“That remark seems a little uncalled for, Mr. Brophy.”

“I’m speaking out because Ward Latisan doesn’t seem to be the flirting kind, miss. You can’t fool with him.”

“I thank you. I shall avoid Mr. Latisan from now on. I have thoughtlessly taken walks with him.”

“If it’s such a thing as you’re intending to get married I’d rather lose you to Latisan than to anybody else in this region. He’s solid goods, miss! Solid!”

She was seeking confirmation to strengthen her resolves. “I hear that his employer is an invalid. I suppose that makes Mr. Latisan pretty nigh indispensable, doesn’t it?”

“There’ll be no Flagg drive down this spring without Ward on the job—I’ll say that much,” declared Brophy, with vigor. “I can’t afford to make any loud talk about the Three C’s, miss,” he went on, lowering his voice cautiously, “because I cater to all comers. But I don’t know another boss driver who couldn’t be scared off or bought off at the present time, considering the hold the big corporation has got on things up this way. They’re bound to monopolize the river—the Three C’s gang. But they can’t freeze out the independents this year if Ward Latisan stays on the job for Eck Flagg. The death clinch comes this season!”

“Where’s your law up this way, Mr. Brophy?” she demanded.

“I guess neither side dares to call on the law right now. Law might tie up everything. Logs have got to come along with the spring driving pitch, and high water won’t wait till lawyers get done arguing.”

He took down a gong and pounded on it with a padded mallet while he marched through the office to the porch and back again. It was the breakfast call.

“I’ll say about Eck Flagg,” he stated, when he hung the gong back on its hook, “that he ain’t so much to blame for his sour temper as some folks are bound to have it. Old Job of the Bible had nothing on Eck for troubles. No matter what he has done, Eck has been a square fighter. Probably you ain’t interested, even to the extent of a hoot, in gossip about the neighbors. But Eck had a bad one put over on him years ago. He hasn’t been right since that time. Square dealing is his religion. But to get his worst trimming right in his own family, it was awful. Son-in-law done it. But I reckon I’d better hang up on that subject, miss. Here comes Latisan for breakfast.”

The landlord plodded out.

This man who seated himself, waiting to be served by her, who was determined to possess her, had been unwittingly alienated by her from the duty which was owed to that helpless grandfather in his extremity.

The reminder which Brophy had tossed at her carelessly had served to rouse her to desperation. She clung to a service table to keep from falling. She staggered when she started to cross the room to Latisan; her hands and feet were prickling as the blood resumed its course in her veins.

“You’re sick,” he suggested, solicitously.

She shook her head. She turned her face from him, afraid of his questioning gaze. “Give your order, please!”

“Bring anything.”

She started away, but turned and hurried back to his table, her face hard with resolution. She feared that the resolution would be weakened by delay; in a few moments others would come into the room.

“I have changed my mind about that offer of marriage. This morning I say, ’Yes!’”

He gaped at her and started to rise.

“Don’t leave that chair!” she commanded, her low tones tense. “There are men in the office looking this way. I’ll marry you when the Flagg drive is down, with you at the head of it, doing your duty. You may think that over while I’m in the kitchen.”

When she returned with food, Latisan, flushed, eager, only partially assured, looked her in the eye, challenging her candor. “That’s straight talk, is it?”

“It is!”

“I thank God! But why—right here in the open—where I can’t——”

“I’ll answer no questions.”

“I’d like to know why you picked out this place to tell me. I can’t be shut away from all the glory in the grandest moment of my life! I want to get up and yell for joy. I want to take you in my arms.”

“I’ll not allow that. Furthermore, you are to leave for the drive immediately after you have eaten your breakfast.” Her manner cowed him.

“Very well!” he returned, meekly. “When I looked into your eyes I knew that your word to me was good!”

She was finding the fixity of his gaze disconcerting and leaned above the table, arranging the dishes which contained his food. She was grateful for the protection the public room was affording; she would not have been able to declare herself in the privacy which love, in most circumstances, demands.

“Who are you?” he asked, in a half whisper, taking advantage of her nearness. “You are more than you seem to be. You are, I say! You are not silly and selfish like most girls in a time like this. You are able to make me do anything you ask. I’ll go north and fight because you want me to. But an ordinary girl wouldn’t take a big view of things, as you do.”

“Yes—for the sake of having a man be what he ought to be.”

He wagged his head doubtfully. “But if you’ll tell me the honest truth about——”

“Hush! Here comes a man.”

It was Crowley. He had looked from his chamber window and had seen the two in conversation in front of the tavern. He was strictly on the job that day; he had dressed in such a hurry that he was tying his necktie as he entered the room. He sat down at a table and glared grimly at Latisan and the girl; provided with ammunition that fortified his courage, Crowley had resolved to make his bigness in the matter, unafraid.

His appearance at that moment and the manner of his espionage and the memory of what had been said concerning his pursuit of the girl stirred Latisan to the depths. His emotions had been in a tumult ever since the girl had declared her promise. He was in no mood to reason calmly. He could not control himself. He purposed to go to what he thought was his duty as her accepted champion. Therefore, he leaped from his chair, put his arm about her waist, and pulled her across the room, in spite of her resistance.

“Listen to me, you sneak!” he adjured Crowley. “This young lady and I are engaged to be married.”

“Hush!” she cried, in mingled fright and fury. “You promised——It isn’t——”

“I made no promise except to go north because you have asked me to go. I’m going back to my job, and I’ll have the Flagg logs down if I have to smash the bottom out of the river,” he boasted, in his new pride. “Crowley—as I believe your name is—you have heard me announce the engagement. If you give this young lady another twisted look or crooked word while I’m away, may God have mercy on your soul!”

He was talking to the one man who ought to hear that news, so the lover felt, but his voice was raised in his emotion and Brophy and the loungers in the office heard, too.

