King Spruce, A Novel

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!”

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

“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

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 of 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