King Spruce, A Novel

CHAPTER XXIV

“Miss Barrett—” Ide checked himself, discreet even in his impatience. “Miss Barrett is all right, and the girl is all right, and—say, look-a-here, my boy, don’t you think of a girl, don’t you look at a girl, don’t you even dream of a girl, for the next two months!” He drove his hard little fist upon the sacred table.

He leaned forward, and his very beard bristled at the young man. “Forget your mother, forget your grandmother, forget that there is anything to you except grit and muscle. For if ever two men had a man’s work cut out for ’em we’re the ones. If ever two men found themselves on the outside of a ripe cheese and needed teeth to gnaw in, we’re the men. Money! I can’t see anything but dollar bills hangin’ from those spruce-trees. But you’ve got to put on brad-boots and climb to get them. You’ve got to walk over men to get ’em!” He was striding about the little room. “I reckon I seem a little excited,” he added, with a catch in his voice. “But by the priest that hammered the tail for the golden calf, I’ve got reasons to be excited. I’ve smelt it comin’ for two years, son! I ’ain’t said anything. I didn’t say anything to you when I took you into partnership; I didn’t dare to. But I smelt it all the time. I ’ain’t watched the comin’s and goin’s of certain men at Castonia for nothin’! Let ’em bring guns and fishin’-poles! They can’t fool me. I smelt it comin’. And now, by ——, it’s come!” Again he banged his fist on the table and glared down on his partner.

The partner stared back at him with so much dismay and reproachful inquiry that Ide blew off his superfluous excitement in one vigorous “Poof!” and sat down.

“The sum and substance of it is, those old Hullin’ Machine falls ain’t goin’ to bellow away all them thousands of hoss-power in empty noise any longer. But they’ve made a noise big enough to reach the crowd that’s organized to fight the paper trust. See now?”

Wade’s eyes gleamed in swift comprehension.

“The independents are goin’ to develop that power. They’re goin’ to build the biggest paper-mill in the world there. They’re goin’ to extend the railroad up to Castonia. They’re goin’ to do it all on an old charter that every one had forgotten except the lobby clique that put it through and has been holdin’ it for speculation. And why I know it all and no one else knows it on the outside yet, my boy, is because they’ve had to come to me! They’ve had to come to me!”

And he promptly answered the eager though mute inquiry in the young man’s eyes.

“Every dollar that I could save, rake, and borrow for years I’ve been putting into shore rights and timber. What timber country I couldn’t buy I’ve leased stumpage on. I’ve smelt it all comin’. And now they’ve had to come to me, Wade. They’ve bonded the shore rights for a purchase, and it’s all settled.”

“With all my heart I’m glad for you, Mr. Ide!” cried the young man, with a sincerity that put a quiver into his voice. And both hands seized the hands of the magnate of Castonia in a grip that brought gratified tears to the other’s eyes.

“I know it has always been a surprise to you, Wade, that I was so ready and anxious to give you a lay on the timber end,” the little man went on. “But I knew it was time to operate on these cuttin’s this season. There are things you can’t hire done with plain money. I wanted courage, grit, and honesty. Most of all, I needed absolute loyalty. There’s been too much buyin’ up of men in these woods. The old gang is a hard one to fight. I reckon I’ve got you with me.”

“Heart, soul, and body, now as from the first, Mr. Ide.”

“And the lay I’ve given you is the best investment I could have made,” declared the partner. “I want you to feel that it is straight business. It was no gift. You’re earnin’ it. But the big bunch is ahead of you, boy!” His tone was serious.

“Your make will come out of the timber lay. I’ve said I smelt this comin’. If it hadn’t come this year we should have sent our logs ’way down-river along with the rest, and done the best we could to steal a profit after Pulaski Britt and his gang had charged us all the tolls and fees they could think of, and made us accept their selling-scale. But now! But now!” His voice became tense, and he leaned forward and patted the young man’s arm. “The Great Independent—and that’s the name of the new organization, and it’s a name that’s goin’ to roar like the Hullin’ Machine in the ears of the trust—wants every log we can hand over to ’em this season. What they don’t use in construction work and in their new saw-mill they’ll pile to grind into pulp next year.

“I’ve got their contract, Wade. Every log to be scaled for ’em on our landings! And I reckon that will be the first time a square selling-scale was ever made on this river. No Pirate Britt and his gang of boom-scale thieves for us this time! Every honest dollar we make will come to us. And there’ll be a lot of ’em, son.”

Wade, even though Rodburd Ide had so brusquely commanded him to forget his love, felt that love stirring in the thrill that animated him now. Did not success mean Elva Barrett? Did not fair return from honest toil mean that he could face John Barrett, bulwarked by his millions? Forget his love? Ide couldn’t understand. His love was a spur whose every thrust was delicious pain. But now that the great secret was out, Rodburd Ide’s tide of enthusiasm seemed to be in somewhat ominous and depressing reflux.

He spread upon the splint table a lumberman’s map, and his hands trembled as he did so.

“You’ve done as I told you, and only yarded at the ends of the twitch-roads, and haven’t hauled to landings?” he inquired.

Wade nodded.

