CHAPTER NINE—UP THE WINDING WAY TO THE “OGRE OF THE BIG WOODS.”
“I have no further business with Colonel Ward at this time,” protested Parker, amazed at Connick's refusal to release him. “Wal, he says you have, an' them's our orders. The men that work for Gid Ward have to obey orders.”
“Your Colonel Ward has already injured me enough,” exclaimed Parker, bitterly, “without dragging me away into the woods fifty or a hundred miles from my duty! I'll not see any more of him.”
“Oh, but ye will, tho!” Connick was grinning, but under his amiability his tones were decisive. “I don't know what he wants to talk with you about, but I reckon it's railroad. We here can't do that with ye. So ye'll have to come along. But we all think you're a smart little man. Ain't that so, hearties?”
The men growled gruff assent.
“Ye see, ye're pop'lar with us,” Connick went on. “Ye can be as friendly with us as tho we was your brothers, but ye don't want to try any shenanigan trick like dodgin' away. We've been told to take you to Number 7 camp, and to that camp ye're goin'. So understandin' that we'll move. There's a snack waitin' here for us at the carry camp, and then for the uptrail.” The men moved along, taking Parker with them in the center of the group.
“How far is it to Number 7?” the young man inquired, despondently.
“They call it fifty miles from the other end of the carry. Ye needn't walk a step if ye don't want to. There's a moose sled an' plenty of men to haul ye.”
After a breakfast of hot beans, biscuits and steaming tea at the camp, the procession moved. Parker was wrapped in tattered bunk blankets and installed in state on a long, narrow sledge. He was given the option of getting off and walking whenever he needed the exercise to warm himself.
The march was brisk all that day, for the brawny woodsmen followed the snowy trail unflaggingly. After the six miles of the carry tote-road, their way led up the crooked West Branch on the ice. There were detours where the open waters roared down rough gorges fast enough to dodge the chilling hand of Jack Frost; there were broad dead waters where the river widened into small lakes. Parker was oppressed by the nervous dread of one who enters a strange new country and faces a danger toward which a fate stronger than he is pressing him.
At noon they ate a lunch beside a crackling fire which warmed the cooked provisions they had brought from the carry camp.
Parker walked during the afternoon to ease his cold-stiffened limbs. Toward dusk the party left the river and turned into a tote-road that writhed away under snow-laden spruces and hemlocks, coiled its way about rocky hummocks, and curved in “whip-lashes” up precipitous hillsides. There was not a break in the forest that stretched away on either hand.
Late in the evening they saw in a valley below them a group of log huts, their snowy roofs silvered by the moonlight. Yellow gleams from the low windows showed that the camp was occupied.
“That's the Sourdanheunk baitin'-place,” Connick explained, in answer to a question from his captive. “One o' Ward's tote-team hang-ups an' feedin'-places.”
The cook, a sallow, tall man encased in a dirty canvas shroud of an apron, was apparently expecting the party. More beans, more biscuits, more steaming tea—and then a bunk was spread for Parker. His previous night of vigil and his day spent in the wind had benumbed his faculties, and he speedily forgot his fears and his bitter resentment in profound slumber.
The next morning the cook's “Whoo-ee!” called the men before the dawn, and they were away while the first flushes presaged the sunrise. It seemed that day that the tortuous tote-road would never end. Valley succeeded to “horseback” and “horseback” to valley. Woods miles are long miles.
Parker's railroad eye and engineer's discernment bitterly condemned the divagations of the wight who wandered first along that trail and imposed his lazy dodgings on all who might come after him. The young man amused himself by reflecting that the tote-road was an excellent example of the persistence of human error, and in these and other philosophical ponderings he was able to draw his mind partially from its uncomfortable dwellings on the probabilities awaiting him at the hands of Gideon Ward.
The sun was far down in the west and the road under the spruces was dusky, when a singular obstacle halted the march. A tremendous thrashing and crashing at one side of the road signaled the approach of some large animal. A network of undergrowth hid the identity of this unknown, and the men instinctively huddled together and displayed some uncertainty as to whether they should remain or run. But the suspense was soon over, for the nearer bushes parted suddenly and out upon the tote-road floundered an immense moose, his bulbous nose wagging, his bristly mane twitching, his stilted fore legs straddled defiantly.
The next moment a great bellow of laughter went up from the crowd.
“The joke's on us!” cried a woodsman, who had been among the first to retreat.
“Hullo, Ben Bouncer!” Connick shouted.
“What do you mean by playin' peek-a-boo with your friends in that manner?”
The moose uttered a hoarse whuffle.
“This is Ben Bouncer, the mascot of Number 7 camp,” the foreman announced. He pushed Parker to the front rank of the group. “He won't hurt ye,” he added. “He has got used enough to men to be a little sassy, an' he's got colty on Gid Ward's grain, but he's mostly bluff.”
The engineer gazed on the moose with considerable interest, for the spectacle was entirely new.
“Ben went to loafin' round 7 camp early this winter. He yarded down here two miles or so. You understand, of course, that a moose picks out a good feedin'-place in winter, when the deep snows come, a place where he can reach a lot of twigs and yards there, as they call it in the woods.”
