“Were you listenin’ at the window, kid?”
“Not yet.” Jean rightly guessed that frankness could hurt him none at all, and might win their friendship. “But I intended to. I’d have listened before I came around to the door.”
Sam chuckled. “I’d have done the same, boy. I surely would.” The big man shifted his feet impatiently. “Sam, this boy means trouble. We’ve got to do something.”
Sam gestured irritably. “Take it easy. I think this boy’s on our side, Fud, and I’ve an idea.”
Jean sat very still, waiting. Outside Rob would be creeping away, until he got far enough from the house to climb to the top of the ridge without being heard. Once atop the ridge he could follow it along to the road, but what if he took the wrong direction and became lost in the forest? For the ridge was but an offshoot of the higher land back of the swamp, and there was forest there, almost untouched, without track or trail of any kind. Sam finished stoking his pipe and lighted it at the candle. The strings of his shirt were untied at the collar showing the thick black hair on his chest, and his big hands were thick and powerful. From time to time as he moved about he glanced at Jean. “Fud,” Sam finally said, “you got to use your head. We can get rid of this boy a month from now as well as now, but on the other hand, he’s not apt to run to the law, bein’ he’s dodgin’ it himself. “Oh, yes!” Sam grinned wisely at Jean. “You might fool those folks in town, but Fud an’ me, we know you’re livin’ alone in that cabin. Your Uncle George ain’t home, an’ what’s more, he ain’t comin’ home. Now if those folks in town knew that they’d have you in the workhouse. I know these here good folks, they can get themselves mighty busy about a poor little boy livin’ all by himself. I know them, lad, an’ you know them, too.
“Those folks, they’d never figure you liked it here in the swamp. They’d want to mess up your life makin’ a home for you. Now I ain’t sayin’ a boy shouldn’t have a home. Mighty good thing, homes are, but these fussy folks they get to watchin’ over a boy, expectin’ him to make mistakes, or tryin’ to make him somethin’ he ain’t. You, f’r instance, you’re a woodsman. Anybody can see that. Take after you pa, you do.”
Jean waited, his attention on Sam. Instinctively he knew his only hope lay in Sam’s suddenly aroused interest. Moreover he was fascinated by the obviously brutal strength of the man, by his big, hard-knuckled hands, so broken and scarred from fighting. Fud was the bigger of the two, but when it came to strength he was not in the same class with Sam. Suddenly Jean realized that Sam had said Uncle George was not coming back. How could they be sure of that unless…?
“You get the idea, Fud.” Sam was addressing his partner but he was talking to Jean also. “This here’s quite a boy. He rustles his own living out of the woods, and as a body can see, he likes it. Of course, if folks knew he was alone they’d take him to a workhouse or ‘prentice him to somebody. Either way they’d work the hair off him.”
“Get to the point,” Fud insisted irritably.
“Sure … this boy’s on our side. We could tell on him, too. We could get him sent to the workhouse, and if he tattled on us we could say he was lyin’ to save his own hide, usin’ his imagination, the way kids do. We could even tell he’d been sneak-thievin’ around, and maybe see something was found in his cabin to prove it. And who’s to deny it?”
People would believe it, Jean knew. They would believe it because it would make them seem right for denying him the companionship of their children. Yes, they would believe it all right.
By now Rob would be climbing the ridge, and it would not be easy, in the dark like it was, when a body had no chance to choose a way. Soon he would be passing by the cabin along the ridge, and what if a rock rolled down? “A boy like this,” Sam continued, drawing deep on his pipe, “could do us some good. Got big ears, see? Good eyes, too. An’ nobody suspects a kid. By now they’re used to him comin’ it around an’ they would hardly notice he was there. He could find out who was carryin’ money, how they traveled, and I’d bet he knows more hidin’ places in this swamp than any catymount.” The climb up the ridge was steep, and Rob might slip back several times. He might fall headlong and get turned around in the dark when he got up. It had happened to Jean … but Rob had a good head and he had grit. He never took foolish chances. As soon as he got to Mill Creek Road, he would run. He would keep going, too: once Rob began on a thing he wouldn’t let up. “You got any real good friends in town, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“How about the youngsters?”
“They say my mother was a gypsy.”
“Right.” Sam chuckled. He was pleased with himself. He had guessed that a boy living like this one would be at outs with the town. He had been a poor boy himself. He leaned forward. “Boy, is there anything you want real bad? I mean something for your very own?”
“A rifle,” Jean replied promptly. “I’d like a rifle so I could go west.”
Sam’s laughter boomed and he slapped his heavy thigh. “That’s it! There it is! By the Lord Harry, Fud! There’s the LaBarge cropping out in the boy! A rifle so’s he could go west, now doesn’t that beat all?” He sat back on his bench against the wall, puffing at his pipe. He held the pipe in one corner of his mouth and puffed from the other side. Fud looked bored and impatient, but the man on the bunk merely snored. Rob should definitely be on the ridge by now. He would be frightened and breathing hard from the climb so he would stop to catch his breath. Up there on the ridge it would be bright moonlight, stark and clear. Below him on this side would be the swamp, and on the other, the forest. All he had to do was pick his way carefully along the top of that comblike ridge until it played out at Mill Creek Road.
How long would it take him to get to town? Two hours? Three? Rob was cautious, and on the ridge he would take his time. Up there among the jagged rocks and brush it would be rough going and to hurry might mean a sprained or broken ankle. Once out of the woods and on the road he could run. But how far could a boy run without stopping?
Rob would be frightened up there in the moonlight with a vast sea of darkness below him, a sea whose waves were the moving tops of trees and whose bottom was swamp and forest. It would be very still up there, except for the wind, and a sudden noise would stop a man, make the hair prickle on the back of his neck. The air would be cool, but there would be that strange odor of dampness and decay, the smell from stagnant pools, of rotting vegetation mingled with the fresh smell of pines and hemlock. Somewhere a night bird would call, an eerie sound that would make Rob stop, shivering. But then he would hurry on, perhaps falling, skinning his knees, rising agajn and going on … “So you want a rifle? Now that’s smart. A good rifle is a thing to come by, and mighty handy, but a good rifle costs money. Now you try selling herbs to buy a rifle and it would take quite a spell. You stick with us, do what I tell you and use that noggin of yours, then we’ll get a rifle for you, and the best of the lot, too.”
“What would I have to do?”
Sam chuckled again. “See there, Fud? No nonsense about this lad, comes right to the point. Business, he is, strictly business.” Sam leaned his hairy forearms on the table. “Do? Nothing but what you’ve been doing, boy. You take your herbs to town to sell. On’y sometimes you go to Sunbury or Selinsgrove, too. And you sell ‘em … what else? You listen. Just that. You listen. Sometimes folks passing through carry a sight of money, more’n is good for ‘em. Well, we mean to he’p out, Fud, me, an’ him.
“You see somebody with money, you just come to us. No townsfolk, mind you. Only travelers, folks goin’ through on the pike or the river.” “Those folks who travel,” Jean suggested tentatively. “Don’t they have rifles sometimes?”