10725	----	The Centralia Conspiracy By Ralph Chaplin [Illustration: cover] A Tongue of Flame The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of flame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all her work is ruin. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.--Emerson. Murder or Self-Defense? This booklet is not an apology for murder. It is an honest effort to unravel the tangled mesh of circumstances that led up to the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia, Washington. The writer is one of those who believe that the taking of human life is justifiable only in self-defense. Even then the act is a horrible reversion to the brute--to the low plane of savagery. Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other methods of settling human differences than those of blood letting. The nation was shocked on November 11, 1919, to read of the killing of four American Legion men by members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Centralia. The capitalist newspapers announced to the world that these unoffending paraders were killed in cold blood--that they were murdered from ambush without provocation of any kind. If the author were convinced that there was even a slight possibility of this being true, he would not raise his voice to defend the perpetrators of such a cowardly crime. But there are two sides to every question and perhaps the newspapers presented only one of these. Dr. Frank Bickford, an ex-service man who participated in the affair, testified at the coroner's inquest that the Legion men were attempting to raid the union hall when they were killed. Sworn testimony of various eyewitnesses has revealed the fact that some of the "unoffending paraders" carried coils of rope and that others were armed with such weapons as would work the demolition of the hall and bodily injury to its occupants. These things throw an entirely different light on the subject. If this is true it means that the union loggers fired only in self-defense and not with the intention of committing wanton and malicious murder as has been stated. Now, as at least two of the union men who did the shooting were ex-soldiers, it appears that the tragedy must have resulted from something more than a mere quarrel between loggers and soldiers. There must be something back of it all that the public generally doesn't know about. There is only one body of men in the Northwest who would hate a union hall enough to have it raided--the lumber "interests." And now we get at the kernel of the matter, which is the fact that the affair was the outgrowth of a struggle between the lumber trust and its employees--between Organized Capital and Organized Labor. A Labor Case And so, after all, the famous trial at Montesano was not a murder trial but a labor trial in the strict sense of the word. Under the law, it must be remembered, a man is not committing murder in defending his life and property from the felonious assault of a mob bent on killing and destruction. There is no doubt whatever but what the lumber trust had plotted to "make an example" of the loggers and destroy their hall on this occasion. And this was not the first time that such atrocities had been attempted and actually committed. Isn't it peculiar that, out of many similar raids, you only heard of the one where the men defended themselves? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but the preservation of its holy profits is the first law of the lumber trust. The organized lumber workers were considered a menace to the super-prosperity of a few profiteers--hence the attempted raid and the subsequent killing. What is more significant is the fact the raid had been carefully planned weeks in advance. There is a great deal of evidence to prove this point. There is no question that the whole affair was the outcome of a struggle--a class struggle, if you please--between the union loggers and the lumber interests; the former seeking to organize the workers in the woods and the latter fighting this movement with all the means at its disposal. In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident but rather an incident in an eventful industrial conflict, little known and less understood, between the lumber barons and loggers of the Pacific Northwest. This viewpoint will place Centralia in its proper perspective and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circumstances and conditions that gave it birth. But was there a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to commit murder and violence in an effort to drive organized labor from its domain? Weeks of patient investigating in and around the scene or the occurrence has convinced the present writer that such a conspiracy has existed. A considerable amount of startling evidence has been unearthed that has hitherto been suppressed. If you care to consider Labor's version of this unfortunate incident you are urged to read the following truthful account of this almost unbelievable piece of mediaeval intrigue and brutality. The facts will speak for themselves. Credit them or not, but read! The Forests of the Northwest The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white explorers to set foot upon its fertile soil were awed by the magnitude and grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly trees. Towering into the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air. When Columbus first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the snow-capped mountains--waiting for the hand of man to put them to the multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those "calm cathedral isles," wondering at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with such inexhaustible resources. But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them, robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream that the day would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which prolific nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon mankind. But that day has come and with it the struggle between master and man that was to result in Centralia--or possibly many Centralias. Lumber--A Basic Industry It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites. It seems that reason would preclude the possibility of any other arrangement, and that it would be considered as absurd for individuals to lay claim to forests, mines, railroads and factories as it would be for individuals to lay claim to the ownership of the sunlight that warms us or to the air we breathe. But the poor human race, in its bungling efforts to learn how to live in our beautiful world, appears destined to find out by bitter experience that the private ownership of the means of life is both criminal and disastrous. Lumber is one of the basic industries--one of the industries mankind never could have done without. The whole structure of what we call civilization is built upon wooden timbers, ax-hewn or machine finished as the case may be. Without the product of the forests humanity would never have learned the use of fire, the primitive bow and arrow or the bulging galleys of ancient commerce. Without the firm and fibrous flesh of the mighty monarchs of the forest men might never have had barges for fishing or weapons for the chase; they would not have had carts for their oxen or kilns for the fashioning of pottery; they would not have had dwellings, temples or cities; they would not have had furniture nor fittings nor roofs above their heads. Wood is one of the most primitive and indispensable of human necessities. Without its use we would still be groping in the gloom and misery of early savagery, suffering from the cold of outer space and defenseless in the midst of a harsh and hostile environment. From Pioneer to Parasite So it happened that the first pioneers in the northern were forced to bare their arms and match their strength with the wooded wilderness. At first the subjugation of the forests was a social effort. The lives and future prosperity of the settlers must be made secure from the raids of the Indians and the inclemency of the elements. Manfully did these men labor until their work was done. But this period did not last long, for the tide of emigration was sweeping westward over the sun-baked prairies to the promised land in the golden West. [Illustration: Fir and Spruce Trees The wood of the West coast abound with tall fir trees. Practically all high grade spruce comes from this district also. Spruce was a war necessity and the lumber trust profiteered unmercifully on the government. U.S. prisons are full of loggers who struck for the 8 hour day in 1917.] Towns sprang up like magic, new trees were felled, sawmills erected and huge logs in ever increasing numbers were driven down the foaming torrents each year at spring time. The country was new, the market for lumber constantly growing and expanding. But the monopolist was unknown and the lynch-mobs of the lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future. So passed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone, when freedom was dear to the hearts of all. It was at this time that the spirit of real Americanism was born, when the clean, sturdy name "America" spelled freedom, justice and independence. Patriotism in these days was not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their bloody hands in the folds of their nation's flag. But modern capitalism was creeping like a black curse upon the land. Stealing, coercing, cajoling, defrauding, it spread from its plague-center in Wall St., leaving misery, class antagonism and resentment in its trial. The old free America of our fathers was undergoing a profound change. Equality of opportunity was doomed. A new social alignment was being created. Monopoly was loosed upon the land. Fabulous fortunes were being made as wealth was becoming centered into fewer and fewer hands. Modern capitalism was entrenching itself for the final and inevitable struggle for world domination. In due time the social parasites of the East, foreseeing that the forests of Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin could not last forever, began to look to the woods of the Northwest with covetous eyes. [Illustration: Cedar Trees of the Northwest With these giants the logger daily matches his strength and skill. The profit-greedy lumber trust has wasted enough trees of smaller size to supply the world with wood for years to come.] Stealing the People's Forest Land The history of the acquisition of the forests of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California is a long, sordid story of thinly veiled robbery and intrigue. The methods of the lumber barons in invading and seizing its "holdings" did not differ greatly, however, from those of the steel and oil kings, the railroad magnates or any of the other industrial potentates who acquired great wealth by pilfering America and peonizing its people. The whole sorry proceeding was disgraceful, high-handed and treacherous, and only made possible by reason of the blindness of the generous American people, drugged with the vanishing hope of "success" and too confident of the continued possession of its blood-bought liberties. And do the lumber barons were unhindered in their infamous work of debauchery, bribery, murder and brazen fraud. As a result the monopoly of the Northwestern woods became an established fact. The lumber trust came into "its own." The new social alignment was complete, with the idle, absentee landlord at one end and the migratory and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest; but the brawny logger whose labor had made possible the development of the industry was given, as his share of the spoils, a crumby "bindle" and a rebellious heart. The masters had gained undisputed control of the timber of the country, three quarters of which is located in the Northwest; but the workers who felled the trees, drove the logs, dressed, finished and loaded the lumber were left in the state of helpless dependency from which they could only extricate themselves by means of organization. And it is this effort to form a union and establish union headquarters that led to the tragedy at Centralia. The lumber barons had not only achieved a monopoly of the woods but a perfect feudal domination of the woods as well. Within their domain banks, ships, railways and mills bore their private insignia-and politicians, Employers' Associations, preachers, newspapers, fraternal orders and judges and gun-men were always at their beck and call. The power they wield is tremendous and their profits would ransom a kingdom. Naturally they did not intend to permit either power or profits to be menaced by a mass of weather-beaten slaves in stag shirts and overalls. And so the struggle waxed fiercer just as the lumberjack learned to contend successfully for living conditions and adequate remuneration. It was the old, old conflict of human rights against property rights. Let us see how they compared in strength. The Triumph of Monopoly The following extract from a document entitled "The Lumber Industry," by the Honorable Herbert Knox Smith and published by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of Corporations) will give some idea of the holdings and influence of the lumber trust: "Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber--each a foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home. These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held enough standing timber; an indispensable natural resource, to yield the planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New York to Liverpool. It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France, Germany and Italy. It would build a fence eleven miles high along our entire coast line. All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, or interests more or less interlocked. One of those interests--a grant of only three holders--monopolized at one time two hundred and thirty-seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which would make a column one foot square and three million miles high. Although controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight percent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time." The above illuminating figures, quoted from "The I.W.A. in the Lumber Industry," by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power of the lumber trust. [Illustration: "Topping a Tree" After one of these huge trees is "topped" it is called a "spar tree"--very necessary in a certain kind of logging operations. As soon as the chopped-off portion falls, the trunk vibrates rapidly from side to side sometimes shaking the logger to certain death below.] Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence--nothing but their hard, bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the world--and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker. But let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things possible, is like. The Human Element--"The Timber Beast" Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two categories--the saw-mill hand and the logger. The former, like his brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is essentially a man of the open air. Both types are necessary to the production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an imperative necessity. Sawmill work is machine work--rapid, tedious and often dangerous. There is the uninteresting repetition of the same act of motions day in and day out. The sights, sounds and smells of the mill are never varied. The fact that the mill is permanently located tends to keep mill workers grouped about the place of their employment. Many of them, especially in the shingle mills, have lost fingers or hands in feeding the lumber to the screaming saws. It has been estimated that fully a half of these men are married and remain settled in the mill communities. The other half, however, are not nearly so migratory as the lumberjack. Sawmill workers are not the "rough-necks" of the industry. They are of the more conservative "home-guard" element and characterized by the psychology of all factory workers. The logger, on the other hand, (and it is with him our narrative is chiefly concerned), is accustomed to hard and hazardous work in the open woods. His occupation makes him of necessity migratory. The camp, following the uncut timber from place to place, makes it impossible for him to acquire a family and settle down. Scarcely one out of ten has ever dared assume the responsibility of matrimony. The necessity of shipping from a central point in going from one job to another usually forces a migratory existence upon the lumberjack in spite of his best intentions to live otherwise. What Is a Casual Laborer? The problem of the logger is that of the casual laborer in general. Broadly speaking, there are three distinct classes of casual laborers: First, the "harvest stiff" of the middle West who follows the ripening crops from Kansas to the Dakotas, finding winter employment in the North, Middle Western woods, in construction camps or on the ice fields. Then there is the harvest worker of "the Coast" who garners the fruit, hops and grain, and does the canning of California, Washington and Oregon, finding out-of-season employment wherever possible. Finally there is the Northwestern logger, whose work, unlike that of the Middle Western "jack" is not seasonal, but who is compelled nevertheless to remain migratory. As a rule, however, his habitat is confined, according to preference or force of circumstances, to either the "long log" country of Western Washington and Oregon as well as California, or to the "short log" country of Eastern Washington and Oregon, Northern Idaho and Western Montana. Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in what is called the "short log" region. [Illustration: A Logger of the Pacific Northwest This is a type of the men who work in the "long log" region of the West coast. His is a man's sized job, and his efforts to organize and better the working conditions in the lumber industry have been manly efforts--and bitterly opposed.] As a rule the logger of the Northwest follows the woods to the exclusion of all other employment. He is militantly a lumberjack and is inclined to be a trifle "patriotic" and disputatious as to the relative importance of his own particular branch of the industry. "Long loggers," for instance, view with a suspicion of disdain the work of "short loggers" and vice versa. "Lumber-Jack" The Giant Killer But the lumber-jack is a casual worker and he is the finished product of modern capitalism. He is the perfect proletarian type--possessionless, homeless, and rebellious. He is the reverse side of the gilded medal of present day society. On the one side is the third generation idle rich--arrogant and parasitical, and on the other, the actual producer, economically helpless and denied access to the means of production unless he "beg his lordly fellow worm to give him leave to toil," as Robert Burns has it. The logger of the Northwest has his faults. He is not any more perfect than the rest of us. The years of degradation and struggle he has endured in the woods have not failed to leave their mark upon him. But, as the wage workers go, he is not the common but the uncommon type both as regards physical strength and cleanliness and mental alertness. He is generous to a fault and has all the qualities Lincoln and Whitman loved in men. In the first place, whether as faller, rigging man or on the "drive," his work is muscular and out of doors. He must at all times conquer the forest and battle with the elements. There is a tang and adventure to his labor in the impressive solitude of the woods that gives him a steady eye, a strong arm and a clear brain. Being constantly close to the great green heart of Nature, he acquires the dignity and independence of the savage rather than the passive and unresisting submission of the factory worker. The fact that he is free from family ties also tends to make him ready for an industrial frolic or fight at any time. In daily matching his prowess and skill with the products of the earth he feels in a way, that the woods "belong" to him and develops a contempt for the unseen and unknown employers who kindly permit him to enrich them with his labor. He is constantly reminded of the glaring absurdity of the private ownership of natural resources. Instinctively he becomes a rebel against the injustice and contradictions of capitalist society. Dwarfed to ant-like insignificance by the verdant immensity around him, the logger toils daily with ax, saw and cable. One after another forest giants of dizzy height crash to the earth with a sound like thunder. In a short time they are loaded on flat cars and hurried across the stump-dotted clearing to the river, whence they are dispatched to the noisy, ever-waiting saws at the mill. And always the logger knows in his heart that this is not done that people may have lumber for their needs, but rather that some overfed parasite may first add to his holy dividends. Production for profit always strikes the logger with the full force of objective observation. And is it any wonder, with the process of exploitation thus naked always before his eyes, that he should have been among the very first workers to challenge the flimsy title of the lumber barons to the private ownership of the woods? The Factory Worker and the Lumber-Jack Without wishing to disparage the ultimate worth of either; it might be well to contrast for a moment the factory worker of the East with the lumber-jack of the Pacific Northwest. To the factory hand the master's claim to the exclusive title of the means of production is not so evidently absurd. Around him are huge, smoking buildings filled with roaring machinery--all man-made. As a rule he simply takes for granted that his employers--whoever they are--own these just as he himself owns, for instance, his pipe or his furniture. Only when he learns, from thoughtful observation or study, that such things are the appropriated products of the labor of himself and his kind, does the truth dawn upon him that labor produces all and is entitled to its own. [Illustration: Logging Operations Look around you at the present moment and you will see wood used for many different purposes. Have you ever stopped to think where the raw material comes from or what the workers are like who produce it? Here is a scene from a lumber camp showing the loggers at their daily tasks. The lumber trust is willing that these men should work-but not organize.] It must be admitted that factory life tends to dispirit and cow the workers who spend their lives in the gloomy confines of the modern mill or shop. Obedient to the shrill whistle they pour out of their clustered grey dwellings in the early morning. Out of the labor ghettos they swarm and into their dismal slave-pens. Then the long monotonous, daily "grind," and home again to repeat the identical proceeding on the following day. Almost always, tired, trained to harsh discipline or content with low comfort; they are all too liable to feel that capitalism is invincibly colossal and that the possibility of a better day is hopelessly remote. Most of them are unacquainted with their neighbors. They live in small family or boarding house units and, having no common meeting place, realize only with difficulty the mighty potency of their vast numbers. To them organization appears desirable at times but unattainable. The dickering conservatism of craft unionism appeals to their cautious natures. They act only en masse, under awful compulsion and then their release of repressed slave emotion is sudden and terrible. Not so with the weather-tanned husky of the Northwestern woods. His job life is a group life. He walks to his daily task with his fellow workers. He is seldom employed for long away from them. At a common table he eats with them, and they all sleep in common bunk houses. The trees themselves teach him to scorn his master's adventitious claim to exclusive ownership. The circumstances of his daily occupation show him the need of class solidarity. His strong body clamours constantly for the sweetness and comforts of life that are denied him, his alert brain urges him to organize and his independent spirit gives him the courage and tenacity to achieve his aims. The union hall is often his only home and the One Big Union his best-beloved. He is fond of reading and discussion. He resents industrial slavery as an insult. He resented filth, overwork and poverty, he resented being made to carry his own bundle of blankets from job to job; he gritted his teeth together and fought until he had ground these obnoxious things under his iron-caulked heel. The lumber trust hated him just in proportion as he gained and used his industrial power; but neither curses, promises nor blows could make him budge. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get what he wanted. And his boss didn't like it very well. The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion--excepting in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be--that "wild wobbly dream" that every passing day brings closer to realization--and he wants all who work around him to share his vision and his determination to win so that all will be ready and worthy to live in the New Day that is dawning. In a word the Northwestern lumber-jack was too human and too stubborn ever to repudiate his red-blooded manhood at the behest of his masters and become a serf. His union meant to him all that he possessed or hoped to gain. Is it any wonder that he endured the tortures of hell during the period of the war rather than yield his Red Card--or that he is still determined and still undefeated? Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunning--or that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violence--and failed? Why the Loggers Organized The condition of the logger previous to the period of organization beggars description. Modern industrial autocracy seemed with him to develop its most inhuman characteristics. The evil plant of wage slavery appeared to bear its most noxious blossoms in the woods. The hours of labor were unendurably long, ten hours being the general rule--with the exception of the Grays Harbor district, where the eleven or even twelve hour day prevailed. In addition to this men were compelled to walk considerable distances to and from their work and meals through the wet brush. Not infrequently the noon lunch was made almost impossible because of the order to be back on the job when work commenced. A ten hour stretch of arduous labor, in a climate where incessant rain is the rule for at least six months of the year, was enough to try the strength and patience of even the strongest. The wages too were pitiably inadequate. The camps themselves, always more or less temporary affairs, were inferior to the cow-shed accommodations of a cattle ranch. The bunk house were over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary. In these ramshackle affairs the loggers were packed like sardines. The bunks were arranged tier over tier and nearly always without mattresses. They were uniformly vermin-infested and sometimes of the "muzzle-loading" variety. No blankets were furnished, each logger being compelled to supply his own. There were no facilities for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing. Lighting and ventilation were of course, always poor. In addition to these discomforts the unorganized logger was charged a monthly hospital fee for imaginary medical service. Also it was nearly always necessary to pay for the opportunity of enjoying these privileges by purchasing employment from a "job shark" or securing the good graces of a "man catcher." The former often had "business agreements" with the camp foreman and, in many cases, a man could not get a job unless he had a ticket from a labor agent in some shipping point. It may be said that the conditions just described were more prevalent in some parts of the lumber country than in others. Nevertheless, these prevailed pretty generally in all sections of the industry before the workers attempted to better them by organizing. At all events such were the conditions the lumber barons sought with all their power to preserve and the loggers to change. Organization and the Opening Struggle A few years before the birth of the Industrial workers of the World the lumber workers had started to organize. By 1905, when the above mentioned union was launched, lumber-workers were already united in considerable numbers in the old Western afterwards the American Labor Union. This organization took steps to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World and was thus among the very first to seek a larger share of life in the ranks of that militant and maligned organization. Strike followed strike with varying success and the conditions of the loggers began perceptibly to improve. Scattered here and there in the cities of the Northwest were many locals of the Industrial Workers of the World. Not until 1912, however, were these consolidated into a real industrial unit. For the first time a sufficient number of loggers and saw mill men were organized to be grouped into an integral part of the One Big Union. This was done with reasonable success. In the following year the American Federation of Labor attempted a similar task but without lasting results, the loggers preferring the industrial to the craft form of organization. Besides this, they were predisposed to sympathize with the ideal of solidarity and Industrial Democracy for which their own union had stood from the beginning. The "timber beast" was starting to reap the benefits of his organized power. Also he was about to feel the force and hatred of the "interests" arrayed against him. He was soon to learn that the path of labor unionism is strewn with more rocks than roses. He was making an earnest effort to emerge from the squalor and misery of peonage and was soon to see that his overlords were satisfied to keep him right where he had always been. Strange to say, almost the first really important clash occurred in the very heart of the lumber trust's domain, in the little city of Aberdeen, Grays Harbor County--only a short distance from Centralia, of mob fame! [Illustration: Eugene Barnett (After the man-hunt) Coal miner. Born in North Carolina. Member of U.M.W.A. and I.W.W. Went to work underground at the age of eight. Self educated, a student and philosopher. Upon reaching home Barnett, fearful of the mob, took to the woods with his rifle. He surrendered to the posse only after he had convinced himself that their purpose was not to lynch him.] This was in 1912. A strike had started in the saw mills over demands of a $2.50 daily wage. Some of the saw mill workers were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. They were supported by the union loggers of Western Washington. The struggle was bitterly contested and lasted for several weeks. The lumber trust bared its fangs and struck viciously at the workers in a manner that has since characterized its tactics in all labor disputes. The jails of Aberdeen and adjoining towns were filled with strikers. Picket lines were broken up and the pickets arrested. When the wives of the strikers with babies in their arms, took the places of their imprisoned husbands, the fire hose was turned on them with great force, in many instances knocking them to the ground. Loggers and sawmill men alike were unmercifully beaten. Many were slugged by mobs with pick handles, taken to the outskirts of the city and told that their return would be the occasion of a lynching. At one time an armed mob of business men dragged nearly four hundred strikers from their homes or boarding houses, herded them into waiting boxcars, sealed up the doors and were about to deport them en masse. The sheriff, getting wind of this unheard-of proceeding, stopped it at the last moment. Many men were badly scarred by beatings they received. One logger was crippled for life by the brutal treatment accorded him. But the strikers won their demands and conditions were materially improved. The Industrial Workers of the World continued to grow in numbers and prestige. This event may be considered the beginning of the labor movement on Grays Harbor that the lumber trust sought finally to crush with mob violence on a certain memorable day in Centralia seven years later. Following the Aberdeen strike one or two minor clashes occurred. The lumber workers were usually successful. During this period they were quietly but effectually spreading One Big Union propaganda throughout the camps and mills in the district. Also they were organizing their fellow workers in increasing numbers into their union. The lumber trust, smarting under its last defeat, was alarmed and alert. [Illustration: Bert Faulkner American. Logger. 21 years of age. Member of the Industrial Workers of the World since 1917. Was in the hall when raid occurred. Faulkner personally knew Grimm, McElfresh and a number of others who marched in the parade. He is an ex-soldier himself. The prosecution used a great deal of pressure to make this boy turn state's evidence. He refused stating that he would tell nothing but the truth. At the last moment he was discharged from the case after being held in jail four months.] A Massacre and a New Law But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the World, had started a drive for membership around Puget Sound. Loggers and mill hands were eager for the message of Industrial Unionism. Meetings were well attended and the sentiment in favor of the organization was steadily growing. The A.F. of L. shingle weavers and longshoremen were on strike and had asked the I.W.W. to help them secure free speech in Everett. The ever-watchful lumber interests decided the time to strike had again arrived. The events of "Bloody Sunday" are too well known to need repeating here. Suffice to say that after a summer replete with illegal beatings and jailings five men were killed in cold blood and forty wounded in a final desperate effort to drive the union out of the city of Everett, Washington. These unarmed loggers were slaughtered and wounded by the gunfire of a gang of business men and plug-uglies of the lumber interests. True to form, the lumber trust had every union man in sight arrested and seventy-four charged with the murder of a gunman who had been killed by the cross-fire of his own comrades. None of the desperadoes who had done the actual murdering was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded. The charge against the members of the Industrial Workers of the World was pressed. The case was tried in court and the Industrialists declared "not guilty." George Vanderveer was attorney for the defense. The lumber interests were infuriated at their defeat, and from this time on the struggle raged in deadly earnest. Almost everything from mob law to open assassination had been tried without avail. The execrated One Big Union idea was gaining members and power every day. The situation was truly alarming. Their heretofore trustworthy "wage plugs" were showing unmistakable symptoms of intelligence. Workingmen were waking up. They were, in appalling numbers, demanding the right to live like men. Something must be done something new and drastic--to split asunder this on-coming phalanx of industrial power. But the gun-man-and-mob method was discarded, temporarily at least, in favor of the machinations of lumber trust tools in the law making bodies. Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them--and with as little impunity. So the notorious Washington "Criminal Syndicalism" law was devised. This law, however, struck a snag. The honest-minded governor of the state, recognizing its transparent character and far-reaching effects, promptly vetoed the measure. After the death of Governor Lister the criminal syndicalism law was passed, however, by the next State Legislature. Since that time it has been used against the American Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialist Party and even common citizens not affiliated with any of these organizations. The criminal syndicalism law registers the high water mark of reaction. It infringes more on the liberties of the people than any of the labor-crushing laws that blackened Russia during the dynasty of the Romanoffs. It would disgrace the anti-Celestial legislation of Hell. The Eight Hour Day and "Treason" Nineteen hundred and seventeen was an eventful year. It was then the greatest strike in the history of the lumber industry occurred-the strike for the eight hour day. For years the logger and mill hand had fought against the unrestrained greed of the lumber interests. Step by step, in the face of fiercest opposition, they had fought for the right to live like men; and step by step they had been gaining. Each failure or success had shown them the weakness or the strength of their union. They had been consolidating their forces as well as learning how to use them. The lumber trust had been making huge profits the while, but the lumber workers were still working ten hours or more and the logger was still packing his dirty blankets from job to job. Dissatisfaction with conditions was wider and more prevalent then ever before. Then came the war. As soon as this country had taken its stand with the allied imperialists the price of lumber, needed for war purposes, was boosted to sky high figures. From $16.00 to $116.00 per thousand feet is quite a jump; but recent disclosures show that the Government paid as high as $1200.00 per thousand for spruce that private concerns were purchasing for less than one tenth of that sum. Gay parties with plenty of wild women and hard drink are alleged to have been instrumental in enabling the "patriotic" lumber trust to put these little deals across. Due to the duplicity of this same bunch of predatory gentlemen the airplane and ship building program of the United States turned out to be a scandal instead of a success. Out of 21,000 feet of spruce delivered to a Massachusetts factory, inspectors could only pass 400 feet as fit for use. Keep these facts and figures in mind when you read about what happened to the "disloyal" lumber workers during the war-and afterwards. [Illustration: Mrs. Elmer Smith and Baby Girl Mrs. Elmer Smith is the cultured daughter of a Washington judge. Since Elmer Smith got into trouble many efforts have been made to induce his wife to leave him. Mrs. Smith prefers, however, to stick with her rebel lawyer whom she loves and admires.] Discontent had been smouldering in the woods for a long time. It was soon fanned to a flame by the brazen profiteering of the lumber trust. The loggers had been biding their time--rather sullenly it is true--for the day when the wrongs they had endured so patiently and so long might be rectified. Their quarrel with the lumber interests was an old one. The time was becoming propitious. In the early summer of 1917 the strike started. Sweeping through the short log country it spread like wild-fire over nearly all the Northwestern lumber districts. The tie-up was practically complete. The industry was paralyzed. The lumber trust, its mouth drooling in anticipation of the many millions it was about to make in profits, shattered high heaven with its cries of rage. Immediately its loyal henchmen in the Wilson administration rushed to the rescue. Profiteering might be condoned, moralized over or winked at, but militant labor unionism was a menace to the government and the prosecution of the war. It must be crushed. For was it not treacherous and treasonable for loggers to strike for living conditions when Uncle Sam needed the wood and the lumber interests the money? So Woodrow Wilson and his coterie of political troglodytes from the slave-owning districts of the old South, started out to teach militant labor a lesson. Corporation lawyers were assembled. Indictments were made to order. The bloodhounds of the Department of "Justice" were unleashed. Grand Juries of "patriotic" business men were impaneled and did their expected work not wisely but too well. All the gun-men and stool-pigeons of Big Business got busy. And the opera bouffe of "saving our form of government" was staged. Industrial Heretics and the White Terror For a time it seemed as though the strikers would surely be defeated. The onslaught was terrific, but the loggers held out bravely. Workers were beaten and jailed by the hundreds. Men were herded like cattle in blistering "bull-pens," to be freed after months of misery, looking more like skeletons than human beings. Ellensburg and Yakima will never be forgotten in Washington. One logger was even burned to death while locked in a small iron-barred shack that had been dignified with the title of "jail." In the Northwest even the military were used and the bayonet of the soldier could be seen glistening beside the cold steel of the hired thug. Union halls were raided in all parts of the land. Thousands of workers were deported. Dozens were tarred and feathered and mobbed. Some were even taken out in the dead of night and hanged to railway bridges. Hundreds were convicted of imaginary offenses and sent to prison for terms from one to twenty years. Scores were held in filthy jails for as long as twenty-six months awaiting trial. The Espionage Law, which never convicted a spy, and the Criminal Syndicalism Laws, which never convicted a criminal, were used savagely and with full force against the workers in their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of the American people. Our form of government, forsooth, must be saved. Our institutions must be rescued from the clutch of the "reds." Thus was the war-frenzy of their dupes lashed to madness and the guarantees of the constitution suspended as far as the working class was concerned. So all the good, wise and noisy men of the nation were induced by diverse means to cry out against the strikers and their union. The worst passions of the respectable people were appealed to. The hoarse blood-cry of the mob was raised. It was echoed and re-echoed from press and pulpit. The very air quivered from its reverberations. Lynching parties became "respectable." Indictments were flourished. Hand-cuffs flashed. The clinking feet of workers going to prison rivaled the sound of the soldiers marching to war. And while all this was happening, a certain paunchy little English Jew with moth-eaten hair and blotchy jowls the accredited head of a great labor union glared through his thick spectacles and nodded his perverse approval. But the lumber trust licked its fat lips and leered at its swollen dividends. All was well and the world was being made "safe for democracy!" [Illustration: Britt Smith American. Logger. 35 years old. Had followed the woods for twenty years. Smith made his home in the hall that was raided and was secretary of the Union. When the mob broke into the jail and seized Wesley Everest to torture and lynch him they cried, "We've got Britt Smith!" Smith was the man they wanted and it was to break his neck that ropes were carried in the "parade." Not until Everest's body was brought back to the city jail was it discovered that the mob had lynched the wrong man.] Autocracy vs. Unionism This unprecedented struggle was really a test of strength between industrial autocracy and militant unionism. The former was determined to restore the palmy days of peonage for all time to come, the latter to fight to the last ditch in spite of hell and high water. The lumber trust sought to break the strike of the loggers and destroy their organization. In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best--and they were bad losers. After the war-fever had died down--one year after the signing of the Armistice--they were still trying in Centralia to attain their ignoble ends by means of mob violence. But at this time the ranks of the strikers were unbroken. The heads of the loggers were "bloody but unbowed." Even at last, when compelled to yield to privation and brute force and return to work, they turned defeat to victory by "carrying the strike onto the job." As a body they refused to work more than eight hours. Secretary of War Baker and President Wilson had both vainly urged the lumber interests to grant the eight hour day. The determined industrialists gained this demand, after all else had failed, by simply blowing a whistle when the time was up. Most of their other demands were won as well. In spite of even the Disque despotism, mattresses, clean linen and shower baths were reluctantly granted as the fruits of victory. But even as these lines are written the jails and prisons of America are filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime is loyalty to the working class. The war profiteers are still wallowing in luxury. None has ever been placed behind the bars. Before he was lynched in Butte, Frank Little had said, "I stand for the solidarity of labor." That was enough. The vials of wrath were poured on his head for no other reason. And for no other reason was the hatred of the employing class directed at the valiant hundreds who now rot in prison for longer terms than those meted out to felons. William Haywood and Eugene Debs are behind steel bars today for the same cause. The boys at Centralia were conspired against because they too stood "for the solidarity of labor." It is simply lying and camouflage to attempt to trace such persecutions to any other source. These are things America will be ashamed of when she comes to her senses. Such gruesome events are paralleled in no country save the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm or the Russia of the Czar. This picture of labor persecution in free America--terrible but true--will serve as a background for the dramatic history of the events leading up to the climactic tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919. While in Washington... All over the state of Washington the mobbing, jailing and tar and feathering of workers continued the order of the day until long after the cessation of hostilities in Europe. The organization had always urged and disciplined its members to avoid violence as an unworthy weapon. Usually the loggers have left their halls to the mercy of the mobs when they knew a raid was contemplated. Centralia is the one exception. Here the outrages heaped upon them could be no longer endured. In Yakima and Sedro Woolley, among other places in 1918, union men were stripped of their clothing, beaten with rope ends and hot tar applied to the bleeding flesh. They were then driven half naked into the woods. A man was hanged at night in South Montesano about this time and another had been tarred and feathered. As a rule the men were taken unaware before being treated in this manner. In one instance a stationary delegate of the Industrial Workers of the World received word that he was to be "decorated" and rode out of town on a rail. He slit a pillow open and placed it in the window with a note attached stating that he knew of the plan; would be ready for them, and would gladly supply his own feathers. He did not leave town either on a rail or otherwise. In Seattle, Tacoma and many other towns, union halls and print shops were raided and their contents destroyed or burned. In the former city in 1919, men, women and children were knocked insensible by policemen and detectives riding up and down the sidewalks in automobiles, striking to right and left with "billy" and night stick as they went. These were accompanied by auto trucks filled with hidden riflemen and an armored tank bristling with machine guns. A peaceable meeting of union men was being dispersed. [Illustration: Loren Roberts American. Logger. 19 years old. Loren's mother said of him at the trial: "Loren was a good boy, he brought his money home regularly for three years. After his father took sick he was the only support for his father and me and the three younger ones." The father was a sawyer in a mill and died of tuberculosis after an accident had broken his strength. This boy, the weakest of the men on trial, was driven insane by the unspeakable "third degree" administered in the city jail. One of the lumber trust lawyers was in the jail at the time Roberts signed his so-called "confession." "Tell him to quit stalling," said a prosecutor to Vanderveer, when Roberts left the witness stand. "You cur!" replied the defense attorney in a low voice, "you know who is responsible for this boy's condition." Roberts was one of the loggers on Seminary Hill.] In Centralia, Aberdeen and Montesano, in Grays Harbor County, the struggle was more local but not less intense. No fewer than twenty-five loggers on different occasions were taken from their beds at night and treated to tar and feathers. A great number were jailed for indefinite periods on indefinite charges. As an additional punishment these were frequently locked in their cells and the fire hose played on their drenched and shivering bodies. "Breech of jail discipline" was the reason given for this "cruel and unusual" form of lumber trust punishment. In Aberdeen and Montesano there were several raids and many deportations of the tar and feather variety. In Aberdeen in the fall of 1917 during a "patriotic" parade, the battered hall of the union loggers was again forcibly entered in the absence of its owners. Furniture, office fixtures, Victrola and books were dumped into the street and destroyed. In the town of Centralia, about a year before the tragedy, the Union Secretary was kidnapped and taken into the woods by a mob of well dressed business men. He was made to "run the gauntlet" and severely beaten. There was a strong sentiment in favor of lynching him on the spot, but one of the mob objected saying it would be "too raw." The victim was then escorted to the outskirts of the city and warned not to return under pain of usual penalty. On more than one occasion loggers who had expressed themselves in favor of the Industrial Workers of the World, were found in the morning dangling from trees in the neighborhood. No explanation but that of "suicide" was ever offered. The whole story of the atrocities perpetrated during these days of the White Terror, in all probability, will never be published. The criminals are all well known but their influence is too powerful to ever make it expedient to expose their crimes. Besides, who would care to get a gentleman in trouble for killing a mere "Wobbly"? The few instances noted above will, however, give the reader some slight idea of the gruesome events that were leading inevitably to that grim day in Centralia in November, 1919. Weathering the Storm Through it all the industrialists clung to their Red Cards and to the One Big Union for which they had sacrificed so much. Time after time, with incomparable patience, they would refurnish and reopen their beleaguered halls, heal up the wounds of rope, tar or "billy" and proceed with the work of organization as though nothing had happened. With union cards or credentials hidden in their heavy shoes they would meet secretly in the woods at night. Here they would consult about members who had been mobbed, jailed or killed, about caring for their families--if they had any--about carrying on the work of propaganda and laying plans for the future progress of their union. Perhaps they would take time to chant a rebel song or two in low voices. Then, back on the job again to "line up the slaves for the New Society!" Through a veritable inferno of torment and persecution these men had refused to be driven from the woods or to give up their union--the Industrial Workers of the World. Between the two dreadful alternatives of peonage or persecution they chose the latter--and the lesser. Can you imagine what their peonage must have been like? Sinister Centralia But Centralia was destined to be the scene of the most dramatic portion of the struggle between the entrenched interests and the union loggers. Here the long persecuted industrialists made a stand for their lives and fought to defend their own, thus giving the glib-tongued lawyers of the prosecution the opportunity of accusing them of "wantonly murdering unoffending paraders" on Armistice Day. Centralia in appearance is a creditable small American city--the kind of city smug people show their friends with pride from the rose-scented tranquility of a super-six in passage. The streets are wide and clean, the buildings comfortable, the lawns and shade trees attractive. Centralia is somewhat of a coquette but she is as sinister and cowardly as she is pretty. There is a shudder lurking in every corner and a nameless fear sucks the sweetness out of every breeze. Song birds warble at the outskirts of the town but one is always haunted by the cries of the human beings who have been tortured and killed within her confines. A red-faced business man motors leisurely down the wet street. He shouts a laughing greeting to a well dressed group at the curb who respond in kind. But the roughly dressed lumberworkers drop their glances in passing one another. The Fear is always upon them. As these lines are written several hundred discontented shingle-weavers are threatened with deportation if they dare to strike. They will not strike, for they know too well the consequences. The man-hunt of a few months ago is not forgotten and the terror of it grips their hearts whenever they think of opposing the will of the Moloch that dominates their every move. Around Centralia are wooded hills; men have been beaten beneath them and lynched from their limbs. The beautiful Chehalis River flows near by; Wesley Everest was left dangling from one of its bridges. But Centralia is provokingly pretty for all that. It is small wonder that the lumber trust and its henchmen wish to keep it all for themselves. Well tended roads lead in every direction, bordered with clearings of worked out camps and studded with occasional tree stumps of great age and truly prodigious size. At intervals are busy saw mills with thousands of feet of odorous lumber piled up in orderly rows. In all directions stretches the pillared immensity of the forests. The vistas through the trees seen enchanted rather than real--unbelievable green and of form and depth that remind one of painted settings for a Maeterlinck fable rather than matter-of-fact timber land. The High Priests of Labor Hatred Practically all of this land is controlled by the trusts; much of it by the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, of which F.B. Hubbard is the head. The strike of 1917 almost ruined this worthy gentleman. He has always been a strong advocate of the open shop, but during the last few years he has permitted his rabid labor-hatred to reach the point of fanaticism. This Hubbard figures prominently in Centralia's business, social and mob circles. He is one of the moving spirits in the Centralia conspiracy. The Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, besides large tracts of land, owns saw-mills, coal mines and a railway. The Centralia newspapers are its mouthpieces while the Chamber of Commerce and the Elks' Club are its general headquarters. The Farmers' & Merchants' Bank is its local citadel of power. In charge of this bank is a sinister character, one Uhlman, a German of the old school and a typical Prussian junker. At one time he was an officer in the German army but at present is a "100% American"--an easy metamorphosis for a Prussian in these days. His native born "brother-at-arms" is George Dysart whose son led the posses in the man-hunt that followed the shooting. In Centralia this bank and its Hun dictator dominates the financial, political and social activities of the community. Business men, lawyers, editors, doctors and local authorities all kow-tow to the institution and its Prussian president. And woe be to any who dare do otherwise! The power of the "interests" is a vengeful power and will have no other power before it. Even the mighty arm of the law becomes palsied in its presence. [Illustration: Lumberworkers Union Hall, Raided in 1918 The first of the two halls to be wrecked by Centralia's terrorists. This picture was not permitted to be introduced as evidence of the conspiracy to raid the new hall. Judge Wilson didn't want the jury to know anything about this event.] The Farmers' & Merchants' Bank is the local instrumentality of the invisible government that holds the nation in its clutch. Kaiser Uhlman has more influence than the city mayor and more power than the police force. The law has always been a little thing to him and his clique. The inscription on the shield of this bank is said to read "To hell with the Constitution; this is Lewis County." As events will show, this inspiring maxim has been faithfully adhered to. One of the mandates of this delectable nest of highbinders is that no headquarters of the Union of the lumber workers shall ever be permitted within the sacred precincts of the city of Centralia. The Loved and Hated Union Hall Now the loggers, being denied the luxury of home and family life, have but three places they can call "home." The bunkhouse in the camp, the cheap rooming house in town and the Union Hall. This latter is by far the best loved of all. It is here the men can gather around a crackling wood fire, smoke their pipes and warm their souls with the glow of comradeship. Here they can, between jobs or after work, discuss the vicissitudes of their daily lives, read their books and magazines and sing their songs of solidarity, or merely listen to the "tinned" humor or harmony of the much-prized Victrola. Also they here attend to affairs of their Union--line up members, hold business and educational meetings and a weekly "open forum." Once in awhile a rough and wholesome "smoker" is given. The features of this great event are planned for weeks in advance and sometimes talked about for months afterwards. [Illustration: The Scene of the Armistice Day Tragedy This is what was left of the Union hall the loggers tried to defend on November 11th. Three of the raiders, Grimm, McElfresh and Cassagranda, were killed in the immediate vicinity of the doorway. Several others were wounded while attempting to rush the doors.] These halls are at all times open to the public and inducements are made to get workers to come in and read a thoughtful treatise on Industrial questions. The latch-string is always out for people who care to listen to a lecture on economics or similar subjects. Inside the hall there is usually a long reading-table littered with books, magazines or papers. In a rack or case at the wall are to be found copies of the "Seattle Union Record," "The Butte Daily Bulletin," "The New Solidarity," "The Industrial Worker," "The Liberator," "The New Republic" and "The Nation." Always there is a shelf of thumb-worn books on history, science, economics and socialism. On the walls are lithographs or engravings of noted champions of the cause of Labor, a few photographs of local interest and the monthly Bulletins and Statements of the Union. Invariably there is a blackboard with jobs, wages and hours written in chalk for the benefit of men seeking employment. There are always a number of chairs in the room and a roll top desk for the secretary. Sometimes at the end of the hall is a plank rostrum--a modest altar to the Goddess of Free Speech and open discussion. This is what the loved and hated I.W.W. Halls are like--the halls that have been raided and destroyed by the hundreds during the last three years. Remember, too, that in each of these raids the union men were not the aggressors and that there was never any attempt at reprisal. In spite of the fact that the lumber workers were within their legal right to keep open their halls and to defend them from felonious attack, it had never happened until November 11, that active resistance was offered the marauders. This fact alone speaks volumes for the long-suffering patience of the logger and for his desire to settle his problems by peaceable means wherever possible. But the Centralia raid was the straw that broke the camel's back. The lumber trust went a little too far on this occasion and it got the surprise of its life. Four of its misguided dupes paid for their lawlessness with their lives, and a number of others were wounded. There has not since been a raid on a union hall in the Northwestern District. It is well that workingmen and women throughout the country should understand the truth about the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia and the circumstances that led up to it. But in order to know why the hall was raided it is necessary first to understand why this, and all similar halls, are hated by the oligarchies of the woods. The issue contested is whether the loggers have the right to organize themselves into a union, or whether they must remain chattels--mere hewers of wood and helpless in the face of the rapacity of their industrial overlords--or whether they have the right to keep open their halls and peacefully to conduct the affairs of their union. The lumber workers contend that they are entitled by law to do these things and the employers assert that, law or no law, they shall not do so. In other words, it is a question of whether labor organization shall retain its foothold in the lumber industry or be "driven from the woods." Pioneers of Unionism It is hard for workers in most of the other industries--especially in the East--to understand the problems, struggles and aspirations of the husky and unconquerable lumber workers of the Northwest. The reason is that the average union man takes his union for granted. He goes to his union meetings, discusses the affairs of his craft, industry or class, and he carries his card--all as a matter of course. It seldom enters his mind that the privileges and benefits that surround him and the protection he enjoys are the result of the efforts and sacrifices of the nameless thousands of pioneers that cleared the way. But these unknown heroes of the great struggle of the classes did precede him with their loyal hearts and strong hands; otherwise workers now organized would have to start the long hard battle at the beginning and count their gains a step at a time, just as did the early champions of industrial organization, or as the loggers of the West Coast are now doing. The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry. They were the men who made possible all things that came after and all things that are still to come. They were the trail blazers. It is easier to follow them than to have gone before them--or with them. They established the outposts of unionism in the wilderness of Industrial autocracy. Their voices were the first to proclaim the burning message of Labor's power, of Labor's mission and of Labor's ultimate emancipation. Their breasts were the first to receive the blows of the enemy; their unprotected bodies were shielding the countless thousands to follow. They were the forerunners of the solidarity of Toil. They fought in a good and great cause; for without solidarity, Labor would have attained nothing yesterday, gained nothing today nor dare to hope for anything tomorrow. [Illustration: Seminary Hall The Union hall looks out on this hill, with Tower avenue and an alley between. It is claimed that loggers, among others Loren Roberts, Bert Bland and the missing Ole Hanson, fired at the attacking mob from this position.] The Block House and the Union Hall In the Northwest today the rebel lumberjack is a pioneer. Just as our fathers had to face the enmity of the Indians, so are these men called upon to face the fury of the predatory interests that have usurped the richest timber resources of the richest nation in the world. Just outside Centralia stands a weatherbeaten landmark. It is an old, brown dilapidated block house of early days. In many ways it reminds one of the battered and wrecked union halls to be found in the heart of the city. The evolution of industry has replaced the block house with the union hall as the embattled center of assault and defense. The weapons are no longer the rifle and the tomahawk but the boycott and the strike. The frontier is no longer territorial but industrial. The new struggle is as portentous as the old. The stakes are larger and the warfare even more bitter. The painted and be-feathered scalp-hunter of the Sioux or Iroquois were not more heartless in maiming, mutilating and killing their victims than the "respectable" profit-hunters of today--the type of men who conceived the raid on the Union Hall in Centralia on Armistice Day--and who fiendishly tortured and hanged Wesley Everest for the crime of defending himself from their inhuman rage. It seems incredible that such deeds could be possible in the twentieth century. It is incredible to those who have not followed in the bloody trail of the lumber trust and who are not familiar with its ruthlessness, its greed and its lust for power. As might be expected the I.W.W. Halls in Washington were hated by the lumber barons with a deep and undying hatred. Union halls were a standing challenge to their hitherto undisputed right to the complete domination of the forests. Like the blockhouses of early days, these humble meeting places were the outposts of a new and better order planted in the stronghold of the old. And they were hated accordingly. The thieves who had invaded the resources of the nation had long ago seized the woods and still held them in a grip of steel. They were not going to tolerate the encroachments of the One Big Union of the lumber workers. Events will prove that they did not hesitate at anything to achieve their purposes. The First Centralia Hall In the year 1918 a union hall stood on one of the side streets in Centralia. It was similar to the halls that have just been described. This was not, however, the hall in which the Armistice Day tragedy took place. You must always remember that there were two halls raided in Centralia; one in 1918 and another in 1919. The loggers did not defend the first hall and many of them were manhandled by the mob that wrecked it. The loggers did defend the second and were given as reward a hanging, a speedy, fair and impartial conviction and sentences of from 25 to 40 years. No member of the mob has ever been punished or even taken to task for this misdeed. Their names are known to everybody. They kiss their wives and babies at night and go to church on Sundays. People tip their hats to them on the street. Yet they are a greater menace to the institutions of this country than all the "reds" in the land. In a world where Mammon is king the king can do no wrong. But the question of "right" or "wrong" did not concern the lumber interests when they raided the Union hall in 1918. "Yes, we raided the hall, what are you going to do about it," is the position they take in the matter. During the 1917 strike the two lumber trust papers in Centralia, the "Hub" and the "Chronicle" were bitter in their denunciation of the strikers. Repeatedly they urged that most drastic and violent measures be taken by the authorities and "citizens" to break the strike, smash the union and punish the strikers. The war-frenzy was at its height and these miserable sheets went about their work like Czarist papers inciting a pogrom. The lumber workers were accused of "disloyalty," "treason," "anarchy"--anything that would tend to make their cause unpopular. The Abolitionists were spoken about in identical terms before the civil war. As soon as the right atmosphere for their crime had been created the employers struck and struck hard. It was in April, 1918. Like many other cities in the land Centralia was conducting a Red Cross drive. Among the features of this event were a bazaar and a parade. The profits of the lumber trust were soaring to dizzy heights at this time and their patriotism was proportionately exalted. There was the usual brand of hypocritical and fervid speechmaking. The flag was waved, the Government was lauded and the Constitution praised. Then, after the war-like proclivities of the stay-at-home heroes had been sufficiently worked upon; flag, Government and Constitution were forgotten long enough for the gang to go down the street and raid the "wobbly" hall. Dominating the festivities was the figure of F.B. Hubbard, at that time President of the Employers' Association of the State of Washington. This is neither Hubbard's first nor last appearance as a terrorist and mob-leader--usually behind the scenes, however, or putting in a last minute appearance. [Illustration: Avalon Hotel, Centralia From this point Elsie Hornbeck claimed she identified Eugene Barnett in the open window with a rifle. Afterwards she admitted that her identification was based only on a photograph shown her by the prosecution. This young lady nearly fainted on the witness stand while trying to patch her absurd story together.] The 1918 Raid It had been rumored about town that the Union Hall was to be wrecked on this day but the loggers at the hall were of the opinion that the business men, having driven their Secretary out of town a short time previously, would not dare to perpetrate another atrocity so soon afterwards. In this they were sadly mistaken. Down the street marched the parade, at first presenting no unusual appearance. The Chief of Police, the Mayor and the Governor of the State were given places of honor at the head of the procession. Company G of the National Guard and a gang of broad-cloth hoodlums disguised as "Elks" made up the main body of the marchers. But the crafty and unscrupulous Hubbard had laid his plans in advance with characteristic cunning. The parade, like a scorpion, carried its sting in the rear. Along the main avenue went the guardsmen and the gentlemen of the Elks Club. So far nothing extraordinary had happened. Then the procession swerved to a side street. This must be the right thing for the line of march had been arranged by the Chamber of Commerce itself. A couple of blocks more and the parade had reached the intersection of First Street and Tower Avenue. What happened then the Mayor and Chief of Police probably could not have stopped even had the Governor himself ordered them to do so. From somewhere in the line of march a voice cried out, "Let's raid the I.W.W. Hall!" And the crowd at the tail end of the procession broke ranks and leaped to their work with a will. In a short time the intervening block that separated them from the Union Hall was covered. The building was stormed with clubs and stones. Every window was shattered and every door was smashed, the very sides of the building were torn off by the mob in its blind fury. Inside the rioters tore down the partitions and broke up chairs and pictures. The union men were surrounded, beaten and driven to the street where they were forced to watch furniture, records, typewriter and literature demolished and burned before their eyes. An American flag hanging in the hall, was torn down and destroyed. A Victrola and a desk were carried to the street with considerable care. The former was auctioned off on the spot for the benefit of the Red Cross. James Churchill, owner of a glove factory, won the machine. He still boasts of its possession. The desk was appropriated by F.B. Hubbard himself. This was turned over to an expressman and carted to the Chamber of Commerce. A small boy picked up the typewriter case and started to take it to a nearby hotel office. One of the terrorists detected the act and gave warning. The mob seized the lad, took him to a nearby light pole and threatened to lynch him if he did not tell them where books and papers were secreted which somebody said had been carried away by him. The boy denied having done this, but the hoodlums went into the hotel, ransacked and overturned everything. Not finding what they wanted, they left a notice that the proprietor would have to take the sign down from his building in just twenty-four hours. Then the mob surged around the unfortunate men who had been found in the Union hall. With cuffs and blows these were dragged to waiting trucks where they were lifted by the ears to the body of the machine and knocked prostrate one at a time. Sometimes a man would be dropped to the ground just after he had been lifted from his feet. Here he would lay with ear drums bursting and writhing from the kicks and blows that had been freely given. Like all similar mobs this one carried ropes, which were placed about the necks of the loggers. "Here's and I.W.W." yelled someone. "What shall we do with him?" A cry was given to "lynch him!" Some were taken to the city jail and the rest were dumped unceremoniously on the other side of the county line. Since that time the wrecked hall has remained tenantless and unrepaired. Grey and gaunt like a house in battle-scarred Belgium, it stands a mute testimony of the labor-hating ferocity of the lumber trust. Repeated efforts have since been made to destroy the remains with fire. The defense had tried without avail to introduce a photograph of the ruin as evidence to prove that the second hall was raided in a similar manner on Armistice Day, 1919. Judge Wilson refused to permit the jury to see either the photographs or the hall. But in case of another trial...? Evidently the lumber trust thought it better to have all traces of its previous crime obliterated. The raid of 1918 did not weaken the lumber workers' Union in Centralia. On the contrary it served to strengthen it. But not until more than a year had passed were the loggers able to establish a new headquarters. This hall was located next door to the Roderick Hotel on Tower Avenue, between Second and Third Streets. Hardly was this hall opened when threats were circulated by the Chamber of Commerce that it, like the previous one, was marked for destruction. The business element was lined up solid in denunciation of and opposition to the Union Hall and all that it stood for. But other anti-labor matters took up their attention and it was some time before the second raid was actually accomplished. There was one rift in the lute of lumber trust solidarity in Centralia. Business and professional men had long been groveling in sycophantic servility at the feet of "the clique." There was only one notable exception. A Lawyer--and a Man A young lawyer had settled in the city a few years previous to the Armistice Day tragedy. Together with his parents and four brothers he had left his home in Minnesota to seek fame and fortune in the woods of Washington. He had worked his way through McAlester College and the Law School of the University of Minnesota. He was young, ambitious, red-headed and husky, a loving husband and the proud father of a beautiful baby girl. Nature had endowed him with a dangerous combination of gifts,--a brilliant mind and a kind heart. His name was just plain Smith--Elmer Smith--and he came from the old rugged American stock. Smith started to practice law in Centralia, but unlike his brother attorneys, he held to the assumption that all men are equal under the law--even the hated I.W.W. In a short time his brilliant mind and kind heart had won him as much hatred from the lumber barons as love from the down-trodden,--which is saying a good deal. The "interests" studied the young lawyer carefully for awhile and soon decided that he could be neither bullied or bought. So they determined to either break his spirit or to break his neck. Smith is at present in prison charged with murder. This is how it happened: Smith established his office in the First Guarantee Bank Building which was quite the proper thing to do. Then he began to handle law suits for wage-earners, which was altogether the reverse. Caste rules in Centralia, and Elmer Smith was violating its most sacred mandataries by giving the "working trash" the benefit of his talents instead of people really worth while. Warren O. Grimm, who was afterwards shot while trying to break into the Union Hall with the mob, once cautioned Smith of the folly and danger of such a course. "You'll get along all right," said he, "if you will come in with us." Then he continued: "How would you feel if one of your clients would come up to you in public, slap you on the back and say 'Hello, Elmer?'" "Very proud," answered the young lawyer. [Illustration: Elmer Smith Attorney at law. Old American stock--born on a homestead in North Dakota. By championing the cause of the "under-dog" in Centralia Smith brought down on himself the wrath of the lumber trust. He defended many union men in the courts, and at one time sought to prosecute the kidnappers of Tom Lassiter. Smith is the man Warren O. Grimm told would get along all right, "if you come in with us." He bucked the lumber trust instead and landed in prison on a trumped-up murder charge. Smith was found "not guilty" by the jury, but immediately re-arrested on practically the same charge. He is not related to Britt Smith.] [Illustration: Wesley Everest Logger. American (old Washington pioneer stock). Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917. A returned soldier. Earnest, sincere, quiet, he was the "Jimmy Higgins" of the Centralia branch of the Lumberworkers Union. Everest was mistaken for Britt Smith, the Union secretary, whom the mob had started out to lynch. He was pursued by a gang of terrorists and unmercifully manhandled. Later--at night--he was taken from the city jail and hanged to a bridge. In the automobile, on the way to the lynching, he was unsexed by a human fiend--a well known Centralia business man--who used a razor on his helpless victim. Even the lynchers were forced to admit that Everest was the most "dead game" man they had ever seen.] Some months previous Smith had taken a case for an I.W.W. logger. He won it. Other cases in which workers needed legal advice came to him. He took them. A young girl was working at the Centralia "Chronicle." She was receiving a weekly wage of three dollars which is in defiance of the minimum wage law of the state for women. Smith won the case. Also he collected hundreds of dollars in back wages for workers whom the companies had sought to defraud. Workers in the clutches of loan sharks were extricated by means of the bankruptcy laws, hitherto only used by their masters. An automobile firm was making a practice of replacing Ford engines with old ones when a machine was brought in for repairs. One of the victims brought his case to Smith. and a lawsuit followed. This was an unheard-of proceeding, for heretofore such little business tricks had been kept out of court by common understanding. A worker, formerly employed by a subsidiary of the Eastern Lumber & Railway Company, had been deprived of his wages on a technicality of the law by the corporation attorneys. This man had a large family and hard circumstances were forced upon them by this misfortune. One of his little girls died from what the doctor called malnutrition--plain starvation. Smith filed suit and openly stated that the lawyers of the corporation were responsible for the death of the child. The indignation of the business and professional element blazed to white heat. A suit for libel and disbarment proceedings were started against him. Nothing could be done in this direction as Smith had not only justice but the law on his side. His enemies were waiting with great impatience for a more favorable opportunity to strike him down. Open threats were beginning to be heard against him. A Union lecturer came to town. The meeting was well attended. A vigilance committee of provocateurs and business men was in the audience. At the close of the lecture those gentlemen started to pass the signal for action. Elmer Smith sauntered down the aisle, shook hands with the speaker and told him he would walk to the train with him. The following morning the door to Smith's office was ornamented with a cardboard sign. It read: "Are you an American? You had better say so. Citizens' Committee." This was lettered in lead pencil. Across the bottom were scrawled these words: "No more I.W.W. meetings for you." In 1918 an event occurred which served further to tighten the noose about the stubborn neck of the young lawyer. On this occasion the terrorists of the city perpetrated another shameful crime against the working class--and the law. Blind Tom--A Blemish on America Tom Lassiter made his living by selling newspapers at a little stand on a street corner. Tom is blind, a good soul and well liked by the loggers. But Tom has vision enough to see that there is something wrong with the hideous capitalist system we live under; and so he kept papers on sale that would help enlighten the workers. Among these were the "Seattle Union Record," "The Industrial Worker" and "Solidarity." To put it plainly, Tom was a thorn in the side of the local respectability because of his modest efforts to make people thing. And his doom had also been sealed. Early in June the newsstand was broken into and all his clothing, literature and little personal belongings were taken to a vacant lot and burned. A warning sign was left on a short pole stuck in the ashes. The message, "You leave town in 24 hours, U.S. Soldiers, Sailors and Marines," was left on the table in his room. With true Wobbly determination, Lassiter secured a new stock of papers and immediately re-opened his little stand. About this time a Centralia business man, J.H. Roberts by name, was heard to say "This man (Lassiter) is within his legal rights and if we can't do anything by law we'll take the law into our own hands." This is precisely what happened. On the afternoon of June 30th, Blind Tom was crossing Tower Avenue with hesitating steps when, without warning, two business men seized his groping arms and yelled in his ear, "We'll get you out of town this time!" Lassiter called for help. The good Samaritan came along in the form of a brute-faced creature known as W.R. Patton, a rich property owner of the city. This Christian gentleman sneaked up behind the blind man and lunged him forcibly into a waiting Oakland automobile. The machine is owned by Cornelius McIntyre who is said to have been one of the kidnapping party. "Shut up or I'll smash your mouth so you can't yell," said one of his assailants as Lassiter was forced, still screaming for help, into the car. Turning to the driver one of the party said, "Step on her and let's get out of here." About this time Constable Luther Patton appeared on the scene. W.R. Patton walked over to where the constable stood and shouted to the bystanders, "We'll arrest the first person that objects, interferes or gets too loud." "A good smash on the jaw would do more good," suggested the kind-hearted official. "Well, we got that one pretty slick and now there are two more we have to get," stated W.R. Patton, a short time afterwards. Blind Tom was dropped helpless in a ditch just over the county line. He was picked up by a passing car and eventually made his way to Olympia, capital of the state. In about a week he was back in Centralia. But before he could again resume his paper selling he was arrested on a charge of "criminal syndicalism." He is now awaiting conviction at Chehalis. Before his arrest, however, Lassiter engaged Elmer Smith as his attorney. Smith appealed to County Attorney Herman Allen for protection for his client. After a half-hearted effort to locate the kidnappers--who were known to everybody--this official gave up the task saying he was "Too busy to bother with the affair, and, besides, the offense was only 'third degree assault' which is punishable with a fine of but one dollar and costs." The young lawyer did not waste any more time with the County authorities. Instead he secured sworn statements of the facts in the case and submitted them to the Governor. These were duly acknowledged and placed on file in Olympia. But up to date no action has been taken by the executive to prosecute the criminals who committed the crime. "Handle these I.W.W. cases if you want to," said a local attorney to Elmer Smith, counsel for one of the banks, "but sooner or later they're all going to be hanged or deported anyway." [Illustration: Where Barnett's Rifle Was Supposed to Have Been Found Eugene Barnett was said to have left his rifle under this sign-board as he fled from the scene of the shooting. It would have been much easier to hide a gun in the tall brush in the foreground. In reality Barnett did not have a rifle on November 11th and was never within a mile of this place. Prosecutor Cunningham said he had "been looking all over for that rifle" when it was turned over to him by a stool pigeon. Strangely enough Cunningham knew the number of the gun before he placed hands on it.] Smith was feathering a nest for himself--feathering it with steel and stone and a possible coil of hempen rope. The shadow of the prison bars was falling blacker on his red head with every passing moment. His fearless championing of the cause of the "under dog" had won him the implacable hatred of his own class. To them his acts of kindness and humanity were nothing less than treason. Smith had been ungrateful to the clique that had offered him every inducement to "come in with us". A lawyer with a heart is as dangerous as a working man with his brains. Elmer Smith would be punished all right; it would just be a matter of time. The indifference of the County and State authorities regarding the kidnapping of blind Tom gave the terrorists renewed confidence in the efficacy and "legality" of their methods. Also it gave them a hint as to the form their future depredations were to take. And so, with the implied approval of everyone worth considering, they went about their plotting with still greater determination and a soothing sense of security. The Conspiracy Develops The cessation of hostilities in Europe deprived the gangsters of the cloak of "patriotism" as a cover for their crimes. But this cloak was too convenient to be discarded so easily. "Let the man in uniform do it" was an axiom that had been proved both profitable and safe. Then came the organization of the local post of the American Legion and the now famous Citizen's Protective League--of which more afterwards. With the signing of the Armistice, and the consequent almost imperceptible lifting of the White Terror that dominated the country, the organization of the loggers began daily to gather strength. The Chamber of Commerce began to growl menacingly, the Employers' Association to threaten and the lumber trust papers to incite open violence. And the American Legion began to function as a "cats paw" for the men behind the scenes. Why should the beautiful city of Centralia tolerate the hated Union hall any longer? Other halls had been raided, men had been tarred and feathered and deported--no one had ever been punished! Why should the good citizens of Centralia endure a lumberworkers headquarters and their despised union itself right in the midst of their peaceful community? Why indeed! The matter appeared simple enough from any angle. So then and there the conspiracy was hatched that resulted in the tragedy on Armistice Day. But the forces at work to bring about this unhappy conclusion were far from local. Let us see what these were like before the actual details of the conspiracy are recounted. There were three distinct phases of this campaign to "rid the woods of the agitators." These three phases dovetail together perfectly. Each one is a perfect part of a shrewdly calculated and mercilessly executed conspiracy to commit constructive murder and unlawful entry. The diabolical plan itself was designed to brush aside the laws of the land, trample the Constitution underfoot and bring about an unparalleled orgy of unbridled labor hatred and labor repression that would settle the question of unionism for a long time. The Conspiracy--And a Snag First of all comes the propaganda stage with the full force of the editorial virulence of the trust-controlled newspapers directed against labor in favor of "law and order," i.e., the lumber interests. All the machinery of newspaper publicity was used to vilify the lumber worker and to discredit his Union. Nothing was left unsaid that would tend to produce intolerance and hatred or to incite mob violence. This is not only true of Centralia, but of all the cities and towns located in the lumber district. Centralia happened to be the place where the tree of anti-labor propaganda first bore its ghastly fruit. Space does not permit us to quote the countless horrible things the I.W.W. was supposed to stand for and to be constantly planning to do. Statements from the lips of General Wood and young Roosevelt to the effect that citizens should not argue with Bolshevists but meet them "head on" were very conspicuously displayed on all occasions. Any addle-headed mediocrity, in or out of uniform, who had anything particularly atrocious to say against the labor movement in general or the "radicals" in particular, was afforded every opportunity to do so. The papers were vying with one another in devising effectual, if somewhat informal, means of dealing with the "red menace." Supported by, and partly the result of this barrage of lies, misrepresentation and incitation, came the period of attempted repression by "law". This was probably the easiest thing of all because the grip of Big Business upon the law-making and law-enforcing machinery of the nation is incredible. At all events a state's "criminal syndicalism law" had been conveniently passed and was being applied vigorously against union men, A.F. of L. and I.W.W. alike, but chiefly against the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union, No. 500, of the Industrial Workers of the World, the basic lumber industry being the largest in the Northwest and the growing power of the organized lumberjack being therefore more to be feared. [Illustration: His Uncle Planned It Dale Hubbard, killed in self-defense by Wesley Everest, Armistice Day, 1919. F. Hubbard, a lumber baron and uncle of the dead man, is held to have been the instigator of the plot in which his nephew was shot. Hubbard was martyrized by the lumber trust's determination "to let the men in uniform do it."] No doubt the lumber interests had great hope that the execution of these made-to-order laws would clear up the atmosphere so far as the lumber situation was concerned. But they were doomed to a cruel and surprising disappointment. A number of arrests were made in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and even Nevada. Fifty or sixty men all told were arrested and their trials rushed as test cases. During this period from April 25th to October 28th, 1919, the lumber trust saw with chagrin and dismay each of the state cases in turn either won outright by the defendants or else dismissed in the realization that it would be impossible to win them. By October 28th George F. Vanderveer, chief attorney for the defense, declared there were not a single member of the I.W.W. in custody in Washington, Idaho or Montana under this charge. In Seattle, Washington, an injunction was obtained restraining the mayor from closing down the new Union hall in that city under the new law. Thus it appeared that the nefarious plan of the employers and their subservient lawmaking adjuncts, to outlaw the lumber workers Union and to penalize the activities of its members, was to be doomed to an ignominious failure. Renewed Efforts--Legal and Otherwise Furious at the realization of their own impotency the "interests" launched forth upon a new campaign. This truly machiavellian scheme was devised to make it impossible for accused men to secure legal defense of any kind. All labor cases were to be tried simultaneously, thus making it impossible for the defendants to secure adequate counsel. George F. Russell, Secretary-Manager of the Washington Employers' Association, addressed meetings over the state urging all Washington Prosecuting Attorneys to organize that this end might be achieved. It is reported that Governor Hart, of Washington, looked upon the scheme with favor when it was brought to his personal attention by Mr. Russell. However, the fact remains that the lumber trust was losing and that it would have to devise even more drastic measures if it were to hope to escape the prospect of a very humiliating defeat. And, all the while the organization of the lumber workers continued to grow. In Washington the situation was becoming more tense, momentarily. Many towns in the heart of the lumber district had passed absurd criminal syndicalism ordinances. These prohibited membership in the I.W.W.; made it unlawful to rent premises to the organization or to circulate its literature. The Employers' Association had boasted that it was due to its efforts that these ordinances had been passed. But still they were faced with the provocative and unforgettable fact, that the I.W.W. was no more dead than the cat with the proverbial nine lives. Where halls had been closed or raided the lumber workers were transacting their union affairs right on the job or in the bunkhouses, just as though nothing had happened. What was more deplorable a few Union halls were still open and doing business at the same old stand. Centralia was one of these; drastic measures must be applied at once or loggers in other localities might be encouraged to open halls also. As events prove these measures were taken--and they were drastic. The Employers Show Their Fangs That the Employers' Association was assiduously preparing its members for action suitable for the situation is evidenced by the following quotations from the official bulletin addressed privately "to Members of the Employers' Association of Washington". Note them carefully; they are published as "suggestions to members" over the written signature of George F. Russell Secretary-Manager: June 25th, 1918.--"Provide a penalty for idleness ... Common labor now works a few days and then loafs to spend the money earned ... Active prosecution of the I.W.W. and other radicals." April 30th, 1919.--"Keep business out of the control of radicals and I.W.W.... Overcome agitation ... Closer co-operation between employers and employees ... Suppress the agitators ... Hang the Bolshevists." May 31st, 1919.--"If the agitators were taken care of we would have very little trouble ... Propaganda to counteract radicals and overcome agitation ... Put the I.W.W. in jail." June 30th, 1919.--"Make some of the Seattle papers print the truth ... Get rid of the I.W.W.'s." July 2nd, 1919.--"Educate along the line of the three R's and the golden rule, economy and self denial ... Import Japanese labor ... Import Chinese labor." July 31st, 1919.--"Deport about ten Russians in this community." August 31st, 1919.--"Personal contact between employer and employee, stringent treatment of the I.W.W." October 15th, 1919. "There are many I.W.W.s--mostly in the logging camps...." October 31st, 1919.--(A little over a week before the Centralia raid.) "Run your business or quit ... Business men and tax payers of Vancouver, Washington, have organized the Loyal Citizen's Protective League; opposed to Bolsheviki and the Soviet form of government and in favor of the open shop ... Jail the radicals and deport them ... Since the armistice these radicals have started in again. ONLY TWO COMMUNITIES IN WASHINGTON ALLOW I.W.W. HEADQUARTERS." (!!!) [Illustration: Arthur McElfresh A Centralia druggist. His wife warned him not to march to the union headquarters because "she knew he'd get hurt." McElfresh is the man said to have been shot inside the hall when the mob burst through the door.] December 31st, 1919. "Get rid of all the I.W.W. and all other un-American organizations ... Deport the radicals or use the rope as at Centralia. Until we get rid of the I.W.W. and radicals we don't expect to do much in this country ... Keep cleaning up on the I.W.W.... Don't let it die down ... Keep up public sentiment..." These few choice significant morsels of one hundred percent (on the dollar) Americanism are quoted almost at random from the private bulletins of the officials of the Iron Heel in the state of Washington. Here you can read their sentiments in their own words; you can see how dupes and hirelings were coached to perpetrate the crime of Centralia, and as many other similar crimes as they could get away with. Needless to say these illuminating lines were not intended for the perusal of the working class. But now that we have obtained them and placed them before your eyes you can draw your own conclusion. There are many, many more records germane to this case that we would like to place before you, but the Oligarchy has closed its steel jaws upon them and they are at present inaccessible. Men are still afraid to tell the truth in Centralia. Some day the workers may learn the whole truth about the inside workings of the Centralia conspiracy. Be that as it may the business interests of the Northwest lumber country stand bloody handed and doubly damned, black with guilt and foul with crime; convicted before the bar of public opinion, by their own statements and their own acts. Failure and Desperation Let us see for a moment how the conspiracy of the lumber barons operated to achieve the unlawful ends for which it was designed. Let us see how they were driven by their own failure at intrigue to adopt methods so brutal that they would have disgraced the head-hunter; how they tried to gain with murder-lust what they had failed to gain lawfully and with public approval. The campaign of lies and slander inaugurated by their private newspapers failed to convince the workers of the undesirability of labor organization. In spite of the armies of editors and news-whelps assembled to its aid, it served only to lash to a murderous frenzy the low instincts of the anti-labor elements in the community. The campaign of legal repression, admittedly instituted by the Employers' Association, failed also in spite of the fact that all the machinery of the state from dog-catcher down to Governor was at its beck and call on all occasions and for all purposes. Having made a mess of things with these methods the lumber barons threw all scruples to the winds--if they ever had any--threw aside all pretension of living within the law. They started out, mad-dog like, to rent, wreck and destroy the last vestige of labor organization from the woods of the Northwest, and furthermore, to hunt down union men and martyrize them with the club, the gun, the rope and the courthouse. It was to cover up their own crimes that the heartless beasts of Big Business beat the tom-toms of the press in order to lash the "patriotism" of their dupes and hirelings into hysteria. It was to hide their own infamy that the loathsome war dance was started that developed perceptibly from uncomprehending belligerency into the lawless tumult of mobs, raids and lynching! And it will be an everlasting blot upon the fair name of America that they were permitted to do so. The Centralia tragedy was the culmination of a long series of unpunished atrocities against labor. What is expected of men who have been treated as these men were treated and who were denied redress or protection under the law? Every worker in the Northwest knows about the wrongs lumberworkers have endured--they are matters of common knowledge. It was common knowledge in Centralia and adjoining towns that the I.W.W. hall was to be raided on Armistice Day. Yet eight loggers have been sentenced from twenty-five to forty years in prison for the crime of defending themselves from the mob that set out to murder them! But let us see how the conspiracy was operating in Centralia to make the Armistice Day tragedy inevitable. The Maelstrom--And Four Men Centralia was fast becoming the vortex of the conspiracy that was rushing to its inevitable conclusion. Event followed event in rapid succession, straws indicating the main current of the flood tide of labor-hatred. The Commercial Club was seething with intrigue like the court of old France under Catherine de Medici; only this time it was Industrial Unionism instead of Huguenots who were being Marked for a new night of St. Bartholomew. The heresy to be uprooted was belief in industrial instead of religious freedom; but the stake and the gibbet were awaiting the New Idea just as they had the old. The actions of the lumber interests were now but thinly veiled and their evil purpose all too manifest. The connection between the Employers' Association of the state and its local representatives in Centralia had become unmistakably evident. And behind these loomed the gigantic silhouette of the Employers' Association of the nation--the colossal "invisible government"--more powerful at times than the Government itself. More and more stood out the naked brutal fact that the purpose of all this plotting was to drive the union loggers from the city and to destroy their hall. The names of the men actively interested in this movement came to light in spite of strenuous efforts to keep them obscured. Four of these stand out prominently in the light of the tragedy that followed: George F. Russell, F.B. Hubbard, William Scales and last, but not least, Warren O. Grimm. [Illustration: Warren O. Grimm Warren O. Grimm, killed at the beginning of the rush on the I.W.W. hall. At another raid on an I.W.W. hall in 1918 Grimm was said by witnesses to have been leading the mob, "holding two American flags and dancing like a whirling dervish." His life-long friend, Frank Van Gilder, testified: "I stood less than two feet from Grimm when he was shot. He doubled up, put his hands to his stomach and said to me: 'My God, I'm shot.'" "What did you do then?" "I turned and left him."] The first named, George F. Russell, is a hired Manager for the Washington Employers' Association, whose membership employs between 75,000 and 80,000 workers in the state. Russell is known to be a reactionary of the most pronounced type. He is an avowed union smasher and a staunch upholder of the open shop principle, which is widely advertised as the "American plan" in Washington. Incidentally he is an advocate of the scheme to import Chinese and Japanese cooley labor as a solution of the "high wage and arrogant unionism" problem. F. B. Hubbard, is a small-bore Russell, differing from his chief only in that his labor hatred is more fanatical and less discreet. Hubbard was hard hit by the strike in 1917 which fact has evidently won him the significant title of "a vicious little anti-labor reptile." He is the man who helped to raid the 1918 Union Hall in Centralia and who appropriated for himself the stolen desk of the Union Secretary. His nephew Dale Hubbard was shot while trying to lynch Wesley Everest. William Scales is a Centralia business man and a virulent sycophant. He is a parochial replica of the two persons mentioned above. Scales was in the Quartermaster's Department down on the border during the trouble with Mexico. Because he was making too much money out of Uncle Sam's groceries, he was relieved of his duties quite suddenly and discharged from the service. He was fortunate in making France instead of Fort Leavenworth, however, and upon his return, became an ardent proselyte of Russell and Hubbard and their worthy cause. Also he continued in the grocery business. [Illustration: Hizzoner, The Jedge In his black robe, like a bird of prey, he perched above the courtroom and ruled always adversely to the cause of labor. Appointed to try men accused of killing other men whom he had previously eulogized Judge John M. Wilson did not disappoint those who appointed him. In open court Vanderveer told him. In open court Vanderveer told this man: "There was a time when I thought your rulings were due to ignorance of the law. That will no longer explain them."] Warren O. Grimm came from a good family and was a small town aristocrat. His brother is city attorney at Centralia. Grimm was a lawyer, a college athlete and a social lion. He had been with the American forces in Siberia and his chief bid for distinction was a noisy dislike for the Worker's & Peasants' Republic of Russia, and the I.W.W. which he termed the "American Bolsheviki". During the 1918 raid on the Centralia hall Grimm is said to have been dancing around "like a whirling dervish" and waving the American flag while the work of destruction was going on. Afterwards he became prominent in the American Legion and was the chief "cat's paw" for the lumber interests who were capitalizing the uniform to gain their own unholy ends. Personally he was a clean-cut modern young man. Shadows Cast Before On June 26th, the following notice appeared conspicuously on the first page of the Centralia Hub: Meeting of Business Men Called for Friday Evening "Business men and property owners of Centralia are urged to attend a meeting tomorrow in the Chamber of Commerce rooms to meet the officers of the Employers' Association of the state to discuss ways and means of bettering the conditions which now confront the business and property interests of the state. George F. Russell, Secretary-Manager, says in his note to business men: 'We need your advice and your co-operation in support of the movement for the defense of property and property rights. It is the most important question before the public today.'" At this meeting Mr. Russell dwelt on the statement that the "radicals" were better organized than the property interests. Also he pointed out the need of a special organization to protect "rights of property" from the encroachments of all "foes of the government". The Non-Partisan League, the Triple Alliance and the A.F. of L. were duly condemned. The speaker then launched out into a long tirade against the Industrial Workers of the World which was characterized as the most dangerous organization in America and the one most necessary for "good citizens" to crush. Needless to state the address was chock full of 100% Americanism. It amply made up in forcefulness anything it lacked in logic. So the "Citizens' Protective League" of Centralia was born. From the first it was a law unto itself--murder lust wearing the smirk of respectability--Judge Lynch dressed in a business suit. The advent of this infamous league marks the final ascendancy of terrorism over the Constitution in the city of Centralia. The only things still needed were a secret committee, a coil of rope and an opportunity. F.B. Hubbard was the man selected to pull off the "rough stuff" and at the same time keep the odium of crime from smirching the fair names of the conspirators. He was told to "perfect his own organization". Hubbard was eminently fitted for his position by reason of his intense labor-hatred and his aptitude for intrigue. The following day the Centralia Daily Chronicle carried the following significant news item: BUSINESS MEN OF COUNTY ORGANIZE Representatives From Many Communities Attend Meeting in Chamber of Commerce, Presided Over Secretary of Employers' Association. "The labor situation was thoroughly discussed this afternoon at a meeting held in the local Chamber of Commerce which was attended by representative business men from various parts of Lewis County. "George F. Russell, Secretary of the Employers' Association, of Washington, presided at the meeting. "A temporary organization was effected with F. B. Hubbard, President of the Eastern Railway & Lumber Company, as chairman. He was empowered to perfect his own organization. A similar meeting will be held in Chehalis in connection with the noon luncheon of the Citizens' Club on that day." [Illustration: "Special Prosecutor" C.D. Cunningham, attorney for F.B. Hubbard and various lumber interests, took charge of the prosecution immediately. He was the father of much of the "third degree" methods used on witnesses. Vanderveer offered to prove at the trial that Cunningham was at the jail when Wesley Everest was dragged out, brutally mutilated and then lynched.] The city of Centralia became alive with gossip and speculation about this new move on the part of the employers. Everybody knew that the whole thing centered around the detested hall of the Union loggers. Curiosity seekers began to come In from all parts of the county to have a peep at this hall before it was wrecked. Business men were known to drive their friends from the new to the old hall in order to show what the former would look like in a short time. People in Centralia generally knew for a certainty that the present hall would go the way of its predecessor. It was just a question now as to the time and circumstances of the event. Warren O. Grimm had done his bit to work up sentiment against the union loggers and their hall. Only a month previously--on Labor Day, 1919,--he had delivered a "labor" speech that was received with great enthusiasm by a local clique of business men. Posing as an authority on Bolshevism on account of his Siberian service Grimm had elaborated on the dangers of this pernicious doctrine. With a great deal of dramatic emphasis he had urged his audience to beware of the sinister influence of "the American Bolsheviki--the Industrial Workers of the World." A few days before the hall was raided Elmer Smith called at Grimm's office on legal business. Grimm asked him, by the way, what he thought of his Labor Day speech. Smith replied that he thought it was "rotten" and that he couldn't agree with Grimm's anti-labor conception of Americanism. Smith pointed to the deportation of Tom Lassiter as an example of the "Americanism" he considered disgraceful. He said also that he thought free speech was one of the fundamental rights of all citizens. "I can't agree with you," replied Grimm. "That's the proper way to treat such a fellow." The New Black Hundred On October 19th the Centralia Hub published an item headed "Employers Called to Discuss Handling of 'Wobbly' Problem." This article urges all employers to attend, states that the meeting will be held in the Elk's Club and mentioned the wrecking of the Union Hall in 1918. On the following day, October 20th, three weeks before the shooting, this meeting was held at the hall of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks--the now famous Elks' Club of Centralia. The avowed purpose of this meeting was to "deal with the I.W.W. problem." The chairman was William Scales, at that time Commander of the Centralia Post of the American Legion. The I.W.W. Hall was the chief topic of discussion. F.B. Hubbard opened up by saying that the I.W.W. was a menace and should be driven out of town. Chief of Police Hughes, however, cautioned them against such a course. He is reported to have said that "the I.W.W. is doing nothing wrong in Centralia--is not violating any law--and you have no right to drive them out of town in this manner." The Chief of Police then proceeded to tell the audience that he had taken up the matter of legally evicting the industrialists with City Attorney C.E. Grimm, a brother of Warren O. Grimm, who is said to have told them, "Gentlemen, there is no law by which you can drive the I.W.W. out of town." City Commissioner Saunders and County Attorney Allen had spoken to the same effect. The latter, Allen, had gone over the literature of the organization with regard to violence and destruction and had voluntarily dismissed a "criminal syndicalist" case without trial for want of evidence. [Illustration: Lewis County's Legal Prostitute Herman Allen, prosecuting attorney of Lewis County. He stood at the corner during the raid and received papers stolen from the hall. There is no record of his having protested against any illegal action. He turned over his office to the special Prosecutors and acted as their tool throughout. During the entire trial he never appeared as an active participant.] Hubbard was furious at this turn of affairs and shouted to Chief of Police Hughes: "It's a damned outrage that these men should be permitted to remain in town! Law or no law, if I were Chief of Police they wouldn't stay here twenty-four hours." "I'm not in favor of raiding the hall myself," said Scales. "But I'm certain that if anybody else wants to raid the I.W.W. Hall there is no jury in the land will ever convict them." After considerable discussion the meeting started to elect a committee to deal with the situation. First of all an effort was made to get a workingman elected as a member to help camouflage its very evident character and make people believe that "honest labor" was also desirous of ridding the town of the hated I.W.W. Hall. A switchman named Henry, a member of the Railway Brotherhood, was nominated. When he indignantly declined, Hubbard, red in the face with rage, called him a "damned skunk." The Inner Circle Scales then proceeded to tell the audience in general and the city officials in particular that he would himself appoint a committee "whose inner workings were secret," and see if he could not get around the matter that way. The officers of the League were then elected. The President was County Coroner David Livingstone, who afterwards helped to lynch Wesley Everest. Dr. Livingstone made his money from union miners. William Scales was vice president and Hubbard was treasurer. The secret committee was then appointed by Hubbard. As its name implies it was an underground affair, similar to the Black Hundreds of Old Russia. No record of any of its proceedings has ever come to light, but according to best available knowledge, Warren O. Grimm, Arthur McElfresh, B.S. Cromier and one or two others who figured prominently in the raid, were members. At all events on November 6th, five days before the shooting, Grimm was elected Commander of the Centralia Post of the American Legion, taking the place of Scales, who resigned in his favor. Scales evidently was of the opinion that a Siberian veteran and athlete was better fitted to lead the "shock troops" than a mere counter-jumper like himself. There is no doubt but the secret committee had its members well placed in positions of strategic importance for the coming event. The following day the Tacoma News Tribune carried a significant editorial on the subject of the new organization: "At Centralia a committee of citizens has been formed that takes the mind back to the old days of vigilance committees of the West, which did so much to force law-abiding citizenship upon certain lawless elements. It is called the Centralia Protective Association, and its object is to combat I.W.W. activities in that city and the surrounding country. It invites to membership all citizens who favor the enforcement of law and order ... It is high time for the people who do believe in the lawful and orderly conduct of affairs to take the upper hand ... Every city and town might, with profit, follow Centralia's example." The reference to "law and orderly conduct of affairs" has taken a somewhat ironical twist, now that Centralia has shown the world what she considers such processes to be. No less significant was an editorial appearing on the same Date in the Centralia Hub: "If the city is left open to this menace, we will soon find ourselves at the mercy of an organized band of outlaws bent on destruction. What are we going to do about it?" And, referring to the organization of the "secret committee," the editorial stated: "It was decided that the inner workings of the organization were to be kept secret, to more effectively combat a body using similar tactics." The editorial reeks with lies; but it was necessary that the mob spirit should be kept at white heat at all times. Newspaper incitation has never been punished by law, yet it is directly responsible for more murders, lynching and raids than any other one force in America. [Illustration: The Stool Pigeon Tom Morgan, who turned state's evidence. There is an historical precedent for Morgan. Judas acted similarly, but Judas later had the manhood to go out and hang himself. Morgan left for "parts unknown."] The Plot Leaks Out By degrees the story of the infamous secret committee and its diabolical plan leaked out, adding positive confirmation to the many already credited rumors in circulation. Some of the newspapers quite openly hinted that the I.W.W. Hall was to be the object of the brewing storm. Chief of Police Hughes told a member of the Lewis County Trades Council, William T. Merriman by name, that the business men were organizing to raid the hall and drive its members out of town. Merriman, in turn carried the statement to many of his friends and brother unionists. Soon the prospective raid was the subject of open discussion,--over the breakfast toast, on the street corners, in the camps and mills--every place. So common was the knowledge in fact that many of the craft organizations in Centralia began to discuss openly what they should do about it. They realized that the matter was one which concerned labor and many members wanted to protest and were urging their unions to try to do something. At the Lewis County Trades Council the subject was brought up for discussion by its president, L. F. Dickson. No way of helping the loggers was found, however, if they would so stubbornly try to keep open their headquarters in the face of such opposition. Harry Smith, a brother of Elmer Smith, the attorney, was a delegate at this meeting and reported to his brother the discussion that took place. Secretary Britt Smith and the loggers at the Union hall were not by any means ignorant of the conspiracy being hatched against them. Day by day they had followed the development of the plot with breathless interest and not a little anxiety. They knew from bitter experience how union men were handled when they were trapped in their halls. But they would not entertain the idea of abandoning their principles and seeking personal safety. Every logging camp for miles around knew of the danger also. The loggers there had gone through the hell of the organization period and had felt the wrath of the lumber barons. Some of them felt that the statement of Secretary of Labor Wilson as to the attitude of the Industrial Workers of the World towards "overthrowing the government," and "violence and destruction" would discourage the terrorists from attempting such a flagrant and brutal injustice as the one contemplated. [Illustration: "Oily" Abel Suave and slimy as a snake; without any of the kindlier traits of nature, W.H. Abel, sounded the gamut of rottenness in his efforts to convict the accused men without the semblance of a fair trial. Abel is notorious throughout Washington as the hireling of the lumber interests. In 1917 he prosecuted "without fee" all laboring men on strike and is attorney for the Cosmopolis "penitentiary" so called on account of the brutality with which it treats employes. Located in one of the small towns of the state Abel has made a fortune prosecuting labor cases for the special interests.] Regarding the deportation of I.W.W.'s for belonging to an organization which advocates such things, Secretary of Labor Wilson had stated a short time previously: "An exhaustive study into the by-laws and practices of the I.W.W. has thus far failed to disclose anything that brings it within the class of organizations referred to." Other of the loggers were buoyed up with the many victories won in the courts on "criminal syndicalism" charges and felt that the raid would be too "raw" a thing for the lumber interests even to consider. All were secure in the knowledge and assurance that they were violating no law in keeping open their hall. And they wanted that hall kept open. Of course the question of what was to be done was discussed at their business meetings. When news reached them on November 4th of the contemplated "parade" they decided to publish a leaflet telling the Citizens of Centralia about the justice and legality of their position, the aims of their organization and the real reason for the intense hatred which the lumber trust harbored against them. Such leaflet was drawn up by Secretary Britt Smith and approved by the membership. It was an honest, outspoken appeal for public sympathy and support. This leaflet--word for word as it was printed and circulated in Centralia--is reprinted below: To the Citizens of Centralia We Must Appeal [Illustration: The Chief Fink Frank P. Christensen, who was the "fixer" for the prosecution. As Assistant Attorney General he used his office to intimidate witnesses and in the effort to cover up actions of the mob. He is reported to have been responsible for the recovery and burial of Everest's body, saying: "We've got to bring in that body and bury it. If the wobs ever find out what was done and get it they'll raise hell and make capital of it."] "To the law abiding citizens of Centralia and to the working class in general: We beg of you to read and carefully consider the following: "The profiteering class of Centralia have of late been waving the flag of our country in an endeavor to incite the lawless element of our city to raid our hall and club us out of town. For this purpose they have inspired editorials in the Hub, falsely and viciously attacking the I.W.W., hoping to gain public approval for such revolting criminality. These profiteers are holding numerous secret meetings to that end, and covertly inviting returned service men to do their bidding. In this work they are ably assisted by the bankrupt lumber barons of southwest Washington who led the mob that looted and burned the I.W.W. hall a year ago. "These criminal thugs call us a band of outlaws bent on destruction. This they do in an attempt to hide their own dastardly work in burning our hall and destroying our property. They say we are a menace; and we are a menace to all mobocrats and pilfering thieves. Never did the I.W.W. burn public or private halls, kidnap their fellow citizens, destroy their property, club their fellows out of town, bootleg or act in any ways as law-breakers. These patriotic profiteers throughout the country have falsely and with out any foundation whatever charged the I.W.W. with every crime on the statute books. For these alleged crimes thousands of us have been jailed in foul and filthy cells throughout this country, often without charge, for months and in some cases, years, and when released re-arrested and again thrust in jail to await a trial that is never called. The only convictions of the I.W.W. were those under the espionage law, where we were forced to trial before jurors, all of whom were at political and industrial enmity toward us, and in courts hostile to the working class. This same class of handpicked courts and juries also convicted many labor leaders, socialists, non-partisans, pacifists, guilty of no crime save that of loyalty to the working class. "By such courts Jesus the Carpenter was slaughtered upon the charge that 'he stirreth up the people.' Only last month 25 I.W.W. were indicted in Seattle as strike leaders, belonging to an unlawful organization, attempting to overthrow the government and other vile things under the syndicalist law passed by the last legislature. To exterminate the 'wobbly' both the court and jury have the lie to every charge. The court held them a lawful organization and their literature was not disloyal nor inciting to violence, though the government had combed the country from Chicago to Seattle for witnesses, and used every pamphlet taken from their hall in government raids. "In Spokane 13 members were indicted in the Superior Court for wearing the I.W.W. button and displaying their emblem. The jury unanimously acquitted them and the court held it no crime. "In test cases last month both in the Seattle and Everett Superior Courts, the presiding judge declared the police had no authority in law to close their halls and the padlocks were ordered off and the halls opened. "Many I.W.W. in and around Centralia went to France and fought and bled for the democracy they never secured. They came home to be threatened with mob violence by the law and order outfit that pilfered every nickel possible from their mothers and fathers while they were fighting in the trenches in the thickest of the fray. "Our only crime is solidarity, loyalty to the working class and justice to the oppressed." "Let the Men in Uniform Do It" On November 6th, the Centralia Post of the American Legion met with a committee from the Chamber of Commerce to arrange for a parade-another "patriotic" parade. The first anniversary of the signing of the armistice was now but a few days distant and Centralia felt it incumbent upon herself to celebrate. Of course the matter was brought up rather circumspectly, but knowing smiles greeted the suggestion. One business man made a motion that the brave boys wear their uniforms. This was agreed upon. The line of march was also discussed. As the union hall was a little off the customary parade route, Scales suggested that their course lead past the hall "in order to show them how strong we are." It was intimated that a command "eyes right" would be given as the legionaries and business men passed the union headquarters. This was merely a poor excuse of the secret committeemen to get the parade where they needed it. But many innocent men were lured into a "lynching bee" without knowing that they were being led to death by a hidden gang of broad-cloth conspirators who were plotting at murder. Lieutenant Cormier, who afterwards blew the whistle that was the signal for the raid, endorsed the proposal of Scales as did Grimm and McElfresh--all three of them secret committeemen. Practically no other subject but the "parade" was discussed at this meeting. The success of the project was now assured for it had placed into the hands of the men who alone could arrange to "have the men in uniform do it." The men in uniform had done it once before and people knew what to expect. The day following this meeting the Centralia Hub published an announcement of the coming event stating that the legionaires had "voted to wear uniforms." The line of march was published for the first time. Any doubts about the real purpose of the parade vanished when people read that the precession was to march from the City Park to Third street and Tower avenue and return. The union hall was on Tower between Second and Third streets, practically at the end of the line of march and plainly the objective of the demonstrators. [Illustration: Bridge from which Everest Was Hanged From this bridge, over the Chehalis river, Wesley Everest was left dangling by a mob of business men. Automobile parties visited this spot at different times during the night and played their headlights on the corpse in order better to enjoy the spectacle.] "Decent Labor"--Hands Off! A short time after the shooting a virulent leaflet was issued by the Mayor's office stating that the "plot to kill had been laid two or three weeks before the tragedy," and that "the attack (of the loggers) was without justification or excuse." Both statements are bare faced lies. The meeting was held the 6th and the line of march made public of the 7th. The loggers could not possibly have planned a week and a half previously to shoot into a parade they knew nothing about and whose line of march had not yet been disclosed. It was proved in court that the union men armed themselves at the very last moment, after everything else had failed and they had been left helpless to face the alternative of being driven out of town or being lynched. About this time eyewitnesses declare coils of rope were being purchased in a local hardware store. This rope is all cut up into little pieces now and most of it is dirty and stained. But many of Centralia's best families prize their souvenir highly. They say it brings good luck to a family. A few days after the meeting just described William Dunning, vice president of the Lewis County Trades and Labor Assembly, met Warren Grimm on the street. Having fresh in his mind a recent talk about the raid in the Labor Council meetings, and being well aware of Grimm's standing and influence, Dunning broached the subject. "We've been discussing the threatened raid on the I.W.W. hall," he said. "Who are you, an I.W.W.?" asked Grimm. Dunning replied stating that he was vice president of the Labor Assembly and proceeded to tell Grimm the feeling of his organization on the subject. "Decent labor ought to keep its hands off," was Grimm's laconic reply. The Sunday before the raid a public meeting was held in the union hall. About a hundred and fifty persons were in the audience, mostly working men and women of Centralia. A number of loggers were present, dressed in the invariable mackinaw, stagged overalls and caulked shoes. John Foss, an I.W.W. ship builder from Seattle, was the speaker. Secretary Britt Smith was chairman. Walking up and down the isle, selling the union's pamphlets and papers was a muscular and sun-burned young man with a rough, honest face and a pair of clear hazel eyes in which a smile was always twinkling. He wore a khaki army coat above stagged overalls of a slightly darker shade,--Wesley Everest, the ex-soldier who was shortly to be mutilated and lynched by the mob. "I Hope to Jesus Nothing Happens" The atmosphere of the meeting was already tainted with the Terror. Nerves were on edge. Every time any newcomer would enter the door the audience would look over their shoulders with apprehensive glances. At the conclusion of the meeting the loggers gathered around the secretary and asked him the latest news about the contemplated raid. For reply Britt Smith handed them copies of the leaflet "We Must Appeal" and told of the efforts that had been made and were being made to secure legal protection and to let the public know the real facts in the case. "If they raid the hall again as they did in 1918 the boys won't stand for it," said a logger. "If the law won't protect us we've got a right to protect ourselves," ventured another. "I hope to Jesus nothing happens," replied the secretary. Wesley Everest laid down his few unsold papers, rolled a brown paper cigarette and smiled enigmatically over the empty seats in the general direction of the new One Big Union label on the front window. His closest friends say he was never afraid of anything in all his life. None of these men knew that loggers from nearby camps, having heard of the purchase of the coils of rope, were watching the hall night and day to see that "nothing happens." The next day, after talking things over with Britt Smith, Mrs. McAllister, wife of the proprietor of the Roderick hotel from whom the loggers rented the hall, went to see Chief of Police Hughes. This is how she told of the interview: "I got worried and I went to the Chief. I says to him 'Are you going to protect my property?' Hughes says, 'We'll do the best we can for you, but as far as the wobblies are concerned they wouldn't last fifteen minutes if the business men start after them. The business men don't want any wobblies in this town.'" The day before the tragedy Elmer Smith dropped in at the Union hall to warn his clients that nothing could now stop the raid. "Defend it if you choose to do so," he told them. "The law gives you that right." It was on the strength of this remark, overheard by the stool-pigeon, Morgan, and afterwards reported to the prosecution, that Elmer Smith was hailed to prison charged with murder in the first degree. His enemies had been certain all along that his incomprehensible delusion about the law being the same for the poor man as the rich would bring its own punishment. It did; there can no longer be any doubt on the subject. [Illustration: Carting Away Wesley Everest's Body for Burial After the mutilated body had been cut down in laid in the river for two days. Then it was taken back to the city jail where it remained for two days more--as an object lesson--in plain view of the comrades of the murdered boy. Everest was taken from this building to be lynched. During the first week after the tragedy this jail witnessed scenes of torture and horror that equaled the worst days of the Spanish inquisition.] The Scorpion's Sting November 11th was a raw, gray day; the cold sunlight barely penetrating the mist that hung over the city and the distant tree-clad hills. The "parade" assembled at the City Park. Lieutenant Cormier was marshal. Warren Grimm was commander of the Centralia division. In a very short time he had the various bodies arranged to his satisfaction. At the head of the procession was the "two-fisted" Centralia bunch. This was followed by one from Chehalis, the county seat, and where the parade would logically have been held had its purpose been an honest one. Then came a few sailors and marines and a large body of well dressed gentlemen from the Elks. The school children who were to have marched did not appear. At the very end were a couple of dozen boy scouts and an automobile carrying pretty girls dressed in Red Cross uniforms. Evidently this parade, unlike the one of 1918, did not, like a scorpion, carry its sting in the rear. But wait until you read how cleverly this part of it had been arranged! The marchers were unduly silent and those who knew nothing of the lawless plan of the secret committee felt somehow that something must be wrong. City Postmaster McCleary and a wicked-faced old man named Thompson were seen carrying coils of rope. Thompson is a veteran of the Civil War and a minister of God. On the witness stand he afterwards swore he picked up the rope from the street and was carrying it "as a joke." It turned out that the "joke" was on Wesley Everest. "Be ready for the command 'eyes right' or 'eyes left' when we pass the 'reviewing stand'," Grimm told the platoon commanders just as the parade started. The procession covered most of the line of march without incident. When the union hall was reached there was some craning of necks but no outburst of any kind. A few of the out-of-town paraders looked at the place curiously and several business men were seen pointing the hall out to their friends. There were some dark glances and a few long noses but no demonstration. "When do we reach the reviewing stand?" asked a parader, named Joe Smith, of a man marching beside him. "Hell, there ain't any reviewing stand," was the reply. "We're going to give the wobbly hall 'eyes right' on the way back." The head of the columns reached Third avenue and halted. A command of 'about face' was given and the procession again started to march past the union hall going in the opposite direction. The loggers inside felt greatly relieved as they saw the crowd once more headed for the city. But the Centralia and Chehalis contingents, that had headed the parade, was now in the rear--just where the "scorpion sting" of the 1918 parade had been located! The danger was not yet over. "Let's go! At 'em, boys!" The Chehalis division had marched past the hall and the Centralia division was just in front of it when a sharp command was given. The latter stopped squarely in front of the hall but the former continued to march. Lieutenant Cormier of the secret committee was riding between the two contingents on a bay horse. Suddenly he placed his fingers to his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Immediately there was a hoarse cry of "Let's go-o-o! At 'em, boys!" About sixty feet separated the two contingents at this time, the Chehalis men still continuing the march. Cromier spurred his horse and overtook them. "Aren't you boys in on this?" he shouted. At the words "Let's go," the paraders from both ends and the middle of the Centralia contingent broke ranks and started on the run for the union headquarters. A crowd of soldiers surged against the door. There was a crashing of glass and a splintering of wood as the door gave way. A few of the marauders had actually forced their way into the hall. Then there was a shot, three more shots ... and a small volley. From Seminary hill and the Avalon hotel rifles began to crack. [Illustration: Elks Club, Centralia It was here that the Centralia conspiracy was hatched and the notorious "secret committee" appointed to do the dirty work.] The mob stopped suddenly, astounded at the unexpected opposition. Out of hundreds of halls that had been raided during the past two years this was the first time the union men had attempted to defend themselves. It had evidently been planned to stampede the entire contingent into the attack by having the secret committeemen take the lead from both ends and the middle. But before this could happen the crowd, frightened at the shots started to scurry for cover. Two men were seen carrying the limp figure of a soldier from the door of the hall. When the volley started they dropped it and ran. The soldier was a handsome young man, named Arthur McElfresh. He was left lying in front of the hall with his feet on the curb and his head in the gutter. The whole thing had been a matter of seconds. "I Had No Business Being There" Several men had been wounded. A pool of blood was widening in front of the doorway. A big man in officer's uniform was seen to stagger away bent almost double and holding his hands over his abdomen. "My God, I'm shot!" he had cried to the soldier beside him. This was Warren O. Grimm; the other was his friend, Frank Van Gilder. Grimm walked unassisted to the rear of a nearby soft drink place from whence he was taken to a hospital. He died a short time afterwards. Van Gilder swore on the witness stand that Grimm and himself were standing at the head of the columns of "unoffending paraders" when his friend was shot. He stated that Grimm had been his life-long friend but admitted that when his "life-long friend" received his mortal wound that he (Van Gilder), instead of acting like a hero in no man's land, had deserted him in precipitate haste. Too many eye witnesses had seen Grimm stagger wounded from the doorway of the hall to suit the prosecution. Van Gilder knew at which place Grimm had been shot but it was necessary that he be placed at a convenient distance from the hall. It is reported on good authority that Grimm, just before he died in the hospital, confessed to a person at his bedside: "It served me right, I had no business being there." A workingman, John Patterson, had come down town on Armistice Day with his three small children to watch the parade. He was standing thirty-five feet from the door of the hall when the raid started. On the witness stand Patterson told of being pushed out of the way by the rush before the shooting began. He saw a couple of soldiers shot and saw Grimm stagger away from the doorway wounded in the abdomen. The testimony of Dr. Bickford at the corner's inquest under oath was as follows: "I spoke up and said I would lead if enough would follow, but before I could take the lead there were many ahead of me. Someone next to me put his foot against the door and forced it open, after which a shower of bullets poured through the opening about us." Dr. Bickford is an A.E.F. man and one of the very few legionaires who dared to tell the truth about the shooting. The Centralia business element has since tried repeatedly to ruin him. In trying to present the plea of self defense to the court, Defense attorney Vanderveer stated: "There was a rush, men reached the hall under the command of Grimm, and yet counsel asks to have shown a specific overt act of Grimm before we can present the plea of self-defense. Would he have had the men wait with their lives at stake? The fact is that Grimm was there and in defending themselves these men shot. Grimm was killed because he was there. They could not wait. Your honor, self defense isn't much good after a man is dead." The prosecution sought to make a point of the fact that the loggers had fired into a street in which there were innocent bystanders as well as paraders. But the fact remains that the only men hit by bullets were those who were in the forefront of the mob. Through the Hall Window How the raid looked from the inside of the hall can best be described from the viewpoint of one of the occupants, Bert Faulkner, a union logger and ex-service man. Faulkner described how he had dropped in at the hall on Armistice Day and stood watching the parade from the window. In words all the more startling for their sheer artlessness he told of the events which followed: First the grimacing faces of the business men, then as the soldiers returned, a muffled order, the smashing of the window, with the splinters of glass falling against the curtain, the crashing open of the door ... and the shots that "made his ears ring," and made him run for shelter to the rear of the hall, with the shoulder of his overcoat torn with a bullet. Then how he found himself on the back stairs covered with rifles and commanded to come down with his hands in the air. Finally how he was frisked to the city jail in an automobile with a business man standing over him armed with a piece of gas pipe. Eugene Barnett gave a graphic description of the raid as he saw it from the office of the adjoining Roderick hotel. Barnett said he saw the line go past the hotel. The business men were ahead of the soldiers and as this detachment passed the hotel returning the soldiers still were going north. The business men were looking at the hall and pointing it out to the soldiers. Some of them had their thumbs to their noses and others were saying various things. [Illustration: City Park, Centralia At this place the parade assembled that started out to raid the Union hall and lynch its secretary.] "When the soldiers turned and came past I saw a man on horseback ride past. He was giving orders which were repeated along the line by another. As the rider passed the hotel he gave a command and the second man said: 'Bunch up, men!' "When this order came the men all rushed for the hall. I heard glass break. I heard a door slam. There was another sound and then shooting came. It started from inside the hall. "As I saw these soldiers rush the hall I jumped up and threw off my coat. I thought there would be a fight and I was going to mix in. Then came the shooting, and I knew I had no business there." Later Barnett went home and remained there until his arrest the next day. In the union hall, besides Bert Faulkner, were Wesley Everest, Roy Becker, Britt Smith, Mike Sheehan, James McInerney and the "stool pigeon," these, with the exception of Faulkner and Everest, remained in the hall until the authorities came to place them under arrest. They had after the first furious rush of their assailants, taken refuge in a big and long disused ice box in the rear of the hall. Britt Smith was unarmed, his revolver being found afterwards, fully loaded, in his roll-top desk. After their arrest the loggers were taken to the city jail which was to be the scene of an inquisition unparalleled in the history of the United States. After this, as an additional punishment, they were compelled to face the farce of a "fair trial" in a capitalistic court. Wesley Everest But Destiny had decided to spare one man the bitter irony of judicial murder. Wesley Everest still had a pocket full of cartridges and a forty-four automatic that could speak for itself. This soldier-lumberjack had done most of the shooting in the hall. He held off the mob until the very last moment, and, instead of seeking refuge in the refrigerator after the "paraders" had been dispersed, he ran out of the back door, reloading his pistol as he went. It is believed by many that Arthur McElfresh was killed inside the hall by a bullet fired by Everest. In the yard at the rear of the hall the mob had already reorganized for an attack from that direction. Before anyone knew what had happened Everest had broken through their ranks and scaled the fence. "Don't follow me and I won't shoot," he called to the crowd and displaying the still smoking blue steel pistol in his hand. "There goes the secretary!" yelled someone, as the logger started at top speed down the alley. The mob surged in pursuit, collapsing the board fence before them with sheer force of numbers. There was a rope in the crowd and the union secretary was the man they wanted. The chase that followed probably saved the life, not only of Britt Smith, but the remaining loggers in the hall as well. Running pell-mell down the alley the mob gave a shout of exaltation as Everest slowed his pace and turned to face them. They stopped cold, however, as a number of quick shots rang out and bullets whistled and zipped around them. Everest turned in his tracks and was off again like a flash, reloading his pistol as he ran. The mob again resumed the pursuit. The logger ran through an open gateway, paused to turn and again fire at his pursuers; then he ran between two frame dwellings to the open street. When the mob again caught the trail they were evidently under the impression that the logger's ammunition was exhausted. At all events they took up the chase with redoubled energy. Some men in the mob had rifles and now and then a pot-shot would be taken at the fleeing figure. The marksmanship of both sides seems to have been poor for no one appears to have been injured. Dale Hubbard This kind of running fight was kept up until Everest reached the river. Having kept off his pursuers thus far the boy started boldly for the comparative security of the opposite shore, splashing the water violently as he waded out into the stream. The mob was getting closer all the time. Suddenly Everest seemed to change his mind and began to retrace his steps to the shore. Here he stood dripping wet in the tangled grasses to await the arrival of the mob bent on his destruction. Everest had lost his hat and his wet hair stuck to his forehead. His gun was now so hot he could hardly hold it and the last of his ammunition was in the magazine. Eye witnesses declare his face still wore a quizzical, half bantering smile when the mob overtook him. With the pistol held loosely in his rough hand Everest stood at bay, ready to make a last stand for his life. Seeing him thus, and no doubt thinking his last bullet had been expended, the mob made a rush for its quarry. "Stand back!" he shouted. "If there are 'bulls' in the crowd, I'll submit to arrest; otherwise lay off of me." [Illustration: Blind Tom Lassiter Tom Lassiter is the blind news dealer who Was kidnapped and deported out of town in June, 1919, by a gang of business men. His stand was raided and the contents burned in the street. He had been selling The Seattle Union Record, The Industrial Worker and Solidarity. County attorney Allen said he couldn't help to apprehend the criminals and would only charge them with third degree assault if they were found. The fine would be one dollar and costs! Lassiter is now in jail in Chehalis charged with "criminal syndicalism."] No attention was paid to his words. Everest shot from the hip four times,--then his gun stalled. A group of soldiers started to run in his direction. Everest was tugging at the gun with both hands. Raising it suddenly he took careful aim and fired. All the soldiers but one wavered and stopped. Everest fired twice, both bullets taking effect. Two more shots were fired almost point blank before the logger dropped his assailant at his feet. Then he tossed away the empty gun and the mob surged upon him. The legionaire who had been shot was Dale Hubbard, a nephew of F.B. Hubbard, the lumber baron. He was a strong, brave and misguided young man--worthy of a nobler death. "Let's Finish the Job!" Everest attempted a fight with his fists but was overpowered and severely beaten. A number of men clamoured for immediate lynching, but saner council prevailed for the time and he was dragged through the streets towards the city jail. When the mob was half a block from this place the "hot heads" made another attempt to cheat the state executioner. A wave of fury seemed here to sweep the crowd. Men fought with one another for a chance to strike, kick or spit in the face of their victim. It was an orgy of hatred and blood-lust. Everest's arms were pinioned, blows, kicks and curses rained upon him from every side. One business man clawed strips of bleeding flesh from his face. A woman slapped his battered cheek with a well groomed hand. A soldier tried to lunge a hunting rifle at the helpless logger; the crowd was too thick. He bumped them aside with the butt of the gun to get room. Then he crashed the muzzle with full force into Everest's mouth. Teeth were broken and blood flowed profusely. A rope appeared from somewhere. "Let's finish the job!" cried a voice. The rope was placed about the neck of the logger. "You haven't got guts enough to lynch a man in the daytime," was all he said. At this juncture a woman brushed through the crowd and took the rope from Everest's neck. Looking into the distorted faces of the mob she cried indignantly, "You are curs and cowards to treat a man like that!" There may be human beings in Centralia after all. Wesley Everest was taken to the city jail and thrown without ceremony upon the cement floor of the "bull pen." In the surrounding cells were his comrades who had been arrested in the union hall. Here he lay in a wet heap, twitching with agony. A tiny bright stream of blood gathered at his side and trailed slowly along the floor. Only an occasional quivering moan escaped his torn lips as the hours slowly passed by. "Here Is Your Man" Later, at night, when it was quite dark, the lights of the jail were suddenly snapped off. At the same instant the entire city was plunged in darkness. A clamour of voices was heard beyond the walls. There was a hoarse shout as the panel of the outer door was smashed in. "Don't shoot, men," said the policemen on guard, "Here is your man." It was night now, and the business men had no further reason for not lynching the supposed secretary. Everest heard their approaching foot steps in the dark. He arose drunkenly to meet them. "Tell the boys I died for my class," he whispered brokenly to the union men in the cells. These were the last words he uttered in the jail. There were sounds of a short struggle and of many blows. Then a door slammed and, in a short time the lights were switched on. The darkened city was again illuminated at the same moment. Outside three luxurious automobiles were purring them selves out of sight in the darkness. The only man who had protested the lynching at the last moment was William Scales. "Don't kill him, men," he is said to have begged of the mob. But it was too late. "If you don't go through with this you're an I.W.W. too," they told him. Scales could not calm the evil passions he had helped to arouse. But how did it happen that the lights were turned out at such an opportune time? Could it be that city officials were working hand in glove with the lynch mob? Defense Attorney Vanderveer offered to prove to the court that such was the case. He offered to prove this was a part of the greater conspiracy against the union loggers and their hall,--offered to prove it point by point from the very beginning. Incidentally Vanderveer offered to prove that Earl Craft, electrician in charge of the city lighting plant, had left the station at seven o'clock on Armistice day after securely locking the door; and that while Craft was away the lights of the city were turned off and Wesley Everest taken out and lynched. Furthermore, he offered to prove that when Craft returned, the lights were again turned on and the city electrician, his assistant and the Mayor of Centralia were in the building with the door again locked. These offers were received by his honor with impassive judicial dignity, but the faces of the lumber trust attorneys were wreathed with smiles at the audacity of the suggestion. The corporation lawyers very politely registered their objections which the judge as politely sustained. The Night of Horrors After Everest had been taken away the jail became a nightmare--as full of horrors as a madman's dream. The mob howled around the walls until late in the night. Inside, a lumber trust lawyer and his official assistants were administering the "third degree" to the arrested loggers, to make them "confess." One at a time the men were taken to the torture chamber, and so terrible was the ordeal of this American Inquisition that some were almost broken--body and soul. Loren Roberts had the light in his brain snuffed out. Today he is a shuffling wreck. He is not interested in things any more. He is always looking around with horror-wide eyes, talking of "voices" and "wires" that no one but himself knows anything about. There is no telling what they did to the boy, but he signed the "confession." Its most incriminating statement must have contained too much truth for the prosecution. It was never used in court. When interviewed by Frank Walklin of the Seattle Union Record the loggers told the story in their own way: "I have heard tales of cruelty," said James McInerney, "but I believe what we boys went through on those nights can never be equaled. I thought it was my last night on earth and had reconciled myself to an early death of some kind, perhaps hanging. I was taken out once by the mob, and a rope was placed around my neck and thrown over a cross-bar or something. "I waited for them to pull the rope. But they didn't. I heard voices in the mob say, 'That's not him,' and then I was put back into the jail." John Hill Lamb, another defendant, related how several times a gun was poked through his cell window by some one who was aching to get a pot shot at him. Being ever watchful he hid under his bunk and close to the wall where the would-be murderer could not see him. Britt Smith and Roy Becker told with bated breath about Everest as he lay half-dead in the corridor, in plain sight of the prisoners in the cells on both sides. The lights went out and Everest, unconscious and dying, was taken out. The men inside could hear the shouts of the mob diminishing as Everest was hurried to the Chehalis River bridge. [Illustration: Bert Bland Logger. American. (Brother of O.C. Bland.) One of the men who fired from Seminary Hill. Bland has worked all his life in the woods. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World during the great strike of 1917. Bert Bland took to the hills after the shooting and was captured a week later during the man hunt.] None of the prisoners was permitted to sleep that night; the fear of death was kept upon them constantly, the voices outside the cell windows telling of more lynchings to come. "Every time I heard a footstep or the clanking of keys," said Britt Smith, "I thought the mob was coming after more of us. I didn't sleep, couldn't sleep; all I could do was strain my ears for the mob I felt sure was coming." Ray Becker, listening at Britt's side, said: "Yes, that was one hell of a night." And the strain of that night seems to linger in their faces; probably it always will remain--the expression of a memory that can never be blotted out. When asked if they felt safer when the soldiers arrived to guard the Centralia jail, there was a long pause, and finally the answer was "Yes." "But you must remember," offered one, "that they took 'em out at Tulsa from a supposedly guarded jail; and we couldn't know from where we were what was going on outside." "For ten days we had no blankets," said Mike Sheehan. "It was cold weather, and we had to sleep uncovered on concrete floors. In those ten days I had no more than three hours sleep." "The mob and those who came after the mob wouldn't let us sleep. They would come outside our windows and hurl curses at us, and tell each of us it would be our turn next. They brought in Wesley Everest and laid him on the corridor floor; he was bleeding from his ears and mouth and nose, was curled in a heap and groaning. And men outside and inside kept up the din. I tried to sleep; I was nearly mad; my temples kept pounding like sledge-hammers. I don't know how a man can go through all that and live--but we did." All through the night the prisoners could hear the voices of the mob under their cell windows. "Well, we fixed that guy Everest all right," some one would say. "Now we'll get Roberts." Then the lights would snap off, there would be a shuffling, curses, a groan and the clanking of a steel door. All the while they were being urged to "come clean" with a statement that would clear the lumber trust of the crime and throw the blame onto its victims. McInerney's neck was scraped raw by the rope of the mob but he repeatedly told them to "go to hell!" Morgan, the stool-pigeon, escaped the torture by immediate acquiescence. Someone has since paid his fare To parts unknown. His "statement" didn't damage the defense. [Illustration: Ray Becker Logger, American born. Twenty-five years of age. Studied four years for the ministry before going to work in the woods. His father and brother are both preachers. Becker joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917 and has always been a strong believer in the cause of the solidarity of Labor. He has the zeal of a prophet and the courage of a lion. Defended himself inside the hall with an Ivor Johnson, 38, until his ammunition was exhausted. He surrendered to the authorities--not the mob.] The Human Fiend But with the young logger who had been taken out into the night things were different. Wesley Everest was thrown, half unconscious, into the bottom of an automobile. The hands of the men who had dragged him there were sticky and red. Their pant legs were sodden from rubbing against the crumpled figure at their feet. Through the dark streets sped the three machines. The smooth asphalt became a rough road as the suburbs were reached. Then came a stretch of open country, with the Chehalis river bridge only a short distance ahead. The cars lurched over the uneven road with increasing speed, their headlights playing on each other or on the darkened highway. Wesley Everest stirred uneasily. Raising himself slowly on one elbow he swung weakly with his free arm, striking one of his tormentors full in the face. The other occupants immediately seized him and bound his hands and feet with rope. It must have been the glancing blow from the fist of the logger that gave one of the gentlemen his fiendish inspiration. Reaching in his pocket he produced a razor. For a moment he fumbled over the now limp figure in the bottom of the car. His companions looked on with stolid acquiescence. Suddenly there was a piercing scream of pain. The figure gave a convulsive shudder of agony. After a moment Wesley Everest said in a weak voice: "For Christ's sake, men; shoot me--don't let me suffer like this." On the way back to Centralia, after the parade rope had done Its deadly work, the gentlemen of the razor alighted from the car in front of a certain little building. He asked leave to wash his hands. They were as red as a butcher's. Great clots of blood were adhering to his sleeves. "That's about the nastiest job I ever had to do," was his casual remark as he washed himself in the cool clear water of the Washington hills. The name of this man is known to nearly everybody in Centralia. He is still at large. The headlight of the foremost car was now playing on the slender steel framework of the Chehalis river bridge. This machine crossed over and stopped, the second one reached the middle of the bridge and stopped while the third came to a halt when it had barely touched the plankwork on the near side. The well-dressed occupants of the first and last cars alighted and proceeded at once to patrol both approaches to the bridge. Lynching--An American Institution Wesley Everest was dragged out of the middle machine. A rope was attached to a girder with the other end tied in a noose around his neck. His almost lifeless body was hauled to the side of the bridge. The headlights of two of the machines threw a white light over the horrible scene. Just as the lynchers let go of their victim the fingers of the half dead logger clung convulsively to the planking of the bridge. A business man stamped on them with a curse until the grip was broken. There was a swishing sound; then a sudden crunching jerk and the rope tied to the girder began to writhe and twist like a live thing. This lasted but a short time. The lynchers peered over the railing into the darkness. Then they slowly pulled up the dead body, attached a longer rope and repeated the performance. This did not seem to suit them either, so they again dragged the corpse through the railings and tied a still longer rope around the horribly broken neck of the dead logger. The business men were evidently enjoying their work, and besides, the more rope the more souvenirs for their friends, who would prize them highly. This time the knot was tied by a young sailor. He knew how to tie a good knot and was proud of the fact. He boasted of the stunt afterwards to a man he thought as beastly as himself. In all probability he never dreamed he was talking for publication. But he was. The rope had now been lengthened to about fifteen feet. The broken and gory body was kicked through the railing for the last time. The knot on the girder did not move any more. Then the lynchers returned to their luxurious cars and procured their rifles. A headlight flashed the dangling figure into ghastly relief. It was riddled with volley after volley. The man who fired the first shot boasted of the deed afterwards to a brother lodge member. He didn't know he was talking for publication either. On the following morning the corpse was cut down by an unknown hand. It drifted away with the current. A few hours later Frank Christianson, a tool of the lumber trust from the Attorney General's office, arrived in Centralia. "We've got to get that body," this worthy official declared, "or the wobs will find it and raise hell over its condition." The corpse was located after a search. It was not buried, however, but carted back to the city jail, there to be used as a terrible object lesson for the benefit of the incarcerated union men. The unrecognizable form was placed in a cell between two of the loggers who had loved the lynched boy as a comrade and a friend. Something must be done to make the union men admit that they, and not the lumber interests, had conspired to commit murder. This was the final act of ruthlessness. It was fruitful in results. One "confession," one Judas and one shattered mind were the result of their last deed of fiendish terrorism. [Illustration: The Burial of the Mob's Victim No undertaker would handle Everest's body. The autopsy was performed by a man from Portland, who hung the body up by the heels and played a hose on it. The men lowering the plank casket into the grave are Union loggers who had been caught in the police drag net and taken from jail for this purpose.] No undertaker could be found to bury Everest's body, so after two days it was dropped into a hole in the ground by four union loggers who had been arrested on suspicion and were released from jail for this purpose. The "burial" is supposed to have taken place in the new cemetery; the body being carried thither in an auto truck. The union loggers who really dug the grave declare, however, that the interment took place at a desolate spot "somewhere along a railroad track." Another body was seen, covered with ashes in a cart, being taken away for burial on the morning of the twelfth. There are persistent rumors that more than one man was lynched on the eve of Armistice day. A guard of heavily armed soldiers had charge of the funeral. The grave has since been obliterated. Rumor has it that the body has since been removed to Camp Lewis. No one seems to know why or when. "As Comical as a Corner" An informal inquest was held in the city jail. A man from Portland performed the autopsy, that is, he hung the body up by the heels and played a water hose on it. Everest was reported by the corner's jury to have met his death at the hands of parties unknown. It was here that Dr. Bickford let slip the statement about the hall being raided before the shooting started. This was the first inkling of truth to reach the public. Coroner Livingstone, in a jocular mood, reported the inquest to a meeting of gentlemen at the Elks' Club. In explaining the death of the union logger, Dr. Livingstone stated that Wesley Everest had broken out of jail, gone to the Chehalis river bridge and jumped off with a rope around his neck. Finding the rope too short he climbed back and fastened on a longer one; jumped off again, broke his neck and then shot himself full of holes. Livingstone's audience, appreciative of his tact and levity, laughed long and hearty. Business men still chuckle over the joke in Centralia. "As funny as a funeral" is no longer the stock saying in this humorous little town; "as comical as a coroner" is now the approved form. The Man-Hunt Acting on the theory that "a strong offensive is the best defense," the terrorists took immediate steps to conceal all traces of their crime and to shift the blame onto the shoulders of their victims. The capitalist press did yeoman service in this cause by deluging the nation with a veritable avalanche of lies. For days the district around Centralia and the city itself were at the mercy of a mob. The homes of all workers suspected of being sympathetic to Labor were spied upon or surrounded and entered without warrant. Doors were battered down at times, and women and children abused and insulted. Heavily armed posses were sent out in all directions in search of "reds." All roads were patrolled by armed business men in automobiles. A strict mail and wire censorship was established. It was the open season for "wobblies" and intimidation was the order of the day. The White Terror was supreme. An Associated Press reporter was compelled to leave town hastily without bag or baggage because he inadvertently published Dr. Bickford's indiscreet remark about the starting of the trouble. Men and women did not dare to think, much less think aloud. Some of them in the district are still that way. To Eugene Barnett's little home came a posse armed to the teeth. They asked for Barnett and were told by his young wife that he had gone up the hill with his rifle. Placing a bayonet to her breast they demanded entrance. The brave little woman refused to admit them until they had shown a warrant. Barnett surrendered when he had made sure he was to be arrested and not mobbed. O.C. Bland, Bert Bland, John Lamb and Loren Roberts were also apprehended in due time. Two loggers, John Doe Davis and Ole Hanson, who were said to have also fired on the mob, have not yet been arrested. A vigorous search is still being made for them in all parts of the country. It is believed by many that one of these men was lynched like Everest on the night of November 11th. [Illustration: Court House at Montesano--And a Little "Atmosphere" The trial was held on the third floor of the building as you look at the picture. The soldiers were sent for over the head of the judge by one of the lumber trust attorneys of the prosecution. Their only purpose was to create the proper "atmosphere" for an unjust conviction.] Hypocrisy and Terror The reign of terror was extended to cover the entire West coast. Over a thousand men and women were arrested in the state of Washington alone. Union halls were closed and kept that way. Labor papers were suppressed and many men have been given sentences of from one to fourteen years for having in their possession copies of periodicals which contained little else but the truth about the Centralia tragedy. The Seattle Union Record was temporarily closed down and its stock confiscated for daring to hint that there were two sides to the story. During all this time the capitalist press was given full rein to spread its infamous poison. The general public, denied the true version of the affair, was shuddering over its morning coffee at the thought of I.W.W. desperadoes shooting down unoffending paraders from ambush. But the lumber interests were chortling with glee and winking a suggestive eye at their high priced lawyers who were making ready for the prosecution. Jurymen were shortly to be drawn and things were "sitting pretty," as they say in poker. Adding a characteristic touch to the rotten hypocrisy of the situation came a letter from Supreme Court Judge McIntosh to George Dysart, whose son was in command of a posse during the manhunt. This remarkable document is as follows: Kenneth Mackintosh, Judge The Supreme Court, State of Washington Olympia. George Dysart, Esq., Centralia, Wash. My Dear Dysart: November 13, 1919. I want to express to you my appreciation of the high character of citizenship displayed by the people of Centralia in their agonizing calamity. We are all shocked by the manifestation of barbarity on the part of the outlaws, and are depressed by the loss of lives of brave men, but at the same time are proud of the calm control and loyalty to American ideals demonstrated by the returned soldiers and citizens. I am proud to be an inhabitant of a state which contains a city with the record which has been made for Centralia by its law-abiding citizens. Sincerely, (Signed) Kenneth MacKintosh. "Patriotic" Union Smashing Not to be outdone by this brazen example of judicial perversion, Attorney General Thompson, after a secret conference of prosecuting attorneys, issued a circular of advice to county prosecutors. In this document the suggestion was made that officers and members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Washington be arrested by the wholesale under the "criminal syndicalism" law and brought to trial simultaneously so that they might not be able to secure legal defense. The astounding recommendation was also made that, owing to the fact that juries had been "reluctant to convict," prosecutors and the Bar Association should co-operate in examining jury panels so that "none but courageous and patriotic Americans" secure places on the juries. This effectual if somewhat arbitrary plan was put into operation at once. Since the tragedy at Centralia dozens of union workers have been convicted by "courageous and patriotic" juries and sentenced to serve from one to fourteen years in the state penitentiary. Hundreds more are awaiting trial. The verdict at Montesano is now known to everyone. Truly the lives of the four Legion boys which were sacrificed by the lumber interests in furtherance of their own murderous designs, were well expended. The investment was a profitable one and the results are no doubt highly gratifying. But just the same the despicable plot of the Attorney General is an obvious effort to defeat the purpose of the courts and obtain unjust convictions by means of what is termed "jury fixing." There may be honor among thieves but there is plainly none among the public servants they have working for them! [Illustration: Mike Sheenan Born in Ireland. 64 years old. Has been a union man for over fifty years, having joined his grandfather's union when he was only eight. Has been through many strikes and has been repeatedly black-hated, beaten and even exiled. He was a stoker in the Navy during the Spanish War. Mike Sheehan was arrested in the Union hall, went through the horrible experience in the city jail and was found "not guilty" by the jury. Like Elmer Smith, he was re-arrested on another similar charge and thrown back in jail.] The only sane note sounded during these dark days, outside of the startling statement of Dr. Bickford, came from Montana. Edward Bassett, commander of the Butte Post of the American Legion and an over-seas veteran, issued a statement to the labor press that was truly remarkable: "The I.W.W. in Centralia, Wash., who fired upon the men that were attempting to raid the I.W.W. headquarters, were fully justified in their act. "Mob rule in this country must be stopped, and when mobs attack the home of a millionaire, of a laborer, or of the I.W.W., it is not only the right but the duty of the occupants to resist with every means in their power. If the officers of the law can not stop these raids, perhaps the resistance of the raided may have that effect. "Whether the I.W.W. is a meritorious organization or not, whether it is unpopular or otherwise, should have absolutely nothing to do with the case. The reports of the evidence at the coroner's jury show that the attack was made before the firing started. If that is true, I commend the boys inside for the action that they took. "The fact that there were some American Legion men among the paraders who everlastingly disgraced themselves by taking part in the raid, does not affect my judgment in the least. Any one who becomes a party to a mob bent upon unlawful violence, cannot expect the truly patriotic men of the American Legion to condone his act." Vanderveer's Opening Speech Defense Attorney George Vanderveer hurried across the continent from Chicago to take up the legal battle for the eleven men who had been arrested and charged with the murder of Warren O. Grimm. The lumber interests had already selected six of their most trustworthy tools as prosecutors. It is not the purpose of the present writer to give a detailed story of this "trial"--possibly one of the greatest travesties on justice ever staged. This incident was a very important part of the Centralia conspiracy but a hasty sketch, such as might be portrayed in these pages, would be an inadequate presentation at best. It might be well, therefore, to permit Mr. Vanderveer to tell of the case as he told it to the jury in his opening and closing arguments. Details of the trial itself can be found in other booklets by more capable authors. Vanderveer's opening address appears in part below: May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury:--As you have already sensed from our examination of you and from a question which I propounded to counsel at the close of his statement yesterday, the big question in this case is, who was the aggressor, who started the battle? Was it on the one side a deliberately planned murderous attack upon innocent marchers, or was it on the other side a deliberately planned wicked attack upon the I.W.W., which they merely resisted? That, I say, is the issue. I asked counsel what his position would be in order that you might know it, and that he said was his position, that he would stand and fall and be judged by it, and I say to you now that is our position, and we will stand or fall and be judged by that issue. In order that you may properly understand this situation, and the things that led up to it, the motives underlying it, the manner in which it was planned and executed, I want to go just a little way back of the occurrence on November 11th, and state to you in rough outline the situation that existed in Centralia, the objects that were involved in this case, the things each are trying to accomplish and the way each went about it. There has been some effort on the part of the state to make it appear it is not an I.W.W. trial. I felt throughout that the I.W.W. issue must come into this case, and now that they have made their opening statement, I say unreservedly it is here in this case, not because we want to drag it in here, but because it can't be left out. To conceal from you gentlemen that it is an I.W.W. issue would be merely to conceal the truth from you and we, on our part, don't want to do that now or at any time hereafter. The I.W.W. is at the bottom of this. Not as an aggressor, however. It is a labor organization, organized in Chicago in 1905, and it is because of the philosophy for which it stands and because of certain tactics which it evolves that this thing arose. [Illustration: James McInerney Logger. Born in County Claire, Ireland. Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1916. Was wounded on the steamer "Verona" when the lumber trust tried to exterminate the union lumberworkers with bullets at Everett, Washington. McInerney was one of those trapped in the hall. He surrendered to officers of the law. While in the city jail his neck was worn raw with a hangman's rope in an effort to make him "confess" that the loggers and not the mob had started the trouble. McInerney told them to "go to hell." He is Irish and an I.W.W. and proud of being both.] A Labor Movement on Trial The I.W.W. is the representative in this country of the labor movement of the rest of the world It is the representative in the United States of the idea that capitalism is wrong: that no man has a right, moral or otherwise, to exploit his fellow men, the idea that our industrial efforts should be conducted not for the profits of any individual but should be conducted for social service, for social welfare. So the I.W.W. says first, that the wage system is wrong and that it means to abolish that wage system. It says that it intends to do this, not by political action, not by balloting, but by organization on the industrial or economical field, precisely as employers, precisely as capital is organized on the basis of the industry, not on the basis of the tool. The I.W.W. says industrial evolution has progressed to that point there the tool no longer enforces craftsmanship. In the place of a half dozen or dozen who were employed, each a skilled artisan, employed to do the work, you have a machine process to do that work and it resulted in the organization of the industry on an industrial basis. You have the oil industry, controlled by the Standard Oil; you have the lumber industry, controlled by the Lumbermen's Association of the South and West, and you have the steel and copper industry, all organized on an industrial basis resulting in a fusing, or corporation, or trust of a lot of former owners. Now the I.W.W. say if they are to compete with our employers, we must compete with our employers as an organization, and as they are organized so we must protect our organization, as they protect themselves. And so they propose to organize into industrial unions; the steel workers and the coal miners, and the transportation workers each into its own industrial unit. This plan of organization is extremely distasteful to the employers because it is efficient; because it means a new order, a new system in the labor world in this country. The meaning of this can be gathered, in some measure, from the recent experiences in the steel strike of this country, where they acted as an industrial unit; from the recent experiences in the coal mining industry, where they acted as an industrial unit. Instead of having two or three dozen other crafts, each working separately, they acted as an industrial unit. When the strike occurred it paralyzed industry and forced concessions to the demands of the workers. That is the first thing the I.W.W. stands for and in some measure and in part explains the attitude capital has taken all over the country towards it. In the next place it says that labor should organize on the basis of some fundamental principle; and labor should organize for something more than a mere bartering and dickering for fifty cents a day or for some shorter time, something of that sort. It says that the system is fundamentally wrong and must be fundamentally changed before you can look for some improvement. Its philosophy is based upon government statistics which show that in a few years in this country our important industries have crept into more than two-thirds of our entire wealth. Seventy-five per cent of the workers in the basic industry are unable to send their children to school. Seventy-one per cent of the heads of the families in our basic industries are unable to provide a decent living for their families without the assistance of the other members. Twenty-nine per cent of our laborers are able to live up to the myth that he is the head of the family. The results of these evils are manifold. Our people are not being raised in decent vicinities. They are not being raised and educated. Their health is not being cared for; their morals are not being cared for. I will show you that in certain of our industries where the wages are low and the hours are long, that the children of the working people die at the rate of 300 to 350 per thousand inhabitants under the age of one year because of their undernourishment, lack of proper housing and lack of proper medical attention and because the mothers of these children before they are born and when the children are being carried in the mother's womb that they are compelled to go into the industries and work and work and work, and before the child can receive proper nourishment the mother is compelled to go back into the industry and work again. The I.W.W.'s say there must be a fundamental change and that fundamental change must be in the line of reorganization of industry, for public service, so that the purpose shall be that we will work to live and not merely live to work. Work for service rather than work for profit. [Illustration: James McInerney (After he had undergone the "Third degree".) McInerney had a rope around his neck nearly all night before this picture was taken. One end of the rope had been pulled taut over a beam by his tormentors. McInerney had told them to "go to hell." "It's no use trying to get anything out of a man like that," was the final decision of the inquisitors.] To Kill an Ideal... Some time in September, counsel told you, the I.W.W., holding these beliefs, opened a hall in Centralia. Back of that hall was a living room, where Britt Smith lived, kept his clothes and belongings and made his home. From then on the I.W.W. conducted a regular propaganda meeting every Saturday night. These propaganda meetings were given over to a discussion of these industrial problems and beliefs. From that district there were dispatched into nearby lumber camps and wherever there were working people to whom to carry this message--there were dispatched organizers who went out, made the talks in the camps briefly and sought to organize them into this union, at least to teach them the philosophy of this labor movement. Because that propaganda is fatal to those who live by other people's work, who live by the profits they wring from labor, it excited intense opposition on the part of employers and business people of Centralia and about the time this hall was opened we will show you that people from Seattle, where they maintain their headquarters for these labor fights, came into Centralia and held meetings. I don't know what they call this new thing they were seeking to organize--it is in fact a branch of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of the United States, a national organization whose sole purpose is to fight and crush and beat labor. It was in no sense a local movement because it started in Seattle and it was organized by people from Seattle, and the purpose was to organize in Centralia an organization of business men to combat this new labor philosophy. Whether in the mouths of the I.W.W., or Nonpartisan League, or the Socialists, it did not make any difference; to brand anybody as a traitor, un-American, who sought to tell the truth about our industrial conditions. The Two Raids In the fall of 1918, the I.W.W. had a hall two blocks and a half from this hall, at the corner of First and B streets. There was a Red Cross parade, and that hall was wrecked, just as was this hall. These profiteering gentlemen never overlook an opportunity to capitalize on a patriotic event, and so they capitalized the Red Cross parade that day just as they capitalized the Armistice Day parade on November 11, and in exactly the same way as on November 11. And that day, when the tail-end of the parade of the Red Cross passed the main avenue, it broke off and went a block out of its way and attacked the I.W.W. hall, a good two-story building. And they broke it into splinters. The furniture, records, the literature that belongs to these boys, everything was taken out into the street and burned. [Illustration: O. C. Bland Logger. American. Resident of Centralia for a number of years. Has worked in woods and mills practically all his life. Has a wife and seven children. Bland was in the Arnold hotel at the time of the raid. He was armed but had cut his hand on broken glass before he had a chance to shoot. Since his arrest and conviction his family has undergone severe hardships. The defense is making an effort to raise enough funds to keep the helpless wives and children of the convicted men in the comforts of life.] Now, what was contemplated on Armistice Day? The I.W.W. did as you would do; it judged from experience. Patience No Longer a Virtue When the paraders smashed the door in, the I.W.W.'s, as every lover of free speech and every respecter of his person--they had appealed to the citizens, they had appealed to the officers, and some of their members had been tarred and feathered, beaten up and hung--they said in thought: "Patience has ceased to be a virtue." And if the law will not protect us, and the people won't protect us, we will protect ourselves. And they did. And in deciding this case, I want each of you, members of the jury, to ask yourself what would you have done? There had been discussions of this character in the I.W.W. hall, and so have there been discussions everywhere. There had never been a plot laid to murder anybody, nor to shoot anybody in any parade. I want you to ask yourself: "Why would anybody want to shoot anybody in a parade," and to particularly ask yourself why anyone would want to shoot upon soldiers? He who was a soldier himself, Wesley Everest, the man who did most of the shooting, and the man whom they beat until he was unconscious and whom they grabbed from the street and put a rope around his neck, the man whom they nearly shot to pieces, and the man whom they hung, once dropping him ten feet, and when what didn't kill him lengthened the rope to 15 feet and dropped him again--why would one soldier want to kill another soldier, or soldiers, who had never done him nor his fellows any harm? I exonerate the American Legion as an organization of the responsibility of this. For I say they didn't know about it. The day will come when they will realize that they have been mere catspaws in the hands of the Centralia commercial interests. That is the story. I don't know what the verdict will be today, but the verdict ten years hence will be the verdict in the Lovejoy case; that these men were within their rights and that they fought for a cause, that these men fought for liberty. They fought for these things for which we stand and for which all true lovers of liberty stand, and those who smashed them up are the real enemies of our country. This is a big case, counsel says, the biggest case that has ever been tried in this country, but the biggest thing about these big things is from beginning to end it has been a struggle on the one side for ideals and on the other side to suppress those ideals. This thing was started with Hubbard at its head. It is being started today with Hubbard at its head in this courtroom, and I don't believe you will fall for it. Vanderveer's Closing Argument There are only two real issues in this case. One is the question: Who was the aggressor in the Armistice Day affray? The other is: Was Eugene Barnett in the Avalon hotel window when that affray occurred? We have proven by unimpeachable witnesses that there was a raid on the I.W.W. hall in Centralia on November 11--a raid, in which the business interests of the city used members of the American Legion as catspaws. We have shown that Warren O. Grimm, for the killing of whom these defendants are on trial, actually took park in that raid, and was in the very doorway of the hall when the attack was made, despite the attempts of the prosecution to place Grimm 100 feet away when he was shot. We have proven a complete alibi for Eugene Barnett through unshaken and undisputable witnesses. He was not in the Avalon hotel during the riot; he was in the Roderick hotel lobby; he had no gun and he took no part in the shooting. In my opening statement, I said I would stand or fall on the issue of: Who was the aggressor on Armistice Day? I have stood by that promise, and stand by it now. Mr. Abel, specially hired prosecutor in this trial, made the same promise. So did Herman Allen, the official Lewis county prosecutor, who has been so ingloriously shoved aside by Mr. Abel and his colleague, Mr. Cunningham, ever since the beginning here. But a few days ago, when the defense was piling up evidence showing that there was a raid on the I.W.W. hall by the paraders, Mr. Abel backed down. Why Were the Shots Fired? I was careful in the beginning to put him on record on that point; all along I knew that he and Mr. Allen would back down on the issue of who was the aggressor; they could not uphold their contention that the Armistice Day paraders were fired upon in cold blood while engaged in lawful and peaceful action. What possible motive could these boys have had for firing upon innocent marching soldiers? It is true that the marchers were fired upon; that shots were fired by some of these defendants; but why were the shots fired? [Illustration: John Lamb Logger. American. Joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917. Lamb was in the Arnold Hotel with O.C. Bland during the raid on the hall. Neither of them did any shooting. John Lamb has lived for years in Centralia. He is married and has five children who are left dependent since the conviction.] There is only one reason why--they were defending their own legal property against unlawful invasion and attack; they were defending the dwelling place of Britt Smith, their secretary. And they had full right to defend their lives and that property and that home against violence or destruction; they had a right to use force, if necessary, to effect that defense. The law gives them that right; and it accrues to them also from all of the wells of elementary justice. The law says that when a man or group of men have reason to fear attack from superior numbers, they may provide whatever protection they may deem necessary to repel such an attack. And it says also that if a man who is in bad company when such an attack is made happens to be killed by the defenders, those defenders are not to be considered guilty of that man's death. So they had the troops come, to blow bugles and drill in the streets where the jury could see; their power, however wielded, was great enough to cause Governor Hart to send the soldiers here without consulting the trial judge or the sheriff, whose function it was to preserve law and order here--and you know, I am sure, that law and order were adequately preserved here before the troops came. "Fearful of the Truth" They tried the moth-eaten device of arresting our witnesses for alleged perjury, hoping to discredit those witnesses thus in your eyes because they knew they couldn't discredit them in any regular nor legitimate way. Fearful of the truth, the guilty ones at Centralia deliberately framed up evidence to save themselves from blame--to throw the responsibility for the Armistice Day horror onto other men. But they bungled the frame-up badly. No bolder nor cruder fabrication has ever been attempted than the ridiculous effort to fasten the killing of Warren Grimm upon Eugene Barnett. [Illustration: Court Room in which the Farcical "Trial" Took Place This garish room in the court house at Montesano was the scene of the attempted "judicial murder" that followed the lynching. The judge always entered his chambers through the door under the word "Transgression": the jury always left through the door over which "Instruction" appears. In this room the lumber trust attorneys attempted to build a gallows of perjured testimony on which to break the necks of innocent men.] These conspirators were clumsy enough in their planning to drive the I.W.W. out of town; their intent was to stampede the marching soldiers into raiding the I.W.W. hall. But how much more clumsy was the frame-up afterward--the elaborate fixing of many witnesses to make it appear that Grimm was shot at Tower avenue and Second street when he actually was shot in front of the hall; and to make it appear that Ben Casagranda and Earl Watts were shot around the corner on Second street, when they were actually shot on Tower avenue, close to the front of the hall. These conspirators were clumsy enough in their planning to drive the I.W.W. out of town; their intent was to stampede the marching soldiers into raiding the I.W.W. hall. But how much more clumsy was the frame-up afterward--the elaborate fixing of many witnesses to make it appear that Grimm was shot at Tower avenue and Second street when he actually was shot in front of the hall; and to make it appear that Ben Casagranda and Earl Watts were shot around the corner on Second street, when they were actually shot on Tower avenue, close to the front of the hall. Then, you will remember, I compelled Elsie Hornbeck to admit that she had been shown photographs of Barnett by the prosecution. She would not have told this fact, had I not trapped her into admitting it; that was obvious to everybody in this courtroom that day. You have heard the gentlemen of the prosecution assert that this is a murder trial, and not a labor trial. But they have been careful to ask all our witnesses whether they were I.W.W. members, whether they belonged to any labor union, and whether they were sympathetic towards workers on trial for their lives. And when the answer to any of these questions was yes, they tried to brand the witness as one not worthy of belief. Their policy and thus browbeating working people who were called as witnesses is in keeping with the tactics of the mob during the days when it held Centralia in its grasp. You know, even if the detailed story has been barred from the record, of the part F.R. Hubbard, lumber baron, played in this horror at Centralia. You have heard from various witnesses that the lumber mill owned by Hubbard's corporation, the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, is a notorious non-union concern. And you have heard it said that W.A. Abel, the special prosecutor here, has been an ardent and active labor-baiter for years. Hubbard wanted to drive the I.W.W. out of Centralia. Why did he want to drive them out? He said they were a menace. And it is true that they were a menace, and are a menace--to those who exploit the workers who produce the wealth for the few to enjoy. Why Were Ropes Carried? Was there a raid on the hall before the shooting? Dr. Frank Bickford, a reputable physician, appeared here and repeated under oath what he had sworn to at the coroner's inquest--that when the parade stopped, he offered to lead a raid on the hall if enough would follow,--but that others pushed ahead of him, forced open the door, and then the shots came from inside. And why did the Rev. H.W. Thompson have a rope? Thompson believes in hanging men by the neck until they are dead. When the state Employers' Association and others wanted the hanging law in Washington revived not long ago, the Reverend Thompson lectured in many cities and towns in behalf of that law. And he has since lectured widely against the I.W.W. Did he carry a rope in the parade because he owned a cow and a calf? Or what? Why did the prosecution need so many attorneys here, if it had the facts straight? Why were scores of American Legion members imported here to sit at the trial at a wage of $4 per day and expenses? They have told you this was a murder trial, and not a labor trial. But vastly more than the lives of ten men are the stakes in the big gamble here; for the right of workers to organize for the bettering of their own condition is on trial; the right of free assemblage is on trial; democracy and Americanism are on trial. In our opening statement, we promised to prove various facts; and we have proven them, in the main; if there are any contentions about which the evidence remains vague, this circumstance exists only because His Honor has seen fit to rule out certain testimony which is vital to the case, and we believed, and still believe, was entirely material and properly admissible. But is there any doubt in your minds that there was a conspiracy to raid the I.W.W. hall, and to run the Industrial Workers of the World out of town? Even if the court will not allow you to read the handbill issued by the I.W.W., asking protection from the citizens of Centralia have you any doubt that the I.W.W. had reason to fear an attack from Warren Grimm and his fellow marchers? And have you any doubt that there was a raid on the hall? When I came into this case I knew that we were up against tremendous odds. Terror was loose in Centralia; prejudice and hatred against the I.W.W. was being systematically and sweepingly spread in Grays Harbor county and throughout the whole Northwest; and intimidation or influence of some sort was being employed against every possible witness and talesman. [Illustration: George Vanderveer This man single handed opposed six high priced lumber trust prosecutors in the famous trial at Montesano. Vanderveer is a man of wide experience and deep social vision. He was at one time prosecuting attorney for King County, Washington. The lumber trust has made countless threats to "get him." "A lawyer with a heart is as dangerous as a workingman with brains."] Not only were unlimited money and other resources of the Lewis County commercial interests banded against us, but practically all the attorneys up and down the Pacific coast had pledged themselves not to defend any I.W.W., no matter how great nor how small the charge he faced. Our investigators were arrested without warrant; solicitors for our defense fund met with the same fate. And when the trial date approached, the judge before whom this case is being heard admitted that a fair trial could not be had here, because of the surging prejudice existent in this community. Then, five days later, the court announced that the law would not permit a second change of venue, and that the trial must go ahead in Montesano. In the face of these things, and in the face of all the atmosphere of violence and bloodthirstiness which the prosecution has sought to throw around these defendants, I am placing our case in your hands; I am intrusting to you gentlemen to decide upon the fate of ten human beings--whether they shall live or die or be shut away from their fellows for months or years. But I am asking you much more than that--I am asking you to decide the fate of organized labor in the Northwest; whether its fundamental rights are to survive or be trampled underfoot. The Lumber Trust Wins the Jury On Saturday evening, March 13th, the jury brought in its final verdict of guilty. In the face of the very evident ability of the lumber interests, to satisfy its vengeance at will, any other verdict would have been suicidal--for the jury. The prosecution was out for blood and nothing less than blood. Day by day they had built the structure of gallows right there in the courtroom. They built a scaffolding on which to hang ten loggers--built it of lies and threats and perjury. Dozens of witnesses from the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion took the stand to braid a hangman's rope of untruthful testimony. Some of these were members of the mob; on their white hands the blood of Wesley Everest was hardly dry. And they were not satisfied with sending their victims to prison for terms of from 25 to 40 years, they wanted the pleasure of seeing their necks broken. But they failed. Two verdicts were returned; his honor refused to accept the first; no intelligent man can accept the second. Here is the way the two verdicts compare with each other: Elmer Smith and Mike Sheehan were declared not guilty and Loren Roberts insane, in both the first and second verdicts. Britt Smith, O.C. Bland, James McInerney, Bert Bland and Ray Becker were found guilty of murder in the second degree in both instances, but Eugene Barnett and John Lamb were at first declared guilty of manslaughter, or murder "in the third degree" in the jury's first findings, and guilty of second degree murder in the second. The significant point is that the state made its strongest argument against the four men whom the jury practically exonerated of the charge of conspiring to murder. More significant is the fact that the whole verdict completely upsets the charge of conspiracy to murder under which the men were tried. The difference between first and second degree murder is that the former, first degree, implies premeditation while the other, second degree, means murder that is not premeditated. Now, how in the world can men be found guilty of conspiring to murder without previous premeditation? The verdict, brutal and stupid as it is, shows the weakness and falsity of the state's charge more eloquently than anything the defense has ever said about it. But Labor Says, "Not Guilty!" But another jury had been watching the trial. Their verdict came as a surprise to those who had read the newspaper version of the case. No sooner had the twelve bewildered and frightened men in the jury box paid tribute to the power of the Lumber Trust with a ludicrous and tragic verdict than the six workingmen of the Labor Jury returned their verdict also. Those six men represented as many labor organizations in the Pacific Northwest with a combined membership of many thousands of wage earners. The last echoes of the prolonged legal battle had hardly died away when these six men sojourned to Tacoma to ballot, deliberate and to reach their decision about the disputed facts of the case. At the very moment when the trust-controlled newspapers, frantic with disappointment, were again raising the blood-cry of their pack, the frank and positive statement of these six workers came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky,--"Not Guilty!" The Labor Jury had studied the development of the case with earnest attention from the beginning. Day by day they had watched with increasing astonishment the efforts of the defense to present, and of the prosecution and the judge to exclude, from the consideration of the trial jury, the things everybody knew to be true about the tragedy at Centralia. Day by day the sordid drama had been unfolded before their eyes. Day by day the conviction had grown upon them that the loggers on trial for their lives were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were convinced in their hearts and minds that the loggers on trial were innocent. And they would have been just as honest and just as fearless had their convictions been otherwise. It cannot be said that the Labor Jury was biased in favor of the defendants or of the I.W.W. If anything, they were predisposed to believe the defendants guilty and their union an outlaw organization. It must be remembered that all the labor jury knew of the case was what it had read in the capitalist newspapers prior to their arrival at the scene of the trial. These men were not radicals but representative working men--members of conservative unions--who had been instructed by their organizations to observe impartially the progress of the trial and to report back to their unions the result of their observations. Read their report: Labor's Verdict Labor Temple, Tacoma, March 15, 1920, 1:40 p.m. The Labor Jury met in the rooms of the Labor Temple and organized, electing P. K. Mohr as foreman. Present: J.A. Craft, W.J. Beard, Otto Newman, Theodore Mayer, E.W. Thrall and P.K. Mohr. 1. On motion a secret ballot of guilty or not guilty was taken, the count resulting in a unanimous "Not Guilty!" 2. Shall we give our report to the press? Verdict, "Yes." [Illustration: Labor's Silent Jury W.J. Beard, Central Labor Council, Tacoma: Paul K. Mohr, Central Labor Council, Seattle: Theodore Meyer, Central Labor Council, Everett: E.W. Thrall, Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia: John A. Craft, Metal Trades Council, Seattle.] 3. Was there a conspiracy to raid the I.W.W. hall on the part of the business interests of Centralia? Verdict, "Yes." There was evidence offered by the defense to show that the business interests held a meeting at the Elk's Club on October 20, 1919, at which ways and means to deal with the I.W.W. situation were discussed. F.B. Hubbard, Chief of Police Hughes and William Scales, commander of the American Legion at Centralia, were present. Prosecuting Attorney Allen was quoted as having said, "There is no law that would let you run the I.W.W. out of town." Chief of Police Hughes said, "You cannot run the I.W.W. out of town; they have violated no law." F.G. Hubbard said, "It's a damn shame; if I was chief I would have them out of town in 24 hours." William Scales, presiding at the meeting, said that although he was not in favor of a raid, there was no American jury that would convict them if they did, or words to that effect. He then announced that he would appoint a secret committee to deal with the I.W.W. situation. 4. Was the I.W.W. hall unlawfully raided? Verdict, "Yes." The evidence introduced convinces us that an attack was made before a shot was fired. 5. Had the defendants a right to defend their hall. Verdict, "yes." On a former occasion the I.W.W. hall was raided, furniture destroyed and stolen, ropes placed around their necks and they were otherwise abused and driven out of town by citizens, armed with pick handles. 6. Was Warren O. Grimm a party to the conspiracy of raiding the I.W.W. hall? Verdict, "Yes." The evidence introduced convinces us that Warren O. Grimm participated in the raid of the I.W.W. hall. 7. To our minds the most convincing evidence that Grimm was in front of and raiding the I.W.W. hall with others, is the evidence of State Witness Van Gilder who testified that he stood at the side of Grimm at the intersection of Second street and Tower avenue, when, according to his testimony, Grimm was shot. This testimony was refuted by five witnesses who testified that they saw Grimm coming wounded from the direction of the I.W.W. hall. It is not credible that Van Gilder, who was a personal and intimate friend of Grimm, would leave him when he was mortally wounded, to walk half a block alone and unaided. 8. Did the defendants get a fair and impartial trial? Verdict, "No." The most damaging evidence of a conspiracy by the business men of Centralia, of a raid on the I.W.W. hall, was ruled out by the court and not permitted to go to the jury. This was one of the principal issues that the defense sought to establish. Also the calling of the federal troops by Prosecuting Attorney Allen was for no other reason than to create atmosphere. On interviewing the judge, sheriff and prosecuting attorney, the judge and the sheriff informed us that in their opinion the troops were not needed and that they were brought there without their consent or knowledge. In the interview Mr. Allen promised to furnish the substance of the evidence which in his opinion necessitated the presence of the troops the next morning, but on the following day he declined the information. He, however, did say that he did not fear the I.W.W., but was afraid of violence by the American Legion. This confession came after he was shown by us the fallacy of the I.W.W. coming armed to interfere with the verdict. Also the presence of the American Legion in large numbers in court. Theodore Meyer, Everett Central Labor Council; John O. Craft, Seattle Metal Trades Council; E.W. Thrall, Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia; W.J. Beard, Tacoma Central Labor Council; Otto Newman, Portland Central Labor Council; P.K. Mohr, Seattle Central Labor Council. The above report speaks for itself. It was received with great enthusiasm by the organizations of each of the jurymen when the verdict was submitted. On March 17th, the Seattle Central Labor Council voted unanimously to send the verdict to all of the Central Labor Assemblies of the United States and Canada. Not only are the loggers vindicated in defending their property and lives from the felonious assault of the Armistice Day mob, but the conspiracy of the business interests to raid the hall and the raid itself were established. The participation of Warren O. Grimm is also accepted as proved beyond doubt. Doubly significant is the statement about the "fair and impartial trial" that is supposed to be guaranteed all men under our constitution. Nothing could more effectively stamp the seal of infamy upon the whole sickening rape of justice than the manly outspoken statements of these six labor jurors. Perhaps the personalities of these men might prove of interest: E. W. Thrall, of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Centralia, is an old time and trusted member of his union. As will be noticed, he comes from Centralia, the scene of the tragedy. Otto Newman, of the Central Labor Council, Portland, Oregon, has ably represented his union in the C.L.C. for some time. W.J. Beard is organizer for the Central Labor Council in Tacoma, Washington. He is an old member of the Western Federation of Miners and remembers the terrible times during the strikes at Tulluride. John O. Craft is president of Local 40, International Union of Steam Operating Engineers, of which union he has been a member for the last ten years. Mr. Craft has been actively connected with unions affiliated with the A.F. of L. since 1898. Theodore Meyer was sent by the Longshoremen of Everett, Washington. Since 1903 he has been a member of the A.F. of L.; prior to that time being a member of the National Sailors and Firemen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Sailors' Union of Australia. P. K. Mohr represents the Central Labor Council of Seattle and is one of the oldest active members in the Seattle unions. Mr. Mohr became a charter member of the first Bakers' Union in 1889 and was its first presiding officer. He was elected delegate to the old Western Central Labor Council in 1890. At one time Mr. Mohr was president of the Seattle Labor Council. At the present time he is president of the Bakers' Union. Such are the men who have studied the travesty on justice in the great labor trial at Montesano. "Not Guilty" is their verdict. Does it mean anything to you? Wesley Everest Torn and defiant as a wind-lashed reed, Wounded, he faced you as he stood at bay; You dared not lynch him in the light of day, But on your dungeon stones you let him bleed; Night came ... and you black vigilants of Greed,... Like human wolves, seized hand upon your prey, Tortured and killed ... and, silent, slunk away Without one qualm of horror at the deed. Once ... long ago ... do you remember how You hailed Him king for soldiers to deride-- You placed a scroll above His bleeding brow And spat upon Him, scourged Him, crucified...? A rebel unto Caesar--then as now-- Alone, thorn-crowned, a spear wound in His side! --R.C. in "N.Y. Call." 
34775	----	THE BOSS OF WIND RIVER [Illustration: The girl caught Joe's arm. "It's going out, Joe! It's going out! Oh, see it pull!"] THE BOSS OF WIND RIVER BY A. M. CHISHOLM ILLUSTRATED GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION TO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY STREET & SMITH ILLUSTRATIONS The girl caught Joe's arm. "It's going out, Joe! It's going out! Oh, see it pull!" Miss Crooks came down the walk to meet him ... "I'm so glad to see you, Joe. I've been looking for you for days" Haggarty and Rough Shan, locked in a deadly grip, fought like bulldogs "There's the line. Cross it to-night or try to scrap with McCane's crew before I tell you to, and I'll shut down" I As young Joe Kent entered the office of the Kent Lumber Company at nine o'clock he was conscious of a sudden pause in the morning's work. He felt rather than saw that the eyes of every employee were fixed upon him with an interest he had never before excited. And the quality of this interest, as he felt it, was curiously composite. In it there was a new respect, but mingled with misgivings; a sympathy repressed by the respect; a very dubious weighing of him, a comparison, a sizing up--a sort of mental shake of the head, as if the chances were in favour of his proving decidedly light in the balance; and running through it all was a waiting expectancy, frankly tinged with curiosity. Kent nodded a somewhat embarrassed, comprehensive good morning, and as he did so a thick-set, grizzled man came forward and shook hands. This was Wright, the office and mill manager. "The personal and important mail is on your desk, Mr. Kent," he said. "Later I suppose you will want to go into the details of the business." "I expect Mr. Locke about ten o'clock," Kent replied. "I thought we might have a little talk together then, if you have time." Wright smiled a little sadly. "My time is yours, you know. Just let me know when you want me." Kent opened the door of the private office that had been his father's, stepped in, and shut it. He glanced half expectantly at the big, leather-cushioned revolving chair behind the broad, flat-topped desk on which the morning's mail lay neatly stacked. The chair was empty. It came to him in a keen, stabbing pain that whenever in future he should enter this office which was now his, the chair would be empty--that the big, square, kindly, keen-eyed man whose business throne it had been would sit in it no more. He seated himself at the desk, branded to right and left by countless cigars carelessly laid down, and drew the pile of correspondence to him. The topmost envelope bore no stamp, and as he saw his name upon it in the familiar, bold handwriting, his heart pounded and a lump rose in his throat. The fingers which slid a paper cutter beneath the flap were a trifle unsteady. He read: My Dear Boy: Locke will see that you get this when I have gone out. It is just a little personal note which I like to think you will be glad to read. I am not going to begin by apologizing for the fact that I leave behind me less money than most people, including myself, expected. There will be enough to give you a start and keep you hustling, which will do you no harm. You'll find it easier to hustle now than later. But, nevertheless, a word of explanation is due you. As you grow older you will observe that when the ordinary man acquires a comfortable stack at his own game he is seized with an unaccountable desire to play another man's game, at which he usually loses. It turned out so with me. I know the logging business; but I didn't know, and don't know, the stock market. I lost and I have no kick coming. It serves me right, but it may be a little hard on you. If that Power which put me in this world had seen fit to allow me to remain in it for a few years I would have stuck exclusively to my own last and repaired the damage. As it is I am warned that I must go out inside six months, and may do so at any earlier moment. It is in contemplation of the latter possibility that I write you now. Afterward I intend to go into business details with Locke. You may tie to him and Crooks. They are both white men. Don't be too proud to consult them occasionally. And if they both think one way and you think the other, make up your mind you're wrong. At a rough estimate, setting the present value of my assets against my liabilities, there should be a credit balance of fifty or sixty thousand dollars. That is lumping the whole thing--mills, timber limits, camp equipments, real estate, and so on. If you sold out everything you should get that much clear cash, perhaps more. But I hope you won't sell. For one thing the assets will increase in value. The water powers I own will be worth a fortune some day. And then I want you to carry on the business because I think you'll like it. You'll make mistakes, of course; but in a few years or less I am certain you will have lifted the incumbrances with which my folly has saddled the concern, and you will begin to lay up a competence against the time when your chief regret at leaving this world will be that you must become only a memory to some one whom you love. Preaching isn't my forte, and I am not trying to write a letter which shall be a guide through life under all conceivable conditions. But one or two hints may not be amiss. Such as they are I've bought 'em with my own money and paid mighty dear for some of them. Remember this: Straight business is good business, and crooked business isn't, no matter how much money you make at it. Apart from ethics there's a come-back with it, every time. A very fair test of the rectitude or otherwise of any deal is this: How will it look in print beneath a good scare head? If you don't mind the answer, it's probably all right. If you do, it's apt to be mostly wrong, no matter how expensive a lawyer drew the papers. Be steady. Don't let any man or thing rattle you into unconsidered action. Take your own time; it's just as easy to make other people wait for you as to wait for them, but don't keep them standing. Know as much of other people's business as is consistent with minding your own. When any man offers you a gilt-edged snap, try to figure out why he doesn't keep it all for himself; and if the answer is that he likes you, guess again. If you ever feel that you're beaten and want to quit, make sure that the other fellow isn't feeling worse; one more punch will help you to make sure. Get your fun as you go along. And now and then, Joe, old boy, when the sun is bright on the river and woods and the fish are leaping and the birds are flying and the tang of the open air makes life taste extra good, take time for a thought of him who was your loving father. -- William Kent. Young Kent choked suddenly, put down the letter, and stared out of the window at a landscape which had become very indistinct and misty. Before him lay the silver bosom of the river, checkered with the long, black lines of the booms stretching from shore to anchor-pier, great water corrals for the herds of shaggy, brown logs that were driven down from their native forests every spring. The morning breeze, streaming through the open window, was laden with the clean, penetrating, never-to-be-forgotten odour of newly cut pine. The air was vibrant with the deep hum of distant machinery. The thunderous roll of the log-carriages, the high-pitched whine of the planers, the sharp notes of edgers and trimmers, blended into one grand harmony; and shouting through it at exactly spaced intervals came the sustained, ripping crash of the great saws as their teeth bit into the flesh of some forest giant, bound and prostrate on an iron bed of torment. As he looked and listened, his eyes cleared of mists. For the first time he realized dimly that it was worth while. That the sounds he heard were part of a great song, a Song of Progress; the triumphant, virile song of the newest and greatest of nations, ringing from sea to sea across the breadth of a continent as it built itself, self-sustaining, strong, enduring. And young Joe Kent, standing by the window facing his inheritance, was a fair representative of the average young American who works with his hands or with his head, and more often with both. There was nothing striking about him. He was of medium height, of medium weight, of medium good looks. From the top of his close-clipped brown head to the toes of his polished brown boots he was neat and trim and healthy and sound. Only, looking closer, an accurate observer might have noticed a breadth of shoulder and a depth of chest not apparent at first glance, and a sweep of lean jaw and set of mouth at variance with the frank, boyish good humour of the tanned face and brown eyes. Kent left the window, settled himself in his father's seat with as business-like an air as he could assume, and proceeded to wade through the pile of correspondence. In five minutes he was hopelessly bewildered. It was much less intelligible to him than Greek, for he was beautifully ignorant of the details of his father's business. It had been an understood thing between them that some day, in a year or two--no hurry at all about it--he should enter that office and master the details of that business against the time--how far off it looked then!--when it should devolve upon him to conduct it. But they had both put it off. He was young, just through college. A year of travel was merely a proper adjunct to a not particularly brilliant academic degree. And in the midst of it had come the cablegram summoning him home, where he arrived a scant twenty-four hours before his father's death. And now, William Kent having been laid to rest on the sunny slope where the great, plumed elms whispered messages with every summer breeze to the dead below them, his son was called to con the business ship through unknown waters, without any knowledge of navigation or even of ordinary seamanship. The letters which he scanned, reading the words but not getting the sense because he had not the remotest idea of what they were about, were for the most part exceedingly terse and business-like. They were the morning cream of the correspondence, skimmed from the mass by the practised hand of Wright, the manager; letters which, in the ordinary course of business, go direct to the head of the house to be passed upon. But in this case the head of the house had rather vaguer ideas than his office boy as to how they should be handled. They dealt with timber berths, with logs, with lumber, with contracts made and to be made; in fact with almost everything that Joe Kent knew nothing about and with nothing that he knew anything about. And so, in utter despair, he was on the point of summoning Wright to elucidate matters when, after an emphatic rap, the door opened, admitting a burly, red-faced man of fifty. This was Locke. He had the appearance of a prosperous farmer, and he was an exceedingly busy lawyer, with the reputation of a relentless fighter when once he took a case. He had been William Kent's friend as well as his legal adviser. "Well, Joe," said he, "getting into harness already?" "I can get into it easy enough," Joe replied; "but it's a lot too big for me." Locke nodded. "You'll grow. When I started I didn't know any more about law than you do about logs. You got that letter?" "Yes, thanks. He said I might tie to you and Crooks." Locke looked out of the window because his eyes were filling. To disguise the fact he pretended to search his pockets for a cigar and growled: "So you may, within limits. Got a smoke there? I'm out." He lit one of William Kent's big, black cigars, leaned back in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other. "Now, then, Joe, where shall we start?" he asked. "I'm busy, and you ought to be. What do you know of your father's affairs, anyway?" "Almost nothing," young Kent admitted. "Say I don't know anything, and it will be about right. This letter hints at debts--mortgages and things, I suppose." "Mortgages and things!" repeated the lawyer. "Lord, what an unsophisticated young blood you are! I should say there were. Now here it is, as your father explained it to me." Kent tried to follow the lawyer's practised analysis, but did not altogether succeed. Three things emerged clearly. The mills, plant, and real estate were heavily mortgaged. There was an indebtedness to the Commercial Bank on notes made by William Kent and endorsed by Crooks. And there was a further indebtedness to them on Kent's notes alone, secured by a collateral mortgage on certain timber lands. "Now, you see," Locke concluded, "setting the assets against the liabilities you are solvent to the extent of sixty or seventy thousand dollars, or perhaps more. In all probability you could get that clear if you sold out. Properly managed for you by somebody else, it would yield an income of between three and four thousand dollars per annum. On that you could live comfortably, be free from worry, and die of dry-rot and Scotch highballs at about my age." "I'm going to run the business," said Joe. "My father wished it; and anyway I'm going to." Locke smoked thoughtfully for some moments. "That's good talk," he said at length. "I understand your feelings. But before you come to a definite conclusion take time to look at all sides of the question. The cold fact is that you have had no experience. The business is solvent, but too involved to give you much leeway. It is an expensive one to run, and you can't afford to make many mistakes. For seven months in the year your payroll and camp supply bill will run into five figures. Your father intended to make a big cut next winter and clear off some of the debt. Suppose you try that yourself. It means a big outlay. Can you swing it? Remember, you haven't got much rope; and if you fail and smash it won't be a case of living on three or four thousand a year, but of earning five or six hundred a year to live on." "I hadn't thought of it in just that way," said Kent. "You see it's all new to me. But I'm going into it, sink or swim. My mind's made up." "I thought it would be," said Locke with satisfaction. "If I were you I'd take Wright into my confidence from the start. He is a good man, and thinks as much of your interests as if they were his own." Wright, called in, listened to Locke's succinct statement without much surprise. "Of course, I knew these things already in a general way," he commented. "I have decided to carry on the business," Joe told him. "What do you think of it?" "The carrying or the business?" "Both." "Well," said Wright slowly, "the business might be in worse shape--a lot worse. With your father handling it there would be no trouble. With you--I don't know." "That's not very encouraging," said Joe, endeavouring to smile at Locke, an effort not entirely successful. Locke said nothing. "I don't mean to be discouraging," said Wright. "It's a fact. I _don't_ know. You see, you've never had a chance; you've no experience." "Well, I'm after it now," said Kent. "Will you stay with me while I get it?" "Of course I will," said Wright heartily. When Locke had gone Joe turned to his manager. "Now," he said, "will you please tell me what I ought to know about the business, just what we have on hand and what we must do to keep going? I don't know a thing about it, and I'm here to learn. I've got to. Make it as simple as you can. I'm not going to pretend I understand if I don't. Therefore I'll probably ask a lot of fool questions. You see, I'm showing you my hand, and I own up to you that there's nothing in it. But I won't show it to any one else. When I want to know things I'll come to you; but for all other people know to the contrary I'll be playing my own game. That is, till I'm capable of running the business without advice I'll run it on yours. I've got to make a bluff, and this is the only way I see of doing it. What do you think?" "I think," said Wright, "that it's the best thing you can do, though I wouldn't have suggested it myself. I'll give you the best I've got. An hour ago I was rather doubtful, but now I think you've got it in you to play a mighty good game of your own one of these days." Whereupon old Bob Wright and young Joe Kent shook hands with mutual respect--Wright because he had found that Kent was not a self-sufficient young ass, and Kent because Wright had treated him as a man instead of merely as an employer. II In the course of a few weeks Joe Kent began to feel that he was making some progress. The business was no longer a mysterious machine that somehow produced money for his needs. It became a breathing, throbbing creature, sensitive to the touch, thriving with attention, languishing with neglect. It was a delicate organism, wonderfully responsive to the handling. Every action, every word, every hastily dictated letter had far reaching results. Conscientiously and humbly, as became a beginner, he came to the study of it. He began to meet his men. Not those with whom he came in daily contact in the office; but his foremen, tanned, weather-beaten, level-eyed logging bosses, silent for the most part, not at all certain how to take the "Old Man's" son, and apparently considering "yes" and "no" perfectly adequate contributions to conversation, who consumed his proffered cigars, kept their own opinions, and went their several ways. Kent was conscious that he was being held at arm's length; conscious that the steady eyes took note of his smart shoes, his well-pressed clothes, and his smooth cheeks. He did not know that the same critical eyes also noted approvingly his broad shoulders, deep chest, and firm jaw. He felt that the questions he asked and the conversation he tried to make were not the questions and conversation which his father would have addressed to them. But he was building better than he knew. Many old friends of William Kent dropped in to shake hands with his son, and one morning Joe was handed the card of Mr. Stanley Ackerman. "Tell him to walk in," said Joe. Mr. Ackerman walked in. He was tall and slim and gray and accurately dressed. Mr. Ackerman's business, if his varied pursuits might be thus consolidated, was that of a Director of Enterprises. He was on all sorts of directorates from banks to hospitals. He had promoted or caused to be promoted many corporate activities. He was identified in one way and another with a dozen financial and industrial concerns. He was the confidential friend and twin brother of Capital; and he was smooth, very smooth. His handshake expressed tender, delicate sympathy. "I should have called sooner, Mr. Kent, after the recent melancholy event," said he, "but that I feared to intrude. I knew your father very well, very well indeed. I hope to know his son as well--or better. These changes come to us all, but I was shocked, deeply shocked. I assure you, Mr. Kent, I--was--shocked." "Sit down, won't you?" said Joe. "Have a cigar?" "Not in the morning, thank you," said Ackerman. "My constitution won't stand it now. Don't mind me, though." He watched Joe strike a match. His gaze was very keen and measuring, as if the young man were a problem of some sort to be solved. "And how do you find it going?" he asked. "Quite a change for you, to be saddled with a big business at a moment's notice. If I recollect, you were at college till very recently. Yes? Unfortunate. Not that I would deprecate the value of education. Not at all. A most excellent thing. Fine training for the battle of life. But at the same time scarcely a practical preparation for the duties you have been called on so suddenly to assume." "That's a fact," said Joe. "Just at present I'd trade a couple of the years I spent there for one in the office. However, I'm learning slowly. Doing the best I can, you know." "No doubt, no doubt," returned Ackerman cordially. "If I had a son--I am sorry I haven't--and Providence in its inscrutable wisdom saw fit to remove me--we never can tell; as the Good Book says, Death comes like a thief in the night--that is how I would wish him to face the world. Bravely and modestly, as you are doing. No doubt you feel your responsibilities, eh?" "Well, yes," Joe admitted. "I have my experience to get, and the concern is pretty large. Naturally it worries me a little." "Ah," said Mr. Ackerman thoughtfully, "it's a pity your father never took action along the lines of a conversation I had with him a few months ago. I expressed surprise that he had never turned his business into a joint stock company, and--rather to _my_ surprise I confess, for he was a little old-fashioned in such matters--he said he had been thinking of doing so. He observed, and very truly, that he was as capable of managing his own affairs as any board of directors, but that if anything happened to him, such experienced advice would be of inestimable benefit to you. And then he spoke of the limited liability feature as desirable. Looking back at that conversation," said Mr. Ackerman with a gentle sigh, "it almost seems as if he had a premonition. I assure you that he spoke with the greatest earnestness, as if he had thought the matter over carefully and arrived at a definite conclusion. And yet I suppose nothing has been done in that direction, yet?" No, nothing had been done, Joe told him. In fact, this was the first intimation he had had that such a thing had entered his father's thoughts. That, said Mr. Ackerman, was too bad. It was a great responsibility for a young man--too great. Now, a board of experienced directors would share it, and they would have an active interest in advising properly. "Meaning that the advice I get now isn't proper?" asked Joe, with just a little tightening of the mouth. "Meaning nothing of the sort," Ackerman hastened to disclaim. "Don't misunderstand me. But you must admit that it is irresponsible. In the long run you pay the piper." "That's true enough," Joe admitted. "In the end it's up to me, of course." "Just so," said Mr. Ackerman. "That is what your father foresaw and intended to provide against. If he had been spared a few months longer I believe he would have formed a company, retaining the controlling interest himself, so that you might have had the benefit of the advice of a board of experienced directors." Joe Kent was quite sure his father would not have done anything of the kind, but he did not say so. Ackerman bestowed on him another measuring glance and proceeded: "You see, Mr. Kent, business history shows that, generally speaking, the collective wisdom of half a dozen men is greater than that of the individual. The exceptions only prove the rule. The weak points in any proposition rarely get past half a dozen experienced men. And then we must remember that influence makes for success. Naturally the influence of half a dozen representative men helps to get business as it helps the business to buy cheaply, and as it helps to transact business properly. Why,"--here Mr. Ackerman became prophetic--"I venture to say, Mr. Kent, that if this business of yours were turned into a joint stock company and the proper gentlemen interested, its volume would double in a very short time." "Perhaps so," said Joe doubtfully. "Why not do it?" said Mr. Ackerman, seizing the psychological moment. "I would take stock myself. I think I know of others who would. And as to forming and organizing the company, I need not say that any small knowledge I may have of such matters is entirely at your service." "Very good of you," said Joe. "It's a new idea to me. I don't think, though, that I quite like it. This is my business now, and I run it. If a company were formed I couldn't do that. I'd have to do as I was told. Of course I understand I'd have votes according to what stock I held, but it wouldn't be the same thing." "Nominally different only," Ackerman assured him. "Very properly you would retain a majority of the shares--that is, a controlling interest. Then you'd be made managing director, at a good salary. No doubt that would be the arrangement. So that you would have an assured income, a dividend on your stock, and practical control of the business, as well as the advice of experienced men and consequent freedom from a good deal of worry. If I were in your place--speaking as one who has seen a good many ups and downs in business--I should not hesitate." But in spite of this personal clinching argument young Kent did hesitate. And this hesitation so much resembled a plain mulish balk that Mr. Ackerman was a trifle disconcerted. Nevertheless he beamed upon the young man with tolerant good nature. "Well, well, a new proposition," said he. "Take time to think it over--take plenty of time. You must see its advantages. New capital brought in would permit the business to expand. It would pay off the debts----" "Debts!" said young Kent icily. "What debts?" "Why--ah"--Mr. Ackerman was again slightly disconcerted--"you must be aware of the mortgages existing, Mr. Kent." "I am," said Kent, "but how do you know about them? What business are they of yours?" "Tut, tut!" said Ackerman reprovingly. "I read a weekly commercial report, like other men. The mortgages are no secret." "I beg your pardon," said Kent. "I shouldn't have spoken as I did. Fact is, I'm a little touchy on that subject." "Needlessly so," said Ackerman. "Most of my own property is mortgaged, and I don't consider it a disgrace. I can use the money to better advantage in other ways. Well, as I was saying, the new capital would expand the business, the advice of experienced gentlemen would make things easy for you; and if the property was put in at a good, liberal valuation--as of course it would be--your holding would be worth more than it is to-day." "That is, the experienced gentlemen would water the stock," said Kent. Mr. Ackerman reddened a little. "A liberal valuation isn't water," he replied. "Those who would buy into the concern wouldn't be apt to give you too much. Of course, they would desire to be perfectly fair." "Oh, of course," said Kent. "Well, Mr. Ackerman, I don't think we need discuss the matter further, for I've decided to keep on paddling my own little canoe." "Think it over, think it over," Ackerman urged. "I have thought it over," said Joe. "You see, Mr. Ackerman, I may not know much about this business, but I don't know any more about any other. So I might as well stick to it." "The plan I have outlined"--Ackerman began. "I don't like," Kent put in, smiling. "My position is this: I want to handle this business myself and make a success at it. I expect to make mistakes, but not the same mistake twice. I'm awfully obliged for your interest, but to be told what to do by a board of directors would spoil all my fun." "Fun!" echoed Mr. Ackerman, horrified. "My dear sir, business--is--not--fun!" "It is for me--about the bulliest fun I ever had in my life," said young Kent. "I never played a game I liked as well." Mr. Ackerman shook his head sadly. The young man was hopeless. "I suppose," he said casually, as he rose to go, "that in the event of a syndicate offering you a fair price for the whole concern, lock, stock, and barrel, you wouldn't sell?" "No, I don't think so," Joe replied. "Ah, well, youth is ever sanguine," said Mr. Ackerman. "Your energy and confidence do you credit, Mr. Kent, though I'm rather sorry you won't entertain the company idea. We could make this a very big business on that basis. Perhaps, later, you may come around to it. Anyway, I wish you luck. If I can assist you in any way at any time just let me know. Good morning. _Good_ morning! Remember, in _any_ way, at _any_ time." Joe, from his favourite position at the window, saw Mr. Ackerman emerge from the building and begin his dignified progress down the street. "I didn't like his stock proposition," he thought, "but I guess he isn't a bad old sport at bottom. Seems to mean well. I'm sorry I was rude to him." Just then Mr. Ackerman, looking up, caught his eye. Joe waved a careless, friendly hand. Mr. Ackerman so far forgot his dignity as to return the friendly salute, and smiled upward benignantly. "The damned young pup!" said Mr. Ackerman behind his smile. III William Crooks, the old lumberman who had been the friend of the elder Kent, was big and broad and burly, and before the years had silvered his mane it was as red as any danger flag that ever wagged athwart steel rails. He held strong opinions, he used strong language, he was swift to anger, he feared no man on earth, and he knew the logging business from stump to market. He inhabited a huge, square, brick structure that would have given an architect chronic nightmare. Twenty odd years before he had called to him one Dorsey, by trade a builder. "Dorsey," said Crooks, "I want you to build me a house." Dorsey, who was a practical man, removed his pipe, scratched his head and asked: "What of?" "Red brick," said Crooks. He held out a sheet of foolscap. "Here's the number of rooms and the sizes of them." Dorsey scanned the paper. "What do you want her to cost?" "What she's worth, and a fair profit to you," said Crooks. "Get at her and finish her by frost. I'll want to move in by then." "All right," said Dorsey. "She'll be ready for you." By frost "she" was finished, and Crooks moved in. There he had lived ever since; and there he intended to live as long as he could. Kindly time had partially concealed the weird creation of Dorsey's brain by trees and creepers; here and there an added veranda or bow window was offered in mitigation of the original crime; but its stark, ungraceful outline remained a continual offence to the eye. That was outside. Inside it was different. The rooms were big and airy and well lighted. There was an abundance of open fireplaces, as became the residence of a man whose life had been spent in devastating forests, and the furniture and furnishings were practical and comfortable, for Bill Crooks hated "frills." In that house his children were born, and there three of them and his wife died. There Jean, his youngest girl, grew to womanhood, a straight, lithe, slender, dark-haired young tyrant, with his own fearlessness and directness of speech. She was known to her intimates as "Jack," and she and Joe Kent had been friends all their young lives. Since coming home Kent had seen little of her. He was very busy mastering details of the business, and either went back to his office in the evenings or spent them quietly at the club. But on the day of his interview with Mr. Ackerman it occurred to him that he should call upon Jack Crooks. When he opened the gate that evening he saw that the wide veranda was well occupied. Four young men were making exceedingly light conversation to two young women. William Crooks was nowhere visible. Miss Crooks came down the walk to meet him, and held out two slim hands in welcome. "I'm so glad to see you, Joe. I've been looking for you for days." "You see, I've been busy," said Kent. "And then, naturally, I haven't been going out much." She nodded sympathetic comprehension. "I understand, of course. Come up and be presented. I have a very charming visitor." "Any one I know?" "Edith Garwood. She's my guest for a few weeks. Have you met her?" Joe had never met Miss Garwood. He decided as he shook hands with her that this was his distinct loss. Edith Garwood was tall and fair and blue eyed, with the dainty bloom and colouring of a flower. Her smile was simply distracting. Her voice was low and musical, and her laughter carried a little trill that stuck in the memory like the first bird notes of spring. She seemed to be one of those rare girls who are made to be loved by everybody, madly adored by several, and finally captured by some undeservingly lucky man. [Illustration: Miss Crooks came down the walk to meet him ... "I'm so glad to see you, Joe. I've been looking for you for days"] At that moment she was holding a little court. Mallane, a young lawyer; Drew, of Drew & Son; Leadly, whose chief occupation was the dissemination of his father's money, which he had almost accomplished; and young Jolly, who honoured a bank with his presence by day, clustered around her closely. Each was quite positive that her glances and laughter held a meaning for him which the others did not share. The charmed circle, momentarily broken by the entrance of Kent, closed again. They talked at Miss Garwood, they postured at her, and when, now and then, they remembered the existence of their young hostess and included her in the conversation, it was evidently as a matter of duty only. Just then Edith Garwood was the only star in all the heavens. Joe drew chairs for himself and Miss Jack just outside the group. "Well?" she asked. "Quite, thank you." "I didn't mean that. Is it love at first sight with you, too?" "No chance for me," laughed Joe. "Competition is too keen. Besides, Jack, I've been in love with you for years." "Nonsense!" she said, so sharply that he looked at her in surprise. "I waive my prior claim," she added, with a laugh. "Confess, Joe! Isn't she the prettiest girl you ever saw?" "She seems to be a good deal of a peach," Joe admitted. "Is she related to Hugh Garwood, the president of the O. & N. Railway?" "Daughter," said Jack briefly. "His only child." Joe grinned. "Which probably accounts for the obvious devotion of Mallane and Leadly." "Don't be so cynical; it isn't nice. She can't help it, can she?" "Of course not. I was speaking of the men." "Well, she's very pretty and charming. If I were a young man I'd fall in love with her. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see you smitten." Joe reddened a trifle, conscious that while he had been talking to Jack his eyes had been on Miss Garwood. Once or twice her glance had met his and she had given him a friendly smile. It seemed to hint at an understanding between them--as if she would have been very glad to have him change places with one of the others. And yet it was absolutely frank and open. Kent, being an average young man, did not analyze the quality of it. He merely felt that he liked Edith Garwood, and she probably did not dislike him. At the same time he began to feel a slight aversion to the four men who monopolized her; but he explained this to himself quite honestly on the ground that it was boorish of them to neglect Jack Crooks for a guest, no matter how charming the latter might be. His reply to Jack's prediction was interrupted by William Crooks. "Well, young people," said the old lumberman, emerging upon the veranda, "why don't you come into the house and have some music?" "It's cooler out here, dad," said Jack. "Sit down and make yourself at home and have a smoke. Here's Joe." Crooks laid a huge hand on Kent's shoulder. "I want to talk over some business with you, Joe. You won't mind if I take him away for half an hour, Jack?" "Not a bit, dad. Don't keep him all night, though." "I won't," he promised, smiling at her fondly. "Come on, Joe. We'll go to the library." William Crooks's library held few books. Such as there were mainly dealt with the breeding, training, and diseases of horses and dogs. Stuffed birds and fish, guns and rods adorned the walls. A huge table in the centre of the room bore a mass of papers in which pipes, cartridge cases, trout flies, and samples of various woods mingled in gorgeous confusion. Crooks laid an open box of cigars on top of the disarray. "Well, Joe," he asked, "how you makin' it?" "I don't quite know yet," Kent replied. "I'm just beginning to learn the ropes around the office. So far I like it." "You'll like it better," said Crooks. "You come to me if you get stuck; but work things out for yourself if you can. Now, about those notes I've indorsed!" "Yes," said Kent. "I don't see how I'm to take them up just yet." "Nobody wants you to," said Crooks. "Your father helped me out often enough. I was doing the same for him, and what I'd do for him I'll do for you. Don't worry about the notes or renewals. Only--I may as well talk straight to you, Joe--I don't want to increase my liabilities without I have to. Understand, if it's a case of need I'll back you up to any amount in reason, but if you can worry along without more accommodation I wish you would." "It's very good of you," said Joe. "I'll try to get along. Anyway, I never thought of asking you for more endorsements." "Well, you think of it if you need them," said Crooks gruffly. "Come to me as if I were your father, boy. I'll go with you as far as I would with him, and that's to the rim-ice of Hades." For acknowledgment Joe took his hand and shook it, an action which embarrassed the old lumber baron exceedingly. "All right, all right," he growled. "Don't be a blamed young fool. I'm not going away anywhere." Joe laughed. "I'm glad of that. I'll ask your advice pretty often, Mr. Crooks. By the way, what would you think of turning my business into a joint stock company? I don't fancy the idea myself." "Who's been talking to you?" demanded Crooks. "Well, Mr. Ackerman dropped in this morning." "What did he want?" "I don't suppose he wanted anything in particular. He just happened in, being in town. This came up in the course of conversation." "Son," said Crooks, "Ackerman doesn't go anywhere or see anybody without he wants something. You tie into that. What did he talk about?" Joe told him. Crooks listened intently, chewing his cigar. "He suggested the same thing to your father, and your father refused to consider it," he said. "Now he comes to you. Huh!" He smoked in silence for several moments. "I wonder what his game is?" he concluded thoughtfully. "Why, I suppose if he organized the company he'd get a block of stock for his services," said Joe, and he thought the comment particularly shrewd. "That's all I see in it, Mr. Crooks." "You don't know a thing about it," growled the lumberman bluntly. "If you fell in with his proposition he'd kick you out when he got ready." "No," said Joe. "He suggested that I retain a majority of the shares." Crooks eyed him pityingly. "In about six months he'd issue more and cut your throat." "How could he do that unless I consented?" "You would consent--the way they'd put it up to you. However, you won't deal with him if you have any sense. Now, look here. You're not twenty-five, just starting business. You think all there is to it is to cut your logs, bring down your drives, cut them up into lumber, and the demand will take care of the rest. That's how it used to be. It isn't so now. Timber is getting scarcer and prices are going up. There is a scramble for what timber limits are left, and the men with the pull get them. Same way with contracts. You'll find it out. The big concerns are eating up the little ones in our line, just as in others. That's why you'd better keep clear of any proposals of Ackerman's." "I will," Joe promised. At the same time he thought Crooks unduly pessimistic. "Now about timber," the old lumberman went on. "I'm starting men to cruise all north of Rat Lake to the divide. You'd better send a couple of cruisers into Wind River and let them work east over that stuff, so you will be in shape to bid for it. That was what your father intended to do." "We have two men there now," Joe told him. "Do you know how this bidding works?" asked Crooks. "The government calls for tenders and accepts the highest," Joe replied. "Theoretically," said Crooks. "Practically, if you're not a friend of their rotten outfit you might tender the mint and not get a look in. They used to have sales by public auction, and those were square enough; though sometimes the boys pooled on 'em. Now what happens is this: The government may open any timber for sale on any man's application, and they are supposed to advertise for tenders. If the applicant isn't a friend they won't open it. If he is, they advertise in a couple of issues of some backwoods paper that no one sees, nobody else tenders, and he gets it for a song. Of course some one high up gets a rake-off. Only you can't prove it." "How do you buy, then?" Joe asked. "You're not friendly to the present government, and I'm not." Crooks hesitated for a moment. "You'll have to know sooner or later," he said. "I tender in the name of another man, and I pay him from ten to twenty per cent. of the amount I tender for the bare use of his name--if I get what I want. Oh, I know it's rotten, but I have to stand for it or shut down. Your father did the same thing; you'll have to do it, too. I'm not defending it. I'll tell you more. This infernal political graft is everywhere. You can't supply a foot of lumber to a contractor on any public work unless you stand in." Joe whistled astonishment, not unmixed with disbelief. "Sounds pretty stiff, hey?" said Crooks. "Well, here's something else for you to digest. There's a concern called the Central Lumber Company, capitalized for a hundred thousand, composed of a young lawyer, a bookkeeper, a real estate man, and an insurance agent--individuals, mind you, who couldn't raise ten thousand dollars between them--who have bought in timber lands and acquired going lumber businesses worth several millions. What do you think of that?" Joe did not know what to think of it, and said so. The suspicion that Crooks was stringing him crossed his mind, but the old lumberman was evidently in deadly earnest. "And now I'll tell you one thing more," said Crooks, instinctively lowering his voice. "I had an offer for my business some time ago, and I turned it down. It came through a firm of lawyers for clients unnamed. Since then I've had a run of bad luck. My sales have fallen off, I have trouble in my mills, and the railway can't supply me with cars. There isn't a thing I can fasten on, either." "Oh, you must be mistaken," said Joe. It seemed to him that bad luck, which often runs in grooves, had given rise to groundless suspicions in Crooks's mind. "I'm not mistaken," the latter replied. "I'm playing with a cold deck, and though I can't see a blame thing wrong with the deal I notice I draw rags every time. That's enough for me. I'm going to find out why, because if I don't I may as well quit playing." He banged his big fist viciously on the table. "I'll know the reason why!" he thundered. "I will, by the Glory Eternal! If any gang of blasted high-bankers think they can run me out of my own business without a fight they miss their guess." His white hair bristled and his cold blue eyes blazed. Thirty years before he had been a holy terror with fists and feet. Few men then had cared to arouse Bill Crooks. Now the old fighting spirit surged up and took possession of him, and he was proceeding to stronger language when Miss Jack tapped imperatively at the door and opened it. "May I come in? Dad, this isn't playing fair. You've kept Joe all evening. Edith and I have been waiting alone for half an hour. Come in, Edith, and tell him what you think of him." "Well, you girls had four young fellows without Joe. How many do you want?" She raised inquiring eyebrows at his tone. "Anything the matter, daddy? I didn't mean to intrude." "You never do that, Jack," he smiled at her fondly. "Business bothers--nothing to worry about. It'll be all right 'when the drive comes down!'" "That always means I mustn't ask questions. I won't; but for being rude to me you shall sing the song. Edith wants to hear it." "Oh, do please, Mr. Crooks," said Miss Garwood sweetly. "I've no more voice than a crow, and Jack knows it," said Crooks, but followed his daughter meekly to the piano in the next room. "'When the Drive Comes Down,' as sung by Mr. William Crooks, Selected Record," Jack announced in a metallic voice. She struck a chord, and Crooks, his face beaming and his ill humour forgotten, with the preliminary whine of the genuine shanty vocalist struck into an ancient ballad of the river, which was his especial favourite: "Come all ye gallant shanty boys, an' listen while I sing, We've worked six months in cruel frosts, but soon we'll take our fling. The ice is black an' rotten, an' the rollways is piled high, So boost upon yer peavey sticks while I do tell ye why-y-y. For it's break the roll ways out, me boys, an' let the big stick slide, An' file yer corks, an' grease yer boots, an' start upon the drive, A hundred miles of water is the nearest way to town, So tie into the tail of her, an' keep her hustlin' down-n-n." He roared it in a heavy bass, beating time with a thunderous fist. Jack's clear alto and Joe's strong baritone struck into the first refrain: "When the drive comes dow-un, when the jam comes down, Oh, it's then we're paid our money, an' it's then we own the town. All the gutters runs with whiskey when the shanty boys so frisky Sets their boot corks in the sidewalks when the drive is down-n-n." "Splendid!" cried Miss Garwood. "More, Mr. Crooks!" He nodded at her indulgently, and let his big voice go: "There's some poor lads will never lift a peavey-hook again, Nor hear the trees crack wid the frost, nor feel a warm spring rain. 'Twas fallin' timber, rowlin' logs that handed them their time; It was their luck to get it so--it may be yours or mine. "But break the rollways out, me lads, an' let the big sticks slide, For one man killed within the woods ten's drownded on the drive. So make yer sowls before ye take the nearest way to town While the lads that be's in Heaven watch the drive go down-n-n. "When the drive starts dow-un, when the drive starts down, Oh, it's every lad in Heaven he wud swop his golden crown For a peavey stick again, an' a soakin' April rain, An' to birl a log beneath him as he drives the river down-n-n." "Oh, I don't like that verse," protested Miss Garwood. "It's sad, fatalistic, reckless--anything and everything it shouldn't be. I thought shanty songs were more cheerful." "Some of 'em are cheerful enough," said Crooks, winking at Joe, who had the grace to blush. "But most describe the lingering deaths of true lovers," said Jack. "A shantyman requires sentiment or murder, and preferably both, in his music. Dad, sing us 'The Fate of Lovely May.'" "I will not," Crooks refused. "It has five hundred verses, more or less. I'm going to bed. You can lose sleep if you want to." "Don't take that hint, Joe," laughed Jack. "You're not company." "Hint nothing," said Crooks. "Jack knows it wasn't." "I'm a business man now," said Joe. "I feel it my duty to set an example to frivolous young people." "Come around often, the way you used to," said Jack. Miss Garwood, obviously, could not second the invitation in words: but much can be expressed by a pair of blue eyes. Joe felt that, unless he was an absolute dub at interpreting such things, his visits would not be unwelcome to her. IV Wright stalked into Joe's office one morning and slapped an open letter down on his desk. Evidently he was red hot. "What do you think of that?" he demanded. The communication was brief and business-like: BARKER & SMITH Contractors--Builders Oshkook, June 10th. The Kent Lumber Co., Falls City. Dear Sirs: Referring to our correspondence as to a quantity of lumber f.o.b. Falls City, we would say that we will not require same from you, having been quoted a more favourable rate. Regretting that in this instance we must place our order elsewhere, we are, -- Yours truly, Barker & Smith. Joe whistled dismally. Barker & Smith were large contractors and retail dealers. The quantity of lumber referred to was large, and the contract had been all but closed; in fact, he was not sure that it had not been closed. After consultation with Wright he had quoted the firm a rock bottom cash price because he needed the money more than the lumber. Now he was thrown down hard. "Well, some one underbid us," he said, trying to hide his disappointment. "That's all there is to it." "Nobody could underbid us and get out even," said Wright. "We figured our margin down to a hair-line. I'll bet a hundred to one they can't get it cheaper without stealing." "They say they can, and I suppose it goes," said Joe wearily. "Hang it, I thought it was as good as closed!" "Same here; and I'm not sure it isn't," said Wright. "They practically agreed to take the stuff from us." "Show the correspondence to Locke then, and see what he says," Joe suggested. But Locke, after he had waded through the papers, tossed them back to Wright. "No good," he said. "What's here doesn't amount to a contract, though it comes mighty close to it." "It comes so close to it that we had cars run up the spur and started to load," said Wright. "The understanding was--" "It had no business to be," Locke interrupted. "You've shown me all the papers in the matter, haven't you? Very well, I tell you they don't amount to an agreement. They're simply a series of proposals, rejections, and requests for other proposals, though you came very nearly agreeing. While you're dickering some one cuts in with a better rate and they call it off. You can't hold them." "But nobody could underbid us; we quoted 'em rock bottom," Wright persisted. That was the main point in his mind. "Oh, pshaw, Wright, have some sense!" snapped Locke. "That may be an excuse, or it may not. It's quite immaterial. Can't you see that?" "That's all right from a lawyer's standpoint, but not from ours," said Wright. "Barker & Smith use a lot of lumber, and they're not in business to lose money. I say nobody could underbid us. They lie when they say they got a better rate. What do they want to lie for? It's money out of their pockets." "I'm a lawyer, not a mind reader," Locke reminded him. "Your quotations were f.o.b. Falls City. It's just possible the freight rate may have something to do with it." Wright returned to the office, pulled out his tariff books and compared the rate from Falls City to Oshkook with rates from other competitive points to the latter place. "We've got 'em skinned there, too," he soliloquized. "They can't lay down any lumber cheaper than ours. It beats me." For an hour he pulled at a blackened brier and pondered the question. Then he went to Kent. "This thing worries me," he said. "I can't see through it. I think I'll take a run over to Oshkook and have a talk with Barker & Smith." "I wouldn't," said Joe, his pride up in arms. "We don't want to go begging for their business. We quoted 'em a good rate. If they don't want our stuff at that let 'em go to the devil." He was sore and stiff-necked, as is the wont of youth when things go wrong. But the older man persisted: "I don't care so much that we lost the contract; I want to find out, if I can, why we lost it. I know we weren't underbid, and I want to know why they lied about it. It isn't a case of soliciting business; it's a case of finding out why we don't get what's coming to us, and that's a mighty vital question to any concern. We've sold Barker & Smith before, and never had any friction. We can't afford to ride the high horse just now. There's something behind this, and it's up to us to find out what." Kent recognized the force of the argument. "I was wrong. Go ahead and find out all you can." Wright took train for Oshkook and dropped into Barker & Smith's office. Barker was out, and he saw Smith. "I called about the lumber we quoted you a price on," said Wright. "Oh, that?" said Smith, who was plainly uneasy. "Yes. Let's see! We didn't come to terms, did we?" "No, we didn't." said Wright. "We quoted you a price that left us practically no margin. I don't see how any one could give a lower quotation. In fact, I wouldn't have believed it possible if your letter hadn't said so. I tell you whoever underbid us will lose money by it, or else you'll get poor stuff." "We won't accept poor stuff," said Smith. "As to whether the other people lose money or not, that's their affair. I presume they know their own business." "Would you mind telling me who they are?" Wright asked. The question appeared to embarrass Smith. "Why, upon my word, Wright, I don't exactly know," he replied. "We got a number of quotations, of course. Barker has been looking after it. Better see him." "You'd have the information in the office, wouldn't you?" Wright pressed. "I suppose so, I suppose so; but--here, you see Barker. He knows all about it. I don't. Sorry to leave you, but I've got an appointment." And he left Wright to wait for the senior partner. When Barker came in, fully two hours later, his surprise at seeing Wright was so much overdone that the latter knew Smith had been talking to him. "Well, now, look here," said Barker when Wright had opened the matter, "I don't want to talk about this. We got a dozen quotations and picked out the one that suited us. That's all there is to it. I'm not going to tell you where we buy or what we buy for. That's our business." "You said we were underbid, and that's my business," said Wright. "I tell you we weren't." "That," said Barker with first-class indignation, "amounts to a reflection on our veracity." "I wouldn't put it that way," retorted Wright. "Your letter was a darned poor lie, if you want my opinion of it. Now, hold your horses for a minute while I talk. No one quoted you a better rate then we did; I know that. And I know that transportation charges cut no figure, either. I'm not kicking, understand, but I do want to know why we didn't land the contract. We've done business with you before and hope to do business with you again. Where do we fall down? Why are you throwing it into us? What do we have to figure on besides cost, next time you ask us for a quotation?" "Better wait till I ask you," said Barker. "No, because this is a serious thing for us. I want to make it plain that we recognize your right to buy anywhere, and for any price you choose to pay. That's all right. You needn't have given any reason at all. But the reason you did give was not the true one, and we both know it. Now, man to man, Mr. Barker, tell me what we're up against. Why didn't we get the contract?" "Well," said Barker hesitatingly, "there is something in what you say. I don't mind telling you this much: There are a holy lot of wires in our business, and we have to stand in with the people who pull them, see? Sometimes we have to buy where we're told, no matter what the price is. We get square in other ways. That's about what happened in this case, otherwise you would have got the order." Wright felt quite elated when he took his departure, for he had justified his contention that they had not been underbidden. Wright's business was to cut logs into lumber and sell the lumber. William Kent had looked after the logging end of the concern. The limits, the camps, and the drives were his field. What logs he did not sell he handed over to Wright and thought no more about, knowing that they would be worked up into everything from rough boards to matched flooring. Wright, then, having ascertained the reason of the throw down, accepted it philosophically as arising from circumstances beyond his control. But young Kent, when he received his manager's report, was not so philosophic. "Pretty rotten state of affairs if people have to buy where they are told," he fumed. "Nice free country we inhabit! I never took much stock in such yarns, but I'm beginning to see that there may be something in them." He took his troubles to Crooks, who listened, growled profane comment, but offered no advice. When Kent had gone he went to Locke's office. Locke heard him with attention. "What does the boy think about it?" he asked. "So far," Crooks replied, "he's more indignant because Barker & Smith have to buy somewhere else than because he can't sell to them. Same thing in one way, of course. But he's looking at it from what he thinks is their standpoint. Says it's an outrage that they have to buy where they're told." "Now I wonder," said Locke thoughtfully, "if we may go a step further? I wonder if they are told where not to buy?" "By George!" exclaimed Crooks. "It proves nothing," said Locke. "It may not be especially directed at Kent." "I'll bet it is," said Crooks. "I'm losing good customers myself without reason. I can stand it, but Joe can't. He needs good luck to pull him through as it is." "What in thunder do you suspect anyway?" asked Locke. "A combine?" "Not a bit of it," replied Crooks. "I've not been asked to join any ring to boost prices; but I have been asked to sell out. So has Kent. We won't do it, and immediately our businesses suffer." "That is, you think somebody is forcing your hand?" "That's what I think. If Barker had told the truth he'd have said he'd been ordered not to buy from Kent." "Well, if any one is hammering you he'll have to show his hand sooner or later," said Locke. "Take your medicine till you can get hold of one definite illegal act susceptible of proof beyond all question. Then we'll simply raise the roof." V In less than a week from their first meeting, Edith Garwood and Joe Kent were giving a very fair imitation of a flirtation. Joe, as has been said before, was merely an average young man. He was not genuinely or at all in love at first; but he was strongly attracted, and he played the pleasant game without much thought of consequences. And Edith Garwood, being so constituted that admiration was as the breath of life to her, entered into it with zest. Not that she confined herself to Joe. Mallane, Leadly, and half a dozen others basked in the sunshine of her smiles, and she held the balance fairly level, enjoying her power. Thus jealousies sprang up which threatened to disrupt the _entente cordiale_ normally existing in the younger set of Falls City. These were by no means confined to the young men, for certain young ladies found themselves suddenly deserted by cavaliers to whose loyalty they would have sworn, and were much displeased thereby. These things bore somewhat hardly on Jack Crooks. She was a frank, unspoiled, straight-forward girl, and loyalty to her friends was one of her distinguishing features. But she was very human, and the general male adoration of her guest made her just a little tired. No young hostess likes to be completely outshone by a visitor, even a very lovely one, and to find herself practically overlooked by the young men of her own town was a new and unpleasant experience. "I thought Joe, anyway, had more sense," she reflected. "She doesn't care for him any more than for the others, and he ought to see it. Oh, well, let him burn his fingers. I don't care." But she did care, because he was a very old friend, and she rather resented the pumping process to which Miss Garwood subjected her one evening. That young lady, after eliciting certain information as to the habits, characters, and worldly prospects of several young gentlemen, at last came around to Kent, a sequence which was suspicious in itself. "Now your Mr. Kent, dear--tell me about him!" "He's not _my_ Mr. Kent," said Jack, a shade of red stealing into her cheeks. "Joe's a nice boy, quite the nicest I know. We played together when we were kids--that is, he condescended to amuse me when he was nine and I was five, and that's quite a concession for a boy, isn't it? Lately he's been away at college, and so we haven't seen much of each other." "His father died recently. He is the only son, isn't he?" "Yes. And his mother died when he was a little fellow, so he is quite alone. He is carrying on the business himself." "It's a big business, isn't it? Somebody said the late Mr. Kent was quite wealthy." Jack's brows drew together a little. She disliked these questions, perfectly natural though they were. "I believe he was; that is, of course, he owned mills and timber limits and so on. I suppose Joe is well off, but he has never confided in me." "But he may some day?" The unmistakable meaning in the words brought the red to Jack's cheeks again. She turned the question carelessly. "Oh, perhaps, when he is in a confidential mood. He always was a clam, though." "Jack, dear," said Miss Garwood, "look at me. Is there anything between you and Mr. Kent?" "Not a blessed thing," said Jack honestly. "Why?" "I wanted to make sure I wasn't trespassing," replied Miss Garwood lightly. "Well, you're not," said Jack. "Now let me ask a question: Have you fallen in love with him?" "No, not exactly," said Miss Garwood. "But--well, dearie, I half suspect that he has fallen in love with me." In spite of herself Jack winced. It was what she had told herself, but to hear it from Edith Garwood's careless lips was different. And yet why should she care? Joe was no more to her than any other old friend. Naturally he would fall in love some day and marry. Perhaps Edith, in spite of her denial, did care for him. In that case-- She gave herself a mental shake and met the curious look in her guest's blue eyes squarely. "I don't see how he could help it," she said truthfully. "He isn't the only one, either. Shall you marry him, Edith?" Edith Garwood laughed, well pleased, for she liked to be told of her conquests. "It's rather early to say," she replied. "You see, dear, he hasn't asked me yet. And if he did, there are all sorts of things to be considered." "Such as what?" asked Jack. "If you love one another that's the main thing, isn't it?" "You dear, unsophisticated child!" laughed Miss Garwood. "That's only one thing. We should have to live after we were married, you see." "Well, I suppose Joe has enough money for that," Jack commented. "And then you have plenty of money yourself, or your father has." "Yes," Miss Garwood agreed; "but papa has his own ideas of what would be a suitable match for me. I'm not sure he would approve of Joe--I mean Mr. Kent. Confidentially, Jack, how much do you suppose he is worth?" "I never supposed," said Jack shortly. "His income may be one thousand or ten thousand a year; I don't know. You aren't marrying him for his money." "I haven't decided to marry him at all, you goose," said Miss Garwood lightly. "It will be time enough to make up my mind when he asks me." Nevertheless she lay awake for half an hour that night, thinking. Her flirtation with Joe had reached a point for thought. She wondered how Hugh Garwood would regard him as a prospective son-in-law. Finding the answer rather doubtful, she sighed, turned her facile mind to something else, and almost immediately slept. For hours after her guest slumbered, Jack Crooks stared from her bed at the treetops outside the window, and watched the patch of moonlight on the floor slowly shift and finally disappear. And this sleeplessness was the more unaccountable because she told herself again that she didn't care whether Joe married Edith or not. She was quite honest about it. "But I didn't like her questions about his money," she reflected. "She has or will have enough for both. I know if I were in love--which thank goodness I'm not--the amount of money a young man had would be the last thing I'd think of. I don't believe dad would think of it either, just so we had enough to live on, and good prospects. Of course not. She can't think much of Joe if she lets that stand in the way. If he isn't exactly rich he can't be poor. Mr. Kent was as well off as dad, I should think. Oh, dear! I've simply _got_ to go to sleep." And finally she did, just as the faintest light grew in the east. Meanwhile, Joe Kent was doing a little soul searching himself, without coming to any definite conclusion. He liked Edith Garwood, and he suffered acute jealousy when she accepted the marked attentions of others; but to save his life he couldn't make up his mind whether he would care to look at her across his breakfast coffee as long as they both should live. The question of money occurred to him, but not as an important factor. He knew that old Hugh Garwood, the president of the O. & N. Railway, had it to burn, to throw at the birds, to stuff cats with, and half a dozen other ways of disposition. But he himself had enough to keep a wife in the modest comfort which had always been his. He was clean, healthy, well educated, and owned a business which, though encumbered, was perfectly solvent. Therefore he considered himself, without egotism, eligible for the hand of any girl, no matter how wealthy her father might be. But apart from the question of whether he loved Edith Garwood or not was the somewhat embarrassing one of whether she loved him. It was all right to flirt, to play the two-handed game for fun. But suppose it was for marbles; suppose one took it seriously---- "Hang it," said young Kent to himself, "I don't know whether I've got the real thing or not; and I don't know whether she has been stringing me along or not. But if she hasn't been it's pretty nearly up to me to come across with a formal proposal. I wish I knew where I was at. I wonder if I could get a line from Jack?" From which the experienced will readily deduce that young Mr. Kent was somewhat rattled and a little afraid of the future, but not altogether unwilling to pay for his fun like a man. His endeavour to sound Miss Crooks was by no means a success. With unwonted density she did not or would not see the drift of his questions, framed with what he considered great subtlety; and when he became more direct she went to the point with embarrassing candour: "Do you want to marry her, or don't you?" she asked. "Why, Jack, I'll be hanged if I know," he admitted. "Well, when you make up your mind, ask her," said Jack. "Meanwhile don't try to pump me. I don't know anything about her sentiments, and if I did I wouldn't tell you." So Joe had to go it blind. The flirtation, however, progressed. One night the moon, rising gorgeous and serene above a notch in the hills, discovered Edith Garwood and Joe Kent seated prosaically upon a huge log by the river side, both very tongue-tied, and both apparently absorbed in the engrossing pastime of tossing pebbles into the black water and seeing the rings spread. In fact it had come to a showdown. It was distinctly Joe's play, but he held up his hand. It was provoking, from Miss Garwood's standpoint. "I think," she said, "that we should go home." "Oh, not yet; it's early," said Joe. Pause. Miss Garwood sighed inaudibly but impatiently, and her fingers played nervously with a ring. Joe stared blankly at the water. The ring, escaping from the lady's hand, fell tinkling on the beach pebbles. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "I've dropped my ring!" She knelt at once and began to search for it in the semi-darkness. So did Joe. Quite by accident her slim white hand came in contact with his broad brown one. And the natural thing happened. "Mr. Kent!" "Yes--Edith!" "Please!" But she swayed toward him slightly. Accepting the situation, Joe Kent's unoccupied hand and arm encircled her waist with considerable facility. He even applied gentle pressure. She yielded a little, but protested: "Mr. Kent--Joe!" "Yes, dear!" "You shouldn't--I shouldn't. I never gave you any reason to think that I thought that you thought--I mean you couldn't think I did, could you?" Which confusion of speech went to show that the usually composed Miss Garwood was slightly rattled. She had created the situation and she felt it slipping beyond her control. Joe, who had accepted it recklessly, drew a long breath and made the plunge. "I hope you do. I--I love you, Edith." He wondered if the words rang true. To him they sounded hollow and forced. But Miss Garwood's waist yielded a little more. The fingers of her disengaged hand clasped the lapel of his coat and played with it, and her sweet blue eyes looked up pleadingly, trustfully, into his brown ones. "Joe," she murmured, "I don't know what to say. I'm not sure, but I half suspect that I--I--oh!" The exclamation was smothered, for again the natural thing had happened. Five minutes afterward Miss Garwood smoothed her hair and said irrelevantly: "But we haven't found my ring!" "Good old ring," said Joe, producing it from his pocket. "Joe!" she cried in unaffected astonishment. "Did you have it there all the time?" "I found it pretty early in the game," he acknowledged without shame. "I'll buy you another to-morrow." The dim light hid the sudden gravity of her features. "Do you mean an engagement ring, Joe?" "Of course." "Are we really engaged?" "Simple process, isn't it? I guess we are." Miss Garwood dug a daintily shod foot into the sand. This was getting serious. "But we ought to have papa's consent first." "Well, I'll take a run over to your town and tell him about it," said Joe carelessly. "Matter of form, I suppose. I'll look after that in a day or two." Miss Garwood laughed uneasily. "It's plain that you don't know him. I think you would better leave that to me--about our engagement, I mean. And meantime we won't say anything about it to anybody." "I don't like that," said Joe frankly. Having made the plunge he was ready to stay in the water. "Why shouldn't we announce it? Do you mean your father wouldn't consent?" "I doubt if he would, at first," she replied, apparently with equal frankness. "You see he expects me--please don't be offended--but he expects me to make what is called a good marriage." "Do you mean he expects you to marry for money?" "No, not altogether. But money and social position are desirable." Thus early she sought to provide an avenue of retreat. Joe stared at her, his pride hurt. It had never occurred to him that his own social position was not as good as any one's. He was received everywhere he wished to go; of fashionable society and the grades and jealousies of it he knew little and cared less. He had no social ambitions whatever, and his own modest place was perfectly assured. "I don't quite get it," said he. "I have enough to live on. And I suppose I could butt into society, if that's what you mean." She explained gently, shouldering the responsibility upon her father. In any event they could not marry at once. Then let their engagement remain a secret between them. She sighed with relief when she carried her point, for it gave her time to pause and reflect. Joe had swept her away a little, for she really liked him. Now she saw things clearly once more. Relative values emerged. Even a temporary engagement to a comparatively poor, obscure young man would never do; that is, it must not be made public. But she was given to following the line of the least resistance. It never occurred to her to doubt that he was genuinely in love, and she hated a scene. Later it would be an easy thing to break with him. Meanwhile she would have what fun she could out of it, for Joe was really very nice. VI As a matter of fact Kent was rather relieved when Miss Garwood's visit ended. Whether he had made a mistake or not he was ready to abide by it; but he found himself in a false position, and he greatly disliked to witness the open attentions of numerous young men, to which he could not very well object. However, he had a number of other things, just as important and considerably more pressing, to think about. For instance, there was the question of car shortage. The Peninsular Railway, which was the only line serving Falls City, seemed to have no rolling stock available. Promises were forthcoming in plenty--but no cars. Complaints of delayed shipments from indignant purchasers poured down on Kent in a daily deluge. He and Wright besieged the manager, the traffic superintendent, and the dispatchers, demanding flats and boxes--anything on wheels--and by dint of unremitting persistence were able to obtain about half as many cars as they needed. It was this difficulty which made Joe, after consultation with Wright, refuse a proposition of Clancy Brothers, with whom they already had a large delivery contract, calling for almost double the quantity of lumber which they had a right to purchase under the existing agreement, and at the same rate and same terms of delivery. "No use making contracts if we can't get cars," said Joe regretfully when he had read the Clancys' letter. "That's so," said Wright. "We'll explain it to them. I suppose if they want more lumber, and if we can ever get anything to ship it in, we can sell it to them." And he wrote them to that effect and subsequently regretted it, for cars began to come easier. And then there was the situation at the bank. The notes were coming due, and though there was no objection to renewing those which Crooks had endorsed, the bank intimated that the others should be reduced. "But why?" asked Joe. "You have collateral. The security is as good now as when they were given." "The personal liability is different," replied Hagel, manager of the Commercial Bank. He was a stout, pompous, side-whiskered man of middle age, inclined to a solemnity of speech which partially cloaked an innate stupidity, and he held his position mainly because he did as he was told, without question. "Your father's ability to pay was one thing; yours--you'll pardon me--is quite another." "In other words, you don't think I can run the business?" said Joe. Hagel raised a protesting hand. "It is not what _I_ think, Mr. Kent. My directors, in their wisdom, foresee a--er--a financial storm. We must shorten sail, Mr. Kent--hem!--yes--shorten sail. I regret the necessity, but----" "All right," Joe interrupted. "If you insist, of course I'll have to take up the notes when they mature. To do that I'll have to borrow money, and I don't feel inclined to leave my account where I can't get ordinary accommodation. I'll go over to the Farmers' National and see what McDowell will do for me." McDowell was manager of the latter institution, and the very antipodes of Hagel, who hated him. He was young, popular, brusque, and a thorough-paced sport after banking hours. "I trust you won't do that," said Hagel, for the Kent account was a very valuable one. "You have other accommodation from us, and we have had your account for a long time." "That's got nothing to do with it," said Joe, who was developing a most disconcerting habit of going straight to the point. "You people are trying to keep the cream and make me hustle to sell skim milk. If you force me to hunt accommodation elsewhere not another dollar of my money goes through your hands. You'll do what seems best to you, of course; but I want to know now where I am at." Hagel had lost some very good accounts which the Farmers' National had subsequently acquired, and his directors had made unpleasant remarks. Although he was merely carrying out their instructions in this instance, he knew director nature well enough to realize that he would be blamed if the account were withdrawn. "Better wait a few days, Mr. Kent," he said. "I'll put your views before my board, and I think it very likely the matter can be arranged--very likely indeed." "All right," said Joe; "but that's how it lies. I don't think I'm getting a square deal, and if I have to lift the notes I'll take the account with them." On top of this there came another trouble, and a serious one. Joe, one morning, had just rung for his stenographer when Wright burst in upon him in considerable agitation, brushing past that long-suffering young lady in the doorway. "What do you think of this?" he cried, waving a sheet of paper. "That infernal railway--" He swore venomously, and Joe's stenographer, with a glance at her employer, discreetly withdrew, for she was a young woman of experience. "What's the row?" Joe asked. "And you might shade your language a little. Not that I mind, but I don't want Miss Brown to quit her job." "A readjustment of freight rates!" cried Wright. "A readjustment! And look what they've done to lumber!" Joe grabbed the paper, glanced at it, and supplemented his manager's remarks with great heartiness. In a general and long-promised overhauling of freight rates that on lumber was boosted sky-high. But he did not at once grasp the full significance of it. He saw that the result would be to increase the price of lumber proportionately and restrict building to some extent in certain localities; but in the end the consumer would pay, as usual. "Rotten!" he commented. "The old rate was high enough. Looks like a case for the Transportation Commission. They ought to scale this down." "They'll get around to it in a couple of years," snorted Wright with bitter contempt. "Meanwhile where do we get off at? I tell you it just cuts the heart out of our business." "I don't see--" Joe began. "You don't?" Wright fairly shouted. "No, and I don't see it all myself--yet. But look what it does to our contract with the Clancys!" Now the contract with Clancy Brothers, mentioned before, was peculiar. They logged and manufactured lumber, but not nearly all for which they had sale. They operated a system of selling yards in twenty towns. By the terms of an agreement made by his father, which had more than a year to run, Kent was bound to supply them with lumber as required to a stated maximum amount at a stated price according to quality; and they, on their part, were bound to order lumber to a stated minimum quantity. But instead of the price being f.o.b. Falls City, as was usual, the Clancys had insisted on a delivery price at their central yard, thus striking an average and getting rid of trouble. Therefore the price of the lumber per thousand feet was based on a calculation in which the then existing freight rate was an important factor. Thus an unforeseen and substantial increase in the rate meant a corresponding loss to Kent, if the Clancys chose to hold him to the agreement. Joe looked at his manager in slowly, dawning comprehension. "Why--why--hang it, Wright," he said slowly, "it means a dead loss to us on every foot of boards we sell them!" "Just that," Wright agreed grimly. "And they'll boost their price with the rest of the retail men and make a double profit." "Surely they won't hold us up when we're losing money and they're making two kinds?" said Joe, from his utter inexperience. "Won't they?" snapped Wright. "They'll hold us up for every foot the contract calls for." He stopped suddenly. "And only a couple of weeks ago they wanted us to enter into a new contract for double the quantity at the same rates. Now I see it!" "They had advance information of the change!" gasped Joe. "Sure. After all, that car shortage was a good thing; otherwise we'd have closed with them. Now our only chance to get out even is to find a hole in the contract." Joe's hope that the Clancys would not hold him to a losing agreement went glimmering, but he didn't quite like Wright's suggestion. "We made this contract with our eyes open," he said. "At least my father did. Would it be square to back out now, even if we could?" "Square?" exclaimed Wright. "Look at the dirty game they tried on us! Anything's square with people like them. I'd rob their safe if I could. Didn't they try to get a new contract that would kill us? Did you ever see them?" "No," Joe admitted. "I heard they were good business men, that's all." "Business men!" Wright struggled for appropriate words, and finding none threw out his hands in a protesting gesture. "They're all that and then some. I wish I had half their business ability. They're a pair of cold-blooded, dirty-tongued, sewer-rat devils, with the knack of making money hand over fist. And you see how they do it! But they pay up to the day and the cent, and they never squeal when they're hit, I'll say that for them." "Then we won't squeal either," said Joe proudly. "Maybe, after all, they'll let us down easy." "Not them," said Wright, ungrammatically but positively. Not two hours afterward a wire was received from Clancy Brothers ordering a large consignment of dressed lumber which they wanted rushed. "What did I tell you?" said Wright sadly. "And the nerve of them to want it rushed. Rushed! I'll see them in blazes first. They'll take their turn, and that's last." This strategic delay was provocative of results. Some days afterward Joe's telephone rang. "Is that Misther Kent?" demanded a heavy voice at the other end of the wire. "It is? Well, this is Finn Clancy, talkin'--Finn Clancy of Clancy Brothers. I want to know how about that lumber we ordered. Is ut shipped yit?" "Not yet," Joe replied. "We don't----" "An' why the divil isn't ut?" interrupted Clancy. "Haven't ye got ut cut?" "Yes," Joe admitted, "but----" "No 'buts' about it," Clancy cut him short again. "Don't tell me ye can't get cars. I know better. That gag don't work no more. I'll have yeez people to understand that when we order lumber we want lumber an' not excuses. Th' contract calls for----" "I know quite well what it calls for," Joe interrupted in his turn. "If you think you've got a kick, come up to the office and make it." And he slammed the receiver back on the hook viciously. Half an hour afterward Wright ushered in the brothers Clancy. Finn Clancy fulfilled the promise of his telephone voice. He stood over six feet; he was broad, deep-chested, and red-bearded, with a pair of bright blue eyes hard as polished steel. John Clancy was small, dark, and wizened, and his mouth was a straight slit, tucked in at the corners. "This is Mr. Kent," said Wright. The brothers stared at Joe for a moment. "So ut was you I was talkin' to?" growled Finn Clancy belligerently. "It was," said Joe shortly, but, realizing the advisability of holding his temper, he added: "Sit down, gentlemen." They sat down. Finn heavily; John cautiously. "Now about the lumber," Joe began. "We've been delayed one way and another, but we'll ship it in a day or two." "You betther," Finn rumbled. "We got contracts to fill, an' we got a contract wid you. You want to remember that." "I do remember it," said Joe. "Also I remember that you tried to get us to sign a new one for double the amount, not so very long ago. I suppose it was a coincidence that the freight rate was boosted a few days afterward." They simply grinned at him. John Clancy chuckled dryly, as if it were the best joke in the world. "If we'd 'a' got that we'd 'a' made money," he said. "No doubt," Joe commented. "You're making enough as it is. We lose money on every order of yours that we fill." "That's your business," said Finn, and John's mouth tucked in a little more. He shot an understanding glance at his brother, but said nothing. "Quite true," said Joe. "And your profits will be doubled by the increased price of lumber. In view of that it occurred to us that you might be willing to amend the contract so as to let us out even." "That occurred to ye, did it?" said the big man. There was a sneer in his voice. "It didn't occur to us, did it, Jawn?" "It did not, Finn," said John positively. "Well, I mention it to you now," said Joe. "We don't want to lose money, but we'd be satisfied with an even break. Your profits will be big enough to allow us that. But it's up to you. If you choose to hold us up I suppose you can do it." "There's no holdin' up about it," said Finn. "You contract to deliver lumber at one price; we contract to buy it at that price. If it goes down we lose; if it goes up you lose. Anyways ye had yer eyes open when ye signed. That's how I look at it. Am I right, Jawn?" "Ye are," declared his brother. "If so be lumber had went down, wud we have came whinin to ye to let us off our contract? We wud not. When we lose we pay, an' say nawthin' about it. That's business." "All right," said Joe; "it may be. But if I stood to make as much money as you do I'd see that the other fellow didn't lose anything, that's all." "It's aisy to talk," sneered Finn; "an' all the time ye do be holdin' up our order, thinkin' to bluff us into amendin' the contract. Is that straight business, young felly?" Joe flushed, for there was just a little truth in the words. "That's not so," he replied. "Your order will go through, but I won't rush it for you. And if you'll allow me to give you a pointer, Clancy, it's to the effect that you're not in a position to make insinuations." "I don't insinuate, I talk straight," retorted Clancy. "I'm onto ye, young felly. Ye'll keep that contract to the letter, or I'll know why!" and he emphasized his ultimatum with an oath. "Mr. Clancy," said Joe icily, though his temper was at boiling point, "we'll dispense with profanity. I do all the necessary swearing here myself, understand. I won't have strong language or loud talk in my office." "Won't ye?" shouted Clancy. "Why, ye damned little----" Joe Kent's chair crashed back against the wall. Its occupant put his hand on the desk and vaulted it, alighting poised on his toes in front of the big man so suddenly that the latter paused in sheer amazement. "Go ahead and say what you were going to," said Joe with a queer little shake in his voice; "and then, you dirty mucker, I'll give you a lesson in manners!" Finn Clancy would have tackled a Dago armed with a knife or a construction hand holding a shovel without an instant's hesitation, for he was quite devoid of physical fear and a scrapper to his fingers' tips. But to have a quiet, brown-eyed young man suddenly leap a desk in an orderly business office and challenge him was so surprising that he paused. He took careful note of the steady, watchful eyes, the sweep of the lean jaw, the two brown fists swinging to just the slightest oscillation of the tensed forearms, and the poise of the body on the gripping feet; and he knew that if his tongue uttered the words on the tip of it those fists would smash into him with all the driving power of a very fine pair of shoulders behind them. Knowing it, his lips opened to speak the words; and Joe Kent, who had mastered the difficult art of starting a punch from wherever his hand happened to be, tautened his arm and shoulder muscles to steel. John Clancy intervened. "There's enough of this," he said. "Dry up, Finn. For why wud ye start rough-house wid the lad? An' you, Kent, 'tis wan punch ye'd have, an' then he'd kill ye." He pushed roughly between them and took his brother by the shoulder. "Come on out o' here, Finn, now. Lave him be, I tell ye!" "I won't," said Finn. "I'll tell him what I think iv him. An' if he makes a pass at me, Jawn, I'll break him acrost me knee!" "An' be pulled f'r it, wid yer name in the papers, an' a fine, an' a lawyer to pay, an' all," said his brother bitterly. "Have some sense. I'll not stand f'r it, an' I warn ye!" "Let him go, and stand out of the way!" cried Joe. "There'll be no law about it, Clancy, I promise you that, whichever way it goes." His blood was dancing in his veins and he laughed nastily in the surge of his anger. He fairly hungered to whirl two-handed into this big, beefy Irishman, and give or take a first-class licking. John Clancy put his open hand on his brother's breast and pushed him back. "Ye're a pair of fools," he announced dispassionately. "Can't ye talk over a business matter widout scrappin'? Be ashamed! It's little good ye've done yerself, Kent, this day. Finn, come on out of here!" "All right," growled Finn as he took a step toward the door, propelled by his brother's insistent hand. "Lave me be, Jawn. I'll get him another time. Mind ye, now," he cried to Kent, "we mane to have every foot of timber the contract calls for, an' no shenanigan about ut! An' ye may bless yer stars for Jawn, here, me bucko. Only for him I'd have lamed ye!" Joe did not reply to the threat. "When you came in I was willing to stay with the contract, even at a loss," he said. "Now, I tell you straight that if there's a way out of it you won't get another foot of boards from me." John Clancy grinned at him. "Hunt for holes in it, an' welcome," he said dryly. "If our lawyers is bum we want to know it, so we can change 'em. Nicholas K. Ryan drawed that agreement. I'm thinkin' ye couldn't break it wid dynymite." When they had gone Joe dug his copy of the agreement out of the safe and went to see Locke. "I want to know," he said, "if this agreement will hold water." Locke barely glanced at the document. "Ryan drew this, and your father signed it against my advice," he said. "Hold water? It would hold gas. What's the matter? Aren't they living up to it?" "Living up to it? I should say they are!" exclaimed Joe. "That's just the trouble. I want to know if there's a way out of this for me?" He explained the position, and the lawyer listened, frowning. "They're a sweet pair," he commented. "And so you want to dodge out of an agreement with them because you stand to lose money on it?" Joe reddened. Baldly put it amounted to just that, though in the heat of his anger he had lost sight of his former scruples. "They've rubbed you the wrong way," said Locke, "and no doubt they're too crooked to lie straight in a ditch, but that doesn't affect this contract. You can't break it." "If I haven't a chance I won't fight," said Joe. "I guess you're right about the ethics of the case, too. They made me so mad I forgot that side of it. Of course they knew the railway was going to jump the rate on us. Have you any idea why it was jumped." "I suppose they knew you'd have to stand for it," said Locke, grimly. "That's enough reason for any railroad." VII Coincident with the rise in the freight rate the car shortage became a thing of the past. Orders from Clancy Brothers poured in and were filled as slowly as possible. Around them flourished a mass of acrid correspondence--complaints and threats from the consignees, tart rejoinders from Kent. In other quarters sales were slow and small, for the time was one of money stringency. Credit, once long and easy, contracted, and the men who held the purse-strings drew them tight. Hagel, of the Commercial Bank, communicated his directors' decision as to the maturing notes, with his usual verbose solemnity. Done into plain English it amounted to this: The directors insisted on having the notes reduced by half, and they didn't care a hoot for the Kent current account. Kent thereupon drew a check for his balance and took it to the Farmers' National, where he had already made tentative arrangements. New notes were signed, the Commercial paid off, and the securities held by them transferred to the Farmers'. That incident was closed. Joe found McDowell a vast improvement upon Hagel. Where the latter had backed and filled and referred to his directors, McDowell, to whom responsibility was as the breath of life, decided instantly. He was less bound by routine and tradition, more willing to take a chance, and in closer touch with the exigencies of modern business. But for all that he never lost sight of his bank's interests, and his impartial and cool advice was of inestimable benefit to Joe. Also he made it very plain that while his institution would meet any reasonable proposition more than half way, it would protect itself first, last, and all the time. But their policy was a more liberal one than the Commercial's. Thus Joe was able to pay the interest on the mortgages held by the Northern Loan Company. This was overdue, and the mortgagees had threatened legal proceedings. And he was able, also, to accompany his tender for the choice Wind River limits by a marked check, a necessary formality which had cost him some sleepless nights. Naturally neither Crooks nor Kent sat down quietly under the new freight rate. They protested warmly, and, protests failing, deputed Locke to handle the matter for them. Locke went straight to headquarters, as was his custom. Henry J. Beemer, the general manager of the Peninsular Railway, tilted back his chair and knocked the ashes from his cigar. "As a matter of fact, Locke," he said, "there never was a freight rate that pleased everybody." "Certainly not this one," Locke replied. "It pleases no one." "Oh, I don't know," said Beemer. "It's not such a bad rate. We have the usual number of complaints, but nothing more. Before promulgating it we made inquiries----" "From my clients?" Locke interrupted sceptically. "No, I'm afraid we overlooked them. But we have letters from several large lumber shippers and dealers. Like to read them?" Locke nodded. He perused the letters produced, with a sardonic smile. "Very pretty," he commented, handing them back. "You couldn't have worded them better yourself. They wouldn't deceive a child." "Do you insinuate that they are not genuine?" asked Beemer sharply, frowning. "They're not forgeries, but that lets them out," said Locke. "They're inspired, every one of them. The signatories would admit it under oath, too. Are you paying them rebates?" "Illegal," said Beemer, recovering his usual suavity. "Yes--but are you?" Locke retorted. "I'm not in the witness box," said Beemer. "You will be, one of these days," Locke predicted. "Then we'll thresh out the letters and the rebate question, if I have the cross-examining of you." Beemer smiled rather uneasily. "We don't seem to be getting ahead. What do you want us to do?" "Restore the old rate. My clients--or one of them--made contracts on the faith of it." "Shouldn't have done it," said Beemer. "Good heavens! You, as a lawyer, can't hold us responsible for that." "No, but you see how the new rate hits them." "We were losing money on the old one," said Beemer. "This has just gone into effect. We must see how it works. I won't promise anything, but later we may be able to reduce it." "That isn't satisfactory," Locke told him bluntly. "I shall advise my clients to file a complaint with the Transportation Commission." Beemer laughed. The commission was notoriously slow and over-loaded with work. Taken in its order of priority the complaint would not, in all probability, be disposed of inside a year. "Go ahead!" he said indifferently. "All right," said Locke. "Give me a list of your directors." "What do you want that for?" "I want to find out, if I can, how many or which of them will benefit by this increased rate on lumber." "Confound it, Locke," snapped Beemer, "that's another insinuation. It amounts to a charge of manipulation of rates." "Which is, of course, absurd," said Locke ironically. "Will you give me the names, or must I get them another way?" That night he and Crooks went carefully over the list of directors. They found several names whose owners were more or less connected with lumber interests, though just how they benefited by the new rate was not apparent, unless they received rebates in some form, as doubtless they did. "As to Carney it's plain enough," said Crooks. "His business is over on the O. & N. The rise won't touch him and will cut us out of his markets." "That's so," responded Locke. "Now, take Ackerman. I know he's mixed up in about everything, but I never heard that he had lumber interests." "He tried to get young Kent to turn his business into a stock company, and failing that to sell it," said Crooks. "The devil he did? Then we may assume his interest. But what is it?" Neither could answer the question. Mr. Ackerman's varied activities were not blazoned forth to the world. He was more prominent in finance than in commerce, and so far as they knew he was not identified with any lumber business. "But he must be," said Locke thoughtfully. "I'll see what I can find out. It's strange. I wonder----" He broke off abruptly and pulled out a drawer of his desk, burrowing among the papers. "Yes, here we are. Huh!" He laid two papers side by side and ran his eye down them. "By the Lord Harry, Crooks, Ackerman is a director of the Peninsular Railway, of the Commercial Bank, and of the Northern Loan Company!" "Is, hey?" Crooks did not see the connection. "He's in a lot of things besides." "Don't you get it?" Locke rapped out. "That bank was Joe Kent's till they tried to squeeze him and he changed. The loan company hold his mortgages and threatened foreclosure for an instalment of interest not much overdue. The railway makes a rate that loses money for him. And Ackerman, director in all three concerns, tries to get hold of his business. What do you think of that?" Crooks's thought compressed itself into one forcible word. "So there's a coon in the tree somewhere," Locke pursued. "Now, here's another thing: Clancy Brothers knew of the intended change before the new rate was promulgated. The contract which they tried to obtain would have been absolutely ruinous to Kent. The one they have is bad enough. Therefore we seem to be warranted in assuming some connection between Ackerman and the Clancys." The assumption seemed warranted but did not put them much further forward. Out of their speculations two salient points emerged: Some person or persons were hammering the lumber interests along the Peninsular Railway, and Kent's in particular; and Mr. Stanley Ackerman represented the people who wielded the hammer. Joe, when told of their deductions, was not nearly as surprised and indignant as he would have been a couple of months before. He was learning in a hard school, and hardening in the process. And his brief and pointed reference to Ackerman, the Clancys, _et hoc genus omne_, would have done credit to old Bill Crooks in his most vitriolic mood. "Showing the effect of a modern college education upon the vocabulary," Locke commented dryly. Joe grinned mirthlessly. "They're all that and then some," he said. "I'll show them yet." Therefore it was unfortunate for Mr. Stanley Ackerman that he should have chosen this juncture for a second call upon the son of his highly respected deceased acquaintance, William Kent. Joe had just finished reading a letter from that eminent lawyer, Nicholas K. Ryan, setting forth the law in the matter of breach of contract, when Mr. Ackerman's accurately engraved card was handed to him. Followed Mr. Ackerman, perfectly dressed, bland, and smiling. His manner had lost nothing in warmth; indeed it was, if possible, more fatherly than ever. He beamed upon Joe, greatly to that young man's disgust. "Well, Mr. Ackerman," he said shortly, "what can I do for you?" "Why, my dear boy, that is exactly what I was about to ask _you_," replied Mr. Ackerman. "I promised myself that the first time I was in Falls City I would drop in and ask if I could be of _any_ assistance in _any_ way." "Awfully kind of you," said Joe in a tone which should have given his visitor warning. "Not a bit of it, my boy. The signs point to hard times, and the advice of one who has--hem!--a certain amount of business experience may not come amiss. What can I do for you? Out with it! How is the business?" "The business," said Joe grimly, "is doing about as well as can be expected--under the circumstances." Involuntarily his eyes sought the letter lying open on his desk. So did Mr. Ackerman's, and as he recognized the huge, sprawling signature of that eminent attorney, Nicholas K. Ryan, a satisfied comprehension came into them. "Ah," he said, "you feel the prevailing depression already. I am sorry to say--hem!--it is only beginning. These things move in cycles. Buoyant trade, optimism, expansion; over-expansion, falling trade, pessimism. We are on the down grade now, and have not nearly reached the lowest point. It may be one year or two or three before there is a revival. Those whose businesses are sound will weather the storm; but those who are unprepared will perhaps founder." "Well, I'll weather it all right, if that's what you mean," said Joe. "I hope so--I sincerely hope so," said Mr. Ackerman in a tone which implied grave doubt. "By the way, since I was here I mentioned in a certain quarter--no matter where--the possibility of your being willing to stock your business or sell it, and I think a very good arrangement might be made--good from your standpoint, I mean. Let me tell you just what might be done." "I won't trouble you," said Joe. "I told you once I wasn't open to anything of the kind." "But this would be most advantageous," Ackerman persisted. "It would allow you to retain practical control of the business and give you more money than you are making at present." "Drop it!" rasped Joe. "You and your friends will get hold of the pieces of my business when you smash it and me, and not before." Mr. Ackerman was amazed, shocked, and pained. At least his face assumed an expression combining all three emotions. "My _dear_ boy----" "What's the use?" Joe interrupted hotly. "I know more about you than I did. You and your fellow directors of the railway raised the rate on lumber and tipped off the Clancys in advance. You nearly got me on that. You and your fellow directors of the bank tried to close me out when my security was ample. You and your fellow directors of the loan company wouldn't give me an ordinary extension of time for an interest payment. And if I went into any such arrangement as you seem prepared to suggest you'd cut my throat and throw me overboard when it suited you. And so, Mr. Ackerman, I think we may as well close this interview now." "I assure you----" Mr. Ackerman began earnestly. "Don't!" Joe interrupted curtly. "I wouldn't believe you." Mr. Stanley Ackerman rose and held out his hand, a smile, tolerant and forgiving, illuminating a countenance which, to tell the truth, was somewhat red. "I'd rather not, thanks," said Joe, looking at the hand. His tone was so thoroughly contemptuous that Mr. Ackerman's beautiful smile vanished. "All right, then, young man," he snapped. "This is the last offer you'll get from me. And in future you need expect no consideration from any institution with which I am identified. Go ahead and run your own little business, and see what happens." Joe brightened instantly. "That's better talk--and I believe you are telling the truth for once," he said cheerfully. "That's precisely what I'm going to do." Mr. Ackerman's lips opened in a further remark; but thinking better of it he shut them again and left the office, wearing his dignity about him as a mantle. He brushed past Wright in the hall, and the latter whistled his astonishment, for the highly respectable and usually unperturbed twin brother of Capital was swearing through his teeth in a way that would have increased the reputation of any drunken pirate who ever infested the Florida Keys. VIII The year drew into September, time of goldenrod, browning grasses, crisp, clear mornings and hazy, dreamy days. The shanty lads began to straggle back to town from little backwoods farms where they had spent the summer loafing or increasing the size of the clearings, from mills, from out-of-the-way holes and corners. They haunted the lumber companies' offices looking for jobs. There things began to hum with the bustle of preparation and owners held long consultations with walking bosses and laid plans for the winter's campaign. Kent's tender for the choice Wind River limits was accepted, somewhat to his surprise and to Crooks's profane amazement. The latter, through the good offices of a middleman working for his rake-off, secured the limits on Rat Lake. Remained the question of how the logs should be cut, and when. Joe, after taking counsel with Crooks, Wright, and Locke, decided on his course. That winter he would make a supreme effort to cut every stick he could, and sell them in the drive, retaining only enough logs to run his mill on half time or a little better. This seemed the only thing to do. Locke had been unable to push his complaint anent the freight rate to a hearing before the commission. Kent's liabilities were piling up and maturing; the general financial stringency was increasing, as predicted by Ackerman; his timber sales, taking into consideration the unprofitable contract with the Clancys, showed a very narrow margin; and the consensus of advice he received was to market his raw product while he could, reduce his liabilities as much as possible, and then sit tight and hope for better luck and better times. For once fortune seemed to play into his hand, for while he was considering the question of opening negotiations for the disposal of the surplus logs the following spring he received a letter from Wismer & Holden, who were very large millmen and did little logging, either jobbing out such limits as they bought or buying their logs from loggers who had no mills. The letter stated that they wished to obtain from twenty million feet upward, in the log, deliverable at their booms not later than July 1st of the following year. They offered a good price, and were prepared to pay cash on delivery. And they wished to know if Kent could supply them with the above quantity of logs, or, if not, what part of it. This was too good a proposition to be neglected, and Joe immediately took train and called on Wismer & Holden. In half an hour the preliminaries were settled. "You understand," said Wismer, "that we must have these logs by July 1st. A later date won't do." "I can get them down by then, of course," said Joe. "Then we might as well close the deal now," said Wismer, and called his stenographer. He dictated an agreement from a form which he took from his desk. In this agreement was a clause providing a penalty for non-delivery by the date named. Joe was not versed in legal terminology, but it read pretty stiff and he took objection to it. "That's our ordinary form of delivery contract," said Wismer. "We have to protect ourselves somehow. We give you ample margin for delivery, you see, but we've got to have some guarantee that you'll make good, because we make other contracts in the expectation of getting the logs by a certain date. If we didn't get them we'd be up against it." That seemed reasonable enough, and Joe signed the instrument. But when a few days afterward he showed it to Locke, the lawyer pounced on that clause like a hawk, switched over to the last page, looked at Joe's signature duly witnessed, and groaned. "Boy, what on earth did you sign that for? Did they chloroform you?" "What's the matter with it?" asked Joe. "Matter with it?" snorted Locke. "Why, it's a man-trap, nothing short of it. Can't you read, or didn't you read? If you didn't know what you were signing there's a glimmer of hope." "I read the thing," Joe admitted. "And yet you signed it! Why, you young come on, if you fail to deliver by July 1st they may refuse to accept any logs whatever; and, moreover, you become their debtor and bind yourself to pay an amount which they say is ascertained damages for non-performance. Do you get that with any degree of clarity?" "Oh, that's all right, I guess," said Joe, and repeated Wismer's explanation. "I'm sure to have the logs down early in June, so it doesn't matter." "Any clause in a contract matters," said Locke. "You're gambling on a date. The amount they specify as damages is an arbitrary one, and may be twice as great as the loss to them. This is another of Nick Ryan's deadfalls--I recognize the turn of the phrases--and he's got the little joker tucked inside, as usual. After this don't you sign a blame thing without showing it to me." Locke's words would have caused Joe some uneasiness but for the fact that he was sure of making delivery. Having arranged a market for his logs, or, rather, one having arranged itself for him, the next thing was to provide the logs themselves. He and Wright held council with McKenna, Tobin, Deever, and MacNutt, the former being Kent's walking boss and the last three his foremen. The winter's work was divided in this way: Deever and Tobin were to finish cutting the limits on the Missabini; MacNutt was to take the Wind River limit, just acquired; Dennis McKenna, the walking boss, had a general oversight of the camps, but would divide his time between Tobin's and Deever's, after locating the camp at Wind River, which limit he had cruised before the purchase. Immediately on reaching this decision, the foremen got together the nucleus of crews. "Why don't you go up to the Wind with McKenna and take a look at things?" said Crooks. Joe welcomed the suggestion with enthusiasm. He had been sticking pretty closely to the office, and the prospect of a couple of weeks in the open air was attractive. Three days later saw him trudging beside McKenna and MacNutt, while behind them a wagon laden with tents, blankets, food, and tools bumped and jolted. They left roads behind, and plunged into unmarked, uncharted country where the wheels sank half-way to the hubs in damp, green moss, crashed through fern to the horses' bellies, or skidded perilously on rocky hillsides. Ahead, McKenna piloted his crew, a light axe in his hand, gashing the trees with blazes at frequent intervals. He blazed them both back and front, until the road was plainly marked so that going and coming the way might be seen. To Joe the instinct of the old woodsman was marvellous. He made no mistakes, never hesitated, never cast back. But always he followed the lines of the least natural resistance, and somehow these lines, which he apparently carried in his head, became a fairly straight route to an objective point. There were obstacles easier to surmount than to avoid--logs to be cut and thrown aside, pole bridges to be built, bits of corduroy to be laid in shaky places; merely temporary things, these, for the flying column. Later others would make a road of it, but at present anything that would carry team and wagon served. So the crew slashed out a way with double-bitted or two-faced axes--"Methodist axes," as they were called in an unwarranted reflection upon that excellent denomination--throwing light, frail bridges together with wonderful celerity, twisting fallen timber out of the way with peavey-hook and cant-dog, and doing the work effortlessly and easily, for they were one and all experts with the tools of their trade, and such work was child's play to them. In due course they arrived at the site chosen by McKenna when he had cruised the limit. It was a natural opening, ringed about with towering, feathery-headed pines. At one end it sloped down to alder and willow through which a little stream slid gently between brown roots and mossy banks. This meant water supply. Ruffed grouse roared up from under Joe's feet as he parted the bushes, and when he rose to his knees, having drunk his fill lying flat on the ground, he saw a big, brown swamp hare, already graying about the ears, watching him not twenty feet away. Also, in a bare and muddy place, he saw the pointed tracks of deer, and dog-like prints which were those of a stray wolf. However, he had not come to hunt. Tents came out of the wagon and were rammed up and made fast in short order. The cook dug a shallow trench and built his fireplace, drove forked stakes, laid a stout, green pole between them, slung his pot-hooks on it and below them his pots, and so was ready to minister to the needs of the inner man. With tape-line and pegs McKenna laid out the ground plans of bunk-house, eating-camp, caboose, foreman's quarters, and stables. At a safe distance he located the dynamite storehouse. Already the crashing fall of trees announced that the crew was getting out timbers for the buildings, and Joe watched the work of axes and saws with a species of fascination. No sooner did a tree strike the ground than men were on it, measuring, trimming, cutting it to length. When a square timber was required, one man cut notches three feet apart down the sides of a prostrate trunk and split off the slabs. Another, a lean, wasp-waisted tiemaker, stripped to underclothes and moccasins, mounted one end with a huge, razor-edged broad-axe which was the pride of his heart. Every stroke fell to a hair. He hewed a straight line by judgment of eye alone, and the result was a stick of square or half-square timber, absolutely straight, and almost as smooth as if planed. As fast as the logs were ready the teamster grappled them with hook and chain, and the big horses yanked them out into position. Another wagon and more men arrived. Buildings grew as if by magic. The wall-logs were mortised and skidded up into place; the whole was roofed in; the chinks were stuffed with moss and plastered with wet clay; bunks in tiers were built around the walls; tables and benches knocked together in no time; and the Wind River camp was finished and ready for occupation. While these preparations were going forward, Joe, McKenna, and MacNutt prowled the woods at such times as the last two had to spare from construction work. The walking boss and the foreman sized up the situation with the sure rapidity of experts. They knew just how many feet of timber a given area held, how long it should take so many men to cut it, and in how many loads, given good sleigh-roads, it should be hauled out to the banking grounds at the river. "It'll depend a lot on the season, of course," said McKenna. "If she's a fair winter--a powder of snow and good frost for a bottom and then snow and hard weather with odd flurries to make good slippin'--we can get out all we cut. But if she freezes hard and dry, and the snow's late and scanty or hits us all in a bunch when it comes, it will put us back. Or if mild weather gets here early and the roads break it will be bad." As the walking boss spoke he and Joe were standing at the top of a height looking down a vista of brown tree-trunks which sloped gently away to a dense cedar swamp. Suddenly Joe's eye caught a moving figure and he pointed it out to McKenna. "It can't be one of our men," said the latter; "we'd better see who it is." As the stranger came into plain view, heading straight for them, McKenna gave a grunt of recognition and displeasure. "That's Shan McCane!" "Never heard of him," said Joe carelessly. "You don't miss much," the walking boss commented. "'Rough Shan,' they call him. The name fits." Mr. McCane was no beauty. He was big, and looked fleshy, but was not. A deceptive slouchiness of carriage covered the quickness of a cat when necessary. His cheeks and chin bristled with a beard of the texture and colour of a worn-out blacking brush; his nose had a cant to the northeast, and his left eye was marred by a sinister cast. Add to these a chronic, ferocious scowl and subtract two front teeth, and you have the portrait of Rough Shan McCane, as Joe saw him. For attire he wore a greasy flannel shirt, open in front so that his great, mossy chest was bare to the winds, short trousers held in place by a frayed leather strap, and a pair of fourteen-inch larrigans. He and McKenna greeted each other without enthusiasm. "Cruisin'?" asked the walking boss. "Nope," replied McCane. "I got a camp over here a ways. I'm cuttin' Clancys' limit." "Clancys'!" said Joe in surprise, for Clancy Brothers had purchased the next limit in the name of a third party a couple of years before and their interest did not appear. "Do they own timber here?" "Their limit butts on your east line," McCane told him. "How do you get your logs out?" asked McKenna. "We'll haul down to Lebret Creek and drive that to the Wind." McKenna nodded. The Kent logs would be driven down Wind River. Lebret Creek lay east of it. It was a small stream, but fast and good driving. "Well, I must be gettin' back," said McCane. "Your timber runs better than ours. So long!" He nodded and slouched off. McKenna looked after him and shook his head. "I'd rather have any one else jobbin' Clancys' limit," he observed. "McCane keeps a bad camp an' feeds his crew on whiskey. He has a wild bunch of Callahans, Red McDougals, and Charbonneaus workin' for him always. No other man could hold 'em down." "How does he get his work done with whiskey in camp?" Joe asked. "He can make a man work, drunk or sober--or else he half kills him. The worst is that with a booze-camp handy our boys will get it once in awhile. Still, MacNutt can hold 'em down. McCane laid him out a couple of years ago with a peavey, and he hates him. He won't stand any nonsense. A good man is Mac!" MacNutt, the foreman of the Wind River crew, was a lean, sinewy logger who had spent twenty years in the camps. He owned a poisonous tongue and a deadly temper when aroused; but he had also a cool head, and put his employer's interests before all else. He heard the news in silence. "Of course we can't stand for booze in the camp," said Joe. "If any man gets drunk on whiskey from McCane's camp or elsewhere, fire him at once." He thought he was putting the seal of authority on a very severe measure. MacNutt smiled sourly. "I won't fire a good man the first time--I'll just knock the daylights out of him," he said. "As for McCane, I look for trouble with him." Suddenly he swore with venom. "I'll split his head with an axe if he crowds me again!" "Oh, come--" Joe began. "Sounds like talk, I know," MacNutt interrupted. "But he nigh brained me with a peavey once, when I had only my bare hands. It's coming to him, Mr. Kent. I'll take nothing from him nor his crew." Joe, on his way back to town the following day, thought of MacNutt's hard eyes and set mouth, and felt assured that he would meet any trouble half-way. His own disposition being rather combative on occasion, he endorsed his foreman's attitude irrespective of the diplomacy of it. IX When he returned from Wind River, Kent determined, after clearing off what work had accumulated in his absence, to pay a visit to Edith Garwood. He sent no advance notice of his coming, and her surprise at seeing him was considerably more apparent than any joy she might have felt; for she was carrying on an interesting affair with a young gentleman who really did not know the extent of resources which had been in his family in the form of real estate for something over a century. It was most annoying that Joe Kent should turn up just then. "I'm just going out," she said. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" "No particular reason," said Joe, feeling the coolness of his reception. "Does it matter?" "Of course it matters. I have made engagements which I can't very well break, even for you. If you had told me----" "Don't worry," said Joe. "I'll take what's left. You're going out, and I shan't keep you. May I call to-night?" That evening happened to be blank. She gave him the desired permission, and feeling that she had perhaps shown her irritation too plainly, asked him to accompany her. "It's an afternoon affair," she explained, "and of course you won't care to come in; but you may see me that far if you like, and the car will set you down anywhere." As they entered the waiting car a gentleman on the other side of the street raised his hat. Miss Garwood bowed, and Joe acknowledged the salute mechanically. It was only when the car shot by the pedestrian that he recognized him as Mr. Stanley Ackerman. "Hello!" he exclaimed. "Do you know that fellow?" "Really, Joe," she replied, "I wish you wouldn't speak of my father's friends in that way." Her annoyance was genuine, but his words were not the cause of it. She disliked Ackerman and distrusted him. Also he knew the young man with the real estate pedigree. "I can't congratulate your father on that particular friend," Kent observed bluntly, and became thoughtful. Mr. Ackerman looked after the car and became thoughtful also. Shortly afterward he entered Hugh Garwood's office. The president of the O. & N. would have been spare and shapely if he had taken ordinary exercise; but being far too busy a man to spend any time on the trifling matter of physical well-being his figure had run to seed. Only his head was lean and alertly poised, by virtue of the keen, ever-working brain within. The face was narrow, hard, and determined; and the mouth, set awry beneath the close-clipped gray moustache, was ruthless and grim. It was, in fact, a fairly good indication of his character and methods. He was never known to forego an advantage of any kind, and he was accustomed to bludgeon opponents into submission without being particular where he cut his clubs. "Well, Ackerman," he said, "what's the news?" Mr. Ackerman had no news. It was a fine day, though cool. Beautiful weather. Made a man want to be outdoors. Garwood grunted. He was not interested in the weather, save as it affected business. Snow blockades and wash-outs and natural phenomena producing them received his attention. Apart from such things he scarcely knew whether a day was fine or not. "All very well for people who have time to burn," he commented. "I haven't." "Young people enjoy it," said Mr. Ackerman, getting his opening. "I saw your daughter go by in a car as I came downtown. Lovely girl that. I thought she looked remarkably well and happy." "She ought to be happy," said her father grimly. "She spends enough money." "You can afford it. It won't be long till some one else is paying her bills. Plenty of young men would think it a privilege." Garwood, from his knowledge of Mr. Ackerman's indirect methods of approach, suddenly regarded him with attention. "What are you driving at, anyway, Ackerman?" he asked. "_You_ don't want to marry her, do you?" Mr. Ackerman disclaimed any such desire with haste and evident sincerity. "There was a very good-looking young fellow with her this afternoon," he observed. "Trust her for that," growled Garwood. "Who was it? Young Statten?" "No," said Mr. Ackerman slowly, enjoying the sensation in advance, "his name is Kent, Joseph Kent of Falls City." "What?" cried Garwood, and straightened in his chair as if he had received a shock, as indeed he had. "Yes," said Mr. Ackerman. "You remember she was in Falls City for some weeks this summer. I heard somewhere--you know how these things get about--that she and Kent were--well, in fact, I heard that they were together a great deal." Garwood rapped out a man's size oath. "Why didn't you tell me this before?" "Knowing Miss Edith's penchant for innocent summer flirtations I attached no importance to it," smiled Mr. Ackerman. Garwood sat frowning. "You may be right. That girl would flirt with a man's shadow. However, I'll put a stop to this at once. Now see here, Ackerman, you've bungled the Kent matter so far." "I have not," denied Mr. Ackerman indignantly. "He simply would not sell. That's not my fault." Garwood dismissed the protest with an impatient gesture. "The fact remains that I haven't got what I'm after. Crooks's business and Kent's are all that prevent us from controlling the lumber market on the O. & N. and the Peninsular. Crooks is pretty strong, but this winter must break Kent, and after that we'll get Crooks. We absolutely must have the water powers which Kent owns. He has a fortune in them, if he only knew it and had money enough to develop them, and we also need his mills. We must have these things, and there must be no mistake about it." "If he doesn't deliver the logs he has contracted to deliver----" Ackerman began, but Garwood cut him short. "It must be made impossible for him to deliver them. If he makes good it gives him a new lease of life and delays our plans; but if he doesn't cut the logs he can't deliver them, whether his drive is hung up or not." "It was against my advice that his tender for the Wind River limits went through." "I know. But he could ill afford to put up the cash for them. His credit is becoming badly strained. A small cut or non-delivery will be fatal to him." "But how can we prevent his cutting?" "Really, Ackerman, you are dense to-day," said Garwood. "Clancy Brothers have timber near Wind River. We can't touch the other camps, so far as I can see at present, but if you represent matters properly to the Clancys I think they will look after that one." When Garwood went home that evening he called his daughter into his private room and went straight to the point. "Now, Edith," said he, "I want to know what there is between you and young Kent." She flushed angrily, immediately fixing the responsibility for the leak on Ackerman. "Who told you there was anything between us?" "Never mind. Is it a fact?" "Is what a fact?" "Don't beat about the bush with me. How far has this flirtation of yours gone?" "Not very far," she answered calmly. "Mr. Kent has merely asked me to marry him." "What!" cried Garwood, "you don't mean to tell me you're engaged?" "I suppose we are--in a way." "This must stop," said Garwood. "I thought you had more sense. You can't marry him. He is a nobody; he is on the verge of bankruptcy; he is merely after my money." She cast a sidewise glance at a long mirror and laughed at the lovely reflection. "You are not complimentary, papa. Don't you think a young man might fall in love with me for myself?" "I am not talking of love, but of marriage," said Garwood cynically. "I won't have it, I tell you. You must drop Kent now." "Why?" "Because I say so," said her father, his mouth setting firmly. "I won't mince matters with you, Edith. Inside a year Kent will be looking for a clerk's job. You're not cut out for a poor man's wife." "You mean that if I married him you would give me nothing?" "You grasp my meaning exactly. Not a cent during my life nor after my death." Edith Garwood sighed as plaintively as she could; but it was in fact a sigh of relief. It was put up to her so squarely that she had no choice, as she looked at it. She was already tired of Kent, anxious for an excuse to break with him, and she had secretly dreaded the affair coming to her father's knowledge. Now the worst was over. And she saw an opportunity of avoiding a scene with Joe, which she had dreaded also. "Of course I haven't been brought up to marry a poor man," she said. "We would both be miserable, if it came to that. So it would be a mistake, wouldn't it?" "Undoubtedly," responded Garwood, who, having carried his point much more easily than he expected, found a certain amusement in her mental processes, as one is entertained by the antics of a kitten. "Then I suppose I shall have to give him up," she continued, with another beautifully plaintive sigh. "He is to call to-night. Will you tell him? Or shall I write him a note?" "No doubt you know the correct procedure," said Garwood. "Write your note and give it to me. Make it firm and definite." She nodded agreement. "And now, papa, don't you think I am a very dutiful, self-sacrificing daughter?" Garwood reached for his check-book with a smile of grim comprehension. "How much does it cost me this time?" he asked. When Joe called that evening he was shown into Hugh Garwood's study. The railway man, seated at his desk, eyed him keenly. Kent found the scrutiny unfriendly, and stiffened. "I called to see Miss Garwood," said he. "My name is Kent." "Sit down, Mr. Kent," said Garwood. "My daughter has given me this note for you. Will you please read it." Joe read. It was brief and to the point, and wound up with perfunctory regrets. There was no possibility of misunderstanding it. He folded the missive. "I presume you know the contents of this letter, Mr. Garwood?" "I am aware of them, yes." "Miss Garwood says that you object to her engagement to me. Will you kindly tell me why?" "With pleasure. You are not in a position to marry, and you entrapped my daughter into a clandestine engagement, which was not a manly thing to do. In fact, to put it very plainly, you are trying to marry money." "To put it just as plainly," said Joe, flushing, "I don't care about your money at all. I am in a position to marry. The secret engagement I own up to and take the blame for. I shouldn't have consented to it." "Consented?" said Garwood sharply. "Then it was my daughter who suggested that?" "Not at all," said Joe, lying manfully as he felt bound to do after the slip. "It was my fault entirely." Garwood smiled cynically. "You needn't shoulder all the blame. I know her better than you do." He was rather surprised at the equanimity with which Kent accepted his dismissal. He had looked for a stormy interview with a disappointed, unreasonable youth who would protest and indulge in heroics. He felt quite kindly toward this young man, whose business, nevertheless, he intended to smash. Inwardly he made a note to offer him some sort of a job when that was accomplished. "I take back what I said a moment ago. But you must understand that there can be nothing between you and my daughter." "I think I understand that very well," said Joe. "Glad to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Garwood. By the way, please tell Mr. Ackerman I recognized him to-day. Good night." Edith Garwood, peeping from behind a drawn blind, expected to see an utterly crushed being slink from the house. What she saw was an erect young man who paused on the steps to light a cigar, cocked it up at a jaunty angle, and went down the street head up and shoulders back. In fact, Joe Kent was shaking hands with himself. He had known for some time that his feeling for Edith Garwood fell far short of love; but as he looked at it, he could not tell her so. So that his dismissal, instead of plunging him into the depths of gloom, boosted his spirits sky-high. "Thank the Lord!" he exclaimed fervently as he swung down the street. "Joe, my son, let this be a lesson to you. Cut out the girl proposition and stick to business." He became thoughtful. "So old Ackerman's a friend of Garwood's. And Garwood tells me I'm not in a position to marry. I wonder how he knows so much about it? I wonder----" He did not complete the sentence, but Garwood's words stuck in his recollection. X When Mr. Ackerman, following the hint received from Garwood, called at the office of Clancy Brothers, his reception was nothing short of frosty. John Clancy was alone, and he regarded his visitor from beneath a lowering brow. "Now, here's what I want to know about," said he. "How does it come that Kent gets them limits at Wind River? We tendered for them ourselves." "Likely his tender was higher," said Mr. Ackerman with assumed carelessness. "An' what's that got to do wid it?" demanded Clancy, who appeared to find this explanation inadequate. "Don't we give up strong to th' campaign fund? Neither young Kent nor his father ever gave a cent to it, and their politics is the other way. It's a raw deal we got, an' ye can say that we'll remember it. If them limits had gone to one of our own people we'd have said nawthin', for we could have fixed it wid him or he'd a had to fix it wid us. But th' way it is we're sore, an' we make no bones about sayin' so. Where's his pull, that's what we want to know? An' if it's come to this, that a young felly whose politics is agin ye an' who don't give up to th' fund can buy limits ahead of us, why, then, we're through an' be damned to ye! An' there's others who thinks the same way." This unusually long and evidently heartfelt speech of Clancy's indicated a dissatisfaction which Mr. Ackerman, who held confidential relations with certain members of a thoroughly rotten and graft-ridden administration, could not afford to ignore. "Oh, that's nonsense, Clancy," said Ackerman. "There was a reason why Kent got the limits and we'll see that you get something else." "We want what we go after, an' we don't have to take what's handed to us," retorted Clancy unappeased. "See now, Ackerman, we know a thing or two. Here's Kent been makin' up to ould Garwood's girl. Garwood works his pull, an' th' limits goes to Kent. I have it from the inside that Garwood got them for him. Now, I'm not settin' our pull agin Garwood's--not by no manes--but we will not be used by you to double-cross him. We want no trouble wid Garwood." "What do you mean?" Ackerman queried. "I mane this: You tip us off to make a new contract wid Kent bekase the railway will raise the rates on boards. Ye don't do that for love of us, nor yet for a rake-off, for ye asked for none. So ye do it to hit Kent. Then he tenders for timber limits, an' Garwood, bekase the young man is keepin' company wid his daughter, sees he gets them. You an' Garwood do be thick together, an' it's strange you're knockin' his son-in-law-to-be. Me an' Finn will have no more to do wid it." Mr. Ackerman chuckled at Clancy's very natural mistake. "If you think Garwood is a friend of Kent's you're wrong." "Show me," said Clancy. "There's nothing now between Garwood's daughter and Kent," responded Ackerman. "If Garwood had cared to use his influence for him the Peninsular would not have raised the rate on lumber. That's obvious enough, I should think." "I'm talkin' about them limits," said Clancy obstinately. "Well, admitting that Garwood is responsible for that, he had his reasons other than the one you mentioned. Kent has sunk a lot of money in that timber. He may not get it out again." "Ye mane that the limits was onloaded onto him to tie up his cash resources?" said Clancy, comprehending. "I didn't say so," said Mr. Ackerman, smiling sweetly, "but his business is involved already, and if anything unforeseen should occur he might smash." "An' somebody might buy him in," Clancy commented with an appreciative grin. "I wish ye luck, but what do we get in place of our tender that was turned down?" "Let me know what you want and I'll do my best for you," Ackerman promised. "Now, I understand you have some timber near Kent's Wind River limits?" "Buttin' onto 'em at one line," Clancy replied. "That's why we tendered--to round out our holdin'." "Are you cutting it this winter?" "We are." "Yourselves?" "We jobbed it out." "That's too bad," said Mr. Ackerman in disappointment. "I suppose the jobber is a good man?" "A good man!" echoed John Clancy. "Is Rough Shan McCane a good man? If there's a worse one anywheres I never seen him." "Then why did you give him the stuff to cut?" "Bekase he'll put in the logs. He can drive a crew, drunk or sober." "I thought liquor wasn't allowed in the camps?" "No more it is--in most." "I suppose," said Mr. Ackerman casually, "that if whiskey got into Kent's camp his work would suffer?" John Clancy eyed him keenly. "Two an' two makes four," he said oracularly. "What are ye drivin' at? Put it in plain words." Mr. Ackerman put it as plainly as his bias in favour of indirect speech would permit. Clancy considered with pursed mouth. "These things works both ways," he said. "A loggin' war, wanst started bechune two camps, means hell an' docthers' bills to pay, to say nawthin' of lost time. What would we get out of it?" Mr. Ackerman told him, prudently sinking his voice to little more than a whisper, and Clancy's eyes glistened. "Them's good contracts," he commented. "I'll speak to Finn. He has it in for Kent." This partial assurance seemed to satisfy Mr. Ackerman. "Is Kent still delivering lumber under your contract?" he asked. "He is--as slow as he can. Ryan says we can't have the law on him for breach of contract yet. I had him write a letter makin' a bluff, an' Kent's lawyer wrote back callin' it. So there ye are." "Well, I suppose it can't be helped," said Mr. Ackerman regretfully. But on the whole he was very well satisfied with the position of affairs, and left Clancy's office wearing the peculiarly bland, guileless smile which was his whenever he had succeeded in arranging a particularly unpleasant programme for some one else. The smile, however, lost something of its quality when, just outside the street door, he ran into Locke. The lawyer glanced from him to Clancy Brothers' window lettering and back again, and smiled. His expression somehow reminded Mr. Ackerman of a dog that has found an exceedingly choice bone. "Hallo, Ackerman!" said he. "What are you framing up now?" "I don't think I understand you," said Mr. Ackerman with dignity. "Well, here's something I wanted to ask you," Locke went on. "Is it a fact that the O. & N.