King Spruce, A Novel

CHAPTER IX

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

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

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.”

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.