Latisan kissed her once, swiftly and rapturously.

According to the code of social procedure in Adonia, as the office onlookers viewed the matter of congratulation, the occasion called for three cheers; they were proposed and given and even Brophy joined, but with sour grace.

She had endeavored ineffectually to check Latisan’s outburst, understanding fully the interlocking perils involved in the promulgation to Crowley that the drive master was going back to his work. It had become her own personal, vital affair, this thing! She was far from admitting even then that love was urging her to the promise she had made so precipitately. The wild spirit of sacrifice had surged in her. She was able to pay—to redeem! It was all for the sake of the family! But this love-cracked idiot, babbling his triumph, had thrown wide the gate of caution—had exposed all to the enemy; she feared Crowley in his surly, new mood!

Poor Ward turned to her a radiant, humid stare of devotion; she responded by flashing fury at him from her eyes. Her cheeks were crimson. “Haven’t you any wit in you?” she raged, holding her tones in leash with effort, her convulsed face close to his amazed countenance.

“It was to put you right——” he stammered.

“It has made everything all wrong!”

Men had come into the room. She hurried away from the dumfounded lover.

While she went about her work, sedulously keeping her gaze from Latisan, she heard the men jocosely canvassing the matter. They called to the drive master, giving him clumsy congratulation. There were timber cruisers who were going into the north country; they declared with hilarity that they would spread the news. They ate and went stamping away, news bureaus afoot.

She marched to the pathetic incarnation of doubt and dolor after a time; he was lingering at table in a condition that was near to stupefaction.

“Why aren’t you on your way?” she demanded, with ireful impatience.

“You’ll have to tell me what the matter is with you!”

“I’ll tell you nothing—not now! But you have something to tell Mr. Flagg, haven’t you?”

“You’re right! I’ll go and tell him that I’m starting for the drive. If I have to smash the hinges off the door of Tophet I’ll put our logs——”

“That’s it!” she cried, eagerly. “Our logs! We’ll call them our logs. Don’t mind because I seemed strange a little while ago. You’ll understand, some day. But now hurry! Hurry!” She forced herself to smile. She was eagerly in earnest, almost hysterical. She spoke his name, though with effort. “Remember, Ward! Our logs! Bring them through!”

He leaped out of his chair. The other breakfasters were gone. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

Immediately after Latisan had left on his way to assure Echford Flagg, the girl was reminded of her putative Vose-Mern affiliations. Crowley lounged back into the room, taking advantage of the fact that she was alone. “Put me wise as to why you’re playing this shot with the reverse English.”

“Hands off, Crowley! You’re only a watchdog, paid to guard me.”

“I don’t propose to have our folks double-crossed. You have started that drive boss back onto his job, and you and he announce an engagement this morning! You’re cagy or crazy! I won’t have anything put over! If you’re straight, come through to me and I’ll back you. Otherwise——” He tossed his hands in an eloquent gesture.

“I’ll wire to have you pulled down to the city.”

“I have done some wiring ahead of you. It’s up to our folks to find out what’s the big idea.”

“Crowley, won’t you leave it all to me?” she pleaded, fighting to the last ditch for her secret and for time. “Can’t you see that I’m placing a double-crosser in the enemy’s camp?”

He looked at her hard and long and his lips curled into a sardonic grin. “You’re a good one. I’ll admit that. But you can’t stand there and give me the straight eye and make me believe you have made over Latisan to that extent. I’ve got him sized. It can’t be done!”

Crowley was right—she could not meet his sophisticated gaze.

“What do you expect me to do?” she asked, lamely.

“Keep him off the drive. If he starts to leave this village to-day I’m going to grab in.”

She knew Crowley’s obstinacy in his single-track methods. There was no telling what he would undertake nor what damage might be wrought by his interference. She tried to force from him his intentions; he paid no heed to her appeals or her threats.

She was fighting for her own with all the wit and power that were in her; she was standing in the path by which the enemies must advance, resolved to battle as long as her strength might last, serving as best she could to distract attention from the main fight to herself, willing to sacrifice herself utterly.

Crowley walked with a bit of a swagger from the room, lighted a cigarette in the office, puttered for a few moments with some old newspapers on a table, and then went out of doors and strolled along the road in the direction of the big house on the hill. She observed his course from a side window. She felt the impulse to run after him and beat her fists against that broad and stubborn back.

She saw Latisan come striding down from the Flagg mansion, determination in his manner.

The two men met. They halted.

Her apprehension became agony, but she did not dare to interfere between them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Latisan had extricated his hand, intending to hurry on about his affairs. But here was a person who seemed to be in a way to tell him something more definite about one who was baffling his wild anxiety to fathom her real identity. However, Latisan did not dare to ask questions. His own pride and the spirit of protecting her reasons for reticence, if she had any, fettered his tongue; he was ashamed to admit to this man, whom he had so recently hated, that the real character of a fiancée was a closed book.

“Honestly, she ought to have told you that she knew me,” complained Crowley. “It would have saved all that trouble between you and me.” He rubbed his ear reminiscently. “But perhaps she did,” he pursued, affecting to misinterpret the hardness which had come into Latisan’s face. “But how she could say anything against me, as far as she and I are concerned, I can’t understand.”

“She has not mentioned you to me,” returned Latisan, curtly.

“That’s queer, too,” said Crowley, wrinkling his brow, his demeanor adding to the young man’s conviction that the whole situation was decidedly queer. Once more the smoldering embers were showing red flames! “Mr. Latisan, get me right, now! I don’t propose to discuss the young lady, seeing what she is to you. But perhaps you’ll allow me to refer back to what you said to me, personally, in the tavern a little while ago. We can make that our own business, can’t we?”

Crowley accepted a stiff nod as his answer and went on. “You told me that you are going back to the drive because the young lady has insisted on your doing so. That right?”