--otherwise Garwood--has secured control of the Peninsular?" The question was so entirely unexpected that Mr. Ackerman was almost caught off his guard, but he said: "Control of the Peninsular? You must be joking." "It is not a fact, then?" asked Locke. "He may have bought some shares. But control--oh, no! that would be most unlikely. Our shares are all too strongly held." "Not an impossibility, however?" Locke persisted. "Humanly speaking, anything is possible," smiled Mr. Ackerman, getting his second wind. "Rumours are most unreliable things." "Yes," Locke assented. "When did you and Garwood go into the lumber business?" Once more Mr. Ackerman was taken flat aback. Figuratively speaking, he even gathered sternway. He simply stared at Locke for a moment. "The--lumber--business?" he exclaimed, recovering power of speech. "My dear sir, I am not in the lumber business, save for a few shares which I own here and there." "No?" Locke smiled unpleasant, open disbelief. "How about Garwood?" "Why don't you ask him?" said Mr. Ackerman with unnecessary tartness. "I will, one of these days," said Locke. "By the way, I'm going to subpoena both of you in my application to the commission." "That will come on next year, I believe," said Mr. Ackerman with something very like a sneer. "Probably next month," Locke retorted. "Good morning." Locke's words were by no means random shots. Once convinced that Ackerman represented some person or persons inimical to Kent and Crooks, he sought for a clue. One by one he went over Ackerman's business associates, including Garwood, and discarded them one by one. Then came the rumour of Garwood's acquisition of the Peninsular, an acquisition almost coincident with the rise in rates. Therefore, Locke argued, Garwood somehow benefited by it. But how? The railway man was not known to be interested in lumber. Still, as Locke saw it, he must be. "Here," said Locke to himself, "is this Central Lumber Company officered by dummies, capitalized for a mere trifle, and yet acquiring business after business. Why the secrecy? Who is behind it? Obviously some man or men who don't wish their identity known until they have accomplished a certain purpose. What is the purpose? So far it seems to be the buying out of existing lumber concerns. Ackerman approached Kent. For whom? Probably for this Central Lumber Company. Therefore Ackerman is one of those behind it. Ackerman's influence has been unfriendly to Kent in every way. Garwood no sooner acquired control of Peninsular stock than the rate on lumber was boosted. Ackerman is associated with him. Therefore it is not a wild hypothesis to say that Garwood is financing the Central Lumber Company." Thus Locke argued to himself, and he found fresh confirmation in the methods adopted toward Kent, which were typically those of Hugh Garwood. Then, too, Mr. Ackerman's evident discomposure when directly charged with association with him in a lumber business was suspicious. He arrived at these conclusions quite independently and mentioned them to no one. His surprise, therefore, was great when Joe Kent, dropping in one morning, asked what he knew about Hugh Garwood. "Did it ever strike you," Joe asked, "that he may be the man behind?" "It did," Locke answered, "but tell me how it happened to strike you." "Well--it just occurred to me," replied Joe, embarrassed. "Give up, give up," said the lawyer impatiently. "Don't hold out on your doctor, your banker, or your lawyer." Thereupon Joe, under pledge of secrecy, outlined the conjunction of events. It was a slight thing, but another corroboratory circumstance. Suppressing Joe's part, Locke mentioned his suspicions to Crooks. "I'll bet a thousand you're right," said the old lumberman thoughtfully. "Garwood, hey? He's the last man I'd have suspected. And usually the last man you suspect is the first man you ought to. It's just like him to cut a man's throat and then pick his pocket. Why, damn him"--Bill Crooks' voice rose in indignation--"his girl visited my girl for a month last summer. You know that, Joe; you used to trot around with her." Joe reddened. Crooks went on: "Well, what can we do about it? This is up to you, Locke. Start your game and I'll back it. So will Joe." "I haven't got enough evidence to start anything," said Locke. "I hope to prove Garwood's connection with the Peninsular when our application to the Transportation Commission comes up for hearing. Outside of that our best chance lies in investigating this Central Lumber Company. I'll see what I can find out about them and you'd better get busy along the same line and pump every lumberman and dealer you know." Kent's good spirits and increased cheerfulness were so noticeable that Jack Crooks, knowing of his recent flying trip, drew her own conclusions. Casually one evening she approached the subject. "Of course you saw Edith?" "Oh, yes, I saw her," Joe replied. "She must have been very glad to see you?" Joe smiled enigmatically. "Well, Jack, she didn't exactly fall on my neck. I don't think I brightened up life for her to any extent." "Modest young man. Are you aware that you have worn a sunny smile ever since you returned? You can't bluff me, Joe. Why don't you own up?" "Own up to what?" Joe's smile became a broad grin. Jack thought he looked idiotically pleased. To her eyes his face expressed the good-natured fatuity of the recently engaged man who rather likes to be joked about it--a being whom she despised. She was disappointed in Joe. "If you expect me to jolly you into admitting your engagement to her you're making a mistake," she said coldly. "I can wait till you see fit to announce it." "Are you sure you can?" he teased. "Very nicely. And I beg your pardon for what must have seemed an impertinent curiosity." She regarded him with an icy dignity. "Fine speech, that," Joe commented genially. "It's from some third act, isn't it? And then I say: 'Ah, Beatrice, why that cold and haughty tone? Me life holds no secrets from you: me heart----'" "Joe Kent, I'll throw something at you!" she cried indignantly. Then she laughed. "Joe, I'll come down to the ploughed ground. You and Edith were very much taken with each other, and when you come back, wearing an idiotic grin, I'm entitled to suppose. I confess to curiosity. Come, now; give up, like a good boy!" "There's nothing to give up," said Joe frankly. "Not a thing." "I know better," said Jack. "Edith was in a very confidential mood one night and she told me something. Afterward she regretted it and swore me to secrecy. Does that make any difference?" "Not much," said Joe. "But now I can tell you that I've been thrown down hard. What you spoke of is very much off." He outlined what had occurred. She listened, indignant but puzzled. "But--but you seem so cheerful about it. I don't understand. Weren't you fond of her? And if you weren't, why did you tell her you were? And if you were, why----" "Stop!" cried Joe. "Don't get me in so deep." He became serious. "Jack, most people make mistakes at times. Edith and I made one together. I think we both saw it as soon as it was made, but it took all this time to straighten out. I'm sure she's relieved, and, though it doesn't seem a nice thing to say, I'm just tickled to death." "Well," said Jack judicially, "I don't approve of flirting, and I never flirt myself. I think she was flirting straight through, and I don't know whether to blame you or not. But, anyway, I'm awfully glad it's all off." "It's great," said Joe. "Now I can get down to work." There was, indeed, much to be done. Wright looked after the manufacturing and sales end of the business and looked after it well; McKenna was an excellent walking boss; MacNutt, Deever, and Tobin were good, practical foremen. But the concern lacked a strong, competent executive head who knew the logging business intimately, who could decide at once and finally the questions that must ever arise, and who could command the loyalty and unquestioning obedience of his men in the camps. For there is a vast difference in the mind of a lumber jack between working for wages merely and working for an employer. For the one he will do a day's work; for the other he will do a day's work and a half, with the pay as an entirely secondary consideration. Just as great commanders have fired their troops with enthusiasm to the point of performing practical impossibilities through pride in them and in themselves and that magic, mystic thing called _esprit du corps_, so there have been employers who, in time of need, command the unswerving, uncomplaining loyalty of the shantyman. For such men he will work without grumbling in all kinds of weather; he will take all manner of chances on land or water; he will fight for them at the drop of a hat; and, finally, he will throw his loyalty into each lick of axe and pull of saw, so that at the end of the season it may be measured in saw logs. Nor does this depend wholly or even materially upon the treatment accorded him by the "Old Man"--save that he must have a square deal. He may be driven like a mule, cursed in language for which he would kill any one else, fed poorly and housed worse; but if the essential thing is possessed by the boss the lumber jack will not grumble overmuch nor ask for his time. And this essential is mysterious and hard to define. Much as the shantyman admires physical prowess, it is not a prime requisite. But courage is, and so is firmness in dealing with any situation. The boss must never recede from a position once taken. He may listen to advice, but he must decide for himself and by himself. He must never argue, he must never give reasons. He must hold himself aloof and above his men, and yet not overdo it. He must be approachable but dignified, friendly but not familiar. He must be boss, first, last, and all the time, and from his decisions, right or wrong, there must be no appeal and of them no slackness of enforcement. William Kent had filled this bill. With his passing a place became vacant. Some of the old hands hired again into the Kent camps; more did not come back, but went to others of renown. New blood drifted in, and a generation arose which literally knew not Joseph--to whom the name of Kent meant nothing. The old hands would have fought at one word uttered against the "Old Man's" son, whom most of them had never seen, but they would have done so on general principles merely, and not because they cherished any particular feeling toward him. Neither walking boss nor foreman could take the place which William Kent had filled. Thus the work of the camps was no better and no worse than the average. The foremen's capability ensured fair effort. But the something necessary to weld the crews into a supremely efficient machine was lacking. The winter opened hard and dry, without snowfall. Day after day the wind wailed through the bare arms of the deciduous trees and moaned in the feathery tops of the pines. The ground was frozen to an iron hardness, and the little lakes, creeks, and rivers were bound in black ice, smooth and unbroken. At the Wind River camp the logging roads--veins leading to main arteries which in turn led to the river and the banking grounds--were useless. By dint of effort and good luck logs could be got to the various skidways located at convenient places beside the roads, and piled there, but they could not be transported farther. The big sleighs with their nine-foot bunks, built to accommodate ten thousand feet and upward of logs at a load, lay idle. MacNutt prayed for snow, or, rather, cursed the lack of it. When it came, with continued cold weather, it was hard, dry, and powdery. It had no bottom. It gritted like sand beneath the sleigh-shoes, and they went through it to the ground, even without a load. To obviate this and to get going in some way MacNutt put the sprinklers to work. These were huge tank affairs on runners, drawn by from four to six horses. At the top of the tank was a stout, wooden triangle with a block. A wire rope ran through the block. At one end of the rope was a barrel; at the other end was a horse. The horse walked away; the barrel, filled at a water-hole cut in the ice, ran up an inclined, rungless ladder to the top of the tank, where it dumped its contents automatically. The water found its exit from the tank through auger holes bored in the rear, controlled by a closely fitting trap door. Thus the roads were flooded, they froze, and the hauling began. So far MacNutt had seen nothing of Rough Shan McCane. Occasionally on a Sunday, when work was suspended, one of the latter's men would drift over, but the gang kept very much to themselves. There was no indication of undue sociability. Still MacNutt, on the principle that storms always brew in fine weather, kept a very open pair of eyes and ears. Some of the men, he knew, could not resist liquor; given access to it they would become drunk as certainly as effect ever follows cause. Over these weak vessels, then, he kept watch. It was shortly after the road went into operation that he found the first sign of trouble. A swamper, named Flett, was trimming the top of a fallen tree. MacNutt observed the listless rise and fall of the man's axe in high displeasure. It fell almost of its own weight; there was no power to the blow, and instead of being recovered and swung up again with vim for another stroke the blade lay for an appreciable instant in the gash. "You, Flett," rasped MacNutt, "I'll have no sojerin' on this job! Understand?" The man turned, startled, exhibiting a pair of reddened, bloodshot eyes. "Who's sojerin'?" he growled. "Wake up an' work, ye damned lazy dog!" roared MacNutt. "Take a man's pay, eat a man's grub, an' then loaf on the job, would ye, ye slab-mouthed, slouchin' son of sin?" For the first time he noticed the man's eyes, and swore a great oath. "Ye've been drinkin'!" "I ain't," Flett denied sullenly. "Ye lie!" barked MacNutt. "Where did ye get it?" "Go to blazes!" said Flett. MacNutt caught him by the throat, crooked a knee, and threw him back down across the log with a shock that almost broke his spine. "Talk, ye dog, or I'll kill ye!" he gritted; and Flett, staring up helpless and half stunned into the savage face of the foreman, gave up. "Regan and me got a bottle apiece from a man in McCane's camp." MacNutt jerked him to his feet and turned him loose. "Get yer time to-night and hike in the morning!" he ordered. "You're fired! Not because ye got drunk, but for bein' no use, drunk or sober." He sought Regan. Regan was doing a man's work, and doing it well. "I've fired Flett," said MacNutt without preliminary. "I'll have no booze in this camp, Regan." Regan, who was made of different stuff than his fellow-transgressor, spat on the dry snow and regarded the foreman with a level stare. "Do I get my time?" he asked. "Not unless you want it," MacNutt replied. "I can do with ye or without ye. Suit yourself. But I'll have no more of it." "A drink now an' then hurts no man," said Regan. "It raises Cain with a camp, and you know it," MacNutt retorted. "That's true enough," admitted Regan, who was not unreasonable, "but the boys over to McCane's camp shoved it at us. They've plenty there." MacNutt said no more. He could not forbid his men from strolling on Sunday, when there was nothing else to do, over the few miles which separated the two camps. But he could and did issue a warning that any man bringing liquor into the camp would get his time forthwith. He saw no man drunk, but the little signs were unmistakable. The percentage of quarrels and fights became higher; the bunk-house at night, usually noisy, was now uproarious; some of the men obeyed with less alacrity and grumbled with a great deal more; and through the entire crew there spread a spirit of devil-may-care slackness very hard indeed upon a foreman. One Sunday MacNutt shouldered an axe and took the well-marked trail which led through the forest to McCane's camp. Arrived at the compass line dividing the limits, he sat down and lit his pipe. For an hour he waited, smoking thoughtfully, watching the fluffy, impudent whiskey-jacks. At the end of that time three men appeared down the trail from McCane's. One carried a sack over his shoulder, and the sack bulged suggestively in the shape of a two-gallon jug. MacNutt tapped out his pipe and stepped into the trail. "Where are you men headin' for?" he asked. "None o' your business," replied the man with the sack. "What's in that sack?" MacNutt demanded. "Cold tea," answered the man, and the others laughed. MacNutt shut his lips grimly. "Go back and take your booze with you," he ordered; "and don't let me catch you this side of that line again." "Must think you own the woods," said he of the jug, slipping the bag from his shoulder in readiness for trouble. "You go to hell!" The axe resting on MacNutt's shoulder leaped forward and down in a sweeping stroke. There was a crash of crockery and a sudden strong odour of alcohol; following these a tremendous burst of profanity. The three men rushed at MacNutt. The foreman was not foolish enough to meet three hardened "bully-boys" with his fists. His axe flashed up and just missed the head of the leader in its descent. There was such evident deadly sincerity in the blow that the men paused. MacNutt gave them no time. He charged them instantly, axe aloft, and, prudence getting the better of anger, they ran for their lives. MacNutt followed for a short distance, shouted a final warning, and returned to camp. He did not think that he had put a stop to the contraband traffic, but he had fired the first gun and made his attitude clear. The following day, as he was overseeing the work, Rough Shan McCane came striding through the snow. "What's this I hear about your chasing three of my men with an axe?" he demanded. "Well, what about it?" asked MacNutt indifferently, and the men near at hand listened with all their ears. "This much," said Rough Shan truculently. "My men have a right in the woods, an' not you nor anny one else will stop them going where they like." "Well, I did stop them," retorted MacNutt. "I smashed a jug of booze they were bringing to my camp, and I'd have split their heads if they hadn't run." This was news to the Kent men. MacNutt rose several notches in their estimation. Regan, who had expected to share the contents of the jug and had been disappointed by its non-arrival, whispered to Devlin: "Ain't ould Mac th' bully-boy? I'd 'a' give a week's pay to 'a' seen it." "A jug of booze among fifty men!" sneered Rough Shan. "What's that? Can't ye let the boys have a drink if they want it? An' if it was a bar'l ain't ye man enough to be boss of yer own camp?" "When I want your help to run it I'll send for you," rasped MacNutt. "There's been booze comin' over from your camp, an' I'm goin' to stop it; an' the way I stop it is my business." "If you lay out a man of mine I'll take you to pieces," threatened Rough Shan. "I done it once, an' I'll do it again." MacNutt's eyes blazed. He caught Regan's axe and tossed it on the snow before McCane. Himself he seized Devlin's. "If you want a fight pick up that axe and go to it!" he cried. McCane was rough and tough, but he had come to run a bluff rather than to look for serious trouble, and a fight with axes was too cold-blooded a proposition, even for him. "I'll go ye with fists an' feet in a minute," he offered. "No," MacNutt refused. "Take an axe. I want to kill ye!" McCane was bluffed, to the huge delight of the Kent men. "I'm no damn fool, if you are," he said. "Leave my men alone, an' I'll leave you alone. But if you don't, I'll come over and take you apart." "Bring your own axe," said MacNutt. "Now you get out o' here." This conversation, retailed at the camp by Devlin, Regan, and others, with such additions, mainly blasphemous, as the imagination of the individual narrator could suggest, sent MacNutt's stock booming. The lumber jack loves a fighter, and a man who could run three of McCane's crew out of the woods and bluff Rough Shan himself was one after their own hearts. Regan, himself a rough-and-tumble artist of considerable ability, voiced the sentiments of the better men. "I like me drink as well as anny man; but ould Mac is boss, an' what he says goes wid me, after this. I'll save me thirst till the drive is down, an' then--" An uplifting of the eyes and a licking of the lips expressed more than mere words. But many of the men did not see it in that way. If they could get liquor they would drink it. Visitors from McCane's camp came empty-handed, and Kent's men seldom went there. And yet there was liquor in the camp! MacNutt could not account for it. He pondered the problem over many pipes. "They get it somewhere," he said to himself. "For a week not a man has gone to McCane's and not a man of his has been here. There's only one answer. They've got a _cache_." Having reached this conclusion by the Holmes process of elimination, he began a new line of investigation; and he was struck by the popularity of the tote road as a promenade. There was no reason why the men should not walk on it, and it bore directly away from McCane's camp, but in the light of his deduction the fact had to be explained. MacNutt walked out the tote road. Over a mile from camp he saw a blazed tree. With this as a base he began a systematic search, and finally found beneath the butt of a windfall a small keg containing rye whiskey of peculiarly malignant quality. In the keg was a spigot, so that each visitor might fill a bottle for himself. MacNutt did not demolish the keg. Instead he made a flying trip to camp. When he returned he carried one bottle of horse liniment, half a pound of cayenne pepper, a tin of mustard, two boxes of "Little Giant" pills, a cake of soap, and a huge plug of black chewing tobacco. All these he introduced to the keg's interior and replaced the spigot. This took time. Afterward he took fifteen minutes' violent exercise in shaking the keg. Thus it was that Hicks, up-ending Chartrand's bottle with a grin of pure anticipation, suddenly choked and gagged, for he had taken two mighty swallows before the taste reached his toughened palate. Now two swallows may not make a summer, but they may make a very sick lumber jack. The winter forest echoed to the sounds of upheaval. Between paroxysms Hicks cursed Chartrand. The latter regarded him in amazement. "W'at's de mattaire wit' you, hey?" he queried. "Mo' Gee! I t'ink you eat too moche grub dat you ain't chaw. S'pose you tak one leetle drink, encore, for help hold heem down." "I'll kill you, you blasted pea-soup!" howled Hicks. "I'll kick your backbone up through your hat; I'll----" Here circumstances over which he had no control interrupted him. "I' t'ink you go crazee, me," said Chartrand. "You eat lak one dam beeg _cochon_--de pork, de bean, de bread an' molass'--_tous les choses_. All right. I tak heem one leetle drink, _moi-meme_. _A votre sante, mon ami!_" He grinned pleasantly at Hicks and tilted the bottle to his own mouth, rolling a beatific eye as the liquid gurgled down. Suddenly he choked as Hicks had done. "_Sacré nom du bon Dieu!_" he shrieked, spitting like a cat. "What is it that it is? Ah, holy Sainte Agathe, I am poison' lak one wolf! Ah, _bon Saint Jean Baptiste, venez mes secours_, for I have been one sinful man! _Sacré dam_, I burn lak hell inside!" Hicks, sitting weakly on a log, his hands clasped across his outraged epigastrium, watched Chartrand's gyrations with huge satisfaction, and roared vindictive sarcasm at the final catastrophe. "Eat too much grub that I don't chaw, do I?" he mocked. "Make a pig of meself wid pork an' beans, hey? Take some yerself, me laddybuck. That's right--tie yerself in knots. How would ye like another little drink to help hold her down?" In the end they sat together on the log, cursing in two languages, and regarding the fragments of the broken bottle balefully. Chartrand rose and picked up a heavy club. "Bagosh, I bus' up dat keg for sure!" he announced. But Hicks, whose wisdom was of the serpentine variety, demurred. "Let the boys find it out for themselves," he counselled. "If we give ourselves away we get the dirty laugh." Therefore there descended upon the camp a sudden sickness amounting to an epidemic; for the effects of MacNutt's concoction, though violent and immediate, were also far-reaching and enduring. The foreman noted the victims of his strategy, issued them chlorodyne from the van, and kept his mouth shut. He had won the first round, but he knew very well it was only a preliminary. Rough Shan was still to be reckoned with. XI The east line of Kent's limit butted on the west line of Clancys', and in due course MacNutt began to cut along the line. The snow he had been longing for fell in plenty and the road already bottomed and made became good. A constant stream of logs flowed down it on the big-bunked sleighs, draining the skidways, which were continually replenished by more logs travoyed out of the woods. At the banking grounds the big piles grew. The work was going merrily. About the time MacNutt began to cut to his line McCane did the same. The crews fraternized to some extent, but the bosses had nothing to say to each other, each keeping to his own side. Hence Kent's foreman was surprised when one morning, after a fresh fall of snow, Rough Shan accompanied by two other men came to him. He noted, also, with an eye experienced in reading signs of trouble, that most of McCane's crew were working, or making a pretence of working, just across the line. "These men is sawyers, MacNutt," said Rough Shan. "Yesterday, late on, they dropped a tree an' cut her into two lengths. This morning the logs is gone." "What have I got to do with that?" asked MacNutt. "That's what I've come to find out," retorted McCane. "Our teamsters never touched them. Logs don't get away by themselves." MacNutt frowned at him. "If you think we took your logs there's our skidways, and the road is open to the river. Take a look for yourself." McCane and his men went to the nearest skidway and examined the logs. They passed on to another, and MacNutt thought it advisable to follow. At the second skidway one of the sawyers slapped a stick of timber. "This is her," he announced. "I know her by this here knot. Yes, an' here's the other length." Jackson, Ward, and Haggarty, cant-hook men and old employees of the Kents, had been regarding McCane and his followers with scowling disfavour, and Haggarty, from his post on top of the pile where he had been "decking" the logs as they were sent up to him, asked: "What's wrong wid them sticks?" "We cut them yesterday on our limit," the man told him. "Ye lie!" cried Haggarty fiercely, dropping his cant-hook and leaping to the ground. Jackson and Ward sprang forward as one man. "You keep out o' this," said Rough Shan. "This is log stealin', and a matter for your boss, if he's man enough to talk to me face." "Man enough? Come over here an' say we stole yer logs, ye dirty----" Haggarty's language became lurid. He was an iron-fisted old-timer and hated McCane. MacNutt, when he saw Haggarty drop his cant-hook and jump, ran across to the skids. So did other men at hand. A ring of fierce, bearded faces and level, inquiring eyes gathered about the intruders. "Here is the logs, MacNutt," said Rough Shan. "Now, I want to know how they come here." MacNutt examined the logs. They had not yet been branded by the marking-iron with the big K which proclaimed Kent ownership. They were in no material particular different from the rest. It was possible that his teamsters had made a mistake. His sawyers could not identify the logs positively; they thought they had cut them, but were not sure. On the other hand, the two teamsters, Laviolette and old Ben Watkins, were very sure they had never drawn those particular sticks to the pile. "One o' yeez must 'a done it," asserted McCane. "Not on your say-so," retorted Watkins, whose fighting blood had not cooled with age. "Don't you get gay with the old man, Shan McCane. I'll----" "Shut up, Ben!" MacNutt ordered. He turned to McCane. "I'll give you the logs because your men are sure and mine ain't. Break them out o' that, Haggarty; and you, Laviolette, hitch on and pull them across the line to wherever they say they laid. All the same I want to tell ye it wasn't my teamsters snaked them here." "An' do ye think mine did?--a likely t'ing" said Rough Shan. "Mind this, now, MacNutt, you be more careful about whose logs ye take." MacNutt lit his pipe deliberately before replying. "The next one ye pull onto our skidways we'll keep," said he. McCane glowered at him. "Ye've got a gall. Steal our logs, an' tell me I done it meself! I want to tell ye, MacNutt, I won't take that from you nor anny man." "Go back and boss your gang," said MacNutt coldly, refusing the evident challenge. He had made up his mind to give no provocation; but he had also determined to push the fight to a finish when it came, as he saw it inevitably must. The occurrence of the morning' confirmed his suspicion that McCane was following out a deliberate plan. He perceived, too, that the matter of the logs was a tactical mistake of the latter's. For, if Rough Shan had confined his activities to supplying the men with whiskey and fomenting discontent, MacNutt would have been forced to discharge half of them, and good hands were scarce. Thus the camp would have been practically crippled. But an accusation of log stealing would weld the men solidly together for the honour of their employer. Haggarty, the iron-fisted cant-hook man, who had drawn Kent pay for years, took up the matter in the bunk-house that night. "Nobody knows better nor Rough Shan hisself who put them logs on our skidway," he declared with a tremendous oath. "An' for why did he do it? To pick a row, no less. He thought ould Mac would keep the sticks an' tell him to go to the divil. Mac was too foxy for him that time." "If he wants a row he can have it," said Regan; "him or anny of his gang. It's the dirty bunch they are. An' I want to say right here," he continued, glaring at the row of men on the "deacon seat," "that the man that fills himself up on rotgut whiskey from McCane's camp after this is a low-lived son of a dog, an' I will beat the head off of him once when he's drunk an' again when he's sober." A growl of approval ran along the bench. "That's right." "That's the talk, Larry!" "To hell wid McCane an' his whiskey, both!" "Mo' Gee! we pass ourself on hees camp an' clean heem out." The temperance wave was so strong that the minority maintained a discreet silence. Indeed, even those who relished the contraband whiskey most would have relished no less an encounter with McCane's crew, for whom they had little use, individually or collectively. Save for the first few bottles to whet their appetites, the whiskey had not been supplied free. They had paid high for it, and the mystery of the fatal keg had never been cleared up. The sufferers were inclined to blame one or more of McCane's men, and, not being able to fasten the responsibility for the outrage on any individual, saddled it on the entire crew. At this juncture Joe Kent arrived in camp, following out a laudable determination to become acquainted with the woods end of his business. He came at night, and took up his quarters with MacNutt. Although he had visited camps before with his father, it was still fresh and new to Joe--the roomy box stove, the log walls hung with mackinaw garments, moccasins, and snowshoes, the water pail on the shelf beside the door, the bunks with their heavy gray blankets and bearskins--all the raffle that accumulates in a foreman's winter quarters. And because his imagination was young and active and unspoiled he saw in these things the elements of romance where an older hand would have seen utility only. He felt that they typified a life which he had come to learn, that they were part of a game which he had studied theoretically from a distance, but was now come to play himself. MacNutt was silent from habit. A foreman cannot mingle socially with his men to any extent and preserve his authority. Hence his life is lonely and loneliness begets silence. He answered questions with clear brevity, but did not make conversation. He was not at all embarrassed by the presence of his employer; nor would he have been if the latter had been old and experienced instead of young and green. He knew very well that Kent had come to learn the practical side of the woods business. That was all right and he approved of it. He would tell him whatever he wanted to know; but as a basis he must know enough to ask intelligent questions. Outside of that he must learn by experience. That was how MacNutt had learned himself, and if Joe had asked him the best way to obtain practical knowledge he would have been advised to go into the woods with another man's crew and use an axe. "And now about McCane's gang," said Joe when he had learned what he could absorb as to the progress of the work. "Are they giving you any trouble." "Not more than I can handle," said MacNutt, and for the first time told of the doctored whiskey. Joe roared at the recital, and MacNutt smiled grimly. He was not a humourist, and his narrative was not at all embellished. He went on to relate the incident of the logs and his deductions. Kent thought of Finn Clancy and frowned. He told the foreman of the contract with the Clancy firm and of the narrowly averted row with Finn. "Then they are behind McCane," said MacNutt conclusively. "That means he will make it bad for us yet--unless we stop him." "I don't understand," said Joe. "It's this way," MacNutt explained. "McCane has his instructions, but you can't prove them. Suppose he claims a log and doesn't get it and a fight starts between the crews--why, he's jobbing the limit himself and the Clancys ain't responsible." "A bit of a scrap won't matter," said Joe cheerfully. "It will matter if the woods ain't big enough to hold but one crew--ours or theirs," returned MacNutt. "I've seen it happen before." "Tell me about it," said Joe. He listened eagerly to the concise narrative that followed, which was the little-known history of a logging war in which the casualties were large. "The dead men were reported killed by falling timber," the foreman concluded. "Five of them there was--five lives, and all for one pine tree that turned out punk when it was cut." He tapped his pipe out against the stove. "You'll be tired. I get up before light, but I'll try not to wake you, Mr. Kent." "I'll get up when you do," said Joe. "I'm going out on the job with the crew." "All right; I'll wake you," said the foreman without comment, but likewise without conviction. In the morning--or as it seemed to Joe about midnight--he awoke with a light in his eyes and the foreman's hand on his shoulder. The light came from the lamp. Outside it was pitch dark, and the wind was shouting through the forest and whining around the cabin. Now and then a volley of snow pattered against the window. By way of contrast never had a bed seemed so absolutely comfortable. For a moment he was tempted to exercise his right to sleep. The ghost of a smile on MacNutt's face decided for him. He tumbled out, soused his head in water, pulled on his heavy clothes, high German socks, and moccasins, and in five minutes stood, a very solid, good-looking young lumber jack with a very healthy appetite for breakfast. The darkness was lifting when the crew left camp for the woods. Joe and the foreman tramped behind. There was little speech. However excellent early rising may be theoretically it does not sweeten the temper, especially in mid-winter. There was a notable absence of laughter, of jest, even of ordinarily civil conversation. Almost every man bent his energies to the consumption of tobacco. They had not shaken off the lethargy of the night, and their mental processes were not yet astir. They plodded mechanically, backs humped, eyes upon the ground, dully resentful of the weather, the work, of existence itself. Arrived at the scene of operations, the lethargy vanished. Men sighed as they lifted axes for the first blow--such a sigh as one gives when stooping to resume a burden. With the fall of the blow, and the shock of it running up the helve through arms and shoulders, they were completely awake. What remained of the dull, aimless resentment was directed at the timber that ringed them around--the timber that represented at once a livelihood and an unending toil. Joe followed MacNutt, keenly observant. He knew little about the work--how it should be done, how much each man and team should do, where odd moments might be saved, and the way in which a desired object might be accomplished with the least expenditure of effort. But he was by no means absolutely ignorant, for, like the average young American, he had spent considerable time in the woods, which involves a more or less intimate acquaintance with the axe, and he had also the average American's aptitude for tools and constructive work of any kind. Then, too, he had absorbed unconsciously much theory from his father and from the conversation of his father's friends, added to which was the study and thought of the past few months. Thus he possessed a groundwork. Remained analysis of the actual individual operations as they were performed before his eyes, and synthesis into a whole. With the foreman he went over most of the job, from the first slashings to the river rollways, and thus gained a comprehensive idea of what had been done, what remained to do, and what time there was to do it in. He drank scalding tea and ate pork, bread, and doughnuts with the men at noon, and smoked a pipe, sheltered from the biting north wind by a thick clump of firs. In the afternoon, to keep himself warm, he took an axe and trimmed tree tops with the swampers, showing a fair degree of efficiency with the implement. Also he took a turn at the end of the long, flexible cross-cut saw, an exercise which made a new set of muscles ache; but he learned the rudiments of it--to pull with a long, smooth, level swing, not to push, but to let the other man pull on the return motion, to tap in a wedge when the settling trunk began to bind the thin, rending ribbon of steel, and to use kerosene on the blade when it gummed and pulled heavily and stickily. When the work ceased with the falling darkness he tramped back to camp with the men, ate a huge supper, spent an hour in the bunk-house with them, and sang them a couple of songs which were received with wild applause, and then rolled into his bunk, dog-tired, and was asleep as his head settled in the pillow. Behind him, in the sleeping-camp, he left a favourable impression. "He's good stuff, that lad," said Haggarty. "He minds me of some one--a good man, too." "Would it be Alec Macnamara, now?" asked Regan. Macnamara, a famous "white-water birler," had met his fate in the breaking of a log-jam some years before. "That's who it is, God rest his soul," said Haggarty. "He's younger, but he's the dead spit of Alec in the eyes an' mouth. It's my belief he laughs when he fights, like him, an' he'd die game as Alec died." Whether Haggarty's belief was right or wrong did not appear. Nothing arose to put the young boss's courage to a test. All went merry as a marriage bell, and the quantity of logs pouring down to the banking grounds attested the quality of the work done. Then came trouble out of a comparatively clear sky. One day Joe was bossing the job, MacNutt being in camp. His bossing, truth to tell, lay more in the moral effect of his presence than in issuing orders or giving instruction. Having the good sense to recognize his present limitations, he let the men alone. The air was soft with a promise of snow, and he lit his pipe and sauntered up the logging road. Before a skidway stood four men in hot argument. Two of these were Haggarty and Jackson. One was unknown to Kent. The fourth he recognized as Rough Shan McCane. "Here's Mr. Kent now," said Haggarty, catching sight of him. Rough Shan favored Joe with a contemptuous stare. "Where's MacNutt?" he demanded. "I told him this log stealin' had got to stop." "MacNutt is in camp," said Joe. "You can talk to me if you like. What's the matter?" Rough Shan cursed the absent foreman. "Log stealin's the matter," he announced. "A load of our logs has gone slick an' clean." "Gone where?" asked Joe coldly. "MacNutt knows where!" asserted Rough Shan with an oath. "This is the second time. I'm goin' to find them, an' when I do----" "What'll ye do?" demanded Haggarty truculently. "It is the likes of you can come over here an' say----" "Dry up, Haggarty!" Joe commanded shortly. "Now, look here, Mr. McCane, we haven't got your logs." "But ye have," Rough Shan proclaimed loudly. "I know the dirty tricks of ye. That's stealin'--stealin', d'ye mind, young felly? I want them logs an' I want 'em quick, drawed over an' decked on our skidways an' no words about it. As it is, I'm a good mind to run ye out o' the woods." Joe's temper began to boil. Here was an elemental condition confronting him. Rough Shan was big and hard and tough, but he was not much awed. To him the big lumber jack was not more formidable than any one of a score of husky young giants who had done their several and collective bests to break his neck on the football field, and he was not inclined to take any further gratuitous abuse. "What makes you think we took your logs?" he asked. "Who else could 'a' done it?" demanded Rough Shan with elemental logic. "You might have done it yourself," Joe told him. "Now, you listen to me for a minute and keep a civil tongue in your head. You're trying to make trouble for us, and I know it, and I know who is behind you. If you want a row you can have it, now or any old time. You won't run anybody out of the woods. As for the logs, you know what MacNutt told you. Still, if you can prove ownership of any, satisfactorily to me, you may haul them back with the team you hauled them in with. But, mind you, this is the last time. The trick is stale, and you mustn't play it again." "I'll find them an' then I'll talk to you," said Rough Shan with contempt. "Come on, Mike." He made for the nearest skidway. "You two men go along and tell the boys to let him look till he's tired," said Joe to Haggarty and Jackson. "Don't scrap with him, remember." "Well, we'll try not," said Haggarty. "That's Mike Callahan wid him--a divil!" "You do what I tell you!" Joe snapped, and Haggarty and Jackson uttered a suddenly respectful "Yes, sir." In half an hour Jackson came for Joe. He found Rough Shan at the banking grounds. Before him lay a little pile of thin, round circles of wood; also sawdust. McCane picked one circle up and handed it to him. It was a slice cut from the end of a saw log. One side was blank. On the other the letters "CB" proclaiming the ownership of Clancy Brothers were deeply indented. "Well, what about it?" asked Joe. "What about it!" Rough Shan repeated. "Here's the ends sawed from our marked logs. Then ye mark them fresh for yerself. A nice trick! That's jail for some wan." "Pretty smooth," said Joe. "Saves you the trouble of hauling the logs in here, doesn't it? One man could carry these ends in a sack." Rough Shan glared at him. "I want them logs, an' I want them now," he cried with an oath. "All right; take them," Joe retorted. "Of course you'll have to match these ends on the logs they belong to. Possibly you overlooked that little detail. Haggarty, you see that he makes a good fit." Haggarty grinned. "Then I'm thinkin' I'll be goin' over onto Clancys' limit wid him," he commented. Rough Shan took a fierce step forward. Joe stood his ground and the other paused. "Our logs is here," he exclaimed. "These ends proves it. I'll not match them, nor try to. I give ye an hour to deliver a full load of logs, average twelve-inch tops, at our skidways." "Not a log, unless you prove ownership of it, and then you do your own delivering," said Joe. "Pshaw! McCane, what's the use? You can't bluff me. Let your employers go to law if they want to." "Law!" cried Rough Shan. "We run our own law in these woods, young felly. I give ye fair warnin'!" "You make me tired," Joe retorted. "Why don't you _do_ something?" Joe was quick on his feet, but he was quite unprepared for the sudden blow which Rough Shan delivered. It caught him on the jaw and staggered him. Instantly Haggarty hurled himself at McCane, while Jackson tackled Callahan. The men at the rollways ran to the scrap. Callahan floored Jackson and went for Joe, who met him with straight, stiff punches which surprised the redoubtable Mike. As reinforcements came up, McCane and his henchman backed against a pile of timber. "Come on, ye measly log stealers!" roared the foreman, thoroughly in his element. The odds against him had no effect save to stimulate his language. He poured forth a torrent of the vilest abuse that ever defiled a pinery. Beside him Callahan, heavy-set and gorilla-armed, supplemented his remarks. There was no doubt of the thorough gameness of the pair. In went Haggarty, Reese, Ward, and Chartrand. Others followed. The rush simply overwhelmed the two. They went down, using fists, knees, and feet impartially. A dozen men strove to get at them. [Illustration: Haggarty and Rough Shan, locked in a deadly grip, fought like bulldogs] Joe's sense of fair play was outraged. He caught the nearest man by the collar and slung him back twenty feet. "Quit it!" he shouted. "Haggarty! Chartrand! White! Let them alone, do you hear me?" In his anger he rose to heights of unsuspected eloquence and his words cut like whips. The men disentangled before his voice and hands. At the bottom Haggarty and Rough Shan, locked in a deadly grip, fought like bulldogs, each trying for room to apply the knee to the other's stomach. "Pull 'em apart!" Joe ordered sharply, and unwilling hands did so. They cursed each other with deep hatred. Their vocabularies were much on a par and highly unedifying. "That'll do, Haggarty!" Joe rasped. "McCane, you shut your dirty mouth and get out of here." "You--" McCane began venomously. "Don't say it," Joe warned him. "Clear out!" "A dozen of ye to two!" cried McCane. "If I had ye alone, Kent, I'd put ye acrost me knee!" "Come to my camp any night this week and I'll take you with the gloves," said Joe. "If you want a scrap for all hands bring your crew with you. Now, boys, get back on the job. We've wasted enough time. These men are going." He turned away, and the men scattered unwillingly to their several employments. Rough Shan and Callahan, left alone, hesitated, shouted a few perfunctory curses, and finally tramped off. But every one who knew them knew also that this was only the beginning. XII Locke, by means known to himself alone, managed to have his application to the Transportation Commission set down for an early hearing. This made Joe's presence necessary, and he came out of the woods lean and hard and full of vigour. Neither McCane nor his crew had taken up the challenge, and their intentions remained matter of speculation. Just before the hearing, however, the railway suddenly restored the old freight rate on lumber, thus taking the wind out of Locke's sails. "This puts us in the position of flogging a dead horse," he grumbled. "Now the commission will tell us we ought to be satisfied, and refuse to let me show the genesis of the cancelled rate. Confound it! I depended on this to find out more about Garwood." This prediction turned out to be correct. The commission refused to allow its time to be wasted. The old rate was restored, and that was not complained of. Therefore, said they, there was no question for them to consider, their powers not being retroactive. Locke was unable to convince them to the contrary. Outgeneralled in his plan of attack he sought another, finding it in a grievance possessed by one Dingle, a small contractor in a town on the O. & N. There the price of lumber had been boosted sky-high, and this destroyed Dingle's profits on contracts he had undertaken. Investigation showed that the Central Lumber Company had bought out two competing dealers and immediately raised the price. Locke brought action for Dingle, claiming damages and charging an unlawful combination. He named the Central Lumber Company, its directors, Ackerman, Garwood, and the O. & N. Railway, defendants. It was, in fact, a legal fishing expedition and little more. The object of it was to obtain information looking to an action by Crooks and Kent against the same defendants, with the Peninsular Railway added. Locke's first intimation that he had drawn blood came in the shape of a visit from Henry J. Beemer, manager of the Peninsular. Beemer offered him the position of general counsel for that railway. The offer was apparently _bona fide_, and no visible strings dangled from it. Beemer, in fact, was not aware of the Dingle action and was merely carrying out instructions, and he was much surprised when Locke refused the offer. "But why?" he asked. "It's a good thing." "I know it is," said Locke with a sigh, as he thought of his own rough-and-tumble practice. "Still I can't take it. I don't suppose you are aware of the fact, Beemer, but this is an attempt to buy me up." "Nonsense!" said Beemer indignantly. "If we had wanted to buy you we should have done it before. There is no litigation against us now in which you are interested. We make you the offer in good faith, because you are the man for the job." "I have litigation pending against Ackerman and Garwood," the lawyer informed him. "You didn't know that. So, you see, I have to refuse." Beemer took his departure, rather indignant at Ackerman for keeping him in the dark. But a few days afterward Hugh Garwood himself walked into Locke's office. "My name is Garwood," he announced. "I know you by sight," said Locke. "Sit down, Mr. Garwood." Garwood sat down and looked at the lawyer from narrowed eyes. His face was an inscrutable mask. "You have made me a defendant in litigation of yours," he said bluntly. "Why?" "Because I believe you are financing the Central Lumber Company." "Can you prove that?" Garwood asked. "I think so; at least I can put it up to you to disprove it." "Suppose I am financing it," said Garwood after a pause. "Suppose this man-of-straw, Dingle, gets a judgment and his paltry damages are paid--what then?" "Then he should be satisfied," said Locke. Garwood frowned impatiently. "You are a clever man, Locke. Give me credit for average intelligence, please." "Certainly--for much more than the average, Mr. Garwood." "Very good. Now I am going to talk plainly. You are promoting this litigation to form a groundwork for more. If you find what you hope to find, you will bring an action against myself and others." "Well?" "Well, I don't want that action brought." Locke smiled. "Understand me, I am not afraid of it; but it might disarrange some of my plans. Now, a certain offer has been made to you. You refused it. Wasn't it big enough?" "No." "In the not improbable event of the fusion of the Peninsular with the O. & N.," said Garwood slowly, "you might be offered the post of counsel for the amalgamated road." "I should refuse that also, for the same reason." Garwood threw himself back in his chair. "Then what _do_ you want?" "Several things," said Locke. "I want a fair deal for my clients, Crooks and Kent. I want damages for the outrageous freight rate you made for their injury. They must have cars, hereafter, when they want them. The political ukase forbidding purchases from them must be withdrawn, and the markets must be thrown open to them again. The crooked system of double-check tenders for timber limits must be altered. And generally you must stop hammering these men and using your influence against them." Garwood waved an impatient hand. "We are not discussing these things now. Leave them aside. What do you want for yourself?" "They are not to be left aside. My clients will pay my fees. I can't accept anything from you as matters stand." Garwood stared incredulously. "I thought I was dealing with a lawyer," said he. "You will be absolutely certain of that in a very short time," Locke retorted bitingly. Garwood saw his own mistake immediately. You may make an amusing pun on a man's name or gently insinuate that the majority of the members of the profession to which he belongs are unblushing rascals, and the man may smile: but in his heart he feels like killing you. And so Garwood, who desired to come to terms with Locke if possible, apologized. The lawyer accepted the apology coldly and waited. "Your demands for your clients are out of the question," Garwood resumed positively. "We need not discuss them at all. I came here to make an arrangement with you. I have made you an offer which most men would snap at. I ask you again what you want?" "I have told you," Locke replied. "I am bound to my clients. That is absolute and final. If you will not recognize their claims I will proceed with the Dingle action and follow it by another, as you infer." "I dislike to upset your carefully arranged plans," said Garwood, "but Dingle will come to you to-morrow, pay your fees, and instruct you to discontinue the action." "What?" cried Locke, shaken out of his usual calm. If this were true the enemy had again executed a masterly retreat. It annoyed him exceedingly to be blocked twice by the same trick, although he did not see how he could have helped it. "As I told you, we don't want litigation just now," said Garwood. "Without admitting Dingle's claim at all, we considered a settlement the easiest way." "No doubt," said Locke dryly. "Well, you won't be able to buy off the next action. I'll take care of that." "You persist in your refusal to make terms?" "That is a very cool way of putting it," said Locke. "I tell you now, Garwood, I'm going after you, and when I get you I'll nail your hide to the sunny side of the barn." Garwood rose and shook a threatening forefinger at the lawyer. "Remember, if you make trouble for me I'll smash your business. Perhaps you don't think I can. You'll see. Inside a year you won't have a case in any court." "You own a couple of judges, don't you?" said Locke cheerfully. "A nice pair they are, too. You think my clients will get the worst of it from them. Of course they will, but I appeal most of their decisions now. You can injure me to some extent, but not as much as you think. Go to it, Garwood. When I get through with you you'll be a discredited man." On the whole he considered that he had broken even with the railway magnate. The settlement of the Dingle action was a confession of weakness. When that individual made an apologetic appearance the next day, Locke turned his anger loose and almost kicked him out of the office. Then he sat down and did some really first-class thinking, marshalling all the facts he had, drawing deductions, sorting and arranging, and finally he decided that he had a _prima facie_ case. Thereupon he brought action against everybody concerned, directly or remotely, in the assault on the business of Kent and Crooks. Meanwhile Joe Kent was impatient to get back to the woods, but certain business held him. A year before he would have been quite content to pass his evenings at the club, with cards, billiards and the like. Now these seemed strangely futile and inadequate, as did the current conversation of the young men about town. It all struck him as not worth while. He longed for the little log shack with the dully glowing stove within, the winter storm without, and the taciturn MacNutt. As he lay back with a cigar in a luxurious chair he could see the bunk-house filled with the smoke of unspeakable tobacco, the unkempt, weather-hardened men on the "deacon seat," and the festoons of garments drying above the stove. The smart slang and mild swearing disgusted him. He preferred the ribald, man's-size oaths of the shanty men, the crackling blasphemies which embellished their speech. In fact, though he did not know it, he was passing through a process of change; shedding the lightness of extreme youth, hardening a little, coming to the stature of a man. Because the club bored him he took to spending his evenings with Jack Crooks. There was a cosey little room with an open fire, a piano, big, worn, friendly easy-chairs, and an atmosphere of home. This was Jack's particular den, to which none but her best friends penetrated. Sometimes Crooks would drop in, smoke a cigar, and spin yarns of logging in the early days; but more often they were alone. Jack played well and sang better; but she made no pretence of entertaining Joe. He was welcome; he might sit and smoke and say nothing if he chose. She sang or played or read or created mysterious things with linen, needle, and silk, as if he were one of the household. On the other hand, if he preferred to talk she was usually equally willing. One night she sat at the piano and picked minor chords. Joe, sunk in the chair he particularly affected, scowled at the fire and thought of logs. Lately he had thought of little else. He wanted to get back and see the work actually going on. Jack half turned and looked at him. "He needs cheering up," she said. "He's thinking of her still." "What's that?" said Joe with a start. "'Tis better to have loved and lost," she quoted mockingly. "Brace up, Joe." She often teased him about his temporary infatuation with Edith Garwood, knowing that it did not hurt. She swung about to the piano and her fingers crashed into the keys: "Whin _I_ was jilted by Peggy Flynn, The heart iv me broke, an' I tuk to gin; An' I soaked me sowl both night an' day While worrukin' on the railwa-a-a-y. "Arrah-me, arrah-me, arrah-me, ay, Arrah-me, arrah-me, arrah-me, ay, Oh, sorra th' cint I saved of me pay While worrukin' on the railwa-a-a-y. "But in eighteen hundred an' seventy-three I went an' married Biddy McGee, An' th' foine ould woman she was to me While worrukin' on the railwa-a-a-y. "We'll omit the next thirteen stanzas, Joe. See what your fate might have been: "In eighteen hundred an' eighty-siven, Poor Biddy died an' she went to Hiven; An' I was left wid kids eliven Worrukin' on the railwa-a-a-y." "Great Scott, Jack, where did you pick up that old come-all-ye?" Joe interrupted. "You sing it like an Irish section hand." "I learned it from one. He was a good friend of mine. Do you want the rest of the verses? There are about seventy, I think." "If Biddy is in Heaven, we'll let it go at that," laughed Joe. "Why don't you sing something touching and sentimental, appropriate to my bereaved condition? By the way, Jack, where is Drew keeping himself? I haven't seen him lately. I was just beginning to feel _de trop_ when he called." This was carrying the war into Jack's territory. Young Drew had paid her very pronounced, attentions and had recently discontinued them, for a reason which only she and himself knew. The colour flamed into her cheeks. "Don't talk nonsense! There was no reason why you should feel that way." "Hello! You're blushing!" Joe commented. "I'm not; it's the fire." "Is it?" said Joe sceptically. For the first time in his life he regarded her carefully. He had been used to taking Jack for granted, and had paid no more attention to her looks than the average brother pays to those of a younger sister. Now it struck him that she was pretty. Her hair was abundant, brown and glossy; her eyes and skin were clean and clear and healthy, and her small, shapely head was carried with regal uprightness; she was slim and straight and strong and capable. In fact she suddenly dawned upon his accustomed vision in an entirely new way. "Jack," said he, and his surprise showed in his voice, "upon my word I believe you are rather good looking!" She rose and swept him a mock curtsey. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." "Nice eyes, plenty of hair, and a good figure," Joe drawled. "I don't blame Drew at all." "Now, Joe, quit it. I don't care to be jollied about that." "What's sauce for the gander is ditto for the goose. I wasn't aware that there was anything serious----" "There isn't," Jack snapped, "and there never will be. Will you stop when I ask you to?" Joe dropped the subject, but eyed her curiously. "I take it back," said he after an interval of silence. "Jack, you're absolutely pretty. What have you been doing to yourself?" "I always was pretty," Jack declared. "The trouble was with your powers of observation." "Likely," said Joe, and fell silent again. Jack picked up a book and began to read. He watched her idly, pleased by the picture she presented. She fidgeted beneath his gaze. "I wish you wouldn't stare at me as if I were a recently discovered species," she exclaimed at last. "Now I wonder," said he, "why I never noticed it before." Jack dimpled charmingly. "I want to tell you, young man, that you are singularly dense. Even dad knows what I look like." "So do I--now," said Joe. "I suppose I've been thinking of you as a little girl. Great Scott!" He shook his head, puzzled by his blindness. Jack's eyes twinkled and her dimples became pronounced. She was enjoying his discovery greatly. Presently she said: "When do you go up to Wind River?" "As soon as I can--in a day or two, anyway." A slight frown drew lines between his eyes. "I ought to be up there now. Not that I can tell MacNutt anything about his job, of course. But there's that outfit of McCane's! No telling what they will be up to next. And then I ought to go round to the other camps and see how there're making it. We want a main drive of twenty-five or thirty million this year. Got to have it. Yes, I ought to be on the spot." He was talking to himself rather than to her, and the boyishness had vanished from his voice and manner. He was the man of affairs, the executive head, thinking, planning, immersed in his business. Jack was quick to recognize the change. "You need the logs, don't you, Joe?" "I'll smash without 'em, sure. Twenty million feet delivered at Wismer & Holden's booms by July 1st. Not a day later. Then I can lift the notes, square my overdraft, and meet the mortgage payments. If I don't--well, my credit is strained pretty badly now." "You'll pull through, Joe. I know you will." Her hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up abstractedly and saw her standing beside him. Mechanically his hand reached up and closed on hers. At the contact he felt a little thrill, and something stirred within him. It was the first time he had touched her hand since childhood, save in greeting or farewell. And her touch was the first of understanding human sympathy he had had since called upon to hoe his own row. He vibrated to it responsively. "You're a good little sport, Jack," he said gratefully and pressed her hand. There was a discreet knock at the door. "Telegram for you, Joe," said Jack, taking the yellow envelope from the maid. "May I?" said Joe, and tore it open. His face became a thunder-cloud. He bit back the words that rose to his lips. "What is it?" asked Jack anxiously. "Not bad news?" "Couldn't be much worse." He held out the slip of yellow paper. She read: Camp burnt out. McCane's crew. Wire instructions. --MacNutt. Joe tore a leaf from a note-book and scribbled: Hold men together and build new camp. Rushing supplies. Coming at once. "I've got to have that camp going again in a week," said he grimly. "That means hustle. I shan't see you again before I go up." "You're going yourself," she said with approval. "Good boy, Joe. Oh, how I wish I were a man!" "If you were I'd have you for a partner," he declared. "But I'm glad you're not. I like you best this way. Good-bye, little girl, and thanks for many pleasant evenings. I'll tell you all about the war when I come back." In spite of Joe's misfortune Jack went upstairs that night with a light step, humming the refrain of the last stanza of her father's favourite song: When the drive comes dow-un, when the jam comes down. What makes yeez lads so wishful-eyed as we draw near to town? Other eyes is soft an' bright like the stars of a June night-- Wives an' sweethearts--prayin' waitin'--as we drive the river down. (Oh, ye divils!) God bless the eyes that shine for us when we boil into town. "Other eyes is soft an' bright;" she crooned to her white-clad reflection as she braided the great coils of glossy brown hair. "To think Joe has just found out that _my_ eyes are bright. Charlie Drew knew it long ago. How stupid some boys are!" Meanwhile Wright and Locke were swearing angrily as they read the telegram, while Joe told them of his determination to rebuild at once. "That's the talk," said Wright. "I'll sue Clancy Brothers at once," said Locke. "I believe they can be made liable. Anyway, it will have a good moral effect. And when you get the names of the men who did the burning I'll have them arrested." "I don't think I'll bother about law," said Joe. Locke stared at him in surprise. "Because the way I feel now," young Kent continued, "I think as soon as I can spare the time I'll take a bunch of bully-boys and run them out of the woods." XIII At Maguire's station Joe disembarked from the crawling, snow-smothered train, consisting of engine, baggage car, and day coach. The platform was covered with boxes, sacks, and bundles; and men were piling them on bobsleighs. These were shanty boys from the Wind River camp. Haggarty, one eye blackened and almost closed, growled a hearty welcome to the young boss. The latter, looking around, observed other marks of combat. He asked the cause. "It was like this, Mr. Kent," Haggarty replied. "The camp was burnt at noon. Half a dozen men wid flour sacks over their heads ran in on the cook, the cookee bein' out on the job. They took him out an' fired the camp. Then they tied him, covered him wid blankets so he wouldn't freeze, an' lit out. The cookee come back an' found him, an' brought us word. MacNutt an' what men he could hold hit for camp to see what could be done, but the rest of us was too mad, an' we boiled across to do up McCane's crew. It was a good fight, but they was too many for us." He swore with deep feeling. "Just wait. The woods ain't big enough to hold us both after this." "Are all the men at camp now?" "All but what's down wid the teams. There was tents an' stoves went up yesterday. Before that she was a cold rig for sleepin' and eatin'. Now it's better." On the long sleigh drive Joe got details, but the main facts were as stated by Haggarty. None of the incendiaries had been recognized, but nobody doubted that they were of Rough Shan's crew. Joe found a dozen tents pitched around the clearing, well banked with snow and floored with boughs. New buildings were going up as fast as the logs could be hauled out of the woods and laid in place. The work of logging was temporarily suspended. MacNutt, grim and in a poisonous temper, drove the willing crew from streak of dawn till fall of dark. "You'll blame me, like enough," said he. "I blame myself. I've seen the like before, and I knew McCane, curse him! If you say so I'm ready to quit, but I'll get even with him for this." "I don't blame you a bit," Joe told him. "It can't be helped. We must get the camp and the cutting going on again, and then we'll square up with McCane when we have time." As the buildings neared completion new men began to arrive--strapping, aggressive-eyed fellows who viewed each other and the Wind River men very much after the manner of strange mastiffs. These were draughts from Tobin's and Deever's camps--the "hardest" men from each, picked by the foremen by Joe's instructions and sent on to him. In return, Joe instructed some of his original crew to report to Deever and Tobin. Thus he found himself with a crew of "bully-boys" who feared nothing on earth and were simply spoiling for a fight. In the completed bunk-house a huge, bearded, riverman leaped high, cracked his heels together and whooped. "Is it Rough Shan McCane?" he yelled as he hit the floor. "Is it him wid his raft of Callahans an' Red McDougals an' scrapin's of hell wud burn a Kent camp?" His blasphemy was original and unreproducible. "By the Mortal! The moon's high, an' the travellin's good. Come on, bullies, we'll burn them out of their bunks this night!" The yell that arose reached the ears of Joe and MacNutt. The foreman looked at his employer. "What's up?" the latter asked. "If you want McCane's camp burnt and his gang run out of the woods all you have to do is to sit here and smoke your pipe," MacNutt replied. Joe seized his cap and opened the door just as the crew began to pour out of the bunk-house hastily pulling on garments as they came. He dashed across the open space and met the leaders. "What's the excitement, boys?" he asked. "We're going to burn out Rough Shan for you," answered the big riverman. "Oh, you are!" said Joe. "Well, Cooley, I don't remember asking you to do anything of the kind." "Sure, you don't need to ask it, Mr. Kent," returned big Cooley with what he intended for an amiable, protective smile. "The boys will see to it for you." A yell of fierce affirmation arose behind him. "You go to bed an' know nawthin' about it." "Are you giving me orders, Cooley?" Joe demanded in biting tones. "Let me tell you this," he cried. "Not a man goes out to-night. When I want McCane's camp burnt I'll tell you. Yes, and I'll set fire to it myself. That's the kind of fellow I am. I won't hide behind you boys. Now get back, every man of you!" They hesitated and murmured. Those behind pushed forward. The young man was showing unsuspected qualities. Joe stepped up close. "Do you men think I'll let you run this camp?" he demanded. "You're here to cut logs when I tell you and not to fight till I tell you. Get it through you now and get it clear that I'm Boss. _Boss_, do you understand? BOSS! What I say goes, day or night." He drew a furrow in the snow with his moccasin. "The man who crosses that line gets his time. If you all cross you all get it. If half of you cross you all get it, and I'll shut down this camp. That's what Clancy and McCane are trying to make me do. If you want to help them and smash me--cross the line!" [Illustration: "There's the line. Cross it to-night or try to scrap with McCane's crew before I tell you to, and I'll shut down"] His voice rang clear as a trumpet in the frozen stillness. By accident, almost, he had chosen the right course. Pleadings alone would have been in vain; orders alone would have been useless; the placing of this responsibility upon the men turned the scale. "Aw, now, Mr. Kent," said big Cooley coaxingly, "what harm to put the run on them high-bankers and burn their dirty camp?" Joe eyed him coldly. "I won't argue," he said. "There's the line. Cross it to-night or try to scrap with McCane's crew before I tell you to, and I'll shut down. I mean it, boys. Goodnight." He turned and walked to the foreman's quarters without looking back. Behind him the men stood huddled foolishly. Then, one by one, they straggled back to the bunk-house. From that moment Joe Kent stood with his crew on his own feet. He was _boss_. The following night, when he came in with the crew from the woods, he was served with an injunction restraining him, his servants, agents, or workmen, from entering upon the limits of Clancy Brothers, or injuring or interfering with their property or employees. "Wouldn't that jar a brick wall?" he commented to MacNutt. "They burn our camp and get an injunction against us. I half wish I had let the boys go over last night. Now, I suppose it would be contempt of court to cross their line." "Don't let that worry you," said the foreman grimly. "Orders of court is a poor rig in the woods. All you've got to do is to give me and the boys our time and hire us again when we've cleaned 'em out." But this beautifully simple evasion of the law did not appeal to Joe. He wanted logs, and had no time to waste in satisfying his grudges. The weather, which had been ideal for logging, changed and choking snows fell. The road had to be ploughed out time after time. The hauling was heavy and slow. Then came a great thaw. The horses balled and stumbled and caulked themselves. The huge sleighs made pitch-holes in the road. Altogether it was discouraging. Finally the wind switched into the north and the weather hardened. The mercury dropped to zero at night and rose to twenty at noon. The road became icy and the runners slid easily in the ruts. Once more the teamsters took full loads and the choked skidways found relief. The men, denied the innocent recreation of burning out the other camp, worked with vim. The word went around that Kent needed the logs--needed them, in fact, badly. That was enough. Haggarty, Regan, big Cooley, and half a dozen others set the pace, and the rest of the crew kept up to it. They were at work by the first light, and only darkness forced a halt. The nooning was cut short voluntarily, the men contenting themselves with a few whiffs of tobacco and resuming work without a word from MacNutt. Joe felt the change. There was a subtle difference in the ring of the axes and the vibration of the saws. They sang a faster song and held a truer note. As he went over the work from man to man with a joke or a pleasant word--criticisms, instructions, and suggestions he still wisely left to MacNutt--he was met by cheerful grins. These rough, virile men of the woods and the river recognized a kinship with the young boss; they felt in him their own fearlessness and willingness to take a chance, and a strength of purpose and of character unmarred by their vices. Since the rebuilding of the camp they had seen little of McCane's crew. Curses and threats had been exchanged between individuals across the deadline, but on the whole Peace brooded dove-like and triumphant, as it is accustomed to brood above armed states, and the manner of its sudden, startled flight was thus: Joe and MacNutt, going through a slashing at the farthest corner of the limit which they had reached in the cutting, inadvertently trespassed upon Clancys'; thereby becoming technically guilty of contempt of court. As they ploughed through the deep snow two men came into view from behind the fallen tops. One of these was Rough Shan; the other, to Joe's astonishment, proved to be Finn Clancy. The two advanced. Joe and MacNutt stopped. Clancy opened the ball with an explosion of profanity. "Are ye lookin' for more logs to steal?" he observed in conclusion. "Keep to yer own limit, ye young thief, or I'll break yer neck!" "You've reached _your_ limit!" said Joe through his teeth, and put his whole weight behind his left fist. Clancy went back in the snow as if he had been hit by an axe. MacNutt, like a dog unleashed, went for McCane. The latter, nothing loath, met him half-way. Clancy staggered up out of the snow spitting blood and broken dentistry, and charged Joe like a bull moose, roaring inarticulate invective. Joe smashed him right and left, took a counter in the face that made his brain swim, was caught in the big man's arms and fought himself free by straight, hard body punches. Two of McCane's men ran into the slashing. At sight of the fight they raised a yell and charged. This yell reached the ears of Kent's teamster, little Narcisse Laviolette, bending to clutch the butt of a log with a swamp-hook. He straightened himself at the sound. "Bagosh, some feller mak' de beeg row!" he muttered. "I see heem dat boss an' MacNutt pass heemself dat way. Mo' Gee! mebbe dey ron into plaintee troub'." He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Ya-hoo-ee! Ya-hoo-ee!" he shouted in a far-carrying cry. Leaving his team to their own devices he turned and ran, shouting at every step. The buoyant cry went echoing through the forest. It spelt trouble. Man after man left saw in the cut and axe in the limb and ran toward it. Laviolette bounded into the slashing. In the middle were half a dozen men, fighting fiercely. On the other side, the woods poured forth a yelling crew. Laviolette did not hesitate. He hurled himself through the snow in great leaps, and plunged into the thick of the fray. His heavy "snag-proof" gum boot crashed into one man's face with all the power of his leg-muscles behind it. He sprang on the back of another and bore him to the ground, gripping one ear and tearing it half away from the head, for little Laviolette was a dirty fighter. Then he was kicked in the throat and stamped into the snow. Clancy was getting the worst of it from Joe, and MacNutt was holding his own with Rough Shan. The first newcomers turned the scale. Laviolette almost evened it again. Then all were swamped by the rush of McCane's crew. Kent and MacNutt went down fighting gamely, and were kicked and hammered until the world swam before their outraged senses. At this stage of the combat Kent's crew caught sight of the enemy. The roar that went up from them was heard even at the rollways. They charged home. A wave of fighting shantymen surged over Joe, and he raised himself and staggered up as he had often done from the bottom of a scrimmage. Big Cooley raged in the van of the fight, spouting blasphemies and swinging his enormous fists right and left. Beside him Haggarty and Regan found vent for their hatred of the other camp. The fight spread out into a number of single combats, and it was then that Kent's picked fighters proved their quality. Man after man of McCane's gang had enough, quit, and ran. The rout became general. "Burn them out!" was the cry. Joe turned to MacNutt, who stood beside him gasping for breath and swaying. "Shall I stop them?" he said. "Stop nothing!" said the foreman. "If I get there in time I'll touch her off myself!" He ran twenty yards and fell in the snow. For the first time in his life he had fainted. Joe caught Laviolette darting past and held him. "Get a sleigh and haul him into camp," he ordered. Laviolette, mad with excitement, tried to break away. Joe gripped the teamster by the throat and shook him violently, despite a grinding pain in his side which made the forest swim. "Do you hear me, damn you?" he thundered. "A sleigh, I say, or----" His fingers tightened. "Sure, sure," croaked the teamster. "_Oui, m'sieu!_ Mo' Gee, I choke!" Joe released him and bent over MacNutt. Suddenly the world grew black and he pitched down head foremost beside his foreman. Thus neither of them saw the finish of McCane's camp. The gang roared through the woods and stormed the camp like demons. McCane's cook, game enough, grabbed an axe. Instantly an iron pot, thrown with full force, sailed through the air and broke his right arm. The cookee emerged from the bunk-house with a gun in his hand and found himself face to face with Cooley. He levelled the weapon. The big riverman grinned at him. "Put it down an' ye won't be hurted," he said. "Shoot, an' the boys will burn ye alive." There was no mistaking the temper of the gang, and the cookee wisely did as he was told. The men raided the van and broached a barrel of kerosene oil. They threw the contents by the pailful inside the buildings. "Here she goes to hell!" shouted big Cooley as he struck a match. The light blue flames ran up the oil-soaked wood and took hold. It began to crackle and then to roar. Outside, Kent's crew danced with glee. Some one found a keg of whiskey. Regan smashed in one end and upset the contents on the snow. "No booze," said he. "This is no work to get drunk at." From a neighbouring knoll most of McCane's crew looked on with curses loud and deep, but they had no collective stomach for further warfare just then. When nothing but charred end-logs and glowing coals remained, Kent's men tramped off through the deep snows shouting gibes and taunts at their enemies. Their vengeance had been ample and satisfying. XIV MacNutt was able to boss the job on the following day; but Kent was less fortunate. Pains in side and head attacked him, what of the pounding he had received. After waiting a couple of days for them to disappear, with a healthy man's confidence in his own recuperative powers, he was driven back to Maguire's, where he took train for Falls City. There his injured side was strapped and he was ordered complete rest and quiet. Early in the winter, because he was alone in the world, he had leased his house and moved to an apartment building. This now seemed to him about as cheerful as a prison. He longed for human companionship of some sort, and he would have disobeyed his doctor's orders and gone out in search of it, but for the fact that his face, covered with bruises, would have attracted attention. But in the afternoon of his first day's confinement came William Crooks and Miss Jack. That young lady took charge of the situation with calm capacity. "Now, Joe," she said, "you're coming up to the house until you're well. Doctor's orders. So tell me what things you want and I'll pack them for you." "I couldn't think of troubling you," he protested. "I'm not sick, you know. Just a cracked rib and a jolt on the head. I feel all right, really." "You do as you're told," she replied. She began to pull out the drawers of his chiffonier. "What a mess your things are in! Nothing where it ought to be. Where _do_ you keep your pajamas? Dad, look in that closet for his suit case." "This is kidnapping," said Joe. "Call it what you like," chuckled Crooks. "Do as Jack tells you and quit kicking. _I_ have to." He brought out a suit case and a deep club bag. "Fire in what you think he needs, Jack." Joe watched uneasily her selection of articles supposedly indispensable to his comfort, and gave in. "Hold on, Jack, or else get a trunk. Let me show you, if I have to go." "That's better," said Crooks. He paused and regarded Joe critically. "Well, you did get a pounding. Did the whole crew jump on your face?" "It felt that way at the time," said Joe, "but you ought to see Finn Clancy's." He told the story of the fight briefly, making little mention of his own part in it. "So you see I was out of the fun at the wind-up," he concluded. "Too bad," said Crooks with a sympathy born of personal experience. "There will be trouble over that, though. They'll call it contempt of court, and malicious destruction, and the Lord and Locke only know what else." This prophecy proved to be correct. As soon as he could be located writs, summonses, and orders to appear and show cause showered on Joe. These passed on to Locke, who secured delay by physicians' certificates, affidavits, motions--all the methods by which the experienced attorney can clog the slowly moving wheels of the law. Meanwhile Joe nursed his knitting ribs and rested completely. Jack established an invisible wall about him through which no business affairs penetrated. "Dad and Mr. Wright can look after things for a week or two," she explained. "Mr. Locke says you needn't worry about law matters. Everything at the camps is going well. So, young man, you just make yourself comfortable and be lazy. That's your job for the present." When a few days had accustomed him to inaction it proved to be a very pleasant job. He developed an unsuspected capacity for sleep. This meant the restorage of his nerve cells. The pains in his head lessened and ceased, and the bruised flesh gradually assumed a normal hue. His favourite place was Jack's den. There was a bow window with a south exposure, and in the recess stood a huge easy-chair. Joe lay in it and absorbed sunshine, for the days were warming and lengthening, and stared up into the blue sky dotted with little white-wool clouds, or watched Jack, who had made the den her workroom. He found the latter pursuit the more entertaining. Jack affected white, with a superb disregard of laundry bills. It set off her lithe, straight figure, the small uplifted head with the abundant coils of dark hair, and the pretty piquant face with the firm yet tender mouth. From top to toe she was spotless and neat and trim and dainty. Her conversation was a tonic in itself. She was direct of speech, frank, and often slangy when slang best expressed her meaning. There were many odd "characters" dependent upon the open-handed bounty of William Crooks, and from them she had heard strange philosophies born of twisted lives, odd expressions which occasionally crept into her speech, and scraps of forgotten song. She had listened by the hour to old Micky Keeliher who tended the garden; to the widowed Mrs. Quilty who came once a week to do the washing; to crippled Angus McDougal, once a mighty riverman, whose strength had departed, and to a dozen others. Not one of them but would have died for William Crooks's daughter. To her they sang the songs of their youth in cracked, quavering voices; for her they unlocked the storehouses of their experience and gave of it freely. She absorbed their songs, their sayings, their tales; and as nearly as her youth would permit she understood their viewpoint of life. Joe, buried in his chosen chair, listened to the queer tunes she lilted--tunes which had stirred the hearts of by-gone generations in other lands--and by turns stared at the bright out-of-doors and slept. And Jack, on her part, felt a strange happiness, as if the room held all that was best and most to be desired. She did not analyze the feeling; she was content that it was hers. Bending over her sewing one bright afternoon during the last days of Joe's convalescence she crooned: "Is it far away ye're goin', Danny, dear? Is it lavin' me ye arre, widout a tear? Sure the ship's white sails is swellin', But it's this to ye I'm tellin'-- Ye shall love an' seek me out widin the year, "By the spell that's laid upon ye ye shall come agin to me, The dear, bould, handsome head of ye shall drop upon me knee. While ye sleep or while ye wake, It's the heart of ye shall ache Wid love o' that poor weepin' gyurl ye left beside the sea!" "That's a cheerful song," said Joe ironically from his chair. "Did he come back?" "Of course," laughed Jack. "Unfortunately, he died as his head touched her knee, and naturally she was inconsolable. Like to hear her lament?" She drew her face into lines of sorrow and threw back her head in a preliminary wail, as a dog howls. E-e-yah-h-h! Oh, why did he die? Oh-h-h-h, why did---- "Stop!" cried Joe. "Look here, Jack, remember I'm an interesting invalid. I want something cheerful." "Well, that _is_ comparatively cheerful. Now, if I sang you a real Hielan' lament----" "Don't you dare," Joe interrupted. "I am still far from strong." Jack laughed. "You smoked yesterday. Doctor Eberts says that a man who can enjoy a smoke is well enough to work." "Good for the doc!" cried Joe. "Me for the office and then back to the woods. Hooray!" "Not for a day or two," said Jack. "Things are going all right. You keep quiet." Joe sank back in his chair. "I suppose so, but--well, I want to look after them myself." Far off against the blue sky a wedge of black specks bored through space, swinging off beyond the limits of the town. "Look, Jack! The first geese going north. That means the end of winter and open water. We'll start our drives in a few weeks." "Yes, Joe." She perched on the arm of the big chair and stared after the birds, her face clouded with discontent. "That's life, and you can live it. Oh, heavens! Why wasn't I a boy? I'd love it so. I want to go up to the camps and see the rollways broken out and the banking grounds emptied. I want to wear spiked boots and ride a stick in white water and use a peavey. I want to come back to the wanegan at night, and eat and dry off by a big fire and sleep out of doors. I want--don't you dare to laugh at me, Joe Kent--I want to come into town with the bully-boys, with a hat pulled down over my eyes and a cigar in my mouth sticking up at an angle, and sing 'Jimmy Judge,' and 'From Far Temiskamang.' I want"--she faced him defiantly--"I want to ride up town in a hack--_with my feet out of the window!_ Yes, I do. And now tell me you are shocked." "I might be if I saw you do it," said Joe. "I've felt the same way myself--like breaking loose from everything. If you were a man you wouldn't, though. Only the shanty boys tear off these stunts. _We_ can't." "All very well for you to talk--you could if you wanted to," said Jack disconsolately. "I'm a girl. I can't even go up to the camps unless dad takes me." She voiced her grievance again. "I wish I had been a boy." She turned to the window and stared out. Joe rose and stood beside her, looking down at the burnished brown of her hair and the soft profile of her cheek. Once more the nameless thrill he had felt before when he had touched her hand possessed him. Hesitatingly, awkwardly, impelled by something which was not of his own volition, he put his arm around her. Instantly, as if a curtain had been rolled up--as if a screen had been withdrawn--he saw his own mind clearly. Why, he loved her! It came to him with a shock of utter amazement. Little Jack Crooks, his playmate, his friend, his confidant, the girl he had looked at so long with unseeing eyes--she, she was the only woman in the wide world for him. She had always been the only one. Edith Garwood? Pshaw! How could he have been so blind? Not all her radiant beauty and deceptive sweetness could compare with straight, loyal, little Jack, his chum and his love. She seemed unconscious of his arm until he spoke her name. Then she turned her head slowly and her dark eyes looked directly into his. What she saw there brought the red to her cheeks in a wave. Up and up the telltale crimson tide leaped to her brow, to the roots of her glossy brown hair, but her gaze did not waver. "Should you, Joe?" she asked simply. Stumblingly, humbly he told her, and she listened, nestling in his arms as one who has found her own place. And so, when bluff old William Crooks came home, he found them sitting in the twilight, planning wonderful things. Joe put the situation simply. "Jack has consented to marry me, sir." William Crooks stared at him and then at his daughter. "Fact, dad," she confirmed. "Well, I'll be--" began Crooks out of his unbounded astonishment. She put her hand over his lips. "I hope not, dad." "Well, you take a man unawares," growled Crooks. "How long has this been going on?" "About two hours, I think," said Joe happily. "Oh," said Crooks; "I was afraid you had been holding out on me. You're sure about this, I suppose?" They were very sure. "Well," said Crooks judicially, "I don't know any young fellow I'd rather give Jack to, Joe. Shake hands, you robber. But, mind you, you've got to put your business on its feet before you marry her." "I'll do it," Joe promised. "Of course he will," Jack asserted with perfect faith. Bill Crooks regarded them wistfully. In their youth and hope he saw his own. He thought of a far day when he and a girl had faced the world together, determined to wring from it success. The success had come, but the woman of his heart no longer shared it with him. Suddenly he felt old and lonely. He roused himself with a sigh and a shake of his big shoulders. No one, not even his daughter, suspected old Bill Crooks of sentiment. His thoughts were his own. XV Joe Kent tore himself away from his new happiness, visited Tobin's and Deever's camps, spent a few days at each, and wound up at Wind River. The banking grounds were full--great piles of timber stretching along the water's edge waiting the going of the ice. The winter roads were failing fast and the last logs were coming out the woods in half loads. Most of the hauling was done by night, for then the roads hardened with frost. By day the air was mild and the depth of snow sank sensibly. Then came the first rain of the season, destroying the roads utterly. All the men, save the driving crew, were paid off. Since a lumber camp is a self-contained community including a store or "van" at which the hands purchase most of their simple necessaries, paying off involves an adjustment of accounts, A lumber jack seldom keeps a record of his purchases, and is thus dependent upon the honesty of his employer's bookkeeping. The custom is to run rapidly over the account of each man in his presence. If he remembers the purchases and is satisfied, as he is in the majority of cases, well and good. If he does not remember or is not satisfied after reasonable explanation he is tendered a check and told to see a lawyer. But there have been logging firms who have robbed their men shamelessly. "Jack," one employer is alleged to have said, "you remember that pair of socks you got in December?" Jack, after an effort, remembered. "That's one pair," said the employer, and went on rapidly. "And you remember the pair you didn't get in January--that's two pairs." And Jack agreed. Keener men have been flimflammed by much the same formula. But, on the whole, the men get a square deal, few employers being small enough to charge excessive prices for supplies, much less to make fictitious entries against them. There was no dissatisfaction among Kent's men. Differences of opinion never reached the point of absolute assertion. "Well, Billy," MacNutt would say, "there's the entry in our books made at the time. If you say flat you didn't get the goods we'll let it go, because we know you're a straight man, and think you're right. But if you just say you don't remember, why, then, our books show we do." This unusual but effective system had been installed by William Kent and worked like a charm. Seldom did a man, having it put up to him in that way, flatly contradict the books. And then it prevented all friction. After the surplus men had been paid off, the weather hardened. A bitter wind held in the north by day; the nights were still, clear, and cold. Ice actually made and thickened in the river. It was unheard-of. Each morning the rivermen rose, cocked wise eyes at the sky, and cursed the weather. Each night they sat around the stove, for the cold was penetrating. "It's the qualified adjective moon," said Cooley. "The weather will break when she changes." "She'll break when she gets ready," said Jackson. "This will make a late drive." "But high water when it does come," said another. Joe Kent took to looking into the sleeping camp for an hour or so each night. He had brought a banjo with him, and he exhausted his song repertory. The men enjoyed it thoroughly. It was, perhaps, bad for discipline, but it developed a feeling of comradeship. His authority was not in danger, for they had seen him hold his own against the redoubtable Mike Callahan, who was a dangerous fighter; and he had also bested big Finn Clancy, who had whipped many a good man in his day. Suddenly the weather changed. One morning a southerly wind and a cloudy sky greeted them; by noon there was a warm rain slashing against the earth; at night mists and fog hung everywhere. "She breaks up this time," said Cooley, who was engaged in saturating his driving boots with oil and hot tallow, not with intent to keep his feet dry, but to preserve the leather. "An' time it is," said Regan, busy with a file at the inch spikes which studded the soles of his footgear. "She's a fortnight later nor she should be." This was so, but it had caused Joe little uneasiness, for his margin seemed ample. His plan was to drive the Wind River cut down the Wind to the Mattawagan. Tobin and Deever would drive down the Missabini to the latter stream. The drives would unite at McColl's Sney, where the main drive would be formed. Thence it would proceed down that great water artery past Falls City to Wismer & Holden's booms. It was all very simple--on paper. But it took a week for the ice to move in the Wind. The driving crew chafed and cursed, for they regarded Kent's interests as their own, and they longed to feel a rocking log beneath their feet once more. When the ice finally moved they attacked the rollways with fury, and the huge piles of great sticks cascaded thunderously into the water like huge amphibians. At that point the river was deep and had little current. Therefore the logs strung out slowly and in an orderly manner with a dignity befitting their weight and age. When the drive began to string with the slow current, MacNutt sent part of the crew downstream to keep the logs moving and prevent jams. The remainder divided and strung along either bank, releasing such sticks as grounded in the shallows or caught in the "sweepers" from the banks. Last of all came the "wanegan," also known as the "sweep." This was a long, heavy, flat bottomed scow, of primitive but enormously strong construction. It was the base of supplies for the driving crew. It held tents, provisions, clothing, and tools, and it was manned by the cook, cookees, and blacksmith. For propulsion it possessed long sweeps; but since it had merely to keep pace with the logs and the logs moved no faster than the current, these were used only for guidance. In slow water the life of its crew by day was one of dreamy, idyllic ease; but in fast water this condition was reversed. The scow was big, heavy, and unwieldly. It refused to be guided, checked or restrained; it bumped malevolently against boulders, grounded on sandbars, scraped its crew against overhanging limbs, and dragged them, cursing, into the water when they tried to line it down a fast, obstructed current. For the first few days they always endeavoured to control their craft; after that they let it go and trusted to luck, clinging perfunctorily to the sweeps and damning the grinning rivermen who shouted sarcastic comment and advice from the banks and solitary logs. At night the crew sought the wanegan and ate voraciously. They were always wet to the waist and often to the ears. They changed and dried their soaked clothing on pole racks by roaring fires, smoked, and slept in little tents pitched ready for them. Before the first light they had breakfasted, and they stepped into ice water in the gray dawn. But with it they were happy and contented, for the drive was the crowning glory of the year. The drive made average progress. There were small jams, easily broken, minor delays which always occur, but both MacNutt and Joe were pleased. "The late opening won't matter," said the former as they spread their blankets in the little wedge tent. "The head will hit the first dam to-morrow, sometime. We ought to sluice her through inside two days. Then there's the second dam. If we have luck we'll tie into the main drive pretty near on time. The others'll be about as late as we are." "I hope so," said Joe. "We don't want to hang up anywhere. I suppose McCane's drive will be out of our way?" "Sure to ---- unless he jams somewhere," said MacNutt. "Lebret Creek is faster than the Wind and opens earlier. It's good drivin'. He ought to be through the second dam by now." Lebret Creek joined the Wind above the second dam. They were then some twenty-five miles from the confluence, and four miles above the first dam. The day broke clear and splendid. Joe and MacNutt set off down stream for the dam half an hour behind a dozen of the crew. They cut through the woods across a three-mile bend of the stream and came suddenly upon it again. "By the G. jumping Jasper!" cried MacNutt. The river seemed to have shrunk. Logs lay along the banks, were caught in shallows, rocked in the feeble current. As far as the eye could reach stretched the shaggy backs of the brown herd, motionless or nearly so. The ancient bed of the stream appeared as it had been before the dams were built--a flat, rocky bottom over which a foot or so of water brawled noisily and ineffectively, utterly useless from the standpoint of a logger. The drive was plugged for want of water. A man appeared through the trees. He was running. "Dam's gone out!" he shouted as he came within hailing distance. Joe and the foreman looked at each other. There was no need to put the single thought into words. "Come on," said Joe briefly, and broke into a trot. They found the men gathered by the remnants of the dam. The wings of the structures sagged forlornly, and through the wrecked centre the stream poured over a rocky bed. The débris had been swept downstream by the rush of released water, and the ruin was beautifully complete. The cause of its going out must remain speculation merely. "What's the best thing to do?" Joe asked MacNutt. "Ward," said MacNutt, "you hike. Bring every man here, a-jumping. Load up a peakie with tools, blocks and tackle and dynamite and run her down river somehow. Load up another with tents, blankets, and grub, and tell the cook to bring her down. Camp is here till we move the logs. Get a move on you, now!" "There's only one thing to do," he continued to Kent. "The dam has got to be put in again. There's no fall to speak of, and four foot of water will float the best part of the logs. The rest we'll have to sack out. It means a week, but we can't help it." Regan, who after examining the wreck narrowly had taken to the bank, appeared above them. He carried a piece of timber, twisted and riven. This he dumped down before the boss. "Found her back in the brush," said he. "They used powder. I knowed that dam never went out by herself." "The infernal scoundrels!" said Joe. Regan looked at him hopefully. "I seen an Injun yesterday. He says McCane's drive is jammed near the mouth of Lebret. Say the word, boss, an' we'll mosey over an' half murder every mother's son of them!" "Thank you, Regan, but I can't say it," said Joe. "I have to get these logs out. If I don't get them I bust. Tell the boys that." The men began to arrive. MacNutt divided them into gangs and set them to work staying and shoring the remnants of the dam. Slight progress was made that day. The wanegan was looted and the peakies--a peakie is a flat-bottomed, double-ended river boat--made trip after trip, drawn by men wading in the shallows, until sufficient supplies were transferred to the camp by the dam. Light saw the crew at work. There was nothing fancy about the structure which MacNutt planned. It was built entirely of logs. Holes were blown in the bed of the river at intervals of a few feet, and in these were set buttress-logs slanted sharply upstream to back the timbers when the weight of the water should come against them. These things took time--days of the hardest kind of toil--but the impromptu dam was finally completed, even to the construction of a short slide to run the logs to the free water below. The river rose and backed up. The newly laid timbers groaned and complained. Now and then a startling crack made Joe's heart leap. "Will she hold, Mac?" he asked anxiously. "She's got to hold," said the foreman grimly. "I don't mean she's a permanent job; she ain't. If she'll last till we get through we'll blow her to glory." "Why?" asked Joe. "Because if we don't she may go out herself or some skunk may blow her for us when we're downstream. Half of us might be drowned and the logs winged out into the bush." But the jury-rig held. The water mounted higher and higher. Booms were strung, forming a funnel of which the sluiceway was the outlet. These also served to keep the weight of floating timber off the dam structure. Satisfied with the strength of his work, MacNutt hurried up stream. Many of the logs were afloat, moving sullenly; others were beginning to rock in the rising water. The men were working hard and steadily, with concentrated energy. Their peavies clanked regularly, and the logs twirled out of their resting places and trundled into the stream. Still the river rose, and MacNutt judged that it was high enough. Fearful for the strength of his dam he made an outlet by the simple expedient of knocking a few timbers loose. The water held at the new level. Down by the dam the herd of logs thickened and packed tight. The boom strained with their pressure. It was manned by men with long pike poles. They pushed here, restrained there, feeding the slide constantly and evenly, so that a nearly solid stream of timber shot through it into the good water below. When darkness fell, huge fires were lighted on the banks and the sluicing continued. Half the crew turned in immediately after supper; the other half kept the logs going. At two o'clock in the morning they shifted. By noon the last logs shot through. Then came the wanegan. MacNutt picked half a dozen men. "Throw her down little by little, boys," he ordered. "Don't be in a hurry, and don't use powder till there's no danger of a wave hitting us. We want a head of water, but not too much of it. The river's rising now." Joe looked back from the stern of the peakie in which he rode to catch up with the drive. The men had clambered out on the timbers and were busy with axes and saws destroying what had been so laboriously constructed. It had served his turn, but he felt regret. He would have liked it to stand, so that some day he might show Jack the rude, effective structure, and tell her the story of its building. He had had but small part in it, though his hands were blistered and ragged from handling rocks and rough timbers. He did not pose even to himself as a conqueror of difficulties; he gave the credit to MacNutt and his crew. XVI MacNutt suddenly struck his head a violent blow with his clenched fist and swore. He and Joe sat before the fire smoking a final pipe before turning in, and the gurgle of the water under the banks was music to their ears, for it meant that the logs were travelling free by night. "What's the matter?" Joe asked, sleepily. "I ought to be kicked!" cried the foreman in tones of bitter self-condemnation. "I'm a saphead. I got no more sense than a hen. McCane blew that dam on us. What's to hinder his blowing the other when he's finished sluicing his drive? He may be through now." "By heavens, Mac!" Joe ejaculated, appalled by the prospect. With the late season's start and the delays which had already occurred such an occurrence would be a calamity. "By heavens Mac, we can't let him get away with it again! We can't afford to take a chance. We've got to be _sure_ he doesn't." MacNutt scowled at the fire, biting his pipe stem. "I can't think of but one way out," said he. "We've got to put a guard on that dam, and if it comes to a case they must have the nerve to make good." "You mean--?" "Just what I say. If any one starts monkeying with it they must stop him--with lead if they have to. Of course you'll be held responsible for such an order." Joe's mouth hardened. "Mac," said he, "this is make or break with me. I've got to get these logs out. Pick one man and I'll go with him myself." "Don't do that," MacNutt dissuaded. "The boys will look after it all right. You better keep out." "No, I'll go," said Joe with determination. "You need every hand on the drive. I won't ask any man to do what I won't do myself. Pick your man and fetch him in here. We ought to start now." MacNutt arose and left the tent. In five minutes he returned with a little, brown-faced riverman, Dave Cottrell by name. Joe was surprised. He had expected the foreman to choose Cooley, Haggarty, or one of the noted "bully-boys." Cottrell was an excellent riverman, active as a squirrel and ready to take any chances, but extremely quiet and self-effacing. He was never in a row, had no chums, and, apparently, no enemies. He minded his own business and avoided notice. Such speech as he essayed was brief and to the point. "Now Dave," said the foreman, "we think McCane may blow this dam on us. Mr. Kent is going down to see that it ain't done, and he wants a man with him. How about you? Of course this ain't what you were hired for." "That's all right," said Cottrell. "You understand," said Joe, "that we're going to protect the dam at all costs. Can you shoot?" "Some," said Cottrell, and MacNutt chuckled to himself. "Then get ready," Joe ordered. "We'll start in half an hour." "C'rect," said Cottrell, and departed to roll his blanket. Blankets and food for two days were made into packs. The outfit owned two rifles, one belonging to Joe, the other to the foreman, who gave it to Cottrell. The little riverman tested the action, filled the magazine, and shouldered his pack. "Now if you're ready we'll be goin'," said he. Straightway he took the lead and the command. Joe found himself relegated to a subordinate position, compelled to follow one who seemed to possess the eyesight and easy movement of a nocturnal animal. The riverman had discarded his spiked boots and taken to moccasins. His gait was the bent-kneed amble of the confirmed woods-loafer. It was not pretty, and it looked slouchy and slow; but it carried him along at a tremendous rate. Now and then he paused and waited for the young boss, but made no comment. They left the river and took to the bush, following a course presumably known to Cottrell. They crossed swamps and wormed through alder swales, coming out again on pine and hardwood ridges. Joe was hopelessly lost and bewildered. He had no idea of the direction in which they were going. "You're sure you're heading right?" he asked. "Why, of course," said Cottrell, surprised at the question. About two o'clock in the morning he halted by a little creek. "We better take a spell," he said. "You ain't used to this, but the travellin' will be better from now on." Joe was glad to sit down. His legs ached, and he was torn by limbs and briers; but besides the purely physical fatigue was that which comes of travelling an unknown route without the faintest idea of how much of it you are covering. He stretched himself out with his back to a log. Cottrell built a fire and hung a little pail over it. When the water boiled he made tea, and they ate. Afterward they smoked. Warmed and weary, Joe began to nod. "We better be gettin' on," said Cottrell. Once more they plunged into the forest, but it was more open and, as the riverman had foretold, the going was easier. Gradually the stars paled in the east, and a faint gray light succeeded. Then came the rosy streaks of dawn. Cottrell halted and held up his hand. Faint in the distance sounded the measured music of an axe. "We're in time," said Cottrell. They came out on the river and on McCane's rear. Cottrell led the way back into the bush and when they emerged again it was at the dam. The dam pond was brown with logs, and they were being sluiced through in a great hurry. A crew of unkempt, tousled rivermen manned the booms and kept the sticks hustling. Rough Shan McCane stood on the boom by the water-gate directing operations, and his profane urgings came to them above the sound of the water. As they stood on the bank, rifles under their arms, one of the men caught sight of them and pointed. Immediately they became the nucleus of all eyes. McCane came ashore accompanied by half a dozen of his crew. He walked up to the new comers. "What do yez want?" he demanded. "When will you be sluiced through?" Joe asked. "What business is that of yours?" growled the rough one. "You know what business it is of mine," Joe answered. "My drive's coming down. And I'll tell you something more, McCane, we're going to camp right here till it does. I warn you now--don't try to wreck this dam!" "Wreck the dam, is it?" said McCane innocently. "For why should we wreck the dam?" "I suppose you don't know that the one above went out and hung my drive for a week," said Joe with sarcasm. "Is that so?" said McCane with mock sympathy. "Well, well, ye do be in hard luck. What's the guns for? Deer is out o' season. Yon's a pretty-lookin' rifle, now. I'll bet it cost ye somethin'. Let me have a look at it." He stretched out his hand casually, and suddenly leaped. His hand fastened on the rifle barrel. Instantly Cottrell's weapon sprang to a level. "Drop that, McCane!" snapped the little riverman. "You men keep back there, or I'll onhook her into you." Rough Shan looked into the ominous tube and slowly released his grip. "Don't ye get gay wid that gun!" he warned. "I could have ye jailed for pointin' it at me." The little man's bright eyes twinkled behind the sights. "If she went off as she's pointin' now you wouldn't know what happened," he announced gravely. Joe backed up alongside him. "We're not looking for trouble," said he, "but the man who tries any funny business with that dam will get hurt. Go ahead with your sluicing, or my drive will be down on top of you." "Will it?" said McCane. "Then, let me tell ye this, young felly, it'll stop till I get through. I'll sluice when I please." Behind him his men growled angrily. He shook his fist and roared, forth a flood of blasphemy. To Joe's utter amazement it was answered by Cottrell. The little man's language was fairly blood-curdling. His words snapped and crackled with venom. Such a "cursing out" had never been heard along the Wind. Finally his voice cracked. "Burn our camp, would ye?" he croaked hoarsely in conclusion. "Hang our drive, would ye? Blow a dam on us, an' think for to do it again! The man that takes a stick of powder near it will never draw his pay. See them birds!" Fifty yards away two woodpeckers clung to the bark of a tree, hopping and tapping in search of the worms that were their food. Dave Cottrell's rifle swung to his shoulder. Two reports followed, spaced inappreciably by the jangle of the magazine action. Two mangled masses of bloody feathers fell from the tree. The little man regarded the unkempt crew with evil eyes. "Lemme see one o' ye make a bad move!" he challenged, and there was death in his voice. Not a man made a move, bad or otherwise. Cottrell chose a spot overlooking the packed logs and the sliding water of the sluiceway. There he sat down, rifle on knees, and smoked. He had apparently talked himself out, for he answered Joe's remarks with customary brevity. In half an hour McCane quit sluicing. He and his crew came ashore and lit their pipes, lounging in the sun. The men from the rear came in and the whole camp rested. This continued all day. It was evident that McCane had a purpose in view. With the fall of night Joe and Cottrell moved down on the dam. The stars gave an intermittent light. The banks were deep in shadow, but objects could be made out on the river. "You better lie down and get some sleep," Dave advised his boss. "Then you can spell me later. They won't touch the dam till their logs is through, likely, but they may try to do us up." Joe rolled up in his blanket and presently slept. The fires of the camp died down. Save for the deep roar of rushing water the night was still. About twelve o'clock three stones, thrown simultaneously, whizzed out of the darkness. Two missed Cottrell's head by a few inches; the third, thrown short, struck Joe's shoulder a glancing blow as he lay in his blanket. As he woke with a startled cry Cottrell's rifle spat a rod of flame into the dark. The man fired three shots and paused. A stick cracked in the bushes. Instantly he fired twice more at the sound, and listened. The camp was astir. Men poured out cursing in three languages. Through the babel Cottrell tried to make out the sound of footsteps. Failing, he fired once more, on general principles. "Stop it, Cottrell!" cried Joe. "We don't want to kill any one." "If one o' them rocks had hit my head it would have killed _me_," snarled Cottrell. "I'll put the fear o' God in their rotten hearts!" He shoved in fresh cartridges savagely. "I think you've put it there now," Joe commented as the row subsided. "But don't shoot at their camp, or they'll start shooting back. They must have a gun in their outfit." Boom! The roar of a shotgun shattered the silence, and the shot pellets pattered against the logs and stones. Boom! the second barrel spoke. "Damn scatter-gun!" said Cottrell with contempt, and fired one shot. The crowd stampeded for cover as the bullet whined a foot above their heads. "It's all right--I held high," he explained. "It'd be just my darn luck to get one o' them little shots in the eye. Now they won't do no more shootin'." This prediction proved correct. The night passed without further incident. With daylight McCane's cook appeared and made up his fire. Later the crew crawled out of their dingy tents. A few washed at the river; but most made no attempt at a toilet. They sat on the ground and wolfed down their food. With the last mouthful they reached for tobacco. "Red McDougals, Callahans, and Charbonneaus--a dirty bunch," said Cottrell. The little man had sluiced himself with icy water from top to toe in the gray of the dawn, and was now frying slices of pork strung on green twigs above a small fire. "Some day the small pox will do a good job for 'em. Look at them scratch their backs against the rocks. Ugh!" His disgust was too deep for words. McCane emerged from his tent and Cottrell cursed him with venom. "What have you got against the man?" asked Joe reaching for a slice of bread. "He beat up a chum of mine once," Cottrell replied, "a little feller about my size that had no chance agin him. I'll get him yet for that. I wish t' God he'd made a move yesterday, an' I'd 'a' blowed his head off!" "Now, look here, Dave," said Joe, "we're here to protect the dam, and that's all. I won't have any feud mixed up with it." "I ain't mixin' it," said Cottrell. "I'm just prayin' he'll have the nerve to walk out to the sluice gate with a stick of powder in his hand or even a bulge in his shirt." But McCane and his crew lay around camp. Nobody went out on the booms or touched a log. The Kent drive would soon be running into their rear, and this meant confusion as well as delay. Joe finally left Cottrell on the dam and walked down to the camp. "See here, McCane," said he, "you've got to get your logs out of my way. You can't hang me up like this." McCane leered up at him insolently from where he lay stretched on the ground, resting comfortably against a log. "Can't I? Not a log goes through till I'm good an' ready." "But you've got no right----" Joe began hotly, and paused as he saw the living sneer in the other's eyes. He realized that argument was worse than useless and went back to his position. There he awaited the coming of MacNutt and his own crew, wondering what had delayed them. MacNutt had been delayed for a few hours by a small jam, but finally he ran into the logs of McCane's rear. He reached the dam at the head of a dozen indignant "bully-boys," and he and Joe tackled McCane. "You've got to move your logs," Joe told him again. "Not till I get ready," McCane answered as before. "You think you'll hang our drive, do you?" said MacNutt. "Well, you won't. You get your crew out on them booms at once and go to sluicing." McCane merely grinned. "Get at it!" cried the foreman furiously, and took a step forward. Rough Shan did not yield an inch. "If you want a fight you can have it quick," said he. "Me men have quit me. I can't pay their wages; I'm hung up meself." "That's a poor lie," said MacNutt. "Ask them," returned McCane. "If ye will step out here I'll beat the face off of ye!" MacNutt ignored the challenge and questioned the men. They backed up Rough Shan's statement surlily. Convinced that they were lying but unable to prove it, Joe and MacNutt held council. They had to get their logs through, and the only way to do it was to sluice McCane's first, and charge him with the time. "A lot of good that will do," said Joe. "He'll let us sluice them and then hang us up somewhere again." "Not if I can help it," said MacNutt. "I think I can work a game on him. Act as if you were good and sore." They returned to Rough Shan. "Your men say they won't work," said Joe. "We'll do your sluicing for you, but you'll pay us for it." "Like hell I will," said Rough Shan. "I'll sluice me own logs when I get a fresh crew." "You want to hang us up, do you?" cried Joe, finding no difficulty in simulating anger. "You can't do it. My men will pitch the whole bunch of you into the pond if I give them the word. I'll put your logs through. MacNutt, start the sluicing." "I warn ye to let my logs alone," said Rough Shan. "I'll hold ye responsible for every stick that goes through the chute." "All right," said Joe, and turned away. The sluicing began at once. MacNutt issued private instructions to Cooley and Cottrell. They started upstream, where they were shortly joined by ten more. There they picked up a peakie, and laboriously portaged the heavy boat through the woods well out of sight of the dam, setting it in the water below. With another trip they brought augers, boom-chains and shackles, and a manilla rope. Embarking they ran downstream two miles. At that point the river ran past the mouth of a backwater, an old channel, now an almost currentless little lake, reedy, with shores of floating bog and bottomed with ooze of unknown depth. The water ran into it sluggishly, and drained out half a mile below over muddy shallows. Logs once ensnared in this backwater could be taken out only at the cost of much time and labour. The dozen, working at speed, constructed a boom of logs shackled end to end. This they strung slantwise across the stream. One end was moored to the lower side of the backwater's inlet; the other to the opposite bank upstream. Thus logs coming down were deflected to the backwater. Six men with pike poles manned the boom, walking to and fro on the precarious footing, shoving the logs, as they came down, toward the slough. The others saw them safe inside. Dave Cottrell sat in midstream in the peakie, a rifle across his knees, watching either bank. The work proceeded merrily, for the rivermen enjoyed the trick. Late in the afternoon half a dozen of McCane's crew hove in sight. When they saw the boom and comprehended its meaning they ran forward to cut its moorings. "You get back there!" yelled Cottrell, raising his rifle. As they paid no attention to him he fired. The bullet cut dirt at the toes of the foremost. "I'll drop one of ye next time," Cottrell warned them, his eyes glued to the sights. They halted and cursed him. "When I count twenty I'm goin' to start shootin' the hats off of ye," said Cottrell. "If I was on shore I could do it easy, an' hurt no one. Out here the water jiggles the boat, an' I may go high or low. One--two--three----" He began to count. At "ten" they gave back; at "fifteen" they were in full retreat. McCane, when the news was brought to him, ran out on the booms, his face working with rage. Profanity spewed from his mouth in a steady stream. "You'll bring every log out o' that backwater or I'll know why," he thundered. "A dirty trick!" "Dealin' with you we're dirty every time from now out, and you can tie to that," MacNutt told him. "Every log in your drive is goin' into that backwater if she'll hold them. You'll get them out yourself, or train beavers to do it for you. You stinkin', lowdown Mick, you've been givin' us dirt all winter. Here's where we get square. Now get off o' these booms, or I'll bash in your head with a peavey. If I say 'sic 'em' to the boys you know what'll happen. You won't have camp nor crew nor nothin' in ten minutes, an' you'll spend the summer in a hospital, like enough. I'm _sick_ of you! Get out!" McCane's courage was beyond question, but the odds were against him. Twenty hardened fighters, every one of whom thirsted for a chance to trample on his face with caulked boots, crowded up behind MacNutt. His crew, rough and tough as they were, were outnumbered, and Kent's men were picked "bully-boys" with a score to even. "All right," said he. "You hear _me_, MacNutt--I'll get even with you an' Kent. It's comin' to both of ye. The woods ain't big enough for me an' you now." "Bah!" said MacNutt, and spat. McCane went ashore. MacNutt shut down the sluicing with darkness. In the morning it began again. That day saw McCane's entire drive packed in the backwater. He was helpless to prevent it. Kent's logs slid down merrily into the free current, and Rough Shan and his wild crew cursed the rear out of sight as it swept around a bend below. Then they went at the tedious task of extricating their own drive from the backwater. Rough Shan the next day put Callahan in charge and departed, as he said, to see about supplies, for his grub was running low. XVII In due course the Wind River logs reached McColl's Sney, where Tobin and Deever had already brought their respective drives, and were waiting impatiently with McKenna for the others. A strong crew had gone upriver to lend a hand, and as soon as MacNutt's logs got within a few miles the booms were opened and the entire drive thrown into the current. McColl's boasted a post-office, and there Joe found a stack of mail awaiting him, among it half a dozen letters from Jack; and it is a sad commentary on his attention to business that he opened these first. Jack did not run to sentiment in correspondence. Her letters were frank, newsy notes, and she was keenly interested in the drive and all that pertained to it. She wrote much as a partner in the business might write, giving here and there a bit of advice from Bill Crooks's ripe experience; but beneath the frank words and often slangy phrases ran a tender undercurrent which Joe was quick to detect. "What a little brick she is," he said to himself as he folded her last letter and placed it carefully in an inside pocket. "When we get into touch with the railway, I'll bring her up to see the drive. She'd like that, bless her little heart." This was the real thing at last. He knew that thenceforth no pleasure would be perfect which she did not share, no sorrow too great to be borne with her help. He looked at the logs, acres and acres of them herded in the booms and drifting by in the current, at the steel-shod rivermen who ran here and there pushing and guiding, at his camp set back beneath the budding trees; and he realized that the mainspring of his life and his endeavour had changed. It was no longer the business--his father's business--personal pride, nor the desire to succeed that held him to effort; but it was Jack--straight, slim little Jack, with the crown of dark hair and the frank, fearless eyes. From such realizations spring success. The next letter he opened was from Locke, and the news it contained was not only unexpected but very good indeed. You will be surprised to hear the action against Garwood _et al._ has been discontinued, Crooks agreeing with me that we should accept the terms of settlement offered, which, however, did not proceed from Garwood directly. As a matter of fact, the action was getting out of the realm of law into that of politics. The newspapers were beginning to sit up and take notice, and it looked as if our innocent little lawsuit might blossom into a general investigation which, in turn, might involve a number of prominent people. At this stage I received an intimation that if we dropped the action we could have what we wanted, and after consultation with Crooks we decided to do so. Having the whip hand we were by no means modest in our demands. You will hear no more of the proceedings in contempt against you for your disregard of the Court's order re-trespass upon Clancys' limits, and destruction of their property. So, too, Clancys' action against you for the said destruction will be withdrawn. In future you will both receive a fair share of orders from the contractors who have been boycotting you; you will get a fair deal in buying timber berths; the railway will give you all the cars you want; and there will be no discrimination against you in haulage rates. This means that your businesses will be henceforth on a fair competitive basis in the above respects, which is all you can expect. It also means that the riot act has been read to Garwood by some people who are in a position to read it. Just how he was persuaded to crawl down I don't know, though I rather think a threat of legislation affecting his railways was the means used. You see he might very easily be forced to spend anywhere from half a million up on useless frills and equipment merely as a beginning. Anyway, you may depend upon these terms of settlement being carried out. But all the same you are by no means out of the woods, and a great deal depends upon your ability to deliver your logs to Wismer & Holden by July 1st. I am satisfied in my own mind that their offer and the "little joker" in the contract were both inspired by Garwood; also that they will not give you an hour's grace. McDowell, of the Farmers' National, tells me that his bank cannot carry you after that date--indeed, only the practical certainty of your filling the contract induced them to finance you to the extent which they did. If you don't make good they will shut down on you, and proceed to realize on what securities they hold. Then, a payment will be due on your mortgage to the Northern Loan Company. You need not expect any leniency from them. So, if I were you, I'd hustle the logs down day and night. Joe was delighted with the first part of the letter. With fair competition in the future he saw plain sailing ahead. But the latter part gave him some uneasiness. It was then well along in May, and the drive was at least three weeks later than it should have been, due to the backward season and to the unforeseen delays. That night Joe held council with his foremen. The probabilities were carefully canvassed, and at the end of the discussion old Dennis McKenna voiced the general opinion. "We can make her with a week or two to spare--if we don't strike a snag somewheres," said he. "That's allowin' for usual hard luck, too. The river's risin' now. The snows up north are meltin' and she'll boom soon. That'll help us a lot." Day after day the brown logs of Kent's big drive slipped down the current. He had experienced foremen and a strong driving crew. A log no sooner touched the shore than it was thrust back into deep water. The drive was strung for miles, and all along the banks prowled husky rivermen, peavey or pike pole in hand, keeping the sticks hustling. MacNutt and the Wind River crew, reinforced by most of Deever's, had the rear, which usually means hard work, for none of the logs must be left behind. McKenna travelled daily up and down the banks overseeing the whole, and Joe tramped with him. Tobin, ahead, kept a sharp lookout for obstructions and possible jams. But so far not a jam worth mentioning had formed. "She's too good to last," said McKenna one night. "Tobin will hit the Silver Chain to-morrow, and then look out. I figured on higher water than this." The Silver Chain was a succession of rapids greatly disliked by river drivers. It extended for a couple of miles, white, torn patches of water with some clear current between. The banks were steep, sheer rock fringed with dwarf pines, frowning ceaselessly at the foam and turmoil below. Jams had a habit of forming there, and nearly always some sort of trouble occurred. The crew had calculated upon this and they got it, for early the next day Tobin sent them word of a jam which he had not been able to break, and demanded more men. "And she's a bad one, sure enough," said McKenna, when he and Joe arrived. The jam had occurred in a rapid familiarly known as "Hell's Bumps," about midway in the Chain. Just how it had formed nobody knew. The logs were running free when suddenly half a dozen plugged and held for an instant only, but it was sufficient for others to pile on top of them. Every moment brought down fresh sticks, and the fast water flung them at the growing mass to make a part of it. Some shoved, up-ended, and forced others aloft. The face of the jam rose high, abrupt, and dangerous. The tail grew swiftly upstream. By the time McKenna arrived it had become a genuine, old-time "teaser." The foremen went over it carefully, with glum faces, for this meant more delay; no one could tell how long it would take to break it. They pondered the current and the depth of water as they knew it by experience, and were not encouraged. "Sooner or later we'll have to use powder on her," said McKenna; "we might as well use it sooner." He set the crew to work picking out logs so that the dynamite might be exploded in the bowels of the monster. The men worked with a will but gingerly, for the task was dangerous. The dynamite was placed deep in the jam. When it exploded the mass heaved, shook, buckled, and moved a few yards downstream, where it plugged again. Nothing had been gained. "It'd take a carload of powder to root her out," said Tobin in disgust. "We'll just have to dig into her with the peavies, Dinny, and trust to luck." So they dug with the peavies for three days, and nothing happened. Occasionally there would be a quiver and a long, shuddering groan as if a monster were awaking from sleep; and once a series of startling, premonitory cracks and a sharp movement set the jam crew zig-zagging for shore. But this proved a false alarm, for the tremendous pack of timber merely settled down and squatted immutably upon its brown haunches, the bristling top of it seeming to grin defiance at the puny efforts of man. "If it takes a trainload of powder we've got to break it," said Joe desperately, and telegraphed Wright from the nearest station to send on a supply of high-explosive. As the keystone supports an arch so key-logs hold a jam. If they can be found and dislodged, the jam collapses and disentangles. Finding them is difficult, laborious, and very dangerous. If there are dams above, a head of water is sometimes let loose suddenly and the jam swept away. But there were no dams, so that Kent had his choice between manual labour, which is slow and costly, and dynamite, which is sudden but uncertain. By way of compromise he used both, and still the logs did not move. He began to feel a strange personal enmity toward them. They were his, bought by his money, cut by his crew, inanimate, senseless things. And yet in the mass they seemed to possess a personality, a living spirit of pure, balky cussedness; they lay in bulk, a brown shaggy monster that obstinately refused to heed the voice of its master. XVIII Joe stood on the jam, watching the crew dry-picking out the logs and throwing them into the water, burrowing down for a place to use more powder, when his name was shouted. He looked up, and his heart gave a decided thump. Above him stood William Crooks and Jack. Joe leaped the logs and ran up the bank. "How did you get here?" he cried. "Why didn't you let me know you were coming?" "We thought we'd surprise you," said Jack sedately. "I persuaded dad. I wanted to see how _our_ drive was coming down." "It isn't coming down just now," Joe observed. "We can't stir it. Here, come over to my tent and make yourselves at home. Oh, Jimmy," he called to the cook, "rustle a good meal, will you? Spread yourself on something fancy, now." The cook grinned amiably, and became suddenly shamefaced as Jack smiled at him. "I ain't got much fixin's," he apologized. "If th' lady, there'd tell me what she'd like----" "Why, you're Jimmy Bowes!" cried Jack. "I remember you, twelve years ago on dad's camp on the Little Canoe. You used to give me lumps from the brown sugar barrel. Jimmy, I'll always love you for that." Jimmy Bowes blushed to the top of his bald head as he shook hands. "You've growed," said he. "Sure, I remember, but I didn't think you'd know the old bull-cook. You're--you're real purty!" Suddenly embarrassed by his own candour and Joe's laughter he retreated to his own domain where, cursing his cookee, he plunged into preparations for a magnificent meal. McKenna and MacNutt came ashore and met Crooks. "Well, boys," said the old lumberman, "she's a teaser, hey!" "You bet," replied McKenna. "She's solid as a cellar--froze to the bottom all the way. Still, the water's risin' now, an' she may pull most any time." He did not believe a word of his statement, but he spoke so that Joe should not be discouraged. Crooks, who did not believe a word of it either, nodded. "That's the way with big jams. I remember, thirty years ago on Frenchman's Creek--" He drew McKenna and MacNutt out of earshot, relating his story. Suddenly he stopped. "Look here, Dinny, if this jam don't break mighty soon young Kent goes out of business." "Well, I wish t' God I knew how to break her," said McKenna. "The boys can't work harder than they're doing. We've put in shots 't'd rip a mountain loose, and she just lays back her ears and sits tighter." Meanwhile Jack and Joe walked upstream along the bank. Here and there on the flanks of the wooden monster crews of men picked away with peavies. The clean smell of the millions of feet of freshly cut, wet timber struck the nostrils. The water tore and snarled at the wedged logs, and little streams shot through the mass, hissing and gurgling; the voice of the checked river was deep and angry. "To-morrow we're going to fill it up with powder and see what that does," said Joe. "With the rising water it may start things. If it does not--" He shrugged his shoulders. If the jam did not "pull" soon he was broken, and he knew it. Jack slid her arm in his. "Dad says the big jams go when you least expect it. This will. You have time yet, Joey-boy." He patted her hand. "It's good of you, Jack. Anyway, I've done my best, and if I'm downed this time I can make a fresh start. I know something about the business now." Jack looked at him and nodded. He was quite unlike the neatly tailored Joe Kent of a year before. He wore a battered felt hat, a gray shirt, trousers cut off below the knees, and heavy woollen stockings. On his feet were the "cork boots" of the riverman. Already he had mastered the rudiments of "birling," and could run across floating logs, if not gracefully at least with slight chance of a ducking. He was bronzed and hard, and his hands were rough and calloused. But the difference went deeper than outward appearance. He was stronger, graver, more self-reliant, and the girl recognized and approved of the change. The day faded into dusk. Big fires were lighted at the camp. Crooks and his daughter remained for supper; afterward they were to drive back to the little town, coming back the next morning to see the big shots let off. Crooks lit a cigar and joined the foremen, to discuss the jam and the probability of breaking it, and yarn of his own experiences with mighty rivermen whose names were now but traditions. The men lay about the fires, smoking and talking. They were tired, and the popular vocalists, shy because there was a girl in the camp, hung back and muttered profane refusals when asked to sing. Jack was disappointed. "I haven't heard a shanty song sung by a crew in ages. I wish they would wake up. Am I the wet-blanket?" "I'll go over and tell them to sing anything you like," Joe offered promptly. "No, that wouldn't do. Some of them are going to their blankets already. To-morrow night--when the jam is broken--we'll have a celebration. I'll sing to them myself." "If it _is_ broken!" "Now, Joe," she reproved him severely, "you brace up. We're going to break that jam to-morrow; and we're going to deliver our logs on time, and don't you dare to even _think_ we're not. I tell you we are! Don't get discouraged, for we're going to win out." "You're a good booster, Jack" he said, smothering a sigh. "Of course we are. And once we get through here we'll have plain sailing." He pressed her hand gratefully. It was something to receive encouragement, even if it was plainly labelled, and he would not be so ungracious as to tell her so. Crooks loomed out of the darkness and called for his team. Half an hour afterward Joe was the only man awake in camp, and he drifted into slumber with the memory of the soft touch of Jack's lips as they lay for a moment on his. In the morning the jam was sown with dynamite, planted deep beneath the logs at points approved by McKenna. Crooks and Jack arrived. The men came ashore and waited anxiously. Almost simultaneously, columns of water, strips of bark and twisted, riven wood shot high in the air, and the detonations thundered back from the rocks. A rumbling growl issued from the inwards of the wooden monster. It heaved and rose. Logs toppled down the face of it, and then the whole front cascaded in wild confusion. Just when it seemed that the whole thing must go motion ceased. The shaggy, bristling brute settled back into immobility. The shots had failed. Bosses and men swore fervently. These continued failures were blots on their records as rivermen. Their employer needed those logs badly, and it was up to them not to disappoint him. The jam was big and ugly, but it must be broken. Doggedly they climbed out on the logs again and set to work. When the jam failed to "pull," Kent looked at Jack, reading the bitter disappointment in her face. Somehow it helped him to conceal his own. "Better luck next time, girlie," he said. "Anyway, we made a lot of noise." She smiled back at him, but her lips quivered, "Of course it will pull next time; it can't help it." "Of course not," he agreed, being quite convinced to the contrary. They fell silent, gloomily watching the crew at work. Below them a man clamped his peavey into a log at the base of the pile and swung back on it so that the tough stock bent like a whip. Failing to move it he called a comrade. They pried and boosted, their clinging shirts bulging with the swell of their back-muscles. Suddenly the log came away. Immediately a groan rose from the timbers. The men sprang to alertness. Crackings and complainings ran through the mass. The girl caught Joe's arm. "It's going out, Joe! It's going out! Oh, see it pull!" There was no doubt of it. The jam "pulled" with the bellow of a maddened beast. Logs shot outward, upward, downward--every way, rolling over and over, smashing, up-ending, grinding. Through them the white, torn water boiled madly. The core of the jam seemed to leap bodily downstream and then split into fragments. Over the turmoil the rivermen fled for shore, each man balancing himself with his peavey, held low across his body. Their flight was swift, but unhurried and calculated. In face of the deadliest peril of the riverman--the breaking jam--they were cool and wary, timing to a nicety leap from tossing log to tossing log. Suddenly, opposite the watchers, a man lost his footing and pitched forward. Another, twenty feet away, cleared the space with two leaps, caught the first by the collar and dragged him upright, but the man sagged down, evidently badly hurt. The other dropped his peavey, heaved him up in his arms and, thus burdened, made for shore. He sprang once, twice, hampered by his load. Then a wave of smashing timber surged down and over them. They were blotted from the world, effaced without even a stain on the torn water. Jack, deadly white, with shining eyes and parted lips, stared at the spot where they had been. "Oh, the brave boy--the poor, brave boy!" she cried. "Who was he, Joe?" "Ward--Ward and McClung, two of my best men--chums," Joe told her bitterly. "I wouldn't have--Jack! Jack, look there!" Strung along the jam as the men were when it pulled, some of them had no direct route for shore. Among these were McKenna, Dave Cottrell, and Hill and Laflamme of Deever's crew. The last three were noted "white water birlers," experts upon logs under any and all conditions, and McKenna, the old walking boss, in his best days had never found a man who could put him off a stick of pine. When the jam began to pull they were opposite a stretch of rocky bank that offered no way of escape. "Boys," said McKenna, "it's a bad chance, but we've got to take it--we've got to ride her down." As he spoke the log on which he stood pitched sideways beneath him. He left it as a bird leaves a bough, alighting on another, and ran the tossing mass downstream. Cottrell, active as a squirrel, kept close to him. Hill and Laflamme, too, kept together but without premeditation, for each instinctively took the course that looked best to him. They dodged over and across the up-ending, smashing timbers, avoiding death at each spring by the thickness of a hair. It was this sight which had caused Joe Kent's exclamation. Hill was the first to go. Just once he miscalculated by the fraction of an inch. He disappeared without a sound. Laflamme, just behind him, sprang across the spot where his companion had been, his eyes widening, his teeth bared and set, his gaudy voyageur's sash streaming from his waist, a bright flag fluttering in the face of destruction. Suddenly an up-ending log brushed his thigh. It was little, but it threw him from his stride. His shriek soared high above the roar of wood and water as the great logs nipped out his life. Neither McKenna nor Cottrell looked back, though they heard the cry. Their own case was too perilous. A log thrust up suddenly beneath Cottrell's feet and threw him into the air as if he had been shot from a springboard. He alighted on his feet again by the purest of luck, and seeing an opening of water and a free log, leaped on it, whence he made his way to shore. McKenna, dead-beat, gained the outlying logs and fell as he reached solid earth. Behind them the jam swept by in tossing, foaming grandeur, the backed-up water scouring all before it. McKenna staggered to his feet and waved a gaunt arm. "Into her, boys, and keep her hustling!" he shouted. But MacNutt and Deever were already on their way upstream. Tobin and his crew attacked the outlying logs and flung them into the current. Soon the channel was brown with the shooting sticks, flashing by in the racing water. Jack, pale and shaken, sat and watched them go by. The bright sun, the dancing water, the bird songs from the woods, and the fierce activity of the rivermen were all at variance with the vision of sudden death which she had beheld. Joe, grave and silent, came up accompanied by her father. "I guess we'd better be going, daughter," said Crooks gently. She shook her head. "No, dad, I'd like to stay, please. Just leave me here. Joe has the work to see to, and you'd like to be there, too." The men looked at each other, and her father nodded silently. They went upstream to where the rear was working ferociously. Jack, left alone, stared at the river, reconstructing the scene, which she was never to entirely forget. It was the first time she had seen men, rejoicing in the pride of their strength, wiped from life as dust is wiped up by a damp cloth. From her childhood she had spent days and even weeks in her father's camps, meeting the big, rough shantymen who one and all adored her; getting glimpses of their life, but only touching the outer shell of it; seeing them against a background of cheerful labour, ringing axes, song and jest, as real and yet as unreal as a stage setting--a background which in her eyes surrounded them with the elements of romance. Of their vices she knew nothing save by hearsay; of the tragedy of their lives she knew even less. Now, before her young eyes, Fate had swooped and struck instantly and without warning. Small wonder that she was shocked. And she was shocked, also, by the apparent callousness of the dead men's comrades. They worked carelessly, as it seemed, about the very spot where the others had died. But here common sense came to her aid. The logs--Joe's logs, their logs--must be got out. No matter what toll the river claimed the drive must go down and to market. It was the way of the world. In this as in other things, human life was the cheapest of commodities; its loss the least important hindrance, of less practical moment than the breakage of an ingenious man-made machine. She sighed as the realization came to her. It seemed heartless, yet she could not escape it. Sitting on the log, staring at the river, her lips moved in almost unconscious prayer for the men who had died like men, doing the work they were paid to do. XIX With the breaking of the big jam the luck of the drive seemed to change. The river was rising, the water was good, the logs travelled freely day and night without halt. Indeed, the delays seemed about to prove blessings in disguise, for other firms' drives, more fortunate, would be out of the way. Also when they reached the lower almost currentless stretches of the river, down which the logs would have to be towed in booms by steamers, there would be no delay. But these calculations were upset one day when they got news of a drive just ahead of them. Straightway Tobin and Joe went down to see about it. Sure enough there was a drive, and as he looked at the end of a stranded log the foremen swore indignantly, for on it was stamped the "CB" of Clancy Brothers. "It's their drive from Basket Lake," said Tobin. "They should have had it down three weeks gone." As they passed downstream he called Joe's attention to the rear crew. "Look at that. See 'em sojerin' on the job. They're loafin', every mother's son of them, and they've a stronger crew than they need, too." They found Clancys' river-boss, Tom Archer by name, smoking a pipe and watching the indolent efforts of half a dozen men who were not even pretending to hustle. "I thought you would have been down long ago," said Tobin. "Our drive is right behind, and we'll be bumping your rear to-morrow if you don't get some ginger into your crew." "They're a lazy bunch," said Archer without the flicker of an eyelid. "I just have to do the best I can with them. I've cursed them till my throat went back on me." Tobin regarded him narrowly. "Let me handle them for twenty-four hours and I'll show you a difference." "Thanks, but I can run my job myself," said Archer dryly. "The point is," Joe explained, "that my drive is coming down a-humping, and we need all our time because we have a delivery contract to fill. Can you keep ahead of us, do you think?" "Couldn't say," returned Archer. "I don't want to run down on top of you," said Joe. "How would it be if I turned a dozen men into your rear to lend a hand?" Archer regarded him in silence for a ten-second interval. "When I need your help, bub, I'll ask for it." "I didn't mean it that way," Joe explained. "I don't suppose you want to delay me. It's about four days to Moore's Rapids. Will you oblige me by booming there till I get through? Of course I'll pay for the time of your crew." "No," Archer replied. "I have my rights on the river and I don't have to get out of your way. You can tail along behind me." "The hell we can!" flared Tobin, whose temper was always set on a hair-trigger. "Do you think we ain't onto you, Archer. What's Clancys payin' you for doin' their dirty work?" Archer put his pipe in his pocket with deliberation. "Any more talk like that, Tobin, and you and me will settle it right here," he announced. Tobin, nowise loath, would have accepted the challenge instantly, but Joe restrained him and pointed to a man who appeared on the bank. "It's quite plain what this gentleman is up to, Tobin. There's Rough Shan McCane. I guess any more talk is waste time." McCane sprang down like a cat and advanced truculently. "Tom," said he to Archer, "I'm going to give this young feller a father of a lickin' an' put the boots to him afterward. You look after the other one." Joe did not assume any attitude popularly supposed to be one of defence, but the bunched shoulder muscles crept and crawled beneath his shirt, and Archer, eying him carefully, interposed a decided negative. "No, you won't. I don't want any trouble with Mr. Kent or his crew. If they crowd us it'll be different." "It'll be a lot different," said Tobin. "You're McCane, are you? I've heard of your doin's this winter. You've got it comin' to you, me buck, tie into that." Then and there hostilities would have started but for Joe and Archer, who kept cool. Tobin and McCane growled at each other like leashed fighting-dogs. "Come along, Tobin," Joe ordered. "We're wasting time. You won't reconsider my offer, Archer?" "No," replied Archer flatly, "I won't. I have the right-of-way, and I'll keep it." The way he intended to keep it immediately became apparent. His drive travelled with maddening slowness. His rear crew made great pretence of working, but the feint was transparent and the tempers of Kent's men wore under the strain. One or two fights took place, more or less indecisive. Clearly a climax was at hand. Joe took counsel with his foremen, and they threshed the matter out one night sitting around the fire. It was plain that as long as Clancys' drive kept ahead they could make no speed. Much time had already been lost. They could not pass it on the river, and Archer would not yield his right-of-way at Moore's Rapids. It looked like an impasse. It was quiet Deever who suggested the only way out. Deever usually had little to say. The reverse of Tobin, he was slow to anger, but knew no limit when aroused, as unruly lumber jacks found to their cost. He was rather small of frame, but built of wires and steel springs. "If we run our drive right on top of them and mix the logs we'll make better time than we're making now," said he. "Then we sack out our own, and they can bring theirs along or not, as they like. There's sortin' booms at Moore's, and we've a strong crew, just spoilin' for a scrap. If we take charge an' cull out all Clancys' logs, why, then we get ahead. It just means a little fight." The foremen looked at each other and nodded. Then they looked at Joe. "It sounds good," said he. "Of course, we haven't any right to do it." "Not a right," said MacNutt cheerfully, "but we've got a blame good crew." Joe laughed. "Go to it, then," said he. "Slam the whole drive down on top of them as soon as you can." The speed of a drive depends upon the work of the crew, for although logs can travel no faster than the current the more that are kept in the current the faster the whole will travel. Kent's men sailed into the work like demons. No log had a chance to rest. Soon the two drives tangled and became one, although naturally Clancys' leading logs were far in advance of Kent's. The latter's crew left the other logs religiously alone, but Clancys' men soon began to shove Kent's logs toward the shallows. "Leave them logs alone!" roared Big Cooley savagely, detecting a man in the act. The man swore back at him defiantly and shoved another log shoreward. Cooley jumped from the log on which he stood, alighting on the one ridden by the offender, and knocked him into the water. In two minutes the crews were more tangled than the logs. More of Kent's men piled downstream and joined the melee. Finally Clancys' rear crew, badly whipped, left the field to their opponents. When Archer heard of the fight he came back at once. "I won't stand this," said he. "You've got no right to run into my drive." "Keep it out of my way, then," said Joe. "I gave you your chance; I'm going to drive clean through you." "We'll see about that," said Archer, and took his departure. Thereafter his crew worked hard but avoided trouble. Nevertheless the drives were hopelessly entangled, and they drew near Moore's Rapids. The booms at Moore's had been put in and were maintained by the various lumber firms for their own convenience, so that one had as much right to them as another. This was lucky for Kent, for had the booms been owned by a river improvement company, as were those on the lower river, he could not have carried out the high-handed act he contemplated. As it was, the question resolved itself into whether he could seize the booms and hold control of them while he sorted the logs. By so doing he laid himself open to an action for damages, but he could better afford that than further delay. Twenty-four hours before any logs could reach Moore's, McKenna chose a picked crew and took possession of the booms, forestalling Archer, who intended to do that very thing himself. Therefore when he arrived with a picked crew of his own some hours later he became righteously indignant. "I have the right-of-way, McKenna," said he, "and my logs are going down that channel first. You can sort out yours and wait your turn." "I hear what you say," said McKenna from the boom. "You're making a little mistake, Archer. _Ours_ are going through first." "What?" cried Archer, suddenly realizing the situation. "Do you know what the law is? The leading drive has precedence in booms, chutes, and slides. You'd better be careful!" "I know all that," retorted McKenna. "That's the law--_and we're going to break it_. You'd hog the river on us, would you? Well, we'll hog the booms and channel on you!" Archer spat into the stream and swore. "I have nothing against you, McKenna, but you nor no other man can hang my drive. I'll bring down my crew and clear you off the booms. If I can't do that I'll cut them and let the whole shootin' match go down together." "That's big talk," said McKenna. "Now you listen here. We're doing this cold because we have to, and you know it. We won't stop at anything. Bring down your crew and try to clean us out if you like. We expect it. But if you try to cut the booms it's different." He pointed to a pier out in the current. On it in a state of splendid isolation, sat Davy Cottrell. "That man out there has a rifle and he can hit birds flying with it. He'll shoot the first man that touches the booms. If you don't believe that, get somebody to try." Shortly afterward the first logs began to arrive, and with them Archer's entire crew. Immediately they made a determined attempt to seize the booms, but as these were already occupied by Kent's men, against whom they could advance only in single file, their numbers gave them little advantage. The fight raged along the length of the slippery, swaying boom-logs. Men knocked off into the river swam and climbed up again, or cunningly seized others by the ankles and upset them, taking the chance of being kicked in the face by spiked boots. Gradually Archer's men pushed McKenna's backward and might have driven them from the booms altogether had not the rest of Kent's crew arrived, thirsting for battle. Archer's crew, now hopelessly outnumbered, fought gamely. The fight spread from booms to shore. Tobin went for Archer and met his match. MacNutt tried to get to Rough Shan, but could not. Quiet Deever, white-faced and eyes ablaze, his lips lifting at the corners in a wolfish snarl, was before him. "'Rough Shan' they call you," he gritted through set teeth. "Let's see how rough you are, you dirty cur. Come on an' rough it with a littler man, you lousy, camp-burnin' high-banker!" He planted a terrific right in McCane's face, and was himself knocked sideways the next instant by a heavy swing. They went at it hammer-and-tongs. Joe Kent found himself paired with a smooth-faced, bronzed, shanty lad who fought with a grin and hit with a grunt. His blows were like the kicks of a mule, but his knowledge of boxing was rudimentary. The young boss smashed him almost at will, but the grin never faded. Always he came back for more, and when he landed, it jarred Joe from top to toe. Finally they clenched and wrestled to and fro among the rough stones of the beach. At this game Joe rather fancied himself, but all he ever remembered of the outcome was that suddenly his feet flew into the air--the rest was a shock, accompanied by marvellous constellations. He came to with water sluicing his face and a hat fanning air into his lungs. He got to his feet rather dizzily, looked around and laughed. "You cleaned them out, did you?" Deever, his face battered and swollen and his knuckles cut to raw meat, grinned happily. Tobin, one eye closed and the other blinking, nodded. "We're sluicin' now." "We put the run on them," said McKenna, whose leathery face bore the marks of war. "Lucky for us we had the numbers. They're hard lads, but 'tis not like they'll bother us again. Now, boys, the boss is all right. Out on the booms with yez." Without delay they swarmed out on the booms. Others went upstream to hustle the logs down. The work of sorting and sluicing went forward merrily, for Kent's logs outnumbered Clancys' in the proportion of four to one, and besides the crew was not very particular as to the ownership of individual logs, which could be culled out later. The main thing was speed. Clancys' logs were sided into an inner boom; Kent's were allowed to go down with the current. It took time, but it was worth it. Thus Kent's big drive passed Clancys' and ran Moore's Rapids in defiance of the law and usage of the river; but every man, from the young boss down, was very sure that the end justified the means, and was quite ready to take any consequences that might accrue from the high-handed act. XX Joe Kent preceded his drive to Falls City by a few days. He found Wright in great feather. Several large orders had been placed, proof that the terms of the settlement mentioned by Locke in his letter were being carried out. But when Joe asked the lawyer for more details the latter shook his head. "I can't mention names, for that was part of the arrangement," said he. "You be satisfied with what you've got. You're a hundred times better off than if you had merely exposed Garwood." "I know it," Joe admitted; "but are you sure the arrangement will be carried out?" "Certain. You've got good orders coming in, haven't you? You won't have anything to complain of hereafter. How about those logs? Can you deliver them on time?" "I think so," Joe replied. "Well, you'd better be mighty sure before you take them past your own booms. Wismer will refuse to accept them if he gets half a chance, and see where that would leave you. You couldn't bring them back upstream, and there isn't a concern on the river below Wismer that would buy them, this side of Hughson's Mills. To get there, towing charges and tolls would eat up your profits, and old Hughson would whipsaw you, anyway." "Crooks says I can do it, and so do my foremen," said Joe. "I've got to sell the logs to meet my liabilities. I'll keep barely enough for my own mill." "All right--if you're dead-sure," said Locke. The situation was made very clear to Joe. He was told plainly that the bank had gone with him as far as it would go. In the event of non-delivery his credit would be cut off and his securities sold. The mortgage company would enforce their rights in any event. Also there was no doubt that Wismer & Holden would enforce to the letter the penalty clause in their contract. These things, taken together, meant bankruptcy. And that would mean that his marriage with Jack must be put off indefinitely. On the other hand, if he delivered the logs he could wipe off most of the debt, put his business on a solid basis, and ask her to become mistress of the old Kent homestead without delay. It was worth fighting for, and Joe's' lean jaw hardened as he swore to himself that nothing should stop his drive. Business claimed him by day, but the evenings he was able to spend with Jack. They sat in the dusk of Crooks's wide veranda, watching the stars light and wink in the June sky, while soft-winged moths fluttered ghost-like among the shading vines. Neither was overly given to sentiment, but in those brief evenings their confidences grew; and each, looking into the other's inmost mind, found there only honour and loyalty and little of ambition, but a great desire to live straightly and cleanly and truly, thinking evil of none and doing such good as might be. Being ordinary young people they did not put these things into words. They rather shied from the sentimental and high-flown, preferring the more accustomed planes of speech and thought. But they understood each other, and so were content. The only shadow, and a constantly recurring one, was the question of the drive. "If I don't make it I'm busted," said Joe practically, "and so I've got to make it. There's no reason why I shouldn't. Now, it's this way." For the twentieth time he went over the problem. "Dad says you can make it," Jack agreed. "It's a week to Steven's Ferry. Down to Burritt's Rapids is two days more. Then allow time to tow through Thirty Mile Lake--oh, you can make it with nearly a week to spare." "Of course I can," said Joe, "and then, Jack, I think we'd better get married." She flushed to the roots of her brown hair. "In the fall, Joe?" "No--right away. What's the use of waiting? My business will be solid then, and I deserve a holiday. Let's take one together." "Well"--she considered the question gravely, without affected hesitation--"I'd like that. I'll see what dad says about it." "It's up to you." "Yes--I know. Still, we'd better not leave him out." "I don't want to. He's as good a friend as I have. What he says goes, of course; but he won't object if you don't." "I won't." Suddenly she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Oh, Joe, you've got to deliver those logs! You've got to, you've got to!" "Jack," he said grimly, "I'd deliver 'em now if the whole blamed river dried up. Come down to-morrow and see them go through. We'll cut out enough to run the mill, but the main drive will go straight ahead and I'm going with it. I'll wire you as soon as we strike Burritt's Rapids. I can tell then how it's going to go." "Do you think I'll stay here?" she cried. "Dad and I are going down to see the drive come into Wismer & Holden's booms. You'll probably see us at Thirty Mile." The sun was barely risen when the first logs of the big drive swung down leisurely, their pace accelerating as the faster current above the falls gripped them. This vanguard was run into Kent's booms, and the rivermen cheered as they caught sight of the young boss, and cheered again for William Crooks and his daughter who stood beside him. They ran gaily along the slippery brown logs and danced lightly across their backs, pushing, pulling, prodding, guiding and restraining, and the booms filled magically. The main drive did not halt at all. The river was crowded with logs, and they were fed through the huge water-gates of the slides as fast and as thick as they would run. It was beautiful, clean, uninterrupted work, and when the last stick had shot through Joe bade Jack good-bye and followed. Now, at last, the drive was on the homestretch with a few days to spare--a narrow margin, but still a margin. It was then the fifteenth of June, and the river was at its best. Taking into consideration the high water and consequently more rapid current, Joe hoped to reach Burritt's Rapids by the twenty-third. That would give one week from that point to Wismer & Holden's mills, a distance of thirty-five miles. Below Burritt's Rapids, however, was Thirty Mile Lake, a shallow, almost currentless expansion of the river, some thirty miles long and varying in width from half a mile to two miles, through which the drive would have to be towed by steamers owned by a river improvement company, who also owned the booms above the rapids. The time occupied by towing would depend on the weather. Therefore, although the probabilities were in Joe's favour there was always a doubt. He must remain on the anxious seat till the actual event. Because of the good water the drive made Burritt's on the twenty-second instead of the twenty-third. They made it in a heavy downriver gale with an accompaniment of slashing rain that soaked every one to the skin. Because a drive turned down the rapids would simply float all over the lake and have to be gathered up again, a task involving much time and trouble, the logs were always put through a narrow, inner channel protected by cribwork and booms, and caught in other booms below. There steamers took them in tow and turned them loose down other rapids at the foot of the lake, which were about three miles above Wismer & Holden's booms. Accordingly, when they made Burritt's with some daylight to spare the dripping crew ran the drive into the booms and started to feed down the inner channel. When darkness fell they winched a boom across the narrow mouth and quit. The ground was wet, the tents were wet, and so were the blankets. Although it was June the wind was raw and cutting. The rain slashed and sputtered at the fires. Clothes hung before them steamed, but accumulated moisture faster than they dried. Altogether it was miserable, and the rivermen cursed the weather heartily. They squatted on the sodden ground beneath canvas that let through fine spray with every gust, and big teardrops which had an aggravating habit of landing on the back of the neck, and juggled tin plates piled with pork and beans on their knees, wiping them up with huge wedges of bread. "A curse of a night," grumbled Haggarty, shifting away from a drop which threatened to become a stream. "Black as a cord of black cats, an' rainin' fit to flood hell! An' not a dry stitch to me back, an' the blanket's soaked, an' all. Fill up me plate again, you, cookee, an' slap a dose of molasses on her. Praise be, me hide is waterproof an' the inside of me's dry." "An' that's more nor mine will be this day week," said big Cooley, licking his lips in pure anticipation. "A hard winter, an' a long drive. The throat of me aches for the rasp of a drink of the good stuff!" "For sure, for sure," Chartrand agreed with him. "I'll be dry, me, lak one sap maple in August. When dat drive is finish', by dam' I stay dronk for one mont'. Hooray!" "An' you see me so," Cooley promised. "I'll find that McCane an' put the boots till him till he can't crawl. A dirty dog! An' Tom Archer is no better--no, nor his bosses." In another tent Joe and his foremen ate supper and listened to the rain, the wind, the roar of the rapids, and the swirl of the current as it talked against the booms. MacNutt went out and came back dripping. "Can't see a thing," he reported. "The wind is gettin' worse, an' the water's risen nigh a foot. How is them booms, Dinny? Our whole drive is down by now, an' there's an awful weight on them with this wind an' the high water." "I went over them when we came down," returned McKenna. "They're all right. The big lower one is three logs, and well anchored." "They should have another anchor-pier in the middle of it," growled MacNutt. "It has an awful belly. If it went out on us----" He paused and shook his head. The boom referred to was directly above the rapids, strung at an angle across the river. Upon it came all the pressure of the logs above. It was a massive affair, built of three logs fastened side by side and chained to other threes end to end. The ends of the boom were secured to huge, stone-filled piers. It appeared capable of holding any weight of logs. "What's the use of talkin' like that, Mac?" said Tobin, half angrily. "You're borrowin' trouble for every one. The boom's all right. I looked at it myself after Dinny did." Nevertheless he went out ten minutes later and was absent sometime. "She sure has a belly on her," he said when he returned. "She'll hold, though. I think the wind's dropped some." As he uttered the words a shrieking gust almost laid the tent flat. A shout and muffled curses followed. "I'll bet one of the men's tents has blown down," said Joe. "Hear Cooley swear." They grinned at each other as Cooley rose to the occasion. The wind grew worse. The side and roof of the tent bellied in and slatted in the squalls. Tobin went out and tautened the guy ropes. "It'd blow the bark from a tree," he cried when he came in. McKenna sat pulling his grizzled moustache. The wind, the rapidly rising water, the huge weight of timber, and MacNutt's forebodings were getting on his nerves. Suddenly he began to pull on his spiked river boots. "What's up, Dinny?" MacNutt asked. "I'm going to look at that boom," McKenna replied. "You've got me all worked up over it. I _know_ it's all right; but all the same----" "I'll go with you," said Joe, reaching for his boots. "You're not good enough on the logs yet," said the walking boss bluntly. "It's pitch dark and blowin' great guns. It's an old hand's job, Mr. Kent. You'd only hinder me." Joe realized the truth of the words. "Well, I'm going," said MacNutt. "Same here," said Tobin. "Sure," said Deever. Each man took a lantern. Joe went with them. Anyway he would go as far as the first pier. They could hear the logs grumbling and complaining. "I don't like it," said MacNutt. "It sounds--" He hesitated to put the thought into words, and swung his lantern high, peering at the intensified darkness. "Oh, shut _up!_" snapped Tobin. "What do you want to croak for? Of course they'll talk with the wind an' current an' all. Funny if they wouldn't." They ran out across the almost solid carpet of timber that filled the head of the channel, and reached the anchor-pier of the big lower boom. McKenna, in advance, stopped short with a gasp: "They're moving, boys--they're _moving!_" Slowly, with the calm certainty of irresistible might, the big drive was on its way. The logs ground at the anchor pier and thrust and bumped at it. The feeble rays of the upheld lanterns threw a short circle of light on the field of timber as it slid smoothly downstream. Joe's heart, for the first time, skipped a beat. The boom had gone out. McKenna leaped out on the moving logs. MacNutt caught him. "Come back, Dinny! What do you think you can do?" McKenna's seamed face was absolutely colourless as he turned to Joe. "He's right, Mr. Kent. I can't do a damned thing. It's my fault. I should 'a' backed the boom with another." His voice was vibrant with sorrow and self-accusation. He knew what it meant to his employer. The logs, driven by the wind, would go down the rapids and be flung far and wide over Thirty Mile Lake. To gather them up would be a task of weeks; they could not be delivered on time. Joe met the blow like a man. "That's all right, Dinny," he said. "It was up to the company, not to you. Their boom was weak somewhere, that's all. Now what can we do about it? They have two steamers below. We'll need 'em right away. Mac, you tell 'em to get fire under their boilers, quick. Promise 'em anything. Say you've got the company's orders--but get 'em. Tobin, rouse out the boys and get 'em down to the boats double-quick. Take every foot of rope and chain you can find or steal. Deever, you open the channel boom and let everything go that will go. Dinny, you come with me." In five minutes they were banging at the door of the boom company's representative, bringing that worthy citizen from his bed to the window. "Your boom has gone out and my drive is over the rapids into the lake," Joe told him. "I haven't got time to talk about damages or liabilities now. I want your steamers day and night till I sweep my logs up and every other boat you can hire as well. I want every river man you can lay your hands on, too. I'll pay for these things at once, pending the adjustment of any question of responsibility. Will you do your best for me?" "Sure I will," said the agent. "Wait till I get my clothes on and I'll come along. It's funny about that boom. I don't see----" But Joe and McKenna were already out of earshot, hurrying back to the river. The camp was buzzing like a hornet's nest. Men were catching up ropes, chains, peavies, and pike poles and hurrying off into the darkness. Joe, Tobin, and McKenna followed. As they passed the head of the channel where Deever and half a dozen men were stationed the foreman called to them: "I've got something to show you, Mr. Kent. It won't take five minutes." He led the way over the logs and down the cribwork and booming of the channel, and stopped: "One end of the boom swung down here when she went out," he said, and lowered his lantern. "Look at that!" They bent low and peered at the ends of three joined boom-timbers. The ends were white, square, and new. "Sawed through, by thunder!" cried McKenna. XXI The _Sophie Green_, a beamy, shallow-draft, paddle-wheeled old teakettle, lay broad-side-on to a rickety wharf which was piled with cord wood. From the pile, across her gang-plank and back again, trotted an endless procession of deckhands and rivermen, carrying the big sticks that were her fuel. The fires were roaring beneath her boilers, and the gauge was beginning to move. A hundred yards away, at another cord wood pile, her sister craft, the _Ada Bell_, was receiving like attentions. Out in the darkness, by the fitful light of lanterns, half a dozen big riverboats crowded with men, were shackling up short lengths of boom into longer ones. Chains rattled and hammers rang on cold-shuts as the crews joined the timbers. Down the shore for a mile and more other rivermen hunted for boats, taking everything that would pull two pairs of oars. When she had steam enough the _Sophie Green_ bellowed and cast off, wallowing around in a short semi-circle. A peakie shot under her stern and a heaving-line uncoiled across her deck. To this was attached a hawser. It came inboard to the bucking clatter of a winch, and was made fast to the towing bitts. Then the crew of the peakie swarmed aboard; the peakie was hoisted up with half a dozen others, and the _Sophie_ felt her way downstream in the darkness, a half-mile of boom trailing after her. In twenty minutes the _Ada Bell_ followed with more boom-timbers in tow. The river just below the rapids was obstructed by the floating logs of the broken drive, and the _Sophie_ went through them gingerly, fearful for her paddle-wheels. It was still pitch-dark and blowing hard, but the rain had ceased. The lake opened out before them, scummed with foam and torn into choppy, white-topped waves among which the logs were tossing. Joe and McKenna were in the wheel-house with Capt. Jimmy Congdon, a veteran of the river who had been a warm friend of William Kent's, and was ready to do anything for his son. Captain Jimmy was broad, ruddy, and silver-haired, with a pair of steady blue eyes that never shifted. Periodically he spat to leeward with precision, but until the lake opened up his whole attention was devoted to the wheel. "Steerin' on a night like this is mostly be-guess and be-god," he vouchsafed. "There's Six Mile Light off to sta'bo'rd. Now, young man, I run this boat to suit you, so tell me what you want." "I want to boom the logs the easiest and quickest way," Joe informed him. "How would you do it?" Captain Jimmy spat and reflected. "Blowin' like she is now logs'd jump a boom even if we got 'em into one; but she's breezin' too hard to last. If it was me, come daylight I'd boom off the Fire Island Channel and sweep the floatin' stuff into it." This advice was identical with McKenna's. Joe decided to adopt it. Daylight found them lying to, below long, swampy Fire Island, which lay well over toward the eastern shore. They strung a boom from the lower end to the mainland, thus closing the channel and forming a great pocket; and then they went at the tough job of "sweeping up" the scattered drive. The logs were strewn all over the upper end of the lake; but by that strange attraction which floating objects have for one another many of them lay in small rafts. They lay inert, motionless on the almost glassy expanse, for the storm had blown itself out and a sunny day of almost perfect calm succeeded. When these floating patches of timber were reached the peakies were dumped over the side and the rivermen tumbled into them. The _Sophie Green_ steamed in a slow, careful circle, and when she had completed it her half-mile of trailing boom lay in a great loop about many patches of logs. She picked up the other end and went ahead, and the logs naturally sagged back into the farther end of the loop. The _Ada Bell_ went through a similar manoeuvre. Then they steamed up to more logs, winged out one end of the boom alongside, and the men in the peakies fed them more logs through the opening. When the booms were full, they took them to Fire Island, emptied the logs out into the big pocket, and came back for more. As the morning lengthened they obtained reinforcements in the form of a powerful tug belonging to the company and a couple of launches whose owners were not averse to making a few honest dollars. These were of material assistance. The tug took one end of a boom and the _Sophie_ the other and steamed straight ahead in parallel courses. The swath of the boom took up every log between the two boats. Then the _Sophie_ took up both ends as before, but left a dozen lengths of boom-timbers trailing free. These were winged out by a launch, and the rivermen fed logs down the moving funnel thus formed. The tug, meanwhile, went to the assistance of the _Ada Bell_. In this manner the lake was being expeditiously cleared of the rafts of floating logs. Joe blessed his stars for the quiet weather, but for which he could have made but little progress, and prayed for its continuance. He had eight days to sweep up the broken drive and bring it through, and this was not a bit too much. The logs floating openly in the lake were the easiest part of the job; but there were more, strewn along the shore, washed high and dry and embedded in the sand by the storm or caught in shallows and marshy bays--there was where the pull would come. In the afternoon a long, lean power-boat racketed up the lake, nosed the logs inside Fire Island, went up one shore and down the other, and finally ran alongside the _Sophie Green_. In it sat Wismer, and he hailed Joe, who looked over the rail. "This is a nice mess your drive is in, Kent," said he. "I'm afraid you won't be able to get it down in time." "I'll try, anyway," Joe told him. "You can't make it," said Wismer. "Now, I don't want to be hard on you, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make you an offer for the logs as they lie, and if you'll accept it I'll cancel our existing contract." "Let's hear your offer," said Joe. When he heard it he laughed, for it was entirely piratical. "You must think I'm easy. You couldn't steal logs much cheaper." "Take it or leave it," said Wismer, a little puzzled. The Joe Kent with whom he had made his contract had certainly been easy; but this bronzed young fellow leaning over the rail was different. "You don't want to forget that penalty clause," he added warningly. "Not for a minute," said Kent. "I know quite well that Ackerman or Garwood framed up that cinch contract. And I know you're trying to get the logs cheap now, and give them the double-cross. I'm not kicking--merely pointing out that I know what you're up to." Wismer reddened, and for the first time found a difficulty in meeting the young man's eye. "You're talking utter nonsense," said he. "I don't know what you mean, and I don't much care. If you like to take up the offer I've just made, all right. If not, I'll hold you to the letter of our contract." "I'm holding myself to it," said Joe. "I want you to have your booms ready for me, for the first tow of logs goes down the lake to-night." He watched Wismer's launch gather way, and turned to the business in hand. At dusk the _Ada Bell_ picked up one tow and the tug another, and started down the lake. The tired crew went ashore just above Fire Island, where the camp was established. Joe and McKenna remained on the _Sophie_. After supper the foreman came aboard to plan the next day's work. "Boys," said Joe, "who cut that boom?" "McCane, an' no one else," MacNutt answered, and the others nodded. "That's what I think," said Joe, "but I'll never be able to prove it. Now, then, about the drive. Is it possible to get it down on time?" "Shure," said McKenna, "if we have good weather." "Not unless," said Tobin. On a fine-weather basis they planned the work. In the morning they went at it again. Before noon the tow-boats returned, the long booms trailing behind them. Their tows had been emptied down the rapids, and a small crew was seeing them safe into Wismer & Holden's booms. Late in the afternoon a launch--a flying thing of spotless paint, burnished brass, and throbbing engines--split the lake. A wall of water fell away on either side of her shearing stem, and the white kick of her wake streamed out behind like a giant ribbon. She slowed and swung daintily up to the dingy _Sophie Green_. In her sat William Crooks and his daughter. "Hello, Joe!" roared the veteran lumberman. "Hello, Jimmy!" to Captain Congdon. "Throw down a ladder or something. We want to come aboard." They came aboard, and the very spick-and-span young man who owned the launch looked doubtfully at the other young man in the flannel shirt, short trousers, and spiked boots, who was on such enviable terms with pretty little Miss Crooks. "How's she comin'?" Crooks demanded, and Joe told him. "I got twenty boys off my drive on the way to give you a boost," the old lumberman continued. "We'll show these fellows a thing or two about sweepin' up logs. Jimmy, my girl and I are going to camp down on this old tub of yours till the last log's out of the lake. Got room for us?" "You bet I have, Bill," replied Congdon, "Miss Jack, you take my quarters." "Couldn't think of it, thank you, Captain Congdon," said Jack promptly. "I wouldn't put you out for the world." "Mutiny, by the Lord!" shouted Captain Jimmy. "Young woman, I'm a bachelor, and used to having my own way. I get awful mean and cranky when I'm opposed. It'd be just like me to refuse to tow a single blame log if you don't obey orders." "Aye, aye, sir!" said Jack. "Any more orders, sir?" "Only that you're to ask for what you want if you don't see it," said Captain Jimmy, grinning. The launch shot away down the lake, and the _Sophie_ continued to gather logs. Night fell. This time one boat was sufficient to tow all the day's take. Jack and Joe sat on the foredeck in the dusk, listening to the soft lap of water alongside. "I can't tell you what I felt when I heard the drive had broken, Joe," said she. "It seemed so safe before, and now--but you'll make it, Joe, I know you will!" "I'll make it or bust--and that's no figure of speech," he told her grimly. "Those twenty men your father has lent me will just about turn the scale. The boys are working like demons--each man doing the work of two; but it depends on the weather more than on anything else. A couple of windy days would knock us cold. However, there's no use worrying about that, and all the weather sharps in the crew, and Congdon as well, say it has set for fair. To-morrow night we'll work by moonlight. I feel a presentiment amounting to a hunch that you'll be Mrs. Kent before another moon." She nestled closer to him. "If I were a very conventional person I'd insist on three months at least to prepare a trousseau and make sure of a lot of wedding presents--but I'm not. I've spoken to dad, and he makes your delivery of these logs the only condition. And now, boy, it's time you were asleep. You're working as hard as any of the men." The floating logs had all been gathered up. Now the crew attacked those hung in bays and jettisoned on shoals and points. It was slow, hard work, but little by little the broken drive was gathered up. The fine weather held. Nightly tows went down the lake, and each morning the empty-booms trailed back for more. Joe Kent worked with his men. He was strong, active, and enduring. He developed a fair amount of skill with a peavey, and he derived a fierce satisfaction from each log that he twisted from its resting place and rolled into free water. By just that much he was beating Garwood, Ackerman, Clancys--all the gang who, as principals or tools, had determined to loot his business and strip him of his inheritance. His young, sinewy body responded to the calls made upon it. Wet to the waist he worked all day and at night until the moon set, cheering on his crew with laugh and joke. Afterward he stumbled aboard the _Sophie Green_ almost too tired to speak, even to Jack; but the first dim light saw him drop over the side eager for the new day's work. That week Joe lost twenty pounds--and he was not fleshy to start with. Those days of heartbreaking work and the nerve-strain back of it cut lines in his face which were never wholly erased. It was for him a desperate hand-to-hand grapple with time. Logs, logs, logs! By day he worked with them, and by night they crowded his dreams. He had to lift them, to climb over them, to count millions of them; sometimes piles of them cascaded on him, burying him from the world; sometimes they were about to fall on Jack. He would wake, a cry of warning on his lips and the sweat running from every pore of his iron-hard body. His men responded nobly to the call. They held a fierce, jealous pride in their drive, in their ability to bring it down, in making good any promise given by their employer. Chronic grumblers over small things, they accepted cheerfully the eighteen hours a day of work, and even stretched it a little. And every minute of every hour they worked. Each man moved with a spring and a jump. There were no laggards--none for the foremen to curse. They took in Bill Crooks's chosen twenty and fired them with the same fierce energy. But this was not a hard task, for the word passed around somehow that on their success in getting out the logs depended the marriage of Kent and Miss Jack. Every man straightway felt a personal responsibility, and the way they sailed into the job made Kent's crew hustle to keep pace. Bill Crooks threw off thirty years, put on a pair of spiked boots, and tramped up and down the shore bellowing encouragement to the rivermen. Most of it took the form of virulent curses directed at the men who had persistently tried to hang Kent's drive. "But they can't do it, boys!" the old logger would roar. "They may blow dams and saw booms, but we'll do them yet. Birl into her, bullies! All the blasted high-bankers between this and the booms of hell can't hang us up." Then the men would bark fierce assent, and whirl into the logs with fury. And so, by unremitting work by day and night, the big drive was swept up from open water, shoal, point, and bay. On the twenty-eighth of June, at midnight, the last logs were boomed. Half an hour afterward the _Sophie Green_, the _Ada Bell_, and the big tug started down the lake with heavy tows. The boats were full of rivermen, proud in the consciousness that they had set a record for the river. Their toil and their weariness of body were forgotten. Only a few days separated them from town, where they would make up for both, according to time-honoured custom. They shouted songs--expurgated editions out of deference to Jack Crooks--and the hoarse cough of the ancient _Sophie Green's_ exhaust, delivered at exact intervals, chopped the verses in two. Jack and Joe had arranged a little treat. The cook rustled a wonderful meal. Boxes of good cigars were passed around. A phonograph played in the bow of each boat. The trip down the lake was as good as a moonlight excursion, and the men of Kent's drives talk of it yet. One by one they lay down on the deck, beside the boilers, anywhere and everywhere, and slept the sleep of exhaustion. In the morning they let the tows down the rapids. The rivermen debarked, followed down the river, and hustled out the bunches of logs that the few men who had preceded them had not bothered about. It was plain sailing now. That day and the next the channel was brown with logs. Kent's foremen and Wismer & Holden's cullers checked them as they came. Joe and Jack stood out on an anchor pier and watched the booms fill. More logs came down and still more. Far away on the morning of the thirtieth they heard the bellowing whistles of the _Sophie Green_ and _Ada Bell_, and the deep-throated blast of the tug telling them that the last of the big drive was down. At six o'clock that night the booms closed behind the last log. Joe drew a long breath. "Thank heaven," said he. "Now, girlie, we'll have the best meal they can put up in this little town." "We will--but we'll have it in camp," she informed him. "I've arranged with Jimmy Bowes. This is my treat to the men." They occupied the head of an impromptu table of pine boards. Down its length and along similar tables were ranged the rivermen. Huge roasts, fowls, vegetables, and stacks of pies were piled before them, for Jimmy Bowes, having _carte blanche_ from Jack, had raided the shops of the town. When the meal was over Haggarty rose, very red and confused amid low growls of encouragement: "Go to it, Larry!" "What are ye waitin' for?" "Shut up an' listen to him, now!" "Mr. Kent, an' Miss Crooks an' Mister Crooks," began Haggarty, and paused. More growls of encouragement. "I'm no speaker, but the boys wants me to tell ye something, an' it's this: There's them that's had it in for ye these months past, an' has done their da--I mean their dirtiest--to spoil yer cut an' hang yer drive. They haven't done it, an' for why? Bekase ye're good stuff, an' kept a stiff upper lip an' stayed wid the game when others would have give it up, beaten. There ain't a man that ain't proud to work for ye, an' we'll stick by ye, Mr. Kent, till there's snowballin' in--in summer. That's what I was to say. An' besides that, an' not wantin' to be fresh at all, we wish you an' the young lady all sorts of luck an' happiness." Haggarty sat down and was pounded on the back. Joe rose, almost as confused as Haggarty. "Boys," said he, "you knew I was in a tight place and you stayed with me. I've got you to thank that my logs are here to-night, instead of somewhere upriver. Each man of you has done the work of a dozen, and I want you to know that I'm grateful. I can't pay you in money, but I want to say that I'm the friend of each man here, and any time one of you wants anything from me all he has to do is to ask for it. I hope to have you all with me next year, and I'll saw every log we cut in my own mills. Just one thing more, and that's an important one." He took Jack's hand and she rose blushing and laughing while the men cheered madly. "Miss Crooks will be Mrs. Kent in a few weeks, boys, and we ask you all to the wedding." The shout that went up startled the little town. They cheered and pounded the table with hammer-like fists. Then in the tumult began a cry which soon grew insistent: "Cooley, Cooley! Big Bill Cooley!" "Speech, Bill!" "Get up on yer hind-legs, ye bully-boy!" "Tell the boss about it, Bill!" From the seclusion of the foot of the farthest table came muffled, shamefaced protest and muttered profanity. Suddenly half a dozen pairs of arms heaved the big riverman upon the long table. "Heavens, Joe! what has he been doing?" gasped Jack. For big Bill Cooley's face was puffed and cut, and one eye was quite closed. The other glared wickedly at those who had thrust him into prominence. His right hand was bandaged, and the knuckles of the left resembled a hamburger steak. Plainly Cooley had been in the wars. "You fellies make me tired," he growled. "Let me down out o' this!" "Tell the boss an' his young lady first," howled the crew. "Go ahead, Cooley," Joe encouraged him. "They ain't nothin' to tell, Mr. Kent," said Cooley. "I only catched Rough Shan McCane in among the lumber piles this afternoon and took a birl out of him." The crew yelped joyously beneath him. "He won't walk for a month!" "Ye done him up good, Billy-buck!" "The boots in his face, an' all!" "Hooray for dat beeg Bill Cooley, de boss bully-boy!" "Dry up, ye divils! How can he hear himself?" But Cooley made a flying leap from the table, and nothing could induce him to mount it again. Joe got details at second hand of the fearful licking administered to McCane by Cooley, a combat which had been witnessed by only half a dozen. In the end the big riverman had kicked his enemy into unconsciousness with his spiked boots, according to ancient custom. He desisted only when it was apparent that the fallen man's life hung in the balance. As he and his fellows looked at it, this was merely justice, and very light justice at that. More than half the crew started for town to drink the health of the young boss and his bride-to-be. It was a beautiful excuse. Jack and Joe walked up the river's bank to take a last look at the logs. They had little to say, for the reaction had set in. They stood silently in the moonlight, gazing at the fields of brown timber covering the surface of the river, safe down at last at the cost of a winter's toil, a spring's heartbreaking endeavour, and a toll of human life. Joe put his arm around the girl's waist and drew her to him. Strong and full-throated, mellowed by distance, came the last refrain of old Bill Crooks's favourite river-song as the crew shouted it on their way to town. "When the drive comes dow-un, when the jam comes down, What makes yeez lads so wishful-eyed as we draw near to town? Other eyes is soft an' bright, like the stars of a June night-- Wives an' sweethearts--prayin', waitin'--as we drive the river down. (Oh, ye divils!) God bless the eyes that shine for us when we boil into town." "God bless _your_ eyes, Jack, dear!" said Joe softly, and kissed her. The future lay clear and fair before them, a-flush with the rosy lights of youth and hope. XXII By the terms of Joe's contract with Wismer & Holden, these astute millmen had agreed to pay cash for the logs on delivery. Joe held them to this, refusing acceptances at thirty and sixty days. He was thus at once in a position to reduce his liabilities and sustain his credit, which had been seriously strained, with his own bank. His mill was running at capacity. All day the air was vibrant with the hum of it, the thunder of the log carriages, the deep raucous drone of the big saws, the higher pitched voices of the smaller. All day a stream of shaggy, brown logs, prodded by pike poles, was swept upward in dripping procession on an endless chain, tossed on iron beds, flung against the saws, rolled on carriers as rough boards to other saws--to edgers, trimmers and planers--and disgorged from the farther end of the mill in a dozen grades of product to be carried to the piling yards and drying sheds. Day and night the smoke from burning sawdust in the huge, stack-like consumer poured upward to the sky. Thus the producing end of his business was satisfactory. Not less so were the sales. In addition to a particularly brisk local demand, Wright's activities had resulted in some excellent contracts not only for immediate, but for future delivery. There would be no lack of a market for every foot the mill could turn out. Also there was no car shortage. The tacit agreement which Locke had been able to obtain as part of the price of withdrawing his action was being held to rigidly. The firm could sell all its mills could cut and deliver all it could sell. Naturally Wright and Joe were pleased and congratulated each other upon the rosy outlook. "It looks as if we were over the hump," said Joe one afternoon. "Those are good contracts you landed. I want to show you that I appreciate all you have done. Left to myself I'd have been as helpless as a baby in this business." "Oh, I don't know," said Wright. "You pick up things pretty fast. I've been paid for whatever I've done. But apart from that I've been with this concern a good many years and your father always treated me well. Funny if I wouldn't do all I could for you. You've come pretty near making good so far. You made the big cut that your father planned to make and you brought the logs down. That's all he could have done, and I tell you not even Crooks knows the logging business better than he did. So far as showing your appreciation goes it isn't necessary--or, anyway, that can wait till you are in better shape. I'm not shouting for money the minute I see your head above water." "I know you're not, but at the end of the year we'll fix things up on a better basis," said Joe. While Joe was occupied with his business, Jack was busy, too. Mysterious packages were constantly arriving at Bill Crooks's home. As the wedding day drew near the patter of these became a downpour. Jack's friends gave luncheons in her honour, and she was "showered" with articles of alleged usefulness or ornament. She and Joe, sitting chatting one night in her den, heard the heavy, decided tread of the old lumber baron in the darkened hall. Suddenly there was a stumble, a wrathful bellow, and Bill Crooks's voice raised in insistent demand for the name of the thus-and-so-forth wretch who left boxes in the hall, mingled with a prophecy as to his ultimate fate. "What kind of 'fire' and 'nation' were you speaking of, dad?" asked Jack as he appeared in the door. "Never mind," growled Crooks, who was under the impression that his remarks had been sotto voce. "This house is being cluttered up with a bunch of junk. I've peeled a six-inch strip of hide clean off my shin. Who left that box out there?" "I think you did." "Hey?" "I think you did. You took it from the expressman." "Huh?" snorted Crooks. "If I did I didn't leave it in the middle of the hall. I put it out of the way behind the hatrack. Somebody moved it out. That's only one thing. There's a hundred others. You've got enough truck to start a china shop or a jewellery store or a whitewear sale!" "I don't get married every summer," his daughter returned placidly. "We have to have things. And then our friends are good to us. I know one darling old grouch who gave me a big cheque. Remember what he told me to do with it?" "I didn't need to tell you. You can get away with a cheque without instructions. Never knew a woman who couldn't." "You told me to 'blow it' on myself--not to put a dollar of it into house furnishings." "Suppose I did! You don't need house furnishings. There's two houses ready furnished for you--this one and Kent's. How many blamed houses do you want to live in, anyway?" "Oh, Heavens, Joe, give him a cigar!" exclaimed Jack at the end of her patience. "He's going to be an awful crank of a father-in-law." Crooks took Joe's cigar and dropped into a chair, while Jack departed in search of refreshment; men being, as she declared, invariably hungry when they were not thirsty. "I've been thinking, Joe," said the old lumberman, "quite a bit about my business lately." "Why, what's the matter with it?" asked Joe in surprise, for Crooks's business, like his own, had been very good indeed. "Nothing's the matter with it," Crooks replied. "It's good--it's too good. I've run it for a long time, and now it's beginning to run me." "I don't quite understand." "It's this way," Crooks explained: "I'm getting on, and outside of Jack I've nobody. Now you're going to marry her. It had to be somebody, I suppose, and I'm glad it's you. Still, there's the business. It's mine, I made it and I like it--but it's beginning to drive me too much. I can't go away for a month or a week without being afraid things will be tied up in hard knots before I get back. If I had a man as good as Wright it might be different, but I haven't. I have to be on the job myself all the time, and I'm getting too old for that. I want to take it easy a little and get the most out of the years that are left me." "I see," said Joe as Crooks paused. "You'll know better how it is yourself thirty years from now," Crooks continued. "I've nobody but Jack. If the boys had lived they'd have been able to run the business and let me sit back and just give them a hand now and then. But they died." He was silent for a long moment. "I'll tell you something, Joe, you were the one thing I envied your father. I saw you growing up, a good, clean, healthy young fellow, with no bad habits to speak of--oh, I don't mean that you were any saint; I suppose you kicked up once in a while, same as any healthy young colt, but there was nothing vicious about you--and it seemed hard luck that out of my three boys one wasn't left me. Well, never mind that. Now all I've got will be Jack's when I get my time. And so I was thinking of making you a little proposition." "Yes," said Joe wondering what this was leading up to. "What is it, Mr. Crooks?" "I was wondering," Crooks pursued, "whether you'd care to combine our businesses?" Joe was thoughtful for a moment. His eyes narrowed a little, and his brows drew down in a slight frown. He looked at Crooks steadily. The old lumberman returned his gaze. "Is there anything behind this, sir?" Joe asked. "Behind it--how? You don't think I'm putting up a job to freeze you out, do you?" "No, not that. But are you making this proposition for Jack's sake? I mean, do you think I'd make a mess of my business if I ran it alone? Because if that's really the reason I'd like to show you." "If I thought you couldn't run your own business I wouldn't want your help to run mine," Crooks replied. "Mind you, I consider myself able to give you a few pointers. You've a lot to learn, but you're one of the young fellows who will learn. Some can't; others won't. I'd hate to see Jack marry a man I didn't think would make good. I'd tell him so mighty quick. No, I gave you my real reason." "It's a good proposition for me, Mr. Crooks," said Joe. "I'm for it, if we can arrange details. Were you thinking of forming a company?" "No, I wasn't," said Crooks. "I don't like companies--too much shenanigan about stock and directors and meetings. A company can't do a blamed thing without seeing a lawyer first. I own one business which will be Jack's and yours some day, and you own another. We just make a little 'greement to run 'em together and divide the profits; and we arrange who's to do what work--and there you are. Any time things don't run to suit us we split the blanket. If we tell Locke what we want he'll put it in shape in half an hour." "I'll do it," Joe agreed; "but I feel that I'm getting the best of the bargain in your experience." "My experience is all right," said Crooks, "but I can't hustle like I used to--or else I won't. You will, and I'll be able to tell you how. That makes it an even break. And then you've got Wright. I've wanted him or some one like him for years." "I feel that I owe Wright a good deal," said Joe. "He has really run the business end of the concern. I was thinking of giving him a share in it. Seems to me something like that is coming to him." "I'm glad to hear you say so. We'll take him in with us and give him an interest." "I want it to come out of my share." "No. He's going to work for me as much as for you. Wright is a part of your equipment and a big asset. Whatever interest he gets must come out of the whole business and not out of one end of it." They took their proposition in the rough to Locke, and that experienced adjuster of other men's perplexities proceeded to hammer it into working shape, finally producing an agreement, clear, concise and satisfactory. Thus the lumber firm of Crooks & Kent was born. A couple of days before the wedding, certain quarters of the town--and also those charged with the duty of enforcing a fair imitation of law and order therein--began to notice a sudden influx of strangers. They were for the most part big and very brown, and they walked with a truculent swagger and regarded the world through humorously insolent eyes. Also they held together clannishly, and for the most part--to the relief of the authorities--maintained themselves in a condition of near sobriety. "For if ye get too full," big Cooley explained to the bibulously inclined Chartrand, "ye miss the weddin'. An' it's not the likes of you is axed to one every day." "I'll be mos' awful dry, me!" Chartrand complained. He hailed little Narcisse Laviolette. "_Hola_, Narcisse, _mon vieux!_ Come on, tak' leetle drink wit' me. Come on, you beeg Cooley. We don't get dronk--_pas du tout_. We jus' feex ourself so we lak for sing leetle _chanson_." He hammered the bar with the heavy-bottomed little glass constructed in the interests of the house to hold one man's size drink and no more, and burst into alleged melody: "Dat square-face-gin, she'll be ver' fine, Some feller lak dat champagne wine-- But de bes' dam' drink w'hat I never saw Come out of a bottle of _whiskey blanc_. (O listen to me now, while I'll tol' you how!) Dere was Joe Leduc an' me, Larry Frost an' Savigny, Chevrier an' Prevost, Jimmy Judge an' Larribee, Lamontagne an' Lajeunesse--mebbe fifty mans, I guess; You would know de whole kaboodle if I ain't forget de res'. We was drive upon dat reever an' we ron heem down _les Chats_, An' den we hit dat Quyon where we buy dat _whiskey blanc_!" "Yell her out, _mes amis!_ Bus' dat roof!" "Hooraw! hooraw! _pour le_ good ol' _whiskey blanc_! She's gran' for mak love on, she's bully for fight, She'll keep out dat col', an'----" "Shut up!" roared Cooley. "Now you listen here--you ain't goin' to show up drunk at the boss's weddin', puttin' the whole crew on the hog. Savvy? You're three parts full now. I'll sober ye, me buck, if it's wid me feet in yer face!" And the threat of Cooley, combined with the eloquent profanity of a self-constituted temperance committee, caused Chartrand to postpone his celebration. It was Cooley also who constituted himself an authority on social usage. "Bein' asked to this weddin'," said he, "the c'rect thing is to put up a present." "Sure!" "That's right, Cooley." "You bet!" "We'll do it right while we're about it," said the big man. "Here's ten dollars in me hat. Sweeten as she goes 'round, boys. Let's buy the boss an' his girl somethin' good--somethin' they won't be ashamed to keep in the front room an' tell their friends it come from the boys of Kent's big drive!" An hour later the proprietor of Falls City's leading jewelry store was somewhat startled by an invasion of half a dozen weather-beaten, rough-looking customers quite different from his ordinary patrons; and he nearly fainted when the spokesman told him that they were in search of a wedding present on which they were prepared to expend between three and four hundred dollars. In the end they chose a cabinet filled with silver, eying respectfully the dainty knives, forks, and spoons, and other articles of whose use they had small conception. "We want a name plate put on her," said Cooley, "showing a lad in river clothes standin' on a log wid a peavey in his fist; an' above that we want the date; an' underneath it, 'From Kent's River Crew.'" It is safe to say that never had the church, to whose support old Bill Crooks contributed more often than he attended it, held as motley a gathering as on the morning of the wedding of his daughter and Joe Kent. Big, brown men, painfully shaven, in aggressively new garments which cramped their strong muscles and rendered them awkward and ill at ease, occupied seats beside the members of Falls City's leading families, who eyed the intruders askance. And here and there, also ill at ease, were old men and women, dependents of William Crooks and friends of his daughter, whom they loved. Joe and his best man entered from the vestry; but there was a slight delay. They stood before the chancel waiting for the bride and her father. "The boss is nervous," Cooley commented to Haggarty in a low whisper. "Look at him shift on his feet. An' see the ears of him. Red!" "Small blame to him," Haggarty responded sympathetically. "I'll bet he'd rather be swappin' punches wid a man twice his own weight." But Jack entered on her father's arm--a dainty, queenly Jack, clad in bride-white, her eyes demurely downcast but the small head with the crown of glossy brown hair carried as proudly as ever. "An' I used to give her lumps out of the sugar bar'l!" said Jimmy Bowes, the fat old bull-cook, in sentimental reminiscence. "Purty as a little red wagon," said Haggarty with approval. "Mo' Gee! I leave home for dat myself!" commented little Narcisse Laviolette, who possessed a wife of double his own fighting weight and offspring of about the same combined avoirdupois. And Cooley, who overheard this tribute from the little teamster, took offence thereat. "Shut up, ye blasted little pea-soup!" he growled. "She's the boss's wife--or as good as. You remember that, and don't try to be funny!" "Who's try for be fonnee?" demanded Laviolette with indignation at this unjust interpretation of his well-meant speech. "You give me de swif' pain, you. Sacré dam! Some tam, bagosh, I ponch your beeg Irish mug!" "Sh!" rumbled Haggarty. "Can't ye quit yer dam' swearin' in a church? Shut up, the both of ye!" The ceremony, which was rapidly changing Jack Crooks into Mrs. Joe Kent, proceeded, finished. Kisses were showered on her, handshakes and slaps on the back on Joe. In the midst of these the latter caught sight of a group of weather-tanned faces in the centre of the church. Their owners were standing uncertainly, diffident, not caring to mingle with the more fashionably clad throng that clustered about the principals. Joe turned to his bride. "There's Cooley and Haggarty and a bunch of the boys of my river crew, Jack," he said. "They want to wish us luck, and they're too bashful to mix. Come on down and shake hands." "Of course," said Jack. With his bride on his arm Joe went down the aisle to the men of his drive, to have his right hand almost permanently disabled in the grips he received; but the pressure of the big hands that closed bashfully around Jack's slim fingers would not have crushed a butterfly. "Wishin' ye good luck an' happiness, ma'am," was the formula, but little varied. Into the midst of them came old Bill Crooks. "Come on, boys!" he exclaimed. "There's a wedding spread up at my house, and I want every man of you there to drink good luck to the bride--and to the new firm of Crooks & Kent. No holding back, now. Come along, everybody!" They came along, though most of them would have preferred to go down a bad piece of water on a single stick of pine, and their coming taxed the space of Crooks's dining-room--to say nothing of the commissariat and canteen--to the limit. They ate and drank solemnly, on their best behaviour and conscious of it, sipping the unaccustomed wines with reserved judgment. "What'll be a dose of this?" whispered Regan, eying his champagne glass with suspicion. "The waitin' gyurls fill it up whenever I empty it. This makes five I've had and I can't feel it yet. Belike it acts suddint. I wouldn't want to get full here." "Nor me," Cooley agreed. "They're all drinkin' it, an' none the worse. If they can stand it we can." He gulped down half a glass and thrust his tongue back and forth experimentally. "Champagne, hey? It has a puckery taste till it, but no rasp. It might be hard cider wid more fizz. There's no harm in it. I cud drink enough of it to float a log. Here's some lad speakin'. Listen to what he says." They heard the health of the bride proposed in customary language; Joe's reply, embarrassed, jerky, brief. "Speaking isn't Kent's strong point," a guest commented. Cooley glowered at him, resentful of the just criticism. "He can talk when he has anything to say, and he can curse _fine_!" he affirmed. He led vociferous cheers as Joe sat down, and cheered almost equally hard when Crooks concluded five minutes of pointed remarks in which he announced the formation of the new firm. But these cheers were as nothing to the leather-lunged roars that bade Jack and Joe farewell as they stepped into the carriage. With the cheers came showers of rice. Joe turned up his coat collar; but Jack laughed back through the fusillade of it, blowing kisses to her father, her girl friends, and the rivermen, impartially. And the memory of them stayed with the rough shantymen for years. The train which bore Joe and his bride on their wedding journey clanked slowly through the yards following the line of the river. As it looped around a curve they could see, looking backward from the rear platform of the last coach which they had to themselves, the mills of Bill Crooks and of Joe Kent each flying a flag from the topmost point, the silver of the flowing water checkered with the black lines of the long booms and the herds of brown logs inside them. In the mills not a wheel turned that day. But steam was in the boilers, for as they looked it poured white from the roofs of the engine houses and the bellowing howls of two fire sirens bade them a joyous farewell. Jack slipped her hand in Joe's. "Are you glad?" "Glad it's over? You bet I am!" "No--glad we're married?" "That's a nice question. And you know the answer." "Of course I do," she admitted happily. "I suppose a wedding trip is a fine thing. Anyway, it's conventional. But--I'll be glad to come back home." "Same here," he agreed. "There's lot to be done--a holy lot. I have to get right down to work. I want to take all the weight I can off your father's shoulders. That's up to me. Then, when you come to running two mills under one management, there must be all sorts of economies possible, if a fellow could only find out what they are. I don't want to let Wright do all the finding out for me. Yes, I'll be pretty busy." "Well, you like the work. That's the main thing." "That's so," he admitted. "I like it better all the time. I never knew what real fun was till I had to hustle for myself. A year ago I was no better than a big kid. I could feed myself and dress myself if somebody handed me the price, and that just about let me out. And at that I thought I was having a good time. A good time? Huh! Why, I didn't know I was alive. Oh, well ... we'll cut out business on this trip--not talk of it or think of it at all. Shall we?" "No--o. I like to talk about it. It makes me think I'm helping. If I were a man----" "I'm mighty glad you're not. Remember the time you wished you were a boy?" "That was before----" "Before what?" "You know very well. Before I knew you thought anything of me." "You are absolutely the best little girl in the world," he said with conviction. "I always loved you, Jack--ever since we were kids--only I didn't know it." She gave his arm a quick little understanding hug, with a new womanly pride in the hard, swelling muscles that met the pressure. They stood close together, watching the last silvery reach of the river, burnished, mirror-like, lustrous beneath the sloping afternoon sun. They had been born beside it; as children they had played on it, in it; and they loved it as a part of their lives. It was a treasure stream, bearing to them year after year the loot of the northern forests--the great, brown sticks of pine. Changeless and yet ever changing it never failed to charm. Ages old but ever young it held its children in the spell of its eternal life. And so as it vanished, shut out by a landscape that seemed to rush backward as the train gathered speed, their eyes and their thoughts clung to it; for by the river and with the pine their lifework lay. THE END LOUIS TRACY'S CAPTIVATING AND EXHILARATING ROMANCES May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. CYNTHIA'S CHAUFFEUR. Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. A pretty American girl in London is touring in a car with a chauffeur whose identity puzzles her. An amusing mystery. THE STOWAWAY GIRL. Illustrated by Nesbitt Benson. A shipwreck, a lovely girl stowaway, a rascally captain, a fascinating officer, and thrilling adventures in South Seas. THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. Love and the salt sea, a helpless ship whirled into the hands of cannibals, desperate fighting and a tender romance. THE MESSAGE. Illustrated by Joseph Cummings Chase. A bit of parchment found in the figurehead of an old vessel tells of a buried treasure. A thrilling mystery develops. THE PILLAR OF LIGHT. The pillar thus designated was a lighthouse, and the author tells with exciting detail the terrible dilemma of its cut-off inhabitants. THE WHEEL O'FORTUNE. With illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg. The story deals with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars of some of the treasures of the Queen of Sheba. A SON OF THE IMMORTALS. Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. A young American is proclaimed king of a little Balkan Kingdom, and a pretty Parisian art student is the power behind the throne. THE WINGS OF THE MORNING. A sort of Robinson Crusoe _redivivus_ with modern setting, and a very pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of a wreck, and have many thrilling adventures on their desert island. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK TITLES SELECTED FROM GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list HIS HOUR. By Elinor Glyn. Illustrated. A beautiful blonde Englishwoman visits Russia, and is violently made love to by a young Russian aristocrat. A most unique situation complicates the romance. THE GAMBLERS. By Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. A big, vital treatment of a present day situation wherein men play for big financial stakes and women flourish on the profits--or repudiate the methods. CHEERFUL AMERICANS. By Charles Battell Loomis. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn and others. A good, wholesome, laughable presentation of some Americans rat home and abroad, on their vacations, and during their hours of relaxation. THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Clever, original presentations of present day social problems and the best solutions of them. A book every girl and woman should possess. THE LIGHT THAT LURES. By Percy Brehner. Illustrated. Handsomely colored wrapper. A young Southerner who loved Lafayette, goes to France to aid him during the days of terror, and is lured in a certain direction by the lovely eyes of a Frenchwoman. THE RAMRODDERS. By Holman Day. Frontispiece by Harold Matthews Brett. A clever, timely story that will make politicians think and will make women realize the part that politics play--even in their romances. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS Original, sincere and courageous--often amusing--the kind that are making theatrical history. MADAME X. By Alexandre Bisson and J. W. McConaughy. Illustrated with scenes from the play. A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not forgive an error of her youth. Her love for her son is the great final influence in her career. A tremendous dramatic success. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. THE PRINCE OF INDIA. By Lew Wallace. A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting with extraordinary power the siege of Constantinople, and lighting its tragedy with the warm underglow of an Oriental romance. As a play it is a great dramatic spectacle. TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard Chandler Christy. A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University student, and it works startling changes in her life and the lives of those about her. The dramatic version is one of the sensations of the season. YOUNG WALLINGFORD. By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger and Henry Raleigh. A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young man, each of which is just on the safe side of a State's prison offence. As "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably the most amusing expose of money manipulation ever seen on the stage. THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY. By P. G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe. Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur burglary adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the title of "A Gentleman of Leisure," it furnishes hours of laughter to the play-goers. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK TITLES SELECTED FROM GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list A CERTAIN RICH MAN. By William Allen White. A vivid, startling portrayal of one man's financial greed, its wide spreading power, its action in Wall Street, and its effect on the three women most intimately in his life. A splendid, entertaining American novel. IN OUR TOWN. By William Allen White. Illustrated by F. R. Gruger and W. Glackens. Made up of the observations of a keen newspaper editor, involving the town millionaire, the smart set, the literary set, the bohemian set, and many others. All humorously related and sure to hold the attention. NATHAN BURKE. By Mary S. Watts. The story of an ambitious, backwoods Ohio boy who rose to prominence. Everyday humor of American rustic life permeates the book. THE HIGH HAND. By Jacques Futrelle. Illustrated by Will Grefe. A splendid story of the political game, with a son of the soil on the one side, and a "kid glove" politician on the other. A pretty girl, interested in both men, is the chief figure. THE BACKWOODSMEN. By Charles G. D. Roberts. Illustrated. Realistic stories of men and women living midst the savage beauty of the wilderness. Human nature at its best and worst is well portrayed. YELLOWSTONE NIGHTS. By Herbert Quick. A jolly company of six artists, writers and other clever folks take a trip through the National Park, and tell stories around camp fire at night. Brilliantly clever and original. THE PROFESSOR'S MYSTERY. By Wells Hastings and Brian Hooker. Illustrated by Hanson Booth. A young college professor, missing his steamer for Europe, has a romantic meeting with a pretty girl, escorts her home, and is enveloped in a big mystery. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST., NEW YORK TITLES SELECTED FROM GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. By Meredith Nicholson. Illustrated by C. Coles Phillips and Reginald Birch. Seven suitors vie with each other for the love of a beautiful girl, and she subjects them to a test that is full of mystery, magic and sheer amusement. THE MAGNET. By Henry C. Rowland. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. The story of a remarkable courtship involving three pretty girls on a yacht, a poet-lover in pursuit, and a mix-up in the names of the girls. THE TURN OF THE ROAD. By Eugenia Brooks Frothingham. A beautiful young opera singer chooses professional success instead of love, but comes to a place in life where the call of the heart is stronger than worldly success. SCOTTIE AND HIS LADY. By Margaret Morse. Illustrated by Harold M. Brett. A young girl whose affections have been blighted is presented with a Scotch Collie to divert her mind, and the roving adventures of her pet lead the young mistress into another romance. SHEILA VEDDER. By Amelia E. Barr. Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher. A very beautiful romance of the Shetland Islands, with a handsome, strong willed hero and a lovely girl of Gaelic blood as heroine. A sequel to "Jan Vedder's Wife." JOHN WARD. PREACHER. By Margaret Deland. The first big success of this much loved American novelist. It is a powerful portrayal of a young clergyman's attempt to win his beautiful wife to his own narrow creed. THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT. By Robert W. Service. Illustrated by Maynard Dixon. One of the best stories of "Vagabondia" ever written, and one of the most accurate and picturesque of the stampede of gold seekers to the Yukon. The love story embedded in the narrative is strikingly original. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK THE NOVELS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL Skillful in plot, dramatic in episode, powerful and original in climax. MR. CREWE'S CAREER. Illus. by A. I. Keller and Kinneys. A New England state is under the political domination of a railway and Mr. Crewe, a millionaire, seizes the moment when the cause of the people against corporation greed is being espoused by an ardent young attorney, to further his own interest in a political way, by taking up this cause. The daughter of the railway president, with the sunny humor and shrewd common sense of the New England girl, plays no small part in the situation as well as in the life of the young attorney who stands so unflinchingly for clean politics. THE CROSSING. Illus. by S. Adamson and L. Baylis. Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie and the British fleet in the harbor of Charleston, the blazing of the Kentucky wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of dauntless followers in Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio and Mississippi, and the treasonable schemes builded against Washington and the Federal Government. CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn. A deft blending of love and politics distinguishes this book. The author has taken for his hero a New Englander, a crude man of the tannery, who rose to political prominence by his own powers, and then surrendered all for the love of a woman. It is a sermon on civic righteousness, and a love story of a deep motive. THE CELEBRITY. An Episode. An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of personalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman of the most blatant type. The story is adorned with some character sketches more living than pen work. It is the purest, keenest fun--no such piece of humor has appeared for years: it is American to the core. THE CRISIS. Illus. by Howard Chandler Christie. A book that presents the great crisis in our national life with splendid power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism that are inspiring. The several scenes in the book in which Abraham Lincoln figures must be read in their entirety for they give a picture of that great, magnetic, lovable man, which has been drawn with evident affection and exceptional success. GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK TITLES SELECTED FROM GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list THE SILENT CALL. by Edwin Milton Royle. Illustrated with scenes from the play. The hero of this story is the Squaw Man's son. He has been taken to England, but spurns conventional life for the sake of the untamed West and a girl's pretty face. JOHN MARCH, SOUTHERNER. By George W. Cable. A story of the pretty women and spirited men of the South. As fragrant in sentiment as a sprig of magnolia, and as full of mystery and racial troubles as any romance of "after the war" days. MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES. By E. W. Hornung. This engaging rascal is found helping a young cricket player out of the toils of a money shark. Novel in plot, thrilling and amusing. FORTY MINUTES LATE. By F. Hopkinson Smith. Illustrated by S. M. Chase. Delightfully human stories of every day happenings; of a lecturer's laughable experience because he's late, a young woman's excursion into the stock market, etc. OLD LADY NUMBER 31. By Louise Forsslund. A heart-warming story of American rural life, telling of the adventures of an old couple in an old folk's home, their sunny, philosophical acceptance of misfortune and ultimate prosperity. THE HUSBAND'S STORY. By David Graham Phillips. A story that has given all Europe as well as all America much food for thought. A young couple begin life in humble circumstances and rise in worldly matters until the husband is enormously rich--the wife in the most aristocratic European society--but at the price of their happiness. THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT. By Robert W. Service. Illustrated by Maynard Dixon. One of the best stories of "Vagabondia" ever written, and one of the most accurate and picturesque descriptions of the stampede of gold seekers to the Yukon. The love story embedded in the narrative is strikingly original. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST., NEW YORK TITLES SELECTED FROM GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. THE SECOND WIFE. By Thompson Buchanan. Illustrated by W. W. Fawcett. Harrison Fisher wrapper printed in four colors and gold. An intensely interesting story of a marital complication in a wealthy New York family involving the happiness of a beautiful young girl. TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace Miller White. Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. An amazingly vivid picture of low class life in a New York college town, with a heroine beautiful and noble, who makes a great sacrifice for love. FROM THE VALLEY OF THE MISSING. By Graces Miller White. Frontispiece and wrapper in colors by Penrhyn Stanlaws. Another story of "the storm country." Two beautiful children are kidnapped from a wealthy home and appear many years after showing the effects of a deep, malicious scheme behind their disappearance. THE LIGHTED MATCH. By Charles Neville Buck. Illustrated by R. F. Schabelitz. A lovely princess travels incognito through the States and falls in love with an American man. There are ties that bind her to someone in her own home, and the great plot revolves round her efforts to work her way out. MAUD BAXTER. By C. C. Hotchkiss. Illustrated by Will Grefe. A romance both daring and delightful, involving an American girl and a young man who had been impressed into English service during the Revolution. THE HIGHWAYMAN. By Guy Rawlence. Illustrated by Will Grefe. A French beauty of mysterious antecedents wins the love of an Englishman of title. Developments of a startling character and a clever untangling of affairs hold the reader's interest. THE PURPLE STOCKINGS. By Edward Salisbury Field. Illustrated in colors; marginal illustrations. A young New York business man, his pretty sweetheart, his sentimental stenographer, and his fashionable sister are mixed up in a misunderstanding that surpasses anything in the way of comedy in years. A story with a laugh on every page. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK 
11223	----	Team. [Illustration: She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck. FRONTISPIECE.] BIG TIMBER A Story of the Northwest By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR With Frontispiece By DOUGLAS DUER 1916 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW II. MR. ABBEY ARRIVES III. HALFWAY POINT IV. A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME V. THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER VI. THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL VII. SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE VIII. DURANCE VILE IX. JACK FYFE'S CAMP X. ONE WAY OUT XI. THE PLUNGE XII. AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED XIII. IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME XIV. A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE XV. A RESURRECTION XVI. THE CRISIS XVII. IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH XVIII. THE OPENING GUN XIX. FREE AS THE WIND XX. ECHOES XXI. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING XXII. THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE XXIII. A RIDE BY NIGHT XXIV. "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" CHAPTER I GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,--narrow on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,--down which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, roaring through the granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range, took a wider channel and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen from it as haste falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his destination near at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for now it was but threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved placidly--as an old man moves when all the headlong urge of youth is spent and his race near run. On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella Benton nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her elbow on the window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening valley instead of a bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to see wooded heights lift green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and dry and still. She was near the finish of her journey. Pensively she considered the end of the road. How would it be there? What manner of folk and country? Between her past mode of life and the new that she was hurrying toward lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class even. It was bound to be crude, to be full of inconveniences and uncouthness. Her brother's letters had partly prepared her for that. Involuntarily she shrank from it, had been shrinking from it by fits and starts all the way, as flowers that thrive best in shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude winds. Not that Estella Benton was particularly flower-like. On the contrary she was a healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to be described as beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a daughter of the well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes in families to which American politicians unctuously refer as the backbone of the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty pane, she bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was full of misgivings. Four days of lonely travel across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of view, upon conditioning circumstances and previous experience. Estella Benton's experience along such lines was chiefly a blank and the conditioning circumstances of her present journey were somber enough to breed thought that verged upon the melancholy. Save for a natural buoyancy of spirit she might have wept her way across North America. She had no tried standard by which to measure life's values for she had lived her twenty-two years wholly shielded from the human maelstrom, fed, clothed, taught, an untried product of home and schools. Her head was full of university lore, things she had read, a smattering of the arts and philosophy, liberal portions of academic knowledge, all tagged and sorted like parcels on a shelf to be reached when called for. Buried under these externalities the ego of her lay unaroused, an incalculable quantity. All of which is merely by way of stating that Miss Estella Benton was a young woman who had grown up quite complacently in that station of life in which--to quote the Philistines--it had pleased God to place her, and that Chance had somehow, to her astonished dismay, contrived to thrust a spoke in the smooth-rolling wheels of destiny. Or was it Destiny? She had begun to think about that, to wonder if a lot that she had taken for granted as an ordered state of things was not, after all, wholly dependent upon Chance. She had danced and sung and played lightheartedly accepting a certain standard of living, a certain position in a certain set, a pleasantly ordered home life, as her birthright, a natural heritage. She had dwelt upon her ultimate destiny in her secret thoughts as foreshadowed by that of other girls she knew. The Prince would come, to put it in a nutshell. He would woo gracefully. They would wed. They would be delightfully happy. Except for the matter of being married, things would move along the same pleasant channels. Just so. But a broken steering knuckle on a heavy touring car set things in a different light--many things. She learned then that death is no respecter of persons, that a big income may be lived to its limit with nothing left when the brain force which commanded it ceases to function. Her father produced perhaps fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year in his brokerage business, and he had saved nothing. Thus at one stroke she was put on an equal footing with the stenographer in her father's office. Scarcely equal either, for the stenographer earned her bread and was technically equipped for the task, whereas Estella Benton had no training whatsoever, except in social usage. She did not yet fully realize just what had overtaken her. Things had happened so swiftly, to ruthlessly, that she still verged upon the incredulous. Habit clung fast. But she had begun to think, to try and establish some working relation between herself and things as she found them. She had discovered already that certain theories of human relations are not soundly established in fact. She turned at last in her seat. The Limited's whistle had shrilled for a stop. At the next stop--she wondered what lay in store for her just beyond the next stop. While she dwelt mentally upon this, her hands were gathering up some few odds and ends of her belongings on the berth. Across the aisle a large, smooth-faced young man watched her with covert admiration. When she had settled back with bag and suitcase locked and strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted and gloved, he leaned over and addressed her genially. "Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring Springs?" Miss Benton's gray eyes rested impersonally on the top of his head, traveled slowly down over the trim front of his blue serge to the polished tan Oxfords on his feet, and there was not in eyes or on countenance the slightest sign that she saw or heard him. The large young man flushed a vivid red. Miss Benton was partly amused, partly provoked. The large young man had been her vis-à-vis at dinner the day before and at breakfast that morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation each time, but it had been diplomatically confined to salt and other condiments, the weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no objection to young men in general, quite the contrary. But she did not consider it quite the thing to countenance every amiable stranger. Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the blast of the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave the train. Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object down an aisle slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss Estella Benton stood on the plank platform of Hopyard station. Northward stretched a flat, unlovely vista of fire-blackened stumps. Southward, along track and siding, ranged a single row of buildings, a grocery store, a shanty with a huge sign proclaiming that it was a bank, dwelling, hotel and blacksmith shop whence arose the clang of hammered iron. A dirt road ran between town and station, with hitching posts at which farmers' nags stood dispiritedly in harness. To the Westerner such spots are common enough; he sees them not as fixtures, but as places in a stage of transformation. By every side track and telegraph station on every transcontinental line they spring up, centers of productive activity, growing into orderly towns and finally attaining the dignity of cities. To her, fresh from trim farmsteads and rural communities that began setting their houses in order when Washington wintered at Valley Forge, Hopyard stood forth sordid and unkempt. And as happens to many a one in like case, a wave of sickening loneliness engulfed her, and she eyed the speeding Limited as one eyes a departing friend. "How could one live in a place like this?" she asked herself. But she had neither Slave of the Lamp at her beck, nor any Magic Carpet to transport her elsewhere. At any rate, she reflected, Hopyard was not her abiding-place. She hoped that her destination would prove more inviting. Beside the platform were ranged two touring cars. Three or four of those who had alighted entered these. Their baggage was piled over the hoods, buckled on the running boards. The driver of one car approached her. "Hot Springs?" he inquired tersely. She affirmed this, and he took her baggage, likewise her trunk check when she asked how that article would be transported to the lake. She had some idea of route and means, from her brother's written instruction, but she thought he might have been there to meet her. At least he would be at the Springs. So she was whirled along a country road, jolted in the tonneau between a fat man from Calgary and a rheumatic dame on her way to take hot sulphur baths at St. Allwoods. She passed seedy farmhouses, primitive in construction, and big barns with moss plentifully clinging on roof and gable. The stretch of charred stumps was left far behind, but in every field of grain and vegetable and root great butts of fir and cedar rose amid the crops. Her first definitely agreeable impression of this land, which so far as she knew must be her home, was of those huge and numerous stumps contending with crops for possession of the fields. Agreeable, because it came to her forcibly that it must be a sturdy breed of men and women, possessed of brawn and fortitude and high courage, who made their homes here. Back in her country, once beyond suburban areas, the farms lay like the squares of a chess board, trim and orderly, tamely subdued to agriculture. Here, at first hand, she saw how man attacked the forest and conquered it. But the conquest was incomplete, for everywhere stood those stubborn roots, six and eight and ten feet across, contending with man for its primal heritage, the soil, perishing slowly as perish the proud remnants of a conquered race. Then the cleared land came to a stop against heavy timber. The car whipped a curve and drove into what the fat man from Calgary facetiously remarked upon as the tall uncut. Miss Benton sighted up these noble columns to where a breeze droned in the tops, two hundred feet above. Through a gap in the timber she saw mountains, peaks that stood bold as the Rockies, capped with snow. For two days she had been groping for a word to define, to sum up the feeling which had grown upon her, had been growing upon her steadily, as the amazing scroll of that four-day journey unrolled. She found it now, a simple word, one of the simplest in our mother tongue--bigness. Bigness in its most ample sense,--that was the dominant note. Immensities of distance, vastness of rolling plain, sheer bulk of mountain, rivers that one crossed, and after a day's journey crossed again, still far from source or confluence. And now this unending sweep of colossal trees! At first she had been overpowered with a sense of insignificance utterly foreign to her previous experience. But now she discovered with an agreeable sensation of surprise she could vibrate to such a keynote. And while she communed with this pleasant discovery the car sped down a straight stretch and around a corner and stopped short to unload sacks of mail at a weather-beaten yellow edifice, its windows displaying indiscriminately Indian baskets, groceries, and hardware. Northward opened a broad scope of lake level, girt about with tremendous peaks whose lower slopes were banked with thick forest. Somewhere distant along that lake shore was to be her home. As the car rolled over the four hundred yards between store and white-and-green St. Allwoods, she wondered if Charlie would be there to meet her. She was weary of seeing strange faces, of being directed, of being hustled about. But he was not there, and she recalled that he never had been notable for punctuality. Five years is a long time. She expected to find him changed--for the better, in certain directions. He had promised to be there; but, in this respect, time evidently had wrought no appreciable transformation. She registered, was assigned a room, and ate luncheon to the melancholy accompaniment of a three-man orchestra struggling vainly with Bach in an alcove off the dining room. After that she began to make inquiries. Neither clerk nor manager knew aught of Charlie Benton. They were both in their first season there. They advised her to ask the storekeeper. "MacDougal will know," they were agreed. "He knows everybody around here, and everything that goes on." The storekeeper, a genial, round-bodied Scotchman, had the information she desired. "Charlie Benton?" said he. "No, he'll be at his camp up the lake. He was in three or four days back. I mind now, he said he'd be down Thursday; that's to-day. But he isn't here yet, or his boat'd be by the wharf yonder." "Are there any passenger boats that call there?" she asked. MacDougal shook his head. "Not reg'lar. There's a gas boat goes t' the head of the lake now an' then. She's away now. Ye might hire a launch. Jack Fyfe's camp tender's about to get under way. But ye wouldna care to go on her, I'm thinkin'. She'll be loaded wi' lumberjacks--every man drunk as a lord, most like. Maybe Benton'll be in before night." She went back to the hotel. But St. Allwoods, in its dual capacity of health-and-pleasure resort, was a gilded shell, making a brave outward show, but capitalizing chiefly lake, mountains, and hot, mineral springs. Her room was a bare, cheerless place. She did not want to sit and ponder. Too much real grief hovered in the immediate background of her life. It is not always sufficient to be young and alive. To sit still and think--that way lay tears and despondency. So she went out and walked down the road and out upon the wharf which jutted two hundred yards into the lake. It stood deserted save for a lone fisherman on the outer end, and an elderly couple that preceded her. Halfway out she passed a slip beside which lay moored a heavily built, fifty-foot boat, scarred with usage, a squat and powerful craft. Lakeward stretched a smooth, unrippled surface. Overhead patches of white cloud drifted lazily. Where the shadows from these lay, the lake spread gray and lifeless. Where the afternoon sun rested, it touched the water with gleams of gold and pale, delicate green. A white-winged yacht lay offshore, her sails in slack folds. A lump of an island lifted two miles beyond, all cliffs and little, wooded hills. And the mountains surrounding in a giant ring seemed to shut the place away from all the world. For sheer wild, rugged beauty, Roaring Lake surpassed any spot she had ever seen. Its quiet majesty, its air of unbroken peace soothed and comforted her, sick with hurry and swift-footed events. She stood for a time at the outer wharf end, mildly interested when the fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at her own subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her like a virtuoso on his violin. And this was something that she did not recall as a trait in her own character. She had never inclined to the volatile--perhaps because until the motor accident snuffed out her father's life she had never dealt in anything but superficial emotions. After a time she retraced her steps. Nearing the halfway slip, she saw that a wagon from which goods were being unloaded blocked the way. A dozen men were stringing in from the road, bearing bundles and bags and rolls of blankets. They were big, burly men, carrying themselves with a reckless swing, with trousers cut off midway between knee and ankle so that they reached just below the upper of their high-topped, heavy, laced boots. Two or three were singing. All appeared unduly happy, talking loudly, with deep laughter. One threw down his burden and executed a brief clog. Splinters flew where the sharp calks bit into the wharf planking, and his companions applauded. It dawned upon Stella Benton that these might be Jack Fyfe's drunken loggers, and she withdrew until the way should be clear, vitally interested because her brother was a logging man, and wondering if these were the human tools he used in his business, if these were the sort of men with whom he associated. They were a rough lot--and some were very drunk. With the manifestations of liquor she had but the most shadowy acquaintance. But she would have been little less than a fool not to comprehend this. Then they began filing down the gangway to the boat's deck. One slipped, and came near falling into the water, whereat his fellows howled gleefully. Precariously they negotiated the slanting passage. All but one: he sat him down at the slip-head on his bundle and began a quavering chant. The teamster imperturbably finished his unloading, two men meanwhile piling the goods aboard. The wagon backed out, and the way was clear, save for the logger sitting on his blankets, wailing his lugubrious song. From below his fellows urged him to come along. A bell clanged in the pilot house. The exhaust of a gas engine began to sputter through the boat's side. From her after deck a man hailed the logger sharply, and when his call was unheeded, he ran lightly up the slip. A short, squarely-built man he was, light on his feet as a dancing master. He spoke now with authority, impatiently. "Hurry aboard, Mike; we're waiting." The logger rose, waved his hand airily, and turned as if to retreat down the wharf. The other caught him by the arm and spun him face to the slip. "Come on, Slater," he said evenly. "I have no time to fool around." The logger drew back his fist. He was a fairly big man. But if he had in mind to deal a blow, it failed, for the other ducked and caught him with both arms around the middle. He lifted the logger clear of the wharf, hoisted him to the level of his breast, and heaved him down the slip as one would throw a sack of bran. The man's body bounced on the incline, rolled, slid, tumbled, till at length he brought up against the boat's guard, and all that saved him a ducking was the prompt extension of several stout arms, which clutched and hauled him to the flush after deck. He sat on his haunches, blinking. Then he laughed. So did the man at the top of the slip and the lumberjacks clustered on the boat. Homeric laughter, as at some surpassing jest. But the roar of him who had taken that inglorious descent rose loudest of all, an explosive, "Har--har--har!" He clambered unsteadily to his feet, his mouth expanded in an amiable grin. "Hey, Jack," he shouted. "Maybe y' c'n throw m' blankets down too, while y'r at it." The man at the slip-head caught up the roll, poised it high, and cast it from him with a quick twist of his body. The woolen missile flew like a well-put shot and caught its owner fair in the breast, tumbling him backwards on the deck--and the Homeric laughter rose in double strength. Then the boat began to swing, and the man ran down and leaped the widening space as she drew away from her mooring. Stella Benton watched the craft gather way, a trifle shocked, her breath coming a little faster. The most deadly blows she had ever seen struck were delivered in a more subtle, less virile mode, a curl of the lip, an inflection of the voice. These were a different order of beings. This, she sensed was man in a more primitive aspect, man with the conventional bark stripped clean off him. And she scarcely knew whether to be amused or frightened when she reflected that among such her life would presently lie. Charlie had written that she would find things and people a trifle rougher than she was used to. She could well believe that. But--they were picturesque ruffians. Her interested gaze followed the camp tender as it swung around the wharf-end, and so her roaming eyes were led to another craft drawing near. This might be her brother's vessel. She went back to the outer landing to see. Two men manned this boat. As she ranged alongside the piles, one stood forward, and the other aft with lines to make fast. She cast a look at each. They were prototypes of the rude crew but now departed, brown-faced, flannel-shirted, shod with calked boots, unshaven for days, typical men of the woods. But as she turned to go, the man forward and almost directly below her looked her full in the face. "Stell!" She leaned over the rail. "Charlie Benton--for Heaven's sake." They stared at each other. "Well," he laughed at last. "If it were not for your mouth and eyes, Stell, I wouldn't have known you. Why, you're all grown up." He clambered to the wharf level and kissed her. The rough stubble of his beard pricked her tender skin and she drew back. "My word, Charlie, you certainly ought to shave," she observed with sisterly frankness. "I didn't know you until you spoke. I'm awfully glad to see you, but you do need _some one_ to look after you." Benton laughed tolerantly. "Perhaps. But, my dear girl, a fellow doesn't get anywhere on his appearance in this country. When a fellow's bucking big timber, he shucks off a lot of things he used to think were quite essential. By Jove, you're a picture, Stell. If I hadn't been expecting to see you, I wouldn't have known you." "I doubt if I should have known you either," she returned drily. CHAPTER II MR. ABBEY ARRIVES Stella accompanied her brother to the store, where he gave an order for sundry goods. Then they went to the hotel to see if her trunks had arrived. Within a few yards of the fence which enclosed the grounds of St. Allwoods a man hailed Benton, and drew him a few steps aside. Stella walked slowly on, and presently her brother joined her. The baggage wagon had brought the trunks, and when she had paid her bill, they were delivered at the outer wharf-end, where also arrived at about the same time a miscellaneous assortment of supplies from the store and a Japanese with her two handbags. So far as Miss Estella Benton could see, she was about to embark on the last stage of her journey. "How soon will you start?" she inquired, when the last of the stuff was stowed aboard the little steamer. "Twenty minutes or so," Benton answered. "Say," he went on casually, "have you got any money, Stell? I owe a fellow thirty dollars, and I left the bank roll and my check book at camp." Miss Benton drew the purse from her hand bag and gave it to him. He pocketed it and went off down the wharf, with the brief assurance that he would be gone only a minute or so. The minute, however, lengthened to nearly an hour, and Sam Davis had his blow-off valve hissing, and Stella Benton was casting impatient glances shoreward before Charlie strolled leisurely back. "You needn't fire up quite so strong, Sam," he called down. "We won't start for a couple of hours yet." "Sufferin' Moses!" Davis poked his fiery thatch out from the engine room. "I might 'a' known better'n to sweat over firin' up. You generally manage to make about three false starts to one get-away." Benton laughed good-naturedly and turned away. "Do you usually allow your men to address you in that impertinent way?" Miss Benton desired to know. Charlie looked blank for a second. Then he smiled, and linking his arm affectionately in hers, drew her off along the wharf, chuckling to himself. "My dear girl," said he, "you'd better not let Sam Davis or any of Sam's kind hear you pass remarks like that. Sam would say exactly what he thought about such matters to his boss, or King George, or to the first lady of the land, regardless. Sabe? We're what you'll call primitive out here, yet. You want to forget that master and man business, the servant proposition, and proper respect, and all that rot. Outside the English colonies in one or two big towns, that attitude doesn't go in B.C. People in this neck of the woods stand pretty much on the same class footing, and you'll get in bad and get me in bad if you don't remember that. I've got ten loggers working for me in the woods. Whether they're impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the job properly. They're men, you understand, not servants. None of them would hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything I do. If I don't like it, I can fight him or fire him. They won't stand for the sort of airs you're accustomed to. They have the utmost respect for a woman, but a man is merely a two-legged male human like themselves, whether he wears mackinaws or broadcloth, has a barrel of money of none at all. This will seem odd to you at first, but you'll get used to it. You'll find things rather different out here." "I suppose so," she agreed. "But it sounds queer. For instance, if one of papa's clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he'd have been discharged on the spot." "The logger's a different breed," Benton observed drily. "Or perhaps only the same breed manifesting under different conditions. He isn't servile. He doesn't have to be." "Why the delay, though?" she reverted to the point. "I thought you were all ready to go." "I am," Charlie enlightened. "But while I was at the store just now, Paul Abbey 'phoned from Vancouver to know if there was an up-lake boat in. His people are big lumber guns here, and it will accommodate him and won't hurt me to wait a couple of hours and drop him off at their camp. I've got more or less business dealings with them, and it doesn't hurt to be neighborly. He'd have to hire a gas-boat otherwise. Besides, Paul's a pretty good head." This, of course, being strictly her brother's business, Stella forbore comment. She was weary of travel, tired with the tension of eternally being shunted across distances, anxious to experience once more that sense of restful finality which comes with a journey's end. But, in a measure her movements were no longer dependent upon her own volition. They walked slowly along the broad roadway which bordered the lake until they came to a branchy maple, and here they seated themselves on the grassy turf in the shadow of the tree. "Tell me about yourself," she said. "How do you like it here, and how are you getting on? Your letters home were always chiefly remarkable for their brevity." "There isn't a great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just beginning to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to learn and unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here five years, and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and what I'm not. I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a lot easier if the governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He was going to put in some money this fall. But I think I'll make it, anyway, though it will keep me digging and figuring. I have a contract for delivery of a million feet in September and another contract that I could take if I could see my way clear to finance the thing. I could clean up thirty thousand dollars net in two years if I had more cash to work on. As it is, I have to go slow, or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the skin of my teeth. But I've got one good one practically for an annual pittance. If I make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's plain sailing. That about sizes up my prospects, Sis." "You speak a language I don't understand," she smiled. "What does a million feet mean? And what's a limit?" "A limit is one square mile--six hundred and forty acres more or less--of merchantable timber land," he explained. "We speak of timber as scaling so many board feet. A board foot is one inch thick by twelve inches square. Sound fir timber is worth around seven dollars per thousand board feet in the log, got out of the woods, and boomed in the water ready to tow to the mills. The first limit I got--from the government--will scale around ten million feet. The other two are nearly as good. But I got them from timber speculators, and it's costing me pretty high. They're a good spec if I can hang on to them, though." "It sounds big," she commented. "It _is_ big," Charlie declared, "if I could go at it right. I've been trying ever since I got wise to this timber business to make the governor see what a chance there is in it. He was just getting properly impressed with the possibilities when the speed bug got him. He could have trimmed a little here and there at home and put the money to work. Ten thousand dollars would have done the trick, given me a working outfit along with what I've got that would have put us both on Easy Street. However, the poor old chap didn't get around to it. I suppose, like lots of other business men, when he stopped, everything ran down. According to Lander's figures, there won't be a thing left when all accounts are squared." "Don't talk about it, Charlie," she begged. "It's too near, and I was through it all." "I would have been there too," Benton said. "But, as I told you, I was out of reach of your wire, and by the time I got it, it was all over. I couldn't have done any good, anyway. There's no use mourning. One way and another we've all got to come to it some day." Stella looked out over the placid, shimmering surface of Roaring Lake for a minute. Her grief was dimming with time and distance, and she had all her own young life before her. She found herself drifting from painful memories of her father's sudden death to a consideration of things present and personal. She found herself wondering critically if this strange, rude land would work as many changes in her as were patent in this bronzed and burly brother. He had left home a slim, cocksure youngster, who had proved more than a handful for his family before he was half through college, which educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had discussed in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a hopeful experiment, and in the West that abounding spirit which manifested itself in one continual round of minor escapades appeared to have found a natural outlet. She recalled that latterly their father had taken to speaking of Charlie in accents of pride. He was developing the one ambition that Benton senior could thoroughly understand and properly appreciate, the desire to get on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve material success, to make money. Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business before her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable ultimate, so now Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his speech. In her father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a man's personal life did not seem to matter in comparison with getting on and making money. And it was with that personal side of existence that Stella Benton was now chiefly concerned. She had never been required to adjust herself to an existence that was wholly taken up with getting on to the complete exclusion of everything else. Her work had been to play. She could scarce conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion from his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not, what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found to offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of towering woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake appeared to be mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude speech and strong drink. "Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. "It is surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would be a summer cottage on every hundred yards of shore." "Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton returned. "And scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got Europe backed off the map for tourist attractions, if they only knew it. No, about the only summer home in this locality is the Abbey place at Cottonwood Point. They come up here every summer for two or three months. Otherwise I don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel people, and they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake. That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and eight wide." "Are there any nice girls around?" she asked. Benton grinned widely. "Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is concerned, Stell." "I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you do with yourself when you're not working?" "There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a run for his money." "If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap to you, am I not?" "Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get rested up from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds." She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked up to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and paddle to where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile westward, to kill the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train. The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back. By the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse man and reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine sounded down the road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the abutting wharf. The driver handed two suitcases off the burdened hood of his machine. From out the tonneau clambered a large, smooth-faced young man. He wore an expansive smile in addition to a blue serge suit, white Panama, and polished tan Oxfords, and he bestowed a hearty greeting upon Charlie Benton. But his smile suffered eclipse, and a faint flush rose in his round cheeks, when his eyes fell upon Benton's sister. CHAPTER III HALFWAY POINT Miss Benton's cool, impersonal manner seemed rather to heighten the young man's embarrassment. Benton, apparently observing nothing amiss, introduced them in an offhand fashion. "Mr. Abbey--my sister." Mr. Abbey bowed and murmured something that passed for acknowledgment. The three turned up the wharf toward where Sam Davis had once more got up steam. As they walked, Mr. Abbey's habitual assurance returned, and he directed part of his genial flow of conversation to Miss Benton. To Stella's inner amusement, however, he did not make any reference to their having been fellow travelers for a day and a half. Presently they were embarked and under way. Charlie fixed a seat for her on the after deck, and went forward to steer, whither he was straightway joined by Paul Abbey. Miss Benton was as well pleased to be alone. She was not sure she should approve of young men who made such crude efforts to scrape acquaintance with women on trains. She was accustomed to a certain amount of formality in such matters. It might perhaps be laid to the "breezy Western manner" of which she had heard, except that Paul Abbey did not impress her as a Westerner. He seemed more like a type of young man she had encountered frequently in her own circle. At any rate, she was relieved when he did not remain beside her to emit polite commonplaces. She was quite satisfied to sit by herself and look over the panorama of woods and lake--and wonder more than a little what Destiny had in store for her along those silent shores. The Springs fell far behind, became a few white spots against the background of dusky green. Except for the ripples spread by their wake, the water laid oily smooth. Now, a little past four in the afternoon, she began to sense by comparison the great bulk of the western mountains,--locally, the Chehalis Range,--for the sun was dipping behind the ragged peaks already, and deep shadows stole out from the shore to port. Beneath her feet the screw throbbed, pulsing like an overdriven heart, and Sam Davis poked his sweaty face now and then through a window to catch a breath of cool air denied him in the small inferno where he stoked the fire box. The _Chickamin_ cleared Echo Island, and a greater sweep of lake opened out. Here the afternoon wind sprang up, shooting gustily through a gap between the Springs and Hopyard and ruffling the lake out of its noonday siesta. Ripples, chop, and a growing swell followed each other with that marvellous rapidity common to large bodies of fresh water. It broke the monotony of steady cleaving through dead calm. Stella was a good sailor, and she rather enjoyed it when the _Chickamin_ began to lift and yaw off before the following seas that ran up under her fantail stern. After about an hour's run, with the south wind beginning to whip the crests of the short seas into white foam, the boat bore in to a landing behind a low point. Here Abbey disembarked, after taking the trouble to come aft and shake hands with polite farewell. Standing on the float, hat in hand, he bowed his sleek blond head to Stella. "I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as Benton jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to stop over awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's in too big a hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon." Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom this bland friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off their talk. As the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white come down toward the float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little farther out through an opening in the woods, she saw a white and green bungalow, low and rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock three hundred yards back from shore. There was an encircling area of smooth lawn, a place restfully inviting. Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was smitten with a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had assailed her fitfully in the last four days. And while the _Chickamin_ was still plowing the inshore waters on an even keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and joined her brother in the pilot house. "Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she remarked. "Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,--up-to-date cottage, gardeners, tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, and all that. But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what they want to do. They've made it in timber, as I expect to make mine. You didn't particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, did you?" "I? Of course not," she responded. "Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," Charlie drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any tentative advances. The women put on lots of side, they say. If they want to hunt us up and cultivate you, all right. But I've got too much to do to butt into society. Anyway, I didn't want to run up against any critical females looking like I do right now." Stella smiled. "Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and be-yutiful sister?" "He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie retorted. "Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't mine--not yet. Here, you take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger." She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In twenty minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted with whitecaps. The _Chickamin_ would hang on the crest of a wave and shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in the trough. It began to grow insufferably hot in the pilot house. The wind drove with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box into the forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the wheel. There were puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to ply it with fuel. All the sour smells that rose from an unclean bilge eddied about them. The heat and the smell and the surging motion began to nauseate Stella. "I must get outside where I can breathe," she gasped, at length. "It's suffocating. I don't see how you stand it." "It does get stuffy in here when we run with the wind," Benton admitted. "Cuts off our ventilation. I'm used to it. Crawl out the window and sit on the forward deck. Don't try to get aft. You might slip off, the way she's lurching." Curled in the hollow of a faked-down hawser with the clean air fanning her, Stella recovered herself. The giddiness left her. She pitied Sam Davis back in that stinking hole beside the fire box. But she supposed he, like her brother, was "used to it." Apparently one could get used to anything, if she could judge by the amazing change in Charlie. Far ahead loomed a ridge running down to the lake shore and cutting off in a bold promontory. That was Halfway Point, Charlie had told her, and under its shadow lay his camp. Without any previous knowledge of camps, she was approaching this one with less eager anticipation than when she began her long journey. She began to fear that it might be totally unlike anything she had been able to imagine, disagreeably so. Charlie, she decided, had grown hard and coarsened in the evolution of his ambition to get on, to make his pile. She was but four years younger than he, and she had always thought of herself as being older and wiser and steadier. She had conceived the idea that her presence would have a good influence on him, that they would pull together--now that there were but the two of them. But four hours in his company had dispelled that illusion. She had the wit to perceive that Charlie Benton had emerged from the chrysalis stage, that he had the will and the ability to mold his life after his elected fashion, and that her coming was a relatively unimportant incident. In due course the _Chickamin_ bore in under Halfway Point, opened out a sheltered bight where the watery commotion outside raised but a faint ripple, and drew in alongside a float. The girl swept lake shore, bay, and sloping forest with a quickening eye. Here was no trim-painted cottage and velvet lawn. In the waters beside and lining the beach floated innumerable logs, confined by boomsticks, hundreds of trunks of fir, forty and sixty feet long, four and six feet across the butt, timber enough, when it had passed through the sawmills, to build four such towns as Hopyard. Just back from the shore, amid stumps and littered branches, rose the roofs of divers buildings. One was long and low. Hard by it stood another of like type but of lesser dimension. Two or three mere shanties lifted level with great stumps,--crude, unpainted buildings. Smoke issued from the pipe of the larger, and a white-aproned man stood in the doorway. Somewhere in the screen of woods a whistle shrilled. Benton looked at his watch. "We made good time, in spite of the little roll," said he. "That's the donkey blowing quitting time--six o'clock. Well, come on up to the shack, Sis. Sam, you get a wheelbarrow and run those trunks up after supper, will you?" Away in the banked timber beyond the maples and alder which Stella now saw masked the bank of a small stream flowing by the cabins, a faint call rose, long-drawn: "Tim-ber-r-r-r!" They moved along a path beaten through fern and clawing blackberry vine toward the camp, Benton carrying the two grips. A loud, sharp crack split the stillness; then a mild swishing sound arose. Hard on the heels of that followed a rending, tearing crash, a thud that sent tremors through the solid earth under their feet. The girl started. "Falling gang dropped a big fir," Charlie laughed. "You'll get used to that. You'll hear it a good many times a day here." "Good Heavens, it sounded like the end of the world," she said. "Well, you can't fell a stick of timber two hundred feet high and six or eight feet through without making a pretty considerable noise," her brother remarked complacently. "I like that sound myself. Every big tree that goes down means a bunch of money." He led the way past the mess-house, from the doorway of which the aproned cook eyed her with frank curiosity, hailing his employer with nonchalant air, a cigarette resting in one corner of his mouth. Benton opened the door of the second building. Stella followed him in. It had the saving grace of cleanliness--according to logging-camp standards. But the bareness of it appalled her. There was a rusty box heater, littered with cigar and cigarette stubs, a desk fabricated of undressed boards, a homemade chair or two, sundry boxes standing about. The sole concession to comfort was a rug of cheap Axminster covering half the floor. The walls were decorated chiefly with miscellaneous clothing suspended from nails, a few maps and blue prints tacked up askew. Straight across from the entering door another stood ajar, and she could see further vistas of bare board wall, small, dusty window-panes, and a bed whereon gray blankets were tumbled as they fell when a waking sleeper cast them aside. Benton crossed the room and threw open another door. "Here's a nook I fixed up for you, Stella," he said briskly. "It isn't very fancy, but it's the best I could do just now." She followed him in silently. He set her two bags on the floor and turned to go. Then some impulse moved him to turn back, and he put both hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently. "You're home, anyway," he said. "That's something, if it isn't what you're used to. Try to overlook the crudities. We'll have supper as soon as you feel like it." He went out, closing the door behind him. Miss Estella Benton stood in the middle of the room fighting against a swift heart-sinking, a terrible depression that strove to master her. "Good Lord in Heaven," she muttered at last. "What a place to be marooned in. It's--it's simply impossible." Her gaze roved about the room. A square box, neither more nor less, fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapered. There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes in one corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the other room lay on the floor. On an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a tin washbasin. That was all. She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of sickening rebellion against everything swept over her. To herself she seemed as irrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the depths of the dark timber that rose on every hand. And sitting there she heard at length the voices of men. Looking out through a window curtained with cheesecloth she saw her brother's logging gang swing past, stout woodsmen all, big men, tall men, short-bodied men with thick necks and shoulders, sunburned, all grimy with the sweat of their labors, carrying themselves with a free and reckless swing, the doubles in type of that roistering crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat. In so far as she had taken note of those who labored with their hands in the region of her birth, she had seen few like these. The chauffeur, the footman, the street cleaner, the factory workers--they were all different. They lacked something,--perhaps nothing in the way of physical excellence; but these men betrayed in every movement a subtle difference that she could not define. Her nearest approximation and the first attempt she made at analysis was that they looked like pirates. They were bold men and strong; that was written in their faces and the swing of them as they walked. And they served the very excellent purpose of taking her mind off herself for the time being. She watched them cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble their faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously on towels, sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, hauling it back and forth in rude play. All about that cookhouse dooryard spread a confusion of empty tin cans, gaudily labeled, containers of corn and peas and tomatoes. Dishwater and refuse, chips, scraps, all the refuse of the camp was scattered there in unlovely array. But that made no more than a passing impression upon her. She was thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer angles come now and then to the human mind. She wondered why she should be sufficiently interested in her brother's hired men to drive off a compelling attack of the blues in consideration of them as men. Nevertheless, she found herself unable to view them as she had viewed, say, the clerks in her father's office. She began to brush her hair and to wonder what sort of food would be served for supper. CHAPTER IV A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a table that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth. Chairs there were none. A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table furnished seating capacity for twenty men, provided none objected to an occasional nudging from his neighbor's elbow. The dishes, different from any she had ever eaten from, were of enormously thick porcelain, dead white, variously chipped and cracked with fine seams. But the food, if plain, was of excellent quality, tastily cooked. She discovered herself with an appetite wholly independent of silver and cut glass and linen. The tin spoons and steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without impairing her ability to satisfy hunger. They had the dining room to themselves. Through a single shiplap partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew loafed in their bunkhouse. The cook served them without any ceremony, putting everything on the table at once,--soup, meat, vegetables, a bread pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin pot. Benton introduced him to his sister. He withdrew hastily to the kitchen, and they saw no more of him. "Charlie," the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed the door behind him, "I don't quite fathom your social customs out here. Is one supposed to know everybody that one encounters?" "Just about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in this neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive,--at least, nobody who lives here any length of time. You can't tell when you may have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter of life and death almost. A man couldn't possibly maintain the same attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be considered proper back where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out here. I'd get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in the hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks on end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working for a man that meets them on an equal footing--why, they'll go to hell and back again for him. They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag. They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks, and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this country,--loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're what they term 'all right,' you can do anything, and they'll back you up. If you go to putting on airs and trying to assert yourself as a superior being, they'll go out of their way to hand you packages of trouble." "I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by circumstances to practice democracy." "Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on eating his supper. "Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, Charlie?" she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. "I suppose it suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but it's bare as a barn." "It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I haven't had it to spend on knickknacks." "Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and curtains and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The cost wouldn't amount to anything." Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he essayed reply. "Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably strikes you as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to pretty soft surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you wanted whenever you expressed a wish for it. Things that you've grown into the way of considering necessities _are_ luxuries. And they're out of the question for us at present. I got a pretty hard seasoning the first two years I was in this country, and when I set up this camp it was merely a place to live. I never thought anything about it as being comfortable or otherwise until you elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for trimmings. Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this summer. I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I make delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of these men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me with their wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses that must be met with cash--and I've got all my funds figured down to nickels. If I get by on this contract, I'll have a few hundred to squander on house things. Until then, it's the simple life for us. You can camp for three or four months, can't you, without finding it completely unbearable?" "Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the way things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to fix up a little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I didn't know you were practically compelled to live like this as a matter of economy." "Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a place away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but an inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm after a bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and suggested it, you could have spent five or six hundred, and I wouldn't have missed it. But this contract came my way, and gave me a chance to clean up three thousand dollars clear profit in four months. I grabbed it, and I find it's some undertaking. I'm dealing with a hard business outfit, hard as nails. I might get the banks or some capitalist to finance me, because my timber holdings are worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed that when a logger starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes broke. The financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to sail as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get this timber out--but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for me to be buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for their wages till September?" "I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively remarked. "Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, instead of being a drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I can do. I could keep house--only you haven't any house to keep, therefore no need of a housekeeper. Why, who's that?" Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, outside. She looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression remained absent, as of one concentrated upon his own problems. She repeated the question. "That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. "Siwash bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing for us now and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or something." Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, plump-bodied girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she conformed to none of Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the aboriginal inhabitant. If she had been pinned down, she would probably have admitted that she expected to behold an Indian maiden garbed in beaded buckskin and brass ornaments. Instead, Katy John wore a white sailor blouse, a brown pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair. "Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as fragments of the girl's speech floated over to her. "Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?" "Well--er--I suppose my notion of Indians is rather vague," Stella admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?" "Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. Say, Stell, can you cook?" "A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's really pretty, isn't she?" "They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they are old and tubby by the time they're thirty." Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand. Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against the bunkhouse wall. "Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the girl vanished in the brush. "Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's about due to go on a tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about his limit. The first man that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and head for town. I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang from starving to death if that happened. The last time I had to get in and cook for two weeks myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the cook shanty very well." "I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This seems to be a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at all times and in public?" "It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled tolerantly. "I guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this North American continent. Only a man here gets drunk openly and riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered anything but a natural lapse. That's one thing you'll have to get used to out here, Stell--I mean, that what vices men have are all on the surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not break out for weeks." He yawned openly. "Sleepy?" Stella inquired. "I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can go to sleep any time after supper." "I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly. "All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though." She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale. At her feet surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. Far through the woods behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir and cedar. There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing stuff along the shore. Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the wood-sprites' feet. Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water's edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind. Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some responsive chord in her. If only one could live amid such surrounding with a contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready standards of the woods with much equanimity--not as she had that day seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so far encountered. She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not see how it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must stay there. She had no friends to go elsewhere, or training in the harsh business of gaining a livelihood if she did go. For the first time she began dully to resent the manner of her upbringing. Once she had desired to enter hospital training, had been properly enthusiastic for a period of months over a career in this field of mercy. Then, as now, marriage, while accepted as the ultimate state, was only to be considered through a haze of idealism and romanticism. She cherished certain ideals of a possible lover and husband, but always with a false sense of shame. The really serious business of a woman's life was the one thing to which she made no attempt to apply practical consideration. But her parents had had positive ideas on that subject, even if they were not openly expressed. Her yearnings after a useful "career" were skilfully discouraged,--by her mother because that worthy lady thought it was "scarcely the thing, Stella dear, and so unnecessary"; by her father because, as he bluntly put it, it would only be a waste of time and money, since the chances were she would get married before she was half through training, and anyway a girl's place was at home till she did get married. That was his only reference to the subject of her ultimate disposition that she could recall, but it was plain enough as far as it went. It was too late to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she did wish there was some one thing she could do and do well, some service of value that would guarantee self-support. If she could only pound a typewriter or keep a set of books, or even make a passable attempt at sewing, she would have felt vastly more at ease in this rude logging camp, knowing that she could leave it if she desired. So far as she could see things, she looked at them with measurable clearness, without any vain illusions concerning her ability to march triumphant over unknown fields of endeavor. Along practical lines she had everything to learn. Culture furnishes an excellent pair of wings wherewith to soar in skies of abstraction, but is a poor vehicle to carry one over rough roads. She might have remained in Philadelphia, a guest among friends. Pride forbade that. Incidentally, such an arrangement would have enabled her to stalk a husband, a moneyed husband, which did not occur to her at all. There remained only to join Charlie. If his fortunes mended, well and good. Perhaps she could even help in minor ways. But it was all so radically different--brother and all--from what she had pictured that she was filled with dismay and not a little foreboding of the future. Sufficient, however, unto the day was the evil thereof, she told herself at last, and tried to make that assurance work a change of heart. She was very lonely and depressed and full of a futile wish that she were a man. Over across the bay some one was playing an accordeon, and to its strains a stout-lunged lumberjack was roaring out a song, with all his fellows joining strong in the chorus: "Oh, the Saginaw Kid was a cook in a camp, way up on the Ocon-to-o-o. And the cook in a camp in them old days had a damn hard row to hoe-i-oh! Had a damn hard row to hoe." There was a fine, rollicking air to it. The careless note in their voices, the jovial lilt of their song, made her envious. They at least had their destiny, limited as it might be and cast along rude ways, largely under their own control. Her wandering gaze at length came to rest on a tent top showing in the brush northward from the camp. She saw two canoes drawn up on the beach above the lash of the waves, two small figures playing on the gravel, and sundry dogs prowling alongshore. Smoke went eddying away in the wind. The Siwash camp where Katy John hailed from, Miss Benton supposed. She had an impulse to skirt the bay and view the Indian camp at closer range, a notion born of curiosity. She debated this casually, and just as she was about to rise, her movement was arrested by a faint crackle in the woods behind. She looked away through the deepening shadow among the trees and saw nothing at first. But the sound was repeated at odd intervals. She sat still. Thoughts of forest animals slipped into her mind, without making her afraid. At last she caught sight of a man striding through the timber, soundlessly on the thick moss, coming almost straight toward her. He was scarcely fifty yards away. Across his shoulders he bore a reddish-gray burden, and in his right hand was a gun. She did not move. Bowed slightly under the weight, the man passed within twenty feet of her, so close that she could see the sweat-beads glisten on that side of his face, and saw also that the load he carried was the carcass of a deer. Gaining the beach and laying the animal across a boulder, he straightened himself up and drew a long breath. Then he wiped the sweat off his face. She recognized him as the man who had thrown the logger down the slip that day at noon,--presumably Jack Fyfe. A sturdily built man about thirty, of Saxon fairness, with a tinge of red in his hair and a liberal display of freckles across nose and cheek bones. He was no beauty, she decided, albeit he displayed a frank and pleasing countenance. That he was a remarkably strong and active man she had seen for herself, and if the firm round of his jaw counted for anything, an individual of considerable determination besides. Miss Benton conceived herself to be possessed of considerable skill at character analysis. He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his hat, and strode off toward the camp. Her attention now diverted from the Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother's quarters, stand in the door a minute, then go back to the beach accompanied by Charlie. In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his deer aboard, and pulled away north along the shore. She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a point, rowing with strong, even strokes. Then she walked home. Benton was poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil and paper when she entered. "You had a visitor, I see," she remarked. "Yes, Jack Fyfe. He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here and borrowed a boat to get home." "I saw him come out of the woods," she said. "His camp can't be far from here, is it? He only left the Springs as you came in. Does he hunt deer for sport?" "Hardly. Oh, well, I suppose it's sport for Jack, in a way. He's always piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod," Benton returned. "But we kill 'em to eat mostly. It's good meat and cheap. I get one myself now and then. However, you want to keep that under your hat--about us fellows hunting--or we'll have game wardens nosing around here." "Are you not allowed to hunt them?" she asked. "Not in close season. Hunting season's from September to December." "If it's unlawful, why break the law?" she ventured hesitatingly. "Isn't that rather--er--" "Oh, bosh," Charlie derided. "A man in the woods is entitled to venison, if he's hunter enough to get it. The woods are full of deer, and a few more or less don't matter. We can't run forty miles to town and back and pay famine prices for beef every two or three days, when we can get it at home in the woods." Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that this mild sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law and order visible anywhere. The characteristic attitude of these woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency. It had colored her brother's point of view. She perceived that whereas all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them, he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply. "And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or Mr. Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?" "We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told her. "But they don't catch us." He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to smoke. Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank arose the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and still, was riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse had died. The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the horizon. "Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. "Pleasant dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the bank roll. You won't have much use for money up here, anyway." He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his bedroom. Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount Douglas a few minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like room, the bare discomfort of which chilled her merely to behold. With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair. "'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly the last clause." In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill. CHAPTER V THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook, roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding in the lead, when she entered the mess-house. She killed time with partial success till noon. Several times she was startled to momentary attention by the prolonged series of sharp cracks which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. There were other sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in the near-by forest,--the ringing whine of saw blades, the dull stroke of the axe, voices calling distantly. She tried to interest herself in the camp and the beach and ended up by sitting on a log in a shady spot, staring dreamily over the lake. She thought impatiently of that homely saw concerning Satan and idle hands, but she reflected also that in this isolation even mischief was comparatively impossible. There was not a soul to hold speech with except the cook, and he was too busy to talk, even if he had not been afflicted with a painful degree of diffidence when she addressed him. She could make no effort at settling down, at arranging things in what was to be her home. There was nothing to arrange, no odds and ends wherewith almost any woman can conjure up a homelike effect in the barest sort of place. She beheld the noon return of the crew much as a shipwrecked castaway on a desert shore might behold a rescuing sail, and she told Charlie that she intended to go into the woods that afternoon and watch them work. "All right," said he. "Just so you don't get in the way of a falling tree." A narrow fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, made by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to side, the outer sticks half their thickness above the inner, they formed a continuous trough the bottom and sides worn smooth with friction of sliding timbers. Stella had crossed it the previous evening and wondered what it was. Now, watching them at work, she saw. Also she saw why the great stumps that rose in every clearing in this land of massive trees were sawed six and eight feet above the ground. Always at the base the firs swelled sharply. Wherefore the falling gangs lifted themselves above the enlargement to make their cut. Two sawyers attacked a tree. First, with their double-bitted axes, each drove a deep notch into the sapwood just wide enough to take the end of a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the end,--the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business lies among the biggest timber on God's footstool. Each then clambered up on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would fall. That done, they swung the ends of their springboards, or if it were a thick trunk, made new holding notches on the other side, and the long saw would eat steadily through the heart of the tree toward that yellow, gashed undercut, stroke upon stroke, ringing with a thin, metallic twang. Presently there would arise an ominous cracking. High in the air the tall crest would dip slowly, as if it bowed with manifest reluctance to the inevitable. The sawyers would drop lightly from their springboards, crying: "Tim-ber-r-r-r!" The earthward swoop of the upper boughs would hasten till the air was full of a whistling, whishing sound. Then came the rending crash as the great tree smashed prone, crushing what small timber stood in its path, followed by the earth-quivering shock of its impact with the soil. The tree once down, the fallers went on to another. Immediately the swampers fell upon the prone trunk with axes, denuding it of limbs; the buckers followed them to saw it into lengths decreed by the boss logger. When the job was done, the brown fir was no longer a stately tree but saw-logs, each with the square butt that lay donkeyward, trimmed a trifle rounding with the axe. Benton worked one falling gang. The falling gang raced to keep ahead of the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep ahead of the hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last trio moved the logs from woods to water, once they were down and trimmed. Terrible, devastating forces of destruction they seemed to Stella Benton, wholly unused as she was to any woodland save the well-kept parks and little areas of groomed forest in her native State. All about in the ravaged woods lay the big logs, scores of them. They had only begun to pull with the donkey a week earlier, Benton explained to her. With his size gang he could not keep a donkey engine working steadily. So they had felled and trimmed to a good start, and now the falling crew and the swampers and buckers were in a dingdong contest to see how long they could keep ahead of the puffing Seattle yarder. Stella sat on a stump, watching. Over an area of many acres the ground was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent and broken younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their fall. Huge stumps upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, massive butts. From all the ravaged wood rose a pungent smell of pitch and sap, a resinous, pleasant smell. Radiating like the spokes of a wheel from the head of the chute ran deep, raw gashes in the earth, where the donkey had hauled up the Brobdingnagian logs on the end of an inch cable. "This is no small boy's play, is it, Stell?" Charlie said to her once in passing. And she agreed that it was not. Agreed more emphatically and with half-awed wonder when she saw the donkey puff and quiver on its anchor cable, as the hauling line spooled up on the drum. On the outer end of that line snaked a sixty-foot stick, five feet across the butt, but it came down to the chute head, brushing earth and brush and small trees aside as if they were naught. Once the big log caromed against a stump. The rearward end flipped ten feet in the air and thirty feet sidewise. But it came clear and slid with incredible swiftness to the head of the chute, flinging aside showers of dirt and small stones, and leaving one more deep furrow in the forest floor. Benton trotted behind it. Once it came to rest well in the chute, he unhooked the line, freed the choker (the short noosed loop of cable that slips over the log's end), and the haul-back cable hurried the main line back to another log. Benton followed, and again the donkey shuddered on its foundation skids till another log laid in the chute, with its end butted against that which lay before. One log after another was hauled down till half a dozen rested there, elongated peas in a wooden pod. Then a last big stick came with a rush, bunted these others powerfully so that they began to slide with the momentum thus imparted, slowly at first then, gathering way and speed, they shot down to the lake and plunged to the water over the ten-foot jump-off like a school of breaching whales. All this took time, vastly more time than it takes in the telling. The logs were ponderous masses. They had to be maneuvered sometimes between stumps and standing timber, jerked this way and that to bring them into the clear. By four o'clock Benton and his rigging-slinger had just finished bunting their second batch of logs down the chute. Stella watched these Titanic labors with a growing interest and a dawning vision of why these men walked the earth with that reckless swing of their shoulders. For they were palpably masters in their environment. They strove with woodsy giants and laid them low. Amid constant dangers they sweated at a task that shamed the seven labors of Hercules. Gladiators they were in a contest from which they did not always emerge victorious. When Benton and his helper followed the haul-back line away to the domain of the falling gang the last time, Stella had so far unbent as to strike up conversation with the donkey engineer. That greasy individual finished stoking his fire box and replied to her first comment. "Work? You bet," said he. "It's real graft, this is. I got the easy end of it, and mine's no snap. I miss a signal, big stick butts against something solid; biff! goes the line and maybe cuts a man plumb in two. You got to be wide awake when you run a loggin' donkey. These woods is no place for a man, anyway, if he ain't spry both in his head and feet." "Do many men get hurt logging?" Stella asked. "It looks awfully dangerous, with these big trees falling and smashing everything. Look at that. Goodness!" From the donkey they could see a shower of ragged splinters and broken limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar that stood in the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the pieces strike against brush and trees like the patter of shot on a tin wall. The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough. "Them flyin' chunks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. "Oh, yes, now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you got to take a chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb drops on you, or you get in the way of a breakin' line,--though a man ain't got any business in the bight of a line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a inch 'n' a quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller on Howe Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's the worst, though. That generally gets the riggin' slinger, but a piece of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks the haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a snatch block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an angle to get a log out the way you want. Suppose the block breaks when I'm givin' it to her? Chunks uh that broken cast iron'll fly like bullets. Yes, sir, broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you noticed the boys used the snatch block two or three times this afternoon? We've been lucky in this camp all spring. Nobody so much as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks in the gear don't come very often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class shape. We got good gear an' a good crew--about as _skookum_ a bunch as I ever saw in the woods." Two hundred yards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stump and semaphored with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled faster, the line tautened like a fiddle-string, and the ponderous machine vibrated with the strain of its effort. Suddenly the line came slack. Stella, watching for the log to appear, saw her brother leap backward off the stump, saw the cable whip sidewise, mowing down a clump of saplings that stood in the bight of the line, before the engineer could cut off the power. In that return of comparative silence there rose above the sibilant hiss of the blow-off valve a sudden commotion of voices. "Damn!" the donkey engineer peered over the brush. "That don't sound good. I guess somebody got it in the neck." Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running. "What's up?" the engineer called as they passed on a dog trot. "Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. "Piece of it near took a leg off Jim Renfrew." Stella stood a moment, hesitating. "I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said. "Better not," the engineer warned. "Liable to run into something that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'." Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a stretcher. Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Renfrew lay on his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground was smeared with blood. Stella looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. She drew back. Benton looked up. "Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can be done." She retreated a little and sat down on a root, half-sickened. The other two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work done, and rolled a cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off to one side she saw the fallers climb up on their springboards. Presently arose the ringing whine of the thin steel blade, the chuck of axes where the swampers attacked a fallen tree. No matter, she thought, that injury came to one, that death might hover near, the work went on apace, like action on a battlefield. A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. They laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket. Then four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella heard one say to her brother: "Matt's jagged." "What?" Benton exploded. "Where'd it come from?" "One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters's in camp," the logger answered. "Maybe he brought a bottle. I didn't stop to see. But Matt's sure got a tank full." Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away down the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at the wrathful set of his features. She barely kept in sight, so rapidly did he move. Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the _Chickamin's_ stack, but the kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to five o'clock. Benton made straight for the cookhouse. Stella followed, a trifle uncertainly. A glimpse past Charlie as he came out showed her Matt staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, red-eyed, scowling, muttering to himself. Benton hurried to the bunkhouse door, much as a hound might follow a scent, peered in, and went on to the corner. On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook's intoxication. A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his haunches, gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a _klootchman_ and a wizen-featured old Siwash. The Indian woman was drunk beyond any mistaking, affably drunk. She looked up at Benton out of vacuous eyes, grinned, and extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim gin. The logger rose to his feet. "H'lo, Benton," he greeted thickly. "How's every-thin'?" Benton's answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab of his clenched fist. The blow stretched the logger on his back, with blood streaming from both nostrils. But he was a hardy customer, for he bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously before he was well set on his feet. This time Benton snarled a curse and kicked him as he lay. "Charlie, Charlie!" Stella screamed. If he heard her, he gave no heed. "Hit the trail, you," he shouted at the logger. "Hit it quick before I tramp your damned face into the ground. I told you once not to come around here feeding booze to my cook. I do all the whisky-drinking that's done in this camp, and don't you forget it. Damn your eyes, I've got troubles enough without whisky." The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand to his bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float. "G'wan home," Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes. "Get drunk at your own camp, not in mine. _Sabe?_ Beat it." They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat _klootch_ along her uncertain way. Down on the lake the chastised logger stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to shake a fist at Benton. Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and outraged sister. "Good Heavens!" she burst out. "Is it necessary to be so downright brutal in actions as well as speech?" "I'm running a logging camp, not a kindergarten," he snapped angrily. "I know what I'm doing. If you don't like it, go in the house where your hyper-sensitive tastes won't be offended." "Thank you," she responded cuttingly and swung about, angry and hurt--only to have a fresh scare from the drunken cook, who came reeling forward. "I'm gonna quit," he loudly declared. "I ain't goin' to stick 'round here no more. The job's no good. I want m' time. Yuh hear me, Benton. I'm through. Com-pletely, ab-sho-lutely through. You bet I am. Gimme m' time. I'm a gone goose." "Quit, then, hang you," Benton growled. "You'll get your check in a minute. You're a fine excuse for a cook, all right--get drunk right on the job. You don't need to show up here again, when you've had your jag out." "'S all right," Matt declared largely. "'S other jobs. You ain't the whole Pacific coast. Oh, way down 'pon the Swa-a-nee ribber--" He broke into dolorous song and turned back into the cookhouse. Benton's hard-set face relaxed. He laughed shortly. "Takes all kinds to make a world," he commented. "Don't look so horrified, Sis. This isn't the regular order of events. It's just an accumulation--and it sort of got me going. Here's the boys." The four stretcher men set down their burden in the shade of the bunkhouse. Renfrew was conscious now. "Tough luck, Jim," Benton sympathized. "Does it pain much?" Renfrew shook his head. White and weakened from shock and loss of blood, nevertheless he bravely disclaimed pain. "We'll get you fixed up at the Springs," Benton went on. "It's a nasty slash in the meat, but I don't think the bone was touched. You'll be on deck before long. I'll see you through, anyway." They gave him a drink of water and filled his pipe, joking him about easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. The drunken cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began maudlin sympathy, and was promptly squelched, whereupon he retreated to the float, emitting conversation to the world at large. Then they carried Renfrew down to the float, and Davis began to haul up the anchor to lay the _Chickamin_ alongside. While the chain was still chattering in the hawse pipe, the squat black hull of Jack Fyfe's tender rounded the nearest point. "Whistle him up, Sam," Benton ordered. "Jack can beat our time, and this bleeding must be stopped quick." The tender veered in from her course at the signal. Fyfe himself was at the wheel. Five minutes effected a complete arrangement, and the _Panther_ drew off with the drunken cook singing atop of the pilot house, and Renfrew comfortable in her cabin, and Jack Fyfe's promise to see him properly installed and attended in the local hospital at Roaring Springs. Benton heaved a sigh of relief and turned to his sister. "Still mad, Stell?" he asked placatingly and put his arm over her shoulders. "Of course not," she responded instantly to this kindlier phase. "Ugh! Your hands are all bloody, Charlie." "That's so, but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse. Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and lend me a hand in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no matter what happens." CHAPTER VI THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, Stella took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a unit in the human mechanism which he operated skilfully and relentlessly at top speed to achieve his desired end--one million feet of timber in boomsticks by September the first. From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a drunken cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her shoulders. For a week Benton daily expected and spoke of the arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had wired a Vancouver employment agency to send one, the day he took Jim Renfrew down. But either cooks were scarce, or the order went astray, for no rough and ready kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime ceased to look for one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself, unsparing of others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen fire, roused Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to his day in the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait on the table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella certain simple tricks of cooking that she did not know. Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever she set her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as the days passed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left the job to her as a matter of course. "You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he said to her at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your time. I'd have to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws twenty-five. You can credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay off when the contract money comes in. We might as well keep the coin in the family. I'll feel easier, because you won't get drunk and jump the job in a pinch. What do you say?" She said the only possible thing to say under the circumstances. But she did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of gratitude. It was hard work, and she and hard work were utter strangers. Her feet ached from continual standing on them. The heat and the smell of stewing meat and vegetables sickened her. Her hands were growing rough and red from dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a precious boon. Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her brother. She saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage behind. She perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to have her wishes readily gratified was not an inherent right--that some one must foot the bill--that now for all she received she must return equitable value. At home she had never thought of it in that light; in fact, she had never thought of it at all. Now that she was beginning to get a glimmering of her true economic relation to the world at large, she had no wish to emulate the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have secured a continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was therefore a certain personal satisfaction to have achieved self-support at a stroke, insofar as that in the sweat of her brow,--all too literally,--she earned her bread and a compensation besides. But there were times when that solace seemed scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the endless routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and irritations it brought upon her. For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is no mean undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the conveniences of a hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in buckets from the creek near by, and wood brought in armfuls from the pile of sawn blocks outside. The low-roofed kitchen shanty was always like an oven. The flies swarmed in their tens of thousands. As the men sweated with axe and saw in the woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done. She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its din in the cool morning. "You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You wasn't cut out for a cook." "This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I don't wonder that men cooks take to drink." Katy laughed. "Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work." "You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite so much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply. There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. Paul Abbey had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during the hour of her stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With no hint of condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to arouse in Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable pongee silk, simple and costly, and _her_ hands had evidently never known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul did not bring Linda again. But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. Charlie was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which offended and irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She could be friends with the Paul Abbey kind of man, but when she tried to consider him as a possible lover, she found herself unresponsive, even amused. She was forced to consider it, because Abbey was fast approaching that stage. It was heralded in the look of dumb appeal that she frequently surprised in his gaze, by various signs and tokens, that Stella Benton was too sophisticated to mistake. One of these days he would lay his heart, and hand at her feet. Sometimes she considered what her life might be if she should marry him. Abbey was wealthy in his own right and heir to more wealth. But--she could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound--sold for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that men and women did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted no shackles, she wanted to be free to face the great adventure when it came. Yet there were times during the weeks that flitted past when it seemed to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been spoiled in the making for so sordid an existence. Sometimes she would sit amid the array of dishes and pans and cooking food and wonder if she really were the same being whose life had been made up of books and music, of teas and dinners and plays, of light, inconsequential chatter with genial, well-dressed folk. There was no one to talk to here and less time to talk. There was nothing to read except a batch of newspapers filtering into camp once a week or ten days. There was not much in this monster stretch of giant timber but heat and dirt and flies and hungry men who must be fed. If Paul Abbey had chanced to ask her to marry him during a period of such bodily and spiritual rebellion, she would probably have committed herself to that means of escape in sheer desperation. For she did not harden to the work; it steadily sapped both her strength and patience. But he chose an ill time for his declaration. Stella had overtaken her work and snared a fleeting hour of idleness in mid-afternoon of a hot day in early August. Under a branchy alder at the cook-house-end she piled all the pillows she could commandeer in their quarters and curled herself upon them at grateful ease. Like a tired animal, she gave herself up to the pleasure of physical relaxation, staring at a perfect turquoise sky through the whispering leaves above. She was not even thinking. She was too tired to think, and for the time being too much at peace to permit thought that would, in the very nature of things, be disturbing. Abbey maintained for his own pleasure a fast motorboat. He slid now into the bay unheard, tied up beside the float, walked to the kitchen, glanced in, then around the corner, and smilingly took a seat on the grass near her. "It's too perfect a day to loaf in the shade," he observed, after a brief exchange of commonplaces. "Won't you come out for a little spin on the lake? A ride in the _Wolf_ will put some color in your cheeks." "If I had time," she said, "I would. But loggers must eat though the heavens fall. In about twenty minutes I'll have to start supper. I'll have color enough, goodness knows once I get over that stove." Abbey picked nervously at a blade of grass for a minute. "This is a regular dog's life for you," he broke out suddenly. "Oh, hardly that," she protested. "It's a little hard on me because I haven't been used to it, that's all." "It's Chinaman's work," he said hotly. "Charlie oughtn't to let you stew in that kitchen." Stella said nothing; she was not moved to the defence of her brother. She was loyal enough to her blood, but not so intensely loyal that she could defend him against criticism that struck a responsive chord in her own mind. She was beginning to see that, being useful, Charlie was making use of her. His horizon had narrowed to logs that might be transmuted into money. Enslaved himself by his engrossing purposes, he thought nothing of enslaving others to serve his end. She had come to a definite conclusion about that, and she meant to collect her wages when he sold his logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had coolly appropriated, and try a different outlet. If one must work, one might at least seek work a little to one's taste. She therefore dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly: "Some one has to do it." A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He looked at her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in his expression gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been that peculiar psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are pleased to call intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was coming and would have forestalled it by rising. He prevented that move by catching her hands. "Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death to see you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. Won't you marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end good chums." She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement, Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge in a flippant manner. "Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really I couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could resign the job of chef, would you?" "Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively. "Not that way," she answered positively. "You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy about you. I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't want any greater privilege than to marry you and take you away from this sort of thing. You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of sudden, but I know my own mind. Can't you take a chance with me?" "I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. "It isn't a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I haven't got any feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I married you, it would only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm not made that way. Can't you see how impossible it would be?" "You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the next man." His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again. "That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said he. "But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you could like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good to you." "I daresay you would," she said quietly. "But I couldn't be good to you. I don't want to marry you, Mr. Abbey. That's final. All the feeling I have for you isn't enough for any woman to marry on." "Maybe not," he said dolefully. "I suppose that's the way it goes. Hang it, I guess I was a little too sudden. But I'm a stayer. Maybe you'll change your mind some time." He was standing very near her, and they were both so intent upon the momentous business that occupied them that neither noticed Charlie Benton until his hail startled them to attention. "Hello, folks," he greeted and passed on into the cook shanty, bestowing upon Stella, over Abbey's shoulder, a comprehensive grin which nettled her exceedingly. Her peaceful hour had been disturbed to no purpose. She did not want to love or be loved. For the moment she felt old beyond her years, mature beyond the comprehension of any man. If she had voiced her real attitude toward Paul Abbey, she would have counseled him to run and play, "like a good little boy." Instead she remarked: "I must get to work," and left her downcast suitor without further ceremony. As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat himself upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom. He was presently joined by her brother. Glancing out, now and then, she made a guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled slightly. She saw them walk down to Abbey's launch, and Charlie delivered an encouraging slap on Paul's shoulder as he embarked. Then the speedy craft tore out of the bay at a headlong gait, her motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust, wide wings of white spray arching off her flaring bows. "The desperate recklessness of thwarted affection--fiddlesticks!" Miss Benton observed in sardonic mood. Her hands were deep in pie dough. She thumped it viciously. The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it rasped at her nerves again. Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin box where such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a corner of the table, eying her critically while he munched. "So you turned Paul down, eh?" he said at last. "You're the prize chump. You've missed the best chance you'll ever have to put yourself on Easy Street." CHAPTER VII SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE For a week thereafter Benton developed moods of sourness, periods of scowling thought. He tried to speed up his gang, and having all spring driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their patience, and Stella heard some sharp interchanges of words. He quelled one incipient mutiny through sheer dominance, but it left him more short of temper, more crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his ill-nature broke out against Stella over some trifle, and she--being herself an aggrieved party to his transactions--surprised her own sense of the fitness of things by retaliating in kind. "I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work I despise, and you can't even speak decently to me," she flared up. "You act like a perfect brute lately. What's the matter with you?" Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence. "Hang it, I guess you're right," he admitted at last. "But I can't help having a grouch. I'm going to fall behind on this contract, the best I can do." "Well," she replied tartly. "I'm not to blame for that. I'm not responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me?" "I don't, particularly," he answered. "Only--can't you _sabe_? A man gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about to come to nothing." "So does a woman," she made pointed retort. Benton chose to ignore the inference. "If I fall down on this, it'll just about finish me," he continued glumly. "These people are not going to allow me an inch leeway. I'll have to deliver on that contract to the last stipulated splinter before they'll pay over a dollar. If I don't have a million feet for 'em three weeks from to-day, it's all off, and maybe a suit for breach of contract besides. That's the sort they are. If they can wiggle out of taking my logs, they'll be to the good, because they've made other contracts down the coast at fifty cents a thousand less. And the aggravating thing about it is that if I could get by with this deal, I can close a five-million-foot contract with the Abbey-Monohan outfit, for delivery next spring. I must have the money for this before I can undertake the bigger contract." "Can't you sell your logs if these other people won't take them?" she asked, somewhat alive now to his position--and, incidentally, her own interest therein. "In time, yes," he said. "But when you go into the open market with logs, you don't always find a buyer right off the reel. I'd have to hire 'em towed from here to Vancouver, and there's some bad water to get over. Time is money to me right now, Stell. If the thing dragged over two or three months, by the time they were sold and all expenses paid, I might not have anything left. I'm in debt for supplies, behind in wages. When it looks like a man's losing, everybody jumps him. That's business. I may have my outfit seized and sold up if I fall down on this delivery and fail to square up accounts right away. Damn it, if you hadn't given Paul Abbey the cold turn-down, I might have got a boost over this hill. You were certainly a chump." "I'm not a mere pawn in your game yet," she flared hotly. "I suppose you'd trade me for logs enough to complete your contract and consider it a good bargain." "Oh, piffle," he answered coolly. "What's the use talking like that. It's your game as much as mine. Where do you get off, if I go broke? You might have done a heap worse. Paul's a good head. A girl that hasn't anything but her looks to get through the world on hasn't any business overlooking a bet like that. Nine girls out of ten marry for what there is in it, anyhow." "Thank you," she replied angrily. "I'm not in the market on that basis." "All this stuff about ideal love and soul communion and perfect mating is pure bunk, it seems to me," Charlie tacked off on a new course of thought. "A man and a woman somewhere near of an age generally hit it off all right, if they've got common horse sense--and income enough so they don't have to squabble eternally about where the next new hat and suit's coming from. It's the coin that counts most of all. It sure is, Sis. It's me that knows it, right now." He sat a minute or two longer, again preoccupied with his problems. "Well," he said at last, "I've got to get action somehow. If I could get about thirty men and another donkey for three weeks, I'd make it." He went outside. Up in the near woods the whine of the saws and the sounds of chopping kept measured beat. It was late in the forenoon, and Stella was hard about her dinner preparations. Contract or no contract, money or no money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, working harder than any of his men. A little later she saw him put off from the float in the _Chickamin's_ dinghy. When the crew came to dinner, he had not returned. Nor was he back when they went out again at one. Near mid-afternoon, however, he strode into the kitchen, wearing the look of a conqueror. "I've got it fixed," he announced. Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was stirring in a pan. "Got what fixed?" she asked. "Why, this log business," he said. "Jack Fyfe is going to put in a crew and a donkey, and we're going to everlastingly rip the innards out of these woods. I'll make delivery after all." "That's good," she remarked, but noticeably without enthusiasm. The heat of that low-roofed shanty had taken all possible enthusiasm for anything out of her for the time being. Always toward the close of each day she was gripped by that feeling of deadly fatigue, in the face of which nothing much mattered but to get through the last hours somehow and drag herself wearily to bed. Benton playfully tweaked Katy John's ear and went whistling up the trail. It was plain sailing for him now, and he was correspondingly elated. He tried to talk to Stella that evening when she was through, all about big things in the future, big contracts he could get, big money he could see his way to make. It fell mostly on unappreciative ears. She was tired, so tired that his egotistical chatter irritated her beyond measure. What she would have welcomed with heartfelt gratitude was not so much a prospect of future affluence in which she might or might not share as a lightening of her present burden. So far as his conversation ran, Benton's sole concern seemed to be more equipment, more men, so that he might get out more logs. In the midst of this optimistic talk, Stella walked abruptly into her room. Noon of the next day brought the _Panther_ coughing into the bay, flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. To starboard was made fast a like scow. That was housed over, a smoking stovepipe stuck through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the window sill as they floated in. Men to the number of twenty or more clustered about both scows and the _Panther's_ deck, busy with pipe and cigarette and rude jest. The clatter of their voices uprose through the noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the beach, the chaff and laughter died into silent, capable action. "A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a tree," Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own machine. It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at work. Steam was up in the donkey. They carried a line from its drum through a snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the scow in a matter of minutes. Then the same cable was made fast to a sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponderous machine slid forward on its own skids, like an up-ended barrel on a sled, down off the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that stood in its path, drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable spooled up on the drum. A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore the loose end away up the path. Presently one stood clear, waving a signal. Again the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began to roll up on the drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope under its own power, a locomotive unneedful of rails, making its own right of way. Upon the platform built over the skids were piled the tools of the crew, sawed blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, grindstones, all that was necessary in their task. At one o'clock they made their first move. At two the donkey was vanished into that region where the chute-head lay, and the great firs stood waiting the slaughter. By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in the logs that came hurtling lakeward. Now at shorter intervals arose the grinding sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as each leaped to the water. It was a good thing, she surmised--for Charlie Benton. She could not see where it made much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a hundred came down to the boomsticks. Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic visits to the camp of her kindred around the point. Bred out of doors, of a tribe whose immemorial custom it is that the women do all the work, the Siwash girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as bovine in temperament and movements. She could lift with ease a weight that taxed Stella's strength, and Stella Benton was no weakling, either. It was therefore a part of Katy's routine to keep water pails filled from the creek and the wood box supplied, in addition to washing dishes and carrying food to the table. Katy slighted these various tasks occasionally. She needed oversight, continual admonition, to get any job done in time. She was slow to the point of exasperation. Nevertheless, she lightened the day's labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or assume the entire burden herself. This time Katy thoughtlessly left with both water pails empty. Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow darkened the door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe. "How d' do," he greeted. He had seemed a short man. Now, standing within four feet of her, she perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to match his manner. She flushed. Fyfe smiled, a broad, friendly grin, in which a wide mouth opened to show strong, even teeth. "I'm after a drink," he said quite impersonally, and coolly taking the pails out of her hands, walked through the kitchen and down to the creek. He was back in a minute, set the filled buckets in their place, and helped himself with a dipper. "Say," he asked easily, "how do you like life in a logging camp by this time? This is sure one hot job you've got." "Literally or slangily?" she asked in a flippant tone. Fyfe's reputation, rather vividly colored, had reached her from various sources. She was not quite sure whether she cared to countenance him or not. There was a disturbing quality in his glance, a subtle suggestion of force about him that she felt without being able to define in understandable terms. In any case she felt more than equal to the task of squelching any effort at familiarity, even if Jack Fyfe were, in a sense, the convenient god in her brother's machine. Fyfe chuckled at her answer. "Both," he replied shortly and went out. She saw him a little later out on the bay in the _Panther's_ dink, standing up in the little boat, making long, graceful casts with a pliant rod. She perceived that this manner of fishing was highly successful, insomuch as at every fourth or fifth cast a trout struck his fly, breaking water with a vigorous splash. Then the bamboo would arch as the fish struggled, making sundry leaps clear of the water, gleaming like silver each time he broke the surface, but coming at last tamely to Jack Fyfe's landing net. Of outdoor sports she knew most about angling, for her father had been an ardent fly-caster. And she had observed with a true angler's scorn the efforts of her brother's loggers to catch the lake trout with a baited hook, at which they had scant success. Charlie never fished. He had neither time nor inclination for such fooling, as he termed it. Fyfe stopped fishing when the donkeys whistled six. It happened that when he drew in to his cookhouse float, Stella was standing in her kitchen door. Fyfe looked up at her and held aloft a dozen trout strung by the gills on a stick, gleaming in the sun. "Vanity," she commented inaudibly. "I wonder if he thinks I've been admiring his skill as a fisherman?" Nevertheless she paid tribute to his skill when ten minutes later he sent a logger with the entire catch to her kitchen. They looked toothsome, those lakers, and they were. She cooked one for her own supper and relished it as a change from the everlasting bacon and ham. In the face of that million feet of timber, Benton hunted no deer. True, the Siwashes had once or twice brought in some venison. That, with a roast or two of beef from town, was all the fresh meat she had tasted in two months. There were enough trout to make a breakfast for the crew. She ate hers and mentally thanked Jack Fyfe. Lying in her bed that night, in the short interval that came between undressing and wearied sleep, she found herself wondering with a good deal more interest about Jack Fyfe than she had ever bestowed upon--well, Paul Abbey, for instance. She was quite positive that she was going to dislike Jack Fyfe if he were thrown much in her way. There was something about him that she resented. The difference between him and the rest of the rude crew among which she must perforce live was a question of degree, not of kind. There was certainly some compelling magnetism about the man. But along with it went what she considered an almost brutal directness of speech and action. Part of this conclusion came from hearsay, part from observation, limited though her opportunities had been for the latter. Miss Stella Benton, for all her poise, was not above jumping at conclusions. There was something about Jack Fyfe that she resented. She irritably dismissed it as a foolish impression, but the fact remained that the mere physical nearness of him seemed to put her on the defensive, as if he were in reality a hunter and she the hunted. Fyfe joined Charlie Benton about the time she finished work. The three of them sat on the grass before Benton's quarters, and every time Jack Fyfe's eyes rested on her she steeled herself to resist--what, she did not know. Something intangible, something that disturbed her. She had never experienced anything like that before; it tantalized her, roused her curiosity. There was nothing occult about the man. He was nowise fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to comparing him with other men she knew. She had, in a way, unconsciously been prepared for just such a measure of concentration upon Jack Fyfe. For he was a power on Roaring Lake, and power,--physical, intellectual or financial,--exacts its own tribute of consideration. He was a fighter, a dominant, hard-bitten woodsman, so the tale ran. He had gathered about him the toughest crew on the Lake, himself, upon occasion, the most turbulent of all. He controlled many square miles of big timber, and he had gotten it all by his own effort in the eight years since he came to Roaring Lake as a hand logger. He was slow of speech, chain-lightning in action, respected generally, feared a lot. All these things her brother and Katy John had sketched for Stella with much verbal embellishment. There was no ignoring such a man. Brought into close contact with the man himself, Stella felt the radiating force of his personality. There it was, a thing to be reckoned with. She felt that whenever Jack Fyfe's gray eyes rested impersonally on her. His pleasant, freckled face hovered before her until she fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed again of him throwing that drunken logger down the Hot Springs slip. CHAPTER VIII DURANCE VILE By September first a growing uneasiness hardened into distasteful certainty upon Stella. It had become her firm resolve to get what money was due her when Charlie marketed his logs and try another field of labor. That camp on Roaring Lake was becoming a nightmare to her. She had no inherent dislike for work. She was too vibrantly alive to be lazy. But she had had an overdose of unaccustomed drudgery, and she was growing desperate. If there had been anything to keep her mind from continual dwelling on the manifold disagreeableness she had to cope with, she might have felt differently, but there was not. She ate, slept, worked,--ate, slept, and worked again,--till every fibre of her being cried out in protest against the deadening round. She was like a flower striving to attain its destiny of bloom in soil overrun with rank weeds. Loneliness and hard, mean work, day after day, in which all that had ever seemed desirable in life had neither place nor consideration, were twin evils of isolation and flesh-wearying labor, from which she felt that she must get away, or go mad. But she did not go. Benton left to make his delivery to the mill company, the great boom of logs gliding slowly along in the wake of a tug, the _Chickamin_ in attendance. Benton's crew accompanied the boom. Fyfe's gang loaded their donkey and gear aboard the scow and went home. The bay lay all deserted, the woods silent. For the first time in three months she had all her hours free, only her own wants to satisfy. Katy John spent most of her time in the smoky camp of her people. Stella loafed. For two days she did nothing, gave herself up to a physical torpor she had never known before. She did not want to read, to walk about, or even lift her eyes to the bold mountains that loomed massive across the lake. It was enough to lie curled among pillows under the alder and stare drowsily at the blue September sky, half aware of the drone of a breeze in the firs, the flutter of birds' wings, and the lap of water on the beach. Presently, however, the old restless energy revived. The spring came back to her step and she shed that lethargy like a cast-off garment. And in so doing her spirit rose in hot rebellion against being a prisoner to deadening drudgery, against being shut away from all the teeming life that throve and trafficked beyond the solitude in which she sat immured. When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. She had passed through what she termed a culinary inferno. Nothing, she considered, could be beyond her after that unremitting drudgery. But Benton failed to come back on the appointed day. The four days lengthened to a week. Then the _Panther_, bound up-lake, stopped to leave a brief note from Charlie, telling her business had called him to Vancouver. Altogether it was ten days before the _Chickamin_ whistled up the bay. She slid in beside the float, her decks bristling with men like a passenger craft. Stella, so thoroughly sated with loneliness that she temporarily forgot her grievances, flew to meet her brother. But one fair glimpse of the disembarking crew turned her back. They were all in varying stages of liquor--from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits--speaking truly in the double sense. "Hello, lady," he hailed jovially. "How did you fare all by your lonesome this long time? I didn't figure to be gone so long, but there was a lot to attend to. How are you, anyway?" "All right," she answered coolly. "You evidently celebrated your log delivery in the accepted fashion." "Don't you believe it," he grinned amiably. "I had a few drinks with the boys on the way up, that's all. No, sir, it was straight business with a capital B all the time I was gone. I've got a good thing in hand, Sis--big money in sight. Tell you about it later. Think you and Katy can rustle grub for this bunch by six?" "Oh, I suppose so," she said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him then and there that she was through,--like Matt, the cook, that memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken crowd looked formidable in numbers. "How many extra?" she asked mechanically. "Thirty men, all told," Benton returned briskly. "I tell you I'm sure going to rip the heart out of this limit before spring. I've signed up a six-million-foot contract for delivery as soon as the logs'll go over Roaring Rapids in the spring. Remember what I told you when you came? You stick with me, and you'll wear diamonds. I stand to clean up twenty thousand on the winter's work." "In that case, you should be able to hire a real cook," she suggested, a spice of malice in her tone. "I sure will, when it begins to come right," he promised largely. "And I'll give you a soft job keeping books then. Well, I'll lend you a hand for to-night. Where's the Siwash maiden?" "Over at the camp; there she comes now," Stella replied. "Will you start a fire, Charlie, while I change my dress?" "You look like a peach in that thing." He stood off a pace to admire. "You're some dame, Stell, when you get on your glad rags." She frowned at her image in the glass behind the closed door of her room as she set about unfastening the linen dress she had worn that afternoon. Deep in her trunk, along with much other unused finery, it had reposed all summer. That ingrained instinct to be admired, to be garbed fittingly and well, came back to her as soon as she was rested. And though there were none but squirrels and bluejays and occasionally Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, it had pleased her for a week to wear her best, and wander about the beaches and among the dusky trunks of giant fir, a picture of blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She took off the dress and threw it on the bed with a resentful rush of feeling. The treadmill gaped for her again. But not for long. She was through with that. She was glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He could not call on her to help him out of a hole now. She would tell him her decision to-night. And as soon as he could get a cook to fill her place, then good-by to Roaring Lake, good-by to kitchen smells and flies and sixteen hours a day over a hot stove. She wondered why such a loathing of the work afflicted her; if all who earned their bread in the sweat of their brow were ridden with that feeling,--woodsmen, cooks, chauffeurs, the slaves of personal service and the great industrial mills alike? Her heart went out to them if they were. But she was quite sure that work could be otherwise than repellent, enslaving. She recalled that cooks and maids had worked in her father's house with no sign of the revolt that now assailed her. But it seemed to her that their tasks had been light compared with the job of cooking in Charlie Benton's camp. Curiously enough, while she changed her clothes, her thoughts a jumble of present things she disliked and the unknown that she would have to face alone in Vancouver, she found her mind turning on Jack Fyfe. During his three weeks' stay, they had progressed less in the direction of acquaintances than she and Paul Abbey had done in two meetings. Fyfe talked to her now and then briefly, but he looked at her more than he talked. Where his searching gaze disturbed, his speech soothed, it was so coolly impersonal. That, she deemed, was merely another of his odd contradictions. He was contradictory. Stella classified Jack Fyfe as a creature of unrestrained passions. She recognized, or thought she recognized, certain dominant, primitive characteristics, and they did not excite her admiration. Men admired him--those who were not afraid of him. If he had been of more polished clay, she could readily have grasped this attitude. But in her eyes he was merely a rude, masterful man, uncommonly gifted with physical strength, dominating other rude, strong men by sheer brute force. And she herself rather despised sheer brute force. The iron hand should fitly be concealed beneath the velvet glove. Yet in spite of the bold look in his eyes that always confused and irritated her, Fyfe had never singled her out for the slightest attention of the kind any man bestows upon an attractive woman. Stella was no fool. She knew that she was attractive, and she knew why. She had been prepared to repulse, and there had been nothing to repulse. Once during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was not back. He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after all. Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind. Or perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think about that one could not escape the personal element. As if any one ever could. As if life were made up of anything but the impinging of one personality upon another. That was something Miss Stella Benton had yet to learn. She was still mired in the rampant egotism of untried youth, as yet the sublime individualist. That side of her suffered a distinct shock later in the evening. When supper was over, the work done, and the loggers' celebration was slowly subsiding in the bunkhouse, she told Charlie with blunt directness what she wanted to do. With equally blunt directness he declared that he would not permit it. Stella's teeth came together with an angry little click. "I'm of age, Charlie," she said to him. "It isn't for you to say what you will or will not _permit_ me to do. I want that money of mine that you used--and what I've earned. God knows I _have_ earned it. I can't stand this work, and I don't intend to. It isn't work; it's slavery." "But what can you do in town?" he countered. "You haven't the least idea what you'd be going up against, Stell. You've never been away from home, and you've never had the least training at anything useful. You'd be on your uppers in no time at all. You wouldn't have a ghost of a chance." "I have such a splendid chance here," she retorted ironically. "If I could get in any position where I'd be more likely to die of sheer stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this forsaken hole, I'd like to know how. I don't think it's possible." "You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it," Benton returned grumpily. "If you haven't got any sense about things, I have. I know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other seaport town is for a girl alone. I won't let you make any foolish break like that. That's flat." From this position she failed to budge him. Once angered, partly by her expressed intention and partly by the outspoken protest against the mountain of work imposed on her, Charlie refused point-blank to give her either the ninety dollars he had taken out of her purse or the three months' wages due. Having made her request, and having met with this--to her--amazing refusal, Stella sat dumb. There was too fine a streak in her to break out in recrimination. She was too proud to cry. So that she went to bed in a ferment of helpless rage. Virtually she was a prisoner, as much so as if Charlie had kidnaped her and held her so by brute force. The economic restraint was all potent. Without money she could not even leave the camp. And when she contemplated the daily treadmill before her, she shuddered. At least she could go on strike. Her round cheek flushed with the bitterest anger she had ever known, she sat with eyes burning into the dark of her sordid room, and vowed that the thirty loggers should die of slow starvation if they did not eat until she cooked another meal for them. CHAPTER IX JACK FYFE'S CAMP She was still hot with the spirit of mutiny when morning came, but she cooked breakfast. It was not in her to act like a petulant child. Morning also brought a different aspect to things, for Charlie told her while he helped prepare breakfast that he was going to take his crew and repay in labor the help Jack Fyfe had given him. "While we're there, Jack's cook will feed all hands," said he. "And by the time we're through there, I'll have things fixed so it won't be such hard going for you here. Do you want to go along to Jack's camp?" "No," she answered shortly. "I don't. I would much prefer to get away from this lake altogether, as I told you last night." "You might as well forget that notion," he said stubbornly. "I've got a little pride in the matter. I don't want my sister drudging at the only kind of work she'd be able to earn a living at." "You're perfectly willing to have me drudge here," she flashed back. "That's different," he defended. "And it's only temporary. I'll be making real money before long. You'll get your share if you'll have a little patience and put your shoulder to the wheel. Lord, I'm doing the best I can." "Yes--for yourself," she returned. "You don't seem to consider that I'm entitled to as much fair play as you'd have to accord one of your men. I don't want you to hand me an easy living on a silver salver. All I want of you is what is mine, and the privilege of using my own judgment. I'm quite capable of taking care of myself." If there had been opportunity to enlarge on that theme, they might have come to another verbal clash. But Benton never lost sight of his primary object. The getting of breakfast and putting his men about their work promptly was of more importance to him than Stella's grievance. So the incipient storm dwindled to a sullen mood on her part. Breakfast over, Benton loaded men and tools aboard a scow hitched beside the boat. He repeated his invitation, and Stella refused, with a sarcastic reflection on the company she would be compelled to keep there. The _Chickamin_ with her tow drew off, and she was alone again. "Marooned once more," Stella said to herself when the little steamboat slipped behind the first jutting point. "Oh, if I could just be a man for a while." Marooned seemed to her the appropriate term. There were the two old Siwashes and their dark-skinned brood. But they were little more to Stella than the insentient boulders that strewed the beach. She could not talk to them or they to her. Long since she had been surfeited with Katy John. If there were any primitive virtues in that dusky maiden they were well buried under the white man's schooling. Katy's demand upon life was very simple and in marked contrast to Stella Benton's. Plenty of grub, no work, some cheap finery, and a man white or red, no matter, to make eyes at. Her horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission at Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of Stella's loneliness. Nevertheless Stella resigned herself to make the best of it, and it proved a poor best. She could not detach herself sufficiently from the sordid realities to lose herself in day-dreaming. There was not a book in the camp save some ten-cent sensations she found in the bunkhouse, and these she had exhausted during Charlie's first absence. The uncommon stillness of the camp oppressed her more than ever. Even the bluejays and squirrels seemed to sense its abandonment, seemed to take her as part of the inanimate fixtures, for they frisked and chattered about with uncommon fearlessness. The lake lay dead gray, glassy as some great irregular window in the crust of the earth. Only at rare intervals did sail or smoke dot its surface, and then far offshore. The woods stood breathless in the autumn sun. It was like being entombed. And there would be a long stretch of it, with only a recurrence of that deadly grind of kitchen work when the loggers came home again. Some time during the next forenoon she went southerly along the lake shore on foot without object or destination, merely to satisfy in some measure the restless craving for action. Colorful turns of life, the more or less engrossing contact of various personalities, some new thing to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a part of her existence ever since she could remember. None of this touched her now. A dead weight of monotony rode her hard. There was the furtive wild life of the forest, the light of sun and sky, and the banked green of the forest that masked the steep granite slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it indeed, but she could not satisfy her being with scenic effects alone. She craved, without being wholly aware of it, or altogether admitting it to herself, some human distraction in all that majestic solitude. It was forthcoming. When she returned to camp at two o'clock, driven in by hunger, Jack Fyfe sat on the doorstep. "How-de-do. I've come to bring you over to my place," he announced quite casually. "Thanks. I've already declined one pressing invitation to that effect," Stella returned drily. His matter-of-fact assurance rather nettled her. "A woman always has the privilege of changing her mind," Fyfe smiled. "Charlie is going to be at my camp for at least three weeks. It'll rain soon, and the days'll be pretty gray and dreary and lonesome. You might as well pack your war-bag and come along." She stood uncertainly. Her tongue held ready a blunt refusal, but she did not utter it; and she did not know why. She did have a glimpse of the futility of refusing, only she did not admit that refusal might be of no weight in the matter. With her mind running indignantly against compulsion, nevertheless her muscles involuntarily moved to obey. It irritated her further that she should feel in the least constrained to obey the calmly expressed wish of this quiet-spoken woodsman. Certain possible phases of a lengthy sojourn in Jack Fyfe's camp shot across her mind. He seemed of uncanny perception, for he answered this thought before it was clearly formed. "Oh, you'll be properly chaperoned, and you won't have to mix with the crew," he drawled. "I've got all kinds of room. My boss logger's wife is up from town for a while. She's a fine, motherly old party, and she keeps us all in order." "I haven't had any lunch," she temporized. "Have you?" He shook his head. "I rowed over here before twelve. Thought I'd get you back to camp in time for dinner. You know," he said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, "a logger never eats anything but a meal. A lunch to us is a snack that you put in your pocket. I guess we lack tone out here. We haven't got past the breakfast-dinner-supper stage yet; too busy making the country fit to live in." "You have a tremendous job in hand," she observed. "Oh, maybe," he laughed. "All in the way you look at it. Suits some of us. Well, if we get to my camp before three, the cook might feed us. Come on. You'll get to hating yourself if you stay here alone till Charlie's through." Why not? Thus she parleyed with herself, one half of her minded to stand upon her dignity, the other part of her urging acquiescence in his wish that was almost a command. She was tempted to refuse just to see what he would do, but she reconsidered that. Without any logical foundation for the feeling, she was shy of pitting her will against Jack Fyfe's. Hitherto quite sure of herself, schooled in self-possession, it was a new and disturbing experience to come in contact with that subtle, analysis-defying quality which carries the possessor thereof straight to his or her goal over all opposition, which indeed many times stifles all opposition. Force of character, overmastering personality, emanation of sheer will, she could not say in what terms it should be described. Whatever it was, Jack Fyfe had it. It existed, a factor to be reckoned with when one dealt with him. For within twenty minutes she had packed a suitcase full of clothes and was embarked in his rowboat. He sent the lightly built craft easily through the water with regular, effortless strokes. Stella sat in the stern, facing him. Out past the north horn of the bay, she broke the silence that had fallen between them. "Why did you make a point of coming for me?" she asked bluntly. Fyfe rested on his oars a moment, looking at her in his direct, unembarrassed way. "I wintered once on the Stickine," he said. "My partner pulled out before Christmas and never came back. It was the first time I'd ever been alone in my life. I wasn't a much older hand in the country than you are. Four months without hearing the sound of a human voice. Stark alone. I got so I talked to myself out loud before spring. So I thought--well, I thought I'd come and bring you over to see Mrs. Howe." Stella sat gazing at the slow moving panorama of the lake shore, her chin in her hand. "Thank you," she said at last, and very gently. Fyfe looked at her a minute or more, a queer, half-amused expression creeping into his eyes. "Well," he said finally, "I might as well tell the whole truth. I've been thinking about you quite a lot lately, Miss Stella Benton, or I wouldn't have thought about you getting lonesome." He smiled ever so faintly, a mere movement of the corners of his mouth, at the pink flush which rose quickly in her cheeks, and then resumed his steady pull at the oars. Except for a greater number of board shacks and a larger area of stump and top-littered waste immediately behind it, Fyfe's headquarters, outwardly, at least, differed little from her brother's camp. Jack led her to a long, log structure with a shingle roof, which from its more substantial appearance she judged to be his personal domicile. A plump, smiling woman of forty greeted her on the threshold. Once within, Stella perceived that there was in fact considerable difference in Mr. Fyfe's habitation. There was a great stone fireplace, before which big easy-chairs invited restful lounging. The floor was overlaid with thick rugs which deadened her footfalls. With no pretense of ornamental decoration, the room held an air of homely comfort. "Come in here and lay off your things," Mrs. Howe beamed on her. "If I'd 'a' known you were livin' so close, we'd have been acquainted a week ago; though I ain't got rightly settled here myself. My land, these men are such clams. I never knowed till this mornin' there was any white woman at this end of the lake besides myself." She showed Stella into a bedroom. It boasted an enamel washstand with taps which yielded hot and cold water, neatly curtained windows, and a deep-seated Morris chair. Certainly Fyfe's household accommodation was far superior to Charlie Benton's. Stella expected the man's home to be rough and ready like himself, and in a measure it was, but a comfortable sort of rough and readiness. She took off her hat and had a critical survey of herself in a mirror, after which she had just time to brush her hair before answering Mrs. Howe's call to a "cup of tea." The cup of tea resolved itself into a well-cooked and well-served meal, with china and linen and other unexpected table accessories which agreeably surprised, her. Inevitably she made comparisons, somewhat tinctured with natural envy. If Charlie would fix his place with a few such household luxuries, life in their camp would be more nearly bearable, despite the long hours of disagreeable work. As it was--well, the unrelieved discomforts were beginning to warp her out-look on everything. Fyfe maintained his habitual sparsity of words while they ate the food Mrs. Howe brought on a tray hot from the cook's outlying domain. When they finished, he rose, took up his hat and helped himself to a handful of cigars from a box on the fireplace mantel. "I guess you'll be able to put in the time, all right," he remarked. "Make yourself at home. If you take a notion to read, there's a lot of books and magazines in my room. Mrs. Howe'll show you." He walked out. Stella was conscious of a distinct relief when he was gone. She had somehow experienced a recurrence of that peculiar feeling of needing to be on her guard, as if there were some curious, latent antagonism between them. She puzzled over that a little. She had never felt that way about Paul Abbey, for instance, or indeed toward any man she had ever known. Fyfe's more or less ambiguous remark in the boat had helped to arouse it again. His manner of saying that he had "thought a lot about her" conveyed more than the mere words. She could quite conceive of the Jack Fyfe type carrying things with a high hand where a woman was concerned. He had that reputation in all his other dealings. He was aggressive. He could drink any logger in the big firs off his feet. He had an uncanny luck at cards. Somehow or other in every undertaking Jack Fyfe always came out on top, so the tale ran. There must be, she reasoned, a wide streak of the brute in such a man. It was no gratification to her vanity to have him admire her. It did not dawn upon her that so far she had never got over being a little afraid of him, much less to ask herself why she should be afraid of him. But she did not spend much time puzzling over Jack Fyfe. Once out of her sight she forgot him. It was balm to her lonely soul to have some one of her own sex for company. What Mrs. Howe lacked in the higher culture she made up in homely perception and unassuming kindliness. Her husband was Fyfe's foreman. She herself was not a permanent fixture in the camp. They had a cottage at Roaring Springs, where she spent most of the time, so that their three children could be in school. "I was up here all through vacation," she told Stella. "But Lefty he got to howlin' about bein' left alone shortly after school started again, so I got my sister to look after the kids for a spell, while I stay. I'll be goin' down about the time Mr. Benton's through here." Stella eventually went out to take a look around the camp. A hard-beaten path led off toward where rose the distant sounds of logging work, the ponderous crash of trees, and the puff of the donkeys. She followed that a little way and presently came to a knoll some three hundred yards above the beach. There she paused to look and wonder curiously. For the crest of this little hillock had been cleared and graded level and planted to grass over an area four hundred feet square. It was trimmed like a lawn, and in the center of this vivid green block stood an unfinished house foundation of gray stone. No stick of timber, no board or any material for further building lay in sight. The thing stood as if that were to be all. And it was not a new undertaking temporarily delayed. There was moss creeping over the thick stone wall, she discovered when she walked over it. Whoever had laid that foundation had done it many a moon before. Yet the sward about was kept as if a gardener had it in charge. A noble stretch of lake and mountain spread out before her gaze. Straight across the lake two deep clefts in the eastern range opened on the water, five miles apart. She could see the white ribbon of foaming cascades in each. Between lifted a great mountain, and on the lakeward slope of this stood a terrible scar of a slide, yellow and brown, rising two thousand feet from the shore. A vaporous wisp of cloud hung along the top of the slide, and above this aërial banner a snow-capped pinnacle thrust itself high into the infinite blue. "What an outlook," she said, barely conscious that she spoke aloud. "Why do these people build their houses in the bush, when they could live in the open and have something like this to look at. They would, if they had any sense of beauty." "Sure they haven't? Some of them might have, you know, without being able to gratify it." She started, to find Jack Fyfe almost at her elbow, the gleam of a quizzical smile lighting his face. "I daresay that might be true," she admitted. Fyfe's gaze turned from her to the huge sweep of lake and mountain chain. She saw that he was outfitted for fishing, creel on his shoulder, unjointed rod in one hand. By means of his rubber-soled waders he had come upon her noiselessly. "It's truer than you think, maybe," he said at length. "You don't want to come along and take a lesson in catching rainbows, I suppose?" "Not this time, thanks," she shook her head. "I want to get enough for supper, so I'd better be at it," he remarked. "Sometimes they come pretty slow. If you should want to go up and watch the boys work, that trail will take you there." He went off across the grassy level and plunged into the deep timber that rose like a wall beyond. Stella looked after. "It is certainly odd," she reflected with some irritation, "how that man affects me. I don't think a woman could ever be just friends with him. She'd either like him a lot or dislike him intensely. He isn't anything but a logger, and yet he has a presence like one of the lords of creation. Funny." Then she went back to the house to converse upon domestic matters with Mrs. Howe until the shrilling of the donkey whistle brought forty-odd lumberjacks swinging down the trail. Behind them a little way came Jack Fyfe with sagging creel. He did not stop to exhibit his catch, but half an hour later they were served hot and crisp at the table in the big living room, where Fyfe, Stella and Charlie Benton, Lefty Howe and his wife, sat down together. A flunkey from the camp kitchen served the meal and cleared it away. For an hour or two after that the three men sat about in shirt-sleeved ease, puffing at Jack Fyfe's cigars. Then Benton excused himself and went to bed. When Howe and his wife retired, Stella did likewise. The long twilight had dwindled to a misty patch of light sky in the northwest, and she fell asleep more at ease than she had been for weeks. Sitting in Jack Fyfe's living room through that evening she had begun to formulate a philosophy to fit her enforced environment--to live for the day only, and avoid thought of the future until there loomed on the horizon some prospect of a future worth thinking about. The present looked passable enough, she thought, if she kept her mind strictly on it alone. And with that idea to guide her, she found the days slide by smoothly. She got on famously with Mrs. Howe, finding that woman full of virtues unsuspected in her type. Charlie was in his element. His prospects looked so rosy that they led him into egotistic outlines of what he intended to accomplish. To him the future meant logs in the water, big holdings of timber, a growing bank account. Beyond that,--what all his concentrated effort should lead to save more logs and more timber,--he did not seem to go. Judged by his talk, that was the ultimate, economic power,--money and more money. More and more as Stella listened to him, she became aware that he was following in his father's footsteps; save that he aimed at greater heights and that he worked by different methods, juggling with natural resources where their father had merely juggled with prices and tokens of product, their end was the same--not to create or build up, but to grasp, to acquire. That was the game. To get and to hold for their own use and benefit and to look upon men and things, in so far as they were of use, as pawns in the game. She wondered sometimes if that were a characteristic of all men, if that were the big motif in the lives of such men as Paul Abbey and Jack Fyfe, for instance; if everything else, save the struggle of getting and keeping money, resolved itself into purely incidental phases of their existence? For herself she considered that wealth, or the getting of wealth, was only a means to an end. Just what that end might be she found a little vague, rather hard to define in exact terms. It embraced personal leisure and the good things of life as a matter of course, a broader existence, a large-handed generosity toward the less fortunate, an intellectual elevation entirely unrelated to gross material things. Life, she told herself pensively, ought to mean something more than ease and good clothes, but what more she was chary of putting into concrete form. It hadn't meant much more than that for her, so far. She was only beginning to recognize the flinty facts of existence. She saw now that for her there lay open only two paths to food and clothing: one in which, lacking all training, she must earn her bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage. That, she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source nor their ultimate fruits. Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his brief sentences or slow smile. Latterly her feeling about him, that involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his personality, left her. Fyfe seemed to be more or less self-conscious of her presence as a guest in his house. His manner toward her remained always casual, as if she were a man, and there was no question of sex attraction or masculine reaction to it between them. She liked him better for that; and she did admire his wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested in his magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without caring to fondle the beast. Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks. Autumn's gorgeous paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and alder and birch that lined the lake shore. The fall run of the salmon was on, and every stream was packed with the silver horde, threshing through shoal and rapid to reach the spawning ground before they died. Off every creek mouth and all along the lake the seal followed to prey on the salmon, and sea-trout and lakers alike swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon the roe. The days shortened. Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for hours on end, and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking the lake would stand out all freshly robed in white,--a mantle that crept lower on the fir-clad slopes after each storm. The winds that whistled off those heights nipped sharply. Early in October Charlie Benton had squared his neighborly account with Jack Fyfe. With crew and equipment he moved home, to begin work anew on his own limit. Katy John and her people came back from the salmon fishing. Jim Renfrew, still walking with a pronounced limp, returned from the hospital. Charlie wheedled Stella into taking up the cookhouse burden again. Stella consented; in truth she could do nothing else. Charlie spent a little of his contract profits in piping water to the kitchen, in a few things to brighten up and make more comfortable their own quarters. "Just as soon as I can put another boom over the rapids, Stell," he promised, "I'll put a cook on the job. I've got to sail a little close for a while. With this crew I ought to put a million feet in the water in six weeks. Then I'll be over the hump, and you can take it easy. But till then--" "Till then I may as well make myself useful," Stella interrupted caustically. "Well, why not?" Benton demanded impatiently. "Nobody around here works any harder than I do." And there the matter rested. CHAPTER X ONE WAY OUT That was a winter of big snow. November opened with rain. Day after day the sun hid his face behind massed, spitting clouds. Morning, noon, and night the eaves of the shacks dripped steadily, the gaunt limbs of the hardwoods were a line of coursing drops, and through all the vast reaches of fir and cedar the patter of rain kept up a dreary monotone. Whenever the mist that blew like rolling smoke along the mountains lifted for a brief hour, there, creeping steadily downward, lay the banked white. Rain or shine, the work drove on. From the peep of day till dusk shrouded the woods, Benton's donkey puffed and groaned, axes thudded, the thin, twanging whine of the saws rose. Log after log slid down the chute to float behind the boomsticks; and at night the loggers trooped home, soaked to the skin, to hang their steaming mackinaws around the bunkhouse stove. When they gathered in the mess-room they filled it with the odor of sweaty bodies and profane grumbling about the weather. Early in December Benton sent out a big boom of logs with a hired stern-wheeler that was no more than out of Roaring Lake before the snow came. The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned to great, moist flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless night. At daybreak it lay a foot deep and snowing hard. Thenceforth there was no surcease. The white, feathery stuff piled up and piled up, hour upon hour and day after day, as if the deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and frost,--not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum of ice on every patch of still water. Necessarily, all work ceased. The donkey was a shapeless mound of white, all the lines and gear buried deep. A man could neither walk on that yielding mass nor wallow through it. The logging crew hailed the enforced rest with open relief. Benton grumbled. And then, with the hours hanging heavy on his hands, he began to spend more and more of his time in the bunkhouse with the "boys," particularly in the long evenings. Stella wondered what pleasure he found in their company, but she never asked him, nor did she devote very much thought to the matter. There was but small cessation in her labors, and that only because six or eight of the men drew their pay and went out. Benton managed to hold the others against the thaw that might open up the woods in twenty-four hours, but the smaller size of the gang only helped a little, and did not assist her mentally at all. All the old resentment against the indignity of her position rose and smoldered. To her the days were full enough of things that she was terribly weary of doing over and over, endlessly. She was always tired. No matter that she did, in a measure, harden to her work, grow callously accustomed to rising early and working late. Always her feet were sore at night, aching intolerably. Hot food, sharp knives, and a glowing stove played havoc with her hands. Always she rose in the morning heavy-eyed and stiff-muscled. Youth and natural vigor alone kept her from breaking down, and to cap the strain of toil, she was soul-sick with the isolation. For she was isolated; there was not a human being in the camp, Katy John included, with whom she exchanged two dozen words a day. Before the snow put a stop to logging, Jack Fyfe dropped in once a week or so. When work shut down, he came oftener, but he never singled Stella out for any particular attention. Once he surprised her sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table, her face buried in her palms. She looked up at his quiet entrance, and her face must have given him his cue. He leaned a little toward her. "How long do you think you can stand it?" he asked gently. "God knows," she answered, surprised into speaking the thought that lay uppermost in her mind, surprised beyond measure that Be should read that thought. He stood looking down at her for a second or two. His lips parted, but he closed them again over whatever rose to his tongue and passed silently through the dining room and into the bunkhouse, where Benton had preceded him a matter of ten minutes. It lacked a week of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men had gone in the _Chickamin_ to Roaring Springs for supplies. They had returned in mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new note of hilarity in the bunkhouse that part of the supplies had been liquid. This had happened more than once since the big snow closed in. She remembered Charlie's fury at the logger who started Matt the cook on his spree, and she wondered at this relaxation, but it was not in her province, and she made no comment. Jack Fyfe stayed to supper that evening. Neither he nor Charlie came back to Benton's quarters when the meal was finished. While she stacked up the dishes, Katy John observed: "Goodness sakes, Miss Benton, them fellers was fresh at supper. They was half-drunk, some of them. I bet they'll be half a dozen fights before mornin'." Stella passed that over in silence, with a mental turning up of her nose. It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It was a disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. She kept harking back to it, though, when she was in her own quarters, and Katy John had vanished for the night into her little room off the kitchen. Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse disturbing sounds welled now and then into the cold, still night,--incoherent snatches of song, voices uproariously raised, bursts of laughter. Once, as she looked out the door, thinking she heard footsteps crunching in the snow, some one rapped out a coarse oath that drove her back with burning face. As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to know in what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices. Suddenly there rose a brief clamor. In the dead silence that followed, she heard a thud and the clinking smash of breaking glass, a panted oath, sounds of struggle. Stella slipped on a pair of her brother's gum boots and an overcoat, and ran out on the path beaten from their cabin to the shore. It led past the bunkhouse, and on that side opened two uncurtained windows, yellow squares that struck gleaming on the snow. The panes of one were broken now, sharp fragments standing like saw teeth in the wooden sash. She stole warily near and looked in. Two men were being held apart; one by three of his fellows, the other _by_ Jack Fyfe alone. Fyfe grinned mildly, talking to the men in a quiet, pacific tone. "Now you know that was nothing to scrap about," she heard him say, "You're both full of fighting whisky, but a bunkhouse isn't any place to fight. Wait till morning. If you've still got it in your systems, go outside and have it out. But you shouldn't disturb our game and break up the furniture. Be gentlemen, drunk or sober. Better shake hands and call it square." "Aw, let 'em go to it, if they want to." Charlie's voice, drink-thickened, harsh, came from a earner of the room into which she could not see until she moved nearer. By the time she picked him out, Fyfe resumed his seat at the table where three others and Benton waited with cards in their hands, red and white chips and money stacked before them. She knew enough of cards to realize that a stiff poker game was on the board when she had watched one hand dealt and played. It angered her, not from any ethical motive, but because of her brother's part in it. He had no funds to pay a cook's wages, yet he could afford to lose on one hand as much as he credited her with for a month's work. She could slave at the kitchen job day in and day out to save him forty-five dollars a month. He could lose that without the flicker of an eyelash, but he couldn't pay her wages on demand. Also she saw that he had imbibed too freely, if the redness of his face and the glassy fixedness of his eyes could be read aright. "Pig!" she muttered. "If that's his idea of pleasure. Oh, well, why should I care? I don't, so far as he's concerned, if I could just get away from this beast of a place myself." Abreast of her a logger came to the broken window with a sack to bar out the frosty air. And Stella, realizing suddenly that she was shivering with the cold, ran back to the cabin and got into her bed. But she did not sleep, save in uneasy periods of dozing, until midnight was long past. Then Fyfe and her brother came in, and by the sounds she gathered that Fyfe was putting Charlie to bed. She heard his deep, drawly voice urging the unwisdom of sleeping with calked boots on, and Beaton's hiccupy response. The rest of the night she slept fitfully, morbidly imagining terrible things. She was afraid, that was the sum and substance of it. Over in the bunkhouse the carousal was still at its height. She could not rid herself of the sight of those two men struggling to be at each other like wild beasts, the bloody face of the one who had been struck, the coarse animalism of the whole whisky-saturated gang. It repelled and disgusted and frightened her. The night frosts had crept through the single board walls of Stella's room and made its temperature akin to outdoors when the alarm wakened her at six in the morning. She shivered as she dressed. Katy John was blissfully devoid of any responsibility, for seldom did Katy rise first to light the kitchen fire. Yet Stella resented less each day's bleak beginning than she did the enforced necessity of the situation; the fact that she was enduring these things practically under compulsion was what galled. A cutting wind struck her icily as she crossed the few steps of open between cabin and kitchen. Above no cloud floated, no harbinger of melting rain. The cold stars twinkled over snow-blurred forest, struck tiny gleams from stumps that were now white-capped pillars. A night swell from the outside waters beat, its melancholy dirge on the frozen beach. And, as she always did at that hushed hour before dawn, she experienced a physical shrinking from those grim solitudes in which there was nothing warm and human and kindly, nothing but vastness of space upon which silence lay like a smothering blanket, in which she, the human atom, was utterly negligible, a protesting mote in the inexorable wilderness. She knew this to be merely a state of mind, but situated as she was, it bore upon her with all the force of reality. She felt like a prisoner who above all things desired some mode of escape. A light burned in the kitchen. She thanked her stars that this bitter cold morning she would not have to build a fire with freezing fingers while her teeth chattered, and she hurried in to the warmth heralded by a spark-belching stovepipe. But the Siwash girl had not risen to the occasion. Instead, Jack Fyfe sat with his feet on the oven door, a cigar in one corner of his mouth. The kettle steamed. Her porridge pot bubbled ready for the meal. "Good morning," he greeted. "Mind my preempting your job?" "Not at all," she answered. "You can have it for keeps if you want." "No, thanks," he smiled. "I'm sour on my own cooking. Had to eat too much of it in times gone by. I wouldn't be stoking up here either, only I got frozen out. Charlie's spare bed hasn't enough blankets for me these cold nights." He drew his chair aside to be out of the way as she hurried about her breakfast preparations. All the time she was conscious that his eyes were on her, and also that in them lurked an expression of keen interest. His freckled mask of a face gave no clue to his thoughts; it never did, so far as she had ever observed. Fyfe had a gambler's immobility of countenance. He chucked the butt of his cigar in the stove and sat with hands clasped over one knee for some time after Katy John appeared and began setting the dining room table with a great clatter of dishes. He arose to his feet then. Stella stood beside the stove, frying bacon. A logger opened the door and walked in. He had been one to fare ill in the night's hilarity, for a discolored patch encircled one eye, and his lips were split and badly swollen. He carried a tin basin. "Kin I get some hot water?" he asked. Stella silently indicated the reservoir at one end of the range. The man ladled his basin full. The fumes of whisky, the unpleasant odor of his breath offended her, and she drew back. Fyfe looked at her as the man went out. "What?" he asked. She had muttered something, an impatient exclamation of disgust. The man's appearance disagreeably reminded her of the scene she had observed through the bunkhouse window. It stung her to think that her brother was fast putting himself on a par with them--without their valid excuse of type and training. "Oh, nothing," she said wearily, and turned to the sputtering bacon. Fyfe put his foot up on the stove front and drummed a tattoo on his mackinaw clad knee. "Aren't you getting pretty sick of this sort of work, these more or less uncomfortable surroundings, and the sort of people you have to come in contact with?" he asked pointedly. "I am," she returned as bluntly, "but I think that's rather an impertinent question, Mr. Fyfe." He passed imperturbably over this reproof, and his glance turned briefly toward the dining room. Katy John was still noisily at work. "You hate it," he said positively. "I know you do. I've seen your feelings many a time. I don't blame you. It's a rotten business for a girl with your tastes and bringing up. And I'm afraid you'll find it worse, if this snow stays long. I know what a logging camp is when work stops, and whisky creeps in, and the boss lets go his hold for the time being." "That may be true," she returned gloomily, "but I don't see why you should enumerate these disagreeable things for my benefit." "I'm going to show you a way out," he said softly. "I've been thinking it over for quite a while. I want you to marry me." Stella gasped. "Mr. Fyfe." "Listen," he said peremptorily, leaning closer to her and lowering his voice. "I have an idea that you're going to say you don't love me. Lord, _I_ know that. But you _hate_ this. It grates against every inclination of yours like a file on steel. I wouldn't jar on you like that. I wouldn't permit you to live in surroundings that would. That's the material side of it. Nobody can live on day dreams. I like you, Stella Benton, a whole lot more than I'd care to say right out loud. You and I together could make a home we'd be proud of. I want you, and you want to get away from this. It's natural. Marry me and play the game fair, and I don't think you'll be sorry. I'm putting it as baldly as I can. You stand to win everything with nothing to lose--but your domestic chains--" the gleam of a smile lit up his features for a second. "Won't you take a chance?" "No," she declared impulsively. "I won't be a party to any such cold-blooded transaction." "You don't seem to understand me," he said soberly. "I don't want to hand out any sentiment, but it makes me sore to see you wasting yourself on this sort of thing. If you must do it, why don't you do it for somebody who'll make it worth while? If you'd use the brains God gave you, you know that lots of couples have married on flimsier grounds than we'd have. How can a man and a woman really know anything about each other till they've lived together? Just because we don't marry with our heads in the fog is no reason we shouldn't get on fine. What are you going to do? Stick here at this till you go crazy? You won't get away. You don't realize what a one-idea, determined person this brother of yours is. He has just one object in life, and he'll use everything and everybody in sight to attain that object. He means to succeed and he will. You're purely incidental; but he has that perverted, middle-class family pride that will make him prevent you from getting out and trying your own wings. Nature never intended a woman like you to be a celibate, any more than I was so intended. And sooner or late you'll marry somebody--if only to hop out of the fire into the frying pan." "I hate you," she flashed passionately, "when you talk like that." "No, you don't," he returned quietly. "You hate what I say, because it's the truth--and it's humiliating to be helpless. You think I don't _sabe?_ But I'm putting a weapon into your hand. Let's put it differently; leave out the sentiment for a minute. We'll say that I want a housekeeper, preferably an ornamental one, because I like beautiful things. You want to get away from this drudgery. That's what it is, simple drudgery. You crave lots of things you can't get by yourself, but that you could help me get for you. There's things lacking in your life, and so is there in mine. Why shouldn't we go partners? You think about it." "I don't need to," she answered coolly. "It wouldn't work. You don't appear to have any idea what it means for a woman to give herself up body and soul to a man she doesn't care for. For me it would be plain selling myself. I haven't the least affection for you personally. I might even detest you." "You wouldn't," he said positively. "What makes you so sure of that?" she demanded. "It would sound conceited if I told you why," he drawled. "Listen. We're not gods and goddesses, we human beings. We're not, after all, in our real impulses, so much different from the age when a man took his club and went after a female that looked good to him. They mated, and raised their young, and very likely faced on an average fewer problems than arise in modern marriages supposedly ordained in Heaven. You'd have the one big problem solved,--the lack of means to live decently,--which wrecks more homes than anything else, far more than lack of love. Affection doesn't seem to thrive on poverty. What is love?" His voice took on a challenging note. Stella shook her head. He puzzled her, wholly serious one minute, a whimsical smile twisting up the corners of his mouth the next. And he surprised her too by his sureness of utterance on subjects she had not supposed would enter such a man's mind. "I don't know," she answered absently, turning over strips of bacon with the long-handled fork. "There you are," he said. "I don't know either. We'd start even, then, for the sake of argument. No, I guess we wouldn't either, because you're the only woman I've run across so far with whom I could calmly contemplate spending the rest of my life in close contact. That's a fact. To me it's a highly important fact. You don't happen to have any such feeling about me, eh?" "No. I hadn't even thought of you in that way," Stella answered truthfully. "You want to think about me," he said calmly. "You want to think about me from every possible angle, because I'm going to come back and ask you this same question every once in a while, so long as you're in reach and doing this dirty work for a thankless boss. You want to think of me as a possible refuge from a lot of disagreeable things. I'd like to have you to chum with, and I'd like to have some incentive to put a big white bungalow on that old foundation for us two," he smiled. "I'll never do it for myself alone. Go on. Take a gambling chance and marry me, Stella. Say yes, and say it now." But she shook her head resolutely, and as Katy John came in just then, Fyfe took his foot off the stove and went out of the kitchen. He threw a glance over his shoulder at Stella, a broad smile, as if to say that he harbored no grudge, and nursed no wound in his vanity because she would have none of him. Katy rang the breakfast gong. Five minutes later the tattoo of knives and forks and spoons told of appetites in process of appeasement. Charlie came into the kitchen in the midst of this, bearing certain unmistakable signs. His eyes were inflamed, his cheeks still bearing the flush of liquor. His demeanor was that of a man suffering an intolerable headache and correspondingly short-tempered. Stella barely spoke to him. It was bad enough for a man to make a beast of himself with whisky, but far worse was his gambling streak. There were so many little ways in which she could have eased things with a few dollars; yet he always grumbled when she spoke of money, always put her off with promises to be redeemed when business got better. Stella watched him bathe his head copiously in cold water and then seat himself at the long table, trying to force food upon an aggrieved and rebellious stomach. Gradually a flood of recklessness welled up in her breast. "For two pins I would marry Jack Fyfe," she told herself savagely. "_Anything_ would be better than this." CHAPTER XI THE PLUNGE Stella went over that queer debate a good many times in the ten days that followed. It revealed Jack Fyfe to her in a new, inexplicable light, at odd variance with her former conception of the man. She could not have visualized him standing with one foot on the stove front speaking calmly of love and marriage if she had not seen him with her own eyes, heard him with somewhat incredulous ears. She had continued to endow him with the attributes of unrestrained passion, of headlong leaping to the goal of his desires, of brushing aside obstacles and opposition with sheer brute force; and he had shown unreckoned qualities of restraint, of understanding. She was not quite sure if this were guile or sensible consideration. He had put his case logically, persuasively even. She was very sure that if he had adopted emotional methods, she would have been repelled. If he had laid siege to her hand and heart in the orthodox fashion, she would have raised that siege in short order. As it stood, in spite of her words to him, there was in her own mind a lack of finality. As she went about her daily tasks, that prospect of trying a fresh fling at the world as Jack Fyfe's wife tantalized her with certain desirable features. Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some time to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of environment? At best, she could only get away from Charlie's camp and begin along new lines that might perhaps be little better, that must inevitably lie among strangers in a strange land. To what end? What did she want of life, anyway? She had to admit that she could not say fully and explicitly what she wanted. When she left out her material wants, there was nothing but a nebulous craving for--what? Love, she assumed. And she could not define love, except as some incomprehensible transport of emotion which irresistibly drew a man and a woman together, a divine fire kindled in two hearts. It was not a thing she could vouch for by personal experience. It might never touch and warm her, that divine fire. Instinct did now and then warn her that some time it would wrap her like a flame. But in the meantime--Life had her in midstream of its remorseless, drab current, sweeping her along. A foothold offered. Half a loaf, a single slice of bread even, is better than none. Jack Fyfe did not happen in again for nearly two weeks and then only to pay a brief call, but he stole an opportunity, when Katy John was not looking, to whisper in Stella's ear: "Have you been thinking about that bungalow of ours?" She shook her head, and he went out quietly, without another word. He neither pleaded nor urged, and perhaps that was wisest, for in spite of herself Stella thought of him continually. He loomed always before her, a persistent, compelling factor. She knew at last, beyond any gainsaying, that the venture tempted, largely perhaps because it contained so great an element of the unknown. To get away from this soul-dwarfing round meant much. She felt herself reasoning desperately that the frying pan could not be worse than the fire, and held at least the merit of greater dignity and freedom from the twin evils of poverty and thankless domestic slavery. While she considered this, pro and con, shrinking from such a step one hour, considering it soberly the next, the days dragged past in wearisome sequence. The great depth of snow endured, was added to by spasmodic flurries. The frosts held. The camp seethed with the restlessness of the men. In default of the daily work that consumed their superfluous energy, the loggers argued and fought, drank and gambled, made "rough house" in their sleeping quarters till sometimes Stella's cheeks blanched and she expected murder to be done. Twice the _Chickamin_ came back from Roaring Springs with whisky aboard, and a protracted debauch ensued. Once a drunken logger shouldered his way into the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at Stella, and, himself inflamed by liquor and the affront, Charlie Benton beat the man until his face was a mass of bloody bruises. That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents. All the routine discipline of the woods seemed to have slipped out of Benton's hands. When the second whisky consignment struck the camp, Stella stayed in her room, refusing to cook until order reigned again. Benton grumblingly took up the burden himself. With Katy's help and that of sundry loggers, he fed the roistering crew, but for his sister it was a two-day period of protesting disgust. That mood, like so many of her moods, relapsed into dogged endurance. She took up the work again when Charlie promised that no more whisky should be allowed in the camp. "Though it's ten to one I won't have a corporal's guard left when I want to start work again," he grumbled. "I'm well within my rights if I put my foot down hard on any jinks when there's work, but I have no license to set myself up as guardian of a logger's morals and pocketbook when I have nothing for him to do. These fellows are paying their board. So long as they don't make themselves obnoxious to you, I don't see that it's our funeral whether they're drunk or sober. They'd tell me so quick enough." To this pronouncement of expediency Stella made no rejoinder. She no longer expected anything much of Charlie, in the way of consideration. So far as she could see, she, his sister, was little more to him than one of his loggers; a little less important than, say, his donkey engineer. In so far as she conduced to the well-being of the camp and effected a saving to his credit in the matter of preparing food, he valued her and was willing to concede a minor point to satisfy her. Beyond that Stella felt that he did not go. Five years in totally different environments had dug a great gulf between them. He felt an arbitrary sense of duty toward her, she knew, but in its manifestations it never lapped over the bounds of his own immediate self-interest. And so when she blundered upon knowledge of a state of affairs which must have existed under her very nose for some time, there were few remnants of sisterly affection to bid her seek extenuating circumstances. Katy John proved the final straw. Just by what means Stella grew to suspect any such moral lapse on Benton's part is wholly irrelevant. Once the unpleasant likelihood came to her notice, she took measures to verify her suspicion, and when convinced she taxed her brother with it, to his utter confusion. "What kind of a man are you?" she cried at last in shamed anger. "Is there nothing too low for you to dabble in? Haven't you any respect for anything or anybody, yourself included?" "Oh, don't talk like a damned Puritan," Benton growled, though his tanned face was burning. "This is what comes of having women around the camp. I'll send the girl away." "You--you beast!" she flared--and ran out of the kitchen to seek refuge in her own room and cry into her pillow some of the dumb protest that surged up within her. For her knowledge of passion and the workings of passion as they bore upon the relations of a man and a woman were at once vague and tinctured with inflexible tenets of morality, the steel-hard conception of virtue which is the bulwark of middle-class theory for its wives and daughters and sisters--with an eye consistently blind to the concealed lapses of its men. Stella Benton passed that morning through successive stages of shocked amazement, of pity, and disgust. As between her brother and the Siwash girl, she saw little to choose. From her virtuous pinnacle she abhorred both. If she had to continue intimate living with them, she felt that she would be utterly defiled, degraded to their level. That was her first definite conclusion. After a time she heard Benton come into their living room and light a fire in the heater. She dried her eyes and went out to face him. "Charlie," she declared desperately, "I can't stay here any longer. It's simply impossible." "Don't start that song again. We've had it often enough," he answered stubbornly. "You're not going--not till spring. I'm not going to let you go in the frame of mind you're in right now, anyhow. You'll get over that. Hang it, I'm not the first man whose foot slipped. It isn't your funeral, anyway. Forget it." The grumbling coarseness of this retort left her speechless. Benton got the fire going and went out. She saw him cross to the kitchen, and later she saw Katy John leave the camp with all her belongings in a bundle over her shoulder, trudging away to the camp of her people around the point. Kipling's pregnant line shot across her mind: "For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins." "I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor, little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. She doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem to care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn't right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him to--to use." She looked out along the shores piled high with broken ice and snow, through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted themselves imperiously aloof, white spires against the sky,--over a forest all draped in winter robes; shore, mountains, and forest alike were chill and hushed and desolate. The lake spread its forty-odd miles in a boomerang curve from Roaring Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifeless gray. She sat a long time looking at that, and a dead weight seemed to settle upon her heart. For the second time that day she broke down. Not the shamed, indignant weeping of an hour earlier, but with the essence of all things forlorn and desolate in her choked sobs. She did not hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was there, until she felt his hand gently on her shoulder and looked up. And so deep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving for some human sympathy, some measure of understanding, that she made no effort to remove his hand. She was in too deep a spiritual quagmire to refuse any sort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in analytical self-fathoming. She had a dim sense of being oddly comforted by his presence, as if she, afloat on uncharted seas, saw suddenly near at hand a safe anchorage and welcoming hands. Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked up at Fyfe and hid her wet face in her hands again. He stood silent a few seconds. When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation in his voice. "What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?" Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept aside before the essentially human need to share a burden that has grown too great to bear alone. "Oh, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any place for you at all." He slid his arm across her shoulders and tilted her face with his other hand so that her eyes met his. And she felt no desire to draw away or any of that old instinct to be on her guard against him. For all she knew--indeed, by all she had been told--Jack Fyfe was tarred with the same stick as her brother, but she had no thought of resisting him, no feeling of repulsion. "Will you marry me, Stella?" he asked evenly. "I can free you from this sort of thing forever." "How can I?" she returned. "I don't want to marry anybody. I don't love you. I'm not even sure I like you. I'm too miserable to think, even. I'm afraid to take a step like that. I should think you would be too." He shook his head. "I've thought a lot about it lately," he said. "It hasn't occurred to me to be afraid of how it may turn out. Why borrow trouble when there's plenty at hand? I don't care whether you love me or not, right now. You couldn't possibly be any worse off as my wife, could you?" "No," she admitted. "I don't see how I could." "Take a chance then," he urged. "I'll make a fair bargain with you. I'll make life as pleasant for you as I can. You'll live pretty much as you've been brought up to live, so far as money goes. The rest we'll have to work out for ourselves. I won't ask you to pretend anything you don't feel. You'll play fair, because that's the way you're made,--unless I've sized you up wrong. It'll simply be a case of our adjusting ourselves, just as mating couples have been doing since the year one. You've everything to gain and nothing to lose." "In some ways," she murmured. "Every way," he insisted. "You aren't handicapped by caring for any other man." "How do you know?" she asked. "Just a hunch," Fyfe smiled. "If you did, he'd have beaten me to the rescue long ago--if he were the sort of man you _could_ care for." "No," she admitted. "There isn't any other man, but there might be. Think how terrible it would be if it happened--afterward." Fyfe shrugged his shoulders. "Sufficient unto the day," he said. "There is no string on either of us just now. We start even. That's good enough. Will you?" "You have me at a disadvantage," she whispered. "You offer me a lot that I want, everything but a feeling I've somehow always believed ought to exist, ought to be mutual. Part of me wants to shut my eyes and jump. Part of me wants to hang back. I can't stand this thing I've got into and see no way of getting out of. Yet I dread starting a new train of wretchedness. I'm afraid--whichever way I turn." Fyfe considered this a moment. "Well," he said finally, "that's a rather unfortunate attitude. But I'm going into it with my eyes open. I know what I want. You'll be making a sort of experiment. Still, I advise you to make it. I think you'll be the better for making it. Come on. Say yes." Stella looked up at him, then out over the banked snow, and all the dreary discomforts, the mean drudgery, the sordid shifts she had been put to for months rose up in disheartening phalanx. For that moment Jack Fyfe loomed like a tower of refuge. She trusted him now. She had a feeling that even if she grew to dislike him, she would still trust him. He would play fair. If he said he would do this or that, she could bank on it absolutely. She turned and looked at him searchingly a long half-minute, wondering what really lay behind the blue eyes that met her own so steadfastly. He stood waiting patiently, outwardly impassive. But she could feel through the thin stuff of her dress a quiver in the fingers that rested on her shoulder, and that repressed sign of the man's pent-up feeling gave her an odd thrill, moved her strangely, swung the pendulum of her impulse. "Yes," she said. Fyfe bent a little lower. "Listen," he said in characteristically blunt fashion. "You want to get away from here. There is no sense in our fussing or hesitating about what we're going to do, is there?" "No, I suppose not," she agreed. "I'll send the _Panther_ down to the Springs for Lefty Howe's wife," he outlined his plans unhesitatingly. "She'll get up here this evening. To-morrow we will go down and take the train to Vancouver and be married. You have plenty of good clothes, good enough for Vancouver. I know,"--with a whimsical smile,--"because you had no chance to wear them out. Then we'll go somewhere, California, Florida, and come back to Roaring Lake in the spring. You'll have all the bad taste of this out of your mouth by that time." Stella nodded acquiescence. Better to make the plunge boldly, since she had elected to make it. "All right. I'm going to tell Benton," Fyfe said. "Good-by till to-morrow." She stood up. He looked at her a long time earnestly, searchingly, one of her hands imprisoned tight between his two big palms. Then, before she was quite aware of his intention, he kissed her gently on the mouth, and was gone. * * * * * This turn of events left Benton dumbfounded, to use a trite but expressive phrase. He came in, apparently to look at Stella in amazed curiosity, for at first he had nothing to say. He sat down beside his makeshift desk and pawed over some papers, running the fingers of one hand through his thick brown hair. "Well, Sis," he blurted out at last. "I suppose you know what you're doing?" "I think so," Stella returned composedly. "But why all this mad haste?" he asked. "If you're going to get married, why didn't you let me know, so I could give you some sort of decent send-off." "Oh, thanks," she returned dryly. "I don't think that's necessary. Not at this stage of the game, as you occasionally remark." He ruminated upon this a minute, flushing slightly. "Well, I wish you luck," he said sincerely enough. "Though I can hardly realize this sudden move. You and Jack Fyfe may get on all right. He's a good sort--in his way." "His way suits me," she said, spurred to the defensive by what she deemed a note of disparagement in his utterance. "If you have any objections or criticisms, you can save your breath--or address them direct to Mr. Fyfe." "No, thank you," he grinned. "I don't care to get into any argument with _him_, especially as he's going to be my brother-in-law. Fyfe's all right. I didn't imagine he was the sort of man you'd fancy, that's all." Stella refrained from any comment on this. She had no intention of admitting to Charlie that marriage with Jack Fyfe commended itself to her chiefly as an avenue of escape from a well-nigh intolerable condition which he himself had inflicted upon her. Her pride rose in arms against any such belittling admission. She admitted it frankly to herself,--and to Fyfe,--because Fyfe understood and was content with that understanding. She desired to forget that phase of the transaction. She told herself that she meant honestly to make the best of it. Benton turned again to his papers. He did not broach the subject again until in the distance the squat hull of the _Panther_ began to show on her return from the Springs. Then he came to where Stella was putting the last of her things into her trunk. He had some banknotes in one hand, and a check. "Here's that ninety I borrowed, Stell," he said. "And a check for your back pay. Things have been sort of lean around here, maybe, but I still think it's a pity you couldn't have stuck it out till it came smoother. I hate to see you going away with a chronic grouch against me. I suppose I wouldn't even be a welcome guest at the wedding?" "No," she said unforgivingly. "Some things are a little too--too recent." "Oh," he replied casually enough, pausing in the doorway a second on his way out, "you'll get over that. You'll find that ordinary, everyday living isn't any kid-glove affair." She sat on the closed lid of her trunk, looking at the check and money. Three hundred and sixty dollars, all told. A month ago that would have spelled freedom, a chance to try her luck in less desolate fields. Well, she tried to consider the thing philosophically; it was no use to bewail what might have been. In her hands now lay the sinews of a war she had forgone all need of waging. It did not occur to her to repudiate her bargain with Jack Fyfe. She had given her promise, and she considered she was bound, irrevocably. Indeed, for the moment, she was glad of that. She was worn out, all weary with unaccustomed stress of body and mind. To her, just then, rest seemed the sweetest boon in the world. Any port in a storm, expressed her mood. What came after was to be met as it came. She was too tired to anticipate. It was a pale, weary-eyed young woman, dressed in the same plain tailored suit she had worn into the country, who was cuddled to Mrs. Howe's plump bosom when she went aboard the _Panther_ for the first stage of her journey. A slaty bank of cloud spread a somber film across the sky. When the _Panther_ laid her ice-sheathed guard-rail against the Hot Springs wharf the sun was down. The lake spread gray and lifeless under a gray sky, and Stella Benton's spirits were steeped in that same dour color. CHAPTER XII AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED Spring had waved her transforming wand over the lake region before the Fyfes came home again. All the low ground, the creeks and hollows and banks, were bright green with new-leaved birch and alder and maple. The air was full of those aromatic exudations the forest throws off when it is in the full tide of the growing time. Shores that Stella had last seen dismal and forlorn in the frost-fog, sheathed in ice, banked with deep snow, lay sparkling now in warm sunshine, under an unflecked arch of blue. All that was left of winter was the white cap on Mount Douglas, snow-filled chasms on distant, rocky peaks. Stella stood on the Hot Springs wharf looking out across the emerald deep of the lake, thinking soberly of the contrast. Something, she reflected, some part of that desolate winter, must have seeped to the very roots of her being to produce the state of mind in which she embarked upon that matrimonial voyage. A little of it clung to her still. She could look back at those months of loneliness, of immeasurable toil and numberless indignities, without any qualms. There would be no repetition of that. The world at large would say she had done well. She herself in her most cynical moments could not deny that she had done well. Materially, life promised to be generous. She was married to a man who quietly but inexorably got what he wanted, and it was her good fortune that he wanted her to have the best of everything. She saw him now coming from the hotel, and she regarded him thoughtfully, a powerful figure swinging along with light, effortless steps. He was back on his own ground, openly glad to be back. Yet she could not recall that he had ever shown himself at a disadvantage anywhere they had been together. He wore evening clothes when occasion required as unconcernedly as he wore mackinaws and calked boots among his loggers. She had not yet determined whether his equable poise arose from an unequivocal democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any rate, where she had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit that socially, at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of the game. Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. In fact, so far as Jack Fyfe's breeding and antecedents were concerned, she knew little more than before their marriage. He was not given to reminiscence. His people--distant relatives--lived in her own native state of Pennsylvania. He had an only sister who was now in South America with her husband, a civil engineer. Beyond that Fyfe did not go, and Stella made no attempt to pry up the lid of his past. She was not particularly curious. Her clearest judgment of him was at first hand. He was a big, virile type of man, generous, considerate, so sure of himself that he could be tolerant of others. She could easily understand why Roaring Lake considered Jack Fyfe "square." The other tales of him that circulated there she doubted now. The fighting type he certainly was, aggressive in a clash, but if there were any downright coarseness in him, it had never manifested itself to her. She was not sorry she had married him. If they had not set out blind in a fog of sentiment, as he had once put it, nevertheless they got on. She did not love him,--not as she defined that magic word,--but she liked him, was mildly proud of him. When he kissed her, if there were no mad thrill in it, there was at least a passive contentment in having inspired that affection. For he left her in no doubt as to where he stood, not by what he said, but wholly by his actions. He joined her now. The _Panther_, glossy black as a crow's wing with fresh paint, lay at the pier-end with their trunks aboard. Stella surveyed those marked with her initials, looking them over with a critical eye, when they reached the deck. "How in the world did I ever manage to accumulate so much stuff, Jack?" she asked quizzically. "I didn't realize it. We might have been doing Europe with souvenir collecting our principal aim, by the amount of our baggage." Fyfe smiled, without commenting. They sat on a trunk and watched Roaring Springs fall astern, dwindle to a line of white dots against the great green base of the mountain that rose behind it. "It's good to get back here," he said at last. "To me, anyway. How about it, Stella? You haven't got so much of a grievance with the world in general as you had when we left, eh?" "No, thank goodness," she responded fervently. "You don't look as if you had," he observed, his eyes admiringly upon her. Nor had she. There was a bloom on the soft contour of her cheek, a luminous gleam in her wide, gray eyes. All the ill wrought by months of drudging work and mental revolt had vanished. She was undeniably good to look at, a woman in full flower, round-bodied, deep-breasted, aglow with the unquenched fires of youth. She was aware that Jack Fyfe found her so and tolerably glad that he did so find her. She had revised a good many of her first groping estimates of him that winter. And when she looked over the port bow and saw in behind Halfway Point the huddled shacks of her brother's camp where so much had overtaken her, she experienced a swift rush of thankfulness that she was--as she was. She slid her gloved hand impulsively into Jack Fyfe's, and his strong fingers shut down on hers closely. They sat silent until the camp lay abeam. About it there was every sign of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve hissing, stood by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving back and forth across the swifters, making all ready for a tow. Stella marked a new bunkhouse. Away back on the logging ground in a greater clearing she saw the separate smoke of two donkey engines. Another, a big roader, Fyfe explained, puffed at the water's edge. She could see a string of logs tearing down the skid-road. "He's going pretty strong, that brother of yours," Fyfe remarked. "If he holds his gait, he'll be a big timberman before you know it." "He'll make money, I imagine," Stella admitted, "but I don't know what good that will do him. He'll only want more. What is there about money-making that warps some men so, makes them so grossly self-centered? I'd pity any girl who married Charlie. He used to be rather wild at home, but I never dreamed any man could change so." "You use the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband answered, with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe his ways are pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a competence--which is what we're all after--out of pretty crude material. And he's just a kid, after all, with a kid's tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda like the beggar's ambition and energy." "But he hasn't the least consideration for anybody or anything," Stella protested. "He rides rough-shod over every one. That isn't either right or decent." "It's the only way some men can get to the top," Fyfe answered quietly. "They concentrate on the object to be attained. That's all that counts until they're in a secure position. Then, when they stop to draw their breath, sometimes they find they've done lots of things they wouldn't do again. You watch. By and by Charlie Benton will cease to have those violent reactions that offend you so. As it is--he's a youngster, bucking a big game. Life, when you have your own way to hew through it, with little besides your hands and brain for capital, is no silk-lined affair." She fell into thought over this reply. Fyfe had echoed almost her brother's last words to her. And she wondered if Jack Fyfe had attained that degree of economic power which enabled him to spend several thousand dollars on a winter's pleasuring with her by the exercise of a strong man's prerogative of overriding the weak, bending them to his own inflexible purposes, ruthlessly turning everything to his own advantage? If women came under the same head! She recalled Katy John, and her face burned. Perhaps. But she could not put Jack Fyfe in her brother's category. He didn't fit. Deep in her heart there still lurked an abiding resentment against Charlie Benton for the restraint he had put upon her and the license he had arrogated to himself. She could not convince herself that the lapses of that winter were not part and parcel of her brother's philosophy of life, a coarse and material philosophy. Presently they were drawing in to Cougar Point, with the weather-bleached buildings of Fyfe's camp showing now among the upspringing second-growth scrub. Fyfe went forward and spoke to the man at the wheel. The _Panther_ swung offshore. "Why are we going out again?" Stella asked. "Oh, just for fun," Fyfe smiled. He sat down beside her and slipped one arm around her waist. In a few minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away across the lake, at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a mountain range in twain. "Look around," said he, "and tell me what you think of the House of Fyfe." There it stood, snow-white, broad-porched, a new house reared upon the old stone foundation she remembered. The noon sun struck flashing on the windows. About it spread the living green of the grassy square, behind that towered the massive, darker-hued background of the forest. "Oh," she exclaimed. "What wizard of construction did the work. _That_ was why you fussed so long over those plans in Los Angeles. I thought it was to be this summer or maybe next winter. I never dreamed you were having it built right away." "Well, isn't it rather nice to come home to?" he observed. "It's dear. A homey looking place," she answered. "A beautiful site, and the house fits,--that white and the red tiles. Is the big stone fireplace in the living room, Jack?" "Yes, and one in pretty nearly every other room besides," he nodded. "Wood fires are cheerful." The _Panther_ turned her nose shoreward at Fyfe's word. "I wondered about that foundation the first time I saw it," Stella confessed, "whether you built it, and why it was never finished. There was moss over the stones in places. And that lawn wasn't made in a single season. I know, because dad had a country place once, and he was raging around two or three summers because the land was so hard to get well-grassed." "No, I didn't build the foundation or make the lawn," Fyfe told her. "I merely kept it in shape. A man named Hale owned the land that takes in the bay and the point when I first came to the lake. He was going to be married. I knew him pretty well. But it was tough going those days. He was in the hole on some of his timber, and he and his girl kept waiting. Meantime he cleared and graded that little hill, sowed it to grass, and laid the foundation. He was about to start building when he was killed. A falling tree caught him. I bought in his land and the timber limits that lie back of it. That's how the foundation came there." "It's a wonder it didn't grow up wild," Stella mused. "How long ago was that?" "About five years," Fyfe said. "I kept the grass trimmed. It didn't seem right to let the brush overrun it after the poor devil put that labor of love on it. It always seemed to me that it should be kept smooth and green, and that there should be a big, roomy bungalow there. You see my hunch was correct, too." She looked up at him in some wonder. She hadn't accustomed herself to associating Jack Fyfe with actions based on pure sentiment. He was too intensely masculine, solid, practical, impassive. He did not seem to realize even that sentiment had influenced him in this. He discussed it too matter-of-factly for that. She wondered what became of the bride-to-be. But that Fyfe could not tell her. "Hale showed me her picture once," he said, "but I never saw her. Oh, I suppose she's married some other fellow long ago. Hale was a good sort. He was out-lucked, that's all." The _Panther_ slid in to the float. Jack and Stella went ashore. Lefty Howe came down to meet them. Thirty-five or forty men were stringing away from the camp, back to their work in the woods. Some waved greeting to Jack Fyfe, and he waved back in the hail-fellow fashion of the camps. "How's the frau, Lefty?" he inquired, after they had shaken hands. "Fine. Down to Vancouver. Sister's sick," Howe answered laconically. "House's all shipshape. Wanta eat here, or up there?" "Here at the camp, until we get straightened around," Fyfe responded. "Tell Pollock to have something for us in about half an hour. We'll go up and take a look." Howe went in to convey this message, and the two set off up the path. A sudden spirit of impishness made Jack Fyfe sprint. Stella gathered up her skirt and raced after him, but a sudden shortness of breath overtook her, and she came panting to where Fyfe had stopped to wait. "You'll have to climb hills and row and swim so you'll get some wind," Fyfe chuckled. "Too much easy living, lady." She smiled without making any reply to this sally, and they entered the house--the House of Fyfe, that was to be her home. If the exterior had pleased her, she went from room to room inside with growing amazement. Fyfe had finished it from basement to attic without a word to her that he had any such undertaking in hand. Yet there was scarcely a room in which she could not find the visible result of some expressed wish or desire. Often during the winter they had talked over the matter of furnishings, and she recalled how unconsciously she had been led to make suggestions which he had stored up and acted upon. For the rest she found her husband's taste beyond criticism. There were drapes and rugs and prints and odds and ends that any woman might be proud to have in her home. "You're an amazing sort of a man, Jack," she said thoughtfully. "Is there anything you're not up to? Even a Chinese servant in the kitchen. It's perfect." "I'm glad you like it," he said. "I hoped you would." "Who wouldn't?" she cried impulsively. "I love pretty things. Wait till I get done rearranging." They introduced themselves to the immobile-featured Celestial when they had jointly and severally inspected the house from top to bottom. Sam Foo gazed at them, listened to their account of themselves, and disappeared. He re-entered the room presently, bearing a package. "Mist' Chol' Bentlee him leave foh yo'." Stella looked at it. On the outer wrapping was written: _From C.A. Benton to Mrs. John Henderson Fyfe_ _A Belated Wedding Gift_ She cut the string, and delved into the cardboard box, and gasped. Out of a swathing of tissue paper her hands bared sundry small articles. A little cap and jacket of knitted silk--its double in fine, fleecy yarn--a long silk coat--a bonnet to match,--both daintily embroidered. Other things--a shoal of them--baby things. A grin struggled for lodgment on Fyfe's freckled countenance. His blue eyes twinkled. "I suppose," he growled, "that's Charlie's idea of a joke, huh?" Stella turned away from the tiny garments, one little, hood crumpled tight in her hand. She laid her hot face against his breast and her shoulders quivered. She was crying. "Stella, Stella, what's the matter?" he whispered. "It's no joke," she sobbed. "It's a--it's a reality." CHAPTER XIII IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME From that day on Stella found in her hands the reins over a smooth, frictionless, well-ordered existence. Sam Foo proved himself such a domestic treasure as only the trained Oriental can be. When the labor of an eight-room dwelling proved a little too much for him, he urbanely said so. Thereupon, at Fyfe's suggestion, he imported a fellow countryman, another bland, silent-footed model of efficiency in personal service. Thereafter Stella's task of supervision proved a sinecure. A week or so after their return, in sorting over some of her belongings, she came across the check Charlie had given her: that two hundred and seventy dollars which represented the only money she had ever earned in her life. She studied it a minute, then went out to where her husband sat perched on the verandah rail. "You might cash this, Jack," she suggested. He glanced at the slip. "Better have it framed as a memento," he said, smiling. "You'll never earn two hundred odd dollars so hard again, I hope. No, I'd keep it, if I were you. If ever you should need it, it'll always be good--unless Charlie goes broke." There never had been any question of money between them. From the day of their marriage Fyfe had made her a definite monthly allowance, a greater sum than she needed or spent. "As a matter of fact," he went on, "I'm going to open an account in your name at the Royal Bank, so you can negotiate your own paper and pay your own bills by check." She went in and put away the check. It was hers, earned, all too literally, in the sweat of her brow. For all that it represented she had given service threefold. If ever there came a time when that hunger for independence which had been fanned to a flame in her brother's kitchen should demand appeasement--she pulled herself up short when she found her mind running upon such an eventuality. Her future was ordered. She was married--to be a mother. Here lay her home. All about her ties were in process of formation, ties that with time would grow stronger than any shackles of steel, constraining her to walk in certain ways,--ways that were pleasant enough, certain of ease if not of definite purpose. Yet now and then she found herself falling into fits of abstraction in which Roaring Lake and Jack Fyfe, all that meant anything to her now, faded into the background, and she saw herself playing a lone hand against the world, making her individual struggle to be something more than the petted companion of a dominant male and the mother of his children. She never quite lost sight of the fact that marriage had been the last resort, that in effect she had taken the avenue her personal charm afforded to escape drudgery and isolation. There was still deep-rooted in her a craving for something bigger than mere ease of living. She knew as well as she knew anything that in the natural evolution of things marriage and motherhood should have been the big thing in her life. And it was not. It was too incidental, too incomplete, too much like a mere breathing-place on life's highway. Sometimes she reasoned with herself bluntly, instead of dreaming, was driven to look facts in the eye because she did dream. Always she encountered the same obstacle, a feeling that she had been defrauded, robbed of something vital; she had forgone that wonderful, passionate drawing together which makes the separate lives of the man and woman who experiences it so fuse that in the truest sense of the word they become one. Mostly she kept her mind from that disturbing introspection, because invariably it led her to vague dreaming of a future which she told herself--sometimes wistfully--could never be realized. She had shut the door on many things, it seemed to her now. But she had the sense to know that dwelling on what might have been only served to make her morbid, and did not in the least serve to alter the unalterable. She had chosen what seemed to her at the time the least of two evils, and she meant to abide steadfast by her choice. Charlie Benton came to visit them. Strangely enough to Stella, who had never seen him on Roaring Lake, at least, dressed otherwise than as his loggers, he was sporting a natty gray suit, he was clean shaven, Oxford ties on his feet, a gentleman of leisure in his garb. If he had started on the down grade the previous winter, he bore no signs of it now, for he was the picture of ruddy vigor, clear-eyed, brown-skinned, alert, bubbling over with good spirits. "Why, say, you look like a tourist," Fyfe remarked after an appraising glance. "I'm making money, pulling ahead of the game, that's all," Benton retorted cheerfully. "I can afford to take a holiday now and then. I'm putting a million feet a month in the water. That's going some for small fry like me. Say, this house of yours is all to the good, Jack. It's got class, outside and in. Makes a man feel as if he had to live up to it, eh? Mackinaws and calked boots don't go with oriental rugs and oak floors." "You should get a place like this as soon as possible then," Stella put in drily, "to keep you up to the mark, on edge aesthetically, one might put it." "Not to say morally," Benton laughed. "Oh, maybe I'll get to it by and by, if the timber business holds up." Later, when he and Stella were alone together, he said to her: "You're lucky. You've got everything, and it comes without an effort. You sure showed good judgment when you picked Jack Fyfe. He's a thoroughbred." "Oh, thank you," she returned, a touch of irony in her voice, a subtlety of inflection that went clean over Charlie's head. He was full of inquiries about where they had been that winter, what they had done and seen. Also he brimmed over with his own affairs. He stayed overnight and went his way with a brotherly threat of making the Fyfe bungalow his headquarters whenever he felt like it. "It's a touch of civilization that looks good to me," he declared. "You can put my private mark on one of those big leather chairs, Jack. I'm going to use it often. All you need to make this a social center is a good-looking girl or two--unmarried ones. You watch. When the summer flock comes to the lake, your place is going to be popular." That observation verified Benton's shrewdness. The Fyfe bungalow did become popular. Two weeks after Charlie's visit, a lean, white cruiser, all brass and mahogany above her topsides, slid up to the float, and two women came at a dignified pace along the path to the house. Stella had met Linda Abbey once, reluctantly, under the circumstances, but it was different now--with the difference that money makes. She could play hostess against an effective background, and she did so graciously. Nor was her graciousness wholly assumed. After all, they were her kind of people: Linda, fair-haired, perfectly gowned, perfectly mannered, sweetly pretty; Mrs. Abbey, forty-odd and looking thirty-five, with that calm self-assurance which wealth and position confer upon those who hold it securely. Stella found them altogether to her liking. It pleased her, too, that Jack happened in to meet them. He was not a scintillating talker, yet she had noticed that when he had anything to say, he never failed to attract and hold attention. His quiet, impersonal manner never suggested stolidness. And she was too keen an observer to overlook the fact that from a purely physical standpoint Jack Fyfe made an impression always, particularly on women. Throughout that winter it had not disturbed her. It did not disturb her now, when she noticed Linda Abbey's gaze coming back to him with a veiled appraisal in her blue eyes that were so like Fyfe's own in their tendency to twinkle and gleam with no corresponding play of features. "We'll expect to see a good deal of you this summer," Mrs. Abbey said cordially at leave-taking. "We have a few people up from town now and then to vary the monotony of feasting our souls on scenery. Sometimes we are quite a jolly crowd. Don't be formal. Drop in when you feel the inclination." When Stella reminded Jack of this some time later, in a moment of boredom, he put the _Panther_ at her disposal for the afternoon. But he would not go himself. He had opened up a new outlying camp, and he had directions to issue, work to lay out. "You hold up the social end of the game," he laughed. "I'll hustle logs." So Stella invaded the Abbey-Monohan precincts by herself and enjoyed it--for she met a houseful of young people from the coast, and in that light-hearted company she forgot for the time being that she was married and the responsible mistress of a house. Paul Abbey was there, but he had apparently forgotten or forgiven the blow she had once dealt his vanity. Paul, she reflected, was not the sort to mourn a lost love long. She had the amused experience too of beholding Charlie Benton appear an hour or so before she departed and straightway monopolize Linda Abbey in his characteristically impetuous fashion. Charlie was no diplomat. He believed in driving straight to any goal he selected. "So _that's_ the reason for the outward metamorphosis," Stella reflected. "Well?" Altogether she enjoyed the afternoon hugely. The only fly in her ointment was a greasy smudge bestowed upon her dress--a garment she prized highly--by some cordage coiled on the _Panther's_ deck. The black tender had carried too many cargoes of loggers and logging supplies to be a fit conveyance for persons in party attire. She exhibited the soiled gown to Fyfe with due vexation. "I hope you'll have somebody scrub down the _Panther_ the next time I want to go anywhere in a decent dress," she said ruefully. "That'll never come out. And it's the prettiest thing I've got too." "Ah, what's the odds?" Fyfe slipped one arm around her waist. "You can buy more dresses. Did you have a good time? That's the thing!" That ruined gown, however, subsequently produced an able, forty-foot, cruising launch, powerfully engined, easy in a sea, and comfortably, even luxuriously fitted as to cabin. With that for their private use, the _Panther_ was left to her appointed service, and in the new boat Fyfe and Stella spent many a day abroad on Roaring Lake. They fished together, explored nooks and bays up and down its forty miles of length, climbed hills together like the bear of the ancient rhyme, to see what they could see. And the _Waterbug_ served to put them on intimate terms with their neighbors, particularly the Abbey crowd. The Abbeys took to them wholeheartedly. Fyfe himself was highly esteemed by the elder Abbey, largely, Stella suspected, for his power on Roaring Lake. Abbey _père_ had built up a big fortune out of timber. He respected any man who could follow the same path to success. Therefore he gave Fyfe double credit,--for making good, and for a personality that could not be overlooked. He told Stella that once; that is to say, he told her confidentially that her husband was a very "able" young man. Abbey senior was short and double-chinned and inclined to profuse perspiration if he moved in haste over any extended time. Paul promised to be like him, in that respect. Summer slipped by. There were dances, informal little hops at the Abbey domicile, return engagements at the Fyfe bungalow, laughter and music and Japanese lanterns strung across the lawn. There was tea and tennis and murmuring rivers of small talk. And amid this Stella Fyfe flitted graciously, esteeming it her world, a fair measure of what the future might be. Viewed in that light, it seemed passable enough. Later, when summer was on the wane, she withdrew from much of this activity, spending those days when she did not sit buried in a book out on the water with her husband. When October ushered in the first of the fall rains, they went to Vancouver and took apartments. In December her son was born. CHAPTER XIV A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE With the recurrence of spring, Fyfe's household transferred itself to the Roaring Lake bungalow again. Stella found the change welcome, for Vancouver wearied her. It was a little too crude, too much as yet in the transitory stage, in that civic hobbledehoy period which overtakes every village that shoots up over-swiftly to a city's dimensions. They knew people, to be sure, for the Abbey influence would have opened the way for them into any circle. Stella had made many friends and pleasant acquaintances that summer on the lake, but part of that butterfly clique sought pleasanter winter grounds before she was fit for social activity. Apart from a few more or less formal receptions and an occasional auction party, she found it pleasanter to stay at home. Fyfe himself had spent only part of his time in town after their boy was born. He was extending his timber operations. What he did not put into words, but what Stella sensed because she experienced the same thing herself, was that town bored him to death,--such town existence as Vancouver afforded. Their first winter had been different, because they had sought places where there was manifold variety of life, color, amusement. She was longing for the wide reach of Roaring Lake, the immense amphitheater of the surrounding mountains, long before spring. So she was quite as well pleased when a mild April saw them domiciled at home again. In addition to Sam Foo and Feng Shu, there was a nurse for Jack Junior. Stella did not suggest that; Fyfe insisted on it. He was quite proud of his boy, but he did not want her chained to her baby. "If the added expense doesn't count, of course a nurse will mean a lot more personal freedom," Stella admitted. "You see, I haven't the least idea of your resources, Jack. All I know about it is that you allow me plenty of money for my individual expenses. And I notice we're acquiring a more expensive mode of living all the time." "That's so," Fyfe responded. "I never have gone into any details of my business with you. No reason why you shouldn't know what limits there are to our income. You never happened to express any curiosity before. Operating as I did up till lately, the business netted anywhere from twelve to fifteen thousand a year. I'll double that this season. In fact, with the amount of standing timber I control, I could make it fifty thousand a year by expanding and speeding things up. I guess you needn't worry about an extra servant or two." So, apart from voluntary service on behalf of Jack Junior, she was free as of old to order her days as she pleased. Yet that small morsel of humanity demanded much of her time, because she released through the maternal floodgates a part of that passionate longing to bestow love where her heart willed. Sometimes she took issue with herself over that wayward tendency. By all the rules of the game, she should have loved her husband. He was like a rock, solid, enduring, patient, kind, and generous. He stood to her in the most intimate relation that can exist between a man and a woman. But she never fooled herself; she never had so far as Jack Fyfe was concerned. She liked him, but that was all. He was good to her, and she was grateful. Sometimes she had a dim sense that under his easy-going exterior lurked a capacity for tremendously passionate outbreak. If she had been compelled to modify her first impression of him as an arrogant, dominant sort of character, scarcely less rough than the brown firs out of which he was hewing a fortune, she knew likewise that she had never seen anything but the sunny side of him. He still puzzled her a little at times; there were odd flashes of depths she could not see into, a quality of unexpectedness in things he would do and say. Even so, granting that in him was embodied so much that other men she knew lacked, she did not love him; there were indeed times when she almost resented him. Why, she could not perhaps have put into words. It seemed too fantastic for sober summing-up, when she tried. But lurking always in the background of her thoughts was the ghost of an unrealized dream, a nebulous vision which once served to thrill her in secret. It could never be anything but a vision, she believed now, and believing, regretted. The cold facts of her existence couldn't be daydreamed away. She was married, and marriage put a full stop to the potential adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at the opposite pole from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed to that. She took for her guiding-star--theoretically--the twin concepts of morality and duty as she had been taught to construe them. So she saw no loophole, and seeing none, felt cheated of something infinitely precious. Marriage and motherhood had not come to her as the fruits of love, as the passionately eager fulfilling of her destiny. It had been thrust upon her. She had accepted it as a last resort at a time when her powers of resistance to misfortune were at the ebb. She knew that this sort of self-communing was a bad thing, that it was bound to sour the whole taste of life in her mouth. As much as possible she thrust aside those vague, repressed longings. Materially she had everything. If she had foregone that bargain with Jack Fyfe, God only knew what long-drawn agony of mind and body circumstances and Charlie Benton's subordination of her to his own ends might have inflicted upon her. That was the reverse of her shield, but one that grew dimmer as time passed. Mostly, she took life as she found it, concentrating upon Jack Junior, a sturdy boy with blue eyes like his father, and who grew steadily more adorable. Nevertheless she had recurring periods when moodiness and ill-stifled discontent got hold of her. Sometimes she stole out along the cliffs to sit on a mossy boulder, staring with absent eyes at the distant hills. And sometimes she would slip out in a canoe, to lie rocking in the lake swell,--just dreaming, filled with a passive sort of regret. She could not change things now, but she could not help wishing she could. Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. Roaring Lake, pent in the shape of a boomerang between two mountain ranges, was subject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot down its length like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew that; she had seen the glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten minutes, but she was not afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She was hard and strong. The open, the clean mountain air, and a measure of activity, had built her up physically. She swam like a seal. Out in that sixteen-foot Peterboro she could detach herself from her world of reality, lie back on a cushion, and lose herself staring at the sky. She paid little heed to Fyfe's warning beyond a smiling assurance that she had no intention of courting a watery end. So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack Junior, crowing in his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and breakfasted with him. She was tired, drowsy, content to lie there in pure physical relaxation. Lying so, before she was aware of it, her eyes closed. She wakened with a start at a cold touch of moisture on her face,--rain, great pattering drops. Overhead an ominously black cloud hid the face of the sun. The shore, when she looked, lay a mile and a half abeam. To the north and between her and the land's rocky line was a darkening of the lake's surface. Stella reached for her paddle. The black cloud let fall long, gray streamers of rain. There was scarcely a stirring of the air, but that did not deceive her. There was a growing chill, and there was that broken line sweeping down the lake. Behind that was wind, a summer gale, the black squall dreaded by the Siwashes. She had to buck her way to shore through that. She drove hard on the paddle. She was not afraid, but there rose in her a peculiar tensed-up feeling. Ahead lay a ticklish bit of business. The sixteen-foot canoe dwarfed to pitiful dimensions in the face of that snarling line of wind-harried water. She could hear the distant murmur of it presently, and gusty puffs of wind began to strike her. Then it swept up to her, a ripple, a chop, and very close behind that the short, steep, lake combers with a wind that blew off the tops as each wave-head broke in white, bubbling froth. Immediately she began to lose ground. She had expected that, and it did not alarm her. If she could keep the canoe bow on, there was an even chance that the squall would blow itself out in half an hour. But keeping the canoe bow on proved a task for stout arms. The wind would catch all that forward part which thrust clear as she topped a sea and twist it aside, tending always to throw her broadside into the trough. Spray began to splash aboard. The seas were so short and steep that the Peterboro would rise over the crest of a tall one and dip its bow deep in the next, or leap clear to strike with a slap that made Stella's heart jump. She had never undergone quite that rough and tumble experience in a small craft. She was being beaten farther out and down the lake, and her arms were growing tired. Nor was there any slackening of the wind. The combined rain and slaps of spray soaked her thoroughly. A puddle gathered about her knees in the bilge, sloshing fore and aft as the craft pitched, killing the natural buoyancy of the canoe so that she dove harder. Stella took a chance, ceased paddling, and bailed with a small can. She got a tossing that made her head swim while she lay in the trough. And when she tried to head up into it again, one comber bigger than its fellows reared up and slapped a barrel of water inboard. The next wave swamped her. Sunk to the clamps, Stella held fast to the topsides, crouching on her knees, immersed to the hips in water that struck a chill through her flesh. She had the wit to remember and act upon Jack Fyfe's coaching, namely, to sit tight and hang on. No sea that ever ran can sink a canoe. Wood is buoyant. So long as she could hold on, the submerged craft would keep her head and shoulders above water. But it was numbing cold. Fed by glacial streams, Roaring Lake is icy in hottest midsummer. What with paddling and bailing and the excitement of the struggle, Stella had wasted no time gazing about for other boats. She knew that if any one at the camp saw her, rescue would be speedily effected. Now, holding fast and sitting quiet, she looked eagerly about as the swamped canoe rose loggily on each wave. Almost immediately she was heartened by seeing distinctly some sort of craft plunging through the blow. She had not long to wait after that, for the approaching launch was a lean-lined speeder, powerfully engined, and she was being forced. Stella supposed it was one of the Abbey runabouts. Even with her teeth chattering and numbness fastening itself upon her, she shivered at the chances the man was taking. It was no sea for a speed boat to smash into at thirty miles an hour. She saw it shoot off the top of one wave and disappear in a white burst of spray, slash through the next and bury itself deep again, flinging a foamy cloud far to port and starboard. Stella cried futilely to the man to slow down. She could hang on a long time yet, but her voice carried no distance. After that she had not long to wait. In four minutes the runabout was within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a machine gun. And then the very thing she expected and dreaded came about. Every moment she expected to see him drive bows under and go down. Here and there at intervals uplifted a comber taller than its fellows, standing, just as it broke, like a green wall. Into one such hoary-headed sea the white boat now drove like a lance. Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade, saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch and smash the low windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the roaring exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she had taken. The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth. "Can you hang on a while longer?" he shouted. "Till I can get my boat bailed?" "I'm all right," she called back. She saw him heave up the engine hatch. For a minute or two he bailed rapidly. Then he spun the engine, without result. He straightened up at last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his coat. The launch lay heavily in the trough. The canoe, rising and clinging on the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet at a time, taking the run of the sea faster than the disabled motorboat. So now only a hundred-odd feet separated them, but they could come no nearer, for the canoe was abeam and slowly drifting past. Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his hand. Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged overboard in a beautiful, arching dive. A second later his head showed glistening above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand stroke. It seemed an age--although the actual time was brief enough--before he reached her. She saw then that there was method in his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the launch. He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, smiling broadly at her. "Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission," he said at last. "I'd have had you ashore by now. Hang on for a minute." He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow. Holding fast with one hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch. In that continuous roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they managed it, and presently she sat shivering in the cockpit, watching the man spill the water out of the Peterboro till it rode buoyantly again. Then he went to work at his engine methodically, wiping dry the ignition terminals, all the various connections where moisture could effect a short circuit. At the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple cylinders fired with a roar. He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering gear stood. "Well, Miss Ship-wrecked Mariner," said he lightly, "where do you wish to be landed?" "Over there, if you please." Stella pointed to where the red roof of the bungalow stood out against the green. "I'm Mrs. Fyfe." "Ah!" said he. An expression of veiled surprise flashed across his face. "Another potential romance strangled at birth. You know, I hoped you were some local maiden before whom I could pose as a heroic rescuer. Such is life. Odd, too. Linda Abbey--I'm the Monohan tail to the Abbey business kite, you see--impressed me as pilot for a spin this afternoon and backed out at the last moment. I think she smelled this blow. So I went out for a ride by myself. I was glowering at that new house through a glass when I spied you out in the thick of it." He had the clutch in now, and the launch was cleaving the seas, even at half speed throwing out wide wings of spray. Some of this the wind brought across the cockpit. "Come up into this seat," Monohan commanded. "I don't suppose you can get any wetter, but if you put your feet through this bulkhead door, the heat from the engine will warm you. By Jove, you're fairly shivering." "It's lucky for me you happened along," Stella remarked, when she was ensconced behind the bulkhead. "I was getting so cold. I don't know how much longer I could have stood it." "Thank the good glasses that picked you out. You were only a speck on the water, you know, when I sighted you first." He kept silent after that. All his faculties were centered on the seas ahead which rolled up before the sharp cutwater of the launch. He was making time and still trying to avoid boarding seas. When a big one lifted ahead, he slowed down. He kept one hand on the throttle control, whistling under his breath disconnected snatches of song. Stella studied his profile, clean-cut as a cameo and wholly pleasing. He was almost as big-bodied as Jack Fyfe, and full four inches taller. The wet shirt clinging close to his body outlined well-knit shoulders, ropy-muscled arms. He could easily have posed for a Viking, so strikingly blond was he, with fair, curly hair. She judged that he might be around thirty, yet his face was altogether boyish. Sitting there beside him, shivering in her wet clothes, she found herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about a man that focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed it or no. Why should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the mere physical nearness of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There was no debating that. And she wondered--wondered if a bolt of that lightning she had dreaded ever since her marriage was about to strike her now. She hoped not. All her emotions had lain fallow. If Jack Fyfe had no power to stir her,--and she told herself Jack had so failed, without asking herself why,--then some other man might easily accomplish that, to her unutterable grief. She had told herself many a time that no more terrible plight could overtake her than to love and be loved and sit with hands folded, foregoing it all. She shrank from so tragic an evolution. It meant only pain, the ache of unfulfilled, unattainable desires. If, she reflected cynically, this man beside her stood for such a motif in her life, he might better have left her out in the swamped canoe. While she sat there, drawn-faced with the cold, thinking rather amazedly these things which she told herself she had no right to think, the launch slipped into the quiet nook of Cougar Bay and slowed down to the float. Monohan helped her out, threw off the canoe's painter, and climbed back into the launch. "You're as wet as I am," Stella said. "Won't you come up to the house and get a change of clothes? I haven't even thanked you." "Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please remember not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy the next time--and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming sex. All smiles one minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay this time, thanks. A little wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the water long enough to get chilled, you know. I'll be home in half an hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs. Fyfe, and drink something hot to drive that chill away. Good-by." Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting grip. Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy vision of a greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of soul-affinity, of irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her, nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute. She had never undergone any such experience, and she puzzled over it now. A chance stranger, and his touch could make her pulse leap. It filled her with astonished dismay. Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack Junior cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the natural reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came home, she told him lightly of her rescue. He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, his eyes steady on her. "That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you remember not to drift offshore again?" "I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant experience." "Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on Roaring Lake again." "Do you know him?" she asked. "Yes," he replied briefly. For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its habitual impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer sort of intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly surprised. It wasn't quite in his usual manner. CHAPTER XV A RESURRECTION It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a discovery which profoundly affected the whole current of her thought. The long twilight was just beginning. She was curled on the living-room floor, playing with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie Benton sat by a window, smoking, conversing, as they frequently did, upon certain phases of the timber industry. A draft from an open window fluttered some sheet music down off the piano rack, and Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny, clawing hands. Some of the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One bit of music was a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it soared above her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without any premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began to run over the accompaniment. She could play passably. "That doesn't seem so very hard," she thought aloud. Benton turned at sound of her words. "Say, did you never get any part of your voice back, Stell?" he asked. "I never hear you try to sing." "No," she answered. "I tried and tried long after you left home, but it was always the same old story. I haven't sung a note in five years." "Linda fell down hard on that song last night," he went on. "There was a time when that wouldn't have been a starter for you, eh? Did you know Stella used to warble like a prima donna, Jack?" Fyfe shook his head. "Fact. The governor spent a pot of money cultivating her voice. It was some voice, too. She--" He broke off to listen. Stella was humming the words of the song, her fingers picking at the melody instead of the accompaniment. "Why, you can," Benton cried. "Can what?" She turned on the stool. "Sing, of course. You got that high trill that Linda had to screech through. You got it perfectly, without effort." "I didn't," she returned. "Why, I wasn't singing, just humming it over." "You let out a link or two on those high notes just the same, whether you knew you were doing it or not," her brother returned impatiently. "Go on. Turn yourself loose. Sing that song." "Oh, I couldn't," Stella said ruefully. "I haven't tried for so long. It's no use. My voice always cracks, and I want to cry." "Crack fiddlesticks!" Benton retorted. "I know what it used to be. Believe me, it sounded natural, even if you were just lilting. Here." He came over to the piano and playfully edged her off the stool. "I'm pretty rusty," he said. "But I can fake what I can't play of this. It's simple enough. You stand up there and sing." She only stood looking at him. "Go on," he commanded. "I believe you can sing anything. You have to show me, if you can't." Stella fingered the sheets reluctantly. Then she drew a deep breath and began. It was not a difficult selection, merely a bit from a current light opera, with a closing passage that ranged a trifle too high for the ordinary untrained voice to take with ease. Stella sang it effortlessly, the last high, trilling notes pouring out as sweet and clear as the carol of a lark. Benton struck the closing chord and looked up at her. Fyfe leaned forward in his chair. Jack Junior, among his pillows on the floor, waved his arms, kicking and gurgling. "You did pretty well on that," Charlie remarked complacently. "Now _sing_ something. Got any of your old pieces?" "I wonder if I could?" Stella murmured. "I'm almost afraid to try." She hurried away to some outlying part of the house, reappearing in a few minutes with a dog-eared bundle of sheets in her hand. From among these she selected three and set them on the rack. Benton whistled when he glanced over the music. "The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, look at the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from the 'Flying Dutchman.' Some stunt." "Marchand composed it for the express purpose of trying out voices," Stella said. "It _is_ a stunt." "You'll have to play your own accompaniment," Charlie grinned. "That's too much for me." "Oh, just so you give me a little support here and there," Stella told him. "I can't sing sitting on a piano stool." Benton made a face at the music and struck the keys. It seemed to Stella nothing short of a miracle. She had been mute so long. She had almost forgotten what a tragedy losing her voice had been. And to find it again, to hear it ring like a trumpet. It did! It was too big for the room. She felt herself caught up in a triumphant ecstasy as she sang. She found herself blinking as the last note died away. Her brother twisted about on the piano stool, fumbling for a cigarette. "And still they say they can't come back," he remarked at last. "Why, you're better than you ever were, Stella. You've got the old sweetness and flexibility that dad used to rave about. But your voice is bigger, somehow different. It gets under a man's skin." She picked up the baby from the floor, began to play with him. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to think, to gloat over and hug to herself this miracle of her restored voice. She was very quiet, very much absorbed in her own reflections until it was time--very shortly--to put Jack Junior in his bed. That was a function she made wholly her own. The nurse might greet his waking whimper in the morning and minister to his wants throughout the day, but Stella "tucked him in" his crib every night. And after the blue eyes were closed, she sat there, very still, thinking. In a detached way she was conscious of hearing Charlie leave. Later, when she was sitting beside her dressing table brushing her hair, Fyfe came in. He perched himself on the foot rail of the bed, looking silently at her. She had long grown used to that. It was a familiar trick of his. "How did it happen that you've never tried your voice lately?" he asked after a time. "I gave it up long ago," she said. "Didn't I ever tell you that I used to sing and lost my voice?" "No," he answered. "Charlie did just now. You rather took my breath away. It's wonderful. You'd be a sensation in opera." "I might have been," she corrected. "That was one of my little dreams. You don't know what a grief it was to me when I got over that throat trouble and found I couldn't sing. I used to try and try--and my voice would break every time. I lost all heart to try after a while. That was when I wanted to take up nursing, and they wouldn't let me. I haven't thought about singing for an age. I've crooned lullabies to Jacky without remembering that I once had volume enough to drown out an accompanist. Dad was awfully proud of my voice." "You've reason to be proud of it now," Fyfe said slowly. "It's a voice in ten thousand. What are going to do with it?" Stella drew the brush mechanically through her heavy hair. She had been asking herself that. What could she do? A long road and a hard one lay ahead of her or any other woman who essayed to make her voice the basis of a career. Over and above that she was not free to seek such a career. Fyfe himself knew that, and it irritated her that he should ask such a question. She swung about on him. "Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that my voice is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in the East or abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of such an undertaking? To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to your logs?" "So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little reflected glory as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," he replied slowly. "Well, I can't say that's a particularly pleasing prospect." "Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back impatiently. "It'll be an asset--like my looks--and--and--" She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary sob. Fyfe crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her. "Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool." "D--don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm sorry. I simply can't help it. You don't understand." "Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's the devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,--to feed her soul with illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look here." He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, facing him. There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together of his lips that frightened her a little. "Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you realize what sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You married me under more or less compulsion,--compulsion of circumstances,--and gradually you're beginning to get dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate things you maybe don't dream of now, if you keep on. Damn it, I didn't create the circumstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't any more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going to make your life full of misery." "I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions that--that--Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not complaining. I don't even know what gave me this black mood, just now. I suppose that queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. I feel--well, as if I were a different person, somehow; as if I had forfeited any right to have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. But it's there. I can't help my feeling--or my lack of it." Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially that last. We've been married some little time now, and if anything, we're farther apart in the essentials of mating than we were at the beginning. You've committed yourself to an undertaking, yet more and more you encourage yourself to wish for the moon. If you don't stop dreaming and try real living, don't you see a lot of trouble ahead for yourself? It's simple. You're slowly hardening yourself against me, beginning to resent my being a factor in your life. It's only a matter of time, if you keep on, until your emotions center about some other man." "Why do you talk like that?" she said bitterly. "Do you think I've got neither pride nor self-respect?" "Yes. Both a-plenty," he answered. "But you're a woman, with a rather complex nature even for your sex. If your heart and your head ever clash over anything like that, you'll be in perfect hell until one or the other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, and high-strung as thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides three meals a day and plenty of good clothes to complete your existence. If I can't make it complete, some other man will make you think he can. Why don't you try? Haven't I got any possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little halo of romance about me, for your own sake--if not for mine?" He drew her up close to him, stroking tenderly the glossy brown hair that flowed about her shoulders. "Try it, Stella," he whispered passionately. "Try wanting to like me, for a change. I can't make love by myself. Shake off that infernal apathy that's taking possession of you where I'm concerned. If you can't love me, for God's sake fight with me. Do _something_!" CHAPTER XVI THE CRISIS Looking back at that evening as the summer wore on, Stella perceived that it was the starting point of many things, no one of them definitely outstanding by itself but bulking large as a whole. Fyfe made his appeal, and it left her unmoved save in certain superficial aspects. She was sorry, but she was mostly sorry for herself. And she denied his premonition of disaster. If, she said to herself, they got no raptures out of life, at least they got along without friction. In her mind their marriage, no matter that it lacked what she no less than Fyfe deemed an essential to happiness, was a fixed state, final, irrevocable, not to be altered by any emotional vagaries. No man, she told herself, could make her forget her duty. If it should befall that her heart, lacking safe anchorage, went astray, that would be her personal cross--not Jack Fyfe's. _He_ should never know. One might feel deeply without being moved to act upon one's feelings. So she assured herself. She never dreamed that Jack Fyfe could possibly have foreseen in Walter Monohan a dangerous factor in their lives. A man is not supposed to have uncanny intuitions, even when his wife is a wonderfully attractive woman who does not care for him except in a friendly sort of way. Stella herself had ample warning. From the first time of meeting, the man's presence affected her strangely, made an appeal to her that no man had ever made. She felt it sitting beside him in the plunging launch that day when Roaring Lake reached its watery arms for her. There was seldom a time when they were together that she did not feel it. And she pitted her will against it, as something to be conquered and crushed. There was no denying the man's personal charm in the ordinary sense of the word. He was virile, handsome, cultured, just such a man as she could easily have centered her heart upon in times past,--just such a man as can set a woman's heart thrilling when he lays siege to her. If he had made an open bid for Stella's affection, she, entrenched behind all the accepted canons of her upbringing, would have recoiled from him, viewed him with wholly distrustful eyes. But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he became so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a continual informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and Abbey's. Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common knowledge on Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the Abbey-Monohan combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the lake that summer. There had grown up a genuine intimacy between Linda and Stella. There were always people at the Abbeys'; sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe bungalow. Stella's marvellous voice served to heighten her popularity. The net result of it all was that in the following three months source three days went by that she did not converse with Monohan. She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They stood out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. Where Fyfe was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, save for that whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes, Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face. He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man. What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never determine. She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He had the gift of quick, sympathetic perception,--but so too had Jack Fyfe, she reminded herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice could raise a flutter in her breast, make a faint flush glow in her cheeks, while Monohan could do that. He did not need to be actively attentive. It was only necessary for him to be near. It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when the first cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores flamed again with the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she had been playing with fire--and that fire burns. This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had steeled herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer folk, to take himself out of her life. She admitted that there would be a gap. But that had to be. No word other than friendly ones would ever pass between them. He would go away, and she would go on as before. That was all. She was scarcely aware how far they had traveled along that road whereon travelers converse by glance of eye, by subtle intuitions, eloquent silences. Monohan himself delivered the shock that awakened her to despairing clearness of vision. He had come to bring her a book, he and Linda Abbey and Charlie together,--a commonplace enough little courtesy. And it happened that this day Fyfe had taken his rifle and vanished into the woods immediately after luncheon. Between Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton matters had so far progressed that it was now the most natural thing for them to seek a corner or poke along the beach together, oblivious to all but themselves. This afternoon they chatted a while with Stella and then gradually detached themselves until Monohan, glancing through the window, pointed them out to his hostess. They were seated on a log at the edge of the lawn, a stone's throw from the house. "They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain sailing for them." There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that stabbed Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. Something rose chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against a slow welling of tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was betraying herself, Monohan was holding both her hands fast between his own, gripping them with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking in a passionate undertone. "Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like this?" he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved and been happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I felt it that day I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing on me ever since. I've struggled against it, and it's no use. It's something stronger than I am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me to see you chafing in your chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it have been different?" "You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You mustn't. It isn't right." "I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, when your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do you think I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. I know you're the kind of woman who goes through hell for her conceptions of right and wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, oh, the pity of it. Why should it have to be? Life could have held so much that is fine and true for you and me together. For you do care, don't you?" "What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What difference can it make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I mustn't listen. I mustn't." "But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look at me, Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do anything that might bring the least shadow on you. I know the pitiful hopelessness of it. You're fettered, and there's no apparent loophole to freedom. I know it's best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something precious and sorrowful. I never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't always equal to the task the spirit imposes." She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will that she possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone. But she faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face. "Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm neither little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's big and clean. I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it--if you can understand that. But that's neither here nor there. I know what I have to do. I married without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price. So you must never talk to me of love. You mustn't even see me, if it can be avoided. It's better that way. We can't make over our lives to suit ourselves--at least I can't. I must play the game according to the only rules I know. We daren't--we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling. With you--footloose, and all the world before you--it'll die out presently." "No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I know myself." He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the pain of it ran to her elbows. Then his fingers relaxed a little. "Oh, I know," he said haltingly. "I know it's got to be that way. I have to go my road and leave you to yours. Oh, the blank hopelessness of it, the useless misery of it. We're made for each other, and we have to grin and say good-by, go along our separate ways, trying to smile. What a devilish state of affairs! But I love you, dear, and no matter--I--ah--" His voice flattened out. His hands released hers, he straightened quickly. Stella turned her head. Jack Fyfe stood in the doorway. His face was fixed in its habitual mask. He was biting the end off a cigar. He struck a match and put it to the cigar end with steady fingers as he walked slowly across the big room. "I hear the kid peeping," he said to Stella quite casually, "and I noticed Martha outside as I came in. Better go see what's up with him." Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to obey, for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge of command. Her heart apparently ceased to beat. She tried to smile, but she knew that her face was tear-wet. She knew that Jack Fyfe had seen and understood. She had done no wrong, but a terrible apprehension of consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her own making might stalk grimly in that room. In this extremity she banked with implicit faith on the man she had married rather than the man she loved. For the moment she felt overwhelmingly glad that Jack Fyfe was iron--cool, unshakable. He would never give an inch, but he would never descend to any sordid scene. She could not visualize him the jealous, outraged husband, breathing the conventional anathema, but there were elements unreckonable in that room. She knew instinctively that Fyfe once aroused would be deadly in anger and she could not vouch for Monohan's temper under the strain of feeling. That was why she feared. So she lingered a second or two outside the door, quaking, but there arose only the sound of Fyfe's heavy body settling into a leather chair, and following that the low, even rumble of his voice. She could not distinguish words. The tone sounded ordinary, conversational. She prayed that his intent was to ignore the situation, that Monohan would meet him halfway in that effort. Afterward there would be a reckoning. But for herself she neither thought nor feared. It was a problem to be faced, that was all. And so, the breath of her coming in short, quick respirations, she went to her room. There was no wailing from the nursery. She had known that. Sitting beside a window, chin in hand, her lower lip compressed between her teeth, she saw Fyfe, after the lapse of ten minutes, leave by the front entrance, stopping to chat a minute with Linda and Charlie Benton, who were moving slowly toward the house. Stella rose to her feet and dabbed at her face with a powdered chamois. She couldn't let Monohan go like that; her heart cried out against it. Very likely they would never meet again. She flew down the hall to the living room. Monohan stood just within the front door, gazing irresolutely over his shoulder. He took a step or two to meet her. His clean-cut face was drawn into sullen lines, a deep flush mantled his cheek. "Listen," he said tensely. "I've been made to feel like--like--Well, I controlled myself. I knew it had to be that way. It was unfortunate. I think we could have been trusted to do the decent thing. You and I were bred to do that. I've got a little pride. I can't come here again. And I want to see you once more before I leave here for good. I'll be going away next week. That'll be the end of it--the bitter finish. Will you slip down to the first point south of Cougar Bay about three in the afternoon to-morrow? It'll be the last and only time. He'll have you for life; can't I talk to you for twenty minutes?" "No," she whispered forlornly. "I can't do that. I--oh, good-by--good-by." "Stella, Stella," she heard his vibrant whisper follow after. But she ran away through dining room and hall to the bedroom, there to fling herself face down, choking back the passionate protest that welled up within her. She lay there, her face buried in the pillow, until the sputtering exhaust of the Abbey cruiser growing fainter and more faint told her they were gone. She heard her husband walk through the house once after that. When dinner was served, he was not there. It was eleven o'clock by the time-piece on her mantel when she heard him come in, but he did not come to their room. He went quietly into the guest chamber across the hall. She waited through a leaden period. Then, moved by an impulse she did not attempt to define, a mixture of motives, pity for him, a craving for the outlet of words, a desire to set herself right before him, she slipped on a dressing robe and crossed the hall. The door swung open noiselessly. Fyfe sat slumped in a chair, hat pulled low on his forehead, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He did not even look up. His eyes stared straight ahead, absent, unseeingly fixed on nothing. He seemed to be unconscious of her presence or to ignore it,--she could not tell which. "Jack," she said. And when he made no response she said again, tremulously, that unyielding silence chilling her, "Jack." He stirred a little, but only to take off his hat and lay it on a table beside him. With one hand pushing back mechanically the straight, reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her and said briefly, in a tone barren of all emotion: "Well?" She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was much to be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on with a cloud like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated in the crucible of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a prolonged silence, seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he began to speak, cutting straight to the heart of his subject, after his fashion. "It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. "But now that you're face to face with something definite, what do you propose to do about it?" "Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's there. But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it didn't exist. There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. I'm sorry, Jack." "So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we took,--or I took, rather. I seem to have made a mistake or two, in my estimate of both you and myself. That is human enough, I suppose. You're making a bigger mistake than I did though, to let Monohan sweep you off your feet." There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It stung her. "He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. "Good Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? I've never forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect left yet, if I was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me in the beginning. I was honest with you then. I'm trying to be honest with you now." "I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a damnably unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw something of the sort when we were married. You were candid enough about your attitude. But I told myself like a conceited fool that I could make your life so full that in a little while I'd be the only possible figure on your horizon. I've failed. I've known for some time that I was going to fail. You're not the thin-blooded type of woman that is satisfied with pleasant surroundings and any sort of man. You're bound to run the gamut of all the emotions, sometime and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought in my conceit I could make myself the man, the one man who would mean everything to you." "Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't see how you can avoid paying the penalty for folly." "What do you mean?" she asked. "You haven't tried to play the game," he answered tensely. "For months you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been clanking your chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. It isn't a thing--marriage, I mean--that you hold lightly. That being the case, you would have been wise to try making the best of it, instead of making the worst of it. But you let yourself drift into a state of mind where you--well, you see the result. I saw it coming. I didn't need to happen in this afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling swirling about. And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty. If you let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you'll pay bigger in the end." "I can't help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings," she said wearily. "You think you love him," Fyfe made low reply. "As a matter of fact, you love what you think he is. I daresay that he has sworn his affection by all that's good and great. But if you were convinced that he didn't really care, that his flowery protestations had a double end in view, would you still love him?" "I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do love him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid. But--but I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want this to make us both miserable. I don't want it to generate an atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd only be fighting about a shadow. I never cheated at anything in my life. You can trust me still, can't you?" "Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation. "Then that's all there is to it," she replied, "unless--unless you're ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder along the best I can." He shook his head. "I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's unwise of me to say this,--it will probably antagonize you,--but I know Monohan better than you do. I'd go pretty far to keep you two apart--now--for your sake." "It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. "I can understand that feeling in you. It's so--so typically masculine." "No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll only live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with a man that I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my pocket and let you go. If you cared enough for him to break every tie, to face the embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were entitled to your freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But Monohan--hell, I don't want to talk about him. I trust you, Stella. I'm banking on your own good sense. And along with that good, natural common sense, you've got so many illusions. About life in general, and about men. They seem to have centered about this one particular man. I can't open your eyes or put you on the right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do is to sit back and wait." His voice trailed off huskily. Stella put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in spite of what you know?" "For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing in my life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm getting hopeless." "I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. I didn't love you to begin with--" "And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged that ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the real romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't found it yet. I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could convince you." "Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love you--that I was worn out and desperate and clutching at the life line you threw. In spite of that,--well, if I fight down this love, or fascination, or infatuation, or whatever it is,--I'm not sure myself, except that it affects me strongly,--can't we be friends again?" "Friends! Oh, hell!" Fyfe exploded. He came up out of his chair with a blaze in his eyes that startled her, caught her by the arm, and thrust her out the door. "Friends? You and I?" He sank his voice to a harsh whisper. "My God--friends! Go to bed. Good night." He pushed her into the hall, and the lock clicked between them. For one confused instant Stella stood poised, uncertain. Then she went into her bedroom and sat down, her keenest sensation one of sheer relief. Already in those brief hours emotion had well-nigh exhausted her. To be alone, to lie still and rest, to banish thought,--that was all she desired. She lay on her bed inert, numbed, all but her mind, and that traversed section by section in swift, consecutive progress all the amazing turns of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. There was neither method nor inquiry in this back-casting--merely a ceaseless, involuntary activity of the brain. A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went into the adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and took him to her own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her breast, she lay there fighting against that interminable, maddening buzzing in her brain. She prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers stroking the silky, baby hair. CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH One can only suffer so much. Poignant feeling brings its own anaesthetic. When Stella Fyfe fell into a troubled sleep that night, the storm of her emotions had beaten her sorely. Morning brought its physical reaction. She could see things clearly and calmly enough to perceive that her love for Monohan was fraught with factors that must be taken into account. All the world loves a lover, but her world did not love lovers who kicked over the conventional traces. She had made a niche for herself. There were ties she could not break lightly, and she was not thinking of herself alone when she considered that, but of her husband and Jack Junior, of Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton, of each and every individual whose life touched more or less directly upon her own. She had known always what a woman should do in such case, what she had been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, and take her medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had made that clear. But her heart cried out in rebellion against the necessity. To her, trying to think logically, the most grievous phase of the doing was the fact that nothing could ever be the same again. She could go on. Oh, yes. She could dam up the wellspring of her impulses, walk steadfast along the accustomed ways. But those ways would not be the old ones. There would always be the skeleton at the feast. She would know it was there, and Jack Fyfe would know, and she dreaded the fruits of that knowledge, the bitterness and smothered resentment it would breed. But it had to be. As she saw it, there was no choice. She came down to breakfast calmly enough. It was nothing that could be altered by heroics, by tears and wailings. Not that she was much given to either. She had not whined when her brother made things so hard for her that any refuge seemed alluring by comparison. Curiously enough, she did not blame her brother now; neither did she blame Jack Fyfe. She told herself that in first seeking the line of least resistance she had manifested weakness, that since her present problem was indirectly the outgrowth of that original weakness, she would be weak no more. So she tried to meet her husband as if nothing had happened, in which she succeeded outwardly very well indeed, since Fyfe himself chose to ignore any change in their mutual attitude. She busied herself about the house that forenoon, seeking deliberately a multitude of little tasks to occupy her hands and her mind. But when lunch was over, she was at the end of her resources. Jack Junior settled in his crib for a nap. Fyfe went away to that area back of the camp where arose the crash of falling trees and the labored puffing of donkey engines. She could hear faint and far the voices of the falling gangs that cried: "Tim-ber-r-r-r." She could see on the bank, a little beyond the bunkhouse and cook-shack, the big roader spooling up the cable that brought string after string of logs down to the lake. Rain or sun, happiness or sorrow, the work went on. She found it in her heart to envy the sturdy loggers. They could forget their troubles in the strain of action. Keyed as she was to that high pitch, that sense of their unremitting activity, the ravaging of the forest which produced the resources for which she had sold herself irritated her. She was very bitter when she thought that. She longed for some secluded place to sit and think, or try to stop thinking. And without fully realizing the direction she took, she walked down past the camp, crossed the skid-road, stepping lightly over main line and haul-back at the donkey engineer's warning, and went along the lake shore. A path wound through the belt of brush and hardwood that fringed the lake. Not until she had followed this up on the neck of a little promontory south of the bay, did she remember with a shock that she was approaching the place where Monohan had begged her to meet him. She looked at her watch. Two-thirty. She sought the shore line for sight of a boat, wondering if he would come in spite of her refusal. But to her great relief she saw no sign of him. Probably he had thought better of it, had seen now as she had seen then that no good and an earnest chance of evil might come of such a clandestine meeting, had taken her stand as final. She was glad, because she did not want to go back to the house. She did not want to make the effort of wandering away in the other direction to find that restful peace of woods and water. She moved up a little on the point until she found a mossy boulder and sat down on that, resting her chin in her palms, looking out over the placid surface of the lake with somber eyes. And so Monohan surprised her. The knoll lay thick-carpeted with moss. He was within a few steps of her when a twig cracking underfoot apprised her of some one's approach. She rose, with an impulse to fly, to escape a meeting she had not desired. And as she rose, the breath stopped in her throat. Twenty feet behind Monohan came Jack Fyfe with his hunter's stride, soundlessly over the moss, a rifle drooping in the crook of his arm. A sunbeam striking obliquely between two firs showed her his face plainly, the faint curl of his upper lip. Something in her look arrested Monohan. He glanced around, twisted about, froze in his tracks, his back to her. Fyfe came up. Of the three he was the coolest, the most rigorously self-possessed. He glanced from Monohan to his wife, back to Monohan. After that his blue eyes never left the other man's face. "What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at last. "But then I might have known I was wasting my breath on you!" "Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do about it? This isn't the Stone Age." Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. "Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. "No, it takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as you." A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward Fyfe, his hands clenched. "You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted hoarsely. "No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic clink against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort of a yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. That's why it stings you to be told so." Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was crimson. "By God, I'll teach you something," he snarled. He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for Fyfe's face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the balls of his feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped Monohan across the mouth with the open palm of his hand. "Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It." Monohan pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by inches. Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again, launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance. Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him sprawling on the moss. Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had visualized it when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of her husband that she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to understand. She could have understood him beating Monohan senseless, if he could. A murderous fury of jealousy would not have surprised her. This did. He had not struck a blow, did not attempt to strike. She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with Monohan, making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of height and reach. Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond Monohan's vengeful blows, slipping under those driving fists to slap his adversary, to trip him, mocking him with the futility of his effort. She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was not a fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other, which had little or nothing to do with her. She foresaw, watching the odd combat with a feeling akin to fascination, that it was a losing game for Monohan. Fyfe was his master at every move. Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but that humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his foot that plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold grimace that reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of his features. Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered at his purpose, how it would end. The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body. Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohan was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landed near his heart, and while he staggered from that, clamped one thick arm about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bent backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically choked him; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and his eyes bulged glassily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from his gaping mouth. "Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him." Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirred him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. Stella could not tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling a dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regain his breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice. "You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you that you can't." With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stood silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out a slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set off down the lake. "Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone. "The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose." "What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly. He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now that his face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew harder together as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for the storm that broke. She did not comprehend the tempest that raged within him until he had her by the shoulders, his fingers crushing into her soft flesh like the jaws of a trap, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat, till the heavy coils of hair cascaded over her shoulders, and for a second fear tugged at her heart. For she thought he meant to kill her. When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms that sent her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her being, though not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot protest against his brute strength, against his passionate outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were against her, she knew. Even so, she revolted against his cave-man roughness. She was amazed to find herself longing for the power to strike him. She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring at him in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she looked. He drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his rifle. When he faced about with that in his hand, the old mask of immobility was in place. He waited while Stella gathered up her scattered hairpins and made shift to coil her hair into a semblance of Order. Then he said gently: "I won't break out like that again." "Once is enough." "More than enough--for me," he answered. She disdained reply. Striking off along the path that ran to the camp, she walked rapidly, choking a rising flood of desperate thought. With growing coolness paradoxically there burned hotter the flame of an elemental wrath. What right had he to lay hands on her? Her shoulders ached, her flesh was bruised from the terrible grip of his fingers. The very sound of his footsteps behind her was maddening. To be suspected and watched, to be continually the target of jealous fury! No, a thousand times, no. She wheeled on him at last. "I can't stand this," she cried. "It's beyond endurance. We're like flint and steel to each other now. If to-day's a sample of what we may expect, it's better to make a clean sweep of everything. I've got to get away from here and from you--from everybody." Fyfe motioned her to a near-by log. "Sit down," said he. "We may as well have it out here." For a few seconds he busied himself with a cigar, removing the band with utmost deliberation, biting the end off, applying the match, his brows puckered slightly. "It's very unwise of you to meet Monohan like that," he uttered finally. "Oh, I see," she flashed. "Do you suggest that I met him purposely--by appointment? Even if I did--" "That's for you to say, Stella," he interrupted gravely. "I told you last night that I trusted you absolutely. I do, so far as really vital things are concerned, but I don't always trust your judgment. I merely know that Monohan sneaked along shore, hid his boat, and stole through the timber to where you were sitting. I happened to see him, and I followed him to see what he was up to, why he should take such measures to keep under cover." "The explanation is simple," she answered stiffly. "You can believe it or not, as you choose. My being there was purely unintentional. If I had seen him before he was close, I should certainly not have been there. I have been at odds with myself all day, and I went for a walk, to find a quiet place where I could sit and think." "It doesn't matter now," he said. "Only you'd better try to avoid things like that in the future. Would you mind telling me just exactly what you meant a minute ago? Just what you propose to do?" He asked her that as one might make any commonplace inquiry, but his quietness did not deceive Stella. "What I said," she began desperately. "Wasn't it plain enough? It seems to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if we try to live it together. I--I'm sorry, but you know how I feel. It may be unwise, but these things aren't dictated by reason. You know that. If our emotions were guided by reason and expediency, we'd be altogether different. Last night I was willing to go on and make the best of things. To-day,--especially after this,--it looks impossible. You'll look at me, and guess what I'm thinking, and hate me. And I'll grow to hate you, because you'll be little better than a jailer. Oh, don't you see that the way we'll feel will make us utterly miserable? Why should we stick together when no good can come of it? You've been good to me. I've appreciated that and liked you for it. I'd like to be friends. But I--I'd hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe. I could gladly have killed you when you were jerking me about back yonder." "I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive being than I've supposed?" Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes--eyes that were bright with unshed tears. "And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I didn't want to horrify you with anything like brutality," he went on thoughtfully. "You think I grinned and made a monkey of _him_ because it pleased me to do that? Why, I could have--and ached to--break him into little bits, to smash him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in looking at him again. And I didn't, simply and solely because I didn't want to let you have even a glimpse of what I'm capable of when I get started. I wonder if I made a mistake? It was merely the reaction from letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so. I wonder--well, never mind. Go on." "I think it's better that I should go away," Stella said. "I want you to agree that I should; then there will be no talk or anything disagreeable from outside sources. I'm strong, I can get on. It'll be a relief to have to work. I won't have to be the kitchen drudge Charlie made of me. I've got my voice. I'm quite sure I can capitalize that. But I've got to go. Anything's better than this; anything that's clean and decent. I'd despise myself if I stayed on as your wife, feeling as I do. It was a mistake in the beginning, our marriage." "Nevertheless," Fyfe said slowly, "I'm afraid it's a mistake you'll have to abide by--for a time. All that you say may be true, although I don't admit it myself. Offhand, I'd say you were simply trying to welch on a fair bargain. I'm not going to let you do it blindly, all wrought up to a pitch where you can scarcely think coherently. If you are fully determined to break away from me, you owe it to us both to be sure of what you're doing before you act. I'm going to talk plain. You can believe it and disdain it if you please. If you were leaving me for a man, a real man, I think I could bring myself to make it easy for you and wish you luck. But you're not. He's--" "Can't we leave him out of it?" she demanded. "I want to get away from you both. Can you understand that? It doesn't help you any to pick _him_ to pieces." "No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of idealization you've wrapped around him," Fyfe observed patiently. "It's not a job I have much stomach for however, even if you were willing to let me try. But to come back. You've got to stick it out with me, Stella. You'll hate me for the constraint, I suppose. But until--until things shape up differently--you'll understand what I'm talking about by and by, I think--you've got to abide by the bargain you made with me. I couldn't force you to stay, I know. But there's one hold you can't break--not if I know you at all." "What is that?" she asked icily. "The kid's," he murmured. Stella buried her face in her hands for a minute. "I'd forgotten--I'd forgotten," she whispered. "You understand, don't you?" he said hesitatingly. "If you leave--I keep our boy." "Oh, you're devilish--to use a club like that," she cried. "You know I wouldn't part from my baby--the only thing I've got that's worth having." "He's worth something to me too," Fyfe muttered. "A lot more than you think, maybe. I'm not trying to club you. There's nothing in it for me. But for him; well, he needs you. It isn't his fault he's here, or that you're unhappy. I've got to protect him, see that he gets a fair shake. I can't see anything to it but for you to go on being Mrs. Jack Fyfe until such time as you get back to a normal poise. Then it will be time enough to try and work out some arrangement that won't be too much of a hardship on him. It's that--or a clean break in which you go your own way, and I try to mother him to the best of my ability. You'll understand sometime why I'm showing my teeth this way." "You have everything on your side," she admitted dully, after a long interval of silence. "I'm a fool. I admit it. Have things your way. But it won't work, Jack. This flare-up between us will only smoulder. I think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan. It isn't that I love him so much as that I don't love you at all. I can live without him--which I mean to do in any case--far easier than I can live with you. It won't work." "Don't worry," he replied. "You won't be annoyed by me in person. I'll have my hands full elsewhere." They rose and walked on to the house. On the porch Jack Junior was being wheeled back and forth in his carriage. He lifted chubby arms to his mother as she came up the steps. Stella carried him inside, hugging the sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast. She did not want to cry, but she could not help it. It was as if she had been threatened with irrevocable loss of that precious bit of her own flesh and blood. She hugged him to her, whispering mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly tender. Fyfe stood aside for a minute. Then he came up behind her and stood resting one hand on the back of her chair. "Stella." "Yes." "I got word from my sister and her husband in this morning's mail. They will very likely be here next week for a three days' stay. Brace up. Let's try and keep our skeleton from rattling while they're here. Will you?" "All right, Jack. I'll try." He patted her tousled hair lightly and left the room. Stella looked after him with a surge of mixed feeling. She told herself she hated him and his dominant will that always beat her own down; she hated him for his amazing strength and for his unvarying sureness of himself. And in the same breath she found herself wondering if,--with their status reversed,--Walter Monohan would be as patient, as gentle, as self-controlled with a wife who openly acknowledged her affection for another man. And still her heart cried out for Monohan. She flared hot against the disparaging note, the unconcealed contempt Fyfe seemed to have for him. Yet in spite of her eager defence of him, there was something ugly about that clash with Fyfe in the edge of the woods, something that jarred. It wasn't spontaneous. She could not understand that tigerish onslaught of Monohan's. It was more the action she would have expected from her husband. It puzzled her, grieved her, added a little to the sorrowful weight that settled upon her. They were turbulent spirits both. The matter might not end there. In the next ten days three separate incidents, each isolated and relatively unimportant, gave Stella food for much puzzled thought. The first was a remark of Fyfe's sister in the first hours of their acquaintance. Mrs. Henry Alden could never have denied blood kinship with Jack Fyfe. She had the same wide, good-humored mouth, the blue eyes that always seemed to be on the verge of twinkling, and the same fair, freckled skin. Her characteristics of speech resembled his. She was direct, bluntly so, and she was not much given to small talk. Fyfe and Stella met the Aldens at Roaring Springs with the _Waterbug_. Alden proved a genial sort of man past forty, a big, loose-jointed individual whose outward appearance gave no indication of what he was professionally,--a civil engineer with a reputation that promised to spread beyond his native States. "You don't look much different, Jack," his sister observed critically, as the _Waterbug_ backed away from the wharf in a fine drizzle of rain. "Except that as you grow older, you more and more resemble the pater. Has matrimony toned him down, my dear?" she turned to Stella. "The last time I saw him he had a black eye!" Fyfe did not give her a chance to answer. "Be a little more diplomatic, Dolly," he smiled. "Mrs. Jack doesn't realize what a rowdy I used to be. I've reformed." "Ah," Mrs. Alden chuckled, "I have a vision of you growing meek and mild." They talked desultorily as the launch thrashed along. Alden's profession took him to all corners of the earth. That was why the winter of Fyfe's honeymoon had not made them acquainted. Alden and his wife were then in South America. This visit was to fill in the time before the departure of a trans-Pacific liner which would land the Aldens at Manila. Presently the Abbey-Monohan camp and bungalow lay abeam. Stella told Mrs. Alden something of the place. "That reminds me," Mrs. Alden turned to her brother. "I was quite sure I saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting for the hotel car in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out here. Is he this Monohan?" Fyfe nodded. "How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same region. Do you still maintain the ancient feud?" Fyfe shot her a queer look. "We've grown up, Dolly," he said drily. Then: "Do you expect to get back to God's country short of a year, Alden?" That was all. Neither of them reverted to the subject again. But Stella pondered. An ancient feud? She had not known of that. Neither man had ever dropped a hint. For the second incident, Paul Abbey dropped in to dinner a few days later and divulged a bit of news. "There's been a shake-up in our combination," he remarked casually to Fyfe. "Monohan and dad have split over a question of business policy. Walter's taking over all our interests on Roaring Lake. He appears to be going to peel off his coat and become personally active in the logging industry. Funny streak for Monohan to take, isn't it? He never seemed to care a hoot about the working end of the business, so long as it produced dividends." Lastly, Charlie Benton came over to eat a farewell dinner with the Aldens the night before they left. He followed Stella into the nursery when she went to tuck Jack Junior in his crib. "Say, Stella" he began, "I have just had a letter from old man Lander; you remember he was dad's legal factotum and executor." "Of course," she returned. "Well, do you recall--you were there when the estate was wound up, and I was not--any mention of some worthless oil stock? Some California wildcat stuff the governor got bit on? It was found among his effects." "I seem to recall something of the sort," she answered. "But I don't remember positively. What about it?" "Lander writes me that there is a prospect of it being salable. The company is reviving. And he finds himself without legal authority to do business, although the stock certificates are still in his hands. He suggests that we give him a power of attorney to sell this stuff. He's an awfully conservative old chap, so there must be a reasonable prospect of some cash, or he wouldn't bother. My hunch is to give him a power of attorney and let him use his own judgment." "How much is it worth?" she asked. "The par value is forty thousand dollars," Benton grinned. "But the governor bought it at ten cents on the dollar. If we get what he paid, we'll be lucky. That'll be two thousand apiece. I brought you a blank form. I'm going down with you on the _Bug_ to-morow to send mine. I'd advise you to have yours signed up and witnessed before a notary at Hopyard and send it too." "Of course I will," she said. "It isn't much," Benton mused, leaning on the foot of the crib, watching her smooth the covers over little Jack. "But it won't come amiss--to me, at least. I'm going to be married in the spring." Stella looked up. "You are?" she murmured. "To Linda Abbey?" He nodded. A slight flush crept over his tanned face at the steady look she bent on him. "Hang it, what are you thinking?" he broke out. "I know you've rather looked down on me because I acted like a bounder that winter. But I really took a tumble to myself. You set me thinking when you made that sudden break with Jack. I felt rather guilty about that--until I saw how it turned out. I know I'm not half good enough for Linda. But so long as she thinks I am and I try to live up to that, why we've as good a chance to be happy as anybody. We all make breaks, us fellows that go at everything roughshod. Still, when we pull up and take a new tack, you shouldn't hold grudges. If we could go back to that fall and winter, I'd do things a lot differently." "If you're both really and truly in love," Stella said quietly, "that's about the only thing that matters. I hope you'll be happy. But you'll have to be a lot different with Linda Abbey than you were with me." "Ah, Stella, don't harp on that," he said shame-facedly. "I was rotten, it's true. But we're all human. I couldn't see anything then only what I wanted myself. I was like a bull in a china shop. It's different now. I'm on my feet financially, and I've had time to draw my breath and take a squint at myself from a different angle. I did you a good turn, anyway, even if I was the cause of you taking a leap before you looked. You landed right." Stella mustered a smile that was purely facial. It maddened her to hear his complacent justification of himself. And the most maddening part of it was her knowledge that Benton was right, that in many essential things he had done her a good turn, which her own erratic inclinations bade fair to wholly nullify. "I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world," she said gently. "And I don't bear a grudge, believe me, Charlie. Now, run along. We'll keep baby awake, talking." "All right." He turned to go and came back again. "What I really came in to say, I've hardly got nerve enough for." He sank his voice to a murmur. "Don't fly off at me, Stell. But--you haven't got a trifle interested in Monohan, have you? I mean, you haven't let him think you are?" Stella's hands tightened on the crib rail. For an instant her heart stood still. A wholly unreasoning blaze of anger seized her. But she controlled that. Pride forbade her betraying herself. "What a perfectly ridiculous question," she managed to reply. He looked at her keenly. "Because, if you have--well, you might be perfectly innocent in the matter and still get in bad," he continued evenly. "I'd like to put a bug in your ear." She bent over Jack Junior, striving to inject an amused note into her reply. "Don't be so absurd, Charlie." "Oh, well, I suppose it is. Only, darn it, I've seen him look at you in a way--Pouf! I was going to tell you something. Maybe Jack has--only he's such a close-mouthed beggar. I'm not very anxious to peddle things." Benton turned again. "I guess you don't need any coaching from me, anyhow." He walked out. Stella stared after him, her eyes blazing, hands clenched into hard-knuckled little fists. She could have struck him. And still she wondered over and over again, burning with a consuming fire to know what that "something" was which he had to tell. All the slumbering devils of a stifled passion awoke to rend her, to make her rage against the coil in which she was involved. She despised herself for the weakness of unwise loving, even while she ached to sweep away the barriers that stood between her and love. Mingled with that there whispered an intuition of disaster to come, of destiny shaping to peculiar ends. In Monohan's establishing himself on Roaring Lake she sensed something more than an industrial shift. In his continued presence there she saw incalculable sources of trouble. She stood leaning over the bed rail, staring wistfully at her boy for a few minutes. When she faced the mirror in her room, she was startled at the look in her eyes, the nervous twitch of her lips. There was a physical ache in her breast. "You're a fool, a fool," she whispered to her image. "Where's your will, Stella Fyfe? Borrow a little of your husband's backbone. Presently--presently it won't matter." One can club a too assertive ego into insensibility. A man may smile and smile and be a villain still, as the old saying has it, and so may a woman smile and smile when her heart is tortured, when every nerve in her is strained to the snapping point. Stella went back to the living room and sang for them until it was time to go to bed. The Aldens went first, then Charlie. Stella left her door ajar. An hour afterward, when Fyfe came down the hall, she rose. It had been her purpose to call him in, to ask him to explain that which her brother had hinted he could explain, what prior antagonism lay between him and Monohan, what that "something" about Monohan was which differentiated him from other men where she was concerned. Instead she shut the door, slid the bolt home, and huddled in a chair with her face in her hands. She could not discuss Monohan with him, with any one. Why should she ask? she told herself. It was a closed book, a balanced account. One does not revive dead issues. CHAPTER XVIII THE OPENING GUN The month of November slid day by day into the limbo of the past. The rains washed the land unceasingly. Gray veilings of mist and cloud draped the mountain slopes. As drab a shade colored Stella Fyfe's daily outlook. She was alone a great deal. Even when they were together, she and her husband, words did not come easily between them. He was away a great deal, seeking, she knew, the old panacea of work, hard, unremitting work, to abate the ills of his spirit. She envied him that outlet. Work for her there was none. The two Chinamen and Martha the nurse left her no tasks. She could not read, for all their great store of books and magazines; the printed page would lie idle in her lap, and her gaze would wander off into vacancy, into that thought-world where her spirit wandered in distress. The Abbeys were long gone; her brother hard at his logging. There were no neighbors and no news. The savor was gone out of everything. The only bright spot in her days was Jack Junior, now toddling precociously on his sturdy legs, a dozen steps at a time, crowing victoriously when he negotiated the passage from chair to chair. From the broad east windows of their house she saw all the traffic that came and went on the upper reaches of Roaring Lake, Siwashes in dugouts and fishing boats, hunters, prospectors. But more than any other she saw the craft of her husband and Monohan, the powerful, black-hulled _Panther_, the smaller, daintier _Waterbug_. There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, that she knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, inching its downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast up-lake without a tow. Monohan had abandoned work on the old Abbey-Monohan logging-grounds. The camps and the bungalow lay deserted, given over to a solitary watchman. The lake folk had chattered at this proceeding, and the chatter had come to Stella's ears. He had put in two camps at the lake head, so she heard indirectly: one on the lake shore, one on the Tyee River, a little above the mouth. He had sixty men in each camp, and he was getting the name of a driver. Three miles above his Tyee camp, she knew, lay the camp her husband had put in during the early summer to cut a heavy limit of cedar. Fyfe had only a small crew there. She wondered a little why he spent so much time there, when he had seventy-odd men working near home. But of course he had an able lieutenant in Lefty Howe. And she could guess why Jack Fyfe kept away. She was sorry for him--and for herself. But being sorry--a mere semi-neutral state of mind--did not help matters, she told herself gloomily. Lefty Howe's wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional visits. Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a Siwash whom he had engaged to catch and smoke a winter's supply of salmon for the camps. Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella bundled Jack Junior into warm clothing and went with them for the ride. Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass and leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. Behind these again the beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,--a slashing different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his donkey from the water. It was not more than two miles from their house. "What new camp is that?" she asked Howe. "Monohan's," he answered casually. "I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" she said. Howe shook his head. "Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's got a freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles straight back from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the ham in a sandwich. Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin piece uh ham. About the poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno why the Sam Hill he's cuttin' it. But then he's doin' a lot uh things no practical logger would do." Stella laid down the glasses. It was nothing to her, she told herself. She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked him, and then only to exchange the barest civilities--and to feel her heart flutter at the message his eyes telegraphed. When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and Charlie Benton with him. She crossed the heavy rugs on the living room floor noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior asleep in her arms. And so in passing the door of Fyfe's den, she heard her brother say: "But, good Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to try such fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he brings himself within the law first crack; and the most he could do would be to annoy you." "You underestimate Monohan," Fyfe returned. "He'll play safe, personally, so far as the law goes. He's foxy. I advise you to sell if the offer comes again. If you make any more breaks at him, he'll figure some way to get you. It isn't your fight, you know. You unfortunately happen to be in the road." "Damned if I do," Benton swore. "I'm all in the clear. There's no way he can get me, and I'll tell him what I think of him again if he gives me half a chance. I never liked him, anyhow. Why should I sell when I'm just getting in real good shape to take that timber out myself? Why, I can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years on that block of timber. Besides, without being a sentimental sort of beggar, I don't lose sight of the fact that you helped pull me out of a hole when I sure needed a pull. And I don't like his high-handed style. No, if it comes to a showdown, I'm with you, Jack, as far as I can go. What the hell _can_ he do?" "Nothing--that I can see." Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. "But he'll try. He has dollars to our cents. He could throw everything he's got on Roaring Lake into the discard and still have forty thousand a year fixed income. Sabe? Money does more than talk in this country. I think I'll pull that camp off the Tyee." "Well, maybe," Benton said. "I'm not sure--" Stella passed on. She wanted to hear, but it went against her grain to eavesdrop. Her pause had been purely involuntary. When she became conscious that she was eagerly drinking in each word, she hurried by. Her mind was one urgent question mark while she laid the sleeping youngster in his bed and removed her heavy clothes. What sort of hostilities did Monohan threaten? Had he let a hopeless love turn to the acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed her? Stella could scarcely credit that. It was too much at variance with her idealistic conception of the man. He would never have recourse to such littleness. Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe's voice when he said to Benton: "You underestimate Monohan. He'll play safe ... he's foxy." That stung her to the quick. That was not said for her benefit; it was Fyfe's profound conviction. Based on what? He did not form judgments on momentary impulse. She recalled that only in the most indirect way had he ever passed criticism on Monohan, and then it lay mostly in a tone, suggested more than spoken. Yet he knew Monohan, had known him for years. They had clashed long before she was a factor in their lives. When she went into the big room, Benton and Fyfe were gone outdoors. She glanced into Fyfe's den. It was empty, but a big blue-print unrolled on the table where the two had been seated caught her eye. She bent over it, drawn by the lettered squares along the wavy shore line and the marked waters of creeks she knew. She had never before possessed a comprehensive idea of the various timber holdings along the west shore of Roaring Lake, since it had not been a matter of particular interest to her. She was not sure why it now became a matter of interest to her, unless it was an impression that over these squares and oblongs which stood for thousands upon thousands of merchantable logs there was already shaping a struggle, a clash of iron wills and determined purposes directly involving, perhaps arising because of her. She studied the blue-print closely. Its five feet of length embraced all the west shore of the lake, from the outflowing of Roaring River to the incoming Tyee at the head. Each camp was lettered in with pencil. But her attention focussed chiefly on the timber limits ranging north and south from their home, and she noted two details: that while the limits marked A-M Co. were impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the squares marked J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid block about Cougar Bay,--save for that long tongue of a limit where she had that day noted the new camp. That thrust like the haft of a spear into the heart of Fyfe's timberland. There was the Abbey-Monohan cottage, the three limits her brother controlled lying up against Fyfe's southern boundary. Up around the mouth of the Tyee spread the vast checkerboard of Abbey-Monohan limits, and beyond that, on the eastern bank of the river, a single block,--Fyfe's cedar limit,--the camp he thought he would close down. Why? Immediately the query shaped in her mind. Monohan was concentrating his men and machinery at the lake head. Fyfe proposed to shut down a camp but well-established; established because cedar was climbing in price, an empty market clamoring for cedar logs. Why? Was there aught of significance in that new camp of Monohan's so near by; that sudden activity on ground that bisected her husband's property? A freak limit of timber so poor that Lefty Howe said it could only be logged at a loss. She sighed and went out to give dinner orders to Sam Foo. If she could only go to her husband and talk as they had been able to talk things over at first. But there had grown up between them a deadly restraint. She supposed that was inevitable. Both chafed under conditions they could not change or would not for stubbornness and pride. It made a deep impression on her, all these successive, disassociated finger posts, pointing one and all to things under the surface, to motives and potentialities she had not glimpsed before and could only guess at now. Fyfe and Benton came to dinner more or less preoccupied, an odd mood for Charlie Benton. Afterwards they went into session behind the closed door of Fyfe's den. An hour or so later Benton went home. While she listened to the soft _chuff-a-chuff-a-chuff_ of the _Chickamin_ dying away in the distance, Fyfe came in and slumped down in a chair before the fire where a big fir stick crackled. He sat there silent, a half-smoked cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth, the lines of his square jaw in profile, determined, rigid. Stella eyed him covertly. There were times, in those moods of concentration, when sheer brute power seemed his most salient characteristic. Each bulging curve of his thick upper arm, his neck rising like a pillar from massive shoulders, indicated his power. Yet so well-proportioned was he that the size and strength of him was masked by the symmetry of his body, just as the deliberate immobility of his face screened the play of his feelings. Often Stella found herself staring at him, fruitlessly wondering what manner of thought and feeling that repression overlaid. Sometimes a tricksy, half-provoked desire to break through the barricade of his stoicism tempted her. She told herself that she ought to be thankful for his aloofness, his acquiescence in things as they stood. Yet there were times when she would almost have welcomed an outburst, a storm, anything rather than that deadly chill, enduring day after day. He seldom spoke to her now except of most matter-of-fact things. He played his part like a gentleman before others, but alone with her he withdrew into his shell. Stella was sitting back in the shadow, still studying him, measuring him in spite of herself by the Monohan yardstick. There wasn't much basis for comparison. It wasn't a question of comparison; the two men stood apart, distinctive, in every attribute. The qualities in Fyfe that she understood and appreciated, she beheld glorified in Monohan. Yet it was not, after all, a question of qualities. It was something more subtle, something of the heart which defied logical analysis. Fyfe had never been able to set her pulse dancing. She had never craved physical nearness to him, so that she ached with the poignancy of that craving. She had been passively contented with him, that was all. And Monohan had swept across her horizon like a flame. Why couldn't Jack Fyfe have inspired in her that headlong sort of passion? She smiled hopelessly. The tears were very close to her eyes. She loved Monohan; Monohan loved her. Fyfe loved her in his deliberate, repressed fashion and possessed her, according to the matrimonial design. And although now his possession was a hollow mockery, he would never give her up--not to Walter Monohan. She had that fatalistic conviction. How would it end in the long run? She leaned forward to speak. Words quivered on her lips. But as she struggled to shape them to utterance, the blast of a boat whistle came screaming up from the water, near and shrill and imperative. Fyfe came out of his chair like a shot. He landed poised on his feet, lips drawn apart, hands clenched. He held that pose for an instant, then relaxed, his breath coming with a quick sigh. Stella stared at him. Nerves! She knew the symptoms too well. Nerves at terrible tension in that big, splendid body. A slight quiver seemed to run over him. Then he was erect and calmly himself again, standing in a listening attitude. "That's the _Panther_?" he said. "Pulling in to the _Waterbug's_ landing. Did I startle you when I bounced up like a cougar, Stella?" he asked, with a wry smile. "I guess I was half asleep. That whistle jolted me." Stella glanced out the shaded window. "Some one's coming up from the float with a lantern," she said. "Is there--is there likely to be anything wrong, Jack?" "Anything wrong?" He shot a quick glance at her. Then casually: "Not that I know of." The bobbing lantern came up the path through the lawn. Footsteps crunched on the gravel. "I'll go see what he wants," Fyfe remarked, "Calked boots won't be good for the porch floor." She followed him. "Stay in. It's cold." He stopped in the doorway. "No. I'm coming," she persisted. They met the lantern bearer at the foot of the steps. "Well, Thorsen?" Fyfe shot at him. There was an unusual note of sharpness in his voice, an irritated expectation. Stella saw that it was the skipper of the _Panther_, a big and burly Dane. He raised the lantern a little. The dim light on his face showed it bruised and swollen. Fyfe grunted. "Our boom is hung up," he said plaintively. "They've blocked the river. I got licked for arguin' the point." "How's it blocked?" Fyfe asked. "Two swifters uh logs strung across the channel. They're drivin' piles in front. An' three donkeys buntin' logs in behind." "Swift work. There wasn't a sign of a move when I left this morning," Fyfe commented drily. "Well, take the _Panther_ around to the inner landing. I'll be there." "What's struck that feller Monohan?" the Dane sputtered angrily. "Has he got any license to close the Tyee? He says he has--an' backs his argument strong, believe me. Maybe you can handle him. I couldn't. Next time I'll have a cant-hook handy. By jingo, you gimme my pick uh Lefty's crew, Jack, an' I'll bring that cedar out." "Take the _Panther_ 'round," Fyfe replied. "We'll see." Thorsen turned back down the slope. In a minute the thrum of the boat's exhaust arose as she got under way. "Come on in. You'll get cold standing here," Fyfe said to Stella. She followed him back into the living room. He sat on the arm of a big leather chair, rolling the dead cigar thoughtfully between his lips, little creases gathering between his eyes. "I'm going up the lake," he said at last, getting up abruptly. "What's the matter, Jack?" she asked. "Why, has trouble started up there?" "Part of the logging game," he answered indifferently. "Don't amount to much." "But Thorsen has been fighting. His face was terrible. And I've heard you say he was one of the most peaceable men alive. Is it--is Monohan--" "We won't discuss Monohan," Fyfe said curtly. "Anyway, there's no danger of _him_ getting hurt." He went into his den and came out with hat and coat on. At the door he paused a moment. "Don't worry," he said kindly. "Nothing's going to happen." But she stood looking out the window after he left, uneasy with a prescience of trouble. She watched with a feverish interest the stir that presently arose about the bunkhouses. That summer a wide space had been cleared between bungalow and camp. She could see moving lanterns, and even now and then hear the voices of men calling to each other. Once the _Panther's_ dazzling eye of a searchlight swung across the landing, and its beam picked out a file of men carrying their blankets toward the boat. Shortly after that the tender rounded the point. Close behind her went the _Waterbug_, and both boats swarmed with men. Stella looked and listened until there was but a faint thrum far up the lake. Then she went to bed, but not to sleep. What ugly passions were loosed at the lake head she did not know. But on the face of it she could not avoid wondering if Monohan had deliberately set out to cross and harass Jack Fyfe. Because of her? That was the question which had hovered on her lips that evening, one she had not brought herself to ask. Because of her, or because of some enmity that far preceded her? She had thought him big enough to do as she had done, as Fyfe was tacitly doing,--make the best of a grievous matter. But if he had allowed his passions to dictate reprisals, she trembled for the outcome. Fyfe was not a man to sit quiet under either affront or injury. He would fight with double rancor if Monohan were his adversary. "If anything happens up there, I'll hate myself," she whispered, when the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost unendurable. "I was a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan know I cared. And I'll hate him too if he makes me a bone of contention. I elected to play the game the only decent way there is to play it. So did he. Why can't he abide by that?" Noon of the next day saw the _Waterbug_ heave to a quarter mile abeam of Cougar Point to let off a lone figure in her dinghy, and then bore on, driving straight and fast for Roaring Springs. Stella flew to the landing. Mother Howe came puffing at her heels. "Land's sake, I been worried to death," the older woman breathed. "When men git to quarrellin' about timber, you never can tell where they'll stop, Mrs. Jack. I've knowed some wild times in the woods in the past." The man in the dink was Lefty Howe. He pulled in beside the float. When he stepped up on the planks, he limped perceptibly. "Land alive, what happened yuh, Lefty?" his wife cried. "Got a rap on the leg with a peevy," he said. "Nothin' much." "Why did the _Waterbug_ go down the lake?" Stella asked breathlessly. The man's face was serious. "What happened up there?" "There was a fuss," he answered quietly. "Three or four of the boys got beat up so they need patchin'. Jack's takin' 'em down to the hospital. Damn that yeller-headed Monohan!" his voice lifted suddenly in uncontrollable anger. "Billy Dale was killed this mornin', mother." Stella felt herself grow sick. Death is a small matter when it strikes afar, among strangers. When it comes to one's door! Billy Dale had piloted the _Waterbug_ for a year, a chubby, round-faced boy of twenty, a foster-son, of Mother Howe's before she had children of her own. Stella had asked Jack to put him on the _Waterbug_ because he was such a loyal, cheery sort of soul, and Billy had been a part of every expedition they had taken around the lake. She could not think of him as a rigid, lifeless lump of clay. Why, only the day before he had been laughing and chattering aboard the cruiser, going up and down the cabin floor on his hands and knees, Jack Junior perched triumphantly astride his back. "What happened?" she cried wildly. "Tell me, quick." "It's quick told," Howe said grimly. "We were ready at daylight. Monohan's got a hard crew, and they jumped us as soon as we started to clear the channel. So we cleared them, first. It didn't take so long. Three of our men was used bad, and there's plenty of sore heads on both sides. But we did the job. After we got them on the run, we blowed up their swifters an' piles with giant. Then we begun to put the cedar through. Billy was on the bank when somebody shot him from across the river. One mercy, he never knew what hit him. An' you'll never come so close bein' a widow again, Mrs. Fyfe, an' not be. That bullet was meant for Jack, I figure. He was sittin' down. Billy was standin' right behind him watchin' the logs go through. Whoever he was, he shot high, that's all. There, mother, don't cry. That don't help none. What's done's done." Stella turned and walked up to the house, stunned. She could not credit bloodshed, death. Always in her life both had been things remote. And as the real significance of Lefty Howe's story grew on her, she shuddered. It lay at her door, equally with her and Monohan, even if neither of their hands had sped the bullet,--an indirect responsibility but gruesomely real to her. God only knows to what length she might have gone in reaction. She was quivering under that self-inflicted lash, bordering upon hysteria when she reached the house. She could not shut out a too-vivid picture of Billy Dale lying murdered on the Tyee's bank, of the accusing look with which Fyfe must meet her. Rightly so, she held. She did not try to shirk. She had followed the line of least resistance, lacked the dour courage to pull herself up in the beginning, and it led to this. She felt Billy Dale's blood wet on her soft hands. She walked into her own house panting like a hunted animal. And she had barely crossed the threshold when back in the rear Jack Junior's baby voice rose in a shrill scream of pain. * * * * * Stella scarcely heard her husband and the doctor come in. For a weary age she had been sitting in a low rocker, a pillow across her lap, and on that the little, tortured body swaddled with cotton soaked in olive oil, the only dressing she and Mrs. Howe could devise to ease the pain. All those other things which had so racked her, the fight on the Tyee, the shooting of Billy Dale, they had vanished somehow into thin air before the dread fact that her baby was dying slowly before her anguished eyes. She sat numbed with that deadly assurance, praying without hope for help to come, hopeless that any medical skill would avail when it did come. So many hours had been wasted while a man rowed to Benton's camp, while the _Chickamin_ steamed to Roaring Springs, while the _Waterbug_ came driving back. Five hours! And the skin, yes, even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior's clothing when she took it off. She bent over him, fearful that every feeble breath would be his last. She looked up at the doctor. Fyfe was beside her, his calked boots biting into the oak floor. "See what you can do, doc," he said huskily. Then to Stella: "How did it happen?" "He toddled away from Martha," she whispered. "Sam Foo had set a pan of boiling water on the kitchen floor. He fell into it. Oh, my poor little darling." They watched the doctor bare the terribly scalded body, examine it, listen to the boy's breathing, count his pulse. In the end he re-dressed the tiny body with stuff from the case with which a country physician goes armed against all emergencies. He was very deliberate and thoughtful. Stella looked her appeal when he finished. "He's a sturdy little chap," he said, "and we'll do our best. A child frequently survives terrific shock. It would be mistaken kindness for me to make light of his condition simply to spare your feelings. He has an even chance. I shall stay until morning. Now, I think it would be best to lay him on a bed. You must relax, Mrs. Fyfe. I can see that the strain is telling on you. You mustn't allow yourself to get in that abnormal condition. The baby is not conscious of pain. He is not suffering half so much in his body as you are in your mind, and you mustn't do that. Be hopeful. We'll need your help. We should have a nurse, but there was no time to get one." They laid Jack Junior amid downy pillows on Stella's bed. The doctor stood looking at him, then drew a chair beside the bed. "Go and walk about a little, Mrs. Fyfe," he advised, "and have your dinner. I'll want to watch the boy a while." But Stella did not want to walk. She did not want to eat. She was scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her long vigil in the chair. She was not conscious of herself and her problems, any more. Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the little mite she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured with bitterness that was left her. The bare chance that those little feet might never patter across the floor again, that little voice never wake her in the morning crying "Mom-mom," drove her distracted. She went out into the living room, walked to a window, stood there drumming on the pane with nervous fingers. Dusk was falling outside; a dusk was creeping over her. She shuddered. Fyfe came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and turned her so that she faced him. "I wish I could help, Stella," he whispered. "I wish I could make you feel less forlorn. Poor little kiddies--both of you." She shook off his hands, not because she rebelled against his touch, against his sympathy, merely because she had come to that nervous state where she scarce realized what she did. "Oh," she choked, "I can't bear it. My baby, my little baby boy. The one bright spot that's left, and he has to suffer like that. If he dies, it's the end of everything for me." Fyfe stared at her. The warm, pitying look on his face ebbed away, hardened into his old, mask-like absence of expression. "No," he said quietly, "it would only be the beginning. Lord God, but this has been a day." He whirled about with a quick gesture of his hands, a harsh, raspy laugh that was very near a sob, and left her. Twenty minutes later, when Stella was irresistibly drawn back to the bedroom, she found him sitting sober and silent, looking at his son. A little past midnight Jack Junior died. CHAPTER XIX FREE AS THE WIND Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the asphalt, the muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A forlorn sighing of wind in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that stood before her window reminded her achingly of the wind drone among the tall firs. A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little life blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she could keep him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief seldom kills. Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a greater or less revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella Fyfe, although she was not keenly aware of any forthright metamorphosis. She was, for the present, too actively involved in material changes. The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the lure of Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped her of all emotional reaction. When they had performed the last melancholy service for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar Point, she was as physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed endurance in mind and body as it is possible for a young and healthy woman to become. And when a measure of her natural vitality re-asserted itself, she laid her course. She could no more abide the place where she was than a pardoned convict can abide the prison that has restrained him. It was empty now of everything that made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant reminder of her loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby voice, for those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang that she would never hear them again. The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the gulf between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and preoccupied. They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had meant a lot to him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit with folded hands and think until thought drove him into the bogs of melancholy. And so the break came. With desperate abruptness Stella told him that she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised herself for unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give nothing in return, that the original mistake of their marriage would never be rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake. "What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made that we can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or we have to part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old way of living. I don't want to; I can't. I could never be complaisant and agreeable again. We might as well come to a full stop, and each go his own way." She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. Fyfe listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the end made a quick, impatient gesture with his hands. "Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the kid's no longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to do? Have you made any plans?" "I have to live, naturally," she replied. "Since I've got my voice back, I feel sure I can turn that to account. I should like to go to Seattle first and look around. It can be supposed I have gone visiting, until one or the other of us takes a decisive legal step." "That's simple enough," he returned, after a minute's reflection. "Well, if it has to be, for God's sake let's get it over with." And now it was over with. Fyfe remarked once that with them luckily it was not a question of money. But for Stella it was indeed an economic problem. When she left Roaring Lake, her private account contained over two thousand dollars. Her last act in Vancouver was to re-deposit that to her husband's credit. Only so did she feel that she could go free of all obligation, clean-handed, without stultifying herself in her own eyes. She had treasured as a keepsake the only money she had ever earned in her life, her brother's check for two hundred and seventy dollars, the wages of that sordid period in the cookhouse. She had it now. Two hundred and seventy dollars capital. She hadn't sold herself for that. She had given honest value, double and treble, in the sweat of her brow. She was here now, in a five-dollar-a-week housekeeping room, foot-loose, free as the wind. That was Fyfe's last word to her. He had come with her to Seattle and waited patiently at a hotel until she found a place to live. Then he had gone away without protest. "Well, Stella," he had said, "I guess this is the end of our experiment. In six months,--under the State law,--you can be legally free by a technicality. So far as I'm concerned, you're free as the wind right now. Good luck to you." He turned away with a smile on his lips, a smile that his eyes belied, and she watched him walk to the corner through the same sort of driving rain that now pelted in gray lines against her window. She shook herself impatiently out of that retrospect. It was done. Life, as her brother had prophesied, was no kid-glove affair. The future was her chief concern now, not the past. Yet that immediate past, bits of it, would now and then blaze vividly before her mental vision. The only defense against that lay in action, in something to occupy her mind and hands. If that motive, the desire to shun mental reflexes that brought pain, were not sufficient, there was the equally potent necessity to earn her bread. Never again would she be any man's dependent, a pampered doll, a parasite trading on her sex. They were hard names she called herself. Meantime she had not been idle; neither had she come to Seattle on a blind impulse. She knew of a singing teacher there whose reputation was more than local, a vocal authority whose word carried weight far beyond Puget Sound. First she meant to see him, get an impartial estimate of the value of her voice, of the training she would need. Through him she hoped to get in touch with some outlet for the only talent she possessed. And she had received more encouragement than she dared hope. He listened to her sing, then tested the range and flexibility of her voice. "Amazing," he said frankly. "You have a rare natural endowment. If you have the determination and the sense of dramatic values that musical discipline will give you, you should go far. You should find your place in opera." "That's my ambition," Stella answered. "But that requires time and training. And that means money. I have to earn it." The upshot of that conversation was an appointment to meet the manager of a photoplay house, who wanted a singer. Stella looked at her watch now, and rose to go. Money, always money, if one wanted to get anywhere, she reflected cynically. No wonder men struggled desperately for that token of power. She reached the Charteris Theater, and a doorman gave her access to the dim interior. There was a light in the operator's cage high at the rear, another shaded glow at the piano, where a young man with hair brushed sleekly back chewed gum incessantly while he practiced picture accompaniments. The place looked desolate, with its empty seats, its bald stage front with the empty picture screen. Stella sat down to wait for the manager. He came in a few minutes; his manner was very curt, business-like. He wanted her to sing a popular song, a bit from a Verdi opera, Gounod's Ave Maria, so that he could get a line on what she could do. He appeared to be a pessimist in regard to singers. "Take the stage right there," he instructed. "Just as if the spot was on you. Now then." It wasn't a heartening process to stand there facing the gum-chewing pianist, and the manager's cigar glowing redly five rows back, and the silent emptinesses beyond,--much like singing into the mouth of a gloomy cave. It was more or less a critical moment for Stella. But she was keenly aware that she had to make good in a small way before she could grasp the greater opportunity, so she did her best, and her best was no mediocre performance. She had never sung in a place designed to show off--or to show up--a singer's quality. She was even a bit astonished herself. She elected to sing the Ave Maria first. Her voice went pealing to the domed ceiling as sweet as a silver bell, resonant as a trumpet. When the last note died away, there was a momentary silence. Then the accompanist looked up at her, frankly admiring. "You're _some_ warbler," he said emphatically, "believe _me_." Behind him the manager's cigar lost its glow. He remained silent. The pianist struck up "Let's Murder Care," a rollicking trifle from a Broadway hit. Last of all he thumped, more or less successfully, through the accompaniment to an aria that had in it vocal gymnastics as well as melody. "Come up to the office, Mrs. Fyfe," Howard said, with a singular change from his first manner. "I can give you an indefinite engagement at thirty a week," he made a blunt offer. "You can sing. You're worth more, but right now I can't pay more. If you pull business,--and I rather think you will,--have to sing twice in the afternoon and twice in the evening." Stella considered briefly. Thirty dollars a week meant a great deal more than mere living, as she meant to live. And it was a start, a move in the right direction. She accepted; they discussed certain details. She did not care to court publicity under her legal name, so they agreed that she should be billed as Madame Benton,--the Madame being Howard's suggestion,--and she took her leave. Upon the Monday following Stella stood for the first time in a fierce white glare that dazzled her and so shut off partially her vision of the rows and rows of faces. She went on with a horrible slackness in her knees, a dry feeling in her throat; and she was not sure whether she would sing or fly. When she had finished her first song and bowed herself into the wings, she felt her heart leap and hammer at the hand-clapping that grew and grew till it was like the beat of ocean surf. Howard came running to meet her. "You've sure got 'em going," he laughed. "Fine work. Go out and give 'em some more." In time she grew accustomed to these things, to the applause she never failed to get, to the white beam that beat down from the picture cage, to the eager, upturned faces in the first rows. Her confidence grew; ambition began to glow like a flame within her. She had gone through the primary stages of voice culture, and she was following now a method of practice which produced results. She could see and feel that herself. Sometimes the fear that her voice might go as it had once gone would make her tremble. But that, her teacher assured her, was a remote chance. So she gained in those weeks something of her old poise. Inevitably, she was very lonely at times. But she fought against that with the most effective weapon she knew,--incessant activity. She was always busy. There was a rented piano now sitting in the opposite corner from the gas stove on which she cooked her meals. Howard kept his word. She "pulled business," and he raised her to forty a week and offered her a contract which she refused, because other avenues, bigger and better than singing in a motion-picture house, were tentatively opening. December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following weeks her only contact with the past, beyond the mill of her own thoughts, was an item in the _Seattle Times_ touching upon certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of the Tyee River. There was appended an account of the clash over the closed channel and the killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to book for that yet. Any one of sixty men might have fired the shot. It made Stella wince, for it took her back to that dreadful day. She could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that something more grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at least she had done what she could. If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before she left. If aggression came, it must come from one direction. They were both abstractions now, she tried to assure herself. The glamour of Monohan was fading, and she could not say why. She did not know if his presence would stir again all that old tumult of feeling, but she did know that she was cleaving to a measure of peace, of serenity of mind, and she did not want him or any other man to disturb it. She told herself that she had never loved Jack Fyfe. She recognized in him a lot that a woman is held to admire, but there were also qualities in him that had often baffled and sometimes frightened her. She wondered sometimes what he really thought of her and her actions, why, when she had been nerved to a desperate struggle for her freedom, if she could gain it no other way, he had let her go so easily? After all, she reflected cynically, love comes and goes, but one is driven to pursue material advantages while life lasts. And she wondered, even while the thought took form in her mind, how long she would retain that point of view. CHAPTER XX ECHOES In the early days of February Stella had an unexpected visitor. The landlady called her to the common telephone, and when she took up the receiver, Linda Abbey's voice came over the wire. "When can I see you?" she asked. "I'll only be here to-day and to-morrow." "Now, if you like," Stella responded. "I'm free until two-thirty." "I'll be right over," Linda said. "I'm only about ten minutes drive from where you are." Stella went back to her room both glad and sorry: glad to hear a familiar, friendly voice amid this loneliness which sometimes seemed almost unendurable; sorry because her situation involved some measure of explanation to Linda. That hurt. But she was not prepared for the complete understanding of the matter Linda Abbey tacitly exhibited before they had exchanged a dozen sentences. "How did you know?" Stella asked. "Who told you?" "No one. I drew my own conclusions when I heard you had gone to Seattle," Linda replied. "I saw it coming. My dear, I'm not blind, and I was with you a lot last summer. I knew you too well to believe you'd make a move while you had your baby to think of. When he was gone--well, I looked for anything to happen." "Still, nothing much has happened," Stella remarked with a touch of bitterness, "except the inevitable break between a man and a woman when there's no longer any common bond between them. It's better so. Jack has a multiplicity of interests. He can devote himself to them without the constant irritation of an unresponsive wife. We've each taken our own road. That's all that has happened." "So far," Linda murmured. "It's a pity. I liked that big, silent man of yours. I like you both. It seems a shame things have to turn out this way just because--oh, well. Charlie and I used to plan things for the four of us, little family combinations when we settled down on the lake. Honestly, Stella, do you think it's worth while? I never could see you as a sentimental little chump, letting a momentary aberration throw your whole life out of gear." "How do you know that I have?" Stella asked gravely. Linda shrugged her shoulders expressively. "I suppose it looks silly, if not worse, to you," Stella said. "But I can't help what you think. My reason has dictated every step I've taken since last fall. If I'd really given myself up to sentimentalism, the Lord only knows what might have happened." "Exactly," Linda responded drily. "Now, there's no use beating around the bush. We get so in that habit as a matter of politeness,--our sort of people,--that we seldom say in plain English just what we really mean. Surely, you and I know each other well enough to be frank, even if it's painful. Very likely you'll say I'm a self-centered little beast, but I'm going to marry your brother, my dear, and I'm going to marry him in the face of considerable family opposition. I _am_ selfish. Can you show me any one who isn't largely swayed by motives of self-interest, if it comes to that? I want to be happy. I want to be on good terms with my own people, so that Charlie will have some of the opportunities dad can so easily put in his way. Charlie isn't rich. He hasn't done anything, according to the Abbey standard, but make a fair start. Dad's patronizing as sin, and mother merely tolerates the idea because she knows that I'll marry Charlie in any case, opposition or no opposition. I came over expressly to warn you, Stella. Anything like scandal now would be--well, it would upset so many things." "You needn't be uneasy," Stella answered coldly. "There isn't any foundation for scandal. There won't be." "I don't know," Linda returned, "Walter Monohan came to Seattle a boat ahead of me. In fact, that's largely why I came." Stella flushed angrily. "Well, what of that?" she demanded. "His movements are nothing to me." "I don't know," Linda rejoined. She had taken off her gloves and was rolling them nervously in a ball. Now she dropped them and impulsively grasped Stella's hands. "Stella, Stella," she cried. "Don't get that hurt, angry look. I don't like to say these things to you, but I feel that I have to. I'm worried, and I'm afraid for you and your husband, for Charlie and myself, for all of us together. Walter Monohan is as dangerous as any man who's unscrupulous and rich and absolutely self-centered can possibly be. I know the glamour of the man. I used to feel it myself. It didn't go very far with me, because his attention wandered away from me before my feelings were much involved, and I had a chance to really fathom them and him. He has a queer gift of making women care for him, and he trades on it deliberately. He doesn't play fair; he doesn't mean to. Oh, I know so many cruel things, despicable things, he's done. Don't look at me like that, Stella. I'm not saying this just to wound you. I'm simply putting you on your guard. You can't play with fire and not get burned. If you've been nursing any feeling for Walter Monohan, crush it, cut it out, just as you'd have a surgeon cut out a cancer. Entirely apart from any question of Jack Fyfe, don't let this man play any part whatever in your life. You'll be sorry if you do. There's not a man or woman whose relations with Monohan have been intimate enough to enable them to really know the man and his motives who doesn't either hate or fear or despise him, and sometimes all three." "That's a sweeping indictment," Stella said stiffly. "And you're very earnest. Yet I can hardly take your word at its face value. If he's so impossible a person, how does it come that you and your people countenanced him socially? Besides, it's all rather unnecessary, Linda. I'm not the least bit likely to do anything that will reflect on your prospective husband, which is what it simmers down to, isn't it? I've been pulled and hauled this way and that ever since I've been on the coast, simply because I was dependent on some one else--first Charlie and then Jack--for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that marriage is supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, clinging to a man for what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've been rather painfully frank; so will I be. One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me. Looking back, I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me which I don't deny,--but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some time ago,--I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting all the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been schooled to think unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves. It would have come about a little more gradually, that's all. But I have broken away, and I'm going to live my own life after a fashion, and I'm going to achieve independence of some sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again until I'm sure of myself--and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as simply as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right now I couldn't muster up the least shred of passion of any sort. I seem to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge that's been squeezed dry." "I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's heart is a queer thing, though. When you compare the two men--Oh, well, I know Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You couldn't ever have cared much for Jack." "That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still his wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. There won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free personally to work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is engrossing enough for me." Linda sat a minute, thoughtful. "So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth much," she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I don't think I shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I don't think you're quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a natural gossip. Aside from that, he's quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good. He never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind. In this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have said a word to you, but he certainly knows Monohan. They've clashed before, so I've been told. Jack probably saw what was growing on you, and I don't think he'd hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around. If he did,--or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm rather in the dark,--he'd go to any length to play even with. Fyfe. When Monohan wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital part. He never rests then until he's paid the score. Father was always a little afraid of him. I think that's the chief reason for selling out his Roaring Lake interests to Monohan. He didn't want to be involved in whatever Monohan contemplated doing. He has a wholesome respect for your husband's rather volcanic ability. Monohan has, too. But he has always hated Jack Fyfe. To my knowledge for three years,--prior to pulling you out of the water that time,--he never spoke of Jack Fyfe without a sneer. He hates any one who beats him at anything. That ruction on the Tyee is a sample. He'll spend money, risk lives, all but his own, do anything to satisfy a grudge. That's one of the things that worries me. Charlie will be into anything that Fyfe is, for Fyfe's his friend. I admire the spirit of the thing, but I don't want our little applecart upset in the sort of struggle Fyfe and Monohan may stage. I don't even know what form it will ultimately take, except that from certain indications he'll try to make Fyfe spend money faster than he can make it, perhaps in litigation over timber, over anything that offers, by making trouble in his camps, harassing him at every turn. He can, you know. He has immense resources. Oh, well, I'm satisfied, Stella, that you're a much wiser girl than I thought when I knew you'd left Jack Fyfe. I'm quite sure now you aren't the sort of woman Monohan could wind around his little finger. But I'm sure he'll try. You'll see, and remember what I tell you. There, I think I'd better run along. You're not angry, are you, Stella?" "You mean well enough, I suppose," Stella answered. "But as a matter of fact, you've made me feel rather nasty, Linda. I don't want to talk or even think of these things. The best thing you and Charlie and Jack Fyfe could do is to forget such a discontented pendulum as I ever existed." "Oh, bosh!" Linda exclaimed, as she drew on her gloves. "That's sheer nonsense. You're going to be my big sister in three months. Things will work out. If you felt you had to take this step for your own good, no one can blame you. It needn't make any difference in our friendship." On the threshold she turned on her heel. "Don't forget what I've said," she repeated. "Don't trust Monohan. Not an inch." Stella flung herself angrily into a chair when the door closed on Linda Abbey. Her eyes snapped. She resented being warned and cautioned, as if she were some moral weakling who could not be trusted to make the most obvious distinctions. Particularly did she resent having Monohan flung in her teeth, when she was in a way to forget him, to thrust the strange charm of the man forever out of her thoughts. Why, she asked bitterly, couldn't other people do as Jack Fyfe had done: cut the Gordian knot at one stroke and let it rest at that? So Monohan was in Seattle? Would he try to see her? Stella had not minced matters with herself when she left Roaring Lake. Dazed and shaken by suffering, nevertheless she knew that she would not always suffer, that in time she would get back to that normal state in which the human ego diligently pursues happiness. In time the legal tie between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to exist. If Monohan cared for her as she thought he cared, a year or two more or less mattered little. They had all their lives before them. In the long run, the errors and mistakes of that upheaval would grow dim, be as nothing. Jack Fyfe would shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter mate, one as loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the fire into the frying-pan? So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song, so that she would never again be buffeted by material urgencies in a material world, Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of her mind, so to speak, for a word from Monohan to say that he understood, and that all was well. Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in Seattle, away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had only followed the cue she had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget Billy Dale. If the motive behind that bloody culmination were thwarted love, it was a thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing herself to reason with cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less than he hated Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two diverse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its boiling over. "Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in a man's life, after all." She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about to begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy flow, periods of calm are succeeded by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife insisted that Stella join them at supper after the show. They were decent folk who accorded frank admiration to her voice and her personality. They had been kind to her in many little ways, and she was glad to accept. At eleven a taxi deposited them at the door of Wain's. The Seattle of yesterday needs no introduction to Wain's, and its counterpart can be found in any cosmopolitan, seaport city. It is a place of subtle distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill streets, where after-theater parties and nighthawks with an eye for pretty women, an ear for sensuous music, and a taste for good food, go when they have money to spend. Ensconced behind a potted palm, with a waiter taking Howard's order, Stella let her gaze travel over the diners. She brought up with a repressed start at a table but four removes from her own, her eyes resting upon the unmistakable profile of Walter Monohan. He was dining vis-à-vis with a young woman chiefly remarkable for a profusion of yellow hair and a blazing diamond in the lobe of each ear,--a plump, blond, vivacious person of a type that Stella, even with her limited experience, found herself instantly classifying. A bottle of wine rested in an iced dish between them. Monohan was toying with the stem of a half-emptied glass, smiling at his companion. The girl leaned toward him, speaking rapidly, pouting. Monohan nodded, drained his glass, signaled a waiter. When she got into an elaborate opera cloak and Monohan into his Inverness, they went out, the plump, jeweled hand resting familiarly on Monohan's arm. Stella breathed a sigh of relief as they passed, looking straight ahead. She watched through the upper half of the café window and saw a machine draw against the curb, saw the be-scarfed yellow head enter and Monohan's silk hat follow. Then she relaxed, but she had little appetite for her food. A hot wave of shamed disgust kept coming over her. She felt sick, physically revolted. Very likely Monohan had put her in _that_ class, in his secret thought. She was glad when the evening ended, and the Howards left her at her own doorstep. On the carpet where it had been thrust by the postman under the door, a white square caught her eye, and she picked it up before she switched on the light. And she got a queer little shock when the light fell on the envelope, for it was addressed in Jack Fyfe's angular handwriting. She tore it open. It was little enough in the way of a letter, a couple of lines scrawled across a sheet of note-paper. "_Dear Girl:_ "I was in Seattle a few days ago and heard you sing. Here's hoping good luck rides with you. "JACK." Stella sat down by the window. Outside, the ever-present Puget Sound rain drove against wall and roof and sidewalk, gathered in wet, glistening pools in the street. Through that same window she had watched Jack Fyfe walk out of her life three months ago without a backward look, sturdily, silently, uncomplaining. He hadn't whined, he wasn't whining now,--only flinging a cheerful word out of the blank spaces of his own life into the blank spaces of hers. Stella felt something warm and wet steal down her cheeks. She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of her hand. A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the light switch and threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry in the dusky quiet. And she could not have told why, except that she had been overcome by a miserably forlorn feeling; all the mental props she relied upon were knocked out from under her. Somehow those few scrawled words had flung swiftly before her, like a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby toddling uncertainly across the porch of the white bungalow. And she could not bear to think of that! * * * * * When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden winter skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, Stella was singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house that boasted a "big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery richness of her voice had carried her name already beyond local boundaries, as the singing master under whom she studied prophesied it would. In proof thereof she received during April a feminine committee of two from Vancouver bearing an offer of three hundred dollars for her appearance in a series of three concerts under the auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be given in the ballroom of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the Granada. The date was mid-July. She took the offer under advisement, promising a decision in ten days. The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,--not for her daily bread, but for an accumulated fund that would enable her to reach New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the most direct route to her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it now. Confidence came to abide with her. She throve on work; and with increasing salary, her fund grew. Coming from any other source, she would have accepted this further augmentation of it without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, it was a liberal offer. But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many people knew her; the local papers would feature her. She did not know how Fyfe would take it; she did not even know if there had been any open talk of their separation. Money, she felt, was a small thing beside opening old sores. For herself, she was tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social estimate of her or her acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's name, she did not feel free to make herself a public figure there without his sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the offer and asked point-blank if it mattered to him. His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail connection had been made on the minute. "If it is to your advantage to sing here," he wrote, "by all means accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come and hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings and useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, they are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a glass case. Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling about your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and fine a thing to remain obscure. "JACK." He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy postscript: "I wish you would do something next month, not as a favor to me particularly, but to ease things along for Charlie and Linda. They are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up your little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion of your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But it doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very little different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean is that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly because--I've flattered myself--I talked to him like a Dutch uncle, and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut mold that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with him. He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a good deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think. "I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, they are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family pride, intend to give Linda a big wedding. "Now, no one outside of you and me and--well you and me--knows that there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been quizzed--naturally. It got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera as a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I fostered that rumor--simply to keep gossip down until things shaped themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have started--Abbey _père_ and _mère_ will then be unable to frown on Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a divorce case. "I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after those concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house of Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation--a myth that you've taken no measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be a sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way--one amazed yelp from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over. "Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard against a bomb from the Abbey fortress. "Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would be very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she pretty clearly guesses the breach in our rampart--not the original mistake in our over-hasty plunge--but the wedge that divided us for good. If she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good stuff, because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way and another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've got it all off my chest now, or pretty near. "J.H.F." Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time. "I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice galvanized her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the mellow spring sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her feet carried her to a little park that overlooked the far reach of the Sound and gave westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary and aloof to a perfect sky, like their brother peaks that ringed Roaring Lake. And all the time her mind kept turning on a question whose asking was rooted neither in fact nor necessity, an inquiry born of a sentiment she had never expected to feel. Should she go back to Jack Fyfe? She shook her head impatiently when she faced that squarely. Why tread the same bitter road again? But she put that self-interested phase of it aside and asked herself candidly if she _could_ go back and take up the old threads where they had been broken off and make life run smoothly along the old, quiet channels? She was as sure as she was sure of the breath she drew that Fyfe wanted her, that he longed for and would welcome her. But she was equally sure that the old illusions would never serve. She couldn't even make him happy, much less herself. Monohan--well, Monohan was a dead issue. He had come to the Charteris to see her, all smiles and eagerness. She had been able to look at him and through him--and cut him dead--and do it without a single flutter of her heart. That brief and illuminating episode in Wain's had merely confirmed an impression that had slowly grown upon her, and her outburst of feeling that night had only been the overflowing of shamed anger at herself for letting his magnetic personality make so deep an impression on her that she could admit to him that she cared. She felt that she had belittled herself by that. But he was no longer a problem. She wondered now how he ever could have been. She recalled that once Jack Fyfe had soberly told her she would never sense life's real values while she nursed so many illusions. Monohan had been one of them. "But it wouldn't work," she whispered to herself. "I couldn't do it. He'd know I only did it because I was sorry, because I thought I should, because the old ties, and they seem so many and so strong in spite of everything, were harder to break than the new road is to follow alone. He'd resent anything like pity for his loneliness. And if Monohan has made any real trouble, it began over me, or at least it focussed on me. And he might resent that. He's ten times a better man than I am a woman. He thinks about the other fellow's side of things. I'm just what he said about Charlie, self-centered, a profound egotist. If I really and truly loved Jack Fyfe, I'd be a jealous little fury if he so much as looked at another woman. But I don't, and I don't see why I don't. I want to be loved; I want to love. I've always wanted that so much that I'll never dare trust my instincts about it again. I wonder why people like me exist to go blundering about in the world, playing havoc with themselves and everybody else?" Before she reached home, that self-sacrificing mood had vanished in the face of sundry twinges of pride. Jack Fyfe hadn't asked her to come back; he never would ask her to come back. Of that she was quite sure. She knew the stony determination of him too well. Neither hope or heaven nor fear of hell would turn him aside when he had made a decision. If he ever had moments of irresolution, he had successfully concealed any such weakness from those who knew him best. No one ever felt called upon to pity Jack Fyfe, and in those rocked-ribbed qualities, Stella had an illuminating flash, perhaps lay the secret of his failure ever to stir in her that yearning tenderness which she knew herself to be capable of lavishing, which her nature impelled her to lavish on some one. "Ah, well," she sighed, when she came back to her rooms and put Fyfe's letter away in a drawer. "I'll do the decent thing if they ask me. I wonder what Jack would say if he knew what I've been debating with myself this afternoon? I wonder if we were actually divorced and I'd made myself a reputation as a singer, and we happened to meet quite casually sometime, somewhere, just how we'd really feel about each other?" She was still musing on that, in a detached, impersonal fashion, when she caught a car down to the theater for the matinée. CHAPTER XXI AN UNEXPECTED MEETING The formally worded wedding card arrived in due course. Following close came a letter from Linda Abbey, a missive that radiated friendliness and begged Stella to come a week before the date. "You're going to be pretty prominent in the public eye when you sing here," Linda wrote. "People are going to make a to-do over you. Ever so many have mentioned you since the announcement was made that you'll sing at the Granada concerts. I'm getting a lot of reflected glory as the future sister-in-law of a rising singer. So you may as well come and get your hand into the social game in preparation for being fussed over in July." In the same mail was a characteristic note from Charlie which ran: "_Dear Sis:_ "As the Siwashes say, long time I see you no. I might have dropped a line before, but you know what a punk correspondent I am. They tell me you're becoming a real noise musically. How about it? "Can't you break away from the fame and fortune stuff long enough to be on hand when Linda and I get married? I wasn't invited to your wedding, but I'd like to have you at mine. Jack says it's up to you to represent the Fyfe connection, as he's too busy. I'll come over to Seattle and get you, if you say so." She capitulated at that and wrote saying that she would be there, and that she did not mind the trip alone in the least. She did not want Charlie asking pertinent questions about why she lived in such grubby quarters and practiced such strict economy in the matter of living. Then there was the detail of arranging a break in her engagements, which ran continuously to the end of June. She managed that easily enough, for she was becoming too great a drawing card for managers to curtly override her wishes. Almost before she realized it, June was at hand. Linda wrote again urgently, and Stella took the night boat for Vancouver a week before the wedding day. Linda met her at the dock with a machine. Mrs. Abbey was the essence of cordiality when she reached the big Abbey house on Vancouver's aristocratic "heights," where the local capitalists, all those fortunate climbers enriched by timber and mineral, grown wealthy in a decade through the great Coast boom, segregated themselves in "Villas" and "Places" and "Views," all painfully new and sometimes garish, striving for an effect in landscape and architecture which the very intensity of the striving defeated. They were well-meaning folk, however, the Abbeys included. Stella could not deny that she enjoyed the luxury of the Abbey ménage, the little festive round which was shaping about Linda in these last days of her spinsterhood. She relished the change from unremitting work. It amused her to startle little groups with the range and quality of her voice, when they asked her to sing. They made a much ado over that, a genuine admiration that flattered Stella. It was easy for her to fall into the swing of that life; it was only a lapsing back to the old ways. But she saw it now with a more critical vision. It was soft and satisfying and eminently desirable to have everything one wanted without the effort of striving for it, but a begging wheedling game on the part of these women. They were, she told herself rather harshly, an incompetent, helpless lot, dependent one and all upon some man's favor or affection, just as she herself had been all her life until the past few months. Some man had to work and scheme to pay the bills. She did not know why this line of thought should arise, neither did she so far forget herself as to voice these social heresies. But it helped to reconcile her with her new-found independence, to put a less formidable aspect on the long, hard grind that lay ahead of her before she could revel in equal affluence gained by her own efforts. All that they had she desired,--homes, servants, clothes, social standing,--but she did not want these things bestowed upon her as a favor by some man, the emoluments of sex. She expected she would have to be on her guard with her brother, even to dissemble a little. But she found him too deeply engrossed in what to him was the most momentous event of his career, impatiently awaiting the day, rather dreading the publicity of it. "Why in Sam Hill can't a man and a woman get married without all this fuss?" he complained once. "Why should we make our private affairs a spectacle for the whole town?" "Principally because mamma has her heart set on a spectacle," Linda laughed. "She'd hold up her hands in horror if she heard you. Decorated bridal bower, high church dignitary, bridesmaids, orange blossoms, rice, and all. Mamma likes to show off. Besides, that's the way it's done in society. _And_ the honeymoon." They both giggled, as at some mirthful secret. "Shall we tell her?" Linda nodded toward Stella. "Sure," Benton said. "I thought you had." "The happy couple will spend their honeymoon on a leisurely tour of the Southern and Eastern States, remaining for some weeks in Philadelphia, where the groom has wealthy and influential connections. It's all prepared for the pay-a-purs," Linda whispered with exaggerated secrecy behind her hand. Benton snorted. "Can you beat that?" he appealed to Stella. "And all the time," Linda continued, "the happy couple, unknown to every one, will be spending their days in peace and quietness in their shanty at Halfway Point. My, but mamma would rave if she knew. Don't give us away, Stella. It seems so senseless to squander a lot of money gadding about on trains and living in hotels when we'd much rather be at home by ourselves. My husband's a poor young man, Stella. 'Pore but worthy.' He has to make his fortune before we start in spending it. I'm sick of all this spreading it on because dad has made a pile of money," she broke out impatiently. "Our living used to be simple enough when I was a kid. I think I can relish a little simplicity again for a change. Mamma's been trying for four years to marry me off to her conception of an eligible man. It didn't matter a hang about his essential qualities so long as he had money and an assured social position." "Forget that," Charlie counseled slangily. "I have all the essential qualities, and I'll have the money and social position too; you watch my smoke." "Conceited ninny," Linda smiled. But there was no reproof in her tone, only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so openly and unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a pang of envy, a dull little ache in her heart. She had missed that. It had passed her by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two personalities in the biggest passion life holds. Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed her out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them, that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her woman's heritage. She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked the thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit seeking the outlet of action. "Thank the Lord I've got something to do, something that's worth doing," she whispered savagely. "If I can't have what I want, I can make my life embrace something more than just food and clothes and social trifling. If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring what it would, I believe I'd go clean mad." A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one had called her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the library. She wasn't prepared for the voice that came over the line, but she recognized it instantly as Fyfe's. "Listen, Stella," he said. "I'm sorry this has happened, but I can't very well avoid it now, without causing comment. I had no choice about coming to Vancouver. It was a business matter I couldn't neglect. And as luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I got off the train. On account of your being there, of course, he insisted that I come out for dinner. It'll look queer if I don't, as I can't possibly get a return train for the Springs before nine-thirty this evening. I accepted without stuttering rather than leave any chance for the impression that I wanted to avoid you. Now, here's how I propose to fix it. I'll come out about two-thirty and pay a hurry-up five-minute call. Then I'll excuse myself to Mrs. Abbey for inability to join them at dinner--press of important business takes me to Victoria and so forth. That'll satisfy the conventions and let us both out. I called you so you won't be taken by surprise. Do you mind?" "Of course not," she answered instantly. "Why should I?" There was a momentary silence. "Well," he said at last, "I didn't know how you'd feel about it. Anyway, it will only be for a few minutes, and it's unlikely to happen again." Stella put the receiver back on the hook and looked at her watch. It lacked a quarter of two. In the room adjoining, Charlie and Linda were jubilantly wading through the latest "rag" song in a passable soprano and baritone, with Mrs. Abbey listening in outward resignation. Stella sat soberly for a minute, then joined them. "Jack's in town," she informed them placidly, when the ragtime spasm ended. "He telephoned that he was going to snatch a few minutes between important business confabs to run out and see me." "I could have told you that half an hour ago, my dear," Mrs. Abbey responded with playful archness. "Mr. Fyfe will dine with us this evening." "Oh," Stella feigned surprise. "Why, he spoke of going to Victoria on the afternoon boat. He gave me the impression of mad haste--making a dash out here between breaths, as you might say." "Oh, I hope he won't be called away on such short notice as that," Mrs. Abbey murmured politely. She left the room presently. Out of one corner of her eye Stella saw Linda looking at her queerly. Charlie had turned to the window, staring at the blue blur of the Lions across the Inlet. "It's a wonder Jack would leave the lake," he said suddenly, "with things the way they are. I've been hoping for rain ever since I've been down. I'll be glad when we're on the spot again, Linda." "Wishing for rain?" Stella echoed. "Why?" "Fire," he said shortly. "I don't suppose you realize it, but there's been practically no rain for two months. It's getting hot. A few weeks of dry, warm weather, and this whole country is ready to blow away. The woods are like a pile of shavings. That would be a fine wedding present--to be cleaned out by fire. Every dollar I've got's in timber." "Don't be a pessimist," Linda said sharply. "What makes you so uneasy now?" Stella asked thoughtfully. "There's always the fire danger in the dry months. That's been a bugaboo ever since I came to the lake." "Yes, but never like it is this summer," Benton frowned. "Oh, well, no use borrowing trouble, I suppose." Stella rose. "When Jack comes, I'll be in the library," she said. "I'm going to read a while." But the book she took up lay idle in her lap. She looked forward to that meeting with a curious mixture of reluctance and regret. She could not face it unmoved. No woman who has ever lain passive in a man's arms can ever again look into that man's eyes with genuine indifference. She may hate him or love him with a degree of intensity according to her nature, be merely friendly, or nurse a slow resentment. But there is always that intangible something which differentiates him from other men. Stella felt now a shyness of him, a little dread of him, less sureness of herself, as he swung out of the machine and took the house steps with that effortless lightness on his feet that she remembered so well. She heard him in the hall, his deep voice mingling with the thin, penetrating tones of Mrs. Abbey. And then the library door opened, and he came in. Stella had risen, and stood uncertainly at one corner of a big reading table, repressing an impulse to fly, finding herself stricken with a strange recurrence of the feeling she had first disliked him for arousing in her,--a sense of needing to be on her guard, of impending assertion of a will infinitely more powerful than her own. But that was, she told herself, only a state of mind, and Fyfe put her quickly at her ease. He came up to the table and seated himself on the edge of it an arm's length from her, swinging one foot free. He looked at her intently. There was no shadow of expression on his face, only in his clear eyes lurked a gleam of feeling. "Well, lady," he said at length, "you're looking fine. How goes everything?" "Fairly well," she answered. "Seems odd, doesn't it, to meet like this?" he ventured. "I'd have dodged it, if it had been politic. As it is, there's no harm done, I imagine. Mrs. Abbey assured me we'd be free from interruption. If the exceedingly cordial dame had an inkling of how things stand between us, I daresay she'd be holding her breath about now." "Why do you talk like that, Jack?" Stella protested nervously. "Well, I have to say something," he remarked, after a moment's reflection. "I can't sit here and just look at you. That would be rude, not to say embarrassing." Stella bit her lip. "I don't see why we can't talk like any other man and woman for a few minutes," she observed. "I do," he said quietly. "You know why, too, if you stop to think. I'm the same old Jack Fyfe, Stella. I don't think much where you are concerned; I just feel. And that doesn't lend itself readily to impersonal chatter." "How do you feel?" she asked, meeting his gaze squarely. "If you don't hate me, you must at least rather despise me." "Neither," he said slowly. "I admire your grit, lady. You broke away from everything and made a fresh start. You asserted your own individuality in a fashion that rather surprised me. Maybe the incentive wasn't what it might have been, but the result is, or promises to be. I was only a milestone. Why should I hate or despise you because you recognized that and passed on? I had no business setting myself up for the end of your road instead of the beginning. I meant to have it that way until the kid--well, Fate took a hand there. Pshaw," he broke off with a quick gesture, "let's talk about something else." Stella laid one hand on his knee. Unbidden tears were crowding up in her gray eyes. "You were good to me," she whispered. "But just being good wasn't enough for a perverse creature like me. I couldn't be a sleek pussy-cat, comfortable beside your fire. I'm full of queer longings. I want wings. I must be a variation from the normal type of woman. Our marriage didn't touch the real me at all, Jack. It only scratched the surface. And sometimes I'm afraid to look deep, for fear of what I'll see. Even if another man hadn't come along and stirred up a temporary tumult in me, I couldn't have gone on forever." "A temporary tumult," Fyfe mused. "Have you thoroughly chucked that illusion? I knew you would, of course, but I had no idea how long it would take you." "Long ago," she answered. "Even before I left you, I was shaky about that. There were things I couldn't reconcile. But pride wouldn't let me admit it. I can't even explain it to myself." "I can," he said, a little sadly. "You've never poured out that big, warm heart of yours on a man. It's there, always has been there, those concentrated essences of passion. Every unattached man's a possible factor, a potential lover. Nature has her own devices to gain her end. I couldn't be the one. We started wrong. I saw the mistake of that when it was too late. Monohan, a highly magnetic animal, came along at a time when you were peculiarly and rather blindly receptive. That's all. Sex--you have it in a word. It couldn't stand any stress, that sort of attraction. I knew it would only last until you got one illuminating glimpse of the real man of him. But I don't want to talk about him. He'll keep. Sometime you'll really love a _man_, Stella, and he'll be a very lucky mortal. There's an erratic streak in you, lady, but there's a bigger streak that's fine and good and true. You'd have gone through with it to the bitter end, if Jack Junior hadn't died. The weaklings don't do that. Neither do they cut loose as you did, burning all their economic bridges behind them. Do you know that it was over a month before I found out that you'd turned your private balance back into my account? I suppose there was a keen personal satisfaction in going on your own and making good from the start. Only I couldn't rest until--until--" His voice trailed huskily off into silence. The gloves in his left hand were doubled and twisted in his uneasy fingers. Stella's eyes were blurred. "Well, I'm going," he said shortly. "Be good." He slipped off the table and stood erect, a wide, deep-chested man, tanned brown, his fair hair with its bronze tinge lying back in a smooth wave from his forehead, blue eyes bent on her, hot with a slumbering fire. Without warning, he caught her close in his arms so that she could feel the pounding of his heart against her breast, kissed her cheeks, her hair, the round, firm white neck of her, with lips that burned. Then he held her off at arm's length. "That's how _I_ care," he said defiantly. "That's how I want you. No other way. I'm a one-woman man. Some time you may love like that, and if you do, you'll know how I feel. I've watched you sleeping beside me and ached because I couldn't kindle the faintest glow of the real thing in you. I'm sick with a miserable sense of failure, the only thing I've ever failed at, and the biggest, most complete failure I can conceive of,--to love a woman in every way desirable; to have her and yet never have her." He caught up his hat, and the door clicked shut behind him. A minute later Stella saw him step into the tonneau of the car. He never looked back. And she fled to her own room, stunned, half-frightened, wholly amazed at this outburst. Her face was damp with his lip-pressure, damp and warm. Her arms tingled with the grip of his. The blood stood in her cheeks like a danger signal, flooding in hot, successive waves to the roots of her thick, brown hair. "If I thought--I could," she whispered into her pillow, "I'd try. But I daren't. I'm afraid. It's just a mood, I know it is. I've had it before. A--ah! I'm a spineless jellyfish, a weathercock that whirls to every emotional breeze. And I won't be. I'll stand on my own feet if I can--so help me God, I will!" CHAPTER XXII THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE This is no intimate chronicle of Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey, save in so far as they naturally furnish a logical sequence in what transpired. Therefore the details of their nuptials is of no particular concern. They were wedded, ceremonially dined as befitted the occasion, and departed upon their hypothetical honeymoon, surreptitiously abbreviated from an extravagant swing over half of North America to seventy miles by rail and twenty by water,--and a month of blissful seclusion, which suited those two far better than any amount of Pullman touring, besides leaving them money in pocket. When they were gone, Stella caught the next boat for Seattle. She had drawn fresh breath in the meantime, and while she felt tenderly, almost maternally, sorry for Jack Fyfe, she swung back to the old attitude. Even granting, she argued, that she could muster courage to take up the mantle of wifehood where she laid it off, there was no surety that they could do more than compromise. There was the stubborn fact that she had openly declared her love for another man, that by her act she had plunged her husband into far-reaching conflict. Such a conflict existed. She could put her finger on no concrete facts, but it was in the air. She heard whispers of a battle between giants--a financial duel to the death--with all the odds against Jack Fyfe. Win or lose, there would be scars. And the struggle, if not of and by her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity through her. Men, she told herself, do not forget these things; they rankle. Jack Fyfe was only human. No, Stella felt that they could only come safe to the old port by virtue of a passion that could match Fyfe's own. And she put that rather sadly beyond her, beyond the possibilities. She had felt stirrings of it, but not to endure. She was proud and sensitive and growing wise with bitterly accumulated experience. It had to be all or nothing with them, a cleaving together complete enough to erase and forever obliterate all that had gone before. And since she could not see that as a possibility, there was nothing to do but play the game according to the cards she held. Of these the trump was work, the inner glow that comes of something worth while done toward a definite, purposeful end. She took up her singing again with a distinct relief. Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding day and the date of her Granada engagement. It seemed a mere breathing space before the middle of July rolled around, and she was once more aboard a Vancouver boat. In the interim, she had received a letter from the attorney who had wound up her father's estate, intimating that there was now a market demand for that oil stock, and asking if he should sell or hold for a rise in price which seemed reasonably sure? Stella telegraphed her answer. If that left-over of a speculative period would bring a few hundred dollars, it would never be of greater service to her than now. All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the international boundary, the _Charlotte_ drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open gulf again, a vast bank of smoke flung up blue and gray, a rolling mass. The air was pungent, oppressive. When the _Charlotte_ spanned the thirty-mile gap between Vancouver Island and the mainland shore, she nosed into the Lion's Gate under a slow bell, through a smoke pall thick as Bering fog. Stella's recollection swung back to Charlie's uneasy growl of a month earlier. Fire! Throughout the midsummer season there was always the danger of fire breaking out in the woods. Not all the fire-ranger patrols could guard against the carelessness of fishermen and campers. "It's a tough Summer over here for the timber owners," she heard a man remark. "I've been twenty years on the coast and never saw the woods so dry." "Dry's no name," his neighbor responded. "It's like tinder. A cigarette stub'll start a blaze forty men couldn't put out. It's me that knows it. I've got four limits on the North Arm, and there's fire on two sides of me. You bet I'm praying for rain." "They say the country between Chehalis and Roaring Lake is one big blaze," the first man observed. "So?" the other replied. "Pity, too. Fine timber in there. I came near buying some timber on the lake this spring. Some stuff that was on the market as a result of that Abbey-Monohan split. Glad I didn't now. I'd just as soon have _all_ my money out of timber this season." They moved away in the press of disembarking, and Stella heard no more of their talk. She took a taxi to the Granada, and she bought a paper in the foyer before she followed the bell boy to her room. She had scarcely taken off her hat and settled down to read when the telephone rang. Linda's voice greeted her when she answered. "I called on the chance that you took the morning boat," Linda said. "Can I run in? I'm just down for the day. I won't be able to hear you sing, but I'd like to see you, dear." "Can you come right now?" Stella asked. "Come up, and we'll have something served up here. I don't feel like running the gauntlet of the dining room just now." "I'll be there in a few minutes," Linda answered. Stella went back to her paper. She hadn't noticed any particular stress laid on forest fires in the Seattle dailies, but she could not say that of this Vancouver sheet. The front page reeked of smoke and fire. She glanced through the various items for news of Roaring Lake, but found only a brief mention. It was "reported" and "asserted" and "rumored" that fire was raging at one or two points there, statements that were overshadowed by positive knowledge of greater areas nearer at hand burning with a fierceness that could be seen and smelled. The local papers had enough feature stuff in fires that threatened the very suburbs of Vancouver without going so far afield as Roaring Lake. Linda's entrance put a stop to her reading, without, however, changing the direction of her thought. For after an exchange of greetings, Linda divulged the source of her worried expression, which Stella had immediately remarked. "Who wouldn't be worried," Linda said, "with the whole country on fire, and no telling when it may break out in some unexpected place and wipe one out of house and home." "Is it so bad as that at the lake?" Stella asked uneasily. "There's not much in the paper. I was looking." "It's so bad," Linda returned, with a touch of bitterness, "that I've been driven to the Springs for safety; that every able-bodied man on the lake who can be spared is fighting fire. There has been one man killed, and there's half a dozen loggers in the hospital, suffering from burns and other hurts. Nobody knows where it will stop. Charlie's limits have barely been scorched, but there's fire all along one side of them. A change of wind--and there you are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a dozen places. We've been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a week." Stella looked out the north window. From the ten-story height she could see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky pall that shrouded the harbor. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "It's devilish," Linda went on. "Like groping in the dark and being afraid--for me. I've been married a month, and for ten days I've only seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes down in the launch for supplies, or to bring an injured man. And he doesn't tell me anything except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything. I sit there at the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and wonder what goes on up there. And at night there's the red glow, very faint and far. That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to help out and to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the evening train back." "I'm sorry," Stella repeated. She said it rather mechanically. Her mind was spinning a thread, upon which, strung like beads, slid all the manifold succession of things that had happened since she came first to Roaring Lake. Linda's voice, continuing, broke into her thoughts. "I suppose I shouldn't be croaking into your ear like a bird of ill omen, when you have to throw yourself heart and soul into that concert to-morrow," she said contritely. "I wonder why that Ancient Mariner way of seeking relief from one's troubles by pouring them into another ear is such a universal trait? You aren't vitally concerned, after all, and I am. Let's have that tea, dear, and talk about less grievous things. I still have one or two trifles to get in the shops too." After they had finished the food that Stella ordered sent up, they went out together. Later Stella saw her off on the train. "Good-by, dear," Linda said from the coach window. "I'm just selfish enough to wish you were going back with me; I wish you could sit with me on the bank of the lake, aching and longing for your man up there in the smoke as I ache and long for mine. Misery loves company." Stella's eyes were clouded as the train pulled out. Something in Linda Benton's parting words made her acutely lonely, dispirited, out of joint with the world she was deliberately fashioning for herself. Into Linda's life something big and elemental had come. The butterfly of yesterday had become the strong man's mate of to-day. Linda's heart was unequivocally up there in the smoke and flame with her man, fighting for their mutual possessions, hoping with him, fearing for him, longing for him, secure in the knowledge that if nothing else was left them, they had each other. It was a rare and beautiful thing to feel like that. And beyond that sorrowful vision of what she lacked to achieve any real and enduring happiness, there loomed also a self-torturing conviction that she herself had set in motion those forces which now threatened ruin for her brother and Jack Fyfe. There was no logical proof of this. Only intuitive, subtle suggestions gleaned here and there, shadowy finger-posts which pointed to Monohan as a deadly hater and with a score chalked up against Fyfe to which she had unconsciously added. He had desired her, and twice Fyfe had treated him like an urchin caught in mischief. She recalled how Monohan sprang at him like a tiger that day on the lake shore. She realized how bitter a humiliation it must have been to suffer that sardonic cuffing at Fyfe's hands. Monohan wasn't the type of man who would ever forget or forgive either that or the terrible grip on his throat. Even at the time she had sensed this and dreaded what it might ultimately lead to. Even while her being answered eagerly to the physical charm of him, she had fought against admitting to herself what desperate intent might have lain back of the killing of Billy Dale,--a shot that Lefty Howe declared was meant for Fyfe. She had long outgrown Monohan's lure, but if he had come to her or written to make out a case for himself when she first went to Seattle, she would have accepted his word against anything. Her heart would have fought for him against the logic of her brain. But--she had had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted him. She could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like Jack Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a torch to Fyfe's timber would be a likely enough counterstroke. She shrank from the thought. Yet it lingered until she felt guilty. Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe might or might not face ruin, she could not, before her own conscience, evade responsibility. The powder might have been laid, but her folly had touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it. That seared her like a pain far into the night. For every crime a punishment; for every sin a penance. Her world had taught her that. She had never danced; she had only listened to the piper and longed to dance, as nature had fashioned her to do. But the piper was sending his bill. She surveyed it wearily, emotionally bankrupt, wondering in what coin of the soul she would have to pay. CHAPTER XXIII A RIDE BY NIGHT Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening. She sang her way straight into the heart of that audience with her opening number. This was on Wednesday. Friday she sang again, and Saturday afternoon. When she came back to her room after that last concert, wearied with the effort of listening to chattering women and playing the gracious lady to an admiring contingent which insisted upon making her last appearance a social triumph, she found a letter forwarded from Seattle. She slit the envelope. A typewritten sheet enfolded a green slip,--a check. She looked at the figures, scarcely comprehending until she read the letter. "We take pleasure in handing you herewith," Mr. Lander wrote for the firm, "our check for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars, proceeds of oil stock sold as per your telegraphed instructions, less brokerage charges. We sold same at par, and trust this will be satisfactory." She looked at the check again. Nineteen thousand, five hundred--payable to her order. Two years ago such a sum would have lifted her to plutocratic heights, filled her with pleasurable excitement, innumerable anticipations. Now it stirred her less than the three hundred dollars she had just received from the Granada Concert committee. She had earned that, had given for it due measure of herself. This other had come without effort, without expectation. And less than she had ever needed money before did she now require such a sum. Yet she was sensibly aware that this windfall meant a short cut to things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over economic hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay houses, to vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial towns. She could hitch her wagon to a star and go straight up the avenue that led to a career, if it were in her to achieve greatness. Pleasant dreams in which the buoyant ego soared, until the logical interpretation of her ambitions brought her to a more practical consideration of ways and means, and that in turn confronted her with the fact that she could leave the Pacific coast to-morrow morning if she so chose. Why should she not so choose? She was her own mistress, free as the wind. Fyfe had said that. She looked out into the smoky veil that shrouded the water front and the hills across the Inlet, that swirled and eddied above the giant fir in Stanley Park, and her mind flicked back to Roaring Lake where the Red Flower of Kipling's _Jungle Book_ bloomed to her husband's ruin. Did it? She wondered. She could not think of him as beaten, bested in any undertaking. She had never been able to think of him in those terms. Always to her he had conveyed the impression of a superman. Always she had been a little in awe of him, of his strength, his patient, inflexible determination, glimpsing under his habitual repression certain tremendous forces. She could not conceive him as a broken man. Staring out into the smoky air, she wondered if the fires at Roaring Lake still ravaged that noble forest; if Fyfe's resources, like her brother's, were wholly involved in standing timber, and if that timber were doomed? She craved to know. Secured herself by that green slip in her hand against every possible need, she wondered if it were ordained that the two men whose possession of material resources had molded her into what she was to-day should lose all, be reduced to the same stress that had made her an unwilling drudge in her brother's kitchen. Then she recalled that for Charlie there was an equivalent sum due,--a share like her own. At the worst, he had the nucleus of another fortune. Curled among the pillows of her bed that night, she looked over the evening papers, read with a swift heart-sinking that the Roaring Lake fire was assuming terrific proportions, that nothing but a deluge of rain would stay it now. And more significantly, except for a minor blaze or two, the fire raged almost wholly upon and around the Fyfe block of limits. She laid aside the papers, switched off the lights, and lay staring wide-eyed at the dusky ceiling. At twenty minutes of midnight she was called to the door of her room to receive a telegram. It was from Linda, and it read: "Charlie badly hurt. Can you come?" Stella reached for the telephone receiver. The night clerk at the C.P.R. depot told her the first train she could take left at six in the morning. That meant reaching the Springs at nine-thirty. Nine and a half hours to sit with idle hands, in suspense. She did not knew what tragic dénouement awaited there, what she could do once she reached there. She knew only that a fever of impatience burned in her. The message had strung her suddenly taut, as if a crisis had arisen in which willy-nilly she must take a hand. So, groping for the relief of action, some method of spanning that nine hours' wait, her eye fell upon a card tucked beside the telephone case. She held it between, finger and thumb, her brows puckered. TAXIS AND TOURING CARS Anywhere . . . Anytime She took down the receiver again and asked for Seymour 9X. "Western Taxi," a man's voice drawled. "I want to reach Roaring Hot Springs in the shortest time possible," she told him rather breathlessly. "Can you furnish me a machine and a reliable chauffeur?" "Roaring Springs?" he repeated. "How many passengers?" "One. Myself." "Just a minute." She heard a faint burble of talk away at the other end of the wire. Then the same voice speaking crisply. "We gotta big six roadster, and a first-class driver. It'll cost you seventy-five dollars--in advance." "Your money will be waiting for you here," she answered calmly. "How soon can you bring the car around to the Hotel Granada?" "In ten minutes, if you say so." "Say twenty minutes, then." "All right." She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, instructed the night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send it by express to Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. Then she walked out to the broad-stepped carriage entrance. A low-hung long-hooded, yellow car stood there, exhaust purring faintly. She paid the driver, sank into the soft upholstering beside him, and the big six slid out into the street. There was no traffic. In a few minutes they were on the outskirts of the city, the long asphalt ribbon of King's Way lying like a silver band between green, bushy walls. They crossed the last car track. The driver spoke to her out of one corner of his mouth. "Wanna make time, huh?" "I want to get to Roaring Lake as quickly as you can drive, without taking chances." "I know the road pretty well," he assured her. "Drove a party clear to Rosebud day before yesterday. I'll do the best I can. Can't drive too fast at night. Too smoky." She could not gage his conception of real speed if the gait he struck was not "too fast." They were through New Westminster and rolling across the Fraser bridge before she was well settled in the seat, breasting the road with a lurch and a swing at the curves, a noise under that long hood like giant bees in an empty barrel. Ninety miles of road good, bad and indifferent, forest and farm and rolling hill, and the swamps of Sumas Prairie, lies between Vancouver and Roaring Lake. At four in the morning, with dawn an hour old, they woke the Rosebud ferryman to cross the river. Twenty minutes after that Stella was stepping stiffly out of the machine before Roaring Springs hospital. The doctor's Chinaman was abroad in the garden. She beckoned him. "You sabe Mr. Benton--Charlie Benton?" she asked. "He in doctor's house?" The Chinaman pointed across the road. "Mist Bentle obah dah," he said. "Velly much sick. Missa Bentle lib dah, all same gleen house." Stella ran across the way. The front door of the green cottage stood wide. An electric drop light burned in the front room, though it was broad day. When she crossed the threshold, she saw Linda sitting in a chair, her arms folded on the table-edge, her head resting on her hands. She was asleep, and she did not raise her head till Stella shook her shoulder. Linda Abbey had been a pretty girl, very fair, with apple-blossom skin and a wonderfully expressive face. It gave Stella a shock to see her now, to gage her suffering by the havoc it had wrought. Linda looked old, haggard, drawn. There was a weary droop to her mouth, her eyes were dull, lifeless, just as one might look who is utterly exhausted in mind and body. Oddly enough, she spoke first of something irrelevant, inconsequential. "I fell asleep," she said heavily. "What time is it?" Stella looked at her watch. "Half-past four," she answered. "How is Charlie? What happened to him?" "Monohan shot him." Stella caught her breath. She hadn't been prepared for that. "Is he--is he--" she could not utter the words. "He'll get better. Wait." Linda rose stiffly from her seat. A door in one side of the room stood ajar. She opened it, and Stella, looking over her shoulder, saw her brother's tousled head on a pillow. A nurse in uniform sat beside his bed. Linda closed the door silently. "Come into the kitchen where we won't make a noise," she whispered. A fire burned in the kitchen stove. Linda sank into a willow rocker. "I'm weary as Atlas," she said. "I've been fretting for so long. Then late yesterday afternoon they brought him home to me--like that. The doctor was probing for the bullet when I wired you. I was in a panic then, I think. Half-past four! How did you get here so soon? How could you? There's no train." Stella told her. "Why should Monohan shoot him?" she broke out. "For God's sake, talk, Linda!" There was a curious impersonality in Linda's manner, as if she stood aloof from it all, as if the fire of her vitality had burned out. She lay back in her chair with eyelids drooping, speaking in dull, lifeless tones. "Monohan shot him because Charlie came on him in the woods setting a fresh fire. They've suspected him, or some one in his pay, of that, and they've been watching. There were two other men with Charlie, so there is no mistake. Monohan got away. That's all I know. Oh, but I'm tired. I've been hanging on to myself for so long. About daylight, after we knew for sure that Charlie was over the hill, something seemed to let go in me. I'm awful glad you came, Stella. Can you make a cup of tea?" Stella could and did, but she drank none of it herself. A dead weight of apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience pointed a deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, sandwiched in between, the loosed fire furies which were taking toll in bodily injury and ruinous loss. Yet she was helpless. The matter was wholly out of her hands, and she stood aghast before it, much as the small child stands aghast before the burning house he has fired by accident. Fyfe next. That was the ultimate, the culmination, which would leave her forever transfixed with remorseful horror. The fact that already the machinery of the law which would eventually bring Monohan to book for the double lawlessness of arson and attempted homicide must be in motion, that the Provincial police would be hard on his trail, did not occur to her. She could only visualize him progressing step by step from one lawless deed to another. And in her mind every step led to Jack Fyfe, who had made a mock of him. She found her hands clenching till the nails dug deep. Linda's head drooped over the teacup. Her eyelids blinked. "Dear," Stella said tenderly, "come and lie down. You're worn out." "Perhaps I'd better," Linda muttered. "There's another room in there." Stella tucked the weary girl into the bed, and went back to the kitchen, and sat down in the willow rocker. After another hour the nurse came out and prepared her own breakfast. Benton was still sleeping. He was in no danger, the nurse told Stella. The bullet had driven cleanly through his body, missing as by a miracle any vital part, and lodged in the muscles of his back, whence the surgeon had removed it. Though weak from shock, loss of blood, excitement, he had rallied splendidly, and fallen into a normal sleep. Later the doctor confirmed this. He made light of the wound. One couldn't kill a young man as full of vitality as Charlie Benton with an axe, he informed Stella with an optimistic smile. Which lifted one burden from her mind. The night nurse went away, and another from the hospital took her place. Benton slept; Linda slept. The house was very quiet. To Stella, brooding in that kitchen chair, it became oppressive, that funeral hush. When it was drawing near ten o'clock, she walked up the road past the corner store and post-office, and so out to the end of the wharf. The air was hot and heavy, pungent, gray with the smoke. Farther along, St. Allwoods bulked mistily amid its grounds. The crescent of shore line half a mile distant was wholly obscured. Up over the eastern mountain range the sun, high above the murk, hung like a bloody orange, rayless and round. No hotel guests strolled by pairs and groups along the bank. She could understand that no one would come for pleasure into that suffocating atmosphere. Caught in that great bowl of which the lake formed the watery bottom, the smoke eddied and rolled like a cloud of mist. She stood a while gazing at the glassy surface of the lake where it spread to her vision a little way beyond the piles. Then she went back to the green cottage. Benton lifted alert, recognizing eyes when she peeped in the bedroom door. "Hello, Sis," he greeted in strangely subdued tones. "When did you blow in? I thought you'd deserted the sinking ship completely. Come on in." She winced inwardly at his words, but made no outward sign, as she came up to his bedside. The nurse went out. "Perhaps you'd better not talk?" she said. "Oh, nonsense," he retorted feebly. "I'm all right. Sore as the mischief and weak. But I don't feel as bad as I might. Linda still asleep?" "I think so," Stella answered. "Poor kid," he breathed; "it's been tough on her. Well, I guess it's been tough on everybody. He turned out to be some bad actor, this Monohan party. I never did like the beggar. He was a little too high-handed in his smooth, kid-glove way. But I didn't suppose he'd try to burn up a million dollars' worth of timber to satisfy a grudge. Well, he put his foot in it proper at last. He'll get a good long jolt in the pen, if the boys don't beat the constables to him and take him to pieces." "He did start the fire then?" Stella muttered. "I guess so," Benton replied. "At any rate, he kept it going. Did it by his lonesome, too. Jack suspected that. We were watching for him as well as fighting fire. He'd come down from the head of the lake in that speed boat of his, and this time daylight caught him before he could get back to where he had her cached, after starting a string of little fires in the edge of my north limit. He had it in for me, too, you know; I batted him over the head with a pike-pole here at the wharf one day this spring, so he plunked me as soon as I hollered at him. I wish he'd done it earlier in the game. We might have saved a lot of good timber. As it was, we couldn't do much. Every time the wind changed, it would break out in a new place--too often to be accidental. Damn him!" "How is it going to end, the fire?" Stella forced herself to ask. "Will you and Jack be able to save any timber?" "If it should rain hard, and if in the meantime the boys keep it from jumping the fire-trails we've cut, I'll get by with most of mine," he said. "But Jack's done for. He won't have anything but his donkeys and gear and part of a cedar limit on the Tyee which isn't paid for. He had practically everything tied up in that big block of timber around the Point. Monohan made him spend money like water to hold his own. Jack's broke." Stella's head drooped. Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, all grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered her soft fingers that rested on his bed. "It's a pity everything's gone to pot like that, Stell," he said softly. "I've grown a lot wiser in human ways the last two years. You taught me a lot, and Jack a lot, and Linda the rest. It seems a blamed shame you and Jack came to a fork in the road. Oh, he never chirped. I've just guessed it the last few weeks. I owe him a lot that he'll never let me pay back in anything but good will. I hate to see him get the worst of it from every direction. He grins and doesn't say anything. But I know it hurts. There can't be anything much wrong between you two. Why don't you forget your petty larceny troubles and start all over again?" "I can't," she whispered. "It wouldn't work. There's too many scars. Too much that's hard to forget." "Well, you know about that better than I do," Benton said thoughtfully. "It all depends on how you _feel_." The poignant truth of that struck miserably home to her. It was not a matter of reason or logic, of her making any sacrifice for her conscience sake. It depended solely upon the existence of an emotion she could not definitely invoke. She was torn by so many emotions, not one of which she could be sure was the vital, the necessary one. Her heart did not cry out for Jack Fyfe, except in a pitying tenderness, as she used to feel for Jack Junior when he bumped and bruised himself. She had felt that before and held it too weak a crutch to lean upon. The nurse came in with a cup of broth for Benton, and Stella went away with a dumb ache in her breast, a leaden sinking of her spirits, and went out to sit on the porch steps. The minutes piled into hours, and noon came, when Linda wakened. Stella forced herself to swallow a cup of tea, to eat food; then she left Linda sitting with her husband and went back to the porch steps again. As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw trousers and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the road, a burly woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's crew. "Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. Say--ah--" He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an uneasiness, a hesitation in his manner. "What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly. "How is everything up the lake?" It was common enough in her experience, that temporary embarrassment of a logger before her. She knew them for men with boyish souls, boyish instincts, rude simplicities of heart. Long ago she had revised those first superficial estimates of them as gross, hulking brutes who worked hard and drank harder, coarsened and calloused by their occupation. They had their weaknesses, but their virtues of abiding loyalty, their reckless generosity, their simple directness, were great indeed. They took their lives in their hands on skid-road and spring-board, that such as she might flourish. They did not understand that, but she did. "What is it, Barlow?" she repeated. "Have you just come down the lake?" "Yes'm," he answered. "Say, Jack don't happen to be here, does he?" "No, he hasn't been here," she told him. The man's face fell. "What's wrong?" Stella demanded. She had a swift divination that something was wrong. "Oh, I dunno's anythin's wrong, particular," Barlow replied. "Only--well, Lefty he sent me down to see if Jack was at the Springs. We ain't seen him for a couple uh days." Her pulse quickened. "And he has not come down the lake?" "I guess not," the logger said. "Oh, I guess it's all right. Jack's pretty _skookum_ in the woods. Only Lefty got uneasy. It's desperate hot and smoky up there." "How did you come down? Are you going back soon?" she asked abruptly. "I got the _Waterbug_," Barlow told her. "I'm goin' right straight back." Stella looked out over the smoky lake and back at the logger again, a sudden resolution born of intolerable uncertainty, of a feeling that she could only characterize as fear, sprang full-fledged into her mind. "Wait for me," she said. "I'm going with you." CHAPTER XXIV "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" The _Waterbug_ limped. Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. He was satisfied to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve at all. So the boat moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at less than half speed. Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser bore every mark of hard usage. Her topsides were foul, her decks splintered by the tramping of calked boots, grimy with soot and cinders. It seemed to Stella that everything and every one on and about Roaring Lake bore some mark of that holocaust raging in the timber, as if the fire were some malignant disease menacing and marring all that it affected, and affecting all that trafficked within its smoky radius. But of the fire itself she could see nothing, even when late in the afternoon they drew in to the bay before her brother's camp. A heavier smoke cloud, more pungent of burning pitch, blanketed the shores, lifted in blue, rolling masses farther back. A greater heat made the air stifling, causing the eyes to smart and grow watery. That was the only difference. Barlow laid the _Waterbug_ alongside the float. He had already told her that Lefty Howe, with the greater part of Fyfe's crew, was extending and guarding Benton's fire-trail, and he half expected that Fyfe might have turned up there. Away back in the smoke arose spasmodic coughing of donkey engines, dull resounding of axe-blades. Barlow led the way. They traversed a few hundred yards of path through brush, broken tops, and stumps, coming at last into a fairway cut through virgin timber, a sixty-foot strip denuded of every growth, great firs felled and drawn far aside, brush piled and burned. A breastwork from which to fight advancing fire, it ran away into the heart of a smoky forest. Here and there blackened, fire-scorched patches abutted upon its northern flank, stumps of great trees smoldering, crackling yet. At the first such place, half a dozen men were busy with shovels blotting out streaks of fire that crept along in the dry leaf mold. No, they had not seen Fyfe. But they had been blamed busy. He might be up above. Half a mile beyond that, beside the first donkey shuddering on its anchored skids as it tore an eighteen-inch cedar out by the roots, they came on Lefty Howe. He shook his head when Stella asked for Fyfe. "He took twenty men around to the main camp day before yesterday," said Lefty. "There was a piece uh timber beyond that he thought he could save. I--well, I took a shoot around there yesterday, after your brother got hurt. Jack wasn't there. Most of the boys was at camp loadin' gear on the scows. They said Jack's gone around to Tumblin' Creek with one man. He wasn't back this mornin'. So I thought maybe he'd gone to the Springs. I dunno's there's any occasion to worry. He might 'a' gone to the head uh the lake with them constables that went up last night. How's Charlie Benton?" She told him briefly. "That's good," said Lefty. "Now, I'd go around to Cougar Bay, if I was you, Mrs. Jack. He's liable to come in there, any time. You could stay at the house to-night. Everything around there, shacks 'n' all, was burned days ago, so the fire can't touch the house. The crew there has grub an' a cook. I kinda expect Jack'll be there, unless he fell in with them constables." She trudged silently back to the _Waterbug_. Barlow started the engine, and the boat took up her slow way. As they skirted the shore, Stella began to see here and there the fierce havoc of the fire. Black trunks of fir reared nakedly to the smoky sky, lay crisscross on bank and beach. Nowhere was there a green blade, a living bush. Nothing but charred black, a melancholy waste of smoking litter, with here and there a pitch-soaked stub still waving its banner of flame, or glowing redly. Back of those seared skeletons a shifting cloud of smoke obscured everything. Presently they drew in to Cougar Bay. Men moved about on the beach; two bulky scows stood nose-on to the shore. Upon them rested half a dozen donkey engines, thick-bellied, upright machines, blown down, dead on their skids. About these in great coils lay piled the gear of logging, miles of steel cable, blocks, the varied tools of the logger's trade. The _Panther_ lay between the scows, with lines from each passed over her towing bitts. Stella could see the outline of the white bungalow on its grassy knoll. They had saved only that, of all the camp, by a fight that sent three men to the hospital, on a day when the wind shifted into the northwest and sent a sheet of flame rolling through the timber and down on Cougar Bay like a tidal wave. So Barlow told her. He cupped his hands now and called to his fellows on the beach. No, Fyfe had not come back yet. "Go up to the mouth of Tumbling Creek," Stella ordered. Barlow swung the _Waterbug_ about, cleared the point, and stood up along the shore. Stella sat on a cushioned seat at the back of the pilot house, hard-eyed, struggling against that dead weight that seemed, to grow and grow in her breast. That elemental fury raging in the woods made her shrink. Her own hand had helped to loose it, but her hands were powerless to stay it; she could only sit and watch and wait, eaten up with misery of her own making. She was horribly afraid, with a fear she would not name to herself. Behind that density of atmosphere, the sun had gone to rest. The first shadows of dusk were closing in, betokened by a thickening of the smoke-fog into which the _Waterbug_ slowly plowed. To port a dimming shore line; to starboard, aft, and dead ahead, water and air merged in two boat lengths. Barlow leaned through the pilot-house window, one hand on the wheel, straining his eyes on their course. Suddenly he threw out the clutch, shut down his throttle control with one hand, and yanked with the other at the cord which loosed the _Waterbug's_ shrill whistle. Dead ahead, almost upon them, came an answering toot. "I thought I heard a gas-boat," Barlow exclaimed. "Sufferin' Jerusalem! Hi, there!" He threw his weight on the wheel, sending it hard over. The cruiser still had way on; the momentum of her ten-ton weight scarcely had slackened, and she answered the helm. Out of the deceptive thickness ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another forty-footer, sheering quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was upon them, and abreast, and gone, with a watery purl of her bow wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust, passing so near than an active man could have leaped the space between. "Sufferin' Jerusalem!" Barlow repeated, turning to Stella. "Did you see that, Mrs. Jack? They got him." Stella nodded. She too had seen Monohan seated on the after deck, his head sunk on his breast, irons on his wrists. A glimpse, no more. "That'll help some," Barlow grunted. "Quick work. But they come blame near cuttin' us down, beltin' along at ten knots when you can't see forty feet ahead." An empty beach greeted them at Tumbling Creek. Reluctantly Stella bade Barlow turn back. It would soon be dark, and Barlow said he would be taking chances of piling on the shore before he could see it, or getting lost in the profound black that would shut down on the water with daylight's end. Less than a mile from Cougar Bay, the _Waterbug's_ engine gave a few premonitory gasps and died. Barlow descended to the engine room, hooked up the trouble lamp, and sought for the cause. He could not find it. Stella could hear him muttering profanity, turning the flywheel over, getting an occasional explosion. An hour passed. Dark of the Pit descended, shrouding the lake with a sable curtain, close-folded, impenetrable. The dead stillness of the day vanished before a hot land breeze, and Stella, as she felt the launch drift, knew by her experience on the lake that they were moving offshore. Presently this was confirmed, for out of the black wall on the west, from which the night wind brought stifling puffs of smoke, there lifted a yellow effulgence that grew to a red glare as the boat drifted out. Soon that red glare was a glowing line that rose and fell, dipping and rising and wavering along a two-mile stretch, a fiery surf beating against the forest. Down in the engine room Barlow finally located the trouble, and the motor took up its labors, spinning with a rhythmic chatter of valves. The man came up into the pilot house, wiping the sweat from his grimy face. "Gee, I'm sorry, Mrs. Fyfe," he said. "A gas-engine man would 'a' fixed that in five minutes. Took me two hours to find out what was wrong. It'll be a heck of a job to fetch Cougar Bay now." But by luck Barlow made his way back, blundering fairly into the landing at the foot of the path that led to the bungalow, as if the cruiser knew the way to her old berth. And as he reached the float, the front windows on the hillock broke out yellow, pale blurs in the smoky night. "Well, say," Barlow pointed. "I bet a nickel Jack's home. See? Nobody but him would be in the house." "I'll go up," Stella said. "All right, I guess you know the path better'n I do," Barlow said. "I'll take the _Bug_ around into the bay." Stella ran up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and leaned against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her step was noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the _Waterbug_ she had found an old pair of her own shoes, rubber-soled, and she had put them on to ease the ache in her feet born of thirty-six hours' encasement in leather. She gained the door without a sound. It was wide open, and in the middle of the big room Jack Fyfe stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, staring absently at the floor. She took a step or two inside. Fyfe did not hear her; he did not look up. "Jack." He gave ever so slight a start, glanced up, stood with head thrown back a little. But he did not move, or answer, and Stella, looking at him, seeing the flame that glowed in his eyes, could not speak. Something seemed to choke her, something that was a strange compound of relief and bewilderment and a slow wonder at herself,--at the queer, unsteady pounding of her heart. "How did you get way up here?" he asked at last. "Linda wired last night that Charlie was hurt. I got a machine to the Springs. Then Barlow came down this afternoon looking for you. He said you'd been missing for two days. So I--I--" She broke off. Fyfe was walking toward her with that peculiar, lightfooted step of his, a queer, tense look on his face. "Nero fiddled when Rome was burning," he said harshly. "Did you come to sing while _my_ Rome goes up in smoke?" A little, half-strangled sob escaped her. She turned to go. But he caught her by the arm. "There, lady," he said, with a swift change of tone, "I didn't mean to slash at you. I suppose you mean all right. But just now, with everything gone to the devil, to look up and see you here--I've really got an ugly temper, Stella, and it's pretty near the surface these days. I don't want to be pitied and sympathized with. I want to fight. I want to hurt somebody." "Hurt me then," she cried. He shook his head sadly. "I couldn't do that," he said. "No, I can't imagine myself ever doing that." "Why?" she asked, knowing why, but wishful to hear in words what his eyes shouted. "Because I love you," he said. "You know well enough why." She lifted her one free hand to his shoulder. Her face turned up to his. A warm wave of blood dyed the round, white neck, shot up into her cheeks. Her eyes were suddenly aglow, lips tremulous. "Kiss me, then," she whispered. "That's what I came for. Kiss me, Jack." If she had doubted, if she had ever in the last few hours looked with misgiving upon what she felt herself impelled to do, the pressure of Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words against his breast. "And so--and so, after all, you do care." Fyfe held her off a little from him, his sinewy fingers gripping gently the soft flesh of her arms. "And you were big enough to come back. Oh, my dear, you don't know what that means to me. I'm broke, and I'd just about reached the point where I didn't give a damn. This fire has cleaned me out. I've--" "I know," Stella interrupted. "That's why I came back. I wouldn't have come otherwise, at least not for a long time--perhaps never. It seemed as if I ought to--as if it were the least I could do. Of course, it looks altogether different, now that I know I really want to. But you see I didn't know that for sure until I saw you standing here. Oh, Jack, there's such a lot I wish I could wipe out." "It's wiped out," he said happily. "The slate's clean. Fair weather didn't get us anywhere. It took a storm. Well, the storm's over." She stirred uneasily in his arms. "Haven't you got the least bit of resentment, Jack, for all this trouble I've helped to bring about?" she faltered. "Why, no" he said thoughtfully. "All you did was to touch the fireworks off. And they might have started over anything. Lord no! put that idea out of your head." "I don't understand," she murmured. "I never have quite understood why Monohan should attack you with such savage bitterness. That trouble he started on the Tyee, then this criminal firing of the woods. I've had hints, first from your sister, then from Linda. I didn't know you'd clashed before. I'm not very clear on that yet. But you knew all the time what he was. Why didn't you tell me, Jack?" "Well, maybe I should have," Fyfe admitted. "But I couldn't very well. Don't you see? He wasn't even an incident, until he bobbed up and rescued you that day. I couldn't, after that, start in picking his character to pieces as a mater of precaution. We had a sort of an armed truce. He left me strictly alone. I'd trimmed his claws once or twice already. I suppose he was acute enough to see an opportunity to get a whack at me through you. You were just living from day to day, creating a world of illusions for yourself, nourishing yourself with dreams, smarting under a stifled regret for a lot you thought you'd passed up for good. _He_ wasn't a factor, at first. When he did finally stir in you an emotion I had failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say anything. If I'd tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your idol's clay feet, you'd have despised me, as well as refused to believe. I couldn't do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you to find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on. I purposely refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first time,--partly on the kid's account, partly because I could hardly bear to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able to size him up. "You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing would afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to check-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really started him properly. After that, you--as something to be desired and possessed--ran second to his feeling against me. He was bound to try and play even, regardless of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee, I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life--for my own life, if he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about to you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me. Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me. I had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge against life, and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never kissed me once in all those two years like you kissed me just now." She pulled his head down and kissed him again. "So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own advantage," he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I wanted to put a brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex individual, Stella. Along with certain fixed, fundamental principles, you've got a streak of divine madness in you, a capacity for reckless undertakings. You'd never have married me if you hadn't. I trusted you absolutely. But, I was afraid in spite of my faith. You had draped such an idealistic mantle around Monohan. I wanted to rend that before it came to a final separation between us. It worked out, because he couldn't resist trying to take a crack at me when the notion seized him. "So," he continued, after a pause, "you aren't responsible, and I've never considered you responsible for any of this. It's between him and me, and it's been shaping for years. Whenever our trails crossed there was bound to be a clash. There's always been a natural personal antagonism between us. It began to show when we were kids, you might say. Monohan's nature is such that he can't acknowledge defeat, he can't deny himself a gratification. He's a supreme egotist. He's always had plenty of money, he's always had whatever he wanted, and it never mattered to him how he gratified his desires. "The first time we locked horns was in my last year at high school. Monohan was a star athlete. I beat him in a pole vault. That irked him so that he sulked and sneered, and generally made himself so insulting that I slapped him. We fought, and I whipped him. I had a temper that I hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I had nothing but contempt for him, anyway, because even then, when he wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,--a girl he'd picked up on a trip to Georgia,--like any confirmed rounder. "Well, from that time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance to sting me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, so hard that when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me home and read the riot act so strong that I flared up and left. Then I came to the coast here and got a job in the woods, got to be a logging boss, and went into business on my own hook eventually. I'd just got nicely started when I ran into Monohan again. He'd got into timber himself. I was hand logging up the coast, and I'd hate to tell you the tricks he tried. He kept it up until I got too big to be harassed in a petty way. Then he left me alone. But he never forgot his grudge. The stage was all set for this act long before you gave him his cue, Stella. You weren't to blame for that, or if you were in part, it doesn't matter now. I'm satisfied. Paradoxically I feel rich, even though it's a long shot that I'm broke flat. I've got something money doesn't buy. And he has overreached himself at last. All his money and pull won't help him out of this jack pot. Arson and attempted murder is serious business." "They caught him," Stella said. "The constables took him down the lake to-night. I saw him on their launch as they passed the _Waterbug_." "Yes?" Fyfe said. "Quick work. I didn't even know about the shooting till I came in here to-night about dark. Well," he snapped his fingers, "exit Monohan. He's a dead issue, far as we're concerned. Wouldn't you like something to eat, Stella? I'm hungry, and I was dog-tired when I landed here. Say, you can't guess what I was thinking about, lady, standing there when you came in." She shook her head. "I had a crazy notion of touching a match to the house," he said soberly, "letting it go up in smoke with the rest. Yes, that's what I was thinking I would do. Then I'd take the _Panther_ and what gear I have on the scows and pull off Roaring Lake. It didn't seem as if I could stay. I'd laid the foundation of a fortune here and tried to make a home--and lost it all, everything that was worth having. And then all at once there you were, like a vision in the door. Miracles _do_ happen!" Her arms tightened involuntarily about him. "Oh," she cried breathlessly. "Our little, white house!" "Without you," he replied softly, "it was just an empty shell of boards and plaster, something to make me ache with loneliness." "But not now," she murmured. "It's home, now." "Yes," he agreed, smiling. "Ah, but it isn't quite." She choked down a lump in her throat. "Not when I think of those little feet that used to patter on the floor. Oh, Jack--when I think of my baby boy! My dear, my dear, why did all this have to be, I wonder?" Fyfe stroked her glossy coils of hair. "We get nothing of value without a price," he said quietly. "Except by rare accident, nothing that's worth having comes cheap and easy. We've paid the price, and we're square with the world and with each other. That's everything." "Are you completely ruined, Jack?" she asked after an interval. "Charlie said you were." "Well," he answered reflectively, "I haven't had time to balance accounts, but I guess I will be. The timber's gone. I've saved most of the logging gear. But if I realized on everything that's left, and squared up everything, I guess I'd be pretty near strapped." "Will you take me in as a business partner, Jack?" she asked eagerly. "That's what I had in mind when I came up here. I made up my mind to propose that, after I'd heard you were ruined. Oh, it seems silly now, but I wanted to make amends that way; at least, I tried to tell myself that. Listen. When my father died, he left some supposedly worthless oil stock. But it proved to have a market value. I got my share of it the other day. It'll help us to make a fresh start--together." She had the envelope and the check tucked inside her waist. She took it out now and pressed the green slip into his hand. Fyfe looked at it and at her, a little chuckle deep in his throat. "Nineteen thousand, five hundred," he laughed. "Well, that's quite a stake for you. But if you go partners with me, what about your singing?" "I don't see how I can have my cake and eat it, too," she said lightly. "I don't feel quite so eager for a career as I did." "Well, we'll see," he said. "That light of yours shouldn't be hidden under a bushel. And still, I don't like the idea of you being away from me, which a career implies." He put the check back in the envelope, smiling oddly to himself, and tucked it back in her bosom. She caught and pressed his hand there, against the soft flesh. "Won't you use it, Jack?" she pleaded. "Won't it help? Don't let any silly pride influence you. There mustn't ever be anything like that between us again." "There won't be," he smiled. "Frankly, if I need it, I'll use it. But that's a matter there's plenty of time to decide. You see, although technically I may be broke, I'm a long way from the end of my tether. I think I'll have my working outfit clear, and the country's full of timber. I've got a standing in the business that neither fire nor anything else can destroy. No, I haven't any false pride about the money, dear. But the money part of our future is a detail. With the incentive I've got now to work and plan, it won't take me five years to be a bigger toad in the timber puddle than I ever was. You don't know what a dynamo I am when I get going." "I don't doubt that," she said proudly. "But the money's yours, if you need it." "I need something else a good deal more right now," he laughed. "That's something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Stella? Wouldn't you like a cup of coffee?" "I'm famished," she admitted--the literal truth. The vaulting uplift of spirit, that glad little song that kept lilting in her heart, filled her with peace and contentment, but physically she was beginning to experience acute hunger. She recalled that she had eaten scarcely anything that day. "We'll go down to the camp," Fyfe suggested. "The cook will have something left. We're camping like pioneers down there. The shacks were all burned, and somebody sank the cookhouse scow." They went down the path to the bay, hand in hand, feeling their way through that fire-blackened area, under a black sky. A red eye glowed ahead of them, a fire on the beach around which men squatted on their haunches or lay stretched on their blankets, sooty-faced fire fighters, a weary group. The air was rank with smoke wafted from the burning woods. The cook's fire was dead, and that worthy was humped on his bed-roll smoking a pipe. But he had cold meat and bread, and he brewed a pot of coffee on the big fire for them, and Stella ate the plain fare, sitting in the circle of tired loggers. "Poor fellows, they look worn out," she said, when they were again traversing that black road to the bungalow. "We've slept standing up for three weeks," Fyfe said simply. "They've done everything they could. And we're not through yet. A north wind might set Charlie's timber afire in a dozen places." "Oh, for a rain," she sighed. "If wishing for rain brought it," he laughed, "we'd have had a second flood. We've got to keep pegging away till it does rain, that's all. We can't do much, but we have to keep doing it. You'll have to go back to the Springs to-morrow, I'm afraid, Stella. I'll have to stay on the firing line, literally." "I don't want to," she cried rebelliously. "I want to stay up here with you. I'm not wax. I won't melt." She continued that argument into the house, until Fyfe laughingly smothered her speech with kisses. * * * * * An oddly familiar sound murmuring in Stella's ear wakened her. At first she thought she must be dreaming. It was still inky dark, but the air that blew in at the open window was sweet and cool, filtered of that choking smoke. She lifted herself warily, looked out, reached a hand through the lifted sash. Wet drops spattered it. The sound she heard was the drip of eaves, the beat of rain on the charred timber, upon the dried grass of the lawn. Beside her Fyfe was a dim bulk, sleeping the dead slumber of utter weariness. She hesitated a minute, then shook him. "Listen, Jack," she said. He lifted his head. "Rain!" he whispered. "Good night, Mister Fire. Hooray!" "I brought it," Stella murmured sleepily. "I wished it on Roaring Lake to-night." Then she slipped her arm about his neck, and drew his face down to her breast with a tender fierceness, and closed her eyes with a contented sigh. THE END 
