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Uncle Henry descended to personal threats and the smaller man called out: "You jest put your hand on me, you big, overgrown sawney! That's all I'm a-waitin' for. You 'tack me and I'll have you in the caboose, sure's my name's Gedney Raffer. Try it!" The quarrel was most distressing. Nan pulled at her uncle's coat sleeve. The rough men eyed her curiously. She had never felt so ashamed in her life.
And while he fished in that direction, Momsey threw out her line toward Memphis and Adair MacKenzie. Mr. Sherwood pulled in his line first, without much of a nibble, it must be confessed. "Dear Bob," the elder Sherwood wrote: "Things are flatter than a stepped-on pancake with me. I've got a bunch of trouble with old Ged Raffer and may have to go into court with him.
These here lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints." "Wal, wal!" snarled Raffer. "I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help you ef you won't help me?" He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start, and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart. Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had ever seen.
Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latter dared not use his puny fists on the giant. The blunt club of the lumberman's speech was scarcely a match for the sharp rapier of Raffer's tongue. As the crowd laughed it was evident that the fox-faced man was getting the verbal best of the controversy. Nan's ears burned and tears stood in her eyes.
Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose. "Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich," thought Nan, "I'd beg her for the money.
It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might, summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter they had, what would become of them?
Only my self-respect, I s'pose," grunted the old lumberman, and Nan approved very much of him just then. "Bah!" exclaimed Raffer. "Bah, yourself!" Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. "I got some decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man, Ged Raffer!" "Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?" demanded the eager Raffer.
On this, her first visit to the island in the swamp, Nan said nothing to old Toby Vanderwiller about the line dispute between her uncle and Gedney Raffer, which the old lumberman was supposed to be able to settle if he would. Mrs. Vanderwiller insisted upon Toby's hitching up an old, broken-kneed pony he owned, and taking her over the corduroy road to Pine Camp, where she arrived before dark.
"That's my secret," snapped the old lumberman. "If I don't witness for you, be glad I don't harm you." "You dare!" cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned from the buggy seat. "You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother," repeated Toby, gloomily. "Wal," snarled Raffer, "see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for any man but me.
Others were evidently minded to increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicious tale-bearing. Often Nan thought of what Uncle Henry had said to old Toby Vanderwiller.
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