“I was waitin’, I was waitin’,” explained the other, nervously scrubbing his hand over the map. “If nothin’ had happened at Umcolcus Hullin’ Machine this year we’d have landed our logs on Enchanted Stream and run ’em down into Jerusalem, and taken our chances along with Britt’s logs. ’Twas a hard outlook, Wade. The last time I dared to operate here I did that, and you’ll find jill-pokes with my mark stranded all along the stream. The old pirate took my drive because he claimed control of the dams, charged me full fees, and left behind twenty-five per cent. of my logs, claiming that the water dropped on him. But I noticed he got all of his out. It’s what we’re up against, my son. If I’d tried to fight him with an independent drive he would have had me hornswoggled all the way to the down-river sortin’-boom, and then would have had my heart out on the scale. It’s what we’re up against!” he repeated, despondently. “There isn’t any law to it. It’s the hard fist that makes the right up this way. I’m tellin’ you this so you can understand. You’ve got to understand, my boy. I wish it was different. I wish it was all square. I hate to do dirty things myself. I hate to ask others to do ’em.”

It was not entirely a gaze of reassurance that the young man turned on him. Ide avoided it, and with stubby finger began to mark the map to illustrate his words. Wade leaned close. He realized that a new and grave aspect of the situation was to be revealed to him. Getting the timber down off the stumps had absorbed his attention utterly. As to getting it to market, he had been awaiting the word of his partner and mentor.

“Here it is!” growled Ide. “It’s a picture of it! And if it ain’t a good picture of the damnable reason why no one else but Pulaski Britt and his crowd can make a dollar on these waters, then I’m no judge. Here we are on Enchanted—mountain here and pond here! The dam at our pond will give us water enough to get us down to Britt’s dam on Enchanted dead-water. Then we’ve got to deal with Britt. Law may be with us, but in dealin’ with Britt up here in this section law is like a woodpecker tryin’ to pull the teeth out of a cross-cut saw. Britt has got the foot of Enchanted Stream, and he controls Jerusalem Stream that gobbles Enchanted. That’s our outlook to the east of us. Now to the west, and only two miles from our operation here, is Blunder Stream. Runs into Umcolcus main river, you see, like Jerusalem Stream away over here to the east. Straightaway run. Fed by Blunder Lake, up here ten miles to the north—that is, it ought to be fed! And it ought to be the stream to take our logs. But more than thirty years ago, without law or justice, Britt closed in the rightful western outlet of Blunder Lake with a big dam, and dug a canal from the eastern end to Jerusalem Stream, and every spring since then he’s used the water for the Jerusalem drive. A half a dozen small operators have been to the legislature from time to time to get rights. Did they get ’em? Why, they didn’t even get a decent look! Old King Spruce doesn’t go to law or the legislature askin’ for things. King Spruce takes them. Then the laborin’ oar is with the chaps who try to take ’em away. Even if a thing is unrighteous, Wade, it doesn’t stir much of a scandal in politics to keep it just as it is. It’s what we’re up against, I say!”

He held down the map, his finger on Enchanted, as though typifying the power that held them and their interests helpless. Wade gazed upon the finger-end. He felt it pressing upon his hopes. His brows wrinkled, but he said nothing.

“The Great Independents will make that name heard by the next legislature, I’ve no doubt,” Ide went on, “but that’s a year from now. In the mean time we’ve got five millions or so of timber here at this end, and its market and the money waitin’ at the other end, which is Castonia. And there’s another thing, Wade, and it’s the biggest of all: we’ve got to hold our timber above the Hullin’ Machine. Nature has fixed the place for us. There’s the dead-water behind Hay Island. With Britt drivin’ our logs, he’d ram ’em hell-whoopin’ through the Hullin’ Machine, and find an excuse for it, and then buy ’em in down-river at his own price. If we undertook to follow him down Enchanted and Jerusalem, he wouldn’t leave enough water to drown a cat in. I’m taking the time to show you this thing as it stands, son. You’ve got to see all sides of it.”

Ide’s little gray eyes were gleaming at him, and the expression of his face showed that he was narrowing possibilities to one prospect, and was wondering whether his partner had grasped the full import of that prospect.

“I think I see all sides of it, Mr. Ide,” he said, at last. Then he put his fingers on the thin thread that marked the course of Blunder Stream. “And the only side that doesn’t hurt the eyes seems to be this side, west of Enchanted Mountain.”

“Well, even then it depends on what kind of specs you’ve got on,” returned Ide.

“Suppose we forget that dam at the west end of Blunder and Britt’s canal to the east for just a moment, Mr. Ide. If we got our logs down the side of Enchanted Mountain and landed them on Blunder Stream we’d stand our only show of heading Britt’s drive at the Hulling Machine, wouldn’t we?”

“You was reckonin’ on havin’ water under ’em, wasn’t you?” inquired the little man, with good-natured satire. “Wasn’t plannin’ on havin’ ’em walk like a caterpillar, nor fly down, nor anything of the sort?”

“I was reckoning on water,” returned the young man, flushing slightly, “but I was not discussing Blunder Lake. I asked you to leave that out for a moment.”