“It is. But I fail to see how you can make it any part of your business and mine.”

“It happens to belong in my business.” He put his hand to his breast pocket as if to reassure himself. He proceeded with more confidence. “Are you afraid of the truth, Mr. Latisan—scared to meet it face to face in a showdown?”

“I’m in the habit of going after the truth, no matter where it hides itself.”

“Then I guess you’d better come along with me. I’ve got to the point where I’ve got to have the truth, too, or else fetch up in a crazy house.”

Crowley’s determination was set definitely on his mind’s single track. If a man had an urgent reason for doing a certain thing and the compelling reason were removed, he might naturally be expected to do something else, Crowley figured.

If Latisan proposed to go back to work because his love and allegiance caused him to obey a girl’s commands, he would do the opposite of what she asked if his love and confidence were destroyed. It seemed to be a case of two and two making four, as Crowley viewed the thing. He was done with tangled subtleties.

He put his hand again on his breast pocket as he walked with the drive master down the hill. There was a letter in that pocket; Crowley had purloined it from the girl’s bureau that day when he had so quickly returned from following her. And he also had a telegram in that pocket; the wire had come along that morning, addressed to Miss Patsy Jones, in his care.

The job, as Crowley understood orders, was to keep Latisan off the river that season. Crowley saw a way of doing that job and of getting the credit for the performance.

The girl, staring through the window with strained attention, noting every detail of the meeting, seeing the appearance of amity and of understanding, beholding Crowley put his hand on Latisan’s shoulder in the pose of friendly adviser, suspected the worst; she was stricken with anguished certainty when Latisan strode toward the tavern; according to her belief, two men were now arrayed against her. The drive master’s haste indicated that she had been betrayed by the sullen botcher of methods.

In that room she felt like a creature that had been run to cover—cornered. She wanted to escape into the open. There was honesty outside, anyway, under the sky, at the edge of the forest, where the thunder of the great falls made human voices and mortal affairs so petty by contrast.

She ran through the tavern office and faced Latisan in the yard; there were curious spectators on the porch, the loungers of the hamlet, but she paid no attention to them; she was searching the countenance of Latisan, avidly anxious, fearfully uncertain regarding what mischief had been wrought in him.

He smiled tenderly, flourishing a salute. “All serene in the big house!”

The white was succeeded by a flush in her cheeks. She looked up into his honest eyes and was thrilled by an emotion that was new to her. It was impossible not to answer back to that earnest affection he was expressing. Gratitude glowed in her—and gratitude is a sister of love!

“I beg your pardon,” put in Crowley, “But can’t the three of us step inside and have a little private talk?”

He made a gesture to indicate the gallery of listeners on the tavern porch.

Once that morning Lida had found protection by handling an important crisis in a public place. She was having no time just then to think clearly. She was feeling sure of Latisan, after his look into her eyes. She mustered a smile and shook her head when the drive master mutely referred the matter to her, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.

“You’d better,” warned Crowley, bridling.

The girl felt that she had no option except to keep on in the bold course she had marked for herself. She could not conceive that the operative would prejudice the Vose-Mern proposition in public. “I cannot understand what private matters we three have in common, sir. I have no desire to listen. Mr. Latisan has no time, I’m sure. He is leaving for the north country.”

“That’s true,” agreed Latisan, under the spell of her gaze, won by her, loyal in all his fiber, determined to exclude all others in the world from the partnership of two. He had put aside his anxiety to know what she had been in the city, as Crowley knew her; that quest seemed to be disloyalty to her. “I’m starting mighty sudden! Sorry, sir! Let Brophy put your business with us in his refrigerator till the drive is down.”

Careless of the onlookers, the girl patted his cheek, encouraging his stand. “Till our drive is down. Remember, it’s ours!” she whispered.

“Harness in my horses,” Latisan called to Brophy’s nephew in the door of the tavern stable.

She was human; she was a girl; Latisan’s manner assured her that she had won her battle with Crowley, whatever might have been the methods by which he had tried to prevail over the drive master. She could not resist the impulse to give the Vose-Mern operative a challenging look of triumph that was lighted by the joy of her victory.

Crowley’s slow mind speeded up on its one track; he opened the throttle, smash or no smash! He marched up to Latisan and displayed a badge, dredging it from his trousers pocket. “That’s what I am, mister, an operative for a detective agency. So is she!”

“I am not,” she declared defiantly.

“Maybe not, after your flop in this case. But you were when you struck this place, if your word means anything!”

“You’re a liar,” shouted Latisan. He doubled his fist and drew it back; the girl seized the hand and unclasped the knotted grip and braided her fingers with his.

“I don’t blame you, Latisan. It’s natural for you to feel that way toward me right now,” agreed Crowley. “She has slipped the cross-tag onto you. But you’re no fool. I don’t ask you to take my word. Go down to that railroad station and wire to an address I’ll give you in New York. Ask her if she dares to have you do it.”

There was no longer a smolder in Latisan—it was all a red flame!

He had not realized till then how penetratingly deep had been his conviction that this girl was something other than she assumed to be.

Crowley pulled a letter from his pocket, flapped it open, and shoved it under Latisan’s nose.

There was no further attempt to deal behind doors with the affair. It was in Crowley’s mind, then, that spreading the situation wide open before the gaping throng, which was increasing, crowding about in a narrowing circle, would assist his plan to make intolerable Latisan’s stay in that region.

“Look at the letterhead—Vose-Mern Agency! Look and you’ll see that it’s addressed to Miss Patsy Jones, Adonia. Take it and read it! It’s orders to her from the chief!”

Latisan was plainly in no state of mind to read; he crumpled the letter in his hand and stuffed the paper into his trousers pocket.