“When the snow got crusty and scraped his legs, Ben seemed to have a tired fit come over him, and began to come closer an' closer to the horse hovels to steal what loose hay he could. No one round the camp wanted to hurt him. After a time we all became sort of interested in him, and toled him up to the camp by leavin' hay an' grain round where he could get at it. You can see what a big fat fellow we've made of him. Our feedin' him makes the colonel mad, for hay is worth something by the time ye get it in here to camp. I bet if ye put it all together the colonel has chased him more'n forty miles with a bow whip.
“He was goin' to shoot Ben, but the boys got up on their ear and made it known that if he killed the camp mascot they'd throw up their jobs. An' if you know anything about a woods crew you'd know it's the little things that they get the maddest about. An' now whenever the colonel comes round he takes it out in chasin' Ben with a whip. Ben just lopes round in a circle of a mile or two, and comes back lookin' reproachful, but still perfectly satisfied with Number 7 as a winter residence. The boys think a lot of Ben. Ben thinks a lot of the boys. But the colonel is sp'ilin' his temper some with that bow whip. I reckon why Ben jest come out there lookin' so savage was because he thought old Ward was comin' up to camp.”
The moose finished his critical survey of the group, snorted, and then thrust himself out of sight in the bushes.
“If we ever have any serious fallin' out with Colonel Gid it's like to be over that moose,” drawled a man.
“To judge by the moose, we must be near Number 7 camp,” Parker suggested.
“Just over the hossback,” was the laconic answer.
Parker was soon looking down on it from the hilltop. There were two long, low main camps—one for the sleeping quarters of the men, the other crowded with long, roughly made tables, at which they ate, The space that separated the camps was roofed and had one side open to the weather. This shelter was called the “dingle,” and contained the camp grindstone and spare sled equipment.
At a little distance was a small camp containing the stores, such as moccasins, larigans, leggings, flannel shirts and mittens, all for sale at double the prices ruling in the city and for Colonel Ward's profit. The woods name for this store is the “wangan camp.”
The hour was still too early for the few men left at Number 7 to be in from the cutting. Only the cook and his helper, “the cookee,” were at the camp.
The cook came out and advanced to meet the new arrivals, having been attracted from his kettles and pans by the view-halloo they sent down from the hilltop.
“Colonel left word to lock him in the wangan,” reported the cook, rolling his bare arms more tightly in his dingy apron.
“Where is the colonel?” asked Connick.
“He's out at the log landin'. Be in at supper-time, so he said.” The cook eyed the captive with curiosity not unmixed with commiseration. “Has he been takin' on much?” he inquired of one of the men.
“Nope. Stiff upper lip—an' he licked Dan,” the man added, behind his palm.
“Sho!” the cook ejaculated, looking on Parker with new interest. “Ain't he worried by thinkin' of the colonel?”
“Naw-w! Says he'll eat him raw!” fabricated the men, enjoying the cook's amazement. “Says he's glad to come up here. Been hankerin' to get at Ward, he says.”
“Wal, you don't say!” The cook surveyed Parker from head to foot with critical inspection. This scrutiny annoyed the young man at last.
“Do I owe you anything?” He snapped.
“Heh—wal—blorh-h—wal, I hope ye don't!” spluttered the cook, retreating. “Land, ain't he a savage one?” he gasped, as he hastened back into his realm of pots. He transferred his news to the amazed cookee.
“They tell me,” he magnified, so as not to be outdone in sensationalism, “that this feller has licked every man that they've turned him loose on between here and Sunkhaze, an' now is just grittin' his teeth a-waitin' for the colonel.”
“Wal,” said the cookee, solemnly, “if the r'yal Asiatic tiger—meanin' Colonel Gid—and the great human Bengal—meanin' him as is in the wangan—get together in this clearin', I think I'd rather see it from up a tree.” And the two were only diverted from their breathless discussion of possibilities by the noisy arrival of Gideon Ward, clamoring for his supper.
Parker had hardly finished in solitude his humble supper brought by the cookee, when there was a rattling of the padlock outside. Open flew the door of bolted planks, and Colonel Ward stamped in, kicking the snow from his feet with wholly unnecessary racket of boots. A hatchet-faced man, whose chin was framed between the ends of a drooping yellow mustache, followed meekly and closed the door. Parker rose with a confident air he was far from feeling.
Ward gazed on his prisoner a moment, his gray hair bristling from under his fur cap, his little eyes glittering maliciously. His cheek knobs were more irately purple than ever. He took up his cry where he had left it at Poquette Carry, and began to shout:
“Better'n law, hey? Better'n law! Ye remember what I said, don't yeh? Better'n law!”
The young man faced him.
“Colonel Ward, there's a law against trespass, a law against conspiracy, a law against riots and destruction of property, and a law against abduction. I promise you here and now that you'll learn something about those laws later.”
“Still threat'nin' me right on my own land, are yeh, hey?”
“I am not threatening. I am simply standing up for my rights as a citizen under the law.”
“Wal, I ain't here to argue law nor nothin' else with yeh. I've had you brought up here so's I can talk straight business with you. You've had a pretty tart lesson, but I hope you've learned somethin' by it. I've showed ye that a railro'd can't be built over Gideon Ward's property till he says the word. An' he'll never say the word. Ye're licked. Own up to it, now ain't ye?” Ward's voice was mighty with a conqueror's confidence.
“Not by any means. You have simply incurred the penalty of being sent to state prison. And while you're there I'll be building that railroad.”