“Leave out Blunder Lake, and you haven’t got a brook that will float chips,” said Ide. Then he jumped up and shot his fists above his head. “But with a drivin’-pitch in Blunder Stream we can have the head of our drive down into Umcolcus River and to Castonia logan while Pulaski Britt is still swearin’ and warpin’ with head-works across Jerusalem dead-water. We’d have our head there before he had a log down the last five miles of lower Jerusalem into the main river. We’ll have our sheer booms set and our sortin’-gap, and we’ll hold our logs and let his through—his and the corporation drive that he’s master of, and has been master of for thirty years. He’s been the river tyrant, Wade; but with our head first at Castonia, and our booms set, and we willin’ to sort free of expense to them followin’, I’d like to see the man that would dare to interfere with our common river rights. The old Umcolcus was rollin’ its waters for the use of the tax-payin’, law-abidin’ citizens of this State before old Pulaski Britt and his log-drivin’ association gang of pirates was ever heard of. They’ve usurped, Wade! They’ve usurped until they’ve made possession seem like ownership. I’ve picked you as a man that can handle the men that’s under him, and isn’t afraid of Pulaski Britt. And it’s got to be a case of reach and take what belongs to you. If they’ve got any law with ’em in this thing, it’s law they’ve stolen like they’ve stolen the timber lands.”

“I’ve never intended to break law in my dealings with men,” said Wade, with a cadence of mournfulness in his tones. “Law up in the big woods doesn’t seem to be quite as clear-cut as it is in men’s relations outside. But can there be honest law, Mr. Ide, that will allow men like Pulaski Britt to step in and deprive a man of rightful profits earned by his own hard labor—to deprive him of—” He was thinking then, despite of himself, of Elva Barrett, but choked and added, wistfully, “When it’s only an even show a man asks, a fair chance to travel his own course, it seems hard that there are men who go out of their path to trip him.” It was not lament. He had the air of one who displayed his convictions to have them indorsed.

“It’s Britt’s way,” retorted the other, curtly. “He’s made money by doin’ it, and expects to make a lot more by bossin’ the river.”

“I want to see Mr. Britt,” said Wade, quietly.

“See Britt! You don’t think for a minute you’re goin’ to induce him to take our drive or do the square thing on the water question, do you?”

“But I want to see him for a reason of my own, Mr. Ide. I’m frank to say I don’t expect any justice from Britt, after my experience with him; but there is such a thing as justification for myself. I see you don’t understand.” He noted the little man’s wrinkling brows. “I don’t know that I’m exactly sure of my own mind. But I can’t seem to bring myself to fight this thing according to the code of the woods. I’m going into it with every ounce of strength and hope that’s in me, and there’s just one preliminary that I want for my peace of soul. I want to see Pulaski Britt.”

“If I was gettin’ ready to fight the devil,” remonstrated Ide, “I reckon I’d keep away from his brimstone-pot. He’s at his Jerusalem camp,” he added, grudgingly. “He went through two days ago.”

“Then that’s where I’ll go to find him,” said Wade, decisively.

Rodburd Ide fingered his nose and gazed on his partner with frank scepticism. “Whatever you want with Britt, you’re wastin’ your time on him”—his tone was sullen—“and the wind-up will be another peckin’-match with that long-legged rooster, MacLeod. I say, save time and strength for our own business, Wade.”

“And I say I’ve got business with Pulaski Britt, and propose to go to him like a man,” declared Wade. “You and I can’t afford to have any misunderstanding about this, Mr. Ide. You have said you picked me to handle this end. I’ve got to handle it in my own way, so far as dealings with men go. I’ll take your advice—I’ll ask your advice on details of the work, because I don’t know. As to my business with Mr. Britt, there is no doubt in my mind. I want you to go with me.”

And in the end Mr. Ide went, nipping his thin lips, not wholly convinced as to the logic of the step, but with his opinion of Dwight Wade’s courage and self-reliance decidedly heightened, and he reflected with comfort that those were the qualities he had sought in his partnership.

CHAPTER XXV

“Here’s a line Barrett’s girl left to be sent in to you the first chance.” He met the young man’s reproachful gaze boldly. “When a man’s got real business to attend to,” he snorted, “he ain’t to blame if he disremembers tugaluggin’ a love-letter.” He gave the missive into Wade’s hands, and went on, discontentedly: “What kind of a crazy-headed performance was it those girls was up to when they came up into these woods? I’ve had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, and probably I couldn’t, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. She has her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her,” he grumbled.

“I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide’s movements, even with her father. Miss Barrett’s affairs are wholly her own. May I read my letter?”

“May you read it?” blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of this conventional request. “What in tophet do you think I’ve got to do with your readin’ your own letters?” And he subsided into offended silence, seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with events as they were disposing themselves.

Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in his bare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand had rested.

When Wade folded it he found Rodburd Ide studying his face with shrewd side glance.

“Have you any idea what ‘Stumpage John’ is goin’ to do with the other one—the left-hand one?” he inquired, blandly. “Favor each other considerably, don’t they? It told the story to me the first time I saw them together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can’t hardly blame John for not takin’ the left-hand one out with him, same as my girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, I reckon.”

“Did he say anything to—” stammered Wade, and hesitated.

“Nothin’ to me,” returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. “Didn’t have to. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank for more’n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color of the Hullin’ Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into the back office of my store. I wasn’t tryin’ to listen or overhear, you understand, but I heard him stutter somethin’ about takin’ her out of the woods and puttin’ her in school, and she braced back and put her hands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to hell.”

“What?” shouted Wade, in utter astonishment.

“Oh, not in them words,” corrected Ide. “But that’s what it come to so far as meanin’ went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked out and back to my house.”

