--forever
calling him.

When he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed of it,
and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in the
outskirts of Grand Rapids. With three partners, he organized a lumber
company. His work was to purchase, fell, and ship the timber to the
mills. Marshall managed the milling process and passed the lumber to the
factory. From the lumber, Barthol made beautiful and useful furniture,
which Uptegrove scattered all over the world from a big wholesale house.
Of the thousands who saw their faces reflected on the polished surfaces
of that furniture and found comfort in its use, few there were to whom
it suggested mighty forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big
of soul and body, who cut his way through them, and with the eye of
experience doomed the proud trees that were now entering the homes of
civilization for service.

When McLean turned from his finished report, he faced a young man,
yet under twenty, tall, spare, heavily framed, closely freckled, and
red-haired, with a homely Irish face, but in the steady gray eyes,
straightly meeting his searching ones of blue, there was unswerving
candor and the appearance of longing not to be ignored. He was dressed
in the roughest of farm clothing, and seemed tired to the point of
falling.

"You are looking for work?" questioned McLean.

"Yis," answered Freckles.

"I am very sorry," said the Boss with genuine sympathy in his every
tone, "but there is only one man I want at present--a hardy, big fellow
with a stout heart and a strong body. I hoped that you would do, but I
am afraid you are too young and scarcely strong enough."

Freckles stood, hat in hand, watching McLean.

"And what was it you thought I might be doing?" he asked.

The Boss could scarcely repress a start. Somewhere before accident and
poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English, even
with an accent. The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet and pure.
It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a
trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here
and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse
of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and
which touched him nearly. He was of foreign birth, and despite years of
alienation, in times of strong feeling he committed inherited sins of
accent and construction.

"It's no child's job," answered McLean. "I am the field manager of a
big lumber company. We have just leased two thousand acres of the
Limberlost. Many of these trees are of great value. We can't leave our
camp, six miles south, for almost a year yet; so we have blazed a trail
and strung barbed wires securely around this lease. Before we return to
our work, I must put this property in the hands of a reliable, brave,
strong man who will guard it every hour of the day, and sleep with one
eye open at night. I shall require the entire length of the trail to be
walked at least twice each day, to make sure that our lines are up and
that no one has been trespassing."

Freckles was leaning forward, absorbing every word with such intense
eagerness that he was beguiling the Boss into explanations he had never
intended making.

"But why wouldn't that be the finest job in the world for me?" he
pleaded. "I am never sick. I could walk the trail twice, three times
every day, and I'd be watching sharp all the while."

"It's because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this will be a
trying job for a work-hardened man," answered McLean. "You see, in the
first place, you would be afraid. In stretching our lines, we killed six
rattlesnakes almost as long as your body and as thick as your arm. It's
the price of your life to start through the marshgrass surrounding the
swamp unless you are covered with heavy leather above your knees.

"You should be able to swim in case high water undermines the temporary
bridge we have built where Sleepy Snake Creek enters the swamp. The fall
and winter changes of weather are abrupt and severe, while I would want
strict watch kept every day. You would always be alone, and I don't
guarantee what is in the Limberlost. It is lying here as it has lain
since the beginning of time, and it is alive with forms and voices. I
don't pretend to say what all of them come from; but from a few slinking
shapes I've seen, and hair-raising yells I've heard, I'd rather not
confront their owners myself; and I am neither weak nor fearful.

"Worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and steal
timber is desperate. One of my employees at the south camp, John Carter,
compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious reasons. He came
here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded in locating and marking
a number of valuable trees that he was endeavoring to sell to a rival
company when we secured the lease. He has sworn to have these trees if
he has to die or to kill others to get them; and he is a man that the
strongest would not care to meet."

"But if he came to steal trees, wouldn't he bring teams and men enough:
that all anyone could do would be to watch and be after you?" queried
the boy.

"Yes," replied McLean.

"Then why couldn't I be watching just as closely, and coming as fast, as
an older, stronger man?" asked Freckles.

"Why, by George, you could!" exclaimed McLean. "I don't know as the size
of a man would be half so important as his grit and faithfulness, come
to think of it. Sit on that log there and we will talk it over. What is
your name?"

Freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding his arms,
stood straight as the trees around him. He grew a shade whiter, but his
eyes never faltered.

"Freckles!" he said.

"Good enough for everyday," laughed McLean, "but I scarcely can put
'Freckles' on the company's books. Tell me your name."