Fury fairly streamed from Ward's eyes. He choked, grasped at his throat, writhed as if he were strangling, and stamped his foot until the camp shook. At last he recovered his voice.
“I'll pay ye for that! Now see here!” He jammed a paper into Parker's hands. “Sign that docyment, there an' now. Sign it an' swear ye'll stick by your agreement; 'cause if ye go back on it, may the Lord have mercy on your soul, for Gid Ward never will!”
Parker glanced at the crudely drawn agreement. It bound him as agent for his principals to withdraw all material from the Po-quette Carry, and abandon his railroad undertaking. It furthermore promised that he would make no complaint on account of damages to property or himself—admitting that he had been guilty of trespass.
Parker indignantly held the paper toward the colonel. The latter refused to take it.
“Sign it!” he roared. “Sign it, or you'll take your medicine!”
“Do you think I am a fool, Colonel Ward? Or are you one? I cannot bind my principals in any such manner. Furthermore, a signature obtained under duress is of no value in court. I claim that I am under duress.”
“You refuse to sign, then?”
“Absolutely. It would be easy enough to sign that paper and then go away and do as I like. But I am not going to lie to you even for a moment. The paper would be worthless in court.”
“It ain't a paper that's goin' into court,” Ward retorted. “It's a paper by which you agree to get out of here. It's you an' me. It just means that ro'd shan't be built.”
“Put into other words, I am to be scared out, and run back home and report that the road is impracticable?”
“There's no one else in the world but you that would be fool enough to start in here an' buck me!” Ward shouted.
“And therefore you think if I agree to leave, no one else will dare to undertake the thing? You do me too much honor, Colonel Ward. But I repeat, I shall not run away.”
“Don't you realize I have gone too far into this thing to pull back now? I warn you that I may have to do things I don't like to do in order to protect myself. I can't back out now—no, sir!”
“You shouldn't have started in, then!” Parker sat down and looked away as if the incident were closed. He slowly tore up the agreement and tossed the pieces on the floor.
This bravado made Ward choke.
“Stand right up, do you, an' threaten to put me into state prison?”
“You went into this with your eyes open. You must take the consequences. You are a business man, and are supposed to have arrived at years of understanding. This matter isn't like kicking over a mud house at school.”
“Look here, I've got every lumber operator in this section behind me in this matter. You hain't realized yet what you're up against.”
“If that is the case,” Parker replied, his eyes kindling, “I can see that this state is in for one of the big scandals of its history.”
Ward, who had been carried away by his passion and desire to intimidate, understood now how this admission would compromise men who would be ruined politically if any hint of such an illegal combination should be noised abroad.
When he had offered to defeat the actual construction of the road, he had been warned that he must take all the responsibility upon himself. He had willingly assumed it, for he was as proud of his reputation for savage obstinacy as other men are of popular credit for more noble attributes. Col. Gideon Ward had confidently boasted to his associates that he would prevent the building of the Poquette railroad. He would rather lose half his fortune than confess to them that he had been beaten by a youth.
Now his hardy nature shivered at the thought that not only might the youth win, but that he had the power to make the agent of the timber barons doubly execrated and an outcast among his own people. Ward was faced by the most serious problem of his life, and the uncomfortable reflection pricked him that he had allowed his anger to steal his brains.
“Young man,” said he, “I've been on earth a good while longer'n you have. I expect to stay some time yet. And I expect to live right here in this section. You hain't got to live here. Now do you think Gid Ward can afford to be put on his back just yet? I know just who'd tromp on me, an' I know it better'n you. Now I tell you fair an' square you've got to give in.” He bellowed the word “got” and thunked his fist on his knee.
“There is no answer to that required from me, Colonel Ward.”
“All right, then. Come along, Hackett!” Ward commanded. “We'll give this critter a little time to figure this thing over, an' think whether he's got any friends that he'd like to get back to.” They went out and locked the door.
CHAPTER TEN—THE WANGAN DUEL
AFTER the fashion of any prisoner, Parker's initial impulse was to examine the place in which he was confined. At first, escape was in his mind. The more he pondered on the lawless performance of the old timber baron and on the wilful destruction of the company's property, the more eager he was to get to a telegraph instrument.
Nothing had been taken from his person. He had his huge, sharp, jack-knife. The door was strong and thick but he believed that if he attacked the wood vigorously he might be able to whittle out the lock.
There were wooden bars on the windows outside and within, rude protection against thieves who might want to ransack the stock of the wangan store. His stout knife would take care of them, too.
But after whittling vigorously at a bar for a few moments he stopped suddenly, shut his knife and rammed it into his pocket with an exclamation of sudden resolve.
He reflected that even if he got out of the camp that night, he was more than fifty miles from Poquette, the only point in that wilderness whose location was known to him. He was without food for a journey and had his weary way to make through Gideon Ward's own country.
“He has brought me here to bluster at me and frighten me into running away out of the section,” he reflected. “I'll stay and disappoint him.”
His own respect for law and order was still so strong within him that he feared no extreme measures. His honest belief was that the colonel, like most men who find they have picked up a brick too hot for them, would drop him in good time and allow him to return to his work.
In order to force the old man to this issue he determined to put on a bold front, defy his captor still more doggedly and in the end accept release under conditions of his own making. He felt that Ward was compromised and now to a certain extent in his power.