He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, as though this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: “She’s still at my house, and the girl says she’s goin’ to stay there—so I guess that settles it. Now let’s get down to some business that amounts to somethin’! What are you goin’ to say to Pulaski Britt?”

But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, hands between his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridged under the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence.

When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary to search long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. They heard him bellowing hoarsely, and a moment later were looking down on him from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in the deep snow, one of them “cast” and tangled in the harness. The teamster stood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spotted with blood.

“You’ve let that horse calk himself, you beef-brained son of a bladder-fish!” roared Britt. “You ain’t fit to drive a rockin’-horse with wooden webbin’s!” He dove upon the struggling animal, and, hooking his great fists about the bit-rings, dragged the horse to his feet. “Stripped to the fetlocks!” mourned the owner. He surveyed the bleeding leg and whirled on the teamster. “That’s the second pair you’ve put out of business for me in a week. Me furnishing hundred-and-fifty-dollar horses for you to paint the snow with!” He ploughed across to where the man stood holding the reins, and struck him full in the face, and the fellow went down like a log, blood flying from his face. “Mix some of your five-cent blood with blood that’s worth something!” he yelped. “If there’s got to be rainbow-snow up this way, I know how to furnish it cheaper.”

“That’s a nice, interestin’ gent down there for you to tackle just now on your business proposition,” observed Ide, sourly. “Now, suppose you use common-sense, and turn around and go back to Enchanted!”

But the Honorable Pulaski suddenly heard the jangle of their jumper-bell, and stared up at them.

“Gettin’ lessons on how to run a crew, Ide?” he asked. And seeing that the teamster was up and fumbling blindly at the tangled harness, he advanced up the slope. “I ’ain’t ever forgiven you for takin’ Tommy Eye away from me. That man’s a teamster! It was a nasty trick, and perhaps your young whelp of a partner there has found out enough about woods law by this time to understand it.”

“Mr. Britt—” began Wade.

“I don’t want to talk to you at all!” snapped the tyrant, flapping his hand in protest.

“Nor I to you!” retorted Wade, in sudden heat. “But as Mr. Ide’s partner I have taken charge of the woods end of our operation, and I’ve got business to talk with you. We haven’t begun to land our logs yet because—”

“It’s a wonder to me that you’ve got any cut down, you dude!” snorted Britt, contemptuously.

“Because we haven’t had an understanding about the drive,” went on the young man, trying to keep his temper. “Now, about logs coming down Enchanted and into Jerusalem—”

“You’ll pay drivin’ fees for every stick.”

“And you’ll take our drive with yours?”

“No, sir. I won’t put the iron of a pick-pole into a log with your mark on it!” declared Britt.[5]

“Mr. Britt,” said Wade, his voice trembling in the stress of his emotions, “as an operator in this section, as a man who is asking you straight business questions as courteously as I know how, I am entitled to decent treatment, and it will be better for all of us if I get it.”

“Threats, hey?” demanded Britt, malignantly.

“No threats, sir. If you won’t take our drive for the usual fees and guarantee its delivery, will you let us drive it independently?”

“Not with my water—and you’ll pay fees just the same!”

“Your water! Who made you the boss of God’s rains and rivers? Have you any charter, giving you the right to turn the State waters of Blunder Lake from their natural outlet and keep everybody else from using them?”

Britt clacked his finger in his hard palm and blurted contemptuous “Phuh!” through his beard.

“Show me any such charter, Mr. Britt, or tell me where to find the record of it, and I’ll accept the law.”

“Hell on your law!” cried the tyrant of the Umcolcus.

“Aren’t you willing to let the law decide it, Mr. Britt?”

“Hell on your law!”

Three times more did Wade, his face burning in his righteous anger, his voice trembling with passion, ask the question. Three times did the Honorable Pulaski Britt fling those four words of maddening insult back at him. And Wade, his face going suddenly white, snatched the reins from Ide’s hands, struck the horse, whirled him into the trail, and drove away madly. Down the aisles of the forest followed those four words as long as Pulaski Britt felt that their iteration could reach the ears of listeners.

“So you finished your business with him, did you?” inquired Ide, at last, allowing himself, as a true prophet, a bit of a sneer.

“I got just what I went after,” snarled the young man. “I got in four words the fighting rules of these woods, explained by the head devil of them all, and, by ——, if that’s the only way for an honest man to save his skin up here, they can have the fight on those lines! Take the reins, Mr. Ide; I want to straighten this thing in my mind.”

Little passed between them on the return journey, but they talked far into the night, leaning towards each other across the little splint table in the office camp.

The next morning they climbed the side of Enchanted, following the main road that had been swamped to Enchanted Stream. On the upper slopes they came upon the log-yards, and heaps of great, stripped spruces piled ready for the sleds. Farther up the slopes they heard the monotonous “whush-wish” of the cross-cut saws and the crackling crash of falling trees.

In the Maine woods it is not the practice to haul to landings until the tree crop is practically all down and yarded on the main roads. This practice in the case of the Enchanted operation that winter was providential; for in the conference of the night before Rodburd Ide and his partner had definitely abandoned Enchanted Stream. That decision left them the alternative of Blunder Stream. It was the only plan that fitted with Rodburd Ide’s new hopes based on the log contract in his breast-pocket. For months he had dimly foreseen this crisis without clear conception as to how it was to be met. But the possibilities of the gamble had fascinated him.

