Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] (17 page)

“Holy heaps of trouble,” Molly said. “Children…more than
one?”

“Two more than one,” Maggie said. “A boy and two girls.”

“My, my, you Scots may have a lot of good qualities, but
I’ll say one thing for you, you sure do know how to complicate things. I’ll
have to hand you that.” She gave Maggie a frank look. “You sure you don’t have
a husband floating around out there somewhere who might just decide to turn up
on our doorstep some fine afternoon? Packin’ a gun?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“I have to tell him, of course, but—”

“You don’t have to tell him straightaway.”

“That’s being deceptive, dinna you think?”

Molly shrugged. “We get it from Eve,” she said
matter-of-factly, “so we can’t be blamed.” She winked at Maggie. “Don’t fret
so. He’s already been deceived. As I see it, he can’t rightly get any more
angry if he hears about it now or a month from now.”

“My children will be here in a month or two. I can’t wait
too long.”

“Just wait long enough for Adrian to get this thorn out of
his paw before you go jabbing another one into it. No need to heap more coals
on a roaring fire. It’s kinda pointless. Just take it one thing at a time, as
my pa always said.” Molly crossed the room, putting her cup away, then went
back to chopping vegetables, and Maggie knew the subject as well as their
discussion of it was finished.

“Molly, do you think Big John would mind showing me around
the mill tomorrow?”

Molly didn’t answer, but she did give Maggie a mighty
strange look. “You feelin’ all right?”

“Yes, but I need to get out of the house. I need to do
something besides paint and play the piano, or take Israel for a walk and weigh
my mind down with my problems. I’d like to know more about Adrian’s business.
Then perhaps I could talk to him when he comes home in the evening. I could
discuss what he does all day. I’m frightfully ignorant of the kind of life he
and the others here lead.”

“I’ll speak to John tonight. I can’t think of any reason why
you couldn’t go down to the camp and have a look-see. Like you said, it would
get your mind off other things.”

Maggie carried her teacup to the cabinet, putting it into
the big enamel dishpan before she turned and leaned against the cabinet,
looking at Molly steadily. “You willna mention any of this…the things we’ve
discussed, I mean, to Big John or Adrian?”

“Your secrets are as safe with me as they are with Israel,”
Molly said.

Maggie laughed. “How did you know I talked to Israel?”

“Don’t take no smarts to know that. Anybody what loves
animals talks to them, same as with children… Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring that
up again.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said, placing her hand over Molly’s and
giving it a squeeze. “I dinna ken what I’d do if you werena here for me to talk
to.”

For a moment Molly looked like she didn’t know what to say,
then she said, “You know, I was prepared to not like you, seein’ as how I was
so fond of Katherine and all.”

Maggie looked surprised. “What was she like?”

“Reminds me of you in some ways—levelheaded,
good-natured—but Katherine can be riled a mite faster than you can.”

Maggie laughed. “Aye, I believe it. I saw the red hair.”

“You’ve got a speck or two of red in your own hair, but you
do have the dad-derndest knack for holding yourself on an even keel. That’s why
I think you’re better suited to Adrian than Katherine was. It’ll just take
Adrian a spell to realize it, that’s all. He’s as stubborn as Alex was for not
realizing all those years it was Katherine he loved, not her sister, and now
here comes Adrian, following stupidly in his brother’s footsteps. It’s enough
to make a body scream. Course, you may not believe that…and you might be
feeling just a little miffed that I had the gall to compare you to Katherine.”

“I’m not offended, Molly, and I’m not Katherine’s enemy.
Quite the contrary. Judging from her picture and the things I’ve heard about
her, I think the two of us could become fast friends if given the chance.
Adrian loved her. I dinna hold that against either one of them. How could I? I
was in love with another man as well.”

“You’re a wise woman, Maggie Mackinnon. That in itself will
get you far. I ‘spect Adrian will see the way of it before long. He’s a mite
shocked and hurt right now. His pride has been given a dent or two, but it’ll
polish up good as new. You’ve got a strange way about you. Calm as a moonless
night. Doesn’t anything ruffle you?”

“Aye, I’ve been known to have my moments.”

“We all do, but you seem so dad-blasted calm about
everything. I can’t help wondering why.”