It was a decidedly comforting reflection, that, for a prisoner, and he tucked himself into the blankets of his bunk and went to sleep with his mind eased.
The cook's shrill morning call woke him and without rising he listened to the bustle of men preparing for the day's work. He heard the continuous rattle of tin dishes, the mellow rasp of axes on turning grindstones, the squeak of footsteps departing over the crisp snow and the squealing of the runners of sleds. And when all were gone, there was as yet only the faintest glimmering of the dawn against the window of the wangan camp.
The engineer was up and dressed when the key rattled in the door. Colonel Ward came first, “sipping” his tongue against his teeth in a manner that showed he had just finished breakfast. The morning light showed redly on his face as he came ill, and in that glow he seemed to be in more gracious spirit than on the evening before.
The man who had previously accompanied him, the man of the hatchet visage, followed at his heels bearing several tin dishes that contained breakfast.
“There ain't no intention here to starve ye nor use ye in any ways contrary to gen'ral regulations—that is, so fur as we can help,” began the colonel. “Of course, if you were a little more reasonable and bus'ness-like we could use you better. Hackett, set down the breakfast! Fall to, young man, and eat hearty jest as tho ye relished your vittles.”
It was evident that Colonel Ward was making desperate attempts to appear cordial.
He even endeavored to force a smile but it was hardly more than a ridging of his cheek muscles under his bristly beard. Parker imagined that he could hear the skin crackling at this unaccustomed facial twist. The struggle to appear cheerful was so grim that the engineer dreaded his antagonist in this new guise more than he did when he was brutally open in his warfare.
“Sit down, Hackett,” commanded the colonel. “Hackett's a friend o' mine—that is, in so far as I have friends, and he might as well be here to listen to what I have to say to you and what you have to say to me. There's northin' like a witness of transactions, Mr. Parker. Now you and me ain't got together right up to now. I'm allus pretty much fussed up by my bus'ness and kept cross-grained all the time by havin' to handle so many blasted fool woodsmen, and the man that meets me for the first time might natch-rally think I was uglier'n a Injun devil in fly-time—which I ain't, Parker, No, I ain't I want you and me should be good friends and bus'ness men together, which we ain't been so far, all on account of a misunderstandin'. Now, you're goin' to find me square and honest and open.”
Ward looked at the young man eagerly and waited as tho for some encouraging word.
“Even under the circumstances in which you have placed me, not only on my personal account but with my employers, by destroying their property,” said Parker, after pondering a moment, “I am ready to talk business with you if you are now ready to talk it.”
“Well, let's say that we can talk it all nice and friendly. Won't you say that you'll talk it all nice and friendly?” He had Hackett in the corner of his eye, as tho soliciting that individual to take careful note of the conversation.
“The fact is, Colonel Ward,” replied the engineer, “human nature isn't to be driven to and fro quite like an ox team. What I mean by that is, I might say, 'Go to, now! Be friends!'—say that to myself. But that wouldn't make me feel friendly—not in present circumstances. But I'm going to say to you that I'd like to be friends, and if you will start in now and show me some reason why we should be friends I'll give you my word to come more than half way.”
“Wal, that sounds reasonable and as much as any one can expect on short notice,” broke in Hackett, who sat straining his attention.
“You shut up, Hackett,” roared the colonel, who realized Parker's mental reservation better than his man Friday. “I'll show ye all in good time why we should be friends, Parker,” he went on, addressing the engineer. “But first of all I'll show ye how much it is goin' to hurt me to have that railroad built acrost Poquette. And when I show you that, then you'll understand what the trouble was that you and me didn't start in on the basis of good friends. I tell ye, Parker, it's a serious proposition for me and my associates. I can tell ye just why that road can't and mustn't be built.”
The old man straddled his legs, leaned forward and set his right forefinger into his left palm with the confident air of one who is prepared to prove his contentions.
“I say,” he went on, “that the road must not be built, and as a business man—”
“Colonel Ward,” broke in Parker, mildly yet firmly, “if that line of talk is what you are proposing to me I think I'd better tell you at the start that you'll have to take the question of whether the road must or must not be built to my employers. I have no right to enter upon any such discussion. Nothing will be gained. They have sent me to Poquette to build the road. I shall keep on with the work until my first orders are countermanded from our headquarters. And if you want them countermanded you'll be obliged to go to headquarters. It seems to me that ought to be pretty plain to you.”
The old man, his finger still boring his palm, sat for some moments and stared at the engineer. He tried to keep from scowling but his brows twisted into knots in spite of himself.
“You will keep on till orders are countermanded, hey?” he inquired grimly. “Ain't you got no commonsense nor reason to you?”
“It isn't a question of that, Colonel. It's a question of obeying my employers.”
The old man gave him another thorough looking-over and then whirled on Hackett.
“You go 'tend to something else,” he ordered bluffly. And after Hackett had closed the door on himself he again turned to his scrutiny of the young engineer.
“I ain't no great hand to beat about the bush, young feller,” he declared. “Now look at the position you're in. You might say, you're more than half queered already with your company. Your engine and all that collateral has been dumped into the lake—sayin' nothin' about how it happened. The main point is, it's there! And you're here! I ain't makin' any threats—not as yet—but you're here, and you can't gainsay that much. Now the idea is, with your stuff under water and you here, how long do you think it's goin' to be before you git to work ag'in?”