“Here’s a telegram,” continued the operative. “It’s for her to go back to New York. It hasn’t been enough for her to double-cross you; she’s doing the same thing to the folks who have hired her. Nice kind of dame, eh? I don’t know just what her game is, friend! But I’m coming across to you and tell you that the big idea is to keep you off the drive this season. Good money has been put up to turn the trick.”

In the midst of the whirling torches which made up his thoughts just then, Latisan was not able to give sane consideration to her zeal in urging him to duty; he was conscious only of the revelation of her character. Out of the city had come some kind of a design to undo him!

The village was still agog with the news of his engagement; the news bureaus on legs had gone north to tattle the thing among all the camps; and she was a detective sent to beguile him! The faces of the bystanders were creasing into grins.

“Ask her!” urged Crowley, relentlessly. “Or ask New York.”

Postponement of the truth was futile; denial was dangerous; a confession forced by an appeal to New York would discredit her motives; she had not formally severed her connection with the agency. She determined to meet this man of the woods on his own plane of honesty.

“Come with me where we can talk privately,” she urged; her demeanor told Latisan that she was not able to back the defiant stand he had taken with Crowley a moment before.

“It’s too late now,” he objected, getting his emotions partly under control. “The thing has been advertised too much to have any privacy about it now. When they are left to guess things in this section the guessing is awful! I’m never afraid to face men with the truth. He has said you came here as a detective. Those men standing around heard him. What have you to say?”

“Won’t you let me talk to you alone?”

“If I’m to stand up here before men after this, the facts will have to come out later; they may as well come out now.”

He spoke mildly, but his manner afforded her no opportunity for further appeal; he was a man of the square edge and he was acting according to the code of the Open Places. She put away womanly weakness as best she was able and continued with him on his own ground.

“There is a plot to keep you away from your duty on the drive this season. You know as well as I do what interests furnished the money for such a purpose.”

“And you know about it, do you, because you are one of the detective gang?”

“I have worked for the Vose-Mern agency.”

She could not deny the evidence of that letter which he had shoved deep down into his pocket. He had reminded her of it by whacking his hand against his thigh.

“So that’s what you are!” Again he was losing control of himself.

Men in the crowd snickered. They were perceiving much humor in the situation.

“I can explain later.” She, too, was breaking down under the strain. She whimpered, pleading with him. “After you have brought down the drive I can explain and——”

“Now! It must be now! I can’t bring down any drive till you do explain.”

She did not understand.

But he knew all too bitterly under what a sword of Damocles he was standing. Ridicule was ready to slay him! The Big Laugh was already gurgling deep in the throats of all the folks. The news of his engagement had gone ahead of him to the north country; the Big Laugh would roar along in the wake of that news.

“The truth! It must come out now!” he shouted. “All the truth—the whole truth about yourself!”

“I can’t tell you!” wailed Lida Kennard, turning her back fearsomely on the big house on the ledges.

“You’ve got a mouthful of truth out of me. Can’t you see how it is?” growled Crowley.

“So that’s what you are, is it?” Latisan dwelt on the subject, twisting the handle that Crowley had given him.

“Mr. Latisan, listen to me! I implore you to forget me—what I am! Go to your work.”

“My work has nothing to do with this matter between you and me. So that’s what you are!” he repeated, insistent on his one idea, looking her up and down. “A detective sneak!”

“I am done with the work. I am a human being, at any rate, and you promised me——”

He sliced his hand through the air. “That’s all off! You lied to me. It must have been a lie, seeing what you are. But I believed, and I stood up and took you for mine. The word has gone out. Every man on the Noda will know about it. I had no rights over your life till you met me. But when a woman lies to a man to make him do this or that she is laughing at him behind his back. You have played me for a poor fool in the tall timber. That’s the word that’s starting now.”

“If you have found out how worthless I am,” she sobbed, “you can go on with your work and be a real man.”

He loosed the leash on himself. He mocked her with bitter irony, his face working hideously. “‘Go on with your work!’ Don’t you have any idea what men are up these woods? Who’ll take orders from me after this? They’ll hoot me off the river! I’m done. You have put me down and under!”

More than the spirit of sacrifice was actuating her then. Her impulses were inextricably mingled, but they all tended to one end, to save him from error. His scorn had touched her heart; meeting him on his own plane—on the level of honesty—woman with man, she was conscious of bitter despair because he was leaving her life. She was fighting for her own—for the old man in the big house, for the new love that was springing up out of her sympathy for this champion from whom, without realizing the peril of her procedure, she had filched the weapons of his manhood at the moment when he needed them most.

“The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!” he cried.

“I swear before our God that I’ll be straight with you from now on. Won’t it put heart in you if I’m your wife, standing by you through everything?” She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the limits of appeal. “I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I urged you on to your duty. I’m willing to say it here before all. Take me, and let’s fight together.”

In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of her pride; she was making passionate, primitive appeal to the chosen mate.

But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this man’s fortunes, as Latisan viewed the situation. Ridicule, the taunt that he had been fooled by a girl from the city, was waiting for him all along the river. Echford Flagg would be the first to deny the worth of a man who had received the Big Laugh. No man on the Noda had ever incurred mock to such a degree. And he had vaunted his engagement to her!

She went toward him, her hands outstretched; he had been backing away from her.

“Look out!” he warned. “I never struck a woman!” He spread his big hand. All the fury of his forebears was rioting in him.

He was not swayed by rage, merely; there would have been something petty in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that way—to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency’s sake. And a mere liquid had been able to put them into that temper!

But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!

He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a man; he had never tasted the stuff.

Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else—he knew that he was drunk—and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told himself, and he was only a woodsman; the hellions of the world were not allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning faces around him!

Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was “the Latisan lallyloo”! It had echoed among the hills in the old days when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.

The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of despair!

Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove down his cap.

“Lie there, drive master!” he shouted.

The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out of the station; a succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned prospective passengers.

Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of the passenger car, he shook his fists at assembled Adonia and yelled again.

Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had thrown away.

She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant proprietorship.

“How come?” sneered Brophy. “Latest bulletin seemed to be that the engagement was broke!” He was suddenly hostile.

She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was triumphant. “It’s understood that I get the credit for this job,” he informed her, sotto voce. His air suggested that he was convinced that the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.

All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan—the breaking of her grandfather’s last prop. She had intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault, involuntary though that fault was.

Brophy stood before her. “I reckon you ain’t going to be very popular hereabout as a hash-slinger, Miss Whatever-your-name is.” He snapped his fingers and stretched his hand to command the transfer of the jacket and cap. “I’ll take ’em and put ’em in Ward’s room.”

But she clung to what she had retrieved as if she felt that she held a hostage of fortune. Brophy refrained from laying violent hands on the articles, and to save his face and create a diversion he turned on Crowley.

“Let’s see! You have bragged about being a detective! We don’t stand for your kind or tricks in this neck o’ woods.”

There was the menace of growls in the crowd. The mob spirit was stirring. A man said something about a rail and tar and feathers.

“I’ll argue with the boys and try to give you a fair start,” stated the landlord. “But you’d better pack up in a hurry. You can’t wait for to-morrow’s train under my roof. I’ll furnish you a livery hitch to the junction. Take the woman with you.”

It was an ugly crowd; the landlord was obliged to push back men when Crowley followed Lida into the tavern.

Miss Elsham was just inside the door, where she had posted herself as a spectator and listener. “There’s no telling what they’ll do; they’re bound to find out that I’m an operative,” she quavered. “You must take me with you, Buck.”

He had been appointed her guardian and he could not refuse. But he glowered at Lida, white and trembling.

Brophy came in after a struggle at the door; he slammed the portal and bolted it.

“They’re usually pretty genteel up here where wimmen are concerned,” he told Lida, “but they’re laying it all to you. They’ll let you go, Crowley, if you’ll go in a hurry. Are you one of ’em, too?” he bluntly asked Miss Elsham, ready to suspect all strangers.

She nodded. “I’m going with Crowley.”

“Understanding that you give me full credit,” her associate told her, his lips close to her ear.

“I ain’t sure but what I’d better hide you till night,” the landlord informed Lida. “As I said, they’re naturally genteel, but——” He hesitated when he heard the growing grumble of voices.

“I’ve got trouble enough in getting away without taking you on for an extra load,” was Crowley’s rough repudiation of Lida. “You have double-crossed——”

“I’ll accept your opinion as an expert in that line,” she said, lashing her courage back to meet the situation. “I am not asking any favors from Vose-Mern or their operatives. Nor from you,” she informed the landlord.

She settled Ward’s cap and jacket more securely in the clutch of her arms. “Unbar and open the door, if you please, Mr. Brophy.”

He demurred.

“It’s the door of a public inn. You must open it.”

He obeyed, standing ready to repel intruders.

She walked straight out and through the crowd of hostile natives, who parted to allow her to pass; her chin was up and her eyes were level in meeting the gaze of any man who stared at her.

She had made up her mind where she was going, and the thought of that intended destination put some of the spirit of old Echford Flagg in her.

When she was free from the crowd she began to run; instinct of the homing sort impelled her to hasten. She had not settled in her mind what she would say or do when she got there, but there seemed to be no other place in all the world for her right then except the big house on the ledges.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

She held on to the cap and the jacket and with her free hand she beat upon her breast and tried to pour out a confession of her part in the mischief which had been done. She could not tell Flagg who she was; she was telling him what she was. She made herself a part of the Vose-Mern conspiracy; that seemed to be the best way. She did not try to make herself better than her associates; she admitted that she was an operative; in no other way could she account for her presence in the north country; and the old man’s keen eyes warned her that a less plausible statement would endanger her secret. Therefore, she arraigned herself bitterly as the cause of Latisan’s undoing, and to explain her new attitude she pleaded love and resulting repentance. There seemed to be no other way of giving Flagg a good reason why she was interested in speeding the fortunes of Latisan and the Flagg drive.

She began to babble rather incoherently. His silence troubled her. His gaze was intent.

After a time, allowing her to talk on, he ordered Dick to bring more fire for the pipe, and then he puffed and listened a little longer.

At last he jabbed his pipe stem toward the door, and Dick obeyed the silent command and left the room.

“Now, my girl, hold up a moment and get your breath. Sit down!” She obeyed.

“I see that you’re hanging on to Latisan’s cap and jacket. Did he pull himself out of the jacket whilst you were clinging to his collar?” In spite of the seriousness of the news which she had brought to him, there was a touch of dry humor in his tone. “He must have had a pretty desperate change of heart to run away from such a girl, after what he told me of his feelings this morning.”

He talked on, allowing her to recover. “Your words have been tumbling along like logs coming down the Hulling Machine Falls, but I reckon I understand that a detective agency sent you up here to Delilah my Samson. I’ve just been reading about that case in the Old Testament. And you’re sorry, eh? It’s a start in the right direction—being sorry. He told me this morning that he was going back to the drive in spite of me—he said it was because you had torched him on to do so. I’ll admit I haven’t got over being thankful to you for that help. And now it’s all tipped upside down, eh? I’m not surprised. It’s the Latisan nature to blow up! I knew his grandfather well—and I remember! We seem to have made a bad mess of it, you and I. I’ll own to it that I haven’t been careful in the management of my tongue where he’s concerned. If I had, all the girls this side o’ Tophet couldn’t have made him jump his job in this style. You see, I’m willing to admit my mistake, and that makes me feel kinder toward you, now that you admit yours.”

Her courage was coming back to her. Only a veritable frenzy of despair had forced her into the presence of that old man who had declared his unalterable hostility to her and hers. She found him singularly and surprisingly mild in this crisis. Wreathed in the tobacco smoke, his countenance was full of sympathy. It was an amazing alteration in Echford Flagg, so those who knew him would have stated, had they been there to behold.

“I suppose you have to slap on a lot of deceit in that detective business.”

“I’m done with deceit. I’ve left that work forever.”

“So I reckoned whilst I looked at you and heard you talk. I’ve got quite an eye for a change of heart in persons. I hate to see young folks in trouble. ’Most always I’m pretty hard on people. I’ve grown to be that way. Had good reasons! But you seem to have caught me to-day in a different frame of mind. I didn’t get a good look at you last evening. I’ve just been telling myself that you remind me very much of somebody I used to know. There was a time,” he went on, wrinkling his forehead, “when I would have ordered you out of this house, simply on your looks. But to-day, somehow, I like to keep my eyes on you. Old age has a lot of whims, you know.”

She did not venture to speak. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s too bad, sis! Too bad! ’Tis a tough thing to work out, this Latisan matter. You have started the old John devil a-roaring in him! And I reckon that now you’re falling in love with the fool, even if you did come up-country to do something mean to him!”

She nodded; her emotions were too deeply stirred to permit evasion or more deceit.

“I have to depend on hired help, sis. And the trouble with any other drive master than Latisan is that the opposition crowd can hire away what Latisan wouldn’t sell—I’ll say that for the boy! It’s a matter of principle with him—this fight for the independents.”

“But your men will keep on working, won’t they, sir?”

“They’ll work—yes! But they won’t fight without Latisan to lead ’em. That’s why the Three C’s folks are so hot on the trail of one man. They’re going to trig my drive at the Skulltree dam unless we are through ahead of ’em. Conservation of water, that’s what they will call it when they make their play for a court order,” he snarled. “But it’s only devilish theft of the rights I hold in common—and that’s where lawyers have their chance to argue, when rights are common.” He found himself becoming garrulous in his emotion. He frowned. “But why talk such matters to you; you can’t understand!”

“No,” she admitted, sadly. “I haven’t any knowledge about drives. I can only understand that through me a great mischief has been done.”

“Well, it might have been worse for young Latisan if they hadn’t got rid of him by this underhand way. Now that he has quit and has gone larruping off on his own hook, you may as well get what comfort out of it you can,” he said, trying to ameliorate her distress. “There’s no telling what they might have been savage enough to do to him if he had stayed to make the fight as he intended to make it.”

“Do you give up the fight?”

With the left hand he lifted his helpless right arm across his knees. “It’s a two-fisted proposition this year. I guess I’m licked. They’ll buy in my logs at what price they have a mind to pay and will turn ’em into paper. The sawmills will have to shut down, and the chap who wants to build a home will keep on cussing the price of lumber. I have made a good try of it, sis, but the big combinations are bound to have their way in the end.”

“It isn’t right for anybody to have his own way without giving the other man a square deal,” she cried, adding, with bitterness, “though I’m the last person entitled to preach on that subject.”

“It’s all in the way of progress, so the syndicate fellows tell us,” he remarked, dryly. “Maybe they know. Whilst they’re grabbing in all the money, they may be getting control of all the brains, too.”

She flung up her arms and accused herself, passionately: “I have been a fool. I’d give my very heart to make matters right again!”

“I think so,” he admitted. “I reckon you’re in earnest.”

Again his fixed, appraising stare was disturbing her.

“About Mr. Latisan——” she hurried on. “I can’t believe that he’ll stay away long.”

“I guess you know as little about the ways of men up here as you know about the drives, my girl. There’s plenty of iron in their natures, but there isn’t much brass in their cheeks. He’s done—he can’t face the Big Laugh. He’s seen what it has done to others. But you city folks don’t understand woods ways and notions!”

She set her firm teeth over her lower lip to control its quivering. Then she ventured. It was a resolve born out of her desperate desire to redeem, if she were able. There was one thing she could do—it seemed a natural thing to do, in that extremity.

“I have something to ask of you. Please don’t be angry! I’m trying to square myself!”

“Go ahead! I’m ready now to be pretty easy natured when somebody is really in earnest about helping me.”

“Give me your permission to go north and explain to your men why Mr. Latisan isn’t on the drive! I’ll tell them everything. I’ll open my soul to those men. They’ll understand.”

“It’s not a girl’s job,” he declared, sternly.

“I have been trained in a hard school, sir. I have been forced to study men and to deal with men. I have been sorry because I have been obliged to do the things I have done. But my knowledge of men may help your affairs. I am glad I have been through my trials. Let me go north to your crews! I beg it of you!”

“I don’t want to have you messing into any such business. There’s something about you—something that makes me want to put a safeguard over you, sis, instead of sending you into danger.”

“You’ll make the danger worse for me if you don’t give me that permission—a word from you to them that I’m your agent.” She arose, flaming with her resolution. “I am going anyway, sir! You can’t stop me from going where I will in the woods.”

“You’re right!” he admitted, sadly. “I’m so old and helpless that I can’t even boss a girl.”

She stood in front of him and put Latisan’s cap on her head; she pulled on the belted jacket. “They’ll know this jacket and cap! I’ll tell the story! Do you think it is folly? No! I can see in your face that you know what those men will do!”

“Yes, I do know! I have been a woodsman in my time, too! After they have listened to you they’ll hammer hell out of anything that gets in front of ’em.”

His face lighted up. He beamed on her. “I told you that old age has its whims. A minute ago a whim made me want to keep you away from trouble. Now, by the gods! the same whim makes me want to send you north. You will stand for Eck Flagg, saying what he’d like to say to his men! The right spirit is in you! I ain’t afraid that you won’t make good!”

He pointed to an object on the wall of the room. It was a stout staff of ash tipped with a steel nose and provided with a hook of steel; it was the Flagg cant dog. The ash staff was banded with faded red stripes and there was a queer figure carved on the wood.

“Lift it down and bring it here and lay it across my knees,” he commanded.

She ran and brought it.

“They know that stick along the Noda waters,” he told her, caressing the staff with his hale hand. “I carried it at the head of the drive for many a year, my girl. You won’t need letters of introduction if you go north with that stick in your hand. I would never give it into the hands of a man. It has propped the edge of my shelter tent, to keep the spring snow off my face when I caught a few winks of sleep; that steel dog has rattled nigh my ear when I couldn’t afford to sleep and kept walking. Tell ’em your story, with that stick in your hand when you tell it! Take it and stand up in front of me!”

Her face was white; she trembled when she lifted the staff from his knees.

An old man’s whim! The girl believed that she understood better than he the instinct which was prompting him to deliver over the scepter which he had treasured for so long.

And some sort of instinct, trickling in the blood from that riverman forebear, prompted her strike a pose, which brought a yelp of admiration from the old man. She had set the steel nose close to her right foot and propped the staff, with right arm fully extended, swinging the stick with a man-fashion sweep.

“Sis, where did ye learn the twist of the Flagg wrist when ye set that staff?” It was a compliment rather than a question, and the girl did not reply. She was not able to speak; a sob was choking her. Her grip on that badge of the family authority thrilled her; here was the last of her kin; he was intrusting to her, as his sole dependence, the mission of saving his pride and his fortunes. Her tear-wet eyes pledged him her devoted loyalty.

“God bless you!” he said.

“And may God help me,” she added fervently. Impulse was irresistible. She succumbed. She dropped the staff and ran to the old man and threw her arms convulsively about his neck and kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” she faltered, stepping back. “I’m afraid I startled you.”

“No,” he told her, after a moment of reflection, “I guess I rather expected you’d do that before you went away. Some more of that whim, maybe! When do you think of leaving?”

“I’d like to go at once. I cannot stay any longer in this village.”

“You’d best get to my drivers as soon as the Three C’s slander does.”

He shouted at a door and old Dick appeared.

“Move spry now!” commanded the master. “Have Jeff hitch the big bays into the jumper. And Jeff will be able to tend and do for me whilst you’re away. For here’s the job I’m sending you on. Take this young woman north to the drive. She’s tending to some business for me. See to it that she’s taken good care of. And bring her back when she feels that she’s ready to come.”

“Am I to come here—back to your house to-to——” she faltered.

“To report? Of course you are!” He was suddenly curt and cold after his softness of the moment before. He looked as if he were impatient for her to be gone.

“Have Dick stop at the tavern for your belongings.”

“There’s only a small bag, sir.”

“If you’re short of clothes—well, I advise you to wear Latisan’s cap and jacket. They’ll keep you warm—and they’ll keep you—reminded!” He put much meaning in his emphasis of the last word.

She bowed her head humbly; the clutch at her throat would not permit her to reply to him. Then, bearing with her the Flagg scepter, she went out to where the horses were being put to the jumper.

When he was alone the old man laid his hand on the Bible at his side. For a long time he gazed straight ahead, deep in his ponderings. Then he opened the volume and leaved the pages until he came to the family register, midway in the book. After the New England custom, there were inscribed in faded ink the names of the Flaggs who had been born, the names of those who had died, the records of the marriages. Echford Flagg’s father had begun the register; the son had continued it. Across the marriage record of Alfred Kennard and Sylvia Flagg were rude penstrokes. On the page of births was the name of Lida Kennard, and he slowly ran his finger under it. When he gazed down at the floor again in meditation he met the stare of the cat that Rickety Dick loved and petted.

The cat was bestowing no friendly look on Flagg. He had often cuffed her whenever she ventured to leap into his lap. He had repulsed the cat as he repelled human beings who had sought to make up to him. Now he called to her softly, inviting her with his hand. She backed away with apprehensive haste.

“I’m starting late, pussy,” he muttered. “And I was never much of a hand at coaxing anybody to come to me. But I wish you’d hop up here on my knee. Come, kitty! Please come!”

It was a long time before he was able to gain her confidence. He heard the big bays go trampling away down the ledges. At last the cat came cautiously, climbing up his leg, and sat on his knees and stared up at his face in a questioning way.

“She’s too much like her mother for me not to know her—like her mother looked when she went away,” he informed the cat. “I reckon I’m a whole lot different right now than I ever was before. I’m old and sick—and I’m different. I don’t blame you for looking hard at me, kitty. I’m so lonesome that I’m glad to have a cat to talk to. She’s got her mother’s looks—and the Flagg grit. She wants to do it her own way—like I’d want to do it my way, without being bothered. And I’m letting her do it. It wouldn’t be a square deal if I didn’t let her. And she’ll do it! It’s in her! She’s trying to pay back. It’s the style of the Flaggs. She didn’t come up here to smash me or Latisan. I didn’t believe what she said—a Flagg knows when another Flagg is lying. She came to help—and she’ll do it yet! She’s Lida, kitty, Lida!” His tone caressed the name. His hand caressed the written name.

Then he turned the pages slowly, going forward in the volume—to the New Testament.

And after a time he found words which fitted his new mood and he read aloud to his feline auditor.

“‘Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another——’”

Jeff, the servitor, hearing the mumble of the old man’s voice, tiptoed to the door and peeped in. He goggled at the tableau and listened to the words. He was in the state of mind of that oft-quoted doubter who spat on the giraffe’s hoof and remarked to the bystanders, “Hell! There ain’t no such animile!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lida had conferred with Dick on the way down from the big house and had decided on a bit of guile to divert the attention of the gossips of Adonia from her real objective. According to all appearances she was in full flight toward the city, or else was chasing up Ward Latisan; the cynics, after that affair in the street when she had pleaded with the young man, opined that she was brazen enough to do almost anything that a girl should not.