In his calculations he had tried to keep prudence to the fore. But he had been waiting so long that at last prudence became dizzy in the swirl of possibilities. He had never intended to make Dwight Wade his mere cat’s-paw. But the vehement courage of that sturdy young man, as displayed in the battle of Castonia, had touched something in Rodburd Ide’s soul. All through his quiet life he had seen might and mastery make money out of the woods. And so at last he himself ventured, trusting much to the might and mastery he found in this self-reliant young gentleman whom Fate had flung into his life. Gasping at the boldness of it, he was willing that the whole winter’s cut of the Enchanted operation should be landed upon Blunder Stream. That there was a way to get their water he admitted to himself, but he did not dare to think much upon the means. Dwight Wade, driven by fierce anger against Pulaski Britt, who blocked his way to the girl whom his own hands could win but for Britt, smote the splint table and declared that there should be a spring flood in Blunder Stream.

“And if you fear lawsuits, being a man of property, Mr. Ide, you should not know what I intend to do. You may be held as a partner. Dissolve that partnership. You may be held as an employer. Discharge me when this log-cut is landed. Protect yourself. I have only my two hands for them to attach.”

The little man blinked at him admiringly, and then patted his shoulder.

“You needn’t tell me what you intend to do. You are the one for this end, and I can trust you. But when it comes to responsibility and the law, Wade, if those thieves try it on, after all they’ve stolen, you’ll find Rod Ide right with you. You’re my partner, and you’ll stay my partner,” declared Ide, stoutly.

He repeated it as they swung around the upper granite dome of Enchanted, and looked down the western slope into Blunder valley.

“There’s the place for your main road, Wade,” he said—“down that shoulder there! Swamp a half-mile of the steep pitch and you’ll come into the Cameron road, and it will take you to the stream. You’ll need about fifteen hundred feet of snub-line for that sharp incline there, and I’ll have it up to you by the time you are ready for it. Put the swale hay to the rest of the pitches. It will trig better than gravel. Don’t let ’em put a chain round a runner. You want to keep your road so smooth that every load of logs will go down there like a boy down a barn rollway. Sprinkle your levels and keep ’em glare ice. By ——, it’s a beauty of an outlook for a landing-job! Cut your high slopes this trip. Keep your logs above the level of that shoulder, and every hoss team will make a four-turn day of it. We’ll save a dollar a thousand on the landing-proposition alone, over and above the Enchanted road chance! And up there—” He gazed to the north up the valley over the wooded ridges, and then hushed his voice, as though there lay somewhere in that blue distance a thing that he feared.

“Up there is a lake of water, Mr. Ide, that God designed to flow down this valley, and it’s going to find its own channel again—somehow! I hope that doesn’t sound like cheap boasting. It’s only my idea of the right.”

He led the way back around the granite dome above the spruce benches, and the old man followed in silence.

Two hours later Rodburd Ide was off and away for Castonia, his jumper-bell jangling its echoes among the trees. He had hope in his heart and a letter in his pocket. The hope was his own. The letter was addressed to John Barrett’s daughter, and the superscription had brought a little scowl to the brows of the magnate of Castonia. Somehow it seemed like communication with the enemy. But Dwight Wade, writing it in the stillness of the night, while the little man snored in his bunk, had seemed in his own imaginings to be putting into that letter, as one lays away for safe keeping in a casket, all that heart and soul held of love and candor and tenderness. It was as though he intrusted those into her hands to preserve for him against the day when he might take them back into life and living once more. Just now they did not seem to belong to this life on Enchanted; they did not harmonize with the bitter conditions. He pressed down the envelope’s seal with the fantastic reflection that he was sending out of the conflict witnesses in whose presence he might stand ashamed.

Therefore, it was not treason that Rodburd Ide bore in the pocket of his big fur coat. Dwight Wade had sent tenderer emotions to the rear. He stood at the front, ready to meet iron with iron and fire with fire.

CHAPTER XXVI

The most brilliant young attorney of the newer generation in the State had been Wade’s college mate. To him Wade detailed in those long letters the iniquitous conditions that fettered independent operators in the north country, and gave the case into his enthusiastic keeping. It meant digging into the black heart of the State’s political corruption, timber graft, and land steals. It was a task that the young attorney, with earnest zeal and new ideals of civic honor, had long before entered upon. He seized upon this store of new ammunition with delight, and Wade rejoiced at the tenor of his replies. That the law and the right would intervene in Blunder valley to preserve him from a conflict in which he must use the shameful weapons selected by Britt for the duello was a promise that he cherished. And thus heartened, he toiled more eagerly.

It was well into February before they began to haul their logs to the landing-place on Blunder Stream. But even with an estimated five millions to dump upon the ice of Blunder, time was ample, for the snub-line down the steep quarter-mile of Enchanted’s shoulder made a cut-off that doubled the efficiency of the teams. It was the crux of the situation, that snubbing-pitch. With its desperate dangers, its uncertainties, its celerity, it was ominous and it was fascinating. But it was the big end of the great game. Dwight Wade made himself its captain. Tommy Eye, master of horses, came into his own and was his lieutenant.

Those two trudged there together in the gray of the dawn; they trudged back together in the chilled dusk, still trembling with the racking strain of it all.

