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To the "Good-day" of the boys Caleb made no reply, but turned as they left and asked, "Whar ye camped?" "On the knoll by the creek in Raften's swamp." "H-m, maybe I'll come an' see ye." "All right," Sam called out; "follow the blazed trail from the brush fence." "Why, Sam," said Yan, as soon as they were out of hearing, "there isn't any blazed trail; why did you say that?"
Then she whispered confidentially: "Paw's going to Downey's this afternoon, an' you can slip away as soon as he's gone, an' if you work well before that he won't be so awful mad after you come back. But be sure you don't let down the bars, coz if the pig was to get in Raften's woods dear knows what." This was the reason of Guy's delay. He did not return to camp with the skins till late that day.
A pig wandered in from the barnyard. Then the boys heard a sudden scuffle, and a squeal from the pig as it scrambled out again, and Raften's voice: "Consarn them pigs! Them boys ought to be here to herd them." This was sufficiently alarming to scare the Warriors off in great haste. They hid in the huge root-cellar and there held a council of war.
Garney was a dissolute soldier who blew his head off, accidentally, his friends claimed, and he was buried on what was supposed to be his own land just north of Raften's, but it afterward proved to be part of the highway where a sidepath joined in, and in spite of its diggers the grave was at the crossing of two roads. Thus by the hand of fate Bill Garney was stamped as a suicide.
Though overpowered in argument, Raften's rancour was not abated, but rather increased toward the man he had evidently misused, until the balance was turned by the chance of his helping that man in a time of direst straits. Oh, the magic of the campfire! No unkind feeling long withstands its glow.
His roughness and force made Yan afraid of him, and as it was Raften's way to say nothing until his mind was fully made up, and then say it "strong," Yan was left in doubt as to whether or not he was giving satisfaction. Sam Sam Raften turned out to be more congenial than he looked.
"How's the note-book?" as Raften's eye caught sight of the open sketch-book still in Yan's hand. "Oh, that reminds me," was the reply. "But what is this?" He showed the hoof-mark be had sketched. Raften examined it curiously. "H-m, I dunno'; 'pears to me moighty loike a big Buck. But I guess not; there ain't any left."
In Sanger settlement the farmhouse parlour is not a room; it is an institution. It is kept closed all the week except when the minister calls, and the one at Raften's was the pure type. On the center-table was one tintype album, a Bible, and some large books for company use.
"Where are ye livin' now?" "Well," said Sam, hastening again to forestall Yan, whose simple directness he feared, "to tell the truth, we made a wigwam of bark in the woods below here, but it wasn't a success." "Whose woods?" "Oh, about a mile below on the creek." "Hm! That must be Raften's or Burns's woods." "I guess it is," said Sam. "An' you look uncommon like Sam Raften.
Raften was the stronger and richer man, but Boyle, whose father had paid his own steerage rate, knew all about Raften's father, and always wound up any discussion by hurling in Raften's teeth: "Don't talk to me, ye upstart. Everybody knows ye are nothing but a Emmy Grant." This was the one fly in the Raften ointment. No use denying it.
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