Along the marshes, blue-winged teal would hiss and whistle in their irregular flight. Earliest of all the wild-ducks, they came when the time was between darkness and daylight. Next came the blacks and grays, quacking their way noisily along the shores. High above them a long, dark line would whistle into view and pass onward with the speed of a cloud-shadow. These were red-heads, newly arrived from the south. Still swift of wing, though weary, they would follow on until their leader called a halt. Now lost against the slate sky, now sweeping into view against a splash of crimson, they would turn and flash along the farther shore, sinking lower with diminished speed as they passed an outstretching point of land. A number of their kind, arrived the night before, would be feeding and resting there. Onward the line would pass, and then turning drop down slowly and the ducks would settle among their fellows with muffled spats and heads facing the wind.
Far over the pines of the Point another dark bunch would grow into space, and, turning, throw a gleam of white upon the watcher’s sight. These were blue-bills, hardiest of all wild-ducks. They were tired and unafraid and ready to make friends with any water-fowl, whether they were of their own kind or a flock of despised coot. Great flocks of peerless canvasbacks, their wings dipping in unison, their white backs gleaming in the morning light, would grow up and fade and grow to life again. They would sweep around and around the bay, craning their long necks suspiciously, settling ever lower, and passing many a flock of dozing ruddy ducks, that were resting, having fed long before the dawn of day.
Boy would watch these wild, free things with all the joy of a wild thing in sympathy with them. As far as the eye could reach were ducks, and beyond the bay was the wild Point, and above all the wild sky with angry darts of light like ragged knives, slashing its breast here and there.
Naturally Boy resented the advance of anything that tended to destroy the pictures of his world.
A big man from Civilization, who owned the strip of timber across the creek, had built a mill thereon, and all day long, now, that mill sang its song of derision, and the swaths in the wood were growing wider. It was his own timber the man was cutting—nobody could gainsay that fact; but he was destroying, each day, the creek, that silver thread that had been for so long a home for duck and mink and water-rat. He was destroying beauty and crippling the usefulness of the best trapping and fishing ground of the Bushwhackers. A discord had been set vibrating throughout that wooded fastness. The sibilant song of Hallibut’s mill was driving the fur-bearing animals to seek more secluded haunts. The wood-ducks that had nested close in along the wooded shore drifted far back to another creek, and the black ducks did not flutter lazily along the marsh throughout the breeding season now, but high in air and remote from the noise and smoke and jar that was a new and fearful thing to them.
Boy McTavish hated that mill; and that schoolhouse of white boards clinging to the hill he hated, too. Hatred was a strange element with him. It sickened his soul, crushed him, and robbed him of all his old-time restfulness of spirit. The discord could not pass him by.
CHAPTER V
Comrades of the Hardwoods
Even in this golden, hazy dawn it was with him, as he stood gazing across the creek. The crimson sun warmed his cheeks and the heavy scent of over-ripe woods-plants stole to his senses like a soothing balm. But that scar upon which his eyes rested had reached his inmost soul, and for him the old gladness of sweet, dewy mornings must hereafter be tempered with a new and strange bitterness.
From the tall smokestack of Hallibut’s mill a thin wreath of blue smoke ascending cut a spiral figure against the fleecy clouds.
Boy turned and walked up the path, his head bowed and his hands deep in his pockets. Behind him trailed the setter, looking neither to the right nor to the left. His moods were always suited to his master’s. For some reason Boy was sad. Therefore, Joe was sad.
Where the path forked Boy turned and, catching sight of the dog’s wistful face, he threw back his head and laughed. Then he turned and, bending, caught the setter about the neck with strong arms.
“Joe,” he whispered, “you’re an old fool.”
The dog submitted to the caress gravely and sat down, looking up into his master’s face with deep sympathetic eyes.
Adown through the woods came a voice in rollicking song:
“Massar gone away, de darkey say ‘Ho! ho!’
Mus’ be now dat de kingdom’s comin’
I’ de year ob jubiloo.”
“That’s Bill, pup,” laughed Boy. “He always sings when he’s washin’ his breakfast dishes. Come on, let’s go over and borrow his pitch-fork. You and me have got to dig taters to-day.”
A few hundred yards further on they found the singer. He was clad in Bushwhacker buckskins from head to foot.
“Hello, Boy, how’s your ma?” he called as he caught sight of the visitors.
“Just about the same, I guess,” Boy answered. “Nobody up when I left, so I can’t just say how ma spent the night. Want to borrow your fork, Bill.”
“Take it and anythin’ else you see as you’d like. Say, won’t you step in the house and have a cup of tea?”
“I ain’t much on tea drinkin’, as you know, Bill, and I must be hittin’ the back trail soon, ’cause we want to get the taters dug before night.”
“All right, as soon as I put these dishes away I’ll get you the fork.”
Boy’s eyes followed his friend sympathetically, and when Paisley rejoined him he asked hesitatingly:
“Say, Bill, why do you live alone here like you do? Ain’t it lonesome for you?”
“Some.” Paisley dried his hands on a towel and sat down on a stump. “It’s some lonesome; yes. But I’ve sort of got used to it, you see.”
Boy seated himself on a log and leaned back, nursing his knee in his hands.
“How about Mary Ann?” he asked.
Bill shook his head.
“Too good and too young for me, Boy. She don’t just think me her style, I guess. That young teacher chap, now, he is just about Mary Ann’s style.”
Boy’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s just about Gloss’s style, too,” he said slowly. “He’s some different from us bush-fellers, is Mr. Simpson.”
“I don’t take to him very well myself,” said Paisley, looking away, “but, of course, Mary Ann’s bound to see him a lot, him boardin’ at her mother’s, and maybe he’ll see as he can’t afford to miss gettin’ a girl like Mary Ann, pervidin’ she’s willin’.”
“How many times have you asked her, Bill?”
“Twice a year—every spring and fall, for the last three years.”
Paisley laughed queerly and stooped down to pat the setter’s shaggy sides.
“Boy,” he said, “don’t ever get carin’ for a woman; it’s some hell.”
Boy leaned back with a deep breath. His eyes were on a tiny wreath of smoke drifting between the tree-tops and the sky.
“I ask her twice a year regular,” went on Paisley. “It’s got to be a custom now. It’ll soon be time to ask her again.”
A yellow-hammer swooped across the open and, alighting on a decayed stub, began to grub out a breakfast. He was a gay, mottle-breasted