Wade, cant-dog in hand, stood beside the snubbing-post and gave the word for every load to start, and watched every inch of its progress with tense muscles and pounding heart. Tommy Eye mounted the load and took the reins from the deposed driver as each team came to the top of the pitch; and the snorting, fearing horses seemed to know his master touch, and in blind faith went into their collars and floundered down under the fateful looming of the great load. Thus, every hour of the day, Tommy Eye silently, boldly ventured his life in the interests of the man who had once saved it, and Dwight Wade watched over his safety from the top of the slope. No word passed between the two. But they understood. There was no other man in the north country with the soothing voice, the assuring touch on the reins, and the mystic power to inspire confidence in dumb brutes—no other man that could bring the qualities that Tommy Eye brought to his task, coupled with the blind courage to perform. The horses turned their heads to make sure that he held the reins and was adventuring with them. Then they went on.

The snubbing-post was a huge beech, sawed to leave four feet of stump. It had been adzed to the smoothness of an axe-handle. The three-inch hawser clasped it with four turns, and two men, whose hands were protected by huge leather mittens, kept the squalling coils loosened and paid out the slack, when the cable was hooked to the load of logs on its way down the slope in order to hold it back. And when the coils yanked themselves loose and the rope ran too swiftly, even making the leather mittens smoke, Wade, with his cant-dog, threw the hawser hard against the stump and checked it. It was a trick that Tommy Eye taught him, and it required muscle and snap. At the instant of peril he drove his cant-dog’s iron nose into the roots of the stump, surged back on his lever, and pinched the rope between post and ash handle of the tool. Friction checked and held the load, but it was muscle-stretching, back-breaking labor.

And all the time there was the rope to watch to make sure that no rock’s edge or sharp stick had severed a strand, for broken strands uncoil like a spring under the mighty strain. There were the flipping bights of the coiled hawser to guard against as the men paid it out. Men are caught by those bights and ground to horrible death against the snubbing-post.

In time that rope came to have sentiency in the eyes of Wade. Some days it seemed to be possessed by the spirit of evil. It would not run smoothly. It fed out by jerks, getting more and more of slack at each jump. It began to sway and vibrate between post and load, a wider arc with every jerk, a gigantic cello-string booming horrible music. It snarled on the post; it growled grim and sinister warning along its tense length. So terrible are these wordless threats that men have been known to surrender in panic, flee from the snubbing-post, and let destruction wreak its will. Hence the silent and understanding partnership between Tommy Eye, shadowed by death on the load, and Dwight Wade fiercely alert at the snubbing-post.

There came a day when the spirit of evil had full sway.

The weather was hard, with gray skies and a bone-searching chill. The hawser, made smooth as glass by attrition, was steely and stiff with the cold. It had new voices. Once it leaped so viciously at the legs of one of the post-men that he gave a yell and ran. In the tumult of his passion and fear Wade cursed the caitiff, his own legs in the swirl of the bights, his cant-dog nipping the rope to the post and checking it short. And far down the slope Tommy Eye, his teeth hard shut on his tobacco, waited without turning his head, a mute picture of utter confidence.

It was while Wade held the line, waiting for the men to re-coil the hawser into safe condition to run, that the Honorable Pulaski Britt appeared. He came trotting his horses down the Enchanted main road and jerked them to a halt at the top of the pitch. Two men were with him on the jumper. Each wore the little blue badge of a game warden.

“We are after a man named Thomas Eye, of your crew,” said one of the men, catching Wade’s inquiring gaze. “We’ve traced that cow-moose killing to him—the Cameron case.”

For an instant Wade’s heart went sick, and then it went wild. Such an impudent, barefaced plot to rob him of an invaluable man at this crisis in his affairs seemed impossible to credit. It was vengefulness run mad, gone puerile.

“Mr. Britt has signed the complaint and has the witnesses,” said the warden. “We’ve got a warrant and we’ll have to take the man.”

“And there he is on that load,” said the Honorable Pulaski, pointing his whip-butt.

“Hold that line, men,” commanded Wade, coming away from the post. “Tommy Eye has not been out of my camp, wardens. He is absolutely indispensable to me. He has killed no moose. But if it can be proven I’ll pay his fine.”

“It takes a trial to prove it,” said the warden, dryly. “That’s why we’re after him.”

“Britt, I didn’t think you’d get down to this,” stormed the young man.

“I’m not a game warden,” retorted the baron of the Umcolcus. “You’re dealin’ with them, not me.”

He sat, slicing his whip-lash into the snow, and watched the young man’s bitter anger with huge enjoyment. And when Wade seemed unable to frame a suitable retort he went on: “If you think I’ve got anything to do with taking that crack teamster out of your crew, you’d better thank me. Anything that interferes with your landing your logs in a blind pocket like Blunder Stream is a godsend to you and Rod Ide.” His temper began to flame. “What do you think you’re going to do there? Do you calculate to steal any of my water? Do you think that whipper-snapper whelp of a lawyer that you’ve set yappin’ at our heels is goin’ to spin a thread for you against the men that have run this section for thirty years? If you’ve only got the law bug in your head, give it up. But if you have the least sneakin’ idea of troublin’ that dam up there”—he shook his fist into the north—“coil your snub-line and save time and money; for, by the eternal Jehovah, blood will run in that valley before water does!”

