Freckles

Wherein great risks are taken and the Limberlost guard is hired.

Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and clothing.

Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. A feeling of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. Without stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and followed it to the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper and bed.

The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees. The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content, the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch head-teamster, lovingly wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he softly whistled, “O wha will be my dearie, O!” and a cricket beneath the leaves at his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and crackled merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his testing-fork, gusts of savory odors escaped.

“I don’t understand,” said McLean.

“I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you wouldn’t,” said Freckles slowly. “I’ve spent more time on it than I ever did on anything else in all me life, and I don’t understand. Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That’s what somebody did to me.”

McLean stared aghast. He had no reply ready, and presently in a low voice he suggested: “And after?”

“The Home people took me in, and I was there the full legal age and several years over. For the most part we were a lot of little Irishmen together. They could always find homes for the other children, but nobody would ever be wanting me on account of me arm.”

“Were they kind to you?” McLean regretted the question the minute it was asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Freckles. The reply sounded so hopeless, even to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding: “You see, it’s like this, sir. Kindnesses that people are paid to lay off in job lots and that belong equally to several hundred others, ain’t going to be soaking into any one fellow so much.”

“Go on,” said McLean, nodding comprehendingly.

“There’s nothing worth the taking of your time to tell,” replied Freckles. “The Home was in Chicago, and I was there all me life until three months ago.

A peculiar movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention. He stopped to investigate. There was an unusually large Luna cocoon, and the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and air. Freckles stood and stared.

“There’s something in there trying to get out,” he muttered. “Wonder if I could help it? Guess I best not be trying. If I hadn’t happened along, there wouldn’t have been anyone to do anything, and maybe I’d only be hurting it. It’s⁠—it’s⁠—Oh, skaggany! It’s just being born!”

Freckles gasped with surprise. The moth cleared the opening, and with many wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree. He stared speechless with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under side. There was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen. There was a band of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head, and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. As Freckles gazed, tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping, taking on color, and small, oval markings were beginning to show.

The minutes passed. Freckles’ steady gaze never wavered. Without realizing it, he was trembling with eagerness and anxiety. As he saw what was taking place, “It’s going to fly,” he breathed in hushed wonder.

Wherein an angel materializes and a man worships.

Perhaps there was a breath of sound⁠—Freckles never afterward could remember⁠—but for some reason he lifted his head as the bushes parted and the face of an angel looked between. Saints, nymphs, and fairies had floated down his cathedral aisle for him many times, with forms and voices of exquisite beauty.

Parting the wild roses at the entrance was beauty of which Freckles never had dreamed. Was it real or would it vanish as the other dreams? He dropped his book, and rising to his feet, went a step closer, gazing intently. This was real flesh and blood. It was in every way kin to the Limberlost, for no bird of its branches swung with easier grace than this dainty young thing rocked on the bit of morass on which she stood. A sapling beside her was not straighter or rounder than her slender form. Her soft, waving hair clung around her face from the heat, and curled over her shoulders. It was all of one piece with the gold of the sun that filtered between the branches. Her eyes were the deepest blue of the iris, her lips the reddest red of the foxfire, while her cheeks were exactly of the same satin as the wild rose petals caressing them. She was smiling at Freckles in perfect confidence, and she cried:

“Oh, I’m so delighted that I’ve found you!”

Wherein Black Jack captures Freckles and the Angel captures Jack.

As Freckles left the trail, from the swale close the south entrance, four large muscular men arose and swiftly and carefully entered the swamp by the wagon road. Two of them carried a big saw, the third, coils of rope and wire, and all of them were heavily armed. They left one man on guard at the entrance. The other three made their way through the darkness as best they could, and were soon at Freckles’ room. He had left the swamp on his wheel from the west trail. They counted on his returning on the wheel and circling the east line before he came there.

A little below the west entrance to Freckles’ room, Black Jack stepped into the swale, and binding a wire tightly around a scrub oak, carried it below the waving grasses, stretched it taut across the trail, and fastened it to a tree in the swamp. Then he obliterated all signs of his work, and arranged the grass over the wire until it was so completely covered that only minute examination would reveal it. They entered Freckles’ room with coarse oaths and jests. In a few moments, his specimen case with its precious contents was rolled into the swamp, while the saw was eating into one of the finest trees of the Limberlost.

The first report from the man on watch was that Duncan had driven to the South camp; the second, that Freckles was coming.