"I haven't any name," replied the boy.

"I don't understand," said McLean.

"I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you wouldn't,"
said Freckles slowly. "I've spent more time on it than I ever did on
anything else in all me life, and I don't understand. Does it seem to
you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was
bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night
on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That's what
somebody did to me."

McLean stared aghast. He had no reply ready, and presently in a low
voice he suggested: "And after?"

"The Home people took me in, and I was there the full legal age and
several years over. For the most part we were a lot of little Irishmen
together. They could always find homes for the other children, but
nobody would ever be wanting me on account of me arm."

"Were they kind to you?" McLean regretted the question the minute it was
asked.

"I don't know," answered Freckles. The reply sounded so hopeless, even
to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding: "You see,
it's like this, sir. Kindnesses that people are paid to lay off in job
lots and that belong equally to several hundred others, ain't going to
be soaking into any one fellow so much."

"Go on," said McLean, nodding comprehendingly.

"There's nothing worth the taking of your time to tell," replied
Freckles. "The Home was in Chicago, and I was there all me life until
three months ago. When I was too old for the training they gave to the
little children, they sent me to the closest ward school as long as the
law would let them; but I was never like any of the other children, and
they all knew it. I'd to go and come like a prisoner, and be working
around the Home early and late for me board and clothes. I always wanted
to learn mighty bad, but I was glad when that was over.

"Every few days, all me life, I'd to be called up, looked over, and
refused a home and love, on account of me hand and ugly face; but it was
all the home I'd ever known, and I didn't seem to belong to any place
else.

"Then a new superintendent was put in. He wasn't for being like any of
the others, and he swore he'd weed me out the first thing he did. He
made a plan to send me down the State to a man he said he knew who
needed a boy. He wasn't for remembering to tell that man that I was a
hand short, and he knocked me down the minute he found I was the boy who
had been sent him. Between noon and that evening, he and his son close
my age had me in pretty much the same shape in which I was found in
the beginning, so I lay awake that night and ran away. I'd like to have
squared me account with that boy before I left, but I didn't dare for
fear of waking the old man, and I knew I couldn't handle the two of
them; but I'm hoping to meet him alone some day before I die."

McLean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but he
liked the boy all the better for this confession.

"I didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting in me Home
ones," Freckles continued, "for they had already taken all me clean,
neat things for the boy and put me into his rags, and that went almost
as sore as the beatings, for where I was we were always kept tidy and
sweet-smelling, anyway. I hustled clear into this State before I learned
that man couldn't have kept me if he'd wanted to. When I thought I
was good and away from him, I commenced hunting work, but it is with
everybody else just as it is with you, sir. Big, strong, whole men are
the only ones for being wanted."

"I have been studying over this matter," answered McLean. "I am not so
sure but that a man no older than you and similar in every way could do
this work very well, if he were not a coward, and had it in him to be
trustworthy and industrious."

Freckles came forward a step.

"If you will give me a job where I can earn me food, clothes, and a
place to sleep," he said, "if I can have a Boss to work for like other
men, and a place I feel I've a right to, I will do precisely what you
tell me or die trying."

He spoke so convincingly that McLean believed, although in his heart he
knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business for a man with
the interests he had involved.

"Very well," the Boss found himself answering, "I will enter you on my
pay rolls. We'll have supper, and then I will provide you with clean
clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending apparatus, and a revolver.
The first thing in the morning, I will take you the length of the trail
myself and explain fully what I want done. All I ask of you is to come
to me at once at the south camp and tell me as a man if you find this
job too hard for you. It will not surprise me. It is work that few men
would perform faithfully. What name shall I put down?"

Freckles' gaze never left McLean's face, and the Boss saw the swift
spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features.

"I haven't any name," he said stubbornly, "no more than one somebody
clapped on to me when they put me on the Home books, with not the
thought or care they'd name a house cat. I've seen how they enter those
poor little abandoned devils often enough to know. What they called me
is no more my name than it is yours. I don't know what mine is, and I
never will; but I am going to be your man and do your work, and I'll be
glad to answer to any name you choose to call me. Won't you please be
giving me a name, Mr. McLean?"

The Boss wheeled abruptly and began stacking his books. What he was
thinking was probably what any other gentleman would have thought in the
circumstances. With his eyes still downcast, and in a voice harsh with
huskiness, he spoke.