In the pause that followed one of the wardens asked, “Do you propose to resist the arrest of Eye, Mr. Wade?”

The question was an incautious one. In a flash the young man saw that this last sortie of the Honorable Pulaski was not so much an adventure against Tommy Eye as against himself—with intent to embroil him with the officers of the law. That might mean more trouble than he dared reflect upon. He had a very definite apprehension of what the legal machinery of Britt and his associates might do to him if he afforded any pretence for their procedure.

One of the wardens dropped off the jumper at a word from Britt, and the timber baron urged his horses down the slope, the other officer accompanying him.

Tommy Eye sat on his load, still with gaze patiently to the front, waiting in serene confidence the convenience of his employer. That back turned to Wade was the back of the humble confider, the back of the martyr. In his sudden trepidation at thought of his own imperilled interests, were he himself enmeshed in the law, Wade had thought to leave Tommy’s possible fate alone. But now, almost without reflection or plan, he ran down the hill. The martyr’s serene obliviousness struck a pang to his heart. In those days of strife and toil and understanding Tommy Eye had grown dear to him. Britt, turning, yelled to the officer at the top of the slope, “Give that snub-line a half-hitch and hold that load!”

A bit of a rock shelf broadened the road where the logs were halted. Britt lashed his horses around in front of the load with apparent intent to intimidate Tommy. The warden dropped off the jumper and shut off retreat in the rear. And Wade, running swiftly, carrying his cant-dog, came and leaped upon the load and stood above Tommy—his protecting genius, but a genius who had no very clear idea of what he was about to do.

No one ever explained exactly how it happened!

The warden, who was at the top of the pitch and who did it, gazed a moment, saw what he had done, and fled with a howl of abject terror, never to appear on Enchanted again. The men at the snub-post stated afterwards that he came to them, hearing Pulaski Britt’s orders, elbowed them aside with an oath, and took the hawser. He probably undertook to loosen the coils to make a half-hitch; but a game warden has no business with a snub-line when the devil is in it.

It gave one triumphant shriek at its release, and then—“Toom! Toom! Toom!”—it began to sing its horrible bass note. It was slipping faster and faster around the snubbing-post under the strain of Tommy Eye’s load, which it had been holding back.

Tommy Eye knew without looking—knew without understanding. He knew—that most terrible knowledge of all woods terrors—that he was “sluiced.” He screamed once—only once—and the horses came into their collars. Their hot breath was on the back of Pulaski Britt’s neck when he started—started with a hoarse oath above which sang the shrill yelp of his whip-lash, and behind him, on the icy slope, slid the great load of logs now released from anchorage to the snubbing-post and guided only by the nerve of Tommy Eye.

“Jump, Mr. Wade! Jump!” gasped the teamster. But Wade drove the peak of his cant-dog into a log and clung to the upright handle. He looked back. The great hawser spun itself off the spindle of the post and chased down the hill in spirals, utterly loose and free.

It was no dare-devil spirit that held him on the load. His soul was sick with horrible fear. It was something that was almost subconsciousness that kept him there. Perhaps it was pity—pity for Tommy Eye, so brave a martyr at his post of duty. In the flash of that instant when the great load gathered speed he stiffened himself to leap, then he looked at Tommy’s patched coat and remembered his oft-repeated little boast: “I’ve never left my hosses yet!” And so if Tommy could stay with his horses, he, Dwight Wade, could stay with Tommy! There was a queer thrill in his breast and the sting of sudden tears in his eyes as he decided.

The first rush of the descent was along an incline, steep but even. There were benches below—each shelf ten feet or so of jutting level—that broke the descent. Wade saw the jumper of Pulaski Britt strike the first bench. The old man went off the seat into the air, and when he fell he dropped his reins, clutched the seat, and kneeled, facing the pursuers, his face ghastly with terror. He crouched there, not daring to turn. Even if he had held his reins they would have been as useless in his hands as strips of fog. Ledges and trees hemmed either side. There was only the narrow road for his flying horses, and they ran straight on, needing neither whip nor admonitions.

The groan of five thousand feet of timber chafing the bind-chains when their great load struck the shelf was like the groan of an animal in agony. The chains held. It was Tommy who had seen to every link and every loop. Then, for the first time in his life, Wade heard the scream of horses in mortal fear. The lurch of the forward sled lifted the pole, and for one dreadful instant both animals kicked free and clear in air.

Tommy Eye shot two words at them like bullets. “Steady, boys!” he yelled. His head was hunched between his shoulders. His arms were out-stretched and rigid. Tommy Eye, master of horses! It was his lift on the bits at just the fraction of a second when they needed it that set them on their feet when the pole dropped. And down the next descent they swooped.

From his height Wade looked straight into the eyes of Pulaski Britt. It seemed that with every plunge of their hoofs Tommy Eye’s horses would smash that puffy face. The checks of the benches, when the huge load struck and staggered from time to time, allowed Britt’s lighter equipage a little start. But the mighty projectile that drove on him down the smooth slopes gained with every yard, for the thrusting pole swept the horses off their feet in plunge after plunge. And then it was Tommy Eye’s desperate coolness that helped them to their infrequent footing. All of the man’s face that Wade could see was a ridged jaw muscle above the faded collar of his coat. The peak of his cap hid all but that.