13532	----	KINDRED OF THE DUST by PETER B. KYNE Author of _Cappy Ricks_, _The Valley of the Giants_, _Webster--Man's Man_, etc. Illustrated by Dean Cornwell 1920 TO IRENE MY DEAR, TYRANNICAL, PRACTICAL LITTLE FOSTER-SISTER WITHOUT WHOSE AID AND COMFORT, HOOTS, CHEERS AND UNAUTHORIZED STRIKES, THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF MY ALLEGED LITERARY OUTPUT WOULD BE APPRECIABLY DIMINISHED, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED THE ILLUSTRATIONS Hector McKaye was bred of an acquisitive race She stole to the old square piano and sang for him Donald bowed his head, "I can't give her up, father" "I'm a man without a home and you've just _got_ to take me in, Nan" I In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building castles in Spain--for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of Port Agnew; ever and anon he would gaze through the plate-glass windows out to sea and watch for his ships to come home. Whenever The Laird put his dreams behind him, he always looked seaward. In the course of time, his home-bound skippers, sighting the white house on the headland and knowing that The Laird was apt to be up there watching, formed the habit of doing something that pleased their owner mightily. When the northwest trades held steady and true, and while the tide was still at the flood, they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The Laird, they would dip his house-flag--a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white--the symbol to the world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul of Hector McKaye would thrill. "Guid lads! My bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw one of his ships in the offing--and he could identify his ships as far as he could see them--he ordered the gardener to load this cannon. Presently the masters began to dip the house-flag when outward bound, and discovered that, whether The Laird sat at his desk in the mill office or watched from the cliff, they drew an answering salute. This was their hail and farewell. One morning, the barkentine Hathor, towing out for Delagoa Bay, dipped her house-flag, and the watch at their stations bent their gaze upon the house on the cliff. Long they waited but no answering salute greeted the acknowledgment of their affectionate and willing service. The mate's glance met the master's. "The old laird must be unwell, sir," he opined. But the master shook his head. "He was to have had dinner aboard with us last night, but early in the afternoon he sent over word that he'd like to be excused. He's sick at heart, poor man! Daney tells me he's heard the town gossip about young Donald." "The lad's a gentleman, sir," the mate defended. "He'll not disgrace his people." "He's young--and youth must be served. Man, I was young myself once--and Nan of the Sawdust Pile is not a woman a young man would look at once and go his way." * * * * * In the southwestern corner of the state of Washington, nestled in the Bight of Tyee and straddling the Skookum River, lies the little sawmill town of Port Agnew. It is a community somewhat difficult to locate, for the Bight of Tyee is not of sufficient importance as a harbor to have won consideration by the cartographers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Port Agnew is not quite forty years old. Consequently, it appears only on the very latest state maps and in the smallest possible type. When Hector McKaye first gazed upon the bight, the transcontinental lines had not yet begun to consider the thrusting of their tentacles into southwestern Washington, and, with the exception of those regions where good harbors had partially solved the problem of transportation, timber in Washington was very cheap. Consequently, since Hector McKaye was one of those hardy men who never hesitate to take that which no man denies them, he reached forth and acquired timber. A strip of land a quarter of a mile wide and fronting the beach was barren of commercial timber. As grazing-land, Hector McKaye was enabled to file on a full section of this, and, with its acquisition, he owned the key to the outlet. While "proving up" his claim, he operated a general store for trading with the Indians and trappers, and at this he prospered. From time to time he purchased timber-claims from the trappers as fast as they "proved up," paying for these stumpage-prices varying from twenty-five to fifty cents per thousand. On his frequent trips to the outer world, McKaye extolled the opportunities for acquiring good timber-claims down on the Skookum; he advertised them in letters and in discreet interviews with the editors of little newspapers in the sawmill towns on Puget Sound and Grays Harhor; he let it be known that an honest fellow could secure credit for a winter's provisions from him, and pay for it with pelts in the spring. The influx of homesteaders increased--single men, for the most part, and poor--men who labored six months of the year elsewhere and lived the remaining six months in rude log huts on their claims down on the Skookum. And when the requirements of the homestead laws had been complied with and a patent to their quarter-section obtained from the Land Office in Washington, the homesteaders were ready to sell and move on to other and greener pastures. So they sold to the only possible purchaser, Hector McKaye, and departed, quite satisfied with a profit which they flattered themselves had been the result of their own prudence and foresight. Thus, in the course of ten years, Hector McKaye' acquired ten thousand acres of splendid Douglas fir and white cedar. But he had not been successful in acquiring claims along the south bank of the Skookum. For some mysterious reason, he soon found claims on the north bank cheaper and easier to secure, albeit the timber showed no variance in quantity or quality. Discreet investigations brought to light the fact that he had a competitor--one Martin Darrow, who dwelt in St. Paul, Minnesota. To St. Paul, therefore, journeyed Hector McKaye, and sought an audience with Martin Darrow. "I'm McKaye, from the Skookum River, Washington," he announced, without preamble. "I've been expecting you, Mr. McKaye," Darrow replied. "Got a proposition to submit?" "Naturally, or I wouldn't have come to St. Paul. I notice you have a weakness for the timber on the south bank of the Skookum. You've opposed me there half a dozen times and won. I have also observed that I have a free hand with claims north of the river. That's fair--and there's timber enough for two. Hereafter, I'll keep to my own side of the river." "I see we're going to come to an understanding, Mr. McKaye. What will you give me to stick to my side of the river?" "An outlet through the bight for your product when you commence manufacturing. I control the lower half-mile of the river and the only available mill-sites. I'll give you a mill-site if you'll pay half the expense of digging a new channel for the Skookum, and changing its course so it will emerge into the still, deep water under the lee of Tyee Head." "We'll do business," said Martin Darrow--and they did, although it was many years after Hector McKaye had incorporated the Tyee Lumber Company and founded his town of Port Agnew before Darrow began operations. True to his promise, McKaye deeded him a mill-and town-site, and he founded a settlement on the eastern edge of Port Agnew, but quite distinct from it, and called it Darrow, after himself. It was not a community that Hector McKaye approved of, for it was squalid and unsanitary, and its untidy, unpainted shacks of rough lumber harbored southern European labor, of which Hector McKaye would have none. In Darrow, also, there were three groggeries and a gambling-house, with the usual concomitant of women whose profession is the oldest and the saddest in the world. Following his discovery of the Bight of Tyee, a quarter of a century passed. A man may prosper much in twenty-five years, and Hector McKaye, albeit American born, was bred of an acquisitive race. When his Gethsemane came upon him, he was rated the richest lumberman in the state of Washington; his twenty-thousand board-feet capacity per day sawmill had grown to five hundred thousand, his ten thousand acres to a hundred thousand. Two thousand persons looked to him and his enterprise for their bread and butter; he owned a fleet of half a dozen steam-schooners and sixteen big wind-jammers; he owned a town which he had called Port Agnew, and he had married and been blessed with children. And because his ambition no longer demanded it, he was no longer a miser. [Illustration: HECTOR MCKAYE WAS BRED OF AN ACQUISITIVE RACE.] In a word, he was a happy man, and in affectionate pride and as a tribute to his might, his name and an occasional forget-me-not of speech which clung to his tongue, heritage of his Scotch forebears, his people called him "The Laird of Tyee." Singularly enough, his character fitted this cognomen rather well. Reserved, proud, independent, and sensitive, thinking straight and talking straight, a man of brusque yet tender sentiment which was wont to manifest itself unexpectedly, it had been said of him that in a company of a hundred of his mental, physical, and financial peers, he would have stood forth preeminently and distinctively, like a lone tree on a hill. Although The Laird loved his town of Port Agnew, because he had created it, he had not, nevertheless, resided in it for some years prior to the period at which this chronicle begins. At the very apex of the headland that shelters the Bight of Tyee, in a cuplike depression several acres in extent, on the northern side and ideally situated two hundred feet below the crest, thus permitting the howling southeasters to blow over it, Hector McKaye, in the fulness of time, had built for himself a not very large two-story house of white stone native to the locality. This house, in the center of beautiful and well-kept grounds, was designed in the shape of a letter T, with the combination living-room and library forming the entire leg of the T and enclosed on all three sides by heavy plate-glass French windows. Thus, The Laird was enabled to command a view of the bight, with Port Agnew nestled far below; of the silver strip that is the Skookum River flowing down to the sea through the logged-over lands, now checker-boarded into little green farms; of the rolling back country with its dark-green mantle of fir and white cedar, fading in the distance to dark blue and black; of the yellow sandstone bluffs of the coast-line to the north, and the turquoise of the Pacific out to the horizon. This room Hector McKaye enjoyed best of all things in life, with the exception of his family; of his family, his son Donald was nearest and dearest to him. This boy he loved with a fierce and hungry love, intensified, doubtless, because to the young Laird of Tyee, McKaye was still the greatest hero in the world. To his wife, The Laird was no longer a hero, although in the old days of the upward climb, when he had fiercely claimed her and supported her by the sweat of his brow, he had been something akin to a god. As for Elizabeth and Jane, his daughters, it must be recorded that both these young women had long since ceased to regard their father as anything except an unfailing source of revenue--an old dear who clung to Port Agnew, homely speech, and homely ways, hooting good-naturedly at the pretensions of their set, and, with characteristic Gaelic stubbornness, insisting upon living and enjoying the kind of life that appealed to him with peculiar force as the only kind worth living. Indeed, in more than one humble home in Port Agnew, it had been said that the two McKaye girls were secretly ashamed of their father. This because frequently, in a light and debonair manner, Elizabeth and Jane apologized for their father and exhibited toward him an indulgent attitude, as is frequently the case with overeducated and supercultured young ladies who cannot recall a time when their slightest wish has not been gratified and cannot forget that the good fairy who gratified it once worked hard with his hands, spoke the language and acquired the habits of his comrades in the battle for existence. Of course, Elizabeth and Jane would have resented this analysis of their mental attitude toward their father. Be that as it may, however, the fact remained that both girls were perfunctory in their expressions of affection for their father, but wildly extravagant in them where their mother was concerned. Hector McKaye liked it so. He was a man who never thought about himself, and he had discovered that if he gave his wife and daughters everything they desired, he was not apt to be nagged. Only on one occasion had Hector McKaye declared himself master in his own house, and, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, this was before the house had been built. One day, while they still occupied their first home (in Port Agnew), a house with a mansard roof, two towers, jig-saw and scroll-work galore, and the usual cast-iron mastiffs and deer on the front lawn, The Laird had come gleefully home from a trip to Seattle and proudly exhibited the plans for a new house. Ensued examination and discussion by his wife and the young ladies. Alas! The Laird's dream of a home did not correspond with that of his wife, although, as a matter of fact, the lady had no ideas on the subject beyond an insistence that the house should be "worthy of their station," and erected in a fashionable suburb of Seattle. Elizabeth and Jane aided and abetted her in clamoring for a Seattle home, although both were quick to note the advantages of a picturesque country home on the cliffs above the bight. They urged their father to build his house, but condemned his plans. They desired a house some three times larger than the blue-prints called for. Hector McKaye said nothing. The women chattered and argued among themselves until, Elizabeth and Jane having vanquished their mother, all three moved briskly to the attack upon The Laird. When they had talked themselves out and awaited a reply, he gave it with the simple directness of his nature. It was evident that he had given his answer thought. "I can never live in Seattle until I retire, and I cannot retire until Donald takes my place in the business. That means that Donald must live here. Consequently, I shall spend half of my time with you and the girls in Seattle, mother, and the other half with Donald here. When we built our first home, you had your way--and I've lived in this architectural horror ever since. This time, I'm going to have my own way--and you've lived with me long enough to know that when I declare for a will of my own, I'll not be denied. Well I realize you and the girls have outgrown Port Agnew. There's naught here to interest you, and I would not have woman o' mine unhappy. So plan your house in Seattle, and I'll build it and spare no expense. As for this house on the headland, you have no interest in it. Donald's approved the plans, and him only will I defer to. 'Twill be his house some day--his and his wife's, when he gets one. And there will be no more talk of it, my dears. I'll not take it kindly of ye to interfere." II At a period in his upward climb to fortune, when as yet Hector McKaye had not fulfilled his dream of a factory for the manufacture of his waste and short-length stock into sash, door, blinds, moldings, and so forth, he had been wont to use about fifty per cent. of this material for fuel to maintain steam in the mill boilers, while the remainder passed out over the waste-conveyor to the slab pile, where it was burned. The sawdust, however, remained to be disposed of, and since it was not possible to burn this in the slab fire for the reason that the wet sawdust blanketed the flames and resulted in a profusion of smoke that blew back upon the mill to the annoyance of the employees, for many years The Laird had caused this accumulated sawdust to be hauled to the edge of the bight on the north side of the town, and there dumped in a low, marshy spot which formerly had bred millions of mosquitoes. Subsequently, in the process of grading the streets of Port Agnew and excavating cellars, waste dirt had been dumped with the sawdust, and, occasionally, when high winter tides swept over the spot, sand, small stones, sea-shells, and kelp were added to the mixture. And as if this were not sufficient, the citizens of Port Agnew contributed from time to time old barrels and bottles, yard-sweepings, tin cans, and superannuated stoves and kitchen utensils. Slowly this dump crept out on the beach, and in order to prevent the continuous attrition of the surf upon the outer edge of it from befouling the white-sand bathing-beach farther up the Bight of Tyee, The Laird had driven a double row of fir piling parallel with and beyond the line of breakers. This piling, driven as close together as possible and reenforced with two-inch planking between, formed a bulkhead with the flanks curving in to the beach, thus insuring practically a water-tight pen some two acres in extent; and, with the passage of years, this became about two-thirds filled with the waste from the town. Had The Laird ever decided to lay claim to the Sawdust Pile, there would have been none in Port Agnew to contest his title; since he did not claim it, the Sawdust Pile became a sort of No Man's Land. After The Laird erected his factory and began to salvage his waste, the slab fire went out forever for lack of fuel, and the modicum of waste from the mill and factory, together with the sawdust, was utilized for fuel in an electric-light plant that furnished light, heat, and power to the town. Consequently, sawdust no longer mercifully covered the trash on the Sawdust Pile as fast as this trash arrived, and, one day, Hector McKaye, observing this, decided that it was an unsightly spot and not quite worthy of his town of Port Agnew. So he constructed a barge somewhat upon the principle of a patent dump-wagon, moored it to the river-bank, created a garbage monopoly in Port Agnew, and sold it for five thousand dollars to a pair of ambitious Italians. With the proceeds of this garbage deal, The Laird built a very pretty little public library. Having organized his new garbage system (the garbage was to be towed twenty miles to sea and there dumped), The Laird forbade further dumping on the Sawdust Pile. When the necessity for more dredger-work developed, in order to keep the deep channel of the Skookum from filling, he had the pipes from the dredger run out to the Sawdust Pile and covered the unsightly spot with six feet of rich river-silt up to the level of the piling. "And now," said Hector McKaye to Andrew Daney, his general manager, "when that settles, we'll run a light track out here and use the Sawdust Pile for a drying-yard." The silt settled and dried, and almost immediately thereafter a squatter took possession of the Sawdust Pile. Across the neck of the little promontory, and in line with extreme high-water mark on each side, he erected a driftwood fence; he had a canvas, driftwood, and corrugated-iron shanty well under way when Hector McKaye appeared on the scene and bade him a pleasant good-morning. The squatter turned from his labor and bent upon his visitor an appraising glance. His scrutiny appearing to satisfy him as to the identity of the latter, he straightened suddenly and touched his forelock in a queer little salute that left one in doubt whether he was a former member of the United States navy or the British mercantile marine. He was a threadbare little man, possibly sixty years old, with a russet, kindly countenance and mild blue eyes; apart from his salute, there was about him an intangible hint of the sea. He was being assisted in his labors by a ragamuffin girl of perhaps thirteen years. "Thinking of settling in Port Agnew?" The Laird inquired. "Why, yes, sir. I thought this might make a good safe anchorage for Nan and me. My name is Caleb Brent. You're Mr. McKaye, aren't you?" The Laird nodded. "I had an idea, when I filled this spot in and built that bulkhead, Mr. Brent, that some day this would make a safe anchorage for some of my lumber. I planned a drying-yard here. What's that you're building, Brent? A hen-house?" Caleb Brent flushed. "Why, no, sir. I'm making shift to build a home here for Nan and me." "Is this little one Nan?" The ragamuffin girl, her head slightly to one side, had been regarding Hector McKaye with alert curiosity mingled with furtive apprehension. As he glanced at her now, she remembered her manners and dropped him a courtesy--an electric, half-defiant jerk that reminded The Laird of a similar greeting customarily extended by squinch-owls. Nan was not particularly clean, and her one-piece dress, of heavy blue navy-uniform cloth was old and worn and spotted. Over this dress she wore a boy's coarse red-worsted sweater with white-pearl buttons. The skin of her thin neck was fine and creamy; the calves, of her bare brown legs were shapely, her feet small, her ankles dainty. With the quick eye of the student of character, this man, proud of his own ancient lineage for all his humble beginning, noted that her hands, though brown and uncared-for, were small and dimpled, with long, delicate fingers. She had sea-blue eyes like Caleb Brent's, and, like his, they were sad and wistful; a frowsy wilderness of golden hair, very fine and held in confinement at the nape of her neck by the simple expedient of a piece of twine, showed all too plainly the lack of a mother's care. The Laird returned Nan's courtesy with a patronizing inclination of his head. "Your granddaughter, I presume?" he addressed Caleb Brent. "No; my daughter, sir. I was forty when I married, and Nan came ten years later. She's thirteen now, and her mother's been dead ten years." Hector McKaye had an idea that the departed mother was probably just as well, if not better, off, free of the battle for existence which appeared to confront this futile old man and his elf of a daughter. He glanced at the embryo shack under construction and, comparing it with his own beautiful home on Tyee Head, he turned toward the bight. A short distance off the bulkhead, he observed a staunch forty-foot motor-cruiser at anchor. She would have been the better for a coat of paint; undeniably she was of a piece with Caleb Brent and Nan, for, like them, The Laird had never seen her before. "Yours?" he queried. "Yes, sir." "You arrived in her, then?" "I did, sir. Nan and I came down from Bremerton in her, sir." The Laird owned many ships, and he noted the slurring of the "sir" as only an old sailor can slur it. And there was a naval base at Bremerton. "You're an old sailor, aren't you, Brent?" he pursued. "Yes, sir. I was retired a chief petty officer, sir. Thirty years' continuous service, sir--and I was in the mercantile marine at sixteen. I've served my time as a shipwright. Am--am I intruding here, sir?" The Laird smiled, and followed the smile with a brief chuckle. "Well--yes and no. I haven't any title to this land you've elected to occupy, although I created it. You see, I'm sort of lord of creation around here. My people call me 'The Laird of Tyee,' and nobody but a stranger would have had the courage to squat on the Sawdust Pile without consulting me. What's your idea about it, Brent?" "I'll go if you want me to, sir." "I mean what's your idea if you stay? What do you expect to do for a living?" "You will observe, sir, that I have fenced off only that portion of the dump beyond high-water mark. That takes in about half of it--about an acre and a half. Well, I thought I'd keep some chickens and raise some garden truck. This silt will grow anything. And I have my launch, and can do some towing, maybe, or take fishing parties out. I might supply the town with fish. I understand you import your fish from Seattle--and with the sea right here at your door." "I see. And you have your three-quarters pay as a retired chief petty officer?" "Yes, sir." "Anything in bank? I do not ask these personal questions, Brent, out of mere idle curiosity. This is my town, you know, and there is no poverty in it. I'm rather proud of that, so I--" "I understand, sir. That's why I came to Port Agnew. I saw your son yesterday, and he said I could stay." "Oh! Well, that's all right, then. If Donald told you to stay, stay you shall. Did he give you the Sawdust Pile?" "Yes, sir; he did!" "Well, I had other plans for it, Brent; but since you're here, I'll offer no objection." Nan now piped up. "We haven't any money in bank, Mr. Laird, but we have some saved up." "Indeed! That's encouraging. Where do you keep it?" "In the brown teapot in the galley. We've got a hundred and ten dollars." "Well, my little lady, I think you might do well to take your hundred and ten dollars out of the brown teapot in the galley and deposit it in the Port Agnew bank. Suppose that motor-cruiser should spring a leak and sink?" Nan smiled and shook her golden head in negation. They had beaten round Cape Flattery in that boat, and she had confidence in it. "Would you know my boy if you should see him again, Nan?" The Laird demanded suddenly. "Oh, yes, indeed, sir! He's such a nice boy." "I think, Nan, that if you asked him, he might help your father build this house." "I'll see him this afternoon when he comes out of high school," Nan declared. "You might call on Andrew Daney, my general manager," The Laird continued, turning to Caleb Brent, "and make a dicker with him for hauling our garbage-scow out to sea and dumping it. I observe that your motor-boat is fitted with towing-bitts. We dump twice a week. And you may have a monopoly on fresh fish if you desire it. We have no fishermen here, because I do not care for Greeks and Sicilians in Port Agnew. And they're about the only fishermen on this coast." "Thank you, Mr. McKaye." "Mind you don't abuse your monopoly. If you do, I'll take it away from you." "You are very kind, sir. And I can have the Sawdust Pile, sir?" "Yes; since Donald gave it to you. However, I wish you'd tear down that patchwork fence and replace it with a decent job the instant you can afford it." "Ah, just wait," old Brent promised. "I know how to make things neat and pretty and keep them shipshape. You just keep your eye on the Sawdust Pile, sir." The old wind-bitten face flushed with pride; the faded sea-blue eyes shone with joyous anticipation. "I've observed your pride in your town, sir, and before I get through, I'll have a prettier place than the best of them." A few days later, The Laird looked across the Bight of Tyee from his home on Tyee Head, and through his marine glasses studied the Sawdust Pile. He chuckled as he observed that the ramshackle shanty had disappeared almost as soon as it had been started and in its place a small cottage was being erected. There was a pile of lumber in the yard--bright lumber, fresh from the saws--and old Caleb Brent and the motherless Nan were being assisted by two carpenters on the Tyee Lumber Company's pay-roll. When Donald came home from school that night, The Laird asked him about the inhabitants of the Sawdust Pile with relation to the lumber and the two carpenters. "Oh, I made a trade with Mr. Brent and Nan. I'm to furnish the lumber and furniture for the house, and those two carpenters weren't very busy, so Mr. Daney told me I could have them to help out. In return, Mr. Brent is going to build me a sloop and teach me how to sail it." The Laird nodded. "When his little home is completed, Donald," he suggested presently, "you might take old Brent and his girl over to our old house in town and let them have what furniture they require. See if you cannot manage to saw off some of your mother's antiques on them," added whimsically. "By the way, what kind of shanty is old Brent going to build?" "A square house with five rooms and a cupola fitted up like a pilot-house. There's to be a flagpole on the cupola, and Nan says they'll have colors every night and morning. That means that you hoist the flag in the morning and salute it, and when you haul it down at night, you salute it again. They do that up at the Bremerton navy-yard." "That's rather a nice, sentimental idea," Hector McKaye replied. "I rather like old Brent and his girl for that. We Americans are too prone to take our flag and what it stands for rather lightly." "Nan wants me to have colors up here, too," Donald continued. "Then she can see our flag, and we can see theirs across the bight." "All right," The Laird answered heartily, for he was always profoundly interested in anything that interested his boy. "I'll have the woods boss get out a nice young cedar with, say, a twelve-inch butt, and we'll make it into a flagpole." "If we're going to do the job navy-fashion, we ought to fire a sunrise and sunset gun," Donald suggested with all the enthusiasm of his sixteen years. "Well, I think we can afford that, too, Donald." Thus it came about that the little brass cannon was installed on its concrete base on the cliff. And when the flagpole had been erected, old Caleb Brent came up one day, built a little mound of smooth, sea-washed cobblestones round the base, and whitewashed them. Evidently he was a prideful little man, and liked to see things done in a seamanlike manner. And presently it became a habit with The Laird to watch night and morning, for the little pin-prick of color to flutter forth from the house on the Sawdust Pile, and if his own colors did not break forth on the instant and the little cannon boom from the cliff, he was annoyed and demanded an explanation. III Hector McKaye and his close-mouthed general manager, Andrew Daney, were the only persons who knew the extent of The Laird's fortune. Even their knowledge was approximate, however, for The Laird disliked to delude himself, and carried on his books at their cost-price properties which had appreciated tremendously in value since their purchase. The knowledge of his wealth brought to McKaye a goodly measure of happiness--not because he was of Scottish ancestry and had inherited a love for his baubees, but because he was descended from a fierce, proud Scottish clan and wealth spelled independence to him and his. The Laird would have filled his cup of happiness to overflowing had he married a less mediocre woman or had he raised his daughters as he had his son. The girls' upbringing had been left entirely in their mother's hands. Not so with young Donald, however--wherefore it was a byword in Port Agnew that Donald was his father's son, a veritable chip of the old block. By some uncanny alchemy, hard cash appears to soften the heads and relax the muscles of rich men's sons--at least, such had been old Hector's observation, and on the instant that he first gazed upon the face of his son, there had been born in him a mighty resolve that, come what might, he would not have it said of him that he had made a fool of his boy. And throughout the glad years of his fatherhood, with the stern piety of his race and his faith, he had knelt night and morning beside his bed and prayed his God to help him not to make a fool of Donald--to keep Donald from making a fool of himself. When Donald entered Princeton, his father decided upon an experiment. He had raised his boy right, and trained him for the race of life, and now The Laird felt that, like a thoroughbred horse, his son faced the barrier. Would he make the run, or would he, in the parlance of the sporting world, "dog it?" Would his four years at a great American university make of him a better man, or would he degenerate into a snob and a drone? With characteristic courage, The Laird decided to give him ample opportunity to become either, for, as old Hector remarked to Andrew Daney: "If the lad's the McKaye I think he is, nothing can harm him. On the other hand, if I'm mistaken, I want to know it in time, for my money and my Port Agnew Lumber Company is a trust, and if he can't handle it, I'll leave it to the men who can--who've helped me create it--and Donald shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Tools," he added, "belong to the men that can use them." When Donald started East for college, old Hector accompanied him as far as Seattle. On the way up, there was some man-talk between them. In his youth, old Hector had not been an angel, which is to state that he had been a lumberjack. He knew men and the passions that beset them--particularly when they are young and lusty--and he was far from being a prude. He expected his son to raise a certain amount of wild oats; nay, he desired it, for full well he knew that when the fires of youth are quenched, they are liable to flare disgracefully in middle life or old age. "Never pig it, my son," was his final admonition. "Raise hell if you must, but if you love your old father, be a gentleman about it. You've sprung from a clan o' men, not mollycoddles." "Hence the expression: 'When Hector was a pup,'" Donald replied laughingly. "Well, I'll do my best, father--only, if I stub my toe, you mustn't be too hard on me. Remember, please, that I'm only half Scotch." At parting, The Laird handed his son a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. "This is the first year's allowance, Donald," he informed the boy gravely. "It should not require more than a hundred thousand dollars to educate a son of mine, and you must finish in four years. I would not care to think you dull or lazy." "Do you wish an accounting, father?" The Laird shook his head. "Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, my son. I'll read the accounting in your eye when you come back to Port Agnew." "Oh!" said young Donald. At the end of four years, Donald graduated, an honor-man in all his studies, and in the lobby of the gymnasium, where the athletic heroes of Princeton leave their record to posterity, Hector McKaye read his son's name, for, of course, he was there for commencement. Then they spent a week together in New York, following which old Hector announced that one week of New York was about all he could stand. The tall timber was calling for him. "Hoot, mon!" Donald protested gaily. He was a perfect mimic of Sir Harry Lauder at his broadest. "Y'eve nae had a bit holiday in all yer life. Wha' spier ye, Hector McKaye, to a trip aroond the worl', wi' a wee visit tae the auld clan in the Hielands?" "Will you come with me, son?" The Laird inquired eagerly. "Certainly not! You shall come with me. This is to be my party." "Can you stand the pressure? I'm liable to prove an expensive traveling companion." "Well, there's something radically wrong with both of us if we can't get by on two hundred thousand dollars, dad." The Laird started, and then his Scotch sense of humor--and, for all the famed wit of the Irish, no humor on earth is so unctuous as that of the Scotch--commenced to bubble up. He suspected a joke on himself and was prepared to meet it. "Will you demand an accounting, my son?" Donald shook his head. "Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, father, I'll read the accounting in your eye when you get back to Port Agnew." "You braw big scoundrel! You've been up to something. Tell it me, man, or I'll die wi' the suspense of it." "Well," Donald replied, "I lived on twenty-five hundred a year in college and led a happy life. I had a heap of fun, and nothing went by me so fast that I didn't at least get a tail-feather. My college education, therefore, cost me ten thousand dollars, and I managed to squeeze a roadster automobile into that, also. With the remaining ninety thousand, I took a flier in thirty-nine hundred acres of red cedar up the Wiskah River. I paid for it on the instalment plan --yearly payments secured by first mortgage at six per cent., and----" "Who cruised it for you?" The Laird almost shouted. "I'll trust no cruiser but my own David McGregor." "I realized that, so I engaged Dave for the job. You will recall that he and I took a two months' camping-trip after my first year in Princeton. It cruised eighty thousand feet to the acre, and I paid two dollars and a half per thousand for it. Of course, we didn't succeed in cruising half of it, but we rode through the remainder, and it all averaged up very nicely. And I saw a former cruise of it made by a disinterested cruiser----" The Laird had been doing mental arithmetic. "It cost you seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars--and you've paid ninety thousand, principal and interest, on account. Why, you didn't have the customary ten per cent, of the purchase-price as an initial payment!" "The owner was anxious to sell. Besides, he knew I was your son, and I suppose he concluded that, after getting ninety thousand dollars out of me at the end of three years, you'd have to come to my rescue when the balance fell due--in a lump. If you didn't, of course he could foreclose." "I'll save you, my son. It was a good deal--a splendid deal!" "You do not have to, dad. I've sold it--at a profit of an even two hundred thousand dollars!" "Lad, why did you do it? Why didn't you take me into your confidence? That cedar is worth three and a half. In a few years, 'twill be worth five." "I realized that, father, but--a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush--and I'm a proud sort of devil. I didn't want to run to you for help on my first deal, even though I knew you'd come to my rescue and ask no questions. You've always told me to beware of asking favors, you know. Moreover, I had a very friendly feeling toward the man I sold my red cedar to; I hated to stick him too deeply." "You were entitled to your profit, Donald. 'Twas business. You should have taken it. Ah, lad, if you only knew the terrible four years I've paid for yon red-cedar!" "You mean the suspense of not knowing how I was spending my allowance?" The Laird nodded. "Curiosity killed a cat, my son, and I'm not as young as I used to be." "I had thought you'd have read the accounting in my eye. Take another look, Hector McKaye." And Donald thrust his smiling countenance close to his father's. "I see naught in your eye but deviltry and jokes." "None are so blind as they that will not see. If you see a joke, dad, it's on you." Old Hector blinked, then suddenly he sprang at his son, grasped him by the shoulders, and backed him against the wall. "Did you sell me that red cedar?" he demanded incredulously. "Aye, mon; through an agent," Donald burred Scottishly. "A' did nae ha' the heart tae stick my faither sae deep for a bit skulin'. A'm a prood man, Hector McKaye; a'll nae take a grrand eeducashun at sic a price. 'Tis nae Christian." "Ah, my bonny bairn!" old Hector murmured happily, and drew his fine son to his heart. "What a grand joke to play on your puir old father! Och, mon, was there ever a lad like mine?" "I knew you'd buy that timber for an investment if I offered it cheap enough," Donald explained. "Besides, I owed you a poke. You wanted to be certain you hadn't reared a jackass instead of a man, so you gave me a hundred thousand dollars and stood by to see what I'd do with it--didn't you, old Scotty?" Hector nodded a trifle guiltily. "Andrew Daney wrote me you swore by all your Highland clan that the man who sold you that red cedar was ripe for the fool-killer." "Tush, tush!" The Laird protested. "You're getting personal now. I dislike to appear inquisitive, but might I ask what you've done with your two hundred thousand profit?" "Well, you see, dad, I would have felt a trifle guilty had I kept it, so I blew it all in on good, conservative United States bonds, registered them in your name, and sent them to Daney to hide in your vault at Port Agnew." "Ah, well, red cedar or bonds, 'twill all come back to you some day, sonny. The real profit's in the fun--" "And the knowledge that I'm not a fool--eh, father?" Father love supernal gleamed in The Laird's fine gray eyes. "Were you a fool, my son, and all that I have in the world would cure you if thrown into the Bight of Tyee, I'd gladly throw it and take up my life where I began it--with pike-pole and peavy, double-bitted ax, and cross-cut saw. However, since you're not a fool, I intend to continue to enjoy my son. We'll go around the world together." Thus did the experiment end. At least, Donald thought so. But when he left the hotel a few minutes later to book two passages to Europe, The Laird of Tyee suddenly remembered that thanks were due his Presbyterian God. So he slid to his old knees beside his bed and murmured: "Lord, I thank thee! For the sake of thine own martyred Son, set angels to guard him and lead him in the path of manly honor that comes at last to thy kingdom. Amen." Then he wired Andrew Daney a long telegram of instructions and a stiff raise in salary. "The boy has a head like a tar-bucket," he concluded. "Everything I ever put into it has stuck. We are going to frolic round the world together, and we will be home when we get back." IV Donald was twenty-four and The Laird fifty-eight when the pair returned from their frolic round the world--Donald to take up this father's labors, The Laird to lay them aside and retire to The Dreamerie and the books he had accumulated against this happy afterglow of a busy and fruitful life. Donald's mother and sisters were at The Dreamerie the night the father and son arrived. Of late years, they had spent less and less of their time there. The Laird had never protested, for he could not blame them for wearying of a little backwoods sawmill town like Port Agnew. With his ability to think calmly, clearly, and unselfishly, he had long since realized that eventually his girls must marry; now Elizabeth was twenty-six and Jane twenty-eight, and Mrs. McKaye was beginning to be greatly concerned for their future. Since The Laird had built The Dreamerie in opposition to their wishes, they had spent less than six months in each year at Port Agnew. And these visits had been scattered throughout the year. They had traveled much, and, when not traveling, they lived in the Seattle house and were rather busy socially. Despite his devotion to his business, however, The Laird found time to spend at least one week in each month with them in Seattle, in addition to the frequent business trips which took him there. That night of his home-coming was the happiest The Laird had ever known, for it marked the culmination of his lifetime of labor and dreams. Long after his wife and the girls had retired, he and Donald sat in the comfortable living-room, smoking and discussing plans for the future, until presently, these matters having been discussed fully, there fell a silence between them, to be broken presently by The Laird. "I'm wondering, Donald, if you haven't met some bonny lass you'd like to bring home to Port Agnew. You realize, of course, that there's room on Tyee Head for another Dreamerie, although I built this one for you--and her." "There'll be no other house on Tyee Head, father," Donald answered, "unless you care to build one for mother and the girls. The wife that I'll bring home to Port Agnew will not object to my father in my house." He smiled and added, "You're not at all hard to get along with, you know." The Laird's eyes glistened. "Have you found her yet, my son?" Donald shook his head in negation. "Then look for her," old Hector ordered. "I have no doubt that, when you find her, she'll be worthy of you. I'm at an age now when a man looks no longer into the future but dwells in the past, and it's hard for me to think of you, big man that you are, as anything save a wee laddie trotting at my side. Now, if I had a grandson--" When, presently, Donald bade him good-night, Hector McKaye turned off the lights and sat in the dark, gazing down across the moonlit Bight of Tyee to the sparks that flew upward from the stacks of his sawmill in Port Agnew, for they were running a night shift. And, as he gazed, he thrilled, with a fierce pride and a joy that was almost pain, in the knowledge that he had reared a merchant prince for this, his principality of Tyee. V Hector McKaye had always leaned toward the notion that he could run Port Agnew better than a mayor and a town council, in addition to deriving some fun out of it; consequently, Port Agnew had never been incorporated. And this was an issue it was not deemed wise to press, for The Tyee Lumber Company owned every house and lot in town, and Hector McKaye owned every share of stock in the Tyee Lumber Company. If he was a sort of feudal baron, he was a gentle and kindly one; large building-plots, pretty little bungalows, cheap rentals, and no taxation constituted a social condition that few desired to change. As these few developed and The Laird discovered them, their positions in his employ, were forfeited, their rents raised, or their leases canceled, and presently Port Agnew knew them no more. He paid fair wages, worked his men nine hours, and employed none but naturalized Americans, with a noticeable predilection for those of Scotch nativity or ancestry. Strikes or lockouts were unknown in Port Agnew--likewise saloons. Unlike most sawmill towns of that period, Port Agnew had no street in which children were forbidden to play or which mothers taught their daughters to avoid. Once an I.W.W. organizer came to town, and upon being ordered out and refusing to go, The Laird, then past fifty, had ducked him in the Skookum until he changed his mind. The Tyee Lumber Company owned and operated the local telephone company, the butcher shop, the general store, the hotel, a motion-picture theater, a town hall, the bank, and the electric-light-and-power plant, and with the profits from these enterprises, Port Agnew had paved streets, sidewalks lined with handsome electroliers, and a sewer system. It was an admirable little sawmill town, and if the expenses of maintaining it exceeded the income, The Laird met the deficit and assumed all the worry, for he wanted his people to be happy and prosperous beyond all others. It pleased Hector McKaye to make an occasion of his abdication and Donald's accession to the presidency of the Tyee Lumber Company. The Dreamerie was not sufficiently large for his purpose, however, for he planned to entertain all of his subjects at a dinner and make formal announcement of the change. So he gave a barbecue in a grove of maples on the edge of the town. His people received in silence the little speech he made them, for they were loath to lose The Laird. They knew him, while Donald they had not known for five years, and there were many who feared that the East might have changed him. Consequently, when his father called him up to the little platform from which he spoke, they received the young laird in silence also. "Folks--my own home folks," Donald began, "to-day I formally take up the task that was ordained for me at birth. I am going to be very happy doing for you and for myself. I shall never be the man my father is; but if you will take me to your hearts and trust me as you have trusted him, I'll never go back on you, for I expect to live and to die in Port Agnew, and, while I live, I want to be happy with you. I would have you say of me, when I am gone, that I was the worthy son of a worthy sire." He paused and looked out over the eager, upturned faces of the men, women, and children whose destinies he held in the hollow of his hand. "My dear friends, there aren't going to be any changes," he finished, and stepped down off the platform. From the heart of the crowd a lumberjack cried, "Ya-hoo-o-o-o-o!" as only a lusty lumberjack can cry it. "He's a chip of the old block!" cried another, and there were cheers and some tears and a general rush forward to greet the new master, to shake his hand, and pledge allegiance to him. When the reception was over, old Hector took charge of the homely games and athletic contests, and the day's delights culminated in a log-burling contest in the Skookum, in which the young laird participated. When, eventually, he fell in the river and was counted out, old Hector donned his son's calked boots and, with a whoop such as he had not emitted in forty years, entered the lists against the young fellows. In the old days in the Michigan woods, when burling was considered a magnificent art of the lumberjack, he had been a champion, and for five minutes he spun his log until the water foamed, crossing and recrossing the river and winning the contest unanimously. From the bank, Mrs. McKaye and his daughters watched him with well-bred amusement and secret disapproval. They could never forget, as he could, that he was The Laird of Tyee; they preferred more dignity in the head of the house. The McKaye family drove home along the cliff road at sunset. Young Donald paused on the terrace before entering the house, and, stirred by some half-forgotten memory, he glanced across the bight to the little white house far below on the Sawdust Pile. The flag was floating from the cupola, but even as he looked, it came fluttering down. Donald turned toward the McKaye flag. It was still floating. "The old order changeth," he soliloquized, and hauled it down, at the same time shouting to his father within the house: "Hey, dad; fire the sunset gun!" The Laird pressed the button and the cannon boomed. "We've neglected that little ceremony since you've been away," he remarked, as Donald entered the room. "'Other times, other customs,' I dare say." He hurried up-stairs to dress for dinner (a formality which he disliked, but which appeared to please his wife and daughters), and Donald took his father's binoculars and went out on the terrace. It had occurred to him that he had not seen old Caleb Brent and Nan at the barbecue, and he wondered why. Through the glasses, he could make out the figure of a woman in the cupola window, and she was watching him through a long marine telescope. "There's my old friend Nan, grown to womanhood," Donald soliloquized, and waved his arm at her. Through the glasses, he saw her wave back at him. VI The morning after the barbecue, Donald McKaye reported at eight o'clock to his father's faithful old general manager, Andrew Daney. Daney had grown gray in his father's service, and it was no part of Donald's plans to assign him to a back seat. "Well, Mr. Daney," he inquired affably, "what are your plans for the new hired man?" Old Daney looked up quizzically. "You do the planning here, Don," he replied. "You heard me say yesterday that there would be no changes, Mr. Daney. Of course, I haven't grown up in Port Agnew without learning something of my heritage, but, in view of the fact that I still have considerable to learn, suppose you indicate just where I ought to start." Daney was pleased at a deference he had not anticipated. "Start in the woods," he replied. "That's where your daddy started. Felling timber and handling it is rather a fine art, Don. I'd wrestle logs for a month and follow them down the Skookum to the log boom. Then I'd put in six months in the mill and six more in the factory, following it with three months on the dock, tallying, and three months of a hand-shaking tour out among the trade. After that, you may sit in at your father's desk, and I'll gradually break you in to his job." "That's a grand idea, and I'll act on it," Donald declared. "Well, it's too late to act on it to-day, Don. The up-river launch to the logging-camp left at seven o'clock. However, I have a job for you. We really need the Sawdust Pile for an extension of our drying-yard. Our present yard lies right under the lee of that ridge of which Tyee Head is an extension, and it's practically noon before the sun gets a fair chance at it. The Sawdust Pile gets the sun all day long, and the winds have an uninterrupted sweep across it. We can dry our cedar decking there in half the time it requires now." "But the Sawdust Pile is--" "A rat's nest, Don. There are a number of other shacks there now--some Greek fishermen, a negro, and a couple of women from the overflow of Tyee. It ought to be cleaned out." "I noticed those shacks last night, Mr. Daney, and I agree with you that they should go. But I haven't the heart to run old Caleb Brent off the Sawdust Pile. I gave it to him, you know." "Well, let Brent stay there. He's too old and crippled with rheumatism to attend to his truck-garden any more; so if you leave him the space for his house and a chicken-yard, he'll be satisfied. In fact, I have discussed the proposition with him, and he is agreeable." "Why did dad permit those other people to crowd him, Mr. Daney?" "While your father was in Europe with you, they horned in, claimed a squatter's right, and stood pat. Old Brent was defenseless, and while the boys from the mill would have cleaned them out if I had given the word, the Greeks and the negro were defiant, and it meant bloodshed. So I have permitted the matter to rest until your father's return." Donald reached for his hat. "Caleb Brent's squatter-right to that Sawdust Pile is going to be upheld," he declared. "I'll clean that colony out before sunset, or they'll clean me." "I'd proceed cautiously if I were you, Don. They have a host of friends up in Darrow, and we mustn't precipitate a feud." "I'm going over now and serve notice on them to vacate immediately." He grinned at old Daney. "A negro, a handful of Greeks, and those unfortunate women can't bluff the boss of Port Agnew, Mr. Daney." "They tell me there's a blind pig down there, also." "It will not be there after to-day," Donald answered lightly, and departed for the Sawdust Pile. As he came up to the gate in the neat fence Caleb Brent had built across the Sawdust Pile nine years before, a baby boy, of perhaps three years of age, rose out of the weeds in which he had been playing and regarded the visitor expectantly. "Hello, bub!" the young laird of Tyee greeted the child. "Hello!" came the piping answer. "Are you my daddy?" "Why, no, Snickelfritz." He ran his fingers through the tot's golden hair. "Don't you know your own daddy?" "I haven't any daddy," the child drawled. "No? Well, that's unfortunate." Donald stooped and lifted the tike to his shoulder, marveling the while that such a cherub could be the product of any of the denizens of the Sawdust Pile. At once, the boy's arms went round his neck and a velvet cheek was laid close to his. "You're an affectionate little snooks, aren't you?" Donald commented. "Do you live here?" "Yes, sir." "Somebody's been teaching you manners. Whose little boy are you?" "Muvver's." "And who might mother be?" "Nan Brent." "Yo-ho! So you're Nan Brent's boy! What's your name?" "Donald Brent." "No; that isn't it, son. Brent is your mother's name. Tell me your father's name." "Ain't got no farver." "Well then, run along to your mother." He kissed the child and set him down just as a young woman came down the sadly neglected shell walk from Caleb Brent's little white house. Donald opened the gate and advanced to meet her. "I'm sure you must be Nan," he said, "although I can't be certain. I haven't seen Nan in six years." She extended her hand "Yes; I'm Nan," she replied, "and you're Donald McKaye. You're a man now, but somehow you haven't changed greatly." "It's fine to meet you again, Nan." He shook her hand enthusiastically. She smiled a little sadly. "I saw you at colors last night, Donald. When your flag came down and the gun was fired, I knew you'd remembered." "Were you glad?" he demanded, and immediately wondered why he had asked such a childish question. "Yes, I was, Donald. It has been a long time since--since--the gun has been fired--for me. So long since we were children, Donald." "You weren't at the barbecue yesterday. I missed you and Caleb. You two are very old friends of mine, Nan. Was it quite loyal of you to stay home?" "You're the only person that missed us, Donald," she answered, with just the suspicion of a tremor in her sweet voice. "But, then, we are accustomed to being left out of things." He made no effort to formulate an answer to this. Truth does not require an answer. Yet he was sensible of a distinct feeling of sympathy for her, and, manlike, he decided to change the topic of conversation. "You have neighbors on the Sawdust Pile, Nan." "Yes. They came when The Laird was in Europe." "They would never have dared it had he been in Port Agnew. I'm surprised that Andrew Daney permitted it. I had thought of him as a man of courage, but, strange to say, these people outgamed him." "They didn't outgame him, Donald. He just didn't care. I--I--fancy he concluded they would make agreeable neighbors--for me." "I'm sorry, Nan. However, I'm the new laird of Tyee, and I've come down to stage an eviction. I didn't know of this state of affairs until this morning." She smiled a little wistfully and bitterly. "I had flattered myself, Donald, you had called to visit your old friends instead. When you waved at me last night, I--oh, you can't realize how happy it made me to know that _you_ had noticed me--that you really were big enough to be the big man of Port Agnew. And I thought perhaps you would come because of that." He smiled tolerantly upon her. "Something has occurred to make you bitter, Nan. You're not like the girl I used to know before I went away to school. If it will help to restore me to your previous good opinion, however, please believe that when I waved at you last night, simultaneously I made up my mind to make an early visit to the Sawdust Pile. The discovery that these cattle have intruded upon you and your old father, because you were unable to defend yourselves and no one in Port Agnew would defend you, merely hastened my visit. I couldn't in decency come any earlier; could I, Nan? It's just half after eight. And if you're going to keep me standing at the gate, as if I were a sewing-machine agent instead of a very old friend, I _may_ conclude to take offense and regret that I called." "Oh, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, Donald. I'm so much alone--so very lonely--I suppose I grow suspicious of people and their motives." "Say no more about it, Nan. May I come in, then, to greet Caleb and your husband?" "Father is in the house. I'll call him out, Donald. As for my husband--" She hesitated, glanced out across the bight, and then resolutely faced him. "You cannot have heard all of the town gossip, then?" "I hadn't even heard of your marriage. The first I knew of it was when his little nibs here hailed me, and asked me if I was his father. Then he informed me he was your boy. He's a lovely child, Nan, and I have been the recipient of some of his extremely moist kisses." She realized that he was too courteous to ask whether her husband was dead or if there had been a divorce. "I'm rather glad you haven't heard, Donald," she replied evenly. "I much prefer to tell you myself; then you will understand why I cannot invite you into our house, and why you must not be seen talking to me here at the gate. I am not married. I have never been married. My baby's name is--Brent, and I call him Donald, after the only male human being that has ever been truly kind to my father and me." "Ah," said Donald quietly, "so that's why he misses his father and appears to want one so very much." She gazed forlornly out to sea and answered with a brief nod. Seemingly she had long since ceased to be tragic over her pitiful tragedy. "Well," he replied philosophically, "life is quite filled with a number of things, and some of them make for great unhappiness." He stooped and lifted the baby in his great arms. "You're named after me, sonny; so I think I'll try to fill the gap and make you happy. Do you mind, Nan, if I try my hand at foster-fathering? I like children. This little man starts life under a handicap, but I'll see to it that he gets his chance in life--far from Port Agnew, if you desire." She closed her eyes in sudden pain and did not answer. "And whatever your opinion on the matter may be, Nan," he went on, "even had I known yesterday of your sorrow, I should have called to-day just the same." "You call it my 'sorrow!'" she burst forth passionately. "Others call it my trouble--my sin--my disgrace." "And what does Caleb call it, Nan?" "He doesn't call it, Donald. It hasn't appeared to make any difference with him. I'm still--his little girl." "Well, I cannot regard you as anything but a little girl--the same little girl that used to help Caleb and me sail the sloop. I don't wish to know anything about your sorrow, or your trouble, or your disgrace, or your sin, or whatever folks may choose to call it. I just want you to know that I know that you're a good woman, and when the spirit moves me--which will be frequently, now that I have this young man to look after--I shall converse with you at your front gate and visit you and your decent old father in this little house, and be damned to those that decry it. I am the young laird of Tyee. My father raised me to be a gentleman, and, by the gods, I'll be one! Now, Nan, take the boy and go in the house, because I see a rascally negro in the doorway of that shack yonder, and I have a matter to discuss with him. Is that white woman his consort?" Nan nodded again. She could not trust herself to speak, for her heart was full to overflowing. "Come here--you!" Donald called to the negro. The fellow slouched forth defiantly. He was a giant mulatto, and his freckled face wore an evil and contemptuous grin. "I'm Donald McKaye," Donald informed him. "I'm the new laird of Tyee. I want you and that woman to pack up and leave." "How soon, boss?" "Immediately." Anticipating a refusal, Donald stepped closer to the mulatto and looked him sternly in the eye. "We-ll, is dat so?" the yellow rascal drawled. "So youh-all's de new la'rd, eh? Well, ah'm de king o' de Sawdust Pile, an' mah house is mah castle. Git dat, Mistah La'rd?" Donald turned toward Nan. "I'm going to have trouble here, Nan. Please go in the house." "Proceed," she replied simply. "I have a most unwomanly and unladylike desire to see that beast manhandled." Donald turned, in time to go under a sizzling right-hand blow from the mulatto and come up with a right uppercut to the ugly, freckled face and a left rip to the mulatto's midriff. The fellow grunted, and a spasm of pain crossed his countenance. "You yellow dog!" Donald muttered, and flattened his nose far flatter than his mammy had ever wiped it. The enemy promptly backed away and covered; a hearty thump in the solar plexus made him uncover, and under a rain of blows on the chin and jaw, he sprawled unconscious on the ground. Donald left him lying there and stepped to the door of the shack. The frightened drab within spat curses at him. "Pack and go!" he ordered. "Within the hour, I'm going to purge the Sawdust Pile with fire; if you stay in the house, you'll burn with it." She was ready in ten minutes. Three more of her kind occupying an adjacent shack begged to be allowed time in which to load their personal possessions in an express-wagon. The four Greeks were just about to set out for a day's fishing, but, having witnessed the defeat of the mulatto bully, the fever of the hegira seized them also. They loaded their effects in the fishing-launch, and chugged away up river to Darrow, crying curses upon the young laird of Tyee and promising reprisal. Donald waited until the last of the refugees had departed before setting fire to the shacks. Then he stood by old Caleb Brent's house, a circle of filled buckets around him, and watched in case the wind should suddenly shift and shower sparks upon the roof. In half an hour the Sawdust Pile had reverted to its old status and a throng of curious townspeople who, attracted by the flames and smoke, had clustered outside Caleb Brent's gate to watch Donald at work, finally despaired of particulars and scattered when they saw Donald and Nan Brent enter the house. Caleb Brent, looking twenty years older than when Donald had seen him last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes out across the bight. He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness. "Hello, Caleb!" Donald greeted him cordially. "I've just cleaned up the Sawdust Pile for you. You're back in undisputed possession again." He shook hands with old Caleb and sat down in a chair which Nan drew up for him. "It's good of you to call, Mr. Donald," the old man piped. "But isn't that just like him, Nan?" he demanded. "Many's the day--aye, and the night, too, for of late the nights have been bad here--we've thought of you, sir, and wished you were back in Port Agnew. We knew what would happen to those scoundrels when Mr. Donald got around to it." And he laughed the asthmatic, contented chuckle of the aged as Nan related briefly the story of Donald's recent activities. Their conversation which followed was mostly of a reminiscent character--recollections of boat-races in the bight, fishing excursions off the coast, clambakes, hew boats, a dog which Donald had given Nan when he left for prep school and which had since died of old age. And all the while Nan Brent's child stood by Donald's knee, gazing up at him adoringly. During a lull in the conversation, he created some slight embarrassment by reiterating his belief that this strange man must be his father, and appealed to his mother for verification of his suspicions. Poor child! His baby mind had but lately grasped the fact that for him there was something missing in the scheme of life, and, to silence his persistent questioning, Nan had told him that some day his father would come to see them; whereupon, with the calm faith of innocence, he had posted himself at the front gate, to be in position to receive this beloved missing one when the latter should appear. Donald skilfully diverted the child's mind from this all-consuming topic by sliding the boy down to his foot and permitting him to swing gently there. Presently Nan excused herself, for the purpose of looking after the embers of Donald's recent raid. The instant the door closed behind her, old Caleb Brent looked across at his visitor. "You've heard--of course, Mr. Donald?" he queried, with a slight inclination of his head toward the door through which his daughter had disappeared. "Yes, Caleb. Misfortune comes in various guises." "I would I could die," the pitiful old fellow whispered. "I will, soon, but, oh, what will my poor darling do then, Mr. Donald? After we first came here, I was that prosperous, sir, you wouldn't believe it. I gave Nan a good schooling, piano lessons, and fine dresses. We lived well, and yet we put by a thousand dollars in six years. But that's gone now, what with the expenses when the baby came, and my sickness that's prevented me from working. Thank God, sir, I have my three-quarter pay. It isn't much, but we're rent-free, and fuel costs us nothing, what with driftwood and the waste from Darrow that comes down the river. Nan has a bit of a kitchen-garden and a few chickens--so we make out. But when I die, my navy-pay stops." He paused, too profoundly moved by consideration of the destitution that would face Nan and her nameless boy to voice the situation in words. But he looked up at Donald McKaye, and the latter saw again that wistful look in his sea-blue eyes--the dumb pleading of a kind old lost dog. He thought of the thirty-eight-foot sloop old Caleb had built him--a thing of beauty and wondrously seaworthy; or the sense of obligation which had caused old Brent to make of the task a labor of love; of the long, lazy, happy days when, with Caleb and Nan for his crew, he had raced out of the bight twenty miles to sea and back again, for the sheer delight of driving his lee rail under until Nan cried out in apprehension. Poor, sweet, sad Nan Brent! Donald had known her through so many years of gentleness and innocence--and she had come to this! He was consumed with pity for her. She had fallen, but--there were depths to which destitution and desperation might still drive her, just as there were heights to which she might climb again if some half-man would but give her a helping hand. "Do you know the man, Caleb?" he demanded suddenly. "No, I do not. I have never seen him. Nan wrote me when they were married, and told me his name, of course." "Then there _was_ a marriage, Caleb?" "So Nan wrote me." "Ah! Has Nan a marriage certificate?" "I have never seen it. Seems their marriage wasn't legal. The name he gave wasn't his own; he was a bigamist." "Then Nan knows his real name." "Yes; when she learned that, she came home." "But why didn't she prosecute him, Caleb? She owed that to herself and the child--- to her good name and" "She had her reasons, lad." "But you should have prosecuted the scoundrel, Caleb." "I had no money for lawyers. I knew I was going to need it all for Nan and her child. And I thought her reasons sufficient, Donald. She said it would all come out right in the end. Maybe it will." "Do you mean she knowingly accepted the inevitable disgrace when she might have--have--" He wanted to add, "proved herself virtuous," but, somehow, the words would not come. They didn't appear to him to be quite fair to Nan. The old man nodded. "Of course we haven't told this to anybody else," he hastened to add. "'Twould have been useless. They'd have thought it a lie." "Yes, Caleb--a particularly clumsy and stupid lie." Caleb Brent looked up suddenly and searched, with an alert and wistful glance, the face of the young laird of Tyee. "But you do not think so, do you?" he pleaded. "Certainly not, Caleb, If Nan told you that, then she told you the truth." "Thank you, lad." "Poor old Caleb," Donald soliloquized, "you find it hard to believe it yourself, don't you? And it does sound fishy!" "I don't believe it's Nan's fault," Donald found himself saying next. "She was always a good girl, and I can't look at her now and conceive her as anything but virtuous and womanly. I'll always be a good friend of hers, Caleb. I'll stand back of her and see that she gets a square deal--she and her son. When you're gone, she can leave Port Agnew for some city where she isn't known, and as 'Mrs. Brent' she can engage in some self-supporting business. It always struck me that Nan had a voice." "She has, Mr. Donald. They had grand opera in Seattle, and I sent her up there to hear it and having a singing teacher hear her sing 'Alice, Where Art Thou.' He said she'd be earning a thousand dollars a night in five years, Mr. Donald, if somebody in New York could train her. That was the time," he concluded, "that she met _him!_ He was rich and, I suppose, full of fine graces; he promised her a career if she'd marry him, and so he dazzled the child--she was only eighteen--and she went to San Francisco with him. She says there was some sort of marriage, but he gave her no such gift as I gave her mother--a marriage certificate. She wrote me she was happy, and asked me to forgive her the lack of confidence in not advising with me--and of course I forgave her, Mr. Donald. But in three months he left her, and one night the door yonder opened and Nan come in and put her arms round my neck and held me tight, with never a tear--so I knew she'd cried her fill long since and was in trouble." He paused several seconds, then added, "Her mother was an admiral's daughter--and she married me!" He appeared to suggest this latter as a complete explanation of woman's frailty. "The world is small, but it is sufficiently large to hide a girl from the Sawdust Pile of Port Agnew. Of course, Nan cannot leave you now, but when you leave her, Caleb, I'll finance her for her career. Please do not worry about it." "I'm like Nan, sir," he murmured. "I'm beyond tears, or I'd weep, Mr. Donald. God will reward you, sir. I can't begin to thank you." "I'm glad of that. By the way, who is towing the garbage-barge to sea nowadays?" "I don't know, sir. Mr. Daney hired somebody else and his boat when I had to quit because of my sciatica." "Hereafter, we'll use your boat, Caleb, and engage a man to operate it. The rental will be ten dollars per trip, two trips a week, eighty dollars a month. Cheap enough; so don't think it's charity. Here's the first month's rental in advance. I'm going to run along now, Caleb, but I'll look in from time to time, and if you should need me in the interim, send for me." He kissed little Don Brent, who set up a prodigious shriek at the prospect of desertion and brought his mother fluttering into the room. He watched her soothe the youngster and then asked: "Nan, where do you keep the arnica now? I cut my knuckles on that yellow rascal." She raised a sadly smiling face to his. "Where would the arnica be--if we had any, Donald?" she demanded. "Where it used to be, I suppose. Up on that shelf, inside the basement of that funny old half-portion grandfather's clock and just out of reach of the pendulum." "You do remember, don't you? But it's all gone so many years ago, Donald. We haven't had a boy around to visit us since you left Port Agnew, you know. I'll put some tincture of iodine on your knuckles, however." "Do, please, Nan." A little later, he said: "Do you remember, Nan, the day I stuck my finger into the cage of old Mrs. Biddle's South American parrot to coddle the brute and he all but chewed it off?" She nodded. "And you came straight here to have it attended to, instead of going to a doctor." "You wept when you saw my mangled digit. Remember, Nan? Strange how that scene persists in my memory! You were so sweetly sympathetic I was quite ashamed of myself." "That's because you always were the sweetest boy in the world and I was only the garbage-man's daughter," she whispered. "There's a ridiculous song about the garbage-man's daughter. I heard it once, in vaudeville--in San Francisco." "If I come over some evening soon, will you sing for me, Nan?" "I never sing any more, Don." "Nobody but you can ever sing 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginy' for me." "Then I shall sing it, Don." "Thank you, Nan." She completed the anointing of his battle-scarred knuckles with iodine, and, for a moment, she held his hand, examining critically an old ragged white scar on the index-finger of his right hand. And quite suddenly, to his profound amazement, she bent her head and swiftly implanted upon that old scar a kiss so light, so humble, so benignant, so pregnant of adoration and gratitude that he stood before her confused and inquiring. "Such a strong, useful big hand!" she whispered. "It has been raised in defense of the sanctity of my home--and until you came there was 'none so poor to do me reverence.'" He looked at her with sudden, new interest. Her action had almost startled him. As their eyes held each other, he was aware, with a force that was almost a shock, that Nan Brent was a most unusual woman. She was beautiful; yet her physical beauty formed the least part of her attractiveness, perfect as that beauty was. Instinctively, Donald visualized her as a woman with brains, character, nobility of soul; there was that in her eyes, in the honesty and understanding with which they looked into his, that compelled him, in that instant, to accept without reservation and for all time the lame and halting explanation of her predicament he had recently heard from her father's lips. He longed to tell her so. Instead, he flushed boyishly and said, quite impersonally: "Yes; you're beautiful as women go, but that's not the right word to express you. Physically, you might be very homely, but if you were still Nan Brent you would be sweet and compelling. You remind me of a Catholic chapel; there's always one little light within that never goes out, you know. So that makes you more than beautiful. Shall I say--glorious?" She smiled at him with her wistful, sea-blue eyes--a smile tender, maternal, all-comprehending. She knew he was not seeking to flatter her, that the wiles, the Artifices, the pretty speeches of the polished man of the world were quite beyond him. "Still the same old primitive pal," she murmured softly; "still thinking straight, talking straight, acting straight, and--dare I say it, Donald?--seeing straight. I repeat, you always were the sweetest boy in the world--and there is still so much of the little boy about you." Her hand fluttered up and rested lightly on his arm. "I'll not forget this day, my dear friend." It was characteristic of him that, having said that which was uppermost in his mind, he should remember his manners and thank her for dressing his knuckles. Then he extended his hand in farewell. "When you come again, Donald," she pleaded, as he took her hand, "will you please bring me some books? They're all that can keep me sane--and I do not go to the public library any more. I have to run the gantlet of so many curious eyes." "How long is it since you have been away from the Sawdust Pile?" "Since before my baby came." He was silent a minute, pondering this. Since old Caleb had become house-ridden, then, she had been, without books. He nodded assent to her request. "If I do not say very much, you will understand, nevertheless, how grateful I am," she continued. "To-day, the sun has shone. Whatever your thoughts may have been, Donald, you controlled your face and you were decent enough not to say, 'Poor Nan.'" He had no answer to that. He was conscious only of standing helpless in the midst of a terrible tragedy. His heart ached with pity for her, and just for old sake's sake, for a tender sentiment for lost youth and lost happiness of the old comradely days when she had been Cinderella and he the prince, he wished that he might take her in a fraternal embrace and let her cry out on his breast the agony that gnawed at her heart like a worm in an apple. But it was against his code to indicate to her by word or action that she was less worthy than other women and hence to be pitied, for it seemed to him that her burden was already sufficient. "Let me know if those people return to annoy you, Nan," was all he said. Then they shook hands very formally, and the young laird of Tyee returned to the mill-office to report to Andrew Daney that the Sawdust Pile had been cleaned out, but that, for the present at least, they would get along with the old drying-yard. Somehow, the day came to an end, and he went home with tumult in his soul. VII An unerring knowledge of men in general and of his own son in particular indicated to Hector McKaye, upon the instant that the latter appeared at the family dinner-table, that his son's first day in command had had a sobering effect upon that young man. He had gone forth that morning whistling, his eyes alert with interest and anticipation; and a feeling of profound contentment had come to The Laird as he watched Donald climb into his automobile and go briskly down the cliff highway to Port Agnew. Here was no unwilling exile, shackled by his father's dollars to a backwoods town and condemned to labor for the term of his natural life. Gladly, eagerly, it seemed to Hector McKaye, his son was assuming his heritage, casting aside, without one longing backward glance, a brighter, busier, and more delightful world. Although his son's new arena of action was beautiful and The Laird loved it with a passionate love, he was sufficiently imaginative to realize that, in Port Agnew, Donald might not be as happy as had been his father. Old Hector was sufficiently unselfish to have harbored no resentment had this been so. It had been his one anxiety that Donald might take his place in the business as a matter of duty to himself rather than as a duty to his father, and because he had found his lifework and was approaching it with joy, for The Laird was philosopher enough to know that labor without joy is as dead-sea fruit. Indeed, before the first day of his retirement had passed, he had begun to suspect that joy without labor was apt to be something less than he had anticipated. The Laird observed in his son's eyes, as the latter took his place at table, a look that had not been there when Donald left for the mill that morning. His usually pleasant, "Evening, folks!" was perfunctory to-night; he replied briefly to the remarks addressed to him by his mother and sisters; the old man noted not less than thrice a slight pause with the spoon half-way to his mouth, as if his son considered some problem more important than soup. Mrs. McKaye and the girls chattered on, oblivious of these slight evidences of mental perturbation, but as The Laird carved the roast (he delighted in carving and serving his family, and was old-fashioned enough to insist upon his right, to the distress of the girls, who preferred to have the roast carved in the kitchen and served by the Japanese butler), he kept a contemplative eye upon his son, and presently saw Donald heave a slight sigh. "Here's a titbit you always liked, son!" he cried cheerfully, and deftly skewered from the leg of lamb the crisp and tender tail. "Confound you, Donald; I used to eat these fat, juicy little lamb's tails while you were at college, but I suppose, now, I'll have to surrender that prerogative along with the others." In an effort to be cheerful and distract his son's thoughts, he attempted this homely badinage. "I'll give you another little tale in return, dad," Donald replied, endeavoring to meet his father's cheerful manner. "While we were away, a colony of riffraff from Darrow jumped old Caleb Brent's Sawdust Pile, and Daney was weak enough to let them get away with it. I'm somewhat surprised. Daney knew your wishes in the matter; if he had forgotten them, he might have remembered mine, and if he had forgotten both, it would have been the decent thing to have thrown them out on his own responsibility." So that was what lay at the bottom of his son's perturbation! The Laird was relieved. "Andrew's a good man, but he always needed a leader, Donald," he replied. "If he didn't lack initiative, he would have been his own man long ago. I hope you did not chide him for it, lad." "No; I did not. He's old enough to be my father, and, besides, he's been in the Tyee Lumber Company longer than I. I did itch to give him a rawhiding, though." "I saw smoke and excitement down at the Sawdust Pile this morning, Donald. I dare say you rectified Andrew's negligence." "I did. The Sawdust Pile is as clean as a hound's tooth." Jane looked up from her plate. "I hope you sent that shameless Brent girl away, too," she announced, with the calm attitude of one whose own virtue is above reproach. Donald glared at her. "Of course I did not!" he retorted. "How thoroughly unkind and uncharitable of you, Jane, to hope I would be guilty of such a cruel and unmanly action!" The Laird waved his carving-knife. "Hear, hear!" he chuckled. "Spoken like a man, my son. Jane, my dear, if I were you, I wouldn't press this matter further. It's a delicate subject." "I'm sure I do not see why Jane should not be free to express her opinion, Hector." Mrs. McKaye felt impelled to fly to the defense of her daughter. "You know as well as we do, Hector, that the Brent girl is quite outside the pale of respectable society." "We shall never agree on what constitutes 'respectable society,' Nellie," The Laird answered whimsically. "There are a few in that Seattle set of yours I find it hard to include in that category." "Oh, they're quite respectable, father," Donald protested. "Indeed they are, Donald! Hector, you amaze me," Mrs. McKaye chided. "They have too much money to be anything else," Donald added, and winked at his father. "Tush, tush, lad!" the old man murmured. "We shall get nowhere with such arguments. The world has been at that line of conversation for two thousand years, and the issue's still in doubt. Nellie, will you have a piece of the well-done?" "You and your father are never done joining forces against me," Mrs. McKaye protested, and in her voice was the well-known note that presaged tears should she be opposed further. The Laird, all too familiar with this truly feminine type of tyranny, indicated to his son, by a lightning wink, that he desired the conversation diverted into other channels, whereupon Donald favored his mother with a disarming smile. "I'm going to make a real start to-morrow morning, mother," he announced brightly. "I'm going up in the woods and be a lumberjack for a month. Going to grow warts on my hands and chew tobacco and develop into a brawny roughneck." "Is that quite necessary?" Elizabeth queried, with a slight elevation of her eyebrows. "I understood you were going to manage the business." "I am--after I've learned it thoroughly, Lizzie." "Don't call me 'Lizzie,'" she warned him irritably. "Very well, Elizabeth." "In simple justice to those people from Darrow that you evicted from the Sawdust Pile, Don, you should finish your work before you go. If they were not fit to inhabit the Sawdust Pile, then neither is Nan Brent. You've got to play fair." Jane had returned to the attack. "Look here, Jane," her brother answered seriously: "I wish you'd forget Nan Brent. She's an old and very dear friend of mine, and I do not like to hear my friends slandered." "Oh, indeed!" Jane considered this humorous, and indulged herself in a cynical laugh. "Friend of his?" Elizabeth, who was regarded in her set as a wit, a reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother incredulously. "My word! That's a rich dish." "Why, Donald dear," his mother cried reproachfully, "surely you are jesting!" "Not at all. Nan Brent isn't a bad girl, even if she is the mother of a child born out of wedlock. She stays at home and minds her own business, and lets others mind theirs." "Donald's going to be tragic. See if he isn't," Elizabeth declared. "Come now, old dear; if Nan Brent isn't a bad woman, just what is your idea of what constitutes badness in a woman? It would be interesting to know your point of view." "Nan Brent was young, unsophisticated, poor, and trusting when she met this fellow, whoever he may be. He wooed her, and she loved him--or thought she did, which amounts to the same thing until one discovers the difference between thinking and feeling. At first, she thought she was married to him. Later, she discovered she was not--and then it was too late." "It wouldn't have been too late with some--er--good people," The Laird remarked meaningly. "In other words," Donald went on, "Nan Brent found herself out on the end of a limb, and then the world proceeded to saw off the limb. It is true that she is the mother of an illegitimate child, but if that child was not--at least in so far as its mother _is_ concerned--conceived in sin, I say it isn't illegitimate, and that its mother is not a bad woman." "Granted--if it's true; but how do you know it to be true?" Jane demanded. She had a feeling that she was about to get the better of her brother in this argument. "I do not _know_ it to be true, Jane." "_Voilà!"_ "But--I believe it to be true, Jane." "Why?" "Because Nan told her father it was true, and old Caleb told me when I was at his house this morning. So I believe it. And I knew Nan Brent when she was a young girl, and she was sweet and lovely and virtuous. I talked with her this morning, and found no reason to change my previous estimate of her. I could only feel for her a profound pity." "'Pity is akin to love,'" Elizabeth quoted gaily. "Mother, keep an eye on your little son. He'll be going in for settlement-work in Port Agnew first thing we know." "Hush, Elizabeth!" her mother cried sharply. She was highly scandalized at such levity. The Laird salted and peppered his food and said nothing. "Your attitude is very manly and sweet, dear," Mrs. McKaye continued, turning to her son, for her woman's intuition warned her that, if the discussion waxed warmer, The Laird would take a hand in it, and her side would go down to inglorious defeat, their arguments flattened by the weight of Scriptural quotations. She had a feeling that old Hector was preparing to remind them of Mary Magdalen and the scene in the temple. "I would much rather hear you speak a good word for that unfortunate girl than have you condemn her." "A moment ago," her son reminded her, with some asperity, for he was sorely provoked, "you were demanding the right of free speech for Jane, in order that she might condemn her. Mother, I fear me you're not quite consistent." "We will not discuss it further, dearie. It is not a matter of such importance that we should differ to the point of becoming acrimonious. Besides, it's a queer topic for dinner-table conversation." "So say we all of us," Elizabeth struck in laconically. "Dad, will you please help me to some of the well-done?" "Subjects," old Hector struck in, "which, twenty years ago, only the family doctor was supposed to be familiar with or permitted to discuss are now being agitated in women's clubs, books, newspapers, and the public schools. You can't smother sin or the facts of life unless they occur separately. In the case of Nan Brent they have developed coincidently; so we find it hard to regard her as normal and human." "Do you condone her offense, Hector?" Mrs. McKaye demanded incredulously. "I am a firm believer in the sacredness of marriage, I cannot conceive of a civilization worth while without it," The Laird declared earnestly. "Nevertheless, while I know naught of Nan Brent's case, except that which is founded on hearsay evidence, I can condone her offense because I can understand it. She might have developed into a far worse girl than it appears from Donald's account she is. At least, Nellie, she bore her child and cherishes it, and, under the rules of society as we play it, that required a kind of courage in which a great many girls are deficient. Give her credit for that." "Apparently she has been frank," Elizabeth answered him coolly. "On the other hand, father McKaye, her so-called courage may have been ignorance or apathy or cowardice or indifference. It all depends on her point of view." "I disagree with mother that it is not a matter of importance," Donald persisted. "It is a matter of supreme importance to me that my mother and sisters should not feel more charity toward an unfortunate member of their sex; and I happen to know that it is a matter of terrible importance to Nan Brent that in Port Agnew people regard her as unclean and look at her askance. And because that vacillating old Daney didn't have the courage to fly in the face of Port Agnew's rotten public opinion, he subjected Nan Brent and her helpless old father to the daily and nightly association of depraved people. If _he_ should dare to say one word against" "Oh, it wasn't because Andrew was afraid of public opinion, lad," Hector McKaye interrupted him dryly. "Have you no power o'deduction? Twas his guid wife that stayed his hand, and well I know it." "I dare say, dad," Donald laughed. "Yes; I suppose I'll have to forgive him." "She'll be up to-morrow, my dear, to discuss the matter with you," The Laird continued, turning to his wife. "I know her well. Beware of expressing an opinion to her." And he bent upon all the women of his household a smoldering glance. Apparently, by mutual consent, the subject was dropped forthwith. Donald's silence throughout the remainder of the meal was portentous, however, and Mrs. McKaye and her daughters were relieved when, the meal finished at last, they could retire with good grace and leave father and son to their cigars. "Doesn't it beat hell?" Donald burst forth suddenly, apropos of nothing. "It does, laddie." "I wonder why?" The Laird was in a philosophical mood. He weighed his answer carefully. "Because people prefer to have their thoughts manufactured for them; because fanatics and hypocrites have twisted the heart out of the Christian religion in the grand scramble for priority in the 'Who's Holier than Who' handicap; because people who earnestly believe that God knows their inmost thoughts cannot refrain from being human and trying to put one over on Him." He smoked in silence for a minute, his calm glance on the ceiling. "Now that you are what you are, my son," he resumed reflectively, "you'll begin to know men and women. They who never bothered to seek your favor before will fight for it now--they do the same thing with God Almighty, seeking to win his favor by outdoing him in the condemnation of sin. A woman's virtue, lad, is her main barricade against the world; in the matter of that, women are a close corporation. Man, how they do stand together! Their virtue's the shell that protects them, and when one of them leaves her shell or loses it, the others assess her out of the close corporation, for she's a minority stockholder." "Mother and the girls are up to their eyebrows in the work of an organization in Seattle designed to salvage female delinquents," Donald complained. "I can't understand their attitude." Old Hector hooted. "They don't do the salvaging. Not a bit of it! That unpleasant work is left to others, and the virtuous and respectable merely pay for it. Ken ye not, boy, 'twas ever the habit of people of means to patronize and coddle the lowly. If they couldn't do that, where would be the fun of being rich? Look in the Seattle papers. Who gets the advertising out of a charity ball if it isn't the rich? They organize it and they put it over, with the public paying for a look at them, and they attending the ball on complimentary tickets, although I will admit that when the bills are paid and the last shred of social triumph has been torn from the affair, the Bide-a-Wee Home for Unmarried Mothers can have what's left--and be damned to them." Donald laughed quietly. "Scotty, you're developing into an iconoclast. If your fellow plutocrats should hear you ranting in that vein, they'd call you a socialist." "Oh, I'm not saying there aren't a heap of exceptions. Many's the woman with a heart big enough to mother the world, although, when all's said and done; 'tis the poor that are kind to the poor, the unfortunate that can appreciate and forgive misfortune. I'm glad you stood by old Brent and his girl," he added approvingly. "I intend to accord her the treatment which a gentleman always accords the finest lady in the land, dad." "Or the lowest, my son. I've noticed that kind are not altogether unpopular with our finest gentlemen. Donald, I used to pray to God that I wouldn't raise a fool. I feel that he's answered my prayers, but if you should ever turn hypocrite, I'll start praying again." VIII Donald left the following morning in the automobile for the logging-camps up-river, and because of his unfamiliarity with their present location, his father's chauffeur drove him up. He was to be gone all week, but planned to return Saturday afternoon to spend Sunday with his family. As the car wound up the narrow river road, Donald found himself thinking of Nan Brent and her tragedy. Since his visit to the Sawdust Pile the day before, two pictures of her had persisted in his memory, every detail of both standing forth distinctly. In the first, she was a shabby, barelegged girl of thirteen, standing in the cockpit of his sloop, holding the little vessel on its course while he and old Caleb took a reef in the mainsail. The wilderness of gold that was her uncared-for hair blew behind her like a sunny burgee; her sea-blue eyes were fixed on the mainsail, out of which she adroitly spilled the wind at the proper moment, in order that Donald and her father might haul the reef-points home and make them fast. In his mind's eye, he could see the pulse beating in her throat as they prepared to come about, for on such occasions she always became excited; he saw again the sweet curve of her lips and her uplifted chin; he heard again her shrill voice crying, "Ready, about!" and saw the spokes spin as she threw the helm over and crouched from the swinging boom, although it cleared her pretty head by at least three feet. He listened again to her elfin laugh as she let the sloop fall off sufficiently to take the lip of a comber over the starboard counter and force Donald and her father to seek shelter from the spray in the lee of the mainsail, from which sanctuary, with more laughter, she presently routed them by causing the spray to come in over the port counter. The other picture was the pose in which he had seen her the morning previous at the Sawdust Pile, when, to hide her emotion, she had half turned from him and gazed so forlornly out across the Bight of Tyee. It had struck him then, with peculiar force, that Nan Brent never again would laugh that joyous elfin laugh of other days. He had seen the pulse beating in her creamy neck again--a neck fuller, rounder, glorious with the beauty of fully developed womanhood. And the riot of golden hair was subdued, with the exception of little wayward wisps that whipped her white temples. Her eyes, somewhat darker now, like the sea near the horizon after the sun has set but while the glory of the day still lingers, were bright with unshed tears. The sweet curves of her mouth were drawn in pain. The northwest trade-wind blowing across the bight had whipped her gingham dress round her, revealing the soft curves of a body, the beauty of which motherhood had intensified rather than diminished. Thus she had stood, the outcast of Port Agnew, and beside her the little badge of her shame, demanding the father he had never known and would never see. The young laird of Tyee wondered what sort of man could have done this thing--this monumental wickedness. His great fists were clenched as there welled within him a black rage at the scoundrel who had so wantonly wrecked that little home on the Sawdust Pile. He wondered, with the arrogance of his years, assuming unconsciously the right of special privilege, if Nan would ever reveal to him the identity of the villain. Perhaps, some day, in a burst of confidence, she might. Even if she did tell him, what could he do? To induce the recreant lover to marry her openly and legally would, he knew, be the world's way of "righting the wrong" and giving the baby a name, but the mischief had been done too long, and could never be undone unless, indeed, a marriage certificate, with proper dating, could be flaunted in the face of an iconoclastic and brutal world. Even then, there would remain that astute and highly virtuous few who would never cease to impart in whispers the information that, no matter what others might think, _they_ had their doubts. He was roused from his bitter cogitations by the chauffeur speaking. "This is Darrow, Mr. Donald. I don't believe you've seen it, have you? Darrow put in his mill and town while you were away." Donald looked over the motley collection of shacks as the automobile rolled down the single unpaved street. "Filthy hole," he muttered. "Hello! There's one of my late friends from the Sawdust Pile." A woman, standing in the open door of a shanty on the outskirts of the town had made a wry face and thrust out her tongue at him. He lifted his hat gravely, whereat she screamed a curse upon him. An instant later, an empty beer-bottle dropped with a crash in the tonneau, and Donald, turning, beheld in the door of a Darrow groggery one of the Greek fishermen He had dispossessed. "Stop the car!" Donald commanded. "I think that man wants to discuss a matter with me." "Sorry, sir, but I don't think it's wise to obey you just now," his father's chauffeur answered, and trod on the accelerator. "They call that place the 'Bucket of Blood,' and you'll need something more than your fists if you expect to enter there and come out under your own power." "Very well. Some other time, perhaps." "You don't appear to be popular in Darrow, Mr. Donald." "Those people left the Sawdust Pile yesterday--in a hurry," Donald explained. "Naturally, they're still resentful." "They were making quite a little money down there, I believe. Folks do say business was good, and when you take money from that kind of cattle you make a worth-while enemy. If I were you, sir, I'd watch my step in dark alleys, and I'd carry a gun." "When I have to carry a gun to protect myself from vermin like that mulatto and those shifty little Greeks, I'll be a few years older than I am now, Henry. However, I suppose I'd be foolish to neglect your warning to mind my step." He spent a busy week in the woods, and it was his humor to spend it entirely felling trees. The tough, experienced old choppers welcomed him with keen interest and played freeze-out each night in the bunk-houses to see which one should draw him for a partner next day; for the choppers worked in pairs, likewise the cross-cut men. Their bucolic sense of humor impelled the choppers to speed up when they found themselves paired with the new boss, for it would have been a feather in the cap of the man who could make him quit or send him home at nightfall "with his tail dragging," as the woods boss expressed it. Donald sported a wondrous set of blisters at the close of that first day, but after supper he opened them, covered them with adhesive tape, and went back to work next morning as if nothing had happened. During those five days, he learned considerable of the art of dropping a tree exactly where he desired it, and bringing it to earth without breakage. He rode down to Port Agnew with the woods crew on the last log-train Saturday night, walked into the mill office, and cashed in his time-slip for five days' work as a chopper. He had earned two dollars a day and his board and lodging. His father, who had driven into town to meet him, came to the window and watched him humorously. "So that's the way you elect to work it, eh?" he queried. "I told Daney to pay you my salary when I quit." "I like to feel that I'm earning my stipend," Donald replied, "so it pleases me to draw the wages of the job I'm working at. When I'm thoroughly acquainted with all the jobs in the Tyee Lumber Company, or at least have a good working knowledge of them, I think I'll be a better boss." The Laird took his son's big brown hands in his and looked at the palms. "I rather think I like it so," he answered. "A man whose hands have never bled or whose back has never ached is a poor man to judge a labor dispute. 'Twould improve you if you were a married man and had to live on that for a week, less twenty-five cents for your hospital dues. The choppers pay a dollar a month toward the hospital, and that covers medical attendance for them and their families." Donald laughed and flipped a quarter over to the cashier, then turned and handed ten dollars to a wiry little chopper standing in line. "I was feeling so good this morning I bet Sandy my week's pay I could fell a tree quicker than he and with less breakage. He won in a walk," he explained to The Laird. "Come with me," his father ordered, and led him into the office. From the huge safe he selected a ledger, scanned the index, and opened it at a certain account headed, "Sandy dough." To Sandy's credit each month, extending over a period of fifteen years, appeared a credit of thirty dollars. "That's what it's costing me to have discovered Sandy," his father informed him; "but since I had served an apprenticeship as a chopper, the time required to discover Sandy was less than half an hour, I watched him one day when he didn't know who I was--so I figured him for a man and a half and raised him a dollar a day. He doesn't know it, however. If he did, he'd brag about it, and I'd have to pay as much to men half as good. When he's chopped for us twenty years, fire him and give him that. He's earned it. Thus endeth the first lesson, my son. Now come home to dinner." After dinner, Donald returned to town to buy himself some working-clothes at the general store. His purchases completed, he sought the juvenile department. "I want some kid's clothing," he announced. "To fit a child of three. Rompers, socks, shoes--the complete outfit. Charge them to my account and send them over to Nan Brent at the Sawdust Pile. I'll give you a note to enclose with them." Notwithstanding the fact that she was an employe of the Tyee Lumber Company, the girl who waited on him stared at him frankly. He noticed this and bent upon her a calm glance that brought a guilty flush to her cheek. Quickly she averted her eyes, but, nevertheless she had a feeling that the young laird of Tyee was still appraising her, and, unable to withstand the fascination peculiar to such a situation, she looked at him again to verify her suspicions--and it was even so. In great confusion she turned to her stock, and Donald, satisfied that he had squelched her completely, went into the manager's office, wrote, and sealed the following note to Nan Brent: Saturday night. FRIEND NAN: Here are some duds for the young fellow. You gave me the right to look after him, you know; at least, you didn't decline it. At any rate, I think you will not mind accepting them from me. I sent to Seattle for some books I thought you might like. They have probably arrived by parcel-post. Sent you a box of candy, also, although I have forgotten the kind you used to prefer. Been up in the logging-camp all week, chopping, and I ache all over. Expect to be hard and not quite so weary by next week-end, and will call over for Sunday dinner. Sincerely, DONALD McKAYE He spent Sunday at The Dreamerie, and at four o'clock Sunday afternoon boarded the up train and returned to the logging-camp. Mrs. Andrew Daney, seated in Sunday-afternoon peace upon her front veranda, looked up from the columns of the _Churchman_ as the long string of logging-trucks wound round the base of the little knoll upon which the general manager's home stood; but even at a distance of two blocks, she recognized the young laird of Tyee in the cab with the engineer. "Dear, dear!" this good soul murmured. "And such a nice young man, too! I should think he'd have more consideration for his family, if not for himself." "Who's that?" Mr. Daney demanded, emerging from behind the Seattle _Post-Intelligencer_. "Donald McKaye." "What about him?" Mr. Daney demanded, with slight emphasis on the pronoun. "Oh, nothing; only--" "Only what?" "People say he's unduly interested in Nan Brent." "If he is, that's his business. Don't let what people say trouble you, Mrs. Daney." "Well, can I help it if people will talk?" "Yes--when they talk to you." "How do you know they've been talking to me, Andrew?" she demanded foolishly. "Because you know what they say." Andrew Daney rose from the wicker deck-chair in which he had been lounging and leveled his index-finger at the partner of his joys and sorrows. "You forget Donald McKaye and that Brent girl," he ordered. "It's none of your business. All Don has to say to me is, 'Mr. Daney, your job is vacant'--and, by Judas Priest, it'll be vacant. Remember that, my dear." "Nonsense, dear. The Laird wouldn't permit it--after all these years." "If it comes to a test of strength, I'll lose, and don't you forget it. Old sake's sake is all that saved me from a run-in with Donald before he had been in command fifteen minutes. I refer to that Sawdust Pile episode. You dissuaded me from doing my duty in that matter, Mary, and my laxity was not pleasing to Donald. I don't blame him a whit." "Did he say anything?" she demanded, a trifle alarmed. "No; but he looked it." "How did he look, Andrew?" "He looked," her husband replied, "like the Blue Bonnets coming over the border--that's what he looked like. Then he went down to the Sawdust Pile like a raging demon, cleaned it out in two twos, and put it to the torch. You be careful what you say to people, Mary. Get that boy started once, and he'll hark back to his paternal ancestors; and if The Laird has ever told you the history of that old claymore that hangs on the wall in The Dreamerie, you know that the favorite outdoor sports of the McKaye tribe were fighting and foot-racing--with the other fellow in front." "The Laird is mild enough," she defended. "Yes, he is. But when he was young, he could, and frequently did, whip twice his weight in bear-cats. Old as he is to-day, he's as sound as a man of forty; he wouldn't budge an inch for man or devil." Mrs. Daney carefully folded the _Churchman_, laid it aside, and placed her spectacles with it. "Andrew, I know it's terrible of me to breathe such a thing, but--did it ever occur to you that--perhaps--the father of Nan Brent's child might be--" "Donald?" he exploded incredulously. She nodded, and about her nod there was something of that calm self-confidence of an attorney who is winning his case and desires to impress that fact upon the jury. "By God, woman," cried Daney, "you have the most infernal ideas--" "Andrew! Remember it's the Sabbath!" "It's a wonder my language doesn't shrivel this paper. Now then, where in hades do you get this crazy notion?" Daney was thoroughly angry. She gazed up at him in vague apprehension. Had she gone too far? Suddenly he relaxed. "No; don't tell me," he growled. "I'll not be a gossip. God forgive me, I was about to befoul the very salt I eat. I'll not be disloyal." "But, Andrew dear, don't you know I wouldn't dare breathe it to anyone but you?" "I don't know how much you'd dare. At any rate, I'll excuse you from breathing it to me, for I'm not interested. I know it isn't true." "Then, Andrew, it is your duty to tell me why you know it isn't true, in order that I may set at rest certain rumors--" "You--mind--your--own--business, Mary!" he cried furiously, punctuating each word with a vigorous tap of his finger on the arm of her chair. "The McKayes meet their responsibilities as eagerly as they do their enemies. If that child were young Donald's, he'd have married the Brent girl, and if he had demurred about it, The Laird would have ordered him to." "Thank you for that vote of confidence in the McKaye family, Andrew," said a quiet voice. "I think you have the situation sized up just right." Andrew Daney whirled; his wife glanced up, startled, then half rose and settled back in her chair again, for her legs absolutely refused to support her. Standing at the foot of the three steps that led off the veranda was Hector McKaye! "I drove Donald down from The Dreamerie to catch the up train, and thought I'd drop over and visit with you a bit," he explained. "I didn't intend to eavesdrop, and I didn't--very much; but since I couldn't help overhearing such a pertinent bit of conversation, I'll come up and we'll get to the bottom of it. Keep your seat, Mrs. Daney." The advice was unnecessary. The poor soul could not have left it. The Laird perched himself on the veranda railing, handed the dumfounded Daney a cigar, and helped himself to one. "Well, proceed," The Laird commanded. His words apparently were addressed to both, but his glance was fixed on Mrs. Daney--and now she understood full well her husband's description of the McKaye look. "I had finished what I had to say, Mr. McKaye," Andrew Daney found courage to say. "So I noted, Andrew, and right well and forcibly you said it. I'm grateful to you. I make no mistake, I think, if your statement wasn't in reply to some idle tale told your good wife and repeated by her to you--in confidence, of course, as between man and wife." "If you'll excuse me, Mr. McKaye, I--I'd rather not--discuss it!" Mary Daney cried breathlessly. "I would I did not deem it a duty to discuss it myself, Mary. But you must realize that when the tongue of scandal touches my son, it becomes a personal matter with me, and I must look well for a weapon to combat it. You'll tell me now, Mary, what they've been saying about Donald and Caleb Brent's daughter." "Andrew will tell you," she almost whispered, and made as if to go. But The Laird's fierce eyes deterred her; she quailed and sat down again. "Andrew cannot tell me, because Andrew doesn't know," The Laird rebuked her kindly. "I heard him tell you not to tell him, that he wasn't a gossip, and wouldn't befoul the salt he ate by being disloyal, or words to that effect. Is it possible, Mary Daney, that you prefer me to think you are not inspired by similar sentiments? Don't cry, Mary--compose yourself." "Idleness is the mother of mischief, and since the children have grown up and left home, Mary hasn't enough to keep her busy," Daney explained. "So, womanlike and without giving sober thought to the matter, she's been listening to the idle chattering of other idle women. Now then, my dear," he continued, turning to his wife, "that suspicion you just voiced didn't grow in your head. Somebody put it there--and God knows it found fertile soil. Out with it now, wife! Who've you been gossiping with?" "I'll name no names," the unhappy woman sobbed; "but somebody told me that somebody else was down at the Sawdust Pile the day Donald burned those shacks, and after be burned them he spent an hour in the Brent cottage, and when he came out he had the baby in his arms. When he left, the child made a great to-do and called him, 'daddy.'" The Laird smiled. "Well, Mary, what would you expect the boy to do? Beat the child? To my knowledge, he's been robbing the candy department of my general store for years, and the tots of Port Agnew have been the beneficiaries of his vandalism. He was born with a love of children. And would you convict him on the prattle of an innocent child in arms?" "Certainly not, Mr. McKaye. I understand. Well then, on Saturday night he sent over a complete outfit of clothing for the child, with a note in the bundle--" "Hm-m-m." "And then somebody remembered that the child's name is Donald." "How old is that child, Mrs. Daney?" She considered. "As I recall it, he'll be three years old in October." "Since, you're a married woman, Mrs. Daney," The Laird began, with old-fashioned deprecation for the blunt language he was about to employ, "you'll admit that the child wasn't found behind one of old Brent's cabbages. This is the year 1916." But Mrs. Daney anticipated him. "They've figured it out," she interrupted, "and Donald was home from college for the holidays in 1912." "So he was," The Laird replied complacently. "I'd forgotten. So that alibi goes by the board. What else now? Does the child resemble my son?" "Nobody knows. Nan Brent doesn't receive visitors, and she hasn't been up-town since the child was born." "Is that all, Mary?" "All I have heard so far." Old Hector was tempted to tell her that, in his opinion, she had heard altogether too much, but his regard for her husband caused him to refrain. "It's little enough, and yet it's a great deal," he answered. "You'll be kind enough, Mary, not to carry word of this idle gossip to The Dreamerie, I should regret that very much." She flushed with the knowledge that, although he forgave her, still he distrusted her and considered a warning necessary. However, she nodded vigorous acceptance of his desire, and immediately he changed the topic. While, for him, the quiet pleasure he had anticipated in the visit had not materialized and he longed to leave at once, for Daney's sake he remained for tea. When he departed, Mrs. Daney ran to her room and found surcease from her distress in tears, while her husband sat out on the veranda smoking one of The Laird's fine cigars, his embarrassment considerably alleviated by the knowledge that his imprudent wife had received a lesson that should last for the remainder of her life. About eight o'clock, his wife called him to the telephone. The Laird was on the wire. "In the matter of the indiscreet young lady in the store, Andrew," he ordered, "do not dismiss her or reprimand her. The least said in such cases is soonest mended." "Very well, sir." "Good-night, Andrew." "Good-night, sir." "Poor man!" Daney sighed, as he hung up. "He's thought of nothing else since he heard about it; it's a canker in his heart. I wish I dared indicate to Donald the fact that he's being talked about--and watched--by the idle and curious, in order that he may bear himself accordingly. He'd probably misunderstand my motives however." IX During the week, Mary Daney refrained from broaching the subject of that uncomfortable Sunday afternoon, wherefore her husband realized she was thinking considerably about it and, as a result, was not altogether happy. Had he suspected, however, the trend her thoughts were taking, he would have been greatly perturbed. Momentous thoughts rarely racked Mrs. Daney's placid and somewhat bovine brain, but once she became possessed with the notion that Nan Brent was the only human being possessed of undoubted power to create or suppress a scandal which some queer feminine intuition warned her impended, the more firmly did she become convinced that it was her Christian duty to call upon Nan Brent and strive to present the situation in a common-sense light to that erring young Woman. Having at length attained to this resolution, a subtle peace settled over Mrs. Daney, the result, doubtless, of a consciousness of virtue regained, since she was about to right a wrong to which she had so thoughtlessly been a party. Her decision had almost been reached when her husband, coming home for luncheon at noon on Saturday, voiced the apprehension which had harassed him during the week. "Donald will be home from the woods to-night," he announced, in troubled tones. "I do hope he'll not permit that big heart of his to lead him into further kindnesses that will be misunderstood by certain people in case they hear of them. I have never known a man so proud and fond of a son as The Laird is of Donald." "Nonsense!" his wife replied complacently. "The Laird has forgotten all about it." "Perhaps. Nevertheless, he will watch his son, and if, by any chance, the boy should visit the Sawdust Pile--" "Then it will be time enough to worry about him, Andrew. In the meantime, it's none of our business, dear. Eat your luncheon and don't think about it." He relapsed into moody silence. When he had departed for the mill office, however, his wife's decision had been reached. Within the hour she was on her way to the Sawdust Pile, but as she approached Caleb Brent's garden gate, she observed, with a feeling of gratification, that, after all, it was not going to be necessary for her to be seen entering the house or leaving it. Far up the strand she saw a woman and a little child sauntering. Nan Brent looked up at the sound of footsteps crunching the shingle, identified Mrs. Daney at a glance, and turned her head instantly, at the same time walking slowly away at right angles, in order to obviate a meeting. To her surprise, Mrs. Daney also changed her course, and Nan, observing this out of the corner of her eye, dropped her apronful of driftwood and turned to face her visitor. "Good afternoon, Miss Brent. May I speak to you for a few minutes?" "Certainly, Mrs. Daney." Mrs. Daney nodded condescendingly and sat down on the white sand. "Be seated, Miss Brent, if you please." "Well, perhaps if we sit down, we will be less readily recognized at a distance." Nan replied smilingly, and was instantly convinced that she had read her visitor's mind aright, for Mrs. Daney flushed slightly. "Suppose," the girl suggested gently, "that you preface what you have to say by calling me 'Nan.' You knew me well enough to call me that in an earlier and happier day, Mrs. Daney." "Thank you, Nan. I shall accept your invitation and dispense with formality." She hesitated for a beginning, and Nan, observing her slight embarrassment, was gracious enough to aid her by saying: "I dare say your visit has something to do with the unenviable social position in which I find myself in Port Agnew, Mrs. Daney, for I cannot imagine any other possible interest in me to account for it. So you may be quite frank. I'm sure nothing save a profound sense of duty brought you here, and I am prepared to listen." This was a degree of graciousness the lady had not anticipated, and it put her at her ease immediately. "I've called to talk to you about Donald McKaye," she began abruptly. "At the solicitation of whom?" "Nobody." Mrs. Daney sighed. "It was just an idea of mine." "Ah--I think I prefer it that way. Proceed, Mrs. Daney." "Young Mr. McKaye is unduly interested in you, Nan--at least, that is the impression of a number of people in Port Agnew." "I object to the use of the adverb 'unduly' in connection with Mr. Donald's interest in my father and me. But no matter. Since Port Agnew has no interest in me, pray why, Mrs. Daney, should I have the slightest interest in the impressions of these people you refer to and whose volunteer representative you appear to be?" "There! I knew you would be offended!" Mrs. Daney cried, with a deprecatory shrug. "I'm sure I find this a most difficult matter to discuss, and I assure you, I do not desire to appear offensive." "Well, you are; but I can stand it, and whether I resent it or not cannot be a matter of much import to you or the others. And I'll try not to be disagreeable. Just why did you come to see me, Mrs. Daney?" "I might as well speak plainly, Miss Brent. Donald McKaye's action in ridding the Sawdust Pile of your neighbors has occasioned comment. It appears that this was his first official act after assuming his father's place in the business. Then he visited you and your father for an hour, and your child, whom it appears you have named Donald, called him 'daddy.' Then, last Saturday night, Mr. McKaye sent over some clothing for the boy--" "Whereupon the amateur detectives took up the trail," Nan interrupted bitterly. "And you heard of it immediately." "His father heard of it also," Mrs. Daney continued. "It worries him." "It should not. He should have more faith in his son, Mrs. Daney." "He is a father, my dear, very proud of his son, very devoted to him, and fearfully ambitious for Donald's future." "And you fear that I may detract from the radiance of that future? Is that it?" "In plain English," the worthy lady replied brutally, "it is." "I see your point of view very readily, Mrs. Daney. Your apprehensions are ridiculous--almost pathetic, Don McKaye's great sympathy is alone responsible for his hardihood in noticing me, and he is so much too big for Port Agnew that it is no wonder his motives are misunderstood. However, I am sorry his father is worried. We have a very great respect for The Laird; indeed, we owe him a debt of gratitude, and there is nothing my father or I would not do to preserve his peace of mind." "The talk will die out, of course, unless something should occur to revive it, Miss Brent--I mean, Nan. But it would be just like Donald McKaye to start a revival of this gossip. He doesn't care a farthing for what people think or say, and he is too young to realize that one _must_ pay _some_ attention to public opinion. You realize that, of course." "I ought to, Mrs. Daney. I think I have had some experience of public opinion," Nan replied sadly. "Then, should Donald McKaye's impulsive sympathy lead him to--er--" "You mean that I am to discourage him in the event--" "Precisely, Miss Brent. For his father's sake." "Not to mention your husband's position. Precisely, Mrs. Daney." Mary Daney's heart fluttered. "I have trusted to your honor, Nan--although I didn't say so in the beginning--not to mention my visit or this interview to a living soul." "My 'honor!'" Nan's low, bitter laugh raked the Daney nerves like a rasp. "I think, Mrs. Daney, that I may be depended upon to follow my own inclinations in this matter. I suspect you have been doing some talking yourself and may have gone too far, with the result that you are hastening now, by every means in your power, to undo whatever harm, real or fancied, has grown out of your lack of charity." "Nan, I beg of you--" "Don't! You have no right to beg anything of me. I am not unintelligent and neither am I degraded. I think I possess a far keener conception of my duty than do you or those whom you have elected to represent; hence I regard this visit as an unwarranted impertinence. One word from me to Donald McKaye--" Terror smote the Samaritan. She clasped her hands; her lips were pale and trembling. "Oh, my dear, my dear," she pleaded, "you wouldn't breathe a word to him, would you? Promise me you'll say nothing. How could I face my husband if--if--" She began to weep. "I shall promise nothing," Nan replied sternly. "But I only came for his father's sake, you cruel girl!" "Perhaps his father's case is safer in my hands than in yours, Mrs. Daney, and safest of all in those of his son." The outcast of Port Agnew rose, filled her apron with the driftwood she had gathered, and called to her child. As the little fellow approached, Mrs. Daney so far forgot her perturbation as to look at him keenly and decide, eventually, that he bore not the faintest resemblance to Donald McKaye. "I'm sure, Nan, you will not be heartless enough to tell Donald McKaye of my visit to you," she pleaded, as the girl started down the beach. "You have all the assurance of respectability, dear Mrs. Daney," Nan answered carelessly. "You shall not leave me until you promise to be silent!" Mary Daney cried hysterically, and rose to follow her. "I think you had better go, Mrs. Daney. I am quite familiar with the figure of The Laird since his retirement; he walks round the bight with his dogs every afternoon for exercise, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, that is he coming down the beach." Mrs. Daney cast a terrified glance in the direction indicated. A few hundred yards up the beach she recognized The Laird, striding briskly along, swinging his stick, and with his two English setters romping beside him. With a final despairing "Please Nan; please do not be cruel!" she fled, Nan Brent smiling mischievously after her stout retreating form. "I have condemned you to the horrors of uncertainty," the girl soliloquized. "How very, very stupid you are, Mrs. Daney, to warn me to protect him! As if I wouldn't lay down my life to uphold his honor! Nevertheless, you dear old bungling busybody, you are absolutely right, although I suspect no altruistic reason carried you forth on this uncomfortable errand." Nan had heretofore, out of the bitterness of her life, formed the opinion that brickbats were for the lowly, such as she, and bouquets solely for the great, such as Donald McKaye. Now, for the first time, she realized that human society is organized in three strata--high, mediocre, and low, and that when a mediocrity has climbed to the seats of the mighty, his fellows strive to drag him back, down to their own ignoble level--or lower. To Nan, child of poverty, sorrow, and solitude, the world had always appeared more or less incomprehensible, but this afternoon, as she retraced her slow steps to the Sawdust Pile, the old dull pain of existence had become more complicated and acute with the knowledge that the first ray of sunlight that had entered her life in three years was about to be withdrawn; and at the thought, tears, which seemed to well from her heart rather than from her eyes, coursed down her cheeks and a sob broke through her clenched lips. Her progress homeward, what with the heavy bundle of driftwood, in her apron impeding her stride, coupled with the necessity for frequent pauses to permit her child to catch up with her, was necessarily slow--so slow, in fact, that presently she heard quick footsteps behind her and, turning, beheld Hector McKaye. He smiled, lifted his hat, and greeted her pleasantly. "Good-afternoon, Miss Nan. That is a heavy burden of driftwood you carry, my dear. Here--let me relieve you of it. I've retired, you know, and the necessity for finding something to do--Bless my soul, the girl's crying!" He paused, hat in hand, and gazed at her with frank concern. She met his look bravely. "Thank you, Mr. McKaye. Please do not bother about it." "Oh, but I shall bother," he answered. "Remove your apron, girl, and I'll tie the wood up in it and carry it home for you." Despite her distress, she smiled. "You're such an old-fashioned gentleman," she replied. "So very much like your son--I mean, your son is so very much like you." "That's better. I think I enjoy the compliment more when you put it that way," he answered. "Do not stand there holding the wood, my girl. Drop it." She obeyed and employed her right hand, thus freed, in wiping the telltale tears from her sweet face. "I have been lax in neighborly solicitude," The Laird continued. "I must send you over a supply of wood from the box factory. We have more waste than we can use in the furnaces. Is this your little man, Nan? Sturdy little chap, isn't he? Come here, bub, and let me heft you." He swung the child from the sands, and while pretending to consider carefully the infant's weight, he searched the cherubic countenance with a swift, appraising glance. "Healthy little rascal," he continued, and swung the child high in the air two or three times, smiling paternally as the latter screamed with delight. "How do you like that, eh?" he demanded, as he set the boy down on the sand again. "Dood!" the child replied, and gazing up at The Laird yearningly. "Are you my daddy?" But The Laird elected to disregard the pathetic query and busied himself gathering up the bundle of driftwood, nor did he permit his glance to rest upon Nan Brent's flushed and troubled face. Tucking the bundle under one arm and taking Nan's child on the other, he whistled to his dogs and set out for the Sawdust Pile, leaving the girl to follow behind him. He preceded her through the gate, tossed the driftwood on a small pile in the yard, and turned to hand her the apron. "You are not altogether happy, poor girl!" he said kindly. "I'm very sorry. I want the people in my town to be happy." "I shall grow accustomed to it, Mr. McKaye," Nan answered. "To-day, I am merely a little more depressed than usual. Thank you so much for carrying the wood. You are more than kind." His calm, inscrutable gray glance roved over her, noting her beauty and her sweetness, and the soul of him was troubled. "Is it something you could confide in an old man?" he queried gently. "You are much neglected, and I--I understand the thoughts that must come to you sometimes. Perhaps you would be happier elsewhere than in Port Agnew." "Perhaps," she replied dully. "If you could procure work--some profession to keep your mind off your troubles--I have some property in Tacoma--suburban lots with cottages on them." The Laird grew confused and embarrassed because of the thought that was in the back of his mind, and was expressing himself jerkily and in disconnected sentences. "I do not mean--I do not offer charity, for I take it you have had enough insults--well, you and your father could occupy one of those cottages at whatever you think you could afford to pay, and I would be happy to advance you any funds you might need until you--could--that is, of course, you must get on your feet again, and you must have help--" He waved his hand. "All this oppresses me." The remembrance of Mrs. Daney's interview with her prompted the girl to flash back at him. "'Oppresses,' Mr. McKaye? Since when?" He gazed upon her in frank admiration for her audacity and perspicacity. "Yes," he admitted slowly; "I dare say I deserve that. Yet, mingled with that ulterior motive you have so unerringly discerned, there is a genuine, if belated, desire to be decently human. I think you realize that also." "I should be stupid and ungrateful did I not, Mr. McKaye. I am sorry I spoke just now as I did, but I could not bear--" "To permit me to lay the flattering unction to my soul that I had gotten away with something, eh?" he laughed, much more at his ease, now that he realized how frank and yet how tactful she could be. "It wasn't quite worthy of you--not because I might resent it, for I am nobody, but because you should have more faith in yourself and be above the possibility of disturbance at the hands--or rather, the tongues--of people who speak in whispers." She came close to him suddenly and laid her hand lightly on his forearm, for she was speaking with profound earnestness. "I am your debtor, Mr. McKaye, for that speech you found it so hard to make just now, and for past kindnesses from you and your son. I cannot accept your offer. I would like to, did my pride permit, and were it not for the fact that such happiness as is left to my father can only be found by the Bight of Tyee. So, while he lives I shall not desert him. As for your apprehensions"--she smiled tolerantly and whimsically--"though flattering to me, they are quite unnecessary, and I beg you rid your mind of them. I am--that which I am; yet I am more than I appear to be to some and I shall not wantonly or wilfully hurt you--or yours." The Laird of Tyee took in both of his the slim hand that rested so lightly on his sleeve--that dainty left hand with the long, delicate fingers and no wedding ring. "My dear child," he murmured, "I feel more than I dare express. Good-by and may God bless you and be good to you, for I fear the world will not." He bowed with old-fashioned courtesy over her hand and departed; yet such was his knowledge of life that now his soul was more deeply troubled than it had been since his unintentional eavesdropping on his manager's garrulous wife. "What a woman!" he reflected. "Brains, imagination, dignity, womanly pride, courage, beauty and--yes; I agree with Donald. Neither maid, wife nor widow is she--yet she is not, never has been, and never will be a woman without virtue. Ah, Donald, my son, she's a bonny lass! For all her fall, she's not a common woman and my son is not a common man--I wonder--Oh, 'tis lies, lies, lies, and she's heard them and knows they're lies. Ah, my son, my son, with the hot blood of youth in you--you've a man's head and heart and a will of your own--Aye, she's sweet--that she is--I wonder!" X At the front of Caleb Brent's little house there was a bench upon which the old man was wont to sit on sunny days--usually in the morning, before the brisk, cool nor'west trade-wind commenced to blow. Following Hector McKaye's departure, Nan sought this bench until she had sufficiently mastered her emotions to conceal from her father evidence of a distress more pronounced than usual; as she sat there, she revolved the situation in her mind, scanning every aspect of it, weighing carefully every possibility. In common with the majority of human kind, Nan considered herself entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and now, at a period when, in the ordinary course of events, all three of these necessary concomitants of successful existence (for, to her, life meant something more than mere living) should have been hers in bounteous measure, despite the handicap under which she had been born, she faced a future so barren that sometimes the distant boom of the breakers on Tyee Head called to her to desert her hopeless fight and in the blue depths out yonder find haven from the tempests of her soul. In an elder day, when the Sawdust Pile had been Port Agnew's garbage-dump, folks who clipped their rose bushes and thinned out their marigold plants had been accustomed to seeing these slips take root again and bloom on the Sawdust Pile for a brief period after their ash-cans had been emptied there; and, though she did not know it, Nan Brent bore pitiful resemblance to these outcast flowers. Here, on the reclaimed Sawdust Pile, she had bloomed from girlhood into lovely womanhood--a sweet forget-me-not in the Garden of Life, she had been transplanted into Eden until Fate, the grim gardener, had cast her out, to take root again on the Sawdust Pile and ultimately to wither and die. It is terrible for the great of soul, the ambitious, the imaginative, when circumstances condemn them to life amid dull, uninteresting, drab, and sometimes sordid surroundings. Born to love and be loved, Nan Brent's soul beat against her environment even as a wild bird, captured and loosed in a room, beats against the window-pane. From the moment she had felt within her the vague stirrings of womanhood, she had been wont to gaze upon the blue-back hills to the east, to the horizon out west, wondering what mysteries lay beyond, and yearning to encounter them. Perhaps it was the sea-faring instinct, the _Wanderlust_ of her forebears; perhaps it was a keener appreciation of the mediocrity of Port Agnew than others in the little town possessed, a realization that she had more to give to life than life had to give to her. Perhaps it had been merely the restlessness that is the twin of a rare heritage--the music of the spheres--for with such had Nan been born. It is hard to harken for the reedy music of Pan and hear only the whine of a sawmill or the boom of the surf. Of her mother, Nan had seen but little. Her recollections of her mother were few and vague; of her mother's people, she knew nothing save the fact that they dwelt in a world quite free of Brents, and that her mother had committed a distinctly social _faux pas_ in marrying Caleb Brent she guessed long before Caleb Brent, in his brave simplicity, had imparted that fact to her. An admiral's daughter, descendant of an old and wealthy Revolutionary family, the males of which had deemed any calling other than the honorable profession of arms as beneath the blood and traditions of the family, Nan's mother had been the pet of Portsmouth until, inexplicably, Caleb Brent, a chief petty officer on her father's flag-ship, upon whom the hero's medal had just been bestowed, had found favor in her eyes. The ways of love, as all the philosophers of the ages are agreed, are beyond definition or understanding; even in his own case, Caleb Brent was not equal to the task of understanding how their love had grown, burgeoned into an engagement, and ripened into marriage. He only knew that, from a meek and well-disciplined petty officer, he had suddenly developed the courage of a Sir Galahad, and, while under the influence of a strange spell, had respectfully defied the admiral, who had foolishly assumed that, even if his daughter would not obey him, his junior in the service would. Then had come the baby girl, Nan, the divorce--pressed by the mother's family--and the mother's death. If his wife had discerned in him the nobility that was so apparent to his daughter--Poor old hero! But Nan always checked her meditations at this point. They didn't seem quite fair to her mother. Seated on the bench this afternoon, Nan reviewed her life from her sixth year, the year in which her father had claimed her. Until her eighteenth year, she had not been unhappy, for, following their arrival in Port Agnew, her father had prospered to a degree which permitted his daughter the enjoyment of the ordinary opportunities of ordinary people. If she had not known extravagance in the matter of dress, neither had she known penury; when her feminine instinct impelled her to brighten and beautify the little home on the Sawdust Pile from time to time, she had found that possible. She had been graduated with honors from the local high school, and, being a book-lover of catholic taste and wide range, she was, perhaps, more solidly educated than the majority of girls who have had opportunities for so-called higher education. With the broad democracy of sawmill towns, she had not, in the days gone by, been excluded from the social life of the town, such as it was, and she had had her beaus, such as they were. Sometimes she wondered how the choir in the Presbyterian church had progressed since she, once the mezzo-soprano soloist, had resigned to sing lullabys to a nameless child, if Andrew Daney still walked on the tips of his shoes when he passed the collection-plate, and if the mortgage on the church had ever been paid. She rose wearily and entered the little house. Old Caleb sat at the dining-room table playing solitaire. He looked up as she entered, swept the cards into a heap and extended his old arm to encircle her waist as she sat on the broad arm of his chair. She drew his gray head down on her breast. "Dadkins," she said presently, "Donald McKaye isn't coming to dinner to-morrow after all." "Oh, that's too bad, Nan! Has he written you? What's happened?" "No; he hasn't written me, and nothing's happened. I have decided to send him word not to come." [Illustration: SHE STOLE TO THE OLD SQUARE PIANO AND SANG FOR HIM.] "Aren't you feeling well, my dear?" "It isn't that, popsy-wops. He's the new laird of Tyee now, and he must be careful of the company he keeps." Old Caleb growled in his throat. "Much he cares what people think." "I know it. And much I care what people think, for I've grown accustomed to their thoughts. But I do care what his father thinks, for, of course, he has plans for Donald's future, and if Donald, out of the kindness of his heart, should become a frequent visitor here, The Laird would hear of it sooner or later--sooner, perhaps, for it would never occur to Donald to conceal it--and then the poor laird would be worried. And we don't owe The Laird that, father Brent!" "No; we do not." The old face was troubled. "I met Mrs. Daney on the beach, and it was she who gave me the intimation that The Laird had heard some cruel gossip that was disturbing him." "I'm sorry. Well, use your own judgment, daughter." "I'm sure Donald will understand," she assured him. "And he will not think the less of us for doing it." She got up and went to the peculiar and wholly impractical little desk which Mrs. McKaye had picked up in Italy and which Donald, calm in the knowledge that his mother would never use it or miss it, had given her to help furnish the house when first they had come to the Sawdust Pile. On a leaf torn from a tablet, she wrote: THE SAWDUST PILE, Saturday Afternoon. DEAR DONALD: I had planned to reserve my thanks for the books and the candy until you called for dinner to-morrow. Now, I have decided that it will be better for you not to come to dinner to-morrow, although this decision has not been made without father and me being sensible of a keen feeling of disappointment. We had planned to sacrifice an old hen that has outlived her margin of profit, hoping that, with the admixture of a pinch of saleratus, she would prove tender enough to tempt the appetite of a lumberjack, but, upon sober second thought, it seems the part of wisdom to let her live. We honor and respect you, Donald. You are so very dear to us that we wish to cherish always your good opinion of us; we want everybody in Port Agnew to think of you as we do. People will misunderstand and misconstrue your loyalty to the old friends of your boyhood if you dare admit your friendship. Indeed, some have already done so. I thank you for the books and the candy, but with all my heart I am grateful to you for a gift infinitely more precious but which is too valuable for me to accept. I shall have to treasure it at a distance. Sometimes, at colors, you might wave to Your old friend, NAN BRENT. Her letter completed, she sealed it in a plain white envelop, after which she changed into her best dress and shoes and departed up-town. Straight to the mill office of the Tyee Lumber Company she went, her appearance outside the railing in the general office being the signal for many a curious and speculative glance from the girls and young men at work therein. One of the former, with whom Nan had attended high school, came over to the railing and, without extending a greeting, either of word or smile, asked, in businesslike tones, "Whom do you wish to see?" In direct contrast with this cool salutation, Nan inclined her head graciously and smilingly said: "Why, how do you do, Hetty? I wonder if I might be permitted a minute of Mr. Daney's time." "I'll see," Hetty replied, secretly furious in the knowledge that she had been serenely rebuked, and immediately disappeared in the general manager's office. A moment later, she emerged. "Mr. Daney will see you, Miss Brent," she announced. "First door to your right. Go right in." "Thank you very much, Hetty." Andrew Daney, seated at a desk, stood up as she entered. "How do you do, Nan?" he greeted her, with masculine cordiality, and set out a chair. "Please be seated and tell me what I can do to oblige you." A swift scrutiny of the private office convinced her that they were alone; so she advanced to the desk and laid upon it the letter she had addressed to Donald McKaye. "I would be grateful, Mr. Daney, if you would see that Mr. Donald McKaye receives this letter when he comes in from the woods to-night," she replied. Daney was frankly amazed. "Bless my soul," he blurted, "why do you entrust me with it? Would it not have been far simpler to have mailed it?" "Not at all, Mr. Daney. In the first place, the necessity for writing it only developed an hour ago, and in order to be quite certain Mr. McKaye would receive it this evening, I would have had to place a special-delivery stamp upon it. I did not have a special-delivery stamp; so, in order to get one, I would have had to go to the post-office and buy it. And the instant I did that, the girl on duty at the stamp-window would have gone to the mail-chute to get the letter and read the address. So I concluded it would be far more simple and safe to entrust my letter to you. Moreover," she added, "I save ten cents." "I am very greatly obliged to you, Nan," Daney answered soberly. "You did exactly right," Had she conferred upon him a distinct personal favor, his expression of obligation could not have been more sincere. He took a large envelop of the Tyee Lumber Company, wrote Donald's name upon it, enclosed Nan's letter in this large envelop, and sealed it with a mighty blow of his fist. "Now then," he declared, "what people do not know will not trouble them. After you go, I'll place this envelop in Don's mail-box in the outer office. I think we understand each other," he added shrewdly. "I think we do, Mr. Daney." "Splendid fellow, young Donald! Thundering fine boy!" "I agree with you, Mr. Daney. If Donald has a fault, it is his excessive democracy and loyalty to his friends. Thank you so much, Mr. Daney. Good-afternoon." "Not at all--not at all! All this is quite confidential, of course, otherwise you would not be here." He bowed her to the door, opened it for her, and bowed again as she passed him. When she had gone, he summoned the young lady whom Nan had addressed as "Hetty." "Miss Fairchaild," he said, "'phone the local sales-office and tell them to deliver a load of fire-wood to the Brent house at the Sawdust Pile." Two minutes later, the entire office force knew that Nan Brent had called to order a load of fire-wood, and once more the world sagged into the doldrums. XI At six o'clock Donald came in from the logging-camp. Daney made it his business to be in the entry of the outer office when his superior took his mail from his box, and, watching narrowly, thought he observed a frown on the young laird's face as he read Nan Brent's letter. Immediately he took refuge in his private office, to which he was followed almost immediately by Donald. "That's your handwriting, Mr. Daney," he said, thrusting the large envelop under Daney's nose. "Another letter in a smaller envelop was enclosed by you in this large one. You knew, of course, who wrote it." "Miss Brent brought it personally." Donald started slightly. He was amazed. "I take it," he continued, after a slight pause, "that it was entirely your idea to conceal from the office force the fact that Miss Brent had written me this letter." "It was, Don." "I am at a loss to know why you took such a precaution." Donald's eyes met Daney's in frank suspicion; the latter thought that he detected some slight anger in the younger man's bearing. "I can enlighten you, Don. Miss Brent was at some pains to conceal the fact that she had written you a letter; she brought it to me to be handed to you, rather than run the risk of discovery by dropping it in the post-office for special delivery. Some of the girls in our office went to school with Nan Brent and might recognize her handwriting if they saw the envelop. I saw Hetty Fairchaild looking over your letters rather interestedly the other day, when she was sorting the mail and putting it in the boxes." "The entire procedure appears to me to be peculiar and wholly unnecessary. However, I'm obliged to you, Mr. Daney, for acceding so thoroughly to Nan's apparent wishes." He frowned as he tore the envelop into shreds and dropped them in Dahey's waste-basket. "I'm afraid some young women around this plant are going to lose their jobs unless they learn to restrain their curiosity and their tongues," he added. "I thought I was still general manager," Daney reminded him gently, "Hiring and firing have always been my peculiar prerogatives." "Forgive me, Mr. Daney. They shall continue to be." The young Laird grinned at the rebuke; Daney smiled back at him, and the somewhat charged atmosphere cleared instantly. "By the way, Donald, your father is in town. He's going up to Seattle to-night on the seven-ten train. Your mother and the girls left earlier in the week. He's dining at the hotel and wishes you to join him there. He figured that, by the time you could reach The Dreamerie, shave, bathe, and dress, it would be too late to have dinner with him there and still allow him time to catch his train." "How does idleness sit on my parent, Mr. Daney?" "Not very well, I fear. He shoots and fishes and takes long walks with the dogs; he was out twice in your sloop this week. I think he and your mother and the girls plan a trip to Honolulu shortly." "Good!" Donald yawned and stretched his big body, "I've lost eight pounds on this chopping-job," he declared, "and I thought I hadn't an ounce of fat on me. Zounds, I'm sore! But I'm to have an easy job next week. I'm to patrol the skid-roads with a grease-can. That woods boss is certainly running me ragged." "Well, your innings will come later," Daney smiled. At the mill office, Donald washed, and then strolled over to the hotel to meet his father. Old Hector grinned as Donald, in woolen shirt, mackinaw, corduroy trousers, and half-boots came into the little lobby, for in his son he saw a replica of himself thirty years agone. "Hello, dad!" Donald greeted him. "Hello, yourself!" The father, in great good humor, joined his son, and they proceeded to dine, chaffing each other good-naturedly the while, and occasionally exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors at adjoining tables. The Laird was in excellent spirits, a condition which his interview that afternoon with Nan Brent had tended to bring about; during the period that had elapsed between his subsequent doubts and his meeting with his son, he had finally decided that the entire matter was a mare's nest and had dismissed it from his mind. After dinner, they walked down to the railroad station together, Donald carrying his father's bag. While The Laird was at the ticket-window purchasing his transportation, his son walked over to a baggage-truck to rest the bag upon it. As the bag landed with a thud, a man who had been seated on the truck with his back toward Donald glanced over his shoulder in a leisurely way, and, in that glance, the latter recognized one of the Greeks he had evicted from the Sawdust Pile--the same man who had thrown a beer-bottle at him the day he motored through Darrow. "What are you doing in Port Agnew?" Donald demanded. To his query, the fellow replied profanely that this was none of his interrogator's affair. "Well, it is some of my affair," the new boss of Tyee replied. "I have a crow to pluck with you, anyhow, and I'm going to pluck it now." He grasped the Greek by his collar and jerked him backward until the man lay flat on his back across the baggage-truck; then, with his horny left hand, Donald slapped the sullen face vigorously, jerked the fellow to his feet, faced him in the direction of Darrow, and, with a vigorous kick, started him on his way. "That's for throwing beer-bottles!" he called after the man. "And hereafter you keep out of Port Agnew. Your kind are not welcome here." The Greek departed into the night cursing, while The Laird, still at the ticket-window, glanced interestedly from his son to the Greek and then back to Donald. "What's the idea, son?" he demanded. "A recent dweller on the Sawdust Pile," his son replied easily. "He declared war on me, so, naturally, he comes into my territory at his own risk. That scum from Darrow must keep out of our town, dad, and force is the only argument they can understand. Daney gave them a free hand and spoiled them, but I'm going to teach them who's boss around here now. Besides, I owe that fellow a poke. He insulted Nan Brent. There would have been a bill for repairs on the scoundrel if I had caught him the day I drove his gang off the Sawdust Pile." "Well, I approve of your sentiments, Donald, but, nevertheless, it's a poor practise for a gentleman to fight with a mucker, although," he added whimsically, "when I was your age I always enjoyed a go with such fellows. That man you just roughed is George Chirakes, and he's a bad one. Knifed three of his countrymen in a drunken riot in Darrow last fall, but got out of it on a plea of self-defense. Keep your eye on the brute. He may try to play even, although there's no real courage in his kind. They're born bushwhackers," The Laird glanced at his watch and saw that it still lacked eight minutes of train-time. "Wait for me a minute," he told his son. "I want to telephone Daney on a little matter I overlooked this afternoon." He entered the telephone-booth in the station and called up Andrew Daney. "McKaye speaking," he announced. "I've just discovered Donald has an enemy--that Greek, Chirakes, from Darrow. Did Dirty Dan come in from the woods to-night?" "I believe he did. He usually comes in at week-ends." "Look him up immediately, and tell him to keep an eye on Donald, and not to let him out of his sight until the boy boards the logging-train to-morrow night to go back to the woods. Same thing next week-end, and when Donald completes his tour of duty in the woods, transfer Dan from the logging-camp and give him a job in the mill, so he can watch over the boy when he's abroad nights. He is not, of course, to let my son know he is under surveillance." "I will attend to the matter immediately," Daney promised, and The Laird, much relieved, hung up and rejoined his son. "Take care of yourself--and watch that Greek, boy," he cautioned, as he swung aboard the train. Donald stood looking after the train until the tail-lights had disappeared round a curve. XII Daney readily discovered in a pool-hall the man he sought. "Dirty Dan" O'Leary was a chopper in the McKaye employ, and had earned his sobriquet, not because he was less cleanly than the average lumberjack but because he was what his kind described as a "dirty" fighter. That is to say, when his belligerent disposition led him into battle, which it frequently did, Mr. O'Leary's instinct was to win, quickly and decisively, and without consideration of the niceties of combat, for a primitive person was Dirty Dan. Fast as a panther, he was as equally proficient in the use of all his extremities, and, if hard pressed, would use his teeth. He was a stringy, big-boned man of six feet, and much too tall for his weight, wherefore belligerent strangers were sometimes led to the erroneous conclusion that Mr. O'Leary would not be hard to upset. In short, he was a wild, bad Irishman who had gotten immovably fixed in his head an idea that old Hector McKaye was a "gr-rand gintleman," and a gr-rand gintleman was one of the three things that Dirty Dan would fight for, the other two being his personal safety and the love of battle. Daney drew Dirty Dan out of the pool-hall and explained the situation to him. The knowledge that The Laird had, in his extremity, placed reliance on him moved Dirty Dan to the highest pitch of enthusiasm and loyalty. He pursed his lips, winked one of his piggy eyes craftily, and, without wasting time in words of assurance, set forth in search of the man he was to follow and protect. Presently he saw Donald entering the butcher shop; so he stationed himself across the street and watched the young laird of Tyee purchase a fowl and walk out with it under his arm. Keeping his man dimly in view through the gloom, Dirty Dan, from the opposite side of the street, followed on velvet feet to the outskirts of the town, where Donald turned and took a path through some vacant lots, arriving at last at the Sawdust Pile. Dirty Dan heard him open and close the gate to Caleb Brent's garden. "Oh, ho, the young divil!" Dirty Dan murmured, and immediately left the path, padding softly out into the grass in order that, when the door of Caleb Brent's house should be opened, the light from within might not shine forth and betray him. After traversing a dozen steps, he lay down in the grass and set himself patiently to await the reappearance of his quarry. In response to several clearly audible knocks, the front door failed to open, and Dirty Dan heard Don walk round the house to the back door. "The young divil!" he reiterated to himself. "Faith, whin the cat's away the mice'll play, an' divil a worrd o' lie in that! Begorra, I'm thinkin' the ould gintleman'd be scandalized could he know where his darlin' bhoy is this minute--here, wait a minute Daniel, ye gossoon. Maybe, 'tis for this I've been sint to watch the lad an' not for to protect him. If it is, faith 'tis a job I'm not wishful for, shpyin' on me own boss." He pondered the matter. Then: "Well, sorra wan o' me knows. What if the young fella do be in love wit' her an' his father have wind of it! Eh? What thin, Daniel? A scandal, that's what, an', be the toe-nails o' Moses, nayther The Laird nor his son can afford that. I'll take note o' what happens, but, be the same token, 'tis not to Misther Daney I'll make me report, but to the ould man himself. Sh--what's that?" His ear being close to the ground, Dirty Dan had caught the sound of slow, cautious footsteps advancing along the little path. He flattened himself in the grass and listened, the while he hoped fervently that those who walked the path (for he knew now there were more than one) would not leave it as he had done and at the same point. Should they inadvertently tread upon him, Dirty Dan felt that the honor of the McKaye family and the maintenance of the secret of his present employment would demand instant and furious battle--on suspicion. The unknown pedestrians paused in the path. "Ah done tol' you-all Ah'm right," Dirty Dan heard one of them say. "Ha!" thought Dirty Dan. "A dirrty black naygur! I can tell be the v'ice of him." One of his companions grunted, and another said, in accents which the astute Mr. O'Leary correctly judged to be those of a foreigner of some sort: "All right. W'en he's come out, we jumpa right here. Wha's matter, eh?" "Suits me," the negro replied. "Let's set down, an' fo' de Lawd's sake, keep quite 'twell he come." Dirty Dan heard them move off to the other side of the path and sit down in the grass. "So 'tis that big buck yeller naygur from Darrow an' two o' the Greeks," he mused. "An' God knows I never did like fightin' in the dark. They'll knife me as sure as pussy is a cat." Decidedly, the prospect did not appeal to Dirty Dan. However, he had his orders to protect The Laird's son; he had his own peculiar notions of honor, and in his wild Irish heart there was not one drop of craven blood. So presently, with the stealth of an animal, he crawled soundlessly away until he judged it would be safe for him to stand up and walk, which he did with infinite caution. He reached the gate, passed like a wraith through it, and round to the side of Caleb Brent's home, in momentary dread of discovery by a dog. He breathed a sigh of relief when, the outcry failing to materialize, he decided the Brents were too poor to maintain a dog; whereupon he filled his pipe, lighted it, leaned up against the house, and, for the space of an hour, stood entranced, for from Caleb Brent's poor shanty there floated the voice of an angel, singing to the notes of a piano. "Glory be!" murmured the amazed Daniel. "Sure, if that's what the young fella hears whin he calls, divil a bit do I blame him. Oh, the shweet v'ice of her--an' singin' 'The Low-backed Car'!" Despite the wicked work ahead of him, Dirty Dan was glad of the ill fortune which had sent him hither. He had in full measure the Gael's love of music, and when, at length, the singing ceased and reluctantly he made up his mind that the concert was over, he was thrilled to a point of exaltation. "Begorra, I didn't expect to be piped into battle," he reflected humorously--and sought the Brent wood-pile, in which he poked until his hard hands closed over a hard, sound, round piece of wood about three feet long. He tested it across his knee, swung it over his head, and decided it would do. "Now thin, for the surprise party," he reflected grimly, and walked boldly to the gate, which he opened and closed with sufficient vigor to advertise his coming, even if his calked boots on the hard path had not already heralded his advance. However, Dirty Dan desired to make certain; so he pursed his lips and whistled softly the opening bars of "The Low-backed Car" in the hope that the lilting notes would still further serve to inculcate in the lurking enemy the impression that he was a lover returning well content from his tryst. As he sauntered along, he held his bludgeon in readiness while his keen eyes searched--and presently he made out the cronching figures. "The naygur first--to hold me, whilst the Greeks slip a dirk in me," he decided shrewdly. He heard the scuttering rush start, and, with the shock of combat, his carefully prearranged plan of battle quite fled his mercurial mind. He met the charge with a joyous screech, forgot that he had a club, and kicked viciously out with his right foot. His heavy logger's boots connected with something soft and yielding, which instinct told Mr. O'Leary was an abdomen; instinct, coupled with experience, informed him further that no man could assimilate that mighty kick in the abdomen and yet remain perpendicular, whereupon. Dirty Dan leaped high in the air and came down with both terrible calked boots on something which gave slightly under him and moaned. On the instant, he received a light blow in the breast and knew he had been stabbed. He remembered his club now; as he backed away swiftly, he swung it, and, from the impact, concluded he had struck a neck or shoulder. That was the luck of night-fighting; so, with a bitter curse, Dirty Dan swung again, in the pious hope of connecting with a skull; he scored a clean miss and was, by the tremendous force of his swing, turned completely round. Before he could recover his balance, a hand grasped his ankle and he came down heavily on his face; instantly, his assailant's knees were pressed into his back. With a mighty heave he sought to free himself, at the same time flinging both long legs upward, after the fashion of one who strives to kick himself in the small of the back; whereupon a knife drove deep into his instep, and he realized he had not acted a split second too soon to save himself from a murderous thrust in the kidneys--a Greek's favorite blow. In battle, Dirty Dan's advantage lay always in his amazing speed and the terrible fury of his attack during the first five minutes. Even as he threw up his feet, he drew back, an elbow and crashed it into his enemy's ribs; like a flash, his arm straightened, and his sinewy hand closed over the wrist of an arm that struggled in vain to strike downward. Holding that wrist securely, Dirty Dan heaved upward, got his left elbow under his body, and rested a few moments; another mighty heave, and he tossed off the Greek, and, whirling with the speed of a pin-wheel, was on top of his man. He had momentarily released his hold on the Greek's wrist, however, and he had to fight for another hold now--in the dark. Presently he captured it, twisted the arm in the terrible hammer-lock, and broke it; then, while the Greek lay writhing in agony, Mr. O'Leary leaped to his feet and commenced to play with his awful boots a devil's tattoo on that portion of his enemy's superstructure so frequently alluded to in pugilistic circles as "the slats." After five or six kicks, however, he paused, due to a difficulty in breathing; so he struck a match and surveyed the stricken field. The big mulatto and two Greeks, lay unconscious before him; in the nickering light of the match, two blood-stained dirks gleamed in the grass, so, with a minute attention to detail, Dirty Dan possessed himself of these weapons, picked up his club, and, reasoning shrewdly that Donald McKaye's enemies had had enough combat for a few weeks at least, the dauntless fellow dragged the fallen clear of the path, in order that his youthful master might not stumble over them on his way home, and then disappeared into the night. Half an hour later, smeared with dust and blood, he crawled up the steps of the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital on his hands and knees and rapped feebly on the front door. The night nurse came out and looked him over. "I'm Dirty Dan O'Leary," he wheezed; "I've been fightin' agin." The nurse called the doctor and two orderlies, and they carried him into the operating-room. "I'm not the man I used to be," Dirty Dan whispered, "but glory be, ye should see the other fellers." He opened his hand, and two blood-stained clasp-knives rolled out; he winked knowingly, and indulged in humorous reminiscences of the combat while he was being examined. "You're cut to strings and ribbons, Dan," the doctor informed him, "and they've stuck you in the left lung. You've lost a lot of blood. We may pull you through, but I doubt it." "Very well," the demon replied composedly. "Telephone Judge Alton to come and get his dying statement," the doctor ordered the nurse, but Dirty Dan raised a deprecating hand. "'Twas a private, personal matther," he declared. "'Twas settled satisfacthory. I'll not die, an' I'll talk to no man but Misther Daney. Sew me up an' plug me lung, an' be quick about it, Docthor." When Andrew Daney came, summoned by telephone, Dirty Dan ordered all others from the room, and Daney saw that the door was closed tightly after them. Then he bent over Dirty Dan. "Where's Donald?" he demanded. "That's neither here nor there, sir," Mr. O'Leary replied evasively. "He's safe, an' never knew they were afther him. T'ree o' thim, sir, the naygur and two Greeks. I kidded thim into thinkin' I was Misther McKaye; 'tis all over now, an' ye can find out what two Greeks it was by those knives I took for evidence. I cannot identify thim, but go up to Darrow in the mornin' an' look for a spreckled mulatter, wan Greek wit' a broken right arm, an' another wit' a broken neck, but until I die, do nothin'. If I get well, tell them to quit Darrow for good agin' the day I come out o' the hospital. Good-night to you, sir, an' thank ye for callin'." From the hospital, Andrew Daney, avoiding the lighted main street, hastened to the Sawdust Pile. A light still burned in Caleb Brent's cottage; so Daney stood aloof in the vacant lot and waited. About ten o'clock, the front door opened, and, framed in the light of the doorway, the general manager saw Donald McKaye, and beside him Nan Brent. "Until to-morrow at five, Donald, since you will persist in being obstinate," he heard Nan say, as they reached the gate and paused there. "Good-night, dear." Andrew Daney waited no longer, but turned and fled into the darkness. XIII Having done that which her conscience dictated, Nan Brent returned to her home a prey to many conflicting emotions, chief of which were a quiet sense of exaltation in the belief that she had played fair by both old Hector and his son, and a sense of depression in the knowledge that she would not see Donald McKaye again. As a boy, she had liked him tremendously; as a man, she knew she liked him even better. She was quite certain she had never met a man who was quite fit to breathe the same air with Donald McKaye; already she had magnified his virtues until, to her, he was rapidly assuming the aspect of an archangel--a feeling which bordered perilously on adoration. But deep down in her woman's heart she was afraid, fearing for her own weakness. The past had brought her sufficient anguish--she dared not risk a future filled with unsatisfied yearning that comes of a great love suppressed or denied. She felt better about it as she walked homeward; it seemed that she had regained, in a measure, some peace of mind, and as she prepared dinner for her father and her child, she was almost cheerful. A warm glow of self-complacency enveloped her. Later, when old Caleb and the boy had retired and she sat before the little wood fire alone with her thoughts, this feeling of self-conscious rectitude slowly left her, and into its place crept a sense of desolation inspired by one thought that obtruded upon her insistently, no matter how desperately she drove her mind to consider other things. She was not to see him again--no, never any more. Those fearless, fiery gray eyes that were all abeam with tenderness and complete understanding that day he left her at the gate; those features that no one would ever term handsome, yet withal so rugged, so strong, so pregnant of character, so peculiarly winning when lighted by the infrequent smile--she was never to gaze upon them again. It did not seem quite fair that, for all that the world had denied her, it should withhold from her this inconsequent delight. This was carrying misfortune too far; it was terrible--unbearable almost-- A wave of self-pity, the most acute misery of a tortured soul, surged over her; she laid her fair head on her arms outspread upon the table, and gave herself up to wild sobbing. In her desolation, she called aloud, piteously, for that mother she had hardly known, as if she would fain summon that understanding spirit and in her arms seek the comfort that none other in this world could give her. So thoroughly did she abandon herself to this first--and final--paroxysm of despair that she failed to hear a tentative rap upon the front door and, shortly, the tread of rough-shod feet on the board walk round the house. Her first intimation that some one had arrived to comfort her came in the shape of a hard hand that thrust itself gently under her chin and lifted her face from her arms. Through the mist of her tears she saw only the vague outlines of a man clad in heavy woolen shirt and mackinaw, such as her father frequently wore. "Oh, father, father!" she cried softly, and laid her head on his breast, while her arms went round his neck. "I'm so terribly unhappy! I can't bear it--I can't! Just--because he chose to be--kind to us--those gossips--as if anybody could help being fond of him--" She was held tight in his arms. "Not your father, Nan." Donald murmured in a low voice. She drew away from him with a sharp little cry of amazement and chagrin, but his great arms closed round her and drew her close again. "Poor dear," he told her, "you were calling for your mother. You wanted a breast to weep upon, didn't you? Well, mine is here for you." "Oh, sweetheart, you mustn't!" she cried passionately, her lips unconsciously framing the unspoken cry of her heart as she strove to escape from him. "Ah, but I shall!" he answered. "You've called me 'sweetheart,' and that gives me the right." And he kissed her hot cheek and laughed the light, contented little laugh of the conqueror, nor could all her frantic pleadings and struggling prevail upon him to let her go. In the end, she did the obvious, the human thing. She clasped him tightly round the neck, and, forgetting everything in the consuming wonder of the fact that this man loved her with a profound and holy love, she weakly gave herself up to his caresses, satisfying her heart-hunger for a few blessed, wonderful moments before hardening herself to the terrible task of impressing upon him the hopelessness of it all and sending him upon his way. By degrees, she cried herself dry-eyed and leaned against him, striving to collect her dazed thoughts. And then he spoke. "I know what you're going to say, dear. From a worldly point of view, you are quite right. Seemingly, without volition on our part, we have evolved a distressing, an impossible situation--" "Oh, I'm so glad that you understand!" she gasped. "And yet," he continued soberly, "love such as ours is not a light thing to be passed lightly by. To me, Nan Brent, you are sacred; to you, I yearn to be all things that--the--other man was not. I didn't realize until I entered unannounced and found you so desolate that I loved you. For two weeks you have been constantly in my thoughts, and I know now that, after all, you were my boyhood sweetheart." "I know you were mine," she agreed brokenly. "But that's just a little tender memory now, even if we said nothing about it then. We are children no longer, Donald dear; we must be strong and not surrender to our selfish love." "I do not regard it as selfish," he retorted soberly. "It seems most perfectly natural and inevitable. Why, Nan, I didn't even pay you the preliminary compliment of telling you I loved you or asking you if you reciprocated my affection. It appeared to me I didn't have to; that it was a sort of mutual understanding--for here we are. It seems it just was to be--like the law of gravitation." She smiled up at him, despite her mental pain. "I'm not so certain, dear," she answered, "that I'm not wicked enough to rejoice. It will make our renunciation all the easier--for me. I have known great sorrow, but to-night, for a little while, I have surrendered myself to great happiness, and nothing--nothing--can ever rob me of the last shred of that. You are my man, Donald. The knowledge that you love me is going to draw much of the sting out of existence. I know I cannot possess you, but I can resign myself to that and not be embittered." "Well," he answered dully, "I can give you up--because I have to; but I shall never be resigned about it, and I fear I may be embittered. Is there no hope, Nan?" "A faint one--some day, perhaps, if I outlive another." "I'll wait for that day, Nan. Meanwhile, I shall ask no questions. I love you enough to accept your love on faith, for, by God, you're a good woman!" Her eyes shown with a wonderful radiance as she drew his face down to hers and kissed him on the lips. "It's sweet of you to say that; I could love you for that alone, were there nothing else, Donald. But tell me, dear, did you receive my letter?" "Yes--and ignored it. That's why I'm here." "That was a risk you should not have taken." He looked thoughtfully at the multicolored flame of the driftwood fire. "Well, you see, Nan, it didn't occur to me that I was taking a risk; a confession of love was the last thing I would have thought would happen." "Then why did you disregard that letter that cost me such an effort to write?" "Well," he replied slowly, "I guess it's because I'm the captain of my soul--or try to be, at any rate. I didn't think it quite fair that you should be shunned; it occurred to me that I wouldn't be playing a manly part to permit the idle mewing of the Port Agnew tabbies to frighten me away. I didn't intend to fall in love with you--Oh, drat my reasons! I'm here because I'm here. And in the matter of that old hen--" He paused and favored her with a quizzical smile. "Yes?" "I brought a substitute hen with me--all ready for the pot, and if I can't come to dinner to-morrow, I'm going to face a very lonely Sunday." "You ridiculous boy! Of course you may come, although it must be the final visit. You realize that we owe it to ourselves not to make our burden heavier than it's going to be." He nodded. "'Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may be dead,'" he quoted. "Let's sit down and talk it over. I haven't sat in front of a driftwood fire since I was a boy. Queer how the salt in the wood colors the flames, isn't it?" It occurred to her for a fleeting moment that they two were driftwood, and that the salt of their tears would color their lives as the years consumed them. But she banished from her mind all thought of everything save the present. With a contented little sigh she seated herself beside him; her hand stole into his and, soothed and sustained by the comforting touch, each of the other, gradually the first terror of their predicament faded; ere long, Donald reminded her of her promise, and she stole to the old square piano and sang for him while, without, Dirty Dan O'Leary crouched in the darkness and thrilled at the rippling melody. At ten o'clock, when Donald left the Sawdust Pile, he and Nan had arrived at a firm determination to follow separate paths, nor seek to level the barrier that circumstance had raised between them. "Some day--perhaps," he whispered, as he held her to his heart in the dark-it the garden gate. "While I live, I shall love you. Good-by, old sweetheart!" XIV True to his promise, Daniel P. O'Leary declined to die that night. "Confound your belligerent soul!" the doctor growled at dawn. "I believe you're too mean to die." "We'll make it a finish fight," whispered Daniel. "I'll go you," the doctor answered, and sent for digitalis and salt solution. There was one other soul in Port Agnew who did not sleep that night, either. Andrew Daney's soul, shaken by what was to him a cosmic cataclysm, caused that good man to rise at five o'clock and go down to the hospital for another look at Dirty Dan. To his anxious queries the doctor shook a dubious head, but the indomitable O'Leary smiled wanly. "Go on wit' ye!" he wheezed faintly. "I'll win be a hair-line decision." At seven o'clock, when the telegraph-station opened, Andrew Daney was waiting at the door. He entered and sent a telegram to The Laird. Return immediately. In the late afternoon, Hector McKaye returned to Port Agnew and at once sought Daney, who related to him exactly what had occurred. The shadow of profound worry settled over The Laird's face. "Dan refuses to disclose anything regarding Donald's movements," Daney continued, "where he followed the boy or where the fight took place. I only know that Donald was not present; Dan, fortunately, overheard the plot, inculcated, by some means, the idea in those scoundrels' heads that he was Donald, and took the fight off the boy's hands. He claimed he fought a winning fight, and he is right. The mulatto died in Darrow this morning. One of the Greeks has a smashed shoulder, and the other a broken arm and four broken ribs. How they ever got home to Darrow is a mystery." "The third Greek must have waited near the river-mouth with a boat, Andrew. Have you any idea where Donald spent the evening?" "Yes, sir; but he's free, white, and twenty-one, and he's my superior. I prefer not to discuss his movements." "Andrew, I command you to." "I refuse to be commanded, sir." "That's all I wanted to know. He visited the Brents, and you know it." He saw by the flush on Daney's old face that he had hit the mark. "Well, I'm obliged to you, Andrew. You've done your full duty; so we'll not discuss the matter further. The situation will develop in time, and, meanwhile, I'll not spy on my boy. I wonder if that Darrow gang will talk." "I imagine not, sir--that is, if Dirty Dan keeps his own counsel. They will fear prosecution if Dan dies; so they will be silent awaiting the outcome of his injuries. If he lives, they will still remain silent, awaiting his next move. Dan will probably admit having been jumped in the dark by three unknown men and that he defended himself vigorously; he can fail to identify the Greeks, and the Greeks cannot do less than fail to identify Dirty Dan, who can plead self-defense if the coroner's jury delves too deeply into the mulatto's death. I imagine they will not. At any rate, it's up to Dan whether Donald figures in the case or not, and Dan will die before he'll betray the confidence." "That's comforting," The Laird replied. "Will you be good enough to drive me home to The Dreamerie, Andrew?" At The Dreamerie, old Hector discovered that his son had left the house early in the afternoon, saying he would not be home for dinner. So The Laird sat him down and smoked and gazed out across the Bight of Tyee until sunset, when, a vague curiosity possessing him, he looked down to the Sawdust Pile and observed that the flag still flew from the cupola. The night shadows gathered, but still the flag did not come down; and presently round The Laird's grim mouth a little prescient smile appeared, with something of pain in it. "Dining out at Brent's," he soliloquized, "and they're so taken up with each other they've forgotten the flag. I do not remember that the Brent girl ever forgot it before. She loves him." XV Following his parting with Nan Brent on Saturday night, Donald McKaye went directly to the mill office, in front of which his car was parked, entered the car, and drove home to The Dreamerie, quite oblivious of the fact that he was not the only man in Port Agnew who had spent an interesting and exciting evening. So thoroughly mixed were his emotions that he was not quite certain whether he was profoundly happy or incurably wretched. When he gave way to rejoicing in his new-found love, straightway he was assailed by a realization of the barriers to his happiness--a truly masculine recognition of the terrible bar sinister to Nan's perfect wifehood induced a veritable shriveling of his soul, a mental agony all the more intense because it was the first unhappiness he had ever experienced. His distress was born of the knowledge that between the Sawdust Pile and The Dreamerie there stretched a gulf as wide and deep as the Bight of Tyee. He was bred of that puritanical stock which demands that the mate for a male of its blood must be of original purity, regardless of the attitude of leniency on the part of that male for lapses from virtue in one of his own sex. This creed, Donald had accepted as naturally, as inevitably as he had accepted belief in the communion of saints and the resurrection of the dead. His father's daughter-in-law, like Cæsar's wife, would have to be above suspicion; while Donald believed Nan Brent to be virtuous, or, at least, an unconscious, unwilling, and unpremeditating sinner, non-virtuous by circumstance instead of by her own deliberate act, he was too hard-headed not to realize that never, by the grace of God, would she be above suspicion. Too well he realized that his parents and his sisters, for whom he entertained all the affection of a good son and brother, would, unhampered by sex-appeal and controlled wholly by tradition, fail utterly to take the same charitable view, even though he was honest enough with himself to realize that perhaps his own belief in the matter was largely the result of the wish being father to the thought. Curiously enough, he dismissed, quite casually, consideration of the opinions his mother and sisters, their friends and his, the men and women of Port Agnew might entertain on the subject. His apprehensions centered almost entirely upon his father. His affection for his father he had always taken for granted. It was not an emotion to exclaim over. Now that he realized, for the first time, his potential power to hurt his father, to bow that gray head in grief and shame and humiliation, he was vouchsafed a clearer, all-comprehending vision of that father's love, of his goodness, his manliness, his honor, his gentleness, and his fierce, high pride; to Donald simultaneously came the knowledge of his own exalted love for the old man. He knew him as no other human being knew him or ever would know him; whence he knew old Hector's code--that a clean man may not mate with an unclean woman without losing caste. He and Nan had discussed the situation but briefly; for they were young, and the glory of that first perfect hour could not be marred by a minute consideration of, misery in prospect. To-night, they had been content to forget the world and be happy with each other, apparently with the mutual understanding that they occupied an untenable position, one that soon must be evacuated. Yes; he was the young laird of Tyee, the heir to a principality, and it would be too great a strain on mere human beings to expect his little world to approve of its highest mating with its lowest. Prate as we may of democracy, we must admit, if we are to be honest with ourselves, that this sad old world is a snobocracy. The very fact that man is prone to regard himself as superior to his brother is the leaven in the load of civilization; without that quality, whether we elect to classify it as self-conceit or self-esteem, man would be without ambition and our civilization barren of achievement. The instinct for the upward climb--the desire to reach the heights--is too insistent to be disregarded. If all men are born equal, as the framers of our Constitution so solemnly declared, that is because the brains of all infants, of whatsoever degree, are at birth incapable of thought. The democracy of any people, therefore, must be predicated upon their kindness and charity--human characteristics which blossom or wither according to the intensity of the battle for existence. In our day and generation, therefore, democracy is too high-priced for promiscuous dissemination; wherefore, as in an elder day, we turn from the teaching of the Man of Galilee and cling to tradition. Tradition was the stone in the road to Donald McKaye's happiness, and his strength was not equal to the task of rolling it away. Despair enveloped him. Every fiber of his being, every tender, gallant instinct drew him toward this wonder-girl that the world had thrust aside as unworthy. His warm, sympathetic heart ached for her; he knew she needed him as women like her must ever need the kind of man he wanted to be, the kind he had always striven to be. Had he been egotist enough to set a value upon himself, he would have told himself she was worthy of him; yet a damnable set of damnable man-made circumstances over which he had no control hedged them about and kept them apart. It was terrible, so he reflected, to know that, even if Nan should live the life of a saint from the hour of her child's birth until the hour of her death, a half-century hence, yet would she fail to atone for her single lapse while there still lived one who knew--and remembered. He, Donald McKaye, might live down a natural son, but Nan Brent could not. The contemplation of this social phenomenon struck him with peculiar force, for he had not hitherto considered the amazing inequalities of a double standard of morals. For the first time in his life, he could understand the abject deference that must be shown to public opinion. He, who considered himself, and not without reason, a gentleman, must defer to the inchoate, unreasoning, unrelenting, and barbaric point of view of men and women who hadn't sense enough to pound sand in a rat-hole or breeding enough to display a reasonable amount of skill in the manipulation of a knife and fork. Public opinion! Bah! Deference to a fetish, a shibboleth, to the ancient, unwritten law that one must not do that which hypocrites condemn and cowards fear to do, unless, indeed, one can "get away with it." Ah, yes! The eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not be discovered." It had smashed Nan Brent, who had violated it, desolated her, ruined her--she who had but followed the instinct that God Almighty had given her at birth--the instinct of sex, the natural yearning of a trustful, loving heart for love, motherhood, and masculine protection from a brutal world. More. Not satisfied with smashing her, public opinion insisted that she should remain in a perennial state of smash. It was abominable! Nan had told him she had never been married, and a sense of delicacy had indicated to him that this was a subject upon which he must not appear to be curious. To question her for the details would have been repugnant to his nicely balanced sense of the fitness of things. Nevertheless, he reflected, if her love had been illicit, was it more illicit than that of the woman who enters into a loveless marriage, induced to such action by a sordid consideration of worldly goods and gear? Was her sin in bearing a child out of wedlock more terrible than that of the married woman who shudders at the responsibilities of motherhood, or evades the travail of love's fulfilment by snuffing out little lives in embryo? He thought not. He recalled an evening in New York when he had watched a policeman following a drab of the streets who sought to evade him and ply her sorry trade in the vicinity of Herald Square; he remembered how that same policeman had abandoned the chase to touch his cap respectfully and open her limousine door for the heroine (God save the mark!) of a scandalous divorce. "Damn it!" he murmured. "It's a rotten, cruel world, and I don't understand it. I'm all mixed up." And he went to bed, where, his bodily weariness overcoming his mental depression, he slept. He was man enough to scorn public opinion, but human enough to fear it. XVI The heir of the Tyee mills and forests was not of a religious turn of mind for all his strict training in Christian doctrine, although perhaps it would be more to the point to state that he was inclined to be unorthodox. Nevertheless, out of respect to the faith of his fathers, he rose that Sunday morning and decided to go to church. Not that he anticipated any spiritual benefit would accrue to him by virtue of his pilgrimage down to Port Agnew; in his heart of hearts he regarded the pastor as an old woman, a man afraid of the world, and without any knowledge of it, so to speak. But old Hector was a pillar of the church; his family had always accompanied him thither on Sundays, and a sense of duty indicated to Donald that, as the future head of the clan, he should not alter its customs. By a strange coincidence, the Reverend Mr. Tingley chose as the text for his sermon the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John from the first to the eleventh verses, inclusive. Donald, instantly alert, straightened in the pew, and prepared to listen with interest to the Reverend Mr. Tingley's opinion of the wisdom of Jesus Christ in so casually disposing of the case of the woman taken in adultery. "Dearly beloved," the pastor began, carefully placing an index-finger between the leaves of his Bible to mark the passage he had just read, "the title of my sermon this Sunday shall be: 'The First Stone. Let him who is without sin cast it.'" "Banal, hypocritical ass!" Donald soliloquized. "She was the mezzo-soprano soloist in your choir four years, and you haven't tried to help her since she came back to the Sawdust Pile." It was a good sermon, as sermons go. In fact, the Reverend Mr. Tingley, warming to his theme, quite outdid himself on the subject of charity as practised by his Redeemer, and, as a result, was the recipient of numberless congratulatory handshakes later at the church door. Donald agreed that it was an unusually good sermon--in theory; but since he knew it would collapse in practise, he avoided Mr. Tingley after service. On the steps of the church he was accosted by Andrew Daney and the latter's wife, who greeted him effusively. Unfortunately for Mrs. Daney, Nan, in one of those bursts of confidence that must ever exist between lovers, had informed Donald the night previous of the motherly soul's interest in his affairs; wherefore he returned Mrs. Daney's warm greeting with such chilly courtesy that she was at no loss to guess the reason for it and was instantly plunged into a slough of terror and despair. She retained sufficient wit, however, to draw her husband away, thus preventing him from walking with Donald. "I want to tell him about Dirty Dan," Daney protested, in a low voice. "As the boss, he ought to be told promptly of any injury to an employe." "Never mind Dirty Dan," she retorted. "He'll hear of it soon enough. Let us congratulate Mr. Tingley on his sermon." Donald, having turned his back on them almost rudely, strode down the street to his car and motored back to The Dreamerie. He spent the remainder of the morning force-breaking a setter puppy to retrieve; at one o'clock, he ate a cold luncheon, and immediately thereafter drove down to Port Agnew and brazenly parked his car in front of Caleb Brent's gate. He entered without the formality of knocking, and Nan met him in the tiny entrance-hall. "I couldn't wait until dinner-time," he explained. "Nobody home at The Dreamerie--" He took her face in his calloused hands, drew her to him. "You're sweet in that calico gown," he informed her, waiving a preliminary word of greeting. "I love you," he added softly, and kissed her. She clung to him. "You should not have come here in broad daylight," she protested. "Oh, you big, foolish, impulsive dear! Don't you realize I want to protect you from the tongue of scandal? If you persist in forgetting who you are, does it follow that I should pursue a similar course?" He ignored her argument. "I'll help you get dinner, old blue-eyes," he suggested. "Let me shuck some corn or shell some peas or string some beans--any job where I can sit and look at you and talk to you." "It will please me if you'll visit a little while with father Caleb," she suggested. "He's out on the sun-porch. He's far from well this morning. Do cheer him up, Donald dear." Old Caleb hailed him with a pleasure that was almost childish. During the two weeks that had elapsed since Donald had seen him last, he had failed markedly. "Well, how does the old sailor feel this morning?" Donald queried casually, seating himself opposite the old man. "Poorly, Mr. Donald; poorly." He turned, satisfied himself that Nan was busy in the kitchen, and then leaned toward his visitor. "I've got my sailing-orders," he whispered confidentially. The man who had won a Congressional medal of honor, without clearly knowing why or how, had not changed with the years. He advanced this statement as a simple exposition of fact. "Think so, Caleb?" Donald answered soberly. "I know it." "If you have no desire to live, Caleb, of course nature will yield to your desires. Remember that and buck up. You may have your sailing-orders, but you can keep the bar breaking indefinitely to prevent you from crossing out." "I've done that for a year past. I do not wish to die and leave her, for my three-quarter pay stops then. But I suffer from angina pectoris. It's the worry, Mr. Donald," he added. "Worry as to the future of Nan and the child?" "Aye, lad." "Well, Caleb, your worries are unnecessary. I feel it my duty to tell you that I love Nan; she loves me, and we have told each other so. She shall not suffer when you are gone. She has indicated to me that, some day, this--this mess may be cleared up; and when that happens, I shall marry Nan." "So Nan told me this morning. I was wondering if you'd speak to me about it, and I'm glad you have done so--promptly. You--you--honor us, Mr. Donald; you do, indeed. You're the one man in the world I can trust her with, whether as good friend or husband--only, her hushand you'll never be." "I see breakers ahead," Donald admitted. He had no desire to dissemble with this straightforward old father. "We're poor folk and plain, but--please God!--we're decent and we know our place, Mr. Donald. If your big heart tells you to dishonor yourself in the eyes of your world and your people--mark you, lad, I do not admit that an alliance with my girl could ever dishonor you in your own eyes--Nan will not be weak enough to permit it." "I have argued all that out with myself," Donald confessed miserably, "without having arrived at a conclusion. I have made up my mind to wait patiently and see what the future may bring forth." "It may be a long wait." "It will be worth while. And when you have sailed, I'll finance her to leave Port Agnew and develop her glorious voice." "You haven't the right, Mr. Donald. My girl has some pride." "I'll gamble a sizable sum on her artistic future. The matter will be arranged on a business basis. I shall lend her the money, and she shall pay me back with interest." "Nan has a woman's pride. The obligation would remain always, even though the money should be repaid." "I think we'll manage to adjust that," Donald countered confidently. "Ah, well," the old fellow answered; "we've always been your debtors. And it's a debt that grows." He loaded his pipe and was silent, for, after the fashion of the aged, he dared assume that his youthful auditor would understand just how the Brents regarded him. "Well, my heart's lighter for our talk, lad," he declared presently. "If you don't mind, I'll have a little nap." Donald, grateful for the dismissal, returned to the kitchen, where Nan was preparing the vegetables. Her child at once clamored for recognition, and, almost before he knew it, Donald had the tyke in his lap and was saying, "Once upon a time there was a king and he had three sons----" "He isn't interested in kings and princes, dear," Nan interrupted. "Tell him the story of the bad little rabbit." "But I don't know it, Nan." "Then you'll fail as a daddy to my boy. I'm surprised. If Don were your own flesh and blood, you would know intuitively that there is always a bad little rabbit and a good little rabbit. They dwell in a hollow tree with mother Rabbit and father Rabbit." "Thanks for the hint. I shall not fail in this job of dadding. Well then, bub, once upon a time there was a certain Mr. Johnny Rabbit who married a very beautiful lady rabbit whose name was Miss Molly Cottontail. After they were married and had gone to keep house under a lumber-pile, Mr. Hezekiah Coon came along and offered to rent them some beautifully furnished apartments in the burned-out stump of a hemlock tree. The rent was to be one nice ear of sweet corn every month--" The tale continued, with eager queries from the interested listener--queries which merely stimulated the young laird of Tyee to wilder and more whimsical flights of fancy, to the unfolding of adventures more and more thrilling and unbelievable until, at last, the recital began to take on the character of an Arabian Nights' tale that threatened to involve the entire animal kingdom, and only ceased when, with a wealth of mournful detail, Donald described the tragic death and funeral of the gallant young Johnny Rabbit, his fatherless audience suddenly burst into tears and howled lugubriously; whereupon Donald was hard put to it to bring Johnny Rabbit back to life mysteriously but satisfactorily, and send him scampering home to the hollow hemlock tree, there to dwell happily ever after. His tale completed, Donald happened to glance toward Nan. She was regarding him with shining eyes. "Donald," she declared, "it's a tremendous pity you haven't a boy of your own. You're just naturally intended for fatherhood." He grinned. "My father has been hinting rather broadly that a grandson would be the very last thing on earth to make him angry. He desires to see the name and the breed and the business in a fair way of perpetuation before he passes on." "That is the way of all flesh, Donald." "I wish it were not his way. My inability to comply with his desires isn't going to render dad or me any happier." "Dear old boy, what a frightful predicament you're in!" she murmured sympathetically. "I wish I could be quite certain you aren't really in love with me, Donald." "Life would be far rosier for all concerned if I were quite certain I was mistaking an old and exalted friendship for true love. But I'm not. You're the one woman in the world for me, and if I cannot have you, I'll have none other--Hello! Weeping has made this young fellow heavy-lidded, or else my fiction has bored him, for he's nodding." "It's time for his afternoon nap, Donald." She removed the sleepy tot from his arms and carried him away to his crib. When she returned, she resumed her task of preparing dinner. "Nan," Donald queried suddenly, "have I the right to ask you the name of the man who fathered that child?" "Yes," she answered soberly; "you have. I wish, however, that you would not ask me. I should have to decline to answer you." "Well, then, I'll not ask. Nevertheless, it would interest me mightily to know why you protect him." "I am not at all desirous of protecting him, Donald. I am merely striving to protect his legal wife. His marriage to me was bigamous; he undertook the task of leading a dual married life, and, when I discovered it, I left him." "But are you certain he married you?" "We went through a marriage ceremony which, at the time, I regarded as quite genuine. Of course, since it wasn't legal, it leaves me in the status of an unmarried woman." "So I understood from your father. Where did this ceremony take place?" "In San Francisco." She came over, sat down beside him, and took one of his hard, big hands in both of hers. "I'm going to tell you as much as I dare," she informed him soberly. "You have a right to know, and you're too nice to ask questions. So I'll not leave you to the agonies of doubt and curiosity. You see, honey dear, father Brent wanted me to have vocal and piano lessons, and to do that I had to go to Seattle once a week, and the railroad-fare, in addition to the cost of the lessons, was prohibitive until your father was good enough to secure me a position in the railroad-agent's office in Port Agnew. Of course, after I became an employe of the railroad company, I could travel on a pass, so I used to go up to Seattle every Saturday, leaving here on the morning train. Your father arranged matters in some way so that I worked but five days a week." "Naturally. Dad's a pretty heavy shipper over the line." "I would receive my lessons late Saturday afternoons, stay overnight with a friend of mine, and return to Port Agnew on Sunday. _He_ used to board the train at--well, the name of the station doesn't matter--every Saturday, and one day we got acquainted, quite by accident as it were. Our train ran through an open switch and collided with the rear end of a freight; there was considerable excitement, and everybody spoke to everybody else, and after that it didn't appear that we were strangers. The next Saturday, when he boarded the train, he sat down in the same seat with me and asked permission to introduce himself. He was very nice, and his manners were beautiful; he didn't act in the least like a man who desired to 'make a mash.' Finally, one day, he asked me to have dinner with him in Seattle, and I accepted. I think that was because I'd never been in a fashionable restaurant in all my life. After dinner, he escorted me to the studio, and on Sunday morning we took the same train home again. He was such good company and such a jolly, worldly fellow--so thoughtful and deferential! Can't you realize, Donald, how he must have appealed to a little country goose like me? "Well, finally, daddy Brent learned that Signor Moretti, a tenor who had retired from grand opera, had opened a studio in San Francisco. We both wanted Moretti to pass on my voice, but we couldn't afford the expense of a journey to San Francisco for two, so daddy sent me alone. I wrote--that man about our plans, and told him the name of the steamer I was sailing on. Your father gave me a passage on one of his steam-schooners, and when we got to the dock in San Francisco--" "_He_ was there, eh? Came down by train and beat the steamer in." Donald nodded his comprehension. "What did Moretti say about your voice?" "The usual thing. My Seattle teacher had almost ruined my voice, he declared, but, for all that, he was very enthusiastic and promised me a career within five years if I would place myself unreservedly in his hands. Of course, we couldn't afford such an expensive career, and the realization that I had to forego even the special inducements Signor Moretti was generous enough to make me quite broke my heart. When I told _him_ about it--we were engaged by that time--he suggested that we get married immediately, in order that I might reside with him in San Francisco and study under Moretti. So we motored out into the country one day and were married at San José. He asked me to keep our marriage secret on account of some clause in his father's will, but I insisted upon my right to tell daddy Brent. Poor old dear! My marriage was such a shock to him; but he agreed with me that it was all for the best--" "Well, I was quite happy for three months. My husband's business interests necessitated very frequent trips North--" "What business was he in, Nan?" "That is immaterial," she evaded him. "Presently, Signer Moretti contracted a severe cold and closed his studio for a month. My husband--I suppose I must call him that to identify him when I refer to him--had just gone North on one of his frequent trips, and since he always kept me generously supplied with money, I decided suddenly to take advantage of Moretti's absence to run up to Port Agnew and visit my father. "In Seattle, as I alighted from the train, I saw my husband in the station with another woman. I recognized her. She was a friend of mine--a very dear, kind, thoughtful friend of several years' standing--the only woman friend I had in the world. I loved her dearly; you will understand when I tell you that she had frequently gone out of her way to be kind to me. It struck me as strange that he had never admitted knowing her, although frequently he had heard me speak of her. While I stood pondering the situation, he took her in his arms and kissed her good-by and boarded the train without seeing me. I slipped out of the station without having been seen by either of them; but while I was waiting for a taxicab, my friend came out of the station, saw me, and rushed up to greet me. It developed, in the course of our conversation following the usual commonplaces of greeting, that she had been down to the station to see her husband off on the train for San Francisco." Donald whistled softly. "How did you manage to get away with it, Nan?" he demanded incredulously. "All my life I have been used to doing without things," she replied simply. "I suppose that helped a little. The shock was not so abrupt that I lost my presence of mind; you see, I had had a few minutes to adjust myself after seeing him kiss her in the station--and just then the taxicab came up and I escaped. Then I came home to the Sawdust Pile. I wrote him, of course, and sent the letter by registered mail, in order to make certain he would receive it. He did, but he did not answer. There was no reason why he should, for he was quite safe. I had assured him there was no necessity for worry on my account." "Of all the crazy, fool things for you to do!" Donald cried sharply. "Why under the canopy did you deem it necessary to sacrifice yourself for him? Surely you did not love him--" "I'm afraid I never loved him," she interrupted. "I--I thought I did, although, if he hadn't been away so frequently after our marriage, I would have learned to love him dearly, I think." "Just human nature," Donald suggested. "Something akin to what trapshooters and golfers call a mental hazard." "Of course he married me under an assumed name, Donald." "Did you ever see a marriage certificate?" "Oh, yes; I had to sign it in the presence of the minister." Donald was relieved. "Then, you great goose of a girl, you can clear your record any time you desire. The minister forwarded the marriage certificate to the state capital, and it is registered there with the State Board of Health. After registration, it was returned to the minister whose signature appeared on the certificate as the officiating clergyman. The minister undoubtedly returned the certificate to your husband." "I never saw it again." "What if you did not? You can procure a certified copy from the record in the county-clerk's office or from the records of the State Board of Health. Marriage records, old dear, are fairly well protected in our day and generation." "I wrote to the State Board of Health at Sacramento. There is no record of my marriage there." "That's strange. Why didn't you write the county clerk, of the county in which the license was issued?" She smiled at him. "I did. I had to, you know. My honor was at stake. The license was issued in Santa Clara County." "Well, it will be a simple matter to comb the list of ministers until we find the one that tied the knot. A certified copy of the marriage license, with a sworn affidavit by the officiating clergyman--" "The officiating clergyman is dead. A private detective agency in San Francisco discovered that for us." "But couldn't you cover your tracks, Nan? Under the circumstances, a lie--any kind of deceit to save your good name--would have been pardonable." "I couldn't help being smirched. Remember, my father was the only person in Port Agnew who knew I had been married; he heeded my request and kept the secret. Suddenly I returned home with a tale of marriage in anticipation of my ability to prove it. In that I failed. Presently my baby was born. People wondered who my husband was, and where he kept himself; some of the extremely curious had the hardihood to come here and question me. Was my husband dead? Of course not. Had I fibbed and told them he was, they would have asked when and where and the nature of the disease that carried him off. Was I divorced? Again I was confronted with the necessity for telling the truth, because a lie could be proved. Then the minister, to quiet certain rumors that had reached him--he wanted me to sing in the choir again, and there was an uproar when he suggested it--wrote to the California State Board of Health. When he received a reply to his letter, he visited me to talk it over, but I wasn't confiding in Mr. Tingley that day. He said I might hope for salvation if I confessed my wickedness and besought forgiveness from God. He offered to pray for me and with me. He meant well--poor, silly dear!--but he was so terribly incredulous that presently I told him I didn't blame him a bit and suggested that I be permitted to paddle my own canoe, as it were. Thanked him for calling, but told him he needn't call again. He departed in great distress." "I hold no brief for the Reverend Tingley, Nan; but I'll be shot if your story will hold water in a world that's fairly well acquainted with the frailty of humankind. Of course I believe you--and, for some fool reason, I'm not ashamed of my own intelligence in so believing. I have accepted you on faith. What sets my reason tottering on its throne is the fact that you insist upon protecting this scoundrel." "I insist upon protecting his wife. I love her. She has been kind to me. She's the only friend of my own sex that I have ever known. She's tubercular, and will not live many years. She has two children--and she adores her scamp of a husband. If I cannot convict that man of bigamy, would it not be foolish of me to try? And why should I inflict upon her, who has shown me kindness and love, a brimming measure of humiliation and sorrow and disgrace? I can bear my burden a year or two longer, I think; then, when she is gone, I can consider my vindication." She patted his hand to emphasize her unity of purpose. "That's the way I've figured it all out--the whole, crazy-quilt pattern, and if you have a better scheme, and one that isn't founded on human selfishness, I'm here to listen to it." A long silence fell between them. "Well, dear heart?" she demanded finally. "I wasn't thinking of _that_," he replied slowly. "I was just trying to estimate how much more I love you this minute than I did five minutes ago." He drew her golden head down on his shoulder and held her to him a long time without speaking. It was Nan who broke the spell by saying: "When the time comes for my vindication, I shall ask you to attend to it for me, dear. You're my man--and I think it's a man's task." His great fingers opened and closed in a clutching movement. He nodded. XVII When Donald returned to The Dreamerie about eleven o'clock, he was agreeably surprised to find his father in the living-room. "Hello, dad!" he greeted The Laird cheerfully. "Glad to see you. When did you get back?" "Came down on the morning train, Donald." They were shaking hands now. The Laird motioned him to a chair, and asked abruptly. "Where have you been all day, son?" "Well, I represented the clan at church this morning, and, after luncheon here, I went down to visit the Brents at the Sawdust Pile. Stayed for dinner. Old Caleb's in rather bad shape mentally and physically, and I tried to cheer him up. Nan sang for me--quite like old times." "I saw Nan Brent on the beach the other day. Quite a remarkable young woman. Attractive, I should say," the old man answered craftily. "It's a pity, dad. She's every inch a woman. Hard on a girl with brains and character to find herself in such a sorry tangle." The Laird's heavy heart was somewhat lightened by the frankness and lack of suspicion with which his son had met his blunt query as to where he had been spending his time. For the space of a minute, he appeared to be devoting his thoughts to a consideration of Donald's last remark; presently he sighed, faced his son, and took the plunge. "Have you heard anything about a fight down near the Sawdust Pile last night, my son?" he demanded. His son's eyes opened with interest and astonishment. "No; I did not, dad. And I was there until nearly ten o'clock." "Yes; I was aware of that, and of your visit there to-day and this evening. Thank God, you're frank with me! That yellow scoundrel and two Greeks followed you there to do for you. After you roughed the Greek at the railroad station, it occurred to me that you had an enemy and might hold him cheaply; so, just before I boarded the train, I telephoned Daney to tell Dirty Dan to shadow you and guard you. So well did he follow orders that he lies in the company hospital now at the point of death. As near as I can make out the affair, Dirty Dan inculcated in those bushwhackers the idea that he was the man they were after; he went to meet them and took the fight off your hands." "Good old Dirty Dan! I'll wager a stiff sum he did a thorough job." The young laird of Tyee rose and ruffled his father's gray head affectionately. "Thoughtful, canny old fox!" he continued. "I swear I'm all puffed up with conceit when I consider the kind of father I selected for myself." "Those scoundrels would have killed you," old Hector reminded him, with just a trace of emotion in his voice. "And if they'd done that, sonny, your old father'd never held up his head again. There are two things I could not stand up under--your death and"--he sighed, as if what he was about to say hurt him cruelly--"the wrong kind of a daughter-in-law." "We will not fence with each other," his son answered soberly. "There has never been a lack of confidence between us, and I shall not withhold anything from you. You are referring to Nan, are you not?'" "I am, my son." "Well?" "I am not a cat, and it hurts me to be an old dog, but--I saw Nan Brent recently, and we had a bit of talk together. She's a bonny lass, Donald, and I'm thinking 'twould be better for your peace of mind--and the peace of mind of all of us--if you saw less of her." "You think, then, father, that I'm playing with fire." "You're sitting on an open barrel of gunpowder with a lighted torch in your hand." Donald returned to his chair and faced his father. "Let us suppose," he suggested, "that the present unhappy situation in which Nan finds herself did not exist. Would you still prefer that I limit my visits to, say, Christmas and Easter?" The Laird scratched the back of his head in perplexity. "I'm inclined to think I wouldn't," he replied. "I'd consider your best interests always. If you married a fine girl from Chicago or New York, she might not be content to dwell with you in Port Agnew." "Then Nan's poverty--the lowliness of her social position, even in Port Agnew, would not constitute a serious bar?" "I was as poor as Job's turkey once myself--and your mother's people were poorer. But we came of good blood." "Well, Nan's mother was a gentlewoman; her grandfather was an admiral; her great-grandfather a commodore, her great-great-granduncle a Revolutionary colonel, and her grandmother an F.F.V. Old Caleb's ancestors always followed the sea. His father and his grandfather were sturdy old Yankee shipmasters. He holds the Congressional medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry in action over and above the call of duty. The Brent blood may not be good enough for some, but it's a kind that's good enough for me!" "All that is quite beside the question, Donald. The fact remains that Nan Brent loves you." "May I inquire on what grounds you base that statement, dad?" "On Saturday night, when you held her in your arms at parting, she kissed you." Donald was startled, and his features gave indubitable indication of the fact. His father's cool gray eyes were bent upon him kindly but unflinchingly. "Of course," he continued, in even tones, "you would not have accepted that caress were you not head over heels in love with the girl. You are not low enough to seek her favor for another reason." "Yes; I love her," Donald maintained manfully. "I have loved her for years--since I was a boy of sixteen,--only, I didn't realize it until my return to Port Agnew. I can't very well help loving Nan, can I, dad?" To his amazement, his father smiled at him sympathetically. "No; I do not see how you could very well help yourself, son," he replied. "She's an extraordinary young woman. After my brief and accidental interview with her recently, I made up my mind that there would be something radically wrong with you if you didn't fall in love with her." His son grinned back at him. "Proceed, old lumberjack!" he begged. "Your candor is soothing to my bruised spirit." "No; you cannot help loving her, I suppose. Since you admit being in love with her, the fact admits of no argument. It has happened, and I do not condemn you for it. Both of you have merely demonstrated in the natural, human way that you are natural human beings. And I'm grateful to Nan for loving you. I think I should have resented her not doing so, for it would demonstrate her total lack of taste and appreciation of my son. She informed me, in so many words, that she wouldn't marry you." "Nan has the capacity, somewhat rare in a woman, of keeping her own counsel. That is news to me, dad. However, if you had waited about two minutes, I would have informed you that I do not intend to marry Nan--" He paused for an infinitesimal space and added, "yet." The Laird elevated his eyebrows. "'Yet?'" he repeated. Donald flushed a little as he reiterated his statement with an emphatic nod. "Why that reservation, my son?" "Because, some day, Nan may be in position to prove herself that which I know her to be--a virtuous woman--and when that time comes, I'll marry her in spite of hell and high water." Old Hector sighed. He was quite familiar with the fact that, while the records of the county clerk of Santa Clara County, California, indicated that a marriage license had been issued on a certain date to a certain man and one Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Washington, there was no official record of a marriage between the two. The Reverend Mr. Tingley's wife had sorrowfully imparted that information to Mrs. McKaye, who had, in turn, informed old Hector, who had received the news with casual interest, little dreaming that he would ever have cause to remember it in later years. And The Laird was an old man, worldly-wise and of mature judgment. His soul wore the scars of human perfidy, and, because he could understand the weakness of the flesh, he had little confidence in its strength. Consequently, he dismissed now, with a wave of his hand, consideration of the possibility that Nan Brent would ever make a fitting mate for his son. "It's nice of you to believe that, Donald. I would not destroy your faith in human nature, for human nature will destroy your faith in time, as it has destroyed mine. I'm afraid I'm a sort of doubting Thomas. I must see in order to believe; I must thrust my finger into the wound. I wonder if you realize that, even if this poor girl should, at some future time, be enabled to demonstrate her innocence of illicit love, she has been hopelessly smeared and will never, never, be quite able to clean herself." "It matters not if _I_ know she's a good woman. That is all sufficient. To hell with what the world thinks! I'm going to take my happiness where I find it." "It may be a long wait, my son." "I will be patient, sir." "And, in the meantime, I shall be a doddering old man, without a grandson to sweeten the afternoon of my life, without a hope for seeing perpetuated all those things that I have considered worth while because I created them. Ah, Donald, lad, I'm afraid you're going to be cruel to your old father!" "I have suffered with the thought that I might appear to be, dad. I have considered every phase of the situation; I was certain of the attitude you would take, and I feel no resentment because you have taken it. Neither Nan nor I had contemplated the condition which confronts us. It happened--like that," and Donald snapped his fingers. "Now the knowledge of what we mean to each other makes the obstacles all the more heart-breaking. I have tried to wish, for your sake, that I hadn't spoken--that I had controlled myself, but, for some unfathomable reason, I cannot seem to work up a very healthy contrition. And I think, dad, this is going to cause me more suffering than it will you." A faint smile flitted across old Hector's stern face. Youth! Youth! It always thinks it knows! "This affair is beyond consideration by the McKayes, Donald. It is utterly impossible! You must cease calling on the girl." "Why, father?" "To give you my real reason would lead to endless argument in which you would oppose me with more or less sophistry that would be difficult to combat. In the end, we might lose our tempers. Let us say, therefore, that you must cease calling on the lass because I desire it." "I'll never admit that I'm ashamed of her, for I am not!" his son burst forth passionately. "But people are watching you now--talking about you. Man, do ye not ken you're your father's son?" A faint note of passion had crept into The Laird's tones; under the stress of it, his faint Scotch brogue increased perceptibly. He had tried gentle argument, and he knew he had failed; in his desperation, he decided to invoke his authority as the head of his clan. "I forbid you!" he cried firmly, and slapped the huge leather arm of his chair. "I charge you, by the blood that's in you, not to bring disgrace upon my house!" A slight mistiness which Donald, with swelling heart, had noted in his father's eyes a few moments before was now gone. They flashed like naked claymores in the glance that Andrew Daney once had so aptly described to his wife. For the space of ten seconds, father and son looked into each other's soul and therein each read the other's answer. There could be no surrender. "You have bred a man, sir, not a mollycoddle," said the young laird quietly. "I think we understand each other." He rose, drew the old man out of his chair, and threw a great arm across the latter's shoulders. "Good-night, sir," he murmured humbly, and squeezed the old shoulders a little. The Laird bowed his head but did not answer. He dared not trust himself to do so. Thus Donald left him, standing in the middle of the room, with bowed head a trifle to one side, as if old Hector listened for advice from some unseen presence. The Laird of Tyee had thought he had long since plumbed the heights and depths of the joys and sorrows of fatherhood. The tears came presently. A streak of moonlight filtered into the room as the moon sank in the sea and augmented the silver in a head that rested on two clasped hands, while Hector McKaye, kneeling beside his chair, prayed to his stern Presbyterian God once more to save his son from the folly of his love. XVIII It had been Donald McKaye's intention to go up to the logging-camp on the first log-train leaving for the woods at seven o'clock on Monday morning, but the news of Dirty Dan's plight caused him to change his plans. Strangely enough, his interview with his father, instead of causing him the keenest mental distress, had been productive of a peculiar sense of peace. The frank, sympathetic, and temperate manner in which the old laird had discussed his affair had conduced to produce this feeling. He passed a restful night, as his father observed when the pair met at the breakfast-table. "Well, how do you feel this morning, son?" the old man queried kindly. "Considerably better than I did before our talk last night, sir," Donald answered. "I haven't, slept," old Hector continued calmly, "although I expect to have a little nap during the day. Just about daylight a comforting thought stole over me." "I'm glad to hear it, dad." "I've decided to repose faith in Nan, having none at all in you. If she truly loves you, she'll die before she'll hurt you." "Perhaps it may be a comfort to you to know that she has so expressed herself to me." "Bless her poor heart for that! However, she told me practically the same thing." He scooped his eggs into the egg-cup and salted and peppered them before he spoke again. Then: "We'll not discuss this matter further. All I ask is that you'll confine your visits to the Sawdust Pile to the dark of the moon; I trust to your natural desire to promote my peace of mind to see to it that no word of your--affair reaches your mother and sisters. They'll not handle you with the tact you've had from me." "I can well believe that, sir. Thank you. I shall exercise the utmost deference to your desires consistent with an unfaltering adherence to my own code." There it was again--more respectful defiance! Had he not, during the long, distressing hours of the night, wisely decided to leave his son's case in the hands of God and Nan Brent, The Laird would have flown into a passion at that. He compromised by saying nothing, and the meal was finished in silence. After breakfast, Donald went down to the hospital to visit Dirty Dan. O'Leary was still alive, but very close to death; he had lost so much blood that he was in a state of coma. "He's only alive because he's a fighter, Mr. McKaye," the doctor informed Donald. "If I can induce some good healthy man to consent to a transfusion of blood, I think it would buck Dan up considerably." "I'm your man," Donald informed him. It had occurred to him that Dirty Dan had given his blood for the House of McKaye; therefore, the least he could do was to make a partial payment on the debt. The doctor, knowing nothing of the reason for Dirty Dan's predicament, was properly amazed. "You--the boss--desire to do this?" he replied. "We can get one of this wild rascal's comrades--" "That wild rascal is my comrade, doctor. I'm more or less fond of Dan." He had removed his coat and was already rolling up his sleeve. "I'm half Gael," he continued smilingly, "and, you know, we must not adulterate Dirty Dan's blood any more than is absolutely necessary. Consider the complications that might ensue if you gave Dan an infusion of blood from a healthy Italian. The very first fight he engaged in after leaving this hospital, he'd use a knife instead of nature's weapons. Get busy!" But the doctor would take no liberties with the life-blood of the heir of Tyee until he had telephoned to The Laird. "My son is the captain of his own soul," old Hector answered promptly. "You just see that you do your job well; don't hurt the boy or weaken him too greatly." An hour after the operation, father and son sat beside Dirty Dan's bed. Presently, the ivory-tinted eyelids flickered slightly, whereat old Hector winked sagely at his son. Then Dirty Dan's whiskered upper lip twisted humorously, and he whispered audibly: "Ye young divil! Oh-ho, ye young vagabond! Faith, if The Laird knew what ye're up to this night, he'd--break yer--back--in two halves!" Hector McKaye glanced apprehensively about, but the nurse had left the room. He bent over Dirty Dan. "Shut up!" he commanded. "Don't tell everything you know!" O'Leary promptly opened his eyes and gazed upon The Laird in profound puzzlement. [Illustration: DONALD BOWED HIS HEAD. "I CAN'T GIVE HER UP, FATHER."] "Wild horrses couldn't dhrag it out o' me," he protested. "Ask me no questions an' I'll tell ye no lies." He subsided into unconsciousness again. The doctor entered and felt of his pulse. "On the up-grade," he announced. "He'll do." "Dan will obey the voice of authority, even in his delirium," The Laird whispered to his son, when they found themselves alone with the patient once more. "I'll stay here until he wakes up rational, and silence him if, in the mean time, he babbles. Run along home, lad." At noon, Dirty Dan awoke with the light of reason and belligerency in his eyes, whereupon The Laird questioned him, and developed a stubborn reticence which comforted the former to such a degree that he decided to follow his son home to The Dreamerie. XIX A week elapsed before Hector McKaye would permit his son to return to his duties. By that time, the slight wound in the latter's arm where the vein had been opened had practically healed. Dirty Dan continued to improve, passed the danger-mark, and began the upward climb to his old vigor and pugnacity. Port Agnew, stirred to discussion over the affray, forgot it within three days, and on the following Monday morning Donald returned to the woods. The Laird of Tyee carried his worries to the Lord in prayer, and Nan Brent frequently forgot her plight and sang with something of the joy of other days. A month passed. During that month, Donald had visited the Sawdust Pile once and had written Nan thrice. Also, Mrs. Andrew Daney, hard beset because of her second experience with the "Blue Bonnet" glance of a McKaye, had decided to remove herself from the occasions of gossip and be in a position to claim an alibi in the event of developments. So she abandoned Daney to the mercies of a Japanese cook and departed for Whatcom to visit a married daughter. From Whatcom, she wrote her husband that she was enjoying her visit so much she hadn't the slightest idea when she would return, and, for good and sufficient reasons, Daney did not urge her to change her mind. Presently, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters returned to Port Agnew. His wife's letters to The Laird had failed to elicit any satisfactory reason for his continued stay at home, and inasmuch as all three ladies were deferring the trip to Honolulu on his account, they had come to a mutual agreement to get to close quarters and force a decision. Mrs. McKaye had been inside The Dreamerie somewhat less than five minutes before her instinct as a woman, coupled with her knowledge as a wife, informed her that her spouse was troubled in his soul. Always tactless, she charged him with it, and when he denied it, she was certain of it. So she pressed him further, and was informed that he had a business deal on; when she interrogated him as to the nature of it (something she had not done in years), he looked at her and smoked contemplatively. Immediately she changed the subject of conversation, but made a mental resolve to keep her eyes and her ears open. The Fates decreed that she should not have long to wait. Donald came home from the logging-camp the following Saturday night, and the family, having finished dinner, were seated in the living-room. The Laird was smoking and staring moodily out to sea, Donald was reading, Jane was at the piano softly playing ragtime, and Mrs. McKaye and Elizabeth were knitting socks for suffering Armenians when the telephone-bell rang. Jane immediately left the piano and went out into the entrance-hall to answer it, the servants having gone down to Port Agnew to a motion-picture show. A moment later, she returned to the living-room, leaving the door to the entrance-hall open. "You're wanted on the telephone, Don!" she cried gaily. "Such a sweet voice, too!" Mrs. McKaye and Elizabeth looked up from their knitting. They were not accustomed to having Donald called to the telephone by young ladies. Donald laid his magazine aside and strode to the telephone; The Laird faced about in his chair, and a harried look crept into his eyes. "Close the door to the entrance-hall, Jane," he commanded. "Oh, dear me, no!" his spoiled daughter protested. "It would be too great a strain on our feminine curiosity not to eavesdrop on Don's little romance." "Close it!" The Laird repeated. He was too late. Through the open door, Donald's voice reached them: "Oh, you poor girl! I'm so sorry, Nan dear. I'll be over immediately." His voice dropped several octaves, but the words came to the listeners none the less distinctly. "Be brave, sweetheart." Mrs. McKaye glanced at her husband in time to see him avert his face; she noted how he clutched the arm of his chair. To quote a homely phrase, the cat was out of the bag at last. Donald's face wore a troubled expression as he reentered the living-room. His mother spoke first. "Donald! _My_ son!" she murmured tragically. "Hum-m--!" The Laird grunted. The storm had broken at last, and, following the trend of human nature, he was conscious of sudden relief. Jane was the first to recover her customary aplomb. "Don dear," she cooed throatily, "are we mistaken in our assumption that the person with whom you have just talked is Nan Brent?" "Your penetration does you credit, Jane. It was." "And did our ears deceive us or did we really hear you call her 'dear' and 'sweetheart'?" "It is quite possible," Donald answered. He crossed the room and paused beside his father. "Caleb Brent blinked out a few minutes ago, dad. It was quite sudden. Heart-trouble. Nan's all alone down there, and of course she needs help. I'm going. I'll leave to you the job of explaining the situation to mother and the girls. Good-night, pop; I think you understand." Mrs. McKaye was too stunned, too horrified, to find refuge in tears. "How dare that woman ring you up?" she demanded haughtily. "The hussy!" "Why, mother dear, she has to have help," her son suggested reproachfully. "But why from you, of all men? I forbid you to go!" his mother quavered. "You must have more respect for us. Why, what will people say?" "To hell with what people say! They'll say it, anyhow," roared old Hector. Away down in his proud old heart he felt a few cheers rising for his son's manly action, albeit the necessity for that action was wringing his soul. "'Tis no time for idle spierin'. Away with you, lad! Comfort the puir lass. 'Tis no harm to play a man's part. Hear me," he growled; "I'll nae have my soncy lad abused." "Dad's gone back to the Hielands. 'Nough said." Elizabeth had recovered her customary jolly poise. Wise enough, through long experience, to realize that when her father failed to throttle that vocal heritage from his forebears, war impended, she gathered up her knitting and fled to her room. Jane ran to her mother's side, drew the good lady's head down on her shoulder, and faced her brother. "Shame! Shame!" she cried sharply. "You ungrateful boy! How could you hurt dear mother so!" This being the cue for her mother to burst into violent weeping, forthwith the poor soul followed up the cue. Donald, sore beset, longed to take her in his arms and kiss away her tears, but something warned him that such action would merely serve to accentuate the domestic tempest, so, with a despairing glance at old Hector, he left the room. "Pretty kettle o' fish you've left me to bring to a boil!" the old man cried after him. "O Lord! O Lord! Grant me the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the cunning of Judas Iscariot! God help my mildewed soul!" XX The instant the front door closed behind her son, Mrs. McKaye recovered her composure. Had the reason been more trifling, she would have wept longer, but, in view of its gravity, her common sense (she possessed some, when it pleased her to use it) bade her be up and doing. Also, she was smitten with remorse. She told herself she was partly to blame for this scourge that had come upon the family; she had neglected her son and his indulgent father. She, who knew so well the peculiar twists of her husband's mental and moral make-up, should not be surprised if he cast a tolerant eye upon his son's philanderings; seemingly the boy had always been able to twist his father round his finger, so to speak. She sat up, dabbed her eyes, kissed Jane lovingly as who should say, "Well, thank God, here is one child I can rely upon," and turned upon the culprit. Her opening sentence was at once a summons and an invitation. "Well, Hector?" "It happened while you were away--while we were both away, Nellie. I was gone less than forty-eight hours--and he had compromised himself." "You don't mean--really compromised himself!" Jane cried sharply, thus bringing upon her The Laird's attention. He appeared to transfix her with his index finger. "To bed with you, young lady!" he ordered. "Your mother and I will discuss this matter without any of your pert suggestions or exclamations. I'm far from pleased with you, Jane. I told you to shut that door, and you disobeyed me. For that, you shall suffer due penance. Six months in Port Agnew, my dear, to teach you obedience and humility. Go!" Jane departed, sniffling, and this stern evidence of The Laird's temper was not lost upon his wife. She decided to be tactful, which, in her case, meant proceeding slowly, speaking carefully, and listening well. Old Hector heaved himself out of his great chair, came and sat down on the divan with his wife, and put his arm round her. "Dear old Nellie!" he whispered, and kissed her. For the moment, they were lovers of thirty-odd years agone; their children forgotten, they were sufficient unto themselves. "I know just how you feel, Nellie. I have done my best to spare you--I have not connived or condoned. And I'll say this for our son: He's been open and above-board with her and with me. He's young, and in a moment of that passion that comes to young men--aye, and young women, too, for you and I have known it--he told her what was in his heart, even while his head warned him to keep quiet. It seems to me sometimes that 'tis something that was to be." "Oh, Hector, it mustn't be! It cannot be!" "I'm hoping it will not be, Nellie. I'll do my best to stop it." "But, Hector, why did you support him a moment ago?" He flapped a hand to indicate a knowledge of his own incomprehensible conduct. "She'd called for him, Nellie. Poor bairn, her heart went out to the one she knew would help her, and, by God, Nellie, I felt for her! You're a woman, Nellie. Think--if one of your own daughters was wishful for a kind word and a helping hand from an honorable gentleman and some fool father forbade it. Nellie wife, my heart and my head are sore tangled, sore tangled--" His voice broke. He was shaken with emotion. He had stood much and he had stood it alone; while it had never occurred to him to think so, he had been facing life pretty much alone for a decade. It would have eased his surcharged spirit could he have shed a few manly tears, if his wife had taken his leonine old head on her shoulder and lavished upon him the caresses his hungry heart yearned for. Unfortunately, she was that type of wife whose first and only thought is for her children. She was aware only that he was in a softened mood, so she said, "Don't you think you've been a little hard on poor Jane, Hector dear?" "No, I do not. She's cruel, selfish, and uncharitable." "But you'll forgive her this once, won't you, dear?" He considered. "Well, if she doesn't heckle Donald--" he began, but she stopped further proviso with a grateful kiss, and immediately followed Jane up-stairs to break the good news to her. She and Jane then joined Elizabeth in the latter's room, and the trio immediately held what their graceless relative would have termed "a lodge of sorrow." Upon motion of Jane, seconded by Elizabeth, it was unanimously resolved that the honor of the family must be upheld. At all cost. They laid out a plan of campaign. XXI Upon his arrival in Port Agnew, Donald called upon one Sam Carew. In his youth, Mr. Carew had served his time as an undertaker's assistant, but in Port Agnew his shingle proclaimed him to his world as a "mortician." Owing to the low death-rate in that salubrious section, however, Mr. Carew added to his labors those of a carpenter, and when outside jobs of carpentering were scarce, he manufactured a few plain and fancy coffins. Donald routed Sam Carew out of bed with the news of Caleb Brent's death and ordered him down to the Sawdust Pile in his capacity of mortician; then he hastened there himself in advance of Mr. Carew. Nan was in the tiny living-room, her head pillowed on the table, when Donald entered, and when she had sobbed herself dry-eyed in his arms, they went in to look at old Caleb. He had passed peacefully away an hour after retiring for the night; Nan had straightened his limbs and folded the gnarled hands over the still heart; in the great democracy of death, his sad old face had settled into peaceful lines such as had been present in the days when Nan was a child and she and her father had been happy building a home on the Sawdust Pile. As Donald looked at him and reflected on the tremendous epics of a career that the world regarded as commonplace, when he recalled the sloop old Caleb had built for him with so much pride and pleaure, the long-forgotten fishing trips and races in the bight, the wondrous tales the old sailor had poured into his boyish ears, together with the affection and profound respect, as for a superior being, which the old man had always held for him, the young laird of Tyee mingled a tear or two with those of the orphaned Nan. "I've told Sam Carew to come for him," he informed Nan, when they had returned to the living-room. "I shall attend to all of the funeral arrangements. Funeral the day after to-morrow, say in the morning. Are there any relatives to notify?" "None that would be interested, Donald." "Do you wish a religious service?" "Certainly not by the Reverend Tingley." "Then I'll get somebody else. Anything else? Money, clothes?" She glanced at him with all the sweetness and tenderness of her great love lambent in her wistful sea-blue eyes. "What a poor thing is pride in the face of circumstances," she replied drearily. "I haven't sufficient strength of character to send you away. I ought to, for your own sake, but since you're the only one that cares, I suppose you'll have to pay the price. You might lend me a hundred dollars, dear. Perhaps some-day I'll repay it." He laid the money in her hand and retained the hand in his; thus they sat gazing into the blue flames of the driftwood fire--she hopelessly, he with masculine helplessness. Neither spoke, for each was busy with personal problems. The arrival of Mr. Carew interrupted their sad thoughts. When he had departed with the harvest of his grim profession, the thought that had been uppermost in Donald's mind found expression. "It's going to be mighty hard on you living here alone." "It's going to be hard on me wherever I live--alone," she replied resignedly. "Wish I could get some woman to come and live with you until we can adjust your affairs, Nan. Tingley's wife's a good sort. Perhaps--" She shook her head. "I prefer my own company--when I cannot have yours." A wave of bitterness, of humiliation swept over him in the knowledge that he could not ask one of his own sisters to help her. Truly he dwelt in an unlovely world. He glanced at Nan again, and suddenly there came over him a great yearning to share her lot, even at the price of sharing her shame. He was not ashamed of her, and she knew it; yet both were fearful of revealing that fact to their fellow mortals. The conviction stole over Donald McKaye that he was not being true to himself, that he was not a man of honor in the fullest sense or a gentleman in the broadest meaning of the word. And that, to the heir of a principality, was a dangerous thought. He then took tender leave of the girl and walked all the way home. His father had not retired when he reached The Dreamerie, and the sight of that stern yet kindly and wholly understandable person moved him to sit down beside The Laird on the divan and take the old man's hand in his childishly. "Dad, I'm in hell's own hole!" he blurted. "I'm so unhappy!" "Yes, son; I know you are. And it breaks me all up to think that, for the first time in my life, I can't help you. All the money in the world will not buy the medicine that'll cure you." "I have to go through that, too, I suppose," his son complained, and jerked his head toward the stairs, where, as a matter of fact, his sister Jane crouched at the time, striving to eavesdrop. "I had a notion, as I walked home, that I'd refuse to permit them to discuss my business with me." "This particular business of yours is, unfortunately, something which they believe to be their business, also. God help me, I agree with them!" "Well, they had better be mighty careful how they speak of Nan Brent," Donald returned darkly. "This is something I have to fight out alone. By the way, are you going to old Caleb's funeral, dad?" "Certainly. I have always attended the funerals of my neighbors, and I liked and respected Caleb Brent. Always reminded me of a lost dog. But he had a man's pride. I'll say that for him." "Thank you, father. Ten o'clock, the day after to-morrow, from the little chapel. There isn't going to be a preacher present, so I'd be obliged if you'd offer a prayer and read the burial service. That old man and I were pals, and I want a real human being to preside at his obsequies." The Laird whistled softly. He was on the point of asking to be excused, but reflected that Donald was bound to attend the funeral and that his father's presence would tend to detract from the personal side of the unprecedented spectacle and render it more of a matter of family condescension in so far as Port Agnew was concerned. "Very well, lad," he replied; "I'm forced to deny you so much 'twould be small of me not to grant you a wee favor now and then. I'll do my best. And you might send a nurse from the company hospital to stay with Nan for a week or two." "Good old file!" his son murmured gratefully, and, bidding his father good-night, climbed the stairs to his room. Hearing his footsteps ascending, Jane emerged from the rear of the landing; simultaneously, his mother and Elizabeth appeared at the door of the latter's room. He had the feeling of a captured missionary running the gantlet of a forest of spears _en route_ to a grill over a bed of coals. "Donald dear," Elizabeth called throatily, "come here." "Donald dear is going to bed," he retorted savagely. "'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' Good-night!" "But you _must_ discuss this matter with us!" Jane clamored. "How can you expect us to rest until we have your word of honor that you--" The Laird had appeared at the foot of the stairs, having followed his son in anticipation of an interview which he had forbidden. "Six months, Janey," he called up; "and there'll be no appeal from that decision. Nellie! Elizabeth! Poor Jane will be lonesome in Port Agnew, and I'm not wishful to be too hard on her. You'll keep her company." There was a sound of closing doors, and silence settled over The Dreamerie, that little white home that The Laird of Tyee had built and dedicated to peace and love. For he was the master here. XXII Caleb Brent's funeral was the apotheosis of simplicity. Perhaps a score of the old sailor's friends and neighbors attended, and there were, perhaps, half a dozen women--motherly old souls who had known Nan intimately in the days when she associated with their daughters and who felt in the presence of death a curious unbending of a curious and indefinable hostility. Sam Carew, arrayed in the conventional habiliments of his profession, stood against the wall and closed his eyes piously when Hector McKaye, standing beside old Caleb, spoke briefly and kindly of the departed and with a rough eloquence that stirred none present--not even Nan, who, up to that moment, entirely ignorant of The Laird's intention, could only gaze at him, amazed and incredulous--more than it stirred The Laird himself. The sonorous and beautiful lines of the burial service took on an added beauty and dignity as he read them, for The Laird believed! And when he had finished reading the service, he looked up, and his kind gaze lay gently on Nan Brent as he said: "My friends, we will say a wee bit prayer for Caleb wi' all the earnestness of our hearts. O Lorrd, now that yon sailor has towed out on his last long cruise, we pray thee to gie him a guid pilot--aye, an archangel, for he was ever an honest man and brave--to guide him to thy mansion. Forgie him his trespasses and in thy great mercy grant comfort to this poor bairn he leaves behind. And thine shall be the honor and the glory, forever and ever. Amen!" None present, except Donald, realized the earnestness of that prayer, for, as always under the stress of deep emotion, The Laird had grown Scotchy. Mrs. Tingley, a kindly little soul who had felt it her Christian duty to be present, moved over to the little organ, and Nan, conspicuous in a four-year-old tailored suit and a black sailor-hat, rose calmly from her seat and stood beside the minister's wife. For a moment, her glance strayed over the little audience. Then she sang--not a hymn, but just a little song her father had always liked--the haunting, dignified melody that has been set to Stevenson's "Requiem." Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: _Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter, home from the hill_. The Laird, watching her narrowly, realized the effort it was costing her; yet her glorious voice did not break or quiver once. "You wonderful, wonderful woman!" he thought, moved to a high pitch of admiration for her independence and her flagrant flaunting of tradition, "What a wife for my boy--what a mother for my grandson--if you hadn't spoiled it all!" She rode to the cemetery in The Laird's car with The Laird, Donald, and Mrs. Tingley. Leaning on Donald's arm, she watched them hide old Caleb beneath the flowers from the gardens of The Dreamerie; then The Laird read the service at the grave and they returned to the Sawdust Pile, where Nan's child (he had been left at home in charge of a nurse from the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital) experienced more or less difficulty deciding whether Donald or The Laird was his father. The Laird now considered his duty to Caleb Brent accomplished. He remained at the Sawdust Pile a period barely sufficient for Nan to express her sense of obligation. "In a month, my dear girl," he whispered, as he took her hand, "you'll have had time to adjust yourself and decide on the future. Then we'll have a little talk." She smiled bravely up at him through misty eyes and shook her head. She read his thoughts far better than he knew. Father and son repaired to the private office at the mill, and The Laird seated himself in his old swivel chair. "Now then, lad," he demanded, "have I been a good sport?" "You have, indeed, father! I'm grateful to you." "You needn't be. I wouldn't have missed that funeral for considerable. That girl can sing like an angel, and, man, the courage of her! 'Twas sweet of her, singing to old Caleb like that, but I much mistake if she won't be talked about for it. 'Twill be said she's heartless." He handed his son a cigar and snipped the end off one for himself. "We'll be needing the Sawdust Pile now for a drying-yard," he announced complacently. "You mean----" "I mean, my son, that you're dreaming of the impossible, and that it's time for you to wake up. I want no row about it. I can't bear to hear your mother and sisters carrying on longer. I'll never get over thinking what a pity it is that girl is damaged goods. She must not be wife to son of mine." The young laird of Tyee bowed his head. "I can't give her up, father," he murmured. "By God, I can't!" "There can be no happiness without honor, and you'll not be the first to make our name a jest in the mouths of Port Agnew. You will write her and tell her of my decision; if you do not wish to, then I shall do it for you. Trust her to understand and not hold it against you. And it is my wish that you should not see her again. She must be cared for, but when that time comes, I shall attend to it; you know me well enough to realize I'll do that well." He laid his hand tenderly on the young man's shoulder. "This is your first love, my son. Time and hard work will help you forget--and I'll wait for my grandson." "And if I should not agree to this--what?" "Obey me for a month--and then ask me that question if you will. I'm--I'm a bit unprepared for an answer on such short notice." Donald bowed his head. "Very well, sir. I'll think it over for a month--on one condition." "Thank you, my son," said The Laird of Tyee. "And what is the condition?" "Let mother and the girls go to Seattle or Honolulu or Shanghai or some other seaport--anywhere, provided they're not at The Dreamerie when I return to Port Agnew. I'm going to spend that damnable month in the woods, week-ends and all, and wrestle with this problem." Old Hector smiled a small smile. "I'm an old ass," he declared. "Have it your own way, only--by the gods, I ought to teach them sense. I've spoiled them, and I ought to unspoil them. They drive me crazy, much as I love them." * * * * * The Laird went home that afternoon lighter of heart than he had been for a month. He told himself that his firm stand with Donald had rather staggered that young man, and that a month of reflection, far from the disturbing influence of Nan Brent's magnetic presence, would induce Donald to adopt a sensible course. XXIII Since that night when Mr. Daney, standing aloof in the dark vacant lot close to the Sawdust Pile, had seen Donald McKaye, in the light cast through the open door of Caleb Brent's cottage, take Nan Brent in his arms and kiss her, since he had heard Nan Brent's voice apply to the young laird of Port Agnew a term so endearing as to constitute a verbal caress, his practical and unromantic soul had been in a turmoil of apprehension. It seemed to him that in old Hector he noted signs of deep mental perturbation. Also, he told himself, he detected more shades than lights in Donald's usually pleasant features; so, knowing full well that which he knew and which neither The Laird nor Donald suspected him of knowing, to wit: that a declaration of love had been made between Nan Brent and the heir to the Tyee millions, Mr. Daney came to the conclusion, one evening about a week after old Caleb's funeral, that something had to be done--and done quickly--to avert the scandal which impended. To his way of reasoning, however, it appeared that nothing along this line was possible of accomplishment while Nan Brent remained in Port Agnew; so Mr. Daney brought to play all of his considerable intelligence upon the problem of inducing her to leave. Now, to render Port Agnew untenable for Nan, thus forcing her to retreat, was a task which Mr. Daney dismissed not only as unworthy of him but also as impossible. As a director of the Bank of Port Agnew, he had little difficulty in ascertaining that Caleb Brent's savings-account had been exhausted; also, he realized that the chartering of Caleb's motor-boat, Brutus, to tow the municipal garbage-barge to sea and return, had merely been Donald's excuse to be kind to the Brents without hurting their gentle pride. To cancel the charter of the Brutus now would force Nan to leave Port Agnew in order to support herself, for Daney could see to it that no one in Port Agnew employed her, even had anyone in Port Agnew dared run such risk. Also, the Tyee Lumber Company might bluff her out of possession of the Sawdust Pile. However, Donald would have to be reckoned with in either case, and Mr. Daney was not anxious to have the weight of his young master's anger fall on his guilty head. He saw, therefore, that some indirect means must be employed. Now, Mr. Daney wisely held, in contradiction to any number of people not quite so hard-headed as he, that absence does _not_ tend to make the heart grow fonder--particularly if sufficient hard work and worry can be supplied to prevent either party to the separation thinking too long or too intensely of the absentee. Within a decent period following Nan's hoped-for departure from Port Agnew, Mr. Daney planned to impress upon The Laird the desirability of a trip to the Orient, while he, Daney, upon the orders of a nerve-specialist, took a long sea voyage. Immediately the entire burden of seeing that the Tyee Lumber Company functioned smoothly and profitably would fall upon Donald's young and somewhat inexperienced shoulders. In the meantime, what with The Laird's money and the employment of a third party or parties, it would be no trick at all to induce Nan Brent to move so far from Port Agnew that Donald could not, in justice to his business interests, desert those interests in order to pay his court to her. "Dog my cats!" Mr. Daney murmured, at the end of a long period of perplexity. "I have to force the girl out of Port Agnew, and I can never do so while that motor-boat continues to pay her eighty dollars a month. She cannot exist on eighty dollars a month elsewhere, but she can manage very nicely on it here. And yet, even with that confounded charter canceled, we're stuck with the girl. She cannot leave Port Agnew without sufficient funds to carry her through for a while, and she'd die before she'd accept the gift of a penny from anybody in Port Agnew, particularly the McKayes. Even a loan from The Laird would be construed as a roundabout way of buying her off." Mr. Daney pondered his problem until he was almost tempted to butt his poor head against the office wall, goat-fashion, in an attempt to stimulate some new ideas worth while. Nevertheless, one night he wakened from a sound sleep and found himself sitting up in bed, the possessor of a plan so flawless that, in sheer amazement, he announced aloud that he would be--jiggered. Some cunning little emissary of the devil must have crept in through his ear while he slept and planted the brilliant idea in Mr. Daney's brain. Eventually, Mr. Daney lay down again. But he could not go to sleep; so he turned on the electric bedside-lamp and looked at his watch. It was midnight and at midnight no living creature, save possibly an adventurous or amorous cat, moved in Port Agnew; so Mr. Daney dressed, crept down-stairs on velvet feet, in order not to disturb the hired girl, and stepped forth into the night. Ten minutes later, he was down at the municipal garbage-barge, moored to the bulkhead of piles along the bank of the Skookum. He ventured to strike a match. The gunwale of the barge was slightly below the level of the bulkhead; so Mr. Daney realized that the tide had turned and was at the ebb--otherwise, the gunwale would have been on a level with the bulkheads. He stepped down on the barge, made his way aft to the Brutus, moored astern, and boarded the little vessel. He struck another match and looked into the cabin to make certain that no member of the barge-crew slept there. Finding no one, he went into the engine-room and opened the sea-cock. Then he lifted up a floor-board, looked into the bilge, saw that the water therein was rising, and murmured, "Bully--by heck!" He clambered hastily back aboard the barge, cast off the mooring-lines of the Brutus, and with a boat-book gave her a shove which carried her out into the middle of the river. She went bobbing away gently on the ebb-tide, bound for the deep water out in the Bight of Tyee where, when she settled, she would be hidden forever and not be a menace to navigation. Mr. Daney watched her until she disappeared in the dim starlight before returning to his home and so, like Mr. Pepys, to bed, where he had the first real sleep in weeks. He realized this in the morning and marveled at it, for he had always regarded himself as a man of tender conscience and absolutely incapable of committing a maritime crime. Nevertheless, he whistled and wore a red carnation in his lapel as he departed for the mill office. XXIV Following the interview with his father, subsequent to Caleb Brent's funeral, Donald McKaye realized full well that his love-affair, hitherto indefinite as to outcome, had crystallized into a definite issue. For him, there could be no evasion or equivocation; he had to choose, promptly and for all time, between his family and Nan Brent--between respectability, honor, wealth, and approbation on one hand, and pity, contempt, censure, and poverty on the other. Confronting this _impasse_, he was too racked with torment to face his people that night and run the gantlet of his mother's sad, reproachful glances, his father's silence, so eloquent of mental distress, and the studied scorn, amazement, and contempt in the very attitudes of his selfish and convention-bound sisters. So he ate his dinner at the hotel in Port Agnew, and after dinner his bruised heart took command of his feet and marched him to the Sawdust Pile. The nurse he had sent down from the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital to keep Nan company until after the funeral had returned to the hospital, and Nan, with her boy asleep in her lap, was seated in a low rocker before the driftwood fire when Donald entered, unannounced save for his old-time triple tap at the door. At first glance, it was evident to him that the brave reserve which Nan had maintained at the funeral had given way to abundant tears when she found herself alone at home, screened from the gaze of the curious. He knelt and took both outcasts in his great strong arms, and for a long time held them in a silence more eloquent than words. "Well, my dear," she said presently, "aren't you going to tell me all about it?" That was the woman of it. She knew. "I'm terribly unhappy," he replied. "Dad and I had a definite show-down after the funeral. His order--not request--is that I shall not call here again." "Your father is thinking with his head; so he thinks clearly. You, poor dear, are thinking with your heart controlling your head. Of course you'll obey your father. You cannot consider doing anything else." "I'm not going to give you up," he asserted doggedly. "Yes; you are going to give me up, dear heart," she replied evenly. "Because I'm going to give you up, and you're much too fine to make it hard for me to do that." "I'll not risk your contempt for my weakness. It _would_ be a weakness--a contemptible trick--if I should desert you now." "Your family has a greater claim on you, Donald. You were born to a certain destiny--to be a leader of men, to develop your little world, and make of it a happier place for men and women to dwell in. So, dear love, you're just going to buck up and be spunky and take up your big life-task and perform it like the gentleman you are." "But what is to become of you?" he demanded, in desperation. "I do not know. It is a problem I am not going to consider very seriously for at least a month. Of course I shall leave Port Agnew, but before I do, I shall have to make some clothes for baby and myself." "I told my father I would give him a definite answer regarding you in a month, Nan. I'm going up in the woods and battle this thing out by myself." "Please go home and give him a definite answer to-night. You have not the right to make him suffer so," she pleaded. "I'm not prepared to-night to abandon you, Nan. I must have some time to get inured to the prospect." "Did you come over to-night to tell me good-by before going back to the woods, Donald?" He nodded, and deliberately she kissed him with great tenderness. "Then--good-by, sweetheart," she whispered. "In our case, the least said is soonest mended. And please do not write to me. Keep me out of your thoughts for a month, and perhaps I'll stay out." "No hope," he answered, with a lugubrious smile. "However, I'll be as good as I can. And I'll not write. But--when I return from that month of exile, do not be surprised if I appear to claim you for good or for evil, for better or for worse." She kissed him again--hurriedly--and pressed him gently from her, as if his persistence gave her cause for apprehension. "Dear old booby!" she murmured. "Run along home now, won't you, please?" So he went, wondering why he had come, and the following morning, still wrapped in a mental fog, he departed for the logging-camp, but not until his sister Jane had had her long-deferred inning. While he was in the garage at The Dreamerie, warming up his car, Jane appeared and begged him to have some respect for the family, even though, apparently, he had none for himself. Concluding a long and bitter tirade, she referred to Nan as "that abandoned girl." Poor Jane! Hardly had she uttered the words before her father appeared in the door of the garage. "One year, Janey," he announced composedly. "And I'd be pleased to see the photograph o' the human being that'll make me revoke that sentence. I'm fair weary having my work spoiled by women's tongues." "I'll give you my photograph, old pepper-pot," Donald suggested. "I have great influence with you have I not?" The Laird looked up at him with a fond grin. "Well?" he parried. "You will remit the sentence to one washing of the mouth with soap and water to cleanse it of those horrid words you just listened to." "That's not a bad idea," the stern old man answered. "Janey, you may have your choice, since Donald has interceded for you." But Jane maintained a freezing silence and swept out of the garage with a mien that proclaimed her belief that her brother and father were too vulgar and plebeian for her. "I'm having the deil's own time managing my family," old Hector complained, "but I'll have obedience and kindness and justice in my household, or know the reason why. Aye--and a bit of charity," he added grimly. He stood beside the automobile and held up his hand up for his son's. "And you'll be gone a month, lad?" he queried. Donald nodded. "Too painful--this coming home week-ends," he explained. "And Nan has requested that I see no more of her. You have a stanch ally in her, dad. She's for you all the way." Relief showed in his father's troubled face. "I'm glad to know that," he replied. "You're the one that's bringing me worry and breaking down her good resolutions and common sense." He leaned a little closer, first having satisfied himself, by a quick, backward glance, that none of the women of the family was eavesdropping, and whispered: "I'm trying to figure out a nice way to be kind to her and give her a good start in life without insulting her. If you should have a clear thought on the subject, I'd like your advice, son. 'Twould hurt me to have her think I was trying to buy her off." "As I view the situation, all three of us have to figure our own angles for ourselves. However, if a happy thought should dawn on me, I'll write you. Think it over a few weeks, and then do whatever seems best." So they parted. XXV A few days subsequent to Andrew Daney's secret scuttling of the motor-boat Brutus, Nan Brent was amazed to receive a visit from him. "Good-morning, Nan," he saluted her. "I have bad news for you." "What, pray?" she managed to articulate. She wondered if Donald had been injured up in the woods. "Your motor-boat's gone." This was, indeed, bad news. Trouble showed in Nan's face. "Gone where?" she faltered. "Nobody knows. It disappeared from the garbage-barge, alongside of which it was moored. I've had men searching for it two days, but we've given it up as lost. Was the Brutus, by any chance, insured against theft?" "Certainly not." "Well, the Tyee Lumber Company used reasonable care to conserve your property, and while there's a question whether the company's responsible for the loss of the boat if it's been stolen, even while under charter to us, nevertheless, you will be reimbursed for the value of the boat. Your father had it up for sale last year. Do you recall the price he was asking?" "He was asking considerably less than he really believed the Brutus to be worth," Nan replied honestly. "He would have sold for fifteen hundred dollars, but the Brutus was worth at least twenty-five hundred. Values shrink, you know, when one requires ready cash. And I do not agree with you that no responsibility attaches to the Tyee Lumber Company, although, under the circumstances, it appears there is no necessity for argument." "We'll pay twenty-five hundred rather than descend to argument," Daney replied crisply, "although personally I am of the opinion that two thousand would be ample." He coughed a propitiatory cough and looked round the Sawdust Pile appraisingly. "May I inquire, my girl," he asked presently, "what are your plans for the future?" "Certainly, Mr. Daney. I have none." "It would be a favor to the Tyee Lumber Company if you had, and that they contemplated removal to some other house. The Laird had planned originally to use the Sawdust Pile for a drying-yard"--he smiled faintly--"but abandoned the idea rather than interfere with your father's comfort. Of course, The Laird hasn't any more title to the Sawdust Pile than you have--not as much, in fact, for I do believe you could make a squatter's right stick in any court. Just at present, however, we have greater need of the Sawdust Pile than ever. We're getting out quite a lot of airplane spruce for the British government, and since there's no doubt we'll be into the war ourselves one of these days, we'll have to furnish additional spruce for our own government. Spruce has to be air-dried, you know, to obtain the best results, and--well, we really need the Sawdust Pile. What will you take to abandon, it and leave us in undisputed possession?" "Nothing, Mr. Daney." "Nothing?" "Precisely--nothing. We have always occupied it on The Laird's sufferance, so I do not think, Mr. Daney," she explained, with a faint smile, "that I shall turn pirate and ingrate now. If you will be good enough to bring me over twenty-five hundred dollars in cash to-day, I will give you a clearance for the loss of the Brutus and abandon the Sawdust Pile to you within the next three or four days." His plan had worked so successfully that Daney was, for the moment, rendered incapable of speech. "Will you be leaving Port Agnew?" he sputtered presently. "Or can I arrange to let you have a small house at a modest rental--" She dissipated this verbal camouflage with a disdainful motion of her upflung hand. "Thank you. I shall leave Port Agnew--forever. The loss of the Brutus makes my escape possible," she added ironically. "May I suggest that you give no intimation of your intention to surrender this property?" he suggested eagerly. "If word of your plan to abandon got abroad, it might create an opportunity for some person to jump the Sawdust Pile and defy us to dispossess him." Mr. Daney sought, by this subterfuge, to simulate an interest in the physical possession of the Sawdust Pile which he was far from feeling. He congratulated himself, however, that, all in all, he had carried off his mission wonderfully well, and departed with a promise to bring over the money himself that very afternoon. Indeed, so delighted was he that it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from unburdening to The Laird, when the latter dropped in at the mill office that afternoon, the news that before the week should be out Nan Brent would be but a memory in Port Agnew. Later, he wondered how far from Port Agnew she would settle for a new start in life and whether she would leave a forwarding address. He resolved to ask her, and he did, when he reappeared at the Sawdust Pile that afternoon with the money to reimburse Nan for the loss of the Brutus. "I haven't decided where I shall go, Mr. Daney," Nan informed him truthfully, "except that I shall betake myself some distance from the Pacific Coast--some place where the opportunities for meeting people who know me are nebulous, to say the least. And I shall leave no forwarding address. When I leave Port Agnew"--she looked Mr. Daney squarely in the eyes as she said this--"I shall see to it that no man, woman, or child in Port Agnew--not even Don McKaye or The Laird, who have been most kind to me--shall know where I have gone." "I'm sorry matters have so shaped themselves in your life, poor girl, that you're feeling bitter," Mr. Daney replied, with genuine sympathy, notwithstanding the fact that he would have been distressed and puzzled had her bitterness been less genuine. In the realization that it _was_ genuine, he had a wild impulse to leap in the air and crack his ankles together for very joy. "Will I be seeing you again, Nan, before you leave?" "Not unless the spirit moves you, Mr. Daney," she answered dryly. She had no dislike for Andrew Daney, but, since he was the husband of Mrs. Daney and under that person's dominion, she distrusted him. "Well then, I'll bid you good-by now, Nan," he announced. "I hope your lot will fall in pleasanter places than Port Agnew. Good-by, my dear girl, and good luck to you--always." "Good-by, Mr. Daney," she replied. "Thank you for bringing the money over." XXVI By an apparent inconsistency in the natural order of human affairs, it seems that women are called upon far oftener than men to make the hardest sacrifices; also, the call finds them far more willing, if the sacrifice is demanded of them by love. Until Andrew Daney had appeared at the Sawdust Pile with the suddenness of a genie (and a singularly benevolent genie at that), Nan had spent many days wondering what fate the future held in store for her. With all the ardor of a prisoner, she had yearned to leave her jail, although she realized that freedom for her meant economic ruin. On the Sawdust Pile, she could exist on the income from the charter of the Brutus, for she had no rent to pay and no fuel to buy; her proximity to the sea, her little garden and a few chickens still further solved her economic problems. Away from the Sawdust Pile, however, life meant parting with her baby. She would have to place him in some sort of public institution if she would be free to earn a living for them both, and she was not aware that she possessed any adaptability for any particular labor which would enable her to earn one hundred dollars a month, the minimum sum upon which she could, by the strictest economy, manage to exist and support her child. Too well she realized the difficulty which an inexperienced woman has in securing employment in an office or store at a wage which, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, may be termed lucrative, and, lacking funds wherewith to tide her over until she should acquire experience, or even until she should be fortunate enough to secure any kind of work, inevitable starvation faced her. Her sole asset was her voice; she had a vague hope that if she could ever acquire sufficient money to go to New York and buy herself just sufficient clothing to look well dressed and financially independent, she might induce some vaudeville impresario to permit her to spend fifteen minutes twice or four times daily, singing old-fashioned songs to the proletariat at something better than a living wage. She had an idea for a turn to be entitled, "Songs of the 'Sixties." The arrival of Andrew Daney with twenty-five hundred dollars might have been likened to an eleventh-hour reprieve for a condemned murderer. Twenty-five hundred dollars! Why, she and Don could live two years on that! She was free--at last! The knowledge exalted her--in the reaction from a week of contemplating a drab, barren future, she gave no thought to the extreme unlikelihood of anyone's daring to steal a forty-foot motor-boat on a coast where harbors are so few and far between as they are on the Pacific. Had old Caleb been alive, he would have informed her that such action was analogous to the theft of a hot stove, and that no business man possessed of a grain of common sense would have hastened to reimburse her for the loss after an inconsequential search of only two days. Had she been more worldly wise, she would have known that business men do not part with twenty-five hundred dollars that readily--otherwise, they would not be business men and would not be possessed of twenty-five hundred dollars. Nan only realized that, in handing her a roll of bank-notes with a rubber band round them, Andrew Daney had figuratively given her the key to her prison, against the bars of which her soul had beaten for three long years. Now, it is doubtful whether any woman ever loved a man without feeling fully assured that she, more than any other person, was better equipped to decide exactly what was best for that man. Her woman's intuition told Nan that Donald McKaye was not to be depended upon to conserve the honor of the McKaye family by refraining from considering an alliance with her. Also, knowing full well the passionate yearnings of her own heart and the weakness of her economic position, she shrank from submitting herself to the task of repelling his advances. Where he was concerned, she feared her own weakness--she, who had endured the brutality of the world, could not endure that the world's brutality should be visited upon him because of his love for her. Strong of will, self-reliant, a born fighter, and as stiff-necked as his father, his yearning to possess her, coupled with his instinct for fair play, might and probably would lead him to tell the world to go hang, that he would think for himself and take his happiness where he found it. By all means, this must be prevented. Nan felt that she could not permit him to risk making a sorry mess of a life of promise. Consumed with such thoughts as these, it was obvious that Nan should pursue but one course--that is, leave Port Agnew unannounced and endeavor to hide herself where Donald McKaye would never find her. In this high resolve, once taken, she did not falter; she even declined to risk rousing the suspicions of the townspeople by appearing at the general store to purchase badly needed articles of clothing for herself and her child. She resolved to leave Port Agnew in the best clothes she had, merely pausing a few days in her flight--at Vancouver, perhaps--to shop, and then continuing on to New York. On the morning of her departure, the butcher's boy, calling for an order, agreed, for fifty cents, to transport her one small trunk on his cart to the station. The little white house which she and her father had built with so much pride and delight, she left furnished as it was and in perfect order. As she stood at the front door and looked back for the last time, the ticking of the clock in the tiny dining-and-living room answered her mute, "Good-by, little house; good-by," and, though her heart was full enough, she kept back the tears until she saw the flag flying bravely at the cupola. "Oh, my love, my love!" she sobbed. "I mustn't leave it flying there, flaunting my desertion in your dear eyes." Blinded by her tears, she groped her way back to the house, hauled down the flag, furled it, and laid it away in a bureau drawer. And this time, when she left the house, she did not look back. * * * * * At the station, she purchased a ticket for Seattle and checked her trunk at the baggage-room counter. As she turned from the counter and started for the waiting-room, she caught the interested eyes of old Hector McKaye bent upon her. He lifted his hat and walked over to her. "I happened to be looking down at the Sawdust Pile when you hauled your flag down this morning," he explained, in a low voice. "So I knew you were going away. That's why I'm here." To this extraordinary speech, the girl merely replied with an inquiring look. "I wonder if you will permit me to be as kind to you as I can," he continued. "I know it sounds a bit blunt and vulgar to offer you money, but when one needs money--" "I have sufficient for my present needs," she replied. "Mr. Daney has paid me for the loss of my motor-boat, you know. You are very kind; but I think I shall have no need to impose further on your generosity. I think the twenty-five hundred dollars will last me nicely until I have made a new start in life." "Ah!" The Laird breathed softly, "Twenty-five hundred dollars. Yes, yes! So he did; so he did! And are you leaving Port Agnew indefinitely, Nan?" "Forever," she replied. "We have robbed you of the ground for a drying-yard for nearly ten years, but this morning the Sawdust Pile is yours." "Bless my soul!" The Laird ejaculated. "Why, we are not at all in distress for more drying-space." "Mr. Daney intimated that you were. He asked me how much I would take to abandon my squatter's right, but I declined to charge you a single cent." She smiled up at him a ghost of her sweet, old-time whimsical smile. "It was the first opportunity I had to be magnanimous to the McKaye family, and I hastened to take advantage of it. I merely turned the key in the lock and departed." "Daney has been a trifle too zealous for the Tyee interests, I fear," he replied gently. "And where do you plan to live?" "That," she retorted, still smilingly, "is a secret. It may interest you, Mr. McKaye, to know that I am not even leaving a forwarding address for my mail. You see, I never receive any letters of an important nature." He was silent a moment, digesting this. Then, "And does my son share a confidence which I am denied?" "He does not, Mr. McKaye. This is my second opportunity to do the decent thing toward the McKaye family--so I am doing it. I plan to make rather a thorough job of it, too. You--you'll be very kind and patient with him, will you not? He's going to feel rather badly, you know, but, then, I never encouraged him. It's all his fault, I think--I tried to play fair--and it was so hard." Her voice sunk to a mere whisper. "I've always loved Donald, Mr. McKaye. Most people do; so I have not regarded it as sinful on my part." "You are abandoning him of your own free will--" "Certainly. I have to. Surely you must realize that?" "Yes, I do. I have felt that he would never abandon you." He opened and closed his big hands nervously, and was plainly a trifle distrait. "So--so this is your idea of playing the game, is it?" he demanded presently. She nodded. "Well," he replied helplessly, "I would to God I dared be as good a sport as you are, Nan Brent! Hear me, now, lass. Think of the thing in life you want to do and the place where you want to do it--" She interrupted him. "No, no, Mr. McKaye; there can be no talk of money between us. I cannot and will not take your son--for his sake, and for my own sake I cannot and will not accept of your kindness. Somehow, some place, I'm going to paddle my own canoe." "Guid lass; guid lass," he whispered huskily. "Remember, then, if your canoe upsets and spills you, a wire to me will right you, and no questions asked. Good-by, my dear, and good luck to you!" He pressed her hand, lifted his hat, and walked briskly away in the direction of The Tyee Lumber Company's office, quite oblivious of the fact that his interview with Nan Brent had been observed by a person to whom the gods had given at birth a more than average propensity of intrigue, romance, and general cussedness--Mr. Daniel J. O'Leary, of whom more anon. From the station, Hector McKaye hurried over to the mill office and entered Andrew Daney's room. "Andrew," he began, "you've been doing things. What became of old Caleb Brent's motor-boat?" "I opened the sea-cock, cast it off, and let it drift out into the bight on the ebb-tide one night recently." "Why?" "In order that I might have a logical and reasonable excuse to furnish Nan Brent with sufficient funds to leave this town and make a new start elsewhere. I have charged the twenty-five hundred to your personal account on the company books." "You also indulged in some extraordinary statements regarding our pressing need for the Sawdust Pile as a drying-yard." "We can use it, sir," Daney replied. "I felt justified in indicating to the girl that her room was desired to her company. Your son," he added deliberately, "was treading on soft ground, and I took the license of an old friend and, I hope, a faithful servant, to rid him of temptation." "I shall never be done with feeling grateful to you, Andrew. The girl is leaving on the train that's just pulling out, and--the incident is closed. My son is young. He will get over it. Thank you, Andrew, dear friend, until you're better paid--as you will be some day soon." "I'll have need of your friendship if Donald ever discovers my part in this deal. He'll fire me out o' hand." "If he does, I'll hire you back." "Hell will pop when he finds the bird has flown, sir." "Let it pop! That kind of popping is music in my ears. Hark, Andrew lad! There's the train whistling for Darrow's Crossing. From there on the trail is lost--lost--_lost_, I tell you! O Lord, God of Hosts, I thank Thee for Thy great mercy!" And, quite suddenly, old Hector sat down and began to weep. XXVII Nan Brent's departure from the Sawdust Pile was known to so few in Port Agnew that it was fully ten days before the news became general; even then it excited no more than momentary comment, and a week later when Donald McKaye returned to town, somewhat sooner than he had anticipated, Port Agnew had almost forgotten that Nan Brent had ever lived and loved and sinned in its virtuous midst. Even the small gossip about her and the young laird had subsided, condemned by all, including the most thoughtless, as a gross injustice to their favorite son, and consequently dismissed as the unworthy tattling of unworthy, suspicious old women. Life in the busy little sawmill town had again sagged into the doldrums. For several days, a feeling of lassitude had been stealing over Donald. At first he thought it was mental depression, but when, later, he developed nausea, lack of appetite, and pains in his head, back, and extremities, it occurred to him that he wasn't feeling well physically and that The Dreamerie was to be preferred to his rough pine shanty in the woods, even though in the latter he had sanctuary from the female members of his family. He came in unexpectedly on the last log-train on Saturday night; tired, with throbbing head and trembling legs, he crawled off the caboose at the log dump and made his way weakly up to the mill office. It was deserted when he got there at half-past six, but in his mail-box he found something which he had promised himself would be there, despite certain well-remembered assurances to the contrary. It was a letter from Nan. He tore the envelop eagerly and read: Donald dear, I love you. That is why I am leaving you. We shall not meet again, I think. If we should, it will doubtless be years hence, and by that time we shall both have resigned ourselves to this present very necessary sacrifice. Good-by, poor dear. Always your sweetheart, NAN. He read and reread the letter several times. It was undated. Presently, with an effort, he recovered the envelop from the waste-basket and examined the postmark. The letter had been mailed from Seattle, but the post-date was blurred. With the letter clutched in his hand, he bent forward and pillowed his hot face in his arms, outspread upon his father's old desk. He wanted to weep--to sob aloud in a childish effort to unburden his heart, scourged now with the first real sorrow of his existence. His throat contracted; something in his breast appeared to have congealed, yet for upward of an hour he neither moved nor gave forth a sound. At last, under the inspiration of a great hope that came apparently without any mental effort or any desire for hope, so thoroughly crushed was he, the black, touseled head came slowly up. His face, usually ruddy beneath the dark, suntanned skin but now white and haggard, showed a fleeting little smile, as if he grinned at his own weakness and lack of faith; he rose unsteadily and clumped out of the office-building. Gone! Nan gone--like that! No, no! He would not believe it. She might have intended to go--she might have wanted to go--she might even have started to go--but she had turned back! She loved him; she was his. During those long days and nights up in the woods, he had fought the issue with himself and made up his mind that Nan Brent was the one woman in the world for him, that there could never, by God's grace, be any other, and that he would have her, come what might and be the price what it would. Rather than the fortune for which his father had toiled and sacrificed, Donald preferred Nan's love; rather than a life of ease and freedom from worry, he looked forward with a fierce joy to laboring with his hands for a pittance, provided he might have the privilege of sharing it with her. And The Dreamerie, the house his father had built with such great, passionate human hopes and tender yearnings, the young laird of Port Agnew could abandon without a pang for that little white house on the Sawdust Pile. Round steak and potatoes, fried by the woman destined to him for his perfect mate, would taste better to him than the choicest viands served by light stepping servitors in his father's house. What, after all, was there worth while in the world for him if he was to be robbed of his youth and his love? For him, the bare husks of life held no allurement; he was one of that virile, human type that rejects the doctrine of sacrifice, denial, and self-repression in this life for the greater glory of God and man's promise of a reward in another life, of which we wot but little and that little not scientifically authenticated. He wanted the great, all-compelling, omnipotent Present, with its gifts that he could clutch in his fierce hands or draw to his hungry heart. To hell with the future. He reflected that misers permit their thoughts to dwell upon it and die rich and despised, leaving to the apostles of the Present the enjoyment of the fruits of a foolish sacrifice. "She came back. I know she did," he mumbled, as he groped his way through the dark of the drying-yard. "I'm sick. I must see her and tell her to wait until I'm well. The damned dirty world can do what it jolly well pleases to me, but I'll protect her from it. I will--by God!" He emerged into the open fields beyond which lay the Sawdust Pile, snuggled down on the beach. The Brent cottage was visible in the dim starlight, and he observed that there was no light in the window; nevertheless, his high faith did not falter. He pressed on, although each step was the product of an effort, mental and physical. His legs were heavy and dragged, as if he wore upon, his logger's boots the thick, leaden soles of a deep-sea diver. At the gate, he leaned and rested for a few minutes, then entered the deserted yard and rapped at the front door; but his summons bringing no response, he staggered round to the back door and repeated it. He waited half a minute and then banged furiously with his fist upon the door-panel. Still receiving no response, he seized the knob and shook the door until the little house appeared to rattle from cellar to cupola. "Nan! Nan! Where are you?" he called. "It is I--Donald. Answer me, Nan. I know you haven't gone away. You wouldn't! Please answer me, Nan!" But the only sound he heard was the labored pumping of his own heart and the swish of the wavelets against the timbered buttress of the Sawdust Pile. The conviction slowly came to his torpid brain that he was seeking admittance to a deserted house, and he leaned against the door and fought for control of himself. Presently, like a stricken animal, he went slowly and uncertainly away in the direction whence he had come. * * * * * Andrew Daney had put out the cat and wound the clock and was about to ascend to his chamber (now, alas, reoccupied by Mrs. Daney, upon whom the news of Nan's departure had descended like a gentle rainfall over a hitherto arid district) when he heard slow footsteps on his front veranda. Upon going to the door and peering out, he was amazed to see Donald McKaye standing just outside. "Well, bless my soul!" Daney declared. "So it's you Donald. Come in, lad; come in." Donald shook his head. "No, I've only come to stay a minute, Mr. Daney. Thank you, sir. I--I notice you're running a light track from the drying-yard down to the Sawdust Pile. Stumbled over it in the dark a few minutes ago, and I--" He essayed a ghastly smile, for he desired to remove the sting from the gentle rebuke he purposed giving the general manger--"couldn't seem to remember having ordered that track--or--suggesting that it be laid." "Quite so, Donald; quite so," Daney answered. "I did it on my own initiative. Nan Brent has abandoned the Sawdust Pile--moved away from Port Agnew, you know; so I decided to extend the drying-yard, and squat on the Sawdust Pile before some undesirable took possession." "Hm-m-m! I see. Well, suppose Nan takes a notion to return to Port Agnew, Mr. Daney. She'll find our drying-yard something of a nuisance, will she not?" "Oh, but she's not coming back," Daney assured him, with all the confidence of one free from the slightest doubt on the subject. "She might. I could see rather dimly into the kitchen and it appears Miss Brent left her little home furnished." "Yes, she did, Donald. I believe she just turned the key in the lock and went away." "Know where she went, Mr. Daney?" "No. She didn't even leave a forwarding address for her mail." The young laird of Tyee lurched up to Mr. Daney and laid a heavy hand on the older man's shoulder. "How do you know that?" he demanded, and there was a growl in his voice. "Has Mrs. Daney been asking the postmaster?" Mr. Daney saw that, for some inexplicable reason, he was in for a bad five minutes or more. His youthful superior's face was white and beaded with perspiration. Daney had a suspicion that Donald had had a drink or two. "There has been no gossip, Donald," he answered crisply. "Get that notion out of your head. I would protect you from gossip, for I think I know my duty to the McKayes. I learned that lesson a long time ago," he added, with spirit. "You haven't answered my question, Mr. Daney," Donald persisted. "I shall. I know, because she told me herself." Mr. Daney had not intended that Donald should ever discover that he had had an interview with Nan Brent, but his veracity had, for the moment, appeared to him to be questioned by his superior, and he was too truthful, too thoroughly honest to attempt now to protect his reputation for truth-telling by uttering a small fib, albeit he squirmed inwardly at the terrible necessity for such integrity. "Ah! Then Nan called upon you again?" Mr. Daney sighed. "No, I called upon her." "With reference to what?" "To settle with her for the loss of the Brutus." "When did you lose the Brutus." Mr. Daney pulled at his ear, gazed at the porch light, rubbed his Adam's apple, and gave the exact date. "What happened to the Brutus?" "She just disappeared, Donald. She was tied up alongside the barge--" The heavy hand on Mr. Daney's shoulder tightened a little. Donald was merely holding fast to the general manager in order to stay on his feet, but Mr. Daney credited him with being the victim of rising anger. "When did Nan leave Port Agnew, Mr. Daney?" "Let me see, Donald." Mr. Daney tugged at his beard. "Why, she left two weeks ago yesterday. Yes; she left on the nineteenth." "When did you settle with her for the loss of the Brutus?" "On the sixteenth," Daney answered glibly. "How much?" "Twenty-five hundred dollars. It was more than the Brutus was worth, but I disliked to appear niggardly in the matter, Donald. I knew you and your father would approve whatever sum I settled for--and the loss of the little boat provided a nice opportunity for generosity without hurting the girl's pride." "Yes--thank you, Mr. Daney. That was kind and thoughtful of you." Donald spoke the words slowly, as if he searched his brain carefully for each word and then had to coax his tongue into speaking it. "You settled, then, two days after the boat disappeared. Fast work. Nobody up here would steal the boat. Too much distance between ports--run short of gasoline, you know, on her limited tank capacity--and if anybody had purchased cased gasoline around here to load on deck, you'd know of it. Hard to conceal or disguise a forty-foot boat, too." His fingers closed like steel nippers over Mr. Daney's shoulder. "Where did you hide the boat, Mr. Daney? Answer me. I'll not be trifled with." "I scuttled her--if you must have the truth." "I knew you wouldn't lie to me. On whose orders, Mr. Daney? My father's?" "No, sir; it was my own idea." Daney's face was white with mental and physical distress and red with confusion, by turns. His shoulder was numb. "Why?" "I figured that if the girl had some money to make a new start elsewhere, she'd leave Port Agnew, which would be best for all concerned." "Why, Andrew Daney, you old hero! Cost you something to confess that, didn't it? Well--I guessed you or my father had induced her to go, so I concluded to start the investigation with you," He passed his hand over his white dripping brow before resuming what he had to say. "The Tyee Lumber Company isn't equipped to carry on its pay-roll Mr. Donald McKaye and the man who interferes in his personal affair, even though actuated by a kindly interest. You rip up that track you're laying and leave Nan's home alone. Then you clean up your desk and hand me your resignation. I'm sick--and your damned interference hurts. Sorry; but you must go. Understand? Nan's coming back--understand? Coming back--devilish hot night--for this time of year, isn't it? Man, I'm burning up." It came to Mr. Daney that the young laird was acting in a most peculiar manner. Also, he was talking that way. Consequently, and what with the distress of being dismissed from the McKaye service in such cavalier fashion, the general manager decided to twist out from under that terrible grasp on his shoulder. Instantly, Donald released from this support, swayed and clutched gropingly for Mr. Daney's person. "Dizzy," he panted. "Head's on strike. Mr. Daney, where the devil are you? Don't run away from me. You damned old muddler, if I get my hands on you I'll pick you apart--yes, I will--to see--what makes you go. You did it, Yes, you did--even if you're too stupidly honest--to lie about it. Glad of that, though, Mr. Daney. Hate liars and interfering duffers. Ah--the cold-blooded calculation of it--took advantage of her poverty. She's gone--nobody knows--May God damn your soul to the deepest hell--Where are you? I'll kill you--no, no; forgive me, sir--Yes, you've been faithful, and you're an old employe--I wish you a very pleasant good-evening, sir." He stepped gingerly down the three wide stairs, pitched forward, and measured his length in a bed of pansies. Mr. Daney came down, struck a match, and looked at his white face. Donald was apparently unconscious; so Mr. Daney knelt, placed his inquisitive nose close to the partly open lips, and sniffed. Then he swore his chiefest oath. "Hell's hells and panther-tracks! He isn't drunk. He's sick." Fifteen minutes later, the young Laird of Port Agnew reposed in the best room of his own hospital, and Andrew Daney was risking his life motoring at top speed up the cliff road to The Dreamerie with bad news for old Hector. Mrs. McKaye and the girls had retired but The Laird was reading in the living-room when Daney entered unannounced. Old Hector looked up at his general manager from under his white, shaggy brow. "Ye, Andrew," he saluted the latter gently, "I see by your face it's not welcome news you bring. Out with it, man." So Andrew came "out with it," omitting no detail, and at the conclusion of his recital, the old man wagged his head to emphasize his comprehension. "My son is not a dull man by any means," he said presently. "He knows what he knows--a man sure of himself always--and oh, Andrew man, because of the brain of him and the sweet soul of him, it breaks my heart to give pain to him. And what does the doctor say?" "From a cursory examination he suspects typhoid fever." "Ah, that's bad, bad, Andrew." "The boy has the strength of a Hercules, sir. He'll beat through, never fear." "Well, he'll not die to-night, at any rate," old Hector answered, "and I can do no good puttering round the hospital to-night. Neither would I alarm his mother and the girls. Send for the best medical brains in the country, Andrew, and don't quibble at the cost. Pay them what they ask. 'Twill be cheap enough if they save him. Good-night, Andrew, and thank you kindly." He stood up and laid his hand affectionately upon the shoulder of his faithful servant and walked with him thus to the door. "My good Andrew," he murmured, and propelled the general manager gently outside, "there's no need to worry over the dismissal. When the lad's well, he'll rescind his order, so, in the meantime, do not leave us." "But--if he shouldn't rescind it?" Daney pleaded anxiously. Although he was comfortably fixed with this world's goods and had long since ceased to work for monetary reward, the Tyee Lumber Company was, nevertheless, part of his life, and to be dismissed from its service was akin to having some very necessary part of him amputated. "Tush, man; tush! Don't be building a mare's nest," old Hector answered and closed the door upon him. For The Laird was losing control of himself and he could not bear that any human eye should gaze upon his weakness. XXVIII The morning following Donald's admittance to the hospital, the company doctor confirmed his original diagnosis that the patient was suffering from an attack of typhoid fever. The disease had evidently been two weeks incubating, for the woods boss reported that his superior had complained of being "under the weather" for ten days before yielding to the former's repeated advice to go down to Port Agnew and have the doctor look him over. As a result of Donald's stubborn refusal to acknowledge his illness, the disease had reached a fair stage of development by the time he received medical attention. He was not delirious when The Laird and Mrs. McKaye reached the hospital that morning, however, they were permitted to see him for but a few minutes only. "Has he a fighting chance?" old Hector demanded bluntly of the doctor. It seemed to him that his son's face already wore the look of one doomed to dissolution at an early date. "Yes, he has, Mr. McKaye," the doctor replied gravely; "provided he'll fight. You will understand that in typhoid fever the mortality rate is rather high--as high as thirty per cent. However, in the case of Donald, who is a husky athlete, I should place the odds at about ten to one that he'll survive an attack of even more than moderate severity. That is," he added, "under the most favorable conditions." "Well, what's wrong with the conditions in this case?" The Laird demanded crisply. "You can have anything you want--if you're shy on material to work with, and I've sent for the best physician in the state to come here and consult with you." "The hospital conditions are perfect, Mr. McKaye. What I mean is this: It is a well recognized principle of medical practice that a patient combating a disease of extreme severity and high mortality is sustained quite as much by his courage and a passionate desire to get well--in a word, by his morale--as he is by his capacity for physical resistance. Your son is, I think, slightly depressed mentally. That is the sole reason I see to warrant apprehension." "Oh--so that's all, eh?" The Laird was relieved. "Then don't worry about him. He'll put up a battle--never fear. Why, he never quit in all his life. However, in case he might need a bit of encouragement from his old daddy from time to time, you'll have a room made ready for me. I'll stay here till he's out of danger." That was a terrible week on old Hector. The nurse, discovering that his presence appeared to excite her patient, forbade him the room; so he spent his days and part of his nights prowling up and down the corridor, with occasional visits to the mill office and The Dreamerie, there to draw such comfort from Daney and his family as he might. While his temperature remained below a hundred and four, Donald would lie in a semi-comatose condition, but the instant the thermometer crept beyond that point he would commence to mutter incoherently. Suddenly, he would announce, so loudly The Laird could hear every word, that he contemplated the complete and immediate destruction of Andrew Daney and would demand that the culprit be brought before him. Sometimes he assumed that Daney was present, and the not unusual phenomenon attendant upon delirium occurred. When in good health Donald never swore; neither would he tolerate rough language in his presence from an employe; nevertheless, in his delirium he managed, at least once daily, to heap upon the unfortunate Daney a generous helping of invective of a quality that would have made a mule-skinner blush. Sometimes Mr. Daney was unfortunate enough to drop in at the hospital in time to hear this stream of anathema sounding through the corridor; upon such occasions he would go into The Laird's room and he and old Hector would eye each other grimly but say never a word. Having demolished Mr. Daney with a verbal broadside, Donald would appear to consider his enemy dead and direct his remarks to Nan Brent. He would reproach her tenderly for leaving Port Agnew without informing him of her intention; he assured her he loved her, and that unless she returned life would not be worth living. Sometimes he would call upon old dead Caleb to reason with her in his behalf. About that time he would be emerging from a Brand bath and, with the decline of his temperature, his mutterings and complaints gradually grew incoherent again and he would sleep. Thus two weeks passed. Donald showed no sign of the improvement which should ordinarily be looked for in the third week, and it was apparent to the doctors and nurses who attended him that the young Laird was not making a fight to get well--that his tremendous physical resistance was gradually being undermined. His day-nurse it was who had the courage, womanlike, to bring the matter to an issue. "He's madly in love with that Nan girl he's always raving about," she declared. "From all I can gather from his disconnected sentences, she has left Port Agnew forever, and he doesn't know where she is. Now, I've seen men--little, weak men--recover from a worse attack of typhoid than this big fellow has, and he ought to be on the up-grade now, if ever--yet he's headed down-hill. About next week he's going to start to coast, unless Nan Brent shows up to take him by the hand and lead him back up-hill. I believe she could do it--if she would." "I believe she could, also," the doctor agreed. "Perhaps you've noticed that, although his family have listened to him rave about her, they have never given the slightest indication that they know what he is raving about. The girl's tabu, apparently." "The Laird appears to be a human being. Have you spoken to him about this--Nan girl?" "I tried to--once. He looked at me--and I didn't try any more. The fact is," the doctor added, lowering his voice, "I have a notion that old Hector, through Daney, gave the girl money to leave the country." "If he knew what an important personage she is at this minute, he'd give her more money to come back--if only just long enough to save his son. Have you spoken to Mr. Daney?" "No; but I think I had better. He has a great deal of influence with The Laird, and since I have no doubt they were in this conspiracy together, Daney may venture to discuss with the old man the advisability of bringing the girl back to Port Agnew." "If she doesn't appear on the scene within ten days--" "I agree with you. Guess I'll look up Mr. Daney." He did. Daney was at his desk in the mill office when the doctor entered and, without the least circumlocution, apprised him of the desperate state to which Donald was reduced. "I tell you, Mr. Daney," he declared, and pounded Daney's desk to emphasize his statement, "everything that medical science can do for that boy has been done, but he's slipping out from under us. Our last hope lies in Nan Brent. If she can be induced to come to his bedside, hold his hand, and call him pet names when he's rational, he'll buck up and win out. There are no dangerous physical complications to combat now. They are entirely mental." While the physician was speaking, Andrew Daney's face had gradually been taking on the general color-tones of a ripe old Edam cheese. His chin slowly sagged on his breast; his lips parted in horror and amazement until, finally, his mouth hung open slackly, foolishly; presently, two enormous tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and cascaded slowly across his cheeks into his whiskers. He gripped the arms of his chair. "O God, forgive me!" he moaned. "The Laird doesn't know where she is, and neither do I. I induced her to go away, and she's lost somewhere in the world. To find her now would be like searching a haystack for a needle." "But you might telegraph a space-ad to every leading newspaper in the country. The Laird can afford to spend a million to find her--if she can be found in a hurry. Why, even a telegram from her would help to buck him up." But Andrew Daney could only sway in his chair and quiver with his profound distress. "The scandal!" he kept murmuring, "the damned scandal! I'll have to go to Seattle to send the telegrams. The local office would leak. And even if we found her and induced her to come back to save him, she'd--she'd have to go away again--and if she wouldn't--if he wouldn't permit her--why, don't you see how impossible a situation has developed? Man, can Donald McKaye wed Nan Brent of the Sawdust Pile?" "My interest in the case is neither sentimental nor ethical. It is entirely professional. It appears to me that in trying to save this young fellow from the girl, you've signed his death warrant; now it is up to you to save him from himself, and you're worrying because it may be necessary later to save the girl from him or him from the girl. Well, I've stated the facts to you, and I tried to state them to The Laird. Do as you think best. If the boy dies, of course, I'll swear that he was doomed, anyhow, due to perforation of the intestines." "Yes, yes!" Daney gasped. "Let The Laird off as lightly as you can." "Oh, I'll lie cheerfully. By the way, who is this girl? I haven't been in Port Agnew long enough to have acquired all the gossip. Is she impossible?" "She's had a child born out of wedlock." "Oh, then she's not a wanton?" "I'm quite sure she is not." "Well, I'll be damned! So that's all that's wrong with her, eh?" Like the majority of his profession, this physician looked up such a _contretemps_ with a kindly and indulgent eye. In all probability, most of us would if we but knew as many of the secrets of men as do our doctors and lawyers. Long after the doctor had left him alone with his terrible problem, Mr. Daney continued to sit in his chair, legs and arms asprawl, chin on breast. From time to time, he cried audibly: "O Lord! O my God! What have I done? What shall I do? How shall I do it? O Lord!" He was quite too incoherent for organized prayer; nevertheless his agonized cry to Omnipotence was, indeed, a supplication to which the Lord must have inclined favorably, for, in the midst of his desolation and bewilderment, the door opened and Dirty Dan O'Leary presented himself. XXIX Thanks to the constitution of a Nubian lion, Dirty Dan's wounds and contusions had healed very rapidly and after he got out of hospital, he spent ten days in recuperating his sadly depleted strength. His days he spent in the sunny lee of a lumber pile in the drying-yard, where, in defiance of the published ordinance, he smoked plug tobacco and perused the _Gaelic American_. Now, Mr. O'Leary, as has been stated earlier in this chronicle, was bad black Irish. Since the advent of Oliver Cromwell into Ireland, the males of every generation of the particular tribe of O'Leary to which Dirty Dan belonged had actively or passively supported the battles of Ould Ireland against the hereditary enemy across the Channel, and Dirty Dan had suckled this holy hatred at his mother's breast; wherefore he regarded it in the light of his Christian duty to keep that hate alive by subscribing to the _Gaelic American_ and believing all he read therein anent the woes of the Emerald Isle. Mr. O'Leary was also a member of an Irish-American revolutionary society, and was therefore aware that presently his kind of Irish were to rise, cast off their shackles (and, with the help o' God and the German kaiser) proclaim the Irish Republic. For several months past, Daniel's dreams had dwelt mostly with bayonet-practice. Ordinary bayonets, however, were not for him. He dreamed his trusty steel was as long as a cross-cut saw, and nightly he skewered British soldiers on it after the fashion of kidneys and bacon _en brochette_. For two months he had been saving his money toward a passage home to Ireland and the purchase of a rifle and two thousand rounds of ammunition--soft-nose bullets preferred--with the pious intention of starting with "th' bhoys" at the very beginning and going through with them to the bloody and triumphant finish. Unfortunately for Dirty Dan, his battle in defense of Donald McKaye had delayed his sortie to the fields of martyrdom. On the morning that Nan Brent left Port Agnew, however, fortune had again smiled upon The O'Leary. Meeting Judge Moore, who occupied two local offices--justice of the peace and coroner--upon the street, that functionary had informed Dan that the public generally, and he and the town marshal in particular, traced an analogy between the death of the mulatto in Darrow and Mr. O'Leary's recent sojourn in the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital, and thereupon, verbally subpoenaed him to appear before a coroner's jury the following day at ten o'clock A.M., then and there to tell what he knew about said homicide. Dirty Dan received this summons with outward nonchalance but tremendous secret apprehensions, and immediately fled for advice to no less a person than Andrew Daney. However, the Fates ordained that Andrew Daney should be spared the trouble of advising Dirty Dan, for as the latter came shuffling down the hall toward Daney's office door, The Laird emerged from his old office and accosted his henchman. "Well, Dan!" he greeted the convalescent, "how do you find yourself these days?" "Poorly, sir, poorly," Dirty Dan declared. "Twas only yisterd'y I had to take the other side av the shtreet to av'id a swamper from Darrow, sir." The Laird smiled. "Well, Dan, I think it's about time I did something to make you feel better. I owe you considerable for that night's work, so here's a thousand dollars for you, my boy. Go down to southern California or Florida for a month or two, and when you're back in your old form, report for duty. I have an idea Mr. Donald intends to make you foreman of the loading-sheds and the drying-yard when you're ready for duty." "God bless ye, me lord, an' may the heavens be your bed!" murmured the astounded lumberjack, as The Laird produced his wallet and counted into Dan's grimy quivering paw ten crisp hundred-dollar bills. "Oh, t'ank you, sor; t'ank you a t'ousand times, sor. An' ye'll promise me, won't ye, to sind for me firrst-off if ye should be wan tin' some blackguard kilt?" "I assure you, Dan, you are my sole official killer," laughed The Laird, and shook the O'Leary's hand with great heartiness. "Better take my advice about a good rest, Dan." "Sor, I'll be afther havin' the vacation o' me life." "Good-by, then, and good luck to you, Dan!" "Good-by, an' God bless ye, sor!" Five minutes later, Daniel J. O'Leary was in the general store fitting on what he termed a "Sunday suit." Also, he bought himself two white shirts of the "b'iled" variety, a red necktie, a brown Derby hat, and a pair of shoes, all too narrow to accommodate comfortably his care-free toes. Next, he repaired to the barber-shop, where he had a hair-cut and a shave. His ragged red mustache, ordinarily of the soup-strainer pattern, he had trimmed, waxed, and turned up at each end; the barber put much pomade on his hair and combed it in a Mazeppa, with the result that when! Daniel J. O'Leary appeared at the railroad station the following morning, and purchased a ticket for New York City, Hector McKaye, loitering in front of the station on the lookout for Nan Brent, looked at and through Mr. O'Leary without recognizing him from Adam's off ox. It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark that Dirty Dan was about to embark upon an enterprise designed to make his dreams come true. He was headed for Ireland and close grips with the hated redcoats as fast as train and steamer could bear him. Now, Mr. O'Leary had never seen Nan Brent, although he had heard her discussed in one or two bunk-houses about the time her child had been born. Also, he was a lumberjack, and since lumberjacks never speak to the "main push" unless first spoken to, he did not regard it as all necessary to bring himself to Hector McKaye's notice when his alert intelligence informed him that The Laird had failed to recognize him in his going-away habiliments. Further, he could see with half an eye that The Laird was waiting for somebody, and when that somebody appeared on the scene, the imp of suspicion in Dirty Dan's character whispered: "Begorra, is the father up to some shenanigans like the son? Who's this girrl? I dunno. A young widder, belike, seem' she has a youngster wit' her." He saw Nan and The Laird enter into earnest conversation, and his curiosity mastering him, he ventured to inquire of a roustabout who was loading baggage on a truck who the young lady might be. Upon receiving the desired information, he, with difficulty repressed a whistle of amazement and understanding; instantly his active imagination was at work. The girl was leaving Port Agnew. That was evident. Also, The Laird must have known of this, for he had reached the station before the girl and waited for her. Therefore, he must have had something to do with inducing her to depart. Mr. O'Leary concluded that it was quite within the realm of possibility that The Laird had made it well worth her while to refrain from wrecking the honor of his house, and he watched narrowly to observe whether or not money passed between them. One thing puzzled Dirty Dan extremely. That was the perfectly frank, friendly manner in which his employer and this outcast woman greeted each other, the earnestness with which they conversed, and the effect of the woman's low-spoken words upon the color of Hector McKaye's face. When The Laird took his leave, the lumberjack noted the increased respect--the emotion, even--with which he parted from her. The lumberjack heard him say, "Good-by, my dear, and good luck to you wherever you go"; so it was obvious Nan Brent was not coming back to Port Agnew. Knowing what he knew, Mr. O'Leary decided that, upon the whole, here was good riddance to the McKaye family of rubbish that might prove embarrassing if permitted to remain dumped on the Sawdust Pile. "Poor gurrl," he reflected as he followed Nan aboard the train. "She have a sweet face, that she have, God forgive her! An be th' Rock av Cashel, she have a v'ice like an angel from heaven." He sat down in a seat behind her and across the aisle, and all the way to Seattle he stared at the back of her neck or the beautiful rounded profile of her cheek. From time to time, he wondered how much Hector McKaye had paid her to disappear out of his son's life, and how that son would feel, and what he would say to his father when he discovered his light o' love had flown the cage. The following morning Mr. O'Leary boarded a tourist-sleeper on the Canadian Pacific, and, to his profound amazement, discovered that Nan Brent and her child occupied a section in the same car. "Begorra, she couldn't have shtuck the ould man very deep at that, or 'tis in a standard shleeper an' not a tourist she'd be riding," he reflected. "What the divil's up here at all, at all, I dunno." Dirty Dan saw her enter a taxicab at the Grand Central Station in New York. "I wonder if the young Caddyheck himself'll meet her here," Mr. O'Leary reflected, alive with sudden suspicion, and springing into the taxicab that drew in at the stand the instant the taxi bearing Nan and her child pulled out, he directed the driver to follow the car ahead, and in due course found himself before the entrance to a hotel in lower Broadway--one of that fast disappearing number of fifth-class hotels which were first-class thirty years ago. Dirty Dan hovered in the offing until Nan had registered and gone up to her room. Immediately he registered also, and, while doing so, observed that Nan had signed her real name and given her address as Port Agnew, Washington. With unexpected nicety, Dirty Dan decided not to embarrass her by registering from Port Agnew also, so he gave his address as Seattle. For two days, he forgot the woes of Ireland and sat round the stuffy lobby, awaiting Nan Brent's next move. When he saw her at the cashier's window paying out, he concealed himself behind a newspaper, and watched her covertly as the clerk gave instructions to the head porter regarding the disposition of her baggage. The instant she left the hotel, accompanied by her child, Dirty Dan approached the porter and said with an insinuating smile: "I'd give a dollar to know the address the young lady wit' the baby bhoy give you f'r the delivery av her trunk." The porter reached for the dollar and handed Dirty Dan a shipping tag containing the address. Mr. O'Leary laboriously wrote the address in a filthy little memorandum-book, and that afternoon made a point of looking up Nan's new habitation. He discovered it to be an old brownstone front in lower Madison Avenue, and a blue-and-gold sign over the area fence indicated to Mr. O'Leary that, from an abode of ancient New York aristocracy, the place had degenerated into a respectable boarding-house. "'Tis true," Dirty Dan murmured. "She's given the young fella the go-by. Hurro! An' I'm bettin' I'm the only lad in the wide, wide wurrld that knows where she's gone. Faith, but wouldn't Misther Donald pay handsomely for the information in me little book." Having, as he judged, followed the mystery to its logical conclusion, Mr. O'Leary was sensible of a sudden waning of his abnormal curiosity in Nan Brent's affairs. He acknowledged to himself that he had spent time and money on a matter that was absolutely none of his business, but excused himself upon the ground that if he hadn't investigated the matter thoroughly, his failure to do so might annoy him in the future. If, for no other reason than the desirability of being on the inside track of this little romance of a rich man's son, his action was to be commended. People have no business disappearing without leaving a trace or saying good-by to those that love them. Dirty Dan hadn't the least idea of selling his information to Donald McKaye, but something in his peculiar mental make-up caused him to cherish a secret for its own sake; he had a true Irishman's passion for being "in the know," and now that he was in it, he was tremendously satisfied with himself and dismissed the entire matter from his mind. Old Ireland and her woes were again paramount, so Mr. O'Leary presented himself before the proper authorities and applied for a passport to visit Ireland. Now, while Daniel J. did not know it, one of the first questions the applicant for a passport is required to answer is his reason for desiring to make the journey, and during the Great War, as everybody of mature years will recall, civilians were not permitted to subject themselves to the dangers of a ruthless submarine war without good and sufficient reason. Mr. O'Leary had a reason--to his way of thinking, the noblest reason in all the world; consequently he was proud of it and not at all inclined to conceal it. "I'm goin' over there," he declared, with profane emphasis, "to kill all the damned English I can before they kill me." His interlocutor gravely wrote this reply down in Mr. O'Leary's exact language and proceeded to the other questions. When the application was completed, Dirty Dan certified to the correctness of it, and was then smilingly informed that he had better go back where he came from, because his application for a passport was denied. Consumed with fury, the patriot thereupon aired his opinion of the Government of the United States, with particular reference to its representative then present, and in the pious hope of drowning his sorrows, went forth and proceeded to get drunk. When drunk, Mr. O'Leary always insisted, in the early stages of his delirium, on singing Hibernian ballads descriptive of the unflinching courage, pure patriotism and heroic sacrifices of the late Owen Roe O'Neill and O'Donnell Abu. Later in the evening he would howl like a timber-wolf and throw glasses, and toward morning he always fought it out on the floor with some enemy. Of course, in the sawmill towns of the great Northwest, where folks knew Mr. O'Leary and others of his ilk, it was the custom to dodge the glasses and continue to discuss the price of logs. Toward Dirty Dan, however, New York turned a singularly cold shoulder. The instant he threw a glass, the barkeeper tapped him with a "billy"; then a policeman took him in tow, and the following morning, Dirty Dan, sick, sore, and repentant was explaining to a police judge that he was from Port Agnew, Washington, and really hadn't meant any harm. He was, therefore, fined five dollars and ordered to depart forthwith for Port Agnew, Washington, which he did, arriving there absolutely penniless and as hungry as a cougar in midwinter. He fled over to the mill kitchen, tossed about five dollars worth of ham and eggs and hot biscuit into his empty being, and began to take stock of life. Naturally, the first thing he recalled in mind was The Laird's remark that Donald planned to make him foreman of the loading-sheds and drying-yards; so he wasted no time in presenting himself before Donald's office door. To his repeated knocking there was no reply, so he sought Mr. Daney. "Hello, Dan! You back?" Daney greeted him. "Glad to see you. Looking for Mr. Donald?" "Yes, sor; thank you, sor." "Mr. Donald is ill in the company's hospital. We're afraid, Dan, that he isn't going to pull through." "Glory be!" Mr. O'Leary gasped, horrified on two counts. First, because he revered his young boss, and, second, because the latter's death might nullify his opportunity to become foreman of the loading-sheds and drying-yard. "Sure, what's happened to the poor bhoy?" Before Daney could answer, a terrible suspicion shot through the agile and imaginative O'Leary brain. In common with several million of his countrymen, he always voiced the first thought that popped into his head; so he lowered that member, likewise his voice, peered cunningly into Andrew Daney's haggard face, and whispered: "Don't tell me he tried to commit suicide, what wit' his poor broken heart an' all!" It was Andrew Daney's turn to peer suspiciously at Dirty Dan. For a few seconds, they faced each other like a pair of belligerent game-cocks. Then said Daney: "How do you know his heart was broken?" Dirty Dan didn't know. The thought hadn't even occurred to him until ten seconds before; yet, from the solemnity of Daney's face and manner, he knew instantly that once more his feet were about to tread the trails of romance, and the knowledge imbued him with a deep sense of importance. He winked knowingly. "Beggin' yer pardon, Misther Daney an' not m'anin' the least offinse in life, but--I know a lot about that young man--yis, an' the young leddy, too--that divil a sowl on earth knows or is goin' to find out." He tried a shot in the dark. "That was a clever bit o' wurrk gettin' her out o' Port Agnew--" Andrew Daney's hands closed about Dirty Dan's collar, and he was jerked violently into the latter's office, while Daney closed and locked the door behind them. The general manager was white and trembling. "You damned, cunning mick, you!" he cried, in a low voice. "I believe you're right. You do know a lot about this affair--" "Well, if I do, I haven't talked about it," Dirty Dan reminded him with asperity. "You knew the girl had left Port Agnew and why, do you not?" Daney demanded. "Of course I do. She left to plaze The Laird an' get rid o' the young fella. Whether Th' Laird paid her to go or not, I don't know, but I'll say this: 'If he gave her anythin' at all, 'twas damned little.'" "He didn't give her a red cent," Daney protested. "I believe you, sor," Mr. O'Leary assured him, as solemn as a Supreme Court justice. "I judged so be the way she traveled an' the hotel she shtopped at." Daney made another dive at the returned prodigal, but Mr. O'Leary evaded him. "Where did she travel, and what hotel did she put up at?" the general manager demanded. "She traveled to the same places an' put up at the same hotels that I did," Dirty Dan replied evasively, for his natural love for intrigue bade him hoard his secret to the last. Daney sat down and said very quietly: "Dan, do you know where Nan Brent may be found?" "Where she _may_ be found? Faith, I can tell you where she can be found--but I'll not." "Why not?" "Because 'tis her secret, an' why should I share it wit' you, m'anin' no disrespect, sor, at that?" "Your sentiments do you honor, Dan--a heap more honor than I ever thought you possessed. If Mr. Donald's life should happen to be the price of your silence, however, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?" "I would. The young gintlemin's blood runs in my veins, sor." "Thank you, Dan. Give me her address." "Number one eighty-five Madison Avenue, Noo Yorrk City," Dirty Dan replied promptly. "More I do not know. Am I on the pay-roll agin?" "You bet! I'll pick out a good job for you as soon as I find time to think about it." "Could I have a dollar or two in advance--" the wanderer began, as Daney hastened toward the door. "Certainly." The door slammed, and Dirty Dan could hear the general manager shouting in the general office. "Dirty Dan is back. Give him some money." Mr. O'Leary sighed contentedly. "Oh-ho, 'tis the great life we live," he murmured, and hastened outside to present himself at the cashier's window, while Andrew Daney continued on to the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital, tiptoed down the corridor to the room where the young Laird of Port Agnew lay dying, and rapped lightly on the door. A nurse came out and closed the door after her. "Well?" Daney demanded. "No change. His temperature fell two degrees during the night and he slept a little, but the fever is up again this morning, and he's raving again. Any news at your end?" "Yes. I have the girl's address. She's in New York. Is his father inside?" "Yes." "Ask him to step into the reception room for a few minutes, please." The Laird appeared promptly in response to this message, and the two men walked slowly down the hall to the reception-room. Daney closed the door and resolutely faced The Laird. "The doctors and the nurses tell me things, sir, they're afraid to tell you," he began. "Ordinarily, the boy should be able to fight this thing through successfully, for he has a splendid body and a lot of resistance, but the fact of the matter is, he isn't trying. He doesn't want to get well." The Laird's face went white. "They believe this?" he cried sharply. "They do. His subconscious mind clings to the memory of his loss. He keeps calling for her in his delirium, doesn't he? Now that he is assured she has dropped out of his life forever, he doesn't give a snap whether school keeps or not--and the doctors cannot cure him. If the girl were here--well, she might. Her very presence would bring about a strong mental and physical reaction--" He paused a moment. Then, "I know where she can be found." The Laird raised his haggard face and though his stern gray eyes were dull with agony, yet Daney saw in them the light of an unfaltering resolution. "I have left my son's honor and his life in the hands of God Almighty. I have made my bed and I'll lie in it," he panted. "But if the boy should die--" "Rather that than--than--" "But you're not going to take a chance on his pulling through, in the face of the advice of the doctors that only the girl's presence can stimulate him to a desire to live. I tell you, Hector McKaye, man, he's dying because he is not interested in living." "God's will be done, Andrew. If I asked her to come back and save my lad, I'd have to surrender him to her, and I would be derelict in my duty as a father if I permitted that. Better that he should pass out now than know the horror of a living death through all the years to come. God knows best. It is up to Him. Let there be no talk of this thing again, Andrew." Abruptly he quitted the room and returned to his vigil by the side of the son who was at once the light and the shadow of his existence. The nurse came stealthily to the reception-room entrance and looked in inquiringly. Daney shook his head, so she came into the room and pointed at him a singularly commanding index-finger. "If that old man is permitted to have his stubborn way, Donald McKaye will die," she declared. "So will old Hector. He'll be dead of a broken heart within the year." "He's sacrificing his son to his Scotch pride. Now, his mother is far more bitter against the girl than The Laird is; in her distress she accuses the Brent girl of destroying her son. Nevertheless, Mrs. McKaye's pride and resentment are not so intense that she will sacrifice her son to them." "Then give her this address," Daney suggested weakly, and handed it over. "I'm caught between the upper and nether millstone, and I don't care what happens to me. Damn the women, say I. Damn them! Damn them! They're the ones that do all the talking, set up a cruel moral code, and make a broad-minded, generous man follow it." "Thanks for the compliment," the nurse retorted blithely. "If I had time, I'd discuss the matter with you to your disadvantage, but, fortunately, I have other fish to fry. My job is to keep Donald McKaye alive for the next five or six days until Nan Brent can get here. She'll come. I know she will. She'd lie down in the street and die for him. I know it. I spent two days with her when her father was dead, and let me tell you something, Mr. Daney: 'She's too good for them. There! I feel better now.'" "What a remarkable woman!" Mr. Daney reflected, as he walked back to the mill office. "What a truly remarkable woman!" Then he remembered the complications that were about to ensue, and to the wonderment of several citizens of Port Agnew, he paused in front of the post-office, threw both arms aloft in an agitated flourish, and cried audibly: "Hell's bells and panther-tracks! I'd give a ripe peach to be in hell or some other seaport. O Lordy, Lordy, Lordy! And all the calves got loose!" XXX As a wife, it is probable that Nellie McKaye had not been an altogether unqualified success. She lacked tact, understanding and sympathy where her husband was concerned; she was one of that numerous type of wife who loses a great deal of interest in her husband after their first child is born. The Laird's wife was normally intelligent, peacefully inclined, extremely good-looking both as to face and figure, despite her years, and always abnormally concerned over what the most inconsequential people in the world might think of her and hers. She had a passion for being socially "correct." Flights of imagination were rarely hers; on the few occasions when they were, her thoughts had to do with an advantageous marriage for Jane and Elizabeth, who, it must be confessed, had not had very good luck holding on to the few eligible young bachelors who had seemed, for a brief period, to regard them with serious intent. The poor soul was worried about the girls, as well she might be, since the strides of time were rapidly bearing both into the sere-and-yellow-leaf period of life. For her son, she had earnest, passionate mother love, but since, like all mothers, she was obsessed with the delusion that every girl in the world, eligible and ineligible, was busy angling for her darling, she had left his matrimonial future largely to his father. Frequently her conscience smote her for her neglect of old Hector, but she smoothed it by promising herself to devote more time to him, more study to his masculine needs for wifely devotion, as soon as Elizabeth and Jane should be settled. Her son's acute illness and the possibility that he might not survive it had brought her closer to The Laird than these twain had been in twenty years; the blow that had all but crushed him had not even staggered her, for she told herself that, during this crisis she must keep her feet and her head. A wave of pity for her husband and a tinge of shame for her years of neglect of him revived more than a modicum of the old honeymoon tenderness, and, to her mild amazement, she discovered that she was still, in old Hector's eyes, young and beautiful; her breast, her lips, still had power to soothe and comfort. In those trying days she was The Laird's greatest asset. With maternal stubbornness, she resolutely refused to entertain the thought that her son might die. She could understand the possibility of some other woman's son dying, but not hers! she, who knew him so well (or thought she did, which amounts to the same thing), met with gentle tolerance and contempt the portentous nods and anxious glances of doctors and trained nurses. 