“Perhaps it’s because I’ve been through a lot. You know the
Bible says, ‘Tribulation buildeth patience.’”

“Lord-a-mercy, and don’t I know it,” Molly said, and they
both laughed.

Big John Polly came for Maggie the next morning.

A heavy fog groped its way along the ground, so heavy that
droplets condensing on the evergreens overhead fell on the brim of Maggie’s
green bonnet. Silence was everywhere. Not even the horses’ hooves clipping over
a soft carpet of damp fir needles made any noise. Over to her right, coming
from someplace deep in the trees, came the sudden and steady hammering of a
woodpecker grubbing for insects beneath the bark of a massive tree. The
hammering stopped, and Maggie smiled. Evidently the woodpecker got what he was
after. The smile faded when she wondered if she would be able to do the same.

Big John glanced at the young woman perched at his side like
a bird. According to Molly, this bird was one of a different feather. He
watched her for a moment and couldn’t help smiling. She was so small and finely
put together, not much bigger than a minute, and because of that, she kept
sliding around on the leather seats, though she braced herself with her hands
splayed on each side of her.

Whenever the wheels dropped into a chughole, or bounced over
the stump of a log, she bounced in the air, pushing that funny-looking green
bonnet back out of her face as she came back down. She was as prim and properly
put together as any picture he had ever seen of a lady, but she wasn’t the kind
to make the lesser folk, like himself, feel one bit uncomfortable. He could
talk to her as easily as he talked to Molly.

Suddenly a loud clanking sound broke the silence, and Big
John pulled the team up, pointing over the side of the bluff. Looking down,
Maggie saw a wide trail paved with timbers laid crosswise. She turned
questioning eyes back to Big John.

“It’s called a skid road. We build them so we can get the
trees further up the mountain down to camp. That clanking sound you hear is the
sound of the bullwhacker bringing a load of logs down. They’ll be passing by
here any minute now.”

A moment later, eight yokes of oxen lumbered into sight; a
thin man in a floppy hat, galluses, and calked boots walked at their side.
Instead of cracking a whip—something she was accustomed to seeing done with
coach horses in Scotland—this man carried a long stick with a sharp piece of metal
driven through the end. She gasped when he jabbed the oxen in the rump.

“The bullwhacker doesn’t poke them hard enough for the goad
to break skin, Mrs. Mackinnon. Oxen are fat, lazy beasts, and they need a
little prodding.”

“Like some people I know.” Maggie had been about to respond
that there was surely a better way to prod when a series of loud words brayed
by the bullwhacker rent the air.

“Move on there, you lazy beast! Move on now! Hump up there!”

In openmouthed horror, she watched the man hop up to the
beasts’ backs and walk on them in his calked boots. Big John said this was to
prod them to move along, which they did, but Maggie’s sympathy lay with the
oxen, straining and grunting as they pawed for footing on the next timber,
their feet sinking into the mud between each one. As the oxen moved forward, a
string of at least ten or twelve enormous logs, chained together, inched its
way forward, coming into view around the curve of mountainside.

“There’s close to ten thousand pounds of lumber being moved down
there,” Big John said. “There’ll be another load along before too long.”

As they drew closer, the clanking of chains and metal, the
grunting of the oxen, the shouts and curses of the bullwhacker, grew so loud,
Maggie considered putting her hands over her ears. But the slow-moving train
gradually passed and disappeared around another bend, and the noise faded and
the forest returned to quiet.

Big John slapped the reins against the horses’ broad backs,
and the wagon moved forward. The hum and buzz of the massive saws was faint at
first, growing louder as they drew closer. By the time they reached camp, the
whine of the huge saws drifted over the treetops, carried by the steady breeze.
Overhead, the sky was patchy, the fog already growing thin from the heat of the
sun. Following the direction of her look, Big John glanced heavenward. “It’ll
burn off and we’ll have a fine summer day on our hands.” He glanced at the
long-sleeved green outfit she was wearing. “You sure you won’t be too hot in
that dress?”

“I can remove the jacket. The sleeves beneath are short, and
the neckline is easier to live with.”

