Moosemeadows/Chapter 13
XIII
I WONDERED if the old man had told me everything—all his reasons for his abject fear of Louis Romero. He had told very little about the woman who had fled with him. But I asked no questions.
We nursed old Ruben Glashner assiduously, eager for his recovery; for we intended to hand him over to the Provincial Insane Asylum as soon as he was strong enough to make the journey. He was in a high fever, and we dosed him with quinine. He was delirious most of the time. We watched him and waited on him day and night, Tom and Sol and I, in turns. He did not show much improvement by nightfall of the third day, so we decided that if he was not considerably better by morning one of us would go for a doctor. Sol stood the first watch. Tom relieved Sol at midnight. I went on duty at four-thirty, half an hour late. I found Tom sound asleep in his chair, and the bed empty.
The sick man had gone by way of an open window and a clothes-line. Lion had been in the house that night, but neither of the dogs outside had given the alarm. We searched the barns and outhouses, orchards and surrounding woods—miles of country before breakfast. The dogs found a scent, only to lose it in a brook within five hundred yards of the house. After breakfast, we followed the brook back into the forest, beating a wide front. The old fool had skipped in his night-clothes, and without his boots, so we did not think that he would get far. We kept to the brook for miles. Then it occurred to me that he might in his delirium, have revisited the scene of his last camp. Tom and Sol thought well of my idea; so I struck through the woods until I came onto the old logging-road, I found the little glade, f he ashes and charred poles just as Tom and I had left them, but no sign of old Ruben Glashner.
When I got back to the house, Tom and Sol were smoking their pipes in the kitchen and wondering what to do next.
"If the cussed old fool dies of exposure, running the woods, nobody'll be to blame but himself," said Tom.
We searched the barns again, the hay-mows, the oat-bins, the sheep shed, the pig and poultry houses, even the empty root-cellars. Not a sign. Sol suggested that he may have jumped into the creek to cool his fever; but our investigation of mud and deep water failed to confirm his suspicion.
I wanted to go down-stream to see the Jeanbard family. I had been wanting to do so for days, longing to go, and only a sense of duty had held me back. Now I decided to go. A young man's days and nights should not be devoted entirely to the pursuit of murderous and delirious old men. A little of that sort of thing goes a long way; and I had come in for my full share of it, heaven knows!
"In my humble opinion, the old mucker has started for home, for Indian Ledge," I said to Tom and Sol. "He is somewhere on the road. He may have reached the settlement. I'm going to find out. His appearance at the house of one of your unneighborly neighbors in his night clothes and half dead wouldn't add to your local popularity."
"To the devil with my neighbors!" retorted Tom. "I wonder that I ever worried about them. But your idea is a good one, Giddy. I'll go with you."
Tom and I set out after an early supper, in the buggy, with brandy in our flasks and blankets under the seat, in case we should find old Ruben by the wayside. In the shafts was Young Bill. I have known many tall horses and many silly horses, but never any other one horse so tall and so silly as Young Bill. But he always meant well, did Young Bill. There was Clyde in him, quite obviously, and a plumping strain of Percheron, I suspect, and a dash of rocking-horse and some saw-horse. What else, I cannot imagine; but Tom spoke vaguely of Morgan blood. Tom thought him a wonder; and Tom was right. Sol had looked so tired after harnessing him that I believe he must have had to stretch each piece of harness in turn to get it on.
"Hope he don't grow no more," Sol had said.
"I like a big horse," Tom had replied. "Saw too many stunted ones in the tropics. Rats."
Young Bill walked on his toes for half a mile, cocking his ears and looking all around as if for applause. Next, he jogged on the flat of his feet, and the buggy rocked and creaked. He stubbed along on his heels for twenty minutes or so, and I feared for the dashboard.
"Hard gait," I said. "I shouldn't care to ride him."
"There's nothing wrong with his gait. He'd make a first-rate saddle-horse," returned the old man; and even as he said it, Young Bill essayed to change his footwork from heel to toe and, in the changing, stubbed his toe and plunged to his knees and nose. Something broke. He floundered and staggered up; and something else broke. Tom sprang from the quaking buggy and dashed forward. Young Bill stood upright on all four legs and turned a face of distressed surprise over his shoulder. The road was soft, so his knees had escaped injury; but the harness had suffered several fractures. Tom repaired one break with salmon-twine and another with a leather strap from his pocket. We resumed our journey. Night had fallen b;y this time, but there were stars and a slip of moon. The big horse went through his repertoire of gaits again, with variations and without accident. He showed a little of everything except speed.
Slow as our progress was, we at last reached a point which I recognized as being about halfway between the old Deblore house and the Jeanbard cottage; and at that point and that instant of time, something—a bat in the air, a hare beside the road, a bird in a bush, or a wheel in the head—filled Young Bill with a sudden senseless panic. He snorted and lunged, tangled and untangled his hoofs, bunched and unbunched his spine and went away at a crashing gallop. Tom hung onto the reins and I clung to the seat. Above the thumping of big hoofs and the protesting creaks and groans of wheels and springs, I heard the snap of overtaxed leather. The break, wherever it was, evidently allowed Young Bill increased freedom of action, for he immediately lengthened his jumps. But not for long. Another snap! A volley of snaps! Then the rending report of a splintering shaft—and Young Bill and the buggy parted company. For a second Tom maintained his hold on the reins with his hands and hung to the dashboard with his knees. The dashboard gave way and went out with the old man; and the buggy showed appreciation of its new-found independence by jack-knifing into the ditch. That's where and when I fell out.
Young Bill soon came back and stood around in abject attitudes while Tom patched the wreck of his harness with twine and rope and tags of leather. I bound the broken shaft with hay-wire. The repairs took time; but at last the horse and the buggy were reunited, and every prospect of their remaining so until Young Bill's next nerve-wave was bright. But a change had come over the animal. Selecting a flat-footed walk, he stuck to it. Hares jumped and vanished before him, but he heeded them not. Bats flickered low about his head, only to be ignored. The hour grew late.
"We must be somewhere near the Jeanbard clearings," said Tom.
I replied that I had lost all sense of time and place.
"Smoke!" he exclaimed. "Do you smell it, Giddy?"
I did; and with the butt-end of the whip I coaxed Young Bill into a jouncing shuffle. The unmistakable scent grew stronger. Presently I saw a flicker of flame ahead and to the left. I returned the whip to its socket and leapt from the buggy and ran.