“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