Big John nodded and pulled the wagon to a halt in front of
the office. Over the door was the familiar red and white sign that said simply:
CALIFORNIA MILL AND LUMBERING COMPANY, ADRIAN MACKINNON, PROPRIETOR.

Big John left her standing there on the porch. “You wait
right here for a minute or two. I’ve got some work to attend to, but I’ll send
Tom Radford over to show you around.”

Tom Radford came for her a minute later, a tall, lanky man
with coal-black hair. “Big John says I’m to show you around,” he said, and
before the next two hours had passed, he had done just that.

A week later, Maggie was riding down to the camp on one of
Adrian’s smaller, gentler geldings. There were no sidesaddles, of course, but
Ox Woodburn, the blacksmith, had fashioned one for her from an old youth’s
saddle. It was an odd-looking contraption, but it served the purpose, and
Maggie found she liked making her way to camp by herself ever so much better
than having to rely on Big John or one of the other men to come after her with
the wagon. They were busy men, and although they had always been accommodating
and courteous, she knew that spending their time entertaining a woman wasn’t
something any man could honestly say he really took a liking to.

After almost two weeks of daily treks to the camp, Maggie
decided that loggers, besides having marvelous strong bodies, had undeniable
wit and charm. Of course, there were times when their fun-loving side got the
best of one lumberjack or the other and caused a few hard feelings.

Ox told her one such story. “They took a lumberjack known
only as Dirty Shirt Jim—they called him that, you see, because no one ever saw
him change his shirt or take a bath during the six months he’d been here. The
other lumberjacks decided it was time for Dirty Shirt to have a bath, and they
tossed him in the river and followed him in, washing him and his shirt at the
same time. Scrubbed him raw, they did, and him a-howlin’ his fool head off.”

Maggie couldn’t help laughing when Clem Burnside told her,
“Old Dirty Shirt Jim was madder than a widder woman at a wedding. He skipped
camp the next morning, and no one has heard from him since.”

The loggers had their superstitions and their loggers’
quirks, which blended well with Maggie’s own brand of Scottish superstition. It
was John Schurtz who informed her that lumberjacks don’t start lumbering in a
new area on a Friday because it’s bad luck.

He also said, “A fat man in the woods means three accidents
are about to happen.”

When she asked Eli Carr about the copper band he wore like a
bracelet, he said, “Copper bands worn around the wrists and ankles keep you
from getting rheumatism.”

Since there was no doctor in camp, Maggie began spending an
hour or two each day in the small hut set aside for medical purposes. She swore
she didn’t know much more about doctoring than they did, but each man who
visited the small hut with a cut or bruise or twisted muscle would have vouched
she was an angel of mercy.

More than one man who visited the medicine hut came to ask
her about her Scots superstition, and before long, she was passing out dozens
of small crosses made from the wood of a rowan tree, which she said kept evil
away from any house that displayed the cross over the front door.

Big John learned from Molly that a similar cross had been
neatly tacked over the front door of Adrian Mackinnon’s mansion. The two of
them placed private bets as to just how long that tiny rowan cross would stay
there once Adrian returned.

Two days before Adrian was due back, Maggie made her
customary trek down to the camp. She found, as always, that the camp was a busy
place, with teams of oxen dragging in the never-ending supply of logs, the saws
in the mill whining, and the ring of the smithy’s hammer riding on the currents
of the ever-present wind.

Dudley Dunlap was busy in the office, his head bent over the
well-thumbed time book, scribbling figures and chewing on the end of a stubby
pencil, when Maggie poked her head in.

“Hello, Dudley,” she said, and Dudley looked up, giving her
a wave before going back to his figures again. She closed the door, finding Tom
Radford a few minutes later, but Tom, who was in charge of the Ayrshire oxen,
was busy working a new team. Maggie sat on a stump for a while and watched Tom.
Because he was the man who engineered the skid roads that moved the logs down
the mountains and trained the oxen, he was called a bullwhacker. At first
Maggie had mistaken this to mean he whacked the oxen, but it didn’t take Tom
long to set her straight.

“I wouldn’t whack one of these valuable beasties,” he said.
“A pair of ‘em goes for three hundred dollars or more. Handle ‘em with kid
gloves, I do.”