Parker made no reply.
“Needn't answer any question that you can't answer,” continued Ward. “And that's one that you can't answer. You tell me you've got to build that road. You're goin' to tell me that if you don't build it some one else will. Mebbe they will! Mebbe they will!” His eyes grew shrewd. “Mebbe I'll build it myself! I can say this much, that I'd rather build it than have outsiders come in here and git a foothold. There's too big interests in this region and owned by them that's allus lived here, my son, to have outsiders come in now and meddle. It's the very first run of potater bugs that you want to keep out of the garden. And the first run can be handled easier than the settlers after they have set up housekeeping. Now you see the point, I reckon! So the whole thing simmers down to this: I want to discourage them city fellers. It's a long arm they're reachin' down this way, and I won't have to tread on their fingers many times till they'll be mighty glad to pull back. It's only a side issue with them, and they won't let a side issue keep 'em awake too many nights when there's a way to get rid of the bother. When they are discouraged enough to be willin' to sell the charter and the stuff they've got on the spot—and under water,” he added with a wicked grin, “then I'll step in with the cash in my hand. I reckon we can handle our own railroad build-in' down this way. If I ain't got you discouraged already, young man, then I don't understand human natur' as well as I think I do. So now I want to hire you in the discouragin' business—you understand it fairly well. I need an assistant discourager. And here's my proposition! I'll give ye five thousand dollars bonus smack down in your fist and promise you in the name of the Lumbermen's Association a steady job. We're goin' to build three big dams along the West Branch and a four-mile canal cut-off at headwaters. You'll find work enough, if that's what you're lookin' for.”
“And you'll be looking for me to sell out your interests at my first opportunity,” said Parker.
“Ours is a different proposition—a different proposition,” blurted Ward earnestly. “Your men ain't got any right to be here on our own stamping ground—not as bus'ness men. We ain't goin' down where they are to bother them. They hadn't ought to be up here. If you leave 'em and come with us we'll consider that it's showin' that you understand what a square deal in bus'ness matters means. And furthermore,” he said with a certain air as tho he had reserved his trump card, “we'll make our trade in black and white for a ten years' contract at a third more wages than your railroad people are paying and tip you off regular on timber deals where you can make an extry dollar. I don't mind tellin' ye, Parker, that I've had ye looked up and I know that we ain't buyin' any gold brick.” This with a certain cordiality.
“I must say, Colonel Ward, that you have taken a rather peculiar method of getting me interested in your enterprises.” Parker's tone was a bit resentful, but the old man believed he could understand that resentment, and grew more cheerful and confident.
“You had to be discouraged,” chuckled the colonel. “Didn't I tell you that you had to be discouraged? Why, if you hadn't been shown what kind of a proposition you were up against you might have kept on thinkin' that the P. K. &. R. railroad company was the biggest thing in the world. All young men want to work for the biggest folks. But I reckon by this time you have found out that Gideon Ward and the Lumbermen's Association come pretty near bein' lord of all they survey in this country. There, young man! The cards are down. Look at 'em! I'm pretty rough and I'm pretty tough and I play the game for all that's in me. But when it's over you won't find any cards up my sleeve nor down the back of my neck—and you can't always say that of your smooth city chaps.”
Parker sat with his elbows on his knees, looking down at the floor, his forehead wrinkled. He was a pretty sturdy young American in principles and conduct, but at the same time he had all of young America's appreciation of the main chance. And the main chance in these days lies along the road where the dollars are sprinkled thickest. He reflected that the building of the little bob-tail railroad had been tossed at him as a rather silly and secret escapade of two big men who were already half ashamed of the whole business. He realized that in their present frame of mind they would be inclined to close out the whole thing in disgust as soon as they received news of the destruction of the property.
When he got back to town he would simply remind them of a mutual failure to accomplish, and the history of such reminders is that they have been side-tracked in some places where their presence could not remind.
“You know there isn't goin' to be any hurry about your givin' up your present job—not till spring has got well opened and the ice is out of Spinnaker,” said Colonel Ward slyly, breaking in on the young man's meditations. “There's always a right time for re-signin' and we'll discover that time. But your five thousand will be put to your credit in Kenduskeag Bank the next day after you sign our papers, and your salary with us will begin the minute the ink is dry. You'll have double pay for a while, but I reckon you'll be earnin' it.” He chuckled once more.
Parker, surveying his red cheek knobs, his cruel gray eyes narrowed now in evil mirth, recollected with a photographic flash of memory of the details of that story the postmaster at Sunkhaze had told him. This was the same man who had coolly stolen wife and property from his own brother and then had jeered at him, probably with that same expression puckering about his evil, gray eyes. In the sudden revulsion of his feelings Parker wondered if he really had been tempted by the bait held out to him. At least, he had been weighing the chances. He remembered cases where other men who had stopped to weigh advantages had ended in becoming disloyal. He promptly forgot with a mental wrench the bribe that had been offered. It was a coaxing bait and he bravely owned that it had tempted for a moment. He was honest enough to own to himself that, offered by another, it might have won him—and he felt a little quiver of fear at the thought.
But when he pictured himself as the associate of this old harpy who sat leering at him, hands on his knees, and already swelling with a sense of proprietorship, he almost forgot his personal wrongs in the hot flush of his indignation on behalf of the cheated brother.