'Fraid-cats--every last one of them! She told old Hector so and, to a considerable extent, succeeded in making him believe it. After The Laird's interview with Andrew Daney he came home that night to The Dreamerie, and, to please Nellie, he pretended to partake of some dinner. Also, during the course of the meal he suddenly decided to relate to his wife and daughters as much as he knew of the course of the affair between Donald and Nan Brent; he repeated his conversation with Nan on the two occasions he had spoken with her, and gave them to understand that his efforts to induce Donald to "be sensible" had not been successful. Finally, his distress making him more communicative, he related the cunning stratagem by which Daney had made it possible for Donald to be separated from the source of temptation. Elizabeth was the first to comment on his extraordinary revelations when he appeared to have finished his recital. "The girl has a great deal more character than I supposed," she opined in her soft, throaty contralto. "She played the game in an absolutely ripping manner!" Jane declared enthusiastically. "I had no idea she was possessed of so much force. Really, I should love to be kind to her, if that were at all possible now." The Laird smiled but without animus. "You had ample opportunity once, Janey," he reminded her. "But then, of course, unlike Donald and myself, you had no opportunity for realizing what a fine, wholesome lass she is." He lowered his gaze and rolled a bread-crumb nervously between thumb and forefinger. "They tell me at the hospital, Nellie," he began again presently, "that her absence is killing our boy--that he'll die if she doesn't come back. They've been whispering to Daney, and this afternoon he mentioned the matter to me." Three pairs of eyes bent upon him; gazes of mingled curiosity and distress. "Have you heard aught of such talk from the doctors and nurses," he continued, addressing them collectively. "I have," said Mrs. McKaye meekly, and the two girls nodded. "I think it's all poppycock," Jane added. "It isn't all poppycock, my dear," old Hector rebuked her. He rolled another bread-crumb. "Andrew has her address," he resumed after a long silence. "She's in New York. He asked me to wire her to come immediately, or else permit him to wire her in my name. I refused. I told Daney that our boy's case was in the hands of God Almighty." "Oh, Hector!" Mrs. McKaye had spoken. There was gentle reproach and protest in her voice, but she camouflaged it immediately by adding: "You poor dear, to be called upon to make such a decision." "His decision was absolutely right," Elizabeth declared. "I'd almost prefer to see my brother decently dead than the laughing-stock of the town, married to a woman that no respectable person would dare receive in her home." Old Hector looked up in time to see Jane nod approval of her sister's sentiments, and Mrs. McKaye, by her silence, appeared also to agree with them. The Laird reached forth and laid his great hand over hers. "Poor Nellie!" he murmured affectionately. "'Tis hard to stand between our love and duty, is it not, lass? By God, sweetheart, I had to do it. I couldn't stand to see him wedded wie a lass that any man or woman could throw mud at." His voice shook with the intensity of his emotion; his flashing glance swept the board in pitiful defiance. "I have a right to protect my honor and the honor of my house!" he cried sharply. "Is not Jesus Christ the embodiment of honor? How can He blame me if I trust in His power and discretion. I've prayed to Him--ach, man, how I've prayed to Him--to keep my son from makin' a fule o' himself--" "Now, there you go again, Hector, dear," his wife soothed. She rose from her place at the table, came round to him, put her arms around his great neck, and laid her cheek against his. "An open confession is good for the soul, they say, Hector. I'm glad you've taken us into your confidence, because it permits us to share with you an equal burden of this heart-breaking decision. But you mustn't feel badly, father. Haven't I told you our boy isn't going to die?" "Do you really think so, Nellie?" he pleaded childishly, and for the hundredth time. "Silly old Hector! I know so." And this time there was in her voice such a new note of confidence and in her eyes such a gleam of triumph that she actually did succeed in comforting him. "Ah, well, God's will be done," he said piously, and attacked his dinner again, while Mrs. McKaye slipped out of the room and up-stairs on some pretext. Once in her bedroom, she seized the extension telephone and called up Andrew Daney. "Andrew," she said softly but distinctly, "this is Nellie McKaye speaking. Hector and I have been discussing the advisability of sending for the Brent girl." "I--I was goin' to take the matter up with you, Mrs. McKaye. I had a talk with your husband this afternoon, but he was a bit wild--" "He isn't so wild now, Andrew. He's talked it over with the girls and me. It's a terrible alternative, Andrew, but it simply means our boy's life for the gratification of our own selfish family pride--" "Exactly! Exactly! And though I understand just how you feel, Mrs. McKaye, after all, now, it's only a nine days' wonder, and you can't keep people from talking anyhow, unless you gag the brutes. The boy has been raving, and some of the hospital attendants have talked, and the gossip is all over town again. So why not send for her? She doesn't have to marry him just because her presence will revive his sinking morale--" "Certainly not. My idea, exactly, Andrew. Well, Andrew, suppose you telegraph her--" "No, no, no! I'll telephone her. Remember, we have a transcontinental telephone service nowadays. She might not realize the vital necessity for speed; she might question her right to come if I tried to cover the situation in a telegram. But, catch her on the 'phone, Mrs. McKaye, and you can talk to her and convince her." "Oh, that's perfectly splendid! Place the call for me immediately, Andrew, please. And--Andrew, don't mention to Hector what I've done. He wants to do it, poor man, but he simply cannot bring himself to the point of action." "Don't I know it?" Daney's voice rose triumphant. "The blessed old duffer!" he added. "I'll put in a call for New York immediately. We ought to get it through in an hour or two." XXXI It was Mr. Daney's task to place the call for Nan Brent in New York City and while he did not relish the assignment, nevertheless he was far from shrinking from it. While the citizens of Port Agnew had been aware for more than two years that transcontinental telephoning was possible, they knew also that three minutes of conversation for twenty-five dollars tended to render silence more or less golden. As yet, therefore, no one in Port Agnew had essayed the great adventure; wherefore, Mr. Daney knew that when he did his conversation would be listened to eagerly by every telephone operator in the local office and a more or less garbled report of same circulated through the town before morning unless he took pains to prevent it. This he resolved to do, for the Tyee Lumber Company owned the local telephone company and it was quite generally understood in Port Agnew that Mr. Daney was high, low, and jack and the game, to use a sporting expression. He stood by the telephone a moment after hanging up the receiver, and tugged at his beard reflectively. "No," he murmured presently, "I haven't time to motor up-country forty or fifty miles and place the call in some town where we are not known. It just isn't going to be possible to smother this miserable affair; sooner or later the lid is going to fly off, so I might as well be game and let the tail go with the hide. Oh, damn it, damn it! If I didn't feel fully responsible for this dreadful state of affairs, I would most certainly stand from under!" He turned from the 'phone and beheld Mrs. Daney, alert of countenance and fairly pop-eyed with excitement. She grasped her husband by the arm. "You have a private line from the mill office to The Dreamerie," she reminded him. "Have the call run in on your office telephone, then call Mrs. McKaye, and switch her in. We can listen on the office extensions." Upon his spouse Mr. Daney bent a look of profound contempt. "When I consider the loyalty, the love, the forebearance, and Christian charity that have been necessary to restrain me from tearing asunder that which God, in a careless moment, joined together, Mary, I'm inclined to regard myself as four-fifths superman and the other fifth pure angel," he declared coldly. "This is something you're not in on, woman, and I hope the strain of your curiosity will make you sick for a week." He seized his hat and fled, leaving his wife to shed bitter, scalding tears at his cruel words. Poor thing! She prided herself upon being the possessor of a superior brand of virtue and was always quick to take refuge in tears when any one decried that virtue; indeed, she never felt quite so virtuous as when she clothed herself, so to speak, in an atmosphere of patient resignation to insult and misunderstanding. People who delude themselves into the belief that they can camouflage their own nastiness and weaknesses from discovery by intelligent persons are the bane of existence, and in his better half poor Daney had a heavy cross to bear. He left the house wishing he might dare to bawl aloud with anguish at the knowledge that he was yoked for life to a woman of whom he was secretly ashamed; he wished he might dare to get fearfully intoxicated and remain in that condition for a long time. In his youth, he had been shy and retiring, always envying the favor which the ladies appeared to extend to the daring devils of his acquaintance; consequently, his prenuptial existence had not been marked by any memorable amourous experiences, for where other young men sowed wild oats Mr. Daney planted a sweet forget-me-not. As a married man, he was a model of respectability--sacrosanct, almost. His idea of worldly happiness consisted in knowing that he was a solid, trustworthy business man, of undoubted years and discretion, whom no human being could blackmail. Now, as he fled from the odor of respectability he yearned to wallow in deviltry, to permit his soul, so long cramped in virtue, to expand in wickedness. On his way down-town he met young Bert Darrow, son of the man after whom the adjacent lumber-town had been christened. Mr. Darrow had recently been indicted under the Mann law for a jolly little interstate romance. But yesterday, Mr. Daney had regarded Bert Darrow as a wastrel and had gone a block out of his way to avoid the scapegrace; to-night, however, Bert appealed to him as a man of courage, a devil of a fellow with spirit, a lover of life in its infinite moods and tenses, a lad with a fine contempt for public opinion and established morals. Morals? Bah, what were they! In France, Bert Darrow would have earned for himself a wink and a shrug, as though to say: "Ah, these young fellows! One must watch out for the rascals!" In the United States, he was a potential felon. "Evening, Bert," Mr. Daney saluted him pleasantly, and paused long enough to shake the latter's hand. "I saw your ad in the Seattle _P.I._ this morning. You young dog! Hope you crawl out of that mess all right." "_C'est la guerre_," Bert murmured nonchalantly. "Thanks, awfully." Mr. Daney felt better after that brief interview. He had clasped hands with sin and felt now like a human being. He went directly to the local telephone office and placed his New York call with the chief operator, after which he sat in the manager's office and smoked until ten o'clock, when New York reported "Ready!" "You young ladies," said Mr. Daney, addressing the two young women on duty, "may take a walk around the block. Port Agnew will not require any service for the next twenty minutes." They assimilated his hint, and when he was alone with the chief operator Mr. Daney ordered her to switch the New York call on to Mrs. McKaye at The Dreamerie. Followed ten minutes of "Ready, Chicago." "All right, New York. Put your party on the line!"--a lot of persistent buzzing and sudden silence. Then: "Hello, Port Agnew." Mr. Daney, listening on the extension in the office of the manager, recognized the voice instantly as Nan Brent's. "Go on, Mrs. McKaye," he ordered. "That's the Brent girl calling Port Agnew." "Hello, Miss Brent. This is Donald McKaye's mother speaking. Can you hear me distinctly?" "Yes, Mrs. McKaye, quite distinctly." "Donald is ill with typhoid fever. We are afraid he is not going to get well, Miss Brent. The doctors say that is because he does not want to live. Do you understand why this should be?" "Yes; I think I understand perfectly." "Will you come back to Port Agnew and help save him? We all think you can do it, Miss Brent. The doctors say you are the only one that can save him." There was a moment of hesitation. "His family desires this, then?" "Would I telephone across the continent if we did not?" "I'll come, Mrs. McKaye--for his sake and yours. I suppose you understand why I left Port Agnew. If not, I will tell you. It was for his sake and that of his family." "Thank you. I am aware of that, Miss Brent. Ah--of course you will be amply reimbursed for your time and trouble, Miss Brent. When he is well--when all danger of a relapse has passed--I think you realize, Miss Brent, all of the impossible aspects of this unfortunate affair which render it necessary to reduce matters strictly to a business basis." "Quite, dear Mrs. McKaye. I shall return to Port Agnew--on business--starting to-morrow morning. If I arrive in time, I shall do my best to save your son, although to do so I shall probably have to promise not to leave him again. Of course, I realize that you do not expect me to keep that promise." "Oh, I'm so sorry, my dear girl, that I cannot say 'No' to that. But then, since you realized, in the first place, how impossible" "Good-night. I must pack my trunk." "Just a minute, my girl," Andrew Daney interrupted. "Daney speaking. When you get to Chicago, call up the C.M. St. P. station. I'll have a special train waiting there for you." "Thank you, Mr. Daney. I'm sorry you cannot charter an airplane for me from New York to Chicago. Good-night, and tell Donald for me whatever you please." "Send him a telegram," Daney pleaded. "Good-by." He turned to the chief operator and looked her squarely in the eyes. "The Laird likes discreet young women," he announced meaningly, "and rewards discretion. If you're not the highest paid chief operator in the state of Washington from this on, I'm a mighty poor guesser." The girl smiled at him, and suddenly, for the first time in all his humdrum existence, Romance gripped Mr. Daney. He was riotously happy--and courageous! He thrust a finger under the girl's chin and tilted it in a most familiar manner, at the same time pinching it with his thumb. "Young woman," he cautioned her, "don't you ever be prim and smug! And don't you ever marry any man until you're perfectly wild to do it; then, were he the devil himself, follow your own natural impulses." He let go her chin and shook his forefinger between her eyes. "I'd rather be happy than virtuous," the amazing man continued. "The calm placidity that comes of a love of virtue and the possession of it makes me sick! Such people are dull and stupid. They play hide-and-seek with themselves, I tell you. Suspicious little souls peering out of windows and shocked to death at everything they see or hear--condemn everything they do not understand. Damn it, girl, give me the virtue that's had to fight like the devil to stay on its feet--the kind that's been scratched and has had the corners knocked off in contact with the world and still believes that God made man to his own image and likeness. I tell you, the Lord knew what he was about when he invented the devil. If he hadn't, we'd all be so nasty-nice nobody could trust the other fellow further'n you can throw a bear up-hill by the tail. I tell you, young woman, sin is a great institution. Why, just think of all the fun we have in life--we good people--forgiving our neighbor his trespasses as he does not forgive us for trespassing against him." And with this remarkable statement, Mr. Daney betook himself to his home. Mrs. Daney, a trifle red and watery about the eyes and nose, sat up in bed and demanded to be informed what had kept him down-town so late. "Would you sleep any better if you knew?" he demanded. She said she would not. "Then, woman, resign yourself to the soft embrace of Bacchus, the god of sleep," he replied, mixed metaphorically. "As for me, my dear, I'm all talked out!" XXXII Donald, trembling on the brink of Beyond, not from his disease but from the exhaustion incident to it, was conscious when his father entered the room and sat down beside his bed. "Well, lad," he greeted the boy with an assumption of heartiness he was far from feeling, "and have you no good news for your old father this morning. Tell me you're feeling better, lad." "Read the telegram," Donald whispered, and old Hector, seeing a telegram lying on the bed, picked it up. It was dated from New York that morning, and the Laird read: Due Port Agnew Friday morning. Remember the last line in the fairy-tale. Love and kisses from your SWEETHEART. "God bless my soul!" The Laird almost shouted. "Who the devil is 'Sweetheart'?" "Only--have one--Scotty. Sorry--for you--but do you--happen to know--last line--fairy-tale? Tell you. 'And so--they--were married--and lived--happy--ever--after.'" Fell a long silence. Then, from The Laird: "And you're going to wait for--her, my son?" "Certainly. Foolish die--now. I'll try--to wait. Try hard." He was still trying when Nan Brent stepped off the special train at Port Agnew on Friday morning. She was heavily veiled, and because of the distinctly metropolitan cut of her garments, none recognized her. With her child trotting at her side, she walked swiftly to the company hospital, and the nurse, who had been watching for her, met her at the door. The girl raised a white, haggard face, and her sad blue eyes asked the question. The nurse nodded, led her down the hall, pointed to the door of Donald's room, and then picked up Nan's child and carried him off to the hospital kitchen for a cookie. The outcast of Port Agnew entered. Hector McKaye sat by the bed, gazing upon his son, who lay with closed eyes, so still and white and emaciated that a sudden fear rose in Nan's mind. Had she arrived too late? The Laird turned and gazed at her an instant with dull eyes, then sprang to meet her. "Well, lass," he demanded, and there was a belligerent and resentful note in his voice, "is this playing the game?" She nodded, her blurred eyes fixed upon his son, and old Hector's face softened with a tenderness almost paternal. "Then," he whispered, "you didn't mean that--about the last line of the fairy-tale?" Her head moved in negation, but she did not look at him. She had eyes only for the wreck of the man she loved. "I heard you needed me--to save him, Mr. McKaye. So I'm here--to save him, if I can--for you--nothing more." He bowed to her, deeply, humbly, as if she were in truth the grandest lady in the land, then left the room hurriedly. Nan approached the bed and leaned over Donald, gazing at him for several minutes, for he was not as yet aware of her presence. Suddenly she commenced to sing softly the song he loved: "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," and her hand stole into his. The little grin that crept over his bearded face was ghastly; after the first bar, she bent and laid her cool cheek against his. "Well, old shipmate," she murmured in his ear, "I'm back." "'God's in--his heaven,'" he whispered. "'All's right--with the--world.'" XXXIII From the company hospital, The Laird went straight to his general manager's office. Entering, he strode to Daney's desk and transfixed that harassed individual with an accusing finger. "Andrew, this is your work, is it not?" Mr. Daney's heart skipped a beat, but he remembered this was Friday morning. So he decided not to be foolish and spar for time by asking The Laird what work he referred to. Also, having read somewhere that, in battle, the offensive frequently wins--the defensive never--he glared defiantly at The Laird and growled. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" His demeanor appeared to say: "This is my work, and I'm proud of it." To Daney's profound amazement, The Laird smiled benignantly and thrust out his hand, which Mr. Daney shook gingerly, as one might a can of nitroglycerin. "I thank you more than you will ever realize, Andrew, for taking this matter out of my hands. I left the decision up to the Almighty and evidently he inspired you to disobey me and save the day--without compromising me." "Pooh! That's the easiest thing I do." Mr. Daney's courage had returned with a rush. "For heaven's sake, don't talk about it, sir. I placed a call for the girl on the telephone--at your expense. Yes, sir; I talked with her clear across the continent, and before she even started from New York, it was understood that she is to jilt Donald the minute the doctors pronounce him strong enough to stand jilting." "She told me, practically, the same thing. Oh, Andrew, Andrew, my boy, this is bully work! Bully! Bully!" Mr. Daney replied to this encomium with a deprecatory shrug and hoped The Laird would never ask _him who had made the bargain_. Thus far, he flattered himself, he had not strayed from the straight and narrow path of strict veracity, and he hoped he would not have to. To obviate this, he decided to get rid of The Laird immediately; so he affected embarrassment; fussed with the pile of mail on his desk, and growled: "All right, boss. If you're satisfied, I am. I haven't been able to sleep very well since I started mixing in your family affairs, and without sleep a man cannot hold up his job. I've got a lot of work to do, and I cannot have any idle, interfering fellows stampeding round my office; so I suggest that you run up to The Dreamerie to break the good news to your poor wife and the girls, and let me get something done." "All right, Andrew; I'll go in a minute. Er--ah--you're certain, Andrew, the girl understands quite thoroughly that I haven't had a thing to do with bringing her back to Port Agnew?" The Laird smote the desk resolutely; he desired to be absolutely certain of his ground. Mr. Daney looked up with a slight frown. "I'll answer your question with another. Have you seen and talked with Nan Brent this morning?" "Yes. I did--the minute she entered Donald's room." "And you demanded a show-down then and there?" Parenthetically it may be stated that Mr. Daney's intimate knowledge of The Laird's character prompted this question. He was certain of an affirmative reply. "I did." "And her answer was satisfactory?" "Absolutely!" "So I judged from the fact that you shook hands with me upon entering my office. I had expected nothing more nor less than instant dismissal.... Well, since you desire the girl's testimony confirmed, I repeat that she came out here on the distinct understanding that Donald's family had not receded from its original position. This is a business trip, pure and simple, in so far as the McKaye family is concerned, although I grant you there is a heap of sentiment on Nan's part--at least sufficient to persuade her to do anything for the boy's sake. She places his welfare above her own." The Laird nodded. "The girl is capable of doing the most unexpected things, Andrew. I really think she'll play the game. When she told me what her intentions were, I believe she stated the absolute truth." "Well, let us hope she doesn't change them, sir. Remember, she has no more intention of marrying him this morning than she had when she fled from Port Agnew. I was certain of that when listening to her on the telephone the other night. However, sir, I want to go on record, here and now, as disclaiming responsibility for anything that may occur hereafter. I am not the seventh son of a seventh son, and neither was I born with a caul. Hence, I do not pretend to foretell future events with any degree of exactitude. I simply guarantee you, sir, that the girl realizes that you have had nothing whatsoever, directly or indirectly, to do with the request for her return. Also, I give you my word of honor that I have not made her a single promise--directly or indirectly." "Well, I am relieved. I dreaded the thought that I might be compromised--indirectly, for, as you well know, Andrew, I have a repugnance to asking favors from anybody to whom I am not prepared to grant them. My son is my chief happiness. Now, if I were to ask her to save my happiness, while at the same time reserving the right to deny the girl hers--well, thank God, I'm saved that embarrassment! Thanks to you, you fox!" he added. "Bless my wicked heart! I'm glad you've gone and that I'm out of it so easy," the general manager soliloquized, as the door closed behind The Laird. He reached for the telephone and called Mrs. McKaye at The Dreamerie. "Your husband is on his way home, Mrs. McKaye," he advised her. "The girl is here, The Laird has met her and talked with her and is quite happy over the situation. However, I want to warn you that you will avoid unpleasantness by keeping from him the fact that you asked the Brent girl to come back to Port Agnew. He thinks I did that, and I have not seen fit, for reasons of my own, to deny it." "Why, I asked you not to tell him, Andrew," she replied, surprised that he should forget it. "I know. But you had planned to tell him yourself if, after the girl had arrived, you discovered he was secretly pleased that she had come." "Yes; that is true. However, since you say Hector is quite pleased with the situation, why should I not tell him, Andrew?" "I have a suspicion the news will trouble him. He is quite willing to accept of the girl's services, as it were, but not at the behest of any member of his family. Better hear what he has to say on the subject before you commit yourself, Mrs. McKaye." "Oh, I think I can be depended upon to manage Hector," she replied confidently, and hung up, for already through the window she could see The Laird's car taking the grade up Tyee Head. He arrived a few minutes later and entered smilingly, rubbing his hands as indicative of his entire satisfaction with the universe as constituted that morning. "My dears, I have wonderful news for you!" he announced. Elizabeth, warned by her mother of the impending announcement, and already in the latter's confidence regarding the long-distance conversation with Nan Brent, interrupted him. She was a born actress. "Oh, do tell us quickly, daddy dear," she gushed, and flew to throw her arms round his neck. Over his shoulder she winked at Jane and her mother and grimaced knowingly. "Donald's going to pull through. The doctors feel certain he'll take in the slack on his life-line, now that the Brent girl has suddenly turned up. In fact, the lad has been holding his own since he received a telegram from her some days back. I didn't tell you about that, my dears, not being desirous of worrying you; and since it was no doings of mine, I saw it could not be helped, and we'd have to make the best of it." "Oh, daddy! How could you? That's perfectly dreadful news!" the artful Elizabeth cried, while her mother raised her eyes resignedly upward and clasped her hands so tightly that they trembled. The Laird thought his wife sought comfort from above; had he known that she had just delivered a sincere vote of thanks, he would not have hugged her to his heart, as he forthwith proceeded to do. "Now, now, Nellie, my dear," he soothed her, "it's all for the best. Don't cross your bridges before you come to them. Wait till I tell you everything. That fox, Daney, had the common sense to call the girl on the telephone and explain the situation; he induced her to come out here and tease that soft-hearted moonstruck son of ours back to life. And when Donald's strong enough to stand alone--by Jupiter, that's exactly how he's going to stand!--We're not the slightest bit compromised, my dears. The McKaye family is absolutely in the clear. The girl has done this solely for Donald's sake." "Hector McKaye," Jane declared, "you've really got to do something very handsome for Andrew Daney." "Yes, indeed," Elizabeth cooed. "Dear, capable, faithful Andrew!" Mrs. McKaye sighed. "Ah, he's a canny lad, is Andrew," old Hector declared happily. "He took smart care not to compromise me, for well he knows my code. When I rejected his suggestion that I send for the lass, Andrew knew why without asking foolish questions. Well, he realized that if I should ask her to come and save my son, I would not be unfair enough to tell her later that she was not a fit wife for that son. As a matter o' manly principle, I would have had to withdraw my opposition, and Donald could wed her if he liked and with my blessing, for all the bitter cost. I did not build The Dreamerie with the thought that Donald would bring a wife like this Brent lass home to live in it, but--God be thanked!--the puir bairn loves him too well to ruin him--" He broke off, wiping his eyes, moist now with the pressure of his emotions, and while he was wiping them, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters exchanged frightened glances. Elizabeth's penchant for ill-timed humor disappeared; she stood, alert and awed, biting her lip. Jane's eyebrows went up in quick warning to her mother, who paled and flushed alternately. The latter understood now why Andrew Daney had taken the precaution to warn her against the danger of conjugal confidences in the matter of Nan Brent; devoutly she wished she had had the common sense to have left those delicate negotiations entirely in the hands of dear, capable, faithful Andrew, for, delicate as they had been, she realized now, when it was too late, that in all probability Mr. Daney, although a mere man, would have concluded them without compromising the McKaye family. Surely he would have had the good taste to assure Nan that he was acting entirely upon his own initiative. On the instant, Mrs. McKaye hated the unfortunate general manager. She told herself that, had he been possessed of the brains of a chipmunk, he would have pointed out to her the danger of her course; that he had not done so was proof that the craven had feared to compromise himself. He had made a cat's-paw of her, that's what he had done! He had taken advantage of a momentary lack of caution--the result of her impetuous mother love. Ah, what a blockhead the man was, not to have warned her of the diplomatic dangers she was risking! At that moment, placid Nellie McKaye could have shrieked with fury; it would have been a relief to her if she could have stuck her hatpin in that monumental chucklehead, Daney. Like so many of her sex, the good lady's code of sportsmanship was a curious one, to say the least. It had not been prudence but an instinctive desire to protect her son that had moved her to be careful when begging Nan to return to Port Agnew, to indicate that this request predicated no retirement from the resolute stand which the family had taken against the latter's alliance with Donald. In a hazy, indefinite way, she had realized the importance of nullifying any tendency on her part to compromise herself or her family by the mere act of telephoning to Nan, and with the unintentional brutality of a not very intelligent, tactless woman she had taken this means of protection. Curiously enough, it had not occurred to her until this moment that she had done something shameful and cruel and stupid and unwomanly. She shriveled mentally in the contemplation of it. Not until her husband had so unexpectedly revealed to her a hitherto hidden facet of his character--his masculine code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth--did she realize how dreadfully she had blundered. She realized now that, without having given the slightest thought to the commission of an act unworthy of her womanhood, she had acted because, to her, the end appeared to justify the means; never given to self-analysis, she had merely followed the imperative call of her mother love to the point where nothing mattered save results. She looked up tearfully at The Laird. For thirty-odd years she had lived with this strange soul; yet she had not known until now how fierce was his desire for independence, how dear to him was his passion for self-respect. Even now, she found it difficult to understand why, even if he had been able to subdue his pride to the point of asking Nan Brent to preserve life in that which was dearer to him than his own life, his passion for always giving value received should preclude bargaining with the girl. It was plain to her, therefore, that her husband could never love their son as his mother loved him, else, in a matter of life or death, he would not have paused to consider the effect on himself of any action that might safeguard his son's existence. She knew what he had thought when Daney first proposed the matter to him. That sort of thing wasn't "playing the game." Poor, troubled soul! She did not know that he was capable of playing any game to the finish, even though every point scored against him should burn like a branding-iron. The Laird, noting her great distress, held her fondly in his arms and soothed her; manlike, he assumed that she wept because her heart was overflowing with joy. For half an hour he chatted with her; then, with a light step and a cheerful "Good-by, Nellie, wife," he entered his automobile and drove back to town. His departure was the signal for Jane and Elizabeth to rally to their mother's side and inaugurate a plan of defense. "Well, mother dear," Elizabeth opined calmly, "it appears that you've spilled the beans." "What a funny old popsy-wops it is, to be sure!" Jane chirped. "It's fine to be such a grand old sport, but so dreadfully inconvenient! Beth, can you imagine what father McKaye would say if he only knew?" "I wouldn't mind the things he'd say. The things he'd do would be apt to linger longest in our memories." "Oh, my dears, what shall I do?" poor Mrs. McKaye quavered. "Stand pat, should necessity ever arise, and put the buck up to Mr. Daney," the slangy Elizabeth suggested promptly. "He has warned you not to confess to father, hasn't he? Now, why did he do this? Answer. Because he realized that if dad should learn that you telephoned this odious creature from the Sawdust Pile, the head of our clan would consider himself compromised--bound by the action of a member of his clan, as it were. Then we'll have a wedding and after the wedding we'll all be thrown out of The Dreamerie to make room for Master Don and his consort. So, it appears to me, since Mr. Daney has warned you not to tell, mother dear, that he cannot afford to tell on you himself--no, not even to save his own skin." "You do not understand, Elizabeth," Mrs. McKaye sobbed. "It isn't because that stupid Andrew cares a snap of his finger for us; it's because he's devoted to Hector and doesn't want him worried or made unhappy." And in this observation, it is more than probable that the lady spoke more truly than she realized. "Oh, well, if that's the case, it's all as clear as mud!" Jane cried triumphantly. "If the worst should ever come to the worst, Mr. Daney will lie like a gentleman and--why, he has already done so, silly! Of course he has, and it's rather gallant of him to do it, I think." "He's an imbecile, and why Hector has employed him all these years--why he trusts him so implicitly, I'm sure I am at a loss to comprehend." Mrs. McKaye complained waspishly. "Dear, capable, faithful Andrew!" Elizabeth mimicked her mother's speech earlier in the day. "Cheer up, ma! Cherries are ripe." She snapped her fingers, swayed her lithe body, and undulated gracefully to the piano, where she brought both hands down on the keys with a crash, and played ragtime with feverish fury for five minutes. Then, her impish nature asserting itself, she literally smashed out the opening bars of the Wedding March from Lohengrin, and shouted with glee when her mother, a finger in each ear, fled from the room. XXXIV Mr. Daney worked through a stack of mail with his stenographer, dismissed her, and, in the privacy of his sanctum, lighted his pipe and proceeded to mend his fences. In the discretion of the chief operator at the telephone exchange, he had great confidence; in that of Mrs. McKaye, none at all. He believed that the risk of having the secret leak out through Nan herself was a negligible one, and, of course (provided he did not talk in his sleep) the reason for Nan's return was absolutely safe with him. Indeed, the very fact that The Laird had demanded and received an explanation from the girl would indicate to Nan that Mrs. McKaye had acted on her own initiative; hence, Nan would, in all probability, refrain from disclosing this fact to The Laird in any future conversations. Reasoning further, Daney concluded there would be no future conversations. The Laird, following his usual custom of refraining from discussing a subject already settled to his satisfaction, could be depended upon to avoid a discussion of any kind with Nan Brent in future, for such discussions would not be to his interest, and he was singularly adept in guarding that interest. His cogitations were interrupted by a telephone-call from Mrs. McKaye. The good soul's first gust of resentment having passed, she desired to thank him for his timely warning and to assure him that, on the subject of that transcontinental telephone-conversation she and her daughters could be depended upon to remain as silent as the Sphinx. This information relieved Mr. Daney greatly. "After all," he confided to the cuspidor, "it is up to the girl whether we fish or cut bait. But then, what man in his senses can trust a woman to stay put. Females are always making high dives into shoal water, and those tactless McKaye women are going to smear everything up yet. You wait and see." The longer Mr. Daney considered this situation, the more convinced did he become that mischief was brewing. Did not periods of seraphic calm always precede a tornado? In the impending social explosion, a few hard missiles would most certainly come his way, and in a sudden agony of apprehension and shame because he had told The Laird a half-truth, he sprang to his feet, resolved to seek old Hector, inform him that Mrs. McKaye had compromised the family, and thus enable him to meet the issue like a gentleman. But this decision was succeeded by the reflection that perhaps this action would merely serve to precipitate a situation that might not be evolved in the ordinary course of affairs. Furthermore, he could not afford to betray Mrs. McKaye on the mere suspicion that, sooner or later, she would betray herself, for this would savor of too much anxiety to save his own skin at her expense. "I'm a singularly unhappy old duffer," he groaned and kicked his inoffending waste-basket across the office. "The females! The mischief-making, bungling, thoughtless, crazy females! There are millions of wonderful, angelic women in this terrible world, but what I want to know is: Where the Sam Hill do they hide themselves?" XXXV Nan did not remain at the hospital more than fifteen minutes. She was ill at ease there; it was no comfort to her to gaze upon the pallid, wasted face of the man she loved when she realized that, by her presence here, she was constituting herself a party to a heart-breaking swindle, and must deny herself the joy of gazing upon that same beloved countenance when, later, it should be glowing with health and youth and high hopes. He was too weak to speak more than a few words to her. The faintest imaginable pressure of his hand answered the pressure of hers. It appeared to be a tremendous effort for him to open his eyes and look up at her. When, however, he had satisfied his swimming senses that she was really there in the flesh, he murmured: "You'll not--run away--again? Promise?" "I promise, dear. The next time I leave Port Agnew, I'll say good-by." "You must not--leave--again. Promise?" She knew his life might be the reward of a kindly lie; so she told it, bravely and without hesitation. Was she not there for that purpose? "Good--news! If I get--well, will you--marry me, Nan?" She choked up then; nevertheless, she nodded. "More good--news! Wait for me--Sawdust Pile--sweetheart." She interpreted this as a dismissal, and gratefully made her exit. From the hospital office she telephoned orders to the butcher, the baker, the grocer, and the milkman, forcibly separated little Don from the nurse, and walked down through Port Agnew to the Sawdust Pile. The old-fashioned garden welcomed her with its fragrance; her cat, which she had been unable to give away and had not the heart to destroy at the time of her departure, came to the little white gate to meet her and rubbed against her, purring contentedly--apparently none the worse for a month of vagabondage and richer by a litter of kittens that blinked at Nan from under the kitchen stoop. From across the Bight of Tyee, the morning breeze brought her the grateful odor of the sea, while the white sea-gulls, prinking themselves on the pile-butts at the outer edge of the Sawdust Pile, raised raucous cries at her approach and hopped toward her in anticipation of the scraps she had been wont to toss them. She resurrected the key from its hiding-place under the eaves, and her hot tears fell so fast that it was with difficulty she could insert it in the door. Poor derelict on the sea of life, she had gone out with the ebb and had been swept back on the flood, to bob around for a little while in the cross-currents of human destinies before going out again with the ebb. The air in the little house was hot and fetid; so she threw open the doors and windows. Dust had accumulated everywhere and, with a certain detachment, she noted, even in her distress, that she had gone away without closing the great square piano. She ran her fingers over the dusty keys and brought forth a few, sonorous chords; then she observed that the little, ancient, half-portion grandfather's clock had died of inanition; so she made a mental note to listen for the twelve-o'clock whistle on the Tyee mill and set the clock by it. The spigot over the kitchen sink was leaking a little, and it occurred to her, in the same curious detached way, that it needed a new gasket. She sighed. Once more, in this silent little house so fraught with happy memories, the old burden of existence was bearing upon her--the feeling that she was in jail. For a month she had been free--free to walk the streets, to look in shop windows, to seek a livelihood and talk to other human beings without that terrible feeling that, no matter how pleasant they might appear to be, their eyes were secretly appraising her--that they were _thinking_. And now to be forced to abandon that freedom-- "Oh, well! It can't last forever," she soliloquized, and, blinking away her tears, she proceeded to change into a house dress and put her little home in order. Presently, the local expressman arrived with her baggage and was followed by sundry youths bearing sundry provisions; at twelve-thirty, when she and young Don sat down to the luncheon she had prepared, her flight to New York and return appeared singularly unreal, like the memory of a dream. She visited the hospital next day, choosing an hour when Port Agnew was at its evening meal and too preoccupied with that important detail to note her coming and going. She returned to her home under cover of darkness. At the hospital, she had received a favorable report of the patient's progress. His physicians were distinctly encouraged. Nan looked in on her lover for a minute, and then hurried away on the plea that her baby was locked in at the Sawdust Pile, in the absence of some one to care for him; she had the usual maternal presentiment that he was playing with matches. As she was going out she met The Laird and Mrs. McKaye coming in. Old Hector lifted his hat and said quite heartily: "How do you do, my dear girl. The news this evening is most encouraging--thanks to you, I'm told--so we are permitted to see Donald for five minutes. Nellie, my dear, you remember little Nan Brent, do you not?" Mrs. McKaye's handsome mouth contracted in a small, automatic smile that did not extend to her eyes. She acknowledged Nan's "Good-evening, Mrs. McKaye," with a brief nod, and again favored the girl with another property smile, between the coming and going of which her teeth flashed with the swiftness of the opening and closing of a camera shutter. "We are _so_ grateful to you, Miss Brent," she murmured. And then, womanlike, her alert brown eyes, starting their appraisal at Nan's shoes, roved swiftly and calmly upward, noting every item of her dress, every soft seductive curve of her healthy young body. Her glance came to a rest on the girl's face, and for the space of several seconds they looked at each other frankly while old Hector was saying: "Aye, grateful indeed, Nan. We shall never be out of your debt. There are times when a kindness and a sacrifice are all the more welcome because unexpected, and we had no right to expect this of you. God bless you, my dear, and remember--I am always your friend." "Yes, indeed," his wife murmured, in a voice that, lacking his enthusiasm, conveyed to Nan the information that The Laird spoke for himself. She tugged gently at her husband's arm; again the automatic smile; with a cool: "Good-night, Miss Brent. Thank you again--_so_ much," she propelled The Laird toward the hospital entrance. He obeyed promptly, glad to escape a situation that was painful to him, for he had realized that which his wife did not credit him with having sufficiently acute perception to realize--to-wit, that his wife's camouflage was somewhat frayed and poorly manufactured. _She had not played the game with him_. It would have cost her nothing to have been as kindly and sincere as he had been toward this unfortunate girl; nevertheless, while he had sensed her deficiency, his wife had carried the affair off so well that he could not advance a sound argument to convince her of it. So he merely remarked dryly as the hospital door closed behind them: "Nellie, I'm going to propound a conundrum for you. Why did your greeting of the Brent girl remind me of that Louis Quinze tapestry for which you paid sixty thousand francs the last time you were abroad?" "I loathe conundrums, Hector," she replied coldly. "I do not care to guess the answer." "The answer is: Not quite genuine," he retorted mildly, and said no more about it. After that visit, Nan went no more to the hospital. She had met Donald's mother for the first time in four years and had been greeted as "Miss Brent," although in an elder day when, as a child, Donald had brought her to The Dreamerie to visit his mother and sisters, and later when she had sung in the local Presbyterian choir, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters had been wont to greet her as "Nan." The girl did not relish the prospect of facing again that camera-shutter smile and she shrank with the utmost distress from a chance meeting at the hospital with Elizabeth or Jane McKaye. As for The Laird, while she never felt ill at ease in his presence, still she preferred to meet him as infrequently as possible. As a result of this decision, she wrote Andrew Daney, and after explaining to him what she intended doing and why, asked him if he would not send some trustworthy person to her every evening with a report of Donald's progress. Accordingly, Dirty Dan O'Leary, hat in hand and greatly embarrassed, presented himself at the Sawdust Pile the following evening under cover of darkness, and handed her a note from Daney. Donald's condition was continuing to improve. For his services, Mr. O'Leary was duly thanked and given a bouquet from Nan's old-fashioned garden for presentation to the invalid. Tucked away in the heart of it was a tiny envelop that enclosed a message of love and cheer. Dirty Dan was thrilled to think that he had been selected as the intermediary in this secret romance. Clasping the bouquet in his grimy left hand, he bowed low and placed his equally grimy right in the region of his umbilicus. "Me hearrt's wit' ye, agra," he declared. "Sure 'tis to the divil an' back agin I'd be the proud man to go, if 'twould be a favor to ye, Miss Brint." "I know you would, Dan," she agreed, tactfully setting the wild rascal at his ease when addressing him by his Christian name. "I know what you did for Mr. Donald that night. I think you're very, very wonderful. I haven't had an opportunity heretofore to tell you how grateful I am to you for saving him." Here was a mystery! Mr. O'Leary in his Sunday clothes bound for Ireland resembled Dirty Dan O'Leary in the raiment of a lumberjack, his wild hair no longer controlled by judicious applications of pomade and his mustache now--alas--returned to its original state of neglect, as a butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Without pausing to consider this, Dirty Dan, taking the license of a more or less privileged character, queried impudently: "An' are ye glad they sint for ye to come back?" She decided that Mr. O'Leary was inclined to be familiar; so she merely looked at him and her cool glance chilled him. "Becuz if ye are," he continued, embarrassed, "ye have me to thank for it. 'Tis meself that knows a thing or two wit'out bein' told. Have ye not been surprised that they knew so well where to find ye whin they wanted ye?" She stared at him in frank amazement. "Yes, I have been tremendously interested in learning the secret of their marvelous perspicacity." "I supplied Misther Daney wit' your address, allanah." "How did you know it? Did The Laird--" "He did not. I did it all be mesel'. Ah, 'tis the romantic divil I am, Miss Brint. Sure I got a notion ye were runnin' away an' says I to meself, says I: 'I don't like this idjee at all, at all. These mysterious disappearances are always leadin' to throuble.' Sure, what if somebody should die an' lave ye a fortun'? What good would it be to ye if nobody could find ye? An' in back o' that agin," he assured her cunningly, "I realized what a popular laddy buck I'd be wit' Misther Donald if I knew what he didn't know but was wishful o' knowin'?" "But how did you procure my address in New York?" she demanded. "Now, I'm a wise man, but if I towld ye that, ye'd be as wise as I am. An' since 'twould break me heart to think anybody in Port Agnew could be as wise as mesel', ye'll have to excuse me from blatherin' all I know." "Oh, but you must tell me, Dan. There are reasons why I should know, and you wouldn't refuse to set my mind at ease, would you?" Dirty Dan grinned and played his ace. "If ye'll sing 'The Low-backed Car' an' 'She Moved Through the Fair' I'll tell ye," he promised. "Sure I listened to ye the night o' the battle, an' so close to death was I, sure I fought 'twas an angel from glory singing'. Troth, I did." She sat down, laughing, at the antiquated piano, and sang him the songs he loved; then, because she owed him a great debt she sang for him "Kathleen Mavourneen," "Pretty Molly Brannigan," "The Harp That Once Thro' Tara's Halls," and "Killarney." Dan stood just outside the kitchen door, not presuming to enter, and when the last song was finished, he had tears in his piggy little eyes; so he fled with the posies, nor tarried to thank her and wish her a pleasant good-night. Neither did he keep his promise by telling her how he came to know her New York address. "Let me hear anny blackguard mintion that one's name wit' a lack o' respect," Mr. O'Leary breathed, as he crossed the vacant lots, "an' I'll break the back o' him in two halves! Whirro-o-o! Sure I'd make a mummy out o' him!" XXXVI A month passed, and to the Sawdust Pile one evening, instead of Dirty Dan, there came another messenger. It was Mr. Daney. To Nan's invitation to enter and be seated, he gave ready acceptance; once seated, however, he showed indubitable evidence of uneasiness, and that he was the bearer of news of more than ordinary interest was apparent by the nervous manner in which he twirled his hat and scattered over her clean floor a quantity of sawdust which had accumulated under the rim during his peregrinations round the mill that day. "Well, Nan, he went home to The Dreamerie this afternoon," the general manager began presently. "Got up and dressed himself unaided, and insisted on walking out to the car without assistance. He's back on a solid diet now, and the way he's filling up the chinks in his superstructure is a sight to marvel at. I expect he'll be back on the job within a month." "That is wonderful news, Mr. Daney." "Of course," Daney continued, "his hair is falling out, and he'll soon be as bald as a Chihuahua dog. But--it'll grow in again. Yes, indeed. It'll grow in." "Oh dear! I do hope it will grow out," she bantered, in an effort to put him at his ease. "What a pity if his illness should leave poor Don with a head like a thistle--with all the fuzzy-wuzzy inside." He laughed. "I'm glad to find you in such good spirits, Nan, because I've called to talk business. And, for some reason or other, I do not relish my job." "Then, suppose I dismiss you from this particular job, Mr. Daney. Suppose I decline to discuss business." "Oh, but business is something that has to be discussed sooner or later," he asured her, on the authority of one whose life had been dedicated to that exacting duty. "I suppose you've kept track of your expenses since you left New York. That, of course, will include the outlay for your living-expenses while here, and in order to make doubly certain that we are on the safe side, I am instructed to double this total to cover the additional expenses of your return to New York. And if you will set a value upon your lost time from the day you left New York until your return, both days inclusive, I will include that in the check also." "Suppose I should charge you one thousand dollars a day for my lost time," she suggested curiously. "I should pay it without the slightest quibble. The Laird would be delighted to get off so cheaply. He feels himself obligated to you for returning to Port Agnew--" "Did The Laird send you here to adjust these financial details with me, Mr. Daney?" "He did not. The matter is entirely in my hands. Certainly, in all justice, you should be reimbursed for the expenses of a journey voluntarily incurred for the McKaye benefit." "Did he say so?" "No. But I know him so well that I have little difficulty in anticipating his desires. I am acting under Mrs. McKaye's promise to you over the telephone to reimburse you." "I am glad to know that, Mr. Daney. I have a very high regard for Donald's father, and I should not care to convict him of an attempt to settle with me on a cash basis for declining to marry his son. I wish you would inform The Laird, Mr. Daney, that what I did was done because it pleased me to do it for his sake and Donald's. They have been at some pains, throughout the years, to be kind to the Brents, but, unfortunately for the Brents, opportunities for reciprocity have always been lacking until the night Mrs. McKaye telephoned me in New York. I cannot afford the gratification of very many desires--even very simple ones, Mr. Daney--but this happens to be one of the rare occasions when I can. To quote Sir Anthony Gloster, 'Thank God I can pay for my fancies!' The Laird doesn't owe me a dollar, and I beg you, Mr. Daney, not to distress me by offering it." "But, my dear girl, it has cost you at least five hundred dollars--" "What a marvelous sunset we had this evening, Mr. Daney. Did you observe it? My father always maintained that those curious clouds predicated sou'west squalls." "I didn't come here, girl, to talk about sunsets. You're foolish if you do not accept--" The outcast of Port Agnew turned upon Mr. Daney a pair of sea-blue eyes that flashed dangerously. "I think I have paid my debt to the McKayes," she declared, and in her calm voice there was a sibilant little note of passion. "Indeed, I have a slight credit-balance due me, and though Mrs. McKaye and her daughters cannot bring themselves to the point of acknowledging this indebtedness, I must insist upon collecting it. In view of the justice of my claim, however, I cannot stultify my womanhood by permitting the McKaye women to think they can dismiss the obligation by writing a check. I am not an abandoned woman, Mr. Daney. I have sensibilities and, strange to relate, I, too, have pride--more than the McKayes I think sometimes. It is possible to insult me, to hurt me, and cause me to suffer cruelty, and I tell you, Mr. Daney, I would rather lie down and die by the roadside than accept one penny of McKaye money." Mr. Daney stared at her, visibly distressed. "Why, what's happened?" he blurted. She ignored him. "I repeat that The Laird owes me nothing--not even his thanks. I met him one night with Mrs. McKaye on the hospital steps, and he tendered me his meed of gratitude like the splendid gentleman he is." "Oh, I see!" A great light had suddenly dawned on Mr. Daney. "The Laird led trumps, but Nellie McKaye revoked and played a little deuce?" "Well, Mr. Daney, it seemed to me she fumbled the ball, to employ a sporting metaphor. She bowed to me--like this--and smiled at me--like that!" Her cool, patronizing nod and the sudden contraction and relaxation of Nan's facial muscles brought a wry smile to old Daney's stolid countenance. "Even if I felt that I could afford to or was forced to accept reimbursement for my expenses and lost time," Nan resumed, "her action precluded it. Can't you realize that, Mr. Daney? And Jane and Elizabeth went her one--no, two--better. I'm going to tell you about it. I went up-town the other day to send a telegram, and in the telegraph-office I met Donald's sisters. I knew they would not care to have me speak to them in public, so, when the telegrapher wasn't looking at me and intuition told me that Elizabeth and Jane were, I glanced up and favored them with a very small but very polite smile of recognition." "And then," quoted Mr. Daney, reaching into his ragbag of a mind and bringing up a remnant of Shakespeare, "'there came a frost--a killing frost!'" "Two hundred and forty-five degrees below zero, and not even a stick of kindling in the wood-box," she assured him humorously. "They looked at me, through me, over me, beyond me--" "And never batted an eye?" "Not even the flicker of an eyelash." His canine loyalty bade Mr. Daney defend The Laird's ewe lambs. "Well, maybe they didn't recognize you," he protested. "A good deal of water has run under a number of bridges since the McKaye girls saw you last." "In that event, Mr. Daney, I charge that their manners would have been extremely bad. I know town dogs that smile at me when I smile at them. However, much as I would like to assure you that they didn't know me, I must insist, Mr. Daney, that they did." "Well, now, how do you know, Nan?" "A little devil took possession of me, Mr. Daney, and inspired me to smoke them out. I walked up and held out my hand to Jane. 'How do you do, Jane,' I said. 'I'm Nan Brent. Have you forgotten me?'" Mr. Daney raised both arms toward the ceiling. "'Oh, God! cried the woodcock,--and away he flew!' What did the chit say?" "She said, 'Why, not at all,' and turned her back on me. I then proffered Elizabeth a similar greeting and said, 'Surely, Elizabeth, _you_ haven't forgotten me!' Elizabeth is really funny. She replied: 'So sorry! I've always been absent-minded!' She looked at me steadily with such a cool mirth in her eyes--she has nice eyes, too--and I must have had mirth in mine, also, because I remember that at precisely that minute I thought up a perfectly wonderful joke on Elizabeth and Jane and their mother. Of course, the poor Laird will not see the point of the joke, but then he's the innocent bystander, and innocent bystanders are always, getting hurt." "Ah, do not hurt him!" Daney pleaded anxiously. "He's a good, kind, manly gentleman. Spare him! Spare him, my dear!" "Oh, I wouldn't hurt him, Mr. Daney, if I did not know I had the power to heal his hurts." Suddenly she commenced to laugh, albeit there was in her laugh a quality which almost caused Mr. Daney to imagine that he had hackles on his back and that they were rising. He much preferred the note of anger of a few minutes previous; with a rush all of his old apprehensions returned, and he rasped out at her irritably: "Well, well! What's this joke, anyhow? Tell me and perhaps I may laugh, too." "Oh, no, Mr. Daney, you'd never laugh at this one. You'd weep." "Try me." "Very well. You will recall, Mr. Daney, that when Mrs. McKaye rang me up in New York, she was careful, even while asking me to return, to let me know my place?" "Yes, yes. I was listening on the line. I heard her, and I thought she was a bit raw. But no matter. Proceed." "Well, since she asked me to return to Port Agnew, I'm wondering who is going to ask me to go away again?" "I'll be shot if I will! Ha! Ha! Ha!" And Mr. Daney threw back his head and laughed the most enjoyable laugh he had known since the night an itinerant hypnotist, entertaining the citizens of Port Agnew, had requested any adventurous gentleman in the audience who thought he couldn't be hypnotized, to walk up and prove it. Dirty Dan O'Leary had volunteered, had been mesmerized after a struggle, and, upon being told that he was Dick Whittington's cat, had proceeded to cut some feline capers that would have tickled the sensibilities of a totem-pole. Mr. Daney's honest cachinnations now were so infectious that Nan commenced to laugh with him--heartily, but no longer with that strident little note of resentment, and cumulatively, as Mr. Daney's mirth mounted until the honest fellow's tears cascaded across his ruddy cheeks. "Egad, Nan," he declared presently, "but you have a rare sense of humor! Yes, do it. Do it! Make 'em all come down--right here to the Sawdust Pile! Make 'em remember you--all three of 'em--make 'em say please! Yes, sir! 'Please Nan, forgive me for forgetting. Please Nan, forgive me for smiling like the head of an old fiddle. Please, Nan, get out of Port Agnew, so we can sleep nights. Please, Nan, be careful not to say "Good-by." Please, Nan, knock out a couple of your front teeth and wear a black wig and a sunbonnet, so nobody'll recognize you when you leave, follow you, and learn your address.'" He paused to wipe his eyes. "Why, dog my cats, girl, you've got 'em where the hair is short; so make 'em toe the scratch!" "Well, of course," Nan reminded him, "they are not likely to toe the scratch unless they receive a hint that toeing scratches is going to be fashionable in our best Port Agnew circles this winter." Mr. Daney arched his wild eyebrows, pursed his lips, popped his eyes, and looked at Nan over the rims of his spectacles. "Very well, my dear girl, I'll be the goat. A lesson in humility will not be wasted on certain parties. But suppose they object? Suppose they buck and pitch and sidestep and bawl and carry on? What then?" "Why," Nan replied innocently, regarding him in friendly fashion with those wistful blue eyes, "you might hint that I'm liable to go to The Laird and tell him I regard him as a very poor sport, indeed, to expect me to give up his son, in view of the fact that his son's mother sent for me to save that son's life. Do you know, dear Mr. Daney, I suspect that if The Laird knew his wife had compromised him so, he would be a singularly wild Scot!" "Onward, Christian soldier, marching as to war!" cried Mr. Daney, and, seizing his hat from the table, he fled into the night. XXXVII Upon reaching his home, Mr. Daney telephoned to Mrs. McKaye. "It is important," he informed her, "that you, Miss Jane and Miss Elizabeth come down to my office to-morrow for a conference. I would come up to The Dreamerie to see you, but Donald is home now, and his father will be with him; so I would prefer to see you down-town. I have some news of interest for you." The hint of news of interest was sufficient to secure from Mrs. McKaye a promise to call at his office with the girls at ten o'clock the following morning. "What is this interesting news, Andrew?" Mrs. Daney asked, with well-simulated disinterestedness. She was knitting for the French War-Relief Committee a pair of those prodigious socks with which well-meaning souls all over these United States have inspired many a poor little devil of a _poilu_ with the thought that the French must be regarded by us as a Brobdingnagian race. "We're arranging a big blowout, unknown to The Laird and Donald, to celebrate the boy's return to health. I'm planning to shut down the mill and the logging-camps for three days," he replied glibly. Of late he was finding it much easier to lie to her than to tell the truth, and he had observed with satisfaction that Mrs. Daney's bovine brain assimilated either with equal avidity. "How perfectly lovely!" she cooed, and dropped a stitch which later would be heard from on the march, in the shape of a blister on a Gallic heel. "You're so thoughtful and kind, Andrew! Sometimes I wonder if the McKayes really appreciate your worth." "Well, we'll see," he answered enigmatically and went off to bed. It was with a feeling of alert interest that he awaited in his office, the following morning, the arrival of the ladies from The Dreamerie. They arrived half an hour late, very well content with themselves and the world in general, and filling Mr. Daney's office with the perfume of their presence. They appeared to be in such good fettle, indeed, that Mr. Daney took a secret savage delight in dissipating their nonchalance. "Well, ladies," he began, "I decided yesterday that it was getting along toward the season of the year when my thoughts stray as usual toward the Sawdust Pile as a drying-yard. So I went down to see if Nan Brent had abandoned it again--and sure enough, she hadn't." He paused exasperatingly, after the fashion of an orator who realizes that he has awakened in his audience an alert and respectful interest. "Fine kettle of fish brewing down there," he resumed darkly, and paused again, glanced at the ceiling critically as if searching for leaks, smacked his lips and murmured confidentially a single word: "Snag!" "'Snag!'" In chorus. "Snag! In some unaccountable manner, it appears that you three ladies have aroused in Nan Brent a spirit of antagonism--" "Nonsense!" "The idea!" "Fiddlesticks!" "I state the condition as I found it. I happen to know that the girl possesses sufficient means to permit her to live at the Sawdust Pile for a year at least." "But isn't she going away?" Mrs. McKaye's voice rose sharply. "Is she going to break her bargain?" "Oh, I think not, Mrs. McKaye. She merely complained to me that somebody begged her to come back to Port Agnew; so she's waiting for somebody to come down to the Sawdust Pile and beg her to go away again. She's inclined to be capricious about it, too. One person isn't enough. She wants three people to call, and she insists that they be--ah--ladies!" "Good gracious, Andrew, you don't mean it?" "I am delivering a message, Mrs. McKaye." "She must be spoofing you," Jane declared. "Well, she laughed a good deal about it, Miss Jane, and confided to me that a bit of lurking devil in your sister's eyes the day you both met her in the telegraph office gave her the inspiration for this joke. She believes that she who laughs last laughs best." Mrs. McKaye was consumed with virtuous indignation. "The shameless hussy! Does she imagine for a moment that I will submit to blackmail, that my daughters or myself could afford to be seen calling upon her at the Sawdust Pile?" "She wants to force us to recognize her, mother." Jane, recalling that day in the telegraph-office, sat staring at Daney with flashing eyes. She was biting the finger of her glove. "Nothing doing," Elizabeth drawled smilingly. Mr. Daney nodded his comprehension. "In that event, ladies," he countered, with malignant joy in his suppressed soul, "I am requested to remind you that The Laird will be informed by Miss Brent that she considers him a very short sport, indeed, if he insists upon regarding her as unworthy of his son, in view of the fact that his son's mother considered her a person of such importance that she used the transcontinental telephone in order to induce--" "Yes, yes; I know what you're going to say. Do you really think she would go as far as that, Andrew?" Mrs. McKaye was very pale. "Beware the anger of a woman scorned," he quoted. "In the event that she should, Mr. Daney, we should have no other alternative but to deny it." Elizabeth was speaking. She still wore her impish glacial smile. "As a usual thing, we are opposed to fibbing on the high moral ground that it is not a lady's pastime, but in view of the perfectly appalling results that would follow our failure to fib in this particular case, I'm afraid we'll have to join hands, Mr. Daney, and prove Nan Brent a liar. Naturally, we count on your help. As a result of his conversation with you, father believes you did the telephoning." "I told him half the truth, but no lie. I have never lied to him, Miss Elizabeth, and I never shall. When Hector McKaye asks me for the truth, he'll get it." In Mr. Daney's voice there was a growl that spoke of slow, quiet fury at the realization that this cool young woman should presume to dictate to him. "I think you'll change your mind, Mr. Daney. You'll not refuse the hurdle when you come to it. As for this wanton Brent girl, tell her that we will think her proposition over and that she may look for a call from us. We do not care how long she looks, do we mother?" And she laughed her gay, impish laugh. "In the meantime, Mr. Daney, we will do our best to spare ourselves and you the ignominy of that fib. The doctors will order Donald away for a complete rest for six months, and dad will go with him. When they're gone that Brent house on the Sawdust Pile is going to catch fire--accidently, mysteriously. The man who scuttled the Brent's motor-boat surely will not scruple at such a simple matter as burning the Brent shanty. Come, mother. Jane, for goodness' sake, do buck up! Good-by, dear Mr. Daney." He stared at her admiringly. In Elizabeth, he discerned, for the first time, more than a modicum of her father's resolute personality; he saw clearly that she dominated her mother and Jane and, like The Laird, would carry her objective, once she decided upon it, regardless of consequences. "Good-morning, ladies. I shall repeat your message--verbatim, Miss Elizabeth," he assured the departing trio. And that night he did so. "They neglected to inform you how much time they would require to think it over, did they not?" Nan interrogated mildly. "And they didn't tell you approximately when I should look for their visit?" "No," he admitted. "Oh, I knew they wouldn't submit," Nan flung back at him. "They despise me--impersonally, at first and before it seemed that I might dim the family pride; personally, when it was apparent that I could dim it if I desired. Well, I'm tired of being looked at and sneered at, and I haven't money enough left to face New York again. I had dreamed of the kind of living I might earn, and when the opportunity to earn it was already in my grasp, I abandoned it to come back to Port Agnew. I had intended to play fair with them, although I had to lie to Donald to do that, but--they hurt something inside of me--something deep that hadn't been hurt before--and--and now--" [Illustration: "I'M A MAN WITHOUT A HOME AND YOU'VE _GOT_ TO TAKE ME IN, NAN."] "Now _what_!" Mr. Daney cried in anguished tones. "If Donald McKaye comes down to the Sawdust Pile and asks me to marry him, I'm going to do it. I have a right to happiness; I'm--I'm tired--sacrificing--Nobody cares--no appreciation--Nan of the Sawdust Pile will be--mistress of The Dreamerie--and when they--enter house of mine--they shall be--humbler than I. They shall--" As Mr. Daney fled from the house, he looked back through the little hall and saw Nan Brent seated at her tiny living-room table, her golden head pillowed in her arms outspread upon the table, her body shaken with great, passionate sobs. Mr. Daney's heart was constricted. He hadn't felt like that since the Aurora Stock Company had played "East Lynne" in the Port Agnew Opera House. XXXVIII At the Sawdust Pile the monotony of Nan Brent's life remained unbroken; she was marking time, waiting for something to turn up. Since the last visit of the McKaye ambassador she had not altered her determination to exist independent of financial aid from the McKaye women or their father,--for according to her code, the acceptance of remuneration for what she had done would be debasing. Nan had made this decision even while realizing that in waiving Mr. Daney's proffer of reimbursement she was rendering impossible a return to New York with her child. The expenses of their journey and the maintenance of their brief residence there; the outlay for clothing for both and the purchase of an additional wardrobe necessitated when, with unbelievable good luck she had succeeded in securing twenty weeks time over a high-class vaudeville circuit for her "Songs of the 'Sixties," had, together with the cost of transportation back to Port Agnew, so depleted her resources that, with the few hundred dollars remaining, her courage was not equal to the problem which unemployment in New York would present; for with the receipt of Mrs. McKaye's message, Nan had written the booking agent explaining that she had been called West on a matter which could not be evaded and expressed a hope that at a later date the "time" might be open to her. Following her return to the Sawdust Pile she had received a brief communication stating that there would be no opening for her until the following year. The abandonment of her contract and the subsequent loss of commissions to the agent had seriously peeved that person. The receipt of this news, while a severe disappointment, had not caused her to flinch, for she had, in a measure, anticipated it and with the calmness of desperation already commenced giving thought to the problem of her future existence. In the end she had comforted herself with the thought that good cooks were exceedingly scarce--so scarce, in fact, that even a cook with impedimenta in the shape of a small son might be reasonably certain of prompt and well-paid employment. Picturing herself as a kitchen mechanic brought a wry smile to her sweet face, but--it was honorable employment and she preferred it to being a waitress or an underfed and underpaid saleswoman in a department store. For she could cook wonderfully well and she knew it; she believed she could dignify a kitchen and she preferred it to cadging from the McKayes the means to enable her to withstand the economic siege incident to procuring a livelihood more dignified and remunerative. Thus she had planned up to the day of her unexpected meeting with Jane and Elizabeth McKaye in the Port Agnew telegraph office. On that day, something had happened--something that had constituted a distinct event in Nan Brent's existence and with which the well-bred insolence of the McKaye girls had nothing to do. Indirectly old Caleb Brent had been responsible, for by the mere act of dying, his three-guarter pay as a retired sailor had automatically terminated, and Nan had written the Navy Department notifying it accordingly. Now, the death of a retired member of the Army or Navy, no matter what his grade may be, constitutes news for the service journals, and the fact that old Caleb had been a medal of honor man appeared, to the editor of one of these journals, to entitle the dead sailor to three hundred words of posthumous publicity. Subsequently, these three hundred words came under the eye of a retired admiral of the United States Navy, who thereby became aware that he had an orphaned grand-daughter residing in Port Agnew, Washington. As a man grows old he grows kindlier; those things which, at middle age, appear so necessary to an unruffled existence, frequently undergo such a metamorphosis, due to the corroding effects of time, that at eighty one has either forgotten them or regards them as something to be secretly ashamed of. Thus it was with Nan's grandfather. His pride and dignity were as austere as ever, but his withered heart yearned for the love and companionship of one of his own blood; now that Caleb Brent was dead, the ancient martinet forgot the offense which this simple sailor had committed against the pride of a long line of distinguished gentlemen, members of the honorable profession of arms. He thought it over for a month, and then wrote the only child of his dead daughter, asking her to come to him, hinting broadly that his days in the land were nearly numbered and that, in the matter of worldly goods he was not exactly a pauper. Having posted this letter the old admiral waited patiently for an answer, and when this answer was not forthcoming within the time he had set, he had telegraphed the postmaster of Port Agnew, requesting information as to her address. This telegram the postmaster had promptly sent over to Nan and it was for the purpose of replying to it that she had gone to the telegraph office on the day when Fate decreed that Jane and Elizabeth McKaye should also be there. After her return to the Sawdust Pile that day Nan's thoughts frequently adverted to the Biblical line: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Certainly, in her case, He appeared to be working at cross purposes. At a time when she had resigned herself to domestic labor in order to avoid starvation, her aristocratic, arrogant, prideful grandfather had seen fit to forgive her dead father and offer her shelter from the buffets of the world; yet, even while striving, apparently to be kind, she knew that the reason underlying his invitation was plain, old-fashioned heart-hunger, a tender conscience and a generous admixture of human selfishness. She smiled bitterly at his blunt hint of a monetary reward following his demise; it occurred to her that the stubborn old admiral was striving to buy that which he might have had for a different asking. She read the admiral's letter for the twentieth time--and from the thick white page her glance went to her child. Would he be welcome in that stern old sea dog's home? Would his great-grandfather forget the bar sinister of little Don's birth and would her own misfortune be viewed by him with the tenderness and perfect understanding accorded her by old Caleb? She did not think so; and with the remembrance of her dead father, the flames of revolt leaped in her heart. He had been loyal to her and she would be loyal to him. No, no! She was not yet prepared to come fawning to the feet of that fierce old man who had robbed her father of his happiness. What right had he to expect forgiveness, _sans_ the asking, _sans_ an acknowledgment of his heartlessness? With a bitter smile she wrote him a long letter, relating in detail the incident of her marriage, the birth of her child, her standing in Port Agnew society and her belief that all of this rendered acceptance of his invitation impossible, if she were to act with deference to his point of view and still remain loyal to the memory of her dead father. For these reasons she declined, thanked him for his kindness and remained his very sincerely. When she had posted this letter she felt better, and immediately took up the case of the McKayes. Until that moment she had not considered seriously the possibility of a marriage with the young Laird of Port Agnew as a means of humiliating these women who had humiliated her. The thought had occurred to her in the telegraph office and at the moment had held for her a certain delightful fascination; prior to that meeting her resolution not to permit Donald McKaye to share her uncertain fortunes had been as adamant. But long and bitter reflection upon the problem thrust upon her by her grandfather had imbued her with a clearer, deeper realization of the futility of striving to please everybody in this curious world, of the cruelty of those who seek to adjust to their point of view that of another fully capable of adjusting his own; of the appalling lack of appreciation with which her piteous sacrifice would meet from the very persons who shrank from the ignominy incident to non-sacrifice oft the part of her whom they held in open contempt! Donald McKaye was not unintelligent. He was a man, grown, with all a man's passions, with all the caution to be expected in one of his class. If he still loved her sufficiently, following a period of mature deliberation and fierce opposition from his people, to offer her honorable marriage, would she not be a fool to cast away such a priceless gift? How few men know love so strong, so tender, so unselfish, that they do not shrink from sharing with the object of their love, the odium which society has always set upon the woman taken in adultery. In rejecting his proffered sacrifice, she had told herself that she acted thus in order to preserve his happiness, although at the expense of her own. By so doing Nan realized that she had taken a lofty, a noble stand; nevertheless, who was she that she should presume to decide just wherein lay the preservation of his happiness? In her grandfather's letter before her she had ample evidence of the miscarriage of such pompous assumptions. There is a latent force in the weakest of women, an amazing capacity for rebellion in the meekest and a regret for lost virtue even in the most abandoned. Nan was neither weak, meek, nor abandoned; wherefore, to be accorded toleration, polite contumely and resentment where profound gratitude and admiration were her due, had aroused in her a smouldering resentment which had burned like a handful of oil-soaked waste tossed into a corner. At first a mild heat; then a dull red glow of spontaneous combustion progresses--and presently flame and smoke. It is probable that mere man, who never has been able to comprehend the intensity of feeling of which a woman is capable, is not equal to the problem of realizing the effect of solitude, misunderstanding and despair upon the mind of a woman of more than ordinary sensibilities and imagination. The seed of doubt, planted in such soil, burgeons rapidly, and when, upon the very day that Mr. Daney had made his last call at the Sawdust Pile, Nan, spurred to her decision by developments of which none but she was aware, had blazed forth in open rebellion and given the Tyee Lumber Company's general manager the fright of his prosaic existence. XXXIX After leaving the Sawdust Pile, Mr. Daney walked twice around the Bight of Tyee before arriving at a definite decision as to his future conduct in this intrigue, participation in which had been thrust upon him by his own loyalty to his employer and the idiocy of three hare-brained women. Time and again as lie paced the lonely strand, Mr. Daney made audible reference to the bells of the nether regions and the presence of panther tracks! This was his most terrible oath and was never employed except under exceptional circumstances. At length Mr. Daney arrived at a decision. He would have nothing further to do with this horrible love affair. In the role of Dan Cupid's murderer he was apparently a Tumble Tom; for three months he had felt as if he trod thin ice--and now he had fallen through! "I'll carry no more of their messages," he declared aloud. "I'll tell them so and wash my hands of the entire matter. If there is to be any asking of favors from that girl the McKaye women can do it." It was after midnight when he returned to his home and his wife was sitting up to receive an explanation of his nocturnal prowlings. However, the look of desperation with which he met her accusing glance frightened her into silence, albeit she had a quiet little crying spell next morning when she discovered on the floor of Mr. Daney's room quite a quantity of sand which had worked into his shoes during his agitated spring around Tyee Beach. She was quite certain he had indulged in a moonlight stroll on the seashore with a younger and prettier woman, so she resolved to follow him when next he fared forth and catch the traitor red-handed. To her surprise, Mr. Daney went out no more o' nights. He had kept his word given to himself, and on the morning succeeding his extraordinary interview with Nan he had again summoned the ladies of the McKaye family to his office for a conference. However, the capable Elizabeth was the only one of the trio to present herself, for this young woman--and not without reason--regarded herself as Mr. Daney's mental superior; she was confident of her ability to retain his loyalty should he display a tendency to betray them. "Well, dear Mr. Daney," she murmured in her melted-butter voice, "what new bugaboo have you developed for us?" "You do not have to bother calling upon the Brent girl, Miss Elizabeth. She says now that if Donald asks her to marry him she'll accept. She has an idea she'll be mistress of The Dreamerie." Elizabeth arched her eyebrows. "What else?" she queried amiably. "That's all--from Nan Brent. I have a small defi to make on my own account, however, Miss Elizabeth. From this minute on I wash my hands of the private affairs of the McKaye family. My job is managing your father's financial affairs. Believe me, the next move in this comedy-drama is a wedding--if Donald asks her in all seriousness to marry him--that is, if he insists on it. He may insist and then again he may not, but if he should, I shall not attempt to stop him. He's free, white and twenty-one; he's my boss and I hope I know my place. Personally, I'm willing to wager considerable that he'll marry her, but whether he does or not--I'm through." Elizabeth McKaye sighed. "That means we must work fast, Mr. Daney. Donald will be feeling strong: enough within two weeks to call on her; he may even motor down to the Sawdust Pile within ten days. Mother has already broached the subject of taking him away to southern California or Florida for a long rest; Dad has seconded the motion with great enthusiasm--and that stubborn Donald has told them frankly that he isn't going away for a rest." "Gosh!" Mr. Daney gasped. "That makes it a little binding, eh?" She met his clear glance thoughtfully and said: "If her house should burn down--accidentally--to-day or to-night, when she and her baby aren't in it, she'll have to leave Port Agnew. There isn't a house in town where she could find shelter, and you could see to it that all the rooms in the hotel are taken." "You forget, my dear," he replied with a small smile. "I have no further interest in this affair and moreover, I'm not turning firebug--not this year." "You refuse to help us?" "Absolutely. What is to be will be, and I, for one, have decided not to poke my finger into the cogs of destiny." "Well--thanks awfully for what you've already done, Mr. Daney." Again she smiled her bright, impish smile. "Good-morning." "Good-morning, Miss Elizabeth." As she left the office, Mr. Daney noted her débutante slouch and gritted his teeth. "Wonder if they'll call on Nan now, or make a combined attack on the boy and try bluff and threats and tears," he soliloquized. As a matter of fact they tried the latter. The storm broke after luncheon one day when Donald declared he felt strong enough to go down to Port Agnew, and, in the presence of the entire family, ordered the butler to tell his father's chauffeur to bring the closed car around to the door. Immediately, the astute Elizabeth precipitated matters by asking her brother sharply if his projected visit to Port Agnew predicated also a visit to the Sawdust Pile. "Why, yes, Elizabeth," he answered calmly. The Laird scowled at her, but she ignored the scowl; so old Hector flashed a warning glance to Jane and her mother--a glance that said quite plainly: "Let there be no upbraiding of my son." "Do you think it is quite--ah, delicate of you, Donald, to call upon any young lady at her apartments in the absence of a proper chaperon, even if the lady herself appears to have singularly free and easy views on the propriety of receiving you thus?" He saw that she was bound to force the issue and was rather relieved than otherwise. With a mental promise to himself to keep his temper at all hazards he replied: "Well, Elizabeth, I'll admit the situation is a trifle awkward, but what cannot be cured must be endured. You see, I want to have a talk with Nan Brent and I cannot do so unless I call upon her at the Sawdust Pile. It is impossible for us to meet on neutral ground, I fear. However, if you will write her a nice friendly little note and invite her up here to visit me, the question of a chaperon will be solved and I will postpone my visit until she gets here." "Don't be a fool," she retorted bitterly. "As for Nan's free and easy views on the subjects, who in Port Agnew, may I ask, expects her to act differently? Why, therefore, since she is fully convinced that I possess a few of the outward appearances of a gentleman, should she fear to receive me in her home? To conform to the social standards of those who decry her virtue? Elizabeth, you expect too much, I fear." "Hear, hear," cried The Laird. He realized that Elizabeth was not to be denied, so he thought best to assume a jocular attitude during the discussion. "Father," his eldest daughter reminded him. "It is your duty to forbid Donald doing anything which is certain to bring his family into disrepute and make it the target for the tongue of scandal." "Oh, leave him alone, you pestiferous woman," old Hector cried sharply. "Had it not been for the girl he would not be living this minute, so the least he can do is to express his compliments to her. Also, since this disagreeable topic has again been aired, let me remind you that the lass isn't going to marry Donald. She came out here, Donald," he continued, turning to his son, "with the distinct understanding that her job was to humor you back to health, and for that you owe her your thanks and I'm willing you should call on her and express them. Don't flattter yourself that she'll marry you, my boy. I've had a talk with her--since you must know it, sooner or later--and she promised me she wouldn't." The young Laird's face paled a little but he maintained his composure. "I greatly fear you misunderstood her, father," he replied gently. "She promised me she'd marry me. You see," he added looking the old man resolutely in the face, "I think she's virtuous, so I'm going to marry her." His father smiled sadly. "Poor lad. God knows I'm sorry for you, but--well, go see her and let's have the issue settled once for all. For God's sake, lad, grant me peace of mind. End it to-day, one way or the other." "Ah, yes, you're brave," Elizabeth flung at her father. "You're so certain that girl will keep her promise, aren't you? Well, I happen to have been informed, on very good authority, that she intends to betray you. She had made the statement that she'll marry Donald if he asks her--again." "The girl doesn't impress me as one who would lie, Elizabeth. Who told you this?" "Andrew Daney." "Bear with me a moment, son, till I call Andrew on the telephone," the Laird requested, and went into the telephone booth under the stairs in the reception hall. When he emerged a few minutes later his face was pale and haggard. "Well? What did I tell you?" Elizabeth's voice was triumphant. Her father ignored her. Placing himself squarely before his son, he bent forward slightly and thrust his aggressive face close to Donald's. "I command you to respect the honor of my house," he cried furiously. "For the last time, Donald McKaye, ha' done wie this woman, or--" and his great arm was outflung in a swooping gesture that denoted all too forcibly the terrible sentence he shrank from speaking. "Are you offering me an alternative?" Donald's voice was low and very calm, but his brown eyes were blazing with suppressed rage. "The Dreamerie or--" and he swung and pointed to the Brent cottage far below them on the Sawdust Pile. "Aye," his father cried in a hard cracked voice. "Aye!" Donald looked over at his mother with the helplessness of a child who has fallen and hurt himself. "And you, mother? What do you say to this?" She thought she would faint. "You--you must obey your father," she quavered. Until her son should marry Nan Brent she could not force herself to the belief that he could possibly commit such an incredible offense. "The opinions of you and Jane," Donald continued, turning to each sister in turn, "do not interest me particularly, but while the polls are open you might as well vote. If I marry Nan Brent are you each prepared to forget that I am your brother?" Elizabeth nodded calmly. She had gone too far now to develop weakness when an assumption of invincible strength might yet win the day. "I couldn't receive such a peculiar sister-in-law," Jane murmured, evidently close to tears. "Surely, you would not expect us to take such a woman to our hearts, Donald dear?" "I did not build The Dreamerie for yon lass," The Laird burst forth passionately. His son stood with bowed head. "Have you, mother, or you, my sisters, been down to the Sawdust Pile to thank Nan for inspiring me--no matter how--with a desire to live? I think you realize that until she came I was too unhappy--too disgusted with life--to care whether I got well or not? Have you absolved yourselves of an obligation which must be perfectly evident to perfect ladies?" "We have not." Elizabeth's calm voice answered him. "What the girl did was entirely of her own volition. She did it for your sake, and since it is apparent that she plans to collect the reward of her disinterested effort we have considered that a formal expression of thanks would be superfluous." "I see. I see. Well, perhaps you're right. I shall not quarrel with your point of view. And you're all quite certain you will never recede from your attitude of hostility toward Nan--under no circumstances, to recognize her as my wife and extend to her the hospitality of The Dreamerie?" He challenged his father with a look and the old man slowly nodded an affirmative. His mother thought Donald was about to yield to their opposition and nodded likewise. "I have already answered that question," Jane murmured tragically, and Elizabeth again reminded him that it was not necessary for him to make a fool of himself. "Well, I'm glad this affair has been ironed out--at last," Donald assured them. "I had cherished the hope that when you knew Nan better--" He choked up for a moment, then laid his hands on his father's shoulders. "Well, sir," he gulped, "I'm going down to the Sawdust Pile and thank Nan for saving my life. Not," he added bitterly, "that I anticipate enjoying that life to the fullest for some years to come. If I did not believe that time will solve the problem--" The Laird's heart leaped. "Tush, tush, boy. Run along and don't do anything foolish." He slapped Donald heartily across the back while the decisive sweep of that same hand an instant later informed the women of his household that it would be unnecessary to discuss this painful matter further. "I understand just how you feel, dad. I hold no resentment," Donald assured him, and dragged The Laird close to him in a filial embrace. He crossed the room and kissed his mother, who clung to him a moment, tearfully; seeing him so submissive, Jane and Elizabeth each came up and claimed the right to embrace him with sisterly affection. The butler entered to announce that the car was waiting at the front door. Old Hector helped his son into a great coat and Mrs. McKaye wound a reefer around his neck and tucked the ends inside the coat. Then The Laird helped him into the car; as it rolled slowly down the cliff road, Old Hector snorted with relief. "By Judas," he declared, "I never dreamed the boy would accept such an ultimatum." "Well, the way to find out is to try," Elizabeth suggested. "Sorry to have been forced to disregard that optical S.O.S. of yours, Dad, but I realized that we had to strike now or never." "Whew-w-w!" The Laird whistled again. XL With the license of long familiarity, Donald knocked at the front door of the Brent cottage to announce his arrival; then, without awaiting permission to enter, he opened the door and met Nan in the tiny hall hurrying to admit him. "You--Donald!" she reproved him. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be out." "That's why I came in," he retorted drily and kissed her. "And I'm here because I couldn't stand The Dreamerie another instant. I wanted my mother and sisters to call on you and thank you for having been so nice to me during my illness, but the idea wasn't received, very enthusiastically. So, for the sheer sake of doing the decent thing I've called myself. It might please you," he added, "to know that my father thought I should." "He is always tactful and kind," she agreed. She led him to her father's old easy chair in the living room. "As Dirty Dan O'Leary once remarked in my presence," he began, "it is a long lane that hasn't got a saloon at the end of it. I will first light a cigarette, if I may, and make myself comfortable, before putting you on the witness stand and subjecting you to a severe cross-examination. Seat yourself on that little hassock before me and in such a position that I can look squarely into your face and note flush of guilt when you fib to me." She obeyed, with some slight inward trepidation, and sat looking up at him demurely. "Nan," he began, "did anybody ever suggest to you that the sporty thing for you to do would be to run away and hide where I could never find you?" She shook her head. "Did anybody ever suggest to you that the sporty thing for you to do would be to return to Port Agnew from your involuntary exile and inspire me with some enthusiasm for life?" His keen perception did not fail to interpret the slight flush of embarrassment that suffused Nan's face. "I object to that question, your honor," she replied with cleverly simulated gaiety, "on the ground that to do so would necessitate the violation of a confidence." "The objection is sustained by the court. Did my father or Andrew Daney, acting for him, ever offer you any sum of money as a bribe for disappearing out of my life?" "No. Your father offered to be very, very kind to me the morning I was leaving. We met at the railroad station and his offer was made _after_ I informed him that I was leaving Port Agnew forever--and why. So I know he made the offer just because he wanted to be kind--because he is kind." "Neither he nor Daney communicated with you in anyway following your departure from Port Agnew?" "They did not." "Before leaving New York or immediately after your return to Port Agnew, did you enter into verbal agreement with any member of my family or their representative to nurse me back to health and then jilt me?" "I did not. The morning I appeared at the hospital your father, remembering my statement to him the morning I fled from Port Agnew, suspected that I had had a change of heart. He said to me: 'So this is your idea of playing the game, is it?' I assured him then that I had not returned to Port Agnew with the intention of marrying you, but merely to stiffen your morale, as it were. He seemed quite satisfied with my explanation, which I gave him in absolute good faith." "Did he ever question you as to how you ascertained I was ill?" "No. While I cannot explain my impression, I gathered at the time that he knew." "He credited Andrew Daney with that philanthropic job, Nan. He does not know that my mother communicated with you." "Neither do you, Donald. I have not told you she did." "I am not such a stupid fellow as to believe you would ever tell me anything that might hurt me, Nan. One does not relish the information that one's mother has not exhibited the sort of delicacy one expects of one's mother," he added bluntly. "It is not nice of you to say that, Donald. How do you know that Mr. Daney did not send for me?" He smiled tolerantly. "Before Daney would dare do that he would consult with my father, and if my father had consented to it he would never have left to Daney the task of requesting such a tremendous favor of you for his account. If Daney ever consulted my father as to the advisability of such a course, my father refused to consider it." "What makes you think so, old smarty?" "Well, I know my father's code. He had no hesitancy in permitting you to know that you were not welcome as a prospective daughter-in-law, although he was not so rude as to tell you why. He left that to your imagination. Now, for my father to ask a favor of anybody is very unusual. He has a motto that a favor accepted is a debt incurred, and he dislikes those perennial debts. My father is a trader, my dear. If he had, directly or indirectly, been responsible for your return to Port Agnew for the purpose of saving his son's life, he would not be--well, he just wouldn't do it," he explained with some embarrassment. "He couldn't do it. He would say to you, 'My son is dying because he finds life uninteresting without you. If you return, your presence will stimulate in him a renewed interest in life and he will, in all probability, survive. If you are good enough to save my son from death you are good enough to share his life, and although this wedding is about going to kill me, nevertheless we will pull it off and make believe we like it.'" "Nonsense," she retorted. "Knowing how my father would act under such circumstances, I was dumfounded when he informed me this afternoon that you had agreed to perform under false pretenses. He was quite certain you would proceed to jilt me, now that I am strong enough to stand it. He said you had promised him you would." "I did not promise him. I merely told him truthfully what my firm intention was at the time he demanded to be informed as to the nature of my intentions. I reserved my woman's right to change my mind." "Oh!" "Had I made your father a definite promise I would have kept it. If I were a party to such a contract with your father, Donald dear, all of your pleading to induce me to break it would be in vain." "A contract without a consideration is void in law," he reminded her. "Dad just figured he could bank on your love for me. He did you the honor to think it was so strong and wonderful that death would be a delirious delight to you in preference to spoiling my career by marrying me--well--Elizabeth disillusioned him!" Nan's eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "She informed my father in my presence," Donald continued, "that you had had a change of heart; that you were now resolved to accept me should I again ask you to marry me. It appears you had told Andrew Daney this--in cold blood as it were. So Dad went to the telephone and verified this report by Daney; then we had a grand show-down and I was definitely given my choice of habitation--The Dreamerie or the Sawdust Pile. Father, Mother, Elizabeth and Jane; jointly and severally assured me that they would never receive you, so Nan, dear, it appears that I will have to pay rather a heavy price for the privilege of marrying you--" "I have never told you I would marry you," she cried sharply. "Yes, you did. That day in the hospital." "That was a very necessary fib and you should not hold it against me. It was a promise absolutely not made in good faith." "But did you tell Daney that you would accept me if I should ask you again to marry me?" She was visibly agitated but answered him truthfully. "Yes, I did." "You said it in anger?" "Yes." Very softly. "Daney had come to you with an offer of monetary reward for your invaluable services to the McKaye family, had he not? And since what you did was not done for profit, you were properly infuriated and couldn't resist giving Daney the scare of his life? That was the way of it, was it not?" Nan nodded and some tears that trembled on her long lashes were flicked off by the vigor of the nod; some of them fell on the big gaunt hands that held hers. "I suppose you haven't sufficient money with which to return to New York?" he continued. Again she nodded an affirmative. "Just what are your plans, dear?" "I suppose I'll have to go somewhere and try to procure a position as a cook lady." "An admirable decision," he declared enthusiastically. "I'll give you a job cooking for me, provided you'll agree to marry me and permit me to live in your house. I'm a man without a home and you've just _got_ to take me in, Nan. I have no other place to lay my weary head." She looked at him and through the blur of her tears she saw him smiling down at her, calmly, benignantly and with that little touch of whimsicality that was always in evidence and which even his heavy heart could not now subdue. "You've--you've--chosen the Sawdust Pile?" she cried incredulously. "How else would a man of spirit choose, old shipmate?" "But you're not marrying me to save me from poverty, Donald? You must be certain you aren't mistaking for love the sympathy which rises so naturally in that big heart of yours. If it's only a great pity--if it's only the protective instinct--" "Hush! It's all of that and then some. I'm a man grown beyond the puppy-love stage, my dear--and the McKayes are not an impulsive race. We count the costs carefully and take careful note of the potential profits. And while I could grant my people the right to make hash of my happiness I must, for some inexplicable reason, deny them the privilege of doing it with yours. I think I can make you happy, Nan; not so happy, perhaps, that the shadow of your sorrow will not fall across your life occasionally, but so much happier than you are at present that the experiment seems worth trying, even at the expense of sacrificing the worldly pride of my people." "Are you entertaining a strong hope that after you marry me, dear, your people will forgive you, make the best of what they consider a bad bargain and acknowledge me after a fashion? Do you think they will let bygones be bygones and take me to their hearts--for your sake?" "I entertain no such silly illusion. Under no circumstances will they ever acknowledge you after a fashion, for the very sufficient reason that the opportunity to be martyrs will never be accorded my mother and sisters by yours truly, Donald McKaye, late Laird apparent of Port Agnew. Bless, your sweet soul, Nan, I have some pride, you know. I wouldn't permit them to tolerate you. I prefer open warfare every time." "Have you broken with your people, dear?" "Yes, but they do not know it yet. I didn't have the heart to raise a scene, so I merely gave the old pater a hug, kissed mother and the girls and came away. I'm not going back." "You will--if I refuse to marry you?" "I do not anticipate such a refusal. However, it Hoes not enter into the matter at all in so far as my decision to quit The Dreamerie is concerned. I'm through! Listen, Nan. I could win my father to you--win him wholeheartedly and without reservation--if I should inform him that my mother asked you to come back to Port Agnew. My mother and the girls have not told him of this and I suspect they have encouraged his assumption that Andrew Daney took matters in his own hands. Father has not cared to inquire into the matter, anyhow, because he is secretly grateful to Daney (as he thinks) for disobeying him. Mother and the girls are forcing Daney to protect them; they are using his loyalty to the family as a club to keep him in line. With that club they forced him to come to you with a proposition that must have been repugnant to him, if for no other reason than that he knew my father would not countenance it. When you told him you would marry me if I should ask you again, to whom did Daney report? To Elizabeth, of course--the brains of the opposition. That proves to me that my father had nothing to do with it--why the story is as easily understood from deduction as if I had heard the details from their lips. But I cannot use my mother's peace of mind as a club to beat dad into line; I cannot tell him something that will almost make him hate mother and my sisters; I would not force him to do that which he does not desire to do because it is the kindly, sensible and humane course. So I shall sit tight and say nothing--and by the way, I love you more than ever for keeping this affair from me. So few women are true blue sports, I'm afraid." "You must be very, very angry and hurt, Donald?" "I am. So angry and hurt that I desire to be happy within the shortest possible period of elapsed time. Now, old girl, look right into my eyes, because I'm going to propose to you for the last time. My worldly assets consist of about a hundred dollars in cash and a six dollar wedding ring which I bought as I came through Port Agnew. With these wordly goods and all the love and honor and respect a man can possibly have for a woman, I desire to endow you. Answer me quickly. Yes or no?" "Yes," she whispered. "You chatterbox! When?" "At your pleasure." "That's trading talk. We'll be married this afternoon." He stretched out his long arms for her and as she slid off the low hassock and knelt beside his chair, he gathered her hungrily to him and held her there for a long time before he spoke again. When he did it was to say, with an air of wonder that was almost childlike: "I never knew it was possible for a man to be so utterly wretched and so tremendously happy and all within the same hour. I love you so much it hurts." He released her and glanced at his watch. "It is now two o'clock, Nan. If we leave here by three we can reach the county seat by five o'clock, procure a license and be married by six. By half past seven we will have finished our wedding supper and by about ten o'clock we shall be back at the Sawdust Pile. Put a clean pair of rompers on the young fellow and let's go! From this day forward we live, like the Sinn Fein. 'For ourselves alone.'" While Nan was preparing for that hurried ceremony, Donald strolled about the little yard, looking over the neglected garden and marking for future attention various matters such as a broken hinge on the gate, some palings off the fence and the crying necessity for paint on the little white house, for he was striving mightily to shut out all thought of his past life and concentrate on matters that had to do with the future. Presently he wandered out on the bulkhead. The great white gulls which spent their leisure hours gravely contemplating the Bight of Tyee from the decaying piling, rose lazily at his approach and with hoarse cries of resentment flapped out to sea; his dull glance followed them and rested on a familiar sight. Through the Bight of Tyee his father's barkentine Kohala was coming home from Honolulu, ramping in before a twenty mile breeze with every shred of canvas drawing. She was heeled over to starboard a little and there was a pretty little bone in her teeth; the colors streamed from her mizzen rigging while from her foretruck the house-flag flew. Idly Donald watched her until she was abreast and below The Dreamerie and her house-flag dipped in salute to the master watching from the cliff; instantly the young Laird of Tyee saw a woolly puff of smoke break from the terrace below the house and several seconds later the dull boom of the signal gun. His heart was constricted. "Ah, never for me!" he murmured, "never for me--until he tells them to look toward the Sawdust Pile for the master!" He strode out to the gate where his father's chauffeur waited with the limousine. "Take the car home," he ordered, "and as you pass through town stop in at the Central Garage and tell them to send a closed car over to me here." The chauffeur looked at him with surprise but obeyed at once. By the time the hired car had arrived Nan and her child were ready, and just before locking the house Nan, realizing that they would not return to the Sawdust Pile until long after nightfall, hauled in the flag that floated over the little cupola; and for the second time, old Hector, watching up on the cliff, viewed this infallible portent of an event out of the ordinary. His hand trembled as he held his marine glasses to his blurred eyes and focussed on The Sawdust Pile, in time to see his son enter the limousine with Nan Brent and her child--and even at that distance he could see that the car in which they were departing from the Sawdust Pile was not the one in which Donald had left The Dreamerie. From that fact alone The Laird deduced that his son had made his choice; and because Donald was his father's son, imbued with the same fierce high pride and love of independence, he declined to be under obligation to his people even for the service of an automobile upon his wedding day. The Laird stood watching the car until it was out of sight; then he sighed very deeply, entered the house and rang for the butler. "Tell Mrs. McKaye and the young ladies that I would thank them to come here at once," he ordered calmly. They came precipitately, vaguely apprehensive. "My dears," he said in an unnaturally subdued voice, "Donald has just left the Sawdust Pile with the Brent lass to be married. He has made his bed and it is my wish that he shall lie in it." "Oh, Hector!" Mrs. McKaye had spoken quaveringly. "Oh, Hector, dear, do not be hard on him!" He raised his great arm as if to silence further argument. "He has brought disgrace upon my house. He is no longer son of mine and we are discussing him for the last time. Hear me, now. There will be no further mention of Donald in my presence and I forbid you, Nellie, you, Elizabeth and you, Jane, to have aught to do wie him, directly or indirectly." Mrs. McKaye sat down abruptly and commenced to weep and wail her woe aloud, while Jane sought vainly to comfort her. Elizabeth bore the news with extreme fortitude; with unexpected tact she took her father by the arm and steered him outside and along the terrace walk where the agonized sobs and moans of her mother could not be heard--for what Elizabeth feared in that first great moment of remorse was a torrent of self-accusation from her mother. If, as her father had stated, Donald was en route to be married, then the mischief was done and no good could come out of a confession to The Laird of the manner in which the family honor had been compromised, not by Donald, but by his mother, aided and abetted by his sisters! The Laird, now quite dumb with distress, walked in silence with his eldest daughter, vaguely conscious of the comfort of her company and sympathy in his hour of trial. When Elizabeth could catch Jane's attention through the window she cautiously placed her finger on her lip and frowned a warning. Jane nodded her comprehension and promptly bore her mother off to bed where she gave the poor soul some salutary advice and left her to the meager comfort of solitude and smelling salts. * * * * * Just before he retired that night, The Laird saw a light shine suddenly forth from the Sawdust Pile. So he knew his son had selected a home for his bride, and rage and bitterness mingled with his grief and mangled pride to such an extent that he called upon God to take him out of a world that had crumbled about his hoary head. He shook his fist at the little light that blinked so far below him and Mrs. McKaye, who had crept down stairs with a half-formed notion of confessing to The Laird in the hope of mitigating her son's offense--of, mother-like, taking upon her shoulders an equal burden of the blame--caught a glimpse of old Hector's face, and her courage failed her. Thoroughly frightened she returned noiselessly to her room and wept, dry-eyed, for the fountain of her tears had long since been exhausted. Meanwhile, down at the Sawdust Pile, Nan was putting her drowsy son to bed; in the little living-room her husband had lighted the driftwood fire and had drawn the old divan up to the blue flames. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, outlining plans for their future, when Nan, having put her child to bed, came and sat down beside him. He glanced at her with troubled eyes and grinned a trifle foolishly. "Happy?" he queried. She nodded. "In a limited fashion only, dear heart. I'm thinking how wonderfully courageous you have been to marry me and how tremendously grateful I shall always be for your love and faith." She captured his right hand and fondled it for a moment in both of hers, smiling a little thoughtfully the while as if at some dear little secret. "Port Agnew will think I married you for money," she resumed presently; "your mother and sisters will think I married you to spite them and your father will think I married you because you insisted and because I was storm-tossed and had to find a haven from the world. But the real reason is that I love you and know that some day I am going to see more happiness in your eyes than I can see to-night." Again, in that impulsive way she had, she bent and kissed his hand. "Dear King Cophetua," she murmured, "your beggar maid will never be done with adoring you." She looked up at him with a sweet and lovely wistfulness shining in her sea-blue eyes. "And the sweetest thing about it, you angelic simpleton," she added, "is that you will never, never, never know why." XLI The first hint of the tremendous events impending came to Mr. Daney through the medium of no less an informant than his wife. Upon returning from the mill office on the evening of Donald McKaye's marriage, Mr. Daney was met at his front door by Mrs. Daney who cried triumphantly: "Well, what did I tell you about Donald McKaye?" Mr. Daney twitched inwardly, but answered composedly. "Not one-tenth of one per cent, of what I have discovered without your valuable assistance my dear." She wrinkled the end of her nose disdainfully. "He's gone motoring with Nan Brent in a hired car, and they took the baby with them. They passed through town about half past two this afternoon and they haven't returned yet." "How do you know all this?" he demanded coolly. "I saw them as they passed by on the road below; I recognized that rent limousine of the Central Garage with Ben Nicholson driving it, and a few moments ago I telephoned the Central Garage and asked for Ben. He hasn't returned yet--and it's been dark for half an hour." "Hum-m-m! What do you suspect, my dear?" "The worst," she replied dramatically. "What a wonderful fall day this has been," he remarked blandly as he hung up his hat. She turned upon him a glance of fury; he met it with one so calm and impersonal that the good lady quite lost control of herself. "Why do you withhold your confidence from me?" she cried sharply. "Because you wouldn't respect it, my dear; also, because I'm paid to keep the McKaye secrets and you're not." "Is he going to marry her, Andrew? Answer me," she demanded. "Unfortunately for you, Mrs. Daney, the young gentleman hasn't taken me into his confidence. Neither has the young lady. Of course I entertain an opinion, on the subject, but since I am not given to discussing the intimate personal affairs of other people, you'll excuse my reticence on this subject, I'm sure. I repeat that this has been a wonderful fall day." She burst into tears of futile rage and went to her room. Mr. Daney partook of his dinner in solitary state and immediately after dinner strolled down town and loitered around the entrance to the Central Garage until he saw Ben Nicholson drive in about ten o'clock. "Hello, Ben," he hailed the driver as Ben descended from his seat. "I hear you've been pulling off a wedding." Ben Nicholson lowered his voice and spoke out the corner of his mouth. "What do you know about the young Laird, eh, Mr. Daney? Say I could 'a' cried to see him throwin' himself away on that Jane." Mr. Daney shrugged. "Oh, well, boys will be boys," he declared. "The bigger they are the harder they fall. Of course, Ben, you understand I'm not in position to say anything, one way or the other," he added parenthetically, and Ben Nicholson nodded comprehension. Thereupon Mr. Daney sauntered over to the cigar stand in the hotel, loaded his cigar case and went down to his office, where he sat until midnight, smoking and thinking. The sole result of his cogitations, however, he summed up in a remark he directed at the cuspidor just before he went home: "Well, there's blood on the moon and hell will pop in the morning." For the small part he had played in bringing Nan Brent back to Port Agnew, the general manager fully expected to be dismissed from the McKaye service within thirty seconds after old Hector should reach the mill office; hence with the heroism born of twelve hours of preparation he was at his desk at eight o'clock next morning. At nine o'clock The Laird came in and Mr. Daney saw by his face instantly that old Hector knew. The general manager rose at his desk and bowed with great dignity. "Moritori salutamus, sir," he announced gravely. "What the devil are you talking about, Daney?" The Laird demanded irritably. "That's what the gladiators used to say to the Roman populace. It means, I believe, 'We who are about to die, salute you.' Here is my resignation, Mr. McKaye." "Don't be an ass, Andrew," The Laird commanded and threw the proffered resignation into the waste basket. "Why should you resign?" "To spare the trouble of discharging me, sir." "What for?" "Bringing the Brent girl back to Port Agnew. If I hadn't gotten her address from Dirty Dan I would never have suggested to--" "Enough. We will not discuss what might have been, Andrew. The boy has married her, and since the blow has fallen nothing that preceded it is of the slightest importance. What I have called to say to you is this: Donald McKaye is no longer connected with the Tyee Lumber Company." "Oh, come, come, sir," Daney pleaded. "The mischief is done. You'll have to forgive the boy and make the best of a bad business. What can't be cured must be endured, you know." "Not necessarily. And you might spare me your platitude, Andrew," The Laird replied savagely. "I'm done with the lad forever, for son of mine he is no longer. Andrew, do you remember the time he bought that red cedar stumpage up on the Wiskah and unloaded it on me at a profit of two hundred thousand dollars?" Mr. Daney nodded. "And you, in turn, sold it at a profit of fifty thousand," he reminded the irate old man. "Donald did not retain that profit he made at my expense. 'Twas just a joke with him. He put the money into bonds and sent them to you with instructions to place them in my vault for my account." Mr. Daney nodded and The Laird resumed. "Take those bonds to the Sawdust Pile, together with a check for all the interest collected on the coupons since they came into my possession, and tell him from me that I'll take it kindly of him to leave Port Agnew and make a start for himself elsewhere as quickly as he can. He owes it to his family not to affront it by his presence in Port Agnew, giving ground for gossip and scandal and piling needless sorrow upon us. And when the Sawdust Pile is again vacant you will remove the Brent house and put in the drying yard you've planned this many a year." "Very well, sir. It's not a task to my liking, but--" His pause was eloquent. "Have my old desk put in order for me. I'm back in the harness and back to stay, and at that I'm not so certain it isn't the best thing for me, under the present circumstances. I dare say," he added, with a sudden change of tone, "the news is all over Port Agnew this morning." Mr. Daney nodded. "You will procure Donald's resignation as President and have him endorse the stock I gave him in order to qualify as a director of the company. We'll hold a directors' meeting this afternoon and I'll step back into the presidency." "Very well, sir." "You will cause a notice to be prepared for my signature, to be spread on the bulletin board in each department, to the effect that Donald McKaye is no longer connected in any way with the Tyee Lumber Company." "Damn it, man," Daney roared wrathfully, "have you no pride? Why wash your dirty linen in public?" "You are forgetting yourself, my good Andrew. If you do not wish to obey my orders I shall have little difficulty inducing your assistant to carry out my wishes, I'm thinking." The Laird's voice was calm enough; apparently he had himself under perfect control, but--the Blue-Bonnets-coming-over-the-Border look was in his fierce gray eyes; under his bushy iron-gray brows they burned like campfires in twin caverns at night. His arms, bowed belligerently, hung tense at his side, his great hands opened and closed, a little to the fore; he licked his lips and in the brief silence that followed ere Mr. Daney got up and started fumbling with the combination to the great vault in the corner, old Hector's breath came in short snorts. He turned and, still in the same attitude, watched Daney while the latter twirled and fumbled and twirled. Poor man! He knew The Laird's baleful glance was boring into his back and for the life of him he could not remember the combination he had used for thirty years. Suddenly he abandoned all pretense and turned savagely on The Laird. "Get out of my office," he yelled. "I work for you, Hector McKaye, but I give you value received and in this office I'm king and be damned to you." His voice rose to a shrill, childish treble that presaged tears of rage. "You'll be sorry for this, you hard-hearted man. Please God I'll live to see the day your dirty Scotch pride will be humbled and you'll go to that wonderful boy and his wife and plead for forgiveness. Why, you poor, pitiful, pusillanimous old pachyderm, if the boy has dishonored you he has honored himself. He's a gallant young gentleman, that's what he is. He has more guts than a bear. He's _married_ the girl, damn you--and that's more than you would have done at his age. Ah, don't talk to me! We were young together and I know the game you played forty years ago with the girl at the Rat Portage--yes, you--you with your youth and your hot passions--turning your big proud back on your peculiar personal god to wallow in sin and enjoy it." "But I--I was a single man then," The Laird sputtered, almost inarticulate with fury and astonishment. "He was a single man yesterday but he's a married man to-day. And she loves him. She adores him. You can see it in her eyes when his name is mentioned. And she had no _reason_ to behave herself, had she? She has behaved herself for three long years, but did she win anybody's approbation for doing it? I'm telling you a masterful man like him might have had her without the wedding ring, for love's sake, if he'd cared to play a waiting game and stack the cards on her. After all, she's human." Suddenly he commenced to weep with fury, the tears cascading into his whiskers making him look singularly ridiculous in comparison with the expression on his face, which was anything but grievous. "Marriage! Marriage!" he croaked. "I know what it is. I married a fat-head--and so did my wife. We've never known romance; never had anything but a quiet, well-ordered existence. I've dwelt in repression; never got out of life a single one of those thrills that comes of doing something daring and original and nasty. Never had an adventure; never had a woman look at me like I was a god; married at twenty and never knew the Grand Passion." He threw up his arms. "Oh-h-h, God-d-d! If I could only be young again I'd be a devil! Praise be, I know one man with guts enough to tell 'em all to go to hell." With a peculiar little moving cry he started for the door. "Andrew," The Laird cried anxiously. "Where are you going?" "None of your infernal business," the rebel shrilled, "but if you must know, I'm going down to the Sawdust Pile to kiss the bride and shake a man's hand and wish him well. After I've done that I'll deliver your message. Mark me, he'll never take those bonds." "Of course he will, you old fool. They belong to him." "But he refused to make a profit at the expense of his own father. He gave them to you and he's not an Indian giver." "Andrew, I have never known you to act in such a peculiar manner. Are you crazy? Of course he'll take them. He'll have to take them in order to get out of Port Agnew. I doubt if he has a dollar in the world." Mr. Daney beat his chest gorilla fashion. "He doesn't need a dollar. Boy and man, I've loved that--ahem! son of yours. Why, he always _did_ have guts. Keep your filthy money. The boy's credit is good with me. I'm no pauper, even I if do work for you. I work for fun. Understand. Or do you, Hector McKaye?" "If you dare to loan my son as much as a thin dime I'll fire you out of hand." Mr. Daney jeered. "How?" he demanded very distinctly, and yet with a queer, unusual blending of the sentence with a single word, as if the very force of his breath had telescoped every syllable, "would you like to stand off in that corner there and take a long runnin' jump at yourself, proud father?" "Out of this office! You're fired." Mr. Daney dashed the tears from his whiskers and blew his nose. Then he pulled himself together with dignity and bowed so low he lost his center of gravity and teetered a little on his toes before recovering his balance. "Fired is GOOD," he declared. "Where do you get that stuff, eh? My dear old Furiosity, ain't my resignation in the waste-basket? Good-by, good luck and may the good Lord give you the sense God gives geese. I'm a better man than you are, Gunga Din." The door banged open. Then it banged shut and The Laird was alone. The incident was closed. The impossible had come to pass. For the strain had been too great, and at nine o'clock on a working day morning, steady, reliable, dependable, automatic Andrew Daney having imbibed Dutch courage in lieu of Nature's own brand, was, for the first time in his life, jingled to an extent comparable to that of a boiled owl. Mr. Daney's assistant thrust his head in the door, to disturb The Laird's cogitations. "The knee-bolters went out at the shingle mill this morning, sir," he announced. "They want a six and a half hour day and a fifty per cent. increase in wages, with a whole holiday on Saturday. There's a big Russian red down there exhorting them." "Send Dirty Dan to me. Quick!" A telephonic summons to the loading shed brought Daniel P. O'Leary on the run. "Come with me, Dan," The Laird commanded, and started for the shingle mill. On the way down he stopped at the warehouse and selected a new double-bitted ax which he handed to Dirty Dan. Mr. O'Leary received the weapon in silence and trotted along at The Laird's heels like a faithful dog, until, upon arrival at the shingle mill the astute Hibernian took in the situation at a glance. "Sure, 'tis no compliment you've paid me, sor, thinkin' I'll be afther needin' an ax to take that fella's measure," he protested. "Your job is to keep those other animals off me while _I_ take his measure," The Laird corrected him. Without an instant's hesitation Dirty Dan swung his ax and charged the crowd. "Gower that, ye vagabones," he screeched. As he passed the Russian he seized the latter by the collar, swung him and threw him bodily toward old Hector, who received him greedily and drew him to his heart. The terrible O'Leary then stood over the battling pair, his ax poised, the while he hurled insult and anathema at the knee-bolters. A very large percentage of knee-bolters and shingle weavers are members of the I.W.W. and knowing this, Mr. O'Leary begged in dulcet tones, to be informed why in this and that nobody seemed willing to lift a hand to rescue the Little Comrade. He appeared to be keenly disappointed because nobody tried, albeit other axes were quite plentiful thereabouts. Presently The Laird got up and dusted the splinters and sawdust from his clothing; the Red, battered terribly, lay weltering in his blood. "I feel better now," said The Laird. "This is just what I needed this morning to bring me out of myself. Help yourself, Dan," and he made a dive at the nearest striker, who fled, followed by his fellow-strikers, all hotly pursued by The Laird and the demon Daniel. The Laird returned, puffing slightly, to his office and once more sat in at his own desk. As he remarked to Dirty Dan, he felt better now. All his resentment against Daney had fled but his resolution to pursue his contemplated course with reference to his son and the latter's wife had become firmer than ever. In some ways The Laird was a terrible old man. XLII Nan was not at all surprised when, upon responding to a peremptory knock at her front door she discovered Andrew Daney standing without. The general manager, after his stormy interview with The Laird had spent two hours in the sunny lee of a lumber pile, waiting for the alcoholic fogs to lift from his brain, for he had had sense enough left to realize that all was not well with him; he desired to have his tongue in order when he should meet the bride and groom. "Good morning, Mr. Daney," Nan greeted him. "Do come in." "Good morning, Mrs. McKaye. Thank you. I shall with pleasure." He followed her down the little hallway to the living room where Donald sat with his great thin legs stretched out toward the fire. "Don't rise, boy, don't rise," Mr. Daney protested. "I merely called to kiss the bride and shake your hand, my boy. The visit is entirely friendly and unofficial." "Mr. Daney, you're a dear," Nan cried, and presented her fair cheek for the tribute he claimed. "Shake hands with a rebel, boy," Mr. Daney cried heartily to Donald. "God bless you and may you always be happier than you are this minute." Donald wrung the Daney digits with a heartiness he would not have thought possible a month before. "I've quarreled with your father, Donald," he announced, seating himself. "Over you--and you," he added, nodding brightly at both young people. "He thinks he's fired me." He paused, glanced around, coughed a couple of times and came out with it. "Well, what are you going to do now to put tobacco in your old tobacco box, Donald?" Donald smiled sadly. "Oh, Nan still has a few dollars left from that motor-boat swindle you perpetrated, Mr. Daney. She'll take care of me for a couple of weeks until I'm myself again; then, if my father still proves recalcitrant and declines to have me connected with the Tyee Lumber Company, I'll manage to make a living for Nan and the boy somewhere else." Briefly Mr. Daney outlined The Laird's expressed course of action with regard to his son. "He means it," Donald assured the general manager. "He never bluffs. He gave me plenty of warning and his decision has not been arrived at in a hurry. He's through with me." "I fear he is, my boy. Er-ah-ahem! Harumph-h-h! Do you remember those bonds you sent me from New York once--the proceeds of your deal in that Wiskah river cedar?" "Yes." "Your father desires that you accept the entire two hundred thousand dollars worth and accrued interest." "Why?" "Well, I suppose he thinks they'll come in handy when you leave Port Agnew." "Well, I'm not going to leave Port Agnew, Andrew." "Your father instructed me to say to you that he would take it kindly of you to do so--for obvious reasons." "I appreciate his point of view, but since he has kicked me out he has no claim on my sympathies--at least not to the extent of forcing his point of view and causing me to abandon my own. Please say to my father that since I cannot have his forgiveness I do not want his bonds or his money. Tell him also, please, that I'm not going to leave Port Agnew, because that would predicate a sense of guilt on my part and lend some support to the popular assumption that my wife is not a virtuous woman. I could not possibly oblige my father on this point because to do so would be a violent discourtesy to my wife. I am not ashamed of her, you know." Mr. Daney gnawed his thumb nail furiously. "'The wicked flee when no man pursueth'," he quoted. "However, Mr. Donald, you know as well as I do that if your father should forbid it, a dicky bird couldn't make a living in this town." "There are no such restrictions in Darrow, Mr. Daney. The superintendent up there will give me a job on the river." Mr. Daney could not forbear an expression of horror. "Hector McKaye's son a river hog!" he cried incredulously. "Well, Donald McKaye's father was a river hog, wasn't he?" "Oh, but times have changed since Hector was a pup, my boy. Why, this is dreadful." "No, Mr. Daney. Merely unusual." "Well, Donald, I think your father will raise the ante considerably in order to avoid that added disgrace and force you to listen to reason." "If he does, sir, please spare yourself the trouble of bearing his message. Neither Nan nor I is for sale, sir." "I told him you'd decline the bonds. However, Mr. Donald, there is no reason in life why you shouldn't get money from me whenever you want it. Thanks to your father I'm worth more than a hundred thousand myself, although you'd never guess it. Your credit is A-1 with me." "I shall be your debtor for life because of that speech, Mr. Daney. Any news from my mother and the girls?" "None." "Well, I'll stand by for results," Donald assured him gravely. "Do not expect any." "I don't." Mr. Daney fidgeted and finally said he guessed he'd better be trotting along, and Donald and Nan, realizing it would be no kindness to him to be polite and assure him there was no need of hurry, permitted him to depart forthwith. "I think, sweetheart," Donald announced with a pained little smile, as he returned from seeing Mr. Daney to the front gate, "that it wouldn't be a half bad idea for you to sit in at that old piano and play and sing for me. I think I'd like something light and lilting. What's that Kipling thing that's been set to music?" So we went strolling, Down by the rolling, down by the rolling sea. You may keep your croak for other folk But you can't frighten me! He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out on the old divan. She watched him blowing smoke rings at the ceiling--and there was no music in her soul. In the afternoon the McKaye limousine drew up at the front gate and Nan's heart fluttered violently in contemplation of a visit from her husband's mother and sisters. She need not have worried, however. The interior of the car was unoccupied save for Donald's clothing and personal effects which some thoughtful person at The Dreamerie had sent down to him. He hazarded a guess that the cool and practical Elizabeth had realized his needs. XLIII Returning to the mill office, Mr. Daney sat at his desk and started to look over the mail. The Laird heard his desk buzzer sounding frequently and rightly conjecturing that his general manager was back on the job, he came into the latter's office and glared at him. "I thought I fired you?" he growled. "I know. You thought you did," the rebel replied complacently. "I see by your knuckles you've been fighting. Hope it did you good." "It did. Are you going to leave this office?" "No, sir." "I didn't think you would. Well, well! Out with it." Mr. Daney drew a deal of pleasure from that invitation. "The boy directs me to inform you, sir, that he will not accept the bonds nor any monies you may desire to give him. He says he doesn't need them because he isn't going to leave Port Agnew." "Nonsense, Andrew. He cannot remain in this town. He hasn't the courage to face his little world after marrying that girl. And he has to make a living for her." "We shall see that which we shall see," Mr. Daney replied enigmatically. "I wonder if it is possible he is trying to outgame me," old Hector mused aloud. "Andrew, go back and tell him that if he will go to California to live I will deed him that Lassen county sugar and white pine and build him the finest mill in the state." "The terms are quite impossible," Daney retorted and explained why. "He shall get out of Port Agnew," The Laird threatened. "He shall get out or starve." "You are forgetting something, sir." "Forgetting what?" "That I have more than a hundred thousand dollars in bonds right in that vault and that I have not as yet developed paralysis of the right hand. The boy shall not starve and neither shall he crawl, like a beaten dog currying favor with the one that has struck him." "I am the one who has been struck--and he has wounded me sorely," The Laird cried, his voice cracked with anger. "The mischief is done. What's the use of crying over spilled milk? You're going to forgive the boy sooner or later, so do it now and be graceful about it." "I'll never forgive him, Andrew." Mr. Daney walled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Thank God," he murmured piously, "I'm pure. Hereafter, every time Reverend Mr. Tingley says the Lord's prayer I'm going to cough out loud in church at the line: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' You'll hear that cough and remember, Hector McKaye." A deeper shadow of distress settled over The Laird's stern features. "You're uncommon mean to me this bitter day, Andrew," he complained wearily. "I take it as most unkind of you to thwart my wishes like this." "I'm for true love!" Mr. Daney declared firmly. "Ah come, come now! Don't be a stiff-necked old dodo. Forgive the boy." "In time I may forgive him, Andrew. I'm not sure of myself where he is concerned, but we canna receive the girl. 'Tis not in reason that we should." "I believe I'll cough twice," Daney murmured musingly. And the following day being Sunday, he did! He sat two rows behind the McKaye family pew but across the aisle, and in a cold fury The Laird turned to squelch him with a look. What he saw in the Daney pew, however, chilled his fury and threw him into a veritable panic of embarrassment. For to the right of the incomprehensible general manager sat the young ex-laird of Port Agnew; at Daney's left the old Laird beheld his new daughter-in-law, while further down the pew as far as she could retreat, Mrs. Daney, with face aflame, sat rigid, her bovine countenance upraised and her somewhat vacuous glance fixed unblinkingly at a point some forty feet over Mr. Tingley's pious head. Donald intercepted the old man's amazed and troubled glance, and smiled at his father with his eyes--an affectionate overture that was not lost on The Laird ere he jerked his head and eyes once more to the front. Mrs. McKaye and her two daughters were as yet unaware of the horror that impended. But not for long. When the congregation stood to sing the final hymn, Nan's wondrous mezzo-soprano rose clear and sweet over the indifferent-toned notes of every other woman present; to the most dull it would have been obvious that there was a trained singer present, and Mrs. McKaye and her daughters each cast a covert glance in the direction of the voice. However, since every other woman in the church was gazing at Nan, nobody observed the effect of her presence upon the senior branch of the McKaye family, for which small blessing the family in question was duly grateful. At the conclusion of the service old Hector remained in his pew until the majority of the congregation had filed out; then, assuring himself by a quick glance, that his son and the latter's wife had preceded him, he followed with Mrs. McKaye and the girls. From the church steps he observed Donald and Nan walking home, while Mr. Daney and his outraged spouse followed some twenty feet behind them. Quickly The Laird and his family entered the waiting limousine; it was the first occasion that anybody could remember when he had not lingered to shake hands with Mr. Tingley and, perchance, congratulate him on the excellence of his sermon. They were half way up the cliff road before anybody spoke. Then, with a long preliminary sigh, The Laird voiced the thought that obsessed them all. "That damned mutton-head, Daney. I'd run him out of the Tyee employ if it would do a bit of good. I cannot run him out of town or out of church." "The imbecile!" Elizabeth raged. Jane was dumb with shame and rage and Mrs. McKaye was sniffling a little. Presently she said: "How dare he bring her right into church with him," she cried brokenly. "Right before everybody. Oh, dear, oh dear, is my son totally lacking in a sense of decency? This is terrible, terrible." "I shall not risk such another awful Sunday morning," Elizabeth announced. "Nor I," Jane cried with equal fervor. "We shall have to leave Port Agnew now," Mrs, McKaye sobbed. Old Hector patted her hand. "Yes, I think you'll have to, Nellie. Unfortunately, I cannot go with you. Daney doesn't appear to be quite sane of late and with Donald out of the business I'm chained to a desk for the remainder of my life. I fear, however," he added savagely, "I do not intend to let that woman run me out of my own church. Not by a damned sight!" The instant they entered the house, rightly conjecturing that the Daneys had also reached their home, Mrs. McKaye went to the telephone and proceeded to inform Mr. Daney of the opinion which the McKaye family, jointly and severally, entertained for his idea of comedy. Daney listened respectfully to all she had to say touching his sanity, his intelligence, his sense of decency, and his loyalty to Hector and when, stung because he made no defense, she asked: "Have you no explanation to make us for your extraordinary behavior?" he replied: "I am an usher of our church, Mrs. McKaye. When Donald and his wife entered the church the only vacant seats in it were in my pew; the only person in the church who would not have felt a sense of outrage at having your daughter-in-law seated with his or her family, was my self-sacrificing self. I could not be discourteous to Donald and I'm quite certain his wife has as much right in our church as you have. So I shooed them both up to my pew, to the great distress of Mrs. Daney." "You should be ashamed of yourself, Andrew. You should!" "I'm not ashamed of myself, Mrs. McKaye. I've been a pussy-foot all my life. I had to do something I knew would detract from my popularity, but since I had to do it I decided to do it promptly and as if I enjoyed it. Surely you would not have commended me had I met the young couple at the door and said to them: 'Get out of this church. It is not for such as you. However, if you insist upon staying, you'll have to stand up or else sit down on the floor. Nobody here wants to sit with you. They're afraid, too, they'll offend the Chief Pooh-bah of this town'." "You could have pretended you did not see them." "My dear Mrs. McKaye," Daney retorted in even tones, "do you wish me to inform your husband of a certain long distance telephone conversation? If so--" She hung up without waiting to say good-by, and the following day she left for Seattle, accompanied by her daughters. Throughout the week The Laird forbore mentioning his son's name to Mr. Daney; indeed, he refrained from addressing the latter at all unless absolutely necessary to speak to him directly--wherefore Daney knew himself to be blacklisted. On the following Sunday The Laird sat alone in the family pew and Mr. Daney did not cough during the recital of the Lord's prayer, so old Hector managed to conquer a tremendous yearning to glance around for the reason. Also, as on the previous Sunday, he was in no hurry to leave his pew at the conclusion of the service, yet, to his profound irritation, when he did leave it and start down the central aisle of the church, he looked squarely into the faces of Donald and Nan as they emerged from the Daney pew. Mrs. Daney was conspicuous by her absence. Nan's baby boy had fallen asleep during the service and Donald was carrying the cherub. Old Hector's face went white; he gulped when his son spoke to him. "Hello, Dad. You looked lonely all by yourself in that big pew. Suppose we come up and sit with you next Sunday?" Old Hector paused and bent upon his son and Nan a terrible look. "Never speak to me again so long as you live," he replied in a low voice, and passed out of the church. Donald gazed after his broad erect figure and shook his head dolefully, as Mr. Daney fell into step beside him. "I told you so," he whispered. "Isn't it awful to be Scotch?" Nan inquired. "It is awful--on the Scotch," her husband assured her. "The dear old fraud gulped like a broken-hearted boy when I spoke to him. He'd rather be wrong than president." As they were walking home to the Sawdust Pile, Nan captured one of her husband's great fingers and swung it childishly. "I wish you didn't insist upon our going to church, sweetheart," she complained. "We're spoiling your father's Christianity." "Can't help it," he replied doggedly. "We're going to be thoroughbreds about this, no matter how much it hurts." She sighed. "And you're only half Scotch, Donald." XLIV By noon of the following day, Port Agnew was astounded by news brought by the crew of one of the light draft launches used to tow log rafts down the river. Donald McKaye was working for Darrow. He was their raftsman; he had been seen out on the log boom, pike pole in hand, shoving logs in to the endless chain elevator that drew them up to the seas. As might be imagined, Mrs. Daney was among the first to glean this information, and to her husband she repeated it at luncheon with every evidence of pleasure. "Tut, tut, woman," he replied carelessly, "this is no news to me. He told me yesterday after service that he had the job." The familiar wrinkle appeared for an instant on the end of her nose before she continued: "I wonder what The Laird thinks of that, Andrew?" "So do I," he parried skilfully. "Does he know it?" "There isn't a soul in Port Agnew with sufficient courage to tell him." "Why do you not tell him?" "None of my business. Besides, I do not hanker to see people squirm with suffering." She wrinkled her nose once more and was silent. As Mr. Daney had declared, there was none in Port Agnew possessed of sufficient hardihood to inform the Laird of his son's lowly status and it was three weeks before he discovered it for himself. He had gone up the river to one of his logging camps and the humor had seized him to make the trip in a fast little motor-boat he had given Donald at Christmas many years' before. He was busy adjusting the carburetor, after months of disuse, as he passed the Darrow log boom in the morning, so he failed to see his big son leaping across the logs, balancing himself skilfully with the pike pole. It was rather late when he started home and in the knowledge that darkness might find him well up the river he hurried. Now, from the Bight of Tyee to a point some five miles above Darrow, the Skookum flows in almost a straight line; the few bends are wide and gradual, and when The Laird came to this home-stretch he urged the boat to its maximum speed of twenty-eight miles per hour. Many a time in happier days he had raced down this long stretch with Donald at the helm, and he knew the river thoroughly; as he sped along he steered mechanically, his mind occupied in a consideration of the dishonor that had come upon his clan. The sun had already set as he came roaring down a wide deep stretch near Darrow's mill; in his preoccupation he forgot that his competitor's log boom stretched across the river fully two-thirds of its width; that he should throttle down, swerve well to starboard and avoid the field of stored logs. The deep shadows cast by the sucker growth and old snags along the bank blended with the dark surface of the log boom and prevented him from observing that he was headed for the heart of it; the first intimation he had of his danger came to him in a warning shout from the left bank--a shout that rose above the roar of the exhaust. "Jump! Overboard! Quickly! The log boom!" Old Hector awoke from his bitter reverie. He, who had once been a river hog, had no need to be told of the danger incident to abrupt precipitation into the heart of that log boom, particularly when it would presently be gently agitated by the long high "bone" the racing boat carried in her teeth. When logs weighing twenty tons come gently together--even when they barely rub against each other, nothing living caught between them may survive. The unknown who warned him was right. He must jump overboard and take his chance in the river, for it was too late now to slow down and put his motor in reverse. In the impending crash that was only a matter of seconds, The Laird would undoubtedly catapult from the stern sheets into the water--and if he should drift in under the logs, knew the river would eventually give up his body somewhere out in the Bight of Tyee. On the other hand, should he be thrown out on the boom he would stand an equal chance of being seriously injured by the impact or crushed to death when his helpless body should fall between the logs. In any event the boat would be telescoped down to the cockpit and sink at the edge of the log field. He was wearing a heavy overcoat, for it was late in the fall, and he had no time to remove it; not even time to stand up and dive clear. So he merely hurled his big body against the starboard gunwale and toppled overboard--and thirty feet further on the boat struck with a crash that echoed up and down the river, telescoped and drove under the log boom. It was not in right when old Hector rose puffing to the surface and bellowed for help before starting to swim for the log boom. The voice answered him instantly: "Coming! Hold On!" Handicapped as he was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him in long leaps across the logs. And then old Hector noticed something else. He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating enclosure in which the log supply was stored. The moment he rested his weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged suddenly--wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions of feet of stored logs. Within a few minutes, provided he should keep afloat, he would be in the midst of these tremendous Juggernauts, for, clinging to the end of the broken boom he was gradually describing a circle on the outside of the log field, swinging from beyond the middle of the river in to the left-hand bank; presently, when the boom should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity. He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end, where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him. "Careful," he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward him. "The boom is broken! Careful, I tell you! The logs are moving out--they're slipping apart. Be careful." Even as he spoke, The Laird realized that the approaching rescuer would not heed him. He _had_ to make speed out to the edge of the moving logs; if he was to rescue the man clinging to the boom-sticks he must take a chance on those long leaps through the dusk; he _must_ reach The Laird before too much open water developed between the moving logs. Only a trained river man could have won to him in such a brief space of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick. His caulks bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got it under control the iron head of his long pike pole drove into the boom-stick and fended The Laird out of harm's way; before the log the man rode could slip by, the iron had been released and the link of chain between the two boom-sticks had been snagged with the pike hook, and both men drifted side by side. "Safe--o," his rescuer warned Old Hector quietly. "Hang on. I'll keep the logs away from you and when the field floats by I'll get you ashore. We're drifting gradually in toward the bank below the mill." The Laird was too chilled, too exhausted and too lacking in breath to do more than gasp a brief word of thanks. It seemed a long, long time that he clung there, and it was quite dark when his rescuer spoke again. "I think the last log has floated out of the booming ground. I'll swim ashore with you now, as soon as I can shuck my boots and mackinaw." A few minutes later he cried reassuringly, "All set, old-timer," and slid into the water beside The Laird. "Relax yourself and do not struggle." His hands came up around old Hector's jaws from the rear. "Let go," he commanded, and the hard tow commenced. It was all footwork and their progress was very slow, but eventually they won through. As soon as he could stand erect in the mud the rescuer unceremoniously seized The Laird by the nape and dragged him high and dry up the bank. "Now, then," he gasped, "I guess you can take care of yourself. Better go over to the mill and warm yourself in the furnace room. I've got to hurry away to 'phone the Tyee people to swing a dozen spare links of their log boom across the river and stop those runaways before they escape into the Bight and go to sea on the ebb." He was gone on the instant, clambering up the bank through the bushes that grew to the water's edge; old Hector could hear his breath coming in great gasps as he ran. "Must know that chap, whoever he is," The Laird soliloquized. "Think he's worked for me some time or other. His voice sounds mighty familiar. Well--I'll look him up in the morning." He climbed after his rescuer and stumbled away through the murk toward Darrow's mill. Arrived here he found the fireman banking the fires in the furnace room and while he warmed himself one of them summoned Bert Darrow from the mill office. "Bert," The Laird explained, "I'd be obliged if you'd run me home in more or less of a hurry in your closed car. I've been in the drink," and he related the tale of his recent adventures. "Your raftsman saved my life," he concluded. "Who is he? It was so dark before he got to me I couldn't see his face distinctly, but I think he's a young fellow who used to work for me. I know because his voice sounds so very familiar." "He's a new hand, I believe. Lives in Port Agnew. I believe your man Daney can tell you his name," Darrow replied evasively. "I'll ask Daney. The man was gone before I could recover enough breath to thank him for my life. Sorry to have messed up your boom, Bert, but we'll stop the runaways at my boom and I'll have them towed back in the morning. And I'll have a man put in a new boom-stick and connect it up again." Bert Darrow set him down at the Tyee Lumber Company's office, and wet and chilled as he was, The Laird went at once to Mr. Daney's office. The latter was just leaving it for the day when The Laird appeared. "Andrew," the latter began briskly. "I drove that fast motor-boat at full speed into Darrow's boom on my way down river this evening; I've had a ducking and only for Darrow's raftsman you'd be closing down the mill to-morrow out of respect to my memory. Bert Darrow says their raftsman used to work for us; he's a new man with them and Bert says you know who he is." "I think I know the man," Mr. Daney replied thoughtfully. "He's been with them about three weeks; resigned our employ a couple of weeks before that. I was sorry to lose him. He's a good man." "I grant it, Andrew. He's the fastest, coolest hand that ever balanced a pike pole or rode a log. We cannot afford to let men like that fellow get away from us for the sake of a little extra pay. Get him back on the pay-roll, Andrew, and don't be small with him. I'll remember him handsomely at Christmas, and see that I do not forget this, Andrew. What is his name?" "Let me think." Mr. Daney bent his head, tipped back his hat and massaged his brow before replying. "I think that when he worked for the Tyee Lumber Company he was known as Donald McKaye." He looked up. The old Laird's face was ashen. "Thank you, Andrew," he managed to murmur presently. "Perhaps you'd better let Darrow keep him for a while. G--g--good-night!" Outside, his chauffeur waited with his car. "Home--and be quick about it," he mumbled and crawled into the tonneau slowly and weakly. As the car rolled briskly up the high cliff road to The Dreamerie, the old man looked far below him to the little light that twinkled on the Sawdust Pile. "She'll have his dinner cooked for him now and be waiting and watching for him," he thought. XLV Hector McKaye suffered that winter. He dwelt in Gethsemane, for he had incurred to his outcast son the greatest debt that one man can incur to another, and he could not publicly acknowledge the debt or hope to repay it in kind. By the time spring came his heart hunger was almost beyond control; there were times when, even against his will, he contemplated a reconciliation with Donald based on an acceptance of the latter's wife but with certain reservations. The Laird never quite got around to defining the reservation but in a vague way he felt that they should exist and that eventually Donald would come to a realization of the fact and help him define them. Each Sunday during that period of wretchedness he saw his boy and Nan at church, although they no longer sat with Mr. Daney. From Reverend Tingley The Laird learned that Donald now had a pew of his own, and he wondered why. He knew his son had never been remotely religious and eventually he decided that, in his son's place, though he were the devil himself, he would do exactly as Donald had done. Damn a dog that carried a low head and a dead tail! It was the sign of the mongrel strain--curs always crept under the barn when beaten! One Sunday in the latter part of May he observed that Nan came to church alone. He wondered if Donald was at home ill and a vague apprehension stabbed him; he longed to drop into step beside Nan as she left the church and ask her, but, of course, that was unthinkable. Nevertheless he wished he knew and that afternoon he spent the entire time on the terrace at The Dreamerie, searching the Sawdust Pile with his marine glasses, in the hope of seeing Donald moving about the little garden. But he did not see him, and that night his sleep was more troubled than usual. On the following Sunday Nan was not accompanied by her husband either. The Laird decided, therefore, that Donald could not be very ill, otherwise Nan would not have left him home alone. This thought comforted him somewhat. During the week he thought frequently of telephoning up to Darrow and asking if they still had the same raftsman on the pay-roll, but his pride forbade this. So he drove up the river road one day and stopped his car among the trees on the bank of the river from the Darrow log boom. A tall, lively young fellow was leaping nimbly about on the logs, but so active was he that even at two hundred yards The Laird could not be certain this man was his son. He returned to Port Agnew more troubled and distressed than ever. Mrs. McKaye and the girls had made three flying visits down to Port Agnew during the winter and The Laird had spent his week-ends in Seattle twice; otherwise, save for the servants, he was quite alone at The Dreamerie and this did not add to his happiness. Gradually the continued and inexplicable absence of Donald at Sunday service became an obsession with him; he could think of nothing else in his spare moments and even at times when it was imperative he should give all of his attention to important business matters, this eternal, damnable query continued to confront him. It went to bed with him and got up with him and under its steady relentless attrition he began to lose the look of robust health that set him off so well among men of his own age. His eyes took on a worried, restless gleam; he was irritable and in the mornings he frequently wore to the office the haggard appearance that speaks so accusingly of a sleepless night. He lost his appetite and in consequence he lost weight. Andrew Daney was greatly concerned about him, and one day, apropos of nothing, he demanded a bill of particulars. "Oh, I daresay I'm getting old, Andrew," The Laird replied evasively. "Worrying about the boy?" It was a straight shot and old Hector was too inexpressibly weary to attempt to dodge it. He nodded sadly. "Well, let us hope he'll come through all right, sir." "Is he ill? What's wrong with him, Andrew? Man, I've been eating my heart out for months, wondering what it is, but you know the fix I'm in. I don't like to ask and not a soul in Port Agnew will discuss him with me." "Why, there's nothing wrong with him that I'm aware of, sir. I spoke to Nan after services last Sunday and she read me a portion of his last letter. He was quite well at that time." "W-wh-where is he, Andrew?" "Somewhere in France. He's not allowed to tell." "France? Good God, Andrew, not _France_!" "Why not, may I ask? Of course he's in France. He enlisted as a private shortly after war was declared. Dirty Dan quit his job and went with him. They went over with the Fifth Marines. Do you mean to tell me this is news to you?" he added, frankly amazed. "I do," old Hector mumbled brokenly. "Oh, Andrew man, this is terrible, terrible. I canna stand it, man." He sat down and covered his face with his trembling old hands. "Why can't you? You wouldn't want him to sit at home and be a slacker, would you? And you wouldn't have a son of yours wait until the draft board took him by the ear and showed him his duty, would you?" "If he's killed I'll nae get over it." The Laird commenced to weep childishly. "Well, better men or at least men as fine, are paying that price for citizenship, Hector McKaye." "But his wife, man? He was married. 'Twas not expected of him--" "I believe his wife is more or less proud of him, sir. Her people have always followed the flag in some capacity." "But how does she exist? Andrew Daney, if you're giving her the money--" "If I am you have no right to ask impertinent questions about it. But I'm not." "I never knew it, I never knew it," the old man complained bitterly. "Nobody tells me anything about my own son. I'm alone; I sit in the darkness, stifling with money--oh, Andrew, Andrew, I didn't say good-by to him! I let him go in sorrow and in anger." "You may have time to cure all that. Go down to the Sawdust Pile, take the girl to your heart like a good father should and then cable the boy. That will square things beautifully." Even in his great distress the stubborn old head was shaken emphatically. The Laird of Port Agnew was not yet ready to surrender. Spring lengthened into summer and summer into fall. Quail piped in the logged-over lands and wild ducks whistled down through the timber and rested on the muddy bosom of the Skookum, but for the first time in forty years The Laird's setters remained in their kennels and his fowling pieces in their leather cases. To him the wonderful red and gold of the great Northern woods had lost the old allurement and he no longer thrilled when a ship of his fleet, homeward bound, dipped her house-flag far below him. He was slowly disintegrating. Of late he had observed that Nan no longer came to church, so he assumed she had found the task of facing her world bravely one somewhat beyond her strength. A few months before, this realization would have proved a source of savage satisfaction to him, but time and suffering were working queer changes in his point of view. Now, although he told himself it served her right, he was sensible of a small feeling of sympathy for her and a large feeling of resentment against the conditions that had brought her into conflict with the world. "I daresay," Andrew Daney remarked to him about Christmas time, "you haven't forgotten your resolve to do something handsome for that raftsman of Darrow's who saved your life last January. You told me to remind you of him at Christmas." "I have not forgotten the incident," old Hector answered savagely. "I think it might be a nice thing to do if you would send word to Nan, by me, that it will please you if she will consent to have your grandchild born in the company hospital. Otherwise, I imagine she will go to a Seattle hospital, and with doctors and nurses away to the war there's a chance she may not get the best of care." "Do as you see fit," The Laird answered. He longed to evade the issue--he realized that Daney was crowding him always, setting traps for him, driving him relentlessly toward a reconciliation that was abhorrent to him. "I have no objection. She cannot afford the expense of a Seattle hospital, I daresay, and I do not desire to oppress her." The following day Mr. Daney reported that Nan had declined with thanks his permission to enter the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital. As a soldier's wife she would be cared for without expense in the Base Hospital at Camp Lewis, less than a day's journey distant. The Laird actually quivered when Daney broke this news to him. He was hurt--terribly hurt--but he dared not admit it. In January he learned through Mr. Daney that he was a grandfather to a nine-pound boy and that Nan planned to call the baby Caleb, after her father. For the first time in his life then, The Laird felt a pang of jealousy. While the child could never, by any possibility, be aught to him, nevertheless he felt that in the case of a male child a certain polite deference toward the infant's paternal ancestors was always commendable. At any rate, Caleb was Yankee and hateful. "I am the twelfth of my line to be named Hector," he said presently--and Andrew Daney with difficulty repressed a roar of maniac laughter. Instead he said soberly. "The child's playing in hard luck as matters stand; it would be adding insult to injury to call him Hector McKaye, Thirteenth. Isn't that why you named your son Donald?" The Laird pretended not to hear this. Having been fired on from ambush, as it were, he immediately started discussing an order for some ship timbers for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. When he retired to his own office, however, he locked the door and wept with sympathy for his son, so far away and in the shadow of death upon the occasion of the birth of his first son. XLVI Spring came. Overhead the wild geese flew in long wedges, honking, into the North, and The Laird remembered how Donald, as a boy, used to shoot at them with a rifle as they passed over The Dreamerie. Their honking wakened echoes in his heart. With the winter's supply of logs now gone, logging operations commenced in the woods with renewed vigor, the river teemed with rafts, the shouts of the rivermen echoing from bank to bank. Both Tyee and Darrow were getting out spruce for the government and ship timbers for the wooden shipyards along San Francisco Bay. Business had never been so brisk, and with the addition of the war duties that came to every community leader, The Laird found some surcease from his heart-hunger. Mrs. McKaye and the girls had returned to The Dreamerie, now that Donald's marriage had ceased to interest anybody but themselves, so old Hector was not so lonely. But--the flag was flying again at the Sawdust Pile, each day of toil for The Laird was never complete without an eager search of the casualty lists published in the Seattle papers. Spring lengthened into summer. The Marine casualties at Belleau Wood and Chateau-Thierry appalled The Laird; he read that twenty survivors of a charge that started two hundred and fifty strong across the wheat field at Bouresches had taken Bouresches and held it against three hundred of the enemy--led by Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary, of Port Agnew, Washington! Good old Dirty Dan! At last he was finding a legitimate outlet for his talents! He would get the Distinguished Service Cross for that! The Laird wondered what Donald would receive. It would be terrible should Dirty Dan return with the Cross and Donald McKaye without it. In September, Donald appeared in the Casualty List as slightly wounded. Also, he was a first lieutenant now. The Laird breathed easier, for his son would be out of it for a few months, no doubt. It was a severe punishment, however, not to be able to discuss his gallant son with anybody. At home his dignity and a firm adherence to his previous announcement that his son's name should never be mentioned in his presence, forbade a discussion with Mrs. McKaye and the girls; and when he weakly sparred for an opportunity with Andrew Daney, that stupid creature declined to rise to the bait, or even admit that he knew of Donald's commission. When told of it, he expressed neither surprise nor approval. In November, the great influenza epidemic came to Port Agnew and took heavy toll. It brought to The Laird a newer, a more formidable depression. What if Donald's son should catch it and die, and Donald be deprived of the sight of his first-born? What if Nan should succumb to an attack of it while her husband was in France? In that event would Donald forgive and forget and come home to The Dreamerie? Somehow, old Hector had his doubts. For a long time now, he had felt a great urge to see Donald's son. He had a curiosity to discover whether the child favored the McKayes or the Brents. If it favored the McKayes--well, perhaps he might make some provision for its future in his will, and in order to prove himself a good sport he would leave an equal sum to Nan's illegitimate child, which Donald had formally adopted a few days after his marriage to Nan. Why make fish of one and fowl of the other? he thought. They were both McKayes now, in the sight of the law, and for aught he knew to the contrary they were full brothers! The child became an obsession with him. He longed to weigh it and compare its weight with that of Donald's at the same age--he had the ancient record in an old memorandum book at the office. He speculated on whether it had blue eyes or brown, whether it was a blond or a brunette. He wondered if Daney had seen it and wondering, at length he asked. Yes, Mr. Daney had seen the youngster several times, but beyond that statement he would not go and The Laird's dignity forbade too direct a probe. He longed to throttle Mr. Daney, who he now regarded as the most unsympathetic, prosaic, dull-witted old ass imaginable. He wanted to see that child! The desire to do so never left him during his waking hours and he dreamed of the child at night. So in the end he yielded and went down to the Sawdust Pile, under cover of darkness, his intention being to sneak up to the little house and endeavor to catch a glimpse of the child through the window. He was enraged to discover, however, that Nan maintained a belligerent Airedale that refused, like all good Airedales, to waste his time and dignity in useless barking. He growled--once, and The Laird knew he meant it, so he got out of that yard in a hurry. He was in a fine rage as he walked back to the mill office and got into his car. Curse the dog! Was he to be deprived of a glimpse of his grandson by an insensate brute of a dog? He'd be damned if he was! He'd shoot the animal first--no, that would never do. Nan would come out and he would be discovered. Moreover, what right had he to shoot anybody's dog until it attacked him? The thing to do would be to put some strychnine on a piece of meat--no, no, that would never do. The person who would poison a dog--any kind of a dog-- It was a good dog. The animal certainly was acting within its legal rights. Yes, he knew now where Nan had gotten it. The dog had belonged to First Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary of the Fifth Marines; he had doubtless given it to Nan to keep for him when he went to the war; The Laird knew Dan thought a great deal of that dog. His name was Jerry and he had aided Dirty Dan in more than one bar-room battle. Jerry, like his master, like the master of the woman he protected, was a Devil-dog, and one simply cannot kill a soldier's dog for doing a soldier's duty. Should Jerry charge there would be no stopping him until he was killed, so The Laird saw very clearly that there was but one course open to him. If he marched through that gate and straight to the door, as if he meant business, as if he had a moral and legal right to be there on business, Jerry would understand and permit him to pass. But if he snooped in, like a thief in the night, and peered in at a window-- "I wish I had a suit of Fifteenth Century armour," he thought. "Then Jerry, you could chew on my leg and be damned to you. You're a silent dog and I could have a good look while you were wrecking your teeth." He went back to the Sawdust Pile at dusk the next evening, hoping Jerry would be absent upon some unlawful private business, but when he approached the gate slowly and noiselessly Jerry spoke up softly from within and practically said: "Get out or take the consequences." The following night, however, The Laird was prepared for Jerry. He did not halt at the dog's preliminary warning but advanced and rattled the gate a little. Immediately Jerry came to the gate and stood just inside growling in his throat, so The Laird thrust an atomizer through the palings and deluged Jerry's hairy countenance with a fine cloud of spirits of ammonia. He had once tried that trick on a savage bulldog in which he desired to inculcate some respect for his person, and had succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. Therefore, since desperate circumstances always require desperate measures, the memory of that ancient victory had moved him to attempt a similar embarrassment of the dog Jerry. But Jerry was a devil-dog. He had been raised and trained by Dirty Dan O'Leary and in company with that interesting anthropoid he had been through many stormy passages. Long before, he had learned that the offensive frequently wins--the defensive never. It is probable that he wept as he sniffed the awful stuff, but if he did they were tears of rage. Jerry's first move was to stand on his head and cover his face with his paws. Then he did several back flips and wailed aloud in his misery and woe, his yelps of distress quite filling the empyrean. But only for the space of a few seconds. Recovering his customary aplomb he made a flying leap for the top of the gate, his yelps now succeeded by ambitious growls--and in self-defense The Laird was forced to spray him again as he clung momentarily on top of the palings. With a sob Jerry dropped back and buried his nose in the dust, while The Laird beat a hurried retreat into the darkness, for he had lost all confidence in his efforts to inculcate in Jerry an humble and contrite spirit. He could hear rapid footsteps inside the little house; then the door opened and in the light that streamed from within he was indistinctly visible to Nan as she stood in the doorway. "Jerry!" he heard her call. "Good dog! What's the matter? After him, Jerry. Go get him, Jerry!" She ran to the gate and opened it for the dog, who darted through, but paused again to run his afflicted nose in the dust and roll a couple of times. Apparently he felt that there was no great hurry; his quarry could not escape him. It is probable, also, that he was more or less confused and not quite certain which direction the enemy had taken, for Jerry's sense of smell was temporarily suspended and his eyes blinded by tears; certain his language was not at all what it should have been. The Laird ran blindly, apprehensively, but for a very short distance. Suddenly he bumped into something quite solid, which closed around him viciously. "Halt, damn you," a commanding voice cried. Despite his years, Hector McKaye was no weakling, and in the knowledge that he could not afford to be captured and discovered, seemingly he slipped forty years from his shoulders. Once more he was a lumberjack, the top dog of his district--and he proceeded to fight like one. His old arms rained punches on the midriff of the man who held him and he knew they stung cruelly, for at every punch the man grunted and strove to clinch him tighter and smother the next blow. "Let go me or I'll kill you," The Laird panted. "Man dinna drive me to it." He ceased his rain of blows, grasped his adversary and tried to wrestle him down. He succeeded, but the man would not stay down. He wriggled out with amazing ease and had old Hector with his shoulders touching before The Laird's heaving chest and two terrible thumbs closed down on each of The Laird's eyes, with four powerful fingers clasping his face like talons. "Quit, or I'll squeeze your eyeballs out," a voice warned him. The Laird's hand beat the ground beside him. He had surrendered to a master of his style of fighting. With something of the air of an expert, his conqueror ran a quick hand over him, seeking for weapons, and finding none, he grasped The Laird by the collar and jerked him to his feet. "Now, then, my hearty, I'll have a look at you," he said. "You'll explain why you're skulking around here and abusing that dog!" The Laird quivered as he found himself being dragged toward the stream of light, in the center of which Nan Brent stood silhouetted. He could not afford this and he was not yet defeated. "A thousand dollars if you let me go now," he panted. "I have the money in my pocket. Ask yon lass if I've done aught wrong." His captor paused and seemed to consider this. "Make it ten thousand and I'll consider it," he whispered. "Leave it on the mail box just outside the Tyee Lumber Company's office at midnight to-morrow night." "I'll do it--so help me God," The Laird promised frantically. His son's voice spoke in his ear. "Dad! You low-down, worthless lovable old fraud!" "My son! My son!" Old Hector's glad cry ended in a sob. "Oh, my sonny boy, my bonny lad! I canna stand it. I canna! Forgie me, lad, forgie me--and ask her to forgie me!" His old arms were around his son's neck and he was crying on Donald's shoulder, unashamed. "I was trying for a look at the bairn," he cried brokenly, "and 'twas a privilege God would nae gie me seeing that I came like a sneak and not like an honest man. The damned dog--he knew! Och, Donald, say ye forgie ye're auld faither. Say it, lad. Ma heart's breakin'." "Why, bless your bare-shanked old Scotch soul, of course I forgive you. I never held any grudge, you know. I simply stood pat until you could see things through my eyes." "Is that you, Donald?" Nan called. "Aye, aye, sweetheart. Dad's here. He wants to know if you regard him as a particularly terrible old man. I think he's afraid you will refuse to let him look at Laird Hector, Thirteenth." "Man, man," the old man urged, quite shocked at this casual greeting of a returned hero to his wife, "go to her, lad. She'll not relish favoritism." "Oh, this isn't our first meeting, Dad. I got home yesterday. I have thirty days leave. They sent me home as an instructor in small arms practice and gave me a boost in rank. I was just up town for a beefsteak and I've lost the beefsteak battling with you." The Laird wiped his eyes and got control of himself. Presently he said: "Keep that blessed dog off me," and started resolutely for the front gate. Without a moment's hesitation he folded Nan in his arms and kissed her. "Poor bairn," he whispered. "I've been cruel to you. Forgie me, daughter, if so be you can find it in your heart to be that generous. God knows, lass, I'll try to be worthy of you." "Am I worthy of him?" she whispered, womanlike. "Far more than his father is," he admitted humbly. "Damn the world and damn the people in it. You're a good girl, Nan. You always were a good girl--" "But suppose she wasn't--always?" Donald queried gently. "Is that going to make any difference--to you?" "I don't care what she was before you married her. I haven't thought about that for a long time the way I used to think about it. I built The Dreamerie for you and the girl you'd marry and I--I accept her unconditionally, my son, and thank God she has the charity to accept an old Pharisee like me for a father-in-law." Donald slipped his arm around Nan's waist, and started with her toward the door. "Tag along, father," he suggested, "and Nan will show you a prize grandson." At the door, Nan paused. "Do you think, father McKaye," she queried, "that the remainder of the family will think as you do?" "I fear not," he replied sadly. "But then, you haven't married the family. They'll accept you or keep out of Port Agnew; at any rate they'll never bother you, my dear. I think," he added grimly, "that I may find a way to make them treat you with civility at least." "He's a pretty good old sport after all, isn't he, Nan?" her husband suggested. "I'll tell the world he is," she answered archly, employing the A.E.F. slang she had already learned from Donald. She linked her arm in old Hector's and steered him down the hall to the living-room. "Your grandson is in there," she said, and opening the door she gently propelled him into the room. XLVII Nan was right. His grandson was there, but strange to relate he was seated, as naked as Venus (save for a diaper) on his grandmother's lap. Hector McKaye paused and glared at his wife. "Damn it, Nellie," he roared, "what the devil do you mean by this?" "I'm tired of being an old fool, Hector," she replied meekly, and held the baby up for his inspection. "It's time you were," he growled. "Come here, you young rascal till I heft you. By the gods of war, he's a McKaye!" He hugged the squirming youngster to his heart and continued to glare at his wife as if she were a hardened criminal. "Why didn't you tell me you felt yourself slipping?" he demanded. "Out with it, Nellie." "There will be no post-mortems," Nan interdicted. "Mother McKaye and Elizabeth and Jane and I patched up our difficulties when Donald came home yesterday. How we did it or what transpired before we did it, doesn't matter, you dear old snooper." "What? Elizabeth and Jane? Unconditional surrender?" She nodded smilingly and The Laird admitted his entire willingness to be--jiggered. Finally, having inspected his grandson, he turned for an equally minute inspection of his soldier son under the lamplight. "Three service stripes and one wound stripe," he murmured. "And you're not crippled, boy dear?" "Do I fight like one? Hector, man, those punches of yours would have destroyed a battalion of cripples. Oh, you old false-alarm! Honestly, Dad, you're the most awful dub imaginable. And trying to bribe me into permitting you to escape--what the deuce have you been monkeying with? You reek of ammonia--here, go away from my son. You're poison." The Laird ignored him. "What's that ribbon?" he demanded. "Distinguished Service Cross." "You must have bought it in a pawnshop. And that thing?" "Croix de Guerre." "And that red one?" "Legion d'Honneur." A pause. "What did Dirty Dan get, son?" "The one thing in the world he thought he despised. The Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in saving the life of a British colonel, who, by the way, happens to be an Orangeman. When he discovered it he wanted to bayonet the colonel and I won the Croix de Guerre for stopping him." "Oh, cease your nonsense, Donald," his wife urged, "and tell your father and mother something. I think they are entitled to the news now." "Yes, Nan, I think they are. Listen, folks. Now that you've all been nice enough to be human beings and accept my wife at her face value, I have a surprise for you. On the day when Nan married the father of my adopted son, he waited until the officiating minister had signed the marriage license and attested that he had performed the ceremony; then while the minister's attention was on something else, he took possession of the license and put it in his overcoat pocket. Later he and Nan drove to a restaurant for luncheon and the overcoat with the license in the pocket was stolen, from the automobile. The thief pawned the coat later and the pawnbroker discovered the license in the pocket after the thief had departed. The following day the fellow was arrested in the act of stealing another overcoat; the pawnbroker read of the arrest and remembered he had loaned five dollars on an overcoat to a man who gave the same name this thief gave to the police. So the pawnbroker--" "I am not interested, my son. I require no proofs." "Thank you for that, father. But you're entitled to them and you're going to get them. The pawnbroker found on the inside lining of the inner breast pocket of the overcoat the tag which all tailors sew there when, they make the garment. This tag bore the name of the owner of the overcoat, his address and the date of delivery of the overcoat." "Now, the pawnbroker noticed that the man who owned the overcoat was not the person named in the marriage license. Also he noticed that the marriage license was attested by a minister but that it had not been recorded by the state board of health, as required by law--and the pawnbroker was aware that marriage licenses are not permitted, by law, to come into the possession of the contracting parties until the fact that they have been legally married has been duly recorded on the evidence of the marriage--which is, of course, the marriage license." "Why didn't the idiot send the license back to the minister who had performed the ceremony?" The Laird demanded. "Then this tangle would never have occurred." "He says he thought of that, but he was suspicious. It was barely possible that the officiating clergyman had connived at the theft of the license from his desk, so the pawnbroker, who doubtless possesses the instincts of an amateur detective, resolved to get the license into the hands of Nan Brent direct. Before doing so, however, he wrote to the man named in the license and sent his letter to the address therein given. In the course of time that letter was returned by the post-office department with the notation that the location of the addressee was unknown. The pawnbroker then wrote to the man whose name appeared on the tailor's tag in the overcoat, and promptly received a reply. Yes, an overcoat had been stolen from his automobile on a certain date. He described the overcoat and stated that the marriage license of a friend of his might be found in the breast pocket, provided the thief had not removed it. If the license was there he would thank the pawnbroker to forward it to him. He enclosed a check to redeem the overcoat and pay the cost of forwarding it to him by parcel post, insured. The pawnbroker had that check photographed before cashing it and he forwarded the overcoat but retained the marriage license, for he was more than ever convinced that things were not as they should have been. "His next move was to write Miss Nan Brent, at Port Agnew, Washington, informing her of the circumstances and advising her that he had her marriage certificate. This letter reached Port Agnew at the time Nan was living in San Francisco, and her father received it. He merely scratched out Port Agnew, Washington, and substituted for that address: 'Care of---- using Nan's married name, Altamont Apartments, San Francisco.' "By the time that letter reached San Francisco Nan had left that address, but since she planned a brief absence only, she left no forwarding address for her mail. That was the time she came north to visit her father and in Seattle she discovered that her supposed husband was already married. I have told you, father, and you have doubtless told mother, Nan's reasons for refusing to disclose this man's identity at that time. "Of course Nan did not return to San Francisco, but evidently her husband did and at their apartment he found this letter addressed to Nan. He opened it, and immediately set out for San José to call upon the pawnbroker and gain possession of the marriage license. Unknown to him, however, his lines were all tangled and the pawnbroker told him frankly he was a fraud and declined to give him the license. Finally the pawnbroker tried a bluff and declared that if the man did not get out of his place of business he would have him arrested as a bigamist--and the fellow fled. "A month or two later the pawnbroker was in San Francisco so he called at the Altamont Apartments to deliver the license in person, only to discover that the person he sought had departed and that her address was unknown. So he wrote Nan again, using her married name and addressed her at Port Agnew, Washington. You will remember, of course, that at this time Nan's marriage was not known to Port Agnew, she had kept it secret. Naturally the postmaster here did not know anybody by that name, and in due course, when the letter remained unclaimed he did not bother to advertise it but returned it to the sender." "It doesn't seem possible," Mrs. McKaye declared, quite pop-eyed with excitement. "It was possible enough," her son continued drily. "Well, the bewildered pawnbroker thrust the license away in his desk, and awaited the next move of the man in the case. But he never moved, and after a while the pawnbroker forgot he had the license. And the minister was dead. One day, in cleaning out his desk he came across the accumulated papers in the case and it occurred to him to write the state board of health and explain the situation. Promptly he received a letter from the board informing him that inquiries had been made at the board of health office for a certified copy of the license, by Miss Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Washington, and that the board had been unable to furnish such a certified copy. Immediately our obliging and intelligent pawnbroker, whose name, by the way, is Abraham Goldman, bundled up the marriage license, together with the carbon copy of the pawn ticket he had given the thief; a press clipping from the San José _Mercury_ recounting the story of the capture of the thief; carbon copies of all his correspondence in the case, the original of all letters received, the photograph of the check--everything, in fact, to prove a most conclusive case through the medium of a well-ordered and amazing chain of optical and circumstantial evidence. This evidence he sent to Miss Brent, Port Agnew, Washington, and she received it about a week before I married her. Consequently, she was in position to prove to the most captious critic that she was a woman of undoubted virtue, the innocent victim of a scoundrel who had inveigled her into a bigamous marriage. Of course, in view of the fact that the man she went through a legal marriage ceremony with already had a wife living, Nan's marriage to him was illegal--how do you express it? Ipso facto or per se? In the eyes of the law she had never been married; the man in the case was legally debarred from contracting another marriage. The worst that could possibly be said of Nan was that she played in mighty hard luck." "In the name of heaven, why did you not tell me this the day you married her?" The Laird demanded wrathfully. "I didn't know it the day I married her. She was curious enough to want to see how game I was. She wanted to be certain I truly loved her, I think--and in view of her former experience I do not blame her for it. It pleased you a whole lot, didn't it, honey?" he added, turning to Nan, "when I married you on faith?" "But why didn't you tell us after you had discovered it, Donald?" Mrs. McKaye interrupted. "That was not kind of you, my son." "Well," he answered soberly, "in the case of you and the girls I didn't think you deserved it. I kept hoping you and the girls would confess to Dad that you telephoned Nan to come back to Port Agnew that time I was sick with typhoid--" "Eh? What's that?" The Laird sat up bristling. Mrs. McKaye flushed scarlet and seemed on the verge of tears. Donald went to her and took her in his arms. "Awfully sorry to have to peach on you, old dear," he continued. "Do not think Nan told on you, Mother. She didn't. I figured it all out by myself. However, as I started to remark, I expected you would confess and that your confession would start a family riot, in the midst of it I knew father would rise up and declare himself. I give you my word, Dad, that for two weeks before I went to work up at Darrow I watched and waited all day long for you to come down here and tell Nan it was a bet and that we'd play it as it lay." Old Hector gritted his teeth and waged his head sorrowfully. "Nellie," he warned his trembling wife, "this is what comes of a lack of confidence between man and wife." She flared up at that. "Hush, you hypocrite. At least I haven't snooped around here trying to poison dogs and kill people when I was discovered playing Peeping Tom. A pretty figure you've cut throughout this entire affair. Didn't I beg you not to be hard on our poor boy?" "Yes, you had better lay low, Father," Donald warned him. "You've been married long enough to know that if you start anything with a woman she'll put it all over you. We will, therefore, forget Mother's error and concentrate on you. Remember the night I dragged you ashore at Darrow's log boom? Well, permit me to tell you that you're a pretty heavy tow and long before my feet struck bottom I figured on two Widows McKaye. If I'd had to swim twenty feet further I would have lost out. Really, I thought you'd come through after that." "I would if you'd waited a bit," old Hector protested miserably. "You ought to know I never do things in a hurry." "Well, I do, Dad, but all the same I grew weary waiting for you. Then I made up my mind I'd never tell you about Nan until you and Mother and the girls had completely reversed yourselves and taken Nan for the woman she is and not the woman you once thought she was." "Well, you've won, haven't you?" The Laird's voice was very husky. "Yes, I have; and it's a sweet victory, I assure you." "Then shut up. Shut up, I tell you." "All right! I'm through--forever." The Laird bent his beetling brows upon Nan. "And you?" he demanded. "Have you finished?" She came to him and laid her soft cheek against his. "You funny old man," she whispered. "Did you ever hear that I had begun?" "Well, nae, I have not--now that you mention it. And, by the way, my dear! Referring to my grandson's half-brother?" "Yes." "I understand he's a McKaye." "Yes, Donald has legally adopted him." "Well, then, I'll accept him as an adopted grandson, my dear. I think there'll be money enough for everybody. But about this scalawag of a man that fathered him. I'll have to know who he is. We have a suit of zebra clothing waiting for him, my dear." "No, you haven't, Father McKaye. My boy's father is never going to be a convict. That man has other children, too." "I'm going to have a glass frame made and in it I'm going to arrange photographic reproductions of all the documents in Nan's case," Donald stated. "The history of the case will all be there, then, with the exception, of course, of the name of the man. In deference to Nan's desires I will omit that. Then I'll have that case screwed into the wall of the post-office lobby where all Port Agnew can see and understand--" "Nellie," The Laird interrupted, "please stop fiddling with that baby and dress him. Daughter, get my other grandson ready, and you, Donald, run over to the mill office. My car is standing there. Bring it here and we'll all go home to The Dreamerie--yes, and tell Daney to come up and help me empty a bottle to--to--to my additional family. He'll bring his wife, of course, but then we must endure the bitter with the sweet. Good old file, Daney. None better." Donald put on his cap and departed. As the front gate closed behind him Hector McKaye sprang up and hurried out of the house after him. "Hey, there, son," he called into the darkness, "What was that you said about a glass case?" Donald returned and repeated the statement of his plan. "And you're going to the trouble of explaining to this sorry world," the old man cried sharply. "Man, the longest day she lives there'll be brutes that will say 'twas old man McKaye's money that framed an alibi for her.' Son, no man or woman was ever so pure that some hypocrite didn't tread 'em under foot like dust and regard them as such. Lad, your wife will always be dust to some folks, but--we're kindred to her--so what do we care? We understand. Do not explain to the damned Pharisees. They wouldn't understand. Hang that thing in the post-office lobby and some superior person will quote Shakespeare, and say: 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much.'" "Then you would advise me to tell the world to go to--" "Exactly, sonny, exactly." 
36522	----	[Frontispiece: "Don't think that makes any difference. I shall marry him just the same." _Frontispiece.--The Trail of the Axe_.] The Trail of the Axe _A Story of the Red Sand Valley_ BY RIDGWELL CULLUM Author of "The Watchers of the Plains," "The Sheriff of Dyke Hole", etc. With Frontispiece in Colors By CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Copyright, 1910, by George W. Jacobs & Company CONTENTS CHAP. I. Dave II. A Picnic in the Red Sand Valley III. Affairs in Malkern IV. Dick Mansell's News V. Jim Truscott Returns VI. Parson Tom Interferes VII. The Work at the Mills VIII. At the Church Bazaar IX. In Dave's Office X. An Auspicious Meeting XI. The Summer Rains XII. The Old Mills XIII. Betty Decides XIV. The Mills XV. Betty Takes Cover XVI. Disaster at the Mill XVII. The Last of the Sawyer XVIII. Face To Face XIX. In the Mountains XX. The Church Militant XXI. An Adventure in the Fog XXII. Terror in the Mountains XXIII. The Red Tide of Anarchy XXIV. In the Dead of Night XXV. Mason's Prisoner XXVI. To the Lumber Camp XXVII. At Bay XXVIII. Dave--the Man XXIX. The End of the Strike XXX. In the Dugout XXXI. At Midnight XXXII. Two Men--and a Woman The Trail of the Axe CHAPTER I DAVE Dave was thirty-two, but looked forty; for, in moulding his great, strong, ugly face, Nature had been less than kind to him. It is probable, from his earliest, Dave had never looked less than ten years older than he really was. Observing him closely, one had the impression that Nature had set herself the task of equipping him for a tremendous struggle in the battle of life; as though she had determined to make him invincible. Presuming this to have been her purpose, she set to work with a liberal hand. She gave him a big heart, doubtless wishing him to be strong to fight and of a great courage, yet with a wonderful sympathy for the beaten foe. She gave him the thews and sinews of a Hercules, probably arguing that a man must possess a mighty strength with which to carry himself to victory. To give him such physical strength it was necessary to provide a body in keeping. Thus, his shoulders were abnormally wide, his chest was of a mighty girth, his arms were of phenomenal length, and his legs were gnarled and knotted with muscles which could never be satisfactorily disguised by the class of "store" clothes it was his frugal custom to wear. For his head Nature gave him a fine, keen brain; strong, practical, subtly far-seeing in matters commercial, bluntly honest and temperate, yet withal matching his big heart in kindly sympathy. It was thrilling with a vast energy and capacity for work, but so pronounced was its dominating force, that in the development of his physical features it completely destroyed all delicacy of mould and gentleness of expression. He displayed to the world the hard, rugged face of the fighter, without any softening, unless, perhaps, one paused to look into the depths of his deep-set gray eyes. Nature undoubtedly fulfilled her purpose. Dave was equipped as few men are equipped, and if it were to be regretted that his architect had forgotten that even a fighting man has his gentler moments, and that there are certain requirements in his construction to suit him to such moments, in all other respects he had been treated lavishly. Summed up briefly, Dave was a tower of physical might, with a face of striking plainness. It was twelve years since he came to the Red Sand Valley. He was then fresh from the lumber regions of Puget Sound, on the western coast of the United States. He came to Western Canada in search of a country to make his own, with a small capital and a large faith in himself, supported by a courage that did not know the meaning of defeat. He found the Red Sand Valley nestling in the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. He saw the wonders of the magnificent pine woods which covered the mountain slopes in an endless sea of deep, sombre green. And he knew that these wonderful primordial wastes were only waiting for the axe of the woodsman to yield a building lumber second to none in the world. The valley offered him everything he needed. A river that flowed in full tide all the open season, with possibilities of almost limitless "timber booms" in its backwaters, a delicious setting for a village, with the pick of a dozen adequate sites for the building of lumber mills. He could hope to find nothing better, so he stayed. His beginning was humble. He started with a horse-power saw-pit, and a few men up in the hills cutting for him. But he had begun his great struggle with fortune, and, in a man such as Nature had made him, it was a struggle that could only end with his life. The battle was tremendous, but he never hesitated, he never flinched. Small as was his beginning, six years later his present great mills and the village of Malkern had begun to take shape. Then, a year later, the result of his own persistent representation, the Canadian Northwestern Railroad built a branch line to his valley. And so, in seven years, his success was practically assured. Now he was comfortably prosperous. The village was prosperous. But none knew better than he how much still remained to be achieved before the foundations of his little world were adequate to support the weight of the vast edifice of commercial enterprise, which, with his own two hands, his own keen brain, he hoped to erect. He was an American business man raised in the commercial faith of his country. He understood the value of "monopoly," and he made for it. Thus, when he could ill spare capital, by dint of heavy borrowings he purchased all the land he required, and the "lumbering" rights of that vast region. Then it was that he extended operations. He abandoned his first mill and began the building of his larger enterprise further down the valley, at a point where he had decided that the village of Malkern should also begin its growth. Once the new mill was safely established he sold his old one to a man who had worked with him from the start. The transaction was more in the nature of a gift to an old friend and comrade. The price was nominal, but the agreement was binding that the mill should only be used for the production of small building material, and under no circumstances to be used in the production of rough "baulks." This was to protect his own monopoly in that class of manufacture. George Truscott, the lumberman with whom he made the transaction, worked the old mills with qualified success for two years. Then he died suddenly of blood-poisoning, supervening upon a badly mutilated arm torn by one of his own saws. The mill automatically became the property of his only son Jim, a youth of eighteen, curly-headed, bright, lovable, but wholly irresponsible for such an up-hill fight as the conduct of the business his father had left him. The master of the Malkern mills, as might be expected, was a man of simple habits and frugal tastes. In his early struggles he had had neither time nor money with which to indulge himself, and the habit of simple living had grown upon him. He required so very little. He had no luxurious home; a mere cottage of four rooms and a kitchen, over which an aged and doting mother ruled, her establishment consisting of one small maid. His office was a shack of two rooms, bare but useful, containing one chair and one desk, and anything he desired to find a temporary safe resting-place for strewn about the floor, or hung upon nails driven into the walls. It was all he needed, a roof to shade him from the blazing summer sun when he was making up his books, and four walls to shut out the cruel blasts of the Canadian winter. He was sitting at his desk now, poring over a heap of letters which had just arrived by the Eastern mail. This was the sort of thing he detested. Correspondence entailed a lot of writing, and he hated writing. Figures he could cope with, he had no grudge against them, but composing letters was a task for which he did not feel himself adequately equipped; words did not flow easily from his pen. His education was rather the education of a man who goes through the world with ears and eyes wide open. He had a wide knowledge of men and things, but the inside of books was a realm into which he had not deeply delved. At last he pushed his letters aside and sat back, his complaining chair protesting loudly at the burden imposed upon it. He drew an impatient sigh, and began to fill his pipe, gazing through the rain-stained window under which his untidy desk stood. He had made up his mind to leave the answering of his letters until later in the day, and the decision brought him some relief. He reached for the matches. But suddenly he altered his mind and removed his pipe from his mouth. A smile shone in his deep-set eyes at the sight of a dainty, white figure which had just emerged from behind a big stack of milled timber out in the yard and was hurrying toward the office. He needed no second glance to tell him who the figure belonged to. It was Betty--little Betty Somers, as he loved to call her--who taught the extreme youth of Malkern out of her twenty-two years of erudition and worldly wisdom. He sprang from his chair and went to the door to meet her, and as he walked his great bulk and vast muscle gave his gait something of the roll of a sailor. He had no lightness, no grace in his movements; just the ponderous slowness of monumental strength. He stood awaiting her in the doorway, which he almost filled up. Betty was not short, but he towered above her as she came up, his six feet five inches making nothing of her five feet six. "This is bully," he cried delightedly, as she stood before him. "I hadn't a notion you were getting around this morning, Betty." His voice was as unwieldy as his figure; it was husky too, in the manner of powerful voices when their owners attempt to moderate them. The girl laughed frankly up into his face. "I'm playing truant," she explained. Then her pretty lips twisted wryly, and she pointed at the lintel of the door. "Please sit down there," she commanded. Then she laughed again. "I want to talk to you, and--and I have no desire to dislocate my neck." He made her feel so absurdly small; she was never comfortable unless he was sitting down. The man grinned humorously at her imperious tone, and sat down. They were great friends, these two. Betty looked upon him as a very dear, big, ugly brother to whom she could always carry all her little worries and troubles, and ever be sure of a sympathetic adviser. It never occurred to her that Dave could be anything dearer to anybody. He was just Dave--dear old Dave, an appellation which seemed to fit him exactly. The thought of him as a lover was quite impossible. It never entered her head. Probably the only people in Malkern who ever considered the possibility of Dave as a lover were his own mother, and perhaps Mrs. Tom Chepstow. But then they were wiser than most of the women of the village. Besides, doubtless his mother was prejudiced, and Mrs. Tom, in her capacity as the wife of the Rev. Tom Chepstow, made it her business to study the members of her husband's parish more carefully than the other women did. But to the ordinary observer he certainly did not suggest the lover. He was so strong, so cumbersome, so unromantic. Then his ways were so deliberate, so machine-like. It almost seemed as though he had taken to himself something of the harsh precision of his own mills. On the other hand, his regard for Betty was a matter of less certainty. Good comradeship was the note he always struck in their intercourse, but oftentimes there would creep into his gray eyes a look which spoke of a warmth of feeling only held under because his good sense warned him of the utter hopelessness of it. He was too painfully aware of the quality of Betty's regard for him to permit himself any false hopes. Betty's brown eyes took on a smiling look of reproach as she held up a warning finger. "Dave," she said, with mock severity, "I always have to remind you of our compact. I insist that you sit down when I am talking to you. I refuse to be made to feel--and look--small. Now light your pipe and listen to me." "Go ahead," he grinned, striking a match. His plain features literally shone with delight at her presence there. Her small oval, sun-tanned face was so bright, so full of animation, so healthy looking. There was such a delightful frankness about her. Her figure, perfectly rounded, was slim and athletic, and her every movement suggested the open air and perfect health. "Well, it's this way," she began, seating herself on the corner of a pile of timber: "I'm out on the war-path. I want scalps. My pocketbook is empty and needs filling, and when that's done I'll get back to my school children, on whose behalf I am out hunting." "It's your picnic?" suggested Dave. "Not mine. The kiddies'. So now, old boy, put up your hands! It's your money or your life." And she sat threatening him with her pocketbook, pointing it at him as though it were a pistol. Dave removed his pipe. "Guess you'd best have 'em both," he smiled. But Betty shook her head with a joyous laugh. "I only want your money," she said, extending an open hand toward him. Dave thrust deep into his hip-pocket, and produced a roll of bills. "It's mostly that way," he murmured, counting them out. But his words had reached the girl, and her laugh died suddenly. "Oh, Dave!" she said reproachfully. And the man's contrition set him blundering. "Say, Betty, I'm a fool man anyway. Don't take any sort of notice. I didn't mean a thing. Now here's fifty, and you can have any more you need." He looked straight into her eyes, which at once responded to his anxious smile. But she did not attempt to take the money. She shook her head. "Too much." But he pushed the bills into her hand. "You can't refuse," he said. "You see, it's for the kiddies. It isn't just for you." When Dave insisted refusal was useless. Betty had long since learned that. Besides, as he said, it was for the "kiddies." She took the money, and he sat and watched her as she folded the bills into her pocketbook. The girl looked up at the sound of a short laugh. "What's that for?" she demanded, her brown eyes seriously inquiring. "Oh, just nothing. I was thinking." The man glanced slowly about him. He looked up at the brilliant summer sun. Then his eyes rested upon the rough exterior of his unpretentious office. "It meant something," asserted Betty. "I hate people to laugh--in that way." "I was thinking of this shack of mine. I was just thinking, Betty, what a heap of difference an elegant coat of paint makes to things. You see, they're just the same underneath, but they--kind of look different with paint on 'em, kind of please the eye more." "Just so," the girl nodded wisely. "And so you laughed--in that way." Dave's eyes twinkled. "You're too sharp," he said. Then he abruptly changed the subject. "Now about this picnic. You're expecting all the grown folk?" The girl's eyes opened to their fullest extent. "Of course I do. Don't you always come? It's only once a year." The last was very like a reproach. The man avoided her eyes. He was looking out across the sea of stacked timber at the great sheds beyond, where the saws were shrieking out their incessant song. "I was thinking," he began awkwardly, "that I'm not much good at those things. Of course I guess I can hand pie round to the folks; any fellow can do that. But----" "But what?" The girl had risen from her seat and was trying to compel his gaze. "Well, you see, we're busy here--desperately busy. Dawson's always grumbling that we're short-handed----" Betty came up close to him, and he suddenly felt a gentle squeeze on his shoulder. "You don't want to come," she said. "'Tisn't that--not exactly." He kept his eyes turned from her. "You see," he went on, "you'll have such a heap of folk there. They mostly all get around--for you. Then there'll be Jim Truscott, and Jim's worth a dozen of me when it comes to picnics and 'sociables' and such-like." The girl's hand suddenly dropped from his shoulder, and she turned away. A flush slowly mounted to her sun-tanned cheeks, and she was angry at it. She stood looking out at the mills beyond, but she wasn't thinking of them. At last she turned back to her friend and her soft eyes searched his. "If--if you don't come to the picnic to-morrow, I'll never forgive you, Dave--never!" And she was gone before his slow tongue could frame a further excuse. CHAPTER II A PICNIC IN THE RED SAND VALLEY Summer, at the foot of the Canadian Rockies, sets in suddenly. There are no dreary days of damp and cold when the east wind bites through to the bones and chills right down to the marrow. One moment all is black, dead; the lean branches and dead grass of last year make a waste of dreary decay. Watch. See the magic of the change. The black of the trees gives way to a warming brown; the grass, so sad in its depression, suddenly lightens with the palest hue of green. There is at once a warmth of tone which spreads itself over the world, and gladdens the heart and sets the pulses throbbing with renewed life and hope. Animal life stirs; the insect world rouses. At the sun's first smile the whole earth wakens; it yawns and stretches itself; it blinks and rubs its eyes, and presently it smiles back. The smile broadens into a laugh, and lo! it is summer, with all the world clad in festal raiment, gorgeous in its myriads of changing color-harmonies. It was on such a day in the smiling valley of the Red Sand River that Betty Somers held her school picnic. There were no shadows to mar the festivities she had arranged. The sky was brilliant, cloudless, and early in the season as it was, the earth was already beginning to crack and parch under the fiery sun. A dozen democrat wagons, bedecked with flags and filled to overflowing with smiling, rosy-faced children, each wagon under the charge of one of the village matrons, set out at eight o'clock in the morning for the camping-ground. Besides these, an hour later, a large number of private buggies conveyed the parents and provender, while the young people of the village rode out on horseback as a sort of escort to the commissariat. It was a gay throng, and there could be little doubt but that the older folk were as delighted at the prospect of the outing as the children themselves. Dave was there with the rest. Betty's challenge had had its effect. But he came without any of the enthusiasm of the rest of the young people. It was perfectly true that the demands of his mill made the outing inconvenient to him, but that was not the real reason of his reluctance. There was another, a far stronger one. All the years of his manhood had taught him that there was small place for him where the youth of both sexes foregathered. His body was too cumbersome, his tongue was too slow, and his face was too plain. The dalliance of man and maid was not for him, he knew, and did he ever doubt or forget it, his looking-glass, like an evil spirit, was ever ready to remind and convince him. The picnic ground was some five miles down the valley, in the depths of a wide, forest-grown glen, through which a tiny tributary of the Red Sand River tumbled its way over a series of miniature waterfalls. The place was large and magnificently rock-bound, and looked as though it had originally been chiseled by Nature to accommodate a rushing mountain torrent. It gave one the impression of a long disused waterway which, profiting by its original purpose, had become so wonderfully fertilized that its vegetation had grown out of all proportion to its capacity. It was a veritable jungle of undergrowth and forest, so dense and wide spreading as almost to shut out the dazzling sunlight. It was an ideal pleasure camping-ground, where the children could romp and play every game known to the Western child, and their elders could revel in the old, old game which never palls, and which the practice of centuries can never rob of its youth. All the morning the children played, while the women were kept busy with the preparations for the midday feast. The men were divided up into two sections, the elders, taking office under the command of Tom Chepstow, organizing the children's games, and the other half, acknowledging the leadership of Mrs. Tom, assisting those engaged in the culinary arrangements. As might be expected, the latter occupation found most favor with the younger men. There was far more fun in wandering through the tangled undergrowth of the riverside to help a girl fill a kettle, than in racking one's brains for some startlingly unoriginal and long-forgotten game with which to dazzle the mind of Malkern's youth. Then there were the joys of gathering fire-wood, a task which enlisted the services of at least a dozen couples. This was a much favored occupation. There was no time limit, and it involved a long, long ramble. Then, too, it was remarkable that every girl performing the simplest duty, and one in which she never required the least assistance when at home, found it quite impossible to do so here without the strong physical and moral support of the man she most favored. Thus the morning passed. While the girls and men flirted, and the older women took to themselves a reflected enjoyment of it all, the children shrieked their delight at the simplest game, and baited their elders with all the impudence of childhood. It was a morning of delight to all; a morning when the sluggish blood of the oldest quickened in the sunken veins; a morning when the joy of living was uppermost, and all care was thrust into the background. It was not until after dinner that Dave saw anything of Betty. As he had anticipated, Jim Truscott never left her side, and his own morning had been spent with Tom Chepstow and the children. Then, at dinner, it had fallen to his lot to assist the matrons in waiting upon the same riotous horde. In consequence, by the time he got his own meal, Betty and the younger section of the helpers had finished theirs and were wandering off into the woods. After dinner he sought out a secluded spot in which to smoke and--make the best of things. He felt he had earned a rest. His way took him along the bank of the little tumbling river. It was delightfully restful, cool and shadowed by the overhanging trees that nearly met across it. It was not an easy path, but it was calmly beautiful and remote, and that was all he sought. Just above one rapid, something larger than the others he had passed, he came to a little log footbridge. It was a delicious spot, and he sat down and filled his pipe. The murmur of the rapids below came up to him pleasantly. All the foliage about him was of that tender green inspired by the humidity of the dank, river atmosphere. Here and there the sun broke through in patches and lit up the scene, and added beauty to the remoter shadows of the woods. It was all so peaceful. Even the distant voices of the children seemed to add to the calm of his retreat. His pipe was nearly finished, and an insidious languor was stealing over him. He nodded once or twice, almost asleep. Then he started wide awake; a familiar laughing voice sounded just behind him, calling him by name. "Oh, Dave! So this is where you are! I've been hunting for you till--till my feet are sore." Before he could move Betty had plumped herself down beside him on the bridge. He was wide enough awake now, and his delight at the girl's presence was so apparent that she promptly and frankly remarked upon it. "I do believe you're glad I came, and--woke you up," she laughed. The man leant back luxuriously and propped himself against the post of the hand-rail. "I am, surely," he said with conviction. "I've been thinking about picnics. It seems to me they're a heap of fun----" "So you stole away by yourself to enjoy this one." Betty's brown eyes glanced slyly at him. There was a half smile in them, and yet they were serious. Dave began to refill his pipe. "Well, Betty, you see I just thought I'd like a smoke. I've been with the kiddies all morning." Suddenly the girl sat round facing him. "Dave, I'm a little beast. I oughtn't to have made you come. I know you don't care for this sort of thing, only--well, you are so kind, and you are so fond of making people happy. And you--you---- Oh, Dave, I--I want to tell you something. That's--that's why I was hunting for you." She had turned from him, and was gazing out down the stream now. Her face was flushed a deep scarlet. For an instant she had encountered his steady gray eyes and her confusion had been complete. She felt as though he had read right down into her very soul. Dave put his pipe away. The serious expression of his rugged face was unchanged, but the smile in his eyes had suddenly become more pronounced. "So that's why you hunted me out?" he said gently. "Well, Betty, you can tell me." He had seen the blushing face. He had noted the embarrassment and hesitancy, and the final desperate plunge. He knew in his heart what was coming, and the pain of that knowledge was so acute that he could almost have cried out. Yet he sat there waiting, his eyes smiling, his face calmly grave as it always was. For nearly a minute neither spoke. Then the man's deep voice urged the girl. "Well?" Betty rested her face in her hands and propped her elbows on her knees. All her embarrassment had gone now. She was thinking, thinking, and when at last her words came that tone of excitement which she had used just a moment before had quite gone out of her voice. "It's Jim," she said quietly. "He's asked me to marry him. I've promised--and--and he's gone to speak to uncle." Dave took out his pipe again and looked into the bowl of it. "I guessed it was that," he said, after a while. Then he fumbled for his tobacco. "And--are you happy--little Betty?" he asked a moment later. "Yes--I--I think so." "You think so?" Dave was astonished out of himself. "You only think so?" he went on, his breath coming quickly. Betty sat quite still and the man watched her, with his pipe and tobacco gripped tightly in his great hand. He was struggling with a mad desire to crush this girl to his heart and defy any one to take her from him. It was a terrible moment. But the wild impulse died down. He took a deep breath and--slowly filled his pipe. "Tell me," he said, and his tone was very tender. The girl turned to him. She rested an arm on his bent knee and looked up into his face. There was no longer any hesitation or doubt. She was pale under the warm tanning of her cheeks, but she was very pretty, and, to Dave, wildly seductive as she thus appealed to him. "Oh, Dave, I must tell you all. You are my only real friend. You, I know, will understand, and can help me. If I went to uncle, good and kind as he is, I feel he would not understand. And auntie, she is so matter-of-fact and practical. But you--you are different from anybody else." The man nodded. "I have loved Jim for so long," she went on hurriedly. "Long--long before he ever even noticed me. To me he has always been everything a man should and could be. You see, he is so kind and thoughtful, so brave, so masterful, so--so handsome, with just that dash of recklessness which makes him so fascinating to a girl. I have watched him pay attention to other girls, and night after night I have cried myself to sleep about it. Dave, you have never known what it is to love anybody, so all this may seem silly to you, but I only want to show you how much I have always cared for Jim. Well, after a long time he began to take notice of me. I remember it so well," she went on, with a far-away look in her eyes. "It was a year ago, at our Church Social. He spent a lot of time with me there, and gave me a box of candy, and then asked permission to see me home. Dave, from that moment I was in a seventh heaven of happiness. Every day I have felt and hoped that he would ask me to be his wife. I have longed for it, prayed for it, dreaded it, and lived in a dream of happiness. And now he has asked me." She turned away to the bustling stream. Her eyes had become pathetically sad. "And----" Dave prompted her. "Oh, I don't know." She shook her head a little helplessly. "It all seems different now." "Different?" "Yes, that wildly happy feeling has gone." "You are--unhappy?" The man's voice shook as he put his question. "It isn't that. I'm happy enough, I suppose. Only--only--I think I'm frightened now, or something. All my dreams seem to have tumbled about my ears. I have no longer that wonderful looking forward. Is it because he is mine now, and no one can take him from me? Or is it," her voice dropped to an awed whisper, "that--I--don't----" She broke off as though afraid to say all she feared. Dave lit his pipe and smoked slowly and thoughtfully. He had gone through his ordeal listening to her, and now felt that he could face anything without giving his own secret away. He must reassure her. He must remove the doubt in her mind, for, in his quiet, reasoning way, he told himself that all her future happiness was at stake. "No, it's not that, Betty," he said earnestly. "It's not that you love him less. It's just that for all that year you've thought and thought and hoped about it--till there's nothing more to it," he added lamely. "You see, it's the same with all things. Realization is nothing. It's all in the anticipation. You wait, little girl. When things are fixed, and Parson Tom has said 'right,' you'll--why, you'll just be the happiest little bit of a girl in Malkern. That's sure." Betty lifted her eyes to his ugly face and looked straight into the kindly eyes. Just for one impulsive moment she reached out and took hold of his knotty hand and squeezed it. "Dave, you are the dearest man in the world. You are the kindest and best," she cried with unusual emotion. "I wonder----" and she turned away to hide the tears that had suddenly welled up into her troubled eyes. But Dave had seen them, and he dared not trust himself to speak. He sat desperately still and sucked at his pipe, emitting great clouds of smoke till the pungent fumes bit his tongue. Then relief came from an unexpected quarter. There was a sharp crackling of bush just above where they sat and the scrunch of crushing pine cones trodden under foot, and Jim Truscott stepped on to the bridge. "Ah, here you are at last. My word, but I had a job to find you." His tone was light and easy, but his usually smiling face was clouded. Betty sprang to her feet. "What is it, Jim?" she demanded, searching his face. "Something is wrong. I know it is." Jim seated himself directly in front of Dave, who now watched him with added interest. He now noticed several things in the boy he did not remember having observed before. The face in repose, or rather without the smile it usually wore, bore signs of weakness about the mouth. The whole of the lower part of it lacked the imprint of keen decision. There was something almost effeminate about the mould of his full lips, something soft and yielding--even vicious. The rest of his face was good, and even intellectual. He was particularly handsome, with crisp curling hair of a light brown that closely matched his large expressive eyes. His tall athletic figure was strangely at variance with the intellectual cast of his face and head. But what Dave most noticed were the distinct lines of dissipation about his eyes. And he wondered how it was he had never seen them before. Perhaps it was that he so rarely saw Jim without his cheery smile. Perhaps, now that Betty had told him what had taken place, his observation was closer, keener. "What is it, Jim?" He added his voice to Betty's inquiry. Jim's face became gloomier. He turned to the girl, who had resumed her seat at Dave's side. "Have you told him?" he asked, and for a moment his eyes brightened with a shadow of their old smile. The girl nodded, and Dave answered for her. "She's told me enough to know you're the luckiest fellow in the Red Sand Valley," he said kindly. Jim glanced up into the girl's face with all the passion of his youthful heart shining in his handsome eyes. "Yes, I am, Dave--in that way," he said. Then his smile faded out and was replaced by a brooding frown. "But all the luck hasn't come my way. I've talked to Parson Tom." "Ah!" Dave's ejaculation was ominous. Suddenly Jim exploded, half angrily, half pettishly, like a disappointed schoolboy. "Betty, I've got to go away. Your uncle says so. He asked me all about my mill, what my profits were, and all that. I told him honestly. I know I'm not doing too well. He said I wasn't making enough to keep a nigger servant on. He told me that until I could show him an income of $2,500 a year there was to be no talk of engagement. What is more, he said he couldn't have me philandering about after you until there was a reasonable prospect of that income. We talked and argued, but he was firm. And in the end he advised me, if I were really in earnest and serious, to go right away, take what capital I had, and select a new and rising country to start in. He pointed out that there was not room enough here for two in the lumbering business; that Dave, here, complained of the state of trade, so what chance could I possibly have without a tithe of his resources. Finally, he told me to go and think out a plan, talk it over with you, and then tell him what I had decided upon. So here I am, and----" "So am I," added Betty. "And as I am here as well," put in Dave, "let's talk it over now. Where are you thinking of going?" "Seems to me the Yukon is the place. There's a big rush going on. There's great talk of fabulous fortunes there." "Yes, fabulous," said Dave dryly. "It's a long way. A big fare. You'll find yourself amongst all the scum and blacklegs of this continent. You'll be up against every proposition known to the crook. You'll get tainted. Why not do some ranching? Somewhere around here, toward Edmonton." Jim shook his head gloomily. "I haven't nearly enough capital." "Maybe I could manage it for you," said Dave thoughtfully. "I mean it as a business proposition," he added hastily. Jim's face cleared, and his ready smile broke out like sunshine after a summer storm. "Would you?" he cried. "Yes, a business proposition. Business interest. I know the very place," he went on ardently. "Betty, wouldn't that be bully? How would you like to be a rancher's wife?" But his spirits quickly received a damper. Betty shook her head. "No, Jim. Not at Dave's expense." Then she turned to the man who had made the offer. "No, no, Dave, old friend. Jim and I know you. This is not business from your point of view. You added that to disguise your kindly intention." "But----" Dave began to protest. But Betty would have none of it. "This is a debate," she said, with a brightness she did not feel, "and I am speaking. Jim," she turned gently to her lover, "we'll start fair and square with the world. You must do as uncle says. And you can do it. Do it yourself--yourself unaided. God will help you--surely. You are clever; you have youth, health and strength. I will wait for you all my life, if necessary. You have my promise, and it is yours until you come back to claim me. It may be only a year or two. We must be very, very brave. Whatever plan you decide on, if it is the Yukon, or Siberia, or anywhere else, I am content, and I will wait for you." The girl's words were so gently spoken, yet they rang with an irrevocable decision that astonished her hearers. Dave looked into the pretty, set face. He had known her so long. He had seen her in almost every mood, yet here was a fresh side to her character he had never even suspected, and the thought flashed through his mind, to what heights of ambition might a man not soar with such a woman at his side. Jim looked at her too. But his was a stare of amazement, and even resentment. "But why, Betty?" he argued sharply. "Why throw away a business offer such as this, when it means almost certain success? Dave offered it himself, and surely you will allow that he is a business man before all things." "Is he?" Betty smiled. Then she turned to the man who had made the offer. "Dave, will you do something for me?" "Why, yes, Betty--if it's not to go and wash up cups down there," he replied at once, with a grin. "No, it isn't to wash cups. It's"--she glanced quickly at Jim, who was watching her with anything but a lover-like stare--"it's--to withdraw that offer." Dave removed his pipe and turned to Jim. "That ranch business is off," he said. Then he suddenly sat up and leant toward the younger man. "Jim, boy, you know I wish you well," he said. "I wish you so well that I understand and appreciate Betty's decision now, though I allow I didn't see it at first. She's right. Parson Tom is right. I was wrong. Get right out into the world and make her a home. Get right out and show her, and the rest of us, the stuff you're made of. You won't fail if you put your back into it. And when you come back it'll be a great day for you both. And see here, boy, so long as you run straight you can ask me anything in the name of friendship, and I'll not fail you. Here's my hand on it." Something of Dave's earnestness rather than the girl's quiet strength seemed to suddenly catch hold of and lift the dejected man out of his moodiness. His face cleared and his sunny smile broke out again. He gripped the great hand, and enthusiasm rang in his voice. "By God, you're right, Dave," he cried. "You're a good chap. Yes, I'll go. Betty," he turned to the girl, "I'll go to the Yukon, where there's gold for the seeking. I'll realize all the money I can. I won't part with my mill. That will be my fall-back if I fail. But I won't fail. I'll make money by--no, I'll make money. And----" Suddenly, at the height of his enthusiasm, his face fell, and the buoyant spirit dropped from him. "Yes, yes," broke in Betty, anxious to see his mood last. Jim thought for a moment while the clouds gathered on his face. Then he looked steadily at Dave. "Dave," he said, and paused. Then he began again. "Dave--in friendship's name--I'll ask you something now. Betty here," he swallowed, as though what he had to say was very difficult. "You see, I may be away a long time, you can never tell. Will you--will you take care of her for me? Will you be her--her guardian, as you have always been mine? I know I'm asking a lot, but somehow I can't leave her here, and--I know there's her uncle and aunt. But, I don't know, somehow I'd like to think you had given me your word that she would be all right, that you were looking after her for me. Will you?" His face and tone were both eager, and full of real feeling. Dave never flinched as he listened to the request, yet every word cut into his heart, lashed him till he wondered how it was Jim could not see and understand. He moistened his lips. He groped in his pocket for his matches and lit one. He let it burn out, watching it until the flame nearly reached his fingers. Then he knocked his pipe out on his boot, and broke it with the force he used. Finally he looked up with a smile, and his eyes encountered Betty's. She smiled back, and he turned to her lover, who was waiting for his answer. "Sure I'll look after her--for you," he said slowly. Jim sprang to his feet. "I can never thank----" But Dave cut him short. "Don't thank me, boy," he said, preparing to return to the camp. "Just--get out and do." And he left the lovers to return at their leisure. CHAPTER III AFFAIRS IN MALKERN Four glowing summers have gone; a fifth is dawning, driving before its radiant splendor the dark shadows and gray monotony of winter's icy pall. Malkern is a busy little town, spreading out its feelers in the way of small houses dotted about amidst the park land of the valley. Every year sees a further and further extension of its boarded sidewalks and grass-edged roadways; every year sees its population steadily increasing; every year sees an advancement in the architecture of its residences, and some detail displaying additional prosperity in its residents. Behind this steady growth of prosperity sits Dave, large, quiet, but irresistible. His is the guiding hand. The tiller of the Malkern ship is in his grasp, and it travels the laid course without deviation whatsoever. The harbor lies ahead, and, come storm or calm, he drives steadily on for its haven. Thus far has the man been content. Thus far have his ambitions been satisfied. He has striven, and gained his way inch by inch; but with that striving has grown up in him a desire such as inevitably comes to the strong and capable worker. A steady success creates a desire to achieve a master-stroke, whereby the fruit which hitherto he has been content to pluck singly falls in a mass into his lap. And therein lies the human nature which so often upsets the carefully trained and drilled method of the finest tempered brain. Dave saw his goal looming. He saw clearly that all that he had worked for, hoped for, could be gained at one stroke. That one stroke meant capturing the great government contract for the lumber required for building the new naval docks. It was a contract involving millions of dollars, and, with all the courage with which his spirit was laden, he meant to attempt the capture. His plans had been silently laid. No detail had been forgotten, no pains spared. Night and day his thoughtful brain had worked upon his scheme, and now had come that time when he must sit back and wait for the great moment. Nor did this great moment depend on him, and therein lay the uncertainty, the gamble so dear to the human heart. His scheme had been confided to only three people, and these were with him now, sitting on the veranda of the Rev. Tom Chepstow's house. The house stood on a slightly rising ground facing out to the east, whence a perfect view of the wide-spreading valley was obtained. It was a modest enough place, but trim and carefully kept. Parson Tom's stipend was so limited and uncertain that luxury was quite impossible; a rigid frugality was the ruling in his small household. It was Saturday. The day's work was over, and the family were watching the sunset and awaiting the hour for supper. The parson was luxuriating in a pipe in a well-worn deck-chair at one extremity of the deep, wild-cucumber-covered veranda. Dave sat near him; Mary Chepstow, the parson's wife, was crocheting a baby's woolen jacket, stoutly comfortable in a leather armchair; while Betty, a little more mature in figure, a little quieter in manner, but even prettier and more charming to look at than she was on the day of her picnic nearly five years ago, occupied a seat near the open French window, ready to attend at a moment's notice to the preparing of supper. Betty had been silent for quite a while. She was staring with introspective gaze out in the direction of the railroad depot. The two men had been discussing the best means of raising the funds for the building of a new church, aided by a few impracticable suggestions from Mrs. Chepstow, who had a way of counting her stitches aloud in the midst of her remarks. Suddenly Betty turned to her uncle, whose lean, angular frame was grotesquely hunched up in his deck-chair. "Will old Mudley bring the mail over if the train does come in this evening?" she inquired abruptly. The parson shook his head. His lean, clean-shaven face lit with a quizzical smile as he glanced over at his niece. "Why should he?" he replied. "He never does bring mail round. Are you expecting a letter--from him?" There was no self-consciousness in the girl's manner as she replied. There was not even warmth. "Oh, no; I was wondering if I should get one from Maud Hardwig. She promised to write me how Lily's wedding went off in Regina. It is a nuisance about the strike. But it's only the plate-layers, isn't it; and it only affects the section where they are constructing east of Winnipeg?" Her uncle removed his pipe. "Yes. But it affects indirectly the whole system. You see, they won't put on local mails from Regina. They wait for the eastern mail to come through. By the way, how long is it since you heard from Jim?" Betty had turned away and was watching the vanishing point of the railway track, where it entered the valley a couple of miles away. Dave's steady eyes turned upon her. But she didn't answer at once, and her uncle had to call her attention. "Betty!" "Oh, I'm sorry, uncle," she replied at once. "I was dreaming. When did I hear? Oh, nearly nine months ago." Mary Chepstow looked up with a start. "Nine months? Gracious, child--there, I've done it wrong." Bending over her work she withdrew her hook and started to unravel the chain she was making. "Yes," Betty went on coldly. "Nine months since I had a letter. But I've heard indirectly." Her uncle sat up. "You never told me," he said uneasily. The girl's indifference was not without its effect on him. She never talked of Jim Truscott now. And somehow the subject was rarely broached by any of them. Truscott had nominally gone away for two or three years, but they were already in the fifth year since his departure, and there was as yet no word of his returning. Secretly her uncle was rather pleased at her silence on the subject. He augured well from it. He did not think there was to be any heart-breaking over the matter. He had never sanctioned any engagement between them, but he had been prepared to do so if the boy turned up under satisfactory conditions. Now he felt that it was time to take action in the matter. Betty was nearly twenty-seven, and--well, he did not want her to spend her life waiting for a man who showed no sign of returning. "I didn't see the necessity," she said quietly. "I heard of him through Dave." The parson swung round on the master of the mills. His keen face was alert with the deepest interest. "You, Dave?" he exclaimed. The lumberman stirred uneasily, and Mary Chepstow let her work lie idle in her lap. "Dawson--my foreman, you know--got a letter from Mansell. You remember Mansell? He acted as Jim's foreman at his mill. A fine sawyer, Mansell----" "Yes, yes." Parson Tom's interest made him impatient. "Well, you remember that Mansell went with Jim when he set out for the Yukon. They intended to try their luck together. Partners, of course. Well, Mansell wrote Dawson he was sick to death of worrying things out up there. He said he'd left Jim, but did not state why. He asked him if my mill was going strong, and would there be a job for him if he came back. He said that Jim was making money now. He had joined a man named Broncho Bill, a pretty hard citizen, and in consequence he was doing better. How he was making money he didn't say. But he finished up his remarks about the boy by saying he'd leave him to tell his own story, as he had no desire to put any one away." Mrs. Chepstow offered no comment, but silently picked up her work and went on with it. Her husband sat back in his chair, stretching his long muscular legs, and folding his hands behind his head. Betty displayed not the least interest in Dave's haltingly told story. The silence on the veranda was ominous. Chepstow began to refill his pipe, furtively watching his niece's pretty profile as she sat looking down the valley. It was his wife who broke the oppressive silence. "I can't believe badly--three treble in the adjacent hole"--she muttered, referring to her pattern book, "of him. I always liked him--five chain." "So do I," put in Dave with emphasis. Betty glanced quickly into his rugged face. "You don't believe the insinuations of that letter?" she asked him sharply. "I don't." Dave's reply was emphatic. Betty smiled over at him. Then she jumped up from her seat and pointed down the track. "There's the mail," she cried. Then she came to her aunt's side and laid a hand coaxingly on her shoulder. "Will you see to supper, dear, if I go down for the mail?" Mrs. Chepstow would not trust herself to speak, she was in the midst of a complicated manipulation of the pattern she was working, so she contented herself with a nod, and Betty was off like the wind. The two men watched her as she sped down the hard red sand trail, and neither spoke until a bend in the road hid her from view. "She's too good a girl, Dave," Chepstow said with almost militant warmth. "She's not going to be made a fool of by--by----" "She won't be made a fool of by any one," Dave broke in with equal warmth. "There's no fear of it, if I'm any judge," he added. "I don't think you realize that girl's spirit, Tom. Here, I'll tell you something I've never told anybody. When Jim went away Betty came to me and asked me to let her study my mills. She wanted to learn all the business of 'em. All the inside of the management of 'em. If I'd have let her she'd have learnt how to run the saws. And do you know why she did it? I'll tell you. Because she thought Jim might come back broke, and he and she together could start up his old mill again, so as to win through. That's Betty. Can you beat it? That girl has made up her mind to a certain line of action, and she'll see it through, no matter what her feelings may be. No word of yours, or mine, will turn her from her purpose. She'll wait for Jim." "Yes, and waste the best of her life," exclaimed Mrs. Chepstow. "One, two, three--turn." Dave smiled over at the rotund figure crocheting so assiduously. Although Mary Chepstow was over forty her face still retained its youthful prettiness. The parson laughed. He generally laughed at his wife's views upon anything outside of her small household and the care of the sick villagers. But it was never an unkind laugh. Just a large, tolerant good-nature, a pronounced feature in his character. Parson Tom, like many kindly men, was hasty of temper, even fiery, and being a man of considerable athletic powers, this characteristic had, on more than one occasion, forcibly brought some recalcitrant member of his uncertain-tempered flock to book, and incidentally acquired for him the sobriquet of "the fighting parson." "I don't know about wasting the best of her life," he said. "Betty has never wasted her life. Look at the school she's got now. And, mark you, she's done it all herself. She has three teachers under her. She has negotiated all the finance of the school herself. She got the government by the coat-tails and dragged national support out of it. Why, she's a wonder. No, no, not waste, Mary. Let her wait if she chooses. We won't interfere. I only hope that when Jim does come back he'll be a decent citizen. If he isn't, I'd bet my last cent Betty will know how to deal with him." "She'll sure give him up, if he isn't," said Dave with conviction. Mary looked up, her round blue eyes twinkling. "Dave knows Betty better than we do, Tom. I'd almost think---- I'm not sure I like this shade of pink," she digressed, examining her wool closely. "Er--what was I saying? Oh, yes--I'd almost think he'd made a special study of her." A deep flush spread slowly over Dave's ugly face, and he tried to hide it by bending over his pipe and examining the inside of the bowl. Parson Tom promptly changed the subject. He shook his head and turned away to watch the ruddy extravagance of the sunset in the valley. "Dave has got far too much to think of in his coming government contract to bother with a girl like Betty. By the way, when do you expect to hear the result of your tender, Dave?" "Any time." The lumberman's embarrassment had vanished at the mention of his contract. His eyes lit, and the whole of his plain features were suddenly illumined. This was his life's purpose. This contract meant everything to him. All that had gone before, all his labor, his early struggles, they were nothing to the store he set by this one great scheme. "Good. And your chances?" There was the keenest interest in the parson's question. "Well, I'd say they're good. You see, that find of ours up in the hills opens a possibility we never had before. The new docks require an enormous supply of ninety-foot timber. It's got to be ninety-foot stuff. Well, we've got the timber in that new find. There's a valley of some thousands of acres of forest which will supply it. Tom," he went on eagerly, "we could cut 'em hundred-and-twenty-foot logs from that forest till the cows come home. It's the greatest proposition in lumbering. It's one of the greatest of those great primordial pine forests which are to be found in the Rockies, if one is lucky enough. At present we are the only people in Canada who can give them the stuff they need, and enough of it. Yes, I think I'll get it. I've set the wires pulling all I know. I've cut the price. I've done everything I can, and I think I'll get it. If I do I'll be a millionaire half a dozen times over, and Malkern, and all its people, will rise to an immense prosperity. I must get it! And having got it, I must push it through successfully." Mary and her husband were hanging on the lumberman's words, carried away by his enthusiasm. There was that light of battle in his eyes, the firm setting of his heavy under-jaw, which they knew and understood so well. To them he was the personification of resolution. To them his personality was irresistible. "Of course you'll push it through successfully," Tom nodded. "Yes, yes. I shall. I must," Dave said, stirring his great body in his chair with a restlessness which spoke of his nervous tension. "But it's this time limit. You see, it's a government contract. They want these naval docks built quickly. The whole scheme is to be rushed through. Since the Imperial Conference has decided that each colony is to build its own share of the navy for imperial defense, in view of the European situation, that building is to be begun at once. They are laying down five ships this year, and, by the end of the year, they are to have docks ready for the laying down of six more. My contract is for the lumber for those docks. You see? My contract must be completed before winter closes down, without fail. I have guaranteed that. Well, as I am the only lumberman in Canada that can supply this heavy lumber, if they do not give it to me they will have to go to the States for it. Yes," he added, with something like a sigh, "I think I shall get it. But--this time limit! If I fail it will break me, and, in the crash, Malkern will go too." Mary Chepstow sighed with emotion. Her crochet was forgotten. "You won't fail," she murmured, her eyes glistening. "You can't!" "Malkern isn't going to tumble about our ears, old friend," Parson Tom said with quiet assurance. Dave had fallen back into his lounging attitude and puffed at his pipe. "No," he said. Then he pointed down the trail in the direction of the depot. "There's Betty coming along in a hurry with Jenkins Mudley." All eyes turned to look. Betty was almost running beside the tall thin figure of the operator and postmaster of Malkern. They came up with a final rush, the man flourishing a telegram at Dave. Betty was carrying a number of letters. "I just thought I'd bring this along myself," Mudley grinned. "Everything's been delayed through the strike down east. This, too. Felt I'd hate to let any one else hand it to you, Dave." Dave snatched at the tinted envelope and tore it open, while Betty, nodding at her uncle and aunt, her eyes dancing with delight, made frantic signs to them. But they took no notice of her, keeping their eyes fixed on the towering form of the master of the mills. Dave was the calmest man present. He read the message over twice, and then deliberately thrust it into his pocket. Then, as he returned to his seat, he said--"I've got my contract, folks." "Hurrah!" cried Betty, no longer able to control herself. The operator had previously imparted the fact to her. Then, with a jump, she was on the veranda and flung some letters into her uncle's lap, retaining one for herself that had already been read. The next moment she had seized both of Dave's great hands, and was wringing them with all her heart and soul shining in her eyes. "I'm so--so glad, I don't know what I'm doing or saying," she cried, and then collapsed on her uncle's knee. Dave laughed quietly, but her aunt, her face belying her words, reproved her gently. "Betty," she said warningly as the girl scrambled to her feet, "don't get excited. I think you'd better go and see to supper. I see you got your letter. How did the wedding go off?" Betty was leaning against one of the veranda posts. "Oh, yes," she said indifferently. "I'd forgotten my letter. It's from Jim. He's coming home." Her aunt suddenly picked up her work. The parson began to open his letters. Dave's eyes, until that moment smiling, suddenly became serious. The girl's news had a strangely damping effect. Dave cleared his throat as though about to speak. But he remained silent. Then Betty moved across to the door. "I'll go and get supper," she said quietly, and vanished into the house. CHAPTER IV DICK MANSELL'S NEWS For Dave the next fortnight was fraught with a tremendous pressure of work. But arduous and wearing as it was, to him there was that thrill of conscious striving which is the very essence of life to the ambition-inspired man. His goal loomed dimly upon his horizon, he could see it in shadowy outline, and every step he took now, every effort he put forth, he knew was carrying him on, drawing him nearer and nearer to it. He worked with that steady enthusiasm which never rushes. He was calm and purposeful. To hasten, to diverge from his deliberate course in the heat of excitement, he knew would only weaken his effort. Careful organization, perfect, machine-like, was what he needed, and the work would do itself. At the mills a large extension of the milling floors and an added number of saws were needed. In its present state the milling floor could hardly accommodate the ninety-foot logs demanded by the contract. This was a structural alteration that must be carried out at express speed, and had been prepared for, so that it was only a matter of executing plans already drawn up. Joel Dawson, the foreman, one of the best lumbermen in the country, was responsible for the alterations. Simon Odd, the master sawyer, had the organizing of the skilled labor staff inside the mill, a work of much responsibility and considerable discrimination. But with Dave rested the whole responsibility and chief organization. It was necessary to secure labor for both the mill and the camps up in the hills. And for this the district had to be scoured, while two hundred lumber-jacks had to be brought up from the forests of the Ottawa River. Dave and his lieutenants worked all their daylight hours, and most of the night was spent in harness. They ate to live only, and slept only when their falling eyelids refused to keep open. Only Dave and his two loyal supporters knew the work of that fortnight; only they understood the anxiety and strain, but their efforts were crowned with success, and at the end of that time the first of the "ninety-footers" floated down the river to the mouth of the great boom that lay directly under the cranes of the milling floor. It was not until that moment that Dave felt free to look about him, to turn his attention from the grindstone of his labors. It was midday when word passed of the arrival of the first of the timber, and he went at once to verify the matter for himself. It was a sight to do his heart good. The boom, stretching right into the heart of the mills, was a mass of rolling, piling logs, and a small army of men was at work upon them piloting them so as to avoid a "crush." It was perilous, skilful work, and the master of the mills watched with approval the splendid efforts of these intrepid lumber-jacks. He only waited until the rattling chains of the cranes were lowered and the first log was grappled and lifted like a match out of the water, and hauled up to the milling floor. Then, with a sigh as of a man relieved of a great strain, he turned away and passed out of his yards. It was the first day for a fortnight he had gone to his house for dinner. His home was a small house of weather-boarding with a veranda all creeper-grown, as were most of the houses in the village. It had only one story, and every window had a window-box full of simple flowers. It stood in a patch of garden that was chiefly given up to vegetables, with just a small lawn of mean-looking turf with a centre bed of flowers. Along the top-railed fence which enclosed it were, set at regular intervals, a number of small blue-gum and spruce trees. It was just such an abode as one might expect Dave to possess: simple, useful, unpretentious. It was the house of a man who cared nothing for luxury. Utility was the key-note of his life. And the little trivial decorations in the way of creepers, flowers, and such small luxuries were due to the gentle, womanly thought of his old mother, with whom he lived, and who permitted no one else to minister to his wants. She was in the doorway when he came up, a small thin figure with shriveled face and keen, questioning eyes. She was clad in black, and wore a print overall. Her snow-white hair was parted in the middle and smoothed down flat, in the method of a previous generation. She was an alert little figure for all her sixty odd years. The questioning eyes changed to a look of gladness as the burly figure of her son turned in at the gate. There could be no doubt as to her feelings. Dave was all the world to her. Her admiration for her son amounted almost to idolatry. "Dinner's ready," she said eagerly. "I thought I'd just see if you were coming. I didn't expect you. Have you time for it, Dave?" "Sure, ma," he responded, stooping and kissing her upturned face. "The logs are down." "Dear boy, I'm glad." It was all she said, but her tone, and the look she gave him, said far more than the mere words. Dave placed one great arm gently about her narrow shoulders and led her into the house. "I'm going to take an hour for dinner to-day sure," he said, with unusual gaiety. "Just to celebrate. After this," he went on, "for six months I'm going to do work that'll astonish even you, ma." "But you won't overdo it, Dave, will you? The money isn't worth it. It isn't really. I've lived a happy life without much of it, boy, and I don't want much now. I only want my boy." There was a world of gentle solicitude in the old woman's tones. So much that Dave smiled upon her as he took his place at the table. "You'll have both, ma, just as sure as sure. I'm not only working for the sake of the money. Sounds funny to say that when I'm working to make myself a millionaire. But it's not the money. It's success first. I don't like being beaten, and that's a fact. We Americans hate being beaten. Then there's other things. Think of these people here. They'll do well. Malkern'll be a city to be reckoned with, and a prosperous one. Then the money's useful to do something with. We can help others. You know, ma, how we've talked it all out." The mother helped her son to food. "Yes, I know. But your health, boy, you must think of that." Dave laughed boisterously, an unusual thing with him. But his mood was light. He felt that he wanted to laugh at anything. What did anything matter? By this time a dozen or so of the "ninety-footers" were already in the process of mutilation by his voracious saws. "Health, ma?" he cried. "Look at me. I don't guess I'm pretty, but I can do the work of any French-Canadian horse in my yards." The old woman shook her silvery head doubtfully. "Well, well, you know best," she said, "only I don't want you to get ill." Dave laughed again. Then happening to glance out of the window he saw the figure of Joe Hardwig, the blacksmith, turning in at the gate. "Another plate, ma," he said hastily. "There's Hardwig coming along." His mother summoned her "hired" girl, and by the time Hardwig's knock came at the door a place was set for him. Dave rose from the table. "Come right in, Joe," he said cheerily. "We're just having grub. Ma's got some bully stew. Sit down and join us." But Joe Hardwig declined, with many protestations. He was a broad, squat little man, whose trade was in his very manner, in the strength of his face, and in the masses of muscle which his clothes could not conceal. "The missus is wantin' me," he said. "Thank you kindly all the same. Your servant, mam," he added awkwardly, turning to Dave's mother. Then to the lumberman, "I jest come along to hand you a bit of information I guessed you'd be real glad of. Mansell--Dick Mansell's got back! I've been yarnin' with him. Say, guess you'll likely need him. He's wantin' a job too. He's a bully sawyer." Dave had suddenly become serious. "Dick Mansell!" he cried. Then, after a pause, "Has he brought word of Jim Truscott?" The mother's eyes were on her son, shrewdly speculating. She had seen his sudden gravity. She knew full well that he cared less for Mansell's powers as a sawyer than for Mansell as the companion and sharer of Jim Truscott's exile. Now she waited for the blacksmith's answer. Joe shifted uneasily. His great honest face looked troubled. He had not come there to spill dirty water. He knew how much Dave wanted skilled hands, and he knew that Dick needed work. "Why, yes," he said at last. "At least--that is----" "Out with it, man," cried Dave, with unusual impatience. "How is Jim, and--how has he done?" Just for an instant Joe let an appealing glance fall in the old woman's direction, but he got no encouragement from her. She was steadily proceeding with her dinner. Besides, she never interfered with her boy. Whatever he did was always right to her. "Well?" Dave urged the hesitating man. "Oh, I guess he's all right. That is--he ain't hard up. Why yes, he was speakin' of him," Joe stumbled on. "He guessed he was comin' along down here later. That is, Jim is--you see----" But Dave hated prevarication. He could see that Joe didn't want to tell what he had heard. However he held him to it fast. "Has Jim been running straight?" he demanded sharply. "Oh, as to that--I guess so," said Joe awkwardly. Dave came over to where Joe was still standing, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "See here, Joe, we all know you; you're a good sportsman, and you don't go around giving folks away--and bully for you. But I'd rather you told me what Mansell's told you than that he should tell me. See? It won't be peaching. I've got to hear it." Joe looked straight up into his face, and suddenly his eyes lit angrily at his own thought. "Yes, you'd best have it," he exclaimed, all his hesitation gone; "that dogone boy's been runnin' a wild racket. He's laid hold of the booze and he's never done a straight day's work since he hit the Yukon trail. He's comin' back to here with a gambler's wad in his pocketbook, and--and--he's dead crooked. Leastways, that's how Mansell says. It's bin roulette, poker an' faro. An' he's bin runnin' the joint. Mansell says he ain't no sort o' use for him no ways, and that he cut adrift from the boy directly he got crooked." "Oh, he did, did he?" said Dave, after a thoughtful pause. "I don't seem to remember that Dick Mansell was any saint. I'd have thought a crooked life would have fallen in with his views, but he preferred to turn the lad adrift when he most needed help. However, it don't signify. So the lad's coming back a drunkard, a gambler and a crook? At least Dick Mansell says so. Does he say why he's coming back?" "Well, he s'poses it's the girl--Miss Betty." "Ah!" Joe shifted uneasily. "It don't seem right--him a crook," he said, with some diffidence. "No." Then Dave's thoughtful look suddenly changed to one of business alertness, and his tone became crisp. "See here, Joe, what about that new tackle for the mills? Those hooks and chains must be ready in a week. Then there's those cant-hooks for the hill camps. The smiths up there are hard at it, so I'm going to look to you for a lot. Then there's another thing. Is your boy Alec fit to join the mills and take his place with the other smiths? I want another hand." "Sure, he's a right good lad--an' thankee. I'll send him along right away." The blacksmith was delighted. He always wanted to get his boy taken on at the mill. The work that came his way he could cope with himself; besides, he had an assistant. He didn't want his boy working under him; it was not his idea of things. It was far better that he should get out and work under strangers. "Well, that's settled." Dave turned to his dinner and Joe Hardwig took his leave, and when mother and son were left together again the old woman lost no time in discussing Dick Mansell and his unpleasant news. "I never could bear that Mansell," she said, with a severe shake of her head. "No, ma. But he's a good sawyer--and I need such men." The old woman looked up quickly. "I was thinking of Jim Truscott." "That's how I guessed." "Well? What do you think?" Dave shook his head. "I haven't seen Jim yet," he said. "Ma, we ain't Jim's judges." "No." "I'm going down to the depot," Dave said after a while. "Guess I've got some messages to send. I'm getting anxious about that strike. They say that neither side will give way. The railway is pretty arbitrary on this point, and the plate-layers are a strong union. I've heard that the brakesmen and engine-drivers are going to join them. If they do, it's going to be bad for us. That is, in a way. Strikes are infectious, and I don't want 'em around here just now. We've got to cut a hundred thousand foot a day steady, and anything delaying us means--well, it's no use thinking what it means. We've got to be at full work night and day until we finish. I'll get going." He pushed his plate away and rose from the table. He paused while he filled and lit his pipe, then he left the house. Joe Hardwig's news had disturbed him more than he cared to admit, and he did not want to discuss it, even with his mother. CHAPTER V JIM TRUSCOTT RETURNS Dave was on the outskirts of the village when he fell in with Parson Tom. Tom was on ahead, but he saw the great lumbering figure swinging along the trail behind him, and waited. "Hello, Dave," he greeted him, as he came up. "It's ages since I've seen you." The master of the mills laughed good-naturedly. "Sure," he said, "my loafing days are over. I'll be ground hollow before I'm through. The grindstone's good and going. It's good to be at work, Tom. I mean what you'd call at your great work. When I'm through you shall have the finest church that red pine can build." "Ah, it's good to hear you talk like that. I take it things are running smoothly. It's not many men who deserve to make millions, but I think you are one of the few." Dave shook his head. "You're prejudiced about me, Tom," he replied smiling, "but I want that money. And when I get it we'll carry out all our schemes. You know, the schemes we've talked over and planned and planned. Well, when the time comes, we won't forget 'em----" "Like most people do. Hello!" The parson was looking ahead in the direction of a small crowd standing outside Harley-Smith's saloon. There was an anxious look in his clear blue eyes, and some comprehension. The crowd was swaying about in unmistakable fashion, and experience told him that a fight was in progress. He had seen so many fights in Malkern. Suddenly he turned to Dave-- "Where are you going?" he inquired. "To the depot." "Good. I'll just cut along over there. That must be stopped." Dave gazed at the swaying crowd. Several men were running to join it. Then he looked down from his great height at the slim, athletic figure of his friend. "Do you want any help?" he inquired casually. Parson Tom shook his head. "No," he said, with a smile of perfect confidence. "They're children, all simple children. Big and awkward and unruly, if you like, but all children. I can manage them." "I believe you can," said Dave. "Well, so long. Don't be too hard on them. Remember they're children." Tom Chepstow laughed back at him as he hurried away. "All right. But unruly children need physical correction as well as moral. And if it is necessary I shan't spare them." He went off at a run, and Dave went on to the depot. He knew his friend down to his very core. There was no man in the village who was the parson's equal in the noble art of self-defense. And it was part of his creed to meet the rougher members of his flock on their own ground. He knew that this militant churchman would stop that fight, and, if necessary, bodily chastise the offenders. It was this wholesome manliness that had so endeared the "fighting parson" to his people. They loved him for his capacity, and consequently respected him far more than they would have done the holiest preacher that ever breathed. He was a man they understood. The spiritual care of a small lumbering village is not lightly to be entered upon. A man must be peculiarly fitted for it. In such a place, where human nature is always at its crudest; where muscle, and not intellect, must always be the dominant note; where life is lived without a thought for the future, and the present concern is only the individual fitness to execute a maximum of labor, and so give expression to a savage vanity in the triumph of brute force, the man who would set out to guide his fellows must possess qualities all too rare in the general run of clergy. His theology must be of the simplest, broadest order. He must live the life of his flock, and teach almost wholly by example. His preaching must be lit with a local setting, and his brush must lay on the color of his people's every-day life. Besides this, he must possess a tremendous moral and physical courage, particularly the latter, for to the lumber-jack nothing else so appeals. He must feel that he is in the presence of a man who is always his equal, if not his superior, in those things he understands. Tom Chepstow was all this. He was a lumberman himself at heart. He knew every detail of the craft. He had lived that life all his manhood's days. Then he possessed a rare gift in medicine. He had purposely studied it and taken his degrees, for no one knew better than he the strength this added to his position. He shed his healing powers upon his people, a gift that reaped him a devotion no sanctity and godliness could ever have brought him. Parson Tom was a practical Christian first, and attended only to spiritual welfare when the body had been duly cared for. Dave went on to the depot, where he despatched his messages. Then he extracted from Jenkins Mudley all the information he possessed upon the matter of the plate-layers' strike, and finally took the river trail back to the mills. His way took him across the log bridge over the river, and here he paused, leaning upon the rail, and gazed thoughtfully down the woodland avenue which enclosed the turbulent stream. Somehow he could never cross that bridge without pausing to admire the wonderful beauty of his little friend's surroundings. He always thought of this river as his friend. How much it was his friend only he knew. But for it, and its peculiarities, his work would be impossible. He did not have to do as so many lumbermen have to, depend on the spring freshet to carry his winter cut down to his mill. The melting snows of the mountains kept the river flowing, a veritable torrent, during the whole of the open season, and at such time he possessed in it a never-failing transport line which cost him not one cent. The hour he had allowed for his dinner was not yet up, and he felt that he could indulge himself a little longer, so he refilled his pipe and smoked while he gazed contemplatively into the depths of the dancing waters below him. But his day-dreaming was promptly interrupted, and the interruption was the coming of Betty, on her way home to her dinner from the schoolhouse up on the hillside. He had seen her only once since the day that brought him the news of his contract. That was on the following Sunday, when he went, as usual, to Tom Chepstow's for supper. Just at that moment Betty was the last person he wanted to see. That was his first thought when he heard her step on the bridge. He had forgotten that this was her way home, and that this was her dinner-time. However, there was no sign of his reluctance in his face when he greeted her. "Why, Betty," he said, as gently as his great voice would let him, "I hadn't thought to see you coming this way." Then he broke off and studied her pretty oval face more closely. "What's wrong?" he inquired presently. "You look--you look kind of tired." He was quite right. The girl looked pale under her tan, and there was an unusual darkness round her gentle brown eyes. She looked very tired, in spite of the smile of welcome with which she greeted him. "Oh, I'm all right, Dave," she said at once. But her tone was cheerless, in spite of her best effort. He shook his great head and knocked his pipe out. "There's something amiss, child. Guess maybe it's the heat." He turned his eyes up to the blazing sun, as though to reassure himself that the heat was there. Betty leant beside him on the rail. Her proximity, and the evident sadness of her whole manner, made him realize that he must not stay there. At that moment she looked such a pathetic little figure that he felt he could not long be responsible for what he said. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her. He could think of nothing to say for a long time, but at last he broke out with-- "You'd best not go back to the school this afternoon." But the girl shook her head. "It's not that," she said. Then she paused. Her eyes were fixed on the rushing water as it flowed beneath the bridge. He watched her closely, and gradually a conviction began to grow in his mind. "Dave," she went on at last, "we've always been such good friends, haven't we? You've always been so patient and kind with me when I have bothered you with my little troubles and worries. You never fail to help me out. It seems to me I can never quite do without your help. I--I"--she smiled more like her old self, and with relief the man saw some of the alarming shadows vanishing from her face, "I don't think I want to, either. I've had a long talk with Susan Hardwig this morning." "Ah!" The man's growing conviction had received confirmation. "What did that mean?" Betty asked quickly. Dave was staring out down the river. "Just nothing. Only I've had a goodish talk with Joe Hardwig." "Then I needn't go into the details. I've heard the news that Dick Mansell has brought with him." It was a long time before either spoke again. For Dave there seemed so little to say. What could he say? Sympathy was out of the question. He had no right to blame Jim yet. Nor did he feel that he could hold out hope to her, for in his heart he believed that the man's news was true. With Betty, she hardly knew how to express her feelings. She hardly knew what her feelings were. At the time Mrs. Hardwig poured her tale into her ears she had listened quite impersonally. Somehow the story had not appealed to her as concerning herself, and her dominant thought had been pity for the man. It was not until afterward, when she was alone on her way to the school, that the full significance of it came to her; and then it came as a shock. She remembered, all of a sudden, that she was promised to Jim. That when Jim came back she was to marry him. From that moment the matter had never been out of her mind; through all her school hours it was with her, and her attention had been so distracted from her work that she found her small pupils getting out of hand. Yes, she was to marry Jim, and they told her he was a drunkard, a gambler, and a "crook." She had given him her promise; she had sent him away. It was her own doing. Her feelings toward him never came into her thoughts. During the long five years of his absence he had become a sort of habit to her. She had never thought of her real feelings after the first month or two of his going. She was simply waiting for him, and would marry him when he came. It was only now, when she heard this story of him, that her feelings were called upon to assert themselves, and the result was something very like horror at her own position. She remembered now her disappointment at the first realization of all her hopes, when Jim had asked her to marry him. She had not understood then, but now--now she did. She knew that she had never really loved him. And at the thought of his return she was filled with horror and dread. She was glad that she had met Dave; she had longed to see him. He was the one person she could always lean on. And in her present trouble she wanted to lean on him. "Dave," she began at last, in a voice so hopeless that it cut him to the heart, "somehow I believe that story. That is, in the main. Don't think it makes any difference to me. I shall marry him just the same. Only I seem to see him in his real light now. He was always weak, only I didn't see it then. He was not really the man to go out into the world to fight alone. We were wrong. I was wrong. He should have stayed here." "Yes," Dave nodded. "He must begin over again," she went on, after a pause. "When he comes here we must help him to a fresh start, and we must blot his past out of our minds altogether. There is time enough. He is young. Now I want you to help me. We must ask him no questions. If he wants to speak he can do so. Now that you are booming at the mills we can help him to reopen his mill, and I know you can, and will, help him by putting work in his way. All this is what I've been thinking out. When he comes, and we are--married," there was the slightest possible hesitation before the word, and Dave's quick ears and quicker senses were swift to hear and interpret it, "I am going to help him with the work. I'll give up my school. I've always had such a contingency in my mind. That's why I got you to teach me your work when he first went away. Tell me, Dave, you'll help me in this. You see the boy can't help his weakness. Perhaps we are stronger than he, and between us we can help him." The man looked at her a long time in silence, and all the while his loyal heart was crying out. His gray eyes shone with a light she did not comprehend. She saw their fixed smile, and only read in them the assent he never withheld from her. "I knew you would," she murmured. It was her voice that roused him. And he spoke just as she turned away in the direction of the schoolhouse trail, whence proceeded the sound of a horse galloping. "Yes, Betty--I'll help you sure," he said in his deep voice. "You'll help him, you mean," she corrected, turning back to him. But Dave ignored the correction. "Tell me, Betty," he went on again, this time with evident diffidence: "you're glad he's coming back? You feel happy about--about getting married? You--love him?" The girl stared straight up into the plain face. Her look was so honest, so full of decision, that her reply left no more to be said. "Five years ago I gave him my promise. That promise I shall redeem, unless Jim, himself, makes its fulfilment impossible." The man nodded. "You can come to me for anything you need for him," he said simply. Betty was about to answer with an outburst of gratitude when, with a rush, a horseman came galloping round the bend of the trail and clattered on to the bridge. At sight of the two figures standing by the rail the horse jibbed, threw himself on to his haunches, and then shied so violently that the rider was unseated and half out of the saddle, clinging desperately to the animal's neck to right himself. And as he hung there struggling, the string of filthy oaths that were hurled at the horse, and any and everybody, was so foul that Betty tried to stop her ears. Dave sprang at the horse and seized the bridle with one hand, with the other he grabbed the horseman and thrust him up into the saddle. The feat could only have been performed by a man of his herculean strength. "Cut that language, you gopher!" he roared into the fellow's ears as he lifted him. "Cut the language!" cried the infuriated man. "What in hell are you standing on a bridge spooning your girl for? This bridge ain't for that sort of truck--it's for traffic, curse you!" By the time the man had finished speaking he had straightened up in the saddle, and his face was visible to all. Dave jumped back, and Betty gave a little cry. It was Jim Truscott! Yes, it was Jim Truscott, but so changed that even Betty could scarcely believe the evidence of her eyes. In place of the bright, clever-looking face, the slim figure she had always had in her mind during the long five years of his absence, she now beheld a bloated, bearded man, without one particle of the old refinement which had been one of his most pronounced characteristics. It seemed incredible that five years could have so changed him. Even his voice was almost unrecognizable, so husky had it become. His eyes no longer had their look of frank honesty, they were dull and lustreless, and leered morosely. Her heart sank as she looked at him, and she remembered Dick Mansell's story. All three stared for a moment without speaking. Then Jim broke into a laugh so harsh that it made the girl shudder. "Well I'm damned!" he cried. "Of all the welcomes home this beats hell!" "Jim--oh, Jim!" The cry of horror and pain was literally wrung from the girl. Nor was it without effect. The man seemed to realize his uncouthness, for he suddenly took off his hat, and his face became serious. "I beg your pardon, Betty," he said apologetically. "I forgot where I was. I forgot that the Yukon was behind me, and----" "That you're talking to the lady you're engaged to be married to," put in Dave sharply. Dave's words drew the younger man's attention to himself. For a second a malicious flash shone in the bloated eyes. Then he dropped them and held out his hand. "How do, Dave?" he said coldly. Dave responded without any enthusiasm. He was chilled, chilled and horrified, and he knew that Mansell's story was no exaggeration. He watched Jim turn again to Betty. He saw the strained look in the girl's eyes, and he waited. "I'll come along up to the house later," Jim said coolly. "Guess I'll get along to the hotel and get cleaned some. I allow I ain't fit for party calls at a hog pen just about now. So long." He jabbed his horse's sides with his heels and dashed across the bridge. In a moment he was gone. It was some time before a word was spoken on the bridge. Dave was waiting, and Betty could find no words. She was frightened. She wanted to cry, and through it all her heart felt like lead in her bosom. But her dominant feeling was fear. "Well, little Betty," said Dave presently, in that gentle protecting manner he so often assumed toward her, "I must go on to the mills. What are you going to do?" "I'm going home," she said; and to the keenly sympathetic ears of the man the note of misery in her voice was all too plain. CHAPTER VI PARSON TOM INTERFERES It was nearly five o'clock and the table was set for tea. Betty was standing at the window staring thoughtfully out upon the valley. Ordinarily her contemplation would have been one of delighted interest, for the scene was her favorite view of the valley, where every feature of it, the village, the mill, the river, assumed its most picturesque aspect. She loved the valley with a deep affection. Unlike most people, who tire of their childhood's surroundings and pant for fresh sights, fresh fields in which to expand their thoughts and feelings, she clung to the valley with all an artist's love for the beautiful, and a strength inspired by the loyal affection of a simple woman. Her delight in her surroundings amounted almost to a passion. To her this valley was a treasured possession. The river was a friend, a fiery, turbulent friend, and often she had declared, when in a whimsical mood, one to whom she could tell her innermost secrets without fear of their being passed on, in confidence, to another, or of having them flung back in her face when spite stirred its tempestuous soul. She knew her river's shortcomings, she knew its every mood. It was merely a torrent, a strenuous mountain torrent, but to her it possessed a real personality. In the spring flood it was like some small individual bursting with its own importance, with its vanity, with resentment at the restraint of the iron hand of winter, from which it had only just torn itself loose, and stirred to the depths of its frothy soul with an overwhelming desire for self-assertion. Often she had watched the splendid destruction of which it was capable at such a time. She had seen the forest giants go down at the roar of its battle-cry. She had often joined the villagers, standing fearful and dismayed, watching its mounting waters lest their homes should be devoured by the insatiable little monster, and filled with awe at its magnificent bluster. Then, in the extreme heat of the late summer, when autumn had tinged the valley to a glorious gold and russet, she had just as often seen the reverse side of the picture. No longer could the river draw on the vast supplies of the melting mountain snows, and so it was doomed to fall a prey to the mighty grip of winter, and, as if in anticipation of its end, it would sing its song of sadness as it sobbed quietly over its fallen greatness, sighing dismally amongst the debris which in the days of its power it had so wantonly torn from its banks. There was a great deal of the girl's character in her love for the river. She possessed an enthusiastic admiration for that strength which fights, fights until the last drop of blood, the last atom of power is expended. Fallen greatness evoked her enthusiasm as keenly as success, only that the enthusiasm was of a different nature. With her it was better to have striven with all one's might and encountered disaster than to have lived fallow, a life of the most perfect rectitude. Her twenty-seven years of life had set her thrilling with a mental and physical virility which was forever urging her, and steadily moulding her whole outlook upon life, even though that outlook carried her no farther than the confines of her beautiful sunlit valley. Something of this was stirring within her now. She was not thinking of that which her eyes looked upon. She was thinking of the man to whom she had given her promise, her woman's promise, which carries with it all the best a woman has to give. She was no weakling, dreaming regretfully of all that might have been; she had no thought of retracting because in her heart she knew she had made a mistake. She was reviewing the man as she had seen him that noon, and considering the story of his doings as she had been told them, quietly making up her mind to her own line of action. He was presently to come up to her home to have tea with them, and she would be given the opportunity of seeing the man that five years' absence in the wilds had made of him. Once or twice she almost shuddered as the details of their meeting on the bridge obtruded themselves. She tried to shut them out. She understood the rough side of men, for she lived amongst a people in whom it was difficult enough to trace even a semblance of gentleness. She allowed for the moment of provocation when the man's horse had shied and unseated him. She realized the natural inclination it would inspire to forcibly, even if irresponsibly, protest. Even the manner of his protest she condoned. But his subsequent attitude, his appearance, and his manner toward herself, these were things which had an ugly tone, and for which she could find no extenuation. However, it should all be settled that afternoon. She unfolded and straightened out a piece of paper she had been abstractedly crumpling in her hand. She glanced at the unsteady writing on it, a writing she hardly recognized as Jim's. "Will come up to tea this afternoon. Sorry for this morning.--JIM." That was the note he had sent her soon after she had reached home. There was no word of affection in it. Nothing but a bare statement and an apology which scarcely warranted the name. To her it seemed to have been prompted by the man's realization of an unpleasant and undesired duty to be performed. The few letters she had received from him immediately before his return had borne a similar tone of indifference, and once or twice she had felt that she ought to write and offer him his freedom. This, however, she had never done, feeling that by doing so she might be laying herself open to misinterpretation. No, if their engagement were distasteful to him, it must be Jim who broke it. Unlike most women, she would rather he threw her over than bear the stigma of having jilted him. She had thought this all out very carefully. She had an almost mannish sense of honor, just as she possessed something of a man's courage to carry out her obligations. She glanced over the tea-table. There were four places set. The table was daintily arranged, and though the china was cheap, and there was no display of silver, or any elaborate furnishings, it looked attractive. The bread and butter was delicate, the assortment of home-made cakes luscious, the preserves the choicest from her aunt's store-cupboard. Betty had been careful, too, that the little sitting-room, with its simple furniture and unpretentious decorations, should be in the nicest order. She had looked to everything so that Jim's welcome should be as cordial as kindly hearts could make it. And now she was awaiting his coming. The clock on the sideboard chimed five, and a few moments later her uncle came in. "What about tea, Betty?" he inquired, glancing with approval at the careful preparations for the meal. "I think we ought to wait," she replied, with a wistful smile into his keen blue eyes. "I sent word to Jim for five o'clock--but--well, perhaps something has detained him." "No doubt," observed the parson dryly. "I dare say five minutes added on to five years means nothing to Jim." He didn't approve the man's attitude at all. All his ideas on the subject of courtship had been outraged at his delay in calling. He had been in the village nearly five hours. The girl rearranged the teacups. "You mustn't be hard on him," she said quietly. "He had to get cleaned up and settled at the hotel. I don't suppose he'd care to come here like--like----" "It doesn't take a man five hours to do all that," broke in her uncle, with some warmth. Then, as he faced the steady gaze of the girl's brown eyes, he abruptly changed his tone and smiled at her. "Yes, of course we'll wait. We'll give him half an hour's grace, and then--I'll fetch him." Betty smiled. There was a characteristic snap in the parson's final declaration. The militant character of the man was always very near the surface. He was the kindest and best of men, but anything suggesting lack of straightforwardness in those from whom he had a right to expect the reverse never failed to rouse his ire. For want of something better to do Betty was carrying out a further rearrangement of the tea-table, and presently her uncle questioned her shrewdly. "You don't seem very elated at Jim's return?" he said. "I am more than pleased," she replied gravely. Parson Tom took up his stand at the window with his back turned. "When I was engaged to your aunt," he said, smiling out at the valley, "if I had been away for five years and suddenly returned, she would probably have had about three fits, a scene of shrieking hysteria, and gone to bed for a week. By all of which I mean she would have been simply crazy with delight. It must be the difference of temperament, eh?" He turned round and stood smiling keenly across at the girl's serious face. "Yes, uncle, I don't think I am demonstrative." "Do you want to marry him?" The man's eyes were perfectly serious now. "I am going to marry him--unless----" "Unless?" "Unless he refuses to marry me." "Do you want to marry him, my dear? That was my question." Her uncle had crossed over to her and stood looking down at her with infinite tenderness in his eyes. She returned his gaze, and slowly a smile replaced her gravity. "You are very literal, uncle," she said gently. "If you want an absolutely direct reply it is 'Yes.'" But her uncle was not quite satisfied. "You--love him?" he persisted. But this catechism was too much for Betty. She was devoted to her uncle, and she knew that his questions were prompted by the kindliest motives. But in this matter she felt that she was entirely justified in thinking and acting for herself. "You don't quite understand," she said, with just a shade of impatience. "Jim and I are engaged, and you must leave us to settle matters ourselves. If you press me I shall speak the plain truth, and then you will have a wrong impression of the position. I perfectly understand my own feelings. I am not blinded by them. I shall act as I think best, and you must rely on my own judgment. I quite realize that you want to help me. But neither you nor any one else can do that, uncle. Ah, here is auntie," she exclaimed, with evident relief. Mrs. Chepstow came in. She was hot from her work in the kitchen, where she was operating, with the aid of her "hired" girl, a large bake of cakes for the poorer villagers. She looked at the clock sharply. "Why, it's half-past five and no tea," she exclaimed, her round face shining, and her gentle eyes wide open. "Where's Jim? Not here? Why, I am astonished. Betty, what are you thinking of?--and after five years, too." "Betty hasn't got him in proper harness yet," laughed the parson, but there was a look in his eyes which was not in harmony with his laugh. "Harness? Don't be absurd, Tom." Then she turned to Betty. "Did you tell him five?" Tom Chepstow picked up his hat, and before the girl could answer he was at the door. "I'm going to fetch him," he said, and was gone before Betty's protest reached him. "I do wish uncle wouldn't interfere," the girl said, as her aunt laughed at her husband's precipitate exit. "Interfere, my dear!" she exclaimed. "You can't stop him. He's got a perverted notion that we women are incapable of taking care of ourselves. He goes through life determined to fight our battles. Determined to help us out when we don't need it. He's helped me 'out' all our married life. He spends his life doing it, and I often wish he'd--he'd leave me 'in' sometimes. I've never seen a man who could upset a woman's plans more completely than your uncle, and all with the best intention. One of these days I'll start to help him out, and then we'll see how he likes it," she laughed good-humoredly. "You know, if he finds Jim he's sure to upset the boy, and he'll come back thinking he's done his duty by you. Poor Tom, and he does mean so well." "I know he does, auntie, and that's why we all love him so. Everybody loves him for it, He never thinks of himself. It's always others, and----" "Yes, my dear, you're right. But all the same I think he's right just now. Why isn't Jim here? Why didn't he come straight away? Why has he been in Malkern five hours before he comes to see you? Betty, my child, I've not said a word all these years. I've left you to your own affairs because I know your good sense; but, in view of the stories that have reached us about Jim, I feel that the time has come for me to speak. Are you going to verify those stories?" Mrs. Chepstow established her comfortable form in a basket chair, which audibly protested at the weight it was called upon to bear. She folded her hands in her lap, and, assuming her most judicial air, waited for the girl's answer. Betty was thinking of her meeting with Jim on the bridge. "I shall hear what he has to say," she said decidedly, after a long pause. Her aunt stared. "You're going to let him tell you what he likes?" she cried in astonishment. "He can tell me what he chooses, or--he need tell me nothing." Her aunt flushed indignantly. "You will never be so foolish," she said, exasperated. "Auntie, if Uncle Tom had been away five years, would you ask him for proof of his life all that time?" Betty demanded with some warmth. The other stirred uneasily. "That depends," she said evasively. "No, no, auntie, it doesn't. You would never question uncle. You are a woman, and just as foolish and stupid about that sort of thing as the rest of us. We must take our men on trust. They are men, and their lives are different from ours. We cannot judge them, or, at any rate, we would rather not. Why does a woman cling to a scoundrelly husband who ill-treats her and makes her life one long round of worry, and even misery? Is it because she simply has to? No. It is because he is her man. He is hers, and she would rather have his unkindness than another man's caresses. Foolish we may be, and I am not sure but that we would rather be foolish--where our men are concerned. Jim has come back. His past five years are his. I am going to take up my little story where it was broken five years ago. The stories I have heard are nothing to me. So, if you don't mind, dear, we will close the subject." "And--and you love him?" questioned the elder woman. But the girl had turned to the window. She pointed out down the road in the direction of the village. "Here is uncle returning," she said, ignoring the question. "He's hurrying. Why--he's actually running!" "Running?" Mrs. Chepstow bustled to the girl's side, and both stood watching the vigorous form of the parson racing up the trail. Just as he came to the veranda they turned from the window and their eyes met. Betty's were full of pained apprehension, while her aunt's were alight with perplexed curiosity. Betty felt that she knew something of the meaning of her uncle's undignified haste. She did not actually interpret it, she knew it meant disaster, but the nature of that disaster never entered into her thought. Something was wrong, she knew instinctively; and, with the patience of strength, she made no attempt to even guess at it, but simply waited. Her aunt rushed at the parson as he entered the room and flung aside his soft felt hat. Betty gazed mutely at the flaming anger she saw in his blue eyes, as his wife questioned him. "What is it?" she demanded. "What has happened?" Parson Tom drew a chair up to the table and flung himself into it. "We'll have tea," he said curtly. His wife obediently took her seat. "And Jim?" she questioned. The angry blue eyes still flashed. "We won't wait for him." Then Betty came to the man's side and laid one small brown hand firmly on his shoulder. "You--you saw him?" she demanded. Her uncle shook her hand off almost roughly. "Yes--I saw him," he said. "And why isn't he here?" the girl persisted without a tremor, without even noticing his rebuff. "Because he's lying on his bed at the hotel--drunk. Blind drunk,--confound him." CHAPTER VII THE WORK AT THE MILLS It was sundown. The evening shadows, long drawn out, were rapidly merging into the purple shades of twilight. The hush of night was stealing upon the valley. There was one voice alone, one discordant note, to jar upon the peace of Nature's repose. It was the voice of Dave's mills, a voice that was never silent. The village, with all its bustling life, its noisy boarding-houses, its well-filled drinking booths, its roystering lumber-jacks released from their day's toil, was powerless to disturb that repose. But the harsh voice of the driving machinery rose dominant above all other sounds. Repose was impossible, even for Nature, where the restless spirit of Dave's enterprise prevailed. The vast wooden structures of the mills, acres of them, stood like some devouring growth at the very core of Nature's fair body. It almost seemed like a living organism feeding upon all the best she had to yield. Day and night the saws, like the gleaming fangs of a voracious life, tore, devoured, digested, and the song of its labors droned without ceasing. Controlling, directing, ordering to the last detail, Dave sat in his unpretentious office. Love of the lumberman's craft ran hot in his veins. He had been born and bred to it. He had passed through its every phase. He was a sawyer whose name was historical in the forests of Oregon. As a cant-hook man he had few equals. As foreman he could extract more work from these simple woodsman giants than could those he employed in a similar capacity. In work he was inevitable. His men knew that when he demanded they must yield. In this direction he displayed no sympathy, no gentleness. He knew the disposition of the lumber-jack. These woodsmen rate their employer by his driving power. They understand and expect to be ruled by a stern discipline, and if this treatment is not forthcoming, their employer may just as well abandon his enterprise for all the work they will yield him. But though this was Dave in his business, it was the result of his tremendous force of character rather than the nature of the man. If he drove, it was honestly, legitimately. He paid for the best a man could give him, and he saw that he got it. Sickness was sure of ready sympathy, not outspoken, but practical. He was much like the prairie man with his horse. His beast is cared for far better than its master cares for himself, but it must work, and work enthusiastically to the last ounce of its power. Fail, and the horse must go. So it was with Dave. The man who failed him would receive his "time" instantly. There was no question, no excuse. And every lumber-jack knew this and gladly entered his service. Dave was closeted with his foreman, Joel Dawson, receiving the day's report. "The tally's eighty thousand," Dawson was saying. Dave looked up from his books. His keen, humorous eyes surveyed the man's squat figure. "Not enough," he said. "She's pressing hard now," came the man's rejoinder, almost defensively. "She's got to do twenty thousand more," retorted Dave finally. "Then y'll have to give her more saw room." "We'll see to it. Meanwhile shove her. How are the logs running? Is Mason keeping the length?" "Guess he cayn't do better. We ain't handled nothin' under eighty foot." "Good. They're driving down the river fast?" "The boom's full, an' we're workin' 'em good an' plenty." The man paused. "'Bout more saw beds an' rollers," he went on a moment later. "Ther' ain't an inch o' space, boss. We'll hev to build." Dave shook his head and faced round from his desk. "There's no time. You'll have to take out the gang saws and replace them for log trimming." Dawson spat into the spittoon. He eyed the ugly, powerful young features of his boss speculatively while he made a swift mental calculation. "That'll mebbe give us eight thousand more. 'Tain't enough, I guess," he said emphatically. "Say, there's that mill up river. Her as belongs to Jim Truscott. If we had her runnin' I 'lows we'd handle twenty-five thousand on a day and night shift. Givin' us fifty all told." Dave's eyes lit. "I've thought of that," he said. "That'll put us up with a small margin. I'll see what can be done. How are the new boys making? I've had a good report from Mason up on No. 1 camp. He's transferred his older hands to new camps, and has the new men with him. He's started to cut on Section 80. His estimate is ten million in the stump on that cut; all big stuff. He's running a big saw-gang up there. The roads were easy making and good for travoying, and most of the timber is within half a mile of the river. We don't need to worry about the 'drive.' He's got the stuff plenty, and all the 'hands' he needs. It's the mill right here that's worrying." Dawson took a fresh chew. "Yes, it's the mill, I guess," he said slowly. "That an' this yer strike. We're goin' to feel it--the strike, I mean. The engineers and firemen are going 'out,' I hear, sure." "That doesn't hit us," said Dave sharply. But there was a keen look of inquiry in his eyes. "Don't it?" Dawson raised his shaggy eyebrows. "Our stuff is merely to be placed on board here. The government will see to its transport." The foreman shook his head. "What o' them firemen an' engineers in the mill? Say, they're mostly union men, an'----" "I see." Dave became thoughtful. "Guess that ain't the only trouble neither," Dawson went on, warming. "Strikes is hell-fire anyways. Ther' ain't no stoppin' 'em when they git good an' goin'. Ther's folk who'd hate work wuss'n pizin when others, of a different craft, are buckin'. I hate strikes, anyway, an' I'll feel a sight easier when the railroaders quits." "You're alarming yourself without need," Dave said easily, closing his books and rising from his seat. "Guess I'll get to supper. And see you remember I look to you to shove her. Are you posting the 'tally'?" "Sure. They're goin' up every shift." A few minutes later the foreman took his departure to hand over to Simon Odd, who ran the mills at night. Dave watched him go. Then, instead of going off to his supper, he sat down again. Dawson's warning was not without its effect on him, in spite of the easy manner in which he had set it aside. If his mills were to be affected by the strike it would be the worst disaster that could befall--short of fire. To find himself with millions of feet coming down the river on the drive and no possibility of getting it cut would mean absolute ruin. Yes, it was a nasty thought. A thought so unpleasant that he promptly set it aside and turned his attention to more pleasant matters. One of the most pleasant that occurred to him was the condition of things in the village. Malkern had already begun to boom as the first result of his sudden burst of increased work. Outside capital was coming in for town plots, and several fresh buildings were going up. Addlestone Chicks, the dry-goods storekeeper, was extending his premises to accommodate the enormous increase in his trade. Two more saloons were being considered, both to be built by men from Calford, and the railroad had promised two mails a day instead of one. Dave thought of these things with the satisfaction of a man who is steadily realizing his ambitions. It only needed his success for prosperity to come automatically to the village in the valley. That was it, his success. This thought brought to his mind again the matter of Jim Truscott's mill, and this, again, set him thinking of Jim himself. He had seen nothing of Jim since his meeting with him on the bridge, and the memory of that meeting was a dark shadow in his recollection. Since that time two days had passed, two days spent in arduous labor, when there had been no time for more than a passing thought for anything else. He had seen no one outside of his mills. He had seen neither Betty nor her uncle; no one who could tell him how matters were going with the prodigal. He felt somehow that he had been neglectful, he felt that he had wrongfully allowed himself to be swamped in the vortex of the whirling waters of his labors. He had purposely shut out every other consideration. Now his mind turned upon Betty, and he suddenly decided to take half an hour's respite and visit Harley-Smith's saloon. He felt that this would be the best direction in which to seek Jim Truscott. Five years ago it would have been different. He rose from his seat and stretched his cumbersome body. Young as he was, he felt stiff. His tremendous effort was making itself felt. Picking up his pipe he lit it, and as he dropped the charred end of the match in the spittoon a knock came at the door. It opened in answer to his call, and in the half-light of the evening he recognized the very man whom he had just decided to seek. It was Jim Truscott who stood in the doorway peering into the darkened room. And at last his searching eyes rested on the enormous figure of the lumberman. Dave was well in the shadow, and what light came in through the window fell full upon the newcomer's face. In the brief silence he had a good look at him. He saw that now he was clean-shaven, that his hair had been trimmed, that his clothes were good and belonged to the more civilized conditions of city life. He was good-looking beyond a doubt; a face, he thought, to catch a young girl's fancy. There was something romantic in the dark setting of the eyes, the keen aquiline nose, the broad forehead. It was only the lower part of the face that he found fault with. There was that vicious weakness about the mouth and chin, and it set him pondering. There were the marks of dissipation about the eyes too, only now they were a hundredfold more pronounced. Where before the rounded cheeks had once so smoothly sloped away, now there were puffings, with deep, unwholesome furrows which, in a man of his age, had no right to be there. Jim was the first to speak, and his manner was almost defiant. "Well?" he ejaculated. "Well?" responded Dave; and the newly-opened waters suddenly froze over again. They measured each other, eye to eye. Both had the memory of their meeting two days ago keenly alive in their thought. Finally Jim broke into a laugh that sounded harshly. "After five years' absence your cordiality is overwhelming," he said. "I seem to remember meeting you on the bridge two days ago," retorted Dave. Then he turned to his desk and lit the lamp. The mill siren hooted out its mournful cry. Its roar was deafening, and answered as an excuse for the silence which remained for some moments between the two men. When the last echo had died out Truscott spoke again. Evidently he had availed himself of those seconds to decide on a more conciliatory course. "That's nerve-racking," he said lightly. "Yes, if your nerves aren't in the best condition," replied Dave. Then he indicated a chair and both men seated themselves. Truscott made himself comfortable and lit a cigar. "Well, Dave," he said pleasantly, "after five years I return here to find everybody talking of you, of your work, of the fortune you are making, of the prosperity of the village--which, by the way, is credited to your efforts. You are the man of the moment in the valley; you are it!" Dave nodded. "Things are doing." "Doing, man! Why, it's the most wonderful thing. I leave a little dozy village, and I come back to a town thrilling with a magnificent prosperity, with money in plenty for everybody, and on every hand talk of investment, and dreams of fortunes to be made. I'm glad I came. I'm glad I left that benighted country of cold and empty stomachs and returned to this veritable Tom Tiddler's ground. I too intend to share in the prosperity you have brought about. Dave, you are a wonder." "I thought you'd come to talk of other matters," said Dave quietly. His words had ample effect. The enthusiasm dropped from the other like a cloak. His face lost its smile, and his eyes became watchful. "You mean----" "Betty," said Dave shortly. Truscott stirred uneasily. Dave's directness was a little disconcerting. Suddenly the latter leant forward in his chair, and his steady eyes held his visitor. "Five years ago, Jim, you went away, and, going, you left Betty to my care--for you. That child has always been in my thoughts, and though I've never had an opportunity to afford her the protection you asked of me, it has not been my fault. She has never once needed it. You went away to make money for her, so that when you came back you could marry her. I remember our meeting two days ago, and it's not my intention to say a thing of it. I have been so busy since then that I have seen nobody who could tell me of either her or you, so I know nothing of how your affairs stand. But if you've anything to say on the matter now I'm prepared to listen. Did you make good up there in the Yukon?" Dave's tone was the tone Truscott had always known. It was kindly, it was strong with honesty and purpose. He felt easier for it, and his relief sounded in his reply. "I can't complain," he said, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. "I'm glad," said Dave simply. "I was doubtful of the experiment, but--well, I'm glad. And----?" Suddenly Jim sprang to his feet and began to pace the room. Dave watched him. He was reading him. He was studying the nervous movements, and interpreting them as surely as though their meaning were written large in the plainest lettering. It was the same man he had known five years ago--the same, only with a difference. He beheld the weakness he had realized before, but now, where there had been frank honesty in all his movements and expressions, there was a furtive undercurrent which suggested only too clearly the truth of the stories told about him. "Dave," he burst out at last, coming to a sudden stand in front of him. "I've come to you about Betty. I've come to you to tell you all the regret I have at that meeting of ours on the bridge, and all I said at the time. I want to tell you that I'm a rotten fool and blackguard. That I haven't been near Betty since I came back. I was to have gone to tea that afternoon, and didn't do so because I got blind drunk instead, and when her uncle came to fetch me I told him to go to hell, and insulted him in a dozen ways. I want to tell you that while I was away I practically forgot Betty, I didn't care for her any longer, that I scarcely even regarded our engagement as serious. I feel I must tell you this. And now it is all changed. I have seen her and I want her. I love her madly, and--and I have spoiled all my chances. She'll never speak to me again. I am a fool and a crook--an utter wrong 'un, but I want her. I must have her!" The man paused breathlessly. His words carried conviction. His manner was passion-swept There could be no doubt as to his sincerity, or of the truth of the momentary remorse conveyed in his self-accusation. Dave's teeth shut tight upon his pipe-stem. "And you did all that?" he inquired with a tenseness that made his voice painfully harsh. "Yes, yes, I did. Dave, you can't say any harder things to me than I've said to myself. When I drink there's madness in my blood that drives me where it will." The other suddenly rose from his seat and towered over him. The look on his rugged face was one of mastery. His personality dominated Truscott at that moment in a manner that made him shrink before his steady, luminous eyes. "How've you earned your living?" he demanded sharply. "I'm a gambler," came Jim's uneasy reply, the truth forced from him against his will. "You're a drunkard and a crook?" "I'm a fool. I told you." Dave accepted the admission. "Then for God's sake get out of this village, and write and release Betty from her engagement. You say you love her. Prove it by releasing her, and be a man." Dave's voice rang out deep with emotion. At that moment he was thinking of Betty, and not of the man before him. He was not there to judge him, his only thought was of the tragedy threatening the girl. Truscott had suddenly become calm, and his eyes had again assumed that furtive watchfulness as he looked up into the larger man's face. He shook his head. "I can't give her up," he said obstinately, after a pause. Dave sat down again, watching the set, almost savage expression of the other's face. The position was difficult; he was not only dealing with this man, but with a woman whose sense of duty and honor was such that left him little hope of settling the matter as he felt it should be settled. Finally he decided to appeal again to the man's better nature. "Jim," he said solemnly, "you come here and confess yourself a crook, and, if not a drunkard, at least a man with a bad tendency that way. You say you love Betty, in spite of having forgotten her while you were away. On your conscience I ask you, can you wilfully drag this girl, who has known only the purest, most innocent, and God-fearing life, into the path you admit you have been, are treading? Can you drag her down with you? Can you in your utter selfishness take her from a home where she is surrounded by all that can keep a woman pure and good? I don't believe it. That is not the Jim I used to know. Jim, take it from me, there is only one decent course open to you, one honest one. Leave her alone, and go from here yourself. You have no right to her so long as your life is what it is." "But my life is going to be that no longer," Truscott broke in with passionate earnestness. "Dave, help me out in this. For God's sake, do. It will be the making of me. I have money now, and I want to get rid of the old life. I, too, want to be decent. I do. I swear it. Give me this chance to straighten myself. I know your influence with her. You can get her to excuse that lapse. She will listen to you. My God! Dave, you don't know how I love that girl." While the lumberman listened his heart hardened. He understood the selfishness, the weakness underlying this man's passion. He understood more than that, Betty was no longer the child she was five years ago, but a handsome woman of perfect moulding. And, truth to tell, he felt this sudden reawakening of the man's passion was not worthy of the name of the love he claimed for it, but rather belonged to baser inspiration. But his own feelings prevented his doing what he would like to have done. He felt that he ought to kick the man out of his office, and have him hunted out of the village. But years ago he had given his promise of help, and a promise was never a light thing with him. And besides that, he realized his own love for Betty, and could not help fearing that his judgment was biassed by it. In the end he gave the answer which from the first he knew he must give. "If you mean that," he said coldly, "I will do what I can for you." Jim's face lit, and he held out his hand impulsively. "Thanks, Dave," he cried, his whole face clearing and lighting up as if by magic. "You're a bully friend. Shake!" But the other ignored the outstretched hand. Somehow he felt he could no longer take it in friendship. Truscott saw the coldness in his eyes, and instantly drew his hand away. He moved toward the door. "Will you see her to-night?" he asked over his shoulder. "I can't say. You'll probably hear from her." At the door the man turned, and Dave suddenly recollected something. "Oh, by the way," he said, still in his coldest manner, "I'd like to buy that old mill of yours--or lease it. I don't mind which. How much do you want for it?" Jim flashed a sharp glance at him. "My old mill?" Then he laughed peculiarly. "What do you want with that?" The other considered for a moment. "My mill hasn't sufficient capacity," he said at last. "You see, my contract is urgent. It must be completed before winter shuts down--under an enormous penalty. We are getting a few thousand a day behind on my calculations. Your mill will put me right, with a margin to spare against accidents." "I see." And the thoughtfulness of Truscott's manner seemed unnecessary. He avoided Dave's eyes. "You're under a penalty, eh? I s'pose the government are a hard crowd to deal with?" Dave nodded. "If I fail it means something very like--ruin," he said, almost as though speaking to himself. Truscott whistled. "Pretty dangerous, traveling so near the limit," he said. "Yes. Well? What about the mill?" "I must think it over. I'll let you know." He turned and left the office without another word, and Dave stared after him, speechless with surprise and disgust. CHAPTER VIII AT THE CHURCH BAZAAR Two days later brought Tom Chepstow's church bazaar. Dave had not yet had the opportunity of interceding with Betty and her uncle on behalf of Jim, but to-day he meant to fulfil his obligations as Tom's chief supporter in church affairs, and, at the same time, to do what he could for the man he had promised to help. The whole morning the valley was flooded with a tremendous summer deluge. It was just as though the heavens had opened and emptied their waters upon the earth. Dave viewed the prospect with no very friendly eye. He knew the summer rains only too well; the possibilities of flood were well grounded, and just now he had no desire to see the river rise higher than it was at present. Still, as yet there was no reason for alarm. This was the first rain, and the glass was rising. By noon the clouds broke, and the barometer's promise was fulfilled, so that, by the time he had clad himself in his best broadcloth, he left his office under a radiant sky. In spite of the wet under foot it was a delight to be abroad. The air was fresh and sparkling; the dripping trees seemed to be studded with thousands of diamonds as the poising rain-drops glistened in the blazing sun. The valley rang with the music of the birds, and the health-giving scent of the pine woods was wafted upon the gentlest of zephyrs. Dave's soul was in perfect sympathy with the beauties about him. To him there could be no spot on God's earth so fair and beautiful as this valley. Passing the mill on his way out of the yards he was met by Joel Dawson, whose voice greeted him with a note of satisfaction in it. "She's goin' full, boss," he said. "We set the last saws in her this mornin' an' she's steaming hard. Ther' ain't nothin' idle. Ther' ain't a' band' or 'gang' left in her." And Dave without praise expressed his satisfaction at the rapidity with which his orders had been carried out. This was his way. Dawson was an excellent foreman, and his respect for his "boss" was largely based on the latter's capacity to extract work out of his men. While praise might have been pleasant to him, it would never have fallen in with his ideas of how the mills should be run. His pride was in the work, and to keep his respect at concert pitch it was necessary that he should feel that his "boss" was rather favoring him by entrusting to him the more important part of the work. Dave passed out of the yards certain that nothing would be neglected in his absence. If things went wrong Dawson would receive no more consideration than a common lumber-jack, and Dawson had no desire to receive his "time." The Meeting House stood slightly apart from the rest of the village. It was a large, staring frame building, void of all pretentiousness and outward devotional sign. The weather-boarding was painted; at least, it had been. But the winter snows had long since robbed it of its original terra-cotta coloring and left its complexion a drab neutral tint. The building stood bare, with no encompassing fence, and its chief distinctive features were a large doorway, a single row of windows set at regular intervals, and a pitched roof. As Dave drew near he saw a considerable gathering of men and horses about the doorway and tie-post. He was greeted cordially as he came up. These men were unfeignedly glad to see him, not only because he was popular, but in the hopes that he would show more courage than they possessed, and lead the way within to the feminine webs being woven for their enmeshing. He chatted for some moments, then, as no one seemed inclined to leave the sunshine for the tempting baits so carefully set out inside the building, he turned to Jenkins Mudley-- "Are you fellows scared of going in?" he inquired, with his large laugh. Jenkins shook his head shamefacedly, while Harley-Smith, loud and vulgar, with a staring diamond pin gleaming in his necktie, answered for him. "'Tain't that," he said. "His wife's kind o' dep'ty for him. She's in ther' with his dollars." "And you?" Dave turned on him quickly. "Me? Oh, I ain't no use for them cirkises. Too much tea an' cake an' kiddies to it for me. Give me a few of the 'jacks' around an' I kind o' feel it homely." "Say, they ain't got a table for 'draw' in there, have they?" inquired Checks facetiously. "That's what Harley-Smith needs." Dave smilingly shook his head. "I don't think there's any gambling about this--unless it's the bran tub. But that is scarcely a gamble. It's a pretty sure thing you get bested over it. Still, there might be a raffle, or an auction. How would that do you, Harley-Smith?" The saloon-keeper laughed boisterously. He liked being the object of interest; he liked being noticed so much by Dave. It tickled his vulgar vanity. But, to his disappointment, the talk was suddenly shifted into another channel by Checks. The dry-goods merchant turned to Dave with very real interest. "Talking of 'draw,'" he said pointedly, "you know that shanty right opposite me. It's been empty this year an' more. Who was it lived there? Why, the Sykeses, sure. You know it, it's got a shingle roof, painted red." "Yes, I know," replied Dave. "It belongs to me. I let Sykes live there because there wasn't another house available at the time. I used to keep it as a storehouse." "Sure, that's it," exclaimed Checks. "Well, there's some one running a game there at night. I've seen the boys going in, and it's been lit up. Some guy is running a faro bank, or something of the sort. My wife swears it's young Jim Truscott. She's seen him going in for the last two nights. She says he's always the first one in and the last to leave." "Psha!" Jenkins Mudley exclaimed, with fine scorn. "Jim ain't no gambler. I'd bet it's some crook in from Calford. There's lots of that kidney coming around, seeing the place is on the boom. The bees allus gets around wher' the honey's made." "Grows," suggested Checks amiably. Harley-Smith laughed loudly. "Say, bully for you," he cried sarcastically. "Young Jim ain't no gambler? Gee! I've see him take a thousand of the best bills out of the boys at 'craps' right there in my bar. Gambler? Well, I'd snigger!" And he illustrated his remark loudly and long. Dave had dropped out of the conversation at the mention of Jim Truscott's name. He felt that he had nothing to say. And he hoped to avoid being again brought into it. But Jenkins had purposely told him. Jenkins was a rigid churchman, and he knew that Dave was also a strong supporter of Parson Tom's. His wife had been very scandalized at the opening of a gambling house directly opposite their store, and he felt it incumbent upon him to fall in with her views. Therefore he turned again to Dave. "Well, what about it, Dave?" he demanded. "What are you going to do?" The lumberman looked him straight in the eye and smiled. "Do? Why, what all you fellows seem to be scared to do. I'm going into this bazaar to do my duty by the church. I'm going to hand them all my spare dollars, and if there's any change coming, I'll take it in dry-goods." But the lightness of his tone and smile had no inspiration from his mood. He was angry; he was disappointed. So this was the worth of Jim's promises! This was the man who, in a perfect fever of passion, had said that the old life of gambling and debauchery was finished for him. And yet he had probably left his (Dave's) office and gone straight to a night of heavy gaming, and, if Checks were right, running a faro bank. He knew only too well what that meant. No man who had graduated as a gambler in such a region as the Yukon was likely to run a faro bank straight. Then a light seemed to flash through his brain, and of a sudden he realized something that fired the blood in his veins and set his pulses hammering feverishly. For the moment it set his thoughts chaotic; he could not realize anything quite clearly. One feeling thrilled him, one wild hope. Then, with stern self-repression, he took hold of himself. This was neither time nor place for such weakness, he told himself. He knew what it was. For the moment he had let himself get out of hand. He had for so long regarded Betty as belonging to Jim; he had for so long shut her from his own thoughts and only regarded her from an impersonal point of view, that it had never occurred to him, until that instant, that there was a possibility of her engagement to Jim ever falling through. This was what had so suddenly stirred him. Now, actuated by his sense of duty and honor, he thrust these things aside. His loyalty to the girl, the strength of his great love for her, would not, even for a moment, permit him to think of himself. Five years ago he had said good-bye to any hopes and thoughts such as these. On that day he had struggled with himself and won. He was not going to destroy the effects of that victory by any selfish thought now. His love for the girl was there, nothing could alter that. It would remain there, deep down in his heart, dormant but living. But it was something more than a mere human passion, it was something purer, loftier; something that crystallized the human clay of his thought into the purest diamonds of unselfishness. In the few moments that it took him to pass into the Meeting House and launch himself upon his task of furthering the cause of Tom Chepstow's church, his mind cleared. He could not yet see the line of action he must take if the gossip of Mr. Addlestone Checks were true. But one thing was plain, that gossip must not influence him until its truth were established. Just as he was seized upon by at least half a dozen of the women who had wares to sell, and were bent on morally picking his pockets, he had arrived at his decision. The hall was ablaze with colored stuffs. There were festoons and banners, and rosettes and evergreen. Every bare corner was somehow concealed. There were drapings of royal blue and staring white, and sufficient bunting to make a suit of flags for a war-ship. All the seats and benches had been removed, and round the walls had been erected the stalls and booths of the saleswomen. One end of the room was given up to a platform, on which, in the evening, the most select of the local vocalists would perform. Beside this was a bran tub, where one could have a dip for fifty cents and be sure of winning a prize worth at least five. Then there was a fortune-telling booth on the opposite side, presided over by a local beauty, Miss Eva Wade, whose father was a small rancher just outside the valley. This institution was eyed askance by many of the women. They were not sure that fortune-telling could safely be regarded as strictly moral. Parson Tom was responsible for its inception, and his lean shoulders were braced to bear the consequences. Dave was by no means new to church bazaars. Any one living in a small western village must have considerable experience of such things. They are a form of taxation much in favor, and serve multifarious purposes. They are at once a pleasant social function where young people can safely meet under the matronly eye; they keep all in close touch with religion; they give the usually idle something to think of and work for, and the busy find them an addition to their burdens. They create a sort of central bureau for the exchange of scandal, and a ready market for trading useless articles to people who do not desire to purchase, but having purchased feel that the moral sacrifice they have made is at least one step in the right direction to make up for many backslidings in the past. Dave doubtless had long since considered all this. But he saw and appreciated the purpose underlying it. He knew Tom Chepstow to be a good man, and though he had little inspiration as a churchman, he spared no pains in his spiritual labors, and the larger portion of his very limited stipend went in unobtrusive charity. No sick bed ever went uncheered by his presence, and no poor ever went without warm clothing and wholesome food in the terrible Canadian winter so long as he had anything to give. Therefore Dave had come well provided with money, which he began at once to spend with hopeless prodigality. The rest of the men followed in the lumberman's wake, and soon the bustle and noise waxed furious. They all bought indiscriminately. Dave started on Mrs. Checks' "gentlemen's outfitters" stall. His heart rejoiced when he sighted a pile of handkerchiefs which the lady had specially made for him, and which she now thrust at him with an exorbitant price marked upon them. He bought them all. He bought a number of shirts he could not possibly have worn. He bought underclothing that wouldn't have been a circumstance on his cumbersome figure. He passed on to Louisa Mudley's millinery stall and bought several hats, which he promptly shed upon the various women in his vicinity. He did his duty royally, and bought dozens of things which he promptly gave away. And his attentions in this matter were quite impartial. He did it with the air of some great good-natured schoolboy that set everybody delighted with him, with themselves, with everything; and the bazaar, as a result, went with a royal, prosperous swing. Here, as in his work, his personality carried with it the magic of success. At last he reached Betty's stall. She was presiding over a hideous collection of cheap bric-à-brac. With her usual unselfishness and desire to promote harmony amongst the workers, and so help the success of the bazaar, she had sacrificed herself on the altar of duty by taking charge of the most unpopular stall. Nobody wanted the goods she had to sell; consequently Dave found her deserted. She smiled up at him a little pathetically as he came over to her. "Are you coming as a friend or as a customer? Most of the visits I have received have been purely friendly." She laughed, but Dave could see that the natural spirit of rivalry was stirred, and she was a little unhappy at the rush of business going on everywhere but at her stall. "I come as both," he said, with that air of frank kindliness so peculiarly his own. The girl's eyes brightened. "Then let's get to work on the customer part of your visit first," she said at once; "the other can wait. Now here I have a nice plate. You can hang it in your office on the wall. You see it's already wired. It might pass for old Worcester if you don't let in too much light. But there, you never have your windows washed, do you? Then I have," she hurried on, turning to other articles, "this. This is a shell--at least I suppose it is," she added naïvely. "And this is a Toby jug; and this is a pipe-rack; this is for matches; this is for a whisk brush; and these two vases, they're real fine. Look at them. Did you ever see such colors? No, and I don't suppose anybody else ever did." She laughed, and Dave joined in her laugh. But her laugh suddenly died out. The man heard a woman, only a few feet away, mention Jim Truscott's name, and he knew that Betty had heard it too. He knew that her smiling chatter, which had seemed so gay, so irresponsible, had all been pretense, a pretense which had suddenly been swept aside at the mere mention of Jim's name. At that moment he felt he could have taken the man up in his two strong hands and strangled him. However, he allowed his feelings no display, but at once took up the challenge of the saleswoman. "Say, Betty, there's just one thing in the world I'm crazy about: it's bits of pots and things such as you've got on your stall. It seems like fate you should be running this stall. Now just get right to it, and fetch out some tickets--a heap of 'em--and write 'sold' on 'em, and dump 'em on all you like. How much for the lot?" "What do you mean, Dave?" the girl cried, her eyes wide and questioning. "How much? I don't want anybody else buying those things," Dave said seriously. "I want 'em all." Betty's eyes softened almost to tears. "I can't let you do it, Dave," she said gently. "Not all. Some." But the man was not to be turned from his purpose. "I want 'em all," he said doggedly. "Here. Here's two hundred dollars. That'll cover it." He laid four bills of fifty dollars each on the stall. "There," he added, "you can sell 'em over again if any of the boys want to buy." Betty was not sure which she wanted to do, cry or laugh. However, she finally decided on the latter course. Dave's simple contradiction was quite too much for her. "You're the most refreshing old simpleton I ever knew," she said. "But I'll take your money--for the church," she added, as though endeavoring to quiet her conscience. Dave sighed in relief. "Well, that's that. Now we come to the friendly side of my visit," he said. "I've got a heap to say to you. Jim Truscott's been to me." He made his statement simply, and waited. But no comment was forthcoming. Betty was stooping over a box, collecting cards to place on the articles on her stall. Presently she looked up, and her look was an invitation for him to go on. The man's task was not easy. It would have been easy enough had he not spoken with Checks outside, but now it was all different. He had promised his help, but in giving it he had no clear conscience. He propped himself against the side-post of her stall, and his weight set the structure shaking perilously. "I've often wondered, Betty," he said, in a rumbling, confidential tone, "if there ever was a man, or for that matter a woman, who really understood human nature. We all think we know a lot about it. We size up a man, and we reckon he's good, bad, or indifferent, and if our estimate happens to prove, we pat ourselves, and hold our heads a shade higher, and feel sorry for those who can't read a man as easy as we can." Betty nodded while she stuck some "Sold" cards about her stall. "A locomotive's a great proposition, so long as it's on a set track. It's an all-fired nuisance without. Guess a locomotive can do everything it shouldn't when it gets loose of its track. My word, I'd hate to be around with a loco up to its fool-tricks, running loose in a city. Seems to me that's how it is with human nature." Betty's brown eyes were thoughtfully contemplating the man's ugly features. "I suppose you mean we all need a track to run on?" "Why, yes," Dave went on, brightening. "Some of us start out in life with a ready-made track, with 'points' we can jump if we've a notion. Some of us have a track without 'points,' so there's no excuse for getting off it. Some of us have to lay down our own track, and keep right on it, building it as we go. That's the hardest. We're bound to have some falls. You see there's so much ballasting needed, the ground's so mighty bumpy. I seem to know a deal about that sort of track. I've had to build mine, and I've fallen plenty. Sometimes it's been hard picking myself up, and I've been bruised and sore often. Still, I've got up, and I don't seem no worse for falling." Betty's eyes were smiling softly. "But _you_ picked yourself up, Dave, didn't you?" she asked gently. "Well--not always. You see, I've got a mother. She's helped a whole heap. You see, she's mostly all my world, and I used to hate to hurt her by letting her see me down. She kind of thinks I'm the greatest proposition ever, and it tickles my vanity. I want her to go on thinking it, as it keeps me hard at work building that track. And now, through her, I've been building so long that it comes easier, and thinking of her makes me hang on so tight I don't get falling around now. There's other fellows haven't got a mother, or--you see, I've always had her with me. That's where it comes in. Now, if she'd been away from me five years, when I was very young; you see----" Dave broke off clumsily. He was floundering in rough water. He knew what he wanted to say, but words were not too easy to him. "Poor Jim!" murmured Betty softly. Dave's eyes were on her in a moment. Her manner was somehow different from what he had expected. There was sympathy and womanly tenderness in her voice; but he had expected---- Then his thoughts went back to the time when they had spoken of Jim on the bridge. And, without knowing why, his pulses quickened, and a warmth of feeling swept over him. "Poor Jim!" he said, after a long pause, during which his pulses had steadied and he had become master of his feelings again. "He's fallen a lot, and I'm not sure it's all his fault. He always ran straight when he was here. He was very young to go away to a place like the Yukon. Maybe--maybe you could pick him up; maybe you could hold him to that track, same as mother did for me?" Betty was close beside him. She had moved out of her stall and was now looking up into his earnest face. "Does he want me to?" she asked wistfully. "Do _you_ think I can help him?" The man's hands clenched tightly. For a moment he struggled. "You can," he said at last. "He wants you; he wants your help. He loves you so, he's nearly crazy." The girl gazed up at him with eyes whose question the man tried but failed to read. It was some seconds before her lips opened to speak again. But her words never came. At that moment Addlestone Checks hurried up to them. He drew Dave sharply on one side. His manner was mysterious and important, and his face wore a look of outraged piety. "Something's got to be done," he said in a stage whisper. "It's the most outrageous thing I've seen in years. Right here--right here in the house where the parson preaches the Word! It sure is enough to set it shakin' to its foundation. Drunk! That's what he is--roarin', flamin', fightin' drunk! You must do something. It's up to you." "What do you mean? Who is drunk?" cried Dave, annoyed at the man's Pharisaical air. Before he could get a reply there was a commotion at the far end of the bazaar. Voices were raised furiously, and everybody had flocked in that direction. Once Dave thought he heard Chepstow's voice raised in protest. Betty ran to his side directly the tumult began. "Oh, Dave, what's the matter down there? I thought I heard Jim's voice?" "So you did, Miss Betty," cried Checks, with sanctimonious spleen. "So you did--the drunken----" "Shut up, or I'll break your neck!" cried Dave, threatening him furiously. The dry-goods dealer staggered back just as Betty's hand was gently, but firmly, laid on Dave's upraised arm. "Don't bother, Dave," she said piteously. "I've seen him. Oh, Jim--Jim!" And she covered her face with her hands. CHAPTER IX IN DAVE'S OFFICE It was the day after the bazaar. Betty had just returned home from her school for midday dinner. She was sitting at the open window, waiting while her aunt set the meal. The cool green of the wild-cucumbers covering the veranda tempered the blistering summer heat which oppressed the valley. The girl was looking out upon the village below her, at the woodland slopes opposite, at the distant narrowing of the mighty walls which bounded her world, but she saw none of these things. She saw nothing of the beauty, the gracious foliage, the wonderful sunlight she loved. Her gaze was introspective. She saw only the pictures her thoughts conjured up. They were not pleasant pictures either, but they were absorbing. She knew that she had arrived at a crisis in her life. The scene she had witnessed at the bazaar was still burning in her brain. The shame stung and revolted her. The horror of it was sickening. Jim's disgrace was complete; yet, in spite of it, she could not help remembering Dave's appeal for him. He had said that Jim needed her more than ever now, and the thought made her uneasy, and her tender heart urged her in a direction she knew she must not take. It was so easy for her to condemn, she who knew nothing of temptation. And yet her position was so utterly impossible. Jim had been in the village all this time and had not been near her, that is except on this one occasion, when he was drunk. He was evidently afraid to come near her. He was a coward, and she hated cowards. He had even persuaded Dave to intercede for him. She smiled as she thought of it. But her smile was for Dave, and not at the other's display of cowardice. It was not a smile of amusement either. She only smiled at the absurdity of Dave pleading for one whom he knew to be wholly unworthy. It was the man's large heart, she told herself. And almost in the same breath she found herself resenting his kindly interference, and wishing he would mind his own business. Why should he be always thinking of others? Why should he not think sometimes of himself? Her dreaming now became of Dave alone, and she found herself reviewing his life as she knew it. Her eyes grew tender, and she basked in the sunlight of a world changed to pleasant thought. His ugliness no longer troubled her--she no longer saw it. She saw only the spirit inside the man, and somehow his roughnesses of voice, manner and appearance seemed a wholly fitting accompaniment to it. Her thoughts of Jim had gone from her entirely. The crisis which she was facing had receded into the shadows. Dave became her dominant thought, and she started when her uncle's voice suddenly broke in upon her reverie. "Betty," he said, coming up behind her and laying one lean hand upon her rounded shoulder, "I haven't had time to speak to you about it since the bazaar, but now I want to tell you that you can have nothing more to do with young Truscott. He is a thorough-paced young scoundrel and----" "You need say no more, uncle," the girl broke in bitterly. "You can tell me nothing I do not already know of him." "Then I trust you will send him about his business at once," added her aunt, who had entered the room bearing the dinner joint on a tray, just in time to hear Betty's reply. Betty looked at her aunt's round, good-natured face. For once it was cold and angry. From her she looked up at her uncle's, and the decision she saw in his frank eyes left her no alternative but a direct reply. "I intend to settle everything this afternoon," she said simply. "In what way?" inquired her uncle sharply. Betty rose from her seat and crossed the room to her aunt's side. The latter, having set the dinner, was waiting beside her chair ready to sit down as soon as the matter should be settled. Betty placed her arm about her stout waist, and the elder woman's face promptly relaxed. She could never long keep up even a pretense of severity where Betty was concerned. The girl promptly addressed herself to her uncle with all the frankness of one assured of a sympathetic hearing. "You have always taught me, uncle dear, that duty must be my first consideration in life," she began steadily. "I have tried to live up to that, and it has possibly made my conscience a little over keen." Her face clouded, but the clouds broke immediately, chased away by a plaintive smile. "When Jim asked me to marry him five years ago I believed I loved him. At one time I'm sure I did, in a silly, girlish fashion. But soon after he went away I realized that a girlish infatuation is not real love. This knowledge I tried to hide even from myself. I would not believe it, and for a long time I almost managed to convince myself. That was until Jim's letters became fewer and colder. With his change I no longer attempted to conceal from myself the real state of my own feelings. But even then my conscience wouldn't let me alone. I had promised to wait for him, and I made up my mind that, come what might, unless he made it impossible I would marry him." She sighed. "Well, you know the rest. He has now made it impossible. What his real feelings are for me," she went on with a pathetic smile, "I have not had an opportunity of gauging. As you know, he has not been near me. I shall now make it my business to see him this afternoon and settle everything. My conscience isn't by any means easy about it, but I intend to give him up." Her aunt squeezed her arm sympathetically, and her uncle nodded his approval. "Where are you going to see him?" the latter asked. "You mustn't see him alone." Then he burst out wrathfully, "He's a blackguard, and----" "No, no, uncle, don't say that," Betty interrupted him. "Surely he is to be pitied. Remember him as he was. You cannot tell what temptations have come his way." The parson's face cleared at once. His angry outbursts were always short-lived. "I'm sorry, Betty," he said. "My dear, you shame me. I'm afraid that my hasty temper is always leading to my undoing as a churchman." The half-humorous smile which accompanied his words passed swiftly. "Where are you going to see him?" he again demanded. "Down at Dave's office," the girl replied, after a moment's thought. "Eh?" Her uncle was startled; but Mary Chepstow smiled on her encouragingly. "Yes, you see," she went on, "Dave had a good deal to do with--our engagement--in a way, and----" "I'm glad Dave is going to help you through this business," said her aunt, with a glance which effectually kept her husband silent. "He's a dear fellow, and--let's have our dinner--it's nearly cold." Aunt Mary was not brilliant, she was not meddlesome, but she had all a woman's intuition. She felt that enough had been said. And for some obscure reason she was glad that Dave was to have a hand in this matter. Nor had her satisfaction anything to do with the man's ability to protect her niece from possible insult. That afternoon Dave received an unexpected visit. He was alone in his office, clad for hard work, without coat, waistcoat, collar or tie. He had no scruples in these matters. With all an American's love of freedom he abandoned himself to all he undertook with a whole-heartedness which could not tolerate even the restraint of what he considered unnecessary clothing. And just now, in the terrific heat, all these things were superfluous. Betty looked particularly charming as she hurried across the lumber-yard. She was dressed in a spotless white cotton frock, and, under her large sun-hat, her brown hair shone in the sunlight like burnished copper. Without the least hesitation she approached the office and knocked peremptorily on the door. The man inside grudgingly answered the summons. His books were occupying all his attention, and his thoughts were filled with columns of figures. But the moment he beheld the white, smiling vision the last of his figures fled precipitately from his mind. "Why, come right in, little Betty," he cried, hastily setting the only available chair for her. Then he bethought himself of his attire. "Say, you might have let me know. Just half a minute and I'll fix myself up." But the girl instantly protested. "You'll do just as you are," she exclaimed. "Now you look like a lumberman. And I like you best that way." Dave grinned and sat down a little self-consciously. But Betty had no idea of letting any conventionalities interfere with the matter she had in hand. She was always direct, always single-minded, when her decision was taken. She gave him no time to speculate as to the object of her visit. "Dave," she began seriously, "I want you to do me a great favor." Then she smiled. "As usual," she added. "I want you to send for Jim Truscott and bring him here." Dave was on his feet in an instant and crossed to the door. The next moment his voice roared out to one of his foremen. It was a shout that could have been heard across his own milling floor with every saw shrieking on the top of its work. He waited, and presently Simon Odd came hurrying across the yard. He spoke to him outside, and then returned to the office. "He'll be along in a few minutes," he said. "I've sent Odd with the buckboard." "Are you sure he'll come?" Dave smiled confidently. "I told Odd to bring him." "I hope he'll come willingly," the girl said, after a thoughtful pause. "So do I," observed Dave dryly. "Well, little girl?" Betty understood the inquiry, and looked him fearlessly in the eyes. "You sowed your wheat on barren soil, Dave," she said decidedly. "Your appeal for Jim has borne no fruit." The man shifted his position. It was the only sign he gave. But the fires were stirred into a sudden blaze, and his blood ran fiercely through his veins. "That's not a heap like you, Betty," was all he said. "Isn't it?" The girl turned to the window. The dirt on the glass made it difficult for her to see out of it, but she gazed at it steadily. "I suppose you'll think me a mean, heartless creature," she said slowly. "You'll think little enough of my promises, and still less of--of my loyalty." She paused. Then she raised her head and turned to him again. "I cannot marry Jim. I cannot undertake his reformation. I cannot give up my life to a man whom I now know I never really loved. I know you will not understand. I know, only too well, your own lofty spirit, your absolute unselfishness. I know that had you been in my place you would have fulfilled your promise at any cost. But I can't. I simply can't." "No." It was the man's only comment. But his mind was busy. He knew Betty so well that he understood a great deal without asking questions. "Aunt Mary and uncle know my decision," the girl went on. "They know I am here, and that I am going to see Jim in your presence. You see, I thought if I sent for him to come to our house he might refuse. He might insult uncle again. I thought, somehow, it would be different with you." Dave nodded. "I don't blame your uncle and aunt for making you give him up," he said. "I'd have done it in their place." "Yet you appealed for him?" Betty's eyes questioned him. "Sure, I promised to help him. That was before the bazaar." Suddenly Betty held out her hands with a little appealing movement. Dave wanted to seize them and crush them in his own, but he did not stir. "Tell me you don't think badly of me. Tell me you do not think me a heartless, wretched woman. I have thought and thought, and prayed for guidance. And now it seems to me I am a thoroughly wicked girl. But I cannot--I must not marry him." The man rose abruptly from his seat. He could no longer look into her troubled eyes and keep his own secret. When he spoke it was with his back to her, as he made a pretense of filling his pipe at the tobacco jar on the table. His voice was deep with emotion. "I thank God you've decided," he said. "You've done right by everybody. And you've shown more courage refusing him than if you'd gone through with your promise, because you've done it against your conscience. No, little Betty," he went on, turning to her again with infinite kindness in his steady eyes, "there's no one can call you heartless, or any other cruel name--and--and they'd better not in my hearing," he finished up clumsily. A few minutes later the rattle of buckboard wheels sounded outside, and before Betty could reply Dave took the opportunity of going to the door. Jim Truscott was standing outside with the gigantic Simon Odd close behind him, much in the manner of a warder watching his prisoner. The flicker of a smile came and went in the lumberman's eyes at the sight. Then his attention was held by the anger he saw in Jim's dissipated face. He was not a pleasant sight. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, and the lines about them were accentuated by his general unwashed appearance. Even at that distance, as they stood there facing each other, he caught the reek of stale brandy the man exhaled. His clothes, too, had the appearance of having been flung on hurriedly, and the shirt and collar he wore were plainly filthy. Altogether he was an object for pity, and at the same time it was not possible to feel anything for him but a profound repugnance. "He was abed," said the giant Odd, the moment Dave appeared. Then with a complacent grin, "But he guessed he'd come right along when I told him you was kind o' busy an' needed him important." But Jim's angry face flamed. "Nothing of the sort. This damned ruffian of yours dragged me out, blast him." "Cut it!" Dave warned him sharply. "There's a lady here to see you. Come right in." The warning had instant effect. Truscott stepped into the room and stood face to face with Betty. Dave closed the door and stood aside. For a few intense moments no word was spoken. The man stared stupidly into the girl's unsmiling face; then he looked across at Dave. It was Betty who finally broke the silence. "Well, Jim," she said kindly, "at last we meet." She noted all the signs of dissipation in the young face, which, but a few years ago, had been so fresh and clean and good-looking. Now it was so different, and, to her woman's eyes, there was more than the mere outward signs. There was a spirit looking out of his bloodshot eyes that she did not recognize. It was as though the soul of the man had changed; it had degenerated to a lower grade. There was something unwholesome in his expression, as though some latent brutality had been stirred into life, and had obliterated every vestige of that clean, boyish spirit that had once been his. "And," she went on, as he remained silent, "you had to be cajoled into coming to see me." Still the man did not speak. Whether it was shame that held him silent it was impossible to tell. Probably not, for there was a steadily growing light in his eyes that suggested thoughts of anything but of a moral tone. He was held by her beauty--he was held as a man is sometimes held by some ravishing vision that appeals to his lower senses. He lost no detail of her perfect woman's figure, the seductive contours so wonderfully moulded. His eyes drank in the sight, and it set his blood afire. Dave never turned his eyes. He too was watching. And he understood, and resented, the storm that was lashing through the man's veins. "Have you nothing to say to me after these long years?" the girl asked again, forced to break the desperate silence. Then the woman in her found voice, "Oh! Jim, Jim! the pity of it. And I thought you so strong." Dave clenched his hands at his sides, but made no other movement. Then Betty's manner suddenly changed. All the warmth died out of her voice, and, mistress of herself again, she went straight to her object. "Jim, it was I who sent for you. I asked Dave to do this for me." "A word from you would have been enough," the man said, with a sudden fire that lost nothing of its fierce passion in the hoarse tone in which he spoke. "A word from me?" There was unconscious irony in the girl's reply. "Yes, a word. I know. You are thinking of when your uncle came to me; you're thinking of our first meeting on the bridge; you're thinking of yesterday. I was drunk. I admit it. But I'm not always drunk. I tell you a word from you would have been enough." The girl's eyes reproached him. "A word from me, after five years' absence? It seems to me you should not have needed a word from me. Jim, had you come to me, whatever your state, poor or rich, it would have made no difference to me. I should have met you as we parted, ready to fulfil my pledge." "You mean----" The man's bloodshot eyes were alight. A tremendous passion was urging him to the limits of his restraining powers. He had almost forgotten where he was. He had quite forgotten Dave. The sight of this woman with her beautiful figure, her sweet face and serious eyes, almost maddened him. He was from the wilds, where he had long since buried his wholesome youthful ideals. The life he had lived had entirely deadened all lofty thought. He only saw with a brain debased to the level of the animal. He desired her. He madly desired her now that he had seen her again, and he realized that his desire was about to be thwarted. Betty drew back a step. The movement was unconscious. It was the woman's instinct at the sight of something threatening which made her draw away from the passion she saw blazing in his eyes. Dave silently watched the man. "I mean," said the girl solemnly, "that you have made our pledge impossible. I mean," she went on, with quiet dignity, "that I cannot marry you now, even if you wish it. No, no," as Jim made a sudden movement to speak, "it is quite useless to discuss the matter further. I insisted on this meeting to settle the matter beyond question. Dave here witnessed our engagement, and I wished him to witness its termination. You will be better free, and so shall I. There could have been no happiness in a marriage between us----" "But I won't give you up," the man suddenly broke out. He had passed the narrow limits of his restraint. His face flushed and showed blotched in the sudden scarlet. For a second, after that first fiery outburst, no words came. Then the torrent flowed forth. "Is this what I went away for? Is this what I have slaved for in the wilds of the Yukon? Is this what I am to find now that I have made the money you desired? No, no, you can't get rid of me like that; you don't mean it, you can't mean it. Betty, I want you more than anything on earth," he rushed on, his voice dropping to a persuasive note. "I want you, and without you life is nothing to me. I must have you!" He took a step forward. But it was only a step, for the girl's steady eyes held him, and checked his further advance. And something in her attitude turned his mood to one of fierce protest. "What is it that has come between us? What is it that has changed you?" Betty snatched at his pause. "Such questions come well from you, Jim," she said, with some bitterness. "You know the truth. You do not need me to tell you." Her tone suddenly let the demon in the man loose. His passion-lit eyes lowered, and a furtive, sinister light shone in them when he lifted them again. "I know. I understand," he cried. "This is an excuse, and it serves you well." The coldness of his voice was in painful contrast to his recent passion. "The old story, eh? You have found some one else. I never thought much of a woman's promise, anyhow. I wonder who it is." Then with a sudden vehemence. "But you shan't marry him. Do you hear? You shan't while I am----" "Quit it!" Dave's great voice suddenly filled the room and cut the man's threats short. Jim turned on him in a flash; until that moment he had entirely forgotten the lumberman. He eyed the giant for a second. Then he laughed cynically. "Oh, I'd forgotten you. Of course," he went on. "I see now. I never thought of it before. I remember, you were on the bridge together when I first----" Dave had taken a couple of strides and now stood between the two. His movement silenced the man, while he addressed himself to Betty. "You're finished with him?" he inquired in a deep, harsh voice. There was something so compelling about him that Betty simply nodded. Instantly he swung round on the younger man. "You'll vacate this place--quick," he said deliberately. The two men eyed each other for some seconds. Truscott's look meant mischief, Dave's was calmly determined. The latter finally stepped aside and crossing to the door held it open. "I said you'll--vacate," he said sharply. Truscott turned and glanced at the open door. Then he glanced at Betty, who had drawn farther away. Finally his frigid eyes turned upon Dave's great figure standing at the door. For an instant a wicked smile played round his lips, and he spoke in the same cynical tone. "I never thought of you in the marriage market, Dave," he said, with a vicious laugh. "I suppose it's only natural. Nobody ever associated you with marriage. Somehow your manner and appearance don't suggest it. I seem to see you handling lumber all your life, not dandling children on your knee. But there, you're a good catch--a mighty good one. And I was fool enough to trust you with my cause. Ye gods! Well, your weight of money has done it, no doubt. I congratulate you. She has lied to me, and no doubt she will lie----" But the man, if he finished his remark at all, must have done so to the stacks of lumber in the yards, and to the accompaniment of the shriek of the saws. There was no fuss. Scarcely any struggle. Dave moved with cat-like swiftness, which in a man of his size was quite miraculous, and in a flash Jim Truscott was sprawling on the hard red ground on the other side of the doorway. And when Dave looked round at Betty the girl's face was covered with her hands, and she was weeping. He stood for a second all contrition, and clumsily fumbling for words. He believed she was distressed at his brutal action. "I'm sorry, little Betty," he blurted out at last. "I'm real sorry. But I just couldn't help it." CHAPTER X AN AUSPICIOUS MEETING Malkern as a village had two moments in the day when it wore the appearance of a thoroughly busy city. At all other times there was little outward sign to tell of the prosperity it really enjoyed. Malkern's really bustling time was at noon, when its workers took an hour and a half recess for the midday meal, and at six o'clock in the evening, when the day and night "shifts" at the mill exchanged places. There was no eight-hour working day in this lumbering village. The lumber-jacks and all the people associated with it worked to make money, not to earn a mere living. They had not reached that deplorable condition of social pessimism when the worker for a wage believes he is the man who is making millions for an employer, who is prospering only by his, the worker's, capacity to do. They were working each for himself, and regarded the man who could afford them such opportunity as an undisguised blessing. The longer the "time" the higher the wages, and this was their whole scheme of life. Besides this, there is a certain pride of achievement in the lumber-jack. He is not a mere automaton. He is a man virile, strong, and of a wonderful independence all his own. His spirits are animal, keen of perception, keen for all the joys of life such as he knows. He lives his life, whether in play or work. Whether he be a sealer, a cant-hook man, a teamster, or an axeman, his pride is in his skill, and the rating of his skill is estimated largely by the tally of his day's work, on which depends the proportion of his wages. It was the midday dinner-hour now, and the mill was debouching its rough tide of workers upon the main street. Harley-Smith's bar was full of men seeking unnecessary "appetizers." Every boarding-house was rapidly filling with hungry men clamoring for the ample, even luxurious meal awaiting them. These men lived well; their work was tremendous, and food of the best, and ample, was needed to keep them fit. The few stores which the village boasted were full of eager purchasers demanding instant service lest the precious time be lost. Harley-Smith's hotel abutted on the main road, and the tide had to pass its inviting portals on their way to the village. Usually the veranda was empty at this time, for the regular boarders were at dinner, and the bar claimed those who were not yet dining. But on this occasion it possessed a solitary occupant. He was sitting on a hard windsor chair, tilted back at a dangerous angle, with his feet propped upon the veranda rail in an attitude of ease, if not of elegance. He was apparently quite unconcerned at anything going on about him. His broad-brimmed hat was tilted well forward upon his nose, in a manner that served the dual purpose of shading his eyes from the dazzling sunlight, and permitting his gaze to wander whither he pleased without the observation of the passers-by. To give a further suggestion of indolent indifference, he was luxuriously smoking one of Harley-Smith's best cigars. But the man's attitude was a pretense. No one passed the veranda who escaped the vigilance of his quick eyes. He scanned each face sharply, and passed on to the next; nor did his watchfulness relax for one instant. It was clear he was looking for some one whom he expected would pass that way, and it was equally evident he had no desire to advertise the fact. Suddenly he pushed his hat back from his face, and, at the same time, his feet dropped to the boarded floor. This brought his chair on its four legs with a jolt, and he sat bolt upright. Now he showed the bloated young face of Jim Truscott. There was a look in his eyes of something approaching venomous satisfaction. He had seen the man he was looking for, and promptly beckoned to him. Dick Mansell was passing at that moment, and his small, ferret-like eyes caught the summons. He hesitated, nor did he come at once in response to the other's smile of good-fellowship. "Dick!" Truscott said. Then he added genially, "I was wondering if you'd come along this way." Mansell nodded indifferently. His face was ill-humored, and his small eyes had little friendliness in them. He nodded, and was about to pass on, but the other stayed him with a gesture. "Don't go," he said. "I want to speak to you. Come up to my room and have a drink." He kept his voice low, but he might have saved himself the trouble. The passing crowd were far too intent upon their own concerns to bother with him. The fact was his attitude was the result of nearly forty-eight hours of hard thinking, thinking inspired by a weak character goaded to offense by the rough but justifiable treatment meted out to him in Dave's office. This man's character, at no time robust, was now morally run-down, and its condition was like the weakly body of an unhealthy man. It collected to itself every injurious germ and left him diseased. His brain and nerves were thrilling with resentment, and a desire to get even with the "board." He was furiously determined that Dave should remember with regret the moment he had laid hands upon him, and that he had come between him and the girl he had intended to make his own. Mansell, stepping on to the veranda, paused and looked the other full in the eye. "Well," he said, after a moment's doubtful consideration, "what is it? 'Tain't like you givin' drink away--'specially to me. What monkey tricks is it?" There was truculence in the sawyer's tone. There was offense in his very attitude. "Are you coming to my room for that drink?" Truscott spoke quite coldly, but he knew the curse of the man's thirst. He had reason to. Mansell laughed without any mirth. "Guess I may as well drink your brandy. It'll taste the same as any other. Go ahead." His host at once led the way into the hotel and up the stairs to his room. It was a front room on the first floor, and comparatively luxurious. The moment the door closed behind him Mansell took in the details with some interest. "A mighty swell apartment--fer you," he observed offensively. Truscott shrugged as he turned his back to pour out drinks at the table. "That's my business," he said. "I pay for it, and," he added, glancing meaningly over his shoulder, "I can afford to pay for it--or anything else I choose to have." Mansell was a fine figure of a man, and beside him the other looked slight, even weedy. But his face and head spoiled him. Both were small and mean, and gave the impression of a low order of intelligence. Yet he was reputed one of the finest sawyers in the valley, and a man, when not on the drink, to be thoroughly trusted. Before he went away to the Yukon with Jim he had been a teetotaler for two years, and on that account, and his unrivaled powers as a sawyer, he had acted as the other's foreman in his early lumbering enterprise. Except, however, for those two years his past had in it far more shadows than light. He grinned unpleasantly. "No need to ast how you came by the stuff," he said. Truscott was round on him in an instant. His eyes shone wickedly, but there was a grin about his lips. "The same way you tried to come by it too, only you couldn't keep your damned head clear. You couldn't let this stuff alone." He handed the man a glass of neat brandy. "You and your cursed drink nearly ruined my chances. It wasn't your fault you didn't. When I ran that game up in Dawson I was a fool to take you into it. I did it out of decency, because you had gone up there with me, and quite against my best judgment when I saw the way you were drinking. If you'd kept straight you'd be in the same position as I am. You wouldn't have returned here more or less broke and only too ready to set rotten yarns going around about me." The sawyer had taken the brandy and swallowed it. Now he set the glass down on the table with a vicious bang. "What yarns?" he demanded angrily. "Tchah! Hardwig's a meddling busybody. You might have known it would come back to me sooner or later. But I didn't bring you here to throw these things up in your face. You brought it on yourself. Keep a civil tongue, and if you like to stand in I'll put you into a good thing. You're not working? And you've got no money?" Truscott's questions came sharply. His plans were clear in his mind. These points he had made sure of already. But he wanted to approach the matter he had in hand in what he considered the best way in dealing with a man like Mansell. He knew the sawyer to have scruples of a kind, that is until they had been carefully undermined by brandy. It was his purpose to undermine them now. "You seem to know a heap," Mansell observed sarcastically. Then he became a shade more interested. "What's the 'good thing'?" Jim poured some brandy out for himself, at the same time, as though unconsciously, replenishing the other's glass liberally. The sawyer watched him while he waited for a reply, and suddenly a thought occurred to his none too ready brain. "Drink, eh?" he laughed mockingly, as though answering a challenge on the subject. "Drink? Say, who's been doing the drink since you got back? Folks says as your gal has gone right back on you, that ther' wench as you was a-sparkin' 'fore we lit out. An' it's clear along of liquor. They say you're soused most ev'ry night, an' most days too. You should git gassin'--I don't think." The man's mean face was alight with brutish glee. He felt he had handed the other a pretty retort. And in his satisfaction he snatched up his glass and drank off its contents at a gulp. Indifferent to the gibe, Jim smiled his satisfaction as he watched the other drain his glass. "You've got no work?" he demanded, as Mansell set it down empty. "Sure I ain't," the other grinned. "An'," he added, under the warming influence of the spirit, "I ain't worritin' a heap neither. My credit's good with the boardin'-house boss. Y' see," he went on, his pride of craft in his gimlet eyes, "I'm kind o' known here for a boss sawyer. When they want sawyers there's allus work for Dick Mansell." "Your credit's good?" Truscott went on, ignoring the man's boasting. "Then you have no money?" "I allows the market's kind o' low." Mansell's mood had become one of clumsy jocularity under the influence of the brandy. "If you can get work so easily, why don't you?" Truscott demanded, filling the two glasses again as he spoke. Mansell seated himself on the bed unbidden. "Wal," he began expansively, "I'm kind o' holiday-makin', as they say. Y' see," he went on with a leer, "I worked so a'mighty hard gittin' back from the Yukon, I'm kind o' fatigued. Savee? Guess I'll git to work later. Say, one o' them for me?" he finished up, pointing at the glasses. Truscott nodded, and Mansell helped himself greedily. The former fell in with the other's mood. He found him very easy to deal with. It was just a question of sufficient drink. "Well, I don't believe in work, anyway. That is unless it happens to be my pleasure, too. I worked hard up at Dawson, but it was my pleasure. I made good money, too--a hell of a sight more than you or anybody else ever had any idea of." "You ran a dandy game," agreed the sawyer. "With plenty of customers with mighty fat rolls of money." Mansell nodded. "I was a fool to quit you," he said regretfully. "You were. But it isn't too late. If you aren't yearning to work too hard." Truscott's smile was crafty. And, even with the drink in him, Mansell saw and understood it. "Monkey tricks?" he said. "Monkey tricks--if you like." Mansell looked over at the bottle. "Hand us another horn of that pizen an' I'll listen," he said. The other poured out the brandy readily, taking care to be more than liberal. He watched the sawyer drink, and then, drawing a chair forward, he sat down. "What's that old mill of mine worth?" he asked suddenly. They exchanged glances silently. Truscott was watching the effect of his question, and the other was trying to fathom the meaning of it. "I'd say," Mansell replied slowly, giving up the puzzle and waiting for enlightenment--"I'd say, to a man who needs it bad, it's worth anything over fifteen thousand dollars. Fer scrappin', I'd say it warn't worth but fi' thousand." "I was thinking of a man needing it." "Fifteen thousand an' over." Truscott leant forward in his chair and became confidential. "Dave wants to buy that mill, and I'm going to sell it to him," he said impressively. "I'll take twenty thousand for it, and get as much more as I can. See? Now I don't want that money. I wouldn't care to handle his money. I've got plenty, and the means of making heaps more if I need it." He paused to let his words sink in. Mansell nodded with his eyes on the brandy bottle. As yet he did not see the man's drift. He did not see where he came in. He waited, and Truscott went on. "Now what would you be willing to do for that twenty thousand--or more?" he asked smilingly. The other turned his head with a start, and, for one fleeting second, his beady eyes searched his companion's face. He saw nothing there but quiet good-nature. It was the face of the old Jim Truscott--used to hide the poisoned mind behind it. "Give me a drink," Mansell demanded roughly. "This needs some thinkin'." Truscott handed him the bottle, and watched him while he drank nearly half a tumbler of the raw spirit. "Well?" Mansell breathed heavily. "Seems to me I'd do--a heap," he said at last. "Would you take a job as sawyer in Dave's mill, and--and act under my orders?" "It kind o' depends on the orders." For some reason the lumberman became cautious. The price was high--almost too high for him. Truscott suddenly rose from his seat, and crossing the room, turned the key in the door. Then he closed the window carefully. He finally glanced round the room, and came back to his seat. Then, leaning forward and lowering his tone, he detailed carefully all that the lumberman would have to do to earn the money. It took some time in the telling, but at last he sat back with a callous laugh. "That's all it is, Dick, my boy," he cried familiarly. "You will be as safe as houses. Not only that, but I may not need your help at all. I have other plans which are even better, and which may do the job without your help. See? This is only in case it is necessary. You see I don't want to leave anything to chance. I want to be ready. And I want no after consequences. You understand? You may get the money for doing nothing. On the other hand, what you have to do entails little enough risk. The price is high, simply because I do not want the money, and I want to be sure I can rely on you." The man's plausibility impressed the none too bright-witted lumberman. Then, too, the brandy had done its work. His last scruple fled, banished by his innate crookedness, set afire by the spirit and the dazzling bait held out to him. It was a case of the clever rascal dominating the less dangerous, but more brutal, type of man. Mansell was as potter's clay in this man's hands. The clay dry would have been impossible to mould, but moistened, the artist in villainy had no difficulty in handling it. And the lubricating process had been liberally supplied. "I'm on," Mansell said, his small eyes twinkling viciously. "I'm on sure. Twenty thousand! Gee! But I'll need it all, Jim," he added greedily. "I'll need it all, and any more you git. You said it yourself, I was to git the lot. Yes," as though reassuring himself, "I'm on." Truscott nodded approvingly. "Good boy," he said pleasantly. "But there's one thing more, Dick. I make it a proviso you don't go on any teetotal racket. I know you. Anyway, I don't believe in the water wagon worth a cent. It don't suit you in work like this. But don't get drunk and act foolish. Keep on the edge. See? Get through this racket right, and you've got a small pile that'll fill your belly up like a distillery--after. You'll get the stuff in a bundle the moment you've done the work." Mansell reached out for the bottle without invitation, picked it up, and put the neck to his lips. Nor did he put it down till he had drained it. It was the culminating point. The spirit had done its work, and as Truscott watched him he knew that, body and soul, the man was his. The lumberman flung the empty bottle on the bed. "I'll do it, you damned crook," he cried. "I'll do it, but not because I like you, or anything to do with you. It's the bills I need sure--green, crisp, crinkly bills. But I'll need fifty of 'em now. Hand over, pard," he cried exultingly. "Hand over, you imp of hell. I want fifty now, or I don't stir a hand. Hand 'em----" Suddenly the man staggered back and fell on the bed, staring stupidly at the shining silver-plated revolver in the other's hands. "Hold your noise, you drunken hog," Jim cried in a biting tone. "This is the sort of thing I suppose I can expect from a blasted fool like you. Now understand this, I'm going to give you that fifty, not because you demand it, but to seal our compact. And by the Holy Moses, when you've handled it, if you attempt to play any game on me, I'll blow you to hell quicker than any through mail could carry you there. Get that, and let it sink into your fool brain." CHAPTER XI THE SUMMER RAINS Truscott looked up from his paper and watched the rain as it hissed against the window. It was falling in a deluge, driven by a gale of wind which swept the woodlands as though bent on crushing out the last dignity of the proud forest giants. The sky was leaden, and held out no promise of relenting. It was a dreary prospect, yet to the man watching it was a matter of small moment. It was nearly midday, and as yet he had not broken his fast. In fact his day was only just beginning. His appearance told plainly the story of his previous night's dissipation. Still, his mood was in no way depressed--he was too well seasoned to the vicious life he had adopted for that. Besides, the prosperity of Malkern brought much grist to his mill, and its quality more than made up for the after effects of his excesses. He turned to his paper again. It was a day old. A large head-line faced him announcing the spreading of the railway strike. Below it was a column describing how business was already affected, and how, shortly, if a settlement were not soon arrived at, it was feared that the trans-continental traffic could only be kept open with the aid of military engineers. The rest of the paper held no interests for him; he had only read this column, and it seemed to afford him food for much thought. He had read it over twice, and was now reading it for a third time. At last he threw the paper aside and walked across to the table to pour himself out a drink. The thought of food sickened him. The only thing possible was a whiskey-and-milk, and he mixed the beverage and held it to his lips. But the smell of it sickened him, and he set it down and moved away to the window. There was little enough to attract him thither, but he preferred the prospect to the sight and smell of whiskey at that hour of the day. After some moments he made another attempt on his liquid breakfast. He knew he must get it down somehow. He turned and looked at it, shuddered, and turned again to the window. And at that instant he recognized the great figure of Dave, clad from head to foot in oilskins, making his way back from the depot to the mill. The sight fixed his attention, and all the venom in his distorted nature shone in the wicked gleam that sprang into his eyes. His blood was fired with hatred. "Betty for you? Never in your life," he muttered at the passing figure. "Never in mine, Dave, my boy. It's you and me for it, and by God I'll never let up on you!" All unconscious of the venomous thoughts the sight of him had inspired, Dave strode on through the rain. He was deep in his own concerns, and at that moment they were none too pleasant. The deluge of rain damped his spirits enough, but the mail he had just received had brought him news that depressed him still more. The Engineers' Union had called for a general cessation of work east of Winnipeg, and he was wondering how it was likely to affect him. Should his engineers go out, would it be possible to replace them? And if he could, how would he be able to cope with the trouble likely to ensue? He could certainly fall in with the Union's demands, but--well, he would wait. It was no use anticipating trouble. But more bad news was awaiting him when he reached his office. Dawson, in his absence, had opened a letter which had arrived by runner from Bob Mason, the foreman of the camps up in the hills. Dawson was no alarmist. He always looked to Dave for everything when a crisis confronted them. He felt that if not a crisis, something very like it was before them now, and so he calmly handed Mason's letter to his boss, confident in the latter's capacity to deal with the situation. "This come along by hand," he said easily. "Guess, seein' it's wrote 'important' on it, I opened it." Dave nodded while he threw off his oilskins. He made no particular haste, and deposited his mail on his desk before he took the letter from his foreman. At last, however, he unfolded the sheet of foolscap on which it was written, and read the ominous contents. It was a long letter dealing with the business of the camps, but the one paragraph which had made the letter important threw all the rest into insignificance. It ran-- "I regret to have to report that an epidemic of mountain fever has broken out in two of our camps--the new No. 8 and No. 1. We have already nearly eighty cases on the sick list, chiefly amongst the new hands from Ottawa who are not yet acclimatized. The summer rains have been exceedingly heavy, which in a large measure accounts for the trouble. I shall be glad if you will send up medical aid, and a supply of drugs, at once. Dysentery is likely to follow, and you know what that means. "We are necessarily short-handed now, but, by increasing hours and offering inducements, and by engaging any stray hands that filter up to the camps, I hope to keep the work going satisfactorily. I am isolating the sick, of course, but it is most important that you send me the medical aid at once," etc., etc. Dave was silent for a while after reading the letter, and the gravity of his expression was enhanced by the extreme plainness of his features. His steady eyes were looking out through the open doorway at the mill beyond, as though it were some living creature to whom he was bound by ties of the deepest affection, and for whom he saw the foreshadowing of disaster. At last he turned. "Damn the rain," he said impatiently. Then he added, "I'll see to it." Dawson glanced quickly at his chief. "Nothin' I ken do, boss?" he inquired casually. A grim smile played over Dave's rugged features. "Nothing, I guess," he said, "unless you can fix a nozzle on to heaven's water-main and turn it on to the strikers down east." The other shook his head seriously. "I ain't worth a cent in the plumbin' line, boss," he said. Dawson left the office. The mill claimed him at all times. He never neglected his charge, and rarely allowed himself long absences beyond the range of its strident music. The pressure of work seemed to increase every day. He knew that the strain on his employer was enormous, and somehow he would have been glad if he could have shared this new responsibility. Dave had just taken his slicker from the wall again when Dawson came back to the door. "Say, ther's that feller Mansell been around this mornin' lookin' fer a job. I sed he'd best come around to-morrer. I didn't guess I'd take him on till I see you. He's a drunken bum anyway." Dave nodded. "He used to be a dandy sawyer," he said, "and we need 'em. Is he drinking now?" "I've heard tell. He stank o' whiskey's mornin'. That's why I passed him on. Yes, he's a dandy sawyer, sure. He was on the 'water wagon' 'fore he went off up north with young Truscott. Mebbe he'll sober up agin--if we put him to work." Dave clenched the matter in his decided way. "Put him on the 'time sheet' to-morrow, and set him on the No. 1 rollers, beside our night office. You can keep a sharp eye on him there. He's a bit of a backslider, but if giving him a job'll pull him up and help him, why, give it him. We've no right to refuse." He struggled into his slicker again as Dawson went off. He inspected the weather outside with no very friendly eye. It meant so much to him. At the moment the deluge was like a bursting waterspout, and the yards were like a lake dotted with islands of lumber. But he plunged out into it without a moment's hesitation. His work must go on, no matter what came. He hurried off in the direction of Chepstow's house. It was some time since he had seen his friend, and though the cause of his present visit was so serious, he was glad of the opportunity of making it. Tom Chepstow saw him coming, and met him on the veranda. He was always a man of cheery spirits, and just now, in spite of the weather, he was well enough satisfied with the world. Matters between Betty and Jim Truscott had been settled just as he could wish, so there was little to bother him. "I was really considering the advisability of a telephone from here to your office, Dave," he said, with a smiling welcome. "But joking apart, I never seem to see you now. How's things down there? If report says truly, you're doing a great work." Dave shook his head. "The mills are," he said modestly. Chepstow laughed heartily. "That's your way of putting it. You and the mills are one. Nobody ever speaks of one without including the other. You'll never marry, my boy. You are wedded to the shriek of your beloved buzz-saws. Here, take off those things and come in. We've got a drop of Mary's sloe gin somewhere." They went into the parlor, and Dave removed his oilskins. While he hung them to drain on a nail outside, the parson poured him out a wineglass of his wife's renowned sloe gin. He drank it down quickly, not because he cared particularly about it, but out of compliment to his friend's wife. Then he set his glass down, and began to explain his visit. "This isn't just a friendly visit, Tom," he said. "It's business. Bad business. You've got to help me out." The parson opened his eyes. It was something quite new to have Dave demanding help. "Go ahead," he said, his keen eyes lighting with amusement. Dave drew a bunch of letters from his coat pocket. He glanced over them hastily, and picked out Mason's and handed it to the other. In picking it out he had discovered another letter he had left unopened. "Read that," he said, while he glanced at the address on the unopened envelope. The handwriting was strange to him, and while Tom Chepstow was reading Mason's letter he tore the other open. As he read, the gravity of his face slowly relaxed. At last an exclamation from the parson made him look up. "This is terrible, Dave!" "It's a bit fierce," the other agreed. "Have you read it all?" he inquired. "Yes." "Then you've got my meaning in coming to you?" "I see. I hadn't thought of it." Dave smiled into the other's face. "You're going to do it for me? It may mean weeks. It may even mean months. You see, it's an epidemic. At the best it might be only a couple of weeks. They're tough, those boys. On the other hand it might mean--anything to me." Chepstow nodded. He understood well enough what an epidemic of mountain fever in his lumber camps must mean to Dave. He understood the conditions under which he stood with regard to his contract. A catastrophe like that might mean ruin. And ruin for Dave would mean ruin for nearly all connected with Malkern. "Yes, I'll do it, Dave. Putting all friendship on one side, it is clearly my duty. Certainly. I'll go up there and lend all the aid I possibly can. You must outfit me with drugs and help." Dave held out his hand, and the two men gripped. "Thanks, Tom," he said simply, although he experienced a world of relief and gratitude. "I wouldn't insult you with a bribe before you consented, but when you come back there's a thumping check for your charities lying somewhere around my office." The parson laughed in his whole-hearted fashion, while his friend once more donned his oilskins. "I'm always open to that sort of bribery, old boy," he said, and was promptly answered by one of Dave's slow smiles. "That's good," he said. Then he held up his other letter, but he did not offer it to be read. "Betty told you what happened at my office the other day--I mean, what happened to Jim Truscott?" The parson's face clouded with swift anger. "The ras----" "Just so. Yes, we had some bother; but he's just sent me this. A most apologetic letter. He offers to sell me his mill now. I wanted to buy it, you know. He wants twenty thousand dollars cash for it. I shall close the deal at once." He laughed. "Hard up, I s'pose?" Dave shook his head. "I don't think so. His change of front is curious, though," he went on thoughtfully. "However, that don't matter. I want the mill, and--I'm going to buy. So long. I've got to go and look at that piece of new track I'm getting laid down. My single line to the depot isn't sufficient. I'll let you know about starting up to the camps. I've got a small gang of lumber-jacks coming up from Ottawa. Maybe I'll get you to go up with them later. Thanks, Tom." The two men shook hands again, and Dave departed. He battled his way through the driving rain to his railroad construction, and on the road he thought a good deal of Truscott's neglected letter. There was something in its tone he could not convince himself about. Why, he asked himself, should he, so closely following on the events which had happened in his office, deliberately turn round and display such a Christian-like spirit? Somehow it didn't seem to suit him. It didn't carry conviction. Then there was the letter; its wording was too careful. It was so deliberately careful that it suggested a suppression of real feeling. This was his impression, and though Dave was usually an unsuspicious man, he could not shake it off. He thought of little else but that letter all the way to his works, and after reviewing the man's attitude from what, in his own simple honesty, he considered to be every possible standpoint, he finally, with a quaint, even quixotic, kindliness assured himself that there could after all be but one interpretation to it. The man was penitent at his painful exhibition before Betty, and his vile accusations against himself. That his moral strength was not equal to standing the strain of a personal interview. That his training up at the Yukon, where he had learned the sordid methods of a professional gambler, had suggested the selling of his mill to him as a sort of peace-offering. And the careful, stilted tone of the letter itself was due to the difficulty of its composition. Further, he decided to accept his offer, and do so in a cordial, friendly spirit, and, when opportunity offered, to endeavor, by his own moral influence, to drag him back to the paths of honest citizenship. This was the decision to which his generous nature prompted him. But his head protested. CHAPTER XII THE OLD MILLS When Dave reached the construction camp the work was in full swing. The men, clad in oilskins, paid little heed to the rain. Ahead was the gang spreading the heavy stone gravel bed, behind it came those laying and trimming ties. Following close upon their heels came others engaged in setting and bolting the rails, while hard in the rear followed a gang leveling, checking gauge, and ballasting. It was very rough railroad construction, but the result was sufficient for the requirements. It was rapid, and lacked the careful precision of a "permanent way," but the men were working at high pressure against time. Dave saw that all was well here. He exchanged a few words with the foreman, and gave his orders. Then he passed on, intending to return to the mill for his buckboard. Crossing the bridge to take a short cut, he encountered Betty driving home from her school in her uncle's buggy. She drew up at once. "Whither away, Dave?" she cried. Then she hastily turned the dozy old mare aside, so as to open the wheels to let the man climb in. "Come along; don't stand there in the rain. Isn't it awful? The river'll be flooding to-morrow if it doesn't stop soon. Back to the mills?" Dave clambered into the buggy and divested himself of his dripping oilskins. The vehicle was a covered one, and comparatively rain-proof, even in such a downpour. "Well, I guess so," he said. "I'm just going back to get my buckboard. Then I'm going up to get a look at Jim Truscott's old mill. He's sent word this morning to say he'll sell it me." The girl chirruped at the old mare, but offered no comment. The simple process of driving over a road nothing could have induced the parson's faithful beast to leave seemed to demand all her attention. "Did he send, or--have you seen him?" she asked him presently. And it was plain that the matter was of unusual interest to her. "I said he sent. He wrote to me--and mailed the letter." "Was there anything--else in the letter?" The girl's tone was cold enough. Dave, watching her, was struck by the decision in her expression. He wanted to hear what she thought of the letter. He was anxious to see its effect on her. He handed it to her, and quietly took the reins out of her hands. "You can read it," he said. And Betty eagerly unfolded the paper. The mare plodded on, splashing solemnly and indifferently through the torrential streams flooding the trail, and they were nearly through the village by the time she handed the letter back and resumed the reins. "Curious. I--I don't think I understand him at all," she said gravely. "It's an apology," said Dave, anxious for her to continue. "Yes, I suppose it is." She paused. "But why to you?" Then a whimsical smile spread over her round face. "I thought you two were nearly square. Now, if the apology had come to me----" "Yes, I hadn't thought of that." Both sat thinking for some time. They arrived at the point where the trail turned up to Tom Chepstow's house. Betty ignored the turning and kept on. "Is that mill worth all that money?" she asked suddenly. Dave shook his head. "You've come too far," he said, pointing at her uncle's house. And the girl smiled. "I want to have a look at the mill. Why are you buying it at that price, Dave?" "Because there's no time to haggle, and--I want it." Betty nodded. She was looking straight ahead, and the man failed to see the tender light his words had conjured in her eyes. She knew that Dave would never have paid that money to anybody else, no matter how much he wanted the mill. He was doing it for Jim. However unworthy the man was, it made no difference to his large-hearted nature. The tenderness still lingered in her eyes when she turned to him again. "Is Jim hard up?" she inquired. The frigidity of her tone was wholly at variance with her expression. But it told plainly of her feelings for the subject of her inquiry. Dave shook his head. "From all I've heard, and from his own talk, I'd guess not." Betty suddenly became very angry. She wanted to shake somebody, even Dave, since he was the only person near enough to be shaken. "He says in his letter, 'as the mill is no further use to me,'" she cried indignantly. "Dave, your Christian spirit carries you beyond all bounds. You have no right to give all that money for it. It isn't worth it anyway. You are--and he--he--oh, I've simply no words for him!" "But your uncle, with due regard for his cloth, has," Dave put in quickly. Betty's indignation was gone in an instant, lost in the laugh which responded to his dry tone. He had no intention of making her laugh, but he was glad she did so. It told him so much. It reassured him of something on which he had needed reassurance. Her parting with Jim, giving up as it did the habit and belief of years, had troubled him. Then in some measure he had felt himself responsible, although he knew perfectly well that no word of his had ever encouraged her on the course she had elected. He was convinced now. Her regard for Jim was utterly dead, had been dead far longer than probably even she realized. With this conviction a sudden wild hope leapt within him; but, like summer lightning, its very brilliancy left the night seemingly darker. No, it could never be now. Betty liked him, liked him only too well. Her frank friendliness was too outspoken, and then--ah, yes, he knew himself. Did he ever get the chance of forgetting? Did not his mirror remind him every morning? Did not his hair brushes, even, force it upon him as they loyally struggled to arrange some order in his obstinate wiry hair? Did not every chair, even his very bed, cry out at the awful burden they were called upon to support? Somehow his thoughts made him rebellious. Why should he be so barred? Why should he be denied the happiness all men are created for? But in a man like Dave such rebellion was not likely to find vent in words, or even mood. In the midst of his thought the drone of his own distant mills came to him through the steady hiss of the rain. The sound held him, and he experienced a strange comfort. It was like an answer to his mute appeal. It reminded him that his work lay before him. It was a call to which he was wedded, bound; it claimed his every nerve; it demanded his every thought like the most exacting mistress; and, for the moment, it gripped him with all the old force. "Say," he cried, holding up a warning finger, untidy with years of labor, "isn't she booming? Hark at the saws," he went on, his eyes glowing with pride and enthusiasm. "They're singing to beat the band. It's real music." They listened. "Hark!" he went on presently, and Betty's eyes watched him with a tender smile in their brown depths. "Hear the rise and fall of it as the breeze carries it. Hear the 'boom' of the 'ninety-footers' as they drop into the shoots. Isn't it great? Isn't it elegant music?" Betty nodded. Her sympathy was with him if she smiled at his words. "A lumbering symphony," she said. Dave's face suddenly fell. "Ah," he said apologetically, "you weren't brought up on a diet of buzz-saw trimmings." Betty shook her head. "No," she said gently, "patent food." Dave's enthusiasm dropped from him, and his face, unlit by it, had fallen back into its stern set. At the sight of the almost tragic change Betty's heart smote her, and she hastened to make amends, fearful lest he should fail to realize the sympathy she had for him. "Ah, no, Dave," she cried. "I know. I understand. I, too, love those mills for what they mean to you, to us, to Malkern. They are your world. They are our world. You have slowly, laboriously built them up. You have made us--Malkern. Your prosperity means happiness and prosperity to hundreds in our beloved valley. You do not love those mills for the fortune they are piling up for you, but for the sake of those others who share in your great profits and whose lives you have been able to gladden. I know you, Dave. And I understand the real music you hear." The man shook his head, but his voice rang with deep feeling. He knew that he did not deserve all this girl's words conveyed, but, coming from her, it was very sweet. "Little Betty," he said, "you kind of run away with things. There's a fellow called 'Dave' I think about a heap. I think about him such a heap I'm most always thinking of him. He's got ambition bad--so bad he thinks of precious little else. Then he's most terrible human. You'd marvel if you knew just how human he was. Now you'd think, maybe, he'd not want anything he hasn't got, wouldn't you? You'd think he was happy and content to see everything he undertakes prospering, and other folks happy. Well, he just isn't, and that's a fact. He's mighty thankful for mercies received, but there's a heap of other mercies he grumbles because he hasn't got." There was so much sincerity in the man's voice that Betty turned and stared at him. "And aren't you happy, Dave?" she asked, hardly knowing what she said, but, woman-like, fixing on the one point that appealed to her deepest sympathy. He evaded the direct question. "I'm as happy as a third child in playtime," he said; and then, before she could fully grasp his meaning, "Ah, here's the mill. Guess we'll pull up right here." The old mare came to a standstill, and Dave sprang out before Betty could answer him. And as soon as she had alighted he led the horse to a shed out of the rain. Then together they explored the mill, and their talk at once became purely technical. The man became the practical lumberman, and, note-book in hand, he led the way from room to room and floor to floor, observing every detail of the conditions prevailing. And all the time they talked, Betty displaying such an exhaustive knowledge of the man's craft that at times she quite staggered him. It was a revelation, a source of constant wonder, and it added a zest to the work which made him love every moment spent in carrying it out. It was over an hour before the inspection was finished, and to Dave it scarcely seemed more than a matter of minutes. Then there was yet the drive home with Betty at his side. As they drove away the culminating point in the man's brief happiness was reached when the girl, with interest such as his own might have been, pointed out the value of his purchase. "It will take you exactly a week to outfit that mill, I should say," she said. "Its capacity for big stuff is so small you shouldn't pay a cent over ten thousand dollars for it." Dave smiled. Sometimes Betty's keenness of perception in his own business made him feel very small. Several times already that morning she had put things so incisively before him that he found himself wondering whether he had considered them from the right point of view. He was about to answer her, but finally contented himself with a wondering exclamation. "For Heaven's sake, Betty, where did you learn it all?" It was a delighted laugh that answered him. "Where? Where do you think? Why, from the one man competent to teach me. You forget that I came to you for instruction five years ago." The girl's eyes were dancing with pleasure. Somehow the desire for this man's praise and approval had unconsciously become part of her whole outlook. Her simple honesty would not let her deny it--showed her no reason for denying it. She sometimes told herself it was just her vanity; it was the desire of a pupil for a master's praise. She, as yet, could see no other reason for it, and would have laughed at the idea that any warmer feeling could possibly underlie it. Dave's pleasure in her acknowledgment was very evident. "I haven't forgotten, Betty," he said. "But I never taught you all that. It's your own clever little head. You could give Joel Dawson a start and beat him." "You don't understand," the girl declared quickly. "It was you who gave me the ground-work, and then I thought and thought. You see, I--I wanted to help Jim when he came back." Dave had no reply to make. The girl's plain statement had damped his enthusiasm. He had forgotten Jim. She had done this for love of the other man. "I want you to do me a great favor," she went on presently. "I want it very--very much. You think I've learned a lot. Well, I want to learn more. I don't know quite why--I s'pose it's because I'm interested. I want to see the big lumber being trimmed. I want to see your own mill in full work, and have what I don't understand explained to me. Will you do it? Some night. I'd like to see it all in its most inspiring light. Will you, Dave?" She laid a coaxing hand on his great arm, and looked eagerly into his eyes. At that moment the lumberman would have promised her the world. And he would have striven with every nerve in his body to fulfil his promise. "Sure," he said simply. "Name your own time." And for once the girl didn't thank him in her usual frank way. She simply drew her hand away and chirruped at the old mare. For the rest of the drive home she remained silent. It was as though Dave's ready, eager promise had suddenly affected her in some disturbing way. Her brown eyes looked straight ahead along the trail, and they were curiously serious. They reached the man's home. He alighted, and she drove on to her own destination with a feeling of relief not unmixed with regret. Dave's mother had been long waiting dinner for her boy. She had seen the buggy and guessed who was in it, and as he came up she greeted him with pride and affection shining in her old eyes. "That was Betty?" she inquired, moving across to the dinner-table, while the man removed his slicker. "Yes, ma," he said coolly. He had no desire to discuss Betty with any one just then, not even with his mother. "Driving with her, dear?" she asked, with smiling, searching eyes upon his averted face. "She gave me a lift," Dave replied, coming over and sitting down at the table. His mother, instead of helping him to his food, suddenly came round to his side and laid one affectionate hand upon his great shoulder. The contrast in these two had something almost ridiculous in it. He was so huge, and she was so small. Perhaps the only things they possessed in common, outside of their mutual adoration, were the courage and strength which shone in their gray eyes, and the abounding kindliness of heart for all humanity. But whereas these things in the mother were always second to her love for her boy, the boy's first thought and care was for the great work his own hands had created. "Dave," she said very gently, "when am I going to have a daughter? I'm getting very, very old, and I don't want to leave you alone in the world." The man propped his elbow on the table and rested his head on his hand. His eyes were almost gloomy. "I don't want to lose you, ma," he said. "It would break me up ter'ble. Life's mostly lonesome anyhow." Then he looked keenly up into her face, and his glance was one of concern. "You--you aren't ailing any?" The old woman shook her head, and her eyes smiled back at him. "No, boy, I'm not ailing. But I worry some at times. You see, I like Betty very, very much. In a different way, I'm almost as fond of her as you are----" Dave started and was about to break in, but his mother shook her head, and her hand caressed his cheek with infinite tenderness. "Why don't you marry her, now--now that the other is broken off----" But Dave turned to her, and, swept by an almost fierce emotion, would not be denied. "Why, ma? Why?" he cried, with all the pent-up bitterness of years in the depth of his tone. "Look at me! Look at me! And you ask me why." He held out his two hands as though to let her see him as he was. "Would any woman think of me--look at me with thoughts of love? She couldn't. What am I? A mountain of muscle, brawn, bone, whatever you will, with a face and figure even a farmer would hate to set up over a corn patch at harvest time." He laughed bitterly. "No--no, ma," he went on, his tone softening, and taking her worn hand tenderly in his. "There are folks made for marriage, and folks that aren't. And when folks that aren't get marrying they're doing a mean thing on the girl. I'm not going to think a mean thing for Betty--let alone do one." His mother moved away to her seat. "Well, boy, I'll say no more, but I'm thinking a time'll come when you'll be doing a mean thing by Betty if you don't, and she'll be the one that'll think it----" "Ma!" "The dinner's near cold." CHAPTER XIII BETTY DECIDES Two nights later Dave was waiting in the tally room for his guests to arrive. The place was just a corner partitioned off from the milling floor. It was here the foreman kept account of the day's work--a bare room, small, and hardly worth the name of "office." Yet there was work enough done in it to satisfy the most exacting master. The master of the mills had taken up a position in the narrow doorway, in full view of the whole floor, and was watching the sawyer on No. 1. It was Mansell. He beheld with delight the wonderful skill with which the man handled the giant logs as they creaked and groaned along over the rollers. He appeared to be sober, too. His deliberate movements, timed to the fraction of a second, were sufficient evidence of this. He felt glad that he had taken him on his time-sheet. Every really skilful sawyer was of inestimable value at the moment, and, after all, this man's failing was one pretty common to all good lumbermen. Dawson came up, and Dave nodded in the sawyer's direction. "Working good," he observed with satisfaction. "Too good to last, if I know anything," grumbled the foreman. "He'll get breakin' out, an then---- I've a mind to set him on a 'buzz-saw'. These big saws won't stand for tricks if he happens to git around with a 'jag' on." "You can't put a first-class sawyer on to a 'buzzer,'" said Dave decisively. "It's tantamount to telling him he doesn't know his work. No, keep him where he is. If he 'signs' in with a souse on, push him out till he's sober. But so long as he's right let him work where he is." "Guess you're 'boss' o' this lay-out," grumbled the foreman. "Just so." Then, as though the matter had no further concern for him, Dawson changed the subject. "There's twenty 'jacks' scheduled by to-night's mail," he said, as though speaking of some dry-goods instead of a human freight. "They're for the hills to-night. Mr. Chepstow's promised to go up and dose the boys for their fever. I'm putting it to him to-night. He'll take 'em with him. By the way, I'm expecting the parson and Miss Betty along directly. They want to get a look at this." He waved an arm in the direction of the grinding rollers. "They want to see it--busy." Dawson was less interested in the visitors. "I see 'em as I come up," he said indifferently. "Looked like they'd been around your office." Dave turned on him sharply. "Go down and bring 'em along up. And say--get things ready for sending up to the camps to-night. Parson'll have my buckboard and the black team. He's got to travel quick. They can come right away back when he's got there. See he's got plenty of bedding and rations. Load it down good. There's a case of medical supplies in my office. That goes with him. Then you'll get three 'democrats' from Mulloc's livery barn for the boys. See they've got plenty of grub too." When Dave gave sharp orders, Dawson simply listened and obeyed. He understood his employer, and never ventured criticism at such times. He hurried away now to give the necessary orders, and then went on to find the visitors. Directly he had gone the master of the mills moved over to the sawyer on No. 1. "You haven't forgotten your craft, Mansell," he said pleasantly, his deep voice carrying, clarion-like, distinctly over the din of the sawing-floor. "Would you fergit how t' eat, boss?" the man inquired surlily, measuring an oncoming log keenly with his eye. He bore down on a "jolting" lever and turned the log into a fresh position. Then he leant forward and tipped the end of it with chalk. Hand and eye worked mechanically together. He knew to a hairsbreadth just where the trimming blade should strike the log to get the maximum square of timber. Dave shook his head. "It would take some forgetting," he said, with a smile. "You see there's always a stomach to remind you." The log was passing, and the man had a moment's breathing space while it traveled to the fangs of the rushing saw. He looked up with a pair of dark, brooding eyes in which shone a peculiarly offensive light. "Jest so," he vouchsafed. "I learned this when I learned t' eat, an' it's filled my belly that long, fi' year ain't like to set me fergittin'." He turned to the rollers and watched the log. He saw it hit the teeth of the saw plumb on his chalk mark. "An awful waste out of a lumberman's life, that five years," Dave went on, when the crucial moment had passed. "That mill would have been doing well now, and--and you were foreman." He was looking straight into the fellow's mean face. He noted the terrible inroads drink had made upon it, the sunken eyes, the pendulous lip, the lines of dissipation in deep furrows round his mouth. He pitied him from the bottom of his heart, but allowed no softness of expression. "Say," exclaimed the sawyer, with a vicious snap, "when I'm lumberin' I ain't got time fer rememberin' anything else--which is a heap good. I don't guess it's good for any one buttin' in when the logs are rollin'. Guess that log's comin' right back." The man's unnecessary insolence was a little staggering. Yet Dave rather liked him for it. The independence of the sawyer's spirit appealed to him. He really had no right to criticize Mansell's past, to stir up an unpleasant memory for him. He knew his men, and he realized that he had overstepped his rights in the matter. He was simply their employer. It was for him to give orders, and for them to obey. In all else he must take them as man and man. He felt now that there was nothing more for him to say, so while the sawyer clambered over to the return rollers, ready for the second journey of the log, he walked thoughtfully back to his office. At that moment his visitors appeared, escorted by Dawson. The foreman was piloting them with all the air of a guide and the pride of his association with the mills. Betty was walking beside him, and while taking in the wonderful scene that opened out before her, she was listening to the conversation of the two men. The foreman had taken upon himself to tell the parson of the orders he had received for the night journey, and the details of the preparations being made for it. The news came to Chepstow unpleasantly, yet he understood that its urgency must be great, or Dave would never have decided upon so sudden a journey. He was a little put out, but quite ready to help his friend. It was the first Betty had heard of it. She was astonished and resentful. She had heard that there was fever up in the hills, but her uncle had told her nothing of Dave's request to him. Therefore, before greetings had been exchanged, and almost before the door of the tally room had closed upon the departing foreman, she opened a volley of questions upon him. "What's this about uncle going up to the hills to-night, Dave?" she demanded. "Why has it been kept secret? Why so sudden? Why to-night?" Her inquiring glance turned from one to the other. Dave made no hurry to reply. He was watching the play of the strong, eager young face. The girl's directness appealed to him even more than her beauty. To-night she looked very pretty in a black clinging gown which made her look almost fragile. She seemed so slight, so delicate, yet her whole manner had such reserve of virile force. He thought now, as he had often thought before, she possessed a brain much too big and keen for her body, yet withal so essentially womanly as to be something to marvel at. The girl became impatient. "Why wasn't I told? For goodness' sake don't stand there staring, Dave." "There's no secrecy exactly, Betty," the lumberman said, "that is, except from the folks in the village. You see, anything likely to check our work, such as fever up in the camps, is liable to set them worrying and talking. We didn't mean to keep it from you----" "Yes, yes," the girl broke in. "But why this hurry? Why to-night?" And so she forced Dave into a full explanation, which alone would satisfy her. At the end of it she turned to her uncle, who had stood quietly by enjoying the manner in which she dictated her will upon the master of the mills. "It's an awful shame you've got to go, uncle, especially while you've got all the new church affairs upon your hands. But I quite see Dave's right, and we must get the boys well as quickly as possible. We've got to remember that these mills are not only Dave's. They also belong to Malkern--one might almost say to the people of this valley. It is the ship, and--and we are its freight. So we start at midnight. Does auntie know?" Instantly two pairs of questioning eyes were turned upon her. That coupling of herself with her uncle in the matter had not escaped them. "Your Aunt Mary knows I am going some time. But she hasn't heard the latest development, my dear," her uncle said. "But--but you said 'we' just now?" Dave understood. He knew what was coming. But then he understood Betty as did no one else. He smiled. "Of course I said 'we,'" Betty exclaimed, with a laugh which only served to cloak the resolve that lay behind it. "You are not going alone. Besides, you can physic people well enough, uncle dear, but you can't nurse them worth--worth a cent. School's all right, and can get on without me for a while. Well?" She smiled quickly from one to the other. "Well, we're ready, aren't we? We can't let this interfere with our view of the mill." Her uncle shook his head. "You can't go up there, Betty," he said seriously. "You can't go about amongst those men. They're good fellows. They're men. But----" he looked over at Dave as though seeking support, a thing he rarely needed. But he was dealing with Betty now, and where she was concerned, there were times when he felt that a little support might be welcome. Dave promptly added his voice in support of his friend's protest. "You can't go, little Betty," he said. "You can't, little girl," he reiterated, shaking his shaggy head. "You think you know the lumber-jacks, and I'll allow you know them a lot. But you don't know 'em up in those camps. They're wild men. They're just as savage as wolves, and foolish as babes. They're just great big baby men, and as irresponsible as half-witted schoolboys. I give you my word I can't let you go up. I know how you want to help us out. I know your big heart. And I know still more what a help you'd be----" "And that's just why I'm going," Betty snapped him up. That one unfortunate remark undid all the impression his appeal might otherwise have made. And as the two men realized the finality of her tone, they understood the hopelessness of turning her from her purpose. "Uncle dear," she went on, "please say 'yes.' Because I'm going, and I'd feel happier with your sanction. Dave," she turned with a smile upon the lumberman, "you've just got to say 'yes,' or I'll never--never let you subscribe to any charity or--or anything I ever get up in Malkern again. Now you two dears, mind, I'm going anyway. I'll just count three, and you both say 'yes' together." She counted deliberately, solemnly, but there was a twinkle in her brown eyes. "One--two--three!" And a simultaneous "Yes" came as surely as though neither had any objection to the whole proceeding. And furthermore, both men joined in the girl's laugh when they realized how they had been cajoled. To them she was quite irresistible. "I don't know whatever your aunt will say," her uncle said lugubriously. "It's not so much what she'll say as--as what may happen up there," protested Dave, his conscience still pricking him. But the girl would have no more of it. "You are two dear old--yes, 'old'--sillies. Now, Dave, the mills!" Betty carried all before her with these men who were little better than her slaves. They obeyed her lightest command hardly knowing they obeyed it. Her uncle's authority, whilst fully acknowledged by her, was practically non-existent. Her loyalty to him and her love for both her guardians left no room for the exercise of authority. And Dave--well, he was her adviser in all things, and like most people who have an adviser, Betty went her own sweet way, but in such a manner that made the master of the mills believe that his help and advice were practically indispensable to her. CHAPTER XIV THE MILLS Dave obediently led the way out of the tally room to the great milling floor, and at once they were in the heart of his world. It was by no means new to Betty; she had seen it all before, but never had the mills been driven at such a pressure as now, and the sensation the knowledge gave her was one which demanded the satisfaction of optical demonstration. She was thrilled with a sense of emergency. The roar of the machinery carried with it a meaning it had never held before. There was a current of excitement in the swift, skilful movements of the sawyers as they handled the mighty logs. To her stirred imagination there was a suggestion of superhuman agency, of some nether world, in the yellow light of the flares which lit that vast sea of moving rollers. As she gazed out across it at the dim, distant corners she felt as though at any moment the machinery might suddenly become manned by hundreds of hideous gnomes, such as she had read of in the fairy tales. Yet it was all real, real and human, and Dave was the man who controlled, whose brain and eyes watched over every detail, whose wonderful skill and power were carrying that colossal work to the goal of success. As she looked, she sighed. She envied the man whose genius had made all this possible. Above the roar Dave's voice reached her. "This is only part of it," he said; "come below." And she followed him to the spiral iron staircase which led to the floor below. Her uncle brought up the rear. At ordinary times the lower part of the mills was given over to the shops for the manufacture of smaller lumber, building stuff, doors and windows, flooring, and tongue and groove. Betty knew this. She knew every shop by heart, just as she knew most of the workmen by sight. But now it was all changed. The partitions had been torn down, and the whole thrown into one floor. It was a replica of the milling floor above. Here again were the everlasting rollers; here again were the tremendous logs traveling across and across the floor; here again were the roar and shriek of the gleaming saws. The girl's enthusiasm rose. Her eyes wandered from the fascinating spectacle to the giant at her side. She felt a lump rise in her throat; she wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry; but she did neither. Only her eyes shone as she gazed at him; and his plainness seemed to fall from him. She saw the man standing at her side, but the great ungainly Dave had gone, leaving in his place only such a hero as her glowing heart could create. They stood there watching, watching. None of the three spoke. None of them had any words. Dave saw and thought. His great unimaginative head had no care for the picture side of it. His eyes were on the sawyers, most of them stripped to the waist in the heat of their labors in the summer night. To him the interest of the scene lay in the precision and regularity with which log followed log over the rollers, and the skill with which they were cut. Parson Tom, with a little more imagination, built up in his mind the future prosperity of their beloved valley, and thanked the Almighty Providence that It had sent them such a man as Dave. But Betty, in spite of her practical brain, lost sight of all the practical side of the work. As she watched she was living in such a dream as only comes once in a lifetime to any woman. At that moment her crown of glory was set upon Dave's rough head. All she had hoped for, striven for all her life seemed so small at the thought of him. And the delight of those moments became almost painful. She had always looked upon him as "her Dave," her beloved "chum," her adviser, her prop to lean on at all times. But no. No, no; he was well and truly named. He was no one's Dave. He was just Dave of the Mills. They moved on to a small doorway, and passing along a protected gallery they worked their way toward the "boom." The place was a vast backwater of the river, enlarged to accommodate millions of feet of logs. It was packed with a mass of tumbled lumber, over which, in the dim light thrown by waste fire, a hundred and more "jacks" could be seen, clambering like a colony of monkeys, pushing, prizing, easing, pulling with their peaveys to get the logs freed, so that the grappling tackle could seize and haul them up out of the water to the milling floors above. Here again they paused and silently gazed at the stupendous work going on. There was no more room for wonder either in the girl or her uncle. The maximum had been reached. They could only silently stare. Dave was the first to move. His keen eyes had closely watched the work. He had seen log after log fly up in the grapple of the hydraulic cranes, he had seen them shot into the gaping jaws of the building, he had seen that not an idle hand was down there in the boom, and he was satisfied. Now he wanted to go on. "There's the 'waste,'" he said casually. "But I guess you've seen that heaps, only it's a bit bigger now, and we've had to build two more 'feeders.'" Betty answered him, and her tone was unusually subdued. "Let's see it all, Dave," she said, almost humbly. All her imperiousness had gone, and in its place was an ecstatic desire to see all and anything that owed its existence to this man. Dave strode on. He was quite unconscious of the change that had taken place in Betty's thoughts of him. To him these things had become every-day matters of his work. They meant no more to him than the stepping-stones toward success which every one who makes for achievement has to tread. Their way took them up another iron staircase outside the main building. At the top of it was an iron gallery, which passed round two angles of the mill, and terminated at the three feeders, stretching out from the mills to the great waste fire a hundred yards away. From this gallery there was an inspiring view of the "everlasting" fire. It had been lit when the mill first started its operations years ago, and had been burning steadily ever since; and so it would go on burning as long as the saws inside continued to rip the logs. The feeders were three shafts, supported on iron trestle work, each carrying an ever-moving, endless bed on which the waste trimmings of the logs were thrown. These were borne upward and outward for a hundred yards till the shafts hung high above the blazing mass. Here the endless band doubled under, and its burden was precipitated below, where it was promptly devoured by the insatiable flames. For some moments they watched the great timber pass on its way to the fire, and so appalling appeared the waste that Parson Tom protested. "This seems to me positively wanton," he said. "Why, the stuff you're sending on to that fire is perfect lumber. At the worst, what grand fuel it would make for the villagers." Dave nodded his great head. He often felt the same about it. "Makes you sicken some to see it go, doesn't it?" he said regretfully. "It does me. But say, we've got a waste yard full, and the folks in Malkern are welcome to all they can haul away. Even Mary uses it in her stoves, but they can't haul or use it fast enough. If it wasn't for this fire there wouldn't be room for a rat in Malkern inside a year. Guess it's got to be, more's the pity." There was no more to be said, and the three watched the fire in silent awe. It was a marvelous sight. The dull red-yellow light shone luridly over everything. The mill on the one hand loomed majestically out of the dark background of night. The fire, over forty feet in height, lit the buildings in a curious, uncanny fashion, throwing grotesque and lurid shadows in every direction. Then all around, on the farther sides, spread the distant dark outline of ghostly pine woods, whose native gloom resisted a light, which, by contrast, was so insignificantly artificial. It gave a weird impression that had a strong effect upon Betty's rapt imagination. Dave again broke the spell. He could not spare too much time, and, as they moved away, Betty sighed. "It's all very, very wonderful," she said, moving along at his side. "And to think even in winter, no matter what the snowfall, that fire never goes out." Dave laughed. "If it rained like it's been raining to-day for six months," he said, "I don't guess it could raise more than a splutter." Then he turned to Tom Chepstow. "Is there anything else you'd like to see? You've got three hours to midnight." But the parson had seen enough; and as he had yet to overhaul the supplies he was to take up to the hill camps, they made their way back to the tally room. At the rollers on which Mansell was working Dave paused with Betty, while her uncle went on. They watched a great log appear at the opening over the boom. The chains of the hydraulic crane creaked under their burden. Dave pointed at it silhouetted against the light of the waste fire beyond. "Watch him," he said. "That's Dick Mansell." The pride in his tone was amply justified. Mansell was at the opening, waiting, peavey in hand. They saw the log dripping and swaying as it was hauled up until its lower end cleared the rollers. On the instant the sawyer leant forward and plunged his hook into the soft pine bark. Then he strained steadily and the log came slowly onward. A whistle, and the crane was eased an inch at a time. The man held his strain, and the end lowered ever further over the rollers until it touched. Two more whistles, and the log was lowered faster until it lay exactly horizontal, and then the rollers carried it in. Once its balance was passed, the sawyer struck the grappling chains loose with his peavey, and, with a rattle, they fell clear, while the prostrate giant lumbered ponderously into the mill. It was all done so swiftly. Now Mansell sprang to the foremost end and chalked the log as it traveled. Then, like a cat, he sprang to the rear of it and measured with his eye. Dissatisfied, he ran to its side and prized it into a fresh position, glancing down it, much as a rifleman might glance over his sights. Satisfied at length, he ran on ahead of the moving log to his saws. Throwing over a lever, he quickened the pace of the gleaming blade. On came the log. The yielding wood met the merciless fangs of the saw upon the chalk line, and passed hissing and shrieking on its way as though it had met with no obstruction. The girl took a deep breath. "Splendid," she cried. Well as she knew this work, to-night it appealed to her with a new force, a deeper and more personal interest. "Easy as pie," Dave laughed. Then more seriously, "Yet it's dangerous as--as hell." Betty nodded. She knew. "But you don't have many accidents, thank goodness." Dave shrugged. "Not many--considering. But you don't often see a sawyer with perfectly sound hands. There's generally something missing." "I know. Look at Mansell's arm there." Betty pointed at a deep furrow on the man's forearm. "Yes, Mansell's been through it. I remember when he got that. Like an Indian holds his first scalp as a sign of his prowess, or the knights of old wore golden spurs as an emblem of their knighthood, the sawyer minus a finger or so has been literally 'through the mill,' and can claim proficiency in his calling. But those are not the dangers I was figgering on." Betty waited for him to go on. "Yes," he said solemnly. "It's the breaking saw. That's the terror of a sawyer's life. And just now of mine. It's always in the back of my head like a black shadow. One breaking saw would do more damage cutting up this big stuff than it would take a fire to do in an hour. It would be the next best thing to bursting a charge of dynamite. Take this saw of Mansell's. A break, a bend out of the truth, the log slips while it's being cut. Any of these things. You wouldn't think a 'ninety-footer' could be thrown far. If any of those things happened, good-bye to anything or anybody with whom it came into contact. But we needn't to worry. Let's get in there to your uncle." CHAPTER XV BETTY TAKES COVER In the office they found Parson Tom at work with pencil and note-book. The latter he closed as they came in. "For goodness' sake shut that door behind you," he laughed. "I've been trying to think of the things I need for my journey to-night, but that uproar makes it well-nigh impossible." The words brought Betty back to matters of the moment. Everything had been forgotten in the interest of her tour of the mills at Dave's side. Now she realized that time was short, and she too must make her preparations. Dave closed the door. "We'd best get down to the barn and fix things there," he said. "Then you can get right back home and arrange matters with Mary. Betty could go on and prepare her." The girl nodded her approval. "Yes," she said, "and I can get my own things together." Both men looked at her. She answered their challenge at once, but now there was a great change in her manner. She no longer laughed at them. She no longer carried things with a high hand. She intended going up to the camps, but it almost seemed as though she desired their justification to support her decision. Somehow that tour of the mills at Dave's side had lessened her belief in herself. "Yes," she said, "I know neither of you wants me to go. Perhaps, from your masculine point of view, you are both right. But--but I want to go. I do indeed. This is no mere whim. Uncle, speak up and admit the necessity for nursing. Who on earth is up there to do it? No one." Then she turned to Dave, and her earnest eyes were full of almost humble entreaty. "You won't refuse me, Dave?" she said. "I feel I must go. I feel that some one, some strange voice, is calling to me to go. That my presence there is needed. I am only a woman, and in these big schemes of yours it is ridiculous to think that I should play a part. Yet somehow--somehow---- Oh, Dave, won't you let me help, if only in this small way? It will be something for me to look back upon when you have succeeded; something for me to cherish, this thought that I have helped you even in so small a way. You won't refuse me. It is so little to you, and it means so--so much to me." Her uncle was watching the grave face of the lumberman; and when she finished he waited, smiling, for the effect of her appeal. It was some moments before Dave answered. Betty's eyes were shining with eager hope, and at last her impatience got the better of her. "You said 'yes' once to-night," she urged softly. Her uncle's smile broadened. He was glad the onus of this thing was on the broad shoulders of his friend. "Betty," said Dave at last, looking squarely into her eyes, "will you promise me to keep to the sick camps, and not go about amongst the 'jacks' who aren't sick without your uncle?" There was something in the man's eyes which made the girl drop hers suddenly. She colored slightly, perhaps with vexation. She somehow felt awkward. And she had never felt awkward with Dave in her life before. However, she answered him gladly. "I promise--promise willingly." "Then I'll not go back on my promise. Go and get ready, little girl," he said gently. She waited for no more. Her eyes thanked him, and for once, though he never saw it, nor, if he had, would he have understood it, there was a shyness in them such as had never been there before. As the door closed behind her he turned with a sigh to his old friend. "Well, Tom," he said, with a dry, half regretful smile, "it strikes me there are a pair of fools in this room." The parson chuckled delightedly. "But one is bigger than the other. You wait until Mary sees you. My word!" Betty hurried out of the mill. She knew the time was all too short; besides, she did not want to give the men time to change their minds. And then there was still her aunt to appease. Outside in the yards the thirsty red sand had entirely lapped up the day's rain. It was almost as dry as though the summer rains were mere showers. The night was brilliantly fine, and though as yet there was no moon, the heavens were diamond-studded, and the milky way spread its ghostly path sheer across the sky. Half running in her eagerness, the girl dodged amongst the stacks of lumber, making her way direct to a point in the fence nearest to her home. To go round to the gates would mean a long, circuitous route that would waste at least ten minutes. As she sped, the din of the mill rapidly receded, and the shadows thrown by the flare lights of the yards behind her lengthened and died out, merged in the darkness of the night beyond their radiance. At the fence she paused and looked about for the easiest place to climb. It was high, and the lateral rails were wide apart. It was all the same whichever way she looked, so, taking her courage in both hands, and lifting her skirts knee high, she essayed the task. It was no easy matter, but she managed it, coming down on the other side much more heavily than she cared about. Still, in her excited state, she didn't pause to trouble about a trifle like that. She was strangely happy without fully understanding the reason. This trip to the hills would be a break in the monotony of her daily routine. But somehow it was not that that elated her. She loved her work, and at no time wanted to shirk it. No, it was not that. Yet it was something to do with her going. Something to do with the hill camps; something to do with helping--Dave--ah! Yes, it was that. She knew it now, and the knowledge thrilled her with a feeling she had never before experienced. Her course took her through a dense clump of pine woods. She was far away from the direct trail, but she knew every inch of the way. Somehow she felt glad of the cool darkness of those woods. Their depth of shadow swallowed her up and hid her from all the rest of the world, and, for the moment, it was good to be alone. She liked the feeling that no one was near her--not even Dave. She wanted to think it all out. She wanted to understand herself. This delight that had come to her, this joy. Dave had promised to let her help him in his great work. It was too good to be true. How she would work. Yes, she would strain every nerve to nurse the men back to health, so that there should be no check in the work. Suddenly she paused in her thought. Her heart seemed to stand still, then its thumping almost stifled her. She had realized her true motive. Yes, she knew it now. It was not the poor sick men she was thinking of. She was not thinking of her uncle, who would be slaving for sheer love of his fellow men. No, it was of Dave she was thinking. Dave--her Dave. Now she knew. She loved him. She felt it here, here, and she pressed both hands over her heart, which was beating tumultuously and thrilling with an emotion such as she had never known before. Never, even in the days when she had believed herself in love with Jim Truscott. She wanted to laugh, to cry aloud her happiness to the dark woods which crowded round her. She wanted to tell all the world. She wanted everything about her to know of it, to share in it. Oh, how good God was to her. She knew that she loved Dave. Loved him with a passion that swept every thought of herself from her fevered brain. She wanted to be his slave; his--his all. Suddenly her passion-swept thoughts turned hideously cold. What of Dave? Did he?--could he? No, he looked upon her as his little "chum" and nothing more. How could it be otherwise? Had he not witnessed her betrothal to Jim Truscott? Had he not been at her side when she renounced him? Had he not always looked after her as an elder brother? Had he---- She came to a dead standstill in the heart of the woods, gripped by a fear that had nothing to do with her thoughts. It was the harsh sound of a voice. And it was just ahead of her. It rang ominously in her ears at such an hour, and in such a place. She listened. Who could be in those woods at that hour of the night? Who beside herself? The voice was so distinct that she felt it must be very, very near. Then she remembered how the woods echo, particularly at night, and a shiver of fear swept over her at the thought that perhaps the sound of her own footsteps had reached the ears of the owner of the voice. She had no desire to encounter any drunken lumber-jacks in such a place. Her heart beat faster, as she cast about in her mind for the best thing to do. The voice she had first heard now gave place to another, which she instantly recognized. The recognition shocked her violently. There could be no mistaking the second voice. It was Jim Truscott's. Hardly knowing what she did, she stepped behind a tree and waited. "I can't get the other thing working yet," she heard Truscott say in a tone of annoyance. "It's a job that takes longer than I figured on. Now, see here, you've got to get busy right away. We must get the brakes on him right now. My job will come on later, and be the final check. That's why I wanted you to-night." Then came the other voice, and, to the listening girl, its harsh note had in it a surly discontent that almost amounted to open rebellion. "Say, that ain't how you said, Jim. We fixed it so I hadn't got to do a thing till you'd played your 'hand.' Play it, an' if you fail clear out, then it's right up to me, an' I'll stick to the deal." Enlightenment was coming to Betty. This was some gambling plot. She knew Jim's record. Some poor wretch was to be robbed. The other man was of course a confederate. But Jim was talking again. Now his voice was commanding, even threatening. "This is no damned child's play; we're going to have no quibbling. You want that money, Mansell, and you've got to earn it. It's the spirit of the bargain I want, not the letter. Maybe you're weakening. Maybe you're scared. Damn it, man! it's the simplest thing--do as I say and--the money's yours." At the mention of the man's name Betty was filled with wonder. She had seen Mansell at work in the mill. The night shift was not relieved until six o'clock in the morning. How then came he there? What was he doing in company with Jim? But now the sawyer's voice was raised in downright anger, and the girl's alarm leapt again. "I said I'd stick to the deal," he cried. Then he added doggedly, "And a deal's a deal." Jim's reply followed in a much lower key, and she had to strain to hear. "I'm not going to be fooled by you," he said. "You'll do this job when I say. When I say, mind----" But at this point his voice dropped so low that the rest was lost. And though Betty strained to catch the words, only the drone of the voices reached her. Presently even that ceased. Then she heard the sound of footsteps receding in different directions, and she knew the men had parted. When the silence of the woods had swallowed up the last sound she set off at a run for home. She thought a great deal about that mysterious encounter on her way. It was mysterious, she decided. She wondered what she should do about it. These men were plotting to cheat and rob some of Dave's lumber-jacks. Wasn't it her duty to try and stop them? She was horrified at the thought of the depths to which Jim had sunk. It was all so paltry, so--so mean. Then the strangeness of the place they had selected for their meeting struck her. Why those woods, so remote from the village? A moment's thought solved the matter to her own satisfaction. No doubt Mansell had made some excuse to leave the mill for a few minutes, and in order not to prolong his absence too much, Jim had come out from the village to meet him. Yes, that was reasonable. Finally she decided to tell Dave and her uncle. Dave would find a way of stopping them. Trust him for that. He could always deal with such things better--yes, even better than her uncle, she admitted to herself in her new-born pride in him. A few minutes later the twinkling lights through the trees showed her her destination. Another few minutes and she was explaining to her aunt that she was off to the hill camps nursing. As had been expected, her news was badly received. "It's bad enough that your uncle's got to go in the midst of his pressing duties," Mrs. Tom exclaimed with heat. "What about the affairs of the new church? What about the sick folk right here? What about old Mrs. Styles? She's likely to die any minute. Who's to bury her with him away? And what about Sarah Dingley? She's haunted--delusions--and there's no one can pacify her but him. And now they must needs take you. It isn't right. You up there amongst all those rough men. It's not decent. It's----" "I know, auntie," Betty broke in. "It's all you say. But--but think of those poor helpless sick men up there, with no comfort. They've just got to lie about and either get well, or--or die. No one to care for them. No one to write a last letter to their friends for them. No one to see they get proper food, and----" "Stuff and nonsense!" her aunt exclaimed. "Now you, Betty, listen to me. Go, if go you must. I'll have nothing to do with it. It's not with my consent you'll go. And some one is going to hear what I think about it, even if he does run the Malkern Mills. If--if Dave wasn't so big, and such a dear good fellow, I'd like--yes, I'd like to box his ears. Be off with you and see to your packing, miss, and don't forget your thickest flannels. Those mountains are terribly cold at nights, even in summer." Then, as the girl ran off to her room, she exploded in a final burst of anger. "Well there, they're all fools, and I've no patience with any of 'em." It did not take long for Betty to get her few things together and pitch them into a grip. The barest necessities were all she required, and her practical mind guided her instinctively. Her task was quite completed when, ten minutes later, she heard the rattle of buckboard wheels and her uncle's cheery voice down-stairs in the parlor. Then she hurried across to her aunt's room. She knew her uncle so well. He wouldn't bother to pack anything for himself. She dragged a large kit bag from under the bed, and, ransacking the bureau, selected what she considered the most necessary things for his comfort and flung them into it. It was all done with the greatest possible haste, and by the time she had everything ready, her uncle joined her and carried the grips downstairs. In the meantime Mary Chepstow, all her anger passed, was busily loading the little table with an ample supper. She might disapprove her niece's going, she might resent the sudden call on her husband, but she would see them both amply fed before starting, and that the buckboard was well provisioned for the road. For the most part supper was eaten in silence. These people were so much in the habit of doing for others, so many calls were made upon them, that such an occasion as this presented little in the way of emergency. It was their life to help others, their delight, and their creed. And Mary's protest meant no more than words, she only hesitated at the thought of Betty's going amongst these rough lumber-jacks. But even this, on reflection, was not so terrible as she at first thought. Betty was an unusual girl, and she expected the unusual from her. So she put her simple trust in the Almighty, and did all she knew to help them. It was not until the meal was nearly over that Chepstow imparted a piece of news he had gleaned on his way from the mill. He suddenly looked up from his plate, and his eyes sought his niece's face. She was lost in a happy contemplation of the events of that night at the mill. All her thoughts, all her soul was, at that moment, centred upon Dave. Now her uncle's voice startled her into a self-conscious blush. "Who d'you think I met on my way up here?" he inquired, searching her face. Betty answered him awkwardly. "I--I don't know," she said. Her uncle reached for the salad, and helped himself deliberately before he enlightened her further. "Jim Truscott," he said at last, without looking up. "Jim Truscott?" exclaimed Aunt Mary, her round eyes wondering. Then she voiced a thought which had long since passed from her niece's mind. "What was he doing out here at this hour of the night?" The parson shrugged. "It seems he was waiting for me. He didn't call here, I s'pose?" Mary shook her head. Betty was waiting to hear more. "I feel sorry for him," he went on. "I'm inclined to think we've judged him harshly. I'm sure we have. It only goes to show how poor and weak our efforts are to understand and help our fellows. He is very, very repentant. Poor fellow, I have never seen any one so down on his luck. He doesn't excuse himself. In fact, he blames himself even more than we have done." "Poor fellow," murmured Aunt Mary. Betty remained silent, and her uncle went on. "He's off down east to make a fresh start. He was waiting to tell me so. He also wanted to tell me how sorry he was for his behavior to us, to you, Betty, and he trusted you would find it possible to forgive him, and think better of him when he was gone. I never saw a fellow so cut up. It was quite pitiful." "When's he going?" Betty suddenly asked, and there was a hardness in her voice which startled her uncle. "That doesn't sound like forgiveness," he said. "Don't you think, my dear, if he's trying to do better you might----" Betty smiled into the earnest face. "Yes, uncle, I forgive him everything, freely, gladly--if he is going to start afresh." "Doubt?" But Betty still had that conversation in the woods in her mind. "I mustn't judge him. His own future actions are all that matter. The past is gone, and can be wiped out. I would give a lot to see him--right himself." "That is the spirit, dear," Aunt Mary put in. "Your uncle is quite right: we must forgive him." Betty nodded; but remained silent. She was half inclined to tell them all she had heard, but it occurred to her that perhaps she had interpreted it all wrong--and yet--anyway, if he were sincere, if he really meant all he had said to her uncle she must not, had no right to do, or say, anything that could prejudice him. So she kept silent, and her uncle went on. "He's off to-morrow on the east-bound mail. That's why he was waiting to see me to-night. He told me he had heard I was going up into the hills, and waited to catch me before I went. Said he couldn't go away without seeing me first. I told him I was going physicking, that the camps were down with fever, and the spread of it might seriously interfere with Dave's work. He was very interested, poor chap, and hoped all would come right. He spoke of Dave in the most cordial terms, and wished he could do something to help. Of course, that's impossible. But I pointed out that the whole future of Malkern, us all, depended on the work going through. Dave would be simply ruined if it didn't. There's a tremendous lot of good in that boy. I always knew it. Once he gets away from this gambling, and cuts out the whiskey, he'll get right again. I suggested his turning teetotaler, and he assured me he'd made up his mind to it. Well, Betty my dear, time's up." Chepstow rose from the table and filled his pipe. Betty followed him, and put on her wraps. Aunt Mary stood by to help to the last. It was less than an hour from the time of Betty's return home that the final farewells were spoken and the buckboard started back for the mill. Aunt Mary watched them go. She saw them vanish into the night, and slowly turned back across the veranda into the house. They were her all, her loved ones. They had gone for perhaps only a few weeks, but their going made her feel very lonely. She gave a deep sigh as she began to clear the remains of the supper away. Then, slowly, two unbidden tears welled up into her round, soft eyes and rolled heavily down her plump cheeks. Instantly she pulled herself together, and dashed her hand across her eyes. And once more the steady courage which was the key-note of her life asserted itself. She could not afford to give way to any such weakness. CHAPTER XVI DISASTER AT THE MILL Night closed in leaden-hued. The threat of storm had early brought the day to a close, so that the sunset was lost in the massing clouds banking on the western horizon. Summer was well advanced, and already the luxurious foliage of the valley was affected by the blistering heat. The emerald of the trees and the grass had gained a maturer hue, and only the darker pines resisted the searching sunlight. The valley was full ripe, and kindly nature was about to temper her efforts and permit a breathing space. The weather-wise understood this. Dave was standing at his office door watching the approach of the electric storm, preparing to launch its thunders upon the valley. Its progress afforded him no sort of satisfaction. Everybody but himself wanted rain. It had already done him too much harm. He was thinking of the letter he had just received from Bob Mason up in the hills. Its contents were so satisfactory, and this coming rain looked like undoing the good his staunch friends in the mountain camps had so laboriously achieved. While Mason reported that the fever still had the upper hand, its course had been checked; the epidemic had been grappled with and held within bounds. That was sufficiently satisfactory, seeing Chepstow had only been up there ten days. Then, too, Mason had had cause to congratulate himself on another matter. A number of recruits for his work had filtered through to his camps from Heaven and themselves alone knew where. This was quite good. These men were not the best of lumbermen, but under the "camp boss" they would help to keep the work progressing, which, in the circumstances, was all that could be asked. A few minutes later Dave departed into the mills. Since the mill up the river had been converted and set to work, and Simon Odd had been given temporary charge of it, he shared with Dawson the work of overseeing. As he mounted to the principal milling floor the great syren shrieked out its summons to the night shift, and sent the call echoing and reëchoing down the valley. There was no cessation of work. The "relief" stood ready, and the work was passed on from hand to hand. Dave saw his foreman standing close by No. 1, and he recognized the relief as Mansell. Dawson was watching the man closely, and judging by the frown on his face, it was plain that something was amiss. He moved over to him and beckoned him into the office. "What's wrong?" he demanded, as soon as the door was closed. Dawson was never the man to choose his words when he had a grievance. That was one of the reasons his employer liked him. He was so rough, and so straightforward. He had a grievance now. "I ain't no sort o' use for these schoolhouse ways," he said, with the added force of an oath. Dave waited for his next attempt. "That skunk Mansell. He's got back to-night. He ain't been on the time-sheet for nigh to a week." "You didn't tell me? Still, he's back." Dave smiled into the other's angry face, and his manner promptly drew an explosion from the hot-headed foreman. "Yes, he's back. But he wouldn't be if I was boss. That's the sort o' Sunday-school racket I ain't no use for. He's back, because you say he's to work right along. Sort of to help him. Yes, he's back. He's been fightin'-drunk fer six nights, and I'd hate to say he's dead sober now." "Yet you signed him on. Why?" "Oh, as to that, he's sober, I guess. But the drink's in him. I tell you, boss, he's rotten--plumb rotten--when the drink's in him. I know him. Say----" But Dave had had enough. "You say he's sober--well, let it go at that. The man can do his work. That's the important thing to us. Just now we can't bother with his morals. Still, you'd best keep an eye on him." He turned to his books, and Dawson busied himself with the checkers' sheets. For some time both men worked without exchanging a word, and the only interruption was the regular coming of the tally boys, who brought the check slips of the lumber measurements. Through the thin partitions the roar of machinery was incessant, and at frequent intervals the hoarse shouts of the "checkers" reached them. But this disturbed them not at all. It was what they were used to, what they liked to hear, for it told of the work going forward without hitch of any sort. At last the master of the mills looked up from a mass of figures. He had been making careful calculations. "We're short, Dawson," he said briefly. "Short by half a million feet," the foreman returned, without even looking round. "How's Odd doing up the river?" "Good. The machinery's newer, I guess." "Yes. But we can't help that. We've no time for installing new machinery here. Besides, I can't spare the capital." Dawson looked round. "'Tain't that," he said. "We're short of the right stuff in the boom. Lestways, we was yesterday. A hundred and fifty logs. We're doing better to-day. Though not good enough. It's that dogone fever, I guess." "What's in the reserve?" "Fifteen hundred logs now. I've drew on them mighty heavy. We've used up that number twice over a'ready. I'm scairt to draw further. You see, it's a heap better turning out short than using up that. If we're short on the cut only us knows it. If we finish up our reserve, and have to shut down some o' the saws, other folks'll know it, and we ain't lookin' for that trouble." Dave closed his book with a slam. All his recent satisfaction was gone in the discovery of the shortage. He had not suspected it. "I must send up to Mason. It's--it's hell!" "It's wuss!" Dave swung round on his loyal assistant. "Use every log in the reserve. Every one, mind. We've got to gamble. If Mason keeps us short we're done anyway. Maybe the fever will let up, and things'll work out all right." Dave flung his book aside and stood up. His heavy face was more deeply lined than it had been at the beginning of summer. He looked to be nearer fifty than thirty. The tremendous work and anxiety were telling. "Get out to the shoots," he went on, in a sharp tone of command he rarely used. "I'll see to the tally. Keep 'em right at it. Squeeze the saws, and get the last foot out of 'em. Use the reserve till it's done. We're up against it." Dawson understood. He gave his chief one keen glance, nodded and departed. He knew, no one better, the tremendous burden on the man's gigantic shoulders. Dave watched him go. Then he turned back to the desk. He was not the man to weaken at the vagaries of ill fortune. Such difficulties as at the moment confronted him only stiffened his determination. He would not take a beating. He was ready to battle to the death. He quietly, yet earnestly, cursed the fever to himself, and opened and reread Mason's letter. One paragraph held his attention, and he read it twice over. "If I'm short on the cut you must not mind too much. I can easily make it up when things straighten out. These hands I'm taking on are mostly 'green.' I can only thank my stars I'm able to find them up here. I can't think where they come from. However, they can work, which is the great thing, and though they need considerable discipline--they're a rebellious lot--I mean to make them work." It was a great thought to the master of the mills that he had such men as Bob Mason in his service. He glowed with satisfaction at the thought, and it largely compensated him for the difficulties besetting him. He put the letter away, and looked over the desk for a memorandum pad. Failing to find what he required, he crossed over to a large cupboard at the far corner of the room. It was roomy, roughly built, to store books and stationery in. The top shelf alone was in use, except that Dawson's winter overcoat hung in the lower part. It was on the top shelf that Dave expected to find the pad he wanted. As he reached the cupboard a terrific crash of thunder shook the building. It was right overhead, and pealed out with nerve-racking force and abruptness. It was the first attack of the threatened storm. The peal died out and all became still again, except for the shriek of the saws beyond the partition walls. He waited listening, and then a strange sound reached him. So used was he to the din of the milling floor that any unusual sound or note never failed to draw and hold his attention. A change of tone in the song of the saws might mean so much. Now this curious sound puzzled him. It was faint, so faint that only his practiced ears could have detected it, yet, to him, it was ominously plain. Suddenly it ceased, but it left him dissatisfied. He was about to resume his search when again he started; and the look he turned upon the door had unmistakable anxiety in it. There it was again, faint, but so painfully distinct. He drew back, half inclined to quit his search, but still he waited, wondering. The noise was as though a farrier's rasp was being lightly passed over a piece of well-oiled steel. At last he made up his mind. He must ascertain its meaning, and he moved to leave the cupboard. Suddenly a terrific grinding noise shrieked harshly above the din of the saws. It culminated in a monstrous thud. Instinctively he sprang back, and was standing half-inside the cupboard when a deafening crash shook the mills to their foundations. There was a fearful rending and smashing of timber. Something struck the walls of the office. It crashed through, and a smashing blow struck the cupboard door and hurled him against the inner wall. He thrust out his arms for protection. The door was fast. He was a prisoner. Now pandemonium reigned. Crash on crash followed in rapid succession. It was as though the office had become the centre of attack for an overwhelming combination of forces. The walls and floor shivered under the terrific onslaught. The very building seemed to totter as though an earthquake were in progress. But at last the end came with a thunder upon the cupboard door, the panels were ripped like tinder, and something vast launched itself through the wrecked woodwork. It struck the imprisoned man in the chest, and in a moment he was pinned to the wall, gasping under ribs bending to the crushing weight which felt to be wringing the very life out of him. A deadly quiet fell as suddenly as the turmoil had arisen, and his quick ears told him that the saws were still, and all work had ceased in the mill. But the pause was momentary. A second later a great shouting arose. Men's voices, loud and hoarse, reached him, and the rushing of heavy feet was significant of the disaster. And he was helpless, a prisoner. He tried to move. His agony was appalling. His ribs felt to be on the verge of cracking under the enormous weight that held him. He raised his arms, but the pain of the effort made him gasp and drop them. Yet he knew he must escape from his prison. He knew that he was needed outside. The shouting grew. It took a definite tone, and became a cry that none could mistake. Dave needed no repetition of it to convince him of the dread truth. The fire spectre loomed before his eyes, and horror nigh drove him to frenzy. In his mind was conjured a picture--a ghastly picture, such as all his life he had dreaded and shut out of his thoughts. His brain suddenly seemed to grow too big for his head. It grew hot, and his temples hammered. A surge of blood rose with a rush through his great veins. His muscles strung tense, and his hands clenched upon the imprisoning beam. He no longer felt any pain from the crushing weight. He was incapable of feeling anything. It was a moment when mind and body were charged with a maddening force that no other time could command. With his elbows planted against the wall behind him, with his lungs filled with a deep whistling breath, he thrust at the beam with every ounce of his enormous strength put forth. He knew all his imprisonment meant. Not to himself alone. Not to those shouting men outside. It was the mills. Hark! Fire! Fire! The cry was on every hand. The mills--his mills--were afire! He struggled as never before in his life had he struggled. He struggled till the sweat poured from his temples, till his hands lacerated, till the veins of his neck stood out like straining ropes, till it seemed as though his lungs must burst. He was spurred by a blind fury, but the beam remained immovable. Hark! The maddening cry filled the air. Fire! Fire! Fire! It was everywhere driving him, urging him, appealing. It rang in his brain with an exquisite torture. It gleamed at him in flaming letters out of the darkness. His mill! Suddenly a cry broke from him as he realized the futility of his effort. It was literally wrung from him in the agony of his soul; nor was he aware that he had spoken. "God, give me strength!" And as the cry went up he hurled himself upon the beam with the fury of a madman. Was it in answer to his prayer? The beam gave. It moved. It was so little, so slight; but it moved. And now, with every fibre braced, he attacked it in one final effort. It gave again. It jolted, it lifted, its rough end tearing the flesh of his chest under his clothing. It tottered for a moment. He struggled on, his bulging eyes and agonized gasping telling plainly of the strain. Inch by inch it gave before him. His muscles felt to be wrenching from the containing tissues, his breathing was spasmodic and whistling, his teeth were grinding together. It gave further, further. Suddenly, with a crash, it fell, the door was wrenched from its hinges, and he was free! He dashed out into the wreck of his office. All was in absolute darkness. He stumbled his way over the debris which covered the floor, and finally reached the shattered remains of the doorway. Now he was no longer in darkness. The milling floor was all too brilliantly lit by the leaping flames down at the "shoot" end of the No. 1 rollers. He waited for nothing, but ran toward the fire. Beyond, dimly outlined in the lurid glow, he could see the men. He saw Dawson and others struggling up the shoot with nozzle and hose, and he put his hands to his mouth and bellowed encouragement. "Five hundred dollars if you get her under!" he cried. If any spur were needed, that voice was sufficient. it was the voice of the master the lumber-jacks knew. Dawson on the lead struggled up, and as he came Dave shouted again. "Now, boy! Sling it hard! And pass the word to pump like hell!" He reached out over the shoot. Dawson threw the nozzle. And as Dave caught it a stream of water belched from the spout. None knew better than he the narrowness of the margin between saving and losing the mills. Another minute and all would have been lost. The whole structure was built of resinous pine, than which there is nothing more inflammable. The fire had got an alarming hold even in those few minutes, and for nearly an hour victory and disaster hung in the balance. Nor did Dave relinquish his post while any doubt remained. It was not until the flames were fully under control that he left the lumber-jacks to complete the work. He was weary--more weary than he knew. It seemed to him that in that brief hour he had gone through a lifetime of struggle, both mental and physical. He was sore in body and soul. This disaster had come at the worst possible time, and, as a result, he saw in it something like a week's delay. The thought was maddening, and his ill humor found vent in the shortness of his manner when Dawson attempted to draw him aside. "Out with it, man," he exclaimed peevishly. Dawson hesitated. He noticed for the first time the torn condition of his chief's clothes, and the blood stains on the breast of his shirt. Then he blurted out his thankfulness in a tone that made Dave regret his impatience. "I'm a'mighty thankful you're safe, boss," he said fervently. Then, after a pause, "But you--you got the racket? You're wise to it?" Dave shrugged. Reaction had set in. Nothing seemed to matter, the cause or anything. The mill was safe. He cared for nothing else. "Something broke, I s'pose," he said almost indifferently. "Sure. Suthin' bust. It bust on purpose. Get it?" The foreman's face lit furiously as he made his announcement. Dave turned on him. All his indifference vanished in a twinkling. "Eh? Not--not an accident?" In an access of loyal rage Dawson seized him by the arm in a nervous clutch, and tried to drag him forward. "Come on," he cried. "Let's find him. It's Mansell!" With a sudden movement Dave flung him off, and the force he used nearly threw the foreman off his feet. His eyes were burning like two live coals. "Come on!" he cried harshly, and Dawson was left to follow as he pleased. CHAPTER XVII THE LAST OF THE SAWYER Dave's lead took the foreman in the direction of the wrecked office. Now, in calmer moments, the full extent of the damage became apparent. The first three sets of rollers were hopelessly wrecked, and the saws were twisted and their settings broken and contorted out of all recognition. Then the fire had practically destroyed the whole of the adjacent northwest corner of the mill. The office was a mere skeleton, a shattered shell, and the walls and flooring adjoining had been torn and battered into a complete ruin. In the midst of all this, half a dozen heavy logs, in various stages of trimming, lay scattered about where the machinery happened to have thrown them. It was a sickening sight to the master of the mills, but in his present mood he put the feeling from him, lost in a furious desire to discover the author of the dastardly outrage. He paused for a moment as one great log lying across half a dozen of the roller beds barred his way. He glanced swiftly over the wreckage. Then he turned to the man following him. "Any of the boys cut up?" he inquired. "Some o' them is pretty mean damaged," Dawson replied. "But it ain't too bad, I guess. I 'lows it was sheer luck. But ther's Mansell. We ain't located him." Mansell was uppermost in his mind. He could think of nothing, and no one, else. He wanted to get his hands about the fellow's throat. In his rage he felt that the only thing to give him satisfaction at the moment would be to squeeze the fellow's life slowly out of him. Dawson was a savage when roused, nor did he make pretense of being otherwise. If he came across the sawyer--well, perhaps it was a good thing that Dave was with him--that is, a good thing for Mansell. Dave scrambled over the log and the two men hurried on to the saw that had been Mansell's. Neither spoke until this was reached. Then Dave turned. "Say, go you right on over by the crane and rake around there. Maybe he jumped the boom and got out that way. I'll be along directly." It was a mere excuse. He wanted to investigate alone. The foreman obeyed, although reluctantly. The moment he was gone, Dave jumped up on the rollers to examine the machinery that had held the saw. The light of the dying fire was insufficient, and he was forced to procure a lantern. His first anger had passed now, and he was thoroughly alert. His practiced eye lost no detail that could afford the least possible clue to the cause of the smash. Dawson had said it was Mansell, and that it was no accident. But then he knew well enough that Dawson had a bad enough opinion of the sawyer, and since the smash had apparently originated on No. 1, he had probably been only too glad to jump to the conclusion. For himself, he was personally determined to avoid any prejudice. He quickly discovered that the saw in question had been broken off short. The settings were desperately twisted, and he knew that the force capable of doing this could have only been supplied by the gigantic log that had been trimming at the moment. Therefore the indication must come from the saw itself. He searched carefully, and found much of the broken blade. The upper portions were broken clean. There was neither dinge nor bend in them. But the lower portions were less clean. One piece particularly looked as though a sharp instrument had been at work upon it. Then the memory of that faint rasping sound, which had been the first thing to attract his attention before the smash, came back to him. He grew hot with rising anger, and stuffed the piece of saw-blade inside his shirt. "The cur!" he muttered. "Why? Why? Guess Dawson was right, after all. The liquor _was_ in him. But why should he try to smash us?" He jumped down to the alleyway, intending to join his foreman, when a fresh thought occurred to him. He looked over at the remains of the office, then he glanced up and down at the broken rollers of No. 1. And his lips shut tight. "I was in there," he said to himself, with his eyes on the wrecked office, "and--he knew it." At that moment Dawson's excited voice interrupted him. "Say, boss, come right along here. Guess I've got him." Dave joined him hurriedly. He found the foreman bending over a baulk of timber, one that had evidently been hurled there in the smash. It was lying across the sill of the opening over the boom, projecting a long way out. Beneath it, just where it rested on the sill, but saved from its full weight by the cant at which it was resting, a human figure was stretched out face downward. Dawson was examining the man's face when Dave reached him, and started to explain hurriedly. "I didn't rightly rec'nize him," he said. "Y'see he's got out of his workin' kit. Might ha' bin goin' to the Meetin'. He was sure lightin' out of here for keeps." To Dave the prostrate figure suggested all that the foreman said. The man had calculated that smash--manufactured it. No more evidence was needed. He had got himself ready for a bolt for safety, preferring the boom as offering the best means of escape and the least chance of detection. Once outside there would be no difficulty in getting away. As Dawson said, his clothes suggested a hurried journey. They were the thick frieze the lumber-jack wears in winter, and would be ample protection for summer nights out in the open. Yes, it had been carefully thought out. But the reason of this attack on himself puzzled him, and he repeatedly asked himself "Why?" There could not be much question as to the man's condition. If he were not yet dead, he must be very near it, for the small of his back was directly under the angle of the beam and crushed against the sill. Dave stood up from his examination. "Get one of the boys, quick," he said. "Start him out at once for Doc Symons, over at High River. It's only fifteen miles. He'll be along before morning anyhow. I'll carry--this down to the office. Don't say a word around the mill. We've just had an--accident. See? And say, Dawson, you're looking for a raise, and you're going to get it, that is if this mill's in full work this day week. We're short of logs--well, this'll serve as an excuse for saws being idle. 'It's an ill wind,' eh? Meantime, get what saws you can going. Now cut along." The foreman's gratitude shone in his eyes. Had Dave given him the least encouragement he would undoubtedly have made him what he considered an elegant speech of thanks, but his employer turned from him at once and set about releasing the imprisoned man. As soon as he had prized the beam clear he gathered him up in his arms and bore him down the spiral staircase to the floor below. Then he hurried on to his office with his burden. And as he went he wondered. The sawyer might dislike Dawson. But he had no cause for grudge against him, Dave. Then why had he waited until he was alone in the tally room? The whole thing looked so like a direct attack upon himself, rather than on the mills, that he was more than ever puzzled. He went back over the time since he had employed Mansell, and he could not remember a single incident that could serve him as an excuse for such an attack. It might have been simply the madness of drink, and yet it seemed too carefully planned. Yes, that was another thing. Mansell had been on the drink for a week, "fighting-drunk," Dawson had said. In the circumstances it was not reasonable for him to plan the thing so carefully. Then a sudden thought occurred to him. Were there others in it? Was Mansell only the tool? He was suddenly startled by a distinct sound from the injured man. It was the sawyer's voice, harsh but inarticulate, and it brought with it a suggestion that he might yet learn the truth. He increased his pace and reached the office a few moments later. Here he prepared a pile of fur rugs upon the floor and laid the sawyer upon it. Then he waited for some minutes, but, as nothing approaching consciousness resulted, he finally left him, intending to return again when the doctor arrived. There was so much to be done in the mill that he could delay his return to it no longer. It was nearly four hours later when he went back to his office. He had seen the work of salvage in order, and at last had a moment to spare to attend to himself. He needed it. He was utterly weary, and his lacerated chest was giving him exquisite pain. He found Mansell precisely as he left him. Apparently there had been no movement of any sort. He bent over him and felt his heart. It was beating faintly. He lifted the lids of his closed eyes, and the eyeballs moved as the light fell upon them. He turned away and began to strip himself of his upper garments. There was a gash in his chest fully six inches long, from which the blood was steadily, though sluggishly, flowing. His clothes were saturated and caked with it. He bathed the wound with the drinking water in the bucket, and tearing his shirt into strips made himself a temporary bandage. This done, he turned to his chair to sit down, when, glancing over at the sick man, he was startled to find his eyes open and staring in his direction. He at once went over to him. "Feeling better, Mansell?" he inquired. The man gave no sign of recognition. His eyes simply stared at him. For a moment he thought he was dead, but a faint though steady breathing reassured him. Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he went to a cupboard and produced a bottle of brandy. Pouring some out into a tin cup, with some difficulty he persuaded it into Mansell's mouth. Then he waited. The staring eyes began to move, and there was a decided fluttering of the eyelids. A moment later the lips moved, and an indistinct but definite sound came from them. "How are you now?" Dave asked. There was another long pause, during which the man's eyes closed again. Then they reopened, and he deliberately turned his head away. "You--didn't--get--hurt?" he asked, in faint, spasmodic gasps. "No." Dave leaned over him. "Have some more brandy?" The man turned his head back again. He didn't answer, but the look in his eyes was sufficient. This time Dave poured out more, and there was no difficulty in administering it. "Well?" he suggested, as the color slowly crept over the man's face. "Good--goo----" The sound died away, and the eyes closed again. But only to reopen quickly. "He--said--you'd--get--killed," he gasped. "He--who?" "Jim." The sawyer's eyelids drooped again. Without a moment's hesitation Dave plied him with more of the spirit. "You mean Truscott?" he asked sharply. He was startled, but he gave no sign. He realized that at any time the man might refuse to say more. Then he added: "He's got it in for me." The sick man remained perfectly still for some seconds. His brain seemed to move slowly. When he did speak, his voice had grown fainter. "Yes." Dave's face was hard and cold as he looked down at him. He was just about to formulate another question, when the door opened and Dr. Symons hurried in. He was a brisk man, and took the situation in at a glance. "A smash?" he inquired. Then, his eyes on the bottle at Dave's side: "What's that--brandy?" "Brandy." The lumberman passed it across to him. "Yes, a smash-up. This poor chap's badly damaged, I'm afraid. Found him with a heavy beam lying across the small of his back. You were the nearest doctor, so I sent for you. Eh? oh, yes," as the doctor pointed at the blood on his clothes. "When you've finished with him you can put a stitch in me--some of the boys too. I'll leave you to it, Doc, they'll need me in the mill. I gave him brandy, and it roused him to consciousness." "Right. You might get back in half an hour." Dr. Symons moved over to the sick man, and Dave put on his coat and left the office. When he returned the doctor met him with a grave face. "What's the night like?" he asked. "I've got to ride back." He went to the door, and Dave followed him out. "His back is broken," he said, when they were out of ear-shot. "It's just a question of hours." "How many?" "Can't say with any certainty. It's badly smashed, and no doubt other things besides. Paralysis of the----" "Has he said anything? Has he shown any inclination to talk?" "No. That is, he looked around the room a good deal as though looking for some one. Maybe you." "Can nothing be done for the poor chap?" "Nothing. Better get him a parson. I'll come over to-morrow to see him, if he's alive. Anyway I'll be needed to sign a certificate. I must get back to home by daylight. I've got fever patients. Now just come inside, and I'll fix you up. Then I'll go and see to the boys. After that, home." "You're sure nothing----" "Plumb sure! Sure as I am you're going to have a mighty bad chest if you don't come inside and let me stop that oozing blood I see coming through your clothes." Without further protest Dave followed the doctor into the office, and submitted to the operation. "That's a rotten bad place," he assured him, in his brisk way. "You'll have to lie up. You ought to be dead beat from loss of blood. Gad, man, you must go home, or I won't answer----" But Dave broke in testily. "Right ho, Doc, you go and see to the boys. Send your bill in to me for the lot." As soon as he had gone, Dave sat thoughtfully gazing at the doomed sawyer. Presently he glanced round at the brandy bottle. The doctor had positively said the poor fellow was doomed. He rose from his seat and poured out a stiff drink. Then he knelt down, and supporting the man's head, held it to his lips. He drank it eagerly. Dave knew it had been his one pleasure in life. Then he went back to his chair. "Feeling comfortable?" he inquired gently. "Yes, boss," came the man's answer promptly. Then, "Wot did the Doc say?" "Guess you're handing in your checks," Dave replied, after a moment's deliberation. The sawyer's eyes were on the brandy bottle. "How long?" he asked presently. "Maybe hours. He couldn't say." "'E's wrong, boss. 'Tain't hours. I'm mighty cold, an'--it's creepin' up quick." Dave looked at his watch. It was already past two o'clock. "He said he'd come and see you in the morning." "I'll be stiff by then," the dying man persisted, with his eyes still on the bottle. "Say, boss," he went on, "that stuff's a heap warming--an' I'm cold." Dave poured him out more brandy. Then he took off his own coat and laid it over the man's legs. His fur coat and another fur robe were in the cupboard, and these he added. And the man's thanks came awkwardly. "I can't send for a parson," Dave said regretfully, after a few moments' silence. "I'd like to, but Parson Tom's away up in the hills. It's only right----" "He's gone up to the hills?" the sick man interrupted him, as though struck by a sudden thought. "Yes. It's fever." Mansell lay staring straight up at the roof. And as the other watched him he felt that some sort of struggle was going on in his slowly moving mind. Twice his lips moved as though about to speak, but for a long time no sound came from them. The lumberman felt extreme pity for him. He had forgotten that this man had so nearly ruined him, so nearly caused his death. He only saw before him a dimly flickering life, a life every moment threatening to die out. He knew how warped had been that life, how worthless from a purely human point of view, but he felt that it was as precious in the sight of One as that of the veriest saint. He racked his thoughts for some way to comfort those last dread moments. Presently the dying man's head turned slightly toward him. "I'm goin', boss," he said with a gasp. "It's gettin' up--the cold." "Will you have--brandy?" The lighting of the man's eyes made a verbal answer unnecessary. Dave gave him nearly half a tumbler, and his ebbing life flickered up again like a dying candle flame. "The Doc said you wus hurt bad, boss. I heard him. I'm sorry--real miser'ble sorry--now." "Now?" "Yep--y' see I'm--goin'." "Ah." "I'm kind o' glad ther' ain't no passon around. Guess ther's a heap I wouldn't 'a' said to him." The dying man's eyes closed for a moment. Dave didn't want to break in on his train of thought, so he kept silent. "Y' see," Mansell went on again almost at once, "he kind o' drove me to it. That an' the drink. He give me the drink too. Jim's cur'us mean by you." "But Jim's gone east days ago." "No, he ain't. He's lyin' low. He ain't east now." "You're sure?" Dave's astonishment crept into his tone. Mansell made a movement which implied his certainty. "He was to give me a heap o' money. The money you give fer his mill. He wants you smashed. He wants the mill smashed. An' I did it. Say, I bust that saw o' mine, an' she was a beaut'," he added, with pride and regret. "I got a rasp on to it. But it's all come back on me. Guess I'll be goin' to hell fer that job--that an' others. Say, boss----" He broke off, looking at the brandy bottle. Dave made no pretense at demur. The man was rapidly dying, and he felt that the spirit gave him a certain ease of mind. The ethics of his action did not trouble him. If he could give a dying man comfort, he would. "There's no hell for those who are real sorry," he said, when the fellow had finished his drink. "The good God is so thankful for a man's real sorrow for doing wrong that He forgives him right out. He forgives a sight easier than men do. You've nothing to worry over, lad. You're sorry--that's the real thing." "Sure, boss?" "Dead sure." "Say, boss, I'd 'a' hate to done you up. But ther' was the money, an'--I wanted it bad." "Sure you did. You see we all want a heap the good God don't reckon good for us----" The man's eyes suddenly closed while Dave was speaking. Then they opened again, and this time they were staring wildly. "I'm--goin'," he gasped. Dave was on his knees in a second, supporting his head. He poured some brandy into the gasping mouth, and for a brief moment the man rallied. Then his breathing suddenly became violent. "I'm--done!" he gasped in a final effort, and a moment later the supporting hand felt the lead-like weight of the lolling head. The man was dead. The lumberman reverently laid the head back upon the rugs, and for some minutes remained where he was kneeling. His rough, plain face was buried in his hands. Then he rose to his feet and stood looking down upon the lifeless form. A great pity welled up in his heart. Poor Mansell was beyond the reach of a hard fate, beyond the reach of earthly temptation and the hard knocks of men. And he felt it were better so. He covered the body carefully over with the fur robe, and sat down at his desk. He sat there for some minutes listening to the sounds of the workers at the mills. He was weary--so weary. But at last he could resist the call no longer, and he went out to join in the labor that was his very life. CHAPTER XVIII FACE TO FACE For the few remaining hours of night Dave took no leisure. He pressed forward the work of repairing the damage, with a zest that set Joel Dawson herding his men on to almost superhuman feats. There was no rest taken, no rest asked. And it said something for the devotion of these lumber-jacks to their employer that no "grouse" or murmur was heard. The rest which the doctor had ordered Dave to take did not come until long after his breakfast hour, and then only it came through sheer physical inability to return to his work. His breakfast was brought to the office, and he made a weak pretense of eating. Then, as he rose from his seat, for the first time in his life he nearly fainted. He saved himself, however, by promptly sitting down again, and in a few seconds his head fell forward on his chest and he was sound asleep, lost in the dreamless slumber of exhaustion. Two hours later Dawson put his head in through the office doorway. He saw the sleeping man and retreated at once. He understood. For himself, he had not yet come to the end of his tether. Besides, Simon Odd would relieve him presently. Then, too, there were others upon whom he could depend for help. It was noon when a quiet tap came at the office door. Dave's old mother peeped in. She had heard of the smash and was fearful for her boy. Seeing him asleep she tiptoed across the room to him. She had met the postmaster on her way, and brought the mail with her. Now she deposited it on his desk and stood looking down at the great recumbent figure with eyes of the deepest love and anxiety. All signs of his lacerated chest were concealed and she was spared what would have been to her a heartbreaking sight. Her gentle heart only took in the unutterably weary attitude of the sleeper. That was sufficient to set her shaking her gray head and sighing heavily. The work, she told herself sadly, was killing him. Nor did she know at the moment how near to the truth she was. For a moment she bent over him, and her aged lips lightly touched his mass of wiry hair. To the world he might be unsightly, he might be ungainly, he might be--well, all he believed himself to be; to her he possessed every beauty, every virtue a doting mother can bestow upon her offspring. She passed out of the office as silently as she came, and the man's stertorous breathing rose and fell steadily, the only sound in that room of death. Two hours later he awoke with a start. A serving girl blundered into the room with a basket of food. His mother had sent over his dinner. The girl's apologies were profuse. "I jest didn't know, Mr. Dave. I'm sure sorry. Your ma sent me over with these things, an' she said as I was to set 'em right out for you. Y' see she didn't just say you was sleepin', she----" "All right, Maggie," Dave said kindly. Then he looked at his watch, and to his horror found it was two o'clock. He had slept the entire morning through. He swiftly rose from his seat and stretched himself. He was stiff and sore, and that stretch reminded him painfully of his wounded chest. Then his eyes fell upon the ominous pile of furs in the corner. Ah, there was that to see to. He watched the girl set out his dinner and remembered he was hungry. And the moment she left the room he fell upon the food with avidity. Yes, he felt better--much better, and he was glad. He could return to his work, and see that everything possible was done, and then there was--that other matter. He had just finished his food when Dr. Symons came in with an apology on his lips. "A bit late," he exclaimed. "Sorry I couldn't make it before. Ah," his quick eyes fell upon the pile of furs. "Dead?" he inquired. Dave nodded. "Sure," the other rattled on. "Had to be. Knew it. Well, there are more good sawyers to be had. Let's look at your chest." Dave submitted, and then the doctor, at the lumberman's request, went off with a rush to see about the arrangements for the sawyer's burial. He had hardly left the place, and Dave was just thinking of going across to the mill again, when there was another call. He was standing at the window. He wanted to return at once to his work, but for some, to him, unaccountable reason he was a prey to a curious reluctance; it was a form of inertia he had never before experienced, and it half annoyed him, yet was irresistibly fascinating. He stood there more or less dreamily, watching the buzzing flies as they hurled themselves against the dirty glass panes. He idly tried to count them. He was not in the least interested, but at that moment, as a result of his wound and his weariness, his brain felt that it needed the rest of such trivialities. It was while occupied in this way that he saw Jim Truscott approaching, and the sight startled him into a mental activity that just then his best interests in the mills failed to stir him to. Then Mansell had told the truth. Jim had not gone east as he had assured Tom Chepstow it was his intention to do. Why was he coming to him now? A grim thought passed through his mind. Was it the fascination which the scene of a crime always has for the criminal? He sat down at his desk, and, when his visitor's knock came, appeared to be busy with his mail. Truscott came in. Dave did not look up, but the tail of his eye warned him of a peculiarly furtive manner in his visitor. "Half a minute," he said, in a preoccupied tone. "Just sit down." The other silently obeyed, while Dave tore open a telegram at haphazard, and immediately became really absorbed in its contents. It was a wire from his agent in Winnipeg, and announced that the railroad strike had been settled, and the news would be public property in twenty-four hours. It further told him that he hoped in future he would have no further hitch to report in the transportation of the Malkern timber, and that now he could cope with practically any quantity Dave might ship down. The news was very satisfactory, except for the reminder it gave him of the disquieting knowledge that his mills were temporarily wrecked, and he could not produce the quantities the agent hoped to ship. At least he could not produce them for some days, and--yes, there was that shortage from the hills to cope with, too. This brought him to the recollection that the author of half his trouble was in the office, and awaiting his pleasure. He turned at once to his visitor, and surveyed him closely from head to foot. Truscott was sitting with his back to the pile of rugs concealing the dead sawyer. Presently their eyes met, and in the space of that glance the lumberman's thought flowed swiftly. Nor, when he spoke, did his tone suggest either anger or resentment, merely a cool inquiry. "You--changed your mind?" he said. "What about?" Truscott was on the defensive at once. "You didn't go east, then?" The other's gaze shifted at once, and his manner suggested annoyance with himself for his display. "Oh, yes. I went as far as Winnipeg. Guess I got hung up by the strike, so--so I came back again. Who told you?" "Tom Chepstow." Truscott nodded. It was some moments before either spoke again. There was an awkwardness between them which seemed to increase every second. Truscott was thinking of their last meeting, and--something else. Dave was estimating the purpose of this visit. He understood that the man had a purpose, and probably a very definite one. Suddenly the lumberman rose from his seat as though about to terminate the interview, and his movement promptly had the effect he desired. Truscott detained him at once. "You had a bad smash, last night. That's why I came over." Dave smiled. It was just the glimmer of a smile, and frigid as a polar sunbeam. As he made no answer, the other was forced to go on. "I'm sorry, Dave," he continued, with a wonderful display of sincerity. Then he hesitated, but finally plunged into a labored apology. "I dare say Parson Tom has told you something of what I said to him the night he went away. He went up to clear out the fever for you, didn't he? He's a good chap. I hoped he'd tell you anyway. I just--hadn't the face to come to you myself after what had happened between us. Look here, Dave, you've treated me 'white' since then--I mean about that mill of mine. You see--well, I can't just forget old days and old friendships. They're on my conscience bad. I want to straighten up. I want to tell you how sorry I am for what I've done and said in the past. You'd have done right if you'd broken my neck for me. I went east as I said, and all these things hung on my conscience like--like cobwebs, and I'm determined to clear 'em away. Dave, I want to shake hands before I go for good. I want you to try and forget. The strike's over now, and I'm going away to-day. I----" He broke off. It seemed as though he had suddenly realized the frigidity of Dave's silence and the hollow ring of his own professions. It is doubtful if he were shamed into silence. It was simply that there was no encouragement to go on, and, in spite of his effrontery, he was left confused. "You're going to-day?" Dave's calmness gave no indication of his feelings. Nor did he offer to shake hands. Truscott nodded. Then-- "The smash--was it a very bad one?" "Pretty bad." "It--it won't interfere with your work--I hope?" "Some." Dave's eyes were fixed steadily upon his visitor, who let his gaze wander. There was something painfully disconcerting in the lumberman's cold regard, and in the brevity of his replies. "Doc Symons told me about it," the other went on presently. "He was fetched here in the night. He said you were hurt. But you seem all right." Dave made it very hard for him. There were thoughts in the back of his head, questions that must be answered. For an instant a doubt swept over him, and his restless eyes came to a standstill on the rugged face of the master of the mills. But he saw nothing there to reassure him, or to give him cause for alarm. It was the same as he had always known it, only perhaps the honest gray eyes lacked their kindly twinkle. "Yes, I'm all right. Doc talks a heap." "Did he lie?" Dave shrugged. "It depends what he calls hurt. Some of the boys were hurt." "Ah. He didn't mention them." Again the conversation languished. "I didn't hear how the smash happened," Truscott went on presently. Dave's eyes suddenly became steely. "It was Mansell's saw. Something broke. Then we got afire. I just got out--a miracle. I was in the tally room." The lumberman's brevity had in it the clip of snapping teeth. If Truscott noticed it, it suited him to ignore it. He went on quickly. His interest was rising and sweeping him on. "On Mansell's saw!" he said. "When I heard you'd got him working I wondered. He's bad for drink. Was he drunk?" Dave's frigidity was no less for the smile that accompanied his next words. "Maybe he'd been drinking." But Truscott was not listening. He was thinking ahead, and his next question came with almost painful sharpness. "Did he get--smashed?" "A bit." "Ah. Was he able to account for the--accident?" The man was leaning forward in his anxiety, and his question was literally hurled at the other. There was a look, too, in his bleared eyes which was a mixture of devilishness and fear. All these things Dave saw. But he displayed no feeling of any sort. "Accidents don't need explaining," he said slowly. "But I didn't say this was an accident. Here, get your eye on that." He drew a piece of saw-blade from his pocket. It was the piece he had picked up in the mill. "Guess it's the bit where it's 'collared' by the driving arm." Truscott examined the steel closely. "Well?" "It's--just smashed?" Truscott replied questioningly. Dave shook his head. "You can see where it's been filed." Truscott reexamined it and nodded. "I see now. God!" The exclamation was involuntary. It came at the sudden realization of how well his work had been carried out, and what that work meant. Dave, watching, grasped something of its meaning. There was that within him which guided him surely in the mental workings of his fellow man. He was looking into the very heart of this man who had so desperately tried to injure him. And what he saw, though he was angered, stirred him to a strange pity. "It's pretty mean when you think of it," he said slowly. "Makes you think some, doesn't it? Makes you wonder what folks are made of. If you hated, could you have done it? Could you have deliberately set out to ruin a fellow--to take his life? The man that did this thing figured on just that." "Did he say so?" Truscott's face had paled, and a haunting fear looked out of his eyes. It was the thought of discovery that troubled him. Dave ignored the interruption, and went on with his half-stern, half-pitying regard fixed upon the other. "Had things gone right with him, and had the fire got a fair hold, nothing could have saved us." He shook his head. "That's a mean hate for a man I've never harmed. For a man I've always helped. You couldn't hate like that, Truscott? You couldn't turn on the man that had so helped you? It's a mean spirit; so mean that I can't hate him for it. I'm sorry--that's all." "He must be a devil." The fear had gone out of Truscott's eyes. All his cool assurance had returned. Dave was blaming the sawyer, and he was satisfied. The lumberman shrugged his great shoulders. "Maybe he is. I don't know. Maybe he's only a poor weak foolish fellow whose wits are all mussed up with brandy, and so he just doesn't know what he's doing." "The man who filed that steel knew what he was doing," cried Truscott. "Don't blame him," replied Dave--his deep voice full and resonant like an organ note. But Truscott had achieved his object, and he felt like expanding. Dave knew nothing. Suspected nothing. Mansell had played the game for him--or perhaps---- "I tell you it was a diabolical piece of villainy on the part of a cur who----" "Don't raise your voice, lad," said Dave, with a sudden solemnity that promptly silenced the other. "Reach round behind you and lift that fur robe." He had risen from his seat and stood pointing one knotty finger at the corner where the dead man was lying. His great figure was full of dignity, his manner had a command in it that was irresistible to the weaker man. Truscott turned, not knowing what to expect. For a second a shudder passed over him. It spent itself as he beheld nothing but the pile of furs. But he made no attempt to reach the robe until Dave's voice, sternly commanding, urged him again. "Lift it," he cried. And the other obeyed even against his will. He reached out, while a great unaccountable fear took hold of him and shook him. His hand touched the robe. He paused. Then his fingers closed upon its furry edge. He lifted it, and lifting it, beheld the face of the dead sawyer. Strangely enough, the glazed eyes were open, and the head was turned, so that they looked straight into the eyes of the living. The hand that held the robe shook. The nerveless fingers relinquished their hold, and it fell back to its place and shut out the sight. But it was some moments before the man recovered himself. When he did so he rose from his chair and moved as far from the dead man as possible. This brought him near the door, and Dave followed him up. "He's dead!" Truscott whispered the words half unconsciously, and the tone of his voice was almost unrecognizable. It sounded like inquiry, yet he had no need to ask the question. "Yes, he's dead--poor fellow," said Dave solemnly. Then, after a long pause, the other dragged his courage together. He looked up into the face above him. "Did--did he say why he did it--or was he----" It was a stumbling question, which Dave did not let him complete. "Yes, he told me all--the whole story of it. That's the door, lad. You won't need to shake hands--now." CHAPTER XIX IN THE MOUNTAINS It was Sunday evening. Inside a capacious "dugout" a small group of two men and a girl sat round the stove which had just been lit. In the mountains, even though the heat of August was still at its height, sundown was the signal for the lighting of fires. Dave's lumber camps were high up in the hills, tapping, as they did, the upper forest belts, where grew the vast primordial timbers. In the extreme heat of summer the air was bracing, crisp, and suggested the process of breathing diamonds, but with the setting of the sun a cold shiver from the ancient glaciers above whistled down through the trees and bit into the bones. The daylight still lingered outside, and the cotton-covered windows of the dugout let in just sufficient of it to leave the remoter corners of the hut bathed in rapidly growing shadow. There was a good deal of comfort in the room, though no luxury. The mud cemented walls were whitewashed and adorned with illustrations from the _Police Gazette_, and other kindred papers. For the most part the furniture was of "home" manufacture. The chairs, and they were all armchairs of sorts, were mere frames with seats of strung rawhide. The table was of the roughest but most solid make, strong enough to be used as a chopping-block, and large enough for an extra bed to be made down upon it. There was a large cupboard serving the dual purpose of larder and pantry, and, in addition to the square cook-stove, the room was heated by a giant wood stove. The only really orthodox piece of furniture was the small writing-desk. For a dugout it was capacious, and, unlike the usual dugout, it possessed three inner rooms backing into the hill against which it was built. One of these was a storeroom for dynamite and other camp equipment, one was a bedroom, and the other was an armory. The necessity for the latter might be questioned, but Bob Mason, the camp "boss," the sole authority over a great number of lumber-jacks, more than a hundred and fifty miles from the faintest semblance of civilization, was content that it should be there. The three faces were serious enough as they gazed down in silence at the glowing, red-hot patch in the iron roof of the stove, and watched it spread, wider and wider, under the forced draught of the open damper. They had been silent for some moments, and before that one of them had practically monopolized the talk. It was Betty who had done most of the talking. Bronzed with the mountain air and sun, her cheeks flushed with interest and excitement, her sweet brown eyes aglow, she had finished recounting to her uncle and Bob Mason a significant incident that had occurred to her that afternoon on her way from the sick camp to the dugout. Walking through a patch of forest which cut the sick quarters off from the main, No. 1, camp, she had encountered two lumber-jacks, whom she had no recollection of having seen before. "They weren't like lumber-jacks," she explained, "except for their clothes. You can't mistake a lumber-jack's manner and speech, particularly when he is talking to a girl. He's so self-conscious and--and shy. Well, these men were neither. Their speech was the same as ours might be, and their faces, well, they were good-looking fellows, and might never have been out of a city. I never saw anybody look so out of place, as they did, in their clothes. There was no beating about the bush with them. They simply greeted me politely, asked me if I was Miss Somers, and, when I told them I was, calmly warned me to leave the hills without delay--not later than to-morrow night. I asked them for an explanation, but they only laughed, not rudely, and repeated their warning, adding that you, uncle, had better go too, or they would not be answerable for the consequences. I reminded them of the sick folk, but they only laughed at that too. One of them cynically reminded me they were all 'jacks' and were of no sort of consequence whatever, in fact, if a few of them happened to die off no one would care. He made me angry, and I told them we should certainly care. He promptly retorted, very sharply, that they had not come there to hold any sort of debate on the matter, but to give me warning. He said that his reason in doing so was simply that I was a girl, and that you, uncle, were a much-respected parson, and they had no desire that any harm should come to either of us. That was all. After that they turned away and went off into the forest, taking an opposite direction to the camp." Mason was the first to break the silence that followed the girl's story. "It's serious," he said, speaking with his chin in his hands and his elbows resting on his parted knees. "The warning?" inquired Chepstow, with a quick glance at the other's thoughtful face. Mason nodded. "I've been watching this thing for weeks past," he said, "and the worst of it is I can't make up my mind as to the meaning of it. There's something afoot, but---- Do you know I've sent six letters down the river to Dave, and none of them have been answered? My monthly budget of orders is a week overdue. That's not like Dave. How long have you been up here? Seven weeks, ain't it? I've only had three letters from Dave in that time." The foreman flung himself back in his chair with a look of perplexity on his broad, open face. "What can be afoot?" asked Chepstow, after a pause. "The men are working well." "They're working as well as 'scabs' generally do," Mason complained. "And thirty per cent, are 'scabs,' now. They're all slackers. They're none of them lumber-jacks. They haven't the spirit of a 'jack.' I have to drive 'em from morning till night. Oh, by the way, parson, that reminds me, I've got a note for you. It's from the sutler. I know what's in it, that is, I can guess." He drew it from his pocket, handed it across to him. "It's to tell you you can't have the store for service to-night. The boys want it. They're going to have a singsong there, or something of the sort." The churchman's eyes lit. "But he promised me. I've made arrangements. The place is fixed up for it. They can have it afterward, but----" "Hadn't you better read the note, uncle?" Betty said gently. She detected the rising storm in his vehemence. He turned at once to the note. It was short, and its tone, though apologetic, was decided beyond all question. "You can't have the store to-night. I'm sorry, but the boys insist on having it themselves. You will understand I am quite powerless when you remember they are my customers." Tom Chepstow read the message from Jules Lieberstein twice over. Then he passed it across to Mason. Only the brightness of his eyes told of his feelings. He was annoyed, and his fighting spirit was stirring. "Well, what are you going to do?" Mason inquired, as he passed the paper on to Betty in response to her silent request. "Do? Do?" Chepstow cried, his keen eyes shining angrily. "Why, I'll hold service there, of course. Jules can't give a thing, and, at the last minute, take it away like that. I've had the room prepared and everything. I shall go and see him. I----" "The trouble--whatever it is--is in that note, too," Betty interrupted, returning him the paper with the deliberate intention of checking his outburst. Mason gave her a quick glance of approval. Though he did not approve of women in a lumber camp, Betty's quiet capacity, her gentle womanliness, with her great strength of character and keenness of perception underlying it, pleased him immensely. He admired her, and curiously enough frequently found himself discussing affairs of the camp with her as though she were there for the purpose of sharing the burden of his responsibilities. In the ordinary course this would not have happened, but she had come at a moment when his difficulties were many and trying. And at such a time her ready understanding had become decided moral support which was none the less welcome for the fact that he failed to realize it. "You're right," he nodded. "There's something doing. What's that?" All three glanced at the door. And there was a look of uneasiness in each which they could not have explained. Mason hurried across the room with Chepstow at his heels. Outside, night was closing in rapidly. A gray, misty twilight held the mountain world in a gloomy shroud. The vast hills, and the dark woodland belts, loomed hazily through the mist. But the deathly stillness was broken by the rattle of wheels and the beating of hoofs upon the hard trail. The vehicle, whatever it was, had passed the dugout, and the sounds of it were already dying away in the direction of the distant camp. "There's a fog coming down," observed Mason, as they returned to the stove. "That was a buckboard," remarked the parson. "And it was traveling fast and light," added Betty. And each remark indicated the point of view of the speaker. Mason thought less of the vehicle than he did of the fog. Any uneasiness he felt was for his work rather than the trouble he felt to be brewing. A heavy fog was always a deterrent, and, at this time of year, fogs were not unfrequent in the hills. Chepstow was bent on the identity of the arrival, while Betty sought the object of it. Mason did not return to his seat. He stood by the stove for a moment thinking. Then he moved across to his pea-jacket hanging on the wall and put it on, at the same time slipping a revolver into his pocket. Then he pulled a cloth cap well down over his eyes. "I'll get a good look around the camp," he said quietly. "Going to investigate?" Chepstow inquired. "Yes. There have been too many arrivals lately--one way and another. I'm sick of 'em." Betty looked up into his face with round smiling eyes. "You need a revolver--to make investigations?" she asked lightly. The lumberman looked her squarely in the eyes for a moment, and there he read something of the thought which had prompted her question. He smiled back at her as he replied. "It's a handy thing to have about you when dealing with the scum of the earth. Lumbermen on this continent are not the beau ideal of gentlefolk, but when you are dealing with the class of loafer such as I have been forced to engage lately, well, the real lumber-jack becomes an angel of gentleness by contrast. A gun doesn't take up much room in your pocket, and it gives an added feeling of security. You see, if there's any sort of trouble brewing the man in authority is not likely to have a healthy time. By the way, parson, I'd suggest you give up this service to-night. Of course it's up to you, I don't want to interfere. You see, if the boys want that store, and you've got it--why----" He broke off with a suggestive shake of the head. Betty watched her uncle's face. She saw him suddenly bend down and fling the damper wider open, and in response the stove roared fiercely. He sat with his keen eyes fixed on the glowing aperture, watching the rapidly brightening light that shone through. The suggestion of fiery rage suited his mood at the moment. But his anger was not of long duration. His was an impetuous disposition generally controlled in the end by a kindly, Christian spirit, and, a few moments later, when he spoke, there was the mildness of resignation in his words. "Maybe you're right, Mason," he said calmly. "You understand these boys up here better than I do. Besides, I don't want to cause you any unnecessary trouble, and I see by your manner you're expecting something serious." Then he added regretfully: "But I should have liked to hold that service. And I would have done it, in spite of our Hebrew friend's sordid excuse. However---- By the way, can I be of any service to you?" He pointed at the lumberman's bulging pocket. "If it's necessary to carry that, two are always better than one." Betty sighed contentedly. She was glad that her uncle had been advised to give up the service. Her woman's quick wit had taken alarm for him, and--well, she regarded her simple-minded uncle as her care, she felt she was responsible to her aunt for him. It was the strong maternal instinct in her which made her yearn to protect and care for those whom she loved. Now she waited anxiously for the foreman's reply. To her astonishment it came with an alacrity and ready acceptance which further stirred her alarm. "Thanks," he said. "As you say two---- Here, slip this other gun into your coat pocket." And he reached the fellow revolver to his own from its holster upon the wall. "Now let's get on." He moved toward the door. Chepstow was in the act of following when Betty's voice stopped him. "What time will you get back?" she inquired. "How shall I know that----" She broke off. Her brown eyes were fixed questioningly upon the lumberman's face. "We'll be around in an hour," said Mason confidently "Meanwhile, Miss Betty, after we're gone, just set those bars across the door. And don't let anybody in till you hear either mine or your uncle's voice." The girl understood him, she always understood without asking a lot of questions. She was outwardly quite calm, without the faintest trace of the alarm she really felt. She had no fear for herself. At that moment she was thinking of her uncle. After the men had gone she closed the heavy log door but did not bar it as she had been advised; then, returning to the stove, she sat down and took up some sewing, prepared to await their return with absolute faith and confidence in the lumberman's assurance. She stitched on in the silence, and soon her thoughts drifted back to the man who had so strangely become the lodestone of her life. The trouble suggested by Mason must be his trouble. She wondered what could possibly happen on top of the fever, which she and her uncle had been fighting for the past weeks, that could further jeopardize his contract. She could see only one thing, and her quickness of perception in all matters relating to the world she knew drove her straight to the reality. She knew it was a general strike Mason feared. She knew it by the warning she had received, by the foreman's manner when he prepared to leave the hut. She was troubled. In imagination she saw the great edifice Dave had so ardently labored upon toppling about his ears. In her picture she saw him great, calm, resolute, standing amidst the wreck, with eyes looking out straight ahead full of that great fighting strength which was his, his heart sore and bruised but his lips silent, his great courage and purpose groping for the shattered foundations that the rebuilding might not be delayed an instant. It was her delight and pride to think of him thus, whilst, with every heart-beat, a nervous dread for him shook her whole body. She tried to think wherein she could help this man who was more to her than her own life. She bitterly hated her own womanhood as she thought of those two men bearing arms at that instant in his interests. Why could not she? But she knew that privilege was denied her. She threw her sewing aside as though the effeminacy of it sickened her, and rose from her seat and paced the room. "Oh, Dave, Dave, why can't I help you?" It was the cry that rang through her troubled brain with every moment that the little metal clock on the desk ticked away, while she waited for the men-folk's return. CHAPTER XX THE CHURCH MILITANT Outside the hut Mason led the way. The mist had deepened into a white fog which seemed to deaden all sound, so quiet was everything, so silent the grim woods all around. It had settled so heavily that it was almost impossible to see anything beyond the edge of the trail. There was just a hazy shadow, like a sudden depth of mist, to mark the woodland borders; beyond this all was gray and desolate. The dugout was built at the trail-side, a trail which had originally been made for travoying logs, but had now become the main trail linking up the camp with the eastern world. The camp itself--No. 1, the main camp--was further in the woods to the west, a distance of nearly a mile and a half by trail, but not more than half a mile through the woods. It was this short cut the two men took now. They talked as they went, but in hushed tones. It was as though the gray of the fog, and the knowledge of their mission weighed heavily, inspiring them with a profound feeling of caution. "You've not had any real trouble before?" Chepstow asked. "I mean trouble such as would serve you with a key to what is going on now?" "Oh, we've had occasional 'rackets,'" said Mason easily. "But nothing serious--nothing to guide us in this. No, we've got to find this out. You see there's no earthly reason for trouble that I know. The boys are paid jolly well, a sight better than I would pay them if this was my outfit. The hours are exacting, I admit. This huge contract has caused that. It's affected us in most every way, but Dave is no niggard, and the inducement has been made more than proportionate, so there's no kick coming on that head. Where before axemen's work was merely a full eight hours, it now takes 'em something like nine and ten, and work like the devil to get through even in that time. But their wages are simply out of sight. Do you know, there are men in this camp drawing from four to five dollars a day clear of food and shelter? Why, the income of some of them is positively princely." "What is it you think is on foot?" Chepstow demanded, as he buttoned his coat close about his neck to keep out the saturating mist. Then, as his companion didn't answer at once, he added half to himself, "It's no wonder there's fever with these mists around." Bob Mason paid no heed to the last remark. The fever had lost interest for him in the storm-clouds he now saw ahead. Hitherto he had not put his thoughts on the matter into concrete form. He had not given actual expression to his fears. There had been so little to guide him. Besides, he had had no sound reason to fear anything, that is no definite reason. It was his work to feel and understand the pulse of the men under him, and it largely depended on the accuracy of his reading whether or not the work under his charge ran smoothly. He had felt for some time that something was wrong, and Betty's story had confirmed his feeling. He was some moments before he answered, but when he did it was with calm decision. "Organized strike," he said at last. Tom Chepstow was startled. The words "organized strike" had an unpleasant sound. He suddenly realized the isolation of these hill camps, the lawless nature of the lumber-jacks. He felt that a strike up here in the mountains would be a very different thing from a strike in the heart of civilization, and that was bad enough. The fact that the tone of Mason's pronouncement had suggested no alarm made him curious to hear his views upon the position. "The reason?" he demanded. The lumberman shrugged. "Haven't a notion." They tramped on in silence for some time, the sound of their footsteps muffled in the fog. The gray was deepening, and, with oncoming night, their surroundings were rapidly becoming more and more obscure. Presently the path opened out into the wide clearing occupied by No. 1 camp. Here shadowy lights were visible in the fog, but beyond that nothing could be seen. Mason paused and glanced carefully about him. "This fog is useful," he said, with a short laugh. "As we don't want to advertise our presence we'll take to the woods opposite, and work our way round to the far side of the camp." "Why the far side?" "The store is that way. And--yes, I think the store is our best plan. Jules Lieberstein is a time-serving ruffian, and will doubtless lend himself to any wildcat scheme of his customers. Besides, this singsong of the boys sounds suggestive to me." "I see." Chepstow was quick to grasp the other's reasoning. The singsong had suggested nothing to him before. Now they turned from the open and hastened across to the wood-belt. As they entered its gloomy aisles, the fog merged into a pitchy blackness that demanded all the lumberman's woodcraft to negotiate. The parson hung close to his heels, and frequently had to assure himself of his immediate presence by reaching out and touching him. A quarter of an hour's tramp brought them to a halt. "We must get out of this now," whispered Mason. "We are about opposite the store. I've no doubt that buckboard will be somewhere around. I've a great fancy to see it." They moved on, this time with greater caution than before. Leaving the forest they found the fog had become denser. The glow of the camp lights was no longer visible, just a blank gray wall obscured everything. However, this was no deterrent to Mason. He moved along with extreme caution, stepping as lightly and quietly as possible. He wished to avoid observation, and though the fog helped him in this it equally afforded the possibility of his inadvertently running into some one. Once this nearly happened. His straining ears caught the faint sound of footsteps approaching, and he checked his companion only just in the nick of time to let two heavy-footed lumber-jacks cross their course directly in front of them. They were talking quite unguardedly as they went, and seemed absorbed in the subject of their conversation. "Y're a fool, a measly-headed fool, Tyke," one of them was saying, with a heat that held the two men listening. "Y'ain't got nuthin' to lose. We ain't got no kick comin' from us; I'll allow that, sure. But if by kickin' we ken drain a few more dollars out of him I say kick, an' kick good an' hard. Them as is fixin' this racket knows, they'll do the fancy work. We'll jest set around an'--an' take the boodle as it comes." The man laughed harshly. The shrewdness of his argument pleased him mightily. "But what's it for, though?" asked the other, the man addressed as "Tyke." "Is it a raise in wages?" "Say, ain't you smart?" retorted the first speaker. "Sure, it's wages. A raise. What else does folks strike for?" "But----" "Cut it. You ain't no sort o' savee. You ain't got nuthin' but to set around----" The voice died away in the distance, and Mason turned to his companion. "Not much doubt about that. The man objecting is 'Tyke' Bacon, one of our oldest hands. A thoroughly reliable axeman of the real sort. The other fellow's voice I didn't recognize. I'd say he's likely one of the scallywags I've picked up lately. This trouble seems to have been brewing ever since I was forced to pick up chance loafers who floated into camp." Chepstow had no comment to make, yet the matter was fraught with the keenest interest for him. Mason's coolness did not deceive him, and, even with his limited experience of the men of these camps, the thing was more than significant. Caution became more than ever necessary now as they neared their destination, and in a few moments a ruddy glow of light on the screen of fog told them they had reached the sutler's store. They came to a halt in rear of the building, and it was difficult to estimate their exact position. However, the sound of a powerful, clarion-like voice reached them through the thickness of the log walls, and the lumberman at once proceeded to grope his way along in the hope of finding a window or some opening through which it would be possible to distinguish the words of the speaker. At last his desire was fulfilled. A small break in the heavy wall of lateral logs proved to be a cotton-covered pivot-window. It was closed, but the light shone through it, and the speaker's words were plainly audible. Chepstow closed up behind him, and both men craned forward listening. Some one was addressing what was apparently a meeting of lumber-jacks. The words and voice were not without refinement, and, obviously, were not belonging to a lumberman. Moreover, it struck the listeners that this man, whoever he be, was not addressing a meeting for the first time. In fact Mason had no difficulty in placing him in the calling to which he actually belonged. He was discoursing with all the delectable speciousness of a regular strike organizer. He was one of those products of trade unionism who are always ready to create dissatisfaction where labour's contentment is most nourishing to capital--that is, at a price. He is not necessarily a part of trade unionism, but exists because trade unionism has created a market for his wares, and made him possible. Just now he was lending all his powers of eloquence and argument to the threadbare quackery of his kind; the iniquity of the possession of wealth acquired by the sweat of a thousand moderately honest brows. It was the old, old dish garnished and hashed up afresh, whose poisonous odors he was wafting into the nostrils of his ignorant audience. He was dealing with men as ignorant and hard as the timber it was their life to cut, and he painted the picture in all the crude, lurid colors most effective to their dull senses. The blessings of liberal employment, of ample wages, the kindly efforts made to add to their happiness and improve their lives were ignored, even rigorously shut out of his argument, or so twisted as to appear definite sins against the legions of labor. For such is the method of those who live upon the hard-earned wages of the unthinking worker. For some minutes the two men listened to the burden of the man's unctuous periods, but at last an exclamation of disgust broke from the lumberman. "Makes you sick!" he whispered in his companion's ear. "And they'll believe it all. Here!" He drew a penknife from his pocket and passed the blade gently through the cotton of the window. The aperture was small, he dared not make it bigger for fear of detection, but, by pressing one eye close up against it, it was sufficient for him to obtain a full view of the room. The place was packed with lumber-jacks, all with their keenest attention upon the speaker, who was addressing them from the reading-desk Tom Chepstow had set up for the purposes of his Sunday evening service. The desecration drew a smothered curse from the lumberman. He was not a religious man, but that an agitator such as this should stand at the parson's desk was too much for him. He scrutinized the fellow closely, nor did he recognize him. He was a stranger to the camp, and his round fat face set his blood surging. Besides this man there were three others sitting behind him on the table the parson had set there for the purposes of administering Holy Communion, and the sight maddened him still more. Two of these he recognized as laborers he had recently taken on his "time sheet," but the other was a stranger to him. At last he drew back and made way for his companion. "Get a good look, parson," he said. Then he added with an angry laugh, "I've thought most of what you'll feel like saying. I'd--I'd like to riddle the hide of that son-of-a-dog's-wife. We did well to get around. We're in for a heap bad time, I guess." Chepstow took his place. Mason heard him mutter something under his breath, and knew at once that the use of his reading-desk and Communion table had struck home. But the sacrilege was promptly swept from the parson's mind. The speaker was forgotten, the matter of the coming strike, even, was almost forgotten. He had recognized the third man on the table, the man who was a stranger to Mason, and he swung round on the lumberman. "What's Jim Truscott doing there?" he demanded in a sharp whisper. "Who? Jim Truscott?" For a second a puzzled expression set Mason frowning. Then his face cleared. "Say, isn't that the fellow who ran that mill--he's a friend of--Dave's?" But the other had turned back to the window. And, at that moment, Mason's attention was also caught by the sudden turn the agitator's talk had taken. "Now, my friends," he was saying, "this is the point I would impress on you. Hitherto we have cut off all communication of a damaging nature to ourselves with the tyrant at Malkern, but the time has come when even more stringent measures must be taken. We wish to conduct our negotiations with the mill-owner himself, direct. We must put before him our proposals. We want no go-betweens. As things stand we cannot reach him, and the reason is the authority of his representative up here. Such obstacles as he can put in our way will be damaging to our cause, and we will not tolerate them. He must be promptly set aside, and, by an absolute stoppage of work, we can force the man from Malkern to come here so that we can talk to him, and insist upon our demands. We must talk to him as from worker to fellow worker. He must be forced to listen to reason. Experience has long since taught me that such is the only way to deal with affairs of this sort. Now, what we propose," and the man turned with a bow to the three men behind him, thus including them with himself, "is that without violence we take possession of these camps and strike all work, and, securing the person of Mr. Mason, and any others likely to interfere with us, we hold them safe until all our plans are fully put through. During the period necessary for the cessation of work, each man will draw an allowance equal to two-thirds of his wages, and he will receive a guarantee of employment when the strike is ended. The sutler, Mr. Lieberstein here, will be the treasurer of the strike funds, and pay each man his daily wage. There is but one thing more I have to say. We intend to take the necessary precautions against interference to-night. The cessation of work will date from this hour. And in the meantime we will put to the vote----" Chepstow, his keen eyes blazing, turned and faced the lumberman. "The scoundrels!" he said, with more force than discretion. "Did you hear? It means----" The lumberman chuckled, but held up a warning hand. "They're going to take me prisoner," he said. Then he added grimly, "There's going to be a warm time to-night." But the churchman was not listening. Again his thought had reverted to the presence of Jim Truscott at that meeting. "What on earth is young Truscott doing in there?" he asked. "He went away east the night I set out for these hills. What's he got to do with that--that rascally agitator? Why--he must be one of the--leaders of this thing. It's--it's most puzzling!" Chepstow's puzzlement did not communicate itself to Mason. The camp "boss" was less interested in the identity of these people than in the strike itself. It was his work to see that so much lumber was sent down the river every day. That was his responsibility. Dave looked to him. And he was face to face with a situation which threatened the complete annihilation of all his employer's schemes. A strike effectually carried out might be prolonged indefinitely, and then-- "Look here, parson," he said coolly, "I want you to stay right here for a minute or so. They aren't likely to be finished for a while inside there. I want to 'prospect.' I want to find that buckboard. That damned agitator--'scuse the language--must have come up in it, so I guess it's near handy. The fog's good and thick, so there's not a heap of chance of anybody locating us, still----" he paused and glanced into the churchman's alert eyes. "Have a look to your gun," he went on with a quiet smile, "and--well, you are a parson, but if anybody comes along and attempts to molest you I'd use it if I were in your place." Chepstow made no reply, but there was something in his look that satisfied the other. Mason hurried away and the parson, left alone, leant against the wall, prepared to wait for his return. In spite of the plot he had listened to, the presence of Jim Truscott in that room occupied most of his thoughts. It was most perplexing. He tried every channel of supposition and argument, but none gave him any satisfactory explanation. One thing alone impressed its importance on his mind. That was the necessity of conveying a warning to Dave. But he remembered they--these conspirators--had cut communications. Mason and probably he were to be made prisoners. His ire roused. He blazed into a sudden fury. These rascals were to make them prisoners. Almost unconsciously he drew his gun from his pocket and turned to the window. As he did so the sound of approaching footsteps set him alert and defensive. He swung his back to the wall again, and, gun in hand, stood ready. The next moment he hurriedly returned the weapon to his pocket, but not before Mason had seen the attitude and the fighting expression of his face, and it set him smiling. "I've found the buckboard," he said in a whisper. Then he paused and looked straight into the churchman's eyes. "We're up against it," he went on. "Maybe you as well as myself. You can't tell where these fellows'll draw the line. And there's Miss Betty to think of, too. Are you ready to buck? Are you game? You're a parson, I know, and these things----" "Get to it, boy," Chepstow interrupted him sharply. "I am of necessity a man of peace, but there are things that become a man's duty. And it seems to me to hit hard will better serve God and man just now than to preach peace. What's your plan?" Mason smiled. He knew he had read the parson aright. He knew he had in him a staunch and loyal support. He liked, too, the phrase by which he excused his weakness for combat. "Well, I mean to do this sponge-faced crawler down, or break my neck in the attempt. I don't intend to be made a prisoner by any damned strikers. This thing means ruin to Dave, and it's up to me to help him out. I'm going to get word through to him. I understand now how our letters have been intercepted, and no doubt his have been stopped too. I'm going to have a flutter in this game. It's a big one, and makes me feel good. What say? Are you game?" "For anything!" exclaimed the parson with eyes sparkling. "Well, there's not a heap of time to waste in talk. I'll just get you to slip back to the dugout. Gather some food and truck into a sack, and a couple of guns or so, and some ammunition. Then get Miss Betty and slip out. Hike on down the trail a hundred yards or so and wait for me. Can you make it?" Chepstow nodded. "And you?" he asked. "I'm going to get possession of that buckboard, and--come right along. The scheme's rotten, I know. But it's the best I can think of at the moment. It's our only chance of warning Dave. There's not a second to spare now, so cut along. You've got to prepare for a two days' journey." "Anything else?" "Nothing. Miss Betty's good grit--in case----?" Chepstow nodded. "Game all through. How long can you give me?" "Maybe a half hour." "Good. I can make it in that." "Right. S'long." "S'long." CHAPTER XXI AN ADVENTURE IN THE FOG Tom Chepstow set out for the dugout. Churchman as he was his blood was stirred to fighting heat, his lean, hard muscles were tingling with a nervous desire for action. Nor did he attempt to check his feelings, or compose them into a condition compatible with his holy calling. Possibly, when the time had passed for action, and the mantle of peace and good-will toward all men had once more fallen upon him, he would bitterly regret his outbreak, but, for the moment, he was a man, human, passionate, unreasoning, thrilling with the joy of life, and the delight of a moral truancy from all his accepted principles. No schoolboy could have broken the bonds of discipline with a greater joy, and his own subconscious knowledge of wrong-doing was no mar to his pleasure. The fog was thick, but it did not cause him great inconvenience. He took to the woods for his course, and, keeping close to the edge which encircled the camp clearing, he had little difficulty in striking the path to the dugout. This achieved he had but to follow it carefully. The one possibility that caused him any anxiety was lest he should overshoot the hut in the fog. But he need have had no fear of this. Dense as the fog was, the lights of the dugout were plainly visible when he came to it. Betty, with careful forethought, had set the oil lamps in the two windows. She quite understood the difficulties of that forest land, and she had no desire for the men-folk to spend the night roaming the wilderness. The parson found her calmly alert. She did not fly at him with a rush of questions. She was far more composed than he, yet there was a sparkling brilliancy in her brown eyes which told of feelings strongly controlled; her eyelids were well parted, and there was a shade of quickening in the dilation of her nostrils as she breathed. She looked up into his face as he turned after closing the door, and his tongue answered the mute challenge. "There's to be a great game to-night," he said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. The tone, the action, both served to point the state of his mind. Knowing him as she did Betty needed no words to tell her that the "game" was to be no sort of play. "It's a 'strike,'" he went on. "A strike, and a bad one. They intend to make a prisoner of Mason, and, maybe, of us. We've got to outwit them. Now, help me get some things together, and I'll tell you while we get ready. We've got to quit to-night." He picked up a gunny sack while he was speaking and gave it to Betty to hold open. Then he immediately began to deplete the lumberman's larder of any eatables that could be easily carried. Ever since the men had left her this strike had been in Betty's mind, so his announcement in no way startled her. "What of Dave?" she asked composedly. "Has he any--idea of it?" "That's just it. We've got to let him know. He's quite in the dark. Communications cut. Mason must get away at once to let him know. He intends to 'jump' their buckboard and team--I mean these strikers' buckboard." He laughed. He felt ready to laugh at most things. It was not that he did not care. His desire was inspired by the thought that he was to play a part in the "game." "The one that came in to-night?" Betty asked, taking up a fresh sack to receive some pots and blankets. "Yes." "And we are to bolt with him?" she went on in a peculiar manner. Her uncle paused in the act of putting firearms and ammunition into the sack. Her tone checked his enthusiasm. Then he laughed. "We're not 'bolting' Betty, we're escaping so that Dave may get the news. His fortune depends on our success. Remember our communications are cut." But his arguments fell upon deaf ears. Betty smiled and shook her brown head. "We're bolting, uncle. Listen. There's no need for us to go. In fact, we can't go. Think for a moment. Things depend on the speed with which Dave learns of the trouble. We should make two more in the buckboard of which the horses are already tired. Mason, by himself, will travel light. Besides, a girl is a deterrent when it comes to--fighting. No, wait." She held up a warning finger as he was about to interrupt. "Then there are the sick here. We cannot leave them. They--are our duty. Besides, Dave's interests would be ill served if we left the fever to continue its ravages unchecked." In her last remark Betty displayed her woman's practical instinct. Perhaps she was not fully aware of her real motive. Perhaps she conscientiously believed that it was their duty that claimed her. Nevertheless her thought was for the man she loved, and it guided her every word and action; it inspired her. The threat of imprisonment up here did not frighten her, did not even enter into her considerations at all. Dave--her every nerve vibrated with desire to help him, to save him. Chepstow suddenly reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. His enthusiasm had passed, and, for the moment, the churchman in him was uppermost again. "You're right, Betty," he said with decision. "We stay here." The girl's eyes thanked him, but her words were full of practical thought. "Will Mason come here? Because, if so, we'll get these things outside ready." "No. We've got to carry them down the trail and meet him there. There may be a rush. There may be a scuffle. We don't know. I half think you'd better stay here while I go and meet him." Betty shook her head. "I'm going to help," she exclaimed, with a flash of battle in her eyes. "Then come on." Her uncle shouldered the heavier of the two sacks, and was about to tuck the other under his arm, but Betty took it from him, and lifted it to her shoulder in a twinkling. "Halves," she cried, as she moved toward the door. The man laughed light-heartedly and blew out the lights. Then, as he reached the girl's side, a distant report caused him to stop short. "What's that?" he demanded. "A pistol shot," cried Betty. "Come along!" They ran out of the hut and down the trail, and, in a moment, were swallowed up in the fog. * * * * * Bob Mason intended to give Chepstow a fair start. He knew, if he were to be successful, his task would occupy far less time than the other's. And a vital point in his scheme lay in meeting his two friends at the appointed spot. He was fully alive to the rank audacity of his plan. It was desperate, and the chances were heavily against him. But he was not a man to shrink from an undertaking on such a score. He had to warn Dave, and this was the only means that suggested itself. If he were not a genius of invention, he was at least full of courage and determination. On his previous reconnoitre he had located the buckboard at the tying-posts in front of the store. Quite why it had been left there he could not understand, unless the strike-leader intended leaving camp that night. However, the point of interest lay in the fact of the vehicle and horses being there ready for his use if he could only safely possess himself of them, so speculation as to the reason of its being there was only of secondary interest. When he made his first move Tom Chepstow had been gone some ten minutes. He groped his way carefully along the wall until the front angle of the building was reached, and here he paused to ascertain the position of things. The meeting was still in progress inside, and, as yet, there seemed to be no sign of its breaking up. The steady hum of voices that reached him told him this. About twenty yards directly in front of him was the buckboard; while to the right, perhaps half that distance away, was the open door of the store, and adjacent to it a large glass window. Both were lit up, and the glow from the oil lamps shone dully on the fog bank. He was half inclined to reconnoitre these latter to ascertain if any one were about, but finally decided to go straight for his goal and chance everything. With this intention he moved straight out from the building and vanished in the fog. He walked quickly. Fortune favored him until he was within a few yards of the tying-post, when suddenly the clanging of an iron-handled bucket being set roughly upon the ground brought him to a dead standstill. Some one was tending the horses--probably watering them. Evidently they were being got ready for a journey. Almost unconsciously his hand went to the pocket in which he carried his revolver. At that moment a roar of applause came from the store, and he knew the meeting was drawing to a close. Then came a prolonged cheering, followed by the raucous singing of "He's a jolly good fellow." It _was_ the end. He could delay no longer. Taking his bearings as well as the fog would permit, he struck out for the tail end of the buckboard. He intended reaching the "near-side" of the horses, where he felt that the reins would be looped up upon the harness, and as the best means of avoiding the man with the bucket. In this he had little difficulty, and when he reached the vehicle he bent low, and, passing clear of the wheels, drew up toward the horses' heads. By this time the man with the bucket was moving away, and he breathed more freely. But his relief was short-lived. The men were already pouring out of the store, and the fog-laden air was filled with the muffled tones of many voices. To add to his discomfiture he further became aware of footsteps approaching. He could delay no longer. He dared not wait to let them pass. Then, they might be the owners of the buckboard. His movements became charged with almost electrical activity. He reached out and assured himself that the bits were in the horses' mouths. Then he groped for the reins; as he expected, they were looped in the harness. Possessing himself of them, he reached for the collar-chain securing the horses to the posts. He pressed the swivel open, and, releasing it, lowered the chain noiselessly. And a moment later two men loomed up out of the fog on the "off-side." They were talking, and he listened. "It's bad med'cine you leaving to-night," he heard the voice of the strike-leader say in a grumbling tone. "I can't help that," came the response. It was a voice he did not recognize. "Well, we've got to secure this man Mason to-night. You can't trust these fellows a heap. Give 'em time, and some one will blow the game. Then he'll be off like a rabbit." "Well, it's up to you to get him," the strange voice retorted sharply. "I'm paying you heavily. You've undertaken the job. Besides, there's that cursed parson and his niece up here. I daren't take a chance of their seeing me. I oughtn't to have come up here at all. If Lieberstein hadn't been such a grasping pig of a Jew there would have been no need for my coming. You've just got to put everything through on your own, Walford. I'm off." Mason waited for no more. The buckboard belonged to the stranger, and he was about to use it. He laughed inwardly, and his spirits rose. Everything was ready. He dropped back to the full extent of the reins as stealthily and as swiftly as possible. This cleared him of the buckboard and hid him from the view of the men. Then with a rein in each hand he slapped them as sharply as he could on the quarters of the cold and restless horses. They jumped at the neck-yoke, and with a "yank" he swung them clear of the tying-posts. He shouted at them and slapped the reins again, and the only too willing beasts plunged into a gallop. He heard an exclamation from one of the men as the buckboard shot past them, and the other made a futile grab for the off-side rein. For himself he seized the rail of the carryall with one hand and gave a wild leap. He dropped into the vehicle safely but with some force, and his legs were left hanging over the back. But he had not cleared the danger yet. He was in the act of drawing in his legs when they were seized in an arm embrace, and the whole weight of a man hung upon him in an effort to drag him off the vehicle. There was no time to consider. He felt himself sliding over the rail, which only checked his progress for an instant. But that instant gave him a winning chance. He drew his revolver, and leveling it, aimed point-blank at where he thought the man's shoulder must be. There was a loud report, and the grip on his legs relaxed. The man dropped to the ground, and he was left to scramble to his feet and climb over into the driving-seat. A blind, wild drive was that race from the store. He drove like a fury in the fog, trusting to the instinct of the horses and the luck of the reckless to guide him into the comparative safety of the eastward trail. As the horses flew over the ground the cries of the strikers filled the air. They seemed to come from every direction, even ahead. The noise, the rattle of the speeding wheels, fired his excitement. The fog--the dense gray pall that hung over the whole camp--was his salvation, and he shouted back defiance. It was a useless and dangerous thing to do, and he realized his folly at once. A great cry instantly went up from the strikers. He was recognized, and his name was shouted in execration. He only laughed. There was joy in the feel of the reins, in the pulling of the mettlesome horses. They were running strong and well within themselves. It was only a matter of seconds from the time of his start to the moment when he felt the vehicle bump heavily over a series of ruts. He promptly threw his weight on the near-side rein, and the horses swung round. It was the trail he was looking for. And as the horses settled down to it he breathed more freely. It was only after this point had been gained and passed that he realized the extent of his previous risk. He knew that the entrance to the trail on its far side was lined by log shanties, and he had been driving straight for them. In the midst of his freshly-acquired ease of mind came a sudden and unpleasant recollection. He remembered the path through the woods to the dugout; it was shorter than the trail he was on by nearly a mile. While he had over a mile and a half to go, those in pursuit, if they took to the path, had barely half. He listened. But he knew beforehand that his fears were only too well founded. Yes, he could hear them. The voices of the pursuers sounded away to the left. They were abreast of him. They had taken to the woods. He snatched the whip from its socket and laid it heavily across the horses' backs, and the animals stretched out into a race. The buckboard jumped, it rattled and shrieked. The pace was terrific. But he was ready to take every chance now, so long as he could gain sufficient time to take up those he knew to be waiting for him ahead. In another few minutes he would know the worst--or the best. Again and again he urged his horses. But already they were straining at the top of their speed. They galloped as though the spirit of the race had entered their willing souls. They could do no more than they were doing; it was only cruelty to flog them. If their present speed was insufficient then he could not hope to outstrip the strikers. If he only could hear their voices dropping behind. The minutes slipped by. The fog worried him. He was watching for the dugout, and he feared lest he should pass it unseen. Nor could he estimate the distance he had come. Hark! the shouts of the pursuers were drawing nearer, and--they were still abreast of him! He must be close on the dugout. He peered into the fog, and suddenly a dark shadow at the trail-side loomed up. There was no mistaking it. It was the hut; and it was in darkness. His friends must be on ahead. How far! that was the question. On that depended everything. What was that? The hammering of heavy feet on the hard trail sounded directly behind him. He had gained nothing. Then he thought of that halt that yet remained in front of him, and something like panic seized him. He slashed viciously at his horses. He felt like a man obsessed with the thought of trailing bloodhounds. He must keep on, on. There must be no pause, no rest, or the ravening pack would fall on him and rend him. Yet he knew that halt must come. He was gaining rapidly enough now. Without that halt they could never come up with him. But--his ears were straining for Chepstow's summons. Every second it was withheld was something gained. He possessed a frantic hope that some guiding spirit might have induced the churchman to take up a position very much further on than he had suggested. "Hallo!" The call had come. Chepstow was at the edge of the trail. Mason's hopes dropped to zero. He abandoned himself to the inevitable, flung his weight on the reins, and brought his horses to a stand with a jolt. "Where's Miss Betty?" he demanded. But his ears caught the sound of the men behind him, and he hurried on without waiting for a reply. "Quick, parson! The bags! fling 'em in, and jump for it! They're close behind!" "Betty's gone back," cried Chepstow, flinging the sacks into the carryall. "I'm going back too. You go on alone. We've got the sick to see to. Tell Dave we're all right. So long! Drive on! Good luck! Eh?" A horrified cry from Mason had caused the final ejaculation. He was pointing at the off-side horse standing out at right angles to the pole. "For God's sake, fix that trace," he cried. "Quick, man! It's unhooked! Gee! What infern----" Chepstow sprang to secure the loosened trace. He, too, could hear the pursuers close behind. He fumbled the iron links in his anxiety, and it took some moments to adjust. "Right," he cried at last, after what seemed an interminable time. Mason whipped up his horses, and they sprang to their traces. But as they did so there was a sudden rush from behind, and a figure leapt on to the carryall. The buckboard rocked and the driver, in the act of shouting at his horses, felt himself seized by the throat from behind. Fortunately the churchman saw it all. His blood rushed to his brain. As the buckboard was sweeping past him he caught the iron rail and leapt. In an instant he was on his feet and had closed with Mason's assailant. He, too, went for the throat, with all the ferocity of a bulldog. The mantle of the church was cast to the winds. He was panting with the lust for fight, and he crushed his fingers deep into the man's windpipe. They dropped together on the sacks. Mason, released, dared not turn. He plied his whip furiously. He had the legs of his pursuers and he meant to add to his distance. He heard the struggle going on behind him. He heard the gasp of a choking man. And, listening, he reveled in it as men of his stamp will revel in such things. "Choke him, parson! Choke the swine!" he hurled viciously over his shoulder. He got no answer. The struggle went on in silence, and presently Mason began to fear for the result. He slackened his horses down and glanced back. Tom Chepstow's working features looked up into his. "I've got him," he said: then of a sudden he looked anxiously down at the man he was kneeling on. "He's--he's unconscious. I hope---- You'd better pull up." "I wish you'd choke the life out of him," cried Mason furiously. "I did my best, I'm afraid," the parson replied ruefully. "You'd better pull up." But the lumberman kept on. "Half a minute. Get these matches, and have a look at him. I'll slow down." The churchman seized the matches, and, in his anxiety at what he had done, struck several before he got one burning long enough to see the unconscious man's face. Finally he succeeded, and an ejaculation of surprise broke from him. "Heavens! It's Jim Truscott!" he cried. He pressed his hand over the man's heart. "Thank God! he's alive," he added. Mason drew up sharply. A sudden change had come over his whole manner. He sprang to the ground. "Here, help me secure him," he said almost fiercely. "I'll take him down to Dave." They lashed their prisoner by his hands and feet. Then Mason seized the churchman excitedly by the arm. "Get back, parson!" he cried. "Get back to the dugout quick as hell'll let you! There's Miss Betty!" "God! I'd forgotten! And there's those--strikers!" CHAPTER XXII TERROR IN THE MOUNTAINS Fear drove Chepstow headlong for the dugout. Mason's words, his tone and manner, had served to excite him to a pitch closely bordering upon absolute terror. What of Betty? Over and over again he asked himself what might not happen to her, left alone at the mercy of these savages? What if, baulked of their prey, they turned to loot and wreck his hut? It was more than possible. To his fear-stricken imagination it was inevitable. His gorge rose and he sickened at the thought, and he raced through the fog to the girl's help. The self-torture he suffered in those weary minutes was exquisite. He railed at his own criminal folly in letting her leave his side. He reviled Mason and his wild schemes. Dave and his interests were banished from his mind. The well-being of Malkern, of the mills, of anybody in the world but the helpless girl, mattered not at all to him. It was Betty--of Betty alone he thought. An innocent girl in the hands of such ruthless brutes as these strikers--what could she do? It was a maddening thought. He prayed to Heaven as he went, that he might be in time, and his prayers rang with a fervor such as they never possessed in his vocation as a churchman. And this mood alternated with another, which was its direct antithesis. The vicious thoughts of a man roused to battle ran through his brain in a fiery torrent. His whole outlook upon life underwent a change. All the kindly impulses of his heart, all the teachings of his church, all his best Christian beliefs, fell from him, and left him the naked, passionate man. Churchman, good Christian he undoubtedly was, but, before all things, he was a man; and just now a man in fighting mood. It probably took him less than twenty minutes to make the return journey, yet it seemed to him hours--he certainly endured hours of mental anguish. But at last it ended with almost ludicrous abruptness. In the obscurity of the fog he was brought to a halt by impact with the walls of the dugout. He recovered himself and stood for a moment listening. There was no sound of any one within, nor was there any sign of the strikers. He moved round to the door; a beam of light shone beneath it. He breathed more freely. Then, to his dismay, at his first touch, the door swung open. His fears leapt again, he dreaded what that open door might disclose. Then, in the midst of his fears, a cry of relief and joy broke from him. "Thank God, you're safe!" he exclaimed, as he rushed into the room. Betty looked up from the work in her lap. She was seated beside the box-stove sewing. Her calmness was in flat contrast to her uncle's excited state. She smiled gently, and her soft eyes had in them a questioning humor that had a steadying effect upon the man. "Safe? Why, dear, of course I'm safe," she said. "But--I was a little anxious about you. You were so long getting back. Did Bob Mason get safely away?" Chepstow laughed. "Yes, oh yes. _He_ got away safely." "He?" The work lay in Betty's lap, and her fingers had become idle. "Yes. But we captured one of the strikers." The parson suddenly turned to the door and barred it securely. Then, as he went on, he crossed to the windows, and began to barricade them. "Yes, we had a busy time. They were hard on his heels when he pulled up for me. We nailed the foremost. He jumped on the buckboard and almost strangled Mason. I jumped on it too, and--and almost strangled him." He laughed harshly. His blood was still up. Betty bent over her work and her expressive face was hidden. "Who was he? I mean your prisoner. Did you recognize him, or was he a new hand?" Chepstow's laugh abruptly died out. He had suddenly remembered who his prisoner was; and he tried to ignore the question. "Oh, yes, we recognized him. But," he went on hurriedly, "we must get some supper. I think we are in for a busy time." But Betty was not so easily put off. Besides, her curiosity was roused by her uncle's evident desire to avoid the subject. "Who was he?" she demanded again. There was no escape, and the man knew it. Betty could be very persistent. "Eh? Oh, I'm afraid it was Jim--Jim Truscott," he said reluctantly. Betty rose from her chair without a word. She stirred the fire in the cook-stove, and began to prepare a supper of bacon and potatoes and tea, while her uncle went on with his task of securing the windows. It was the latter who finally broke the silence. "Has any one--has anybody been here?" he asked awkwardly. Betty did not look up from her work. "Two men paid me a visit," she said easily. "One asked for you. He seemed angry. I--I told him you had gone over to the sick camp--that you were coming back to supper. He laughed--fiercely. He said if you didn't come back I'd find myself up against it. Then he hurried off--and I was glad." "And the other?" Chepstow's work was finished. He had crossed over and was standing beside the cook-stove. His question came with an undercurrent of fierceness that Betty was unused to, but she smiled up into his face. "The other? I think he had been drinking. He was one of those two I met in the woods. He asked me why I hadn't taken his warning. I told him I was considering it. He leered at me and said it was too late, and assured me I must take the consequences. Then he--tried to kiss me. It was rather funny." "Funny? Great Heavens! And you----" Betty's smile broadened as she pointed to a heavy revolver lying in the chair she had just vacated. "I didn't have any trouble. I told him there were five barrels in that, all loaded, and each barrel said he'd better get out." "Did--did he go?" Chepstow could scarcely control his fury. But Betty answered him in a quiet determined manner. "Not until I had emptied one of them," she said. Then with a rueful smile she added, "But it went very wide of its mark." Her uncle tried to laugh, but the result was little better than a furious snort. "Why did you leave the door open?" he inquired a moment later. "Well, you were out. You might have returned in--in a hurry and---- But sit down, uncle dear, food's ready." The man sat down and Betty stood by to supply him with all he needed. Then he noticed she had only prepared food for one. "Why, child, what about you?" he demanded kindly. "I've had some biscuits and tea, before you came in. I'm not hungry. Now don't bother about it, dear. Yes, I am quite well." She shook her head and smiled at him as he attempted to interrupt her, but the smile was a mere cloak to her real feelings. She had eaten before he came in, as she said. But if she hadn't she could have eaten nothing now. Her mind was swept with a hot tide of anxious thought. She had a thousand and one questions unanswered, and she knew it would be useless putting any one of them to her kindly, impetuous uncle. He was to her the gentlest of guardians, but quite impossible as a confidant for her woman's fears, her woman's passionate desire to help the man she loved. He was staunch and brave, and in what might lay before them she could have no better companion, no better champion, but where the subtleties of her woman's feelings were concerned there could be no confidence in him. She watched him eat in silence, and, presently, when he looked up at her, her soft brown eyes were lit by an almost maternal regard for him. He had no understanding of that look, and Betty knew it, otherwise it would not have been there. "I can't understand it all," he said. "Jim is a worse--a worse rascal than I thought. I believe he's not only in this strike, but one of the organizers. Why? That's what I can't make out. Is it mischief--wanton mischief? Is it jealousy of Dave's success? It's a puzzle I can't solve anyhow. After all his protestations to me the thing's inconceivable. It's enough to destroy all one's belief in human nature." "Or strengthen it." "Eh?" "It is only natural for people to err," Betty said seriously. "And having erred it is human nature, whatever our motives, however good our intentions, to find that the mire into which we have fallen sucks hard. It is more often than not the floundering to save ourselves that drives us deeper into it. Poor Jim. He needs our pity and help, just as we so often need help." Her uncle stared into the grave young face. His astonishment kept him silent for a moment. He pushed impatiently away from the table. But it was not until Betty had moved back to her chair at the stove that he found words to express himself. He was angry, quite angry with her. It was not that he was really unchristian, but when he thought of all that this strike meant, he felt that sympathy for the man who was possibly the cause of it was entirely out of place. "Truscott needs none of your pity, Betty," he said sharply. "If pity be needed it is surely for those whom one man's mischief will harm. Do you know what this strike means, child? Before it reaches the outside of these camps it will turn a tide of vice loose upon the men themselves. They will drink, gamble. They will quarrel and fight. And when such men fight it more often than not results in some terrible tragedy. Then, like some malignant cuttlefish, this strike will grope its crushing feelers out from here, its lair, seeking prey on which to fix its sucking tentacles. They will reach Malkern, and work will be paralyzed. That means ruin to more than half the villagers who depend upon their weekly wage. It goes further than that. The mills will shut down. And if the mills shut, good-bye to all trade in Malkern. It means ruin for everybody. It means the wrecking of all Dave's hopes--hopes which have for their object the welfare of the people of our valley. It is a piece of rascality that nothing can justify. Jim Truscott does not need our pity. It is the penitentiary he needs. Betty, I'm--I'm----" But Betty looked up with passionate, glowing eyes from the work she had resumed. "Do you think I don't know what it means, uncle?" she demanded, with a depth of feeling that silenced him instantly. "Do you think because I pity poor Jim that I do not understand the enormity of his wickedness in this matter? Have I spent the best part of my life in our valley carrying on the work that has fallen to my share--work that has been my joy and happiness to do--without understanding the cruelty which this strike means to our people, those who are powerless to help themselves against it? Do you think I don't understand what it means to Dave? Oh, uncle, if you but knew," she went on reproachfully. "I know it means practically the end of all things for Dave if his contract fails. I know that he is all out for the result. That his resources are even now taxed to their uttermost limit, and that only the smooth running of the work can save him from a disaster that will involve us all. If I had a man's strength there is nothing I would not do to serve him. If my two hands, if my brain could assist him in the smallest degree, he would not need to ask for them. They are his--his!" she cried, with a passion that thrilled the listening man. "You are angry with me because I feel sorry for an erring man. I _am_ sorry for him. Yet should evil come to our valley--to Dave--through his work, no wildcat would show him less mercy than I. Oh, why am I not a man with two strong hands?" she cried despairingly. "Why am I condemned to be a useless burden to those I love? Oh, Dave, Dave," she cried with a sudden self-abandonment, so passionate, so overwhelming that it alarmed her uncle, "why can't I help you? Why can't I stand beside you and share in your battles with these two hands?" She held out her arms, in a gesture of appeal. Then they dropped to her side. In a moment she turned almost fiercely upon her uncle, swept on by a tide of feeling long pent up behind the barrier of her woman's reserve, but now no longer possible of restraint. "I love him! I love him! I know! You are ashamed for me! I can see it in your face! You think me unwomanly! You think I have outraged the conventions which hem our sex in! And what if I have? I don't care! I care for nothing and no one but him! He is the world to me--the whole, wide world. I love him so I would give my life for him. Oh, uncle, I love him, and I am powerless to help him." She sank into her chair, and buried her face in her hands. Blame, displeasure, contempt, nothing mattered. The woman was stirred, let loose; the calm strength which was so great a part of her character, had been swept aside by her passion, which saw only the hopelessness with which this strike confronted the man she loved. Chepstow watched her for some moments. He was no longer alarmed. His heart ached for her, and he wanted to comfort her. But it was not easy for him. At last he moved close to her side, and laid a hand upon her bowed head. The action was full of a tender, even reverential sympathy. And it was that, more than his words, which helped to comfort the woman's stricken heart. "You're a good child, Betty," he said awkwardly. "And--and I'm glad you love him. Dave will win out. Don't you fear. It is the difficulties he has had to face that have made him the man he is. Remember Mason has got away, and---- What's that?" Something crashed against the door and dropped to the ground outside. Though the exclamation had broken from the man he needed no answer. It was a stone. A stone hurled with vicious force. Betty sat up. Her face had suddenly returned to its usual calm. She looked up into her uncle's eyes, and saw that the light of battle had been rekindled there. Her own eyes brightened. She, too, realized that battle was imminent. They were two against hundreds. Her spirit warmed. Her recent hopelessness passed and she sprang to her feet. "The cowards!" she cried. The man only laughed. CHAPTER XXIII THE RED TIDE OF ANARCHY Betty and her uncle spent the next few hours in preparing for eventualities. They explored the storeroom and armory, and in the latter they found ample provision for a stout defense. There were firearms in plenty, and such a supply of ammunition as should be sufficient to withstand a siege. The store of dynamite gave them some anxiety. It was dangerous where it was, in case of open warfare, but it would be still more dangerous in the hands of the strikers. Eventually they concealed it well under a pile of other stores in the hopes, in case of accident, it might remain undiscovered. During their preparations several more stones crashed against the walls and the door of the building. They were hurled at longish intervals, and seemed to be the work of one person. Then, finally no more were thrown, and futile as the attack had been, its cessation brought a certain relief and ease of mind. To the man it suggested the work of some drunken lumber-jack--perhaps the man who had been so forcibly rebuffed by Betty earlier in the evening. It was one o'clock when Chepstow took a final look round his barricades. Betty was sitting at the table with a fine array of firearms spread out before her. She had just finished loading the last one when her uncle came to her side. She looked up at him with quiet amusement in her eyes. "I was wondering," she said, with just a suspicion of satire in her manner, "whether we are in a state of siege, or--panic?" But her uncle's sense of humor was lacking at the moment. He saw only the gravity of his responsibility. "You'd best get to bed," he said a little severely. "I shall sit up. You must get all the rest you can. We do not know what may be in store for us." Betty promptly fell in with his mood. "But the sick?" she said. "We must visit them to-morrow. We cannot let them suffer." "No. We must wait and see what to-morrow brings forth. In the meantime----" He broke off, listening. Betty too had suddenly turned her eyes upon the barred door. There was a long pause, during which the murmur of many voices reached them, and the faint but distinct sound of tramping feet. The man's eyes grew anxious, his lean face was set and hard. It was easy enough to read his thoughts. He was weighing the possibilities of collision with these strikers, and calculating the chances in his favor. Betty seemed less disturbed. Her eyes were steady and interested rather than alarmed. "There's a crowd of them," said her uncle in a hushed voice. The girl listened for something which perhaps her uncle had forgotten. Sober, she did not expect much trouble from these people. If they had been drinking it would be different. The voices grew louder. The shuffling, clumping footsteps grew louder. They drew near. They were within a few yards of the building. Finally they stopped just outside the door. Instantly there was a loud hammering upon it, and a harsh demand for admittance. Neither stirred. "Open the door!" roared the voice, and the cry was taken up by others until it grew into a perfect babel of shouting and cursing. Betty moved to her uncle's side and laid a hand upon his arm. She looked up into his face and saw the storm-clouds of his anger gathering there. "We shall have to open it, uncle," she said. "That's--that's Tim Canfield's voice." He looked down into her eager young face. He saw no fear there. He feared, but not for himself: it was of her he was thinking. He wanted to open the door. He wanted to vent his anger in scathing defiance, but he was thinking of the girl in his charge. He was her sole protection. He knew, only too well, what "strike" meant to these men. It meant the turning of their savage passions loose upon brains all too untutored to afford them a semblance of control. Then there was the drink, and drink meant-- The clamor at the door was becoming terrific. He stirred, and, walking swiftly across the room, put his mouth to the jamb. "What do you want?" he shouted angrily. "What right have you to come here disturbing us at such an hour?" Instantly the noise dropped. Then he heard Tim's voice repeating his words to the crowd, and they were greeted with a laugh that had in it a note of rebellion. The laugh died out as the spokesman turned again to the door. "Open this gorl-durned door, or we'll bust it in!" he shouted. And a chorus of "Break it in!" was taken up by the crowd. The parson's anger leapt. His keen nerves were on edge in a moment. Even Betty's gentle eyes kindled. He turned to her, his eyes blazing. "Hand me a couple of guns!" he cried, in a voice that reached the men outside. "Get hold of a couple yourself! If there's to be trouble we'll take a hand!" Then he turned to the door, and his voice was thrilling with "fight." "I'll open the door to no one till I know what you want!" he shouted furiously. "Beat the door in! I warn you those who step inside will get it good and plenty! Beat away!" His words had instant effect. For several seconds there was not a sound on the other side of the door. Then some one muttered something, and instantly the crowd took up a fierce cry, urging their leaders on. But the men in front were not to be rushed into a reckless assault, and a fierce altercation ensued. Finally silence was restored, and Tim Canfield spoke again, but there was a conciliatory note in his voice this time. "You ken open it, passon," he said. "We're talkin' fair. We ain't nuthin' up agin you. We're astin' you to help us out some. Ef you open that door, me an' Mike Duggan'll step in, an' no one else. We'll tell you what's doin'. Ther' don't need be no shootin' to this racket." The churchman considered. The position was awkward. His anger was melting, but he knew that, for the moment, he had the whip hand. However, he also knew if he didn't open the door, ultimately force would certainly be used. These were not the men to be scared easily. But Betty was in his thoughts, and finally it was Betty who decided for him. "Open it," she whispered. "It's our best course. I don't think they mean any harm--yet." The man reluctantly obeyed, but only after some moments' hesitation. He withdrew the bars, and as the girl moved away beyond the stove, and sat down to her sewing, he stepped aside, covering the doorway with his two revolvers. "Only two of you!" he cried, as the door swung open. The two men came in and, turning quickly, shut the rest of the crowd out and rebarred the door. Then they confronted the churchman's two guns. There was something tremendously compelling in Chepstow's attitude and the light of battle that shone in his eyes. He meant business, and they knew it. Their respect for him rose, and they watched him warily until presently he lowered the guns to his side. He eyed them severely. They were men he knew, men who were real lumber-jacks, matured in the long service of Dave's mills, men who should have known better. They were powerfully built and grizzled, with faces and eyes as hard as their tremendous muscles. He knew the type well. It was the type he had always admired, and a type, once they were on the wrong path, he knew could be very, very dangerous. "Well, boys," he demanded, in a more moderate tone, yet holding them with the severity of his expression. "What's all this bother about? What do you mean by this intolerable--bulldozing?" The men suddenly discovered Betty at the far side of the stove. Her attitude was one of preoccupation in her sewing. It was pretense, but it looked natural. They abruptly pulled off their caps, and for the moment, seemed half abashed. But it was only for the moment. The next, Canfield turned on the churchman coldly. "You're actin' kind o' foolish, passon," he said. "It ain't no use talkin' gun-play when ther' ain't no need whatever. It's like to make things ridic'lous awkward, an' set the boys sore. We come along here peaceful to talk you fair----" "So you bring an army," broke in Chepstow, impatiently, "after holding a meeting at the store, and considering the advisability of making prisoners of my niece and me." "Who said?" demanded Tim fiercely. "I did," retorted Chepstow militantly. The promptness of his retort silenced the lumberman. He grinned, and leered round at his companion. "Well?" The parson's voice was getting sharper. "Well, it's like this, passon. Ther' ain't goin' to be no prisoner-makin' if you'll act reas'nable. Ther' ain't nuthin' up to you nor the leddy but wot's good an' clean. You've see to our boys who's sick, an' just done right by us--we can't say the same fer others. We just want you to come right along down to the camp. Ther's a feller bin shot by that all-fired skunk Mason, an' I guess he's jest busy bleedin' plumb to death. Will you come?" "Who is it?" The shortness of Chepstow's tone was uncompromising. The lumber-jack stirred uneasily. He glanced round at his companion. The churchman saw the look and understood. "Come on, Mike Duggan, out with it. I'm not going to be played with," he said. "Your mate doesn't seem easy about it. I suppose it's one of the ringleaders of your strike, and you want me to patch him up so he can go on with his dirty work. Well? I'm waiting." Duggan's eyes flashed. "Easy, passon," he said sharply. "The feller's name is Walford. You ain't like to know him fer sure. He's kind o' runnin' things fer us. He's hit in the shoulder bad." "Ah, it's that fellow who was speaking at your meeting. So he's got his medicine. Good. Well, you want me to fix him up?" The lumber-jacks nodded. "That's it," said Duggan cheerfully. Chepstow considered for a moment. Then he glanced over at Betty. Their eyes met, and his had a smile of encouragement in them. He turned back at once to the waiting men. "I'll help you, but on one or two conditions. I demand my own conditions absolutely. They're easy, but I won't change them or moderate them by a single detail." "Get to it, passon," said Canfield, as he paused. "Make 'em easy, an' ther' won't be no kick comin'." "You must bring the fellow here, and leave him with us until he is sufficiently recovered. Any of you can come and see him, if he's not too sick. Then you must give me a guarantee that my niece and I can visit the sick camp to tend the boys up there without any sort of molestation. You understand? You must guarantee this. You must guarantee that we are in no way interfered with, and if at any time we are out of this hut, no one will enter it without our permission. We are here for peace. We are here to help your sick comrades. Your affairs with your employers have nothing to do with us. Is it a deal?" "Why sure, passon," replied Duggan. And Tim nodded his approval. "It's folks like you makes things easy fer us," added the latter, with hearty good-will. "Guess we'll shake on it." He held out his hand, and Chepstow promptly gripped it. He also shook the other by the hand. "Now, boys," he said genially, "how about those others outside? How will you guarantee them?" "We'll fix that quick. Say, Mike, just open that door." Canfield turned again to Chepstow, while Mike obeyed orders. "I'll give 'em a few words," he went on, "an' we'll send right off for Walford. He's mighty bad, passon. He's----" The door was open by this time, and the two men hurried out. Chepstow secured it behind them, and stood listening for what was to happen. He heard Canfield haranguing the crowd, and his words seemed to have the desired effect, for presently the whole lot began to move off, and in two minutes the last sound of voices and receding footsteps had died out. Betty drew a sigh of relief. "Uncle," she said, smiling affectionately across at him as he left the door and came toward the stove, "you are a genius of diplomacy." The man laughed self-consciously. "Well, we have gained a point," he said doubtfully. Betty let her eyes fall upon her sewing again. "Yes, we have gained a point. I wonder how long that point will hold good, when--when the drink begins to flow." "That's what I'm wondering." And their question was answered in less than twenty-four hours. Half an hour later the wounded strike-leader was brought to the hut. He was in a semi-conscious state, and a swift examination showed him to be in a pretty bad way. The bullet had ploughed its way through the shoulder, smashing both the collar-bone and the shoulder-blade. Then, though no vital spot had been touched, the loss of blood had been terrific. He had been left lying at the store ever since he was shot by Mason, with just a rough bandage of his own shirt, which had been quite powerless to stop the flow of blood. It took Chepstow nearly two hours to dress the wound and set the bones, and by that time the man's weakness had plunged him into absolute unconsciousness. Still, this was due solely to loss of blood, and with careful nursing there was no real reason why he should not make a satisfactory recovery. The rest of the night was spent at the sick man's bedside. Betty and her uncle shared the vigil in reliefs, and, weary work as it was, they never hesitated. A life was at stake, and though the man was the cause of all the trouble, or instrumental in it, they were yet ready to spare no effort on his behalf. With the parson it was sheer love of his duty toward all men that gave him inspiration. With Betty there may have been a less Christian spirit in her motives. All this man's efforts had been directed against the man she loved, and she hated him for it; but a life was at stake, and a life, to her, was a very sacred thing. The next day was spent between care for the sick at the fever camp and the wounded man in their own quarters, and the guarantee of the strikers was literally carried out. There were one or two visits to their sick leader, but no interference or molestation occurred. Then at sundown came the first warning of storm. Betty was returning to the dugout. She was tired and sick at heart with her labors. For both it had been a strenuous day, but it had found her strength out a good deal more than it had her uncle's. Ahead of her she knew there yet lay a long night of nursing the wounded man. It was a gorgeous evening. The fog had quite passed away. A splendid sunset lit the glittering peaks towering about her with a cloak of iridescent fire. The snow caps shone with a ruddy glow, while the ancient glaciers suggested molten streams pouring from the heart of them to the darkling wood-belts below. The girl paused and for a moment the wonder of the scene lifted her out of her weariness. But it was only momentary. The whole picture was so transient. It changed and varied with kaleidoscopic suddenness, and vanished altogether in less than five minutes. Again the mountains assumed the gray cold of their unlit beauties. The sun had gone, and day merged into night with almost staggering abruptness. She turned with a sigh to resume her journey. It was then that her attention was drawn elsewhere. In the direction of the lumber camp, in the very heart of it, it seemed, a heavy smoke was rising and drifting westward on the light evening breeze. It was not the haze of smoke from campfires just lit, but a cloud augmented by great belches from below. And in the growing dusk she fancied there was even a ruddy reflection lighting it. She stared with wide-open, wondering eyes. Suddenly a great shaft of flame shot up into its midst, and, as it lit the scene, she heard the shouting of men mingling with the crash of falling timber. She stood spellbound, a strange terror gripping her heart. It was fear of the unknown. There was a fire--burning what? She turned and ran for the dugout. Bursting into the hut, she poured out her tidings to her uncle, who was preparing supper. The man listening to her hasty words understood the terror that beset her. Fire in those forest regions might well strike terror into the heart. He held a great check upon himself. "Sit down, child," he said gently, at the conclusion of her story. "Sit down and have some food. Afterward, while you see to Walford, I'll cut through the woods and see what's doing." He accomplished his object. Betty calmed at once, and obediently sat down to the food he set before her. She even forced herself to eat, and presently realized she was hungry. The churchman said nothing until they had finished eating. Then he lit his pipe. "It's drink, I expect," he said, as though he had been striving to solve the matter during supper. "Likely they're burning the camp. We know what they are." Betty took a deep breath. "And if they're doing that here, what about the outlying camps?" She knew that such an event would mean absolute ruin to Dave, and again her terror rose. This time it was for Dave, and the feeling sickened her. Her uncle put on his hat. He had no answer for her. He understood what was in her mind. "Don't leave this place, Betty," he said calmly. "Redress Walford's wound the way I showed you. Keep this door barred, and don't let any one in. I'll be back soon." He was gone. And the manner of his going suggested anything but the calmness with which he spoke. Once outside, the terror he had refused to display in Betty's presence lent wings to his feet. Night had closed in by the time he took to the woods. Now the air was full of the burning reek, and he tried to calculate the possibilities. He snuffed at the air to test the smell, fearful lest it should be the forest that was burning. He could not tell. He was too inexperienced in woodcraft to judge accurately. In their sober senses these lumber-jacks dreaded fire as much as a sailor dreads it at sea, then there could be little doubt as to the cause of it now. The inevitable had happened. Drink was flowing, scorching out the none too acute senses of these savages. Where would their orgy lead them? Was there any limit that could hold them? He thought not. If he were inexperienced in the woodsman's craft, he knew these woodsmen, and he shuddered at the pictures his thoughts painted. As he drew nearer the camp the smoke got into his lungs. The fire must be a big one. A sudden thought came to him, and with it his fears receded. He wondered why it had not occurred to him before. Of course. His eyes brightened almost to a smile. If what he suspected had happened, perhaps it was the hand of Providence working in Dave's interest. Working in Dave's, and---- Perhaps it was the cleansing fires of the Almighty sent to wipe out the evil inspired by the erring mind of man. He reached the fringe of woods which surrounded the clearing of the camp, and in another few seconds he stood in the open. "Thank God," he exclaimed. Then, in a moment, the horror of a pitying Christian mind shone in his eyes. His lips were tight shut, and his hands clenched at his sides. Every muscle strung tense with the force of his emotions. In the centre of the clearing the sutler's store was a blazing pile. But it was literally in the centre, with such a distance between it and the surrounding woods as to reduce the danger of setting fire to them to a minimum. It was this, and the fact that it was the store where the spirits were kept, that had inspired his heartfelt exclamation. But his horror was for that which he saw besides. The running figures of the strikers about the fire were the figures of men mad with drink. Their shoutings, their laughter, their antics told him this. But they were not so drunk but what they had sacked the store before setting it ablaze. Ah, he understood now, and he wondered what had happened to the Jew trader. He drew nearer. He felt safe in doing so. These demented savages were so fully occupied that they were scarcely likely to observe him. And if they did, he doubted if he were running much personal risk. They had no particular animosity for him. And as he came near, the sights he beheld sickened him. There were several fights in progress. Not individual battles, but drunken brawls in groups; mauling, savaging masses of men whose instinct, when roused, it is to hurt, hurt anyhow, and if possible to kill. These men fought as beasts fight, tearing each other with teeth and hands, gouging, hacking, clawing. It was a merciless display of brute savagery inspired by a bestial instinct, stirred to fever pitch by the filthy spirit served in a lumber camp. At another point, well away from the burning building, the merchandise was piled, tossed together in the reckless fashion only to be expected in men so inspired. Around this were the more sober, helping themselves greedily, snatching at clothing, at blankets, at the tools of their craft. Some were loaded with tin boxes of fancy biscuits and canned meats, others had possessed themselves of the cheap jewelry such as traders love to dazzle the eyes of their simple customers with. Each took as his stomach guided him, but with a gluttony for things which can be had for nothing always to be found in people of unbridled passions. It was a sight little less revolting than the other, for it spoke of another form of unchecked savagery. Not far from this, shown in strong relief by the lurid fires, was gathered a shouting, turbulent crowd round a pile of barrels and cases. Three barrels were standing on end, apart from the rest, and their heads had been removed, and round these struggled a maddened crew with tin pannikins. They were dipping the fiery spirit out of the casks, and draining each draught as hurriedly as the scorching stuff could pass down their throats, so as to secure as much as possible before it was all gone. The watching man shuddered. Truly a more terrible display was inconceivable. The men were not human in their orgy. They were wild beasts. What, he asked himself, what would be the result when the liquor had saturated the brains of every one of them? It was too terrible to contemplate. The roar of the blazing building, the babel of shouting, the darkly lurid light shining amidst the shadows of surrounding woods, the starlit heavens above, the stillness of mountain gloom and solitude; these things created a picture so awful of contemplation as to be unforgettable. Every detail drove into the watching man's heart as though graven there with chisel and hammer. It was a hellish picture, lit with hellish light, and set in the midst of gloom profound. The men might have been demons silhouetted against the ruddy fire; their doings, their antics, had in them so little that was human. It was awful, and at last, in despair, the man on the outskirts of the clearing turned and fled. Anything rather than this degrading sight; he could bear it no longer. He sickened, yet his heart yearned for them. There was nothing he could do to help them or check them. He could only pray for their demented souls, and--see to the safeguarding of Betty. Betty heard her uncle's voice calling, and flung down the bars of the door. She looked into his ghastly face as he hurried in. She asked no question, and watched him as with nervous hands he closed and secured the door behind him. Her eyes followed his movements as he crossed to the stove and flung himself into a chair. She saw his head droop forward, and his hands cover his eyes in a gesture of despair. Still she waited, her breath coming more quickly as the moments passed. She moved a step toward him, and slowly he raised a drawn haggard face, and his horrified eyes looked into hers. "You must not leave this hut on any pretense, Betty," he said slowly. Then he raised his eyes to the roof. "God have pity on them! They are mad! Mad with drink, and ready for any debauchery. I could kill the men," he went on, shaking his two clenched fists in the air, "who have driven them----" "Hush, uncle!" the girl broke in, laying a restraining hand upon his upraised arms. "One of them lies over there, and--and he is wounded. We must do what we can to help." CHAPTER XXIV IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT It was sundown in the Red Sand Valley. The hush of evening had settled upon Malkern, and its calm was only broken by the droning machinery of the mills. The sky was lit by that chilly, yellow afterglow of sunset which, eastward, merges into the gray and purple of twilight. Already the long-drawn shadows had expanded into the dusk so rapidly obscuring the remoter distance. Straight and solemn rose spires of smoke from hidden chimneys, lolling in the still air, as though loath to leave the scented atmosphere of the valley below. It was the moment of delicious calm when Nature is preparing to seek repose. Two women were standing at the door of Dave's house, and the patch of garden surrounding them, so simple, so plain, was a perfect setting for their elderly, plainly clad figures. Dave's mother, very old, but full of quiet energy, was listening to the gentle complaint of Mrs. Chepstow. She was listening, but her gaze was fixed on the distant mills, an attitude which had practically become her settled habit. The mill, to her, was the end of the earth; there was nothing beyond. "I am dreadfully worried," Mrs. Tom was saying, the anxious wrinkles of her forehead lifting her brows perplexedly. "It's more than six weeks since I heard from Tom and Betty. It's not like him, he's so regular with letters usually. It was madness letting Betty go up there. I can't think what we were doing. If anything has happened to them I shall never forgive myself. I think I shall go down and talk to Dave about it. He may know something. He's sure to know if they are well." The other slowly withdrew her gaze from the mills. It was as though the effort required to do so were a great one, and one she reluctantly undertook. The pivot of her life was her boy. A pivot upon which it revolved without flagging or interruption. She had watched him grow to a magnificent manhood, and with all a pure woman's love and wonderful instinct she had watched and tended him as she might some great oak tree raised from the frailest sapling. Then, when his struggles came, she had shared them with him with a supreme loyalty, helping him with a quiet, strong sympathy which found expression in little touches which probably even he never realized. All his successes and disasters had been hers; all his joys, all his sorrows. And now, in her old age, she clung to this love with the pathetic tenacity of one who realizes that the final parting is not far distant. Her furrowed face lit with a wonderful smile. "I cannot say for sure," she said. "There are times when Dave will not admit me to the thoughts which disturb him. At such times I know that things are not running smoothly. There are other times when he talks quite freely of his hopes, his fears. Then I know that all is well. When he complains I know he is questioning his own judgment, and distrusts himself. And when he laughs at things I know that the trouble is a sore one, and I prepare for disaster. All his moods have meaning for me. Just now I am reading from his silence, and it tells me that much is wrong, and I am wondering. But I do not think it concerns Betty--and, consequently, not your husband; if anything were wrong with her I think I should know." She smiled with all the wisdom of old age. Mrs. Tom's anxiety was slightly allayed, but her curiosity was proportionately roused. "Why would you know--about Betty?" she asked. The older woman's eyes were again turned in the direction of the mill. "Why--why?" She smiled and turned to the churchman's wife. "It would produce a fresh mood in my boy, one I'm not familiar with." Then she became suddenly grave. "I think I should dread that mood more than any other. You see, deep down in his heart there are passionate depths that no one has yet stirred. Were they let loose I fear to think how they might drive him. Dave's head only rules just as far as his heart chooses." "But Betty?" demanded Mrs. Tom. "How is she----" "Betty?" interrupted the other, humorously eyeing the eager face. "The one great passion of Dave's life is Betty. I know. And he thinks it is hopeless. I am betraying no confidence. Dave hugs his secret to himself, but he can't hide it from me. I'm glad he loves her. You don't know how glad. You see, I am in love with her myself, and--and I am getting very old." "And--does Betty know?" Dave's mother shook her head and smiled. "Betty loves him, but neither understands the other's feelings. But that is nothing. Love belongs to Heaven, and Heaven will straighten this out. Listen!" The old woman's eyes turned abruptly in the direction of the mill. There was a curious, anxious look in them, and a perplexed frown drew her brows together. One hand was raised to hold the other woman's attention. It was as though something vital had shocked her, as though some sudden spasm of physical pain had seized her. Her face slowly grew gray. Three people passing along the trail in front of the house had also stopped. Their eyes were also turned in the direction of the mill. Further along a child at play had suddenly paused in its game to turn toward the mill. There were others, too, all over the village who gave up their pursuits to listen. "The mills have stopped work!" cried Mrs. Torn breathlessly. But Dave's mother had no response for her. She had even forgotten the other's presence at her side. The drone of the machinery was silent. Dawson was interviewing his employer in the latter's office. Both men looked desperately worried. Dave's eyes were lit with a brooding light. It was as though a cloud of storm had settled upon his rugged features. Dawson had desperation in every line of his hard face. "Have you sent up the river?" demanded Dave, eyeing his head man as though he alone were responsible for the trouble which was upon them. "I've sent, boss. We've had jams on the river before, an' I guessed it was that. I didn't worrit any for four-an'-twenty hours. It's different now. Ther' ain't bin a log come down for nigh thirty-six hours." "How many men did you send up?" "Six. Two teams, an' all the gear needed for breakin' the jam." "Yes. You're sure it is a jam?" "Ther' ain't nothin' else, boss. Leastways, I can't see nothin' else." "No. And the boom? You've worked out the 'reserve'?" "Clean right out. Ther' ain't a log in it fit to cut." Dave sat down at his desk. He idled clumsily for some moments with the pen in his fingers. His eyes were staring blankly out of the grimy window. The din of the saws rose and fell, and the music for once struck bitterly into his soul. It jarred his nerves, and he stirred restlessly. What was this new trouble that had come upon him? No logs! No logs! Why? He could not understand. A jam? Dawson said it must be a jam on the river. He was a practical lumberman, and to him it was the only explanation. He had sent up men to find out and free it. But why should there be a jam? The river was wide and swift, and the logs were never sent down in such crowds as to make a thing of that nature possible at this time of year. Later, yes, when the water was low and the stream slack, but now, after the recent rains, it was still a torrent. No logs! The thought was always his nightmare, and now--it was a reality. "It must be a jam, I s'pose," said Dave presently, but his tone carried no conviction. "What else can it be, boss?" asked the foreman anxiously. His employer's manner, his tone of uncertainty, worried Dawson. He had never seen Dave like this before. "That's so." Then a look of eager interest came into his eyes. He pointed at the window. "Here's Odd," he said. "And he's in a hurry." Dawson threw open the door, and Simon Odd lumbered hurriedly into the room. He seemed to fill up the place with his vast proportions. His face was anxious and doubtful. "I've had to shut down at the other mill, boss," he explained abruptly. "Ther' ain't no logs. Ther've been none for----" "Thirty-six hours," broke in Dave, with an impatient nod. "I know." "You know, boss?" "Yes." The master of the mills turned again to the window, and the two men watched him in silence. What would he do? This man to whom they looked in difficulty; this man who had never yet failed in resource, in courage, to meet and overcome every obstacle, every emergency that harassed a lumberman's life. Suddenly he turned to them again. In his eyes there was a peculiar, angry light. "Well?" he demanded, in a fierce way that was utterly foreign to him. "Well?" he reiterated, "what are you standing there for? Get you out, both of you. Shut this mill down, too!" Simon Odd moved to the door, but Dawson remained where he was. It almost seemed as if he had not understood. The mill was to be shut down for the first time within his knowledge. What did it mean? In all his years of association with Dave he had seen such wonders of lumbering done by him that he looked upon him as almost infallible. And now--now he was tacitly acknowledging defeat without making a single effort. The realization, the shock of it, held him still. He made no move to obey the roughly-spoken command. Suddenly Dave turned on him. His face was flushed. "Get out!" he roared. "Shut down the mill!" It was the cry of a man driven to a momentary frenzy. For the time despair--black, terrible despair--drove the lumberman. He felt he wanted to hit out and hurt some one. Dawson silently followed Odd to the door, and in five minutes the saws were still. Dave sat on at his desk waiting. The moment the shriek of the machinery ceased he sprang to his feet and began pacing the floor in nervous, hurried strides. What that cessation meant to him only those may know who have suddenly seen their life's ambitions, their hopes, crushed out at one single blow. Let the saws continue their song, let the droning machinery but keep its dead level of tone, and failure in any other form, however disastrous, could not hurt in such degree as the sudden silencing of his lumberman's world. For some minutes he was like a madman. He could not think, his nerves shivered from his feet to the crown of his great ugly head. His hands were clenched as he strode, until the nails of his fingers cut the flesh of the palms into which they were crushed. For some minutes he saw nothing but the black ruin that rose like a wall before him and shut out every thought from his mind. The cessation of machinery was like a pall suddenly burying his whole strength and manhood beneath its paralyzing weight. But gradually the awful tension eased. It could not hold and its victim remain sane. So narrow was his focus during those first passionate moments that he could not see beyond his own personal loss. But with the passing minutes his view widened, and into the picture grew those things which had always been the inspiration of his ambitions. He flung himself heavily into his chair, and his eyes stared through the dirty window at the silent mill beyond. And for an hour he sat thus, thinking, thinking. His nervous tension had passed, his mind became clear, and though the nature of his thoughts lashed his heart, and a hundred times drove him to the verge of that first passion of despair again, there was an impersonal note in them which allowed the use of his usually clear reasoning, and so helped him to rise above himself once more. His castles had been set a-tumbling, and he saw in their fall the crushing of Malkern, the village which was almost as a child to him. And with the crushing of the village must come disaster to all his friends. For one weak moment he felt that this responsibility should not be his--it was not fair to fix it on him. What had he done to deserve so hard a treatment? He thought of Tom Chepstow, loyal, kindly, always caring and thinking for those who needed his help. He thought of the traders of the village who hoped and prayed for his success, that meant prosperity for themselves and happiness for their wives and children. And these things began to rekindle the fighting flame within him; the flame which hitherto had always burned so fiercely. He could not let them go under. Then with a rush a picture rose before his mind, flooding it, shutting out all those others, every thought of self or anybody else. It was Betty, with her gentle face, her soft brown hair and tender smiling eyes. Their steady courageous light shone deep down into his heart, and seemed to smite him for his weakness. His pulses began to throb, the weakened tide of his blood was sent coursing through his veins and mounted, mounted steadily to his brain. God! He must not go under. Even now the loyal child was up in the hills fighting his battles for him with---- He broke off, and sprang to his feet. A terrible fear had suddenly leapt at his heart and clutched him. Betty was up there in the hills. He had not heard from the hill camps for weeks. And now the supply of logs had ceased. What had happened? What was happening up there? The lethargy of despair lifted like a cloud. He was alert, thrilling with all the virility of his manhood set pulsing through his veins. Once more he was the man Dawson had failed to recognize when he ordered the mills to be closed down. Once more he was the man whose personal force had lifted him to his position as the master of Malkern mills. He was the Dave whom all the people of the village knew, ready to fight to the last ounce of his power, to the last drop of his blood. "They shan't beat us!" he muttered, as he strode out into the yard. Nor could he have said of whom he was speaking, if anybody at all. It was nearly midnight. Again Dawson and Simon Odd were in their employer's office. But this time a very different note prevailed. Dawson's hard face was full of keen interest. His eyes were eager. He was listening to the great man he had always known. Simon Odd, burly and unassuming, was waiting his turn when his chief had finished with his principal foreman. "I've thought this thing out, Dawson," Dave said pleasantly, in a tone calculated to inspire the other with confidence, and in a manner suggesting that the affair of the logs had not seriously alarmed him, "and evolved a fresh plan of action. No doubt, as you say, the thing's simply a jam on the river. If this is so, it will be freed in a short time, and we can go ahead. On the other hand, there may be some other reason for the trouble. I can't think of any explanation myself, but that is neither here nor there. Now I intend going up the river to-night. Maybe I shall go on to the camps. I shall be entirely guided by circumstances. Anyway I shall likely be away some days. Whatever is wrong, I intend to see it straight. In the meantime you will stand ready to begin work the moment the logs come down. And when they come down I intend they shall come down at a pace that shall make up for all the time we have lost. That's all I have for you. I simply say, be ready. Good-night." The man went out with a grin of satisfaction on his weather-beaten face. This was the Dave he knew, and he was glad. Simon Odd received his orders. He too must be ready. He must have his men ready. His mill must be asked to do more than ever before when the time came, and on his results would depend a comfortable bonus the size of which quite dazzled the simple giant. With his departure Dave began his own preparations. There was much to see to in leaving everything straight for his foremen. Dawson was more than willing. This new responsibility appealed to him as no other confidence his employer could have reposed in him. They spent some time together, and finally Dave returned to his office. During the evening inquirers from the village flooded the place. But no official information on the subject of the cessation of work was forthcoming, nor would Dave see any of them. They were driven to be content with gleanings of news from the mill hands, and these, with the simple lumberman's understanding of such things, explained that there was a jam on the river which might take a day, or even two days, to free. In this way a panic in the village was averted. Dave required provisions from home. But he could not spare the time to return there for them. He intended to set out on his journey at midnight. Besides, he had no wish to alarm his old mother. And somehow he was afraid she would drag the whole truth of his fears out of him. So he sent a note by one of the men setting out his requirements. His answer came promptly. The man returned with the kit bag only, and word that his mother was bringing the food down herself, and he smiled at the futility of his attempt to put her off. Ten minutes later she entered his office with her burden of provisions. Her face was calmly smiling. There was no trace of anxiety in it. So carefully was the latter suppressed that the effort it entailed became apparent to the man. "You shouldn't have bothered, ma," he protested. "I sent the man up specially to bring those things down." His mother's eyes had a shrewd look in them. "I know," she said. "There's a ham and some bacon, biscuit, and a fresh roast of beef here. Then I've put in a good supply of groceries." "Thanks, dear," he said gently. "You always take care of my inner man. But I wish you hadn't bothered this way." "It's no sort of trouble," she said, raising her eyes to his. Then she let them drop again. "Food don't need a lumberman's rough handling." The smile on Dave's face was good to see. He nodded. "I'd better tell you," he said. "You know, we've--stopped?" His eyes lingered fondly on the aged figure. This woman was very precious to him. "Yes, I know." There was the very slightest flash of anxiety in the old eyes. Then it was gone. "I'm going up the river to find things out." "That's what I understood. Betty is up there--too." The quiet assurance of his mother's remark brought a fresh light into the man's eyes, and the blood surged to his cheeks. "Yes, ma. That's it--chiefly." "I thought so. And--I'm glad. You'll bring her back with you?" "Yes, ma." "Good-bye, boy." His simple assurance satisfied her. Her faith in him was the faith of a mother. The man bent down and kissed the withered, upturned face. She went out, and Dave turned to the things she had brought him. She had thought of everything. And the food--he smiled. She was his mother, and the food had the amplitude such as is characteristic of a mother when providing for a beloved son. He must visit the barn to see about his horses. He went to the door. Opening it, he paused. Standing there he became aware of the sound of approaching wheels. The absence of any noise from the mills had made the night intensely silent, so that the rattle of wheels upon the hard sand trail, though distant, sounded acutely on the night air. He stood listening, with one great hand grasping the door casing. Yes, they were wheels. And now, too, he could hear the sharp pattering of horses' hoofs. The sound was uneven, yet regular, and he recognized the gait. They were approaching at a gallop. Nearer they came, and of a sudden he understood they were practically racing for the mill. He left the doorway and moved out into the yard. He thought it might be the team which Dawson had sent out returning, and perhaps bringing good news of the jam on the river. He walked toward the yard gates and stood listening intently. The night was dark, but clear and still, and as he listened he fancied in the rattle of the vehicle he recognized the peculiar creak of a buckboard. Nearer and nearer it came, louder and louder the clatter of hoofs and the rattle of wheels. The gallop seemed labored, like the clumsy gait of weary horses, and the waiting man straining could plainly hear a voice urging them on. Suddenly he thought of the gates, and promptly opened them. He hardly knew why he did so. It must have been the effect of the pace at which the horses were being driven. It must have been that the speed inspired him with an idea of emergency. Now he stood out in the road, and stooping, glanced along it till the faint light of the horizon revealed a dark object on the trail. He drew back and slowly returned to the office. The man's voice urging his horses on required no effort to hear now. It was hoarse with shouting, and the slashing of his whip told the waiting man of the pace at which he had traveled. The vehicle entered the yard gates. The urging voice became silent, the weary horses clattered up to the office door and came to a standstill. From the doorway Dave surveyed the outfit. He did not recognize it, but something about the man climbing out of the vehicle was familiar. "That you, Mason?" he asked sharply. "Yes--and another. Will you bear a hand to get him out?" Dave went to his assistance, wondering. Mason was busy undoing some ropes. Dave's wonder increased. As he came up he saw that the ropes held a man captive in the carryall. "Who is it?" he inquired. "Jim Truscott--whoever he may be," responded Mason with a laugh, as he freed the last rope. "Ah! Well, come right in--and bring him along too." But Mason remembered the animals that had served him so well. "What about the 'plugs'?" He was holding his captive, who stood silent at his side. "You go inside. I'll see to them." Dave watched Mason conduct his prisoner into the office, then he sprang into the buckboard and drove it across to the barn. CHAPTER XXV MASON'S PRISONER In a few minutes Dave returned from the barn. He had chosen to attend to the horses himself, for his own reasons preferring not to rouse the man who looked after his horses. His thoughts were busy while he was thus occupied. As yet he had no idea of what had actually occurred in the camps, but Mason's presence at such a time, the identity of his prisoner, the horses' condition of exhaustion; these things warned him of the gravity of the situation, and something of the possibilities. By the time he reëntered the office he was prepared for anything his "camp-boss" might have to tell him. He noted the faces of the two men carefully. In Mason he saw the weariness of a long nervous strain. His broad face was drawn, his eyes were sunken and deeply shadowed. From head to foot he was powdered with the red dust of the trail. Dave was accustomed to being well served, but he felt that this man had been serving him to something very near the limits of his endurance. Jim Truscott's face afforded him the keenest interest. It was healthier looking than he had seen it since his first return to Malkern. The bloated puffiness, the hall-mark of his persistent debauches, had almost entirely gone. The health produced by open-air and spare feeding showed in the tan of his skin. His eyes were clear, and though he, too, looked worn out, there was less of exhaustion about him than his captor. On the other hand there was none of Mason's fearless honesty in his expression. There was a truculent defiance in his eyes, a furious scowl in the drawn brows. There was a nervousness in the loose, weak mouth. His wrists were lashed securely together by a rope which had been applied with scant mercy. Dave's eyes took all these things in, and he pointed to the latter as he addressed himself to his overseer. "Better loose that," he said, in that even voice which gave away so little of his real feelings. "Guess you're both pretty near done in," he went on, as Mason unfastened the knots. "Got down here in a hurry?" "Yes; got any whiskey?" Mason had finished removing the prisoner's bonds when he spoke. "Brandy." "That'll do." The overseer laughed as men will laugh when they are least inclined to. Dave poured out long drinks and handed them to the two men. Mason drank his down at a gulp, but Truscott pushed his aside without a word. "There's a deal to tell," said the overseer, as he set his glass down. "There's some hours to daylight," Dave replied. "Go right ahead, and take your own time." The other let his tired eyes rest on his prisoner for some moments and remained silent. He was considering how best to tell his story. Suddenly he looked up. "The camp's on 'strike,'" he said. "Ah!" And it was Dave's eyes that fell upon Jim Truscott now. There was a world of significance in that ejaculation and the expression that leapt to the lumberman's eyes. It was a desperate blow the overseer had dealt him; but it was a blow that did not crush. It carried with it a complete explanation. And that explanation was of something he understood and had power to deal with. "And--this?" Dave nodded in Jim's direction. "Is one of the leaders." "Ah!" Again came Dave's meaning ejaculation. Then he settled himself in his chair and prepared to listen. "Get going," he said; but he felt that he required little more explanation. Mason began his story by inquiries about his own letters to his employer, and learned that none of them had been received during the last few weeks, and he gave a similar reply to Dave's inquiries as to the fate of his letters to the camp. Then he went on to the particulars of the strike movement, from the first appearance of unrest to the final moment when it became an accomplished fact. He told him how the chance "hands" he had been forced to take on had been the disturbing element, and these, he was now convinced, had for some reason been inspired. He told of that visit on the Sunday night to the sutler's store, he told of his narrow escape, and of his shooting down one of the men, and the fortunate capture, made with the timely assistance of Tom Chepstow, of his prisoner. Dave listened attentively, but his eyes were always on Truscott, and at the finish of the long story his commendation was less hearty than one might have expected. "You've made good, Mason, an' I'm obliged," he said, after a prolonged silence. "Say," he went on, glancing at his watch, "there's just four and a half hours to the time we start back for the camp. Go over to Dawson's shack and get a shake-down. Get what sleep you can. I'll call you in time. Meanwhile I'll see to this fellow," he added, indicating the prisoner. "We'll have a heap of time for talk on the way to the camps." The overseer's eyes lit. "Are you going up to the camps?" he inquired eagerly. "Yes, surely. We'll have to straighten this out." Then a sudden thought flashed through his mind. "There's the parson and----!" Mason nodded. "Yes. They've got my shack. There's plenty of arms and ammunition. I left parson to hurry back to----" "He wasn't with her when you left?" There was a sudden, fierce light in Dave's eyes. Mason shook his head, and something of the other's apprehension was in his voice as he replied-- "He was going back there." Dave's eyes were fiercely riveted upon Truscott's face. "We'll start earlier. Get an hour's sleep." There was no misunderstanding his employer's tone. In fact, for the first time since he had left the camp Mason realized the full danger of those two he had left behind him. But he knew he had done the only possible thing in the circumstances, and besides, his presence there would have added to their danger. Still, as he left the office to seek the brief rest for which he was longing, he was not without a qualm of conscience which his honest judgment told him he was not entitled to. Dave closed the door carefully behind him. Then he came back to his chair, and for some moments surveyed his prisoner in silence. Truscott stirred uneasily under the cold regard. Then he looked up, and all his bitter hatred for his one-time friend shone in the defiant stare he gave him. "I've tried to understand, but I can't," Dave said at last, as though his words were the result of long speculation. "It is so far beyond me that---- This is your doing, all your doing. It's nothing to do with those--those 'scabs.' You, and you alone have brought about this strike. First you pay a man to wreck my mills--you even try to kill me. Now you do this. You have thought it all out with devilish cunning. There is nothing that could ruin me so surely as this strike. You mean to wreck me; nor do you care who goes down in the crash. You have already slain one man in your villainy. For that you stand branded a--murderer. God alone knows what death and destruction this strike in the hills may bring about. And all of it is aimed at me. Why? In God's name, why?" Dave's manner was that of cold argument. He displayed none of the passion that really stirred him. He longed to take this man in his two great hands, and crush the mean life out of him. But nothing of such feeling was allowed to show itself. He began to fill his pipe. He did not want to smoke, but it gave his hands something to do, and just then his hands demanded something to do. His words elicited no reply. Truscott's eyes were upon the hands fumbling at the bowl of the pipe. He was not really observing them. He was wrapped in his own thoughts, and his eyes simply fixed themselves on the only moving thing in the room. Dave put his pipe in his mouth and refolded his pouch. Presently he went on speaking, and his tone became warmer, and his words more rapid. "There was a time when you were a man, a decent, honest, happy man; a youngster with all the world before you. At that time I did all in my power to help you. You remember? You ran that mill. It was a matter of hanging on and waiting till fortune turned your way for success and prosperity to come. Then one day you came to me; you and she. It was decided that you should go away--to seek your fortune elsewhere. We shook hands. Do you remember? You left her in my care. All this seems like yesterday. I promised you then that always, in the name of friendship, you could command me. Your trust I carried out to the letter, and all I promised I was ready to fulfil. Need I remind you of what has happened since? Need I draw a picture of the drunkard, gambler who returned to Malkern, of the insults you have put upon her, everybody? Of her patience and loyalty? Of the manner in which you finally made it impossible for her to marry you? It is not necessary. You know it all--if you are a sane man, which I am beginning to doubt. And now--now why are you doing all this? I intend to know. I mean to drag it out of you before you leave this room!" He had risen from his seat and stood before his captive with one hand outstretched in his direction, grasping his pipe by the bowl. His calmness had gone, a passion of angry protest surged through his veins. He was no longer the cool, clear-headed master of the mills, but a man swept by a fury of resentment at the injustice, the wanton, devilish, mischievous injustice of one whom he had always befriended. Friendship was gone and in its place there burned the human desire for retaliation. Truscott's introspective stare changed to a wicked laugh. It was forced, and had for its object the intention of goading the other. Dave calmed immediately. He understood that laugh in time, and so it failed in its purpose and died out. In its place the man's face darkened. It was he who fell a victim to his own intention. All his hatred for his one-time friend rose within him suddenly, and swept him on its burning tide. "You stand there preaching! You!" he cried with a ferocity so sudden that it became appalling. "You dare to preach to me of honesty, of friendship, of promises fulfilled? You? God, it makes me boil to hear you! If ever there was a traitor to friendship in this world it is you. I came back to marry Betty. Why else should I come back? And I find--what? She is changed. You have seen to that. For a time she kept up the pretense of our engagement. Then she seized upon the first excuse to break it. Why? For you! Oh, your trust was well fulfilled. You lost no time in my absence. Who was it I found her with on my return? You! Who was present to give her courage and support when she refused to marry me? You! Do you think I haven't seen the way it has all been worked? You have secured her uncle's and aunt's support. You! You have taken her from me! You! And you preach friendship and honesty to me. God, but you're a liar and a thief!" For a moment the lumberman's fury leapt and in another he would have crushed the man's life out of him, but, in a flash, his whole mood changed. The accusations were so absurd even from his own point of view. Could it be? For a moment he believed that the loss of Betty had unhinged Truscott's mind. But the thought passed, and he grew as calm now as a moment before he had been furious, and an icy sternness chilled him through and through. There was no longer a vestige of pity in him for his accuser. He sat down and lit his pipe, his heavy face set with the iron that had entered his soul. "You have lied to yourself until you have come to believe it," he said sternly. "You have lied because it is your nature to lie, because you have not an honest thought in your mind. I'll not answer your accusations, because they are so hopelessly absurd; but I'll tell you what I intend to do." "You won't answer them because you cannot deny them!" Truscott broke in furiously. "They are true, and you know it. You have stolen her from me. You! Oh, God, I hate you!" His voice rose to a strident shout and Dave raised a warning hand. "Keep quiet!" he commanded coldly. "I have listened to you, and now you shall listen to me." The fire in the other's eyes still shone luridly, but he became silent under the coldly compelling manner, while, like a savage beast, he crouched in his chair ready to break out into passionate protest at the least chance. "I don't know yet how far things have gone in the way you wish them to go up there in the hills, but you have found the way to accomplish your end in ruining me. If the strike continues I tell you frankly you will have done what you set out to do. My resources are taxed now to the limit. That will rejoice you." Truscott grinned savagely as he sprang in with his retort. "The strike is thoroughly established, and there are those up there who'll see it through. Yes, yes, my friend, it is my doing; all my doing, and it cannot fail me now. The money I took from you for the mill I laid out well. I laid out more than that--practically all I had in the world. Oh, I spared nothing; I had no intention of failing. I would give even my life to ruin you!" "Don't be too sure you may not yet have to pay that price," Dave said grimly. "Willingly." Truscott's whole manner carried conviction. Dave read in the sudden clipping of his teeth, the deadly light of his eyes, the clenching of his hands that he meant it. "I'll ruin you even if I die for it, but I'll see you ruined first," cried Truscott. "You have miscalculated one thing, Truscott," Dave said slowly. "You have forgotten that you are in my power and a captive. However, we'll let that go for the moment. I promise you you shall never live to see me suffer in the way you hope. You shall not even be aware of it. I care nothing for the ruin you hope for, so far as I am personally concerned, but I do care for other reasons. In dragging me down you will drag Malkern down, too. You will ruin many others. You will even involve Betty in the crash, for she, like the rest of us, is bound up in Malkern. And in this you will hurt me--hurt me as in your wildest dreams you never expected to do." Then he leant forward in his seat, and a subtle, deliberate intensity, more deadly for the very frigidity of his tone was in his whole attitude. His hands were outstretched toward his captive, his fingers were extended and bent at the joints like talons ready to clutch and rend their prey. "Now, I tell you this," he went on, "as surely as harm comes to Betty up in that camp, through any doings of yours, as surely as ruin through your agency descends upon this valley, as Almighty God is my Judge I will tear the life out of you with my own two hands." For a moment Truscott's eyes supported the frigid glare of Dave's. For a moment he had it in his mind to fling defiance at him. Then his eyes shifted and he looked away, and defiance died out of his mind. The stronger nature shook the weaker, and an involuntary shudder of apprehension slowly crept over him. Dave stirred to the pitch of threatening deliberate slaughter had been beyond his imagination. Now that he saw it the sight was not pleasant. Suddenly the lumberman sprang to his feet "We'll start right away," he said, in his usual voice. "We?" The monosyllabic question sprang from Truscott's lips in a sudden access of fear. "Yes. We. Mason, you, and me." CHAPTER XXVI TO THE LUMBER CAMP The gray morning mist rolled slowly up the hillsides from the bosom of the warming valley below. Great billows mounted, swelling in volume till, overweighted, they toppled, surging like the breaking rollers of a wind-swept ocean. Here and there the rosy sunlight brushed the swirling sea with a tenderness of color no painter's brush could ever hope to produce. A precocious sunbeam shot athwart the leaden prospect. It bored its way through the churning fog searching the depths of some benighted wood-lined hollow, as though to rouse its slumbering world. Dense spruce and hemlock forests grew out of the mists. The spires of gigantic pines rose, piercing the gray as though gasping for the warming radiance above. A perching eagle, newly roused from its slumbers, shrieked its morning song till the rebounding cries, echoing from a thousand directions, suggested the reveille of the entire feathered world. The mournful whistle of a solitary marmot swelled the song from many new directions, and the raucous chorus had for its accompaniment the thundering chords of hidden waters, seething and boiling in the mighty cañons below. The long-drawn, sibilant hush of night was gone; the leaden mountain dawn had passed; day, glorious in its waking splendor, had routed the grim shadows from the mystic depths of cañon, from the leaden-hued forest-laden valleys. The sunlight was upon the dazzling mountain-tops, groping, searching the very heart of the Rocky Mountains. Dave's buckboard, no more conspicuous than some wandering ant in the vast mountain world, crawled from the depths of a wide valley and slowly mounted the shoulders of a forest-clad ridge. It vanished into the twilight of giant woods, only to be seen again, some hours later, at a greater altitude, climbing, climbing the great slopes, or descending to gaping hollows, but always attaining the higher lands. But his speed was by no means a crawl in reality, only did it appear so by reason of the vastness of the world about him. His horses were traveling as fresh, mettlesome beasts can travel when urged by such a man as Dave, with his nerves strung to a terrific tension by the emergency of his journey. The willing beasts raced down the hills over the uneven trail with all the sure-footed carelessness of the prairie-bred broncho. They took the inclines with scarcely perceptible slackening of their gait. And only the sharp hills served them for breathing space. Dave occupied the driving-seat while Mason sat guard over Jim Truscott in the carryall behind. Those two days on the trail had been unusually silent, even for men such as they were, and even taking into consideration the object of their journey. Truscott and Mason were almost "dead beat" with all that had gone before, and Dave--he was wrapped in his own thoughts. His thoughts carried him far away from his companions into a world where love and strife were curiously blended. Every thread of such thought sent him blundering into mires of trouble, the possibilities of which set his nerves jangling with apprehension. But their contemplation only stiffened his stern resolve to fight the coming battle with a courage and resource such as never yet had he brought to bear in his bid for success. He knew that before him lay the culminating battle of his long and ardent sieging of Fortune's stronghold. He knew that now, at last, he was face to face with the great test of his fitness. He knew that this battle had always been bound to come before the goal of his success was reached; although, perhaps, its method and its cause may have taken a thousand other forms. It is not in the nature of things that a man may march untested straight to the golden pastures of his ambitions. He must fight every foot of his way, and the final battle must ever be the sternest, the crudest. God help the man if he has not the fitness, for Fate and Fortune are remorseless foes. But besides his native courage, Dave was stirred to even greater efforts by man's strongest motive, be his cause for good or evil. Love was the main-spring of his inspiration. He had desired success with a passionate longing all his life, and his success was not all selfishness. But now, before all things, he saw the sweetly gentle face of Betty Somers gazing with a heartful appeal, beckoning him, calling him to help her. Every moment of that long journey the vision remained with him; every moment he felt might be the moment of dire tragedy for her. He dared not trust himself to consider the nature of that tragedy, or he must have turned and rended the man who was its cause. Only he blessed each moment that passed, bringing him nearer to her side. He loved her as he loved nothing and no one else on earth, and somehow there had crept into his mind the thought of a possibility he had never yet dared to consider. It was a vague ray of hope that the impossibility of his love was not so great as he had always believed. How it had stolen in upon him he hardly knew. Perhaps it was his mother's persistent references to Betty. Perhaps it was the result of his talk with the man who had brought her to the straits she was now placed in. Perhaps it was one of these things, or both, coupled with the memory of trifling incidents in the past, which had seemed to mean nothing at the time of their happening. Whatever it was, his love for the girl swept through him now in a way that drove him headlong to her rescue. His own affairs of the mills, the fate of his friends in Malkern, of the village itself; all these things were driven into the background of his thoughts. Betty needed him. The thought set his brain whirling with a wild thrilling happiness, mazed, every alternate moment, with a horrible fear that drove him to the depths of despair. It was high noon when smoke ahead warned him that the journey was nearly over. The buckboard was on the ridge shouldering a wide valley, and below it was the rushing torrent of the Red Sand River. From his position Dave had a full view of the dull green forest world rolling away, east and west, in vast, undulating waves as far as the eye could reach. Only to the south, beyond the valley, was there a break in the dense, verdant carpet. And here it was he beheld the telltale smoke of the lumber camp. "That's the camp," he said, looking straight ahead, watching the slowly rising haze with longing eyes. "Guess we haven't to cross the river. Good." Mason was looking out over his shoulder. "No," he said after a moment's pause, while he tried to read the signs he beheld. "We don't cross the river. Keep to the trail. It takes us right past my shack." "Where Parson Tom and----?" "Yes, where they're living." In another quarter of a mile they would be descending the hollow of a small valley diverging from the valley of the Red Sand River. As they drew near the decline, Dave spoke again. "Can you make anything out, Mason?" he asked. "Seems to me that smoke is thick for--for stovepipes. There's two lots; one of 'em nearer this way." Mason stared out for some moments, shielding his eyes from the dazzling sun. "I can't be sure," he said at last. "The nearest smoke should be my shack." A grave anxiety crept into Dave's eyes. "It isn't thick there," he said, as though trying to reassure himself. "That's your stovepipe?" "Maybe." Mason's reply expressed doubt. Suddenly Dave leant over and his whip fell sharply across the horses' backs. They sprang at their neck-yoke and raced down into the final dip. CHAPTER XXVII AT BAY In the dugout Tom Chepstow was standing with his ear pressed against the door-jamb. He was listening, straining with every nerve alert to glean the least indication of what was going on outside. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes shone with anxiety. He was gripped by a fear he had never known before, a fear that might well come to the bravest. Personal, physical danger he understood, it was almost pleasant to him, something that gave life a new interest. But this--this was different, this was horrible. Betty was standing just behind him. She was leaning forward craning intently. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and a similar dread was looking out of her soft eyes. Her face was pale with a marble coldness, her rich red lips were compressed to a fine line, her whole body was tense with the fear that lay behind her straining eyes. There was desperation in the poise of her body, the desperation of a brave woman who sees the last hope vanishing, swallowed up in a tide of disaster she is powerless to stem. For nearly a week these two had been penned up in the hut. But for the last thirty-six hours their stronghold had actually been in a state of siege. From the time of her uncle's realization of the conditions obtaining outside Betty had not ventured without the building, while the man himself had been forced to use the utmost caution in moving abroad. It had been absolutely necessary for him to make several expeditions, otherwise he, too, would have remained in their fortress. They required water and fire-wood, and these things had to be procured. Then, too, there were the sick. But on the third day the climax was reached. Returning from one of his expeditions Chepstow encountered a drunken gang of lumber-jacks. Under the influence of their recent orgy their spirit-soaked brains had conceived the pretty idea of "ilin' the passon's works"; in other words, forcing drink upon him, and making him as drunk as themselves. In their present condition the joke appealed to them, and it was not without a violent struggle that their intended victim escaped. He was carrying fire-wood at the time, and it served him well as a weapon of defense. In a few brief moments he had left one man stunned upon the ground and another with a horribly broken face, and was himself racing for the dugout. He easily outstripped his drunken pursuers, but he was quickly to learn how high a price he must pay for the temporary victory. He had brought a veritable hornets' nest about his ears. The mischief began. The attack upon himself had only been a drunken practical joke. The subsequent happenings were in deadly earnest. The mob came in a blaze of savage fury. Their first thought was for vengeance upon him. In all probability, up to that time, Betty's presence in the hut had been forgotten, but now, as they came to the dugout, they remembered. In their present condition it was but a short step from a desire to revenge themselves upon him, to the suggestion of how it could be accomplished through the girl. They remembered her pretty face, her delicious woman's figure, and instantly they became ravening brutes, fired with a mad desire to possess themselves of her. They were no longer strikers, they were not even men. The spirit taken from the burning store had done its work. A howling pack of demons had been turned loose upon the camp, ready for any fiendish prank, ready for slaughter, ready for anything. These untutored creatures knew no better, they were powerless to help themselves, their passions alone guided them at all times, and now all that was most evil in them was frothing to the surface. Sober, they were as tame as caged wolves kept under by the bludgeon of a stern discipline. Drunk, they were madmen, driven by the untamed passions of the brute creation. They were animals without the restraining instincts of the animal, they lusted for the exercise of their great muscles, and the vital forces which swept through their veins in a passionate torrent. Their first effort was a demand for the surrender of those in the hut, and they were coldly refused. They attempted a parley, and received no encouragement. Now they were determined upon capture, with loudly shouted threats of dire consequences for the defenders' obstinacy. It was close upon noon of the second day of the siege. The hut was barricaded at every point. Door and windows were blocked up with every available piece of furniture that could be spared, and the repeating-rifles were loaded ready, and both uncle and niece were armed with revolvers. They were defending more than life and liberty, and they knew it. They were defending all that is most sacred in a woman's life. It was a ghastly thought, a desperate thought, but a thought that roused in them both a conviction that any defense brain could conceive was justified. If necessary not even life itself should stand in the way of their defense. The yellow lamplight threw gloomy shadows about the barricaded room. Its depressing light added to the sinister aspect of their extremity. The silence was ominous, it was fraught with a portend of disaster; disaster worse than death. How could they hope to withstand the attack of the men outside? They were waiting, waiting for what was to happen. Every conceivable method had been adopted by the besiegers to dislodge their intended victims. They had tried to tear the roof off, but the heavy logs were well dovetailed, and the process would have taken too long, and exposed those attempting it to the fire of the rifles in the capable hands of the defenders. Chepstow had illustrated his determination promptly by a half dozen shots fired at the first moving of one of the logs. Then had come an assault on the door, but, here again, the ready play of the rifle from one of the windows had driven these besiegers hurriedly to cover. Some man, more blinded with drink than the rest of his comrades, had suggested fire. But his suggestion was promptly vetoed. Had it been the parson only they would probably have had no scruples, but Betty was there, and they wanted Betty. For some time there had been no further assault. "I wish I knew how many there were," Chepstow said, in a low voice. "Would that do any good?" The man moved his shoulders in something like a despairing shrug. "Would anything do any good?" "Nothing I can think of," Betty murmured bitterly. "I thought if there were say only a dozen I might open this door. We have the repeating-rifles." The man's eyes as he spoke glittered with a fierce light. Betty saw it, and somehow it made her shiver. It brought home to her their extremity even more poignantly than all that had gone before. When a brave churchman's thoughts concentrated in such a direction she felt that their hopes were small indeed. She shook her head. "No, uncle dear. We must wait for that until they force an entrance." She was cool enough in her desperation, cooler far than he. "Yes," he nodded reluctantly, "perhaps you're right, but the suspense is--killing. Hark! Listen, they are coming at us again. I wonder what it is to be this time." The harsh voices of the drunken mob could be plainly heard. They were coming nearer. Brutal laughter assailed the straining ears inside, and set their nerves tingling afresh. Then came a hush. It lasted some seconds. Then a single laugh just outside the door broke upon the silence. "Try again," a voice said. "Say, here's some more. 'Struth you're a heap of G---- d---- foolishness." Another voice broke in angrily. "God strike you!" it snarled, "do it your b---- self." "Right ho!" Then there came a shuffling of feet, and, a moment later, a scraping and scratching at the foot of the door. Chepstow glanced down at it, and Betty's eyes were irresistibly drawn in the same direction. "What are they doing now?" It was the voice of the wounded strike-leader on his bunk at the far end of the room. He was staring over at the door, his expression one of even greater fear than that of the defenders themselves. He felt that, in spite of the part he had played in bringing the strike about, his position was no better than these others. If anything happened to them all help for him was gone. Besides, he, too, understood that these men outside were no longer strikers, but wolves, whiskey-soaked savages beyond the control of any strike-leader. He received no reply. The scraping went on. Something was being thrust into the gaping crack which stood an inch wide beneath the door. Suddenly the noise ceased, followed by a long pause. Then, in the strong draught under the door, a puff of oil smoke belched into the room, and its nauseous reek set Chepstow coughing. His cough brought an answering peal of brutal laughter from beyond the door, and some one shouted to his comrades-- "Bully fer you, bo'! Draw 'em! Draw 'em like badgers. Smoke 'em out like gophers." The pungent smoke belched into the room, and the man darted from the door. "Quick!" he cried. "Wet rags! A blanket!" Betty sprang to his assistance. The room was rapidly filling with smoke, which stung their eyes and set them choking. A blanket was snatched off the wounded strike-leader, but the process of saturating it was slow. They had only one barrel of water, and dared not waste it by plunging the blanket into it. So they were forced to resort to the use of a dipper. At last it was ready and the man crushed it down at the foot of the door, and stamped it tight with his foot. But it had taken too much time to set in place. The room was dense with a fog of smoke that set eyes streaming and throats gasping. In reckless despair the man sprang at one of the windows and began to tear down the carefully-built barricade. But now the cunning of the besiegers was displayed. As the last of the barricade was removed Chepstow discovered that the cotton covering of the window was smouldering. He tore it out to let in the fresh air, but only to release a pile of smouldering oil rags, which had been placed on the thickness of the wall, and set it tumbling into the room. The window was barricaded on the outside! The smoke became unbearable now, and the two prisoners set to work to trample the smouldering rags out. It was while they were thus occupied that a fresh disaster occurred. There was a terrific clatter at the stove, and a cloud of smoke and soot practically put the place in darkness. Nor did it need the sound of scrambling feet on the roof to tell those below what had happened. The strikers, by removing the topmost joint of the pipe, where it protruded through the roof, had been able, by the aid of a long stick, to dislodge the rest of the pipe and send it crashing to the floor. It was a master-stroke of diabolical cunning, for now, added to the smoke and soot, the sulphurous fumes of the blazing stove rendered the conditions of the room beyond further endurance. Half blinded and gasping Chepstow sprang at the table and seized a rifle. Betty had dropped into a chair choking. The strike-leader lay moaning, trying to shut out the smoke with his one remaining blanket. "Come on, Betty," shouted the man, in a frenzy of rage. "You've got your revolver. I'm going to open the door, and may God Almighty have mercy on the soul of the man who tries to stop us!" CHAPTER XXVIII DAVE--THE MAN Dave's buckboard swept up the slope of the last valley. It reached the dead level of the old travoy trail, which passed in front of Mason's dugout on its way to the lumber camp. He was looking ahead for signs which he feared to discover; he wanted the reason of the smoke he had seen from afar off. But now a perfect screen of towering pine forest lined the way, and all that lay beyond was hidden from his anxious eyes. He flogged his horses faster. The perfect mountain calm was unbroken; even the speeding horses and the rattle of his buckboard were powerless to disturb that stupendous quiet. It was a mere circumstance in a world too vast to take color from a detail so insignificant. It was that wondrous peace, that thrilling silence that aggravated his fears. His apprehension grew with each passing moment, and, though he made no display, his clutch upon the reins, the sharpness with which he plied his whip, the very immobility of his face, all told their tale of feelings strung to a high pitch. Mason was standing directly behind him in the carryall. He steadied himself with a grip upon the back of the driving-seat. Beside him the wretched Truscott was sitting on the jolting slats of the body of the vehicle, mercilessly thrown about by the bumping over the broken trail. Mason, too, was staring out ahead. "Seems quiet enough," he murmured, half to himself. Dave caught at his words. "That's how it seems," he said, in a tone of doubt. "It's less than half a mile now," Mason went on a moment later. "We're coming to the big bend." Dave nodded. His whip fell across his horses' quarters. "Best get ready," he said significantly. Then he laughed mirthlessly and tried to excuse himself. "I don't guess there'll be a heap of trouble, though." "No." Mason's reply carried no conviction. Both men were in doubt. Neither knew what to expect. Neither knew in what way to prepare for the meeting that was now so near. Now the trail began to swing out to the right. It was the beginning of the big bend. The walls of forest about them receded slightly, opening out where logs had been felled beside the trail in years past. The middle of the curve was a small clearing. Then, further on, as it inclined again to the left, it narrowed down to the bare breadth of the trail. "Just beyond this----" Mason broke off. His words were cut short by a loud shout just ahead of them. It was a shout of triumph and gleeful enjoyment. Dave's whip fell again, and the horses laid on to their traces. From that moment to the moment when the horses were almost flung upon their haunches by the sudden jolt with which Dave pulled them up was a matter of seconds only. He was out of the buckboard, too, having flung the reins to Mason, and was standing facing a small group of a dozen men whom it was almost impossible to recognize as lumberjacks. In truth, there were only three of them who were, the others were some of those Mason had been forced to engage in his extremity. At the sight of Dave's enormous figure a cry broke from the crowd. Then they looked at the buckboard with its panting horses, and Mason standing in the carryall, one hand on the reins and one resting on the revolver on his hip. Their cry died out. But as it did so another broke from their midst. It was Betty's voice, and her uncle's. There was a scuffle and a rush. Gripping the girl by the arm Tom Chepstow burst from their midst and ran to Dave's side, dragging Betty with him. "Thank God!" he cried. But there was no answering joy from Dave. He scarcely even seemed to see them. A livid, frozen rage glared out of his eyes. His face was terrible to behold. He moved forward. His gait was cat-like, his head was thrust forward, it was almost as if he tiptoed and was about to spring upon the mob. As he came within a yard of the foremost of the men he halted, and one great arm shot out with its fist clenching. "Back!" he roared; "back to your camp, every man of you! Back, you cowardly hounds!" There were twelve of them; fierce, savage, half-drunken men. They cared for no one, they feared no one. They were ready to follow whithersoever their passions led them. There was not a man among them that would not fight with the last breath in his body. Yet they hesitated at the sound of that voice. They almost shrank before that passion-lit face. The man's enormous stature was not without awe for them. And in that moment of hesitation the battle was won for Dave. Chepstow's repeating-rifle was at his shoulder, and Mason's revolver had been whipped out of its holster and was held covering them. Suddenly there was a movement in the crowd, somewhere behind. If Dave saw it he gave no sign. But Mason saw it, and, sharply incisive, his voice rang out-- "The first man that moves this way I'll shoot him like a dog!" Instantly every eye among the strikers was turned upon the two men with their ready weapons, and to a man they understood that the game was up. "Get out! Get out--quick!" Dave's great voice split the air with another deep roar. And the retreat began on the instant with those in the rear. Some one started to run, and in a moment the rest had joined in a rush for the camp, vanishing into the forest like a pack of timber wolves, flinging back fierce, vengeful glances over their shoulders at those who had so easily routed them. No one stirred till the last man had disappeared. Then Dave turned. "Quick!" he cried, in an utterly changed voice, "get into the buckboard!" But Betty turned to him in a half-hysterical condition. "Oh, Dave, Dave!" she cried helplessly. But Dave was just now a man whom none of them had ever seen before. He had words for no one--not even for Betty. He suddenly caught her in his arms and lifted her bodily into the buckboard. He scrambled in after her, while Chepstow jumped up behind. In a moment, it seemed, they were racing headlong for the camp. * * * * * The camp was in a ruinous condition. The destructive demon in men temporarily demented was abroad and his ruthless hand had fallen heavily. The whole atmosphere suggested the red tide of anarchy. The charred remains of the sutler's store was the centre of a net of ruin spread out in every direction, and from this radiated the wreckage of at least a dozen shanties, which had, like the store, been burned to the ground. In the circumstances it would be impossible to guess at the reasons for such destruction: maybe it was the result of carelessness, maybe a mischievous delight in sweeping away that which reminded these men of their obligations to their employer, maybe it was merely a consequence of the settlement of their own drunken feuds. Whatever the cause, the hideous effect of the strike was apparent in every direction. In the centre of the clearing was a great gathering of the lumbermen. Their seared faces expressed every variety of mental attitude, from fierce jocularity down to the blackest hatred of interference from those whose authority had become anathema to them. They were gathered at the call of those who had fled from the dugout, spurred to a defense of what they believed to be their rights by a hurried, garbled account of the summary treatment just meted out to them. They were ready for more than the mere assertion of their demands. They were ready to enforce them, they were ready for any mischief which the circumstances prompted. It was a deadly array. Many were sober, many were sobering, many were still drunk. The latter were those whose cunning had prompted them, at the outset of the strike, to secrete a sufficient supply of liquor from their fellows. And the majority of these were not the real lumber-jacks, those great simple children of the forest, but the riffraff that had drifted into the camp, or had been sent thither by those who promoted the strike. The real lumber-jacks were more or less incapable of such foresight and cunning. They were slow-thinking creatures of vast muscle, only swift and keen as the axes they used when engaged in the work which was theirs. Through the rank animal growth of their bodies their minds had remained too stunted to display the low cunning of the scallywags whose unscrupulous wits alone must supply their idle bodies with a livelihood. But simple as babes, simple and silly as sheep, and as dependent upon their shepherd, as these men were, they were at all times dangerous, the more dangerous for their very simplicity. Just now, with their unthinking brains sick with the poison of labor's impossible argument, and the execrable liquor of the camp, they were a hundred times more deadly. Men had come in for the orgy from all the outlying camps. They had been carefully shepherded by those whose business it was to make the strike successful. Discontent had been preached into every ear, and the seed had fallen upon fruitful, virgin soil. Thus it was that a great concourse had foregathered now. There was an atmosphere of restrained excitement abroad among them. For them the news of Dave's arrival had tremendous possibilities. A babel of harsh voices debated the situation in loud tones, each man forcing home his argument with a mighty power of lung, a never-failing method of supporting doubtful argument. The general attitude was threatening, yet it hardly seemed to be unanimous. There was too much argument. There seemed to be an undercurrent of uncertainty with no single, capable voice to check or guide it. As the moments sped the crowd became more and more threatening, but whether against the master of the mills, or whether the result of hot blood and hot words, it would have been difficult to say. Then, just as the climax seemed to be approaching, a magical change swept over the throng. It was wrought by the sudden appearance of Dave's buckboard, which seemed to leap upon the scene from the depth of the forest. And as it came into view a hoarse, fierce shout went up. Then, in a moment, an expectant hush fell. Dave's eyes were fixed upon the crowd before him. He gave no sign. His face, like a mask, was cold, hard, unyielding. No word was spoken by those in the buckboard. Every one, with nerves straining and pulses throbbing, was waiting for what was to happen; every one except the prisoner, Truscott. The master of the mills read the meaning of what he beheld with the sureness of a man bred to the calling of these men. He knew. And knowing, he had little blame for them. How could it be otherwise with these unthinking souls? The blame must lie elsewhere. But his sympathy left his determination unaltered. He knew, no one better, that here the iron heel alone could prevail, and for the time his heel was shod for the purpose. He drew near. Some one shouted a furious epithet at him, and the cry was taken up by others. The horses shied. He swung them back with a heavy hand, and forced them to face the crowd, his whip falling viciously at the same time. But, for a moment, his face relaxed its cold expression. His quick ears had detected a lack of unanimity in the execration. Suddenly he pulled the horses up. He passed the reins to Mason and leaped to the ground. It was a stirring moment. The mob advanced, but the movement seemed almost reluctant. It was not the rush of blind fury one might have expected, but rather as though it were due to pressure from behind by those under cover of their comrades in front. Dave moved on to meet them, and those in the buckboard remained deathly still. Mason was the first to move. He had just become aware that Dave had left his revolver on the seat of the vehicle. Instantly he lifted the reins and walked the horses closer to the crowd. "He's unarmed," he said, in explanation to the parson. Chepstow nodded. He moved his repeating-rifle to a handier position. Betty looked up. "He left that gun purposely," she said. "I saw him." Her face was ghastly pale, but a light shone in her eyes which nobody could have failed to interpret. Mason saw it and no longer hesitated. "Will you take these reins?" he said. "And--give me your revolver." The girl understood and obeyed in silence. "I think there'll be trouble," Mason went on a moment later, as he saw Dave halt within a few yards of the front rank of the strikers. He watched the men close about his chief in a semicircle, but the buckboard in rear always held open a road for retreat. Now the crowd pressed up from behind. The semicircle became dense. Those in the buckboard saw that many of the men were carrying the tools of their calling, prominent among them being the deadly peavey, than which, in case of trouble, no weapon could be more dangerous at close quarters. As he halted Dave surveyed the sea of rough, hard faces glowering upon him. He heard the mutterings. He saw the great bared arms and the knotty hands grasping the hafts of their tools. He saw all this and understood, but the sight in no way disturbed him. His great body was erect, his cold eyes unwavering. It was the unconscious pose of a man who feels the power to control within him. "Well?" he inquired, with an easy drawl. Instantly there was silence everywhere. It was the critical moment. It was the moment when, before all things, he must convince these lawless creatures of his power, his reserve of commanding force. "Well?" he demanded again. "Where's your leader? Where's the gopher running this layout? I've come right along to talk to you boys to see if we can't straighten this trouble out. Where's your leader, the man who was hired to make you think I wasn't treating you right; where is he? Speak up, boys, I can't rightly hear all you're saying. I want to parley with your leaders." Mason listening to the great voice of the lumberman chuckled inaudibly. He realized something of Dave's method, and the shrewdness of it. The mutterings had begun afresh. Some of the front rank men drew nearer. Dave did not move. He wanted an answer. He wanted an indication of their actual mood. Somebody laughed in the crowd. It was promptly shouted down. It was the indication the master of the mills sought. They wanted to hear what he had to say. He allowed the ghost of a smile to play round the corners of his stern mouth for a moment. But his attitude remained uncompromising. His back stiffened, his great shoulders squared, he stood out a giant amongst those giants of the forest. "Where's your man?" he cried, in a voice that could be heard by everybody. "Is he backing down? That's not like a lumber-jack. P'r'aps he's not a lumber-jack. P'r'aps he's got no clear argument I can't answer. P'r'aps he hasn't got the grit to get out in the open and talk straight as man to man. Well, let it go at that. Guess you'd best set one of you up as spokesman. I've got all the time you need to listen." "Your blasted skunk of a foreman shot him down!" cried a voice in the crowd, and it was supported by ominous murmurs from the rest. "By God, and Mason was right!" cried Dave, in a voice so fierce that it promptly silenced the murmurs. His dilating eyes rested on several familiar faces. The faces of men who had worked for him for years, men whose hair was graying in the service of the woods. He also flashed his lightning glance upon faces unfamiliar, strangers to his craft. "By God, he was right!" he repeated, as though to force the violence of his opinion upon them. "I could have done it myself. And why? Because he has come here and told you you are badly treated. He's told you the tale that the profits of this work of yours belong to you. He's told you I am an oppressor, who lives by the sweat of your labors. He tells you this because he is paid to tell you. Because he is paid by those who wish to ruin my mills, and put me out of business, and so rob you all of the living I have made it possible for you to earn. You refuse to work at his bidding; what is the result? My mill is closed down. I am ruined. These forests are my right to cut. There is no more cutting to be done. You starve. Yes, you starve like wolves in winter. You'll say you can get work elsewhere. Go and get it, and you'll starve till you get it at half the wage I pay you. I am telling you what is right. I am talking to you with the knowledge of my own ruin staring me in the face. You have been told you can squeeze me, you can squeeze a fraction more of pay out of me. But you can't, not one cent, any man of you; and if you go to work again to keep our ship afloat you'll have to work harder than ever before--for the same pay. Now pass up your spokesman, and I'll talk to him. I can't bellow for all the world to hear." It was a daring beginning, so daring that those in the buckboard gasped in amazement. But Dave knew his men, or, at least, he knew the real lumber-jack. Straight, biting talk must serve him, or nothing would. Now followed a buzz of excited talk. There were those among the crowd who from the beginning had had doubts, and to these Dave's words appealed. He had voiced something of what they had hazily thought. Others there were who were furious at his biting words. Others again, and these were not real lumber-jacks, who were for turning upon him the savage brutality of their drink-soaked brains. An altercation arose. It was the dispute of factions suddenly inflamed. It was somewhere in rear of the crowd. Those in front turned to learn the cause. Dave watched and listened. He understood. It was the result of his demand for a spokesman. Opinions were divided, and a dozen different men were urged forward. He knew he must check the dispute. Suddenly his voice rang out above the din. "It's no use snarling about it like a lot of coyotes," he roared. "Pass them all through, and I'll listen to 'em all. Now, boys, pass 'em through peaceably." One of the men in front of him supported him. "Aye, aye," he shouted. "That's fair, boys, bring 'em along. The boss'll talk 'em straight." The man beside him hit him sharply in the ribs, and the broad-shouldered "jack" swung round. "Ther' ain't no 'boss' to this layout, Peter," objected the man who had dealt the blow. "Yonder feller ain't no better'n us." The man scowled threateningly as he spoke. He was an enormous brute with a sallow, ill-tempered face, and black hair. Dave heard the words and his eyes surveyed him closely. He saw at a glance there was nothing of the lumberman about him. He set him down at once as a French Canadian bully, probably one of the men instrumental in the strike. However, his attention was now drawn to the commotion caused by six of the lumbermen being pushed to the front as spokesmen. They joined the front rank, and stood sheepishly waiting for their employer. Custom and habit were strong upon them, and a certain awe of the master of the mills affected them. "Now we'll get doing," Dave said, noting with satisfaction that four of the six were old hands who had worked beside him in his early days. "Well, boys, let's have it. What's your trouble? Give us the whole story." But as spokesmen these fellows were not brilliant. They hesitated, and, finally, with something approaching a shamefaced grin, one of them spoke up. "It's--it's jest wages, boss." "Leave it at 'wages,' Bob!" shouted a voice at the back of the crowd. "Yes," snarled the sallow-faced giant near by. "We're jest man to man. Ther' ain't no 'bosses' around." "Hah!" Dave breathed the ejaculation. Then he turned his eyes, steely hard, upon the last speaker, and his words came in an unmistakable tone. "It seems there are men here who aren't satisfied with their spokesmen. Maybe they'll speak out good and plenty, instead of interrupting." His challenge seemed to appeal to the original spokesman, for he laughed roughly. "Say, boss," he cried, "he don't cut no ice, anyways. He's jest a bum roadmaker. He ain't bin in camp more'n six weeks. We don't pay no 'tention to him. Y'see, boss," he went on, emphasizing the last word purposely, "it's jest wages. We're workin' a sight longer hours than is right, an' we ain't gettin' nuthin' extry 'cep' the rise you give us three months back. Wal, we're wantin' more. That's how." He finished up his clumsy speech with evident relief, and mopped his forehead with his ham-like hand. "And since when, Bob Nicholson, have you come to this conclusion?" demanded Dave, with evident kindliness. His tone produced instant effect upon the man. He became easier at once, and his manner changed to one of distinct friendliness. "Wal, boss, I can't rightly say jest when, fer sure. Guess it must ha' bin when that orator-feller got around----" "Shut up!" roared some one in the crowd, and the demand was followed up by distinct cursing in several directions. The sallow-faced roadmaker seized his opportunity. "It's wages we want an' wages we're goin' to git!" he shouted so that the crowd could hear. "You're sweatin' us. That's wot you're doin', sweatin' us, to make your pile a sight bigger. We're honest men up here; we ain't skunks what wants wot isn't our lawful rights. Ef you're yearnin' fer extry work you got to pay fer it. Wot say, boys?" "Aye! That's it. Extry wages," cried a number of voices in the background. But again the chorus was not unanimous. There were those, too, in the front whose scowling faces, turned on the speaker, showed their resentment at this interference by a man they did not recognize as a lumber-jack. Dave seized his opportunity. "You're wanting extra wages for overtime," he cried, in a voice that carried like a steam siren. "Well, why didn't you ask for them? Why did you go out on strike first, and then ask? Why? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why you chose this damned gopher racket instead of acting like the honest men you boast yourselves to be. I can tell you why you wanted to lock up your camp-boss, and so prevent your wishes reaching me. I can tell you why you had men on the road between here and Malkern to stop letters going through. I can tell you why you honest men set fire to the store here, and stole all the liquor and goods in it. I can tell you why you did these things. Because you've just listened like silly sheep to the skunks who've come along since the fever broke out. Because you've listened to the men who've set out to ruin us both, you and me. Because you've listened to these scallywags, who aren't lumbermen, who've come among you. They're not 'jacks' and they don't understand the work, but they've been drawing the same wages as you, and they're trying to rob you of your living, they're trying to take your jobs from you and leave you nothing. That's why you've done these things, you boys who've worked with me for years and years, and had all you needed. Are you going to let 'em rob you? They _are_ robbing you, for, I swear before God, my mills are closed down, and they'll remain closed, and every one of you can get out and look for new work unless you turn to at once." A murmur again arose as he finished speaking, but this time there was a note of alarm in it, a note of anger that was not against their employer. Faces looked puzzled, and ended by frowning into the faces of neighbors. Dave understood the effect he had made. He was waiting for a bigger effect. He was fighting for something that was dearer to him than life, and all his courage and resource were out to the limit. He glanced at the sallow-faced giant. Their eyes met, and in his was a fierce challenge. He drew the fellow as easily as any expert swordsman. The man had been shrewd enough to detect the change in his comrades, and he promptly hurled himself into the fray to try and recover the lost ground. He stepped forward, towering over his fellows. He meant mischief. "See, mates," he shouted, trying to put a jeer in his angry voice, "look at 'im! He's come here to call us a pack o' skunks an' gophers. Him wot's makin' thousands o' dollars a day out of us. He's come here to kick us like a lot o' lousy curs. His own man shot up our leader, him as was trying to fit things right fer us. I tell you it was murder--bloody murder! We're dirt to him. He can kick us--shoot us up. We're dogs--lousy yeller dogs--we are. You'll listen to his slobbery talk an' you'll go to work--and he'll cut your wages lower, so he can make thousan's more out o' you." Then he suddenly swung round on Dave with a fierce oath. "God blast you, it's wages we want--d'ye hear--wages! An' we're goin' to have 'em! You ain't goin' to grind us no longer, mister! You're goin' to sign a 'greement fer a rise o' wages of a quarter all round. That's wot you're goin' to do!" Dave was watching, watching. His opportunity was coming. "I came to talk to honest 'jacks,'" he said icily, "not to blacklegs. I'll trouble you to get right back into the crowd, and hide your ugly head, and keep your foul tongue quiet. The boys have got their spokesmen." His voice was sharp, but the man failed to apprehend the danger that lay behind it. He was a bigger man than Dave, and, maybe, he thought to cow him. Perhaps he didn't realize that the master of the mills was now fighting for his existence. There was an instant's pause, and Dave took a step toward him. "Get back!" he roared. His furious demand precipitated things, as he intended it should. Like lightning the giant whipped out a gun. "I'll show you!" he cried. There was a sharp report. But before he could pull the trigger a second time Dave's right fist shot out, and a smashing blow on the chin felled him to the ground like a pole-axed ox. As the man fell Dave turned again to the strikers, and no one noticed that his left arm was hanging helpless at his side. CHAPTER XXIX THE END OF THE STRIKE When the master of the mills faced the men again he hardly knew what to expect. He could not be sure how they would view his action, or what attitude they would adopt. He had considered well before provoking the sallow-faced giant, he had measured him up carefully; the thing had been premeditated. He knew the influence of physical force upon these men. The question was, had he used it at the right moment? He thought he had; he understood lumbermen, but there were more than lumbermen here, and he knew that it was this element of outsiders with whom he was really contending. The fallen man's pistol was on the ground at his feet. He put a foot upon it; then, glancing swiftly at the faces before him, he became aware of a silence, utter, complete, reigning everywhere. There was astonishment, even something of awe in many of the faces; in others doubt mingled with a scowling displeasure. The thing had happened so suddenly. The firing of the shot had startled them unpleasantly, and they were still looking for the result of it. On this point they had no satisfaction. Only Dave knew--he had reason to. The arm hanging limply at his side, and the throb of pain at his shoulder left him in no doubt. But he had no intention of imparting his knowledge to any one else yet. He had not finished the fight which must justify his existence as the owner of the mills. The effect of his encounter was not an unpleasant one on the majority of the men. The use of a fist in the face of a gun was stupendous, even to them. Many of them reveled in the outsider's downfall, and contemplated the grit of their employer with satisfaction. But there were others not so easily swayed. Amongst these were the man's own comrades, men who, like himself, were not real lumbermen, but agitators who had received payment to agitate. Besides these there were those unstable creatures, always to be found in such a community, who had no very definite opinions of their own, but looked for the lead of the majority, ready to side with those who offered the strongest support. All this was very evident in that moment of silence, but the moment passed so quickly that it was impossible to say how far Dave's action had really served him. Suddenly a murmur started. In a few seconds it had risen to a shout. It started with the fallen giant's friends. There was a rush in the crowd, an ominous swaying, as of a struggle going on in its midst. Some one put up a vicious cry that lifted clear above the general din. "Lynch him! Lynch him!" The cry was taken up by the rest of the makeshifts and some of the doubters. Then came the sudden but inevitable awakening of the slow, fierce brains of the real men of the woods. The awakening brought with it not so much a desire to champion their employer, as a resentment that these men they regarded as scallywags should attempt to take initiative in their concerns; it was the rousing of the latent hatred which ever exists in the heart of the legitimate tradesman for the interloper. It caught them in a whirlwind of passion. Their blood rose. All other considerations were forgotten, it mattered nothing the object of that mutiny, all thought of wages, all thought of wrongs between themselves and their employer were banished from their minds. They hated nothing so badly as these men with whom they had worked in apparent harmony. It was at this psychological moment that the final fillip was given. It came from a direction that none of the crowd realized. It came from one who knew the woodsman down to his very core, who had watched every passing mood of the crowd during the whole scene with the intentness of one who only waits his opportunity. It was Bob Mason in the buckboard. "Down with the blacklegs! Down with the dirty 'scabs'!" he shouted. In a moment the battle was raging. There was a wild rush of men, and their steel implements were raised aloft. "Down with the 'scabs'!" The cry echoed and reëchoed in every direction, taken up by every true lumberman. A tumult of shouting and cursing roared everywhere. The crowd broke. It spread out. Groups of struggling combatants were dotted about till the sight suggested nothing so much as a massacre. It was a fight of brutal savagery that would stop short only at actual slaughter. It was the safety-valve for the accumulated spleen of a week's hard drinking. It was the only way to steady the shaken, drink-soaked nerves and restore the dull brains to the dead level of a desire to return to work and order. Fortunately it was a short-lived battle too. The lumber-jacks were the masters from the outset. They were better men, they were harder, they had more sheer "grit." Then, too, they were in the majority. The "scabs" began to seek refuge in flight, but not before they had received a chastisement that would remain a sore memory for many days to come. Those who went down in the fight got the iron-shod boots of their adversaries in their ribs, till, in desperation, they scrambled to their feet and took their punishment like men. But the victory was too easy for the lumber-jacks' rage to last. Like the wayward, big-hearted children of nature they were, their fury passed as quickly as it had stirred. The terror-stricken flight of those upon whom their rage had turned inspired in them a sort of fiendish amusement, and in this was perhaps the saving of a terrible tragedy. As it was, a few broken limbs, a liberal tally of wounds and bruises were the harvest of that battle. That, and the final clearing out of the element of discontent. It was victory for the master of the mills. In less than ten minutes the victors were straggling back from their pursuit of a routed foe. Dave had not moved. He was still standing beside the fallen giant, who was now recovering consciousness from the knock-out blow he had received. They came up in small bands, laughing and recounting episodes of the fight. They were in the saving mood for their employer. All thoughts of a further strike had passed out of their simple heads. They came back to Dave, like sheep, who, after a wild stampede, have suddenly refound their shepherd, and to him they looked for guidance. And Dave was there for the purpose. He called their attention and addressed them. "Now, boys," he said cheerfully, "you've got nicely rid of that scum, and I'm going to talk to you. We understand each other. We've worked too long together for it to be otherwise. But we don't understand those others who're not lumbermen. Say, maybe you can't all hear me; my voice isn't getting stronger, so I'll just call up that buckboard and stand on it, and talk from there." Amidst a murmur of approval the buckboard was drawn up, and not without tremendous pain Dave scrambled up into the driving-seat. Then it was seen by both lumbermen and those in the buckboard that he had left a considerable pool of blood where he had been standing. Betty, with horror in her eyes, turned to him. "What is it?" she began. But he checked her with a look, and turned at once to the men. "I'm first going to tell you about this strike, boys," he said. "After that we'll get to business, and I guess it won't be my fault if we don't figger things out right. Here, do you see this fellow sitting here? Maybe some of you'll recognize him?" He pointed at Jim Truscott sitting in the carryall. His expression was surly, defiant. But somehow he avoided the faces in front of him. "I'm going to tell you about him. This is the man who organized the strike. He found the money and the men to do the dirty work. He did it because he hates me and wants to ruin me. He came to you with plausible tales of oppression and so forth. He cared nothing for you, but he hated me. I tell you frankly he did this thing because he knew I was pushed to the last point to make good my contract with the government, because he knew that to delay the output of logs from this camp meant that I should go to smash. In doing this he meant to carry you down with me. That's how much he cares for your interests." A growl of anger punctuated his speech. But he silenced them with a gesture and proceeded. His voice was getting weaker, and a deadly pallor was stealing over his face. Chepstow, watching him, was filled with anxiety. Betty's brown eyes clung to his face with an expression of love, horror and pity in them that spoke far louder than any words. Mason was simply calculating in his mind how long Dave could keep up his present attitude. "Do you get my meaning, boys?" he went on. "It's this, if we don't get this work through before winter I'm broke--broke to my last dollar. And you'll be out of a billet--every mother's son of you--with the winter staring you in the face." He paused and took a deep breath. Betty even thought she saw him sway. The men kept an intense silence. "Well?" he went on a moment later, pulling himself together with an evident effort. "I'm just here to talk straight business, and that's what you're going to listen to. First, I'll tell you this fellow's going to get his right medicine through me in the proper manner. Then, second and last, I want to give you a plain understanding of things between ourselves. There's going to be no rise in wages. I just can't do it. That's all. But I'm going to give each man in my camp a big bonus, a nice fat wad of money with which to paint any particular town he favors red, when the work's done. That's to be extra, above his wages. And the whole lot of you shall work for me next season on a guarantee. But from now to the late fall you're going to work, boys, you're going to work as if the devil himself was driving you. We've got time to make up, and shortage besides, and you've got to make it up. I don't want any slackers. Men who have any doubts can get right out. You've got to work as you never worked in your lives before. Now, boys, give us your word. Is it work or----" Dave got no further. A shout--hearty, enthusiastic--went up from the crowd. It meant work, and he was satisfied. The next few minutes were passed in a scene of the wildest excitement. The men closed round the buckboard, and struggled with each other to grip the big man's hand. And Dave, faint and weary as he was, knew them too well to reject their friendly overtures. Besides, they were, as he said, like himself, men of the woods, and he was full of a great sympathy and friendliness for them. At last, however, he turned to Chepstow. "Drive back to the dugout, Tom," he said. "Things are getting misty. I think--I'm--done." CHAPTER XXX IN THE DUGOUT Three arduous and anxious days followed the ending of the strike, and each of the occupants of Mason's dugout felt the strain of them in his or her own particular way. Next to the strike itself, Dave's wound was the most serious consideration. He was the leader, the rudder of his ship; his was the controlling brain; and he was a most exasperating patient. His wound was bad enough, though not dangerous. It would be weeks before the use of his left arm was restored to him; but he had a way of forgetting this, of forgetting that he had lost a great quantity of blood, until weakness prostrated him and roused him to a peevish perversity. Betty was his self-appointed nurse. Tom Chepstow might examine his wound and consider his condition, but it was Betty who dressed his wound, Betty who prepared his food and ministered to his lightest needs. From the moment of his return to the dugout she took charge of him. She consulted no one, she asked for no help. For the time, at least, he was her possession, he was hers to lavish all the fulness of her great love upon, a love that had something almost maternal in its wonderful protective instinct. Mason was busy with the work of reorganization. His was the practical hand and head while Dave was on his sick-bed. From daylight to long after dark he took no rest. Dave's counsel guided him to an extent, but much had to be done without any consultation with the master of the mills. Provisioning the camp was a problem not easily solved. It was simple enough to order up food from Malkern, but there would be at least a week's delay before its arrival. Finally, he surmounted this difficulty, through the return of Lieberstein, who had fled to the woods with his cash-box and a supply of provisions, at the first sign of trouble. Now he had returned to save what he could from the wreck. The Jew needed assistance to recover his looted property--what remained of it. The overseer gave him that assistance, and at the same time arranged that all provisions so recovered should be redistributed (at a price) as rations to the men. Thus the delay in the arrival of supplies from Malkern was tided over. But though he availed himself of this means of getting over his difficulty he was fully determined to rid the camp, at the earliest opportunity, of so treacherous a rascal as Lieberstein. In two days the work of restoration was in full swing. The burned store and shanties were run up with all a lumberman's rapidity and disregard for finish. Time was the thing that mattered. And so wonderfully did Mason drive and cajole his men, that on the third day the gangs once more marched out into the woods. Once again the forests echoed with the hiss of saw, the ringing clang of smiting axe, the crash of falling trees, the harsh voices of the woodsmen, and the hundred and one sounds of bustling activity which belong to a lumber camp in full work. That day was a pleasant one for the occupants of the dugout. It was a wonderful work Mason had done. They all knew and appreciated his devotion to his wounded employer, and though none spoke of it, whenever he appeared in their midst their appreciation of him showed in their manner. Betty was very gentle and kindly. She saw that he wanted for nothing in the way of the comforts which the dugout could provide. Tom Chepstow was far too busy with his sick to give attention to anything else. His hands were very full, and his was a task that showed so little result. Dave, for the most part, saw everything that was going on about him, and had a full estimate of all that was being done in his interests by the devoted little band, and, absurdly enough, the effect upon him was to stir him to greater irritability. It was evening, and the slanting sunlight shone in through one of the windows. It was a narrow beam of light, but its effect was sufficiently cheering. No dugout is a haven of brightness, and just now this one needed all that could help to lift the shadow of sickness and disaster that pervaded it. Betty was preparing supper, and Dave, lying on his stretcher, his vast bulk only half concealed by the blanket thrown over him, was watching the girl with eyes that fed hungrily upon the swift, graceful movements of her pretty figure, the play of expression upon her sweet, sun-tanned face, the intentness, the whole-hearted concentration in her steady, serious eyes as she went about her work. Now and again she glanced over at his rough bed, but he seemed to be asleep every time she turned in his direction. The result was an additional care in her work. She made no noise lest she should waken him. Presently she stooped and pushed a log into the fire-box of the cook-stove. The cinders fell with a clatter, and she glanced round apprehensively. Her movement was so sudden that Dave's wide-open eyes had no time to shut. In a moment she was all contrition at her clumsiness. "I'm so sorry, Dave," she exclaimed. "I did so hope you'd sleep on till supper. It's half an hour yet." "I haven't been sleeping at all." "Why, I----" He smiled and shook his head, and his smile delighted the girl. It was the first she had seen in him since his arrival in the camp. His impatience at being kept to his bed was perhaps dying out. She had always heard that the most active and impatient always became reconciled to bed in the end. "Yes, I did it on purpose," Dave said, still smiling. "You see I wanted to think. You'd have talked if I hadn't. I----" "Oh, Dave!" Betty's reproach had something very like resentment in it. She turned abruptly to the boiler of stew and tasted its contents, while the man chuckled softly. But she turned round on him again almost immediately. "Why are you laughing?" she demanded quickly. But he did not seem inclined to enlighten her. "Half an hour to supper?" he said musingly. "Tom'll be in directly--and Mason." Betty was still looking at him with her cooking spoon poised as it had been when she tasted the stew. "Yes," she said, "they'll be in directly. I've only just got to make the tea." She dropped the spoon upon the table and replaced the lid of the boiler. Then she came over to his bedside. "What did you mean saying I should have talked?" she asked, only now there was a smiling response to the smile still lurking in the gray depths of the man's eyes. Dave drew a long sigh of resignation. "Well, y'see, Betty, if I'd laid here with my eyes open, staring about the room, at you, at the roof, at the window for a whole heap of time, you'd have said to yourself, 'Dave's suffering sure. He can't sleep. He's miserable, unhappy.' You'd have said all those things, and with all your kind little heart, you'd have set to work to cheer me up--same as you'd no doubt have done for that strike-leader fellow you shipped over to the sick camp to make room for me. Well, I just didn't want that kind of cheering. I was thinking--thinking mighty hard--figgering how best to make a broken-winged--er--owl fly without waiting for the wing to mend. Y'see, thinking's mostly all I can do just now, and I need to do such a mighty heap to keep me from getting mad and breaking things. Y'see every hour, as I lie here, I kind of seem to be storing up steam like a locomotive, and sometimes I feel--feel as if I was going to bust. Being sick makes me hate things." His smiling protest was yet perfectly serious. The girl understood. A moment later he went on. "Half an hour to supper?" he said, as though suddenly reaching a decision that had cost him much thought. "Well, just sit right down on this stretcher, and I'm going to talk you tired. I'm sick, so you can't refuse." The man's eyes still smiled, but the seriousness of his manner had increased. Nor was Betty slow to observe it. She gladly seated herself on the edge of the stretcher, and without the least embarrassment, without the least self-consciousness, her soft eyes rested on the rugged face of her patient. She was glad that he wanted to talk--and to her, and she promptly took him up in his own tone. "Well, I've got to listen, I s'pose," she said, with a bright smile. "As you say, you're sick. You might have added that I am your nurse." "Yes, I s'pose you are. It seems funny me needing a nurse. I s'pose I do need one?" Betty nodded; her eyes were bright with an emotion that the man's words had all unconsciously stirred. This man, so strong for himself, so strong to help others--this man, on whom all who came into contact with him leaned as upon some staunch, unfailing support--this man, so invincible, so masterful, so eager in the battle where the odds were against him, needed a nurse! A great pity, a great sympathy, went out to him. Then a feeling of joy and gratitude at the thought that she was his nurse succeeded it. She--she alone had the right to wait upon him. But her face expressed none of these feelings when she replied. She nodded gravely. "Yes, you need a nurse, you poor old Dave. Just for once you're going to give others a chance of being to you what you have always been to them. It breaks my heart to see you on a sickbed; but, Dave, you can never know the joy, the happiness it gives me to be--your nurse. All my life it has been the other way. All my life you have been my wise counselor, my ever-ready loyal friend; now, in ever so small a degree, you have to lean on me. Don't be perverse, Dave. Let me help you all I can. Don't begrudge me so small a happiness. But you said you were going to talk me tired, and I'm doing it all." She laughed lightly, but it was a laugh to hide her real feelings. The man's uninjured arm reached out, and his great hand rested heavily on one of hers. The pressure of his fingers, intended to be gentle, was crushing. His action meant so much. No words could have thanked her more truly than that hand pressure. Betty's face grew warm with delight; and she turned her eyes toward the stove as though to see that all was well with her cooking. "They're cutting to-day?" Dave's eyes were turned upon the window. The sunlight was dying out now, and the gray dusk was stealing upon the room. Betty understood the longing in the man's heart. "Yes, they're cutting." He stirred uneasily. "My shoulder is mending fast," he said a moment later. And the girl saw his drift. She shook her head. "It's mending, but it won't be well--for weeks," she said. "It's got to be," he said, with tense emphasis, after a long pause. His voice was low, but thrilling with the purpose of a mind that would not bend to the weakness of his body. "You must be patient, Dave dear," the girl said, with the persuasiveness of a mother for her child. For a moment the man's brows drew together in a frown and his lips compressed. "Betty, Betty, I can't be patient," he suddenly burst out. "I know I'm all wrong; but I can't be patient. You know what all this means. I'm not going to attempt to tell you. You understand it all. I cannot lie here a day longer. Even now I seem to hear the saws and axes at work. I seem to see the men moving through the forests. I seem to hear Mason's orders in the dead calm of the woods. With the first logs that are travoyed to the river I must leave here and get back to Malkern. There is work to be done, and from now on it will be man's work. It will be more than a fight against time. It will be a battle against almost incalculable odds, a battle in which all is against us. Betty, you are my nurse, and as you hope to see me through with this broken shoulder, so you must not attempt to alter my decision. I know you. You want to see me fit and well. Before all things you desire that. You will understand me when I say that, before all things, I must see the work through. My bodily comfort must not be considered; and as my friend, as my nurse, you must not hinder me. I must leave here to-night." The man had lifted himself to a half-sitting posture in his excitement, and the girl watched him with anxious eyes. Now she reached out, and one hand gently pressed him back to his pillow. As he had said, she understood; and when she spoke, her words were the words he wished to hear. They soothed him at once. "Yes, Dave. If you must return, it shall be as you say." He caught her hand and held it, crushing its small round flesh in the hollow of his great palm. It was his gratitude, his gratitude for her understanding and sympathy. His eyes met hers. And in that moment something else stirred in him. The pressure tightened upon her unresisting hand. The blood mounted to her head. It seemed to intoxicate her. It was a moment of such ecstasy as she had dreamed of in a vague sort of way--a moment when the pure woman spirit in her was exalted to such a throne of spiritual light as is beyond the dream of human imagination. In the man, too, was a change. There was something looking out of his eyes which seemed to have banished his last thought of that lifelong desire for the success of his labors, something which left him no room for anything else, something which had for its inception all the human passionate desire of his tremendous soul. His gray eyes glowed with a living fire; they deepened; a flush of hot blood surged over his rugged features, lighting them out of their plainness. His temples throbbed visibly, and the vast sinews shivered with the fire that swept through his body. In a daze Betty understood the change. Her heart leaped out to him, yielding all her love, all that was hers to give. It cried aloud her joy in the passion of those moments, but her lips were silent. She had gazed into heaven for one brief instant, then her eyes dropped before a vision she dared no longer to look upon. "Betty!" The man had lifted to his elbow again. A torrent of passionate words rushed to his lips. But they remained unspoken. His heavy tongue was incapable of giving them expression. He halted. That one feverish exclamation was all that came, for his tongue clave in his mouth. But in that one word was the avowal of such a love as rarely falls to the lot of woman. It was the man's whole being that spoke. Betty's hand twisted from his grasp. She sprang to her feet and turned to the door. "It's Bob Mason," she said, in a voice that was almost an awed whisper, as she rushed to the cook-stove. The camp-boss strode heavily into the room. There was a light in his eyes that usually would have gladdened the master of the mills. Now, however, Dave's thoughts were far from the matters of the camp. "We've travoyed a hundred to the river bank!" the lumberman exclaimed in a tone of triumph. "The work's begun!" It was Betty who answered him. Hers was the ready sympathy, the heart to understand for others equally with herself. She turned with a smile of welcome, of pride in his pride. "Bob, you're a gem!" she cried, holding out a hand of kindliness to him. And Dave's tardy words followed immediately with characteristic sincerity. "Thanks, Bob," he said, in his deep tones. "It's all right, boss, they're working by flare to-night, an' they're going on till ten o'clock." Dave nodded. His thoughts had once more turned into the smooth channel of his affairs. Betty was serving out supper. A few moments later, weary and depressed, the parson came in for his supper. His report was much the same as usual. Progress--all his patients were progressing, but it was slow work, for the recent battle had added to the number of his patients. There was very little talk until supper was over. Then it began as Mason was preparing to depart again to his work. Dave spoke of his decision without any preamble. "Say, folks, I'm going back to Malkern to-night," he said, with a smiling glance of humor at his friends in anticipation of the storm of protest he knew his announcement would bring upon himself. Mason was on his feet in an instant. "You can't do it, boss!" he exclaimed. "You----" "No you don't, Dave, old friend," broke in Chepstow, with a shake of his head. "You'll stay right here till I say 'go.'" Dave's smile broadened, and his eyes sought Betty's. "Well, Betty?" he demanded. But Betty understood. "I have nothing to say," she replied quietly. Dave promptly turned again to the parson. His smile had gone again. "I've got to go, Tom," he said. "My work's done here, but it hasn't begun yet in Malkern. Do you get my meaning? Until the cutting began up here I was not needed down there. Now it is different. There is no one in Malkern to head things. Dawson and Odd are good men, but they are only my--foremen. It is imperative that I go, and--to-night." "But look here, boss, it can't be done," cried Mason, with a sort of hopeless earnestness. "You aren't fit to move yet. The journey down--you'd never stand it. Besides----" "Yes, besides, who's to take you down? How are you going?" Chepstow broke in sharply. He meant to clinch the matter once for all. Dave's manner returned to the peevishness of his invalid state. "There's the buckboard," he said sharply. "Can you drive it?" demanded the parson with equal sharpness. "I can't take you down. I can't leave the sick. Mason is needed here. Well?" "Don't worry. I'm driving myself," Dave said soberly. Chepstow sprang to his feet and waved his pipe in the air in his angry impatience. "You're mad! You drive? Hang it, man, you couldn't drive a team of fleas. Get up! Get up from that stretcher now, and see how much driving you could do. See here, Dave, I absolutely forbid you to attempt any such thing." Dave raised himself upon his elbow. His steady eyes had something of an angry smile in them. "See here, Tom," he said, imitating the other's manner. "You can talk till you're black in the face. I'm going down to-night. Mason's going to hook the buckboard up for me and fetch Truscott along. I'll have to take him down too. It's no use in your kicking, Tom," he went on, as the parson opened his lips for further protest, "I'm going." He turned again to Mason. "I'll need the buckboard and team in an hour. Guess you'll see to it, boy. An' say, just set food for the two of us in it, and half a sack of oats for the horses----" "One moment, Bob," interrupted Betty. She had been merely an interested listener to the discussion, sitting at the far end of the supper table. Now she came over to Dave's bedside. "You'd best put in food for three." Then she looked down at Dave, smiling reassurance. From him she turned to her uncle with a laughing glance. "Trust you men to argue and wrangle over things that can be settled without the least difficulty. Dave here must get down to Malkern. I understand the importance of his presence there. Very well, he must go. Therefore it's only a question how he can get there with the least possible danger to himself. It's plain Bob can't go down. He must see the work through here. You, uncle, must also stay. It is your duty to the sick. We cannot send any of the men. They are all needed. Well, I'm going to drive him down. We'll make him comfortable in the carryall, and Truscott can share the driving-seat with me--carefully secured to prevent him getting away. There you are. I will be responsible for Dave's welfare. You need not be anxious." She turned with such a look of confident affection upon the sick man, that, for the moment, no one had a word of protest to offer. It was Dave who spoke first. He took her hand in his and nodded his great head at her. "Thanks, little Betty," he said. "I shall be perfectly safe in your charge." And his words were ample reward to the woman who loved him. It was his acknowledgment of his dependence upon her. After that there was discussion, argument, protest for nearly half an hour. But Dave and Betty held to their decision, and, at last, Tom Chepstow gave way to them. Then it was that Mason went off to make preparations. The parson went to assist him, and Betty and Dave were once more alone. Betty let her uncle go and then lit the lamp. For some moments no word was spoken between the sick man and his nurse. The girl cleared the supper things and put a kettle on the stove. Then, while watching for it to boil, she was about to pack up her few belongings for the journey. But she changed her mind. Instead she came back to the table and faced the stretcher on which the sick man was lying. "Dave," she said, in a low voice, "will you promise me something?" Dave turned his face toward her. "Anything," he said, in all seriousness. The girl waited. She was gauging the meaning of his reply. In anybody else that answer could not have been taken seriously. In him it might be different. "It's a big thing," she said doubtfully. "It don't matter, little girl, I just mean it." She came slowly over to his side. "Do you remember, I once got you to teach me the business of the mill? I wanted to learn then so I could help some one. I want to help some one now. But it's a different 'some one' this time. Do you understand? I--I haven't forgotten a single thing I learned from you. Will you let me help you? You cannot do all now. Not until your arm is better." She dropped upon her knees at his bedside. "Dave, don't refuse me. You shall just give your orders to me. I will see they are carried out. We--you and I together--will run your mills to the success that I know is going to be yours. Don't say no, Dave--dear." The man had turned to her. He was looking into the depths of the fearless brown eyes before him. He had no intention of refusing her, but he was looking, looking deep down into the beautiful, woman's heart that was beating within her bosom. "I'll not refuse you, Betty. I only thank God Almighty for such a little friend." CHAPTER XXXI AT MIDNIGHT The silence of the night was unbroken. The valley of the Red Sand River was wrapped in a peace such as it had never known since Dave had first brought into it the restless activity of his American spirit. But it was a depressing peace to the dwellers in the valley, for it portended disaster. No word had reached them of the prospects at the mill, only a vague rumor had spread of the doings at the lumber camp. Dave knew the value of silence in such matters, and he had taken care to enforce silence on all who were in a position to enlighten the minds which thirsted for such information. The people of Malkern were waiting, waiting for something definite on the part of the master of the mills. On him depended their future movements. The mill was silent, even though the work of repairing had been completed. But, as yet, they had not lost faith in the man who had piloted them through all the shoals of early struggles to the haven of comparative prosperity. However, the calm, the unwonted silence of the valley depressed and worried them. They longed for the drone, however monotonous, of the mill. They loved it, for it meant that their wheels of life were well oiled, and that they were driving pleasantly along their set track to the terminal of success. Yet while the village slept all was intense activity at the mills. The men had been gathered together again, late that night, and the army of workers was once more complete. The sawyers were at their saws, oiling and fitting, and generally making ready for work. The engineers were at their engines, the firemen at their furnaces, the lumber-jacks were at the shoots, and in the yards. The boom was manned by men who sat around smoking, peavey in hand, ready to handle the mightiest "ninety-footers" that the mountain forests could send them. The checkers were at their posts, and the tally boys were "shooting craps" at the foot of the shoots. The mill, like a resting giant lying prone upon his back, was bursting with a latent strength and activity that only needed the controlling will to set in motion, to drive it to an effort such as Malkern had never seen before, such as, perhaps, Malkern would never see again. And inside Dave's office, that Will lay watching and waiting. It was a curious scene inside the office. The place had been largely converted since the master of the mills had returned. It was half sick room, half office, and the feminine touch about the place was quite incongruous in the office of such a man as Dave. But then just now Dave's control was only of the mill outside. In this room he yielded to another authority. He was in the hands of womenfolk; that is, his body was. He had no word to say in the arrangement of the room, and he was only permitted to think his control outside. It was eleven o'clock, and his mother was preparing to take her departure. Since his return from the camp she was her son's almost constant attendant. Betty's chief concern was for the mill outside, and the careful execution of the man's orders to his foremen. She took a share of the nursing, but only in moments of leisure, and these were very few. Now she had just returned from a final inspection and consultation with Dawson. And the glow of satisfaction on her face was good to see. "Now, mother dear," she said, after having made her report to Dave, "you've got to be off home, and to bed. You've had a long, hard day, and I'm going to relieve you. Dave is all right, and," she added with a smile, "maybe he'll be better still before morning. We expect the logs down by daylight, and then--I guess their arrival in the boom will do more to mend his poor broken shoulder than all our quacks and nostrums. So be off with you. I shall be here all night. I don't intend to rest till the first log enters the boom." The old woman rose wearily from her rocking-chair at her boy's bedside. Her worn face was tired. At her age the strain of nursing was very heavy. But whatever weakness there was in her body, her spirit was as strong as the younger woman's. Her boy was sick, and nothing else could compare with a disaster of that nature. But now she was ready to go, for so it had been arranged between them earlier. She crossed to Betty's side, and, placing her hands upon the girl's shoulders, kissed her tenderly on both cheeks. "God bless and keep you, dearie," she said, with deep emotion. "I'd like to tell you all I feel, but I can't. You're our guardian angel--Dave's and mine. Good-night." "Good-night, mother dear," said the girl, her eyes brightening with a suspicion of tears. Then, with an assumption of lightness which helped to disguise her real feelings, "Now don't you stay awake. Go right off to sleep, and--in the morning you shall hear--the mills!" The old woman nodded and smiled. Next to her boy she loved this motherless girl best in the world. She gathered up her few belongings and went to the bedside. Bending over the sick man she kissed his rugged face tenderly. For a moment one great arm held her in its tremendous embrace, then she toddled out of the room. Betty took her rocking-chair. She sat back and rocked herself in silence for some moments. Her eyes wandered over the curious little room, noting the details of it as though hugging to herself the memory of the smallest trifle that concerned this wonderful time that was hers. There was Dave's desk before the window. It was hers now. There were the vast tomes that recorded his output of lumber. She had spent hours over them calculating figures for the man beside her. There were the flowers his mother had brought, and which she had found time to arrange so that he could see and enjoy them. There were the bandages it was her duty to adjust. There were the remains of the food of which they had both partaken. It was all real, yet so strange. So strange to her who had spent her life surrounded by all those duties so essentially feminine, so closely allied to her uncle's spiritual calling. She felt that she had moved out into a new world, a world in which there was room for her to expand, in which she could bring into play all those faculties which she had always known herself to possess, but which had so long lain dormant that she had almost come to regard her belief in their existence as a mere dream, a mere vanity. It was a wonderful thing this, that had happened to her, and the happiness of it was so overwhelming that it almost made her afraid. Yet the fact remained. She was working for him, she was working with her muscles and brain extended. She sighed, and, placing her hands behind her head, stretched luxuriously. It was good to feel the muscles straining, it was good to contemplate the progress of things in his interests, it was good to love, and to feel that that love was something more practical than the mere sentimentality of awakened passion. Her wandering attention was recalled by a movement of her patient. She glanced round at him, and his face was turned toward her. Her smiling eyes responded to his steady, contemplative gaze. "Well?" he said, in a grave, subdued voice, "it ought to be getting near now?" The girl nodded. "I don't see how we can tell exactly, but--unless anything goes wrong the first logs should get through before daylight. It's good to think of, Dave." Her eyes sparkled with delight at the prospect. The man eyed her for a few silent moments, and his eyes deepened to a passionate warmth. "You're a great little woman, Betty," he said at last. "When I think of all you have done for me--well, I just feel that my life can never be long enough to repay you in. Throughout this business you have been my second self, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of a mind and heart thrilling with youthful strength. I can never forget the journey down from the camp. When I think of the awful physical strain you must have gone through, driving day and night, with a prisoner beside you, and a useless hulk of a man lying behind, I marvel. When I think that you had to do everything, feed us, camp for us, see to the horses for us, it all seems like some fantastic dream. How did you do it? How did I come to let you? It makes me smile to think that I, in my manly superiority, simply lolled about with a revolver handy to enforce our prisoner's obedience to your orders. Ah, little Betty, I can only thank Almighty God that I have been blest with such a little--friend." The girl laid the tips of her fingers over his mouth. "You mustn't say these things," she said, in a thrilling voice. "We--you and I--are just here together to work out your--your plans. God has been very, very good to me that He has given me the power, in however small a degree, to help you. Now let us put these things from our minds for a time and be--be practical. Talking of our prisoner, what are you going to do with--poor Jim?" It was some moments before Dave answered her. It was not that he had no answer to her question, but her words had sent his mind wandering off among long past days. He was thinking of the young lad he had so ardently tried to befriend. He was thinking of the "poor Jim" of then and now. He was recalling that day when those two had come to him with their secret, with their youthful hope of the future, and of all that day had meant to him. They had planned, he had planned, and now it was all so--different. His inclination was to show this man leniency, but his inclination had no power to alter his resolve. When he spoke there was no resentment in his tone against the man who had so cruelly tried to ruin him, only a quiet decision. "I want you to tell Simon Odd to bring him here," he said. Then he smiled. "I intend him to spend the night with me. That is, until the first log comes down the river." "What are you going to do?" The man's smile increased in tenderness. "Don't worry your little head about that, Betty," he said. "There are things which must be said between us. Things which only men can say to men. I promise you he will be free to go when the mill starts work--but not until then." His eyes grew stern. "I owe you so much, Betty," he went on, "that I must be frank with you. So much depends upon our starting work again that I cannot let him go until that happens." "And if--just supposing--that does not happen--I mean, supposing, through his agency, the mill remains idle?" "I cannot answer you. I have only one thing to add." Dave had raised himself upon his elbow, and his face was hard and set. "No man may bring ruin upon a community to satisfy his own mean desires, his revenge, however that revenge may be justified. If we fail, if Malkern is to be made to suffer through that man--God help him!" The girl was facing him now. Her two hands were outstretched appealingly. "But, Dave, should you judge him? Have you the right? Surely there is but one judge, and His alone is the right to condemn weak, erring human nature. Surely it is not for you--us." Dave dropped back upon his pillow. There was no relenting in his eyes. "His own work shall judge him," he said in a hard voice. "What I may do is between him and me." Betty looked at him long and earnestly. Then she rose from her chair. "So be it, Dave. I ask you but one thing. Deal with him as your heart prompts you, and not as your head dictates. I will send him to you, and will come back again--when the mill is at work." Their eyes met in one long ardent gaze. The man nodded, and the smile in his eyes was very, very tender. "Yes, Betty. Don't leave me too long--I can't do without you now." The girl's eyes dropped before the light she beheld in his. "I don't want you to--do without me," she murmured. And she hurried out of the room. CHAPTER XXXII TWO MEN--AND A WOMAN It took some time for Betty to carry out Dave's wishes. Simon Odd, who was Jim Truscott's jailer while the mills were idle, and who had him secreted away where curious eyes were not likely to discover him, was closely occupied with the preparations at the other mill. She had to dispatch a messenger to him, and the messenger having found Simon, it was necessary for the latter to procure his prisoner and hand him over to Dave himself. All this took a long time, nearly an hour and a half, which made it two o'clock in the morning before Truscott reached the office under his escort. Odd presented him with scant ceremony. He knocked on the door, was admitted, and stood close behind his charge's shoulder. "Here he is, boss," said the man with rough freedom. "Will I stand by in case he gits gay?" But Dave had his own ideas. He needed no help from anybody in dealing with this man. "No," he said at once. "You can get back to your mill. I relieve you of all further responsibility of your--charge. But you can pass me some things to prop my pillow up before you go." The giant foreman did as he was bid. Being just a plain lumberman, with no great nicety of fancy he selected three of the ledgers for the purpose. Having propped his employer into a sitting posture, he took his departure in silence. Dave waited until the door closed behind him. His cold eyes were on the man who had so nearly ruined him, who, indirectly, had nearly cost him his life. As the door closed he drew his right hand from under the blankets, and in it was a revolver. He laid the weapon on the blanket, and his fingers rested on the butt. Jim Truscott watched his movements, but his gaze was more mechanical than one of active interest. What his thoughts were at the moment it would have been hard to say, except that they were neither easy nor pleasant, if one judged from the lowering expression of his weak face. The active hatred which he had recently displayed in Dave's presence seemed to be lacking now. It almost seemed as though the rough handling he had been treated to, the failure of his schemes for Dave's ruin, had dulled the edge of his vicious antagonism. It was as though he were indifferent to the object of the meeting, to its outcome. He did not even seem to appreciate the significance of the presence of that gun under Dave's fingers. His attitude was that of a man beaten in the fight where all the odds had seemed in his favor. His mind was gazing back upon the scene of his disaster as though trying to discover the joint in the armor of his attack which had rendered him vulnerable and brought about his defeat. Dave understood something of this. His understanding was more the result of his knowledge of a character he had studied long ago, before the vicious life the man had since lived had clouded the ingenuous impulses of a naturally weak but happy nature. He did not fathom the man's thoughts, he did not even guess at them. He only knew the character, and the rest was like reading from an open book. In his heart he was more sorry for him than he would have dared to admit, but his mind was thinking of all the suffering the mischief of this one man had caused, might yet cause. Betty had displayed a wonderful wisdom when she bade him let his heart govern his judgment in dealing with this man. "You'd best sit down--Jim," Dave said. Already his heart was defying his head. That use of a familiar first name betrayed him. "It may be a long sitting. You're going to stay right here with me until the mill starts up work. I don't know how long that'll be." Truscott made no answer. He showed he had heard and understood by glancing round for a chair. In this quest his eyes rested for a moment on the closed door. They passed on to the chair at the desk. Then they returned to the door again. Dave saw the glance and spoke sharply. "You'd best sit, boy. That door is closed--to you. And I'm here to keep it closed--to you." Still the man made no reply. He turned slowly toward the chair at the desk and sat down. His whole attitude expressed weariness. It was the dejected weariness of a brain overcome by hopelessness. Watching him, Dave's mind reverted to Betty in association with him. He wondered at the nature of this man's regard for her, a regard which was his excuse for the villainies he had planned and carried out against him, and the mills. His thoughts went back to the day of their boy and girl engagement, as he called it now. He remembered the eager, impulsive lover, weak, selfish, but full of passion and youthful protestations. He thought of his decision to go away, and the manner of it. He remembered it was Betty who finally decided for them both. And her decision was against his more selfish desires, but one that opened out for him the opportunity of showing himself to be the man she thought him. Yes, this man had been too young, too weak, too self-indulgent. There lay the trouble of his life. His love for Betty, if it could be called by so pure a name, had been a mere self-indulgence, a passionate desire of the moment that swept every other consideration out of its path. There was not that underlying strength needed for its support. Was he wholly to blame? Dave thought not. Then there was that going to the Yukon. He had protested at the boy's decision. He had known from the first that his character had not the strength to face the pitiless breath of that land of snowy desolation. How could one so weak pit himself against the cruel forces of nature such as are to be found in that land? It was impossible. The inevitable had resulted. He had fallen to the temptations of the easier paths of vice in Dawson, and, lost in that whirl, Betty was forgotten. His passion died down, satiated in the filthy dives of Dawson. Then had come his return to Malkern. Stinking with the contamination of his vices, he had returned caring for nothing but himself. He had once more encountered Betty. The pure fresh beauty of the girl had promptly set his vitiated soul on fire. But now there was no love, not even a love such as had been his before, but only a mad desire, a desire as uncontrolled as the wind-swept rollers of a raging sea. It was the culminating evil of a manhood debased by a long period of loose, vicious living. She must be his at any cost, and opposition only fired his desire the more, and drove him to any length to attain his end. The pity of it! A spirit, a bright buoyant spirit lost in the mad whirl of a nature it had not been given him the power to control. His heart was full of a sorrowful regret. His heart bled for the man, while his mind condemned his ruthless actions. He lay watching in a silence that made the room seem heavy and oppressive. As yet he had no words for the man who had come so nearly to ruining him. He had not brought him there to preach to him, to blame him, to twit him with the failure of his evil plans, the failure he had made of a life that had promised so much. He held him there that he might settle his reckoning with him, once and for all, in a manner which should shut him out of his life forever. He intended to perform an action the contemplation of which increased the sorrow he felt an hundredfold, but one which he was fully determined upon as being the only course, in justice to Betty, to Malkern, to himself, possible. The moments ticked heavily away. Truscott made no move. He gave not the slightest sign of desiring to speak. His eyes scarcely heeded his surroundings. It was almost as if he had no care for what this man who held him in his power intended to do. It almost seemed as though the weight of his failure had crushed the spirit within him, as though a dreary lassitude had settled itself upon him, and he had no longer a thought for the future. Once during that long silence he lifted his large bloodshot eyes, and his gaze encountered the other's steady regard. They dropped almost at once, but in that fleeting glance Dave read the smouldering fire of hate which still burned deep down in his heart. The sight of it had no effect. The man's face alone interested him. It looked years older, it bore a tracery of lines about the eyes and mouth, which, at his age, it had no right to possess. His hair, too, was already graying amongst the curls that had always been one of his chief physical attractions. It was thinning, too, a premature thinning at the temples, which also had nothing to do with his age. Later, again, the man's eyes turned upon the door with a calculating gaze. They came back to the bed where Dave was lying. The movement was unmistakable. Dave's fingers tightened on the butt of his revolver, and his great head was moved in a negative shake, and the ominous shining muzzle of his revolver said plainly, "Don't!" Truscott seemed to understand, for he made no movement, nor did he again glance at the door. It was a strange scene. It was almost appalling in its significant silence. What feelings were passing, what thoughts, no one could tell from the faces of the two men. That each was living through a small world of recollection, mostly bitter, perhaps regretful, there could be no doubt, yet neither gave any sign. They were both waiting. In the mind of one it was a waiting for what he could not even guess at, in the other it was for something for which he longed yet feared might not come. The hands of the clock moved on, but neither heeded them. Time meant nothing to them now. An hour passed. An hour and a half. Two hours of dreadful silence. That vigil seemed endless, and its silence appalling. Then suddenly a sound reached the waiting ears. It was a fierce hissing, like an escape of steam. It grew louder, and into the hiss came a hoarse tone, like a harsh voice trying to bellow through the rushing steam. It grew louder and louder. The voice rose to a long-drawn "hoot," which must have been heard far down the wide spread of the Red Sand Valley. It struck deep into Dave's heart, and loosed in it such a joy as rarely comes to the heart of man. It was the steam siren of the mill belching out its message to a sleeping village. The master of the mills had triumphed over every obstacle. The mill had once more started work. Dave waited until the last echo of that welcome voice had died out. Then, as his ears drank in the welcome song of his saws, plunging their jagged fangs into the newly-arrived logs, he was content. He turned to the man in the chair. "Did you hear that, Jim? D'you know what it means?" he asked, in a voice softened by the emotion of the moment. Truscott's eyes lifted. But he made no answer. The light in them was ugly. He knew. "It means that you are free to go," Dave went on. "It means that my contract will be successfully completed within the time limit. It means that you will leave this village at once and never return, or the penitentiary awaits you for the wrecking of my mills." Truscott rose from his seat. The hate in his heart was stirring. It was rising to his head. The fury of his eyes was appalling. Dave saw it. He shifted his gun and gripped it tightly. "Wait a bit, lad," he said coldly. "It means more than all that to you. A good deal more. Can you guess it? It means that I--and not you--am going to marry Betty Somers." "God!" The man was hit as Dave had meant him to be hit. He started, and his clenched hand went up as though about to strike. The devil in his eyes was appalling. "Now go! Quick!" The word leaped from the lumberman's lips, and his gun went up threateningly. For a moment it seemed as though Truscott was about to spring upon him, regardless of the weapon's shining muzzle. But he did not move. A gun in Dave's hand was no idle threat, and he knew it. Besides he had not the moral strength of the other. He moved to the door and opened it. Then for one fleeting second he looked back. It may have been to reassure himself that the gun was still there, it may have been a last expression of his hate. Another moment and he was gone. Dave replaced his gun beneath the blankets and sighed. Betty sprang into the room. "Hello, door open?" she demanded, glancing about her suspiciously. Then her sparkling eyes came back to the injured man. "Do you hear, Dave?" she cried, in an ecstasy of excitement. "Did you hear the siren! I pulled and held the valve cord! Did you hear it! Thank God!" Dave's happy smile was sufficient for the girl. Had he heard it? His heart was still ringing with its echoes. "Betty, come here," he commanded. "Help me up." "Why----" "Help me up, dear," the man begged. "I must get up. I must get to the door. Don't you understand, child--I must see." "But you can't go out, Dave!" "I know. I know. Only to the door. But--I must see." The girl came over to his bedside. She lifted him with a great effort. He sat up. Then he swung his feet off the bed. "Now, little girl, help me." It felt good to him to enforce his will upon Betty in this way. And the girl obeyed him with all her strength, with all her heart stirred at his evident weakness. He stood leaning on her shakily. "Now, little Betty," he said, breathing heavily, "take me to the door." He placed his sound arm round her shoulders. He even leaned more heavily upon her than was necessary. It was good to lean on her. He liked to feel her soft round shoulders under his arm. Then, too, he could look down upon the masses of warm brown hair which crowned her head. To him his weakness was nothing in the joy of that moment, in the joy of his contact with her. They moved slowly toward the door; he made the pace slower than necessary. To him they were delicious moments. To Betty--she did not know what she felt as her arm encircled his great waist, and all her woman's strength and love was extended to him. At the door they paused. They stared out into the yards. The great mills loomed up in the ruddy flare light. It was a dark, shadowy scene in that inadequate light. The steady shriek of the saws filled the air. The grinding of machinery droned forth, broken by the pulsing throb of great shafts and moving beams. Men were hurrying to and fro, dim figures full of life and intent upon the labors so long suspended. They could see the trimmed logs sliding down the shoots, they could hear the grind of the rollers, they could hear the shoutings of "checkers"; and beyond they could see the glowing reflection of the waste fire. It was a sight that thrilled them both. It was a sight that filled their hearts with thanks to God. Each knew that it meant--Success. Dave turned from the sight, and his eyes looked down upon the slight figure at his side. Betty looked up into his face. Her eyes were misty with tears of joy. Suddenly she dropped her eyes and looked again at the scene before them. Her heart was beating wildly. Her arm supporting the man at her side was shaking, nor was it with weariness of her task. She felt that it could never tire of that. Dave's deep voice, so gentle, yet so full of the depth and strength of his nature, was speaking. "It's good, Betty. It's good. We've won out--you and I." Her lips moved to protest at the part she had played, but he silenced her. "Yes, you and I," he said softly. "It's all ours--yours and mine. You'll share it with me?" The girl's supporting arm moved convulsively. "No, no," he went on quickly. "Don't take your arm away. I need--I need its support. Betty--little Betty--I need more than that. I need your support always. Say, dear, you'll give it me. You won't leave me alone now? Betty--Betty, I love you--so--so almighty badly." The girl moved her head as though to avoid his kisses upon her hair. Somehow her face was lifted in doing so, and they fell at once upon her lips instead. Popular Copyright Books AT MODERATE PRICES Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction. +Abner Daniel.+ By Will N. Harben. +Adventures of A Modest Man.+ By Robert W. Chambers. +Adventures of Gerard.+ By A. Conan Doyle. +Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.+ By A. Conan Doyle. +Ailsa Page.+ By Robert W. Chambers. +Alternative, The.+ By George Barr McCutcheon. +Ancient Law, The.+ By Ellen Glasgow. +Angel of Forgiveness, The.+ By Rosa N. Carey. +Angel of Pain, The.+ By E. F. Benson. +Annals of Ann, The.+ By Kate Trimble Sharber. +Anna the Adventuress.+ By E. Phillips Oppenheim. +Ann Boyd.+ By Will N. Harben. +As the Sparks Fly Upward.+ By Cyrus Townsend Brady. +At the Age of Eve.+ By Kate Trimble Sharber. +At the Mercy of Tiberius.+ By Augusta Evans Wilson. +At the Moorings.+ By Rosa N. 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Williamson +My Lady Caprice+ (author of the "Broad Highway"). Jeffery Farnol. +My Lady of Doubt.+ By Randall Parrish. +My Lady of the North.+ By Randall Parrish. +My Lady of the South.+ By Randall Parrish. +Mystery Tales.+ By Edgar Allen Poe. +Nancy Stair.+ By Elinor Macartney Lane. +Ne'er-Do-Well, The.+ By Rex Beach. +No Friend Like a Sister.+ By Rosa N. Carey. +Officer 666.+ By Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh. +One Braver Thing.+ By Richard Dehan. +Order No. 11.+ By Caroline Abbot Stanley. +Orphan, The.+ By Clarence E. Mulford. +Out of the Primitive.+ By Robert Ames Bennett. +Pam.+ By Bettina von Hutten. +Pam Decides.+ By Bettina von Hutten. +Pardners.+ By Rex Beach. +Partners of the Tide.+ By Joseph C. Lincoln. +Passage Perilous, The.+ By Rosa N. Carey. +Passers By.+ By Anthony Partridge. +Paternoster Ruby, The.+ By Charles Edmonds Walk. +Patience of John Moreland, The.+ By Mary Dillon. +Paul Anthony, Christian.+ By Hiram W. 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By Mrs. Southworth. +Shepherd of the Hills, The.+ By Harold Bell Wright. +Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The.+ By Ridgwell Cullum. +Sidney Carteret, Rancher.+ By Harold Bindloss. +Simon the Jester.+ By William J. Locke. +Silver Blade, The.+ By Charles E. Walk. +Silver Horde, The.+ By Rex Beach. +Sir Nigel.+ By A. Conan Doyle. +Sir Richard Calmady.+ By Lucas Malet. +Skyman, The.+ By Henry Ketchell Webster. +Slim Princess, The.+ By George Ade. +Speckled Bird, A.+ By Augusta Evans Wilson. +Spirit In Prison, A.+ By Robert Hichens. +Spirit of the Border, The.+ By Zane Grey. +Spirit Trail, The.+ By Kate and Virgil D.+ Boyles. +Spoilers, The.+ By Rex Beach. +Stanton Wins.+ By Eleanor M. Ingram. +St. Elmo.+ (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans. +Stolen Singer, The.+ By Martha Bellinger. +Stooping Lady, The.+ By Maurice Hewlett. +Story of the Outlaw, The.+ By Emerson Hough. +Strawberry Acres.+ By Grace S. Richmond. +Strawberry Handkerchief, The.+ By Amelia E.+ Barr. +Sunnyside of the Hill, The.+ By Rosa N. Carey. +Sunset Trail, The.+ By Alfred Henry Lewis. +Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop.+ By Anne Warner. +Sword of the Old Frontier, A.+ By Randall Parrish. +Tales of Sherlock Holmes.+ By A. Conan Doyle. +Tennessee Shad, The.+ By Owen Johnson. +Tess of the D'Urbervilles.+ By Thomas Hardy. +Texican, The.+ By Dane Coolidge. +That Printer of Udell's.+ By Harold Bell Wright. +Three Brothers, The.+ By Eden Phillpotts. +Throwback, The.+ By Alfred Henry Lewis. +Thurston of Orchard Valley.+ By Harold Bindloss. +Title Market, The.+ By Emily Post. +Torn Sails. A Tale of a Welsh Village.+ By Allen Raine. +Trail of the Axe, The.+ By Ridgwell Cullum. +Treasure of Heaven, The.+ By Marie Corelli. +Two-Gun Man, The.+ By Charles Alden Seltzer. +Two Vanrevels, The.+ By Booth Tarkington. +Uncle William.+ By Jennette Lee. +Up from Slavery.+ By Booker T. Washington. +Vanity Box, The.+ By C. N. Williamson. +Vashti.+ By Augusta Evans Wilson. +Varmint, The.+ By Owen Johnson. +Vigilante Girl, A.+ By Jerome Hart. +Village of Vagabonds, A.+ By F.+ Berkeley Smith. +Visioning, The.+ By Susan Glaspell. +Voice of the People, The.+ By Ellen Glasgow. +Wanted--A Chaperon.+ By Paul Leicester Ford. +Wanted: A Matchmaker.+ By Paul Leicester Ford. +Watchers of the Plains, The.+ By Ridgwell Cullum. +Wayfarers, The.+ By Mary Stewart Cutting. +Way of a Man, The.+ By Emerson Hough. +Weavers, The.+ By Gilbert Parker. +When Wilderness Was King.+ By Randall Parrish. +Where the Trail Divides.+ By Will Lillibridge. +White Sister, The.+ By Marion Crawford. +Window at the White Cat, The.+ By Mary Roberts Rinehart. +Winning of Barbara Worth, The.+ By Harold Bell Wright. +With Juliet In England.+ By Grace S. Richmond. +Woman Haters, The.+ By Joseph C. Lincoln. +Woman In Question, The.+ By John Reed Scott. +Woman In the Alcove, The.+ By Anna Katharine Green. +Yellow Circle, The.+ By Charles E. Walk. +Yellow Letter, The.+ By William Johnston. +Younger Set, The.+ By Robert W. Chambers. [Transcriber's note: Italicized text is indicated with _underscores_; bolded text with +plus signs+.] 
34948	----	KING SPRUCE A NOVEL BY HOLMAN DAY AUTHOR OF "SQUIRE PHIN" "UP IN MAINE" "KIN O' KTAADN" ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY E. ROSCOE SHRADER NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ Published April, 1908. [Illustration: "'I KNOW YOUR HEART'" [_See p. 289_] TO A. B. D. MY COMRADE OF TRAIL AND CAMP CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. UP IN "CASTLE CUT 'EM" 1 II. THE HEIRESS OF "OAKLANDS" 17 III. THE MAKING OF A "CHANEY MAN" 27 IV. THE BOSS OF THE "BUSTERS" 35 V. DURING THE PUGWASH HANG-UP 55 VI. AS FOUGHT BEFORE THE "IT-'LL-GIT-YE CLUB" 62 VII. ON MISERY GORE 78 VIII. THE TORCH, AND THE LIGHTING OF IT 92 IX. BY ORDER OF PULASKI D. BRITT 104 X. "LADDER" LANE'S SOIRÉE 114 XI. IN THE BARONY OF "STUMPAGE JOHN" 127 XII. THE CODE OF LARRIGAN-LAND 142 XIII. THE RED THROAT OF POGEY 153 XIV. THE MESSAGE OF "PROPHET ELI" 164 XV. BETWEEN TWO ON JERUSALEM 174 XVI. IN THE PATH OF THE BIG WIND 181 XVII. THE AFFAIR AT DURFY'S CAMP 198 XVIII. THE OLD SOUBUNGO TRAIL 217 XIX. THE HOME-MAKERS OF ENCHANTED 230 XX. THE HA'NT OF THE UMCOLCUS 241 XXI. THE MAN WHO CAME FROM NOWHERE 256 XXII. THE HOSTAGE OF THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE 270 XXIII. IN THE MATTER OF JOHN BARRETT'S DAUGHTER 278 XXIV. THE CHEESE RIND THAT NEEDED SHARP TEETH 293 XXV. SHARPENING TEETH ON PULASKI BRITT'S WHETSTONE 303 XXVI. THE DEVIL OF THE HEMPEN STRANDS 312 XXVII. THE "CANNED THUNDER" OF CASTONIA 324 XXVIII. "'TWAS DONE BY TOMMY THUNDER" 341 XXIX. THE PARADE PAST RODBURD IDE'S PLATFORM 352 XXX. THE PACT WITH KING SPRUCE 361 ILLUSTRATIONS "'I KNOW YOUR HEART'" _Frontispiece_ "WADE STOOD ABOVE THE FALLEN FOE" _Facing p._ 70 "WRITHING AT HIS BONDS, HIS CONTORTED FACE TOWARDS THE RED FLAMES GALLOPING UP THE VALLEY" " 172 "'WHAT I SAY ON THIS RIVER GOES!'" " 334 NOTE When the trees have been cut and trimmed in the winter's work in the woods the logs are hauled in great loads to be piled at "landing-places" on the frozen streams, so that the spring floods will move them. Most of the streams have a succession of dams. On the spring drive the logs are floated to the dams, and then the gates are raised and the logs are "sluiced" through with a head of water behind them to carry them down-stream. Thus the drive is lifted along in sections from one dam to another. It will be seen that Pulaski D. Britt's series of dams on Jerusalem constituted a valuable holding, and enabled him to control the water and leave the logs of rivals stranded if he wished. The collection of water and quick work in "sluicing" are most important, for the streams give down only about so much water in the spring. When a load of logs is suddenly set free from the cable holding it back on a steep descent, as in Chapter XXVI., it is said to be "sluiced." When there is a jam of entangled logs as they are swept down-stream, if it is impossible to find and pry loose the "key-log," it is sometimes necessary to blow up the restraining logs with dynamite. When the floating logs are caught upon rocks, and the men are prying them loose, they are said to be "carding" the ledges. A "jill-poke," a pet aversion of drivers, is a log with one end lodged on the bank and the other thrust out into the stream. The "cant-dog" is illustrated on the cover of the book. The "peavy" is the Maine name for a slightly different variety of "cant-dog," which takes its title from its maker in Old Town. The "pick-pole" is an ashen pole ten to twelve feet long, shod with an iron point with a screw-tip, which enables a driver to pull a log towards him or to push it away. KING SPRUCE CHAPTER I UP IN "CASTLE CUT 'EM" "Oh, the road to 'Castle Cut 'Em' is mostly all uphill. You can dance along all cheerful to the sing-song of a mill; King Cole he wanted fiddles, and so does old King Spruce, But it's only gashin'-fiddles that he finds of any use. "Oh, come along, good lumbermen, oh, come along I say! Come up to 'Castle Cut 'Em,' and pull your wads and pay. King Cole he liked his bitters, and so does old King Spruce, But the only kind he hankers for is old spondulix-juice." --From song by Larry Gorman, "Woods Poet." The young man on his way to "Castle Cut 'Em" was a clean-cut picture of self-reliant youth. But he was not walking as one who goes to a welcome task. He saw two men ahead of him who walked with as little display of eagerness; men whose shoulders were stooped and whose hands swung listlessly as do hands that are astonished at finding themselves idle. A row of mills that squatted along the bank of the canal sent after them a medley of howls from band-saws and circulars. The young man, with the memory of his college classics sufficiently fresh to make him fanciful, found suggestion of chained monsters in the aspect of those shrieking mills, with slip-openings like huge mouths. That same imagery invested the big building on the hill with attributes that were not reassuring. But he went on up the street in the sunshine, his eyes on the broad backs of the plodders ahead. King Spruce was in official session. Men who were big, men who were brawny, yet meek and apologetic, were daily climbing the hill or waiting in the big building to have word with the Honorable John Davis Barrett, who was King Spruce's high chamberlain. Dwight Wade found half a dozen ahead of him when he came into the general office. They sat, balancing their hats on their knees, and each face wore the anxious expectancy that characterized those who waited to see John Barrett. Wade had lived long enough in Stillwater to know the type of men who came to the throne-room of King Spruce in midsummer. These were stumpage buyers from the north woods, down to make another season's contract with the lord of a million acres of timber land. Their faces were brown, their hands were knotted, and when one, in his turn, went into the inner office he moved awkwardly across the level tiles, as though he missed the familiar inequalities of the forest's floor. The others droned on with their subdued mumble about saw-logs, sleeper contracts, and "popple" peeling. The young man who had just entered was so plainly not of themselves or their interests that they paid no attention to him. This was the first time Wade had been inside the doors of "Castle Cut 'Em," the name the humorists of Stillwater had given the dominating block on the main street of the little city. The up-country men, with the bitterness of experience, and moved by somewhat fantastic imaginings, said it was "King Spruce's castle." In the north woods one heard men talk of King Spruce as though this potentate were a real and vital personality. To be sure, his power was real, and power is the principal manifestation of the tyrant who is incarnate. Invisibility usually makes the tyranny more potent. King Spruce, vast association of timber interests, was visible only through the affairs of his court administered by his officers to whom power had been delegated. And, viewed by what he exacted and performed, King Spruce lived and reigned--still lives and reigns. Wade, not wholly at ease in the presence, for he had come with a petition like the others, gazed about the reception-room of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving Association, the incorporators' more decorous title for King Spruce. It occurred to him that the wall-adornments were not reassuring. A brightly polished circular-saw hung between two windows. It was crossed by two axes, and a double-handled saw was the base for this suggestive coat of arms. The framed photographs displayed loaded log-sleds and piles of logs heaped at landings and similar portraiture of destruction in the woods. Everything seemed to accentuate the dominion of the edge of steel. The other wall-decorations were the heads of moose and deer, further suggestion of slaughter in the forest. A stuffed porcupine on the mantel above the great fireplace mutely suggested that the timber-owners would brook no rivalry in their campaign against the forest; they had asked the State to offer a bounty for the slaughter of this tree-girdler, and a card propped against the "quill-pig" instructed the reader that the State had already spent more than fifty thousand dollars in bounties. The deification of the cutting-edge appealed to Wade's abundant fancy. He had noticed, when he came past the windows of the lumber company's outfitting store on the first floor of the building, that the window displays consisted mostly of cutting tools. When the door of the inner office opened and one of those big and awkward giants came out, Wade discovered that King Spruce had evidently placed in the hands of the Honorable John Davis Barrett something sharp with which to slash human feelings, also. The man's face was flushed and his teeth were set down over his lower lip with manifest effort to dam back language. "Didn't he renew?" inquired one of the waiting group, solicitously. "He turned me down!" muttered the other, scarcely releasing the clutch on his lip. "I've wondered sometimes why 'Stumpage John' hasn't been over his own timber lands in all these years. If he has backed many out of that office feelin' like I do, I reckon there's a good reason why he doesn't trust himself up in the woods." He struck his soft hat across his palm. He did not raise his voice. But the venom in his tone was convincing. "By God, I'd relish bein' the man that mistook him for a bear!" "Give any good reason for not renewin'?" asked a man whose face showed his anxiety for himself. "Any one who has been over my operation on Lunksoos," declared the lumberman, answering the question in his own way--"any fair man knows I haven't devilled: I've left short stumps and I 'ain't topped off under eight inches, though you all know that their damnable scale-system puts a man to the bad when he's square on tops. But I 'ain't left tops to rot on the ground. I've been square!" Wade did not understand clearly, but the sincerity of the man's distress appealed to him. One of the little group darted an uneasy look towards the door of the inner office. It was closed tightly. But for all that he spoke in a husky whisper. "It must be that you didn't fix with What's-his-name last spring--I heard you and he had trouble." The angry operator dared to speak now. He looked towards the door as though he hoped his voice would penetrate to King Spruce's throne-room. "Trouble!" he cried. "Who wouldn't have trouble? I made up my mind I had divided my profits with John Barrett's blackmailin' thieves of agents for the last time. I lumbered square. And the agent was mad because I wasn't crooked and didn't have hush-money for him. And he spiked me with John Barrett; but you fellows, and all the rest that are willin' to whack up and steal in company, will get your contracts all right. And I'm froze out, with camps all built and five thousand dollars' worth of supplies in my depot-camp." "Hold on!" protested several of the men, in chorus, crowding close to this dangerous tale-teller. "You ain't tryin' to sluice the rest of us, are you, just because you've gone to work and got your own load busted on the ramdown?" "I'd like to see the whole infernal game of graft, gamble, and woods-gashin' showed up. Let John Barrett go up and look at his woods and he'll see what you are doin' to 'em--you and his agents! And the man that lumbers square, and remembers that there are folks comin' after us that will need trees, gets what I've just got!" He shook his crumpled hat in their faces. "And I'm just good and ripe for trouble, and a lot of it." "Here, you let me talk with you," interposed a man who had said nothing before, and he took the recalcitrant by the arm, led him away to a corner, and they entered into earnest conference. At the end of it the destructionist drove his hat on with a smack of his big palm and strode out, sullen but plainly convinced. The other man returned to the group and spoke cautiously low, but in that big, bare room with its resonant emptiness even whispers travelled far. "I'll take a double contract and sublet to him," he explained. "Barrett won't know, and after this Dave will come back into line and handle the agent. I reckon he's got well converted from honesty in a lumberin' deal. It's what we're up against, gents, in this business; the patterns are handed to us and we've got to cut our conduct accordin' to other men's measurements. Barrett gets _his_ first; the agent gets _his_; we get what we can squeeze out of a narrow margin--and the woods get hell." A man came out of the inner office stroking the folds of a stumpage permit preparatory to stuffing it into his wallet, and the peacemaker departed promptly, for it was now his turn to pay his respects to King Spruce. In what he had seen and what he had heard, Dwight Wade found food for thought. The men so manifestly had accepted the stranger as some one utterly removed from comprehension of their affairs or interest in their talk that they had not been discreet. It occurred to him that his own present business with John Barrett would be decidedly furthered were he to utilize that indiscretion. This thought occurred to him not because he intended for one instant to use his information, but because he saw now that his business with John Barrett was more to John Barrett's personal advantage than that gentleman realized. This knowledge gave him more confidence. He was proposing something to the Honorable John Barrett that the latter, for his own good, ought to be pressed into accepting. The earlier reflection which had made him uneasy, that a millionaire timber baron would not listen patiently to suggestions about his own business offered by the principal of the Stillwater high-school, had now been modified by circumstances. Even that lurking fear, that awe of John Barrett which he had his peculiar and private reason for feeling and hiding, was not quite so nerve-racking. Barrett left it to his clients to manage the order of precedence in the outer office. It was only necessary for the awaiting suppliant to note his place between those already there and those who came in after him; and Wade was prompt to accept his turn. He knew the Honorable John Barrett. As mayor that gentleman had distributed the diplomas at the June graduation. And Mr. Barrett, after one first, sharp, scowling glance over his nose-glasses, hooking his chin to one side as he gazed, rose and greeted the young man cordially. Then he wheeled his chair away from his desk to the window and sat down where he could feel the breeze. Looking past him Wade saw the Stillwater saw-mills. There were five of them in a row along the canal. Each had a slip-opening in the end and it yawned wide like a mouth that stretched for prey. The two windows pinched together in each gable gave to the end of the building likeness to a hideous face. From his seat Wade heard the screech of the band-saws. The sounds came out of those open mouths. The dripping logs went up the slips and into those mouths, like morsels sliding along a slavering tongue. Mingled with the fierce scream of the band-saws there were the wailings of the lath and clapboard saws. In that medley of sound the imagination heard monster and victims mingling howl of triumph and despairing cry. The breeze that ruffled the awnings stirred the thin, gray hair of John Barrett, brought fresh scents of sawdust and sweeter fragrance of seasoning lumber. And fainter yet came the whiff of resinous balsam from the vast fields of logs that crowded the booms. With that picture backing him in the frame of the open window--mutilated trees, and mills yowling in chorus, and with the scent of the riven logs bathing him--the timber baron politely waited for the young man to speak. He had put off the brusqueness of his business demeanor, for it had not occurred to him that the principal of the Stillwater high school could have any financial errand. He played a little tattoo with his eye-glasses' rim upon the second button of his frock-coat. One touch of sunshine on Barrett's cheek showed up striated markings and the faint purpling that indulgence paints upon the skin. The way in which the shoulders were set back under the tightly buttoned frock-coat, the flashing of the keen eyes, and even the cock of the bristly gray mustache that crossed the face in a straight line showed that John Barrett had enjoyed the best that life had to offer him. "I'll make my errand a short one, Mr. Barrett," began Wade, "for I see that others are waiting." "They're only men who want to buy something," said the baron, reassuringly--"men who have come, the whole of them, with the same growl and whine. It's a relief to be rid of them for a few moments." Frankly showing that he welcomed the respite, and serenely indifferent to those who waited, he brought a box of cigars from the desk, and the young man accepted one nervously. "I think I have noticed you about the city since your school closed," Mr. Barrett proceeded. And without special interest he asked, whirling his chair and gazing out of the window at the mills: "How do you happen to be staying here in Stillwater this summer? I supposed pedagogues in vacation-time ran away from their schools as fast as they could." If John Barrett had not been staring at the mills he would have seen the flush that blazed on the young man's cheeks at this sudden, blunt demand for the reasons why he stayed in town. "If I had a home I should probably go there," answered Wade; "but my parents died while I was in college--and--and high-school principals do not usually find summer resorts and European trips agreeing with the size of their purses." "Probably not," assented the millionaire, calmly. A sudden recollection seemed to strike him. "Say, speaking of college--you're the Burton centre, aren't you--or you were? I was there a year ago when Burton clinched the championship. I liked your game! I meant to have said as much to you, but I didn't get a chance, for you know what the push is on a ball-ground. I'm a Burton man, you know. I never miss a game. I'm glad to have such a chap as you at the head of our school. These pale fellows with specs aren't my style!" He turned and ran an approving gaze over Wade's six feet of sturdy young manhood. With his keen eye for lines that revealed breeding and training, Barrett usually turned once to look after a handsome woman and twice to stare at a blooded horse. Men interested him, too--men who appealed to his sportsman sense. This young man, with the glamour of the football victories still upon him, was a particularly attractive object at that moment. He stared into Wade's flushed face, evidently accepting the color as the signal that gratified pride had set upon the cheeks. "You'll weigh in at about one hundred and eighty-five," commented the millionaire. It seemed to Wade that his tone was that of a judge appraising the points of a race-horse, and for an instant he resented the fact that Barrett was sizing him less as a man than as a gladiator. "Old Dame Nature put you up solid, Mr. Wade, and gave you the face to go with the rest. I wish I were as young--and as free!" He gave another look at the mills and scowled when he heard the mumble of men's voices in the outer room. "When a man is past sixty, money doesn't buy the things for him that he really wants." It was the familiar cant of the man rich enough to affect disdain for money, and Wade was not impressed. "I'd like to take my daughter across the big pond this summer," the land baron grumbled, discontentedly, "but I never was tied down so in my life. I am directing-manager of the Umcolcus Association, and I've got all my own lands to handle besides, and with matters in the lumbering business as they are just now there are some things that you can't delegate to agents, Mr. Wade." This man, confiding his troubles, did not seem the ogre he had been painted. The young man had flushed still more deeply at mention of Barrett's daughter, but Barrett was again looking at his squalling mills. The pause seemed a fair opportunity for the errand. The mention of agents revived the recollection that he was proposing something to John Barrett's advantage. "Mr. Barrett, you know it is pretty hard for any one to live in Stillwater and not take an interest in the lumbering business. I'll confess that I've taken such interest myself. A few of my older boys have asked me to secure books on the science of forestry and help them study it." "A man would have pretty hard work to convince me that it is a science," broke in Barrett, with some contempt. "As near as I can find out, it's mostly guesswork, and poor guesswork at that." "Well, the fact remains," hastened Wade, a little nettled by the curtness that had succeeded the timber baron's rather sentimental courtesy, "my boys have been studying forestry, and I have been keeping a bit ahead of them and helping them as I could. Now they need a little practical experience. But they are boys who are working their way through school, and as I had to do the same thing I'm taking an especial interest in them. They have been in your mills two summers." "Why isn't it a good place for them to stay?" demanded Barrett. "They're learning a side of forestry there that amounts to something." "The side that they want to learn is the side of the standing trees," persisted Wade, patiently. "I thought I could talk it over with you a little better than they. I hoped that such a large owner of timber land had begun to take interest in forestry and would, for experiment's sake, put these young men upon a section of timber land this summer and let them work up a map and a report that you could use as a basis for later comparison, if nothing else." "What do you mean, that I'm going to hire them to do it--pay them money?" demanded the timber baron, fixing upon the young man that stare that always disconcerted petitioners. At that moment Wade realized why those men whom he had seen waiting in the outer office were gazing at the door of the inner room with such anxiety. "The young men will be performing a real service, for they will plot a square mile and--" "If there's any pay to it, I'd rather pay them to keep off my lands," broke in Barrett. "Forestry--" He in turn was interrupted. The man who came in entered with manifest belief in his right to interrupt. "Forestry!" he cried, taking the word off Barrett's lips--"forestry is getting your men into the woods, getting grub to 'em, hiring bosses that can whale spryness into human jill-pokes, and can get the logs down to Pea Cove sortin'-boom before the drought strikes. That's forestry! That's my kind. It's the kind I've made my money on. It's the kind John Barrett made his on. What are you doin', John--hirin' a perfesser?" The new arrival asked this in a tone and with a glance up and down Wade that left no doubt as to his opinion of "perfessers." "Are you one of these newfangled fellers that's been studyin' in a book how to make trees grow?" he demanded. Wade had only a limited acquaintance with the notables of the State, but he knew this man. He had seen him in Stillwater frequently, and his down-river office was in "Castle Cut 'Em." He was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt. He had acquired that title--mostly for newspaper use--by serving many years in the State senate from Umcolcus County. Wade gazed at the puffy red face, the bristle of gray beard, the hard little eyes--pupils of dull gray set in yellow eyeballs--and remembered the stories he had heard about this man who yelped his words with canine abruptness of utterance, who waved his big, hairy hands about his head as he talked, and with every gesture, every glance, every word revealed himself as a driver of men, grown arrogant and cruel by possession of power. "Mr. Britt is executive officer for the lumber company in the north country," explained Barrett, dryly. "We are all associated more or less closely, though many of our holdings are separate. We think it is quite essential to confer together when undertaking any important step." His satiric dwelling on the word "important" was exasperating. "This young gentleman is the principal of our high-school, Pulaski, and he wants me to put a bunch of high-school boys in my woods as foresters--and pay 'em for it. You came in just as I was going to give him my opinion. But it may be more proper for you to do it, for you are the woods executive, and are better posted on conditions up there than I am." His drawled irony was biting. The Honorable John Barrett enjoyed sport of all kinds, including badger-baiting. Now he leaned back in his swivel-chair with the air of a man about to enjoy the spectacle of a lively affair. But Wade, glancing from Barrett to Britt, was in no humor to be the butt of the millionaire. "I don't think I care to listen to Mr. Britt's opinions," he said, rising hastily. "Why? Don't you think I know what I'm talking about?" demanded the lumberman. He had missed the point of Barrett's satire, being himself a man of the bludgeon instead of the rapier. "I'm quite sure you know, Mr. Britt," said the young man, bowing to Barrett and starting away. "I've hired more men than any ten operators on the Umcolcus, put 'em all together," declared Britt, following him, "and I'd ought to know something about whether a man is worth anything on a job or not. And rather than have any one of those squirt-gun foresters cuttin' and caliperin' over my lands, I'd--" Wade shut the door behind him, strode through the outer office, and hurried down-stairs, his face very red and his teeth shut very tight. He realized that he had left the presence of King Spruce in most discourteous haste, but the look in John Barrett's eyes when he had leaned back and "sicked on" that old railer of the rasping voice had been too much for Wade's nerves. To be made an object of ridicule by _her_ father was bitter, with the bitterness of banished hope that had sprung into blossom for just one encouraging moment. When he came out into the sunlight he threw down the fat cigar--plump with a suggestion of the rich man's opulence--and ground it under his heel. In the anxiety of his intimate hopes, in the first cordiality of their interview, it had seemed as though the millionaire had chosen to meet him upon that common level of gentle society where consideration of money is banished. Now, in the passion of his disappointment, Wade realized that he had served merely as a diversion, as a prize pup or a game-cock would have served, had either been brought to "Castle Cut 'Em" for inspection. Walking--seeking the open country and the comforting breath of the flowers--away from that sickly scent of the sawdust, his cheeks burned when he remembered that at first he had fearfully, yet hopefully, believed that John Barrett knew the secret that he and Elva Barrett were keeping. Hastening away from his humiliation, he confessed to himself that in his optimism of love he had been dreaming a beautiful but particularly foolish dream; but having realized the blessed hope that had once seemed so visionary--having won Elva Barrett's love--the winning of even John Barrett had not seemed an impossible task. The millionaire's frank greeting had held a warmth that Wade had grasped at as vague encouragement. But now the clairvoyancy of his sensitiveness enabled him to understand John Barrett's nature and his own pitiful position in that great affair of the heart; he had not dared to look at that affair too closely till now. So he hurried on, seeking the open country, obsessed by the strange fancy that there was something in his soul that he wanted to take out and scrutinize, alone, away from curious eyes. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had watched that hasty exit with sudden ire that promptly changed to amusement. He turned slowly and gazed at the timber baron with that amusement plainly showing--amusement spiced with a bit of malice. The reverse of Britt's hard character as bully and tyrant was an insatiate curiosity as to the little affairs of the people he knew and a desire to retail those matters in gossip when he could wound feelings or stir mischief. If one with a gift of prophecy had told him that his next words would mark the beginning of the crisis of his life, Pulaski Britt would have professed his profane incredulity in his own vigorous fashion. All that he said was, "Well, John, your girl has picked out quite a rugged-lookin' feller, even if he ain't much inclined to listen to good advice on forestry." Confirmed gossips are like connoisseurs of cheese: the stuff they relish must be stout. It gratified Britt to see that he had "jumped" his friend. "I didn't know but you had him in here to sign partnership papers," Britt continued, helping himself to a cigar. "I wouldn't blame you much for annexin' him. You need a chap of his size to go in on your lands and straighten out your bushwhackin' thieves with a club, seein' that you don't go yourself. As for me, I don't need to delegate clubbers; I can attend to it myself. It's the way I take exercise." "Look here, Pulaski," Barrett replied, angrily, "a joke is all right between friends, but hitching up my daughter Elva's name with a beggar of a school-master isn't humorous." Britt gnawed off the end of the cigar, and spat the fragment of tobacco into a far corner. "Then if you don't see any humor in it, why don't you stop the courtin'?" "There isn't any courting." "I say there is, and if the girl's mother was alive, or you 'tending out at home as sharp as you ought to, your family would have had a stir-up long ago. If you ain't quite ready for a son-in-law, and don't want that young man, you'd better grab in and issue a family bulletin to that effect." "Damn such foolishness! I don't believe it," stormed Barrett, pulling his chair back to the desk; "but if you knew it, why didn't you say something before?" "Oh, I'm no gossip," returned Britt, serenely. "I've got something to do besides watch courtin' scrapes. But I don't have to watch this one in _your_ family. I know it's on." Barrett hooked his glasses on his nose with an angry gesture, and began to fuss with the papers on his desk. But in spite of his professed scepticism and his suspicion of Pulaski Britt's ingenuousness, it was plain that his mind was not on the papers. He whirled away suddenly and faced Britt. That gentleman was pulling packets of other papers from his pocket. "Look here, Britt, about this lying scandal that seems to be snaking around, seeing that it has come to your ears, I--" "What I'm here for is to go over these drivin' tolls so that they can be passed on to the book-keepers," announced Mr. Britt, with a fine and brisk business air. He had shot his shaft of gossip, had "jumped" his man, and the affair of John Barrett's daughter had no further interest for him. "You go ahead and run your family affairs to suit yourself. As to these things you are runnin' with me, let's get at 'em." In this manner, unwittingly, did Pulaski D. Britt light the fuse that connected with his own magazine; in this fashion, too, did he turn his back upon it. CHAPTER II THE HEIRESS OF "OAKLANDS" "Pete Lebree had money and land, Paul of Olamon had none, Only his peavy and driving pole, his birch canoe and his gun. But to Paul Nicola, lithe and tall, son of a Tarratine, Had gone the heart of the governor's child, Molly the island's queen." --_Old Town Ballads._ The coachman usually drove into town from the "Oaklands" to bring John Barrett home from his office, for Barrett liked the spirited rush of his blooded horses. But when his daughter occasionally anticipated the coachman, he resigned himself to a ride in her phaeton with only a sleepy pony to draw them. Once more absorbed in his affairs, after the departure of Pulaski Britt, Barrett had forgotten the unpleasant morsel of gossip that Britt had brought to spice his interview. But a familiar trilling call that came up to him stirred that unpleasant thing in his mind. When Barrett walked to the window and signalled to her that he had heard and would come, his expression was not exactly that of the fond father who welcomes his only child. It was not the expression that the bright face peering from under the phaeton's parasol invited. And as he wore his look of uneasiness and discontent when he took his seat beside her, her face became grave also. "Is it the business or the politics, father?" she asked, solicitously. "I'm jealous of both if they take away the smiles and bring the tired lines. If it's business, let's make believe we've got money enough. Haven't we--for only us two? If it's politics--well, when I'm a governor's daughter I'll be only an unhappy slave to the women, and you a servant of the men." But he did not respond to her rallying. "I can't get away from work this summer, Elva," he said, with something of the curtness of his business tone. "I mean I can't get away to go with you." "But I don't want you to go anywhere, father," protested the girl. She was so earnest that he glanced sidewise at her. His air was that of one who is trying a subtle test. "I feel that I must go north for a visit to my timber lands," he went on; "I have not been over them for years. I've had pretty good proof that I am being robbed by men I trusted. I propose to go up there and make a few wholesome examples." He was accustomed to talk his business affairs with her. She always received them with a grave understanding that pleased him. Her dark eyes now met him frankly and interestedly. Looking at her as he did, with his strange thrill of suspicion that another man wanted her and that she loved the man, he saw that his daughter was beautiful, with the brilliancy of type that transcends prettiness. He realized that she had the wit and spirit which make beauty potent, and her eyes and bearing showed poise and self-reliance. Such was John Barrett's appraisal, and John Barrett's business was to appraise humankind. But perhaps he did not fully realize that she was a woman with a woman's heart. The pony was ambling along lazily under the elms, and the reflective lord of lands was silent awhile, glancing at his daughter occasionally from the corner of his eye. He noted, with fresh interest, that she had greeting for all she met--as gracious a word for the tattered man from the mill as for the youth who slowed his automobile to speak to her. "These gossips have misunderstood her graciousness," he mused, the thought giving him comfort. But he was still grimly intent upon his trial of her. "Because I cannot go with you, and because I shall be away in the woods, Elva," he said, after a time, "I am going to send you to the shore with the Dustins." There was sudden fire in her dark eyes. "I do not care to go anywhere with the Dustins," she said, with decision. "I do not care to go anywhere at all this summer. Father!" There was a volume of protest in the intonation of the word. She had the bluntness of his business air when she was aroused. "I would be blind and a fool not to understand why you are so determined to throw me in with the Dustins. You want me to marry that bland and blessed son and heir. But I'll not do any such thing." "You are jumping at conclusions, Elva," he returned, feeling that he himself had suddenly become the hunted. "I've got enough of your wit, father, to know what's in a barrel when there's a knot-hole for me to peep through." "Now that you have brought up the subject, what reason is there for your not wanting to marry Weston Dustin? He's--" "I know all about him," she interrupted. "There is no earthly need for you and me to get into a snarl of words about him, dadah! He isn't the man I want for a husband; and when John Barrett's only daughter tells him that with all her heart and soul, I don't believe John Barrett is going to argue the question or ask for further reasons or give any orders." He bridled in turn. "But I'm going to tell you, for my part, that I want you to marry Weston Dustin! It has been my wish for a long time, though I have not wanted to hurry you." She urged on the pony, as though anxious to end a _tête-à-tête_ that was becoming embarrassing. "It might be well to save our discussion of Mr. Dustin until that impetuous suitor has shown that he wants to marry me," she remarked, with a little acid in her tone. "He has come to me like a gentleman, told me what he wants, and asked my permission," stated Mr. Barrett. "Following a strictly business rule characteristic of Mr. Dustin--'Will you marry your timber lands to my saw-mill, Mr. John Barrett, one daughter thrown in?'" "At least he didn't come sneaking around by the back door!" cried her father, jarred out of his earlier determination to probe the matter craftily. "Intimating thereby that I have an affair of the heart with the iceman or the grocery boy?" she inquired, tartly. She was looking full at him now with all the Barrett resoluteness shining in her eyes. And he, with only the vague and malicious promptings of Pulaski Britt for his credentials, had not the courage to make the charge that was on his tongue, for his heart rejected it now that he was looking into her face. "In the old times stern parents married off daughters as they would dispose of farm stock," she said, whipping her pony with a little unnecessary vigor. "But I had never learned that the custom had obtained in the Barrett family. Therefore, father, we will talk about something more profitable than Mr. Dustin." Outside the city, in the valley where the road curved to enter the gates of "Oaklands," they met Dwight Wade returning, chastened by self-communion. Barrett did not look at the young man. He kept his eyes on his daughter's face as she returned Wade's bow. He saw what he feared. The fires of indignation quickly left the dark eyes. There was the softness of a caress in her gaze. Love displayed his crimson flag on her cheeks. She spoke in answer to Wade's salutation, and even cast one shy look after him when he had passed. When she took her eyes from him she found her father's hard gaze fronting her. "Do you know that fellow?" he demanded, brusquely. "Yes," she said, her composure not yet regained; "when he was a student at Burton and I was at the academy I met him often at receptions." "What is that academy, a sort of matrimonial bureau?" His tone was rough. "It is not a nunnery," she retorted, with spirit. "The ordinary rules of society govern there as they do here in Stillwater." "Elva," he said, emotion in his tones, "since your mother died you have been mistress of the house and of your own actions, mostly. Has that fellow there been calling on you?" "He has called on me, certainly. Many of my school friends have called. Since he has been principal of the high-school I have invited him to 'Oaklands.'" "You needn't invite him again. I do not want him to call on you." "For what reason, father?" She was looking straight ahead now, and her voice was even with the evenness of contemplated rebellion. "As your father, I am not obliged to give reasons for all my commands." "You are obliged to give me a reason when you deny a young gentleman of good standing in this city our house. An unreasonable order like that reflects on my character or my judgment. I am the mistress of our home, as well as your daughter." "It's making gossip," he floundered, dimly feeling the unwisdom of quoting Pulaski Britt. "Who is gossiping, and what is the gossip?" she insisted. "I don't care to go into the matter," he declared, desperately. "If the young man is nothing to you except an acquaintance, and I have reasons of my own for not wanting him to call at my house, I expect you to do as I say, seeing that his exclusion will not mean any sacrifice for you." He was dealing craftily. She knew it, and resented it. "I do not propose to sacrifice any of my friends for a whim, father. If your reasons have anything to do with my personal side of this matter, I must have them. If they are purely your own and do not concern me, I must consider them your whim, unless you convince me to the contrary, and I shall not be governed in my choice of friends. That may sound rebellious, but a father should not provoke a daughter to rebellion. You ought to know me too well for that." They were at the house, and he threw himself out of the phaeton and tramped in without reply. During their supper he preserved a resentful silence, and at the end went up-stairs to his den to think over the whole matter. It had suddenly assumed a seriousness that puzzled and frightened him. He had been routed in the first encounter. He resolved to make sure of his ground and his facts--and win. Usually he did not notice who came or who went at his house. The still waters of his confidence in his daughter had never been troubled until the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had breathed upon them. This evening, when he heard a caller announced, he tiptoed to the head of the stairs and listened. It was Dwight Wade, and at sight of him his pride took alarm, his anger flared. After the afternoon's exasperating talk, this seemed like open and insulting contempt for his authority. It was as though the man were plotting with a disobedient daughter to flout him as a father. His purpose of calm thought was swept away by an unreasoning wrath. Muttering venomous oaths, he stamped down the stairs, whose carpet made his approach stealthy, though he did not intend it, and he came upon the two as Wade, his great love spurred by the day's opposition, despondent in the present, fearing for the future, reached out his longing arms and took her to his heart. They faced him as he stood and glowered upon them, a pathetic pair, clinging to each other. "You sneaking thief!" roared Barrett. The girl did not draw away. Wade felt her trembling hands seeking his, and he pressed them and kept her in the circle of his arm. "I don't care to advertise this," Barrett went on, choking with his rage, "but there's just one way to treat you, you thief, and that's to have you kicked out of the house. Elva, up-stairs with you!" She gently put away her lover's arm, but she remained beside him, strong in her woman's courage. "I have always been proud of my father as a gentleman," she said. "It hurts my faith to have you say such things under your own roof." "That pup has come under my roof to steal," raged the millionaire, "and he's got to take the consequences. Don't you read me my duty, girl!" Even Barrett in his wrath had to acknowledge that simple manliness has potency against pride of wealth. Wade took two steps towards him, the instinctive movement of the male that protects his mate. "Mr. Barrett," he said, gravely, "give me credit for honest intentions. If it is a fault to love your daughter with all my heart and soul, I have committed that fault. For me it's a privilege--an honor that you can't prevent." "What! I can't regulate my own daughter's marriage, you young hound?" "You misunderstand me, Mr. Barrett. You cannot prevent me from loving her, even though I may never see nor speak to her again." And Elva, blushing, tremulous, yet determined, looked straight in her father's eyes, saying, "And I love him." Barrett realized that his anger was making a sorry figure compared with this young man's resolute calmness. With an effort he held himself in check. "We won't argue the love side of this thing," he said, grimly. "I haven't any notion of doing that with a nineteen-year-old girl and a pauper. But I want to inform you, young man, that the marriage of John Barrett's only child and heir is a matter for my judgment to control. I'm taking it for granted that you are not sneak enough to run away with her, even if you have stolen her affections." The millionaire understood his man. He had calculated the effect of the sneer. He knew how New England pride may be spurred to conquer passion. "These are wicked insults, sir," said the young man, his face rigid and pale, "but I don't deserve them." "I tell you here before my daughter that I have plans for her future that you shall not interfere with. This is no country school-ma'am, down on your plane of life--this is Elva Barrett, of 'Oaklands,' a girl who has temporarily lost her good sense, but who is nevertheless my daughter and my heiress. She will remember that in a little while. Take yourself out of the way, young man!" The girl's eyes blazed. Her face was transfigured with grief and love. She was about to speak, but Wade hastened to her and took her hand. "Good-night, Elva." She understood him. His eyes and the quiver in his voice spoke to her heart. She clung to his hands when he would have withdrawn them. The look she gave her father checked that gentleman's contemptuous mutterings. "I am ashamed of my father, Mr. Wade," she said, passionately. "I offer you the apologies of our home." "Say, look here!" snarled Barrett, this scornful rebelliousness putting his wits to flight, "if that's the way you feel about me, put on your hat and go with him. I'll be d--d if I don't mean it! Go and starve." He realized the folly of his outburst as he returned their gaze. But he persisted in his puerile attack. "Oh, you don't want her that way, do you?" he sneered. "You want her to bring the dollars that go along with her!" Then Wade forgot himself. He wrested one hand from the gentle clasp that entreated him, and would have struck the mouth that uttered the wretched insult. The girl prevented an act that would have been an enormity. She caught his wrist, and when his arm relaxed he did not dare, at first, to look at her. Then he gave her one quick stare of horror and looked at his hand, dazed and ashamed. Barrett, strangely enough, was jarred back to equanimity by the threat of that blow. He folded his arms, drew himself up, and stood there, the outraged master of the mansion restored to command, silent, cold, rigid, his whole attitude of indignant reproach more effective than all the curses in Satan's lexicon. Talk could not help that distressing situation. The young man's white lips tried to frame the words "I apologize," but even in his anguish the grim humor of this reciprocation of apology rose before his dizzy consciousness. "Good-night!" he gasped. Then he left her and went into the hall, John Barrett close on his heels. The millionaire watched him take his hat, followed him out upon the broad porch, and halted him at the edge of the steps. "Mr. Wade," he said, "you'd rather resign your position than be kicked out, I presume?" "You mean that it is your wish that I should go away from Stillwater?" "That is exactly what I mean. You resign, or I will have your resignation demanded by the school board." "I think my school relations are entirely my own business," retorted the young man, fighting back his mounting wrath. "I'll make it mine, and have you kicked out of this town like a cur." Wade remembered at that instant the face of the man whom he had seen leave John Barrett's office that morning. He recollected his words--"I'd relish bein' the man that mistook him for a bear!" He knew now how that man felt. And feeling the lust of killing rise in his own soul for the first time, he clinched his fists, set his teeth, and strode away into the night. CHAPTER III THE MAKING OF A "CHANEY MAN" "We're bound for the choppin's at Chamberlain Lake, And we're lookin' for trouble and suthin' to take. We reckon we'll manage this end of the train, And we'll leave a red streak up the centre of Maine." --Murphy's "Come-all-ye." A company of reserves posted in a thicket, after valiantly withstanding the hammering of a battery, were suddenly routed by wasps. They broke and ran like the veriest knaves. Dwight Wade had determined to face John Barrett's battery of persecution. But at the end of a week he realized that the little city of Stillwater was looking askance at him. He knew that gossip attended his steps and stood ever at his shoulders, as one from the tail of the eye sees shadowy visions and, turning suddenly, finds them gone. That John Barrett would deliberately start stories in which his daughter's affairs were concerned seemed incredible to the lover who, for the sake of her fair fame and her peace of mind, had resolved to make fetish of duty, realizing even better than she herself that Elva Barrett's sense of justice would weigh well her duties as daughter before she could be won to the duties of wife. Yet Wade could hardly tell why he determined to stay in Stillwater. He wanted to console himself with the belief that a sudden departure would give gossip the proof it wanted. For gossip, as he caught its vague whispers, said that John Barrett had kicked--actually and violently kicked--the principal of the Stillwater high-school out of his mansion. Wade did not like to think that Barrett, by himself or a servant, started that story. Yet the thought made Wade suspect that the bitterness of the night at "Oaklands" still rankled, and that he was remaining in Stillwater for the sake of defying John Barrett, and was not simply crucifying his spirit for the sake of the peace of John Barrett's daughter. For he confessed that his stay there would be martyrdom. He had resolved that he would not try to see her; that would only mean grief for her and humiliation for him. He was proud of his love for Elva Barrett, in spite of her father's contempt and insults. He found no reproach for himself because he had loved her and had told her so. But for the rôle of a Lochinvar his New England nature had no taste. He realized, without arguing the question with himself, that Elva Barrett was not to be won by the impetuous folly that demanded blind sacrifice of name and position and father and friends. There was no cowardice in this realization. It was rather a pathetic sacrifice on the part of simple loyalty and a love that was absolute devotion. In deciding to remain in Stillwater he kept his love alight like a flame before a shrine. But beyond his daily work and the unflinching purpose of his great love he could not see his way. It was because his way was so obscure that the wasps found him an easier victim. He heard the buzzings at street corners as he passed. There were stings of glances and of half-heard words. Like the pastor of a church in a small place, the principal of a high-school is one in whom the community feels a sense of proprietorship, with full right to canvass his goings and comings and liberty to circumscribe and control. For is he not the one that should "set example"? The wasps would not accept his silent surrender. They suspected something hidden, and their imaginings saw the worst. They buzzed more busily every day. That they would not allow him the peace and the pathetic liberty of renunciation drove Wade frantic. With all the courage of his conscience, he still faced John Barrett's battery. But the wasps he could not face. And he fled. In the end it was nothing but that--he was put to flight! The people of Stillwater accepted it as flight, for he placed his resignation in the hands of the school board barely a week before the date for the opening of the autumn term. And on the train on which he fled was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, still unconscious that the word of gossip he had dropped was the match that lighted a fuse, and that the fuse was briskly burning. Above the rumble of the starting car-wheels Wade heard the mills of Stillwater screaming their farewell taunt at him. Then the Honorable Pulaski Britt came and sat down in his seat, penning him next to the window. "Yes, sir," said Britt, with keen memory as to where he had left off in his previous conversation and with dogged determination to have his say out, "a man that reads a book written by a perfesser that don't know the difference between a ramdown and a dose of catnip tea, and then thinks he understands forestry of the kind that there's a dollar in, needs to have his head examined for hollows. Do you find anything in them books about how to get the best figgers on dressed beef?--and when you are buyin' it in fifty-ton lots for a dozen camps a half a cent on a pound means something! Is there anything about hirin' men and makin' 'em stay and work, gettin' cooks and saw-filers that know their business, chasin' thieves away from depot-camps, keepin' crews from losin' half the tools? Forestry! Making trees grow! Gawd-amighty, young man, Nature will attend to the tree-growin'. That's all Nature has got to do. She was doin' it before we got here, and doin' it well, and do you reckon we have any right to set up and tell Nature her business? I've got something else to think of besides tellin' Nature how to run her end. I'd like to know how to grow men instead of trees. My Jerusalem boss, MacLeod, writes me he has been two weeks getting together his hundred men for that operation. He'll meet me at the Umcolcus junction, up the line here a hundred miles. And I've been tryin' most of that time to get hold of the right sort of a 'chaney man.'" Wade, in his resentment at Britt's intrusion on his thoughts, was in no mood for philological research, but sudden and rather idle curiosity impelled him to ask what a "chaney man" was. "Why, a clerk--a camp clerk, time-keeper, wangan store overseer, supply accountant, and all that," snapped Britt, with small patience for the young man's ignorance. At that instant it came more plainly to Wade that he was a fugitive. When he had left Elva Barrett behind he had let go the strongest cable of hope. A day before--the day after--his manly spirit probably would not have allowed him to become a clerk for Pulaski Britt. This day the impetuous desire to hide in the woods, to escape the wasps of humanity, to be in some place where sneers and false pity and taunt could not reach him--that desire was coined into performance. "Wouldn't I fit into a job of that sort, Mr. Britt?" he asked, blurting the question. And when the lumberman stared at him with as much astonishment as Pulaski Britt ever allowed himself to display, Wade added, "I have given up school-teaching because--well, I want to get into the woods for my health!" "It will be healthy, all right, but it won't be dude work," said Britt. "You'll have to hump 'round on snow-shoes or a jumper to five camps. Board and thirty-five a month! What's the particular ailment with you?" he demanded, rather suspiciously. "You look rugged enough." The young man did not reply, and the Honorable Pulaski stared at him, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. Mr. Britt had no very delicate notions of repressing an idea when it occurred to him "Say, look here, young man," he cried, "I reckon I understand! The Barrett girl, hey? And John got after you! Well, he can make it hot for any one he takes a niff at." "Can't I have that job, Mr. Britt, without a general discussion of my affairs?" asked Wade, with temper. "You're hired!" There was the click of business in Britt's tone, but his gossip's nature showed itself in the somewhat humorous drawl in which he added: "I'm glad to know that it's only love that ails you. Outside of that, you strike me as bein' a pretty rugged chap, and it's rugged chaps we're lookin' for in 'Britt's Busters.' If it's only love that ails you, I reckon we won't have any trouble about sendin' you out cured in the spring." But noting the glitter in Wade's eyes, Mr. Britt chuckled amiably and took himself off down the car to talk business with a man. During the long ride to Umcolcus Junction, Wade sat revelling in the bitterness of his thoughts. He was not disturbed because he had given up his school. There was a relief in escaping from meddlesome backbiters. The school had been only a means to an end: it afforded revenue to attain certain cherished professional plans that loomed large in Wade's prospects. Money earned honorably in any other fashion would count for as much. But the fact remained that he was fleeing, was hiding. Britt's rough and somewhat contemptuous proprietorship, so instantly displayed, wounded his pride. When he had passed the station to which he had purchased his ticket before he met Britt, he offered more pay to the conductor. He had seen Britt talking with the conductor a moment before, brandishing a hairy hand in his direction. "It's all settled by Mr. Britt," the train officer stated, passing on. "You're one of his men, he says." He growled under his breath as he accepted that label--"One of Britt's men." There were one hundred more waiting for them at Umcolcus Junction, where they changed to the spur line that ran north. Most of the men were in a state of social inebriety. A few fighters were sitting apart on their dunnage-bags, nursing bruises and grudges. Mindful of the State law that forbade the wearing of calked boots on board a railroad train, the men who owned only that sort of footgear were in their stocking feet. They carried their boots strung about their necks by lacings. Many were bareheaded, having thrown away their hats in their enthusiasm. Wade was not in a frame of mind to see any picturesqueness in that frowsy crowd. He was one of them; he walked dutifully behind his master, the Honorable Pulaski Britt. A little man, with neck wattled blue and red with queer suggestion of a turkey's characteristics, lurched out of a group and came at Pulaski Britt with a meek and watery smile of welcome. His knees doubled with a drunkard's limpness, and he had to run to keep from falling. Britt evidently did not propose to serve as dock for this human derelict. He stepped to one side with an oath, and the man made a dizzy whirl and dove headforemost under the train on the main track, and at that moment the train started. The man rolled over twice, and lay, serenely indifferent to death, on the outer rail. * * * * * After it was all over Wade sourly told himself that he acted as he did simply to avoid witnessing a hideous spectacle. For, in spite of Britt's yells of protest, he went under the car, missed the grinding wheels by an inch, and rolled out on the other side with the drunken man in his arms. And when the train had drawn out of the station he came back across the track, lugging the little man as he would carry a gripsack, tossed him into the open door of the baggage-car of the waiting train, spatted the dust off his own clothes, and went into the coach, casting surly looks at the sputtering inebriates who attempted to shake hands with him. When the train started Britt came again and penned the young man in his seat against the window-casing. "You've started in makin' yourself worth while, even if you are only the chaney man," vouchsafed his employer. "You did an infernal fool trick, but you've saved me Tommy Eye, the best teamster on the Umcolcus waters. As he lies there now he ain't worth half a cent a pound to feed to cats; when he's on a load with the webbin's in his hands I wouldn't take ten thousand dollars for him." "Is he a sort of personal property of yours?" asked Wade, sullenly. He was venting his own resentment at Pulaski Britt's airs of general proprietorship over men. "Just the same as that," replied Britt, complacently. "I've had him more than twenty years, and I'd like to see him try to go to work for any one else, or any one else try to hire him away." He struck his hand on the young man's knee. "Up this way, if you don't make men know you own 'em, you're missin' one of the main points of forestry!" He sneered this word every time he used it in his talk with Wade. The new chaney man began to wonder how much longer he could endure the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt without rising and cuffing those puffy cheeks. CHAPTER IV THE BOSS OF THE "BUSTERS" "If you don't like our looks nor ain't stuck on our kind, Git back with the dames in the next car behind." On and on went the yelping staccato of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt. The Honorable Pulaski D. was discoursing on his favorite topic, and his voice was heard above the rattle and jangle of the shaky old passenger-coach that jolted behind some freight-cars. "Forty years ago I rolled nigh onto a million feet into that brook there!" shouted the lumber baron of the Umcolcus. His knotted, hairy fist wagged under the young man's nose as he pointed at the car window, his unwholesome breath fanned warmly on Wade's cheek, and when he crowded over to look into the summer-dried stream his bristly chin-whiskers tickled his seat-mate's ear. The September day was muggy and human contact disquieting. Wade shrank nearer the open window. The Honorable Pulaski did not notice the shrinking. He was accustomed to crowd folks. His self-assertiveness expected them to get out of the way. "Yes, sir, nigh onto a million in one spring, and half of it 'down pine' and sounder'n a hound's tooth. Nothing here now but sleeper stuff. It's a good many miles to the nearest saw-log, and that's where I'm cutting on Jerusalem. I tell you, I've peeled some territory in forty years, young man." Wade looked at the red tongue licking lustfully between blue lips, and then gazed on the ragged, bush-grown wastes on either side. While he had been crowding men the Honorable Pulaski had been just as industriously crowding the forest off God's acres. The "chock" of the axe sounded in his abrupt sentences, the rasp of saws in his voice. "We left big stumps those days." The hairy fist indicated the rotten monuments of moss-covered punk shouldering over the dwarfed bushes. "There was a lot of it ahead of us. Didn't have to be economical. Get it down and yanked to the landings--that was the game! We're cutting as small as eight-inch spruce at Jerusalem. Ain't a mouthful for a gang-saw, but they taste good to pulp-grinders." The train began to groan and jerk to a stand-still, and the old man dove out of his seat and staggered down the aisle, holding to the backs of the seats. At the last station he had spent ten minutes of hand-brandishing colloquy on the platform with a shingle-mill boss whom he had summoned to the train by wire. He was to meet a birch-mill foreman here. Wade looked out at the struggling cedars and the white birches, "the ladies of the forest," pathetic aftermath which was now falling victim to axe and saw, and wondered with a flicker of grim humor in his thoughts why the Honorable Pulaski did not set crews at work cutting the bushes for hoop-poles and then clean up the last remnant into toothpicks. "He's a driver, ain't he?" sounded a voice in his ear. An old man behind him hung his grizzled whiskers over the seat-back and pointed an admiring finger at the retreating back of the lumber baron. Wade wished that people would let him alone. He had some thoughts--some very bitter thoughts--to think alone, and the world jarred on him. The yelp of the Honorable Pulaski's monologue, that everlasting, insistent bellow of voices in the smoking-car ahead, where the ingoing crew of Britt's hundred men were trying to sing with drunken lustiness, and now this amiable old fool of the grizzled whiskers, stung the dull pain of his resentment at deeper troubles into sudden and almost childish anger. "Once when I was swamping for him on Telos stream, he says to me, 'Man,' he says, 'remember that the time that's lost when an axe is slicin' air ain't helping me to pay you day's wages!' And I says to him, 'Mister Britt,' says I--" Dwight Wade, college graduate, former high-school principal, and at all times in the past a cultured and courteous young gentleman, did the first really rude and unpardonable act of his life. He twisted his chin over his shoulder, scowled into the mild, dim, and watery eyes of his interlocutor, and growled: "Oh, cut it short! What in--" He checked the expletive, and snapped himself up and across the aisle, and slammed down into another seat. The red came over his face. He did not dare to look back at the old man. He hearkened to the rip-roaring chorus in the smoking-car, and reflected that as the new time-keeper he was now one of "Britt's Busters," and that the demoralizing license of the great north woods must have entered into his nature thus early. He grunted his disgust at himself under his breath, and hunched his head down between his shoulders. In his nasty state of mind he glowered at a passenger who came into the car at the front. It was a girl, and a pretty girl at that. She nodded a cheery greeting to the old man of the grizzled whiskers, and with a smile still dimpling her cheeks flashed one glance at Wade. It was not a bold look, and yet there was the least bit of challenge in it. The sudden pout on her lips might have been at thought of confiding her fresh, crisp skirts to the dusty seat; and yet, when she turned and shot one more quick glance at the young man's sour countenance, the pout curled into something like disdain, and a little shrug of her shoulders hinted that she had not met the response that she was accustomed to find on the faces of young men who saw her for the first time. While Wade was gazing gloomily and abstractedly at the fair profile and the nose, tip-tilted a wee bit above the big white bow of her veil tied under her chin, one of the crew lurched from the door of the smoking-car, caught off his hat, and bowed extravagantly. It was Tommy Eye. He had to clutch the brake-wheel to keep himself from falling. But his voice was still his own. He broke out lustily: "Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me. I'm all cut loose for to wrassle with the spruce, Way up where she can't find me. Oh, there ain't no--" An angry face appeared over his shoulder in the door of the smoker, two big hands clutched his throat, jammed the melody into a hoarse squawk, and then the songster went tumbling backward into the car and out of sight. Almost immediately his muscular suppressor crossed the platform and came into the coach, snatching the little round hat off the back of his head as he entered. Wade knew him. His employer had introduced them at the junction as two who should know each other. It was Colin MacLeod, the "boss." "And Prince Edward's Island never turned out a smarter," the Honorable Pulaski had said, not deigning to make an aside of his remarks. "Landed four million of the Umcolcus logs on the ice this spring, busted her with dynamite, let hell and the drive loose, licked every pulp-wood boss that got in his way with their kindlings, and was the first into Pea Cove boom with every log on the scale-sheet. That's this boy!" And he fondled the young giant's arm like a butcher appraising beef. Wade paid little attention to him then. With his ridged jaw muscles, his hard gray eyes, and the bullying cock of his head, he was only a part of the ruthlessness of the woods. But now, as he came up the car aisle, his face flushed, his eyes eager, his embarrassment wrinkling on his forehead, Wade looked at him with the sudden thought that the boss of the "Busters" was merely a boy, after all. "It was only Tommy Eye, Miss Nina," explained MacLeod, his voice trembling, his abashed admiration shining in his face. "He's just out of jail, you know." He looked at Wade and then at the old man of the grizzled whiskers, and raised his voice as though to gain a self-possession he did not feel. "Tommy always gets into jail after the drive is down. He's spent seventeen summers in jail, and is proud of it." "But there ain't no better teamster ever pushed on the webbin's," said the old man, admiration for all the folks of the woods still unflagging. The girl did not display the same enthusiasm, either for Tommy Eye's mishaps or for the bashful giant who stood shifting from foot to foot beside her seat. "Crews going into the woods ought to be nailed up in box-cars, that's what father says. And when they go through Castonia settlement I wish they were in crates, the same as they ship bears." "How is your father since spring?" asked the young boss, stammeringly, trying to appear unconscious of her scorn. "Oh, he's all right," she returned, carelessly, patting her hand on her lips to repress a yawn. "And is every one in Castonia all right?" "You can ask them when you get there," she replied, a bit ungraciously. "I tell you, I was pretty surprised to see you get aboard the train down here at Bomazeen. I--" She canted her head suddenly, and looked sidewise at him with an expression half satiric, half indignant. "Do you think that all the folks who ever go anywhere in this world are river drivers and"--she shot a quick and disparaging glance at the still glowering Wade--"drummers?" MacLeod noticed the look and its scorn with delight, and grasped at this opportunity to get outside the platitudes of conversation. But in his eagerness to be news-monger he did not soften his "out-door voice," deepened by many years of bellowing above the roar of white water. "Oh, that ain't a drummer! That's Britt's new chaney man--the time-keeper and the wangan store clerk." MacLeod knew that a girl born and bred in Castonia settlement, on the edge of the great forest, needed no explanation of "chaney man," the only man in a logging crew who could sleep till daylight, and didn't come out in the spring with callous marks on his hands as big as dimes. But he seemed to be hungry for an excuse to stay beside her, where he could gaze down on the brown hair looped over her forehead and her radiantly fair face, and could catch a glimpse of the white teeth. "Britt was tellin' me on the side that he's been teachin' school or something like that, and--say, you've heard of old Barrett, who controls all the stumpage on the Chamberlain waters--that rich old feller? Well, Britt, being hitched up with Barrett more or less, and knowin' all about it--" Wade was now upright in his seat, but the absorbed foreman, catching at last a gleam of interest in the gray eyes upraised to his, did not notice. "--Britt says that Mister School-teacher there went to work and fell in love with Barrett's girl, and now she's goin' to marry a rich feller in the lumberin' line that her dad picked out for her, and instead of goin' to war or to sea, like--" Wade, maddened, sick at heart, furious at the old tattler who had thus canvassed his poor secret with his boss, had tried twice to cry an interruption. But his voice stuck in his throat. Now he leaped up, leaned far over the seat-back in front of him, and shouted, with face flushed and eyes like shining steel: "That's enough of that, you pup!" In the sudden, astonished silence the old man dragged his fingers through his grizzled whiskers and whined plaintively: "Ain't he peppery, though, about anybody talking? He shet me up, too!" "It's my business you're talking!" shouted Wade, beating time with clinched fist. "Drop it." MacLeod, primordial in his instincts, lost sight of the provocation, and felt only the rebuff in the presence of the girl he was seeking to attract. He had no apology on his tongue or in his heart. "It will take a better man than you to trig talk that I'm makin'," he retorted. "This isn't a district school, where you are licked if you whisper!" He sneered as he said it, and took one step up the aisle. With the bitter anger that had been burning in him for many days now fanned into the white-heat of Berserker rage, Wade leaped out of his seat. Between them sat the girl, looking from one to the other, her cheeks paling, her lips apart. At the moment, with a drunken man's instinctive knowledge of ripe occasions, Tommy Eye lurched out once more on the smoker platform and began to carol the lay that had consoled him on so many trips from town: "Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me." There sounded the clang of the engine bell far to the front. There was the premonitory and approaching jangle of shacklings, as car after car took up its slack. "Look after your man there, MacLeod!" cried the girl. "The yank will throw him off." "Let him go, then!" gritted the foreman. The flame in Wade's eyes was like the red torch of battle to him. Not for years had a man dared to give him that look. Suddenly the car sprang forward under their feet as the last shackle snapped taut. The boss was driven towards Wade, and let himself be driven. The other braced himself, blind in his fury, realizing at last the nature of the blood lust. A squall, fairly demoniac in intensity, stopped them. MacLeod recognized the voice, and even his passion for battle yielded. When the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, baron of the Umcolcus, yelled in that fashion it meant obedience, and on this occasion the squall was reinforced by a shriek from the girl. And MacLeod whirled, dropping his fists. There on the platform stood Britt, clutching the limp and soggy Tommy Eye by the slack of his jacket. The Honorable Pulaski, jealous of every second of time, had remained in conversation to the last with his birch foreman. He stepped aboard just as Tommy, jarred from his feet, was pitching off the other side of the platform. The Honorable Pulaski snatched for him and held on, at the imminent risk of his own life. Already both of them were leaning far out, for Tommy Eye, in the blissful calm of his spirit, was making no effort to help himself. In an instant MacLeod was down the car aisle and had pulled both back to safety. "Why in blastnation ain't you staying in this hog-car here, where you belong, you long-legged P.I. steer?" roared the old man, his anger ready the moment his fright subsided. "What do I hire you for? You came near letting me lose the best teamster in my whole crew. Now get into that car and stay in that car till we get to the end of this railroad." He put his hands against MacLeod's breast and shoved him backward into the door, where Tommy Eye, grinning in fatuous ignorance of the danger he had passed through, had just disappeared ahead of him. The angry shame of a man cruelly humiliated twisted MacLeod's features, but he allowed his imperious despot to push him into the car, casting a last appealing look at the girl. Britt slammed the door and stood on the platform, bracing himself by a hand on either side the casing, and peered through the dingy glass to make sure that his crew was now under proper discipline. "He's a driver and a master," piped up Grizzly Whiskers, with the appositeness of a Greek chorus. "There's the song about him, ye know: "Oh, the night that I was married, The night that I was wed, Up there come Pulaski Britt And stood at my bed-head. Said he, 'Arise, young married man, And come along with me. Where the waters of Umcolcus They do roar along so free.'" "I'll bet he went, at that," volunteered a man farther back in the car. "When Britt is after men he gits' em, and when he gits 'em he uses 'em." "Mr. Britt," he shouted down the car aisle as the old man entered, "that was brave work you done in savin' Tommy's life!" "Go to the devil with your compliments!" snapped Britt. "If it wasn't that I was losing my best teamster I wouldn't have put out my little finger to save him from mince-meat." He saw the girl, turned over a seat to face her, and began to fire rapid questions at her regarding her father and mother and the latest news of Castonia settlement. When the conversation languished, as it did soon on account of the inattention of the young woman, the Honorable Pulaski caught the still flaming eye of Dwight Wade, and crooked his finger to summon him. Wade merely scowled the deeper. The Honorable Pulaski serenely disregarded this malevolence as a probable optical illusion, and when Wade did not start beckoned again. "Come here, you!" he bellowed. "Can't you see that I want you?" With new accession of fury at being thus baited, the young man started up, resolved to take his employer aside and free his mind on that matter of news-mongering. But the bluff and busy tyrant was first, as he always was in his dealings with men. "Here, Wade," he shouted, "you shake hands with the prettiest girl in the north country! This is Miss Nina Ide, and this is my new time-keeper, Dwight Wade. He's going to find that there's more in lumbering than there is in being a college dude or teaching a school. Sit down, Wade." He pulled the young man into the seat. "Entertain this young lady," he commanded. "She don't want to talk with old chaps like me. Her father--well, I reckon you know her father! Oh, you don't? Well, he's first assessor of Castonia settlement, runs the roads, the schools, and the town, has the general store and post-office, and this pretty daughter that all the boys are in love with." And at the end of this delicate introduction he pushed brusquely between them, and went back to talk with his elderly admirer in the rear of the car. Wade looked into the gray eyes of the girl sullenly. There was an angry sparkle in her gaze. "Well, Mr. Wade, you may think from what that old fool said that I'm suffering to be entertained. If you think any such thing you can change your mind and go back." She had not a city-bred woman's self-poise, he thought. Her manner was that of the country belle, spoiled the least bit by flattery and attention. And yet, as he looked at her, he thought that he had never seen fairer skin to set off the flush of angry beauty. For others there was something alluring in the absolute whiteness of her teeth, peeping under the curve of her lip, in the nose (the least bit _retroussé_), in the looped locks of brown hair crossing her temples. Yet there was no admiration in his eyes. "I hope you won't hold me guilty of being the intruder," he said, coldly. "Not if you move your brogans over to some seat where there is more room for them," she returned, with a click of her white teeth that showed mild savagery. This young man who was in love with some one else, and who had scowled at her, was decidedly not to her liking, she thought, in spite of his regular features, his firm chin, his clean-cut mouth unhidden by beard, and his brown eyes. Wade flushed, rose, bowed with hat lifted to a rather ironical height, and took his seat alone, well to the front of the car. He saw MacLeod's baleful face framed in the little window of the smoking-car's door. For mile after mile, as the train jangled on, it remained there. The menace of the expression, the challenge in the attitude, and this insolent espionage, all following the insults of his gossiping tongue, wrought upon the young man's feelings like a file on metal. As his resentment gnawed, it was in his mind to go and smash his fist through the little window into the middle of that lowering countenance. To him came the Honorable Pulaski, bristling and bustling. "They're telling me back there, young man, that you and Colin came near to having some sort of rumpus a little while ago. Now, I can't have anything of that sort going on among my men. You mind _your_ business. I'll make _him_ mind _his_. But what's it all about, anyway? Why were you going to fight like roosters at sight?" Wade looked at his pompous red face and into his eyes with their yellowish sclerotic, and choked back the recrimination he had intended. The thought of opening his heart's poor secret by bandying words with this man made him quiver. "As well to talk to a Durham bull," he reflected. "Why, you poor college dude," went on his employer, scornfully, "Colin MacLeod would break you in two and use you to taller his boots, a piece in each hand. You're hired to keep books and peddle wangan stuff according to the prices marked! Keep your place, where you belong. Don't go to stacking muscle against the boss of the Busters." The former centre of Burton College's football eleven stiffened his muscles and set his nails into his palms to keep from hot retort. What was the use? What did college training avail if it didn't help a gentleman to hold his tongue at the right time? "Now, remember what I've told you," ordered Britt, "and I'll go and set MacLeod to the right-about, so that you won't have to be afraid of him if you mind your own business." He went away into the smoking-car. Between the opening and the closing of the door there puffed out a louder jargon from the orgy. It then settled into its dull diapason of maudlin voices. For the rest of the journey, to the end of the forest railroad spur, Wade sat and looked out into the hopeless and ragged ruin left by the axes. The sight fitted with his mood. Britt, back from his interview with MacLeod, and serene in the power of the conscious autocrat, sat by himself and figured endlessly with a stubby lead-pencil. Wade looked around only once at the girl. When he did he caught her looking at him, and she immediately snapped her eyes away indignantly. At last the engine gave a long shriek that wailed away in echoes among the stumps. It was a different note from its careless yelps at the infrequent crossings. "Here we are!" bellowed Britt, cheerfully, stuffing away his papers and coming up the car for his little bag. He stopped opposite Wade. "Remember what I told you about minding your business," he commanded, brusquely. "You may be a college graduate, but MacLeod is your boss. He won't hurt you if you keep your place!" In medicine there are cumulative poisons--the effect of small doses at intervals amounting in the end to a single large dose. In matters of heart, temper, and moral restraint there are cumulative poisons, too. Dwight Wade, struggling up as the train jolted to a halt, felt that this last insult, coming as it did out of that brusque, rough-sneering, culture-despising spirit of the woods, exemplified in Pulaski D. Britt, had put an end to self-restraint. It was the same brusque, money-worshipping, intolerant spirit of the woods that sounded in John Barrett's voice when he had sneered at Wade's pretensions to his daughter's hand. There it was now in those roaring voices in the smoking-car. And yet he had come to it--hating it--fleeing from the sight of men of his kind when his little temple of love seemed closed to him, and the world had jeered at him behind his back! He looked through the dirty car windows at the little shacks of the railroad terminus, heard the bellow of voices, gritted his teeth in ungovernable rage at Britt's last words, and determined to--well, he hardly knew what he did propose to do. But it should be something to show them all that he could no longer be bossed and insulted and jeered at--all in that bumptious, braggadocio, bucko spirit of the woods! Both platforms of the cars were swarming with men--men rigged in queer garb: wool leggings, wool jackets striped off in bizarre colors or checked like crazy horse-blankets. Each man in sight carried his heavy brogan shoes hung about his neck. They were singing in fairly good time, and Wade listened to the words despite himself: "Oh, here I come from the Kay-ni-beck, With my old calk boots slung round my neck Here we come--yas, a-here we come-- A hundred men and a jug of rum. WHOOP-fa-dingo! Old Prong Jones!" The girl passed Wade, going down the aisle before he left his seat. He came behind her. But they were obliged to wait at the door. The men crowded close upon both platforms. Each man had a meal-sack stuffed with his possessions. They were all elbowing each other, and the result was a congestion that the kicks of the Honorable Pulaski and the cuffings of Colin MacLeod did little to break. The boss of the Busters kept stealing glances at the girl, as though to challenge her notice, and perhaps her admiration, as she saw him thus a master of men. It was then that the spirit of anger and rebellion seething in Dwight Wade--the cumulative poison of his many insults--stirred him to bitter provocation in his own turn. The girl carried a heavy leather suit-case, and now, waiting for the press of men to escape from the car, she rested it against a seat, and sighed in weariness and vexation. With quiet masterfulness Wade took it from her hand and smiled into the astonished gray eyes that flashed back over her shoulder at him. It was a smile that not even a maiden, offended as she had been, could resist. "I will assist you to--to--I believe it is a stage-coach that takes us on," he said. "Let me do this, so that you won't remember me simply as a man whose own troubles made him a boor." MacLeod's look of fury as he saw the act fell full upon them both, and the girl resented it. "I thank you," she returned, smiling at her squire with a little exaggeration of cordiality. And when at last the platforms were cleared they stepped out, still talking. All about them men were kneeling, fastening the latchets of their spike-sole shoes. "Rod Ide's gal has got a new mash!" hiccoughed one burly chap, leering at them as they passed. At the instant MacLeod, at their heels, struck the man brutally across the mouth, shouldered Wade roughly, and spoke to the girl, his round hat crumpled in his big fist. "Miss Nina," he stammered, "I'm--I'm sorry for forgetting that you were in that car awhile back. But you know I ain't used to takin' talk of that sort. So, let me see you safe aboard the stage, like an old friend should." "This gentleman will look after me," said the girl. She tried to be calm, but her voice trembled. A city woman, confident of the regard due to woman, would not have feared so acutely. But Nina Ide, bred on the edge of the forest, was accustomed to see the brute in man spurn restraint. The passions flaming in the eyes of these two were familiar to her. She expected little more from the gentleman in the way of consideration for her feelings than she did from the lumber-jack. "You go along about your business, Colin," she said, hastily. "I can attend to mine." "Give me that!" snarled the boss, his eyes red under their meeting brows. In his rage he forgot the deference due the woman. "See if you can take it!" growled back the other. With him the girl was only the means to the end that his whole nature now lusted for. He forgot her. Wade looked for the young giant to strike. But the woods duello has its vagaries. MacLeod lifted one heavy shoe and drove its spiked sole down upon Wade's foot, the brads puncturing the thin leather. With his foe thus anchored, he clutched for the valise. But ere his victim had time to strike, the furious, flaming, bristling face of the Honorable Pulaski was between them, and his elbows, hard as pine knots, drove them apart with wicked thrustings. As they staggered back the old lumber baron, used to playing the tyrant mediator, grabbed an axe from the nearest man of the crew. "I'll brain the one that lifts a finger!" he howled. "What did I tell you about this? Who is running this crew? Whose money is paying you? Get back, you hounds!" Once more, though he gasped in the pure madness of his rage, MacLeod was cowed by his despot. He turned and began marshalling the crew aboard great wagons that were waiting at the station. "You take your seat in that wagon, young man!" roared Britt, shaking that hateful, hairy fist under Wade's nose. "We'll see about all this later! Get onto that wagon!" At the opposite side of the station was the mail-stage, a dusty, rusty conveyance with a lurching canopy of cracked leather above its four seats, and four doleful horses waiting the snap of the driver's whip. Without a word to Britt, Wade led the way to the coach, and set the suit-case between the seats. He limped as he walked, and his teeth were set in pain. He gave his hand to the girl, and she silently accepted the assistance and took her place in the coach. Then he turned to meet the fiery gaze of the Honorable Pulaski, who had followed close on their heels, choking with expletives. "I reckon I see through this now," he growled. "Tryin' to cut out the cleanest feller in the Umcolcus with your dude airs! But Rod Ide's girl ain't to be fooled by city notions. She knows a man when she sees him." He chucked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of MacLeod, busy with the laggard men. "Go aboard, and let this be an end of your meddling, young man." "You just speak for yourself and attend to your business, Mr. Britt!" cried the girl, with a spirit that cowed even the tyrant's bluster. "'Rod Ide's girl,' as you call her, can choose all her own affairs, and you needn't scowl at me, for I'm not on your pay-roll and I'm not afraid of you!" She turned to Wade with real gentleness in her tones. "I'm afraid he hurt you. It's a rough country up here. If you hadn't been trying to help me it wouldn't have happened. He had no right to--" She checked herself suddenly, and her cheeks flamed. "That wasn't a fair twit about my sticking my nose into your affairs, Miss Nina," protested Britt, and turning from her he visited his rage vicariously on his time-keeper, taking him by the arm and starting to drag him. "I told you to get aboard!" he rasped. "And when my men that I hire don't do as I tell 'em to do, I kick 'em aboard--and a time-keeper is no better than a swamper with me when he leaves this railroad. You want to understand those things and save lots of trouble." "You take your hand off my arm, Mr. Britt," said the young man. He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his voice that impressed the Honorable Pulaski, who knew men. "Now," resumed Wade, "for reasons of my own and that I don't propose to explain, I am going to ride to Castonia settlement on this mail-stage." "It's safe to go on the wagon," persisted Britt, more mildly. "I tell you, if you mind your own business, I won't let him lick you." With face gray and rigid at an insult that the old man couldn't understand, Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, turned his back, and climbed aboard the coach. The girl moved along to the farther end, and gropingly and blindly, without thought as to where he was sitting, he took the place beside her. He remembered that as they drove away Britt shook that hairy fist at him, and that some rude roisterer on the wagons lilted some doggerel about "the chaney man." And through a sort of red mist he saw the face of Colin MacLeod. They were miles along the rough road before he looked at the girl. At the movement of his head she turned her own, and in the piquant face above the big white bow of the veil he saw real sympathy. He did not speak, but he looked into her clear eyes--eyes that had the country girl's spirit and a resourcefulness beyond her years--and from them he drew a certain comfort. "Mr. Wade," she said, at last, "I'm only nineteen years old, but up in Castonia settlement we see what men are without the wrappings on them. I don't know much about real society, but I've read about it, and I guess society women get sort of dazzled by the outside polish and don't see things very clear. But up our way, with what they see of men, girls get to be women young. You are a college graduate and a school-teacher and all that, and I'm only nineteen, but--well, it just seems to me I can't help reaching over like this--" She patted his arm. "--And what I feel like saying is, 'Poor boy!'" There was such vibrant sympathy in her voice that though he set his teeth, clinched his hands, and summoned all his resolution, his nervous strain slackened and the tears came into his eyes--tears that had been slowly welling ever since he had turned from John Barrett's door. It was woman's attempt at consolation that broke through his restraint. "I don't blame you much for squizzlin' a little," broke in the stage-driver, who saw this emotion without catching the conversation. "He did bring his huck down solid when he stamped. But I've been calked myself, and a tobacker poultice allus does the business for me--northin' better for p'isen in a wound." The chaney man reached his hand to the girl under the shelter of the seat-back. "Shake!" he said, simply. "I've come up here to stay awhile, and it's good to feel that I've got one friend that's--that's a woman." "And you--" She faltered and paused to listen, lips apart. "I've come to stay," he repeated, grimly. He listened too. Far behind them they heard the dull rumble of the heavy wagons over the ledges. The raucous howling of the revellers had something wolf-like about it. It seemed to close the line of retreat. Ahead were the big woods, looming darkly on the mountain ridges--that vast region of man to man, and the devil take the weak. And again he said, not boastingly, but with a quiet setting of his tense jaw muscles: "I've come to stay." CHAPTER V DURING THE PUGWASH HANG-UP "With eddies and rapids it's middlin' tough, To worry a log-drive through. But to manage a woman is more than enough For a West Branch driving crew." --Leeboomook Song. Just how Tommy Eye escaped so nimbly from the ruck of the fight at the foot of Pugwash Hill he never knew nor understood, his wits not being of the clearest that day--and the others being too busy to notice. But he did escape. One open-handed buffet sent him reeling into and through some wayside bushes. He sat on his haunches on the other side a moment like a jack-rabbit and surveyed the stirring scene, and then made for higher ground. At the end of an enervating sixty-days' sentence in the county jail--his seventeenth summer "on the bricks" for the same old bibulous cause; second offence, and no money left to pay the fine--Tommy did not feel fit for the fray. He sat on a bowlder at the top of the rise for a little while and gazed down on them--the hundred men of "Britt's Busters," bound in for the winter cutting on Umcolcus waters. They were fighting aimlessly, "mixing it up" without any special vindictiveness, and Tommy, an expert in inebriety, sagely concluded that they were too drunk to furnish amusement. So he rolled over the bowlder and nestled down to ease his headache, knowing, as a teamster should know, that Britt's tote wagons were to hold up at the Pugwash for a half-hour's rest and bait. For that matter, a fight at the Pugwash was no novel incident--not for Tommy Eye, at least, veteran of many a woods campaign. The hang-up at the hill is a teamster's rule as ancient as the tote road. And the fight of the ingoing crew is as regular as the halt. All the way from the end of the railroad the men have been crowded on the wagons, with nothing to do but express personal differences of opinion. Every other man is a stranger to his neighbor, for employment offices do not make a specialty of introductions. As the principal matter of argument on the tote wagons is which is the best man, the Pugwash Hill wait, where there is soft ground and elbow-room, makes a most inviting opportunity to settle disputes and establish an _entente cordiale_ that will last through all the winter. Two other men--two men who had been on the outskirts of the fray from its beginning--came leisurely up the hill, and sat down on the bowlder behind which was couched Tommy Eye. One was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt; the other was Colin MacLeod. The Honorable Pulaski tucked the end of a big cigar into the opening in his bristly gray beard where his mouth was hidden, and lighted it. As an after-thought he offered one to MacLeod. The young man, his elbows on his knees, his flushed face turned aside, shook his head sullenly. "Well, you're having a run of cuss-foolishness that even our champion fool, Tommy Eye himself, couldn't match," snorted the old man, rolling his tongue around his cigar. Tommy, behind the rock, tipped one ear up out of the moss. "Here you go pouncing into that car to-day, where my new time-keeper was, and go to picking a fuss with him, and--" "He was the one that started it, Mr. Britt," said the boss, in the dull monotone of one who has said the same thing many times before. "Don't bluff me!" snapped the Honorable Pulaski. "You were gossiping over a lot of his private business with that Ide girl--and bringing me into it, too. You can't fool me! Old Jeff back in the car heard it all. The young feller had a right to put in an oar to stop you, and he did it, and I'll back him in it." "Yes, and you went and introduced him to Miss Ide--that's some more of your backin'," said MacLeod, bitterly. "Just common politeness--just common politeness!" cried Britt, waving his cigar impatiently. "That girl hasn't said she'd marry you, has she? No! I knew she hadn't. Well, she's got a right to talk with nice young men that I introduce to her, and there's nothing to it to make a fuss over, MacLeod--only common politeness. You're making a fool of yourself, and setting the girl herself against you by acting jealous like that before the face and eyes of every one. That's enough time and talk wasted on girls. Now, quit it, and get your mind on your work. You understand that I won't have any more of this scrapping in my crew." With a blissful disregard of consistency, he gazed through smoke-clouds down at the men below, who were listlessly exchanging blows or rolling on the ground, locked in close embrace. MacLeod stood up, and tugged the collar of his wool jacket away from his throat. "I ain't much of a man to talk my business over with any one, Mr. Britt," he said. "But you are putting this thing on a business basis, and you don't have the right to do it. I ain't engaged to Nina Ide, and I 'ain't asked her to be engaged to me, for the time 'ain't come right yet. But there ain't nobody else in God's world goin' to have her but me. She ain't too good for me, even if her father is old Rod Ide. I'll have money some day myself. I've got some now. I can buy the clothes when I need 'em, if that's all that a girl likes. But it ain't all they like--not the kind of a girl like Nina Ide is. She knows a man when she sees him. She knows that I'm a man, square and straight, and one that loves her well enough to let her walk on him, and that's the kind of a man for a girl born and bred on the edge of the woods." He drew up his lithe, tall body, and snapped his head to one side with almost a click of the rigid neck. "Along comes that college dude," he snarled, "just thrown over by a city girl and lookin' for some one else to make love to, and he cuts in"--his voice broke--"you see what he done, Mr. Britt! He helped her off the train before I could get there. He put her on the stage, and rode away with her while you were makin' me handle the men. And he's ridin' with her now, damn him, and he's a-talkin' with her and laughin' at me behind my back!" He shook both fists at the road to Castonia settlement, winding over the hill, and there were tears on his cheeks. "He probably isn't laughing very much," replied Britt, dryly. "Not since you plugged that spike boot of yours down on his foot there on the depot platform. A nasty trick, MacLeod, that was." "I wish I'd 'a' ground it off," muttered the boss. He struck his spikes against the bowlder with such force that a stream of fire followed the kick. "He can't do it--he can't do it, Mr. Britt! He can't steal her! I've loved her too long, and I'll have her. You just gave off your orders to me about fighting. You don't say anything to those cattle down there fighting about nothin'. You let them settle their troubles. Here I am!" He struck his breast. "For five years, first up in the dark of the mornin', last to bed in the dark of the night. I've sweat and swore and frozen in the slush and snow and sleet, driving your crew to make money for you. And I've waded from April till September, I've broken jams and taken the first chance in the white water, so that I could get your drive down ahead of the rest. And now, when it comes to a matter of hell and heaven for me, you tell me I can't stand like a man for my own. You call it wastin' time!" He bent over the Honorable Pulaski, his face purple, his eyes red. Britt took out his cigar and held it aside to blink up at this disconcerting young madman. "I tell you, you are taking chances, Mr. Britt. You have bradded me on, and told me that a man of the woods always gets what he wants if he goes after it right. Twice to-day you have stood between me and what I want. You've let a college dude take the sluice ahead of me. I know you pay me my money, but don't you do that again. I'm going to have that girl, I say! The man that steps in ahead of me, he's goin' to die, Mr. Britt, and the man that steps between me and that man, when I'm after him, he dies, too. And if that sounds like a bluff, then you haven't got Colin MacLeod sized up right, that's all!" The Honorable Pulaski winked rapidly under the other's savage regard. He knew when to bluster and he knew when to palter. "MacLeod," he said, at last, getting up off the rack with a grunt, "what a man that works for me does in the girl line is none of my business. But after that kind of brash talk I might suggest to you that a cell in state-prison isn't going to be like God's out-doors that you're roaming around in now." The boss sneered contemptuously. "Furthermore, this college dude, that you are talking about as though he were a water-logged jill-poke, was something in the football line when he was in college--I don't know what, for I don't know anything about such foolishness--but, anyway, from what I hear, it was up to him to break the most arms and legs, and he did it, I understand. This is only in advice, MacLeod--only in advice," he cried, flapping a big hand to check impatient interruption. "You saw when Tommy Eye, the drunken fool, fell under the train at the junction to-day, as he is always doing, that feller Wade picked him up with one hand and lugged him like a pound of sausage-meat--saved the fool's life, and didn't turn a hair over it. So, talk a little softer about killing, my boy, and, best of all, wait till you find out that he wants the girl or the girl wants _you_!" He walked down the hill. "Go to blazes with your advice, you old fool!" growled MacLeod, under his breath. "He's lookin' for it; he's achin' for it! He gave me a look to-day that no man has given me in ten years and had eyes left open to look a second time. He'll get it!" As he turned to follow his employer he saw the recumbent Tommy, and went out of his way far enough to give him a vicious kick. "Get onto the wagons, you rum-keg, or you'll walk to Castonia!" "Be jigged if I won't walk!" groaned Tommy, surveying the retreating back of the boss with sudden weak hatred. "So there was a man who saved my life to-day when I didn't know it! And there was another man who kicked me when I did know it! It's the chaney man he's after, and the chaney man was good to me! I'll make a fair fight of it if my legs hold out, and that's all any man could do." The horses were still munching fodder, and the gladiators, thankful for an excuse to stop the fray, were stupidly listening to a harangue by the Honorable Pulaski, who was explaining what would be allowed and what would not be allowed in his camps. Tommy Eye ducked around the bushes and took the road with a woodsman's lope, his wobbly knees getting stronger as the exercise cleared his brain. A woodman's lope is not impressive, viewed with a sprinter's eye. Nor is a camel's stride. But either is a great devourer of distance. So it happened that Tommy Eye, sweat-streaked and breathing hard, caught up with the sluggish Castonia stage while it was negotiating the last rock-strewn hill a half-mile outside the settlement. Dwight Wade, time-keeper of the Busters, heard the stertorous puffing, and looked around to see Tommy Eye clinging to the muddy axle and towing behind. Tommy divided an amiable and apologetic grin between Wade and the girl beside him. "I'm only--workin' out--the--the budge!" Tommy explained, between the jerks of the wagon. "Don't mind me!" Down the half-mile of dusty declivity into Castonia, the only smooth road between the railroad and the settlement, the stage made its usual gallant dash with chuckling axle-boxes and the spanking of splay hoofs. And Tommy Eye came limply slamming on behind. CHAPTER VI AS FOUGHT BEFORE THE "IT-'LL-GIT-YE CLUB" "We dug him out of his blankets, and hauled him out to the light-- His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but now he wanted to fight. And screaming a string of curses, he struck as he raved and swore-- Floored Joe Lacrosse and the swamping boss and announced he was ready for more." --The Fight at Damphy's. Civilization sets her last outpost at Castonia in the plate-glass windows of Rodburd Ide's store. Civilization had some aggravating experiences in doing this. Four times hairy iconoclasts from the deep woods came down, gazed disdainfully at these windows as an effort to put on airs, and smashed them with rocks dug out of the dusty road. Four times Rodburd Ide collected damages and renewed the windows--and in the end civilization won out. Those experienced in such things can tell a Castonia man anywhere by the pitch of his voice. Everlastingly, Umcolcus pours its window-jarring white waters through the Hulling Machine's dripping ledges. Here enters Ragmuff stream, bellowing down the side of Tumbledick, a mountain that crowds Castonia close to the river. Most of the men of the settlement do their talking on the platform of Ide's store, with the spray spitting into their faces and the waters roaring at them. And go where he will, a Castonia man carries that sound in his ears and talks like a fog-horn. The satirists of the section call Ide's store platform "The Blowdown." In the woods a blowdown is a wreck of trees. On Ide's platform the loafers are the wrecks of men. Here at the edge of the woods, at the jumping-off place, the forest sets out its grim exhibits and mutely calls, "Beware!" There are men with one leg, men with one arm, men with no arms at all; there are men with hands maimed by every vagary of mischievous axe or saw. There are men with shanks like broomsticks--men who survived the agonies of freezing. There is always a fresh subscription-paper hung on the centre post in Ide's store, meekly calling for "sums set against our names" to aid the latest victim. Wade, looking at this pathetic array of cripples as he slowly swung himself over the wheel of the stage, felt that he was in congenial company; for the foot that MacLeod had so brutally jabbed with his spikes had stiffened in its shoe. It ached with a dull, rancor-stirring pain. When he limped across the platform into the store, carrying the girl's valise, he hobbled ungracefully. The loungers looked after him with fraternal sympathy. "The boss spiked him down to the deepo," advised Tommy, slatting sweat from his forehead with muddy forefinger. "He's the new time-keeper." "Never heard of the boss calkin' the chaney man before," remarked Martin McCrackin, rapping his pipe against his peg-leg to dislodge the dottle. Tommy twisted his face into a prodigious wink, jabbed a thumb over his shoulder towards the store door, and gazed archly around at the circle of faces. "He cut the boss out with the Ide girl!" He whispered this hoarsely. The listeners looked at the door where Wade and the girl had disappeared, and then stared at one another. They had viewed the arrival of the stage with the dull lethargy of the hopelessly stranded. Now they displayed a reviving interest in life. "And that was all he done to him--step on his foot?" demanded a thin man, impatiently twitching the stubs of two arms, off at the elbows. "Old P'laski got in!" said Tommy, with meaning. "Used his old elbows for pick-holes and fended Colin off." "It will git him, though!" said another. He had shapeless stumps of legs encased in boots like exaggerated whip-sockets. "You bet it will git him!" agreed McCrackin. Rodburd Ide, busy, chatty, accommodating little man, trotted out of the store at this instant with a handful of mail to distribute among his crippled patrons. "That's what the river boys call this crowd here," he said, over his shoulder, to Wade, who followed him. "The 'It-'ll-git-ye Club.' I guess It _will_ get ye some time up in this section! Here's the last one, Mr. Wade. Aholiah Belmore--that's the man with the hand done up. Shingle-saw took half his fin. Well, 'Liah, don't mind! No one ever saw a whole shingle-sawyer. It's lucky it wasn't a snub-line that got ye. There's what a snub-line can do, Mr. Wade." He pointed to the armless man and to the man with the shapeless legs. "All done at the same time--bight took 'em and wound 'em round the snub-post." "And it's a pity it wa'n't our necks instead of our legs and arms," growled one of the men--"trimmed like a saw-log and no good to nobody!" "Never say die--never say die!" chirruped the jovial "Mayor of Castonia." He threw back his head in his favorite attitude, thrust out his gray chin beard and tapped his pencil cheerily against the obtrusive false teeth showing under his smoothly shaven upper lip. "Your subscription-papers are growing right along, boys. The first thing you know you'll have enough to buy artificial arms and legs, such as we were looking at in the advertisements the other day. It beats all what they can make nowadays--teeth, arms, legs, and everything." "They can't make new heads, can they?" inquired Tommy Eye, whose mien was that of a man who had something important to impart and was casting about for a way to do it gracefully. "Who needs a new head around here?" smilingly inquired the "mayor." "Him," jerked out Tommy, pointing to Wade. "Leastwise, he will in about ten minutes after the boss gits here." And having thus delicately opened the subject, Tommy's tongue rushed on. "He was good to me when I didn't know it!" His finger again indicated the time-keeper. "I ain't goin' to see him done up any ways but in a fair fight. But _he's_ comin'. There's blood in his eyes and hair on his teeth. I heard him a-talkin' it over to himself--and he's goin' to kill the 'chaney man' for a-gittin' his girl away from him. Now," concluded Tommy, with a hysterical catch in his throat, "if it can be made a fair fight, knuckles up and man to man, then, says I, here's your fair notice it's comin'. But there's a girl in it, and girls don't belong in a fair fight--and I'm afeard--I'm afeard! You'd better run, 'chaney man.'" Nina Ide was in the door behind her father. Her face was crimson, and she winked hard to keep the tears of vexed shame back--for the faces of the loungers told her that Tommy had been imparting other confidences. She did not dare to steal even a glance at Wade. She was suffering too much herself from the brutal situation. "'A girl!' 'His girl!'" repeated Ide, seeing there was something he did not understand. "Whose--" "Father!" cried his daughter. And when he would have continued to question, snapping his sharp eyes from face to face, she stamped her foot in passion and cried, "Father!" in a manner that checked him. He stood surveying her with open mouth and staring eyes. Dwight Wade had fully understood the quizzical glances that were levelled at him. It was not a time--in this queer assemblage--for the observance of the rigid social conventions. Taking the father aside would be misconstrued--and slander would still pursue the girl. "Mr. Ide," he cried, his eyes very bright and his cheeks flushing, "I want you and the others to understand this thing. It's all a mistake. Mr. Britt introduced me to your daughter, and I paid her a few civilities, such as any young lady might expect to receive. But I seem to have stirred up a pretty mess. It's a shameful insult to your daughter--this--this--oh, that man MacLeod must be a fool!" "He is!" said the girl, indignantly. "And he's a fighter," muttered Tommy Eye. Rodburd Ide clutched his beard and blinked his round eyes, much perplexed. "It isn't a very nice thing, any way you look at it--this having two young men scrapping through this region about my girl. It isn't that I don't expect her to get some attention, but this is carrying attention too far." He took her by the arm and led her to one side. "Nina, there is nothing between you and Colin MacLeod?" "Nothing, father. We have danced together at the hall, and he has walked home with me--and that's the only excuse he has for making a fool of himself in this way." "And--and this new man, here?" "I never saw him till this very day! And he's in love with John Barrett's daughter. Oh, what an idiot MacLeod is! This stranger will think we're all fools up here!" Tears of rage and shame filled her eyes. Ide's gaze, wandering from her face to Wade and then to the loafers, saw one of Britt's great wagons topping the distant rise, and he heard a wild chorus of hailing yells. "You run up to the house, girl," he said. "I'll not," she replied. And when he began to frown at her she clasped his arm with both her hands and murmured: "He's a stranger and a gentleman, father, and they're abusing him. He is nothing to me. He's in love with another girl. It was through being obliging and kind to me that this horrible mistake has been made. Now, I'll not run away and leave him to suffer any more." Rodburd Ide, an indulgent father, scratched his nose reflectively. "It isn't the style of the Ide family to leave friends on the chips, Nina," he said--"not even when they're brand new friends. We know what an ingoing lumber crew is, and he probably doesn't, and it's the green man that always gets the worst of it. So I'll tell you what to do: Invite him up to the house, and you entertain him until P'laski and I can get this thing smoothed over." Tommy Eye, hovering near in piteous trepidation lest his kindly offices should miscarry, overheard the invitation that father and daughter extended to the young man, who was gloomily eying the approach of the wagon. "Yess'r, they've got the right of it," stammered Tommy, unluckily. "You'll git it if ye don't--and the 'It-'ll-git-ye Club' will see ye git it. Ye'd best run!" Wade looked into the flushed face of the girl, at the officious father of commiserating countenance, and at the loungers who had heard Tommy's condescending counsel and were looking at him with a sort of scornful pity. Again that strange, sullen, gnawing rage at the general attitude of the world seized upon him. He felt a bristling at the back of his neck and in his hair--the primordial bristling of the beast's mane. "It is kind of you to invite a stranger," he said, "but I fear that among these peculiar people even that kindness would be misconstrued. I belong with Britt's crew. I'll stay here." There was that in his voice which checked further appeal. The girl stood back against the wall of the store. The Honorable Pulaski was the first off the wagon, and he greeted Ide with rough cordiality. When the latter began to whisper rapidly in his ear, he shook his head. "I've wasted a good deal of valuable time and some temper holding those two young fools apart to-day," he snapped. "The last thing MacLeod wanted to do was to lick me. Now, I'm too old to be mixed up in love scrapes. I'm going over to measure that spool stock, and the one that's alive when I get back, I'll load him onto the wagon and we'll keep on up the river." He strode away, leaving the "mayor" champing his false teeth in resentful disappointment. But the autocrat of Castonia had a courage of his own. He set back his head and marched up to MacLeod, who was standing in the middle of the road, his jacket thrown back, his thumbs in his belt. "Colin," he demanded, indifferent as to listeners, "what's all this about my girl? Can't she come along home, minding her own business like the good girl that she is, without a fuss that has set all the section wagging tongues? I thought you were a different chap from this!" "He had his lie made up when he got here, did he?" growled MacLeod. "I believe what my own girl says," the father retorted. "So he's got as far as that, has he? I tell ye, Rod Ide, if you don't know enough--don't care enough about your own daughter to keep her out of the clutches of a cheap masher like that--the kind I've seen many a time before--then--it's where I grab in. Ye'll live to thank me for it. I say, ye will! You don't know what you're talking about now. But you'll know your friends in the end." He put up one arm, stiffened it against Ide's breast, and slowly but relentlessly pushed him aside. Viewed in the code of larrigan-land, the situation was one that didn't admit of temporizing or mediation. The set faces of the men who looked on showed that the trouble between these two, brooding through the hours of that long day, was now to be settled. As for his men, Colin MacLeod had his prestige to keep--and a man who had suffered a stranger to carry off the girl he loved without fitting rebuke could have no prestige in a lumber camp. And it was prestige that made him worth while, made him a boss who could get work out of men. The uncertain quantity in the situation was the stranger. With one movement of heads, all eyes turned to him. He was not a woodsman, and they expected from him something different from the usual duello of the woods. They got it! For instead of waiting for the champion of the Umcolcus to take the initiative, this city man calmly walked off the store platform at this juncture and bearded the champion. "And there ye have it--two bucks and one doe!" grunted old Martin. "The same old woods wrassle." The boss dropped his hands at his side as the time-keeper approached. He grinned evilly when he noted the limp. Wade came close and spoke without anger. "I see you are still determined to be a fool, MacLeod. I want no trouble with you. Aren't you willing to settle all this fuss like a man?" "That's what I'm here for," replied the boss, with grim significance. "Then go and offer an apology to that young lady. Do it, and I'll cancel the one you owe to me." If Wade had been seeking to provoke, he could have chosen no more unfortunate words. "Apology!" howled MacLeod. "Do ye hear it, boys? Talkin' to me like I was a Micmac and didn't know manners! Here's an Umcolcus apology for ye, ye putty-faced dude!" His lunge was vicious, but in his contempt for his adversary it was wholly unguarded. A woodsman's rules of battle are simple. They can be reduced to the single precept: Do your man! Knuckles, butting head, a kick like a game-cock with the spiked boots, grappling and choking--not one is called unfair. MacLeod simply threw himself at his foe. It was blood-lust panting for the clutch of him. Those who told it afterwards always regretfully said it was not a fight--not a fight as the woods looks at such diversions. No one who saw it knew just how it happened. They simply saw that it had happened. [Illustration: "WADE STOOD ABOVE THE FALLEN FOE"] To the former football centre of Burton it was an opening simple as "the fool's gambit" in chess. His tense arms shot forward, his hands clasped the wrists of the flying giant with snaps like a steel trap's clutch, his head hunched between his shoulders, he went down and forward, tugging at the wrists, and by his own momentum MacLeod made his helpless somersault over the college man's broad back. And as he whirled, up lunged the shoulders in a mighty heave, and the woodsman fell ten feet away--fell with the soggy, inert, bone-cracking thud that brings a groan involuntarily from spectators. He lay where he fell, quivered after a moment, rolled, and his right arm twisted under his body in sickening fashion. The girl gave a sharp cry, gathered her skirts about her, and ran away up the street. "He's got it!" said 'Liah Belmore, with the professional decisiveness of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club." "I've read about them things bein' done by the Dagoes in furrin' parts," remarked Martin McCrackin, gazing pensively on the prostrate boss, "but I never expected to see it done in a woods fight." There was silence then for a moment--a silence so profound that the breathing of the spectators could be heard above the summer-quieted murmur of the Hulling Machine. Wade walked over and stood above the fallen foe. He was not gainsaid. Woods decorum forbids interference in a fair fight. As he stood there a rather tempestuous arrival broke the tenseness of the situation. From the mouth of a woods road leading into the tangled mat of forest at the foot of Tumbledick came a little white stallion drawing a muddy gig. Under the seat swung a battered tin pail in which smouldered dry fungi, giving off a trail of smoke behind--the smudge pail designed to rout the black-flies of summer and the "minges" of the later season. An old man drove--an old man, whose long white hair fluttered from under a tall, pointed, visorless wool cap with a knitted knob on its apex. Whiskers, parted by his onrush, streamed past his ears. He pulled up so suddenly in front of Ide's store that his little stallion skated along in the dust. "Hullo," he chirped, cocking his head to peer, "Cole MacLeod down!" He whirled, leaped off the back of the seat, and ran nimbly to the prostrate figure. "Broken!" he jerked, fumbling the arm. "No--no! Out of joint!" "Let the man alone," commanded Wade. "He'll need proper attendance." "Proper attendance!" shrilled the little old man, with snapping eyes. "Proper attendance! And I guess that you haven't travelled much that you don't know me. Here, two of you, come and sit on this man! I'll have him right in a jiffy. Don't know me, eh?" He again turned a scornful gaze on the time-keeper. "Prophet Eli, the natural bone-setter, mediator between the higher forces and man, disease eradicator, the 'charming man'--I guess this is your first time out-doors! Here, two of you come and hold Cole MacLeod!" When Wade, knitting his brows, manifested further symptoms of interference, Rodburd Ide took him by the arm and led him aside. "Let the old man alone," he said. "He'll know what to do. A little cracked, but he knows medicine better than half the doctors that ever got up as far as this." They heard behind them a dull snap and a howl of pain from MacLeod. "There she goes back," said Ide. "He's lived alone on Tumbledick for twenty years, and I suppose there's a story back of him, but we never found it out this way. We just call him Prophet Eli and listen to his predictions and drink his herb tea and let him set broken bones and charm away disease--and there's no kick coming, for he will never take a cent from any one." Four men had carried MacLeod to the wagon. His forehead was bleeding but he was conscious, for the sudden wrench and bitter pain of the dislocated shoulder had stirred his faculties. "Well, you've had it out, have you?" demanded the Honorable Pulaski, coming around the corner of the store and taking in the scene. "What did I tell you, MacLeod? Listen to me next time!" "And you listen to me, too!" squalled MacLeod, his voice breaking like a child's. "This thing ain't over! It's me or him, Mr. Britt. If he goes in with your crew, I stay out. If you want him, you can have him, but you can't have me. And you know what I've done with your crews!" "You don't mean that, Colin," blustered Britt. "God strike me dead for a liar if I don't." "It's easier to get time-keepers than it is bosses," said the Honorable Pulaski, with the brisk decision natural to him. He whirled on Wade. "You'd better go home, young man. You're too much of a royal Bengal tiger to fit a crew of mine." He turned his back and began to order his men aboard the tote teams. Wade stood looking after them as the wagons "rucked" away, his face working with an emotion he could not suppress. "Well, that's Pulaski all over!" remarked Ide at his elbow. "He'll fell a saw-log across a brook any time so as to get across without wetting his feet, and then go off and leave the log there." He stood back and looked the young man over from head to feet, with the shrewd eye of one appraising goods. "Mr. Wade," he said, at last, "will you step into my back office with me a moment?" When they were there, the store-keeper perched himself on a high stool, hooked his toes under a round, thrust his face forward, and said: "Here's my business, straight and to the point. I'm a little something in the lumbering line up this way, myself. What with land, stumpage rights, and tax titles I've got two townships, but they're off the main river, and I haven't done much with 'em. I'm going to be honest, and admit I can't do much with 'em so long as Britt and his gang control roll-dams, flowage, and the water for the driving-pitch the way they do. They haven't got the law with 'em, but that makes no difference to that crowd, the way they run things. Now, you don't know the logging business, but a bright chap like you can learn it mighty quick. And you've shown to-day that there are some things you don't have to learn, and that's how to handle men--and that's the big thing in this country as things are now. What I want to ask you, fair and plain, is, do you want a job?" "What, as a prize-fighter?" asked the young man, surlily. "No, s'r, but as a boss that can boss, and has got the courage to hold up his end on this river! I know this all sounds as though I were temporarily out of my head in a business way, but you've made a reputation in the last half hour here that's worth ten thousand to the man that hires you. There's money in the lumbering business, Mr. Wade. The men that are in it right are getting rich. But you've got to get into it picked end to. Here's the way you and I are fixed: you might wait for ten years and not find the opportunity I'm offering you. I might wait ten years and not find just the man I could afford to take in with me. I've sized you. I know what sort your references will be when I ask for 'em. You seem right. Are you interested enough to listen to figures?" And then Ide, accepting amazed silence as assent, rattled off into his details. At the end of half an hour Wade was listening with a new gleam of resolution in his eyes. At the end of an hour he was blotting his signature at the bottom of a preliminary article of agreement that was to serve until a lawyer could draw one more ample. "And now," said Ide, slamming his safe door and whirling the knob, "it's past supper-time and my folks are waitin'. And it's settled that you stay. I say, it's settled! Where else would you stop in this God-forsaken bunch of shacks? I've got a big house and something to eat. Come along, Mr. Wade! I'm hungry, and we'll do the rest of our talkin' on the road." The young man followed him without a word. And thus entered Dwight Wade into the life of Castonia, and into the battle of strong men in the north woods. In front of the store, as they issued, the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" was still in session, as though waiting for something. They got what they were waiting for. "Boys," announced their satisfied "mayor," "I want to introduce to you my new partner, Mr. Dwight Wade--though he don't really need any introduction in this region after to-day. Bub!" he called to a youngster, "get a wheelbarrow and carry Mr. Wade's duffle up to my house." He pointed to the young man's meagre baggage that had been thrown off the tote wagon. As Wade turned away he caught the keen eye of Prophet Eli fixed on him. The eye was a bit wild, but there was humor there, too. And the cracked falsetto of the old man's voice followed him as he walked away beside his new sponsor: "Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain, Shang, ro-ango, whango-wey! And as he was feelin' salutatious, Chased old Pratt a mile, by gracious, Licked old Shep and two dog Towsers, Then marched back home with old Pratt's trousers. Whango-whey!" "Yes, as I was tellin' you a spell ago--just a little cracked!" apologized Ide. "There's my house, there! The one with the tower. It would look better to me, Mr. Wade, if only my wife had lived to enjoy it with me." But his eyes lighted at sight of his daughter. She was standing at the gate waiting for them. "Her own mother over again, and the best girl in the whole north country, sir! It was man's work you did there to-day for the sake of my girl and her good name--I only wish her father had the muscle to do as much for her." He stretched out his puny arms and shook his head wistfully. "But there's one thing I can do, Mr. Wade. It can't be said that Rod Ide stood by and saw you get thrown out of a job for his daughter's sake, and didn't make it square with you!" "Is that the reason you are offering this partnership to me?" inquired the young man, his pride taking alarm. "No, sir!" replied the little man, with emphasis. But he added, out of his honesty: "It's straight business between us, sir, but it wouldn't be human nature if your best recommendation to me wasn't the fact that you've done for my girl the service that her father ought to have done, and I'm not goin' to try to separate that from our business. But before I get done talking with you, I'll show you that by the time you've helped me to win out against Pulaski Britt and old King Spruce you'll have earned your share in this partnership." And then, with an air that was distinctly triumphant, he pushed Wade ahead of him through the gate, chatting voluble explanation to a girl who listened with a welcoming light in her gray eyes. It was a light that cheered a roving young man who had acquired friends by such a dizzying train of circumstances. They talked until far into the night, he and Rodburd Ide. The next day Christopher Straight was called into the conference. "There ain't any part of the north country that Christopher don't know," eulogized Ide, caressing the woodsman's arm. "Forty years trapper, guide, and explorer--that's his record." Wade gazed into the quiet eyes of the veteran as he grasped his hand, and needed no further recommendation than the look old Christopher returned. There are few men in the world with such appealing qualities as those who have passed their lives in the woods and know what the woods mean. Wade realized now, after his talk with Ide, the nature of the task that he faced. Knowing that Christopher Straight was to be his companion and guide, he was heartened, having seen the man. And with intense eagerness to be away, he completed his modest preparations for the exploring trip, and set forth towards the great unknown of the north. He had Rodburd Ide's parting hand-clasp for reassurance, his daughter's sincere godspeed for his comfort, and the chance to do battle for his love. And he walked with Christopher Straight with head erect and a heart full of new hope. CHAPTER VII ON MISERY GORE "I reckon if gab had been sprawl, He'd have climb' to the very top notch. As it was, though, he made just one crawl To a perch in a next-the-ground crotch." --The Pauper. The two men "hopped" the broad expanse of Patch Dam heath, springing from tussock to tussock of the sphagnum moss. In that mighty flat they seemed as insignificant as frogs, and their progress suggested the batrachian as they leaped and zigzagged. Ahead bounced Christopher Straight, the few tins of his scanty cooking-kit rattling in the meal-bag pack on his back. At his heels came Dwight Wade, blanket-roll across his shoulders and calipers and leather-sheathed axe in his hands. Sweat streamed into his eyes, and, athlete though he was, his leg muscles ached cruelly. The September sunshine shimmered hotly across the open, and the young man's head swam. Old Christopher's keen side glance noted this. With the veteran guide's tactful courtesy towards tenderfeet, he halted on a mound and made pretence of lighting his pipe. There was not even a bead of perspiration on his face, and his crisp, gray beard seemed frosty. "I'm ashamed of myself," blurted the young man in blunt outburst. His knees trembled as he steadied himself after his last leap. "It ain't exactly like strollin' down the shady lane, as the song says," replied old Christopher, with gentle satire. He looked away towards the fringe of distant woods. "We could have kept on around by the Tomah trail, Mr. Wade, but I reckon you got as sick as I did of climbin' through old Britt's slash. And until he operated there last winter it used to be one of the best trails north of Castonia. I blazed it myself forty years ago." "And just a little care in felling it would have left it open," cried the young man, indignantly. "There was orders from Britt to drop ev'ry top across that trail that could be dropped there, Mr. Wade. So, unless they come in flyin'-machines, there's been few fishermen and hunters up the Tomah trail this season to build fires and cut tent-poles." "Does the old hog begrudge that much from the acres he stole from the people of the State?" demanded Wade. "He'd ruther you'd pick your teeth with your knife-blade than pull even a sliver out of a blow down," replied Christopher, mildly. He tossed his brown hand to point his quiet satire, and Wade's eyes swept the vast expanse of wood, from the nearest ridges to the dim blue of the tree-spiked horizon. Christopher put his hand to his forehead and gazed north. "I can show you your first peek at it, Mr. Wade," he said, after a moment. "That's old Enchanted--the blue sugar-loaf you see through Pogey Notch there. Under that sugar-loaf is where we are bound, to Ide's holdin's." There was a thrill for the young man in the spectacle--in the blue mountains swimming above the haze, and in the untried mystery of the miles of forest that still lay between. Even the word "Enchanted" vibrated with suggestion. The zest of wander-lust came upon him later--a zest dulled at first by two days of perspiring fatigue, uneasy slumbers under the stars, breathless scrambles through undergrowth and up rocky slopes. "That's Jerusalem Mountain, layin' a little to the right," went on Christopher. "That's Britt's principal workin' on the east slope of that this season. He'll yard along Attean and the other streams, and run his drive into Jerusalem dead-water--and that's where you and Ide will have a chore cut out for you." The old man wrinkled his brows a bit, but his voice was still mild. The romance oozed from Wade's thrill. The thrill became more like an angry bristling along his spine. During the days of his preparation for this trip into the north country, Rodburd Ide--suddenly become his partner by an astonishing juncture of circumstances--had spent as much time in setting forth the character of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt as he had in instructing his neophyte in the duties of a timber explorer. As a matter of fact, Ide left it mostly to old Christopher to be mentor and instructor in the art of "exploring," as search for timber in the north woods is called. Ide was better posted on the acerbities and sinuosities of Britt's character than he was on the values of standing timber and the science of economical "twitch-roads," and, with sage purpose, he had freely given of this information to his new partner. "Don't worry about the explorin' part--not with Christopher postin' you," Ide had cheerfully counselled, when he had shaken hands with them at the edge of Castonia clearing. "You and he together will find enough timber to be cut. But you can't get dollars for logs until they're sorted and boomed--and that part means dividin' white water with Britt next spring. So, don't spend all your time measuring trees, Wade. Measure chances!" Now, with his eyes on the promised field of battle, Wade growled under his breath. Britt! For four days now he had struggled behind old Christopher through tangled undergrowth of striped maple, witch hobble, and mountain holly--Mother Nature's pathetic attempt to cover with ragged and stunted growth the breast that the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had stripped bare. "He cut her three times," Christopher explained. "First time the virgin black growth--and as handsome a stand of timber as ye ever put calipers to; second time, the battens--all under eleven inches through; third time, even the poles. That's forestry as he practises it! He's robbin' the squirrels!" Britt! Wade had seen rotting tops that would have yielded logs--the refuse of the first reckless and wasteful cutting. He had passed skidways and toiled over corduroy in which thousands of feet of good spruce had been left to decay. The deploring finger of the watchful Christopher pointed out butts hacked off head high. "The best timber in the log left standin' there, Mr. Wade. But Pulaski Britt ain't lettin' his men stop to shovel snow away." Britt behind him, in the tangled undergrowth! Britt about him, in the straggle of trees on the hard-wood ridges! Britt ahead of him, where the black growth shaded the mountains in the blue distance! The same Britt who had so contemptuously tossed him aside as useless baggage when Foreman Colin MacLeod had demanded his discharge! Wade clutched calipers and axe, and went leaping after old Christopher with new strength in his legs. But in spite of the vigor that resentment lent him, he was glad when the guide tossed off his pack beside a brook that trickled under mossy rocks on the hard-wood slope. It was good to hear the tinkle of water, to feel the solid ground after the weird wobbling of the sphagnum moss, and to snuff the smoke of the handful of fire crackling under the tea-pail. They were munching biscuits and bacon, nursing pannikins of tea between their knees, when Christopher cocked an ear, darted a glance, and mumbled a mild oath as savor to his mouthful of biscuit. "Set to eat a snack within a mile of Misery Gore and one of them crows will appear to ye. And that's the old he one of them all." The old man who came shuffling slowly down the path was gaunt with the leanness of want, and unkempt with the squalor of the hopelessly pauperized. "It's one of the Misery Gore squatters, Mr. Wade. All Skeets and Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger relationship. All State paupers, and no more sprawl to 'em than there is to a fresh-water clam." Old Christopher, with Yankee contempt of the thrifty for the willing pauper, grumbled on in his scornful explanations after the old man sat down opposite them. Wade, accustomed to politer usages, winced before this brutal frankness. He plainly felt worse than the subject, who looked from one to the other, his blue lips slavering at sight of the food. "It ain't no use to set there and drool like a hound pup, Jed," snapped old Christopher, cutting another slice of bacon. "We're bound in for a fortnit's explorin' trip, and we ain't got no grub to spare." The patriarch of Misery Gore drew a greasy bit of brown paper from his ragged vest, unfolded it, and took out what was apparently a long hair from his grizzly beard. He pinched the thicker end between his dirty thumb and forefinger, stroked the whisker upright, and held it before his gaping mouth. The whisker slowly bent over towards Christopher. "'Lectric!" announced the experimenter, in thick, stuffy tones, as though he were talking through a cloth. Again he gaped his toothless mouth, and the whisker bent towards the uninviting opening. "'Lectric!" He grinned at them, rolling his watery eyes from face to face to seek appreciation. It was evident that he considered the feat remarkable. "Full of it! Er huh! Full of it!" He stroked his thin fingers down his arm and slatted into the air. "Storms, huh? I know. Fair weather, huh? I know. Things to happen, huh? I know. I can tell." He hitched nearer, and looked hungrily at the bread and bacon which Christopher immediately and ruthlessly began to wrap up. "Them wireless-telegraph folks ought to know about you," grunted the guide. "Don't pay any attention to the old fool, Mr. Wade. He don't have to beg of us. Rod Ide furnishes supplies to these critters. Law says that the assessor of the nearest plantation shall do it, and then Ide puts in his bill to the State. You needn't worry about their starvin'." "You'd all see us starve on Misery Gore," wailed the old man. "You'd all see us starve!" His tone changed suddenly to weak anger. "Ide's an old hog. No tea, no tobarker." "Yes, and he ain't been so lib'ral with turkeys, plush furniture, and champagne as he ought to be," growled Christopher, relishing his irony. "If there's anything that you really need, Mr.--Mr.--" "Skeet," snapped the guide. "--Mr. Skeet, I'll speak to Mr. Ide about it when--" "Mr. Wade," broke in Christopher, "what's the need of wastin' good breath on that sculch? They get all they deserve to have. They're too lazy to breathe unless it come automatic. They let their potatoes rot in the ground, and complain about starvin'. They won't cut browse to bank their shacks, and complain about freezin'. The only thing they can do to the queen's taste is steal, and it's got so in this section that there ain't a sportin'-camp nor a store wangan that it's safe to leave a thing in." He began to stuff tins into the mouth of the meal-sack, glowering at the ancient pauper. "They nigh put me out of bus'ness guidin' hereabouts. Stole everything from my Attean camp that I left there--and it ain't no fun to tugger-lug grub for sports on your back from Castonia." When the last knot in the leather thong was twitched close and the bountiful meal-bag was closed, old Jed abandoned hope and wheedling. He brandished the whisker at Christopher, his moth-speckled hand quivering. "Old butcherman!" he screamed. "'Twas my Jed. Off here!" He set the edge of his palm against his arm. Christopher's face grew hard under his frosty beard, but his cheeks flushed when Wade gazed inquiringly at him. "It's a thief's lookout when there's a spring-gun in a camp," he muttered. "There was a sign on the door sayin' as much. It ain't my fault if folks has been too busy stealin' to learn to read. If you ever hear anything about it up this way, Mr. Wade, you needn't blame me. They had their warnin' by word o' mouth. I'm sorry it happened, but--" "What happened?" "Young Jed Skeet joined the 'It-'ll-git-ye Club' a year ago with a fin shot off at the elbow." Christopher swung his pack to his back, thrust his arms through the straps, and marched away. Wade followed with a new light on some of the accepted ethics of human combat in the big woods. Old Jed shuffled behind, a toothless Nemesis gasping maledictions in stuffy tones. "We'll swing over the ridge and go through Misery Gore settlement, Mr. Wade," said the old guide, after a time, divining the reason for his companion's silence. "It may spoil your appetite for supper, but it'll prob'ly straighten out some of your notions about me and that spring-gun." On the opposite slant of the ridge a ledge thrust above the hard-wood growth, and Christopher led the way out upon this lookout. "There! Ain't that a pictur' for a Sussex shote to look at, and then take to the woods ag'in?" he inquired, with scornful disregard for any civic pride the patriarch of Misery might have taken in his community. The few miserable habitations of poles, mud, and tarred paper were scattered around a tumble-down lumber camp, relic of the old days when "punkin pine" turreted Misery Gore. "I suppose the man who named it stood here and looked down," suggested Wade. "It was named Misery fifty years before this tribe ever came here. I reckon they heard of it, and it sounded as though it might suit 'em. They're a tribe by themselves, Mr. Wade. They've been driven off'n a dozen townships that I know of. Land-owners keep 'em movin'. I reckon this is their longest stop. This Gore is a surplus left in surveying Range Nine. Sort of a no man's land. But they hadn't ought to be left here." There was so much conviction in the old guide's tone, and the contrast of utter ruin below was so great, its last touch added by the pathetic old figure in rags at the foot of the ledge, that the young man's temper flamed. He had been pondering the spring-gun episode with no very tolerant spirit. "For God's sake, Straight, show some man-feeling. Is the selfishness of the woods down to the point where you begrudge those poor devils that wallow of stumps and rocks?" Christopher received this outburst with his usual placidity--the placidity that only woodsmen have cultivated in its most artistic sense. "Look, Mr. Wade!" He swept his hand in the circuit that embraced the panorama of ridges showing the first touches of frost, the hills still darkling with black growth, the valleys and the shredded forest. "There she lays before you, ten thousand acres like a tinder-box in this weather, dry since middle August. You've seen some of the slash. But you've seen only a little of it. Under those trees as far as eye can see there's the slash of three cuttin's. Tops propped on their boughs like wood in a fireplace. Draught like a furnace! It's bad enough now, with the green leaves still on. It's like to be worse in May before the green leaves start. And about all those dod-fired Diggers down there know or care about property interests is that a burn makes blueberries grow, and blueberries are worth six cents a quart! They have done it in other places. They're inbred till they've got water for blood and sponges for brains. When the hankerin' for blueberries catches 'em they'll put the torch to that undergrowth and refuse, and if the wind helps and the rain don't stop it they'll set a fire that will run to Pogey Notch like racin' hosses, roar through there like blazin' tissue-paper in a chimbly flue, and then where'll your black growth on Enchanted be--the growth that's goin' to make money for you and Rod Ide? I tell ye, Mr. Wade, there's more to woods life than roamin' through and cuttin' your gal's name on the bark. There's more to loggin' than the chip-chop of a sharp axe or the rick-raw of a double-handled gashin'-fiddle. And when it comes down to profit, you can't be polite to a porcupine when he's girdlin' your spruce-trees, nor practice society airs and Christian charity with damn fools, whether they're dude fishermen tossin' cigar-stubs or such spontaneously combustin' toadstools as them that live down yonder eatin' the State's pork and flour. I'm up here with ye to tell ye something about the woods, Mr. Wade. And it ain't all goin' to be about calipers, the diffrunce between the Bangor and New Hampshire scale, and how stumpage ain't profitable under nine inches top measure--no, s'r, not by a blame sight!" There was no passion in the old man's remonstrance, but there was an earnestness that closed the young man's lips against argument. He followed silently when Christopher led the way down towards the settlement. Old Jed took up his position at the rear. The first who accosted them was a slatternly woman, her short skirts revealing men's long-legged boots. She rapped the bowl of a pipe smartly in her palm, to show that it was empty, and demanded tobacco. She scowled, and there was no hint of coaxing in her tones. When Wade looked at her with an expression of shocked astonishment that all his resolution could not modify, she sneered at him. "Oh, you think we don't know northin' here--ain't wuth noticin' 'cause we live in the woods, hey? Well, we do know something. Here, Ase, tell this sport the months of the year, and then let's see if he's stingy enough to keep his plug in his pocket." Ase, plainly her son, lubberly and man-grown, roared without bashfulness: "Jan'warry, Feb'darry, Septober, Ockjuber, Fourth o' July, St. Padrick's Day, and Cris'mus--gimme a chaw!" Two or three men lounged out-of-doors--one with his arm significantly off at the elbow. But there was not even a shadow on his vapid face when he looked at Christopher, author of his misfortune. "Ain't ye goin' to give me a piece of your plug, Chris?" he whined. "Seem's if ye might. You 'n' me's square now--I got your pork and you got my arm." "There! Hear that?" growled Straight, in Wade's ear. "Put your common-sense calipers on this stand of human timber and see what ye make of it." Wade, looking from face to face, as the frowsy population of Misery lounged closer about him, half in indolence, half in the distrustful shyness that the stupidly ignorant usually assume towards superior strangers, noted that though the men displayed an almost canine desire to fawn for favors, the women were sullen. The only exception was a very old woman who hobbled close and entreated: "Ain't you got northin' good for Abe, nice young gentleman? Poor Abe! Hain't got no friend but his old mother." She hooked a hand as blue and gaunt as a turkey's claw into Wade's belt and held up her spotted face so close to his that he turned his head in uncontrollable disgust. "Your hands off the gentleman, Jule," commanded Christopher, brusquely. "It's old Jule, mate of the old he one that has been chasin' us," he explained, with more of that blissful disregard for the feelings of his subjects that had previously shocked the young man. "There's old Jed and young Jed--old Jule and young Jule. They 'ain't even got gumption enough here to change names. And that's Abe--the choice specimen that she's beggin' for. Look at him and wish for a pictur'-machine, Mr. Wade!" He had thought there could be no worse in human guise than those he had seen. But this huge, hairy, shaggy, almost naked giant, cowering against the side of a shack with all the timidity of a child, marked a climax even to such degeneracy as he had quailed before. "Mind in him about five years old, and will always stay five years old," said the guide, pointing to the wistful, simpering face. "Body speaks for itself. Look at them muscles! I've seen him ploughin' hitched with their cow. Clever as a mule. He's the old woman's hoss. Hauls her on a jumper clear to Castonia settlement." "An animal!" Wade gasped. "Not much else. Afraid of the dark, of shadows, and women mostly. Strange women! Once a woman scared him in Castonia and he ran away like a hoss, draggin' the jumper. Old Jule hitched him to a post after that." Cretinism in any form had always shocked Dwight Wade inexpressibly. He turned away, but the old woman was in his path, begging. The next moment a tall, lithe girl ran swiftly out of a hut, seized the whimpering old woman, tossed her over her shoulder as a miller would up-end a bag of meal, and staggered back into the hut, kicking the frail door shut with angry heel. Wade got an astonished but a comprehensive view of this "kidnapper." There was no vacuity in her face. It was brilliant, with black eyes under a tangle of dark hair disordered but not unkempt like that of the females he had seen in Misery. Her lips were very red, and the color flamed on her cheeks above the brown of the tan. In that compost heap of humanity the girl was a vision, and Wade turned to old Christopher with unspoken questions on his parted lips. "Don't know," said the guide, laconically, wagging his head. "No one knows. She's with 'em. But you and me can see that she ain't one of 'em. She's always been with 'em as fur back's I know of her--and that was sixteen years ago, when she was in a holler log on rockers for a cradle." "Stolen!" suggested Wade, desperately. The thought had a morsel of comfort in it. That a girl like that could belong by right of birth in this tribe, that a girl with--ah, now he realized why his heart had throbbed at sight of her--that a girl with Elva Barrett's hair and eyes could be doomed to this existence was a knife-thrust in his sensibilities. And the toss of her head and the rebelliousness in the gesture--the defiance in the upward flash of the sparkling eyes--subdued in Elva Barrett's case by training--the mnemonics of love, whose suggestions are so subtle, thrilled him at the sudden apparition of this forest beauty. Reason angrily rebuked this unbidden comparison. He bit his lips, and flushed as though his swift thought had wronged his love. Old Christopher put into blunt woods phrase the pith of the thoughts that struggled together in Wade's mind. The guide was looking at the closed door. "There's lots of folks, Mr. Wade, that don't recognize plain white birch in some of the things that's polished and set up in city parlors. I've wondered a good many times what a society cabinet-shop, as ye might say, would do to that girl." "They must have stolen her," repeated Wade. Old Christopher tucked a sliver of plug into his cheek. "That would sound well in a gypsy fairy-story, but it don't fit the style of the Skeets and Bushees. They're too lazy to steal anything that's alive. They want even a shote killed and dressed before they'll touch it. Near's I can find out, the young one was handed to 'em, and they was too dadblamed tired to wake up and ask where it came from. They didn't even have sprawl enough to name her. I did that," he added, calmly. "Yes," he proceeded, smiling at Wade's astonished glance; "I was guidin' a sport down the West Branch just before they drove the tribe out of the Sourdnaheunk country--under old Katahdin, you know! I see her in that log cradle, and they was callin' her 'it.' So me 'n' the sport got up a name for her--Kate Arden, for the mountain. 'Tain't a name for a Maine girl to be ashamed of." It suddenly occurred to Wade, gazing at the old man, that the quizzical screwing-up of his eyes was hiding some deeper emotion; for Christopher's voice had a quaver in it when he said: "Poor little gaffer! Some one ought to have taken her away from 'em. But it's hard to get folks interested in even a pretty posy when it grows in a skunk-cabbage patch." He looked away, embarrassed that any man should see emotion on his face, and uttered a prompt exclamation. Threading their way in single file among the blackened stumps that bordered the Tomah trail to the north came a half-dozen men. "That's Bennett Rodliff ahead, and he's the high sheriff of this county," growled the old man. "There's two deputies and two game-wardens with him--and old Pulaski Britt bringin' up in the rear. Knowin' them pretty well, I should say that it spells t-r-u-b-l-e, in jest six letters. I ain't a great hand to guess, Mr. Wade, but if some one was to ask me quick, I should say it was the same old checker-game that the Skeets and Bushees have been playin' for all these years, and that it's their turn to move." CHAPTER VIII THE TORCH, AND THE LIGHTING OF IT "We know how to riffle a log jam apart, Though it's tangled and twisted and turned; But the love of a woman and ways of the heart Are things that we never learned." --Leeboomook Song. The sheriff and his men tramped into the little clearing and gave the usual greeting of woods wayfarers--the nod and the almost voiceless grunt. The Honorable Pulaski was a little more talkative. He was also in excellent humor. "Hear you and Rod Ide have hitched hosses, Wade!" he cried. "Sheriff here was tellin' me. I'm mighty glad of it. That lets me out of thinkin' I got you up here on a wild-goose chase. I was sorry to dump you, but it would take nine time-keepers to make a foreman like Colin MacLeod, and when he put it up to me you had to go. It was business, and business beats fun up this way." The young man did not reply. Words seemed useless just then. The Honorable Pulaski turned from him briskly and ran an appraising eye over the miserable huddle of huts. With the true scent of primitive natures for impending trouble, the population of Misery edged around this group of new arrivals--the men in advance and wistful, the women behind and sullen. "Well, boys," said the Honorable Pulaski, "it's just this way about it, and we can all be reasonable and do business like business men." His air was that of a man dealing with children or savages. "As far as I'm personally concerned, I hate to bother you. But I represent the other owners of this township, and the other owners aren't as reasonable about some things as I am." He paused to light a long cigar. No one spoke. He proffered one to Wade, who shook his head with a little unnecessary vigor. Britt talked as he puffed. "Now--pup--pup--now, boys--pup--you know as well as I do that you've squatted right in the middle of a lot of slash that we had to leave, and it lays in a bad way for fire. You ain't so careful about fire as you ought to be." He held up his cigar. "Here's my style. I don't smoke till I'm out of the trail. I--pup--pup--own land, and that makes a difference. You don't own land. I don't want to bring up old stories, but you know and I know that the prospects of six cents a quart for blueberries makes you forgetful about what's been said to you. You've started some devilish big fires. Here's the September big winds about due--and this one that's just springing up to-day is a fair sample--and all is, the owners can't afford to run chances of a fire that will stop God knows where if it gets running in this five thousand acres of dry tops and slash. "Here's Mr. Ide's representative," he continued, flapping a hand towards Wade. "They've got black growth to the north, and he'll tell you just the same thing." "Well, Mister Mealy-mouth," sneered young Jule, over the heads of the others, "git to where you're goin' to. We don't want no sermons. It's move ag'in, hey?" "It's move," snapped the Honorable Pulaski, his ready temper starting at the woman's insolent tone, "and it's move damn sudden." Whether it was a groan or growl that came from the wretched huddle, Wade, looking on them with infinite pity, could not determine. "I could put ye plumb square out of the county," roared Britt; "I've got land jurisdiction enough to do it. But you be reasonable and I'll be reasonable. I won't drive ye too far. I'll have four horses over from my cedar operation to tote what duds you want to take and haul the old women. Sheriff Rodliff and his men here will go along, and see that you have grub and don't have to light fires. In fact, everything will be arranged nice for you, and you'll like it when you get there." "Where?" asked young Jed. "On Little Lobster--the old Drake farm," said the Honorable Pulaski, trying to speak enthusiastically and signally failing. "O my Gawd!" moaned young Jed; "most twenty miles to hoof it, and when ye git there no wood bigger'n alder-withes, and all the stones the devil let drop when his puckerin'-string bruk! Hain't a berry. Hain't northin' to earn a livin'." "You never earned your living, and you don't want to earn your living," retorted Britt. "You just want to stay up here in the big timber and start fires." "No, Mr. Britt, we just want the chance to be human beings!" cried a tense and piercing voice. The girl had reappeared in the door of the hut. Above the meek lamentations of those about her, her voice was as the scream of a young hawk above the baaing of sheep. She pushed her way through them and stood before the Honorable Pulaski, palpitating, glowing, splendid in her fury. But she propped her brown hands on her hips--a woman of the mob--and Wade noted the attitude, and flushed at the shamed thought of the likeness to Elva Barrett. In this crisis, by right of her intelligence, her daring, her superiority, the girl seemed to take her place at the head of the pathetic herd. "That's what we want, Mr. Britt. You're driving us down to the settlements again. And then some bow-legged old farmer will lose a sheep by bears or a hen by hawks, and we'll be set upon and driven back once more to the woods. And then you'll come and huff and puff and blow our house down and chase us away to the settlement. 'The law! The law!' you keep braying like a mule. You kick us one way; the settlements kick us another. Mr. Britt, I didn't ask to be put on this earth! But now that I'm here I've a right to ground enough to set my feet on, and so have these people. We are using no more of your stolen ground here than we'd be using in another place, and here we stay!" She stamped her foot. "You young whippet," snorted the Honorable Pulaski, "don't sneer to me about the law when I've got eviction-papers in my pocket and the high sheriff of this county at my back." "How about the law that makes wild-land owners pay squatters for improvements to land?" demanded the girl. "I know some law, too." "Do you call those hog-pens improvements?" He swept his fat hand at the huts. "You may pay some one a dollar an acre for that blue sky above us and claim that, too. You may claim all of God's open country here in the big woods. But I know that you can't shut even paupers out from the lakes and the streams any more than you can take away the sunlight from us." "I don't know where you got your law, young woman, but I'd advise you to get better posted on the difference between right of way to State waters and squatting on private land. Now, I ain't got time to--" "We'll not go back to the settlement--not one of us." She set her feet apart and bent a fiery gaze on him. Britt looked away from her to his circle of supporters. The deputies stooped over their gun-barrels to hide furtive grins at sight of the timber baron thus baited by a girl on his preserves. Even the broad face of the sheriff was crinkled suspiciously. The tyrant flamed with the quick passion for which he was noted in the north country. "Look here, Rodliff!" His voice was like cracking twigs. "Pile the dunnage out of those huts. If any one gets in your way drive a stake and tie 'em to it." He thrust his bulgy nose into the air to sniff the direction of the wind. "Then set fire to every d--n crib. The wind's all right to carry it towards the bog." "I don't believe you've got law enough in your pocket to do a thing like that, Mr. Britt," broke in Wade, with heat. "You don't, hey?" "Not to throw old men and women and children out of their houses and leave them shelterless a dozen miles from a building. There must be another way of getting at this eviction matter, Mr. Britt--one that's different from burning a hornet's nest." "This don't happen to be any of your special business!" roared the tyrant. "If it was, you'd stand by property interests instead of backing State paupers." "Mr. Sheriff, are you going to do that thing?" "I'm here by order of the court, to do what Mr. Britt wants done to protect his property," replied the officer. "I'm to execute, not to plan nor ask questions." "King Spruce runs this country up here, not human feelin's," muttered old Christopher in Wade's ear. "You won't get any satisfaction by buttin' in. I'm ready to move. I don't like to see such things done, and I don't believe you do. Come on!" He swung his meal-bag upon his shoulders. But the young man lingered doggedly, his eyes on the face of the girl. "Buckin' a high sheriff and his posse ain't ever been reckoned as a profitable business speculation in these parts," mumbled the guide. "It wouldn't amount to a hoorah in tophet, and you'd probably wind up in the county jail." The girl was gazing shrewdly at this sudden champion. There was no shade of coquetry in her glance. It was the frank gaze of man to man. "I protest, Mr. Britt!" cried Wade. "And that's all the good it will do," snorted that angry master of the situation. "Rodliff, you've got my orders!" Young Jed, sidling near Britt, with the mien of a Judas and with manifest intent to curry favor, whimpered: "We don't back her up in all she says, Mr. Britt. We ain't got rights and we know it, but we've got feelin's. Be ye goin' to do the us'al thing about damages, Mr. Britt?" "Why," roared the tyrant, bluffly, "ain't the land-owners always made it worth your while to move? It's all business, boys! Don't let fools bust in. We don't want fire here. Get to Little Lobster as quick as the Lord'll let ye. We'll have six months' supply of pork, flour, and plug tobacco there waitin' for ye--all with the land-owners' compliments. We've always believed that the easiest way is the best way, but you don't buy that way by buckin'. Buck, and the trade is all off--and you get thrown into another county. Close your girl's mouth and keep it shut." "There!" grunted old Christopher, "if ye haven't got any more sympathy to waste on critters like that"--a jab of his thumb at young Jed--"you'd better come along." But at sight of woe on the faces of the women, and mute entreaty in the eyes of the girl, Wade still lingered. "She's speakin' for herself," whispered young Jed, hoarsely. "She don't want to leave the woods because your boss, Colin MacLeod, is courtin' her, and she's waitin' to see him, now that he's back from down-country." Riotous laughter "guffled" in the throat of Pulaski Britt as he stared from the scarlet face of the girl to Wade's confusion. "Courtin' her, hey? Another case of it? I say, Rodliff, pretty soon there won't be a whole arm or leg left on my boss if this young man here keeps chasin' him round the country and breaks a bone on him for ev'ry girl the two of 'em get against together." He laughed to the full content of his soul, and then turned on the girl. "Why, you ragged little fool, Colin MacLeod is crazier than a hornet in a thrashin'-machine over Rod Ide's girl. He's up in camp now with an arm in a sling to make him remember a fight he and this young dude here got into over her. And he's up there beyond Pogey Notch sitting on a stump swearing at the choppers and bragging with every other breath that he'll kill the dude and marry the girl--and I don't reckon he's changed his mind in two days since I saw him last." "You lie!" screamed the girl. "Hold on, there, Miss Spitfire," broke in the sheriff, himself highly amused by the humor of the situation as it appeared to him, "there isn't a man between Castonia and Blunder Lake but what is talking about it. A hundred men saw the fight. I reckon five hundred have heard MacLeod ravin' about how much he loves the Ide girl. So if he ever courted you it must have been just for the sake of getting used to the game." Even the fawning male citizens of Misery Gore cackled their little chorus in the laughter that followed the high sheriff's jest. She drew back slowly and gazed on them all, her lips rolled away from her white teeth. Those jeering faces from "outside" represented property, law, the smug self-satisfaction of all who despised Misery Gore's squalid breed. They stood there in the midst of the land they so arrogantly claimed, ready to toss her away once more in the everlasting game of battledore and shuttlecock. They were afraid for the dollars that made them different from the wretches of Misery. They gloried in their dollars--they mocked her in that moment, the bitterness of which only her heart understood. Let them look out for their dollars, then! Up there where the blue hills divided was sitting Colin MacLeod calling on the name of another woman and nursing a wound received for that woman's sake. Let him look out for himself! "We can make the Blake-cutting camps with you to-night," said Britt, his mind on business once again. "We'll take good care of you, and you might as well start one time as another. Out with the stuff and down with the houses, Rodliff." At the orders the men began to busy themselves, paying no further attention to Misery's inhabitants. The girl ran into the hut, lifted one of the cedar splints that made the floor, and took out a section of iron gas-pipe--the most prized possession of the tribe. It was their wand of plenty. It was Mother Nature's crutch. Out of it flowed bounty. Into the unplugged end she poured all the kerosene there was in a battered can. Then she stuffed into the tube a mass of wicking. It was a torch--the torch for the blueberry barrens. Dragged after one, it left a blazing trail such as no other form of fire could produce. There was a flicker of fire in the rusty stove. She thrust the wicking into the coals, and on the iron stalk a flame-flower sprang into huge blossom. She burst through the hut's rear window and ran straight for the edge of the clearing, towards the fuel piled high in the forest aisles. In that moment of blind and desperate fury she realized that the wind was swinging into the north. It was there that MacLeod was sitting at the foot of Pogey Notch. Ah, what a furnace-flue that would make! She did not pause to reason. Her single wild desire was to send the fire leaping towards him. The roar of voices behind--voices entreating, voices of malediction--made her smile. Above all was the Honorable Pulaski's bull roar. She began to drag the torch. "Catch her! Damnation, catch that girl!" howled Britt. She reached the edge of the distant woodland. Immediately his cry changed to "Shoot her!" He did not mean it the first time he cried it. He did mean it the second time. The deputies stared after her and joggled their weapons on their arms. "Shoot her, or fifty thousand acres of timber are gone!" But that was quarry before which official guns quailed. In his fury and his panic and his desperate fear for his fortune, Britt seized a gun from the nearest deputy and aimed it. Wade struck it up, muttering an indignant oath. Britt made as though to club him out of the way. The young man clutched the gun and twisted it from Britt's quivering clutch. When Britt lunged forward to seize another rifle Wade struck him under the jaw, and he went down like a felled ox. The girl was out of sight in the woods, but yellow smoke shot with bright flame marked her course. "I could have told him," mused old Christopher, looking on the Honorable Pulaski, struggling dizzily to his feet, "havin' watched her more or less since I named her, that she wa'n't a real sociable kind of a girl to joke with on matters that's as serious to women as love is." Sheriff Bennett Rodliff spoke the prologue to that conflagration: "There is h--l in the core of that fire," he said. Sometimes a little mischief, started by chance down the slopes of events, gathers like a rolling snowball into a vast bulk of evil. But more often in matters of evil it is the intent of the impulse that governs. It seems at such times as though inanimate nature were responding to human malevolence. The fire that started that day on Misery leaped to its grim business with a spontaneity as fierce as the mad hate behind it. One man acts in a crisis with more directness and efficiency than many men, each of whom waits on the other. They had stood and stared after the girl when she ran into the woods with the hissing fire streaming behind her. The pursuers that finally did start stopped promptly to witness the fight between the young man and the baron of the Umcolcus. Human fists in play afford more of a spectacle than even an incipient conflagration. When the man who goes down is a man who in the past has always been aggressor and victor, interest is more acute. Dwight Wade did not linger to prolong the conflict to which the furious Britt invited him. Christopher Straight had started for the woods on the track of the fugitive girl, and Wade ran after him, his knuckles tingling gloriously. The thrill of that one moment, when his fist met the flesh of the man who had insulted him, made him realize that when one searches the depths of human nature hate, as well as love, has its delights. Pressing closely on the heels of Christopher, who had waited for him, he dove into the yellow smoke. "We've got to find that young she-devil!" gasped the old man. "It's better for us to find her than for Britt to get hold of her." But by that time the quest was an uncertain one. There is craftiness in a woods fire when it is seeking to establish itself. The fire sent up first from the crackling slash thick, rolling, bitter clouds of smoke to veil its beginnings. Running to the left, where the fresher clouds seemed to be springing, the two men caught sight of the girl. But she was already far to the right, running and leaping like a deer, her hideous torch still flaming. Then the smoke shut down and she was hidden. A blazing mass of tops, twisted in a blowdown, fronted them, and they were forced to make a long detour. They saw the wind wrench torches out of the mass, torches that whirled aloft and went scaling away to the north. Puffs of smoke showed where they had alighted. Here and there the tops of little spruces and firs set a net for the torches, afforded roosting-places for the flame birds that winged their red flight across the sky. The flame did not merely burn these trees; the trees fairly exploded; their resinous fronds and tassels were like powder grains. A wind gust rent the smoke for an instant and showed the pursuers the spread of the growing destruction. It already was sprinkled over acres. "She's started fair, and the devil's helpin' her!" mourned the old man. At that moment the huge bulk of a man went lurching past them. It was Abe, the foolish giant of the Skeets. In the glimpse they caught before the smoke swallowed him, in his hairy nakedness, he seemed a gigantic satyr; he leaped here and there to avoid the blazing patches in the leaf litter and humus, and his movements seemed like a grotesque dance. "The old woman has sent him after the girl," explained Christopher, with quick comprehension. "Come on!" Dodging, choking, crouching for air, they followed him. At last they overtook the author of all the mischief. She threw away her torch when they came upon her, and faced them without shame. She was panting in utter exhaustion, and clung to a tree for support. "Bring her, Abe!" commanded Christopher, in a tone that the giant understood, and he took her up in his brawny arms despite her angry struggles. "No, not that way!" shouted the old man, when Abe whirled to make his way back through the fire zone. "It's spread too far," he explained to Wade; "we've got to keep ahead of it." With a blow to emphasize his order, he drove Abe ahead of him, and they hurried towards the north, the conflagration at their heels. Far ahead of them Jerusalem Mountain lifted the poll of its gray ledge. It blocked the broad valley to the north. For those in the van of that fire it was the rock of refuge. The tote road led that way. The fugitives crashed through the undergrowth into the road. The fire had already crossed it to the south of them. They took their way to the north, their eyes on Jerusalem Mountain. CHAPTER IX BY ORDER OF PULASKI D. BRITT "Twinkle, twinkle, 'Ladder' Lane, With your wavin' winder-pane, Up above the world so high, Like a flash-bug in the sky." The fire-lookout at the Attean station winked this ditty humorously with playful heliograph to "Ladder" Lane, lookout on the high, bald poll of old Jerusalem Knob. The Attean lookout got it by telephone from Castonia. Lyrist unreported. Jerusalem station is more serene in its isolation than the other five lookouts on the mountains of the north country. It has no telephone. Lane allowed to his lonely self that he got more news than he really wanted, anyhow. And most of the news was of the sort that the humorous Attean lookout, or the equally humorous Squaw Mountain man, considered likely to tease the cranky solitary on the highest and farthest outpost of the chain of lookouts. They whiled away their solitude by gossipy chattings over the wire. Lane confined himself to terse winkings that would have been gruff were it possible for a heliograph to be gruff. He seemed to take a certain grim pride in the fact that he was a thousand feet higher than any of them and commanded three hundred thousand acres. Sitting now in the glare of the September sunshine on the flat roof of his cabin, he gravely and stolidly scrawled down the words of the verse as the Attean heliograph, blinking and glaring, spoke to him in the Morse code. "Huh!" he grunted, and went on writing with stubby pencil his interrupted day's entry in his official diary. For the twenty-fifth time he wrote: "Clear, bright, and still dry." He screwed his eyelids close to peer into the heavens bending over him, hard as the bottom of a brass kettle. He took off his hat and held it edgewise at his forehead while his gaze swept the mighty range of his vision. An imaginative person might have smiled at the likeness between his brown and bald poll, thrust above the straggle of hair, and the bare and bald poll of old Jerusalem, rounding above the straggle of growth on its lower slopes. Some one bawled at him from the ground below. Lane did not start, though that was the first human voice he had heard in two months. The young man who stood there, and who had come across the gray ledges from the edge of the timber growth, carried an arm in a sling. "Do you ever look at anybody if they're nearer than ten miles away?" inquired the visitor, with the teasing irony that it seemed popular in the Umcolcus region to employ with "Ladder" Lane. When the old man stood up the fitness of his sobriquet was apparent. He unfolded himself, joint by joint, like a carpenter's rule, and stood gaunt as a bean pole and well towards seven feet in height. The name painted on the door of the photograph "saloon" that even now lies rotting on the banks of Ragmuff in Castonia settlement is: "Linus Lane. Tintypes and Views." No one in Castonia ever knew whither he had come. Oxen or horses and a teamster hired for each trip had dragged the rumbling van from settlement to settlement at the edge of the woods, and finally to Castonia, where it arrived hobbling on three wheels, one corner supported by a dragging sapling. Lane strode ahead, swearing over his shoulder at the driver, and his ill-temper did not seem to leave him even when he had opened his door for business. It is remembered that his first customer was old Bailey, who was corresponding with an unknown woman down-country, and who came for a tintype with hair and whiskers colored to the hue of the raven's wing, evidently desiring to make an impression on his correspondent. And when old Bailey, shocked and disappointed at the painful verity of the tintype, had muttered that it didn't seem to be a very pretty picture, Lane, who was doubled like a jack-knife under the saloon's low roof, had yelled at him: "Pretty picture! You come to me with a face like a scrambled egg dropped into a bucket of soot and complain because you don't get a pretty picture! Get out of here!" And he stopped slicing up the sheet of tintypes, slammed it on the floor, drove out old Bailey, nailed up the door of the saloon, and started for the big woods with his few possessions on his back. To those who remonstrated on behalf of the offended old Bailey, Lane said he had been feeling like that for some time, and was taking to the woods before he expressed his disgust by killing some one. Therefore, the job on the top of Jerusalem that fell to him quite naturally, after his many years' sojourn as a recluse at its foot, was a job that fitted admirably with his scheme of life. "And it looks up there like it must have looked when Noah said, 'All ashore that's goin' ashore,' on Mount Ariat, or wherever 'twas he throwed anchor," announced Tommy Eye, of Britt's crew, returning once from a Sunday trip to the fire station. For, painfully acquired, with gouges, clawings, and scratches to show for it all, "Ladder" Lane had accumulated companions of his loneliness, to wit: One bull moose, captured in calfhood in deep snow; two bear cubs; a raccoon; a three-legged bobcat, victim of an excited hunter; two horned owls; and a fisher cat. On this menagerie, variously tethered or crated in sapling cages, the visitor with the disabled arm bestowed a contemptuous side glance while he blinked at the tall figure on the cabin's flat roof. Without haste Lane worked himself through the roof-scuttle like an angle-worm drawing into his hole; without cordiality he appeared at the cabin door, lounging out into the sunshine. "I suppose you are still doing the second-hand swearing for Britt, MacLeod," he suggested. The young man grunted. "How did ye hurt your arm? Britt chaw it?" "Peavy-stick flipped on me," growled the young man, willing to hide his humiliation from at least one person in the world--and the hermit of the Jerusalem station seemed to be the only one sufficiently isolated. "Huh! I thought his name was Wade." There was no spirit of jest in the tone. The old man surveyed him sourly. "That's what the Attean helio said." "Is that what you use them things for--to pass gossip like an old maid's quiltin'-bee?" "There's a good deal in this world in letting a man place his own self where he belongs," remarked Lane, with calm conviction. "I've let you prove yourself a liar." He turned and went into the cabin and back up the stairs to the roof, picking up a huge telescope as he went. Something in the valley seemed to have attracted his attention. MacLeod followed, his face red, oaths clucking in his throat. In the nearer middle ground of the great plat of country below Patch Dam heath was set into the green of the forest like a medallion of rusty tin. To the west of it smoke began to puff above the tree-tops. "On Misery," mumbled Lane, his long arms steadying his instrument. Then, with the caution of a man of method, he went into the scuttle-hole and secured his range-finder. "What's the good of tinker-fuddlin' with that thing?" demanded MacLeod; "it's on Misery, as you said." "Two hundred and fifty-nine degrees," muttered the fire-scout, booking the figures in his dog's-eared diary. "Say, about that fire, Mr. Lane," blurted MacLeod, nervously. "I'm up here to-day by Mr. Britt's orders to tell you not to report it. It's on Misery Gore, and he's there looking after it, and it ain't goin' to be worth while to report. I know all about it, and that's the truth." Lane, without bestowing a glance on the speaker, was setting up his heliograph tripod. At the young man's last words he grunted over his shoulder: "So it was a peavy-stick! But they told me his name was Wade." "Now you look here," stormed the timber baron's boss, "you can slur all you want to about my lyin', but I tell you, Lane, this is straight goods. You report that fire, after the orders you've got from Britt, and you'll lose your job. I know what I'm talkin' about." Lane kneeled, his thin trousers hanging over his slender shanks like cloth over broomsticks. MacLeod stifled an inclination to take him in one hand and snap him like a whip-lash. The old man was peering through the centre hole in the sun-mirror, bringing his disks into alignment. "Britt has got orders from the court, and he's there to put the Skeets and Bushees out and torch off their shacks. That's all there is to that fire, Lane, and Britt don't want a stir and hoorah made about it. He told me to tell you that. He says the cussed newspapers get a word here and a word there, and they're always ready to string out a lot of lies about King Spruce and wild-landers, and how they abuse settlers, and all that rot--and it hurts prominent men, like Mr. Britt and his associates, because folks get wrong ideas from the papers. Now you know that! Don't report that fire, Lane." It was fulsome appeal and eager appeal, and MacLeod was apparently obeying some very emphatic orders from his superior, who had supplied language as well as directions of procedure. But the old fire-warden kept on with his preparations, exact, careful, without haste. "He said you understood--Britt did," clamored MacLeod, hastening around in front of the heliograph. "You know it ain't right to have those people there in this dry time, with all that slash about 'em. Mr. Britt will make it all right with them--the same as the land-owners always do. It will be the papers that will lie and call the land-owners names for the sake of stirrin' up a sensation about leadin' men--makin' politics out of it, and gettin' the people prejudiced so as to put more taxes onto wild lands." More of Britt's ammunition! "Mr. Britt said you'd understand--and you do understand--and you can't report that fire." Lane set his gaunt grasp about the handle of the screen, ready to tilt it for the first flash. "I understand just this, MacLeod--that I'm a fire-warden of the State, sworn to do my duty as my duty is spread before me." He swept his left arm in impressive gesture. "Look behind you! Do you see that?" Smoke was ballooning from the notch of the woods below them. Round puffs seemed to be dancing in fantastic ballet from tree-top to tree-top. "That's a fire, MacLeod. I take no man's say-so as to what and why. That may be Pulaski Britt smoking a cigar. It may be Jule Skeet's new spring bonnet on fire. I don't care what it is. It's a fire, and it's going to be reported. Stand out of range." His code-card was in the top of his hat. He waved the headgear impatiently at MacLeod, his right hand still on the handle of the screen. MacLeod knew what the orders of Pulaski D. Britt meant. Britt had not hesitated to rely upon the loyalty of "Ladder" Lane, for Britt, when State senator, had caused Lane to be appointed to the post on Jerusalem. MacLeod reflected, with fury rising like flame from the steady glow of his contemptuous resentment at this old recalcitrant, that Pulaski Britt would never make allowance for failure under these circumstances. To be sure, that fire yonder didn't look like a carefully conducted incineration of the dwellings of Misery Gore, and it was a little ahead of time--that time being set for the calm of early evening. But orders from Britt were--to his men--orders from the supreme tribunal. "Britt put you here!" stuttered MacLeod. "I'm working for the State, not Pulaski D. Britt," replied the old man. "And I'm working for Britt, and, by ---- he runs the State in these parts! Him and you and the State can settle it between you later, but just now"--he swung to one side, leaned back, and drove his foot with all the venom of his repressed rage against the apparatus--"that fire report don't go!" "Ladder" Lane, serene in his proud conjuration, "The State," had expected no such enormity. The heliograph skated on its spider legs, went over the edge of the roof, and, after a hushed moment of drop, crashed upon the ledge with shiver and tinkle of flying glass. The boss of "Britt's Busters" turned and darted through the scuttle and down the stairs, excusing this flight to himself on the ground of his out-of-commission arm. He leaped out into the sunshine and clattered away over the ledges, the spikes in his shoes striking sparks. He had made half a dozen rods when he heard the old man scream "Halt!" MacLeod kept on, with a taunting wave of his well hand above his head. The next moment a rifle barked, and the bullet chipped the ledge in front of him. "The next one bores you in the back, MacLeod!" He stopped then, and whirled in his tracks. Lane stood at the edge of his roof, his rifle-butt at his cheek. "Come back here!" "You ain't got the right to hold me up, Lane. I'll have the law on ye!" "Come back here!" There was a grate in the tone, a menace not to be braved. The young man shuffled slowly towards the cabin, roaring oaths and insults to which Lane deigned no reply. MacLeod did not try to run when the warden disappeared for his trip to the door. He waited sullenly. Near the door was a good-sized, empty cage of strong saplings, built in "Ladder" Lane's abundant leisure, for the reception of any new candidate for the menagerie. The old man jerked his head sideways at it. There was a gap of three saplings in the side, and the poles stood there ready to be set in. "I won't be penned that way!" yelled MacLeod. "I ain't no raccoon!" But the bitter visage of the warden, the merciless flash of his gray eyes, and the glint of the rifle-barrel, swinging into line with his face, combined with the sudden remembrance that it was hinted that "Ladder" Lane was not always right in his head, drove the stubborn courage out of MacLeod. He slunk rather than walked into the cage with the mien of a whipped beast. The old man set the saplings one by one into place, and nailed them with vigorous hammer-blows. "How long have I got to stay here, Lane?" he pleaded. "Till I can turn you over to them who will put you where you belong for destroying State's property and interfering with a State officer." The old man turned away and gazed out over the forest stretches between Jerusalem and Misery. MacLeod, clutching the bars of his cage with his left hand, looked, too. It was no puny torching of the Misery huts that he was looking on, and he realized it with growing apprehensiveness as to his zeal in suppressing news. Vast volumes of yellow smoke volleyed up over the crowns of the green growth. It was a racing fire--even those on Jerusalem could see that much across the six miles between. Spirals waved ahead like banners of a charging army. Its front broadened as the fire troops deployed to the flanks. Ahead and ever ahead fresh smoke-puffings marked the advance of the skirmish-line. Now here, now there, drove the cavalry charges of the conflagration, following slash-strewn roads and cuttings, while the dun smoke ripped the green of the maples and beeches. "It's liable to interest Pulaski D. Britt somewhat when he finds out why Jerusalem lookout ain't callin' for a fire-posse," Lane remarked, bitterly. The situation seemed to overwhelm the boss. He looked with straining gaze at the rush of the conflagration, and had no word for reply. "But it may not all be loss for you," the old man proceeded, grimly. "Perhaps the girl will be burned up--perhaps that was in your trade with Britt." "I don't know what you mean about any girl," mumbled MacLeod, looking away from the old man's boring eyes. "You're a liar again as well as a dirty whelp of a sneak." Lane spat the words over his shoulder, stumping away, the bristle of his gray beard standing out like an angry porcupine's quills. "I don't allow anybody to put them words on me!" roared MacLeod. "You don't, heh?" Lane whirled and stumped back. He bent down and set his face close to the saplings, his eyes narrowing like a cat's, his nose wrinkling in mighty anger. "You can steal time paid for by Pulaski D. Britt, and hang around Misery Gore, and coax on an ignorant girl into a worse hell than she's living in now"--he pointed a quivering finger at the smoke-wreathed valley--"when you know and I know, and everyone on these mountain-tops of the Umcolcus knows and gossips it with the settlements, that you've picked her up only to throw her farther into the wallow where you found her. It's the Ide girl you're courtin'. It's poor little Kate of Misery that you're killin'. There isn't another man in the north woods mean enough to steal from a girl as poor as she is--steal love and hope and faith. It's all she's got, MacLeod, and you've taken all." The young man grunted a sullen oath. "There's a lot I could say to you," raged Lane, "but I ain't going to waste time doing it. I'll simply express my opinion of you by--" He spat squarely into the convulsed face of MacLeod, and went away into his cabin. CHAPTER X "LADDER" LANE'S SOIRÉE "And down from off the mountains in the shooting sheets of flame The devils of Katahdin come to play their reg'lar game. So 'tis: men hold tight! Pray for mornin' light! Katahdin's caves are empty and hell's broke loose to-night!" --Ha'nt of Pamola. As the hours of the day went on, Colin MacLeod, caged, helpless, set high on the bald brow of old Jerusalem, where every phase of the great fire was spread before his eyes, found abundant opportunity to curse himself for a fool. In time, of course, Attean or some other point would realize the extent of the conflagration and call for help. But now, hidden under Jerusalem and confined to the slash under the green trees, it was a racing ground-fire that crouched and ran. It came rapidly, but in a measure secretly. It showed a subtility of selection. It did not waste time on the green forest of beeches and maples. It was hurrying north towards its traditional prey. That prey was waiting for it, rooted on the slopes of Jerusalem and the Umcolcus, on the Attean and the Enchanted--the towering black growth of hemlock, pine, and spruce--the apple of Pulaski Britt's commercial eye--the hope of his associates. Once there, it would spring from its crouching race on the ground. It would climb the resinous trunks and torch and flare and rage and roar in the tinder-tops--a dreaded "crown-fire" that only the exhaustion of fuel or the rains of God would stop. Attean would see that fire leaping past Jerusalem, and would swear and wonder and report too late. Just now hours were as precious as days. Men could do nothing at mid-day with the wind lashing behind. MacLeod knew well how that fire should be fought. But with men on the way ready to flank it at nightfall and work ahead of it with pick and shovel and beating branches of green--the winds stilled and the dews condensing--it could be conquered--it must be conquered then, if at all. Woods fires sleep at night. The men who fight them may as well sleep at mid-day. With the dropping of the sun and the sinking of the winds the fires drowse and flicker and smoulder. Then must one attack the monster; for at daybreak he is up, ravening and roaring and hungry. And now--not even Britt's own crew of loggers at the foot of Jerusalem had word and warning. MacLeod bellowed appeals to be let out. He besought Lane to hurry down the mountain to camp. He howled frightful oaths and threats and abject promises. At dusk the old man came out of his cabin, and brought bread and water and bacon to his captive without a word. He fed him with as much unconcern as he brought browse to the tethered bull moose and distributed provender suited to the various tastes of his menagerie. The darkness settled in the valleys first, and one by one fire-dottings pricked out--blazing junipers and the stunted new growth of evergreen. From Jerusalem the great expanse seemed like a mighty city, its windows alight, its streets and avenues illuminated gloriously. MacLeod, silenced except for an occasional hoarse quack of appeal, paced his little cage, despairing. "Ladder" Lane sat on the flat roof silent as a spectre. So the hours dragged past. "I thought so!" grunted the old man at last. "That's what I've been sitting up for." From his eyry he saw a light flickering in the stunted growth far down Jerusalem, zigzagging nearer. At last it emerged and came across the ledges--a flare of hissing birch bark stuck into a cleft stick. There were several men hastening along in the circle of its radiance. Lane could hear from afar their gruntings of exhaustion. "If I ain't mistook, it's your friend Britt," remarked the old man, maliciously, as he passed MacLeod's cage on his way to meet the visitors. And it was Britt--Britt with his hat in his hand, perspiration streaming into his beard, his stertorous breath rumbling in his throat. Lane knew the man who bore the torch as Bennett Rodliff, high sheriff of the county. "It's been--God!--awful work--but we've--come round the east--edge of it, Lane," panted Britt. Commanding general in the grim conflict, he had been willing to burst his heart in order to establish headquarters in the one spot from which he could mobilize his forces and direct their tactics. "How many men have you ordered in, Lane?" "Not a man!" "Not a--not a--you stand there and tell me you haven't reported and called for every man that Attean and Squaw can reach!" He began to curse shrilly. "You'd better save your wire edge, Mr. Britt," counselled Lane. "You're going to need it. Come here till I show you something." One of the sheriff's men lighted a fresh sheet of bark at the dying flare of the other, and Lane led the way to the cage, where MacLeod peered desperately between the saplings. "Just a moment, Mr. Britt!" broke in the warden, again checking the lumber baron's fury. "This man came up here to-day with what he said were your orders not to report that fire, and--" "That fire!" roared Britt, fairly beside himself. "Why, you devilish, infernal--" "A moment, I say! When I set up my heliograph he kicked it off the roof. There it lies just as it fell. You and he can settle your part of it! As for my part of it, I have arrested him by my authority as a fire warden. The sheriff, here, can take him whenever he gives me a receipt and makes note of my complaint." "I did what you told me to, Mr. Britt," protested MacLeod, his voice breaking. "He was reportin' the first puff of smoke, and said that you and your orders could go to thunder. He didn't pay any attention--and I just did what you told me to. I--" "Shut up!" The Honorable Pulaski, crimson with anger, fearful of his own part in this conspiracy, and shamed by the exposure of his methods, bellowed his order. "We'll settle this later. Knock away those saplings, some one. MacLeod, get down this mountain, even if you break your neck doing it, and get your crew to the front of that fire! I--I--haven't got breath to talk to you the way you need to be talked to. As you stand, you're only half a man on account of a girl." He darted a quivering finger at the disabled arm. "And it's your other little d--n fool of a girl at Misery that torched that fire when she heard that you'd jilted her. Now, is it women or woods after this?" "Woods, Mr. Britt!" stammered the boss, eager to conciliate this raging bull. "Then get to the front of that fire and stop it, even if you have to lie down and roll over on it. It's a fire your pauper sweetheart started, and you've arranged, by your infernal bull-headedness, to let it burn. Stop it or keep going! It won't be healthy in my neighborhood." "I'll stop it or die tryin', Mr. Britt." Lane leaned his back against the cage and faced the group, his gaunt arms reaching from side to side. "You can't free a prisoner that way, Mr. Britt," he said, firmly. "You take this man away from me--or if the high sheriff, here, lets him go--I'll report the thing under oath to the governor and the people of this State; and I reckon you can't afford to have that done. I propose to have it known why Linus Lane didn't do his duty in reporting that fire." "Take that old fool away from there and let that man out," commanded Britt, his passion blind to consequences. He could see no way out of his muddle. He seemed to be in for wicked notoriety, anyway. Just now his one thought was to get "Roaring Cole MacLeod," master of men, at the head of that fire, to hold it in leash until more assistance came. He knew his man. He understood that MacLeod, bitter in the consciousness of his blunder, was now worth six men. "Rodliff, I'll take the consequences!" he shouted. "Let my boss out." But the high sheriff seemed to be doubtful as to the consequences that he also would have to accept. Just then he had clearer notions of official responsibility than did the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt. "This man is under arrest all regular," protested Rodliff, "and I've just the same as heard him own up that he interfered with Warden Lane in his duty. The governor himself wouldn't have the right to order me to let a prisoner go before a hearing on the case. That's law, Mr. Britt, and--" "Talk that south of Castonia," broke in the Honorable Pulaski. "Just now law won't put that fire out and save a fifty-thousand-acre stand of black growth. Lane, you've got to be reasonable. There've been mistakes, but they'll be made good. You can't afford to be bull-headed in this thing." But the old man did not move from the cage. The flaring of the torch lighted his solemn and unrelenting face. The worried face of MacLeod peered out over one of the extended arms. "What--what was it happened to 'em on Misery, Mr. Britt?" he asked, humbly. "I told you!" snapped Britt, glad of a momentary excuse to cover embarrassment of this general defiance of his dignity. "Your black-eyed beauty there, that you've been fooling with when my back's been turned, is jealous of Rod Ide's girl, and took to the bush with a blueberry-torch dragging at her heels to show her feelings. I'd have shot her like I would a rabbit if it hadn't been for your particular friend Wade." The wrathful sneer of the Honorable Pulaski was a snarl that would have done credit to "Ladder" Lane's bobcat. "When you come to settle accounts with that critter, MacLeod, break his leg, and charge it on my side of the ledger." "So he was there, hey?" asked the boss, eagerly. "He was there long enough to hit me like a prize-fighter when I was protecting my property." "Why didn't you kill him?" demanded the boss, with venom. "By the time I got a gun he was out of sight at the tail of the fire, chasing the girl--he and old Chris Straight. I believe they were proposing to rescue the girl," concluded Britt, with a mirthless chuckle. "The only consolation I'm getting out of that fire down there is that maybe it's burning that Wade and the girl, whatever they call her, and will chase the Skeets and Bushees south and catch them, too. If it does I'll be willing to let a thousand more acres burn." But it appeared that the choicest section of the Honorable Pulaski's charitable hopes was doomed to disappointment. A torch, tossing from the edge of the stunted growth, marked the approach of some one. "The top of Jerusalem seems liable to be a popular roosting-place for all them that ain't wearing asbestos pants," remarked the high sheriff, dryly. "A rush of excursionists during the heated spell, as the summer-boarder ads say! Lane, can you give the crowd anything to eat at your tavern except broiled moose and fricasseed bobcat?" The pleasantry evoked no smile. For the little group at the cabin, Pulaski Britt first of all, with his keener eyes of hate, recognized those who were approaching. Old Christopher Straight came ahead with the torch. The girl of Misery Gore, moving more slowly now that she saw the group at the top of Jerusalem, her face sullen, her head cocked defiantly, was at his back, and Dwight Wade was at her side. Far behind, at the edge of the torch's radiance, slouched a huge figure of a man. It was foolish Abe, the hirsute giant of the Skeets. "And now, speaking of arresting in the name of the law," snarled the lumber baron, "and your duty that you seem so fond of, Rodliff, get out your handcuffs for something that's worth while. It's three years in state-prison for maliciously setting fires on timber lands. It's a long vacation in the county jail for assaulting a man without provocation. There's the girl who set that fire; there's the man that struck me. So you see, Lane, your prisoner is going to have company." Lane came suddenly away from the cage. The torch showed his face working with strange emotion. "Mr. Britt," he said, appealingly, to the astonishment of the senator, who understood this sour woods cynic's nature, "there are crimes that ain't crimes in this world--not even when they're judged by God's own scale. There's your fire yonder! Some one is responsible for it--but not that poor girl!" "I saw her set it myself, you devilish idiot!" "Not that poor girl, I say. Those that threw her--her, with the pride of good blood that she felt but didn't understand--her, with her hopes and brains that her blood gave her--" "Blood!" roared the Honorable Pulaski. "What do you know about her pedigree?" "Those that threw her into that pen of swine are responsible," went on the warden. "Men like you, that have persecuted her and wonder why she doesn't squeal like the rest of those idiots; men like the whelp in that cage, trying to wrong her and throw her back into hell--all of you are responsible for that fire. You bent the limb. It has snapped back and struck you in your faces. It's the way of the woods." "Well, of all the infernal nonsense I ever listened to, this sermon on Mount Jerusalem clears the skidway," blurted Britt. "You stand up at the trial and repeat that, Lane, and you'll get your picture into the newspapers." "And I guess a lot of the rest of us will before this scrape gets straightened out," muttered the high sheriff, bodingly. "Mr. Britt, you're going to be sorry for it if you drag that poor abused girl to prison," said Lane, with such fire of conviction that the timber baron, cautious in his methods, and always fearing the notoriety that would embroil the great secrets of the timber interests with public opinion, blinked at the oracular old warden and then at the still defiant face of the girl. Like most untrained natures in whom passion has unleashed natural high spirit, she seemed incapable of calm reconsideration. She had made such protest against the enormity of her persecution as opportunity had put into her heart as right and into her hands as feasible. "We were fools to bring her here and toss her into the old hyena's claws," muttered Wade in Christopher's ear. "We might have known that he and his crowd would make for Jerusalem." "I did know it," returned the old guide, quietly. "And I knew just as well what would happen to us in the runway of that fire to-morrow." "Lane," broke in the Honorable Pulaski, with decision, "two trials won't stir this thing any worse than one. You've arranged for one. Go ahead with MacLeod. I'll have the girl." Those who looked on Lane's face only knew that mighty passions were shaking him. His voice broke and quavered. "Mr. Britt, things have been mixed for me in this world till I don't hardly know what is right. I've tried to do my duty as it's been laid out for me. But in climbing up to it there's some things I haven't got the heart to step on. Perhaps in this thing we're mixed in now we've all been more or less wrong. I don't know. I haven't got the head to-night to figure it out. Perhaps it's best that what has happened on Jerusalem to-day don't get out. I don't know as that's right. But I'll say this: give me the girl; you can take MacLeod." The Honorable Pulaski hesitated, "hemmed" hoarsely in his throat, clutched at his beard, looked significantly at the high sheriff, and then called him apart by a nod of his head. When he returned to the group he said, crisply: "It's a trade! Under the circumstances, I don't suppose even such a little tin god as you will have anything to say about it outside," he sneered, running his red eye over Dwight Wade. The young man did not reply, but his face gave assent. Lane pried away the saplings, and MacLeod stepped out. "Give him a camp lantern," commanded Britt. "Get your men into that fire at daylight." "Tell me that they've all been lying about you, Colin," cried the girl, her cheeks crimson, her heart going out to him at sight of his face, "and I'll go with you! I'll work with you! I'm sorry for it if it's made you mad with me." All her sullen anger was gone. She leaned towards him as though she yearned to abase herself. With Britt's flaming eyes on him, MacLeod only moved his lips without words. "Ladder" Lane came out of the cabin with two lanterns. A set of lineman's climbers jangled dully at his belt. "No, you'll not go, girl!" he cried, brusquely. With hands on her hips, she threw back her head, her nostrils dilating. "I've paid a big price for you this night," he went on, more gently, "and it isn't to a cur of that kind that I'll be giving you. MacLeod, here's your lantern! Away, now!" "And I'll go, I say, if you'll tell me they've lied. Colin, darling, tell me!" But he started away, spurred by a ripping oath from the Honorable Pulaski. She tore herself from the restraining grasp of Wade and ran after her lover. At her movement, Abe, cowering in the gloom away from the torch-lighted area of ledge, started behind her with canine loyalty. He had followed her into the fire zone when his mother had screamed command into his ear. His mother and this girl, her protégée, were the only ones who ever looked at him without disgust. "Abe!" shouted "Ladder" Lane. He spoke in a peculiar tone--a tone in which the fool evidently recognized something of an old-time authority; for he uttered a little bleat, in curious contrast with his giant bulk, and halted. "Fire, Abe!" cried Lane, brandishing his arm in the direction of the distant flamings. "Mother want her saved from fire. Fetch, Abe!" It was a tone of authority that the witling recognized, and it commanded his weak will and giant strength. He sped after the girl, seized her in spite of her furious protest, and bore her back to the cabin, her struggles exciting only his amiable grins. Lane rushed him and his burden into his hut. "Now, Abe, mother say watch her. No go into the fire! Watch till I come!" He came out with placid confidence that his order would be obeyed, and the mien of the giant gave excellent confirmation. "Men," he said, grimly, looking round on their faces, "I'd rather trust that girl to the fool than to all of the rest of humankind; but I've had reasons in my life to distrust men, and the higher the men the more I distrust them. Don't any of you interfere in that duet in there. There's only one thing that I ask you to do here till I come back--whoever stays here--feed the animals. You can't corrupt them." He was "Ladder" Lane once more, sour in his satire. "Where are you going, Lane?" demanded Britt. The old man shook a telephone cut-in sender at him. "I'm going through the woods ahead of that fire to tap the Attean line and send my report and call for men," he said, calmly. "I'm still the fire warden of Jerusalem region." He set away, striding over the ledges, his lantern winking between his thin legs. "Looks like a cross between a lightning-bug and a grampy-long-shanks," observed the sheriff, his cheerfulness increased by the happy disposal of his troublesome prisoners. "Travelling on underpinning like that, he'll have his word in before daybreak." But Pulaski Britt had not yet satisfied the curiosity that stirred as soon as greater matters had been settled. He ran after the warden, shouting an order to wait. The little group heard the colloquy, for Lane did not stop, and the Honorable Pulaski had to bellow his question. "Say, Lane, in case anything should happen to you! Ain't you going to let me do the square thing? If this girl is yours, say the word. I'll look after her. Is she yours?" "No!" yelled the old man, with a fury in his tones like the rasp of a file on their flesh as they listened. And the next words seemed to be a cry wrung from him without his will: "If she were, I'd have killed you and Colin MacLeod before this!" He went flitting down the slope of Jerusalem like a will-o'-the-wisp, and they stood in silence and watched him out of sight. That night the tenantry of Jerusalem Knob divided itself silently and sullenly into groups which ignored each other. Britt and his people took blankets from the fire station, and established makeshift camps down in the fringe of the trees. Wade and Christopher Straight went apart, and composed themselves as best they could on some gray moss that tufted the ledge. Their duty was plain. That fire threatened Enchanted, once it should sweep through the chimney draught of Pogey Notch. They must stay there and fight it at the pass through which it was marching to invade their territory. Rodburd Ide promised to have the Enchanted crew following them within a week. It might be that their men were already on the way. Their route lay through Pogey, and Wade would be there ready to captain them. The camp was left to the girl and her unkempt guardian. She sat silent and full of bitter rage; but she understood the vagaries of the fool's character well enough to realize that after Lane's orders to Abe even her persuasions could have no effect; the valley fires that lighted the windows of the camp gave effective point to Lane's commands. The giant crouched by the open door and gazed upon the sullen glowings in the vast pit below, muttering his fears to himself. CHAPTER XI IN THE BARONY OF "STUMPAGE JOHN" "Wilderness lord of the olden time, Stalwart and plumed pine; They have dragged thee down to the roaring town From the realms that once were thine. And he who reigns in thy stately stead Has never a time o' truce, For the axe and saw and the grinder's maw Have doomed thee, too, King Spruce." --Kin o' Ktaadn. At half-past four in the dark of the morning "Dirty-apron Harry's" nickel alarm-clock purred relentlessly, and he rolled out of his bunk, his eyelids sticking like a blind puppy's. At seventeen, youth relishes morning naps. But, as cookee of Barnum Withee's camp on "Lazy Tom" operation, he was chosen to be the earliest bird to crow. His first duty as chanticleer was to wake "Icicle Ike" and "Push Charlie," the teamsters, whose hungry charges were stamping impatient hoofs in the hovel. He dressed himself while stumbling across the dingle to the men's camp, his eyes still shut. This feat was not as difficult as it sounds. The difference between Harry's night-gear and day raiment was merely a Scotch cap and the canvas robe of office that gave him his title. The teamsters grunted when he shook them, and followed him out of the frowsy, snore-fretted atmosphere of the big camp. They did their morning yawnings and stretching as they walked. When Duty calls "Time!" to a woodsman the body is on the dot, even if the soul lags unwillingly. The humorists of the woods have it that the cookee pries up the sun when he jacks the big pot out of the bean-hole. For such an important operation, "Dirty-apron Harry" went at it listlessly. The bean-hole was beyond the horse-hovel, sheltered in the angle of a little palisade of poles whose protection would be needed when the winter's snows drifted. Harry wearily dragged a hoe in that direction after he had kindled a fire in the cook-house stove. He did not look up to the first pearly sheen of sunrise streaming through the yellow of the frost-touched birches. The glory of the skies would wake him too soon. He gave up the final fuddle of slumber grudgingly, his dull mind still piecing the visions of the night, his soul full of loathing for the workaday world of greasy pots and dirty tins. But when he turned the corner of the bean-hole shelter he dropped out of dreams with the suddenest jolt of his life. A black bear was trying to dig up the bean-pot, growling softly at the heat of the round stones she uncovered. Two cubs sat near by, watching operations with great interest, their round ears up-cocked, their jaws drooling expectantly. The big bear whirled promptly and cuffed the hoe out of Harry's limp grasp, leaped past him before his trembling legs could move him, and scuffed away into the woods, with her progeny crowding close to her sheltering bulk. The cookee sped in the other direction towards the hovel with as great alacrity. "Bears?" echoed "Push Charlie," appearing with his pitchfork at the hovel door. "Stop your squawkin'. I seen half a dozen yistiddy, and all of 'em streakin' north up this valley. Heard 'em whooffing and barkin' last night, travellin' past here on the hemlock benches." He pointed his fork at the terraced sides of the valley above them. "It's only excursion parties bound for the Bears' Annooal Convention up at Telos Gorge," suggested "Icicle Ike," rapping the chaff out of a peck measure. The cookee, woods-camp traditional butt of jokes, stared from one to the other, trying to recover his composure. "And Marm Bear there wanted to take along that pot of beans for the picnic dinner," added Charlie. "I think it's goin' to be a general mass-meetin' to discuss the game laws," said Ike. "The boys who were swampin' the twitch-roads yistiddy told me that deer kept traipsin' past all day and--well, there goes three now." White "flags" flitted through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing, and a startled "Whick-i-whick!" further up the valley-side hinted at the retreat of still others. Their departure was probably hastened by the cook's shrill "Who-e-e-e!" the general call for the camp. He came out of the cook-house scrubbing his hands and bare arms with a towel. "Git that bean-pot here! What are you standin' round on one foot for?" he demanded, testily. When the cookee began to stutter explanations, brandishing freckled arms to point the route of the fugitives, the cook interrupted, but now there was humor in his tones. "Thunderation, you gents is sartinly slow to understand what's before your eyes! Don't you know why all these animiles is runnin' away from down there?" He jerked a red thumb over his shoulder towards the south. "Ain't 'Stumpage John' Barrett down there with Withee, lookin' over that tract where we operated last season?" Sly grins of appreciation appeared on the faces of the teamsters. "Ain't you got any notion of what particular kind of language 'Stumpage John' has been lettin' out of himself for the last twenty-four hours?" "Well, the idee is," said the cook, "he is down there cussin' to that extent that he's cussed every animile off'n Square-hole township. Animiles is natcherally timid, delicate in the ears, and hates cussin'. The deer come first because they can run fastest. Bears left as soon as they could, and is hurryin'. Rabbits will come next, and the quill-pigs are on the way. Then I reckon Barnum Withee will fetch up the rear. Oh, it must be somethin' awful down there!" He faced the south with grave mien. His listeners guffawed. But a moment later "Push Charlie" stepped clear of the hovel and sniffed with canine eagerness. There was a subtle, elusive, acrid odor in the air. It seemed to billow up the valley, whose shoulders circumscribed their vision so narrowly. "I reckon," he stated, "that he's throwed so much brimstone around him reckless that he's set fire to the woods." "That's the way with some of these big timber-owners," remarked the cook, still in humorous mood. "They raise tophet with a sport because he throws down a cigar-butt, and they themselves will go out right in a dry time and spit cuss words that's just so much blue flame. It's dretful careless!" he sighed. "But when you come to think of what he found there on that township," said Charlie, "you have to make allowances. More'n a third of the board measure left right there on the ground as slash, and slash that's propped on the branches of the tops like powder-houses on stilts. And the whole township only devilled over at that! Barn only took the stuff that would roll downhill into the water when it was joggled." "You ain't blamin' your own boss, be ye?" demanded the cook. "Not by a darned sight!" rejoined Charlie, stoutly. "If I was an operator, doin' all the hard liftin', with a rich stumpage-owner with a rasp file goin' at me on one end and a log-buyer whittlin' me at the other, I'd figger to save myself. But I've always lived and worked in the old woods, gents. I ain't one of those dudes that never want to see an axe put in. The old woods need the axe to keep 'em healthy. We, here, need the money, and the folks outside need the lumber. But when I see enough of the old woods wasted on every winter operation to make me rich, and all because the men that are gettin' the most out of it are fightin' each other so as to hog profits, it makes me sorry for the old woods and sick of human nature." The morning bustle of the camp began in earnest now. Men crowded at the tin wash-basins on the long shelf outside the log wall. As fast as they slicked their wet hair with the broken comb they hurried into the meal camp. There they heaped their tin plates with beans steaming from the hole where they had simmered overnight, devoured huge chunks of brown bread deluged with molasses, and "sooped" hot coffee. The odor of warm food was good in the nostrils of old "Ladder" Lane, the fire warden of Jerusalem, as he strode down the valley wall towards the camp. He hung his extinguished lantern on a nail outside the cook camp and stooped and entered the low door. Among woodsmen the amenities of a camp are as scant as welcome is plentiful. Lane seized up a tin plate, loaded it with what he saw in sight, and began to eat hastily and voraciously. "Fire?" inquired the cook. Lane jerked a nod of affirmation. "Where?" "Misery." "Big?" Another nod. "Talk about your bounty on wildcats and porky-pines," raged the cook, slamming on a stove-cover to emphasize his remarks, "the State treasurer ought to offer twenty-five dollars for the scalp and thumbs of every Skeet and Bushee brought in." The fire warden ran his last bit of brown bread around his plate, stuffed it dripping into his mouth, and stood up after sixty seconds devoted to his breakfast. "Where's Withee?" he asked the boss chopper, who had lounged to the camp door and was stuffing tobacco into his pipe. "Off on Square-hole," replied the boss, with a sideways cant of his head to show direction. "Fire on Misery eating north towards the Notch," reported Lane, with laconic sourness. "Withee ought to send twenty-five men." He was already starting away. "He'll probably be back by night," said the boss chopper, "if 'Stumpage John' Barrett gets through swearin' at him about that last season's operation." Lane stopped and whirled suddenly, the lineman's climbers at his belt clanking dully. "John Barrett in this region!" he blurted. "For the first time in a lot o' years," returned the boss, with a grin. "Suspected that Barn devilled Square-hole and wasted in the cuttin's as much as he landed in the yards. I reckon it ain't suspicion any more! He's been down there on the grounds two days. But he don't get any of my sympathy. A man who stole these lands at twenty cents an acre, buying tax titles, and has squat on his haunches and made himself rich sellin' stumpage,[1] has got more'n he deserved, even if half the timber is rottin' in the tops on the ground." [Footnote 1: The right to cut trees on the seller's land. Payment is based on the measurement of the logs as they are brought to the landing and piled ready for the drive.] The gaunt jaws of "Ladder" Lane set themselves out like elbows akimbo. He whirled and started away again as though he had fresh cause for haste. "I don't want to take any responsibility for sending off any of the crew," called the boss. "What particular word do you want to leave for Withee?" Lane settled into his woods lope and darted into the Attean trail without reply. "I'll be here with my own word," he muttered, talking aloud, after the habit of the recluse. "And what do you make of that now?" asked the cook of the boss, scaling Lane's discarded plate into the cookee's soapy water. "Why ain't he up on his Jerusalem fire station instead of rampagin' round here in the woods?" "He was rigged out to climb a pole and had a telephone thingumajig with him," suggested the boss. "He's strikin' acrost to tap the Attean telephone and send in an alarm, that's what he's doin'. Prob'ly his old lookin'-glass telegraft is busted," he added, with slighting reference to the Jerusalem helio. He followed his men, who were streaming up the tote road towards the cuttings. Far ahead trudged the horses, drawing jumpers. From the cross-bars the bind-chains dragged jangling over the roots and rocks. In five minutes only three men were in sight about the camps--the cook, making ready a baking of ginger-cakes; the cookee, rattling the tins from the breakfast-table and whistling shrill accompaniment to the clatter; and the blacksmith, busy at his forge in the "dingle," the roofed space between the cook-house and the main camp. It was just before second "bean-time" when Lane came back along the Attean trail and staggered, rather than walked, into the "Lazy Tom" clearing. His face was gray with exertion, and sweat coursed in the wrinkles of his emaciated features. "Shouldn't wonder from your looks that you'd made time," suggested the cook, cheerfully, as the warden stumbled up to the door. "From here to the Attean telephone-line and back before eleven is what I call humpin'. You've been to Attean, hey?" "Yes," snapped the old man. "I've reported that fire and done my duty." "In that case, you've prob'ly got a better appetite than you had this mornin'," remarked "Beans," hospitably. He started to ladle from the steaming kettle of "smother" on the stove. "Nothing to eat for me!" broke in Lane, sullenly. "Are Withee and John Barrett back yet?" "Oh, they'll stay out till dark all right. Barrett will want to count trees as long as he can see." "I'll wait, then!" Lane started towards the men's camp, but the cook stopped him. "If you're reck'nin' to lie down for a nap, warden, don't get into them bunks. Them Quedaws have brought in the usual assortment of 'travellers' this season, and I don't want to see a neat man like you accumulate a menagerie. Now you just go right across there into Withee's private camp. He'd say so if he was here. I'll do that much honors when he ain't here. You won't wake up scratchin'." Without a word Lane turned and strode across to the office camp, went in, and slammed the door shut after him. "He's about as sour and crabbed an old cuss to do a favor for as I ever see," remarked the cook, fiddling a smutty finger under his nose. "But a man never ought to git discouraged in this world about bein' polite." He caught sight of the advance-guard of returning choppers up the road, and whirled on the cookee. "You freckle-faced, hump-backed, dead-and-alive son of a clam fritter, here come them empty nail-kags! Get to goin', now, or I'll pour a dish of hot water down your back." "Is that what you call bein' polite?" growled the cookee. The cook kicked at him as he fled into the meal camp with a pan of biscuits. "They don't use politeness on cookees any more than they put bay-winders onto pig-pens!" he shouted. There were two bunks in the little office camp, one above the other. "Ladder" Lane curled his long legs and tucked himself into the gloom of the lower bunk. His eyes, red-rimmed and glowing with strange fire under their knots of gray brow, noted a rifle lying on wooden braces against a log of the camp wall. He rose, clutched it eagerly, and "broke it down." Its magazine was full. He jacked in a cartridge, laid the rifle on the bunk between himself and the wall, and lay down again. Most men, after the vigil of a night and bitter struggle of the day, would have slept. Lane lay with eyes wide-propped. His mind seemed to be wrestling with a mighty problem. Once in awhile he groaned. At other times his teeth ground together. Twice he put the rifle back on the wall, shuddering as though it were some fearsome object. Twice he got up and retook it, and the last time muttered as though his resolution were clinched. After the resolution had been formed he may have dozed. At any rate, the first he heard of Barrett and Withee they had sat down on the steps of the office camp, and the loud, brusque, and authoritative voice of one of them went on in some harangue that had evidently been progressing for a long time previously. "Damme, Withee, I tell you again that you've robbed me right and left! You left tops in the woods to rot that had a pulp log scale in 'em. You devilled the township without sense or system. You cut out the stands near the waterways without leaving a tree for new seed. You left strips standing that will go down like a row of bricks in the first big gale we have. But what's the use in going over all that again? You know you haven't used me right. The sum and substance is, you pay me a lump sum and square me for damages to that township or I'll cancel this season's stumpage contract. I'm using you just as I propose to use the rest of the thieves up here." There was silence for a little time. The voice of the other man was subdued, even disheartened. "I've said about all I can say, Mr. Barrett," he ventured. "Of course, you're rich and I'm poor, and if you cancel the contract I can't afford to go to law. But I've borrowed ten thousand dollars to put into this season's operation, and I've got it tied up in supplies and outfit. I've just got located and my camps finished. The way things have worked for me, I ain't made any money for three years, and I've put my shoulder to the wheel and my own hands to the axe. The operator can't make money, Mr. Barrett, the way he's ground between the owners of stumpage and the men down-river who buy his logs in the boom. You talk of closing your contract with me! Do you know of a man who can afford to do any better by you than I have--just as long as things are the way they are now?" "Oh, I reckon you're about all alike," returned the lumber baron, ungraciously. "I've been a fool to believe anything stumpage buyers have told me. I ought to have come up here every year and looked after my property. But that would be prowling around in these woods that aren't fit for a human being to live in, and neglecting my other business to keep you fellows from stealing. Not for me! I've got something better to do. Clod-hoppers that don't want to stay in their fields all day with a gun kill one crow and hang it on a stake for the live ones to see. I'm sorry for you, Withee, but I'm going to make a special example of you." "It don't seem hardly fair to pick me out of all the rest, Mr. Barrett." "Well, it's business!" snapped the other. "And business in these days isn't conducted on the lines of a Sunday-school picnic." "Ladder" Lane, who had been staring straight up at the poles of the bunk above his head, had not moved or glanced to right or left since the brusque, tyrannical voice outside had begun to declaim. Now he swung his feet off the bunk and sat on its edge. He fumbled behind him for the rifle and dragged it across his knees. The night had fallen. The one window of the office camp admitted a sallow light. From the main camp came the drone of an accordion and the mumble of many voices. Lane realized that supper had been eaten. "You're right about business, Mr. Barrett," Withee went on, a touch of resentment in his voice. "Your Bangor scale is 'business.' You talk about wasting tops! If an operator leaves the taper of the top on a log, he's hauling a third more weight to the landing, and then your Bangor scale gives him a third less measure than on the short log." "The legislature established the scale; I didn't," retorted Barrett. "Yes, but you rich folks can tell the legislature what to do, and it does it! We fellows that wear larrigans haven't anything to say about it." In his grief and despair he allowed himself to taunt his tyrant. "Your legislature has peddled away all the rights on the river to men with power enough to grab 'em. Look here, Mr. Barrett, while you toasted your shins last winter we worked here like niggers, in the cold and the snow, the frost and the wet--and the first man to get his drag out of our work was you. You got your stumpage-money. And when my logs were in the water, first the Driving Association that you're a director in, with its legislative charter all right and tight, took its toll. Then the River Dam and Improvement Company took its toll, and you're a director in that. Then the Lumbering Association, owned by your bunch, had its boomage tolls. Then the little private inside clique had its pay for 'taking care of logs,' as they call it. Then on top of all the rest, the gang had its tolls for running and shoring logs in the round-up boom, and finally the man who bought 'em scaled down the landing-measure on which you drew stumpage. I couldn't help myself. None of us fellows that operate can help ourselves. It's all tied up. We had to take what was given. Your tolls for this, that, and the other figured up about as much as stumpage. And when the last and final drag was made out of my little profits--there were no profits! I came out in debt, Mr. Barrett. That's all there was to show for a winter's hard work away from my home and family, in these woods that you say ain't fit for a human bein' to live in. That's what you're doin' to us--and you're all standin' together against us poor fellows to do it." "Same old whine of the old crowd of operators," drawled Mr. Barrett. "If you old-fashioned chaps can't keep up with the modern business conditions you'd better get into something else and give the young fellows a chance." "Get into the poor-house, perhaps," Withee replied, bitterly. "My father lumbered this river. I worked with him, before the big fellows had to have both crusts and the middle of the pie. I don't know how to do anything else. Every cent I've got in the world is tied up in my outfit. For God's sake, Mr. Barrett, be fair with me!" It was the pitiful appeal of the toil of the woods at its last stand. But "Stumpage John" Barrett resolutely reflected the autocracy of giant King Spruce. "This whole matter was gone over at our last directors' meeting, Withee. We have decided, one and all, that we won't have our timber lands butchered and gashed and devilled to make profit for you fellows. Our charters give us our rights, and business is business. We've got to stand stiff, and we're going to stand stiff until we show you what's what. I told my associates I would come up here and make an example, and I'm going to do it. Now, that's all, Withee! It's no good to argue. The timber interests can't afford to do any more fooling." "Gents," broke in the voice of "Dirty-apron Harry," "cook sent me to say that your supper is ready." "Tell cook I'm ready, too," snapped Barrett, grunting off the step. "I thought your cattle were never going to get out of that meal camp, Withee. You feed 'em too much! That's where your profits are going to." Lane heard him snuffing. "This smoke seems to be getting thicker, Withee. It must be something more than a bonfire, wherever it is." "Cook is waiting to tell you," said Harry. "He didn't want to break in on your business talk, seein' that you was both so much took up with it. Warden from Jerusalem was through here this morning to give alarm and call for fighters. He's takin' a nap in the office camp, waitin' for Mr. Withee." "A loafer like the rest of 'em!" snorted Barrett, starting away. "Dig him out, Withee, and send him to me. I'm going to eat." At the sound of his retreating footsteps "Ladder" Lane unfolded his gaunt frame, stood up, and swung the rifle into the hook of his arm. He opened the office door and came upon Withee standing where Barrett had left him. In the gloom the operator's toil-stooped shoulders and bowed legs were outlined by the flare from the cook-camp. He continued his mutterings as he turned his head to look at Lane, his gray beard sweeping his shoulder. "It's runnin' north from Misery, Mr. Withee," reported the warden. "It's runnin' in the slash and goin' fast. If it gets through Pogey Notch it means a crown fire in the black growth." "I hope it'll burn every spruce-tree between Misery and the Canada line!" barked the furious old operator. "If I could stand here and put it out by spittin' on it I wouldn't open my mouth." "I've 'phoned the alarm through Attean," went on Lane, calmly, with no apparent thought except his duty. "You ought to send twenty-five men." "Not a man!" roared the operator. "Let the infernal hogs save their own timber lands. They want all the profit in 'em; let 'em stand all the loss, then." "Look here, Withee," said the warden, implacably, "you know the law as well as I do. A fire warden has the same right as a sheriff to summon a posse when a fire is to be fought. Every man that is summoned and don't go pays a fine of ten dollars unless he is sick or disabled, and you'll have to stand good for your crew." "I know it!" bellowed Withee, beside himself. "Some more of the devilish law they've cooked up to make us work like slaves for their profits. Talk about monarchies! Talk about freedom, whether it's in a city or in the woods! We ain't anything but cattle. The rich men have stood together and made us so." "I didn't make the law, Withee. I'm simply delivering my errand as the State orders me to do. I've done my duty. It's up to you." He sighed, shifted the rifle to the other arm, and mumbled behind his teeth, "Now I'll attend to a little matter of business that ain't the State's." He started for the door of the meal camp, the operator on "Lazy Tom" stumping angrily at his heels. CHAPTER XII THE CODE OF LARRIGAN-LAND "Here's a good health to you, family man, From the depths of our hearts and the woods; Boughs for our bunks and salt hoss in junks Ain't hefty in way o' world's goods. Keep your neck near her arms and your cheek near her kiss, And don't ever come here to the troubles o' This! We've tasted of This and we know what it lacks-- We lonesome old baches-- Of peavies and patches, Bills, Tommies, and Jacks of the Axe." --The Family Man. Barrett was at the table, his back towards the door. He was filling a pannikin with whiskey from a silver-mounted flask. The cook, who had been silently admiring his smart suit of corduroy, was now more intently and longingly regarding the amber trickle from the mouth of the flask. But John Barrett was not a man to ask menials to share his bowl with him. His shaven cheeks looked too hard even to permit the growth of beard. The cook, whirling at the sound of Lane's moccasins on the chip dirt, was officious according to his promulgated code of politeness. "Here's the warden from Jerusalem, Mr. Barrett. I done the honors of camp the best I could, seein' that you and Mr. Withee wa'n't here." In mentioning honors, the cook had one lingering hope that the stumpage-king would share his flask with a State employé, and that he himself might participate as one present and one willing. But the timber baron did not turn his head. He stirred sugar in his whiskey and growled. "Do fire wardens up this way earn their pay, sleeping, like cats, in the daytime?" Lane had stepped just inside the door, his moccasins noiseless on the shaved poles. "How near is that fire to the black growth, and how are they fighting it?" demanded Barrett. "It started on Misery"--Lane began, in the same tone that had characterized his former reports. But at his first word Barrett jerked his head around, stared wildly, stood up, and then sat down astride the wooden bench. With his eyes still on the man at the door, he fumbled for the pannikin of whiskey and gulped it down. Lane went on talking. "And if they can get enough men ahead of it perhaps they can stop it in Pogey Notch," Lane concluded. The hands that clutched the gun trembled, but his eyes were steady, with a red sparkle in them. The lumber king endured that stare for a few moments, like one writhing under the torture of a focussed sun-glass. He glanced to right and left, as though seeking a chance for flight. The only exit was the door, and the tall, grim man stood there with his rifle across his arm. "Say it, Lane! Say it!" hoarsely cried Barrett, at last, unable to endure the silence and the doubt. "I have nothing to say--not now," said Lane. "I'll wait here until you eat your supper. My lantern is hanging on the nail there, cook. Will you fill it and light it?" There was a subtle, strange menace in his bearing that the cook and Withee, staring, their mouths gaping, could not understand. But it was plain that the man at the table understood all too well. "Why didn't you take it when I sent you the offer?" asked Barrett, his voice beginning to tremble. "I wanted to settle. It was up to me to settle. It was a bad business, Lane, but I--" "It's a private matter you're opening up here before listeners, Mr. Barrett," broke in Lane. "It's my business with you, and you haven't got the right to do it. Just now you go ahead and eat your supper. You'll need it, for you're going to take a walk with me." In his perturbation, forced to eat, as it seemed, by the quiet insistence of the warden, Barrett swallowed a few mouthfuls of food. But he cowered, with side glances at the grim man by the door. Then he pushed his plate away, choking. Maddened by the silent watchfulness, he stood up. "I'll see you in the office," he muttered. "I'll tell you now and before witnesses that I'm ready to settle. I've always been ready to settle. It would have been settled long ago if you had let my man talk with you. Now, let's not have any trouble, Lane, over what's past and gone. I'll do anything that's reasonable." He shot an appealing glance at Withee. "We'll take Withee with us," he declared. "We'll talk in the office." "We'll talk under no roof of yours and on no land belonging to you," answered Lane, firmly. "We'll talk private matters before no third party. If you're done your supper, Mr. Barrett, you'll come with me where we can stand out man to man in God's open country with no peekers and listeners--and that's more for your sake than it is for mine. I've done nothing in this life that I'm ashamed of." "Do you take me for a fool?" roared the land baron, hiding fear under an assumption of his usual manner. "Do you think I'm going into the woods alone with you?" "You are, Mr. Barrett." "By ----, I won't!" "I'm no hand for a threat," grated Lane, in a low, strange voice, "but you'll come with me. You know why you'll come with me, because you know what I'm likely to do to you if you don't come." Barrett looked past the man at the door. The dingle was full of crowding faces, for the altercation had called every man out. There was some consolation for Barrett in the spectacle of this silent, wondering mob. After all, he was on his own land, and these men must acknowledge him as their master. "Here! a hundred dollars apiece to the men who grab that lunatic and take that rifle away from him!" he shouted, darting a quivering finger at the warden. But before any one made a move Withee stepped forward into the lamplight. With open, waving palm he imposed non-interference on his crew. "Hold on, Mr. Barrett," said he. "Before we run into trouble by arresting a man that's an officer, we want to know whys and wherefores." "Don't you know why he wants to make me go away into the woods?" bawled the lumber king. "We can't very well know without bein' told," replied Withee, and an answering grumble from his men indorsed him. "He wants to murder me--murder me in cold blood!" Barrett fairly screamed this. "I know what his reason is," he added, seeing that their faces showed no conviction. "I've known Linus Lane ever since he came into this region," said Withee, breaking the awed hush that followed the baron's startling words. "I never knew him to be anything but peaceable and square. A little speck odd, maybe, but quiet and peaceable and square. Most of the men here know him that way, too." Another answering mumble of assent. "Odd!" echoed Barrett, grasping at the suggestion. "You've said it. He's a lunatic. He will kill me." "What for?" called the chopping-boss, bluntly. His natural desire to get at the meat of things quickly was stimulated by ardent curiosity. "You are all sticking your noses into a matter that doesn't belong to you!" cried Lane, his well-known crustiness showing itself, though it was evident that he was hiding some deeper emotion. "I want this man to go with me. It's business. And he's going!" His voice was almost a snarl, but there was a resoluteness in the tone that awed them more than violence would have done. "Are you going to give me up to a murderer?" bleated Barrett, for his study of the faces in the lamplight did not reassure him. "Hadn't you better let us step out, and you talk your business over with him right here, Linus?" inquired Withee, conciliatingly. "He's going with me, and he's going now!" shouted Lane, his repression breaking. "The man that gets in our way will get hurt." He banged his rifle-butt on the floor, and those who looked on him shrank before his awful rage. "Put on your hat, Barrett, and walk out!" he shrilled. "Make way, there! This is my man, by ---- and he knows in his dirty heart why he's mine." But Barnum Withee's quiet woodsman's soul was not of a nature to be intimidated, and his instincts of fairness, when it was between man and man, had been made acute by many years of woods adjudication. "Hold on a minute, Linus!" he entreated, stepping between the two men with upraised hand. "You are both under my roof, and you've both eaten my bread to-day. I never got between men in a fair, square quarrel. I won't now. But you've got a gun, and he hasn't. I don't want to know your business. But if there's trouble between you it's got to be settled fair. You can't drag a man out of my camp to do him dirty--and it would be the same if it was only young Harry there that you were tryin' to take." "Good talk!" yelled the boss. "I'll give a hundred dollars--" began Barrett, seeing the advantage swinging his way; but Withee broke in with indignation. "No more of that talk, Mr. Barrett!" he cried. "I'll run my own crew when it comes to pay or to orders. Now, Warden Lane, what are you going to do with this man when you get him where you want to take him?" "I don't know!" snapped Lane, to the amazement of his listeners. And he added, enigmatically, "I can tell better after I've asked him some questions." "Ain't you ready to tell us that you'll use him man-fashion?" persisted Withee. The deep emotion which "Ladder" Lane had been trying to hide whetted the bitterness of his usual attitude towards mankind. "I'm not ready to let any fool mix himself into my affairs. We've argued this question long enough, John Barrett. Now you--step--out!" He leaped aside from the door, cocked the rifle, and motioned angrily with its muzzle. "Stay right where you are, Mr. Barrett," said the old operator, resolutely. "I'll stand for fair play." "And you'll get your pay for it, Withee, my friend!" stuttered his creditor, eagerly. "I don't forget favors. You stand by me, and you'll get your pay." "I haven't anything to sell, Mr. Barrett," said Withee, doggedly. "But I've got something to give you," persisted the frightened magnate, edging near him, and striving to hint confidentially. "You stand by me, and when it comes to contracts--" "I'm not buyin' anything, Mr. Barrett!" He signalled the lumber king back with protesting palm. "I'm simply tellin' Lane that he can't take a man out of my camp to do him dirty. And in that there's no fear and no favor!" Lane gazed at the determined face of the operator and at the massing men who crowded at the door, and whose nods gave emphatic approval of Withee's dictum. No one knew better than he the code of the woods; no one understood more thoroughly the quixotic prejudices and simple impulses which moved the isolated communities of the camps. Just then they would not have surrendered Barrett to an army, and Lane realized it. The eyes focussed on him saw the tense ridges of his seamed face tighten and the gray of an awful passion settle there. "After all the rest of it, you're forcing me to stand here and put it in words, are you, you sneak?" he yelped, thrusting that boding visage towards the timber baron. "You're hiding behind these men! Well, let's see how long they'll stand in front of you! You've got to have 'em hear it, eh? Then you listen to it, woodsmen!" His voice broke suddenly into a frightful yell. "He stole my wife! He stole her! I say he stole her! That's what I want of him, now that he's here where I can meet him in God's open country, plain man to plain man!" "He's lying to you," quavered Barrett. But his eyes shifted, and the keen and candid gaze of the woodsmen detected his paltering. "I was away earning an honest living, and he came along with his airs and his money and fooled her and stole her--stole her and threw her away. It was play for him; it was death for her, and damnation for me. I ain't blaming her, men"--his voice had a sob in it--"she was too young for me. I ought to have known better. Our little house was on his land that he had stolen from the people of this State. Then he came and stole _her_!" He was now close to Barrett, his bony fist slashing the air over the baron's shrinking head. "It wasn't that way," stammered Barrett. "I was up there with some friends fishing and exploring on my lands. It was years ago. The young woman cooked meals for us. I went farther north to some other townships of mine, and she went along to take care of camp. That's all there was to it, men!" He spread out his palms and tried to smile. "You stole her!" iterated Lane. "I came home, men, and she was gone out of our little house. I found just four walls, cold and empty, the key under the rug, and a letter on the table--and I've got that letter, John Barrett! And when you were tired of her up there in the woods you tossed her away like you tossed the lemon-skins out of your whiskey-glass. You didn't wait to see where she fell--she and your child--your child! Curse you, Barrett, I've never wanted to meet you! I sent word to you to keep out of these woods. I sent that word by the man you asked to bribe me--as though your money could do everything for you in this world! You thought you could sneak in here after all these years, because I was tied on the top of Jerusalem. But I'm here! What do you think, men? The fire that is roaring up from Misery township was set by this man's own daughter--the child that he tossed away in the woods. You that know the Skeets and Bushees know her. She set the fire! That's why I'm here. It's his child--his and hers. I don't know whether heaven or hell planned it, but now that I've met you, Barrett, you're going with me!" He strode back to the door and stood there, the rifle again across the hook of his arm. His flaming eyes swept the faces in the dingle. Their eyes gave him a message that his woodsman's soul interpreted. "There's the truth for you, men, since you had to have it!" he shouted. "Once more I'm going to say to John Barrett--'Step out.' And if there's still a man among you that wants to keep that hound in this camp I'd like to have that man stand out and say why." There was not a whisper from the throng. They stood gazing into the door with lips apart. Silently they crowded back, as though to afford free passage. Barrett noted the movement and wailed his terror. "It means trouble for you, Withee, if you let him take me." The old operator surveyed him with a lowering and disgusted stare. "Mr. Barrett," he said, "I've told you that I have nothing to sell. All that I want to buy of you is stumpage, and I've got your figures on that and your opinion of me. I don't ask you to change anything." He turned away, muttering, "He'll have to think pretty hard if he can do anything more to me than what he's already threatened to do." Calm once more, and inexorable as fate, Lane motioned towards the door. "My final word, Barrett: March!" As he gazed into the faces about him, not one gleam of friendliness anywhere, desperation or a flicker of courage spurred the magnate. In that moment John Barrett had none of the adventitious aids of his autocracy--none of the bulwarks of "Castle Cut 'Em." He was only a man among them--fairly demanded by another man to settle a matter of the sort where primordial instinct prompts a universal code. He drove his hat on his head and strode through the door, his head bent. Lane took his lighted lantern from the cook's hand and followed. He had his teeth set tight, as though resolved to say no more. But at the edge of the camp's lamplight he whirled and faced the crew. Barrett halted, too, as though hoping for some intervention. "Look here, men," said Lane, "I want to thank you for being men in this thing. And seeing that you've been square with me I don't want to go away from here leaving any wrong idea behind me. I don't know just what's going to happen between this man and me, for a good deal depends on him. But you've known me long enough to know that I'm not the crust-hunting kind that cuts a deer's throat when he's helpless. You put your confidence in me when you put this man in my hands. And I'll say to you, I'll do the best I know!" "We ain't givin' any advice to you that knows your business better'n we do," called out the boss of the choppers. "But let it be man to man--good woods style!" "Good woods style!" echoed the crew, in hoarse chorus. It was plain that their minds were dwelling on only one solution of the difficulty. Lane stepped back and set the rifle against the log wall. "I was near forgetting," he said, apologetically. "I'm so used to carrying a rifle. This belongs here." "Take it," suggested Withee, with a touch of grimness in his tones. "I don't need it," Lane answered, quietly. He whirled and started away, and Barrett sullenly preceded him. They clambered up the valley wall, the pale lantern-light tossing against the hemlock boughs. The crew of "Lazy Tom" watched in silence until the last flicker vanished among the trees of the Jerusalem trail. "Well," said the chopping-boss, drawing a long breath, "it appears to me that there are some things that money can't do for old 'Stumpage John,' big as he is in this world! One is, he's found he can't buy up the 'Lazy Tom' crew to back him in a dirty job of woman-stealin'." "I'd like to be there when it happens," panted "Dirty-apron Harry," excitedly. "When what happens?" demanded the boss. "Well--well--I--I dunno!" confessed Harry. "Umph!" snorted the boss, "now you're talkin' as though you know 'Ladder' Lane as well as I know him. The man who can stand here and tell what old Lane is goin' to do next can prophesy earthquakes and have 'em happen." He pulled out his watch. "Nine o'clock!" he roared. "Lights out and turn in!" CHAPTER XIII THE RED THROAT OF POGEY "Though it ain't for me nor for any one To say how the awful thing was done, We know that the hand of a grief-crazed man Is set to many a desperate plan." --On _Isle au Haut._ It was a saffron dawn. It was a dawn diffuse and weird. A smear of copper in the east marked the presence of the sun. For the rest, the sky was a sickly monochrome, a dirty yellow, a boding yellow. It was not a wind that blew; a wind has somewhat of freshness in it. It was simply smoky air--air that rolled sullenly--choking, heavy, bitter, acrid air that was to the nostrils what the sky was to the eye. After they had toiled around the base of the mountain and were well into Pogey Notch, the man ahead, stumbling doggedly and stubbornly, found water. It was only a little puddle, cowering from the drouth. The trees had helped it to hide away. They had scattered their autumn foliage upon it, beeches and birches which were grateful, for the pool had humbly cooled their feet in the hot summer. The man ahead, thirst giving him almost a canine scent, fell rather than kneeled beside the pool, thrust his face through the leaves, and guffled the stale water. Then he plunged his smarting eyes, wide open, into the shallow depths. When he faced once more the smother of the smoke and the man who stood over him, he seemed to have a flash of new courage. His eyes blazed again, his rumpled gray hair seemed to bristle. But his defiance was only the desperation of the coward at bay. "You've teamed me all night, Lane--from Withee's camp to here. I have asked questions, and you haven't answered me; but now, by ----, say what you want of me, and let's have this thing over!" It was an air that would have cowed an inferior in John Barrett's office in the city, where tyranny swelled the folds of a frock-coat and was framed in the door of a money vault. But this weary man in knickerbockers, his puffy face mottled by the hues of self-indulgence and haggard after a night of ceaseless tramping along a woods trail, was not an object of awe as he squatted beside the pool like a giant frog. The woodsman who stood over him, his gaunt face seamed and brown, his bony frame erect to the height that had won him the sobriquet of "Ladder" Lane, seemed now the man of dignity and authority. He was of the woods. He was in the woods. Two nights without sleep, miles of bitter struggle through the forest to report that conflagration roaring north to Misery township, and now puffing its stifling breath upon them, and the agony of recollection that John Barrett's crossing his path had dragged out--all these gave no sign in "Ladder" Lane's features and mien. Even his voice was steady with a repression almost humble. What John Barrett did not know was that this humbleness was that of one who stood in the presence of a mighty problem, awed by it. In the long hours of self-communion, as he had plodded on, driving the timber baron before him, he had pondered that problem until his weary brain reeled. Introspection had always made his simple nature dizzy. Now the tumult and torment in his soul frightened him. Over and over again in the darkness of the night, as he had followed at the heels of Barrett, he had whispered, in a half-frightened manner, to himself: "I told him to keep away! And now he's here!" He had looked at the back of the man, stumbling ahead of him in the lantern-light, and had pitied him in a sort of dull, wondering fashion. He had pitied him because he knew that Barrett, despoiler of his home, seducer of his wife, was helpless in his hands. And because "Ladder" Lane realized that grief and isolation had made him over into such a one as sane men flout or fear, he was afraid of himself. "This here is as good a place as any, Mr. Barrett," he said. By striving to be calm, even to the point of being humble, Lane tried to tame the dreadful beast that he knew his inner being had become. But Barrett, pricking his ears at this humbleness, was too foolish to understand. In the mystery of the night he had feared cruelly. With day to reinforce his prestige, it occurred to him that the man was cowed by his presence and by the reflection that a person of influence cannot be kidnapped with impunity. "I can make it hot for you, Lane, for dragging me out of camp and running me all over creation," he blustered, grasping at what he considered his opportunity to regain mastery. "But I'm willing to settle and call quits. I've always been ready to settle. Now, out with it, man-fashion! How much will it take?" Another of those red flashes from the sullen coals of many and long years' hatred roared up in Lane like the torching of a pitch-tree. He had been trying for hours to beat those flashes down, for they made him afraid. He trembled, blinking hard to see past the red. His hands fumbled nervously at his sides, as though seeking something that they could seize upon for steadiness. If the wind would only blow upon his face--a wind of the woods, clear, cool, and hale--he felt that he might get his grip on manhood once more. But the woods sent up to him only the fire-breath. It whispered destruction. If he only could look up to a bit of blue sky he felt that it might charm the red flare from his eyes. But the yellow pall that masked the sky was the hue of combat, not peace. All out-doors seemed full of menace. The nostrils found only bitter air. The smarting eyes saw only the sickly yellow. A normal man would have cursed at the oppression of it all, without exactly knowing why every nerve was on the rack. The recluse of Jerusalem Mountain, out of gear with all the world, with mind diseased by the chronic obsession of bitter injury, stood there under the glowering sky of that day of ravage and ruin, and felt himself becoming a madman. And yet he set a single idea before him for realization, and tried to keep his gaze on that alone, and to be calm. And the idea was an idea of forcing an atonement. How crudely conceived, Lane could not realize, for his mind was passing the stage of clear comprehension. "I probably haven't got enough money with me," went on the timber baron, sullenly. "But my word is good in a matter like this. I don't want it talked about--you don't want it talked about. I'll overlook--you'll overlook! Give me your figures, and you'll get every dollar." And still Lane was calm, and replied in a voice that quavered from an emotion that Barrett failed to understand. "When you stole my wife away, Mr. Barrett, there were men that came to me and advised me what they would do if a rich man came along and took a woman from them, just to amuse himself for a little." "There are people trying to stick their noses into business that doesn't concern them, Lane," snorted the baron, regardless that one edge of this apothegm threatened himself. "I've been alone a good deal since it happened," went on Lane, in a curious, dull monotone, "and I've spent most of my time thinking what I'd say to you and do to you if you stood before me. I hoped it never would happen that you'd stand before me, man to man. I didn't hunt you up to find out what I'd do or say, for I was afraid." He shivered, and Barrett, in his fool's blindness, stiffened his shoulders with a sudden air of importance, and allowed himself to scowl with a suggestion that perhaps Lane was wise to avoid him. "You see, I was always making it end up in my mind that I should kill you. There didn't seem to be any other natural end to it. I had to kill you to square it. And that's why I was afraid. It was always one way in my thoughts. I never could--never can plan out any other way to end it; and murder is an awful thing, sir." Barrett, who had been straightening, crouched farther back on his haunches and lost his important air. "In my thoughts I always gave you half an hour to think it over, and stayed looking at you, and then killed you." There was a sudden convulsion of Lane's features, a smoulder in his eyes, that thrilled Barrett as though some one had whispered in his ear--"Lunatic." The warden's groping hands had clutched the heavy lineman's climbers dangling from his belt, and were now set about them so tightly that muscles were ridged on the bony surface. Barrett became gray with fear. But Lane's ferocity disappeared as suddenly as it had flared. "It all goes to show that in this world most men don't do what they think they'll do, when it comes to a big matter. I don't want to kill you, now that I have you where I want you." He looked down on the frightened man with a sort of pitying scorn. "It would be like batting a sheep to death. I don't want even to talk about your taking her away. It--it chokes in my throat! She's dead--and I guess she wanted to go away with you that time or she wouldn't have gone. That's just the way it seems to me now! And that's why I don't want to talk about it. It seems funny to feel that way, after all the thinking I've done about what I would do to you." "The idea is, you're taking the sensible, business man's view of it," stammered Barrett. "I was young then, and up here in the woods, and--oh, as you say, it is better not to talk it over. We all make mistakes." He was pulling his wallet out of his corduroy coat. He evidently felt that the sight of money would prolong this "sensible, business man's view" of the situation. He did not want to take any more chances that the other and vengeful view would return, which had shown its flame in Lane's contorted face. "Now, I've got here--" "To hell with your dirty money!" shrieked the warden, in a frenzy that was a veritable explosion out of his calmness. He kicked the wallet from the hands of the amazed timber baron. And when Barrett tried to stammer something, Lane leaned down and yelled, cracking his fists in the other's shrinking face: "That's the way you and your kind want to cure everything--a dollar bill greased with a grin and stuck onto the sore place! Put that kind of a plaster on your city sneaks if you want to. But do you think I want it--here?" He swung his arm in a huge gesture and embraced the woods. "Your money is no good, John Barrett--here!" Another sweep of the long arm. Then he stooped and scrabbled up a handful of dry leaves. He pushed them into Barrett's face. "Here, sell me your soul and your decency for that! You won't? Why not? You get your handfuls of greasy money just as easy! You only grab out and take! I don't sell for any stuff that's come at as easy as that." "Say what you want, Lane," stuttered the timber baron, huddling back from this madman. "You'll pay in the way I'll tell you to pay," raged the creditor, thrusting his fierce face close. "You'll pay out of your pride and your heart instead of your pocket. That's the kind of coin you've stripped me of! You stole my wife. She's dead. Settle your accounts with her in hell when you meet her there. But the girl--your young one--yours and hers--that you threw into the woods like you'd leave a blind kitten--" "She was left with people who were paid well--" Barrett broke in, but Lane slapped him across the mouth. "I know where she was left--left with a nest of skunks, so that you could hide your disgrace in the woods. I've watched her all these years. I've been waiting for the right time to come. It's here. Your girl is up there on the top of Jerusalem Mountain in my camp, Barrett. An idiot--a dog on two legs--is guarding her. He's the only friend she's got. That's your daughter. Now, you're going to take her!" "Take her?" echoed the cringing millionaire. "Take her--that's what I said. It belongs to her. Now give it to her." Barrett misinterpreted Lane's interest. His face lighted with a sudden thought that to him seemed a happy one. "Look here, Lane," he said, eagerly, "I didn't realize but what the girl was getting on all right. I ought to have inquired. But I didn't dare to. A man in my position has to be careful. Now she needs some one to take care of her. I'll admit it. I'm sorry it hasn't been attended to before. Let this matter rest between us two without any stir. I'll give you ten thousand dollars to act as the girl's guardian. Take her out of these woods. And I'll put ten thousand more at interest for her." "I take that spawn--_I_ take her?" demanded Lane, beating his thin hand on his breast. "I'd as soon pick up a wood adder! Take _her_--the living reminder of what's made me what I am? Do you suppose I hate you any worse than I hate her for being what she is?" But he checked himself; a sudden emotion--a strange emotion--mastered him, and he sobbed as he muttered, "Poor little girl!" Then his anger flamed again. "By ----, Barrett, I ought to kill you now, anyway!" He clutched the irons at his belt. But after a moment, with a wrench of his shoulders, he pulled himself out of his frenzy. "You are going to take that girl to your home. You are going to acknowledge her as your daughter. You are going to give her what belongs to her." He was grim now, not frenetic. Barrett's whole body quivered. His voice was husky with appeal. "I want to talk to you, man to man. I'm going to show you that I have confidence in you, Lane. I'm not saying this to any one else--only to you. It's a big matter, Lane. It will prove that I want to be square with you." "You're going to take her, I say!" "For ten years, Lane, the big lumber interests in this State have been trying to get the right man into the governor's chair. You are interested in timber. You are a State employé. We all need certain things, and now we are in a way to get them. I'm going to be the next governor of this State, Lane. I've got the pledges, from the State committee down through the ranks. I'm going to be nominated in the next State convention. I've spent fifty thousand already. Now, you see, I'm being frank and honest with you." His voice had a quaver. He was explaining as he would explain to a child. "All the timber interests are behind me. See what it means if I am turned down? A scandal would do it. It's the petty scandal that kills a man in this State quicker than anything else--scandal or a laugh! I can't carry that girl out of the woods and declare her to be my daughter. It would kill all my chances for nomination. The papers would be full of it. And think of my family!" Lane's crude idea of an atonement was not so vague now. His brain whirled more dizzily, for the problem was bigger--and so was the revenge. He chuckled. It was the spirit of revenge, after all, that was driving him, and his madman's soul now realized it and relished it. He looked up at the saffron sky and snuffed the scorching air. He felt the impulse seething up from the ruin of the forest, and with almost a sense of relief loosed the grip that had been holding him above the tide of his soul's fire and blood. He ran and recovered Barrett's wallet from among the leaves, and searched it hastily. He found among the papers a few folded blank sheets bearing John Barrett's name and monogram. There was a fountain-pen stuck in a loop. The paper and the pen he shoved into Barrett's hands. "Write it!" he screamed. "Write it that she is your daughter, and agree to take her and do right by her. Write it! I wouldn't take your word. I want a paper. You've got to take her." Barrett went pale, but his thick lips pinched themselves in desperate resolve. With the aspiration of his life close to realization he knew all that such a document could do to him. He stood up and tossed the paper away. "I'm willing to do right by the girl in the best way I can," he said, firmly; "but as to cutting my throat for her, I won't do it. You've got my word. That's all I'll do for you." "It's all?" asked Lane, with bitter menace. "All, after what you've done to me?" "I won't do it," he repeated, stiffly. The next instant, and so quickly that a cat could not have dodged, Lane struck forward with one of the irons. Barrett saw the flash and felt the impact; his brain clanged once like a great bell, and he crumbled together rather than fell. He was standing when he revived. But his hands were lashed by strips of his torn corduroy coat--drawn behind him around the trunk of a birch and tied securely. Other strips of the cloth bound legs and body close to the tree. Lane mouthed and leaped in front of him--a maniac. "Enjoy it!" he screamed. "There's a thousand-acre fire out in that level. Here's its chimney-flue. It's going through here on its way to Enchanted. It's going fast when it comes along, and it will be your first taste of what's laid up for you in eternity. Burn! And when you're burning just remember that your daughter set it--set it because you left her to grow up a hyena instead of a woman." He whirled and started away at Barrett's first wild appeal. "I wouldn't take your word! You wouldn't write it! You didn't intend to keep it!" CHAPTER XIV THE MESSAGE OF "PROPHET ELI" "And the good, kind skipper and all his crew Got a purse and some medals, tew, And a lot o' praise for a-savin' me From an awful death in the ragin' sea. And I got jawed 'cause I left that way, And the boss he docked me tew weeks' pay." --Hired Man's Sea-song. Lane's quick ear was the first to catch a new sound. He stopped and looked down into the Pogey trail. Barrett ceased his wails, and looked and listened, too. Men of the woods who knew Prophet Eli of Tumbledick were never surprised to see him appear anywhere in the Umcolcus region. And it was usually a time of trouble that he chose for his appearance. In his twenty years' search of the forest he had found trails and avenues that were hidden to others. In places where veteran guides wandered and blundered, Prophet Eli knew a short-cut or detour, and moved with wraithlike swiftness, enjoying his reputation for surprises with the keen relish of the shatter-pate. Those who did not call him "Prophet Eli," his own choice of title, dubbed him "Old Trouble," for he scented disaster with an elfish sense, and followed it north, east, and west. He came down the Pogey Notch on a ding-swingle. It was drawn by his little white stallion. A ding-swingle is the triangle of a trimmed tree-crotch, dragged apex forward, its limbs sprawling behind. With peak mounted on a sapling runner it is the woods vehicle that best conquers tote roads. From under the prophet's knitted woollen cap, with its red knob, his white hair trailed upon his shoulders. His white beard brushed the oddly checkered jacket, flamboyant with its bizarre colors. "The Skeets and the Bushees are still running south," he cried at the two men, in shrill tones. "But I'm around to the front of the trouble, as usual." He appeared to have no eyes for the plight of the trussed-up Barrett, who began to shout desperate appeals to him. He cocked shrewd eyes at "Ladder" Lane, who, with a muttered oath, started to scramble down the slope towards him. Perhaps he saw a threat in the madman's face. He glanced once more at Barrett, as though interested a bit in that miserable man's frantic urgings, and piped this amazing query, "Don't you think a stuttering man is an infernal fool to have a name like McKechnie Connick?" Then he lashed his long reins against the side of his stallion and sped away down the valley. Lane followed him, running. They left an existent millionaire and a prospective governor helplessly grinding the skin from his shoulders against a birch-tree, and bellowing anathema on "lunatics." * * * * * The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, sweat pouring down his purple face as he raged from crew to crew on the fire-line, was not surprised to behold Prophet Eli emerge from the smoke, riding his ding-swingle. In twenty years Mr. Britt had often beheld the prophet at troublous junctures. In his present state of vehement anxiety the king of the Umcolcus felt his temper flare at sight of this herald of ill-omen. "Met the Skeets and the Bushees, and they're still running south. Don't you think a man with pumple-feet is an infernal fool to try to learn to skate?" Britt, thrusting past through the underbrush of the tote road, whirled and poised his foot to kick the inoffensive stallion, as mute expression of his rage and contempt. But he withheld the kick at the apparition of "Ladder" Lane. The warden came running. He fairly burst out of the smoke. That he was pursuing Prophet Eli for no good to the latter occurred to the Honorable Pulaski in one startled flash, as he looked at the warden's savage face. He stepped between the men. But it was not to protect the prophet, whom he dismissed from his mind as utterly as though the forest sage were a fugitive rabbit. Mr. Britt had a pregnant question to ask of Lane on his own account, and he bellowed it at him, clutching at his arm. "Where did you leave John Barrett?" Lane halted at his touch, and glowered on him without reply. "What's the matter with you, Lane? You look like a crazy man. What did you want of Mr. Barrett, anyway? What did you drag him out of Barnum Withee's camp for? Don't try to bluff me. I know about it. Barnum got here with his crew at daylight to fight fire, and his men have been talking about it. What right have you got to be bothering John Barrett? I haven't had time to get facts. I've got something else on my mind than other folk's troubles. But I know you've picked trouble with Barrett. Why, great Judas, you long-shanked fool, that man is goin' to be the next governor of this State! You must have heard of John Barrett! Trying to arrest John Barrett! What did you take him for--a game-poacher? Or have you gone clean out of your wits? What have you done with him?" During the timber baron's harangue Lane kept his eyes on the prophet, meeting the latter's blinking regard with sullen threat in his eyes. "Blast ye! Answer me!" roared the Honorable Pulaski. "Where is Mr. Barrett? I want to discuss this fire situation with him." "Then go find him," growled the fire warden. "Where is he?" Lane raised his gaunt arm and swung it the circle of the horizon. "There!" he snarled. He still kept his gaze on the prophet, as though to note the least intention to betray him. But it appeared that the sage of Tumbledick was in no mood for dangerous revelations. He thrust up one grimy finger. "May be there!" he remarked. He pointed the finger straight down. "May be there!" He jumped his stallion ahead with a crack of his reins and disappeared in the smoke. Lane cast after him a look baleful, but relieved, and whirled and made away in the direction of Jerusalem. "Me standing here wasting my time on a couple of whiffle-heads with that fire waltzing into my black growth!" Britt muttered, turning his wrath on himself, since there was no one else in sight. "It must be only some fool scare about Barrett. A man like him can take care of himself." He stumped on, turning to climb a spur of ledge from which, as commander-in-chief, he might take an observation. Less than a mile to the south, he spied the thing that he had been dreading. The ground fire, lashed by the rising wind of the morning, had leaped off the earth and become a crown fire. It had entered the edge of the black growth. One after the other the green tops of the hemlocks and spruces burst into the horrid bloom of conflagration. They flowered. They seeded. And the seeds were fire-brands that scaled down the wind, dropping, rooting instantly, and blossoming into new destruction. "She can't be stopped! She can't be stopped!" moaned Britt. "She's headed for the Notch, and then tophet's let loose!" But with the persistence of his nature he set off to rally the crew to a flank movement. With the inadequate force it was rather a skirmish than a battle for those who fought in the face of the great fire. Through the night, with shovels and green boughs they had attacked the conflagration's outposts. The red army of destruction took this punishment sullenly. The main fire seemed to crouch and doze in the night, dulled by the condensation of dews and lacking the spur of the winds. At daylight Barnum Withee had arrived with his men and set them to trenching along the tote road parallel with the advance of the fire. He had not reconsidered his bitterness against his tyrant John Barrett. But the unconquerable instinct of the veteran woodsman, anxious to save his forest, had driven him to the scene. To Barnum Withee's crew Dwight Wade and Christopher Straight attached themselves by entirely natural selection, having excellent personal reasons for avoiding the direct commands of the Honorable Pulaski Britt. And to Wade, struggling with blistered hands to drive his mattock through roots and vegetable mould to the mineral earth, appeared Prophet Eli on his ding-swingle. The prophet surveyed him with almost arch look, and piped, in his shrill tones: "Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain, Shang-roango, whey?" Wade stared at him with a vivid recollection of the first time he had seen that strange figure and had heard that song. "So you didn't think I knew how to mend bones, eh, young man? Never heard of Prophet Eli, the charmer-man, the mediator between the higher and lower forces, natural healer and regulator of the weather? Don't you think a man an infernal fool to dig a hole out of the dirt when it is so much easier to dig a hole out of the air and put dirt around it?" Wade, not feeling inclined towards a discussion of this sort, fell to his labor again. "If John Barrett's daughter set this fire, why ain't John Barrett here to help put it out?" shrilled the prophet, and Barnum Withee hearing the amazing query, came hurrying out of the smoke. He found Wade staring at the man with astonished inquiry in his face. "You heard him say that, did you, Mr. Wade?" demanded Withee, with an emotion the young man could not understand. It was the bare mention of John Barrett's daughter that had stirred Dwight Wade; for in his soul's eye but one picture rose when she was mentioned--Elva Barrett of the glorious eyes and the loving heart--the one woman in the world for him--denied to him by the father who ruled her. "I heard him--yes," said Wade; "but what kind of lunatic's raving is it?" "It may not be a lunatic's raving, Mr. Wade," returned Withee, enigmatically, his face grave. The prophet cast a look about, striving to peer into the smoke, as though apprehensive that some one whom he didn't want in his confidence might be listening. In a lower tone he went on: "If a man has got a daughter and is tied to a tree, how much will 'Ladder' Lane scale to be cut up into bean poles?" There was alarm on Withee's features now. He took Wade by the arm and led him aside a few steps. "That old fellow has got something on his mind, Mr. Wade," he said, earnestly, "and it may be bad business. My men have been talking here to-day, as men will talk, though I advised them to keep their mouths shut. It may bring the 'Lazy Tom' crowd into the thing. If there's bad business on, I want you to be able to say outside that I haven't messed into affairs that wa'n't mine. It may have to be proved in court, and the word of a gentleman like you is worth that of fifty rattle-brained choppers." "I don't understand, Mr. Withee. I can't appear as witness in matters I haven't seen." "You can say I was here on the fire-line attendin' to my own business when it happened--if it has happened," cried Withee. "You can say that I had no hand in it. It's this way, Mr. Wade, if you haven't heard. Did any of my men tell you that John Barrett--you've heard of 'Stumpage John' Barrett--was at my camp last night?" "I heard nothing of it," said Wade. He leaned forward with excitement in his face, for the tone and the air of the lumberman were ominous. "He was at my camp, and Lane, the Jerusalem warden, after having words with him over an old matter between them, made Mr. Barrett go away into the woods with him--and I think Lane was about half crazy at the time." "And you let an insane man force Mr. Barrett into the woods?" demanded Wade, indignantly. Withee straightened, and his face took on a sort of sullen pride. "It's on that point that I want to explain to you, for my own sake. I don't know whether you're a friend of John Barrett's or whether you ain't. But when I hear him confess right before me that he has stolen away another man's wife and broken up that man's home forever, and has never done anything to square himself, then I let that matter alone, for it's a matter between man and man. And my men and I let John Barrett and Linus Lane settle their own business." "How?" cried Wade, his face pale. "My God, man, it can't be that John Barrett did a thing like--" "I heard him own to it," persisted Withee. "And what's more, it's John Barrett's daughter that lived with the Skeets and the Bushees, abandoned by him. And when I know a thing like that about a man, Mr. Wade, he can't look to Barn Withee to stand behind him." Dwight Wade staggered back against the tree and put his arms around it to steady himself. Had he not seen the girl he might have scorned to believe such a story. But all his first emotions at sight of her there in her squalid surroundings rushed back upon him now. He had seen in this forest waif too many suggestions of Elva Barrett, and had been ashamed to own to himself that his heart confessed as much, as though it were an insult to the girl who reigned in his heart. "So, I say," repeated Withee, as if to reassure himself, "I let them settle their own business." "But how?" gasped the young man. "You can prove nothing by me," said the lumberman, with a toss of his hand and wag of his head, pregnant gestures of disclaimed responsibility. "But that old fellow sitting on that ding-swingle never put those hints together without havin' something about it on his mind. I never knew trouble to happen in these woods unless he was there to see some part of it." "What have you seen, old man?" demanded Wade, impetuously. "Saw the crow catch the hen-hawk. Isn't a man with a harelip an infernal fool to learn to play a fife?" But Wade, coming close to the sage, noted a strange twinkle in the blue eyes under the knots of gray brow. It was a glance so sane, so significant, so calculating, that the young man had no voice to utter the angry retort on his lips. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Prophet Eli of Tumbledick had not always been understood by those who jeered him. The keen glance noted Wade's changing expression and understood it. "It was Rodburd Ide said it to me," the prophet stated, lowering his tone. "He said it was between you and John Barrett's pretty girl until old John drove you into the woods. Hey?" The young man's face flushed redly and he was about to reply, but the prophet put up a protesting hand. "It was Rodburd Ide said to me that John Barrett didn't think you were good enough for his daughter. Now you follow me! I want to hear John Barrett whine. I want to see John Barrett squirm. Coals of fire! Coals of fire, young man! What is Prophet Eli's mission? Coals of fire! I cure those who have mocked me, don't I? I like to hear 'em whine. I want to see them squirm. You follow me. Coals of fire!" [Illustration: "WRITHING AT HIS BONDS, HIS CONTORTED FACE TOWARDS THE RED FLAMES GALLOPING UP THE VALLEY"] And singing this over and over to himself, he whirled his stallion and hurried away. Wade ran behind him without question, for he guessed while he feared. Withee started, but turned back to his men with a sullen oath. It was a long and a bitter chase through the smother of the smoke, and in the very forefront of the racing conflagration. At last Pogey Notch had begun to suck at the raging fires with its granite lips. It was the chimney-flue of the amphitheatre of Misery. The flames roared from tree to tree. Wade ran, stooping forward, clutching at the cross-bar of the ding-swingle. Without that help he never would have been able to reach the spot where at last he found John Barrett, writhing at his bonds, squealing like an animal--his contorted face towards the red flames galloping up the valley. The prophet had left his vehicle to guide the rescuer up the slope. He stood by, grinning with enjoyment, when the two men faced each other. He chuckled when Wade cut the bonds. He laughed boisterously when Barrett, weeping like a child, threw his arms around the young man's neck. "Coals of fire!" he shrilled. "Heap 'em on! They're hotter than the other kind that are dropping on you!" Then he ran from them a few steps and rapped his skinny knuckles on a scar breast high on a tree. "Your trail!" he cried. "It's here! It's blazed clear to the bald head of old Jerusalem. Get up there on the granite. Then sit down and talk it over! Coals of fire!" They heard him shrieking it back at them as he fled up the Notch. And the two men took the trail, strangling, gasping, feeling their direction from blaze to blaze on the trees, fighting their way up from the Gehenna of Pogey. CHAPTER XV BETWEEN TWO ON JERUSALEM "So he didn't have no doctor but a bowl o' ginger tea, And it didn't seem to help him, not so far as we could see." --Gettin' Larry Home. When they came out upon the bare granite, long after mid-day, they fell upon their faces, and lay there without speaking or the desire to speak. They did not open their smarting eyes. Over and over again Wade heard a dull rumble which his stricken senses failed to understand. But when a hollow boom reverberated among the hills and jarred the granite under his face he sat up. He saw the purple flash shiver across the swaying smoke, heard the splitting crack of the bolt, and felt a raindrop on his face. "Thank God, Mr. Barrett, it has come at last! The rain!" he shouted. And the timber baron staggered to his feet, and turned a bloodshot gaze on the panorama of blazing forest and sheeting heavens. Then he looked at Wade, blinking stupidly and searching his soul for words. "I haven't got the language, Mr. Wade--" he began. But the young man broke upon his stammering speech. "There's no need of saying anything," he said, looking away. "I don't want to hear any thanks." "I was left there to die--tied up there and left to die by a crazy fool that tried to blackmail me--that's it, tried to blackmail me. And I'll put him where he belongs. It was the most infernal plot ever put up on a man. Blackmail and murder!" He gabbled his charges hysterically. The shock of his experience had unmanned him. "You can't blackmail a man like me without suffering for it. I'll put him into the deepest hole in the insane asylum--with a gag in his mouth." He was going on to relate his experience, but Wade again interrupted him. "I won't bother you to tell it, Mr. Barrett," he said, coldly. "I know how it happened. Mr. Withee told me this morning." "It's all lies and blackmail!" screamed Barrett, his fury rising at thought of this gossip. "Withee is against me, too. I told him I'd take his stumpage contract away, and this is how he is getting back. I'll have him and his whole crew in jail for blackmail if he doesn't shut his yawp." A roar of thunder drowned his voice, and he stood, with the rain pelting on him, shaking his fists above his head. But by the twist of his mouth Wade saw that he was still cursing "blackmail." The sight angered him. In as insulting a passion had John Barrett railed at him, Dwight Wade, when he had asked for the hand of John Barrett's daughter. The man had tossed his arms in the same way when he called Wade "a beggar of a school-master." "Don't call it blackmail and murder--not to me, Mr. Barrett," he said, harshly. "Don't you know it's blackmail and a put-up job to ruin me?" roared the timber baron. Wade stood up now and faced him. Torrents of rain beat upon them, and they took no heed; for the face of the young man was working with a mighty emotion and the features of the other man showed that sudden fear had come upon him. "Have you ever seen that daughter of yours that you left to wallow with human swine?" demanded Wade, with a fury he could not restrain. "Well, I have!" Into those words he put all the bitter resentment of months of remembrance of John Barrett's insults. "And I have seen the daughter you cherish in your home. I don't need any man's say-so to prove to me that they're both your children, Mr. Barrett. You stand convicted in the eyes of every man who has eyes and who sees Elva Barrett and then looks on poor Kate Arden--even her name a cruel jest! I don't want to hear a man like you lie, Mr. Barrett. Don't talk any more to me about blackmail." He shook his fist at the roof of the Jerusalem fire station, just showing above the ledges. "I know that girl over there is your daughter. Now go slow, Mr. Barrett, with your threats of what you will do to Lane. If there is any unwritten law, he deserves to have the forfeit of the life that I've helped to save. That's still a matter between you two. But as to that girl yonder, I propose to ask something. What are you going to do with her?" Barrett muttered incoherently, dazed by the new light of Wade's words. "Your blackmail story may go with woodsmen, Mr. Barrett. But if Lane should go out of these woods with his story and that girl to back it he can hold you up to execration by every decent person in the State. The girl proves it in every feature of her face." "The lunatic tried to make me take her home, own her publicly, and treat her as a daughter--and he demanded that to ruin me. It would ruin me in my political prospects, Wade. You know it. I'm willing to do what's right. But I can't do that." His courage revived a little. "I'd rather go down fighting." The young man pondered awhile. "I don't want you to think that I'm persecuting you for any of the trouble between us, Mr. Barrett," he said, at last. "That is all over and done with. But as a man who knows what that poor girl has been condemned to, and like others here who can tell by their own eyes that Lane is speaking the truth, I'm going to see that she gets a fair show." Barrett concealed his private doubts as to the young man's animus. But sudden dread of this new weapon in his foe's hand mastered him. "In the name of God, help me out, Wade!" he pleaded, dropping all his obstinacy. "I couldn't argue with that crazy man. I'll put the girl to school. I'll give her money. She shall have everything heart can wish--except my home. Think of my family, Mr. Wade! Think of my daughter! I want to have the respect of my family, Mr. Wade, for the few years that are left to me. Help me, and you won't be sorry for it. I'll--" "I want no pay and no promises," broke in the young man. "You have been free with your cry of blackmail. You can never taunt me with that. I'm simply appealing to your manhood. But I'm going to see that your daughter gets her rights, and that is no threat--it is justice." "Aren't those rights enough--what I have said?" urged Barrett. "Perhaps they are. They are probably all she can expect. People hardly ever get all they deserve in this world--either in blessings or punishments." His tone was bitter. And he stood apart and gazed out over the broad expanse to the south, his brow wrinkling. He was trying to analyze the emotions that made him champion the outcast. The thunder-heads had rolled on, but like mighty and noisy engines they had dragged behind them masses of clouds that covered the skies with a slaty expanse, and a storm, settled and steady, poured down its grateful floods. Already the fire was dying. Only here and there scattered flames fought the streaming skies from the tops of resinous trees. "Mr. Barrett," said Wade, at length, "the girl is at Lane's. You can't meet her now. It is not the time and place. Probably Lane has returned there. I don't think his mind is right--and after knowing the wrong you did him, I can understand why. You've time to reach Britt's camp before night. It is in the clearing to the north. You are an old woodsman. You can find your way there." Barrett nodded relieved assent. "You have asked me to help you. As that includes helping this poor girl most of all, I am going to do what I can, for the sake of you and your family." Barrett gave a quick glance at him, but the young man's face was impassive. Perhaps the timber baron had hoped, for his own temporary guarantee, to see a flash of the old love in Wade's eyes. "I'm going to request you to leave this matter in my hands for the present. I will see Withee, and try to stop gossip in that quarter. Will you give me the right to--well, to modify some of your threats? And as to Withee--I believe you spoke of a contract!" John Barrett stood straighter now. The sneer of conscious authority, the frown of tyranny, had gone from his face. There was a frankness in his face and a sincerity in his tones that few persons had seen or heard before. But the new inspiration was logical and real. The young man who stood before him had just waived a mean vengeance so nobly that his heart swelled. His doubts were quieted. "My boy," he said, softly, pulling off his cap and standing bareheaded in the rain, "I'm alive now, after the experience of looking straight into the eyes of death and giving up every hope. And, I tell you, it seemed hard to die--just now, when the best hopes of my life are coming true. I had time to think. I thought. I know I talked hard just a bit ago. But I wasn't myself then. I was too near the smoke and fire." He stopped and put his hand to watering eyes. "I can see clear now. And I've got over my bitterness, and I guess now I can understand the Golden Rule. That's my word, and there's my hand on it. Now talk for me to those I've hurt." They clasped hands. But it was Barrett who made that overture. "I'll wait for you at Britt's camp--until you come and tell me what I'm to do," said the timber baron. And then he turned and trudged away across the wet ledges. Wade gazed after him until he disappeared in the stunted growth. He gazed sourly into the palm of the hand that the millionaire had squeezed, and reflected that perhaps Barrett's precipitate repentance was off the same piece as his own forgiveness of the bitter matter that lay between them. Being a young man inclined to be honest with himself, Dwight Wade confessed that the fabric of his forgiveness had a selvage that already showed signs of ravelling. He was a little angry at his state of mind. "And yet it sounded like a campaign speech to catch votes," he muttered. He was still angrier at himself then, for, put into words, his doubt seemed an unjust suspicion. "I must have got more of a jolt than I thought when I dropped from ideals to the real," he pondered, gazing out through the slanting lines of rain. "I seem to have about as many grudges against humanity as old Lane himself." When he looked towards the roof of the little fire station he awoke to the consciousness that the rain was wet and the wind searching. To himself, in a sudden flash of introspection, he seemed to be as unkempt within as without. There on the granite of the bare mountain, with the forces of nature conquering the last embers of the mighty conflagration, the narrower things of life and living--the amenities, the trammels that man patiently puts upon himself for the sake of the social fabric--appeared vain and delusive ideals. It was not thus that the strong battled and won. "Considering what sort of a man they're making of me up here, where cast-iron is better than velvet, I think it's likely, John Barrett, that it has been lucky for you that you have a daughter away down there." He set his face in long gaze to the southern hills, bulked dimly behind the mists. "As for Kate Arden--" He shook his head despondently, and walked away across the glistening granite towards "Ladder" Lane's house. CHAPTER XVI IN THE PATH OF THE BIG WIND "So we fellers of the camp, when the wind-spooks rave and ramp, We fasten up the dingle-door with spike and extry clamp; For it ain't a mite against 'em if the boldest chaps do hide When the big old trees go tumblin', crash and bang, on ev'ry side." --_Ha'nt of Pamola._ John Barrett, millionaire, realized rather vaguely that he had left something on the bald poll of Jerusalem Knob. It was after he had grasped Dwight Wade's hand, both of them standing shelterless under the skies, the welcome rains beating into their faces. John Barrett, millionaire, stumbling weariedly to shelter at the foot of Jerusalem Knob, having left something in that upper vastness where soul forgot the petty things, realized--vaguely again--that he had found what he had left. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt seemed to pass it to him in a hand-clasp. On Jerusalem, John Barrett had left much of his insolence, more of his selfishness, and all of his vindictiveness. Dwight Wade, generous in his own triumph, had shamed the baser feelings out of him. And yet that new poise of a sincerer manliness seemed to be charmed away suddenly by the mere touch of Pulaski Britt's big hand. That hand represented the brutal tyranny of the barons of the woods. It was thrust out in welcome over the threshold of the wangan camp, and Britt hauled in his fellow-baron with boisterous greeting. "It's been hell for all of us, John, but I reckon you've been in the hottest corner of it if what they tell me is true. I didn't have time to ask for any details, not with that infernal fire on my hands, but it isn't the first time that rascals have poked up fools in these woods to pay off old grudges against timber-land owners. I've hit back hard a few times myself. This time we'll hit hard enough to teach 'em a lesson that will stick awhile." He put his head out of the door and yelled an order to the cook. "It--it may not be best to push things too hard," faltered Barrett, spreading his wet, blue hands to the blaze of the Franklin stove. "Things have come up that--" "They've tried the same bluff on me," blustered the host. "They loaded old Lane up with threats of what he'd do. It's all conspiracy and blackmail. There's more behind it than we realize now. But we'll dig 'em out, Barrett. We've got to smash the whole thing now or they'll have us on the run. I didn't suppose Barnum Withee was the kind of man to work out a grudge the way he did, but it shows us the danger in bein' too easy with any of 'em. Old Lane is only crazy. It's this Wade we want to bang the hardest. I'll tell you what I believe, John. I'll bet cents to saw-logs he's been hired to come up here and start a rebellion. There are interests in this State that will do it. By Judas, in twenty-four hours I'll show 'em!" The tacit partnership of honorable reparation bound by hand-clasp on Jerusalem had not the elements to make it endure in Pulaski Britt's domains, with Pulaski Britt to sound his old-time rallying call of greed and tyranny. That earlier partnership, sealed by the arms f Old King Spruce, had never been dissolved, and Barrett was once more becoming "Stumpage John," cold and hard and calculating. "Look here, Pulaski," he blurted out, in sudden confidence, "there's a little more to this than you understand just now. I'm in a devil of a position. I--I--" He hesitated, staring into the fire and waving his hands slowly in the steam that rose from his sodden garments. "I haven't done just right, I suppose, but there are reasons why, that a man like you will understand. I just left that Wade fellow up on the top of Jerusalem. We've had a talk. He didn't understand very well." "Did he offer to trade something for the sake of gettin' that daughter of yours that he's in love with?" demanded Britt, maliciously. "I don't know," confessed the other. "I'm under obligations to him, Pulaski. He cut me loose from a tree to-day in Pogey Notch. In another ten minutes the fire would have got me." "Great Jehosaphat!" exploded the host. "Tried to kill you! A timber grudge carried that far!" He stamped about the little camp. His face wrinkled with apprehension and fury. He had a sudden vivid mind-picture of his own reign of tyranny, and realized that if John Barrett had been attacked, Pulaski Britt had more reason to fear. "It's a call for a lynchin', John," he said, hoarsely. "And I've got a crew that will do it." "It was Lane that tied me--the fire-station warden," Barrett went on. "And Withee turned you over to him, knowin' he'd do it!" stormed the baron. "His men blabbed it that Lane had taken you. Withee, Wade--we'll clean out the whole coop of 'em!" But John Barrett did not seem to warm up to this plan of vengeance. He still kept his eyes on the fire. His shoulders were hunched forward with something of abjectness in their droop. "You haven't got some whiskey handy, have you, Pulaski?" he asked, plaintively. "I don't feel well. I've had an awful night and day." Britt brought the liquor from a cupboard, cursing soulfully and urging vengeance. But after Barrett drank from the pannikin he leaned his face to the blaze again and broke upon the Honorable Pulaski's vicious monologue. "I've told the wrong end first--but there are some things easier to say than others. It was Linus Lane who tied me to that tree and left me to die there, but"--Barrett rolled his head sideways and gave Britt a queer glance from his eye-corners--"did you ever see my daughter Elva, Pulaski?" Britt blinked as though trying to understand this sudden shifting of topic, and wagged slow nod of assent. "Have you ever seen that girl of the Skeet settlement--the one that doesn't belong to them?" Barrett half choked over the question. "Have I seen her?" roared the Honorable Pulaski, no longer paying attention to incongruity of questions. "Why, that's the draggle-tailed lightnin'-bug that set this fire that we've been fightin' for forty-eight hours, and that only this rain stopped from bein' a fifty-thousand-acre crown-fire! Have I seen her! I was there when she set it, and only the grace o' God and that Wade's fist saved her from bein' shot, and shot by me! I would have killed her like I'd kill a quill-pig!" Barrett did not look up from the fire. "Then you've seen both those girls, you say? I haven't seen this one in the woods here. But this Wade told me to-day that they very much resemble each other. He has heard some gossip and is making threats. He seems to think I ought to take the girl and care for her." Britt began a bitter diatribe, coupling the name of Wade and the girl as examples of all that is inimical to timber interests and timber owners--but he checked himself suddenly as soon as his native shrewdness mastered his passion. A flicker in his eyes showed that a light had burst upon his mind. He strode back and forth behind Barrett's stool, and gazed down upon the stumpage king's bent back. "Look here, John," he demanded, bluffly, at last, "was there any truth in the story that was limpin' round in these woods about you almost twenty years ago? There was a woman in it--somebody's wife. I've forgotten who." "It was Lane's wife," admitted Barrett, finding confession good for the soul of one who stood bitterly in need of practical advice--and Pulaski Britt was nothing if not practical. "I was up here prospecting, and she was bound to follow me up to camp, and I was infernal fool enough to let her. And when it came time for me to go out of the woods I couldn't take her--you can see that for yourself! I thought I had provided for her--I would have done it, but she dropped out of sight, and I couldn't go hunting around and stirring up gossip. Same way about the child." "Young one has had a nice, genteel bringin'-up," remarked the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically. Hard though his nature was, he had the sincerity of the woods, and he felt sudden contempt for this man who had uprooted for one brief sniff of its perfume a woods blossom that he could not wear. "I didn't realize it until Lane told me at Withee's camp. I had hoped she had fallen into good hands. It's a devil of a position to be in," the other mourned, returning to his prior lament. "Well," remarked Britt, inexorably, "you can't exactly complain because you are now gettin' only a little of what Lane and the girl have been gettin' a whole lot of all these years. It ain't any use to whine to me, John. I don't pity you much. I've been hard with men, but, by Cephas, I've never been soft with women! It don't pay." "It seems as though you ought to be willin' to advise me a little," pleaded Barrett. "I'm ready to do what I can for the girl, now that I've found out about her. But Lane insisted on my taking her out with me and declaring her to the world as my daughter. And when I refused he tied me to the tree." "Oh, ho! It wasn't just for the old original revenge, then?" queried Pulaski, his expression indicating a more charitable view of "Ladder" Lane's assault on the vested timber interests as represented by Stumpage John Barrett. "Well, if the girl is your young one she ought to have a chance!" In his turn, Barrett got up and paced the floor. "Such a thing would kill my chances of being the next governor of this State, and you and the whole timber crowd have got a lot at stake there." "Well, I've got to admit, havin' played politics myself somewhat," said Britt, unconsolingly, "that a quiet little frost of scandal will nip off a budding leaf that a wind like this wouldn't start." He tapped the frame of the chattering window. In the hush of their voices they heard the wind volleying through the trees and roaring high overhead among the black clouds. Night had fallen. The crew had long before finished supper, and the cook had twice summoned the inattentive two in the wangan to a second table spread more sumptuously. "And what kind of a trade is it your friend Wade wants to make with you?" inquired Britt. "Takin' the thing by and large, you must be in for a prime hold-up. If he should say, 'Your daughter or your life--political life!'--I reckon you'd have to change your mind about his qualifications as a son-in-law, wouldn't you?" He eyed Barrett keenly and heard his oaths with relish. "You see," persisted the host, "though old Lane is probably out of this for good, after trying to kill you, and you can handle Barnum Withee and the rest of these woods cattle in one way or another, this Wade chap is sittin' across from you with about every trump in the deck under his thumb. What does he say he wants?" "He doesn't say," muttered Barrett. "He hasn't asked for anything. He's thinking it over." "It's the cat and the mouse, and him the cat!" suggested the Honorable Pulaski, with manifest intent to irritate. "I should have most thought you would have thrown your arms around his neck after your rescue and yelled in his ear: 'My daughter is yours, noble man! Take her and my money, and live happy ever after!' These fellows that write novels always have 'em do that sort of thing--and the novel-writers ought to know!" "There's no novel about this thing!" retorted Barrett, angrily. "My girl knows whom she is expected to marry--and she'll marry him when the right time comes. And it won't be a college dude without one dollar to rub against another! I'm in a devil of a hole, Pulaski, but do you think for one minute that I'm going to let that Wade make a slip-noose of this thing and hang me up with my heels kicking air? I'll either choke him with thousand-dollar bills, or--or--" He glanced at Britt and forbore to finish the sentence. The door opened just then and Tommy Eye, teamster, poked in his grizzled head. "Cook has lost his voice hollerin' 'Beans!' gents," he reported, and Britt whirled on his heel and led the way out. "After supper, after supper, John!" he snapped, testily, when the other repeated his plea for advice. "We'll come back here and find a plan blossoming in our cigar smoke." They hurried away to the cook-camp, bending against the rush of the wind. "Put some wood on that fire, Tommy," Britt called over his shoulder. With the scent of the inebriate, Tommy had sniffed whiskey when he opened the camp door; his drunkard's eye caressed the bottle that the Honorable Pulaski had forgotten to replace in the cupboard. He stood dusting from his sleeves the bark litter of the wood he had brought and softly snuffled the moisture at the corners of his mouth as he gazed. One wild impulse suggested that he take the bottle and run into the woods. "No," said Tommy, aloud, in order that his voice might brace his determination. "It would be stealin', and, bless God, Tommy Eye never stole when he was sober. I may have stole when I was drunk and didn't know it, but I never stole when I was sober." He paused. "I wish I wasn't sober," he sighed. He took up the bottle, turned it in his grimy hands, gustfully studied the streakings of its oil on the glass, and at last sniffed at the open mouth. "Ah-h-h-h, rich men have the best, and they have plenty. Some people don't think it is wrong to steal from rich men. I do. But if he was here he'd probably say: 'Tommy, you have brought the wood--you have mended the fire. It is a cold night, and sure the wind is awful! Tommy, take one drink with me and work the harder for P'laski Britt on the morrer.'" He took the bottle away from his nose, stared at the window's black outline, listened to the clattering frame, and muttered, again sighing: "Sure and them wor-rds don't sound just like the wor-rds that P'laski Britt would say, but in a night like this it isn't always easy to hear aright. I wouldn't steal--but I'll dream I heard him say 'em. 'One drink, Tommy,' I hear him say." He set the bottle to his lips, tipped it, closed his eyes, and drank until at last, breathless and choking, he felt the bottle suck dry. "Bless the saints!" he gasped; "it was one drink he said, and sure with my eyes shut I couldn't see how big was the drink." He felt the thrill of the mighty potation from head to toes. His meek spirit became exalted. "If I should go out now," he mumbled, "he would say that I stole it. But I will stay here with the bottle in my hand just as it was when I took the one drink. I will show him. And, after all, it is not much he can do to me--now!" He rubbed a consolatory palm over his glowing stomach. He stood there, beginning at last to rock slowly from heel to toe, until he heard voices and footsteps. The preoccupied barons had not lingered over their repast. "No, I'll not run away. I'll not steal," muttered Tommy Eye, "but--but I'll just crawl under the bunk, here, to think over the snatch of a speech I'll make to him. And a bit later I'll feel more like bein' kicked." From the safe gloom of his covert he noted that they had brought back with them the boss, Colin MacLeod. Britt turned down the wooden button over the latch of the door and gave his guests cigars. They smoked in silence for a while, and then Britt spat with a snap of decision into the open fire and spoke. "MacLeod, a while ago, when we were talkin' about Rodburd Ide's girl, Nina, I told you that I wouldn't interfere in your woman affairs again--or you told me not to interfere--I forgot just which!" There was a little touch of grim irony in his tones--irony that he promptly discarded as he went on. "About that Ide girl--you ought to know that you can't catch her--after what has happened. I know something about women myself. The girl never took to you. If she had cared anything about you she would have run to you and cried over you when you were lying there in the road where Dwight Wade tossed you. That's woman when she's in love with a man. Don't break in on what I'm saying! This isn't any session of cheap men sittin' down to gossip over love questions. It may sound like it, but it's straight business. Don't be a fool any longer. But there's a girl that you have courted and a girl that thinks a lot of you, because I heard her say so one night on Jerusalem Knob. You ought to marry that girl." The Honorable Pulaski again checked retort by sharp command. "That girl isn't of the blood of the Skeets and Bushees, and you know it. She is a pretty girl, and once she is away from that gang and dressed in good clothes she will make a wife that you'll be proud of. Now, what do you say, Colin? Will you marry that girl?" MacLeod stared from the face of his employer to the face of John Barrett, the latter displaying decidedly more interest than the questioner. Then he stood up and dashed his cigar angrily into the fire. Blood flamed on his high cheek-bones and his gray eyes glittered. "What has marryin' got to do with my job, or what have you got to do with my marryin'?" he asked, in hot anger. The Honorable Pulaski continued bland and conciliating. "Keep on all your clothes, Colin, my boy," he counselled. "Don't say anything to me that you'll be sorry for after I've shown you that I'm only doin' you a friendly turn. But I've found out a mighty interesting thing about this girl--Kate Arden, they call her. As a friend of yours I'm givin' you the tip. It would be too bad to have a girl with a nice tidy little sum of money comin' to her slip past you when all you have to do is to reach and take her." The boss's face was surly. "You must have been talkin' with some one in Barn Withee's crew," he suggested. "And what does Withee's crew say?" demanded Britt, with heat. "It wasn't a sewin'-circle I was attendin' out on that fire-line," retorted MacLeod, with just as much vigor. "There was somethin' bein' talked, but I didn't stop to listen." "Look here, MacLeod," cried his employer. Britt came close to him and clutched the belt of his wool jacket. "There are some nasty liars in these woods just now. There are some of them that will go to state-prison for attempted blackmail. You are too bright a man not to realize which is your own side. I know you well enough to believe that all the lunatics and slanderers this side of Castonia couldn't turn you against your friends. And you've got no two better friends than John Barrett and I." "I'm not gainsaying it, Mr. Britt. But what has joinin' this matrimonial agency of yours got to do with your friendship or my work?" "I've found out, Colin, that this girl has got money comin' to her from her folks. She doesn't know about it yet. No one knows about it, except us here. She never belonged to the Skeets and Bushees. She was stolen. This money has been waitin' for her. Barrett and I are bank-men, and things like this come to our attention when no one else would hear of it. There's--there's--" Britt paused and slid a look at Barrett from under an eyebrow cocked inquiringly. Barrett slyly spread ten fingers. "There's ten thousand dollars comin' to her in clean cash, Colin. Now, what do you think of that?" "I think it's a ratty kind of a story," said MacLeod, bluntly. Britt's temper flared. "Don't you accuse me of lyin'," he roared. "The girl has got the money comin', I say." "Maybe it _is_ comin'," replied the boss, doggedly; "but has she got any name comin'? Has she got any folks comin'? Has she got anything comin' except somebody's hush-money?" The woodsman's keen scenting of the trail discomposed the Honorable Pulaski for a moment. But after a husky clearing of his throat he returned to the work in hand. "Folks, you fool! You can't dig folks up out of a cemetery. If her folks had been alive they'd have hunted up their girl years ago. They were good folks. You needn't worry about that. There's no need now to bother the girl about her folks or the money. She wouldn't know how to handle it if she had it in her own hands. It needs a man to care for her and the cash. We don't want a cheap hyena to fool her and get it. You're the man, Colin. Marry her, and the ten thousand will be put into your fist the day the knot is tied." "It sounds snide and I won't do it," growled MacLeod, seeming to fairly bristle in his obstinacy. "Not if she was Queen of Sheby." "Le' him go, then!" murmured a voice under the bunk. "Here's a gen'lum puffick--ick--ly willin'." The Honorable Pulaski turned to behold the simpering face of drunken Tommy Eye peering wistfully from his retirement. "I'll do it ch-cheaper, so 'elp me!" said Tommy, pounding down the empty bottle to mark emphasis. "Yank that drunken hog out o' there, MacLeod!" roared Britt, after a preface of horrible oaths. And when Tommy stood before him, swaying limply in the boss's clutch, he cuffed him repeatedly, first with one hand, then with the other. The smile on the man's face became a sickly grimace, but he did not whimper. "'Spected kickin'," he murmured. "Jus' soon be cuffed." He held up the empty bottle that he still clung to desperately. "Want to 'splain 'bout one drink--" he began. But Britt wrenched the bottle from his hand, raised it as though to beat out Tommy's brains, and, relenting, smashed it into a corner. "So you've laid there and listened to our private business," he said, malevolently. "You've heard more than is good for you, Eye." "Didn't hear nossin'," protested Tommy. "Was thinkin' up speech. Jus' heard him say he wouldn't marry--marry--" "Marry who?" "'Queen of Sheby,' says he, with all her di'monds. I'll marry her. I'll settle down wiz Queen of Sheby." "He's too drunk to know anything," said MacLeod. "Open the door, Mr. Britt, and I'll toss him out." And he flung the soggy Tommy out on the carpet of pine-needles with as little consideration as though he were a bag of oats. He turned at the door and looked from Britt to Barrett. "You've put a big thing up to me, gents, and you've sprung it on me like a crack with a sled-stake. If I got dizzy and answered you short it was your own fault. Give me a night to sleep on it." Outside he twisted his hand into the collar of Tommy Eye and started towards the main camp, dragging the inebriate. "I'll see that he keeps his mouth shut, gents," he called back to them. "You needn't worry, John," announced Britt, closing the door and pulling out another cigar. "He'll do it." He waited for the sulphur to burn from the match, and lighted his tobacco, a smile of triumph wrinkling under his beard. "You don't usually tackle Pulaski D. Britt for good, practical advice without gettin' it," he went on. "The girl is crazy after MacLeod. You'll find MacLeod square when he makes a promise. He's got fool notions about those things. And when she's married to him and settled down here in these woods, where she belongs, the chap that wants to make her Exhibit A in a slander against John Barrett will find himself up against a mighty tough proposition. You see that, don't you? Now the next thing is to get her out of the hands of that gang that want to use her against you." He mused a moment. "All that we need to do is to send a man up to Jerusalem to-morrow, and say that you're all ready to start for outside and propose to take the girl along. If any one in this world has any rights over her, you have. They can't refuse. And now we'll go to bed, John, for if ever two men needed sleep, I reckon we're the ones." But it was not unbroken slumber that came to them. The big winds outside roared with the sound of a bursting avalanche. Over the camp the sawing limbs of the interlaced crowns shrieked and groaned. There were deeper, further, and more mystic sounds, like mighty 'cellos. And when the great blow was at its height the wangan camp, built upon the roots of the splay-foot spruces, swayed with the writhing of the roots, creaked in its timbers, and seemed to toss like a craft on a crazy sea. There were noises near at hand in the woods like the detonations of heavy guns. Every now and then the earth shivered, and thunderous echoes boomed down the forest aisles. "Do you hear 'em John?" called Britt, at last. He had long been awake, and had marked the restless stirrings of the other in the bunk below him. "I've been listening an hour," said Barrett, despondently, "and it's big stuff that's coming down. Our loss by fire was small change to what this means to us, Pulaski. Withee has devilled my lands until there isn't a wind-break left." A roar like the awful voice of a park of artillery throbbed past them on the volleying wind. "I feel as though it was kissing a thousand dollars good-bye every time I hear one of those noises," said Britt. "The devil can play jack-straws in the Umcolcus region after this night, and find a new bunch every day." At last they looked dismally out on the dawn. The great gale had blown overhead and away, the rearguard clouds chasing it, and the hard growth, stripped of every vestige of leaf, gave pathetic testimony to the bitterness of the conflict of the night. The two lumber barons, staring anxiously up at the slopes of the black growth for signs of ravage, were confronted by Tommy Eye, meek, repentant, and shaky. "Sure, the witherlicks and the swamp swogons did howl last night, gents, and they all did say as how Tommy Eye ought to be ashamed of the size of his drink. And I've come back to you to get my kick." He turned humbly. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt accepted the invitation with alacrity, and dealt the kick with a vigor that fetched a squawk from the teamster. The timber tyrant's mood that morning welcomed such an opportunity, even as a surcharged cloud welcomes a lightning-rod or a farm-house chimney. But once the kick had been dealt the Honorable Pulaski felt less wire on the edge of his meat-axe temper. "And now I'll take my discharge," said Tommy. "MacLeod gave me an order on you for my pay." Britt snatched away the paper and tore it up. "Get into that hovel and look after your horses." But when Tommy turned to go his employer called him back. "I've got another job for you just now, you snake-chaser. You need to chew fresh air, and you'll find a lot of it on top of Jerusalem. I don't know just how much you understood of our business in the wangan camp last night, Eye, and I don't care. You know me well enough to understand that if you ever blab any of it I'll have your ha' slet out of you!" Tommy cringed under a furious glare. "It will depend on how well you do an errand for me now whether or not I feed you to bobcats. You get that, do you?" Again the teamster bowed his wistful assent. "I wish I hadn't let Sheriff Rodliff and his men leave," remarked Britt to "Stumpage John," eying Tommy with some disfavor. "But perhaps this fool can do the trick better than a sheriff's posse. Sending the posse might make talk and stir suspicions." "The quieter it's done the better," suggested Barrett. "After my talk with Wade--which was pretty soft, as I remember it--it will seem natural for me to send after the girl--and by just such a messenger as this." "So we'll send the fool--you're right!" affirmed Britt. "Tommy," he directed, wagging a thick finger under the man's attentive nose to mark his commands, "you hump up to that fire station on Jerusalem as quick as leg-work will get you there, and you'll find a young girl. There are not enough young girls up there so that you'll make any mistake in the right one. You tell the one that's in charge, or whoever claims to be in charge, that the girl has been sent for. You'll probably find that fellow Dwight Wade takin' the responsibility. Tell him that it's all right, and that the gentleman he made the talk with is prepared to back up all promises. Bring the girl back with you." "Girls was never much took with me, and I never was handy in makin' up to girls," protested Tommy, his face puckering in alarm. "She prob'ly won't come, and then I'll get kicked again." "You'll get kicked again mighty sudden if you don't do as I tell you, and do it quick and do it right!" roared Britt, starting off the camp platform. And Tommy, cowed by his tyrant, stood not upon the order of his going. He was trotting with a dog-waddle when he disappeared up the Jerusalem trail. "He ought to be back by noon," said Britt. "In the mean time we'll eat breakfast and then cruise for blowdowns. And I'm thinkin' it isn't goin' to be a very humorous forenoon for timber-land owners." Nor was it. Dolefully and silently they traversed wastes of splintered devastation, blocked ram-downs, choked twitch-roads, and hideous snarls of cross-piled timber. CHAPTER XVII THE AFFAIR AT DURFY'S CAMP "The boss was a-thinkin' to swat him, but allowed he had better not, For 'twas trouble bad that Dumphy had, whatever it was he'd got." When the timber barons came in sight of the camp at noon, Tommy Eye, returned emissary, was seated on the edge of the wangan platform with attitude and countenance of alarmed expectancy. By his side was old Christopher Straight, the guide who had accompanied Dwight Wade from Castonia settlement. "I done it--I said as you said for me to say," Tommy began, eagerly, "and Mr. Straight here will tell you the same. I said it first to old Noah up there, and he was startin' off with his animiles like as they done with the ark stranded, and he swore me up hill and down, and--" "Shut up!" barked the Honorable Pulaski, in a perfectly fiendish temper after the sights of that forenoon. "Did you bring that girl? And if you didn't, why not?" "I can tell you better, perhaps, Mr. Britt," broke in old Christopher, calmly. "She has been left on Mr. Wade's hands, and Mr. Wade feels that he ought to be careful. Warden Lane, who had charge of her, seems to have lost his wits. All last night--it was an awful night, gentlemen, on Jerusalem--he was out on the ledges raving and howling. I think that a matter that Mr. Barrett will understand was troubling up his conscience, if that's the word for it. This mornin' he seemed to be clean out of his head. He knocked the saplin's off his cages and let out the animals, and they followed him off down into the woods--" "Moose, bobcat, fisher-cat--" But Tommy ceased his enumeration to dodge a vicious sweep of Britt's palm. "I guess he left the place for good, seeing he took his rifle and his pack," continued the guide. "I thought the timber owners might like to know that their fire station is abandoned. As for the girl," he hastened to add, "Mr. Wade told me to say that for reasons that Mr. Britt would understand he didn't think she ought to come here." "Because she's lost her head over my boss, MacLeod, eh?" demanded Britt. "You saw yourself that the girl wasn't to be controlled easily when the young man was present," said Christopher, mildly. "So he believes if there is business to be talked to her and about her it will be better to meet somewhere else." "The blasted coward is afraid to come with her or let her come," sneered the Honorable Pulaski. "Well, we'll go up there; and we'll take a few men along and find out who's runnin' this thing--a college dude or the men who own these timber lands." Mr. Barrett would have advised more pacificatory talk. But Mr. Britt was in a mood too generally unamiable that day to heed prudence and wise counsel. "You'll have only your own trouble for your trip," remarked Straight. "This man here said that Mr. Barrett was all ready to leave the woods. Mr. Wade has left the top of the mountain with the girl, and will meet Mr. Barrett to the south of Pogey Notch. You'll not have to go out of your way, sir," he explained. "Well, where?" snapped Britt. "I'm here prepared to lead Mr. Barrett to the place, and I suggest that if he's ready we'll be on our way. You'll probably want to fetch the Half-way House at nightfall, sir." This patent distrust of Pulaski Britt and his designs angered that gentleman quite beyond the power of even his profanity. But he knew Christopher Straight too well to attempt to bulldoze that hard-eyed old woodsman. "Is this select assembly too good to have me come along?" he inquired, his thick lips curling under his beard. "I think Mr. Wade will be glad to have you there," said Christopher, mildly. "He didn't say anything to the contrary. He expects Mr. Barrett to have some one to keep him company as far as the stage road, though he thought it probably would be a woodsman. But Mr. Wade gave particular instructions about any crowd comin' along, and he'll not meet any one if your boss MacLeod is in the party. That's straight talk. He's had all the trouble with your boss that he cares for." After a withering survey of Straight, which the old guide endured with much composure, Britt beckoned Barrett away with a jerk of his head, and the two strolled behind the horse-hovel. "There you have it, John," he snarled, more ireful as a champion than the unhappy principal. "It's a put-up job. He's goin' to plaster the girl onto you. It's his play. He's goin' to use it for all it's worth." "It will be better for me to take her out than to have him chase along after me with the girl and the story--if that's the way he feels; and it's plain that he means to make trouble," said Barrett, moodily. "I can put her away somewhere in a boarding-school, and--" The Honorable Pulaski broke upon this doleful capitulation with contemptuous brusqueness. "You talk like a fool, John! Take that girl outside these woods and give her an education? File her teeth so that she can set 'em into your throat? You teach her to read and to write and to know things, and that's what it will amount to in the end. The girl has got to stay here!" He embraced the big woods in a vigorous gesture. "She belongs here! And the only way to keep her here is to put her in the hands of a man that--" Colin MacLeod had followed them to their retreat behind the hovel, and was standing at a little distance, looking at them. "Come here, Colin!" And Britt advanced to meet him and clutched his arm, the arm that Dwight Wade had dislocated in that memorable battle in Castonia. "Boy, if you are a coward, now is your time to own it. Old Straight has come down here to tell us that Wade has that girl in his hands. He knows what she's worth. He wants to meet Barrett and myself. You can guess why. He proposes to get hold of that money. He knows we control it. We can't help ourselves if she chooses to stay with him." The able old liar of the Umcolcus knew his man as the harper knows his instrument. He felt the muscles ridge under his clutch. "He has sent word that he won't have you at the meeting. Ask Straight! He'll give you the message. The dude knows he wouldn't stand the show of a snowball in tophet with you there where the girl could see you. If you're a coward, say so, and we'll look further." "By ----, I'm no coward, and you know it!" growled the boss. "He's licked you once and cut you out with one girl," persisted Britt. "The whole Umcolcus knows that! When they find out that he's got away with a girl that has been in love with you, and with ten thousand dollars in the bargain, why, boy, even Tommy Eye will dare to put up his fists to you!" In MacLeod's tumultuous mind it was no longer love's choice between Nina Ide and Kate Arden; it was the hard, bitter passion of the primitive man--the instinct to grasp what a foe is coveting for the sake of humiliating that foe. Again MacLeod felt himself thrust forth by circumstances to be the champion of his kind. That man from the city was of the other sort. "Mr. Britt," he choked, "let me at him once more!" "Oh, that will be all right!" said the baron; "but we're not pulling off a prize-fight, MacLeod. Scraps are interestin' enough when there isn't more important business on hand. There happens to be business just now. The whole idea is, are you ready to marry the girl?" MacLeod had approached them grimly resolved to be defiant on that point. The flicker in his eyes now was the shadow of that resolution departing. "If it's him against me again," he snarled, "I'll marry a quill-pig and ask no questions." "Not exactly cheerful talk to hear from a prospective bridegroom marryin' money and good looks," commented the Honorable Pulaski, dryly; "but a promise is a promise, MacLeod, and I never knew you to break one you made me. Shake!" By the way in which both Barrett and MacLeod turned inquiring gaze on him, the Umcolcus baron understood that he was tacitly elected autocrat of the situation, and he proceeded about his task with the briskness characteristic of his habit of command. "John, you get your dinner, bid us an affectionate farewell, and go along with old Straight. Go alone. Tell him you left all your duffel at Withee's camp and don't need any guide. I'll look after the rest of it. Chris Straight can hide his dude and the girl, but he can't pull up the ground behind him." They started off promptly after the noon snack, the taciturn Christopher offering no comment on Mr. Barrett's amiable compliance, and apparently blandly unsuspicious that the Honorable Pulaski concealed guile under a demeanor which had suddenly become pacific. Men who had made their warfare more by craft and less by brute strength would have been more wily. John Barrett and Pulaski Britt had always been too confident of their own power to think subterfuge necessary. Barrett, especially, as he strode along at the heels of old Christopher, was so well content with his own first essay in duplicity that his taking-down was correspondingly humiliating. They were resting, he and the old guide, after a tough scramble around a blowdown that they had encountered a mile or so from Britt's camps. With a jerk of his chin Christopher indicated a far-off sound on the back trail. "Pretty busy, that woodpecker is, Mr. Barrett!" "Stumpage John" assented, wondering at the same time how such an old woodsman could misinterpret that chip-chop. "The fool Indian ought to make allowance for a blowdown," he reflected, angrily. "He's following too close." "In this world you expect cheap men to lie and cheat," remarked Christopher, serenely. "But you don't hardly expect State senators and candidates for governor to be that sort." "What the devil do you mean?" demanded Barrett, with heat. "I mean that Britt's Indian, Newell Sockbeson, is following us and makin' a double-blaze for--well, I suppose it's so that Pulaski Britt and his men can chase us up. As to why, you probably know better than I do, Mr. Barrett." The timber baron stared at this disconcerting old plain-speaker without finding fit words for reply. "It can hardly be that he's goin' to all that trouble simply to get the girl. Mr. Wade is ready to turn the girl over to you, Mr. Barrett. Why is it that men ain't willin' to play fair in this world? What does Pulaski Britt want to meddle in this thing for?" "I think you're wrong about the Indian following us," paltered the millionaire. "You're only guessin' about that, Straight." "When I see Pulaski Britt talk to an Indian, when I see that Indian pack a lunch, take a camp-axe, and hide at the mouth of the trail, I don't have to guess, Mr. Barrett. Some of us old fellows of the woods see a whole lot of things without seemin' to take much notice." He got up off the tree-trunk where he had been sitting and made ready to take the trail again, swinging his pack to his shoulders. "There wouldn't have been any misunderstanding if Wade had sent the girl back by the messenger," protested Barrett. "And if he didn't have something up his sleeve he would have done so. The girl is nothing to him, and he's meddling in affairs that are none of his business." "You'd better save that talk and tell it to him," said the old guide, grimly. "I'm going to take you to where we arranged to meet if every man that Britt can rake and scrape on his ten townships comes followin' at my back. I've thought it over, and the more witnesses there are to some things the better it is for all concerned--or the worse!" And reflecting on what these words might mean, and now a little dubious as to the sagacity of Pulaski Britt in handling delicate negotiations, "Stumpage John" plodded on with less content in his heart. Two miles farther down the trail, at a place that Barrett recognized as the old Durfy camps, Straight signalled by discharging his rifle, and Dwight Wade came into sight with the girl. Foolish Abe of the Skeets followed far behind like a sheepish dog, uncertain whether to expect kick or caress. "You may as well know first as last that the whole pack is followin' a little way behind," snorted old Christopher, in disgust. "Britt sent an Indian to snuff the trail and blaze the way. I did your errand, that's all. You've got time to get away. You may want to keep on tryin' to do business with a crowd that ain't square. I don't!" He turned and walked away, sat down, and filled his pipe. "I had Straight explain to you why it was better to meet privately here," declared Wade, with honest resentment glowing in his eyes. "But I'm not going to run. I've had hard work to get this young woman to consider your proposition to educate her, Mr. Barrett." He held her by the hand, and spoke out with a candor that convinced the lumberman that here there was neither reservation nor complicity. The girl eyed him sulkily, without interest, as she looked at all outsiders. "I have told this young woman that you, as a timber-land owner, are sorry for all the troubles that the Skeets and Bushees have had in years past, and want to make up in some way. I've told her you're ready to send her to some good boarding-school. As she can't read or write, she doesn't know what this means, and she can't express her thanks. But I'm sure that later she'll understand your kindness and generosity. The girl is untrained, and she knows it. I hope you'll overlook any lack of gratitude, Mr. Barrett. She'll know how to express it some day." John Barrett, looking into a face which recalled the face of the daughter whom he loved and cherished in his city home, felt one throb of strange emotion, and then realized in all his selfish nature that affection is more a matter of habit and cultivation than an affair of instinct. After one thrill his soul shrank from her. He had not expected the girl to be so like. He caught himself wishing that he had not made the compact with the inexorable Britt, and listened for the noise of the men-pack with shame and some regret. On the other hand, this girl, unkempt for all her beauty, insolent with the insolence of ignorance, staring at him from under her knitted brows, was impossible, he reflected, as an asset of a man with a reputation to preserve and an ambition to fulfil. Instead of feeling the instinct of tenderness, he looked at this wild young thing of the woods with uneasy fear in his shifting eyes. With honest resentment, Wade noted the baron's reluctance to make his word good. "You think I'm a meddler, Mr. Barrett," he said, coming close to the other, "but don't think that I'm satisfying any personal grudge when I ask that you care for this poor girl! Perhaps you would have done so anyway, without my suggestion. I hope so." "I think I could arrange my own business without any outside help," said Barrett, dryly. He began to feel that he could get out of the situation better if he aroused his own resentment. "Mr. Barrett, it was chance that put the girl in my way and taught me her story. I've been Don Quixote enough to see her through this thing. I'm sorry it happens to be you on the other side. I'm afraid you don't give me credit for unselfishness." "I'll allow you all the credit you deserve," said "Stumpage John," sullenly. "I understand, without your telling me, that you are gentleman enough to keep this matter behind your teeth on account of my family. I thank you, Wade. I'll take charge of the girl from now on." He looked back up the trail anxiously, and the young man's gaze followed. A man loafed into sight from among stubs blackened by fire. "There's Newell Sockbeson," remarked old Christopher. "I heard him making his last blaze a few minutes ago." "I don't know just what your plan is, Mr. Barrett," said Wade, the red in his cheeks. "I've been hoping that you trusted me to act the gentleman, even if I couldn't act the friend. Mr. Straight and I stand here as witnesses that you have taken charge of this girl." He now spoke low. "But you haven't told me that you indorse the little plan I adopted to relieve you from any explanations and to make the thing seem natural to her." Wade's face showed that he expected a frank promise. "Mr. Straight will go to the stage road with you," added the young man. At this hint of watchfulness the face of Barrett darkened. "As a school-teacher, I know something of the boarding-schools of the State, and I'll--" The timber baron's temper flamed at this plain intent to advise. "I've taken charge of the girl, I say! Your responsibility ends. You were apologizing a moment ago for meddling. Now, don't go to--" "I didn't apologize," replied Wade, with decision. "And I don't intend to. And my responsibility ends only when I know that this unfortunate creature is placed in a good school to get the advantages that she has been robbed of all these years." The hot retort from Barrett ended in his throat with a cluck. "The devil!" he blurted, staring down the trail. Dwight Wade, whirling to look to the south, could not indorse that sentiment. Close at hand was Nina Ide, riding a horse with the grace of a boy, whose attire she had adopted with a woods girl's scorn of conventions. Wade hurried to meet her, cap in hand and eager questions on his lips. The color mounted to her face, and she shook out the folds of a poncho, looped across the saddle, and draped it over her knees. "No, it's not strange, either," she broke in to say. "Your partner--and that's father--had to come up here on business, and I've come along with him, just as I always do when he comes here in the partridge season." She patted a gun-butt. "But I didn't expect to find fire and smoke and lightning and rain and tornadoes up here, any more than I looked for you at Pogey Notch when you were supposed to be exploring for a winter's operation on Enchanted. Now you will have to explain to your partner here!" And he turned from her smiling face to shake hands with Rodburd Ide. "Every man who can handle brush and mattock is expected to be at the head of a fire in time of trouble!" chirped the "Mayor of Castonia." He tipped back his head to beam amiably on his partner. "Did it get through onto us, Wade?" "The rain stopped it half-way up Pogey." "Then God was good to us! Isn't that so, Mr. Barrett?" And the cheerful little man trotted along to grip the hand of "Stumpage John." That gentleman glowered sullenly, and tried to explain his gloom by muttering about "blowdowns" being worse than fires. He looked ill. As he came down the trail a fever had been rising in his blood. He went away by himself, and sat down feeling faint and weak. "Old Enchanted is all right," said Ide. "There's a thousand acres of black growth there, every tree standin' with its arm about its brother. You mustn't let 'em devil you, Mr. Barrett!" he called. Mr. Barrett, his lowering gaze on Wade, agreed mentally. "Well, this is certainly a convention of the timber interests!" cried the brisk little autocrat of Castonia. He pointed up the trail, where the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was advancing alone. Wade withdrew unobstrusively, and stood beside Nina Ide. Perhaps he hoped that her talk might bring some word of Elva Barrett. But at last even Rodburd Ide's cheery consciousness became impressed by the fact that neither Britt nor Barrett seemed to relish any chat on timber topics. And he broke upon a constrained silence to suggest to Wade that they proceed--taking it for granted that now his partner's way lay to the north, along with his own. "There's--there's--" Wade stammered, and now for the first time Ide and his daughter marked the girl of the Skeet settlement leaning moodily against the side of the Durfy hovel, the unkempt Abe hovering apprehensively in the background. "Ah ha!" piped Ide. "There are the remnants, eh? We met the rest of the colony hiperin' out of the woods. They've gone to Little Lobster, girl, and the old woman is worryin' about you." Wade stared straight at Barrett. The timber baron understood the challenge of his eyes. He was commanded to declare his intentions. In spite of himself, he scowled. It was a scowl of recalcitrancy. And the young man, angered by the presence of Britt and the evident appearance of treachery, shot his bolt. "There is a piece of good-fortune for this poor girl, Mr. Ide. Mr. Barrett proposes to educate her, and he's going to take her with him out of the woods." "She has been gettin' a lot of attention lately," blurted the Honorable Pulaski, with malice and derision. "For the past three or four days, Rodburd, your young partner here has been her steady company. They have just come strollin' alone together down the Lovers' Lane from Jerusalem Knob." He fixed his keen eyes on the astonished face of Nina Ide. His narrow nature believed that, like other girls, she could be stirred to quick jealousy. And knowing her influence over her father, he foresaw trouble ahead for the partnership between Ide and Wade. "Seems to be in the air up this way now for the young men to gallivant through the woods with the Skeet girl. Wade here seems to have cut out Colin MacLeod." Then the coarse old jester sneered into the indignant face Wade turned to him. "It will be a good thing for her to go to school," said Ide, a little puzzled by the evident antagonism of these men. "It will be kind of you, Mr. Barrett." "Say, look here, Ide," cried Britt, in his irritation suddenly deciding to play the strong hand with this young interloper, "your friend Wade here, being a school-teacher, seems to have school on the brain. He also seems to be full of ready-made plans for men older and better than he is. From things that come to me, he has picked up a lot of foolishness about these Skeets and Bushees and this girl since he's been cruisin' round these woods. Mr. Barrett and myself have made arrangements to take care of the rest of that pauper settlement, and the Skeets probably told you so when you met them." Ide nodded acknowledgment. "We'll look after the girl, too." He walked up to Wade and snapped his fingers, unable to resist his desire to bully. "Now, young fellow, you've been stickin' your nose pretty deep into other men's business. Take it out, or I'll twist it off your face. Any one would think that this girl matter was runnin' the world in these parts. There's been too much talk about what's of no consequence. Go along with your partner. You're on my land. Keep movin'." But all of Dwight Wade's stubborn obstinacy rose in his breast; all his youthful chivalry flamed in his face. "I've no more business with you, Britt!" he said, significantly; and Britt's face flamed with the remembrance of a certain knock-down blow. "My business is with you, Mr. Barrett, and you know what it is. You keep the word that you've given me about this girl, or I'll set you before the people of this State in your right colors--and you needn't croak blackmail to me, for you can't frighten me." "I--I--don't see that it's any business of yours--of yours, Wade," stammered the pacificatory Ide, catching the courage of protest from the rather indignant face his daughter turned on the young man. "And I don't see that it is the business of any of you!" stormed Kate Arden. She came close to the group of men and stood with brown hands propped on her hips, her head thrown back, and the insolent stare of her black eyes seeking face after face. "I'll be passed about from hand to hand no longer. I don't want any old purple-faced fool to send me to school." Barrett winced. "And as for you," she sneered, turning on Wade, "you attend to your own business until I ask you to help me in mine." The Honorable Pulaski saw his opportunity. "Colin MacLeod!" he bawled. And with a rush that betrayed his impatience, the boss of the Busters came out of his hiding-place up the trail. The girl gave a sharp cry of joy at sight of him. But MacLeod, half-way to them, saw the girl on the horse and stopped as suddenly as he had started. Even at that distance they noted that his face worked with piteous embarrassment. "You've given in your promise, MacLeod! Don't forget that!" roared Britt. "There's the boy for you, my girl! He wants to marry you. Go with him!" "And you'll be a fool of a gir-rl if ye do!" squalled a voice. It was Tommy Eye, yelling from the top of the Durfy hovel, to which he had clambered unobserved. "I know I'm a drunk. I know I ain't worth anything to anybody!" he gabbled. "But ye saved my life once, Mr. Wade, when I didn't know it!" He flapped entreating hands at Wade, and that young man stepped in front of the furious Britt with such determination on his face that the woods tyrant halted. "But ye'll be a fool gir-rl, I say! I was under the bunk last night when they planned it. He don't love ye! I heard him say so. He called you names! Colin MacLeod, ye ain't the liar enough to stand out here and say ye didn't." MacLeod, his adoring eyes on Nina Ide, had no word to say. The features of Kate Arden, who stared at him with her heart in her eyes, twisted with a promise of bitter tears. This, then, was the girl of Castonia, with whom they had taunted her! "It's only for grudge and money he's goin' to marry you!" persisted Tommy. "May I rest forever in purgatory with no masses for my soul if that ain't the truth!" With the instinct of the animal repulsed, the girl read more in the face of MacLeod than she understood from the declaration of Tommy Eye. She looked from face to face again, but the flame was gone from her eyes. There they stood, the silent, hostile, bitter phalanx from outside--oppressors and scorners. There she stood--alone! And she fell face down upon the ground--the only mother she had ever known--a heart-broken, weary, lonely, sobbing child. Nina Ide reached her before the others moved. Twice the girl fought her way out of her arms. Twice the sympathetic little mother-heart of the Castonia beauty conquered the rebel and retook her, whispering to her eagerly. And she held her tear-streaked face close to her shoulder, and patted the grimy little fingers between which tears were trickling. There was something inexpressibly pathetic even in the unkemptness of the stricken girl, in her torn dress and the brown skin of face and hands, touched here and there by the stain of exposure to the blackened forest. And in her loneliness, feeling for the first time in her life real sympathy from one of her sex, gathering with grateful nostrils the faint perfume that whispered of the refinement and comfort that her heart had sought almost unconsciously and had never found, at last the girl ceased her struggles and clung to her new friend. The waif's true instinct was proving this friend's sincerity more surely than the whispered assurances proved it. And Nina Ide bent to her ear, and murmured: "We will hate him together, poor little girl! He is not a good man to have a girl's love." "When the hysterics are all over," remarked the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically, "we'll take the young woman off your hands." "You'll not take her off _my_ hands!" retorted Nina, with spirit. "She's going back home with me." "You haven't got any rights over her!" barked Britt. "Perhaps, then, Mr. Barrett is ready to stand up and say what his rights are," suggested Wade, with bitter hint of retaliation in his tones. Barrett, pale with the illness that was seizing him, grew paler yet with anger and terror, for he feared exposure. The Honorable Pulaski picked up the gage of battle with all the alacrity of his irascible nature. "For a dog-fight, that girl will be as good a bone as anything else!" he growled, under his breath. And then he whirled on his heel and bellowed: "Wake up there, MacLeod! If you can't make love to the girl you are goin' to marry, I reckon you can at least fight a little to get her! Call in the crew!" He walked up to Ide. "Better call off your girl, Rod," he advised, bluffly. "This isn't any of her business, or yours either." "I figure that a Skeet girl belongs as much to us as to you," snapped the doughty little man from Castonia. "If my girl takes interest enough in her to invite her home, I think you'd better let her go." "Well, I've got a crew of a hundred men posted back here a few rods in the woods to back me up when I say she stays right where she belongs." His tone was offensive, and Rodburd Ide's anger flared. "My business just now in here, Britt, is to bring a hundred men for our Enchanted operation. They're down there by the brook eating lunch. I don't want any trouble over this, but there's some nasty reason back of this girl matter, and I won't stand for any persecution of a helpless creature. My men back me when I say she goes home with my girl. Hello, men for the Enchanted! Up this way in a hurry!" The look that Nina flashed at her father was inspiration for him! As his men came into sight over the bank the crew of Britt tramped towards them down the trail. "Nina," said Ide, "you'll have to go back now. Chris Straight will go with you. Take the girl on the horse with you, and let Chris lead by the headstall. You'll go all safe. Hurry away from here! But after you get started, take your time to the Half-way House. There's no one going to get past down this trail to chase you and bother you." There was determination in the voice of the little man, and his daughter kissed him at the same time that Dwight Wade was patting his shoulder. Wade ran along by the side of the horse for a little way, and, when he turned, eagerly kissed Nina Ide's gloved hand. "God bless you for a little saint!" he gasped. "You'll understand this some day, perhaps." "I understand that she is alone and needs a friend," she responded--"just as you needed a friend when you were only Britt's 'chaney man.'" She smiled archly at him and passed out of sight, old Christopher tugging at the bits of the horse. Wade went back in the forefront of the thronging crew of the men for Enchanted. "As I said, Britt, I don't want trouble," repeated Rodburd Ide, "but you'll please remember that the lower corner of your township is here at Durfy's camp. I reckon the men for the Enchanted will camp right here on the trail for a few hours. The man that tries to push past to trouble my daughter or her friend will get hurt." "They are goin' past just the same!" shouted Britt, fiercely. "My God, Pulaski, think of consequences!" pleaded "Stumpage John," in low tones. He arose with difficulty and staggered to Britt's side. His tones quavered with weakness. "I'd be ruined by the story of what it was all about. I'm sick. I only want to get home. I don't want to see trouble here." Britt glared at his associate, at Wade, Ide, and at last at Colin MacLeod, who was staring in the direction of Nina Ide. The tyrant snorted his disgust. "Take the combination of a candidate for governor, some fool women, crazy men, love-sick idiots, and"--his eyes swept the scene in vain search for Tommy Eye--"a pooch-mouthed blabber, and it's enough to trig any decent, honest, sensible woods fight ever yarded down. Barrett, you're right! You'd better get home and get on your long-tailed coat and plug hat as soon as you can. You and your private"--he sneered the word--"business don't seem to fit in up here." He folded his arms and, with his men behind him, stood looking over the crew for the Enchanted, who, cheerfully and without question, stood blocking the way. "It may not happen just now," he grunted, "but it's on my mind to say that some day these two gangs will get together when there isn't a governor's boom to step on, nor women to get mussed up." And the gaze of fury that he bent on Dwight Wade was returned with interest. An imaginative man might have seen the new spirit of the woods facing the old. But there was no imaginative man there--there were only men who chewed tobacco and wondered what it all meant. CHAPTER XVIII THE OLD SOUBUNGO TRAIL "And never a knight in a tournament Rode lists with a jauntier mien, Than he of the drive who came alive Thro' the hell of the Hulling Machine." --The Spike-sole Knight. Larry Gorman, "the woodsman's poet," whose songs are known and sung in the camps from Holeb to Madawaska, was with Rodburd Ide's incoming crew. His three most notable lyrics are these: "I feed P.I.'s on tarts and pies," "Bushmen all, your ear I call until I shall relate," and "The Old Soubungo Trail." When Rodburd Ide's hundred men "met up" with the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt's hundred men at the foot of Pogey Notch, Larry Gorman displayed a true poet's obliviousness to the details of the wrangle between principals. He didn't understand why Pulaski Britt, blue with anger above his grizzled beard, and "Stumpage John" Barrett, mottled with rage, should object so furiously when Rodburd Ide's girl took away the tatterdemalion maid of the Skeets, nor did Larry ask any questions. If this be the attitude of a true poet, there was evidently considerable true poetry in both crews, for no one appeared to be especially curious as to the why of the quarrel. However, the imminence of a quarrel was a matter demanding woodsmen's attention. It might have been noted that Poet Gorman cut the biggest shillalah of any of them. And while he rounded its end and waited for more formal declaration of hostilities, he lustily sang the solo part of "The Old Soubungo Trail," with a hundred hearty voices to help him on the chorus: "I left my Lize behind me, Oh, she won't know what to do, I left my Lize for the Old Town guys, And I left my watch there, too. I left my clothes at a boardin'-house, I reckon they're for sale, And here I go, at a heel-an'-toe, On the old Soubungo trail. Sou-bung-o! Bungo! 'Way up the Bungo trail!" Spirit rather than melody characterized the efforts of these wildwood songsters. The Honorable Pulaski Britt, who didn't like music anyway, and was trying to talk in an undertone to timber baron Barrett, swore a deep bass obligato. He did not take his baleful gaze from Dwight Wade, who had gone apart, and was leaning against the mouldering walls of the Durfy hovel. "You had your chance to block their game, and you didn't do it, John. You make me sick!" muttered the belligerent Britt. "You've let that college dude scare you with threats, and old Ide champ his false teeth at you and back you down. You don't get any of my sympathy from now on. I had a good plan framed. You knocked it galley-west by poking yourself into the way. They've got the girl. They'll use her against you. You can fight it yourself after this." Barrett stared uneasily from one crew to the other. "It would have been too tough a story to go out of these woods," he faltered. "Two crews ste'boyed together by us to capture a State pauper." "A story of a woods rough-and-tumble, that's all!" snorted Britt. "And these dogs wouldn't have known what they were fightin' about--and would have cared less. And while they were at it I could have taken the girl out of sight! You spoiled it! Now, don't talk to me! You go ahead and see if you can do any better." He tossed his big hand into the air and whirled away, snuffling his disgust. Larry Gorman, having peeled a hand-hold on his bludgeon, was moved to sing another verse: "I ain't got pipe nor 'backer, Nor I ain't got 'backer-box; I ain't got a shirt, and my brad-boots hurt, For I ain't a-wearin' socks. But a wangan's on Enchanted, Where they've got them things for sale, And I don't give a dam what the price it am On the old Soubungo trail. Sou-bung-o! Bungo! 'Way up the Bungo trail!" Sturdy little Rodburd Ide, magnate of Castonia, bestrode in the middle of the trail to the south. His head was thrown back, and his mat of whiskers jutted forward with an air of challenge. To be sure, he did not exactly understand as yet the full animus of the quarrel. He had heard his partner, Dwight Wade, announce on behalf of Honorable John Barrett that the latter proposed to educate the girl protégée of the Skeets' tribe. He had noted that the timber baron did not warm to the announcement in a way that might be expected of the true philanthropist. Tommy Eye's astonishing declaration from the house-top that the timber magnates of Jerusalem townships were proposing to marry the girl off to Colin MacLeod, boss of "Britt's Busters," and that, too, in spite of MacLeod's lack of affection, had some effect in enlisting Ide's sympathies and interference. But his daughter's spirited championship of the poor girl was really the influence that clinched matters with the puzzled Mr. Ide. "Rodburd," declared the Honorable Pulaski, approaching him on the contemptuous retreat from Barrett, "you've gone to work and stuck your nose into matters that don't concern you. Your man Wade there, instead of attending to your operation on Enchanted, has been spending his time beauing that girl around these woods and stirring up a blackmail scheme. I'm telling you as a friend that you'd better ship him. He's going to make more trouble for you than he has yet. He isn't fit for the woods. I found it out and fired him. Do the same yourself, or you'll never get your logs down and through the Hulling Machine." "Do you mean that you're going to fight him on the drive on account of your grudge?" demanded Ide. "I don't mean that," blustered Britt. "It's the man himself who'll queer you." "I don't believe it," replied Ide, stoutly. "There are some things goin' on here that I don't understand the inside of up to now; but as for that young man, I picked him for square the first time I laid my eyes on him at Castonia. I've had him looked up by friends of mine outside, and now I know he's square. You can't break up our partnership by that kind of talk, Britt. Now own up! What's the nigger in the woodpile here, anyway?" The little man was still unbending, but his eyes snapped with curiosity. But the Honorable Pulaski's shifty eyes dodged the inquiring stare of the Castonia man. The view down the tote road in the direction in which Nina Ide and Kate Arden had disappeared under convoy of Christopher Straight seemed to be a more welcome prospect than that frankly inquisitive face. And the view down the trail also suggested a safer topic for conversation. "I believe in indulgin' a girl's whims, Rod, but this is a time when you've let yourself go too far. That lucivee[2] kitten that your daughter has lugged off home set this fire that we've been fightin' up here. She set it maliciously, in the face and eyes of Sheriff Rodliff and myself. She's the worst one of the whole lot, and as a plantation officer you know the Skeets and Bushees pretty well. Are you goin' to let your girl take a critter like that back home with her?" He noted a flicker of consternation in the little man's eyes. "Now, don't be a fool in this thing. Let a half-dozen men run after that girl and fetch her back. She don't belong in any decent home. John Barrett and I have arranged a plan to take care of her and keep her out of mischief." [Footnote 2: Lynx, corruption of the French-Canadian name, _loup-cervier_.] But again the timber magnate's eyes failed to meet the test of Ide's frank stare. "I've known you a good many years, Pulaski," said he. "I've done a lot of business with you, and you can't fool me for a minute. You've been into a milk-pan, for I can see cream on your whiskers." "I'm only warnin' you not to harbor such a criminal!" stormed the other. His wrath slipped its leash once more. The presence of Dwight Wade, his very silence, seemed tacit proclamation of victory and the boast of it. "The girl belongs back here, and we're goin' to have her back. If your men don't fetch her, mine will." But Ide set his short legs astride a little more solidly. "As first assessor of the nearest plantation, I can handle the State pauper business of these parts, and do it without help," he said. "You mean that meddlin' girl of yours is runnin' it," taunted Britt. In his heart the fond father realized the force of the taunt, and knew why he was blocking that trail so resolutely. A mother bear would have shown no more determination in closing the retreat of her cubs. "If for any reason that I don't understand as yet you want the guardianship of that girl, Britt," he declared, "come down any time you want to and get your rights legally. But just now I'm tellin' you again that you and your men can't get past here. And if you do, you'll go with cracked heads." And once more Pulaski D. Britt substituted oaths for action. Stamping back towards his men, he saw Tommy Eye squatting like a jack-rabbit on the top of the Durfy camp. That guileless marplot offered a fair target for his rage against the world in general. "MacLeod," bawled Britt to the boss, who had not yet pulled himself together after that final flash of scorn from the eyes of Nina Ide, "pull that drunken loafer off that roof and yard the men back to camp!" "I'm discharged out of your crew, Mr. Britt," squealed Tommy, a quaver of apprehensiveness in his voice. "I've discharged myself. I've told the truth about what you was tryin' to do. So I ain't fit for you to hire." It was not the unconscious satire of the statement that put a wire edge on the Honorable Pulaski's temper. It was Tommy Eye's rebelliousness, displayed for the first time in a long life of utter subservience. "You won't be fit for anything but bait for a bear-trap ten minutes after I get you back to camp," bellowed the tyrant. "MacLeod, get that man down!" "Don't you want to hire a teamster, Mr. Ide?" bleated Tommy, crawfishing to the peak of the low roof. "You know what I be on twitchro'd, ramdown, or in a yard. You don't find my hosses calked or shoulder-galled." He hastened in nervous entreaty: "You hire me, Mr. Ide. I never had a team sluiced yet. You know what I can do in the woods." The plaintiveness of the frightened man's appeal touched Wade. He realized the weight of misery this pathetic turncoat might expect thereafter at the hands of Britt and his crew of "Busters." MacLeod was advancing towards the ladder that conducted to the roof, his sullen face lighting with a certain amount of satisfaction. Wade put himself before the ladder. "Hirin' men out from under isn't square woods style, Tommy," said Ide, shaking his head. "That man isn't a slave," protested Wade. "He is the only man I've found in these woods with courage enough to stand up for what's right, Mr. Ide. I don't believe in leaving him to those who are going to make him suffer for it." "Up to now, you dude, you've done about everything that shouldn't be done in the woods!" cried Britt. "But there's one thing you can't do, and that's take a man out of my crew." "It's an unwritten law, Wade," protested his partner. "It isn't square business to meddle with another operator's crew." "When a case like this comes up, it's time to change the law, then," declared Wade, with savageness of his own, the menacing proximity of MacLeod acting on his anger like bellows on coals. "I can't afford to be mixed into anything of the sort," persisted Ide. "And nobody but a fool would try it, Rod. I've warned you to get rid of him. You can see for yourself now! He don't fit. He's protectin' fire-bugs, standin' out against timber-owners' interests, and breaking every article in the code up here." "And I'm likely to keep on breaking the kind of code that seems to go north of Castonia!" cried the young iconoclast. For a moment his flaming eyes dwelt on the face of the Honorable John Barrett, and that gentleman, who had been wondering just what shaft his own recalcitrancy would next draw from this champion of the oppressed, looked greatly perturbed. "Mr. Ide, do you forbid me to hire this man?" "N-no," admitted his partner, rather grudgingly. "Then you're hired, Eye." Wade looked up and answered the gratitude in Tommy's eyes by a nod of encouragement. "Come down, my man, and get into our crew. You've acted man-fashion, and I'll back you up in it." "Let it stand--let it stand as it is," whispered Barrett, huskily, clutching at the arm of Britt as that furious gentleman surged past him. "If we tackle the young fool now he's apt to blab all he knows about me. It's a ticklish place. Handle it easy." "I'll handle it to suit myself!" stormed Britt, yanking himself loose. "You set back there if you want to, and play dry nurse to your twins--your family scandal on one arm and your governor's boom on the other. But when it comes to my own crew and my private business, by the Lord Harry, I'll operate without your advice!" He began to call on his men, rallying them with shrill cries. He ordered them to surround the camp and take the rebel. In the next breath he bade MacLeod to go up the ladder and pull Tommy down. "Poet" Larry Gorman, who had been gradually edging near the spot which he had sagely picked as the probable core of conflict, set himself suddenly before Colin MacLeod as the boss advanced towards Wade with a look in his eye that was blood-lust. MacLeod had a weather-beaten ash sled-stake. "Sure, and a gent like him don't fight with clubs," said Gorman. "We've all heard about his lickin' ye once, and man-fashion, too! Now, go get your reputation. Start with me." The redoubtable bard poked his shillalah into MacLeod's breast and drove him suddenly back. At this overture of combat the men for Enchanted came up with a rush. They met the "Busters" face to face and eye to eye. "We're all axe-tossers together, boys!" cried Gorman. "Ye know me and you've sung my songs, and ye know there's no truer woodsman than me ever chased beans round a tin plate. Now, Britt's men, if ye want to fight to keep a free man a slave when he wants to chuck his job, then come and fight. But may the good saints put a cramp into the arm of the man that fights against the interests of woodsmen all together!" Under most circumstances even such a cogent argument as this would not have stayed their hands. But coming from Larry Gorman, author of "Bushmen All," it made even the "Busters" stop and think a moment. And when MacLeod was first and only in renewing hostilities--obeying Britt's insistent commands--Gorman again held him off at the end of his bludgeon, and shouted: "Oh, my cock partridge, you're only brisk to get into the game because you're daffy over a girl. You'd wipe your feet on Tommy Eye or any other honest woodsman to polish your shoes for the courtin' of her." It was a taunt whose point the "Busters" realized and relished. It was even more forceful than Larry's first appeal. Some of the men grinned. All held back. But for MacLeod it was the provocation unforgivable. He drew back his arm and swept his stake at Larry's head. That master of stick-play warded and leaped back nimbly. "Fair, now! Fair!" he cried. "They're all lookin' at us, and there can't be dirty work." Gorman's face glowed, for he had won his point. His wit had balked a general combat. His massing fellows had tacitly selected him as their champion. He had put the thing on a plane where the "Busters" were a bit ashamed to take part. They turned their backs on Britt in order to watch the duellists more intently. They knew that Larry Gorman was vain of two things--his songs and his stick-swinging. "What say ye to waitin' till your shoulder ain't so stiff?" he inquired, with pointed reference to the injury MacLeod had received at the hands of Wade. His mock condolence pricked Colin to frenzy. He drove so vicious a blow at the bard that when the latter side-stepped the boss staggered against the side of the camp. "But sure I can make it even," said Larry, facing him again without discomposure; "for I'll sing a bit of song for you to dance by." The merry insolence of this brought a hoarse hoot of delight from both sides. And pressing upon his foe so actively that the crippled MacLeod was put to his utmost to ward thwacks off his head and shoulders, this sprightly Cyrano of the kingdom of spruce carolled after this fashion: "Come, all ye good shillaly men. Come, lis-ten unto me: Old Watson made a walkin'-cane, And used a popple-tree. The knob it were a rouser-- A rouser, so 'twas said-- And when ye sassed old Watson He would knock ye on the head." MacLeod got a tap that made his eyes shut like the snap of a patent cigar-cutter. "Chorus!" exhorted the lyrist. And they bellowed jovially: "Knick, knock, Hickory dock, And he'd hit ye on the head!" Larry leaped back, whirled his stick so rapidly that its bright peeled surface seemed to spit sparks, and again got over the boss's indifferent guard with a whack that echoed hollowly. MacLeod was too angry to retreat. He was too angry to see clearly, and his brain rang dizzily with the blows he had received. His injured shoulder ached with the violence of his exertions. But his pride kept him up, and forced him to meet the fresh attack that Gorman made--an attack in which that master seemed to be fencing mostly to mark the time of his jeering song: "Old Watson was a good old man, And taught the Bible class, But he didn't like the story Of the jawbone of the ass. 'Why didn't he make a popple-club,' So Uncle Watson said, 'And scotch the tribe of the Phlistereens By bangin' 'em on the head?'" The blow that time staggered MacLeod. "Chorus!" called "Poet" Larry. But before he could rap his antagonist at the end of that roaring iteration the Honorable Pulaski was between them, having at last contrived to fight his way through the ranks of the crowding men. He narrowly missed getting the blow intended for the boss. He yanked the sled-stake out of the nerveless grasp of the sweating and discomfited MacLeod, and raised it. "Be careful, Mr. Britt," yelped Gorman. His mien changed from gay insouciance to bitter fury. "You've struck me once in my life, and I took it and went on my way, because I was getting your grub and your pay. You strike me to-day, and I'll split your head open like a rotten punkin!" Britt had begun to rant that he could thrash the whole Enchanted crew single-handed. He was maddened by the lamblike demeanor of his own men. But he knew a desperate and dangerous man when he saw him. At that moment Larry Gorman was dangerous. The tyrant lowered his club and backed away, muttering some wordless recrimination at which the poet curled his lip. Seeing his chance, Tommy Eye hooked his legs about the uprights and slid down the ladder with one dizzy plunge, struck the ground in squatting fashion, and shot head-first into the ranks of his protectors. But after that masterly raillery of Gorman's there was no fight left in the "Busters." And his vengeful bearding of the Honorable Pulaski left the autocrat himself speechless and helpless. Tommy Eye's trembling hand fingered his chin, his wistful eyes peered over the shoulders of his new friends, and he knew he was safe. The "Busters," nudging each other and growling half-humorous comment, began to sift out of the yard of the Durfy hovel, and lounge back along the trail towards the Jerusalem camp. "D--n ye for cowards!" yelled the Honorable Pulaski, viciously flinging the ash sled-stake after them. "Oh, but they're not cowards!" cried Larry. In his bushman's soul he realized that even now a chance taunt, a random prick of word, might start the fight afresh. "Every man-jack there is known to me of old, and the good, brave boys they are! But your money ain't greasy enough, Mr. Britt, to make good men as them fight to take away a comrade's man-rights." The "Busters" nodded affirmation and kept on. One man stepped back and hallooed: "Right ye are, Larry Gorman! And when ye try to get your Enchanted logs first through the Hulling Machine next spring, ye'll find that we're the kind of gristle that can't be chawed. That'll be man's business, and no Teamster Tommy Eye to stub a toe over!" There was a grin on the man's face, but none the less it was a challenge, and Larry accepted it. "Sure, and we'll be there!" he called. "We'll be there with hair a foot long, pick-pole[3] in one hand, peavy-stick[4] in the other, ready for a game of jack-straws in the white water and a fist-jig on the bank!" [Footnote 3: An ashen pole, shod with an iron screw-point.] [Footnote 4: The Maine variety of the cant-dog, illustrated on the cover.] "And will ye write it all into a song, Larry Gorman?" "All into a song it shall go!" And roaring a good-natured cheer over their shoulders, the "Busters" filed away into the mouth of Pogey Notch. "You may as well move, boys," ordered Rodburd Ide. "This business here isn't swampin' yards nor buildin' camps!" The men for Enchanted cheerfully shouldered dunnage-sacks, and in their turn set off up the Notch. "Here's Tommy Eye's bill of his time, Mr. Britt," said Gorman, holding out a crumpled paper to the choking tyrant. Tommy himself had prudently departed, bulwarked by his new comrades. "I'll not pay it!" blustered Britt. "He broke the contract!" "No more does he want you to pay it," replied Larry, serenely, speaking in behalf of the amiable prodigal. "He says to credit it on that one drink of whiskey he took out of your bottle, and when he earns more money workin' for honest men he'll pay ye the rest." He tore the paper across and across, snapped the bits in Britt's face, turned, and followed the crew. CHAPTER XIX THE HOME-MAKERS OF ENCHANTED "The clank of the press and the scream of the saws, The grunt of the grinder that slavers and chaws At the fibre o' pulp-wood, the purr of the plane, Sing only one song to the big woods o' Maine. So here's for a billion down race-way and sluice-- Hell for the hemlock, the pine, and the spruce." --Off for the Woods. John Barrett was first to break the embarrassed silence that fell upon the four men left at the camp. Rodburd Ide's brows were wrinkled, and his lips were parting to ask the questions that his curiosity urged. Britt was wrathfully gazing after the insolent Larry. Dwight Wade had taken up his pack and calipers, and was waiting for Ide with some impatience. "Mr. Wade," began the Umcolcus baron, nervously, "I hope you will understand my position in this matter, and see why it was necessary to make some change in the plan we discussed on Jerusalem." "I sha'n't try to understand it," snapped Wade. "You volunteered promises. I took those promises to the person most interested, and you've seen fit to drop out from under. That ends our business--all the business we had in common, Mr. Barrett." But the baron was anxious to placate. He began guarded explanations, to which Ide was listening intently, but Wade cut them short with a scorn there was no mistaking. "The only sort of interest I took in that unfortunate girl has been maliciously misinterpreted, Mr. Barrett. She was thrown on my hands in a way that you thoroughly understand. Mr. Ide, as a plantation officer, has relieved me of the responsibility. You can talk with him hereafter." "But what--what are you going to say to him?" faltered Barrett, forced to show his anxious fear, since Wade was moving away. In his physical weakness, in the illness that was sapping his nerve, he became wistfully paltering. "Nothing," replied the young man, curtly, but with a decisiveness there was no misunderstanding. "The matter has ceased to be any business of mine. My business hereafter--and I say this to my partner--is concerned wholly and entirely with certain lumbering operations on Enchanted township." He went away, following the crew. Rodburd Ide, eager to be gone, and seeing in the affair thus flatly dropped by Wade only a phase of the older animosity between Britt and the young man--a quarrel that might seek any avenue for expression, even a State pauper--demanded of Barrett: "Do you lay any special claim to the girl?" His tone was that of an official only. "Of course he doesn't," broke in Britt, seeing that his associate was groping for a reply. "We did think of trying to help her, but what's the use? There isn't any more gratitude in that sculch than there is in a pine knot. Send her back to the tribe." The little Castonia magnate looked relieved. "She's all right with my girl till I get home," he said. "Then the affair will take care of itself, like all those things do." Barrett had picked up one of the discarded bludgeons and was supporting himself on it. His legs trembled visibly when he walked to Ide's side. "Rodburd," he said, appealingly, "I can see that you think this thing strange. I don't want you to have wrong ideas. You and I have known each other too long to get into quarrels. You have seen that I have been trying to smooth matters here to-day. I can't talk it over with you now. I'm sick--I'm a sick man, Rodburd! I've been through a dreadful experience up here." "You don't look well," returned Ide, solicitously, his ever-ready sympathy enlisted. Barrett's face was haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. He wavered on his feet, tipping from heel to toe like a drunken man. "You ought to get out of these woods as quick as you can," the Castonia man went on. Even Britt saw now that his associate was in a bad way. He gave a keen glance at him, and shouted to MacLeod, who was waiting at the edge of the woods, "Send back four of my men!" "I feel dreadfully," mourned Barrett. His grit and his excitement had been keeping him up. Now, like most strong men who have to confess that they are conquered, he gave way to his illness with utter abandonment of courage. "Mr. Barrett," said Ide, surveying him pityingly, "I can see that you're a sick man. I don't want to say that to frighten you, but because you ought to know it. You'd better only try to make Castonia, and have a doctor sent there. My girl will be there as soon as you are. You go to my house, and get doctored up before you tackle the trip down-river. That buckboard ride will kill you if you try it in the shape you're in now." "You'd better do as he says, John," advised Britt, checking the timber baron's feeble protests. "I'm going to have these four men make a litter for you and lug you. You can stand that sort of ridin', but unless you are in better shape when you get to Castonia you wouldn't be good for that stage ride. Use common-sense, and rest up at Rodburd's house." "Give the men their orders," whispered the little Castonia magnate in an aside to Britt. "It's fever, and a bad one if I ain't mistaken. By the time he's got to my place he'll probably be too sick to give any orders of his own. I never saw a man grow sick so fast. Tell the men to leave him there." He talked impatiently, for his crew had disappeared up the trail. "I've got to be hurryin'," he added. "Mr. Barrett, make my home yours!" he cried over his shoulder, as he trotted off. "I'll be back in a few days--as soon as I get this crew of mine located." The four men were already at work securing poles and boughs for the litter. Barrett sat down upon a tussock, and held his throbbing head in his hands. He began weakly to complain that Britt had made a mistake in bringing his men and insisting on possession of the girl. The Honorable Pulaski promptly checked the incoherent expostulations of the stumpage baron. "No, I haven't committed you, either," he blurted. "Bluff it out! It's the only way to do. It's the way I advised you to do in the first place. The thing looks big to you here in the woods. You're down on the level with it. Get back into the city, and get your tail-coat on and your dignity, and sit up on top of that governor's boom of yours, and the story will only be political blackmail if they try it on you. But they won't. That Wade fellow is one of those righteous sort of asses that like to read moral lessons to other people, and especially to you, so he can work out his grudge. But he's all done. I know the sort. The thing began to scorch his fingers and he chucked it. He's got enough to attend to in these woods. Don't you worry." "But I do worry," mourned Barrett. "And there's the girl to consider. God save me, Pulaski, she's mine! Her looks show it. I can't sleep nights after this, unless she is taken care of in a decent way." "There'll be a dozen methods of doin' it when the time is ripe," urged the other, consolingly. "As it is now, you get out of these woods and stay out, and attend to your business--which is my business, too, when it comes to the governor matter. By ----, you've seen enough in this trip to understand that we haven't got any too safe timber laws as it is. If the farmers get control next trip it means trouble for such of us as take to the tall timber. Buck up, man! Don't believe for a minute that we're goin' to let a college dude and a State pauper queer you. The thing will work itself out." He uttered a sudden snort of disgust, gazing over Barrett's shoulder. "Foolish Abe" of the Skeets had edged out of the bush, the silence after the uproar of voices and conflict encouraging him. He seemed pitifully bewildered. An instinct almost canine prompted him to take the trail to the south, for his only friend, the girl of the tribe, had gone that way. But a strange female had gone with her, and of strange females he entertained unspeakable fear. "Here, you cross-eyed baboon," called the Honorable Pulaski, "go! Scoot!" He pointed north in the direction in which the Enchanted crew had disappeared. "Young man want you. Follow him. Stay with him. Run!" He picked up his discarded sled-stake, and the fool hurried away towards the Notch. "I'd like to see that human nail-keg plastered onto the Enchanted crew for the winter," remarked Britt, with malice. "There's no fillin' him up. He'll eat as much as three men, and that Wade is just enough of a soft thing not to turn him out. If I can't bore an enemy with a pod-auger, John, I'll do it with a gimlet--a gimlet will let more or less blood." Five minutes later Barrett was borne on his way south, his courage braced by some final arguments from his iron associate, his mind made up to adopt the course of indignant bluff suggested by the belligerent Britt. And Britt was stumping north, driving the blubbering Abe before him with sundry hoots and missiles. When the poor creature came crawling to the fire on hands and knees at dusk that evening, hairy, pitiable, and drooling with hunger, Rodburd Ide accepted him with resignation, though he recognized Britt's petty malice; for unless he were driven, Abe Skeet would never have come past a well-stocked lumber-camp to follow wanderers into the wilderness. That night the Enchanted crew camped on Attean Stream, a short day's journey from their destination. The tired men snatched supper from their packs and fell back snoring, their heads on their dunnage-bags. They were away in the first flush of the morning, Rodburd Ide leading with his partner. Wade welcomed the little man's absorbed interest in the business ahead of them. Ide asked no questions about the incident at Durfy's. Wade put the hideous topic as far behind other thoughts as he could, and soon other thoughts crowded it out. As they passed from the zone of striped maple, round-wood, witch-hobble, and mountain holly that Mother Nature had drawn across her naked breast after the rude hand of Pulaski Britt had stripped the virgin growth, his heart lifted. Under the great spruces of Enchanted the town's bricks, streets, and human passions seemed very far away. Before he slept that night he had had an experience that thrilled the sense of the primitive self hidden within him, as it is hidden in all men, and covered by conventions. He had staked the metes and bounds, the corners, the frontage, all the dimensions of a new home, where no roof except the crowns of trees had ever shut sunlight off the earth. Mankind in general opens eyes within walls that the hands of those coming before have built. Many have no occasion to seek ever for other quarters than those their fathers have given them. With most the limit of exploration is the quest for a new rental. Mankind who build, build along settled streets, first taking note that sewers and water systems have been installed. Even in the woods most crews come up to find that the advance skirmishers have builded main camp, meal camp, horse-hovels, and wangan. Owing to the sudden forming of Rodburd Ide's partnership with the young man whom Fate threw in his way, and his equally sudden determination to operate on virgin Enchanted, there had been no time for preliminaries. Even the tote teams with the first of the winter's supplies were miles away down the trail, for in the woods the human two-foot outclasses the equine four-foot. Therefore, Wade, perspiring in the forefront of the toilers, saw the first tree topple, heard it crash outward from the site of the camp, and tugged with the others when it was set into place as the sill. When he stood back and wiped his forehead and gazed on that one lonesome log it made roofless out-doors seem bigger and more threatening. The rain was pattering from a cold sky. The thrall of centuries of housed ancestors was on him. Roof and walls had attached themselves to his sentiency, even as the shell of the snail is attached to its pulp. But the next moment Larry Gorman started a song, and the rollicking hundred men about him took it up and toiled with merry thoughtlessness of all except that God's good greenwood was about them and God's sky above them, and Wade bent again to labor, ashamed that he had counted shingles and plaster as standing for so much. They put up eight-log walls for the main camp, notching the ends. A hundred willing men made the buildings grow like toadstools. While the walls were going up men laid floors of poles shaved flat on one side. Others brought moss and chinked the spaces between the logs of the walls. The first team up brought tarred paper and the few boards needed for tables and like uses. The tarred paper and cedar splints roofed all comfortably. The second team brought stove, tin dishes, and raw staples--and cook and cookee walked behind. And when old Christopher Straight came at the tail of the procession as fast as he could hurry back from Castonia settlement, the camps stood nearly complete under the frown of Enchanted Mountain, Enchanted Stream gurgling over brown rocks at the door. The distant whick-whack of axes told where the swampers were clearing the way, and the tearing crash of trees punctuated the ceaseless "ur-r rick-raw!" of the cross-cut saws. The only axe scarf on Ide's trees was the nick necessary to direct their fall. They were felled by the saw. Two days of exploration on the spruce benches straight back from the stream showed up several million feet of black growth easily available for a first season's operation. Ide, Wade, and old Christopher cruised, pacing parallels and counting trees. And when they sat down on an outcropping of ledge the young man made so many sagacious observations that Ide's eyes opened in amazement. "Where did you learn lumberin'?" he demanded. "I wasn't aware that I knew it--not as it is viewed from a practical stand-point," replied Wade, humbly. "I was going to ask you in a moment if you wouldn't like to have me keep still so that you and Christopher could talk sense." "I never heard better opinions on a stand of timber and a lay of land," affirmed his partner. "It looks as though you'd been holdin' out on me," he added, with a grim smile. The young man smiled back. There was a certain grateful pride in his expression. "I know how old woodsmen look at book-learned chaps, Mr. Ide. Pulaski Britt told me once. I was simply trying on you a bit of an experiment with my little knowledge of books. I was waiting to have you and Christopher pull me up short. I'm rather surprised to find that you think what I said was good sense. But after a book-fellow has bumped against practical men like--like Mr. Britt for a time, he begins to distrust his books. It's simply this way, Mr. Ide: I had a few young men in my high-school who were interested in forestry of the modern sort, and I worked with them to encourage them as much as I could. It is almost impossible for a reading-man in these days not to take an interest in the protection of our forests, for the folks at Washington are making it the great topic of the times." "Well," remarked Ide, with a sigh of appreciation, "I never read a book on forestry in my life, and I never heard of a lumberman in these parts who ever had. But if you can get facts like those you've stated out of books, I reckon some of us better spend our winter evenin's readin' instead of playin' pitch pede." He got up and gave the young man a complimenting palm. "Wade," he said, earnestly, "I'll own up that I've been a little prejudiced against book-fellows myself. Instead of givin' an ignorant man the contents of the book--the juice of it, as you might say---in a way that won't hurt, they are so anxious to have him know that it's book-learnin' they've got, they'll bang him across the face with it, book-covers and all. I like your knowledge, because it's goin' to help us in handlin' this thing we've bit off up here. But I'll be blamed if I don't like your modesty best of all." He picked up his calipers, stuck them under his arm, and started for camp with a haste that showed full confidence in his partner's ability. And the next morning he buttoned the camp letters in his coat, and started south for Castonia with the outgoing tote team. "I don't worry about this end," he said, at parting, "and you needn't worry about mine. Don't be afraid of going hungry. There's nothin' like full stomachs to make axes and saws run well. It will have to be hand-to-mouth till snow flies, then I'll slip you in stores enough to fill that wangan to the roof. Good heart, my boy! We're goin' to make some money." Wade followed him to the edge of the clearing with his first sense of loneliness tugging within him. "Safe home to you, Mr. Ide," he said, "and my respectful regards to Miss Nina, if you will take them. I suppose--she will--probably--the girl she took away--" he stammered. "By thunder mighty!" cried the Castonia magnate, whirling on him, "I'd forgotten all about that Skeet girl, or Arden girl, or whatever they call her." He eyed the young man with a dawning of his old curiosity, but Wade met his gaze frankly. "The affair of the girl is not mine at all," he said. "Simply because she seemed superior to the tribe she was with, I hoped Mr. Barrett would do as he partly promised--use a few dollars of his money to help her from the muck. Such cases appeal to me, because I'm not accustomed to seeing them, perhaps." "If my girl is interested in that poor little wildcat, you needn't think twice about her bein' taken good care of," cried the admiring father. And gazing into the wholesome eyes and candid face of the little man, Wade reflected that perhaps Fate had handled a problem better for John Barrett's abandoned daughter than he himself, in his resentful zeal, had planned. He shook Ide's hand hard, and, with the picture of John Barrett's other daughter in his dimming eyes and the love of John Barrett's other daughter burning in his lonely heart, he turned back towards the woods, whose fronded arms, tossing in the October wind, beckoned him to his duty. CHAPTER XX THE HA'NT OF THE UMCOLCUS "For even in these days P. I.'s shake At word of the phantom of Brassua Lake; And all of us know of the witherlick That prowls by the shores of the Cup-sup-tic; Of the side-hill ranger whose eyeballs gleam In the light of the moon at Abol stream." --The Ha'nts. A few days after the men of Enchanted were housed, those who gazed southeast from the mountain shoulder saw a smear of white on the horizon. It was the first snow on lofty Katahdin. Tommy Eye greeted that sight most enthusiastically. Like a good teamster, he was anxious for "slippin'." "Bless the saints, old Winter has pitched camp down there, and is mixin' up a batch of our kind of weather," he said to Wade. "Injun Summer had better grab up what's left of her flounces and get out from under." But Winter proceeded about his business with majestic deliberateness. He patted down the duff under the big trees with beating, sleety rains; and when the ground was ready for the sowing of the mighty crop, he piled his banks of clouds up from the south, and, though he gave the coast folk rain, he brought the men of the north woods what they were longing for--snow a-plenty; snow that heaped the arms of the spruces, filled all the air with smothering clouds, and blanketed the ground. Wade, blinking the big flakes out of his eyes as he breasted the swirling storm, came across to the main camp from the wangan, his pipe and tobacco-pouch in hand. He rejoiced in his heart to see the snow driving so thickly that the camp window was only a blur of yellow light smudging the whiteness. This first real storm of the winter promised two feet on a level, and guaranteed the slipping on ram-downs and twitch-roads. The cheer of the storm permeated all the camp on Enchanted. The cook beamed on Wade with floury face. The bare ground had meant bare shelves. He predicted the first supply-team for the morrow. He had been thriftily "making a mitten out of a mouse's ear" for several weeks. Tommy Eye, ploughing back from his good-night visit to the horse-hovel, proclaimed his general pleasure for two reasons: No more bare-ground dragging for the bob-sleds; no more too liberal dosing of bread dough with soap to make the flour "spend" in lighter loaves. "Eats like wind and tastes like a laundry," Tommy had grumbled. The boss of the choppers moved along to give Wade the end of the "deacon seat," and grinned amiably. "That's a cheerful old song she's singing overhead to-night," he remarked. It needed a lumberman's interpretation to give it cheer. There were far groanings, there were near sighs; there were silences, when the soft rustle of the snow against the window-glass made all the sound; there were sudden, tempestuous descents of the wind that rattled the panes and made the throat of the open stove "whummle" like a neighing horse. Wade lighted his pipe with deep content. He enjoyed the rude fraternity of the big camp. There was but little garrulity. Those who talked did so in a drawling monotone that was keyed properly to the monotone of the soughing trees outside--elbows on knees and eyes on the pole floor. Clamor would not have suited that little patch of light niched in the black, brooding night of the forest. But there was comfort within. The blue smoke from pipe bowls curled up and mingled with the shadows dancing against the low roof. The woollens, hung to dry on the long poles, draped the dim openings of the bunks. The "spruce feathers" within were still fresh, and resinous odors struggled against the more athletic fragrance of the pipes. Most of the men loafed along the "deacon seat," relaxed in the luxury of laziness for that precious three hours between supper and nine o'clock. A few, bending forward to catch the light from the bracket-lamp, whittled patiently at what lumbermen call "doodahs"--odd little toys destined for some best girl or admiring youngster at home. "Windy" McPheters regaled those with an ear for music by cheerful efforts on his mouth-harp, coming out strong on the tremolo, and jigging the heel of his moccasined foot for time. And when "Windy" had no more breath left, "Hitchbiddy" Wagg sang, after protracted persuasion, the only song he knew--though one song of that character ought to suffice for any man's musical attainments. Its length may be understood when it is stated that it detailed all the campaigns of the first Napoleon, and "Hitchbiddy" sang it doubled forward, his elbows on his crossed knees, and the toe of his moccasin flapping for the beat. He came down "the stretch" on the last verse with vigor and expression: "Next at Waterloo those Frenchmen fought, Commanded by brave Bonaparte [pronounced 'paught'], Assisted by Field Marshal Ney-- He never was bribed by gold. But when Grouchy let the Prussians in It broke Napoleon's heart within. 'Where are my thirty thousand men? Alas, stranger, for I am sold.' He led one gallant charge across, Saying, 'Alas, brave boys, I fear 'tis lost.' The field was in confusion with dead and dying woes. When the bunch of roses did advance, The English entered into France-- The grand Conversation [_sic_] of Napoleon arose." To signal that the song was done, "Hitchbiddy" dropped the tune on the last line, and in calm, direct, matter-of-fact recitative announced that "the grand Conversation of Napoleon arose." In the fifty years during which that song has been sung in the Maine lumber-camps, no one has ever displayed the least curiosity as to that last line. Away back, somewhere, a singer twisted a nice, fat word of the original song, and it has stayed twisted, and no one has tried to trouble it by idle questions. "Hitchbiddy's" most rapt listener was Foolish Abe of the Skeets. The shaggy giant squatted behind the stove beside the pile of shavings he was everlastingly whittling for the cook-fire. It was the only task that Abe's poor wits could master, and he toiled at it unceasingly, paying thus and by a sort of canine gratitude for the food he received and the cast-off clothes tossed to him. A mumbled chorus of commendation followed the song. But the chopping-boss, his humorous gaze on the witling, remarked: "I reckon I'll have to rule that song out, after this, 'Hitchbiddy.'" "What for?" demanded the amazed songster. "It seems to have a damaging and cavascacious effect on the giant intellect of Perfessor Skeet," remarked the boss, with irony. "Look at him!" Abe was on his knees, stretching up his neck and twitching his head from side to side with the air of an agitated fowl. "We'll make it a rule after this to have only common songs, like Larry Gorman's," continued the boss, with a quizzical glance at the woodsman poet. "These high operas are too thrillin'." But those who stared at Abe promptly saw that his attention was not fixed on matters within, but without. "He heard something," muttered one of the men. "He's got ears like a cat, anyway." If the giant had heard something it was plain that he heard it again, for he dropped his knife and scrambled to his feet. "Me go! Yes!" he roared, gutturally; and, obeying some mysterious summons, his haste showing its authority, he ran out of the camp. "Catch that fool!" yelled the boss. But the first of those who tumbled out into the dingle after him were not quick enough. The night and the swirling storm had swallowed him. A few zealous pursuers ran a little way, trying to follow his tracks, lost them, and then came back for lanterns. "It's no use, Mr. Wade," advised the boss. "He's got the strength of a mule and the legs of an ostrich. The men will only be takin' chances for nothin'. He's gone clean out of his head, and there's no tellin' when he'll stop." And Wade regretfully gave orders to abandon the chase. He and the others stood for a time gazing about them into the storm, now sifting thicker and swirling more wildly. He was oppressed by the happening, as though he had seen some one leap to death. What else could a human being hope for in that waste? "He's as tough as a bull moose, and just as used to bein' out-doors," remarked the boss, consolingly. "When he's had his run he'll smell his way back." Teamster Tommy Eye was the most persistent pursuer. He came in, stamping the snow, after all the others had reassembled in the camp to talk the matter over. "Did ye hear it?" demanded Tommy. "I did, and I run like a tiger so I could say that at last I'd seen one. But I didn't see it. I only heard it." "What?" asked Wade, amazed. "The ha'nt," said Tommy. "I've always wanted to see one. I was first out, and I heard it." "What did it sound like?" gasped one of the men, his superstition glowing in his eyes. "It's bad luck forever to try to make a noise like a ha'nt," said Tommy, with decision. "Nor will I meddle with its business--no, s'r. 'Twould come for me. Take a lucivee, an Injun devil, a bob-sled runner on grit, and the gabble of a loon, mix 'em together, and set 'em, and skim off the cream of the noise, and it would be something like the loo-hoo of a ha'nt. It's awful on the nerves. I reckon I'll take a pull at the old T. D." He rammed his pipe bowl with a finger that trembled visibly. "I've seen one," declared, positively, the man who had inquired in regard to the sound. "I've seen one, but I never heard one holler. I didn't know it was a ha'nt till I'd seen it half a dozen times." "Good eye!" sneered Tommy. "What! did it have to come up and introduce itself, and say, 'Please, Mister MacIntosh, I'm a ha'nt'?" "I've seen one," insisted the man, sullenly. "I was teamin' for the Blaisdell Brothers on their Telos operation, and I see it every day for most a week. It walked ahead of my team close to the bushes, side of the road, and it was like a man, and it always turned off at the same place and went into the woods." "Do you call that a ha'nt--a man walkin' 'longside the road in daylight--some hump-backed old spruce-gum picker?" demanded Tommy. "The last time I see it I noticed that it didn't leave any tracks," declared the narrator. "It walked right along on the light snow, and didn't leave any tracks. Funny I didn't notice that before, but I didn't." "You sartinly ain't what the dictionary would set down as a hawk-eyed critter," remarked Tommy, maliciously. "It must have been kind of discouragin', ha'ntin' you." "It was a ha'nt," insisted the man, with the same doggedness. "I got off'n my team right then and there, and got a bill of my time and left, and the man that took my place got sluiced by the snub-line bustin', and about three thousand feet of spruce mellered the eternal daylights out of him. Say what you're a mind to--I saw a thing that walked on light snow and didn't make tracks, and I left, and that feller got sluiced--everybody in these woods knows that a feller got killed on Telos two winters ago." "Oh, there's ha'nts," agreed Tommy, earnestly. "Mebbe you saw one; only you got at your story kind of back-ended." The old teamster had been watching incredulity settle on the face of Dwight Wade, and this heresy in one to whom his affections had attached touched his sensitiveness. "You're probably thinkin' what most of the city folks say out loud to us, Mr. Wade," he went on, humbly. "They say there ain't any such things as ha'nts in the woods. It would be easy to say there ain't any bull moose up here because they ain't also seen walkin' down a city street and lookin' into store windows. But I'd like to see one of those city folks try to sleep in the camp that's built over old Jumper Joe's grave north of Sourdnaheunk." There was a general mumble of indorsement. It became evident to Wade that the crew of the Enchanted were pretty stanch adherents of the supernatural. "Hitchbiddy" Wagg cleared his throat and sang, for the sake of verification: "He rattled underneath, and he rattled overhead; Never in my life was I ever scared so! And I did not dast to lay down in that bed Where they laid out old Joe." "They can't use that place for anything but a depot-camp now," stated Tommy; "and it's a wonder to me that they can even get pressed hay to stay there overnight." "Well, from what I know of human nature," smiled Wade, "I should think that hay and provisions would stay better overnight in a haunted camp than in one without protection." He rapped out his pipe ashes on the hearth of the stove and rose to go. "And don't you believe that it was a ha'nt that called out Foolish Abe?" asked Tommy, eager to make a convert. "You saw that for yourself, Mr. Wade." "I am afraid to think of what may have happened to that poor creature," replied Wade, earnestly, looking into the black night through the door that he had opened. He heard the chopping-boss call: "Nine! Turn in!" as he strove with the storm between the main camp and the wangan, and when he stamped into his own shelter the yellow smudge winked out behind him--such is the alacrity of a sleepy woods crew when it has a boss who blows out the big lamp on the dot of the hour. He shuddered as he shut out the blackness. He had no superstitions, but the unaccountable flight of the witling, and the eerie tales offered in explanation and the mystic night of storm in that wild forest waste unstrung him. He went to sleep, finding comfort in the dull glow of the lantern that he left lighted. Its glimmer in his eyes when the cook called shrilly in the gray dawn, "Grub on ta-a-abe!" sent his first thoughts to the wretch who had abandoned himself to the storm. He hoped to find Abe whittling shavings in the cook-house. "No, s'r, no sign of him, hide nor hair," said the cook, shaking his head. "Reckon the ha'nt flew high with him." The snow still sifted through the trees--a windless storm now. The forest was trackless. "For a man to start out in the woods in that storm was like jumpin' into a hole and pullin' the hole in after him," observed the chopping-boss. That remark might have served as the obituary of poor Abe Skeet. The swampers, the choppers, the sled-tenders, the teamsters, trudging away to their work, had their minds full of their duties and their mouths full of other topics during the day. And all day the cook bleated his cheerful little prophecy in the ears of the cookee: "The tote team will be in by night." That morning, with his rolling-pin, he had pounded "hungryman's ratty-too" on the bottom of the last flour-barrel to shake out enough for his batch of biscuits, and he burned up the barrel, even though the pessimistic cookee predicted that "the human nail-kags" would eat both kitchen mechanics if the food gave out. Dwight Wade, at nightfall, surveyed the bare shelves of the cook camp with some misgivings. "Don't you worry," advised the master of that domain. "Rod Ide ain't waitin' three weeks for good slippin' jest for the sake of settin' in his store window and singin' 'Beautiful snow'! He sure got a load of supplies started on that first skim o' snow, and they're due here to-night--" The cook paused, kicked at the cookee for slamming the stove-cover at that crucial moment of listening, and shrilled, "There she blows!" Wade heard the jangle of bells, and hastened to meet the dim bulk of the loaded sled. The driver did not reply to his delighted hail, but before he had time to wonder at that silence some one struggled out of the folds of a shrouding blanket and sprang from the sled. It was a woman; and while he stood and stared at her, she ran to him and grasped his hands and clung to him in pitiful abandonment of grief. It was Nina Ide. In the dim light Wade could see tears and heart-broken woe on her face. He had had some experience with the self-poise of the daughter of Rodburd Ide. This emotion, which checked with sobs the words in her throat, frightened him. "It's a terrible thing, and I don't understand it, Mr. Wade," quavered the driver. He slipped down from the load and came and stood beside them. "We was in Pogey Notch, and the wind was blowin' pretty hard there, and I told the young ladies they'd better cover their heads with the blankets. And I pulled the canvas over me, 'cause the snow stung so, and I didn't see it when it happened--and I don't understand it." "When what happened?" Wade gasped. "They took her--whatever they was," stated the driver, in awed tones. "I didn't see 'em or hear 'em take her. And I don't know jest where we was when they took her. I went back and hunted, but it wasn't any use. They was gone, and her with 'em. They wasn't humans, Mr. Wade. It was black art, that's what it was." "Probably," said Tommy Eye, with deep conviction. He had led the group that came out of the camp to greet the tote team. "There were ha'nts here last night. They got Foolish Abe." "They sartinly seem to mean the Skeet family this time," said the driver. "It was that Skeet girl--the pretty one that's called Kate--that they got off'n my team." The men of the camp, surrounding the new arrivals, surveyed Nina Ide with respectful but eager curiosity. "If I was a ha'nt," growled the chopping-boss, "and had my pick, I reckon I'd have shown better judgment." His remark was under his breath, and the girl did not hear it. She clung to Wade. Her agitation communicated itself to him. A sense of calamity told him that there was trouble deeper than the disappearance of the waif of the Skeet tribe. Her words confirmed his suspicion. "My God, what are we going to do, Mr. Wade?" she sobbed. "I planned it; I encouraged her. It was wild, imprudent, reckless. I ought to have realized it. But I knew how you felt towards her. I wanted to help her and--and you!" Something in the horror of her wide-open eyes told him plainly now that this could not be merely the question of the loss of one of the Skeets. And with that conviction growing out of bewildered doubt, he went with her when she led him away towards the office camp. A suspicion wild as a nightmare flashed into his mind. In the wangan she faced him, as woe-stricken, as piteously afraid, as though she were confessing a crime against him. "It was John Barrett's daughter Elva on that team with me," she choked. "She wanted to come--but I'll be honest with you, Mr. Wade. She wouldn't have come if I hadn't encouraged her--yes, put the idea into her head and the means into her hands. I've been a fool, Mr. Wade, but I'll not be a coward and lie about my responsibility." He gazed at her, his face ghastly white in the lantern-light. "She wanted to--she was coming here--she is lost?" he mumbled, as though trying to fathom a mystery. Infinite pity replaced the distraction in the girl's face. "Forgive me, Mr. Wade!" she cried. "Not for my folly--you can't overlook that. Forgive me for wasting time. But I didn't know how to say it to you." She put her woman's weakness from her, though the struggle was a mighty one, and her face showed it. "I won't waste any more words, Mr. Wade. John Barrett has been at my father's house for weeks. He has been near death--he is near death now, but the big doctors from the city say that he will get well. He must have been through some terrible trouble up here." She looked at him with questioning gaze, as though to ask how much he knew of the strain that had prostrated John Barrett, the stumpage king. "He was in great danger--and his exposure--" stammered Wade. But she went on, hurriedly: "It was fever, and it went to his head, and he talked and raved. His daughter came from the city and nursed him, and she has heard him talking, talking, talking, all the time--talking about you, and how you saved him from the fire; talking about a woman who is dead and a man who is alive, and a girl--" "Does Elva Barrett--know?" he demanded, hoarsely. "It was too plain not to know--after she saw that girl, Mr. Wade. The girl was there at our house--she is there now. It isn't all clear to us yet. We have only the ravings of a sick man--and the face of that girl. Father doesn't understand all of it, either. But he knows that you do, although you haven't told him." She clutched her trembling hands to hold them steady. "And he has talked and talked of other things, Mr. Wade--the sick man has. He has said that you have his reputation, and his prospects, and the happiness of his family all in your hands, and that you are waiting to ruin him because he has abused you; and he has tossed in his bed and begged some one to come to you and promise you--buy you--coax you--" "It's a cursed lie--infernal, though a sick man babble it!" Wade cried, heart-brokenly. "It holds me up as a blackmailer, Miss Nina. It makes me seem a wretch in Elva's eyes. And yet--was she--was she coming here thinking I was that kind--coming here to beg for her father?" he demanded. "We--I--oh, I don't like to tell you we believed that of you," the girl sobbed. "No, I didn't believe it. But if you had only heard him lying there talking, talking! And you were the one that he seemed to fear. And we thought if you knew of it you wouldn't want him to worry that way. And if we could carry back some word of comfort from you to him--She wanted to come to you, Mr. Wade, and I encouraged her and helped her to come--because--because--" The girl caught her breath in a long sob, and cried: "She loves you, Mr. Wade! And I've pitied you and her ever since that day in the train when I found out about it." It was not a moment to analyze emotions. Nina Ide, in her ingenuous declaration of Elva Barrett's motives in seeking him, had made his heart for an instant blaze with joy. For that instant he forgot the shame of the baseless babblings of the sick man, the awful mystery of Elva Barrett's disappearance. The blow of it--that Elva Barrett was gone--that she was somewhere in those woods alone, or worse than alone, had stunned him at first. Groping out of that misery, striving to realize what it meant, he had faced first the hideous thought that she might believe him mean enough to seek revenge. Then came the dazzling hope that Elva Barrett so loved him that she adventured--imprudently and recklessly, but none the less bravely--in order to make her love known. Then over all swept the black bitterness of the calamity. "But you must have some suspicion--some hint how she was taken or how she went!" he cried. "In Heaven's name, Miss Nina, think! think! You heard some outcry! There was some hidden rock or stump to jar the sled! The man did not search along the road far enough! She must be lost--lost!" and his voice rose almost to a shriek. "There was no cry, Mr. Wade. And I went back with the man. We searched; we called--we even went as far as the place where we covered ourselves with the blankets. We could find no track, and the snow was driving and sifting. The man does not know it was Elva Barrett," she added. He suddenly remembered the driver's statement. "She came in Kate Arden's clothes," confided the girl. "Those who saw her ride out of Castonia, Mr. Wade, thought it was Kate Arden. And Kate Arden, in Elva Barrett's dress, is sitting now beside John Barrett, holding his hand, and his daughter's face has soothed him. He thinks it is his daughter beside him. They are so like, Kate and Elva. We waited until we had made sure. It was my plan. And Kate obeyed me. I don't know what she is thinking of. She is sullen and silent, but she took the place by his bed when I told her to. Then it could not be said that John Barrett's daughter had come seeking Dwight Wade." Even in this stress he could still feel gratitude for the subterfuge that checked the tongues of gossip. "I wish father had more authority over me," sobbed the girl. "He wouldn't have let us come on such a crazy errand if I hadn't bossed him into it." The lament was so guilelessly feminine that Wade put aside his own woe for the moment to think of the girl's distress. "This will be your home until I can send you back, Miss Nina," he said, gently. "I will have old Christopher bring in your supper and mend your fire." "And about her, Mr. Wade?" she cried. "I'm going," he said, simply, but with such earnestness that her eyes flooded again with tears. CHAPTER XXI THE MAN WHO CAME FROM NOWHERE "He hadn't a word for no one, not even for me or Mike, And whenever we spoke or tried to joke, he growled like a Chessy tyke." Dwight Wade found a lively conference in progress in the main camp. Tommy Eye was doing most of the talking, and it was plain that his opinions carried weight, for no one presumed to gainsay him. "And I'll say to you what I'm tellin' to them here, Mr. Wade," continued the teamster. "You saw for yourself what happened here last night. A ha'nt done it. And the ha'nt done this last. They're pickin' Skeets right and left." "Ha'nt must be in the pay of Pulaski D. Britt," remarked one rude joker. "He's been the one most interested in gettin' the tribe out of this section." Dwight Wade, love and awful fear raging in his heart, was in no mood to play dilettante with the supernatural, nor to relish jokes. "We'll have done with this foolishness, men!" he cried, harshly. "A girl has been lost in these woods." He was protecting Elva Barrett's incognito by a mighty effort of self-repression. The agony of his soul prompted him to leap, shouting, down the tote road, calling her name and crying his love and his despair. "I want this crew to beat the woods and find her." "She can't ever be found," growled a prompt rebel. "I heard the driver tell. She was picked right up and lugged off. There ain't any of us got wings." "Oh, you've got to admit that there are ha'nts!" persisted Tommy, with fine relish for his favorite topic. "And they pick up people. I see one, in the shape of a tree, pick up an ox once and break his neck." "D--n you for drooling idiots!" raved Wade, beside himself. It was the first outlet for the storm of his feelings. He ordered them to get lanterns and start on the search--he strode among them with brandished fists and whirling arms, and they dodged from in front of him, staring in amazement. "My Gawd," mourned Tommy, "this camp has had the spell put on it for sure! The ha'nt has driv' the boss out of his head, and will have him next. And if it can drive a college man out of his head, what chance has the rest of us got?" Panic was writ large in the faces of the simple woodsmen, and fear glittered in their eyes. A single queer circumstance would merely have set them to wondering; but these unexplainable events, following each other so rapidly and taking ominous shade from the glass that lugubrious Tommy Eye held over them, shook them out of self-poise. It needed but one voice to cry, "The place is accursed!" to precipitate a rout, and old Christopher Straight had the woodsman's keen scent for trouble of this sort. "A moment! A moment, Mr. Wade!" he called. He patted the young man's elbow and urged him towards the door. "I want to speak to you. Keep quiet, my men, and go in to your supper." As he passed the cook-house door he sharply ordered the cook to sound the delayed call--the cook being then engaged in discussing, with chopping-boss and cookee, a certain "side-hill lounger," a ha'nt that wrought vast mischief of old along Ripogenus gorge. "Mr. Wade," advised the old man, when they were apart from the camp, "I'm sorry to see you get so stirred up over the Skeet girl, for I don't believe she appreciates your kindness. I have this matter pretty well settled in my own mind. I don't know just why Miss Nina is up here, nor why she has brought that girl back--or tried to. It is plain, though, that the girl has deceived her." "I don't understand," quavered Wade, struggling between his own knowledge and old Christopher's apparent certainty. "The Skeet girl, having her own reasons for wanting to come this way from Castonia, got as far as Pogey Notch, slipped off the team, and made her way to Britt's camp on Jerusalem to join Colin MacLeod. It's all a put-up job, Mr. Wade, and they've simply done what they set out to do in the first place, when Britt and his crew followed John Barrett and me to Durfy's. So I wouldn't worry any more about the girl, Mr. Wade. Let her stay where she plainly wants to stay." Wade blurted the truth without pausing to weigh consequences. He bitterly needed an adviser. Old Christopher's calm confidence in his own theory pricked him. "Great God, man, it isn't the Skeet girl! It is John Barrett's daughter--his daughter Elva!" For a moment Christopher gasped his amazement, without words. "There have been strange things happening outside since we've been locked in here away from the news," the young man went on, excitedly. "It is Elva Barrett, I tell you, Christopher, and she has been stolen." "Then it's a part of the plot--somehow--someway," insisted the old man. "Colin MacLeod, or some one interested for Colin MacLeod, saw that girl, and took her for the Skeet girl. I've never seen Elva Barrett, but you've told me that the Skeet girl is her spittin' image--or words to that effect," corrected the old guide. "And she was dressed in Kate Arden's clothes!" groaned Wade, remembering Nina Ide's little scheme of deception. "Then she's at Britt's camp--mistaken for the Skeet girl, as I said," declared Straight, with conviction. "But hold on!" he cried, grasping Wade's arm as the young man was about to rush back into the camp, "that's no way to go after that girl--hammer and tongs, mob and ragtag. In the first place, Mr. Wade, those men in there are in no frame of mind to be led off into the night. I know woodsmen. They've been talkin' ha'nts till they're ready to jump ten feet high if you shove a finger at 'em. This is no time for an army--an army of that caliber. They know well enough now at Britt's camp that it isn't Kate Arden. And I'll bet they're pretty frightened, now that they know who they've got. It's a simple matter, Mr. Wade. I'll go to Britt's camp and get the young lady. I'll go now on snow-shoes and take the moose-sled, and I'll be back some time to-morrow all safe and happy." "I'll go with you," declared Wade. "It isn't best," protested the old man. "I've no quarrel with Colin MacLeod. It means trouble if you show in sight there without your men behind you." "But I'm going," insisted Wade, with such positiveness that old Christopher merely sighed. "I'll let you go into the camp alone," allowed Wade, "for I am not fool enough to look for trouble just to find it; but I'll be waiting for you up the tote road with the moose-sled, and I'll haul her home here out of that hell." "I can't blame you for wantin' to play hoss for her," said the woodsman, with a little malice in his humor. "And if she is like most girls she'll be willin' to have you do it." Ten minutes later the two were away down the tote road. They said nothing of their purpose except to Nina Ide, whom they left intrenched in the wangan--a woods maiden who felt perfectly certain of the chivalry of the men of the woods about her. The storm was over, but the heavens were still black. Wade dragged the moose-sled, walking behind old Christopher in the patch of radiance that the lantern flung upon the snow. Treading ever and ever on the same whiteness in that little circle of light, it seemed to Wade that he was making no progress, but that the big trees were silently crowding their way past like spectres, and that he, for all his passion of fear and foreboding, simply lifted his feet to make idle tracks. The winds were still, and the only sounds were the rasping of legs and snow-shoes, and the soft thuddings of snow-chunks dropped from the limbs of overladen trees. In the first gray of the morning, swinging off the tote road and down into the depths of Jerusalem valley, they at last came upon the scattered spruce-tops and fresh chips that marked the circle of Britt's winter operation. The young man's good sense rebuked his rebelliousness when Christopher took the cord of the sled and bade him wait where he was. "I don't blame you for feeling that way," said the old man, interpreting Wade's wordless mutterings; "but the easiest way is always the best. If she is there she will want to come with me, where Miss Ide is waiting for her, and the word of the young lady will be respected. I'm afraid your word wouldn't be--not with Colin MacLeod," he added, grimly. And yet Dwight Wade watched the lantern-light flicker down the valley with a secret and shamed feeling that he was a coward not to be the first to hold out a hand of succor to the girl he loved. That he had to wait hidden there in the woods while another represented him chafed his spirits until he strode up and down and snarled at the reddening east. At last the waiting became agony. The sun came up, its light quivering through the snow-shrouded spruces. Below him in the valley he heard teamsters yelping at floundering horses, the grunting "Hup ho!" of sled-tenders, and the chick-chock of axes. It was evident that the visit of Christopher Straight had not created enough of a sensation to divert Pulaski Britt's men from their daily toil. Wade's hurrying thoughts would not allow his common-sense to excuse the old man's continued absence. To go--to tear Elva Barrett from that hateful place--to rush back--what else was there for Straight to do? In the end the goads of apprehension were driving him down the trail towards the camp, regardless of consequences. But when, at the first turn of the road, he saw Christopher plodding towards him, he ran back in sudden tremor. He wanted to think a moment. There was so much to say. The old man came into sight again, near at hand, before Wade had control of the tumult of his thoughts. The sled was empty. Christopher scuffed along slowly, munching a biscuit. "They wouldn't let her go? I--I thought they had made you stay--you were so long!" gasped the young man, trying by words of his own to calm his fear. "She isn't there, Mr. Wade," said the old man, finishing his biscuit, and speaking with an apparent calmness which maddened the young man. This old man, placidly wagging his jaws, seemed a part of the stolid indifference of the woods. "I brought you something to eat, Mr. Wade," Christopher went on. He fumbled at his breast-pocket. "We've got tough work ahead of us. You can't do it on an empty stomach." "My God! what are you saying, Straight?" demanded the young man. "They're lying to you. She is there. She must be. There's no one--" "And I say she isn't there," insisted Christopher, with quiet firmness. "I know what I'm talking about. You're only guessin'." "They lied to you to save themselves." "Mr. Wade, I know woodsmen better than you do. There are a good many things about Colin MacLeod that I don't like. But when it came to a matter of John Barrett's daughter Colin MacLeod would be as square as you or I." "You told them it was John Barrett's daughter?" "I did not," said the old man, stoutly. "There was no need to. If it had been John Barrett's daughter she would have been queening it in those camps when I got there. She hadn't been there. There has been no woman there. Colin MacLeod and his men didn't take Miss Barrett from that tote team. And I've made sure of that point because I knew my men well enough to make sure. She isn't there!" "There is no one else in all these woods to trouble her," declared Wade, brokenly. "No one knows just who and what are movin' about these woods," said Christopher, in solemn tones. "In forty years I've known things to happen here that no one ever explained. Hold on, Mr. Wade!" he cried, checking a bitter outburst. "I'm not talking like Tommy Eye, either! I'm not talking about ha'nts now. But, I say, strange things have happened in these woods--and a strange thing has happened this time. Barrett's daughter is gone. She's been taken. She didn't go by herself." He gazed helplessly about him, searching the avenues of the silent woods. "North or east, west or south!" he muttered, "It's a big job for us, Mr. Wade! I'm goin' to be honest with you. I don't see into it. You'd better eat." The young man pushed the proffered food away. "You eat, I say," commanded old Christopher, his gray eyes snapping. "An empty gun and an empty man ain't either of 'em any good on a huntin'-trip." He started away, dragging the sled, and Wade struggled along after him, choking down the food. When they had retraced their steps as far as the Enchanted tote road, Christopher turned to the south and trudged towards Pogey Notch. The trail of the tote team was visible in hollows which the snow had nearly filled. The snow lay as it had fallen. The tops of the great trees on either side of the road sighed and lashed and moaned in the wind that had risen at dawn. But below in the forest aisles it was quiet. Had not the wind been at their backs, whistling from the north, the passage of Pogey Notch would have proved a savage encounter. The stunted growth offered no wind-break. The great defile roared like a chimney-draught. As the summer winds had howled up the Notch, lashing the leafy branches of the birches and beeches, so now the winter winds howled down, harpers that struck dismal notes from the bare trees. The snow drove horizontally in stinging clouds. The drifting snow even made the sun look wan. The quest for track, trail, or clew in that storm aftermath was waste of time. But the old man kept steadily on, peering to right and left, searching with his eyes nook and cross-defile, until at the southern mouth of the Notch they came to Durfy's hovel. Christopher took refuge there, leaning against the log walls, and mused for a time without speaking. Then he bent his shrewd glance on Wade from under puckered lids. "There's no telling what a lunatic will do next, is there?" he blurted, abruptly. Wade, failing to understand, stared at his questioner. "I was thinkin' about that as we came past that place where 'Ladder' Lane trussed up John Barrett and left him, time of the big fire," the old man went on. "Comin' down the Notch sort of brought the thing up in my mind. It's quite a grudge that Lane has got against John Barrett and all that belongs to him." Wade was well enough versed in Christopher Straight's subtle fashion of expressing his suspicions to understand him now. "By ----, Straight, I believe you've hit it!" he panted. "I've been patchin' a few things together in my head," said the old man, modestly, "as a feller has to do when dealin' with woods matters. I've told you that queer things have happened in the woods. When a number of things happen you can fit 'em together, sometimes. Now, there wasn't anything queer at Britt's camps to fit into the rest. I came right on 'em sudden, and there wasn't a ripple anywhere. I didn't go into the details, Mr. Wade, in tellin' you why I knew Miss Barrett wasn't there. It would have been wastin' time. But now take the queer things! Out goes Abe Skeet into the storm! Who would be mousin' around outside at that time of night except a lunatic--such as 'Ladder' Lane has turned into since the big fire? You saw on Jerusalem how Lane could boss Abe--he jumped when Lane pulled the string. "And it was Lane that called him out of our camp," the old man went on. "No one else could do it--except that old Skeet grandmother. Lane has been in these woods ever since he abandoned the Jerusalem fire station. He's no ordinary lunatic. He's cunnin'. He's only livin' now to nuss the grudge. Now see here!" Christopher held up his fingers, and bent them down one by one to mark his points. "He has ha'nted camps in this section to locate Abe Skeet. Knowed Abe Skeet could probably tell where Kate Arden had gone, Abe havin' been left to guard her. Called Abe out to go with him to get that girl back--maybe havin' heard that John Barrett got out of these woods scot-free and had dumped the girl off somewhere else. Lane is lunatic enough to think he needs the girl to carry out his plan of revenge. And he does, if he means to take her outside and show her to the world as John Barrett's abandoned daughter, as it's plain his scheme is. Lane and Abe started down towards Castonia. Heard tote team, and hid side of road (would naturally hide). Saw girl that looked like Kate Arden (even dressed in her clothes, I believe you told me?). Followed the team, and when she covered herself in the blanket, as though to make herself into a package ready for 'em, they grabbed her off the team before she had time to squawk. Had her ready muzzled and gagged, as you might say! Mr. Wade, as I told you, I've been patchin' things in my mind. I ain't a dime-novel detective nor anything of the sort, but I do know something about the woods and who are in 'em and what they'll be likely to do, and I can't see anything far-fetched in the way I've figgered this." While his fears had been so hideously vague Wade had stumbled on behind his guide without hope, and with his thoughts whirling in his head as wildly as the snow-squalls whirled in Pogey. Now, with definite point on which to hang his bitter fears, he was roused into a fury of activity. "We'll after them, Christopher!" he shouted. "They've got her! It's just as you've figured it. They've got her! She will die of fright, man! I don't dare to think of it!" He was rushing away. Christopher called to him. "Just which way was you thinkin' of goin'?" he asked, with mild sarcasm. "I can put queer things together in my mind so's to make 'em fit pretty well," went on the old man, "but jest which way to go chasin' a lunatic and a fool in these big woods ain't marked down on this snow plain enough so I can see it." Wade, the cord of the moose-sled in his trembling hands, turned and stared dismally at Straight. The old man slowly came away from the hovel, his nose in the air, as though he were sniffing for inspiration. "The nearest place," he said, thinking his thoughts aloud, "would be to the fire station up there." He pointed his mittened hand towards the craggy sides of Jerusalem. "They may have started hot-foot for the settlement. Perhaps 'Ladder' Lane would have done that if 'twas Kate Arden he'd got. But seein' as it's John Barrett's own daughter--" He paused and rubbed his mitten over his face. "Knowin' what we do of the general disposition of old Lane, it's more reasonable to think that he ain't quite so anxious to deliver that particular package outside, seein' that he can twist John Barrett's heart out of him by keepin' her hid in these woods." The young man had no words. His face pictured his fears. "It's only guesswork at best, Mr. Wade," said Christopher. "It's tough to think of climbin' to the top of Jerusalem on this day, but it seems to me it's up to us as men." They looked at each other a moment, and the look was both agreement and pledge. They began the ascent, quartering the snowy slope. The dogged persistence of the veteran woodsman animated the old man; love and desperation spurred the younger. The climb from bench to bench among the trees was an heroic struggle. The passage across the bare poll of the mountain in the teeth of the bitter blast was torture indescribable. And they staggered to the fire station only to find its open doors drifted with snow, its two rooms empty and echoing. "I was in hopes--in hopes!" sighed the old man, stroking the frozen sweat from his cheeks. "But I ain't agoin' to give up hopes here, sonny." Even Wade's despair felt the soothing encouragement in the old man's tone. "We've got to fetch Barnum Withee's camp on 'Lazy Tom' before we sleep," said the guide. "There'll be something to eat there. There may be news. We've got to do it!" And they plodded on wearily over the ledges and down the west descent. They made the last two miles by the light of their lantern, dragging their snow-shoes, one over the other, with the listlessness of exhaustion. The cook of Withee's camp stared at them when they stumbled in at the door of his little domain, their snow-shoes clattering on the floor. He was a sociable cook, and he remarked, cheerily, "Well, gents, I'm glad to see that you seem to be lookin' for a hotel instead of a horsepittle." Not understanding him, they bent to untie the latchets of their shoes without reply. "T'other one is in the horsepittle," said the cook, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his bunk in the lean-to. "He was brought in. I've been lookin' for something of the sort ever since he skipped from the Jerusalem station. Lunatics ain't fit to fool 'round in the woods," he rambled on. "Who've you got in there?" demanded Christopher, snapping up from his fumbling at the rawhide strings. "Old 'Ladder' Lane," replied the cook, calmly. "Murphy's down-toter brought him here just before dark. He's pretty bad. Froze up considerable. Toter heard him hootin' out in the swirl of snow on the Dickery pond and toled him ashore by hootin' back at him. No business tryin' to cross a pond on a day like this! 'Tain't safe for a young man with all his wits, let alone an old man who has beat himself all out slam-bangin' round these woods this winter. "Yes, he's pretty bad. Done what I could for him, me and cookee, by rubbin' on snow and ladlin' ginger-tea into him, but when it come to supper-time them nail-kags of mine had to be 'tended to, and here's bread to mix for to-morrow mornin'. We don't advertise a horsepittle, gents, but you wait a minute and I'll scratch _you_ up somethin' for supper. The horsepittle will have to run itself for a little while." Wade and the old man stared at each other stupidly while the cook bustled about his task. For the moment their thoughts were too busy for words. Even Christopher's whitening face showed the fear that had come upon him. "Guess old Lane was comin' out to get a letter onto the tote team," gossiped the cook. "I was lookin' through his coat after I got it off and found that one up there." He nodded at a grimy epistle stuck in a crevice of the log, and went down into a barrel after doughnuts which he piled on a tin plate. Noiselessly Christopher strode to the log and took down the letter and stared at the superscription, and without a word displayed the writing to Wade. It was addressed to John Barrett at his city address. The cook was busy at the table. "By Cephas, this is _our_ business!" muttered the old man. And, turning his back on the cook, he ripped open the envelope. On a wrinkled leaf torn from an account-book was pencilled this message: "_You stole my wife. I've got your daughter. Now, damn you, crawl and beg!_" "Look here, cook," called Straight, sharply, "there's bad business mixed up with Lane. Don't ask me no questions." He flapped the open letter into the astonished face of the man to check his words. "We've got to speak to Lane, and speak mighty quick." "He was in a sog when I put him to bed," said the cook. "Didn't know what, who, or where. They say lunatics want to be woke up careful. You let me go." He took a doughnut from the plate and started for the lean-to, grinning back over his shoulder. "He may be ready to set up, take notice, and brace himself with a doughnut." The two men waited, eager, silent, hoping, fearing--each framing such appeal as might touch the heart of this revengeful maniac. They heard the cook utter a snort of surprise; then they saw the flame of a match shielded by his palm. A moment later he came out and stood looking at them with a singularly sheepish expression. "Gents," he blurted, "I'll be cussed if the joke ain't on me this time! I went in there to give the horsepittle patient a fresh-laid doughnut to revive his droopin' heart, and--" "Is that man gone?" bawled Christopher, reaching for his snow-shoes. "Yes," said the cook, grimly; "but you can't chase him on snow--not where he's gone. He's deader'n the door-knob on a hearse-house door." CHAPTER XXII THE HOSTAGE OF THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE "Round the bellowin' falls of Abol we lugged him through the brush, And Death had marked his forehead: 'To a Woman. Kindly Rush!'" When Christopher and Wade started up and hurried into the lean-to, the cook of the "Lazy Tom" camp went ahead carrying a lamp to light the place whose rude interior had so suddenly been made mystic by death. "'Yes, s'r,' says I to him," he repeated, with queer, bewildered, hysterical sort of chuckle. "I says to him, jolly as a chipmunk in a beech-nut tree, I says, 'Set up and have a doughnut all fresh laid,' and I'll be bunga-nucked if he wa'n't dead! And that's a joke on me, all right!" He held the lamp over the features of old "Ladder" Lane, and Dwight Wade and Christopher Straight bent and peered. "Look; if he ain't grinnin'!" whispered the cook, huskily. For one horrid moment it seemed to Wade that the fixed grimace of the death-mask expressed hideous mirth. The scrawl that the young man still clutched in his fist held the words that the dead lips seemed to be mouthing: "You stole my wife. I've got your daughter. Now, damn you, crawl and beg!" And at the thought of Elva Barrett, hidden, lost--worse than lost--somewhere in that great silence about them, Wade's agony and anger found vent in the oath that he groaned above the dead man, who seemed to lie there and mock him. But Christopher Straight gently laid his seamed hand on the shaggy fringe of the gray poll. "It was a hot fire that burned in there, poor old fellow," he murmured. "And those that knew you can't be sorry that it's gone out." He pressed his hand up under the hanging jaw, and smoothed down the half-opened eyelids. And when he stepped back, after his sad and kindly offices, the old man's face was composed; it was the worn, wasted face of an old man who had suffered much; grief, hardship, hunger, and all human misery were writ large there in pitiful characters, in hollow temple, sunken cheeks, pinched nostrils, and lips drawn as one draws them after a bitter sob. And over its misery, after a long look of honest grief, the old woodsman drew up the edge of the bunk's worn gray blanket, muttering as soothingly as though he were comforting a sick man: "Take your rest, old fellow! There's a long night ahead of you." With bowed head Wade led the way into the main camp. He stumbled along blindly, for the sudden tears were hot in his eyes. He regretted that instant of anger as a profanation that even his harrowing fears for Elva Barrett could not excuse. For Linus Lane, lying there dead, he reflected, was the spoil of the lust of Elva Barrett's father, as his peace of mind and his sanity had been playthings of John Barrett's contemptuous indifference; and who was he, Dwight Wade, that he should sit in judgment, even though his heart were bursting with the agony of his fears? "In the woods a tree falls the way of the axe-scarf, Mr. Wade," said old Christopher, patting his shoulder. "John Barrett felled that one in there, and he and his got in the way of it. Don't blame the tree, but the man that chopped it." "Where is she, Christopher? What has he done with her?" demanded the young man, hoarsely. He did not look up. His eyes were full. He was trying to unfold the scrap of paper, but his fingers trembled so violently that he tore it. They had not marked the hasty exit of the cook. But his return broke in upon the long hush that had fallen between Wade and the woodsman. He was bringing Barnum Withee, operator on "Lazy Tom," and his chopping-boss, and the men of "Lazy Tom" came streaming behind, moved by curiosity. "And I says to him--and these gents here will tell you the same--I says, 'Set up and have a fresh-laid doughnut!'" babbled the cook, retailing his worn story over and over. "I didn't know you were here," said the hospitable head of the camp, "till cook passed it to me along with the other news, that poor Lane had parted his snub-line. I looked him over when he was brought in, but I didn't see any chance for him." And after inviting them to eat and make "their bigness" in the office camp, he went on into the lean-to. "Put on your cap, boy!" said old Christopher, touching Wade's elbow. The grumble of many voices, the crowd slowly jostling into the camp, the half-jocose comments on "Ladder" Lane disturbed and distressed Christopher, and he realized that the young man was suffering acutely from a bitter cause. "Come out with me for a little while." The wind had lulled. The heavens were clear. The Milky Way glowed with dazzling sheen above the forest's nicking, where the main road led. Wherever the eye found interstice between the fronds of spruce and hemlock the stars spangled the frosty blue. There was a hush so profound that a listener heard the pulsing of his blood. And yet there was something over all that was not silence, nor yet a sound, but a rhythmical, slow respiration, as though the world breathed and one heard it, and, hearing it, could believe that nature was mortal--friend or kin. Christopher walked to the first turn of the logging-road, and the young man followed him; and when the trees had shut from sight the snow-heaped roofs and the yellow lights and all sign of human neighbors, Christopher stopped, leaned against a tree, and gazed up at the sparkling heavens. "I reckoned your feelings was gettin' away from you a bit, Mr. Wade," said the old man, quietly, "and I thought we'd step out for a while where we can sort of get a grip on somethin' stationary, as you might say. In time of deep trouble, when they happen to be round, a chap feels inclined to grab holt of poor human critters, but they ain't much of a prop to hang to. Not when there's the big woods!" "The big woods have got her, Christopher," choked the young man, despairingly. "And I'm afraid!" "The big woods look savagest to you when you're peekin' into them from a camp window in the night," declared the old man. "But when you're right in 'em, like we are now, they ain't anything but friendly. Look around you! Listen! There's nothing to be afraid of. Let the big woods talk to you a moment, my boy. Forget there are men for just a little while. I've let the woods talk to me in some of the sore times in my life, and they've always comforted me when I really set myself to listen." "My God, I can only hear the words that are written on this scrap of paper!" cried Wade. He shook "Ladder" Lane's crumpled letter before the woodsman's face, and Christopher quietly reached for it, took it, and tore it up. "When a paper talks louder than the good old woods talk, it's time to get rid of it," he remarked, and tossed the bits over the snow. "I ain't goin' to tell you not to worry," Christopher went on, after a time. "I'm no fool, and you're no fool. It's a hard proposition, Mr. Wade. A lunatic whirling in a snow-cloud like a leaf, round and round, and then driftin' out, and no way in the world of tellin' where he came from! And there's some one--off that way he came from--that you want terrible bad! Yet even that lunatic's tracks have been patted smooth by the wind. It's no time to talk to human critters, Mr. Wade. It would be 'Run this way and run that!' Let the woods talk to you! They've been wrastlin' the big winds all day. They'll probably have to wrastle 'em again to-morrow. And they'll be ready for the fight. Hear 'em sleep? The same for you and for me, Mr. Wade. Go in and sleep, and be ready for what comes to-morrow." He walked ahead, leading the way back to camp, and Wade followed, every aching muscle crying for rest, though his heart, aching more poignantly, called on him to plunge into the forest in search of the helpless hostage the woods were hiding. It is not in the nature of woodsmen to pry into another's reason for this or that. Barnum Withee gave Christopher Straight a chance to tell why he and his employer were so far off the Enchanted operation; but when Christopher Straight smoked on without explaining, Barnum Withee smoked on without asking questions. In one of the dim bunks of the wangan Wade breathed stertorously, drugged with nature's opiate of utter weariness. And after listening a moment with an air of relief, Christopher broke upon Withee's meditations. "Was you tellin' me where Lane has been makin' his headquarters since he skipped the fire station?" he inquired, innocently. "I was thinkin' about him, too," returned Withee, promptly. "Headquarters! Does an Injun devil with a steel trap on his tail have headquarters while he's runnin' and yowlin'? Whether he's been in the air or in a hole since he went out of his head, time of the fire, I don't know. Eye ain't been laid on him till he come out of that snow-squall, walkin' like an icicle and hootin' like a barn owl." "Heard of any goods bein' missed from any depot camps?" pursued the woodsman, shrewdly. "That might tell where he's been hangin' out." "No," said the operator, suddenly brusque. Then he looked up from the sliver that he had been whittling absent-mindedly, and fixed keen eye on Straight. "Say, look here, Chris, if you and your young friend are over here huntin' for Lane, or for any documents or papers or evidence to make more trouble for Honorable John Barrett, I've got to tell you that you can't ring me in. Honorable Barrett and me has fixed!" "I reckoned you would," said Christopher. "Stumpage kings usually get their own way." "Well, it's different in this case," declared the operator, triumphantly, "and when I've been used square I cal'late to use the other fellow square, and that's why I'm tellin' you, so that you won't make any mistakes about how I feel towards Mr. Barrett. I don't approve of any move to hector him about that Lane matter. He says to me at Castonia--" "When?" "No longer ago than yesterday. I came through from down-river with two new teamsters and a saw-filer, and hearin' Mr. Barrett was able to set up and talk a little business for the first time, I stepped into Rod Ide's house, and we fixed. He throwed off all claims for extry stumpage and damages on Square-hole. And when a man gives me more than I expect, that fixes me with him." "Ought to, for sartin," agreed Christopher. "Change of heart in him, or because you knowed about the Lane case?" The tone was rather satirical, and Withee flushed under his tan. "You don't think I went to a sick man's bedside and blackmailed him, do you, like some--" "Friend Barn," broke in the old woodsman, quietly, "don't slip out any slur that you'll wish you hadn't." "Well," growled the operator, "it may be that 'Stumpage John' Barrett ain't always set a model for a Sunday-school, but if I had as pretty a daughter as that one that was settin' in his room with him, and as nice a girl as she seems to be, though of course she didn't stoop to talk to a grizzly looservee like me, I'd hate to have an old dead and decayed scandal dug up in these woods, and dragged out and dumped over my front-yard fence in the city!" And Christopher remembered what he had remarked on one occasion to Dwight Wade, when they had seen the waif of the Skeet tribe on Misery Gore, and now he half chuckled as he squinted at Withee and muttered in his beard, "Lots of folks don't recognize white birch when it's polished and set up in a parlor." "What say?" demanded the operator, suspiciously. "I'm so sleepy I'm dreamin' out loud," explained Christopher, blandly, "and I'm goin' to turn in." And he sighed to himself as he rolled in upon the fir boughs and pulled the spread about his ears. "There's some feller said that good counsel cometh in the morning. Mebbe so--mebbe so! But it will have to be me and the boy here for the job, because old Dan'l Webster, with all his flow of language, couldn't convince Barn Withee now that it's John Barrett's daughter that is lost in the woods. I know now why something told me to go slow on the hue and cry." CHAPTER XXIII IN THE MATTER OF JOHN BARRETT'S DAUGHTER "Warmth and comfort? Ay, all these Under the arch of the great spruce trees; But our cup o' content holds naught but foam!-- No woman's hand to make a home." Wade did not wake when the cook's wailing hoot called the camp in the morning. It was black darkness still. He slept through all the clatter of tin dishes, the jangle of bind-chains as the sleds started, the yowl of runners on the dry snow, and the creaking of departing footsteps. The sun quivered in his eyes when he rolled in the bunk at touch of old Christopher's hand on his shoulder. "Oh, but you needed it all, my boy!" protested the woodsman, checking the young man's peevish regrets that he had slept so long. "Come to breakfast." Barnum Withee had eaten with his men, but he was waiting in solitary state in the cook camp, smoking his pipe, and moodily rapping the horn handle of a case-knife on the table. "Law says," he remarked to his guests, continuing aloud his meditations, "that employer shall send out remains of them that die in camp. But I ain't employer in this case, and I'm short of hosses, anyway, and the tote team only came in yesterday, and ain't due to go out again for a week." "It makes a lot of trouble, old critters dyin' that ain't got friends," observed Christopher, spooning out beans. "You may mean that sarcastic, but it's the truth just the same," retorted Withee. "He ain't northin' to me. What I was thinkin' of, if you were bound out--" "Ain't goin' that way," said the woodsman, giving Wade a significant glance. "Well, from what things you let drop last night," grumbled the operator, "I figured that you were more or less interested in old Lane, and perhaps were lookin' him up for somethin', and if so you ought to be willin' to help get him out and buried in a cemetery. He ain't a friend of mine and never was, and it ain't square to have the whole thing dumped onto me." Wade, his heart made tender by his own grief, gazed towards the lonesome isolation of the lean-to with moistening eyes. Alone, living; alone, dead! But Christopher put into cold phrase the burning fact they had to face. "We've got business of our own for to-day, Barnum, and mighty important business, too." And pulling their caps about their ears, and tugging their moose-sled, they set away, up the tote road to the north, leaving Barnum Withee not wholly easy in his mind regarding their motives. It was from the snow-swirl on Dickery Pond that "Ladder" Lane had emerged, even then death-struck. It was straight to Dickery that Christopher led the way, and two hours' steady trudging brought them there. "So it was from off there he came," muttered the woodsman, blinking into the glare of the snow crystals on its broad surface. "But where, in God's name, he came from it ain't in me to say!" It was one of those still winter days when even the wind seems to be bound by the hard frost. The sliding snow-shoes shrieked as shrilly with the sun high as they had in the early morning. There was no hint of melting. "There are five old operations around this pond, and a set of empty camps on each one," said Straight. "I've been to each one of them in times past, and I know where the main roads come out to the landings. But it's slow business, takin' 'em one after the other. Perhaps we ought to go back and beat the truth of this thing into Barnum Withee's thick head, and start the hue and cry--but--but--I'd hoped to do it some better way." "Straight," panted the young man, "it's getting to be perfectly damnable, this suspense! Let's do something, if it's only to run up the middle of that pond and shout!" "Well," snorted the old guide, irrelevantly, "I've been lookin' for old Red Fins to come along for two days now, and I ain't disappointed. If there's trouble anywhere in this section, old Eli has got a smeller that leads him to it." Wade whirled from his despairing survey of the pond and saw Prophet Eli. He was coming down the tote road on his "ding-swingle," urging on his little white stallion with loose, clapping reins. Huge mittens of vivid red encased his hands, and his conical, knitted cap was red, and was pulled down over his ears like a candle-snuffer. Wade felt a queer little thrill of superstition as he looked at him, and then sneered at himself as one who was allowing good wit to be infected by the idle follies of the woods. And yet there was something eerie in the way this bizarre old wanderer turned up now, as he had appeared twice before at times that meant so much, at moments so crucial, in Wade's woods life. Prophet Eli swung up to them, halted, and peered at them curiously out of his little eyes. "Green, blue, and yellow," he blurted, patting his much-variegated wool jacket. "And red! Red mittens good for the arterial blood. Why don't you wear them?" "Say, look here, prophet--" began Christopher, blandly respectful. "Green is nature's color. Calms the nerves. Blue, electricity for the system--got a stripe of it all up and down my backbone. Good for you. Ought to wear it. Yellow, kidneys and cathartic. You'd rather be sick, eh? Be sick. Clek-clek!" He clucked his tongue and clapped his reins. But Christopher grabbed at the stallion's headstall and checked him. "I believe the idea is all c'rect, prophet, and I'll use it, and I'll try to make it right with you. But just now I'm wantin' a little information, and I'll make it right with you for that, too. You're sky-hootin' round these woods all the time. Now, where's Lane been makin' his headquarters?--you ought to know!" "What do you want him for? State-prison or insane asylum?" snapped the prophet. "I don't want him," said the woodsman, solemnly. "He's spoken for, Eli. He's down there, dead, in Barn Withee's camps." The little gray eyes blinked quickly. What that emotion was, one could not guess. For the voice of the prophet did not waver in its brisk staccato. "Dead, eh? Hate-bug crawled into him and did it. I told him to stay in the woods and the hate-bugs couldn't get him. Told him twenty years ago. But he wasn't careful. Let the hate-bug get him at last. Dead, eh? I'll go and get him." "Get him?" echoed Christopher. "Promised to bury him," explained the prophet, promptly. "Wanted to be buried off alone, just as he lived. Rocks for a pillow. Expects to rest easy. I helped him dig his grave and lay out the rocks a long time ago. And I'll tell no one the place--no, sir." "Well, that lets Withee out of trouble and expense," said the woodsman, "and you'll get a good reception down that way. Now, prophet, where's he been hiding? You know, probably. It's important, I tell you." The old man had struck his stallion, and the animal was trying to get away. But Christopher held on grimly. "You call yourself a good woodsman?" squealed the indignant Eli. "I reckon I'll average well." "If any one wants anything of 'Ladder' Lane now," cried the prophet, "it must be for something that he's left behind him! Left behind him!" he repeated. He stood up on the "ding-swingle," and ran his keen gaze about the ridges that circled the lake. "Was it something that could build a fire?" he demanded, sharply. Christopher, in no mood for confidences, stared at the peppery old man. "You call yourself a good woodsman, and don't know what it means to see that!" He pointed his whip at a thin trail of white smoke that mounted, as tenuous almost as a thread, above the distant shore of Dickery Pond. "No lumbermen operating there for three years, and you see that, and are lookin' for something, and don't go and find out! And you call yourself a woodsman!" Without further word or look he lashed the stallion; the animal broke away with a squeal, and Prophet Eli's "ding-swingle" disappeared down the tote road in a swirl of snow. "No, I ain't a woodsman!" snorted Christopher. He started away across the pond at a pace that left Wade breath only for effort and not for questions. "I ain't a woodsman. Standin' here and not seein' that smoke! Not seein' it, and guessin' what it must mean! I ain't a woodsman!" Over and over he muttered his bitter complaints at himself in disjointed sentences. "I'm gettin' old. I must be blind. A lunatic can tell me my business." His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him. "I don't feel just like talkin' now, Mr. Wade," he said, gruffly. "I don't feel as though I knew enough to talk to any one over ten years old." He strode on, tugging the sled. An abandoned main logging-road, well grown to leafless moose-wood and witch-hobble, led them up from the lake. Christopher did not have to search the skies for the smoke. His first sight of it had betrayed the camp's location. He knew the roads that led to it. And in the end they came upon it, though it seemed to Wade that the road had set itself to twist eternally through copses and up and down the hemlock benches. The camps were cheerless, the doors of main camp, cook camp, and hovel were open, and the snow had drifted in. But from the battered funnel of the office camp came that trail of smoke, reaching straight up. Crowding close to the funnel for warmth, and nestled in the space that the heat had made in the snow, crouched a creature that Wade recognized as "Ladder" Lane's tame bobcat. This, then, was "Ladder" Lane's retreat. Inside there--the young man's knees trembled, and there was a gripping at his throat, dry and aching from his frantic pursuit of his grim guide. "Mr. Wade," said Christopher, halting, "I reckon she's there, and that she's all right. I'll let you go ahead. She knows you. I don't need to advise you to go careful." And Wade went, tottering across the unmarked expanse of snow, the pure carpet nature had laid between him and the altar of his love--an altar within log walls, an altar whose fires were tended by--He pushed open the door! Foolish Abe was kneeling by the hearth of the rusty Franklin stove. And even as he had been toiling on Enchanted, so here he was whittling, whittling unceasingly, piling the heaps of shavings upon the fire--unconscious signaller of the hiding-place of Elva Barrett. For a moment Wade stood holding by the sides of the door, staring into the gloom of the camp, for his eyes were as yet blinded by the glare of out-doors. And then he saw her. Her white face was peering out of the dimness of a bunk. Plainly she had withdrawn herself there like some cowering creature, awaiting a fate she could not understand or anticipate. One could see that those eyes, wide-set and full of horror, had been strained on that uncouth, hairy creature at the hearth during long and dreadful suspense. Through all that desperate search, in hunger, weariness, and despair, he had forgotten John Barrett, contemptuous millionaire; he remembered that John Barrett's daughter Elva had confessed once that she returned his love, and he had thought that when they met again, this time outside the trammels of town and in the saner atmosphere of the big woods, she might understand him better--understand him well enough to know that John Barrett lied when he made honest love contemptible by his sneers about "fortune-seekers." They were all very chaotic, his thoughts, to be sure, but he had believed that the ground on which they would meet would be that common level of honest, human hearts, where they could stand, eye to eye, hands clasping hands, and love frankly answering love. But love that casts all to the winds, love that forgets tact, prudence, delicacy, love without premeditation or after-thought, is not the love that is ingrained in New England character. She gazed at him at first, not comprehending--her fears still blinding her--and he paused to murmur words of pity and reassurance. And then Yankee prudence, given its opportunity to whisper, told him that to act the precipitate lover now would be to take advantage of her weakness, her helplessness, her gratitude. If he took this first chance to woo her, demanding, as it were, that she disobey her father's commands, and putting a price on the service that he was rendering her, might her good sense not suggest that, after all, he was a sneak rather than a man? They call the New England character of the old bed-rock sort hard and selfish. It is rather acute sensitiveness, timorous even to concealment. And in the end Dwight Wade, faltering banal words of pity for her plight, went to her outwardly calm. And she, her soul still too full of the horror of her experience to let her heart speak what it felt, took his hands and came out upon the rough floor. The shaggy giant squatting by the hearth bent meek and humid eyes on the young man. "Me do it--me do it as you told!" he protested. He patted his hand on the shavings. He was referring to the task to which Wade had set him on Enchanted. To the girl it sounded like the confession of an understanding between this unspeakable creature and her rescuer. Wade, eager only to soothe, protested guilelessly, when she shrank back, that the man was not the ogre he seemed, but a harmless, simple fellow whom he had been sheltering and feeding at his own camp. And then, by the way she stared at him, he realized the chance for a horrible suspicion. "I don't understand," she moaned. "It's like a dreadful dream. There was an old man who sat here and muttered and raved about my father! And this--this"--she faltered, shrinking farther from Abe--"who brought me here in his arms! And you say he came from your camp! Oh, these woods--these terrible woods! Take me away from them! I am afraid!" She dropped the shrouding blanket from her shoulders, and he saw her now in the garb of the waif of the Skeets. And under his scrutiny he saw color in her cheeks for the first time, replacing the pallor of distress. "I had thought there was excuse for this folly--reason for it. I thought it was my duty to--" She faltered, then set her teeth upon her lower lip, and turned away from him. "Oh, take me away from these woods! Something--I do not know--something has bewitched me--made me forget myself--sent me on a fool's errand! The woods--I'm afraid of them, Mr. Wade!" It came to him with a pang that the woods were not offering to his love the common ground of sincerity that he had dreamed of. Elva Barrett, ashamed of her weakness, would not remember generously an attempt to take advantage of her distress when every bulwark of reserve lay in ruins about her, and he felt afraid of his burning desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. Thus self-convinced, he failed to realise that the girl with her bitter words was merely striving, blindly and innocently, to be convinced--and convinced from his own mouth--that she had been wise in her folly, devoted in her mission, and honest in the love that had found such heroic expression in her adventuring. She looked at him, and saw in his face only the struggle of doubt and hopelessness and fear, and misinterpreted. "You know what the woods have done to make shame and wretchedness, Mr. Wade!" she cried, a flash of her old spirit coming into her eyes. "Men who have been honest with the world outside and honest with themselves have forgotten all honesty behind the screen of these savage woods." Her cheeks were burning now. She drew the blanket over herself, hugging its edges close in front, covering the attire she wore as though it were nakedness. And in that bitter moment it was nakedness--for the garb she had borrowed from Kate Arden symbolized for her and for him a father's guilty secret laid bare. "Take me away from the woods!" she gasped. The look that passed between them was speech unutterable. He had no words for her then. In silence he made the long sledge ready for her. Christopher helped him, silent with the reticence of the woodsman. If he had even glanced at Elva Barrett no bystander could have detected that glance. There were thick camp spreads on the sled. Christopher's thoughtfulness had provided them, and when they had been wrapped about her the two men set away, each with hand on the sled-rope. "We'll go the short way back to Enchanted," said the old guide, answering Wade's glance. "Back across Dickery, up the tote road, and follow the Cameron and Telos roads. It will dodge all camps, and keep us away from foolish questions. I've got enough in my pack from Withee's camp for us to eat." Abe floundered behind, keeping them in sight with the pertinacity of a dog, and he ate the bread that Straight threw to him with a dog's mute gratitude. Only the desperation of men utterly resolved could have accomplished the journey they set before them. The girl rode, a silent, shrouded figure; the men strode ahead, silent; Abe struggled on behind, ploughing the snow with dragging feet. When the night fell they went on by the lantern's light. It was long after midnight when they came at last to the Enchanted camps, walking like automatons and almost senseless with fatigue. Wade lifted the girl from the sled when they halted in front of the wangan. Her stiffened and cramped limbs would not move of themselves. And when she was on her feet, and staggered, he kept his arm about her, gently and unobtrusively. "This is the best home I have to offer you," he said. "Nina Ide is here waiting. We will wake her, and she will do for you what should be done. Oh, that sounds cold and formal, I know--but the poor girl waiting in there will put into words all the joy I feel but can't speak. My head is pretty light, and my heels heavy, and I don't seem to be thinking very clearly, Miss Barrett," he murmured, his voice weak with pathetic weariness. She was struggling with sobs, striving to speak; but he hastened on, as though at last his full heart found words. "This is--this--I hardly know how to say this. But I understand why you came." He felt her tremble. "But, my God, Elva, I don't dare to believe that you thought so ill of me that you were coming to plead with me for your father's sake." It was not resentment, it was passionate grief that burst from him, and she put her hands about his arm. "I told you it was folly that sent me," she sobbed. "But he had been unjust to you, Dwight. Oh, it was folly that sent me, but I wanted to know if you--if you--" She was silent and trembled, and when she did not speak he clasped her close, trembling as pitifully as she. "Oh, if you only dared say that you wanted to know whether I still loved you!" he breathed, in a broken whisper. "And I would say--" It seemed that his heart came into his throat, for her fingers pressed more closely upon his arm. In that instant he could not speak. He pretended to look for Christopher, but that wise woodsman's tact did not fail. He saw Christopher disappearing into the gloom of the dingle, and heard the careful lisp of the wooden latch in its socket and the cautious creak of the closing door. There was only the hush of the still night about him, and when he turned again the starlight was shining on Elva Barrett's upraised face. And her dark eyes were imperiously demanding that he finish his sentence--so imperiously that his tongue burst all the shackles of his sensitive prudence. "And I would say that my love is so far above the mean things of the world that they can't make it waver, and it is so unselfish that I can love you the more be-because you love your father and obey him. And all I ask is that you don't misunderstand me." There was deep meaning in his tones. "Oh Dwight, my boy," she moaned, "it's an awful thing for a daughter to disobey her father. But it's more awful when she finds that he--" But he put his fingers tenderly on her lips, and when she kissed them, tears coursing on her cheeks, he gathered her close, and his lips did the service that his fingers retired from in tremulous haste. "My little girl," he said, softly, "keep that story off your lips. It is too hard, too bitter. I may have said cruel things to your father. He may tell you they were cruel. But remember that she had your eyes and your face--that poor girl I found in the woods. And before God, if not before men, she is your sister. And so I gave of my heart and my strength to help her. And I know your heart so well, Elva, that I leave it all to you. It's better to be ashamed than to be unjust." "She _is_ my sister," she answered, simply, but with earnestness there was no mistaking. "And you may leave it all in my hands." Then fearfully, anxiously, grief and shame at shattered faith in a father showing in the face she lifted to him, she asked: "It was he, was it not--the old man that took me away and sat before me and cursed me? He was her--her husband?" His look replied to her. Then he said, soothingly: "It was not in our hands, dear. But that which is in our hands let us do as best we can, and so"--he kissed her, this time not as the lover, but as the faithful, earnest, consoling friend--"and so--to sleep! The morning's almost here, and it will bring a brighter day." She drew his head down and pressed her lips to his forehead. "True knighthood has come again," she murmured. "And my knight has taken me from the enchanted forest, and has shown me his heart--and the last was best." Still clasping her, he shook the door and called to the girl within; and when she came, crying eager questions, he put Elva Barrett into her arms and left them together. As he walked away from the shadow of the camp into the shimmer of the starlight he felt the wine of love coursing his veins. His muscles ached, weariness clogged his heels, but his eyes were wide-propped and his ears hummed as with a sound of distant music. His thoughts seemed too sacred to be taken just then into the company of other men. He dreaded to go inside out of the radiance of the night. He turned from the door of the main camp when his hand was fumbling for the latch, pulled his cap over his ears, and began a slow patrol on the glistening stretch of road before the wangan. The crisp snow sang like fairy bells under his feet. Orion dipped to the west, and the morning stars paled slowly as the flush crept up from the east. And still he walked and dreamed and gazed over the sombre obstacles near at hand in his life into the radiance of promise, even as he looked over the black spruces into the faint roses of the dawn. Tommy Eye, teamster, stumbling towards the hovel for the early foddering, came upon him, and stopped and stared in utter amazement. He came close to make sure that the eerie light of the morning was not playing him false. Wade's cheerful greeting seemed to perplex him. "It isn't a ha'nt, Tommy," said the young man, smiling on him. "I have said all along as how it had got you," declared Tommy, with ingenuous disappointment, looking Wade up and down for marks of conflict. "But it may be that the ha'nts want only woods folk and are afraid of book-learnin'! So you're back, and the girl ain't, nor Christopher, nor--" "We're all back," explained Wade, calculating on Tommy's news-mongering ability to relieve him of the need of circulating information. "We found the--the one that was lost. That was all! She was lost, and we found her, and we even found Foolish Abe, and he came back with us last night. There was no mystery, Tommy. They were simply lost, and we found them. They're asleep." Tommy fingered the wrinkled skin of his neck and stared dubiously at Wade. "You'll see Abe whittling shavings just the same as usual this morning," added the young man. "By-the-way, you and he may be interested to know that Lane, the old fire warden, died at Withee's camp the other day." For reasons of his own Wade did not care to make either the news of the rescue or its place too definite. "Then," declared Tommy, hanging grimly to the last prop left in his theory, "that accounts for it. 'Ladder' Lane is dead, and has turned into a ha'nt. It was him that called out the fool. And he'll be making more trouble yet. You'd better send for Prophet Eli, Mr. Wade, because the prophet is a charmer-man and can take care of old Lane." "He has taken care of him already," said the young man. "We saw Prophet Eli, and he started right away to attend to the case." And Tommy's face displayed such eminent satisfaction that Wade had not the heart to destroy the man's belief that his book-learned boss had adopted a part of the woods creed of the supernatural. It was a day on which he felt very gentle towards the dreams of other persons, for his own beautiful dream shed its radiance on all men and all of life. That she was there, safe, brought by amazing circumstances into the depths of the woods, and under his protection, seemed like a vision of the night as he walked back and forth and watched the morning grow. When the sun was high and the men had been gone for hours, he put his dream to the test. He rapped gently on the wangan door, and her voice, a very real and loving voice, answered. With his own hands he brought food for the two girls and spread a cedar-splint table, and served them as they ate, and ministered in little ways, through the hours of the day, and watched Elva's pallor and weariness give way before tenderness and love. With the poor shifts of a lumber-camp he, not intending it, taught her heart the lesson that love is independent of its housing. He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul. CHAPTER XXIV THE CHEESE RIND THAT NEEDED SHARP TEETH "So, mister, please excuse us, but you open up that sluice, Or Gawd have mercy on ye, if I turn these gents here loose!" --The Rapogenus Ball. Rodburd Ide, fresh-arrived from Castonia in hot haste, saw well to it that he and Dwight Wade were safe from interruption in the wangan camp. He even drove a sliver from the wood-box over the latch of the door. Wade, summoned down from the chopping by a breathless cookee to meet his partner, gazed upon these nervous, eager precautions in some alarm. "Now, brace your feet, and get hold of something and hang on hard," advised the "Mayor of Castonia." "Good Heavens, Mr. Ide, what has happened to her?" gasped the young man. His trembling hands clutched at the edge of the splint table, hallowed by Elva Barrett's smiles of love across it. "Her!" snorted the little man, in indignant astonishment. "You don't think I've whaled up here hell-ti-larrup on a jumper to sit down and talk about women, do you?" "But Miss Barrett--" gulped Wade. "Miss Barrett--" Ide checked himself, discreet even in his impatience. "Miss Barrett is all right, and the girl is all right, and--say, look-a-here, my boy, don't you think of a girl, don't you look at a girl, don't you even dream of a girl, for the next two months!" He drove his hard little fist upon the sacred table. He leaned forward, and his very beard bristled at the young man. "Forget your mother, forget your grandmother, forget that there is anything to you except grit and muscle. For if ever two men had a man's work cut out for 'em we're the ones. If ever two men found themselves on the outside of a ripe cheese and needed teeth to gnaw in, we're the men. Money! I can't see anything but dollar bills hangin' from those spruce-trees. But you've got to put on brad-boots and climb to get them. You've got to walk over men to get 'em!" He was striding about the little room. "I reckon I seem a little excited," he added, with a catch in his voice. "But by the priest that hammered the tail for the golden calf, I've got reasons to be excited. I've smelt it comin' for two years, son! I 'ain't said anything. I didn't say anything to you when I took you into partnership; I didn't dare to. But I smelt it all the time. I 'ain't watched the comin's and goin's of certain men at Castonia for nothin'! Let 'em bring guns and fishin'-poles! They can't fool me. I smelt it comin'. And now, by ----, it's come!" Again he banged his fist on the table and glared down on his partner. The partner stared back at him with so much dismay and reproachful inquiry that Ide blew off his superfluous excitement in one vigorous "Poof!" and sat down. "The sum and substance of it is, those old Hullin' Machine falls ain't goin' to bellow away all them thousands of hoss-power in empty noise any longer. But they've made a noise big enough to reach the crowd that's organized to fight the paper trust. See now?" Wade's eyes gleamed in swift comprehension. "The independents are goin' to develop that power. They're goin' to build the biggest paper-mill in the world there. They're goin' to extend the railroad up to Castonia. They're goin' to do it all on an old charter that every one had forgotten except the lobby clique that put it through and has been holdin' it for speculation. And why I know it all and no one else knows it on the outside yet, my boy, is because they've had to come to _me_! They've _had_ to come to _me_!" And he promptly answered the eager though mute inquiry in the young man's eyes. "Every dollar that I could save, rake, and borrow for years I've been putting into shore rights and timber. What timber country I couldn't buy I've leased stumpage on. I've smelt it all comin'. And now they've had to come to me, Wade. They've bonded the shore rights for a purchase, and it's all settled." "With all my heart I'm glad for you, Mr. Ide!" cried the young man, with a sincerity that put a quiver into his voice. And both hands seized the hands of the magnate of Castonia in a grip that brought gratified tears to the other's eyes. "I know it has always been a surprise to you, Wade, that I was so ready and anxious to give you a lay on the timber end," the little man went on. "But I knew it was time to operate on these cuttin's this season. There are things you can't hire done with plain money. I wanted courage, grit, and honesty. Most of all, I needed absolute loyalty. There's been too much buyin' up of men in these woods. The old gang is a hard one to fight. I reckon I've got you with me." "Heart, soul, and body, now as from the first, Mr. Ide." "And the lay I've given you is the best investment I could have made," declared the partner. "I want you to feel that it is straight business. It was no gift. You're earnin' it. But the big bunch is ahead of you, boy!" His tone was serious. "Your make will come out of the timber lay. I've said I smelt this comin'. If it hadn't come this year we should have sent our logs 'way down-river along with the rest, and done the best we could to steal a profit after Pulaski Britt and his gang had charged us all the tolls and fees they could think of, and made us accept their selling-scale. But now! But now!" His voice became tense, and he leaned forward and patted the young man's arm. "The Great Independent--and that's the name of the new organization, and it's a name that's goin' to roar like the Hullin' Machine in the ears of the trust--wants every log we can hand over to 'em this season. What they don't use in construction work and in their new saw-mill they'll pile to grind into pulp next year. "I've got their contract, Wade. Every log to be scaled for 'em on our landings! And I reckon that will be the first time a square selling-scale was ever made on this river. No Pirate Britt and his gang of boom-scale thieves for us this time! Every honest dollar we make will come to us. And there'll be a lot of 'em, son." Wade, even though Rodburd Ide had so brusquely commanded him to forget his love, felt that love stirring in the thrill that animated him now. Did not success mean Elva Barrett? Did not fair return from honest toil mean that he could face John Barrett, bulwarked by his millions? Forget his love? Ide couldn't understand. His love was a spur whose every thrust was delicious pain. But now that the great secret was out, Rodburd Ide's tide of enthusiasm seemed to be in somewhat ominous and depressing reflux. He spread upon the splint table a lumberman's map, and his hands trembled as he did so. "You've done as I told you, and only yarded at the ends of the twitch-roads, and haven't hauled to landings?" he inquired. Wade nodded. "I was waitin', I was waitin'," explained the other, nervously scrubbing his hand over the map. "If nothin' had happened at Umcolcus Hullin' Machine this year we'd have landed our logs on Enchanted Stream and run 'em down into Jerusalem, and taken our chances along with Britt's logs. 'Twas a hard outlook, Wade. The last time I dared to operate here I did that, and you'll find jill-pokes with my mark stranded all along the stream. The old pirate took my drive because he claimed control of the dams, charged me full fees, and left behind twenty-five per cent. of my logs, claiming that the water dropped on him. But I noticed he got all of his out. It's what we're up against, my son. If I'd tried to fight him with an independent drive he would have had me hornswoggled all the way to the down-river sortin'-boom, and then would have had my heart out on the scale. It's what we're up against!" he repeated, despondently. "There isn't any law to it. It's the hard fist that makes the right up this way. I'm tellin' you this so you can understand. You've got to understand, my boy. I wish it was different. I wish it was all square. I hate to do dirty things myself. I hate to ask others to do 'em." It was not entirely a gaze of reassurance that the young man turned on him. Ide avoided it, and with stubby finger began to mark the map to illustrate his words. Wade leaned close. He realized that a new and grave aspect of the situation was to be revealed to him. Getting the timber down off the stumps had absorbed his attention utterly. As to getting it to market, he had been awaiting the word of his partner and mentor. "Here it is!" growled Ide. "It's a picture of it! And if it ain't a good picture of the damnable reason why no one else but Pulaski Britt and his crowd can make a dollar on these waters, then I'm no judge. Here we are on Enchanted--mountain here and pond here! The dam at our pond will give us water enough to get us down to Britt's dam on Enchanted dead-water. Then we've got to deal with Britt. Law may be with us, but in dealin' with Britt up here in this section law is like a woodpecker tryin' to pull the teeth out of a cross-cut saw. Britt has got the foot of Enchanted Stream, and he controls Jerusalem Stream that gobbles Enchanted. That's our outlook to the east of us. Now to the west, and only two miles from our operation here, is Blunder Stream. Runs into Umcolcus main river, you see, like Jerusalem Stream away over here to the east. Straightaway run. Fed by Blunder Lake, up here ten miles to the north--that is, it ought to be fed! And it ought to be the stream to take our logs. But more than thirty years ago, without law or justice, Britt closed in the rightful western outlet of Blunder Lake with a big dam, and dug a canal from the eastern end to Jerusalem Stream, and every spring since then he's used the water for the Jerusalem drive. A half a dozen small operators have been to the legislature from time to time to get rights. Did they get 'em? Why, they didn't even get a decent look! Old King Spruce doesn't go to law or the legislature askin' for things. King Spruce takes them. Then the laborin' oar is with the chaps who try to take 'em away. Even if a thing is unrighteous, Wade, it doesn't stir much of a scandal in politics to keep it just as it is. It's what we're up against, I say!" He held down the map, his finger on Enchanted, as though typifying the power that held them and their interests helpless. Wade gazed upon the finger-end. He felt it pressing upon his hopes. His brows wrinkled, but he said nothing. "The Great Independents will make that name heard by the next legislature, I've no doubt," Ide went on, "but that's a year from now. In the mean time we've got five millions or so of timber here at this end, and its market and the money waitin' at the other end, which is Castonia. And there's another thing, Wade, and it's the biggest of all: we've got to hold our timber above the Hullin' Machine. Nature has fixed the place for us. There's the dead-water behind Hay Island. With Britt drivin' our logs, he'd ram 'em hell-whoopin' through the Hullin' Machine, and find an excuse for it, and then buy 'em in down-river at his own price. If we undertook to follow him down Enchanted and Jerusalem, he wouldn't leave enough water to drown a cat in. I'm taking the time to show you this thing as it stands, son. You've got to see all sides of it." Ide's little gray eyes were gleaming at him, and the expression of his face showed that he was narrowing possibilities to one prospect, and was wondering whether his partner had grasped the full import of that prospect. "I think I see all sides of it, Mr. Ide," he said, at last. Then he put his fingers on the thin thread that marked the course of Blunder Stream. "And the only side that doesn't hurt the eyes seems to be this side, west of Enchanted Mountain." "Well, even then it depends on what kind of specs you've got on," returned Ide. "Suppose we forget that dam at the west end of Blunder and Britt's canal to the east for just a moment, Mr. Ide. If we got our logs down the side of Enchanted Mountain and landed them on Blunder Stream we'd stand our only show of heading Britt's drive at the Hulling Machine, wouldn't we?" "You was reckonin' on havin' water under 'em, wasn't you?" inquired the little man, with good-natured satire. "Wasn't plannin' on havin' 'em walk like a caterpillar, nor fly down, nor anything of the sort?" "I was reckoning on water," returned the young man, flushing slightly, "but I was not discussing Blunder Lake. I asked you to leave that out for a moment." "Leave out Blunder Lake, and you haven't got a brook that will float chips," said Ide. Then he jumped up and shot his fists above his head. "But with a drivin'-pitch in Blunder Stream we can have the head of our drive down into Umcolcus River and to Castonia logan while Pulaski Britt is still swearin' and warpin' with head-works across Jerusalem dead-water. We'd have our head there before he had a log down the last five miles of lower Jerusalem into the main river. We'll have our sheer booms set and our sortin'-gap, and we'll hold our logs and let his through--his and the corporation drive that he's master of, and has been master of for thirty years. He's been the river tyrant, Wade; but with our head first at Castonia, and our booms set, and we willin' to sort free of expense to them followin', I'd like to see the man that would dare to interfere with our common river rights. The old Umcolcus was rollin' its waters for the use of the tax-payin', law-abidin' citizens of this State before old Pulaski Britt and his log-drivin' association gang of pirates was ever heard of. They've usurped, Wade! They've usurped until they've made possession seem like ownership. I've picked you as a man that can handle the men that's under him, and isn't afraid of Pulaski Britt. And it's got to be a case of reach and take what belongs to you. If they've got any law with 'em in this thing, it's law they've stolen like they've stolen the timber lands." "I've never intended to break law in my dealings with men," said Wade, with a cadence of mournfulness in his tones. "Law up in the big woods doesn't seem to be quite as clear-cut as it is in men's relations outside. But can there be honest law, Mr. Ide, that will allow men like Pulaski Britt to step in and deprive a man of rightful profits earned by his own hard labor--to deprive him of--" He was thinking then, despite of himself, of Elva Barrett, but choked and added, wistfully, "When it's only an even show a man asks, a fair chance to travel his own course, it seems hard that there are men who go out of their path to trip him." It was not lament. He had the air of one who displayed his convictions to have them indorsed. "It's Britt's way," retorted the other, curtly. "He's made money by doin' it, and expects to make a lot more by bossin' the river." "I want to see Mr. Britt," said Wade, quietly. "See Britt! You don't think for a minute you're goin' to induce him to take our drive or do the square thing on the water question, do you?" "But I want to see him for a reason of my own, Mr. Ide. I'm frank to say I don't expect any justice from Britt, after my experience with him; but there is such a thing as justification for myself. I see you don't understand." He noted the little man's wrinkling brows. "I don't know that I'm exactly sure of my own mind. But I can't seem to bring myself to fight this thing according to the code of the woods. I'm going into it with every ounce of strength and hope that's in me, and there's just one preliminary that I want for my peace of soul. I want to see Pulaski Britt." "If I was gettin' ready to fight the devil," remonstrated Ide, "I reckon I'd keep away from his brimstone-pot. He's at his Jerusalem camp," he added, grudgingly. "He went through two days ago." "Then that's where I'll go to find him," said Wade, decisively. Rodburd Ide fingered his nose and gazed on his partner with frank scepticism. "Whatever you want with Britt, you're wastin' your time on him"--his tone was sullen--"and the wind-up will be another peckin'-match with that long-legged rooster, MacLeod. I say, save time and strength for our own business, Wade." "And I say I've got business with Pulaski Britt, and propose to go to him like a man," declared Wade. "You and I can't afford to have any misunderstanding about this, Mr. Ide. You have said you picked me to handle this end. I've got to handle it in my own way, so far as dealings with men go. I'll take your advice--I'll _ask_ your advice on details of the work, because I don't know. As to my business with Mr. Britt, there is no doubt in my mind. I want you to go with me." And in the end Mr. Ide went, nipping his thin lips, not wholly convinced as to the logic of the step, but with his opinion of Dwight Wade's courage and self-reliance decidedly heightened, and he reflected with comfort that those were the qualities he had sought in his partnership. CHAPTER XXV SHARPENING TEETH ON PULASKI BRITT'S WHETSTONE "The people in the city felt the shock of it that day. And they said, in solemn gloom, 'The drive is in the boom, And O'Connor's drawn his wages; clear the track and give him room.'" For a long time they rode side by side on the jumper without a word. Mr. Ide decided that his reticent companion was pondering a plan for the approaching interview, and was careful not to interrupt the train of thought. He was infinitely disappointed and not a little vexed when Wade turned to him at last and inquired, with plain effort to make his voice calm, whether John Barrett had recovered sufficiently to go home. "He? He went two weeks ago--he and his girl," snapped the little man, impatiently. After a moment he began to dig at the buttons of his fur coat, and dipped his hand into his breast-pocket. He brought out a letter. "Here's a line Barrett's girl left to be sent in to you the first chance." He met the young man's reproachful gaze boldly. "When a man's got real business to attend to," he snorted, "he ain't to blame if he disremembers tugaluggin' a love-letter." He gave the missive into Wade's hands, and went on, discontentedly: "What kind of a crazy-headed performance was it those girls was up to when they came up into these woods? I've had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, and probably I couldn't, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. She has her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her," he grumbled. "I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide's movements, even with her father. Miss Barrett's affairs are wholly her own. May I read my letter?" "May you read it?" blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of this conventional request. "What in tophet do you think I've got to do with your readin' your own letters?" And he subsided into offended silence, seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with events as they were disposing themselves. Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in his bare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand had rested. "MY DEAR DWIGHT,--We are going home. The darkness has not lifted from us. For my light and my comfort I look into the north, where I know your love is shining. My sister was sitting by my father's side when I returned, and he was awake from his long dream and knew her, but he had not spoken the truth to her, and if she knows she has not told. And the cloud of it all is over us, and I cannot speak to him or open my heart to him. He did not even ask where I had been. It is as though he feared one word would dislodge the avalanche under which he shrinks. And I have to write this of my father! So we are going home. Love me. I need all your love. Take all of mine in return." When Wade folded it he found Rodburd Ide studying his face with shrewd side glance. "Have you any idea what 'Stumpage John' is goin' to do with the other one--the left-hand one?" he inquired, blandly. "Favor each other considerably, don't they? It told the story to me the first time I saw them together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can't hardly blame John for not takin' the left-hand one out with him, same as my girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, I reckon." "Did he say anything to--" stammered Wade, and hesitated. "Nothin' to me," returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. "Didn't have to. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank for more'n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color of the Hullin' Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into the back office of my store. I wasn't tryin' to listen or overhear, you understand, but I heard him stutter somethin' about takin' her out of the woods and puttin' her in school, and she braced back and put her hands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to hell." "What?" shouted Wade, in utter astonishment. "Oh, not in them words," corrected Ide. "But that's what it come to so far as meanin' went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked out and back to my house." He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, as though this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: "She's still at my house, and the girl says she's goin' to stay there--so I guess that settles it. Now let's get down to some business that amounts to somethin'! What are you goin' to say to Pulaski Britt?" But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, hands between his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridged under the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence. When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary to search long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. They heard him bellowing hoarsely, and a moment later were looking down on him from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in the deep snow, one of them "cast" and tangled in the harness. The teamster stood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spotted with blood. "You've let that horse calk himself, you beef-brained son of a bladder-fish!" roared Britt. "You ain't fit to drive a rockin'-horse with wooden webbin's!" He dove upon the struggling animal, and, hooking his great fists about the bit-rings, dragged the horse to his feet. "Stripped to the fetlocks!" mourned the owner. He surveyed the bleeding leg and whirled on the teamster. "That's the second pair you've put out of business for me in a week. Me furnishing hundred-and-fifty-dollar horses for you to paint the snow with!" He ploughed across to where the man stood holding the reins, and struck him full in the face, and the fellow went down like a log, blood flying from his face. "Mix some of your five-cent blood with blood that's worth something!" he yelped. "If there's got to be rainbow-snow up this way, I know how to furnish it cheaper." "That's a nice, interestin' gent down there for you to tackle just now on your business proposition," observed Ide, sourly. "Now, suppose you use common-sense, and turn around and go back to Enchanted!" But the Honorable Pulaski suddenly heard the jangle of their jumper-bell, and stared up at them. "Gettin' lessons on how to run a crew, Ide?" he asked. And seeing that the teamster was up and fumbling blindly at the tangled harness, he advanced up the slope. "I 'ain't ever forgiven you for takin' Tommy Eye away from me. That man's a _teamster_! It was a nasty trick, and perhaps your young whelp of a partner there has found out enough about woods law by this time to understand it." "Mr. Britt--" began Wade. "I don't want to talk to you at all!" snapped the tyrant, flapping his hand in protest. "Nor I to you!" retorted Wade, in sudden heat. "But as Mr. Ide's partner I have taken charge of the woods end of our operation, and I've got business to talk with you. We haven't begun to land our logs yet because--" "It's a wonder to me that you've got any cut down, you dude!" snorted Britt, contemptuously. "Because we haven't had an understanding about the drive," went on the young man, trying to keep his temper. "Now, about logs coming down Enchanted and into Jerusalem--" "You'll pay drivin' fees for every stick." "And you'll take our drive with yours?" "No, sir. I won't put the iron of a pick-pole into a log with your mark on it!" declared Britt.[5] [Footnote 5: Lest the remarkable attitude of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt be considered an improbable resource of fiction, the author hastens to state that the Maine legislature, in considering the repeal of a log-driving charter, had exactly this situation submitted to it.] "Mr. Britt," said Wade, his voice trembling in the stress of his emotions, "as an operator in this section, as a man who is asking you straight business questions as courteously as I know how, I am entitled to decent treatment, and it will be better for all of us if I get it." "Threats, hey?" demanded Britt, malignantly. "No threats, sir. If you won't take our drive for the usual fees and guarantee its delivery, will you let us drive it independently?" "Not with my water--and you'll pay fees just the same!" "_Your_ water! Who made you the boss of God's rains and rivers? Have you any charter, giving you the right to turn the State waters of Blunder Lake from their natural outlet and keep everybody else from using them?" Britt clacked his finger in his hard palm and blurted contemptuous "Phuh!" through his beard. "Show me any such charter, Mr. Britt, or tell me where to find the record of it, and I'll accept the law." "Hell on your law!" cried the tyrant of the Umcolcus. "Aren't you willing to let the law decide it, Mr. Britt?" "Hell on your law!" Three times more did Wade, his face burning in his righteous anger, his voice trembling with passion, ask the question. Three times did the Honorable Pulaski Britt fling those four words of maddening insult back at him. And Wade, his face going suddenly white, snatched the reins from Ide's hands, struck the horse, whirled him into the trail, and drove away madly. Down the aisles of the forest followed those four words as long as Pulaski Britt felt that their iteration could reach the ears of listeners. "So you finished your business with him, did you?" inquired Ide, at last, allowing himself, as a true prophet, a bit of a sneer. "I got just what I went after," snarled the young man. "I got in four words the fighting rules of these woods, explained by the head devil of them all, and, by ----, if that's the only way for an honest man to save his skin up here, they can have the fight on those lines! Take the reins, Mr. Ide; I want to straighten this thing in my mind." Little passed between them on the return journey, but they talked far into the night, leaning towards each other across the little splint table in the office camp. The next morning they climbed the side of Enchanted, following the main road that had been swamped to Enchanted Stream. On the upper slopes they came upon the log-yards, and heaps of great, stripped spruces piled ready for the sleds. Farther up the slopes they heard the monotonous "whush-wish" of the cross-cut saws and the crackling crash of falling trees. In the Maine woods it is not the practice to haul to landings until the tree crop is practically all down and yarded on the main roads. This practice in the case of the Enchanted operation that winter was providential; for in the conference of the night before Rodburd Ide and his partner had definitely abandoned Enchanted Stream. That decision left them the alternative of Blunder Stream. It was the only plan that fitted with Rodburd Ide's new hopes based on the log contract in his breast-pocket. For months he had dimly foreseen this crisis without clear conception as to how it was to be met. But the possibilities of the gamble had fascinated him. In his calculations he had tried to keep prudence to the fore. But he had been waiting so long that at last prudence became dizzy in the swirl of possibilities. He had never intended to make Dwight Wade his mere cat's-paw. But the vehement courage of that sturdy young man, as displayed in the battle of Castonia, had touched something in Rodburd Ide's soul. All through his quiet life he had seen might and mastery make money out of the woods. And so at last he himself ventured, trusting much to the might and mastery he found in this self-reliant young gentleman whom Fate had flung into his life. Gasping at the boldness of it, he was willing that the whole winter's cut of the Enchanted operation should be landed upon Blunder Stream. That there was a way to get their water he admitted to himself, but he did not dare to think much upon the means. Dwight Wade, driven by fierce anger against Pulaski Britt, who blocked his way to the girl whom his own hands could win but for Britt, smote the splint table and declared that there should be a spring flood in Blunder Stream. "And if you fear lawsuits, being a man of property, Mr. Ide, you should not know what I intend to do. You may be held as a partner. Dissolve that partnership. You may be held as an employer. Discharge me when this log-cut is landed. Protect yourself. I have only my two hands for them to attach." The little man blinked at him admiringly, and then patted his shoulder. "You needn't tell me what you intend to do. You are the one for this end, and I can trust you. But when it comes to responsibility and the law, Wade, if those thieves try it on, after all they've stolen, you'll find Rod Ide right with you. You're my partner, and you'll stay my partner," declared Ide, stoutly. He repeated it as they swung around the upper granite dome of Enchanted, and looked down the western slope into Blunder valley. "There's the place for your main road, Wade," he said--"down that shoulder there! Swamp a half-mile of the steep pitch and you'll come into the Cameron road, and it will take you to the stream. You'll need about fifteen hundred feet of snub-line for that sharp incline there, and I'll have it up to you by the time you are ready for it. Put the swale hay to the rest of the pitches. It will trig better than gravel. Don't let 'em put a chain round a runner. You want to keep your road so smooth that every load of logs will go down there like a boy down a barn rollway. Sprinkle your levels and keep 'em glare ice. By ----, it's a beauty of an outlook for a landing-job! Cut your high slopes this trip. Keep your logs above the level of that shoulder, and every hoss team will make a four-turn day of it. We'll save a dollar a thousand on the landing-proposition alone, over and above the Enchanted road chance! And up there--" He gazed to the north up the valley over the wooded ridges, and then hushed his voice, as though there lay somewhere in that blue distance a thing that he feared. "Up there is a lake of water, Mr. Ide, that God designed to flow down this valley, and it's going to find its own channel again--somehow! I hope that doesn't sound like cheap boasting. It's only my idea of the right." He led the way back around the granite dome above the spruce benches, and the old man followed in silence. Two hours later Rodburd Ide was off and away for Castonia, his jumper-bell jangling its echoes among the trees. He had hope in his heart and a letter in his pocket. The hope was his own. The letter was addressed to John Barrett's daughter, and the superscription had brought a little scowl to the brows of the magnate of Castonia. Somehow it seemed like communication with the enemy. But Dwight Wade, writing it in the stillness of the night, while the little man snored in his bunk, had seemed in his own imaginings to be putting into that letter, as one lays away for safe keeping in a casket, all that heart and soul held of love and candor and tenderness. It was as though he intrusted those into her hands to preserve for him against the day when he might take them back into life and living once more. Just now they did not seem to belong to this life on Enchanted; they did not harmonize with the bitter conditions. He pressed down the envelope's seal with the fantastic reflection that he was sending out of the conflict witnesses in whose presence he might stand ashamed. Therefore, it was not treason that Rodburd Ide bore in the pocket of his big fur coat. Dwight Wade had sent tenderer emotions to the rear. He stood at the front, ready to meet iron with iron and fire with fire. CHAPTER XXVI THE DEVIL OF THE HEMPEN STRANDS "When the snub-line parts and the great load starts There's nothing that men may do, Except to cower with quivering hearts While the wreck goes thundering through." --The Ballad of Tumbledick. Days of winter snow and blow; days of sunshine, hard and cold as the radiance from a diamond's facets; days of calm and days of tempest; days when the snowflakes dropped as straight as plummets, and days when the whirlwinds danced in crazy rigadoons down the valleys or spun like dervishes on the mountain-tops! And all were days of honest, faithful toil in the black growth of Enchanted, and the days brought the dreamless sleep o' nights that labor won. In those long evenings hope lighted a taper that shone brightly beside the lantern of the office camp in whose dull beams Dwight Wade wrote long and earnest letters. But these were not to John Barrett's daughter; the conditions of their waiting love had tacitly closed the mail between them. Again Dwight Wade, in the honesty of his soul, had seen a light of hope that contrasted cheerily with the red glare of might against might which made his decency quail. He saw a chance to win as a man, not as a thug. The most brilliant young attorney of the newer generation in the State had been Wade's college mate. To him Wade detailed in those long letters the iniquitous conditions that fettered independent operators in the north country, and gave the case into his enthusiastic keeping. It meant digging into the black heart of the State's political corruption, timber graft, and land steals. It was a task that the young attorney, with earnest zeal and new ideals of civic honor, had long before entered upon. He seized upon this store of new ammunition with delight, and Wade rejoiced at the tenor of his replies. That the law and the right would intervene in Blunder valley to preserve him from a conflict in which he must use the shameful weapons selected by Britt for the duello was a promise that he cherished. And thus heartened, he toiled more eagerly. It was well into February before they began to haul their logs to the landing-place on Blunder Stream. But even with an estimated five millions to dump upon the ice of Blunder, time was ample, for the snub-line down the steep quarter-mile of Enchanted's shoulder made a cut-off that doubled the efficiency of the teams. It was the crux of the situation, that snubbing-pitch. With its desperate dangers, its uncertainties, its celerity, it was ominous and it was fascinating. But it was the big end of the great game. Dwight Wade made himself its captain. Tommy Eye, master of horses, came into his own and was his lieutenant. Those two trudged there together in the gray of the dawn; they trudged back together in the chilled dusk, still trembling with the racking strain of it all. Wade, cant-dog in hand, stood beside the snubbing-post and gave the word for every load to start, and watched every inch of its progress with tense muscles and pounding heart. Tommy Eye mounted the load and took the reins from the deposed driver as each team came to the top of the pitch; and the snorting, fearing horses seemed to know his master touch, and in blind faith went into their collars and floundered down under the fateful looming of the great load. Thus, every hour of the day, Tommy Eye silently, boldly ventured his life in the interests of the man who had once saved it, and Dwight Wade watched over his safety from the top of the slope. No word passed between the two. But they understood. There was no other man in the north country with the soothing voice, the assuring touch on the reins, and the mystic power to inspire confidence in dumb brutes--no other man that could bring the qualities that Tommy Eye brought to his task, coupled with the blind courage to perform. The horses turned their heads to make sure that he held the reins and was adventuring with them. Then they went on. The snubbing-post was a huge beech, sawed to leave four feet of stump. It had been adzed to the smoothness of an axe-handle. The three-inch hawser clasped it with four turns, and two men, whose hands were protected by huge leather mittens, kept the squalling coils loosened and paid out the slack, when the cable was hooked to the load of logs on its way down the slope in order to hold it back. And when the coils yanked themselves loose and the rope ran too swiftly, even making the leather mittens smoke, Wade, with his cant-dog, threw the hawser hard against the stump and checked it. It was a trick that Tommy Eye taught him, and it required muscle and snap. At the instant of peril he drove his cant-dog's iron nose into the roots of the stump, surged back on his lever, and pinched the rope between post and ash handle of the tool. Friction checked and held the load, but it was muscle-stretching, back-breaking labor. And all the time there was the rope to watch to make sure that no rock's edge or sharp stick had severed a strand, for broken strands uncoil like a spring under the mighty strain. There were the flipping bights of the coiled hawser to guard against as the men paid it out. Men are caught by those bights and ground to horrible death against the snubbing-post. In time that rope came to have sentiency in the eyes of Wade. Some days it seemed to be possessed by the spirit of evil. It would not run smoothly. It fed out by jerks, getting more and more of slack at each jump. It began to sway and vibrate between post and load, a wider arc with every jerk, a gigantic cello-string booming horrible music. It snarled on the post; it growled grim and sinister warning along its tense length. So terrible are these wordless threats that men have been known to surrender in panic, flee from the snubbing-post, and let destruction wreak its will. Hence the silent and understanding partnership between Tommy Eye, shadowed by death on the load, and Dwight Wade fiercely alert at the snubbing-post. There came a day when the spirit of evil had full sway. The weather was hard, with gray skies and a bone-searching chill. The hawser, made smooth as glass by attrition, was steely and stiff with the cold. It had new voices. Once it leaped so viciously at the legs of one of the post-men that he gave a yell and ran. In the tumult of his passion and fear Wade cursed the caitiff, his own legs in the swirl of the bights, his cant-dog nipping the rope to the post and checking it short. And far down the slope Tommy Eye, his teeth hard shut on his tobacco, waited without turning his head, a mute picture of utter confidence. It was while Wade held the line, waiting for the men to re-coil the hawser into safe condition to run, that the Honorable Pulaski Britt appeared. He came trotting his horses down the Enchanted main road and jerked them to a halt at the top of the pitch. Two men were with him on the jumper. Each wore the little blue badge of a game warden. "We are after a man named Thomas Eye, of your crew," said one of the men, catching Wade's inquiring gaze. "We've traced that cow-moose killing to him--the Cameron case." For an instant Wade's heart went sick, and then it went wild. Such an impudent, barefaced plot to rob him of an invaluable man at this crisis in his affairs seemed impossible to credit. It was vengefulness run mad, gone puerile. "Mr. Britt has signed the complaint and has the witnesses," said the warden. "We've got a warrant and we'll have to take the man." "And there he is on that load," said the Honorable Pulaski, pointing his whip-butt. "Hold that line, men," commanded Wade, coming away from the post. "Tommy Eye has not been out of my camp, wardens. He is absolutely indispensable to me. He has killed no moose. But if it can be proven I'll pay his fine." "It takes a trial to prove it," said the warden, dryly. "That's why we're after him." "Britt, I didn't think you'd get down to this," stormed the young man. "I'm not a game warden," retorted the baron of the Umcolcus. "You're dealin' with them, not me." He sat, slicing his whip-lash into the snow, and watched the young man's bitter anger with huge enjoyment. And when Wade seemed unable to frame a suitable retort he went on: "If you think I've got anything to do with taking that crack teamster out of your crew, you'd better thank me. Anything that interferes with your landing your logs in a blind pocket like Blunder Stream is a godsend to you and Rod Ide." His temper began to flame. "What do you think you're going to do there? Do you calculate to steal any of my water? Do you think that whipper-snapper whelp of a lawyer that you've set yappin' at our heels is goin' to spin a thread for you against the men that have run this section for thirty years? If you've only got the law bug in your head, give it up. But if you have the least sneakin' idea of troublin' that dam up there"--he shook his fist into the north--"coil your snub-line and save time and money; for, by the eternal Jehovah, blood will run in that valley before water does!" In the pause that followed one of the wardens asked, "Do you propose to resist the arrest of Eye, Mr. Wade?" The question was an incautious one. In a flash the young man saw that this last sortie of the Honorable Pulaski was not so much an adventure against Tommy Eye as against himself--with intent to embroil him with the officers of the law. That might mean more trouble than he dared reflect upon. He had a very definite apprehension of what the legal machinery of Britt and his associates might do to him if he afforded any pretence for their procedure. One of the wardens dropped off the jumper at a word from Britt, and the timber baron urged his horses down the slope, the other officer accompanying him. Tommy Eye sat on his load, still with gaze patiently to the front, waiting in serene confidence the convenience of his employer. That back turned to Wade was the back of the humble confider, the back of the martyr. In his sudden trepidation at thought of his own imperilled interests, were he himself enmeshed in the law, Wade had thought to leave Tommy's possible fate alone. But now, almost without reflection or plan, he ran down the hill. The martyr's serene obliviousness struck a pang to his heart. In those days of strife and toil and understanding Tommy Eye had grown dear to him. Britt, turning, yelled to the officer at the top of the slope, "Give that snub-line a half-hitch and hold that load!" A bit of a rock shelf broadened the road where the logs were halted. Britt lashed his horses around in front of the load with apparent intent to intimidate Tommy. The warden dropped off the jumper and shut off retreat in the rear. And Wade, running swiftly, carrying his cant-dog, came and leaped upon the load and stood above Tommy--his protecting genius, but a genius who had no very clear idea of what he was about to do. No one ever explained exactly how it happened! The warden, who was at the top of the pitch and who did it, gazed a moment, saw what he had done, and fled with a howl of abject terror, never to appear on Enchanted again. The men at the snub-post stated afterwards that he came to them, hearing Pulaski Britt's orders, elbowed them aside with an oath, and took the hawser. He probably undertook to loosen the coils to make a half-hitch; but a game warden has no business with a snub-line when the devil is in it. It gave one triumphant shriek at its release, and then--"Toom! Toom! Toom!"--it began to sing its horrible bass note. It was slipping faster and faster around the snubbing-post under the strain of Tommy Eye's load, which it had been holding back. Tommy Eye knew without looking--knew without understanding. He knew--that most terrible knowledge of all woods terrors--that he was "sluiced." He screamed once--only once--and the horses came into their collars. Their hot breath was on the back of Pulaski Britt's neck when he started--started with a hoarse oath above which sang the shrill yelp of his whip-lash, and behind him, on the icy slope, slid the great load of logs now released from anchorage to the snubbing-post and guided only by the nerve of Tommy Eye. "Jump, Mr. Wade! Jump!" gasped the teamster. But Wade drove the peak of his cant-dog into a log and clung to the upright handle. He looked back. The great hawser spun itself off the spindle of the post and chased down the hill in spirals, utterly loose and free. It was no dare-devil spirit that held him on the load. His soul was sick with horrible fear. It was something that was almost subconsciousness that kept him there. Perhaps it was pity--pity for Tommy Eye, so brave a martyr at his post of duty. In the flash of that instant when the great load gathered speed he stiffened himself to leap, then he looked at Tommy's patched coat and remembered his oft-repeated little boast: "I've never left my hosses yet!" And so if Tommy could stay with his horses, he, Dwight Wade, could stay with Tommy! There was a queer thrill in his breast and the sting of sudden tears in his eyes as he decided. The first rush of the descent was along an incline, steep but even. There were benches below--each shelf ten feet or so of jutting level--that broke the descent. Wade saw the jumper of Pulaski Britt strike the first bench. The old man went off the seat into the air, and when he fell he dropped his reins, clutched the seat, and kneeled, facing the pursuers, his face ghastly with terror. He crouched there, not daring to turn. Even if he had held his reins they would have been as useless in his hands as strips of fog. Ledges and trees hemmed either side. There was only the narrow road for his flying horses, and they ran straight on, needing neither whip nor admonitions. The groan of five thousand feet of timber chafing the bind-chains when their great load struck the shelf was like the groan of an animal in agony. The chains held. It was Tommy who had seen to every link and every loop. Then, for the first time in his life, Wade heard the scream of horses in mortal fear. The lurch of the forward sled lifted the pole, and for one dreadful instant both animals kicked free and clear in air. Tommy Eye shot two words at them like bullets. "Steady, boys!" he yelled. His head was hunched between his shoulders. His arms were out-stretched and rigid. Tommy Eye, master of horses! It was his lift on the bits at just the fraction of a second when they needed it that set them on their feet when the pole dropped. And down the next descent they swooped. From his height Wade looked straight into the eyes of Pulaski Britt. It seemed that with every plunge of their hoofs Tommy Eye's horses would smash that puffy face. The checks of the benches, when the huge load struck and staggered from time to time, allowed Britt's lighter equipage a little start. But the mighty projectile that drove on him down the smooth slopes gained with every yard, for the thrusting pole swept the horses off their feet in plunge after plunge. And then it was Tommy Eye's desperate coolness that helped them to their infrequent footing. All of the man's face that Wade could see was a ridged jaw muscle above the faded collar of his coat. The peak of his cap hid all but that. There was a curve at the foot of the snub slope. The wall of trees that closed the vista was disaster spelled by bolled trunk and sturdy limb. There stood the nether millstone: the upper was rushing down, and the grist would be flesh of horses and men. No man could see any other alternative. That horses, shaken every now and then on the up-cocked pole as helplessly as kittens, could bring that load around the curve was not a hope; it could be nothing but a dream of desperation. As to what Tommy Eye dreamed or thought, his passenger had no hint. There was only the patch of cheek showing under the tilted cap. But the reins were just as tight, the out-stretched arms just as steady. Wade crouched low, his eyes on that rigid jaw muscle. Suddenly, with a yell like the cry of something wild, Eye sprang to his feet, bestriding the logs, bracing himself for some mighty effort. They were at the Curve of Death! There came a surge on the tight reins, eight hoofs dug the snow in one frantic thrust, and they went around--they went around! With horses and driver straining to one side the great load pitched, swerved, and, after one breathless instant, swept on in the road around the curve. Twenty rods farther on they struck the hay, spread thickly for the trig--the checking of the runners. And the sled-runners, biting it, jerked and halted, the bind-chains creaked, the chafing logs groaned--and they were stopped! The lathering horses stood with legs wide spraddled, their heads lowered, their snorting noses puffing up the snow. Tommy Eye dug the tobacco from his cheek and thoughtfully tossed it away. Britt's team had disappeared, reins dragging, the horses running madly, the whitened, puffy face flashing one last look as it winked out of sight among the trees. "I've dreamed of such a thing as this," observed Tommy, at last, a strange tremor in his tones. "I've dreamed of chasin' old P'laski Britt, me settin' on five thousand feet of wild timber and lookin' down into his face and seein' him a-wonderin' whether they'd let him into the front door of hell or make him go around to the back. It's the first time he was ever run good and plenty, and I done it--but," he sighed, "it was damnation whilst it lasted!" He turned now and gazed long and wistfully at Wade. "Ye stuck by me, didn't ye, Mr. Wade?" he said, softly. "Stuck by me jest like I was a friend, and not old, drunken Tommy Eye! I reckon we'll shake on that!" And when they clasped hands he asked, with the wistful, inexpressible pathos of his simple devotion to duty: "What was it all about? I jest only know they sluiced me!" And Wade gasped an explanation, Tommy Eye staring at him with wrinkling brows and squinting eyes. "Come to arrest me for northin' I hadn't done?" he shrilled. "Come to take me off'n a job where I was needed, and where I was earnin' my honest livin'?" "They had the warrant, and Britt swore out the lying complaint." "Mr. Wade," said Tommy, after a solemn pause, "I've done a lot of things in this life to be ashamed of--but jest gittin' drunk, that's all. I ain't never done a crime. But jest now, if it hadn't been for that toss-up between supper in camp or hot broth in tophet to-night, I'd be travellin' down-country, pulled away from you when you need me worst, and all on account of P'laski Britt. If that's the chances an honest man runs in this world, I'm an outlaw from now on!" Wade stared at him in amazement, for there was a queer significance in Tommy's tone. "An outlaw!" repeated Tommy, slapping his breast. "Yes, s'r, I'm an outlaw! An outlaw so fur as P'laski Britt is concerned. I've showed him I can run him! Did you see him lookin' at me? He'll dream of me after this when he has the nightmare." He took Wade by the arm. "I 'ain't been sayin' much, Mr. Wade, but I see how things are gettin' ready to move in this valley. You ain't built for an outlaw. But you need one in your business. I'm the one from now on." He pulled his thin hand out of his mitten and shook it towards the north in the direction in which Blunder Lake lay. "You need an outlaw in your business, I say! I'm tough from now on. I'll be so tough in April that you'll have to discharge me. There's no knowin' what an outlaw will do, is there, Mr. Wade? I'd ruther go to jail as an outlaw than as a drunk, like I've done every summer. They look up to outlaws. They make drunks scrub the floors and empty the slops." His voice trembled. "Oh, you needn't worry, Mr. Wade! I'll be proud to be an outlaw. And I ain't northin' but old Tommy Eye, anyway." He slid down off the load and went between the horses' heads, and fondled them and kissed them above their eyes. "Brace up, old fellers!" he said. "You won't have to pull no more to-day. I reckon you've done your stunt!" "I--I don't understand this outlaw business, Tommy," stammered Wade, looking down on him from the load. Tommy peered up, his head between the shaggy manes of the horses. "Don't you try to, Mr. Wade!" he cried, earnestly. "There ain't no good in tryin' to understand outlaws. They ain't no kind to hitch up to very close. Don't you try to understand them!" And as he bent to unhook the trace-chains he muttered to himself: "I ain't sure as I understand much about 'em myself, but there's one outlawin' job that it's come to my mind can be done without takin' private lessons off'n Jesse James, or whoever is topnotcher in the line just now. In the mean time, let's see that warden try to arrest me!" But as days went by it became apparent that the wardens and the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt considered that they had precipitated an affair on Enchanted whose possible consequences they did not care to face. CHAPTER XXVII THE "CANNED THUNDER" OF CASTONIA "A woodsman hates a coward as he hates diluted rye, Stiff upper-lip for livin', stiff backbone when you die!" When April came, and with caressing fingers began to stroke the softening snow from the mountain flanks, she found full half a million of the Enchanted cut still on the yards. "If it's to be a gamble, let's make it a good one," Rodburd Ide had counselled his partner. "Pile on every stick that winter's back will carry. Pile till it breaks!" Dwight Wade had a trustworthy "kitchen cabinet" of advisers in old Christopher Straight, Tommy Eye, and the chopping-boss; and with them as counsellors he ventured further than his own narrow experience would have prompted. On nights when April slept and the trickling slopes were stiffened by the cold, the crew of the Enchanted stole a march on spring. They awoke at sundown with the owls. They ate breakfast in the gloom of early evening. And, with the moon holding her lantern for them in the serene skies, they rushed their logs into the waiting arms of Blunder valley. That those arms would surrender the timber when the time was ripe seemed more certain as the days went by. The word of their zealous young man of law was encouraging. There had been pleas, representations, digging over of old charters, hunt through dusty records, citation of precedents, and some very direct talk regarding a thorough legislative investigation of conditions in the north country to regulate the rights of independent operators. It was admittedly too big a question to be hurried. Litigation fattens by what it feeds on. Grown ponderous, it marches, slow and dignified, in short stages between terms, and sits and rests and puffs at every cross-road of argument, exception, appeal, and writ of error. Even that exigency of five millions of timber waiting in Blunder valley could not hasten the settlement of the young reformer's main contention or the big question. But there are in this life some deeper sentiments than enthusiasm in reform. The old college friendship between Dwight Wade, famous centre of Burton's eleven, and the little quarter-back whom he had shielded was one of those deeper sentiments. And now the lawyer, for the sake of that friendship, was willing to buy Dwight Wade's success in Blunder valley by honorable compromise on certain points where compromise was honorable. With a man open to sane reason and moral decency a compromise might have been effected. But after Pulaski D. Britt had craftily drawn out proffer of a truce and proposition of a trade in one phase of the great question of water-rights, he burst into a bellow of "blackmail" that echoed from end to end of the State. The words bristled in the newspapers controlled by the land barons and was rolled on the tongues of gossip. And as humanity in general, selfish in its easy-going way and jealous of resolute activity, likes to believe ill of reformers, men were readier to believe Britt than to give a motive of honest friendship its due. The jeers of the mob make what some people like to call "public opinion." And sometimes when public opinion is loudly gabbling and can be politely referred to in case of doubt, there can be found judges who will listen with one ear to the voices of the street and with the other to the specious representations of the man in power. So it came about that the judge presiding at the _nisi prius_ term in the great county dominated by Pulaski D. Britt hearkened in chambers to some very distressing details set before him by that gentleman and certain other "employers of labor" and "developers of the great timber interests." The judge pursed his lips and with his tongue clucked horrified astonishment at stories of brutal assaults made "on members of Pulaski Britt's crew" (this being Dwight Wade's desperate defence of himself, as pictured by Britt), and other tales of lunatics provoked to deeds of violence towards aforesaid "developers"; of incendiaries spirited away from officers; of men stolen out of Britt's crew (poor Tommy Eye's rescue from torture, as revamped for evidence by the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt); and, lastly, of that desperate and malignant attempt on the life of Honorable Pulaski D. Britt when a load of timber was sluiced at him from the shoulder of Enchanted Mountain. Dwight Wade had not put into the hands of his lawyer the details of those pitiful secrets of the woods; for not only his honor as a man set a seal on his lips, but the sacredness of his love imposed higher obligation still. So his lawyer listened, amazed, incredulous, but incapable of refuting these tales in the categorical way that the law demands. So much, then, for what "the gang" had done for Pulaski D. Britt and his interests. Britt lacked neither words nor will to make the story a black one. As to what they intended to do, the Honorable Pulaski declaimed, with quivering finger rapping tattoo on the map of the Blunder valley, his voice hoarse with emotion and the perspiration of apprehensiveness streaking his puffy cheeks. And with past enormities standing undefended, what might not a judge believe as to future atrocities when the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had made the prediction, his chief exhibit of intended outlawry being five millions of timber stranded in Blunder valley, and requiring "stolen water" to move it? His last argument was an uncontradicted allegation of attempted compromise, his last word "Blackmail!" shot at the face of the opposing lawyer while his stubby finger vibrated under the lawyer's nose. Therefore, at the end of it all, the clerk of courts wrote, the judge signed, and five minutes after the ink was dry High Sheriff Bennett Rodliff buttoned his coat over the folded paper and set his face towards Enchanted. Forty-eight hours later, having travelled by train, by stage, by sledge, and on foot, he stood before Dwight Wade in the midst of his crew at the landings in Blunder valley, gave the paper to him, and watched his face while he read it. Being a man who enjoyed his own authority and exulted in the power of the law when it dealt crushing blows, the high sheriff noted with satisfaction that the young man's face grew pale under its tan. "Get the sense, do you?" inquired the sheriff, allowing himself the relaxation of a chew of tobacco after his headlong rush into the north; "it's an injunction. You can't meddle with Blunder Lake dam; can't h'ist gates; can't take water!" He gazed about him at the heaped logs piled in the bed of the stream. "Kind o' seems to me," he observed, with smug rebuke, "that I'd have been slow in landin' logs down here till I knowed what the law court was goin' to do about these water-rights. Law steps slow and careful, and this whole thing has got to wait till it gets way up to the full bench. Lettin' you have water here might be an admission by the big crowd that they was all wrong on the chief proposition. The big crowd ain't that kind!" Wade had read the injunction through to its bitter end. Every stilted phrase, every estopping, restraining word of its redundancy, was like a bar between him and his hopes. It was a temporary injunction. But the date set for a hearing on the question of permanency was a date that made those log-piles in Blunder valley loom in his dizzy gaze like monuments to buried expectations. "Where was our lawyer when this damnable document was issued?" he cried, shaking the paper under the sheriff's nose. His heart was aflame against the thing called Law. The sheriff stood there as Law's representative, expressing in his blank face such unfeeling acceptance of the situation as hopeless, that Wade wanted to jam the paper between those jaws wagging blandly on their tobacco. "Oh, he was there!" remarked Rodliff, dryly. "Perhaps if he hadn't been there your case would have come off better. Judges ain't got much use for lawyers when the shyster kind get shown up in a graft game. The fellow who named this Blunder valley years ago," he observed, running his eyes over the log-piles once more, "must have had a gift of second-sight. Rod Ide's always been cal'lated to be level-headed. It's a wonder to me he let you fool him into this. I've heard considerable about it outside. But it's worse than I'd reckoned on." For a sickening instant the thing showed to Wade in its blackest light. To be sure, it was the Law that struck down his hands. But it was plain that the Law was, after all, only a part of the game--and his enemies had invoked it and had won. "Look here, men!" shouted the high sheriff, turning from his survey of this defeated wretchedness, "I want you to take note of what I've done here. I've served an injunction on your boss. It means that he's got to leave Blunder Lake dam alone. Him and all his crew! Understand?" The men had been slowly gathering near on the log-piles, in order to get drift of what this visit meant. Some of them had private reasons for wondering what business a high sheriff was on; all of them were curious. And the sheriff saw Tommy Eye in the forefront. "By-the-way, Eye," he called, "the wardens want you! You'd better come along out with me and save trouble." "I'm an outlaw," cried Tommy, defiantly, "and I won't come with nobody!" The sheriff blinked at the man who had been his uncomplaining prisoner for so many summers, and seemed to be trying to digest this defiance. "I'm an outlaw!" repeated the man. "I ain't to work for nobody. I've jacked my job here. I'm just plain outlaw. I ain't responsible to nobody. Nobody ain't responsible for me. You tell that to everybody concerned. I'm an outlaw!" Rodliff, still with wondering eyes on Tommy, slowly worked a revolver out of his hip-pocket. "Come down off'n that pile!" he shouted. "I want you!" But once the revolver was out the target was not visible. Three leaps, his calk boots biting the logs, put Tommy out of sight behind the pile. Two minutes later they heard him among the trees far up the slope of Blunder valley. He was still shouting his declaration of outlawry, and the diminuendo of tone indicated that he was running like a deer. The high sheriff shoved back his revolver, scowling up at the grinning faces on the log-piles. But he found no hint of similar amiability in Wade's expression when he turned to face the young man; and after surveying him up and down with much disfavor, he shook his fist in a gesture that embraced them all, and started away, flinging over his shoulder the contemptuous remark that he seemed to have "lighted in a pretty tough gang." The significance of that expressed conviction was not lost on the young man. It revealed what machination was doing. Britt, bulwarked by the courts and public sentiment, was not to be fought by the outlawry he had invoked as the code of combat. An hour later Dwight Wade was urging his horse towards Castonia. If Rodburd Ide or a message from Rodburd Ide were on the way north he would meet the situation so much the sooner. The sting of his bitter thoughts and the goad of his impatience would not allow him to stay at Enchanted. He wanted to know the exact facts "outside." He did not dare to jeopardize his partner by the rashness his bitter anger once contemplated. A half-mile down the tote road Tommy Eye dashed at him from the covert of the spruces. "I reckoned you'd be goin', Mr. Wade!" he panted. "I ain't intendin' to bother you--but what did Ben Rodliff say that was--that paper that he clubbed you with?" The pitiful intensity of his loyal anxiety struck Wade to the heart. "It was an injunction, Tommy," he explained, patiently. "It's an order from the court. Oh, it's horribly unjust! It may be law, but it isn't justice; for justice would take into account a man's common rights, and wouldn't tie them up by pettifogging delays." He was talking as much to himself as to the poor fellow who clung to the thill. The words surged into his mouth out of his full soul. "I have been square with men, Tommy, square and decent. I believe in law, and I want to respect it. But when law obeys Pulaski Britt's bidding, and takes you by the throat and kneels on you and chokes you, and lets such a man as Britt walk past on his own business, free and clear, it's law that's devil-made." But the incantation of that law was having its effect on a nature that was more docile than it realized. In his hot anger he had said he would fight Britt with the tyrant's own lawless choice of weapons. He looked back and remembered that he had intended to do so. A sheriff with a gold badge and a bit of paper had prevailed over his bitter resolution when Pulaski Britt and his army at his back would have failed to cow him. The dull roll of a distant detonation came to them in the little silence that followed on Wade's outburst. It came from the west, where men of the Enchanted crew were at work widening the granite jaws of Blunder gorge to give clear egress to the Enchanted drive. In that moment of his utter despair the roar of the rend-rock was a mocking voice. "And that's all there is to an injunction?" demanded Tommy. "Ben Rodliff hands you a paper, and spits tobacker-juice on the snow, and calls you a fool, and goes down past here, like he did a little while ago, swingin' his reins and singin' a pennyr'yal hymn? Only has to do that to tie up the whole Enchanted drive that we hundred men have sweat and froze and worked to get onto the landings?" "Only that, Tommy," replied Wade, bitterly. "The law is sitting there on Blunder dam. You can't see it, but it's there, and it says, 'Hands off!'" "There's something you can see, though," Tommy declared. "You can see two men in a shack that's been built over the gates of Blunder Lake dam. One sleeps daytimes, the other sleeps nights, and they've both got Winchesters. I've been there private and personal, and looked 'em over." "I don't want any of my men lurking about that dam," commanded Wade. Tommy Eye cinched his worn belt one notch tighter over his thin haunches and buttoned his checkered wool jacket. "I ain't one of your men," he growled, with such sudden and sullen change in demeanor that Wade stared at him in amazement. "I've gone into the outlaw business, and I've told you so, and I've told Ben Rodliff so." They heard the thudding boom of dynamite once more, and the absolutely fiendish look that came into Tommy's face as he turned his gaze towards Blunder valley enlightened his employer. "That sounds good to me!" shrieked the teamster. It was as though one of the docile Dobbins of the hovel had suddenly perked up ears and tail and begun to play the part of a beast of prey. When Tommy ran back into the spruces Wade shouted after him, insistently and angrily. But he did not reply, and after a time Wade drove on, cursing soulfully the whole innate devilishness of the woods. That another weak nature had run amuck after the fashion to which he had become accustomed in his woods experience seemed probable; but he had neither time nor inclination to chase Tommy Eye. As to Blunder Lake dam, he reflected that the eternal vigilance of the Winchesters guaranteed Pulaski Britt's interests in that direction, and, soul-sick of the whole wicked situation, he was glad that the Winchesters were there. He had failed. He could at least own that much man-fashion to Rodburd Ide. It was a messenger that he met--not the partner himself. And as he had anticipated, the messenger summoned him to Castonia. The last few miles of his journey took him along the bank of the Umcolcus. The big river had already thrown off its winter sheathing and was running full and free. It was waiting for the northern lakes, still ice-bound, to surrender their waters and sweep the logs down to it. Rodburd Ide's stout soul uttered no complaints when the two had locked themselves in the little back office of the store. But his mute distress and bewilderment in the face of calamity sanctioned by the law touched his young partner more than complaints would have done. The fighting spirit was gone out of the little man. "I didn't reckon it could go against us that bad, not after what the lawyer said. He seemed to know his business, Wade. But maybe he was too honest to fight a crowd like that. It's a crusher to come after hopes was up like mine was. I even went to work the minute the ice slid down-river, and set our sheer-booms above the logan and got the sortin'-gap ready. I was that sure our logs were comin' down. But it ain't your fault, Wade, and it ain't mine. It's just as I told you once before. It's what we're up against!" And then, striving for a pretext to end the doleful session, he invited Wade to walk up the river-bank. He wanted to show him the site for the new great mills. "They can't steal that much away from me, my boy," he said, trying to be cheerful. "The mills will have to buy out of the corporation drive this year, seeing that we're coopered on our contract. That means so much more good profit for Britt and his crowd. They've got their smell of what's comin', too, and that's probably why they fought so hard to get the injunction. They're in for a big make and their own prices this year. But the more I know about that charter of the Great Independent the more trouble I can see for the old crowd when the next legislature gets to tearin' this thing to pieces. The G. I.'s know what they're doin'. They'll have their rights. And when the big wagon starts little fellers like you and me can climb aboard and ride, too. But the big wagon won't start till next year," he added, sadly. Out-of-doors they did not talk. The roar of the Hulling Machine dominated everything, and the spume-clouds swaying above it spat in their faces. On the platform of Ide's store the pathetic brotherhood of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sat in silent conclave, stunned into a queer stupor by the bellow of the Hulling Machine, even as habitual opium-eaters succumb to the blissful influence of the drug. Above the falls an island divided the river. On the channel side the waters raced turbulently. The island sentinelled the mouth of the logan that deeply indented the shore on the quiet side of the river. Ide had installed a system of sheer-booms. They spanned the current diagonally, and were to be the silent herders that would edge the log-flocks away from the banks, crowd them to centre at the sorting-gap, and keep them running free. Below the sorting-gap there were two sheer-booms--divergent. One ushered the down-river logs back into the current that dashed towards the Hulling Machine. The other would swing the logs of the Enchanted drive into the quiet holding-ground of the logan. [Illustration: "'WHAT I SAY ON THIS RIVER GOES!'"] The thought of the heaped logs in Blunder valley, the memory of the dynamite bellowing its farewell to him over the tree-tops, and now the spectacle of these empty booms, had the eloquence of despair and the pathos of failure for Dwight Wade. And as the two of them--he and his partner--stood there and gazed silently, they were forced to face bitter accentuation of their stricken fortunes. Pulaski D. Britt, master of the Umcolcus drive, came on his way north at the head of his men. It was an army marching with all its impedimenta. There were many huge bateaux swung upon trucks that had hauled them around the white-water. Men launched them into the eddy above the Hulling Machine, and began to load them with tents, cordage, and the wangan stores. Rodburd Ide and his young partner stood at one side, and surveyed this scene of activity without speaking. And Britt marched up to them, raucous and domineering with the masterfulness of the river tyrant. It had long been the saying along the Umcolcus that Pulaski Britt got mad a week before the driving season opened, and stayed mad a week after it ended. "Ide," he cried, "you and I seem to be always in trouble with each other lately! But it's of your own makin', not mine! These sheer-booms that you've stuck in here obstruct navigation. I want to get my boats up. You've got to cut these booms loose." "Mr. Britt," returned Ide, his tones quivering with passion, "two men in each bateau crew can shove those booms down with pick-poles and let a bateau over without wasting a minute's time. You've brought those bateaux over all your own sheer-booms below here--you've got your own booms above. You've been riding over 'em for thirty years. Now be reasonable." "You run back down there to your store and get onto your job of sellin' kerosene and crackers," advised the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically. "Don't you undertake to tell me my business. As river-master, I say those logs obstruct navigation, and what I say on this river goes!" "You talk, Britt, as though a title that you've grabbed onto, the same as you have everything else along this river, amounted to anything in law," objected the magnate of Castonia. "I own the land that those booms are hitched to, and you're not goin' to bluff me by any of your obstruction-to-navigation talk. You've managed to get most things along this river this spring your own way, but I reckon I know when you've gone about far enough. Don't try to rub it in!" Mr. Britt, serene in his autocracy as drive-master, was in no mood to bandy arguments nor waste time on such as Rodburd Ide. He whirled away, lifted a wooden box from one of the wagons, and set it down gingerly. "MacLeod!" he called. The boss came away from the river-bank, where he was superintending stowing of supplies. "Unpack this dynamite, and blow damnation out of those booms--the sortin'-gap first!" The man twisted his face in a queer grimace. "I don't think I'll do it, Mr. Britt," he said, curtly. He looked away from Britt when the tyrant began to storm at him, and fixed his eyes on Wade's face with an expression there was no reading. "No, I ain't no coward, either," he said, at last, interrupting his employer's flow of invective. "But dynamitin' other folks' booms with the folks lookin' at you ain't laid down in a river-driver's job; and I ain't got any relish for nailin' boot-heels all next summer in a jail workshop." "I'll take the responsibility of this!" shouted Britt. "Then you'd better do the job, sir," suggested MacLeod, firmly. "Law has queer quirks, and I don't propose to get mixed into it." There was no gainsaying the logic of the boss's position. The Honorable Pulaski noted that the men had overheard. He noted also that there were no signs of any volunteers coming from the ranks. And so, with the impetuosity of his temper, when the eyes of men were upon him, he set his own hand to the job. With a cant-dog peak he began to pry at the box-cover. And Colin MacLeod, hesitating a moment, walked straight up to Dwight Wade--to that young man's discomposure, it must be confessed. Wade set his muscles to meet attack. But MacLeod halted opposite him, folded his arms, and gazed at him with something of appeal in his frank, gray eyes. There was candor in his look. In their other meetings Wade had only seen blind hate and unreasoning passion. "Maybe you've got an idea that I'm a pretty cheap skate, Mr. Wade," he blurted. "Maybe I am, but it ain't been so between me and men unless there was women mixed in. My head ain't strong where women is mixed in. You hold on and let me talk!" he cried, putting up his big hand. "I've got eleven hundred dollars in the bank that I've saved, my two hands, and a reputation of bein' square between men. That's all I've got, and I want to keep all three. I had you sized up wrong at the start. I mixed women in without any right to. I misjudged the cards as they laid. I used you dirty, and I got what was comin' to me. Now I've found out. I know how things stand with you all along the line, from there"--he pointed south towards the outside world that held Elva Barrett--"to there on Enchanted. And I'm sorry! I'm sorry I ever got mistaken, and made things harder for a square man. You heard what I just said to Mr. Britt. I wanted you to hear it. All is, I'd like to shake hands with you and start fresh. It may have to be man to man between us yet on this river, but, by ----, for myself I want it man-fashion." He cast a glance behind him. Britt had the box open, and had dug out of the sawdust some cylinders in brown-paper wrappings. When MacLeod whirled again to face Wade the latter put out his hand without reservation in face or gesture. Months before, such amazing repentance and conversion might have astonished him, but now he understood the real ingenuousness of the woods. Pulaski Britt, hardened by avarice and outside associations, was not of the true life of the woods. This impulsive boy, with his mighty muscles and his tender heart, was of the woods, and only the woods. MacLeod came one step nearer to Rodburd Ide, and pulled off his hat. "If it ain't too much trouble, Mr. Ide, I wish you'd tell Miss Nina that I've done it square and righted it fair. And don't scowl at me that way, Mr. Ide! It was a dream--and I've woke up! It was a pretty wild dream--and a man does queer things in his sleep. Your girl ain't for me or my kind, and I know it, now that I've woke up. I'd like to tell her so, and explain, but I don't know how to do it, Mr. Ide. You do it for me. I ask you man-fashion!" He started away from them hastily, strode back to the bateaux, and began to swear at the men who had stopped work to gaze on the Honorable Pulaski. The latter had already embarked in a bateau, carrying several of those ominous sticks wrapped in their brown-paper cases. "Britt," shrieked Ide, "we've been to law with you to find out our rights! Ain't you willin' to take your own medicine?" "Hell on your law!" blazed the drive-master, contemptuously. "Give us time to get an injunction before you destroy our good property," demanded the little man, choking with his ire. For answer Britt shook one of the dynamite sticks above his head without even turning to look back. His men crowded the boat over the boom at the sorting-gap, and Britt lighted the fuse and tossed the explosive upon the anchored log platform. "Oh, if our men were only here instead of at Enchanted!" mourned Ide. "They're just where we ought to have them, Mr. Ide," the young man growled. Britt was safely away up-river when the dynamite did its work; his men had rowed like fiends. It was a beautiful job, viewed from the stand-point of destruction. The downward thrust of the mighty force splintered the platform into toothpicks and let the booms adrift. The partners of Enchanted did not exchange comments. They gazed after the destroyer. Taking his time, as though to prolong their distress, Britt dynamited the booms above, and then stood up and jerked his arm as a signal for his crew to follow. They went splashing up the river, six oars to a bateau, and disappeared, one boat after the other, bound for the mouth of Jerusalem Stream. Already the jaws of the Hulling Machine were gulping down the gobbets of splintered logs. "How soon can you replace those booms, Mr. Ide?" Wade edged the words through his teeth, as a man stricken with lockjaw might have spoken. And without waiting for reply, he hurried on. "Put 'em in, Mr. Ide, because you're going to need 'em. And put along this shore all the men in Castonia who can handle guns. Winchesters and dynamite, with 'Hell on law' for a battle-cry! That's what he's given us. It's good enough for me. Will you put those booms in, Mr. Ide?" "I'll put 'em in, and I'll protect 'em after they're put in," declared the little man, stoutly. The fighting spirit was in him again. They looked at each other a moment, and turned and hurried back towards the settlement. Neither man seemed to feel that words could help that situation nor emphasize determination. Prophet Eli was in front of Ide's store with his little white stallion when the two arrived there. The old man surveyed Wade shrewdly when he hastened to Nina Ide, who was waiting for a word with him. "Boy! boy!" whispered the girl, clasping his tanned hand in both of hers, "I don't like to see your eyes shine so! They're hard. But I know how to soften them. I have a letter for you from the one woman of all the world. Come with me and get it." "Keep it for me," he muttered--"keep it until I come for it. I'm not fit to touch it now. It might make a decent man of me, and--and--I don't want to be--not just yet, Miss Nina." He whirled away, climbed upon his jumper, and lashed his horse back along the trail towards Enchanted. The words of that half-jeering ditty of Prophet Eli's followed him, as they had on that memorable first day at Castonia, and grotesque as the lilt was, it seemed to express the young man's flaming resolution: "Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountains, Shang, ro-ango, whango-whey! And as he was feelin' salutatious, Chased old Pratt a mile, by gracious, Licked old Shep and two dog Towsers, Then marched back home with old Pratt's trousers." CHAPTER XXVIII "'TWAS DONE BY TOMMY THUNDER" "Twenty a month for daring death--or fighting from dawn to dark-- Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public park. We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry crew-- A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes through." --Ballad of the Drive. Wade's poor beast was staggering when at last he topped the horseback overlooking Enchanted valley. He himself plodded behind the jumper, clinging to it, walking to keep awake. He had started in the dusk, he had been nearly twenty-four hours on the road from Castonia, and it was growing dusk again. He was too utterly weary to be surprised when Tommy Eye came hurrying down from a knoll that commanded a long view of the tote road. The light of a little camp-fire glowed on the knoll, and he saw that a horse was tethered there. "I'm gettin' to be a worse outlaw than ever, Mr. Wade," declared the teamster. "I've stole one of your hosses, and grub and hay from the store camp, and I'm livin' here in the woods. I've been waitin' for you," he added, wistfully. "I might have slept a little last night when I didn't know, but I reckon I didn't. I figgered you'd come. I've been waitin' for you. They can't say I'm one of your men, Mr. Wade. I'm livin' here in the woods." "Look here, Eye," blurted his employer, roughly, "I haven't any time nor taste for fool talk just now. You take the horse back to camp and get on your job." He started on. "You don't sound as though you'd got what you went after," cried Tommy, unabashed. He came trotting behind. "You didn't get satisfaction, then, Mr. Wade! Injunction still there, hey? You didn't get--" "What did you suppose I'd get from Pulaski Britt, you infernal fool?" His own brutality towards the faithful servitor made him ashamed. But the spirit of evil that had taken possession of him was speaking through lips that he surrendered in weariness of body and bitterness of soul. And when a shade of repentance smote him at sight of Tommy trotting sorrowfully at his side, he gasped out of his woe. "He has dynamited our booms, Tommy. Did it with his own hands. And now"--he threw up his arms towards Blunder Lake--"wait till to-morrow!" Tommy Eye stopped without a word and let Wade go on. "Wait till to-morrow?" he mumbled, as he scrambled back up the knoll. "Wait till to-morrow, when I've got a two-hoss load of canned thunder planted under Blunder dam, and the devil helpin' me by puttin' them two to sleep ev'ry night, snorin' like quill-pigs?" He waited until Wade had stumbled out of sight, then cinched upon his horse the blankets that had served for couch during his vigil, mounted, and urged the animal through the woods, kicking heels into its flanks. There were men of the crew who heard an unwonted sound in the midnight hush of the Enchanted camp. It was a dull, heavy, earth-thudding noise that swept down from the north over the tree-tops and travelled on through the forest. Men awoke and asked themselves what had awakened them, and went to sleep again, and knew not what it meant. Wade did not hear the sound. Exhaustion had fettered his senses when he crawled into his bunk in the office camp. What he did hear, as he roused himself in the gray of early dawn to set his hand to the desperate task he was resolved upon, was the splattering rush of a horse's feet in the spring ooze of the tote road and a human voice that shrieked, hysterically: "Man the river, damn ye! Man the river!" It was Tommy Eye. He was crouched on the back of his horse when the men came tumbling out. His little eyes were like fire-points. The wattles of his neck were blood-gorged. He spat froth as he raved at them. "Man the river, I tell ye! She's b'ilin' full from bank to bank. Ben Rodliff's injunction busted to blazes and the Enchanted drive started slam-whoopin', and it's me that's done it!" "You hellion, have you blowed Blunder dam?" shouted the chopping-boss, while Dwight Wade was still gasping for words. "Blowed Blunder dam!" shrieked Tommy, "Why, I've blowed Blunder dam so high that Ben Rodliff's injunction can't get to it in a balloon. I've blowed a gouge ten feet deep in the bed-rock. I've let the innards out of Blunder Lake. She's runnin' valley-full, ice-cakes dancin' jigs on the black water! And when they ask who done it, tell 'em it was me--Tommy Eye, the outlaw! Tommy Eye, with a two-hoss load of canned thunder!" He tried to shake his fists above his head, but groaned, and one arm dropped as though it were helpless. Blood was caked on his hand and wrist. He did not wait for Wade to ask the question. "It's the pay I got for wakin' 'em up in time to run, Mr. Wade. I give 'em a chance. They give me a thirty-thirty! They'd have give me more if they could have shot straighter. I'm an outlaw, but there ain't no blood on my head, Mr. Wade." He slid off the horse and staggered towards the cook camp. "Gimme mine in my hand, cook!" he called. "I'll eat it while I'm runnin'. For it's man the river, boys!" And the rest of them ate running, too. Wade led them, determined that no one should head him in the race. He heard the husky breathing of the hundred runners at his back when he swept around the granite dome of Enchanted and came in view of the valley. They stopped, panting, and surveyed the scene for a moment. They saw the tumbling waters, yeasty and brown. They heard the groan and grunt of dissolving log-piles as the fierce tide tore at them and bore away the logs. And each man took a new grip on his cant-dog handle and loped on. It was plain that Tommy Eye had spoken the truth. That flood was not the mere outrush through shattered dam-gates. Blunder Lake was emptying itself through a rent deeper than nature had set in its side. In a stream-bed of intervales and broad levels the Enchanted drive would have been scattered to its own disaster. But Blunder valley was slashed deep between the hills. The turbid flood that raced there was penned. The log-herds could only butt the granite cliffs and surge on. There was but one outlet--the mad current of Blunder Stream pouring down to its junction with the Umcolcus. They "manned the river," scattering along, one man posted at a curve in sight of another. A hat waved meant that a jam was forming and called for help. And when timber jack-strawed too wildly to be readily loosened by cant-dog and pick-pole they dynamited. There was no time for "knittin'-work" on that drive. Tommy Eye, with meal-sack slung over his shoulder, made himself custodian of the "canned thunder." It was Larry Gorman, woodsman poet, who first called him "Tommy Thunder." If you go into the north country you can probably find some one to sing you the song that Larry Gorman composed, the first verse running: "Come, listen, good white-water chaps. Who was that man, I wonder, Who turned himself to an outlaw bold and put the bang-juice under? Who was it cracked the neck of her, 'way up at old Lake Blunder, When hell broke loose and sluiced our spruce? 'Twere done by Tommy Thunder!" His was the recklessness of mania. Men who saw him coming along the shore with his horrid burden dodged into the woods. Where and when he slept no one knew. Daytime and night-time he was racing to where logs had cob-piled. Roars that boomed among the hills told that he had arrived. In the first gray of morning men saw him warming his dynamite over a camp-fire, and shuddered and hurried away. To find the king log of a jam and drop his cartridge where it would have instant effect, he took chances that made men turn their backs. It isn't pleasant to see a man macerated by grinding logs or scattered across the sky. No word passed between Tommy Eye and Dwight Wade. Those days and nights when the Enchanted drive was on its roaring way down Blunder Stream towards the Umcolcus River were not the sort of days that invited conversation. On the ordinary stream-drives to the main river, in the desperate hurry of the driving-pitch, men work as many hours as they can stand up. With the drive under control, they can at least stop sluicing in the dead hours of the night. But the Enchanted drive that spring was a wild beast that never closed its eyes. As it raged along they did not dare to leave it alone for an hour. Men raced beside it, clutched at it, clung as long as they were able, and dropped off, stunned by the stupor of exhaustion. After a few hours some one's prodding foot stirred them back to wakefulness, and they stumbled up and began the fight once more. Outside of a charge in battle, there is no place where individual rivalry is so keen and eager as in a driving-crew on hard waters. Men do not require to be urged to do their utmost. "Coward" and "shirk" are sneers that cut deeply down-river. Wade, rushing from point to point, cant-dog in hand, his shoes mere pulp, his clothes in tatters, saw men asleep with their faces in the tin plates that the cookee had heaped with food. They had gone to sleep with the first mouthful, hungry as demons, but overcome the moment their feet stopped moving. Some he found asleep where they were posted to "card"[6] certain ledges. He beat them about the head with the flat of his hand, and they awoke and thanked him with wistful smiles that touched his heart. But brutal force had started the Enchanted drive, brutal force marked its rush, and it had to be brutal force that could keep it going. Brutal force took toll in the logs that were splintered by dynamite, but it was a toll that circumstances demanded. A man unwilling to take the chances that Tommy Eye took would have wasted thousands of feet instead of hundreds, and Wade knew it, and gulped words of gratitude when they met, hurrying on the shore. [Footnote 6: To disentangle and set free logs caught in the rocks.] Half-way to the Umcolcus, Lazy Tom Stream enters Blunder, and here Wade found Barnum Withee rushing in his logs and eager to accept an invitation to join drives. Withee was asking no questions. He did not need to. He understood. What had been done upstream was none of his business. He could declare that much when he got his drive down, and could defend himself from complicity. In the mean time he would take advantage of the situation. There were now one hundred and sixty herders of the wild flock, with Barnum Withee, one of the best men on the river, to take command of the rear. So Wade went to the front--to Castonia, sweeping down the swollen Umcolcus in one of Withee's bateaux with four men at the oars. He had played violence against violence in the big game. It was natural to suppose that Pulaski Britt by this time had his fists clinched ready to retaliate. On either side of his bateau as he hurried to Castonia the logs ran free. But they were all his own logs, this advance-guard, marked with the double diamond and cross. Had Rodburd Ide done his part, and were they being held at Castonia? He found the booms set again, Rodburd Ide in command at the sorting-gap, and various members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sitting along the shore with guns across their knees. Every able-bodied man in Castonia was on the booms with a pick-pole, and already the double-diamond logs were swirling and herding in the logan. "It's done, and they'll have us into court, but, by ----, we'll have some ready money to fight 'em with!" screamed the little man, grasping Wade's hand as the bateau swung broadside to the sorting-gap platform. And when he had heard the story of "Tommy Thunder, outlaw," that his partner hurriedly related, his mouth parted in a grin, even though his forehead puckered with apprehension. "But will it let us out, Wade?" he asked. "The man took it on himself out of his grudge against Britt. But will it let us out?" "It's your money that is in this thing, and not mine," returned the young man, "and I suppose it's natural for you to think of your property first. But as for me, Mr. Ide, I'll take what profits are coming to me from this operation, and I'll stand in with poor old Tommy Eye, jointly indicted, jointly in the dock, jointly in jail, till the last dollar is spent. For he did just what I meant to do!" For an instant Ide's eyes flickered. Then they became shiny. "My boy," he said, "the Enchanted Township Lumber Company is incorporated, and you and I own the stock. With your consent, I'm goin' to make over ten shares of that stock to Thomas Eye before I sleep to-night. I reckon this company stands ready to fight its battles and protect its members." "Mr. Ide," gulped Wade, contritely, "forgive me for that hasty speech. But God help me, partner, I've been in hell since I saw you last, and I'm full of the fires of it! I think you can understand." He crouched there in the bateau, clutching the gunwale with hands that trembled until they shook his body to and fro. His face was streaked with the grime of days and nights of toil. His eyes were haggard with sleeplessness. Fasting had hollowed his cheeks. Such lines as only the bitter things of life can set in the human countenance were traced deep upon the brown skin. In his rags and his weariness he was as one who had been conquered instead of one who had fulfilled. The little man of Castonia reached down and patted his shoulder with a hand that had a father's sympathy in its touch. "Bub," he murmured, "I'm goin' to take some other time to tell you what I think of you. Just now I want you to go down to the house. My Nina will know what to do for you and what to say to you. She has some letters for you to read before you go to sleep, and I reckon they'll give you pleasant dreams." Kate Arden opened the door and welcomed him with a smile, the first he had ever seen on her face. His heart came into his mouth at sight of her. Never had she seemed so like Elva Barrett. But before he had word with her Nina Ide came running, floury hands outspread, her face alight above her housewife's tire. She stood on tiptoe, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. "Brother Dwight! Brother Dwight!" she half sobbed. "Oh, Brother Dwight, I didn't know--I didn't realize--I didn't understand, or I would have held you back until you had torn these two arms from my shoulders. I prayed for you and watched for you. They buy their logs with blood up there. But it shall not be with your blood, Dwight. I have hated father all these days. He knew what you were going back to, and didn't stop you!" "It was all my own affair, little girl," Wade returned, gently--"my duty, to which I was bound by fair man-promise. And I've got our logs into the river, but it has been the kind of work that blisters souls, Sister Nina!" His voice had a pathetic quaver of weariness. "I was at the sorting-gap when the first one came, and I knelt and kissed it," she said, smiling at him from misty eyes. "And then I wrote to the one of all the world and told her about a hero." An hour later he lay asleep in a darkened room, the tense lines gone from his face, his lax hand spread over a letter, finding the sweetest solace in slumber he had known for many a day. At the first peep of light next morning he was at the sorting-gap in full command, removing a burden of responsibility from Rodburd Ide which had made that little man a quaking wreck of his ordinarily self-reliant self; for in every log that had come spinning around the upper bend of the Umcolcus his fears had seen the peak of Pulaski Britt's rushing bateau. That the river tyrant would come, furious beyond words, was a fact accepted by Dwight Wade, and Wade was ready to meet him. But every hour that passed without bringing the drive-master meant so much more towards the success of the Enchanted drive. The logs came in stampeding droves. Withee's were mixed among the "double diamonds," but there were no delays at the sorting-gap. Two crews fed them through--one for day and one for night, with a dozen lanterns lighting their work. Wade was resolved that Britt should lack at least one argument in the bitter contention. The sorting should be done faithfully and promptly, and the down-river drive should be hurried on its way. But at the end of four days not one of the logs nicked with the "double hat," Britt's registered mark, had shown up. Nor did Britt himself appear. A sullen, suffering man of Britt's crew, who came walking into Castonia with hand held above his head to ease the agony of a felon, brought the first news. Blunder Lake dam had been blown up, he reported, and such a chasm had been opened in the bed-rock that the lake had vomited its waters to the west until the bed of Britt's shallow canal to the east was above the water-line. Britt had only his splash dams along Jerusalem for a driving-head. In the past years the pour of the canal had given him a current in Jerusalem dead-water. Now he was trying to warp his logs across there with head-works and anchor. But the south wind was howling against him, and no human muscle could turn the windlass, even when the oaths of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt dinned in the ears of his toilers. All this the new-comer related. "And it's something awful to hear!" said the man. "He walks the platform of that head-works, back and forth and back and forth. He cusses God and the angels, the wind and all it blows across. And then when he is well worked up to cussin', he 'tends to the case of the devil that blowed up Blunder Lake dam. And his face is as red as my shirt, and the veins stick out on his for'ead as big as a baby's finger. They say that you can't cuss only about so much without somethin' happenin' to you. I've read about the cap'n of a ship that done it too much once, and his ghost is still a-sailin'. All I've got to say is that if Pulaski Britt don't stop, he'll get his." The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" had listened to this recital intently. It agreed forebodingly. In fact, in special session the club passed a vote of dismal prophecy for the whole Jerusalem operation. CHAPTER XXIX THE PARADE PAST RODBURD IDE'S PLATFORM "'Twas a hundred wet miles to the handiest rail, And his home it was fifty more; And behind on our bateau's bubblin' trail Raced Death with his muffled oar." --Ballad of the Drive. Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye's," as sombre prophets, were distinctly cheered by the sight of Boss Colin MacLeod borne past Rodburd Ide's store on a litter. They were hurrying him to the hospital down-river, and he had his teeth set into his lip to keep back the groans. "No, sir! No fifty more miles of that for you, my boy," declared Ide, when he was told that MacLeod's arm and leg were broken. "Into my house you go, and the doctor comes here." And MacLeod was put to bed in the spare room, weeping quietly. "It was the head-works warp done it, Mr. Wade," he moaned, turning hollow eyes upon his sympathizer. "Broke and snapped back. I told him man's strength couldn't warp them logs across against that wind, but he was bound to make us do it. He said I was a coward, Mr. Wade. But I took the place at the guide-block to show I wasn't. And then he cursed me for gettin' hurt!" When Wade left the room he found Kate Arden waiting outside. During the days he had been at Castonia the girl had appeared to avoid him. She had paled when he spoke to her, replied curtly, and hurried away as though she feared he was about to broach some topic that would distress her. Yet it was not towards him merely that she had displayed that apprehensive reserve. Not even to Nina Ide did she open her heart, and Nina told Wade of this with wonderment and grief. She had been docile, even to the subterfuge of sitting silent by John Barrett's bedside when Elva Barrett had resigned her trust to seek Dwight Wade in the wilderness. She had made no comment, asked no questions. She had showed dumb gratitude, and eagerly sought such household tasks as could be intrusted to her untrained hands. But wistful shrinking, the air of a wild thing confined but not tamed, was with her ever. Now, when she faced Wade outside the door, her eyes shone like stars, her cheeks flamed, and the old fearlessness and determination were in her features. "I shall take care of him," she said. "I shall nurse him, and no one but me! I shall know how, Mr. Wade. He'll need me now. You go and tell them all that I shall nurse him. No one else shall do it." It was the woods mate claiming her own. It was more than love as convention has classed it. It was the fire, lighted by the primordial torch of passion, which burns and does not reason, not to be smothered by rebuff or abuse; its pride not the calculating pride of a resentment that can divorce it from its object, but the pride of blind, utter loyalty through all. Dwight Wade had gone near enough to the heart of things to understand this love. He looked at her a little while, sympathy lighting his eyes and vibrating in his voice as he answered her: "You shall have him, poor little girl, because he needs you." He opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and left them alone together. Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" realized the full climax of ominous prophecy and was correspondingly content. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was brought out from Jerusalem dead-water and taken down-river, a helpless hulk of a man grunting stertorous breaths, the right hand, which had waved command all those years along Umcolcus, now hanging helpless at his side, his right leg dangling uselessly as they lifted him along to a wagon. It was the fate that the choleric tyrant had invited. That last and mightiest rage of his life, when with swollen veins and purple face he had stamped about the head-works platform, had done for Pulaski Britt and his weakened blood-vessels what those who knew him well had predicted. Wade was not surprised, for the suppression of Britt by this means and at this frantic climax in Britt's affairs was too entirely logical. It came to him suddenly that he felt a sense of relief, and then he wondered with shame whether he had hoped for it. Then he dismissed the speculation as unprofitable and not agreeable. The tyrant was in chains of his own forging. His logs came limping along in scattered squads, and were sent through the sorting-gap and down-river. The new master of the corporation drive was not cordial when he appeared, hurrying towards headwaters. But he was not hostile, either. He surlily demanded expedition at the Castonia sorting-gap, and went on up-river. There are some combatants who, seeing a crisis approaching, feel that it is their best policy to sit down and wait until the crisis comes to them. This implies the calculation that perhaps the crisis may go around the other way, but it is not the policy for the intrepid. In his present mood Dwight Wade decided to go to meet the crisis, with head erect and shoulders back. He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving Association, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was the fault of Dwight Wade's resolute determination to face the issue. The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt. Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer's cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which had pounded emphasis. In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John Barrett's office in "Castle Cut 'Em." On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June, and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the days between himself and the free life out-of-doors. "Mr. Ide was tellin' me why you are goin' and where you are goin'," said MacLeod, with simple earnestness. Kate Arden was sitting with her head on his knee, and he was smoothing her hair gently. "I wanted the little girl to stay here while I talked this to you. I told you about my dream once, man-fashion. I've told her about it. I ain't excusin' or screenin' myself. I didn't know, that's all. I never tried to fool this little girl, Mr. Wade. They lied who said I did. I pitied her, Mr. Wade. But it's a hard place to start in lovin' a girl where I saw her first--and I'd seen some one else before I saw her. But I know now, sir. I've told her so all these days that she's been with me, so true and tender. I reckon I never was in love before. I wouldn't have acted that way with you, sir, if I really was in love and trusted. But there ain't no mistake this time, Mr. Wade!" He gulped, a sob in his throat and a smile in his eyes. "I'm her man for ever and ever. She knows it and she's glad. And I know she's all mine, and I'm the happiest man in the whole north country." He broke in upon Wade's eager burst of congratulation. "There's just one more word I wanted to say--sort of in the way of business, Mr. Wade." There was a peculiar expression upon his face. "Maybe when you're outside some one--_some one_ may drop a word or inquire about her business--you know--something about her." His look of strange significance became deeper, and Wade understood. "All is, you might say that she and Colin MacLeod are goin' to get married, and Colin MacLeod ain't askin' anybody for her--only herself and God. God ain't denyin' His Fathership to a girl as good as she is. Colin MacLeod ain't askin' anything else--ain't allowin' anything else. Say that to 'em. He's got his own two hands and eleven hundred dollars saved, and the big woods for her and for him. She and I wouldn't be happy outside the big woods, Mr. Wade. Say it all to 'em, sir, if any one drops a word to you--and they probably will, because you've had words with them. You'll know how to say it. But make it plain that it will be dangerous business for any man to reach out his hand to her or to me with anything in it--and tell 'em it's Colin MacLeod says that," he added, bitterly. "The only things you need, Colin," cried Wade, advancing towards him, "are good-will and friendship, and both are in the hand I give you." At the door he turned. "Will you wait until I come back, Colin?" he asked. "I would like to stand up with you when you are married--Nina Ide and I." "I'll wait, Mr. Wade," returned the other, tears of gratitude springing to his eyes. "And may luck go with you in this business." That fervent wish, put again into words, followed him next morning when he departed from Castonia. This time it was Tommy Eye who said it--Tommy Eye, fresh down with the rear of the drive, and a very timorous and apprehensive figure of an outlaw. But he seemed to be a little disappointed after Wade had assured him that the matter of Blunder Lake dam would be assumed by the Enchanted Company, and that Tommy himself had nothing to fear. "I reckon you can do it, Mr. Wade. You can do most anything you set out to," sighed Tommy. "Howsomever, I kind of figgered on that outlaw business to keep me away from down-river. The city ain't good for the likes of me. They begin to rattle the keys of the calaboose the minute I get off'n the train." "Tommy," commanded Wade, severely, "don't you go down-river this season. You stay here and attend to the work we've got marked out for you." "That's just as good a wheel-trig as the outlaw proposition would be," declared Tommy, his face clearing. "Orders from you settles things, Mr. Wade. Here I stay." On the morning of his departure Rodburd Ide's daughter walked with Wade to the store, where the stage started. In the days of their late intimacy the girl had grown into his heart. The sincerity of a sister, self-reliance and womanly sympathy had characterized her attitude towards him from the first; and she had welcomed a friendship which lifted her to a comrade's level. She was as yet an altruist in matters of the heart; she frankly and openly interested herself only in the loves of others. Wade knew all the unspoken words that her sympathy dictated when, standing out before them all, she clasped his hand before he clambered over the wheel of the old stage. He saw no very clear horizon for his own love, but his comrade's smile heartened him, and the flutter of her handkerchief carried its message of good courage when the stage pitched down the slope that hid Castonia settlement. The road to "Castle Cut 'Em" lay before him. At that moment the Honorable John Barrett loomed so largely as a foe that Dwight Wade's thoughts were of his fight. Of his love he hardly dared to think at all. The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" watched the departure of the stage that day with more than usual interest, also with somewhat deeper gloom. The knowledge that Dwight Wade and his partner had assumed all blame for the destruction of Blunder Lake dam was current in all the north country. King Spruce's delay in visiting punishment only made the situation graver in the estimation of the prophets of evil. King Spruce had many weapons, and in the past had promptly seized the one nearest at hand and dealt a crushing blow when provocation was given. The fact that the new drive-master had passed on without even as much as a threat of retribution was taken as an ominous presage. It was agreed that when King Spruce remained grimly silent so long, in order to revolve a project of retaliation, he must be whittling an especially mighty bludgeon. The members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" very frankly expressed thoughts of this tenor to the half-dozen men who arrived at Castonia in the early morning to take the stage down-river with Wade. The men gloomily agreed. Two of them showed signs of funk at the last moment, and had to be coaxed on board the stage by the young man. These were the sort of men that Wade had seen a year before in the general rooms of "Castle Cut 'Em." They were independent operators and stumpage-buyers, who had responded to the messengers and letters that Wade had been sending out. There were more of them who joined the party at the railroad; others came into the train as it stopped here and there on the way to the junction. All of them seemed impressed by that sense of gloom and apprehension; there was not a sanguine face. But in their unanimity of dolorousness they displayed a further interesting characteristic. They seemed entirely ready to accept this young man as their leader and their champion; in fact, as he went among them, they confessed that they had come along only because he had assured them that he would bear the brunt of the approaching conflict. The experience of years had shown them that they had no one man or combination of men among themselves who could go up against King Spruce. They even distrusted each other's honesty, for every man realized all the iniquity of the game of graft and grab that had characterized their dealings with each other and with the main power in the past. That they should let this new-comer lead them was because he had already proved his mettle and his fearlessness, and the whole north country knew it. He had beaten Pulaski Britt at his own game, he had defied King Spruce, and now he was willing to beard the tyrant in his own castle, and only asked their presence at his back in order that the sight of them might prove his assertions and aid to win some grace for all of them. Therefore, they had answered his appeal and had gone with him. But they went without alacrity, and were encouraged only by the despondent belief that at least matters could not be made any worse. CHAPTER XXX THE PACT WITH KING SPRUCE "We 'lowed he was caught, and we never thought we'd see Mike any more; But he took and he kicked a bubble up, and he rode all safe to shore." --The "Best White-water Man." So it came about that once more, after a year had passed, Dwight Wade walked up the hill towards "Castle Cut 'Em," where the sunlight shimmered upon grim walls. The mills along the canal screamed at him as he passed. His fancy detected derision in the squall of the saws. A score of men plodded along with him--broad-backed, silent men who, now that they were under the frown of King Spruce's citadel, muttered their forebodings to one another. Resentment and desperation had left their hearts open to the young man's appeal when he urged a union against the tyrant. But now their reluctance hinted that their determination was built on some very shifty sands. He remembered the man who had declaimed a year before so stoutly, and had been turned aside from his purpose by a few words whispered in a corner. And so it was without high hopes that Wade led the way into the broad stairway to the castle. He wished that the men would pound down their feet on those stairs so that King Spruce would know that they were coming as bold and honest men should come. But his little army tiptoed up, their heavy boots creaking as do the boots of decorous mourners at a funeral. When he opened the door of the big general room his face did not show that he was disheartened. He had determined not to come to John Barrett as a mere petitioner. He was no longer allowing hope to soften the bitter business of demanding. He saw the situation more plainly now than he saw it when he had bidden farewell to Elva Barrett in Pogey Notch. There could be no hope of truce between himself and John Barrett. By winning the love of John Barrett's daughter, by possessing himself of the secret of John Barrett's shame, he realized that he had committed offences that the pride of Barrett could not pardon. He had followed this by striking the first blow against the autocracy of King Spruce in the north country, and he was now appearing before King Spruce's high chamberlain as the leader of the rebels whom his deed had spurred to rebellion. In spite of his great love for Elva Barrett, he felt a sense of exaltation because he had the power to put that love behind him in his dealings with the man he had resolved to fight. It was a relief to convince himself now that Barrett was his implacable foe. Any other belief would have made him less courageous. And when John Barrett, at sound of the tramp of many feet in the outer room, opened the door of his private office and stood framed there, Dwight Wade welcomed the spectacle of his antagonist. Barrett's face was saturnine when he surveyed the group. "I do not understand this, Mr. Wade," he said. "You and I arranged a conference. But there was no arrangement for a general hearing." "The question of conditions on the Umcolcus is a question that takes in all of us who operate there, Mr. Barrett," said Wade. "I'm present to answer to matters that can be charged to my individual responsibility, but the interests of all of us have a bearing on that responsibility, and we are here to have a fair understanding." Barrett stepped back, and motioned the young man to enter the private office. "If you have come to speak for these men," he said, "you may step in here, and we will see if we can arrange to have the directors meet them later." "Well, Mr. Wade," he remarked, when they were alone, "so you have become a magnate in the north country in strictly record time!" "Sarcasm won't help us any in settling this matter!" cried the young man, warmly. "I can understand very well, Mr. Barrett, how you from your position look down on me in mine. But I have at least become some sort of a business man, and I--" "You have become an almighty good business man," declared the land baron, with such a ring of sincerity in his voice that the young man stared at him in sudden astonishment, "and in a little while we will talk business." "That is all I'm here to talk," said Wade, the red coming into his cheeks. When he had left the group of the lumbermen he noticed that some of them bent lowering looks upon him. They had seen other men invited apart and bought from their purpose. Wade wondered if the Honorable John Davis Barrett was not about to trade amnesty on the Blunder dam charge for betrayal of the men who had come at his back to "Castle Cut 'Em." Then a sense of shame at such suspicion came to him, as John Barrett began to speak: "Mr. Wade," said he, "you are more of a chap in every way than you were the last time you were in this office, but--you are still young." From that moment the older man had the advantage. And yet Barrett was not calm. He sat down at his desk, and tossed his papers as he talked. His gaze wavered. His jowls hung heavy and flabby. The marks of his prostrating illness had not left him. But in the gloom of his face there was depression that did not arise from physical causes. Barrett's bitter experience had drawn its black cloud around him. He pulled out the shelf of his desk, set his elbows upon it as though to steady his nerves, and faced Wade. "Young man," he began, "the way the world looks at those things--from the stand-point of some one who hasn't been through the fire--I can afford to look down on you from my height as a moneyed man, and as something more in this State. An outsider might think so. But, by ----, you are the one that can look down on me, for you are square and clean!" He would not allow Wade to interrupt. "I haven't called you in here to buy or bulldoze you. There is a matter between us that hasn't been settled. I made you a promise on Jerusalem Mountain that I didn't keep. I had excuses that seemed good to me then. They don't look that way now. They didn't look good to me when I got off my sick-bed at Castonia. Did Rodburd Ide tell you anything about my talk with the girl?" "He told me, Mr. Barrett." The magnate plunged on desperately. "I don't think you're dull, Mr. Wade, but you can't understand what it meant to me when my child turned on me, spat in my face, and left me. It wasn't merely the bitterness of that one moment--the blistering memory of it goes to sleep with me and wakes up with me. It's with me in every look my daughter Elva gives me, though the poor child tries to hide from me that her old faith and trust have left her. I'm not going to whine, young man, but I'm in hell--in hell!" His voice broke weakly. Then there was silence in the room. Wade heard only the yell of the distant saws and the shuffle of the woodsmen's feet as they paced the big reception-hall of King Spruce. Between the two men there was too much understanding for empty words of sympathy. "Lane is dead," blurted the millionaire, at last. "What will become of the girl?" "MacLeod is to marry her. She nursed him through his sickness at Castonia; they love each other very sincerely, Mr. Barrett, and you need have no trouble about her future. Neither of them will ever trouble you; in fact, MacLeod asked me to say as much for him." Barrett was silent a long time, his gaze on the floor. He looked up at last, and his eyes shone as though a comforting thought had come to him. "There's one thing I can do. I've got money enough to make them independent for life. Be my agent in that, Mr. Wade, and--" "I have another message from MacLeod. I have grown to know the man pretty well, and you'd best take my advice. He says it will be dangerous business for any man to put out a hand to him with anything in it." "You mean they won't take a fortune when I am ready to hand it to them?" "I mean it, Mr. Barrett. There are strange notions among some of the folks of the big woods. Your money is of no use. I advise you frankly not to offer it. At any rate, I'll not insult MacLeod by being your messenger." The timber magnate whirled his chair and gazed away from Wade, looking into the depths of his big steel vault. At the end of a few minutes Wade spoke to him, but he did not reply. When the young man accosted him again, after a decent pause, Barrett spoke over his shoulder without turning his face. "The directors and myself will meet your party in the board-room across the hall in half an hour, Mr. Wade." It was not the voice of John Barrett. It was the thin, quavering tone of a man who was mourning, and wished to be left alone. Wade went quietly away. He was John Barrett once more when Wade saw him half an hour later at the head of the big table in the directors' room. All the board was there except Britt. The lumbermen whom Wade headed stood in solid phalanx at the foot of the room. There were no chairs for them. But they accepted this fact patiently. Wade, a little in advance of his associates, looked into the face of the Honorable John Barrett, now impassive once more. But there was a strange gleam in the eyes. In the hush it seemed that the directors were waiting for Wade to speak--it was the coldly contemptuous silence of King Spruce ready to hearken. The young man accepted this waiting as his challenge. He stepped to the lower end of the huge table; John Barrett arose at the other end, and bent forward, leaning on his knuckles. "Gentlemen," he said, his tone courteous, his air pacificatory, "Mr. Dwight Wade, of the Enchanted Lumber Association is here to-day to confer with us on those matters that have already been considered by us in executive session. I wish first, with your permission, to inform him on one point that we have already decided. My statement will enable us to avoid discussion of an unpleasant matter--I may say, an unprofitable matter." It was plain to be seen that Mr. Barrett was dominating this session, as he had undoubtedly dominated the preliminary session in which the sentiment of King Spruce towards Dwight Wade had been crystallized. Somehow the young man understood that the strange look in Barrett's eyes meant reassurance. "The destruction of Blunder Lake dam was a mistake," continued Barrett, but without even a note of reproach in his voice. "I am ashamed to have to fight that way for common rights that have been stolen," said the young man. "It's nasty fighting, and I don't want to fight that way any more." "We don't, either," broke in a director, bluntly. "There's no money in it." "A moment, gentlemen," interposed Barrett, "I have the floor. I don't propose to speak any ill of an associate--an unfortunate associate. I refer to Mr. Britt, who has for so many years been our executive in the north woods. But I can say frankly, as I have said to his face, that we have deplored some of his measures as unwise. We have tried to restrain him, but we have not been able to hold him back. Let us be charitable, gentlemen, and say merely that old-fashioned lumbering in this State has been conducted on wrong ideas. The manner of putting in Blunder Lake dam is a case in point. In compromising the present disputes between the timber interests and the other tax-paying interests of the State, I'll be frank to say that the history of that dam would not be helpful. Prosecuting you, Mr. Wade, would entail going into the history of that dam. Therefore, we shall not prosecute you; and an arrangement has already been made by which you are purged of contempt of court in the matter of the injunction." He grew earnest. "You have undoubtedly come here to tell us, Mr. Wade, that the woods are being butchered for immediate profit; that the present system of lumbering forces operators to use destructive measures. But we can't enter into argument on that. We admit it. We have been slow about getting together to correct those abuses. We also admit that the time seems to have arrived when we must have a different system. I have been upon my timber tracts during the past year, and have received new light on a great many matters that I had not taken pains to inform myself on. I now view the situation differently, and my associates have coincided with my views." For the others it was merely a business confession of error, an appeal for compromise. To Dwight Wade, looking into the eyes of John Barrett and studying his strange expression, it was much more, and his heart beat quickly. "The whole situation will undoubtedly take a new aspect from now on. We propose, on our part, to leave the past just as it is; set mistakes against mistakes, gentlemen, and clean the slates." He straightened, dropping his air of confidential appeal. "Next week, gentlemen, the convention of my party will nominate me to be the next governor of this State. I need not tell you that the nomination means election. I fully realize my responsibilities. I propose to assume them, and to execute them honestly. I declare here before my associates, as I shall later to the people of the State, that if I am elected I shall be a governor of the whole people, and not of any faction. Personally I shall be glad, Mr. Wade, to have you and all others interested come before the next legislature, present complaints and arguments, and let this whole matter be settled justly. You will find that you and your supporters, as well as we, have interests to protect against the demagogues. In the new conditions that are coming to prevail in public matters, those who manage to keep the full measure of their rights are exceedingly fortunate. Against those new conditions it is folly to fight. But in correcting abuses the pendulum sometimes swings too far. I think we can fairly ask you, Mr. Wade, and those operators who may follow your leadership, to join us in protecting what rightfully belongs to us--to all of us. You will understand that I am offering no hint of bulldozing nor inviting corrupt collusion. It has come to a time when we cannot afford to jeopardize our party or our property, and the safety of both is concerned in a full and frank settlement of this question of the timber lands." He gazed inquiringly at this young man who had come up to the fortress to fight, and now found fortress and foe dissolving like a mirage. There was but one manly attitude to take towards a public pledge of that sort. "Mr. Barrett," declared Wade, earnestly, "on that basis you have my honest co-operation." He took his hat. There was no excuse for remaining longer in a directors' meeting of the Umcolcus Lumbering Association. His head whirled with the suddenness of this new situation. There was a general mumble of indorsement from the men massed at the rear of the room, but one of the group spoke out after a moment's hesitation: "I'm glad to hear you talk of a square deal before next legislature, Mr. Barrett, but I can't help rememberin' that when some of us went up to the state-house two years ago, to see if we couldn't get a few rights, we butted square up against a lobby that was handlin' some fifteen thousand dollars of King Spruce's money to beat us with, and to keep things right where they were." There was no mistaking Barrett's sincerity now. "Gentlemen," he cried, "I have just been admitting that there have been mistakes made in handling this matter. I didn't intend to go into details. It is not a pleasant task. But when I say that this matter shall have fair and square hearing in future, I mean it. And I pledge for myself and my associates--call us 'King Spruce,' if that means most to you--that not one dollar will be used by us in the next legislature, except for expenses of counsel and witnesses before the committees--the same legitimate expenses that you of the opposition will incur." There was no Thomas among them who could persist in the face of a declaration like that. They dispersed. Barrett overtook Wade in the corridor, slipped his hand beneath the young man's arm, and, without a word, led him back into the private office. "I want to ask you a question, Mr. Wade," he said, still holding him by the arm. "Once, in stress of feelings and under peculiar circumstances, I promised certain things and did not fulfil them. You therefore have a perfect right to be sceptical as to my good faith now. I ask you--are you?" "No, Mr. Barrett, I am not," returned Wade, with simple earnestness. "Thank you, my boy!" His voice broke on the words. "When even a square and clean man gets to my age he begins to realize that the world is a bigger creditor of his than he had figured in the past," he went on, after a pause. "In the last few months I have had some bills presented to me that have found me a miserable bankrupt in spite of what my vault holds. You know what my debts are. Linus Lane was right when he told me that my kind of currency couldn't pay those debts. The dead have gone, leaving me their debtor; the living hold me their debtor still. My boy, when I realize what I owe and how useless that stuff is in there"--he shook his hand at the open door of the vault--"I loathe my money! You know what I owe to one child, and you have brought me word that I can never pay her. You know just as well what I owe to another child--I have taken from her most of her faith and love and happiness. Thank God, I can pay that debt in part, and I know the human heart well enough now to understand that I shall be paying the greater part." He left Wade abruptly, and walked to the window and looked down into the street. He beckoned to the young man without turning his head. Wade, coming to his side, saw Elva Barrett's pony phaeton. "I told my creditor to come here, and you see she is prompt," said Barrett, with a wistful smile. "She has accepted what I offer in settlement of my debt, and I offer you my hand, and tell you, with all the earnestness of my soul, that since I have come to realize values I approve my creditor's judgment. I have agreed to pay promptly on demand. Don't keep her waiting." He pushed his "collateral" out into the corridor, and shut the door behind him. Wade ran down the stairway, his hat in his hand, and came upon the sidewalk into the glare of the June sunshine. She was there! The silk of the phaeton's parasol strained a soft and tender light upon her face, and her glorious eyes received him, coming towards her, as though into an embrace. He swayed a little as he crossed the sidewalk, for his eyes swam. And before he reached her he turned and cast one look back at the great building behind him. He seemed to want to reassure himself about something--to see solid bricks and stone--to convince himself that it was not a fairy palace in which he had so amazingly and suddenly found the full fruition of all his hopes. "What have they been doing to you in the ogres' den, Dwight, boy?" she asked, a ripple of laughter in her voice. "I--I don't know!" he stammered. "It all happened so suddenly. Take me away, sweetheart, where I can see a tree. I want to find my bearings once more!" The pony trotted away demurely--so demurely that the girl surrendered one hand to him, and he held it tight-clutched between them, wordless, a mist in his eyes. "Then it did astonish you, after all?" she ventured, breaking the silence. For reply he pressed her hand. She was first to speak again. "I know what a strange boy you are, Dwight," she said, with a touch of humor in her tones. "For the peace of your soul for ever and ever, and the satisfaction of your pride, I want to tell you that my father offered me to you--I did not beg you from my father; but"--she hesitated and looked at him slyly--"I didn't question the legal tender! Now that you are a business man, I suppose we ought to use business terms!" But with his great love shining in his eyes, he pointed away from the staring houses, where the road wound on under the trees and the peace of perfect understanding lay beneath. THE END TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent.