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CHAPTER XIII FOX PILLS ABOUT this
time an affair which had
long been worrying Addison and myself came to a final settlement. Up in the
great woods, three or four
miles from the old Squire's farm, there was a clearing of thirty or
forty acres
in which stood an old house and barn, long unoccupied. A lonelier place
can
hardly be imagined. Sombre spruce and fir woods inclosed the clearing
on all
sides; and over the tree-tops on the east side loomed the three rugged
dark
peaks of the Stoss Pond mountains. Thirty
years before, Lumen Bartlett,
a young man about twenty years old, had cleared the land with his own
labor,
built the house and barn, and a little later gone to live there with
his wife,
Althea, who was younger even than he. Life in so
remote a place must have
been somewhat solitary; but they were very happy, it is said, for a
year and a
half. Then one morning they fell to quarreling bitterly over so
trifling ,a
thing as a cedar broom. In the anger of the moment Althea made a bundle
of her
clothing and without a word of farewell set off on foot to go home to
her
parents, who lived ten miles away. Lumen,
equally stubborn, took his
axe and went out to his work of clearing land for a new field. No one
saw him
alive afterwards; but two weeks later some hunters found his body in
the woods.
Apparently the tops of several of the trees he had been trying to cut
down had
lodged together, and to bring them down he had cut another large tree
on which
they hung. This last tree must have started to fall suddenly. Lumen ran
the
wrong way and was caught under the top of one of the lodged trees as it
came
crashing down. The marks showed that he had tried, probably for hours,
to cut
off with his pocket knife one large branch that lay across his body.
They found
the knife with the blade broken. He had also tried to free himself by
digging
with his bare fingers into the hard, rocky earth. If Lumen had been to
blame
for the quarrel, he paid a fearful penalty. Afterwards,
however, Althea declared
that she had been to blame; and if that were true, she also paid a sad
penalty.
During the few remaining years of her life she was never in her right
mind. She
used to imagine that she heard Lumen calling to her for help, and
several
times, eluding her parents, she made her way back to the clearing.
Every time
when they found her she was wandering about the place, stopping now and
then as
if to listen, then flitting on again, saying in a sad singsong, "I'm
coming, Lumen! Oh, I'll come back!" Naturally,
persons of a
superstitious nature began to imagine that they, too, heard strange
cries at
the deserted farm, for no one ever lived there subsequently. Very
likely they
did hear cries — the cries of wild animals; that old clearing in the
woods was
a great place for bears, foxes, raccoons and "lucivees." A year or
two before we young folks
went home to live on the old farm the town sold this deserted lot at
auction
for unpaid taxes. Some years before, vagrant woodsmen had accidentally
burned
the old house; but the barn, a weathered, gray structure, was still
intact.
Since the land adjoined other timber lots that the old Squire owned, he
bid it
off and let it lie unoccupied except as a pasture where sheep, or young
stock
that needed little care, could be put away for the summer. The soil
was good, and the grass was
excellent in quality. One year,
in May, after we had
repaired the brush fence, we turned into it our three Morgan colts
along with
two Percherons from a stock farm near the village, a Morgan
three-year-old
belonging to our neighbors, the Edwardses, three colts owned by other
neighbors, and a beautiful sorrel three-year-old mare, the pet of young
Mrs.
Kennard, wife of the principal at the village academy. Her father, who
had
recently died, had given her the colt. All four
Morgans were dark-chestnut
colts, lithe but strong and clear-eyed. And what chests and loins they
had for
their size! They were not so showy as the larger, dappled Percherons,
perhaps,
but they were better all-round horses. Lib, Brown and Joe were the
names of our
Morgans; Chet was the name that the Edwards young folks gave theirs.
Yet none
of them was so pretty as Mrs. Kennard's Sylph. She was, indeed, a
blonde fairy
of a mare, as graceful as a deer. On the
afternoon that we took Sylph
up to the clearing, Mrs. Kennard walked all the way with us, because
she wished
to see for herself what the place was like. When she saw what a remote,
wild
region it was, she was loath to leave her pet there, and Mr. Kennard
had some
ado to reassure her. At last, after giving the colt many farewell pats
and
caresses, she came away with us. On the way home she said over and over
to Addison
and me, "Be sure to go up often and see that Sylph is all right."
And, laughing a little, we promised that we would, and that we would
also give
the colt sugar lumps as well as her weekly salt. "Salting"
the sheep and
young cattle that were out at pasture for the season was one of our
weekly
duties. When we were very busy we sometimes put it off until Sunday
morning.
Sometimes it slipped our minds altogether for a few days, or even for a
week;
but Mrs. Kennard's solicitude for her pet had touched our hearts, and
we
resolved that we should always be prompt in performing the task. The colts
had been turned out on
Tuesday; and the following Sunday morning after breakfast Addison and
I, with
the girls accompanying us, set off with the salt and the sugar lumps.
It was a
long walk for the girls, but an inspiring one on such a bright morning.
The
songs of birds and the chatter of squirrels filled the woodland. Fresh
green
heads of bosky ferns and wake-robin were pushing up through the old
mats of
last year's foliage. "How
jealous the rest of them
will be of Sylph!" said Ellen, who had the sugar lumps. "I believe I
shall give each of them a lump, so that they won't be spiteful and kick
her." As we
neared the bars in the brush
fence we saw several of the colts at the upper side of the clearing
beyond the
old barn. At the first call from us, up went their pretty heads; there
was a
general whinny, and then they came racing to the bars to greet us.
Perhaps they
had been a little homesick so far from stables and barns. "One — two
— three — four —
why, they are not all here!" Theodora said. "Here are only seven. Lib
isn't here, or Mrs. Kennard's Sylph." "Oh, I
guess they're not far
off," Addison said, and began calling, "Co' jack, co' jack!" He
wanted them all there before he dropped the salt in little piles on the
grassy
greensward. But the
absent ones did not come.
Ellen ventured the opinion that they might have jumped the fence and
wandered
off. "Oh, they
wouldn't separate up
here in the woods," Addison said. "Colts keep together when off in a
back pasture like this." But when
he went on calling and they
still did not come, we began really to fear that they had got out and
strayed. "Let's go
round the
fence," Addison said at last, "and see if we find a gap, or
hoofprints on the outside, where they have jumped over." He and
Theodora went one way, Ellen
and I the other. We met halfway round the clearing without having
discovered
either gaps in the fence or tracks outside. Remembering that horses,
when
rolling, sometimes get cast in hollows between knolls, we searched the
entire
clearing, and even looked into the old barn, the door of which stood
slightly
ajar; but we found no trace of the missing animals and began to believe
that
they really had jumped out. We gave
the seven colts their salt
and were about to start home to report to the old Squire when Ellen
remarked
that we had not actually looked among the alders down by the brook,
where the
colts went for water. "Oh, but
those colts would not
stay down there by themselves all this time with us calling them!"
Addison
exclaimed. "But let's
just take a look, to
be certain," Ellen replied, and she and I ran down there. We had no
more than pushed our way
through the alder clumps when two crows rose silently and went flapping
away;
and then I caught sight of something that made me stop short: the body
of one
of the Morgan colts — our Lib — lying close to the brook! "Oh!"
gasped Ellen.
"It's dead!" Pushing on
through the alders, we
saw one of the Percherons near the Morgan. The sight affected Ellen so
much
that she turned back; but I went on and a little farther up the brook
found the
sorrel lying stark and stiff. A moment
later Ellen returned, with
Addison and Theodora. Both girls were moved to tears as they gazed at
poor
Sylph; they felt even worse about her than about our own Morgan. "Oh, what
will Mrs. Kennard
say?" Ellen cried. "How dreadfully she will feel!" Addison
closely examined the bodies
of the colts. "I cannot understand what did it!" he exclaimed.
"No marks. No blood. It wasn't wild animals. It couldn't have been
lightning, for there hasn't been a thundershower this season. Must be
something
they've eaten." We looked
all along the brook, but
could see no Indian poke, the fresh growths of which will poison stock.
Nor had
we ever seen ground hemlock or poisonous ivy there. The clearing was
nearly all
good, grassy upland such as farmers consider a safe pasturage. Truly
the shadow
of tragedy seemed to hover there. We bore
our sorrowful tidings home,
and the old Squire was as much astonished and mystified as every one
else. None
of us had the heart either to carry the sad news or even to send word
of it to
Mrs. Kennard; but we notified the owner of the Percherons at once. He
came to
look into the matter the next morning. The affair
made an unusual stir, and
all that Monday a considerable number of persons walked up to the
clearing to
see if they could determine the cause of the colts' mysterious death.
