Moosemeadows/Chapter 1
I
THE ice having gone out of the great St. Johns River and its tributaries during the third week in April, at an early hour of a morning of the second week of May, after a long journey, I boarded a train for Wicklow Creek, which is in the backwoods of New Brunswick. There was but one passenger coach on that train. We dropped passengers here and there all morning; and by noon there were only two of us left. The other was a big, reddish fellow in mackinaw coat and high boots, with steel calks on the sole of each boot, a light of derisive humor in his blue eyes and a bottle in a side pocket of his coat. About noon, the car began to sway from side to side and pitch by the head, more like a ship at sea than a train on a track. The cause of this lay in the roadbed which, bad at its best, had suffered recently from springtime thaws and washouts. The man with steel-shod feet lurched from his seat and staggered along the aisle, biting the pattern of a big foot into the floor at every step, lurched and sank into the better half of my seat; and the bottle in his pocket smote me heavily on the hip. He turned his head and stared me straight in the face. He smiled suddenly; and so I smiled.
"The closer we set, the less we'll joggle," he said. "We'll be all right, I guess, if the whole shebang don't roll off into the river. If she does that, it won't be for the first time."
"Let us hope for the best," I said.
"Sure! Hopin's cheap. What d'ye say to a drink?"
"But I'm told that one has to be careful nowadays."
"That's right, too—but this here's honest liquor. I know. It's what the label says, sure's my name's Stack Glashner."
On pronouncing the name he glanced sharply at me as if expecting I would recognize it, but though my family had lived for generations in that part of the world, I myself was a complete stranger to it.
But, though I made no sign, the big woodsman still seemed to think the name needed some defense, for he went on, "We ain't as bad as folks make out—not now. But in my pa's time, an* before that, we was sure a tough bunch; folks around French River an' Wicklow Creek still got the habit of blamin' 'most everything bad that happens onto us Glashners. That's the way with folks in this country. Back here in the woods nothin' sticks like a bad name. We got a bad name sure enough, us Glashners. Did you ever hear anything ag'in us?"
"No," I replied. "I may have heard the name long ago, but that's all. I don't remember anything about it."
"Where were you about here before?"
"Downriver, at Kingspoint. I was born there, but I haven't been back for twenty years."
"Well, the worst thing any Glashner ever done, if you ask me, was when Sally Glashner"—he tapped his forehead significantly with a finger—"married that old hellion, Henry Deblore."
This very decidedly made me prick up my ears, because at that very moment I was on my way to visit my very distant cousin, Tom Deblore, who lived at Moosemeadows Park. His letter of invitation had caught me at a loose end in London after demobilization and had come out of a clear sky. It was in my pocket at that very moment and read like this:
My dear Captain Gidwicke Swayton:
A few days ago the storekeeper at the village showed me in a newspaper that you had survived the war. Your mother was a daughter of "Three-bottle" James Partridge, a one-time attorney-general of the Province, as you know. The attorney-general's mother was a daughter of Major Goodwin Ludlaw. The major's mother was a Deblore. But of course you are familiar with all this. Having introduced myself as a relative, I now hasten to invite you to Moosemeadows Park. I dwell alone on my ancestral acres, beneath a more or less weather-proof ancestral roof. The years are gathering on my head like a snowdrift and loneliness frequently assaults my heart. If you will come to Moosemeadows and assist in the tasks of the farm, a one-half interest in all that is mine will be yours from the moment of your arrival, and upon my inevitable demise you shall be my sole heir. I may add that Moosemeadows Park is no ordinary farm. An early and favorable reply will greatly oblige,
Your affectionate cousin,
I had been surprised at getting this letter at all, and began to deeply regret not having made greater efforts toward the investigation of the Deblores of Moosemeadows in the days of my youth. I wondered at myself for not having suspected their kinship to my mother. However, being young, footloose and curious, I had let a flip of a coin decide, and here I was hearing a chance acquaintance describe one of the Deblores in no very flattering terms. I wondered if Henry were a kin to Tom. For so many years I had been a wanderer, then had come the war to cut the few remaining family ties, that I had heard very little mention of people in my native province for a great many seasons. The Deblores were a faint memory, anyway, and I was wholly in the dark as to the present family. Old Tom's letter asking me to come to him at Moosemeadows had only caught me in England by the merest chance. In accepting it I had a sneaking hope I might run into some excitement in the New Brunswick backwoods. I dimly remembered the country as a place of big trees, deep shadows and haunting mystery.
Meanwhile, apparently not noting my amazed expression, my loquacious companion went right on, giving me some surprising information about the household, I was then heading to join.
"Henry Deblore had only one vartue," he declared, "an' that was courage. He feared nothin'—an' everybody feared him. It's a wonder he wasn't shot dead on his weddin' day. It's a wonder he wasn't shot dead fifty times before that day. I've heared an uncle of mine, a man who wasn't what ye'd call nervous nor particular, tell how he'd had his sights lined fair on Henry Deblore many's the time, all unbeknownst to Henry an' nobody lookin', an' was scart to press the trigger. Fear of Henry froze his finger. One day I was out after moose, back on the edge of the medders, an' I come face to face with him. I wasn't on his land, nor it wasn't close season for moose, an' I was as big as I am now—but I jumped into the underbrush an' run like the devil himself was after me.
"You mean he was bad?" I inquired cautiously.
"Bad! I reckon he was the worst of the Deblores of Moosemedders, from all I've heared; an' that's about the same as namin' him for the worst man in the world. He was smart, too, or he couldn't of got away with it. An' they were bad before him, them Deblores, rotten bad! How they escaped hangin' is more'n I can figger out, if all the stories be true; an' I don't believe any one of 'em was ever in jail more'n three or four times."
"What do you mean by bad, exactly?" I asked, considerably startled. At any event it began to look as if my visit to Moosemeadows might indeed provide some of the excitement I craved. So I listened with more interest than this chance acquaintance was aware of to his rambling talk. Also, about this time, strange as it seemed, I began to like the fellow.
"There's plenty of things you'd call bad that I wouldn't," he went on. "I am tough, but Henry Deblore was a devil, and everyone round here knew it. And he was slick as he was bad."
"He is dead now, I suppose?" I commented, feeling my way, but not wishing to commit myself.
"I reckon so. But he didn't die at Moosemedders. He'd ought to be dead if he ain't. He got into an argument one night down in the village, in Pete Higgly's store, an' throwed a knife into Pete; an' that's the last was ever seen of him in these parts. He was chased home; but when the crowd got to the old house they had to bust open a door—and he was gone. That was ten or eleven years ago. He ain't been seen nor heared of in these parts since."
"Did Pete Higgly die?" I asked.
"No, but it was a near thing. The crowd hunted all through the house for Hen's money, knowin' he had plenty hid away, and for the old silver and such-like, but they didn't find neither. So they took the livestock—a few cows an' a bunch of steers an' a flock of sheep an' three good horses. But it wasn't more'n a week afterwards when Tom Deblore come home. Yes, sir, Tom—he was Hank's brother—come home to Moosemedders an' made the folks who'd cleaned out the barns an' was figurin' on buyin' in the place at public auction—I forgit how they was goin' to set about it—look like a bunch of rubes."