There was a curve at the foot of the snub slope. The wall of trees that closed the vista was disaster spelled by bolled trunk and sturdy limb. There stood the nether millstone: the upper was rushing down, and the grist would be flesh of horses and men. No man could see any other alternative. That horses, shaken every now and then on the up-cocked pole as helplessly as kittens, could bring that load around the curve was not a hope; it could be nothing but a dream of desperation.

As to what Tommy Eye dreamed or thought, his passenger had no hint. There was only the patch of cheek showing under the tilted cap. But the reins were just as tight, the out-stretched arms just as steady. Wade crouched low, his eyes on that rigid jaw muscle.

Suddenly, with a yell like the cry of something wild, Eye sprang to his feet, bestriding the logs, bracing himself for some mighty effort. They were at the Curve of Death! There came a surge on the tight reins, eight hoofs dug the snow in one frantic thrust, and they went around—they went around! With horses and driver straining to one side the great load pitched, swerved, and, after one breathless instant, swept on in the road around the curve.

Twenty rods farther on they struck the hay, spread thickly for the trig—the checking of the runners. And the sled-runners, biting it, jerked and halted, the bind-chains creaked, the chafing logs groaned—and they were stopped! The lathering horses stood with legs wide spraddled, their heads lowered, their snorting noses puffing up the snow.

Tommy Eye dug the tobacco from his cheek and thoughtfully tossed it away. Britt’s team had disappeared, reins dragging, the horses running madly, the whitened, puffy face flashing one last look as it winked out of sight among the trees.

“I’ve dreamed of such a thing as this,” observed Tommy, at last, a strange tremor in his tones. “I’ve dreamed of chasin’ old P’laski Britt, me settin’ on five thousand feet of wild timber and lookin’ down into his face and seein’ him a-wonderin’ whether they’d let him into the front door of hell or make him go around to the back. It’s the first time he was ever run good and plenty, and I done it—but,” he sighed, “it was damnation whilst it lasted!”

He turned now and gazed long and wistfully at Wade.

“Ye stuck by me, didn’t ye, Mr. Wade?” he said, softly. “Stuck by me jest like I was a friend, and not old, drunken Tommy Eye! I reckon we’ll shake on that!” And when they clasped hands he asked, with the wistful, inexpressible pathos of his simple devotion to duty: “What was it all about? I jest only know they sluiced me!”

And Wade gasped an explanation, Tommy Eye staring at him with wrinkling brows and squinting eyes.

“Come to arrest me for northin’ I hadn’t done?” he shrilled. “Come to take me off’n a job where I was needed, and where I was earnin’ my honest livin’?”

“They had the warrant, and Britt swore out the lying complaint.”

“Mr. Wade,” said Tommy, after a solemn pause, “I’ve done a lot of things in this life to be ashamed of—but jest gittin’ drunk, that’s all. I ain’t never done a crime. But jest now, if it hadn’t been for that toss-up between supper in camp or hot broth in tophet to-night, I’d be travellin’ down-country, pulled away from you when you need me worst, and all on account of P’laski Britt. If that’s the chances an honest man runs in this world, I’m an outlaw from now on!”

Wade stared at him in amazement, for there was a queer significance in Tommy’s tone.

“An outlaw!” repeated Tommy, slapping his breast. “Yes, s’r, I’m an outlaw! An outlaw so fur as P’laski Britt is concerned. I’ve showed him I can run him! Did you see him lookin’ at me? He’ll dream of me after this when he has the nightmare.”

He took Wade by the arm.

“I ’ain’t been sayin’ much, Mr. Wade, but I see how things are gettin’ ready to move in this valley. You ain’t built for an outlaw. But you need one in your business. I’m the one from now on.”

He pulled his thin hand out of his mitten and shook it towards the north in the direction in which Blunder Lake lay.

“You need an outlaw in your business, I say! I’m tough from now on. I’ll be so tough in April that you’ll have to discharge me. There’s no knowin’ what an outlaw will do, is there, Mr. Wade? I’d ruther go to jail as an outlaw than as a drunk, like I’ve done every summer. They look up to outlaws. They make drunks scrub the floors and empty the slops.” His voice trembled. “Oh, you needn’t worry, Mr. Wade! I’ll be proud to be an outlaw. And I ain’t northin’ but old Tommy Eye, anyway.”

He slid down off the load and went between the horses’ heads, and fondled them and kissed them above their eyes.

“Brace up, old fellers!” he said. “You won’t have to pull no more to-day. I reckon you’ve done your stunt!”

“I—I don’t understand this outlaw business, Tommy,” stammered Wade, looking down on him from the load. Tommy peered up, his head between the shaggy manes of the horses.

“Don’t you try to, Mr. Wade!” he cried, earnestly. “There ain’t no good in tryin’ to understand outlaws. They ain’t no kind to hitch up to very close. Don’t you try to understand them!” And as he bent to unhook the trace-chains he muttered to himself: “I ain’t sure as I understand much about ’em myself, but there’s one outlawin’ job that it’s come to my mind can be done without takin’ private lessons off’n Jesse James, or whoever is topnotcher in the line just now. In the mean time, let’s see that warden try to arrest me!”

But as days went by it became apparent that the wardens and the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt considered that they had precipitated an affair on Enchanted whose possible consequences they did not care to face.

CHAPTER XXVII