“That's a proposition that sort of catches ye, hey?” inquired Ward, misunderstanding the nature of the flush that sprung to Parker's cheeks.
“I'm going to be honest enough to say that it did catch me for a moment,” replied the young man.
“Oh, I know all about what temptation is to any men—especially a young man,” said the colonel blandly.
“But I'll bet you a hundred dollars to a toothpick you never knew what it was to resist temptation,” shouted Parker. “And I'm going to tell you now and here that I'd no more accept your offer and take a job with you than I'd poison myself with paris green.” He flung himself back in his chair and glared at his tempter with honest indignation.
For a little while Ward stared at him, open-mouthed. His surprise was greater, for he believed that he had landed his fish.
“And don't you make me any more offers. I've no use for them or for you, either,” cried the young man, his voice trembling.
“I've read about such critters as you be,” said the colonel slowly, “but it was in a dime novel and it was a good many years ago and I didn't believe it. I believe it said in the novel that the young man died young and went to heaven—the only one of his kind. P'raps I'm wrong and he didn't die—went to heaven jest as he stood in his shoes and co't and pants.”
Parker merely scowled back at the biting irony of this rejoinder.
“There's no dime novel or any other kind of a novel to this affair, Colonel Ward. I'm not especially fitted to be the hero of a book. Nor to be one of your hired men, either.”
“Then ye've made up your mind to straddle out your legs and play Branscome's mule, hey?”
“What was his special characteristic?”
The question was drawled coolly.
“He kicked when ye tried to drive him with a whip and he bit and squealed when ye tried to coax him along with sweet apples. So if ye won't neither lead nor drive, then out with it man fashion.”
“I simply demand my liberty.”
“And what be ye goin' to do with it?”
“That is my own affair.”
The two men sat and looked at each other a long time, the old man's choler rising the higher from the fact that it had been so long repressed. The young man's glance did not fall before this furious regard.
At last Ward quivered his fists above his head, stamped around the little room and went to the door.
“You've got a few hours to do a little more thinkin' in, and then you look out for yourself, for it's up to you, you—,” he slammed and locked the door and went away, cursing horribly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN—THE BEAR THAT WALKED LIKE A MAN
That in this age of law and order Gideon Ward meditated any actual violence to his person Parker found it hard to believe as he sat there in the “wangan” and pondered on his situation. He could not avoid the conclusion that at heart Colonel Ward was a coward. But sometimes circumstances that a brave man will not suffer to rule him will drive a coward into crime.
It was a long and dreary day for him.
From the window he saw Colonel Ward go scurrying away on a jumper, evidently bound for the choppings.
The cook and cookee surveyed his prison at a distance. They seemed to have no desire to come into close contact with a man of whom they had heard such sinister reports.
Hackett, who hung about camp, apparently to serve as general “striker” and man of all work, brought food at noon and left it without engaging in conversation.
Parker made a dull day of it.
After the chill dusk had fallen and he had stuffed his rusty little stove with all the wood it would hold, he heard the men returning.
A colloquy that occurred after supper interested him.
He heard Colonel Ward bellow at some one who was evidently advancing toward the wangan.
“Here you, Connick, where are you goin'?”
“Just to pass a word with the lad,” the man replied.
“Have you got your knittin'?” squalled Ward sarcastically. “There's no call for you to go passin' talk around that wangan camp, Connick. You come away from it.”
But when Connick spoke again it was evident he had not retired.
“It's only right to let him come into the men's camp for a bit this evening, Colonel Ward. There'll be a snatch or so of fiddlin' that he'll like, to cheer him up, and a jig and a song or so. I don't see the harm in mentionin' it to him, to find if he'd like to come. I'll answer for it that he's put back in his nest ag'in all right.”
“Who's runnin' this camp, me or you?”
“You're the man, sir.”
“Well, then, there'll be no invitin' out nor passin' talk. You men have nothin' to do with that chap in that wangan and you'll keep away from him or get your heads broken open. Do you hear what I say? Why don't you come away when I speak?”
“I'm not the man to disobey orders,” growled Connick. “But I'm a man as likes man's style. I've always done your biddin', Colonel Ward, and I done your biddin' when I brought him here. Now I've found him a lively young chap that I'm proud to know and tho I speak for myself alone I speak as a man that likes fair play, and I say it's dirty bus'ness keepin' him like a chicken in a coop, after you've had your bus'ness talk with him.”
“You infernal bundle of hair and rags, do you dare to stand there and tell me how to run my own affairs?” roared Ward, thoroughly incensed.
“Keep your bus'ness your own bus'ness for all I care,” Connick answered angrily. “But when it gits to be bus'ness that can't be backed up man-fashion then ye may find that day's wages don't buy the whole earth for ye.”
The reply was a bit enigmatical but Ward understood that it signified mutiny. He gasped a few times and then Parker heard Connick exclaim:
“Don't ye strike me with that sled-stake, Colonel Gideon, or it might be the worse for ye. I'll not bother your man in the wangan till I find out more about what you're doin' to him—but don't you hit me with that stick.”
Both men went back into the big camp, Ward furiously chewing the reflection that for the first time he had been bearded in his own camp.
Gideon Ward sat until midnight in his little pen off the main camp, poking his fire and meditating. He had reckoned that he was justified in proceeding to extremes with this young man, confident that in the end he would break his spirit and frighten him out of the woods. But he realized now with sinking heart that his violence had endangered all the political influence of the gigantic timber interests. The youth had a powerful weapon, and he, Gideon Ward, would be accused of furnishing it.