Many and
various were the conjectures. Some professed to believe that the colts
had been
wantonly poisoned. "It's a state-prison offense to lay poison for
domestic
animals," we overheard several of them say; but no one could find any
motive for such a deed. The owner
of the Percheron brought a
horse doctor, who made a careful examination, but he was unable to
determine
anything more than that the horses had died of a virulent poison. We
buried
them that afternoon. Before
night the news had reached
Mrs. Kennard. In her grief she not only reproached herself bitterly for
allowing Sylph to be turned out in so wild a place but held the old
Squire and
all of us as somehow to blame for her pet's death. The owner of the
Percherons
also intimated that he should hold us liable for his loss, although
when a man
turns his stock out in a neighbor's pasture it is generally on the
understanding that it is at his own risk. He took away his other
Percheron
colt; and during the day all the other persons who had colts up there
took
their animals home. In all respects the occurrence was most
disagreeable — a
truly black Monday with us. The old Squire said little, except that he
wanted
the right thing done. For an
hour or more after we went to
bed that night Addison and I lay talking about the affair, but we could
think
of no explanation of the strange occurrence and at last fell asleep.
The next
morning, however, the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's
mind. As
we were dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and
exclaimed in a
queer voice: "I know
what killed those
colts!" "What?" I
asked. "That fox
bed!" For a
whole minute we stood there,
half dressed, looking at each other in consternation. Without doubt,
the blame
for the loss of the colts was on us. What the consequences might be we
hardly
dared to think. "What
shall we do?" I
exclaimed. Addison
looked alarmed as he
answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet — till we think it over." "We must
tell the old
Squire," I said. "But
there's Willis,"
Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the bed, you know." The old
clearing was, as I have
said, a great place for foxes; and the preceding fall Addison and I,
wishing to
add to the fund we were accumulating for our expenses when we should go
away to
college, had entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do
a
little trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent
partners,
however; Willis actually tended the traps. But there
are years, as every
trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox into a steel trap by any
amount of
artfulness. What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has
been
trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other
foxes.
There were plenty of foxes coming to the clearing; we never went up
there
without seeing fresh signs about the old barn. Yet Willis got no fox. What is
more strange, it was so all
over New England that fall; foxes kept clear of steel traps. As the fur
market
was quick, certain city dealers began sending out offers of "fox
pills" to trappers whom they had on their lists. Willis received one of
those letters and showed it to us. The fox pills were, of course,
poison and
were to be inclosed in little balls of tallow and laid where foxes were
known
to come. Trappers
were advised to use them
but were properly cautioned how and where to expose them. After picking
up one
of the pills, a fox would make for the nearest running water as fast as
he
could go; and that was the place for the trapper to look for him, for,
after
drinking, the fox soon expired. It has been argued that poison is more
humane
than the steel trap, since it brings a quick death; but both are cruel.
There
are also other considerations that weigh against the use of poison; but
at that
time there was no law against it. The
furrier who wrote to Willis
offered to send him a box of those pills for seventy-five cents. We
talked it
over and agreed to try it, and Addison and I contributed the money. A few days
later Willis received the
pills and proceeded to lay them out after a plan of his own. He cut
several tallow
candles into pieces about an inch long, and embedded a pill in each.
When he
had prepared twenty or more of those pieces of poisoned tallow, he put
them in
what he called a fox bed, of oat chaff, behind that old barn. The bed
was about
as large as the floor of a small room. At that time of year farmers were
killing poultry, and Willis
collected a basketful of chickens' and turkeys' heads to put into the
bed along
with the pieces of tallow. He thought that the foxes would smell the
heads and
dig the bed over. We had
said nothing to any one about
it. The old Squire was away from home; but we knew pretty well that he
would
not approve of that method of getting foxes. Indeed, he had little
sympathy
with the use of traps. Willis was the only one who looked after the
bed, or,
indeed, who went up to the clearing at all. During the
next three or four weeks
Willis gathered in not less than ten pelts, I think. They were mostly
red
foxes, but one was a large "crossed gray," the skin of which brought
twenty-two dollars. After every f ew days Willis "doctored" the bed
with more pills; he probably used more than a hundred. What had
happened to the colts was
now clear. They had nuzzled that chaff for the oat grains that were
left in it
and had picked up some of those little balls of tallow. We wondered now
that we
had not at once guessed the cause of their death, and we wondered, too,
that we
had not thought of the fox bed and the danger from it when we first
turned the
colts into the pasture. The fact remains, however, that it had never
occurred
to us that fox pills would poison colts as well as foxes. All that
day as we worked we brooded
over it; and that evening, when we had done the chores, we stole off to
the
Murches' and, calling Willis out, told him about it and asked him what
he
thought we had better do. At first he was incredulous, then thoroughly
alarmed.
