Terry.

by Charles Goff Thomson.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The poem "Casey" used in Chapter IX was written by the late Arthur W.

Ferguson, formerly Executive Secretary for the Philippine Government.

It has been edited and amplified but is substantially as written by him. A man of unusual facility, Mr. Ferguson composed the verses under circ.u.mstances somewhat similar to those set down herein, and with like spontaneity.

TERRY

CHAPTER I

THE FOX

The frosty silence of the snow-mantled hills was rent by the vicious crack of a high-powered, small-calibered rifle. The hunter sprang from the thicket in which he had lain concealed and crossed the gully to a knoll where a black furry bundle had dropped to the snow after one convulsive leap.

Exultant, Terry bent down to examine the silky black coat.

"Right through the ear. Well, Mister Fox, you're mine--though you did lead me a merry chase for twelve days! You laughed at me till the snow came--knew I wouldn't bring you out of your hole with formalin, that it was a square game we played. But to-day everything broke against you, boy,--sun and wind and snow. And perhaps hunger."

The twinge of pain that stabs every true sportsman as he realizes that he has extinguished a spark of life shadowed Terry's thin, sensitive face. It was a face of singular appeal, dominated by a queer twist of upper lip that stamped his mouth with a permanent wistfulness. Even in the bracing cold of the winter morning his skin was white, but the clear pallor was belied by the swift energy with which he moved and the eager sparkle of his dark gray eyes. He picked up the fluffy bundle and stroked the sleek fur.

"Hard luck, old boy! But now you'll never be hungry again, or cold.

And I haven't hunted you all this time just for the sake of the sport." His face lighted. "You're going to be a proud little fox. If foxes have souls--and I don't see why we should deny you what we lay selfish claims to for ourselves--yours will rejoice in the purpose of your end. Every night and every morning you--"

He broke off as the distant pealing of church bells came to his ears, carried faintly but clearly by the light wind that whispered over the snowy stretches of rolling meadowlands. For a long time Terry stood facing toward the invisible village, his face moody and inscrutable.

As the sound of the bells died away he shook off the spell with conscious, humorous effort and picking up his rifle and the fox he went into the thicket to secure and adjust his snowshoes.

Ignoring paths and sleighroads he made his way toward the town. The crisp pine-laden air charged his muscles with exuberant excess of the fine energy of youth and he made his way swiftly across the sparkling snow that blanketed the gentle landscape, through the thickets of evergreens and across the tiny, ice-edged creeks that flowed in swift escape from winter's frozen grip.

Keen-eyed, he stopped a moment in study of a group of pheasants that huddled in a clump of underbrush. They played possum till he pa.s.sed on. A rabbit, reared up in nervous-nosed inquiry, watched him furtively as he approached the rock behind which it had vainly sought concealment. Terry laughed at its ridiculous plight.

"You'd better improve your strategy, you young scamp, or you'll wind up in the pot of some one who hunts rabbits!"

He watched its jumpy flight into a distant copse of young pines, then went on swiftly. In an hour he paused at the top of a last steep grade. Lake Champlain stretched her flat-frozen bosom to the north and south of him. The more level timbered areas of the opposite sh.o.r.e were broken here and there by clearings in which white farm houses and red barns nestled like doll houses.

At the foot of the slope directly beneath him a village lay primly along the lake sh.o.r.e. It was a square-built town, its limits almost rectangular, its breadth and width checkered into exact squares by wide, straight streets. It was an old town: a score of its flat-roofed structures had been built while the Mohawks still guarded the Western Gate of the Long House, and many of the great, old-fashioned homes had stood when Ethan Allen strutted through its streets.

It was not a snug little town, there was no air of hospitality to encourage strangers to tarry within its gates, but seemed to promise "value received" for any who came, paid their way and attended strictly to their own affairs.

Thus Terry saw the town in which he had been born and had spent all of his twenty-six years except the four at Princeton. He tarried, his eyes fixed upon the cemetery which limited the eastern edge of the town, to which his father and mother had been carried when he was a boy of eleven.

He faced about in lingering appreciation of the blue-vaulted expanse, then descended toward the village. Whipping off his snowshoes at the border of the village he entered the main street, which ran straight through town to the lake front. No one was in sight on the broad thoroughfare and he found a measure of relief in its emptiness, for though he did not adhere to the rigid New England doctrine that governed his neighbors, he found no pleasure in wanton violation of their stiff code. Realizing that with snowshoes, gun and fox he jarred heavily upon the atmosphere of the quiet Sunday morning, he hurried down the street.