Perspiration dripped from under the old man's cap. He rasped his rough palms together nervously. At last he rose and tip-toed into the main camp. All the men were asleep, snoring with the lusty heartiness of a tired lumber crew. The colonel advanced cautiously to Hackett's bunk, and stirred that worthy with his finger until the man awoke. He beckoned, and Hackett followed him into the pen.
“Hackett,” said he, “yeh have worked for me a good many years.”
“Yes, colonel.”
“I've let yeh have money on a mortgage for one or two little favors yeh've done me.”
“Yes.”
Hackett began to grow pale.
“Now I'll lift that whole mortgage for another favor—an' don't get scared. I sha'n't ask yeh to do any more'n I propose to do myself.” Ward had noted the look of alarm on the man's face. “If we're both in it neither can say anything. I took yeh along with me last night and to-day so's yeh could hear how that young fool insults me on my own land.”
“I heard what he said, colonel, an' no man can blame ye for feelin' put out.”
Ward looked at him steadily for a moment.
“Listen to me. Few words when there's work to do: that's my motto. I've done the thinkin' part of this thing. What I want you for is to help on the work.”
The man stared with stupid inquiry.
“Hackett, here's my plan. You and I don't want to hurt that man. We can't afford to hurt him. But he's on my hands, an' he won't back down, an' it puts me in a hard place—a mighty hard place, Hackett. You heard what passed between us? Now he's got to be put out of this camp an' shoved where he can't blab this thing round about. Why, he's half got that fool of a Connick on his side already.
“The only thing, Hackett, is for you to take him across into that Tumble-dick camp an' keep him there—keep him there! Tie him to a beam and feed him like yeh would a pup. Keep him there till he weakens an' quits, or till I can think up some plan further. It'll give me time, Hackett.”
“'Tain't any extra sort of job for me, Colonel Ward!” grumbled Hackett “I've got to watch that critter day in an' day out, an' Tumble-dick camp is all o' twenty miles from here, or from any other camp, for that matter.”
“That's why I want him there, Hackett. We'll tie him on a moose sled, an' you start in an hour, whilst the men are still asleep. I'll break a window out of the wangan, an' on this crust there'll be no foot-tracks. It'll be thought he broke out and ran away—an' that'll be his own lookout.”
His voice became low and husky. “Yeh needn't hitch him too tight in Tumble-dick camp, Hackett, providin' you hide the most of his clothes an' it looks like a storm comin' on. If he wants to duck out away from a good home into the woods, with grub an' fire twenty-five miles away, why, that's his own lookout.”
The man licked his lips nervously.
“That ain't our liability, yeh knew.”
The man pondered.
“It's eight hundred for you, Hackett, an' always a good job with me as long as I hire men,” persisted Colonel Ward.
At last Hackett got up and struck his elbows against his sides.
“I'll do it!” he grunted.
Parker's first alarmed awakening was with a cloth about his neck, choking him so that his cry of fright rattled in his throat. He fought bravely, but two strong men are better than one who has struggled and gasped until he has only a trickle of air in his lungs. He was bound, his head muffled in a strip of torn blanket, and he was carried out into the night. He could not see his captors, but he knew that Ward was one of the assailants, because a hoarse command to Hackett had betrayed him.
After he had been dragged a distance Parker realized by a penetrating odor that he was near the horse hovels. There was a mumbled discussion between his captors as to whether he should be tied to the moose sled. It was decided that his arms should be left pinioned as they were, and Hackett growled:
“I won't tie him to the sled! I'll be needin' him on the steep pitches.”
As his arms were tied behind his back, when they put an old fur coat on him they pulled the sleeves of it on his legs and buttoned the coat behind. In spite of the bandage over his eyes, he easily recognized these operations, and then felt himself lifted upon the familiar moose sled. Several bags full of something were thrown on. With his ears strained for every sound that would give him any information, he heard some one approaching even before the two men, busy between camp and sled, were warned.
“Hark!” grunted the voice of Colonel Ward, at last. “Who's that movin' round back of the hoss hovel? Look out, Hackett! Throw something acrost the sled. He's comin' this way.” A moment after, his tones full of disgust, he snorted, “It's that infernal old moose! Here, hand me that ax!”
A hurry of feet, and then Parker heard the impact of a crushing blow and the muffled groan of a stricken animal. The ax blows continued, apparently dealt with fury, and in a few moments the old man creaked across the crust, dragging some heavy object.
“Here's your fresh meat, Hackett—two hind-quarters,” he panted. “Load it on.”
“The boys will be r'iled to find Ben here in the mornin'!” whined the other man.
“He won't eat any more grain f'r me!” the colonel boomed, wrathfully. “Then again, it will show that after Mister Railroad Man broke out of the wangan camp he killed the moose to get grub to last him for his trip, bein' afraid to tackle Gid Ward's camps. The boys will be ready to massacree him if they can lay hands on him, but,” his tones became ominously significant, “remember your lines now, man! Get away and I'll look after this end.”
Parker felt the loaded sled glide over the crust. He could hardly believe that these men meditated anything except a change in his place of imprisonment; but as the sled moved on and on, and in his helplessness he weighed the situation, he began to feel a vague fear of possibilities. He began to plan means of escape. When at last the sled went scaling down a long slope, he rolled off on the crust.