It was not so much the thought of having to settle for the loss of the
horses
that terrified him as it was the dread that he might be imprisoned for
exposing
poison to domestic animals. "Don't say
a word!" he
exclaimed. "Nobody knows about that fox bed. If we keep still, it will
never come out," Addison
and I both felt that such
secrecy would leave us with a mighty mean feeling in our hearts; but
Willis begged
us never to say a word about it to any one. He was as penitent as we
were, I
think; but the thought that he might have to go to jail filled him with
panic. We went
home in a very uncomfortable
frame of mind, without having reached any decision. "We've got
to square this
somehow," Addison said. "If I had the money, I'd settle for the colts
and say nothing more to Willis about it." "Money
wouldn't make Mrs.
Kennard feel much better," I said. "That's
so; but we might find a
pretty sorrel colt somewhere, and make her a present of it in place of
Sylph —
if we only had the money." If it had
not been for Willis, I
rather think that we should have gone to the old Squire that very
evening and
told him the whole story; but the legal consequences of the affair
troubled us,
and since they affected Willis more than they affected us we did Week after
week went by without our
being able to bring ourselves to confess. The concealment was a source
of daily
uneasiness to us; although we rarely spoke of the affair to each other,
it was
always on our minds. Whenever we did speak of it together, Addison
would say,
"We've got to straighten that out," or, "I hate to have that
colt scrape hanging on us in this way." We tried several times to get
Willis's
consent to our telling the old Squire; but he had brooded over the
thing so
long that he had convinced himself that if his act became known he
would surely
be sent to the penitentiary. So there
the matter lay covered up
all summer until one afternoon in September, when the old Squire drove
to the
village to contract for his apple barrels, and I went with him to get a
pair of
boots. Just as we were starting for home we met Mrs.
Kennard. Previously she had often visited us at the farm, but since the
death
of Sylph she had not come near us. The old Squire tried to-day to be
more
cordial than ever, but Mrs. Kennard answered him rather coldly. She
started on,
but turned suddenly and asked whether we had learned anything more
about the
death of those colts. "And, oh,
do you think that
poor Sylph lay there, suffering, a long time?" she exclaimed, with
tears
in her eyes. "I keep thinking of it." "No, we
have learned nothing
more," the old Squire said gently. "It was a mysterious affair; but I
think all three of the colts died suddenly, within a few minutes." That was
all he could say to comfort
her, and Mrs. Kennard walked slowly away with her handkerchief at her
eyes. It
was painful, and I sat there in the wagon feeling like a mean little
malefactor. "Very
singular about those
colts," the old Squire remarked partly to me, partly to himself, as we
drove on. "A strange thing." Sudden
resolution nerved me. I was
sick of skulking. "Sir," said I, swallowing hard several times,
"I know what killed those colts!" The old
Squire glanced quickly at
me, started to speak, but, seeing how greatly agitated I was, kindly
refrained
from questioning me. "It was
fox pills!" I
blurted out. "Willis Murch and Ad and I had a fox bed up there last
winter. We never thought of it when the colts were put in. They ate the
poison
pills." The old
Squire made no comment, and
I plunged into further details. "That
accounts for it,
then," he said at last. I had
expected him to speak plainly
to me about those fox pills, but he merely asked me what I thought of
using
poison in trapping. "I never
would use it
again!" I exclaimed hotly. "I've had enough of it!" "I am glad
you see it so,"
he remarked. "It is a bad method. You never know what may come of it.