He encountered no one, but as he pa.s.sed by the ice-incrusted watering trough at the central square and approached the block made up by Crampville's three churches, the big doors of his own church were flung open and the congregation emerged. As the decorous crowd filed out Terry hesitated a moment, then kept on his way.

The progress of the lone figure along the opposite side of the street was the topic of conversation at nearly every dinner table in Crampville that Sunday. It became a sort of small-town epic, so that they still tell how stern the elders looked, and how white Terry's face against the background of black fur which he had thrown across his shoulder in order to free his right hand that he might gravely raise his crimson hunting cap in respectful salutation of families he had known from childhood. And they still tell, too, how Deane Hunter, flushed with mortification at her father's frigid refusal to recognize Terry's greeting, checked the nudges and whisperings by calling out a cheerful "Good Morning, d.i.c.k." Her courageous voice still rang in his ears as he entered the iron-fenced yard that surrounded the home of his fathers.

Inside the great, high-ceilinged house Terry stood a while in somber reflection, then shrugged his trim shoulders and pa.s.sed through the shadowy rooms out into the barn. In five minutes he had cleaned and oiled his rifle, but an hour pa.s.sed while he carefully removed the pelt and tacked it taut upon a stretching board.

He was in the library, reading, when his sister and brother-in-law came downstairs in response to the dinner bell. Susan and her husband, Ellis Crofts, had lived in the old mansion since their marriage two years previously, rather against Ellis' desires. He had wished to set up an establishment of his own, but had yielded to Susan's pleadings and Terry's sincere letter from college asking him not to be instrumental in closing up a house that had been lived in continuously by the Terrys of four generations.

They had been among the last to emerge from church, but had come out in time to see Terry as he opened the gate, and had heard enough of the murmured comment to understand its significance. It had been difficult for them to control their emotions as they kept slow step with the throng down the broad sidewalk. Susan, mortified but loyal to the core, had set her face in defiant smile lest she burst into tears: Ellis, devoted to Terry but tickled by the situation, had smothered his snickers in protracted fits of coughing.

Terry threw aside a handbook on the curing of pelts and rose at their entrance, smiling:

"Well, do you good folks think you are safe in sitting at the same table with an unrepentant sinner?"

Susan had been crying. "Oh, d.i.c.k! Why did you do it? How do you do such things?"

He waved his hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it."

"But, d.i.c.k, it's no joke. I saw the three elders of our church--Ballard, Remington and Van Slyke--talking about it, and they were very bitter. And you know they can expel any church member."

Terry made no answer save to put his arm around each and lead them into the dining room. But Susan was not content.

"d.i.c.k, I wish you would explain it to Ballard or Van Slyke. They are influential men and both are very religious."

Ellis took a hand: "Their religion is all right, so far as it goes--but they mix it up with their dyspepsia too much to suit me!"

As his wife turned rebuking eyes upon him he pursued doggedly: "Not that their dyspepsia and religion are always mixed; they have their dyspepsia seven days in the week!"

She joined in their laughter over Ellis' exaggerated defense, then turned again to her brother.

"What are you going to do with that nasty thing you shot, d.i.c.k?"

"Nasty?" broke in Ellis in quick alarm. "You didn't shoot a skunk, did you?"

She ignored her husband and persisted: "Tell me why you shot that fox, d.i.c.k. You have been out hunting nearly every day for two weeks and have shot nothing else, so I know you have a reason."

"I'm not going to help eat it!" Ellis broke in. "I've heard they are stringy--and a bit smelly."

"Ellis, will you stop being ridiculous? d.i.c.k, why have you hunted that fox so long?"

Ellis had seen that Terry was not to be pumped, that this was another of his queer quests. He tried again to shunt Susan away.

"Maybe it was a personal matter between him and the fox, Sue."

She turned on him a look she endeavored to make disdainful, but only succeeded in raising another laugh from both. But she was not to be deterred. Her eyes lit with sudden inspiration.

"I'll bet--I'll bet anything--" she began.

"Susan Terry Crofts! Even d.i.c.k would not bet on Sunday!"