As he lay there, he expected every moment to hear the man shout an oath and return. When the hasty creaking of the footsteps died away, he knew that the lightened sled, following of its own momentum, had not betrayed him.
Hoodwinked and pinioned, it was no easy task to travel among the trees and across the slippery crust. As Parker scrambled along, he was tempted to cry out and appeal to the man to return. Now that his sudden panic of the flitting sled was over, the dull, cold fear of a helpless and abandoned man came upon him. But he clinched his teeth to keep back the cry that struggled to follow the man of the sled, and kept pushing on into the undergrowth.
At last he stopped and began to scrub his forehead against the rough bark of a tree, endeavoring to remove the bandage. After a time he worked it above his eyes, although it still bound his head like a turban.
He could see the crisp stars through the interlocking branches. He found the pole star. But as he had been unable to guess the direction his captor had taken in leaving the camp, the points of the compass mattered little in this wilderness, where all was strange.
Parker went on, reflecting uneasily that every step might be taking him directly back to Colonel Ward's camp. His grotesque garb hampered his movements. He lumbered along as awkwardly as a bear. After a time he came through some little spruces that whipped his face, and discovered a tote-road that had been long abandoned, for the bushes grew in it and the crust was unmarked.
He pondered a while. Then he shut his eyes, whirled until he dropped, scrambled up, and started away in the direction in which chance had faced him. He smiled as he thought upon this childish resource, but in that bewildering region he had at least been enabled to make up his mind quickly by the device.
The rosy light of the dawn touched him as he plodded along. His advance was slow, for the sleeves of the fur coat impeded free use of his legs. The day was clear and cold, with a stinging wind that tossed the roaring branches of the spruce-trees. The crust held firm. Parker's constrained arms were aching and his hands were numb. He jerked and twisted at the thongs until his wrists were raw, but the knots were too strong for him.
He had passed so many crossings and fork-ings of the bush-grown road that he gave up trying to keep the ramifications in mind for his use should he find it necessary to turn back. He now went on doggedly, choosing this way or that, as it chanced, hoping to hear a ringing ax or a hunter's gun or a teamster's shout somewhere in those solitudes.
In the late afternoon the road led him to an ice-sheathed stream. Here the way divided.
He took the road that led down-stream. It undoubtedly ended at a lake, thought he. Log-landings are on lakes. There would be men to release him from the torture of aching muscles and gnawing stomach. Parker would have welcomed the sight of Colonel Gideon Ward himself when that second night came through the trees.
It was beyond human endurance to walk farther, but Parker realized that if he lay down in that state of cold, weariness and hunger he would never rise again. He marshaled in his mind all the people, all the interests he had to live for; the parents who depended on him, a certain young girl who was waiting so anxiously for his return, his prospects in life. He did this methodically, as if he were piling fagots for a fire at which to warm himself. Then he mentally kindled the heap with the blaze of a mighty determination to live, and standing under a great spruce, he began to stamp about it and count aloud. Half a dozen times during that long night he staggered and fell, as if an invisible hand had struck him down. But the next moment, with a cry of “I'll stay awake!” he was up again and at his self-set task, mind, muscles and nerves centering in his one desperate resolve.
Then the dawn came peeping over the big spruces, and found him still at his grim gambols. He set forth once more down the road, slipping and stumbling, his body doubled forward. A few miles and a few hours more—it was the most he could hope for.
All at once his dull ears heard the zin-n-ng of a rifle-bullet close to his head; and almost immediately, as he ducked and rolled upon his back, the sinister shriek of another ball made it plain that he was the game aimed at. Two smart cracks at some distance indicated the location of the marksman.
Animal instinct is alike in brute and man. Parker leaped at the sound of the first bullet, fell, and rolled behind a snow-covered boulder. Had Ward or his minion tracked him? Were they now carrying out their desperate plan? The double report was proof that the man or men were determined on slaughter.
After a long time he dared to peer cautiously. At some distance down the tote-road an old man was crouching beside a moose sled. On the sled was the carcass of a deer. Parker realized that this old man must be a poacher.
An assassin sent after a man would not be wasting his ammunition on deer in close time.
The old man remained motionless, with the stolidity of the veteran hunter waiting to make sure. Torpor rapidly seized on Parker's mind. He shouted as best he could, but his voice was hoarse from hours of shouting into the vastness of the deserted woods. His faculties were growing befogged. He dared not exert himself enough to keep awake, for his rock was but a narrow bulwark. It seemed to be a choice of deaths, only.
At last he desperately leaped up and danced behind his protecting boulder, uttering such cries as he could. But he saw the old man throw his rifle up and take aim. Down he dropped, and the bullet sang overhead.
He realized then that his garb made him resemble some strange beast—a bear, perhaps—and he gritted his teeth as he pondered that this might be part of Gideon Ward's vindictive scheme. If he attempted to show himself long enough to convince the old man that he was human he would only be inviting the bullet.
Until his blurring senses left him he occasionally shouted or thrust up his head; but the old still-hunter was relentless, and evidently had not the clear vision of a youth. He was always ready with a shot.
At last, with tears freezing on his cheeks, Parker gave himself up to the fatuous comfort of the man succumbing to cold and hunger.