"I will tell you what we will do, my lad," he said. "My father was my
ideal man, and I loved him better than any other I have ever known. He
went out five years ago, but that he would have been proud to leave you
his name I firmly believe. If I give to you the name of my nearest kin
and the man I loved best--will that do?"

Freckles' rigid attitude relaxed suddenly. His head dropped, and big
tears splashed on the soiled calico shirt. McLean was not surprised at
the silence, for he found that talking came none too easily just then.

"All right," he said. "I will write it on the roll--James Ross McLean."

"Thank you mightily," said Freckles. "That makes me feel almost as if I
belonged, already."

"You do," said McLean. "Until someone armed with every right comes to
claim you, you are mine. Now, come and take a bath, have some supper,
and go to bed."

As Freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his heart
and soul were singing for joy.



CHAPTER II

Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

Next morning found Freckles in clean, whole clothing, fed, and rested.
Then McLean outfitted him and gave him careful instruction in the use of
his weapon. The Boss showed him around the timber-line, and engaged him
a place to board with the family of his head teamster, Duncan, whom he
had brought from Scotland with him, and who lived in a small clearing
he was working out between the swamp and the corduroy. When the gang was
started for the south camp, Freckles was left to guard a fortune in the
Limberlost. That he was under guard himself those first weeks he never
knew.

Each hour was torture to the boy. The restricted life of a great
city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with the
Limberlost. He was afraid for his life every minute. The heat was
intense. The heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they bled. He was
sore and stiff from his long tramp and outdoor exposure. The seven
miles of trail was agony at every step. He practiced at night, under the
direction of Duncan, until he grew sure in the use of his revolver. He
cut a stout hickory cudgel, with a knot on the end as big as his fist;
this never left his hand. What he thought in those first days he himself
could not recall clearly afterward.

His heart stood still every time he saw the beautiful marsh-grass begin
a sinuous waving AGAINST the play of the wind, as McLean had told him it
would. He bolted half a mile with the first boom of the bittern, and his
hat lifted with every yelp of the sheitpoke. Once he saw a lean, shadowy
form following him, and fired his revolver. Then he was frightened worse
than ever for fear it might have been Duncan's collie.

The first afternoon that he found his wires down, and he was compelled
to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring them, he
became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely could control
his shaking hand to do the work. With every step, he felt that he would
miss secure footing and be swallowed in that clinging sea of blackness.
In dumb agony he plunged forward, clinging to the posts and trees until
he had finished restringing and testing the wire. He had consumed
much time. Night closed in. The Limberlost stirred gently, then shook
herself, growled, and awoke around him.

There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and
a little one screeching from every knothole. The bellowing of big
bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of
whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. Nighthawks swept
past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. A prowling
wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage. A straying fox bayed
incessantly for its mate.

The hair on the back of Freckles' neck arose as bristles, and his knees
wavered beneath him. He could not see whether the dreaded snakes were on
the trail, or, in the pandemonium, hear the rattle for which McLean had
cautioned him to listen. He stood motionless in an agony of fear. His
breath whistled between his teeth. The perspiration ran down his face
and body in little streams.

Something big, black, and heavy came crashing through the swamp close
to him, and with a yell of utter panic Freckles ran--how far he did not
know; but at last he gained control over himself and retraced his steps.
His jaws set stiffly and the sweat dried on his body. When he reached
the place from which he had started to run, he turned and with measured
steps made his way down the line. After a time he realized that he was
only walking, so he faced that sea of horrors again. When he came toward
the corduroy, the cudgel fell to test the wire at each step.

Sounds that curdled his blood seemed to encompass him, and shapes of
terror to draw closer and closer. Fear had so gained the mastery that he
did not dare look behind him; and just when he felt that he would fall
dead before he ever reached the clearing, came Duncan's rolling call:
"Freckles! Freckles!" A shuddering sob burst in the boy's dry throat;
but he only told Duncan that finding the wire down had caused the delay.

The next morning he started on time. Day after day, with his heart
pounding, he ducked, dodged, ran when he could, and fought when he was
brought to bay. If he ever had an idea of giving up, no one knew it; for
he clung to his job without the shadow of wavering. All these things, in
so far as he guessed them, Duncan, who had been set to watch the first
weeks of Freckles' work, carried to the Boss at the south camp; but
the innermost, exquisite torture of the thing the big Scotchman never
guessed, and McLean, with his finer perceptions, came only a little
closer.