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Updated: June 20, 2025
"I ain't going to side with Jared Birkdale when a woman's sense of right has been roused. Jared's wits are the keenest and the cruelest round here, and the poison in his tongue is the deadliest; I guess I know. Are you coming in, child? The bed's made, but you best carry a pitcher of fresh water up with you." "I'll be there in a minute, Isa, and the cracked pitcher's by the well, isn't it?"
"See here, son"; and the smooth tones filled Billy with an old fear; "that was all a big mistake. My hand was out of the game. St. Angé had taken the nerve out of me. I've got my steam up now." It was Jared Birkdale! and Billy had hoped he was never to see the man again. From his babyhood up, a look from Jared had had power to quell him when a blow from another might fail.
Quite different was it from the one that had driven him almost mad with fear as he listened to Jude and Birkdale a time back. This was a thriller that appealed to the familiar in him, the impishness that died hard. He went across to the chest and leaned over it. The fire crackled and he leaped back!
In the middle ground of the picture was the peninsula of Wirral, while the river Dee might be seen shimmering like a silver thread under the blue hills of Wales, which occupied the back ground of the landscape. Westward was the ocean next, the Formby shore attracted the eye. The sand-hills about Birkdale and Meols were visible.
I got into the back kitchen while she was outside, and before I could get away in walks Gaston. What I saw and heard that evening, Jude, ain't necessary here, but it blazed our trail, boy, and I cut later taking more than I planned for." Birkdale breathed hard. "You leave Gaston to me, curse 'im! "Make trouble for us?
However, Joyce must refuse to meet "the backwoodsman"; after that they two, Billy and Joyce, must find a path that connected Gaston with them, and make him secure from the plots of the evil Birkdale and the weak, foolish Jude of the unerring shot. All this Billy thought upon as he strode forward whistling comfortably, and his chest swelling proudly.
Gaston had sent it, don't you see that there would have been no need of this mystery? But is it Jude or father, Billy?" "It's old Birkdale," Billy burst out, and then between fear and relief he related what had happened in the hut in the woods. "Then it's a longer way I must go." Joyce sighed wearily. "Do you think I could get there walking, Billy?" The boy eyed her as if she had gone crazy.
He, Gaston, could serve best by retiring. This he did physically. He put away his treasures and locked them fast; then, flinging himself upon the pine-bough bed, dressed as he was, he soon fell into a troubled sleep. Jared Birkdale, with a contemplative eye, looked at his daughter through the haze of his tobacco smoke as if seeing her for the first time. In a way this was so.
He had minded his business, paid his way, taken his turn in camp at greenhorn jobs, accounted for his presence on the ground of seeking health, and that was all. Life went on as usual, sluggishly and dully but on. Jude had, before Billy's illumination, been thinking that after the next logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings the cabin, his dog and gun.
Leon Tate acts the father-part to any one in a fix it helps his trade keeps folks in his debt, you know, but he ain't going to hamper hisself past a certain point, and if this here Jude Lauzoon should get a beckon from old man Birkdale he'd skip as quick as thunder that's what is troubling Tate, and, by gosh! it's troubling me, but for another reason what needn't enter into this here conversation.
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