Hounds or deer may get it, or sheep, or young cattle, or even
children." We drove
on in silence for some
minutes. Clearly the old Squire was having me do my own thinking; for
he now
asked me what I thought should be done next. "Ad thinks
we ought to square
it up somehow," I replied. The old
Squire nodded. "I am
glad to hear that," he said. "What does Addison think we ought to
do?" "Pay Mr.
Cutter for that
Percheron colt." "Yes, and
Mrs. Kennard?" "He thinks
we could find
another sorrel colt somewhere and make her a present of it." The old
Squire nodded again. "I
see. Perhaps we can." Then, after a minute, "And what about letting
this be known?" "Willis is
scared," I
said. "Addison thinks it would be about as well now to settle up if we
can
and say nothing." The old
Squire did not reply to that
for some moments. I thought he was not so well pleased. "I do not
believe
that, in the circumstances, Willis need fear being imprisoned," he said
finally, "and I see no reason for further concealment. True, several
months have passed and people have mostly forgotten it; perhaps not
much good
would come from publishing the facts abroad. We'll think it over." After a
minute he said, "I'm
glad you told me this," and, turning, shook hands with me gravely. "Ad and I
don't want you to
think that we expect you to square this up for us!" I exclaimed. "We
want to do something to pay the bill ourselves, and to pay you for Lib,
too." The old
Squire laughed. "Yes, I
see how you feel," he said. "Would you like me to give you and
Addison a job on shares this fall or winter,
so that you could straighten this out?" "Yes, sir,
we would," said
I earnestly. "And make Willis help, too!" "Yes,
yes," the old Squire
said and laughed again. "I agree with you that Willis should do his
part.
Nothing like square dealing, is there, my son?" he went on. "It makes
us all feel better, doesn't it?" And he
gave me a brisk little pat on
the shoulder that made me feel quite like a man. How much
better I felt after that
talk with the old Squire! I felt as blithe as a bird; and when we got
home I
ran and frisked and whistled all the way to the pasture, where I went
to drive
home the Jersey herd. The only qualm I felt was that I had acted
without
Addison's consent; but his first words when I had told him relieved me
on that
score. "I'm glad
of it!" he said.
"We've been in that fox bed long enough. Now let Willis squirm." And
when I told him of the old Squire's arrangement for our paying off the
debt, he
said, "That suits me. But we'll make Willis work!" We went
over to tell Willis that
evening. He was, I think, even more relieved than we were; in the weeks
of
anxiety that he had passed he had determined that nothing would ever
induce him
to use poison again for trapping animals. At that
time many new telegraph
lines were being put up in Maine; and the old Squire had recently
accepted a
contract for three thousand cedar poles, twenty feet long, at the rate
of
twenty-five cents a pole. Up in lot "No. 5," near Lurvey's Stream,
there was plenty of cedar suitable for the purpose; the poles could be
floated
down to the point of delivery. The old Squire let us furnish a thousand
of
those poles, putting in our own labor at cutting and hauling. And in
that way
we earned the money to pay for the damage done by our fox pills. Mr.
Cutter, the owner of the
Percheron, was willing to settle his loss for one hundred dollars; and
during
the winter, by dint of many inquiries, we heard of another sorrel, a
three-year-old, which we purchased for a hundred and fifteen dollars.
We took
Mr. Kennard into our confidence and with his connivance planned a
pleasant
surprise for his wife. While Theodora and Ellen, who had accompanied us
to the
village, were entertaining Mrs. Kennard indoors, the old Squire and
Addison and
I smuggled the colt into the little stable and put her in the same
stall where
Sylph had once stood. When all was ready, Mr. Kennard went in and said:
"Louise,
Sylph's got back! Come
out to the stable!" Wonderingly
Mrs. Kennard followed
him out to the stable. For a moment she gazed, astonished; then, of
course, she
guessed the ruse. "Oh, but it isn't Sylph!" she cried. "It isn't
half so pretty!" And out came her pocket handkerchief again. The old
Squire took her gently by
the hand. "It's the best we could do," he said. "We hope you will
accept her with our best wishes." Truth to
say, Mrs. Kennard's tears
were soon dried; and before long the new colt became almost as great a
pet as
the lost Sylph. "Don't you
ever forget, and
don't you ever let me forget, how the old Squire has helped us out of
this
scrape," Ad said to me that night after we had gone upstairs. "He's
an old Christian. If he ever needs a friend in his old age and I fail
him, let
my name be Ichabod!" |