Brophy watched her out of sight.

“If it ain’t one thing it’s another with these table girls,” was his sour comment. “I don’t know what I’m liable to draw next; the Queen of Sheby, maybe!”

When a hill shut off the view from Adonia the bays swung into a side lane which connected with the tote road leading north along the Noda waters.

A girl who wore for her armor Latisan’s jacket and his cap, and carried as credentials the woods baton of the last of the independent timber barons of the Noda, was hastening on her mission with the same sort of fervent zeal that made Joan of Arc a conqueror.

Family fealty, the eager desire to right in some measure the wrong done by her father, anxious determination to repair her own fault—all these were animating impulses in this Joan of the Northland. But now especially was she aware that she was seeking by service to absolve herself in the estimation of a poor chap whose love for her had made him forget his duty.

There was no talk between the girl and her charioteer. She had plenty of thought to occupy her, and he drove on with his gaze straight between the ears of the nigh horse.

The road was crooked; when she glanced behind, the woods seemed to be shutting doors on her, closing out the world with which she had been familiar; and ahead, as the road turned, she was looking into vistas which led to the unknown—to a duty of tremendous import—to a task which seemed too great for a girl to accomplish. One knowledge comforted her—it was a knowledge which came from her childhood memories—she could trust those rough men of the woods to treat a girl with respect if she deserved it; but would she be able to convince them that the girl who wrought such mischief to Ward Latisan deserved respect? They might, as her grandfather said, ridicule a man who had been fooled by a girl, if that man appeared to them and tried to make good his authority; but there would be no laugh in the north country behind Latisan’s back, now that he had fled desperately from the wreck of his prospects.

She perceived only silent rebuke, even resentment, in Dick’s countenance when she stole glances at the hard profile above the old man’s knitted scarf. It was plain that he did not relish his job. She wondered whether he believed that her errand was useless. When, after a time, she tried to draw some opinion out of him he gave her no replies that aided her.

She felt acutely that she needed sympathy—something for her encouragement. The old man’s taciturnity hinted that he could be trusted with a secret so far as outsiders were concerned; as to Flagg, she was not sure of Dick’s reliability in keeping anything away from a master to whom he was devoted. But if the old man were kept away from Adonia——

“Do I understand that you’re to stay north until I’m ready to go back?”

“I’ve got to. It’s orders.”

She was choking with the desire to tell him who she was. The lie which she had told him in the tavern was a rankling memory—he had been such a pitiful figure that day.

Again she looked behind. There were many miles between her and Adonia, and the doors of the woods kept closing.

“I need all your help in this thing. I must have a faithful friend. It is the one great effort of my life. You can understand so well! I—I am Lida Kennard!”

Rickety Dick threw up his arms. The reins fell from his hands. “Praise the Lord!” he yelled. The discarded reins slapped the big bays, the shout in that silence caused them to leap wildly. The tote road was rough and rocky and the equipage was light. Almost instantly the horses tore the tongue from the jumper, which was trigged by a bowlder. The animals crashed around in a circle through the underbrush, leaped into the tote road, and went galloping back toward Adonia, seeking their stalls and safety.

Dick rose from where he had fallen and rushed to the girl, who was clinging to the seat of the jumper. He took her in his arms, comforting her as he would have soothed a child. He wept frankly and babbled incoherently. A part of his emotion was concern for her, but more especially was it joy because she had discovered herself to him.

“It was in me—the hope that it was you. But I buried it; I buried it,” he sobbed.

For some moments he was too much absorbed to note the plight in which they had been left. Then his laments were so violent that the girl was obliged to soothe him in her turn.

“But when those horses rush into the yard! Think of it! He’ll cal’late we’re killed. Him penned there in his chair with worry tearing at him! I must get the word to him.” In his frantic care for the master’s peace of mind he ran away down the road, forgetting that he was abandoning the girl.

But in a few moments he came running back to her. “That’s the way it always is with me! Him first! But after this it’s you—and I was leaving you here in the lurch. But I don’t know what to do!” He looked at her, then at the broken jumper; he gazed to the north and he stared to the south; in that emergency, his emotions stressed by what she had told him, he was as helpless as a child.

Her own concern just then was for her grandfather as well as for herself. Those runaway horses appearing in the yard would rouse his bitter fear; they would also start a hue and cry which would follow her into the north country.

“You must go back, at once!” she urged Dick. “Follow as fast as you can. The horses will quiet down; they’ll walk. You may overtake them. You must try.”

“But you!” he mourned.

She lifted the cant dog from the floor of the jumper. “I shall keep on toward the drive—somehow—some way. This will protect me; I’m sure of it.”

He puckered his face and shook his head and expressed his fears and his doubts.

“Then I’m showing more faith than you in what this stands for,” she said, rebukingly. “I believe in it. I trust to it. Haven’t you the same kind of loyalty where my grandfather is concerned—after all your years with him?”

She had appealed to zealous, unquestioning devotion, and it replied to her. “I reckon you’re right. It wouldn’t be showing proper respect if I didn’t meet you halfway in the thing.” He reached out his hand and patted the staff. “I’m only a poor old bent stick beside that one. I even let the horses run away. Yes, they have run away—and now it’s all the long miles to the drive! How’ll ye ever get there, Miss Lida?”

“By starting!” she returned, crisply, with something of Flagg’s manner.

“There are tote teams going north. Anybody’ll be glad to give you a lift. There are bateaus above here, ferrying supplies up the broad water, and you may see a canoeman——” He was wistfully grabbing at hopes.

“I’m not afraid,” she assured him bravely.

He helped her with advice while he busied himself by hooking the handle of her bag over the staff; she carried it across her shoulder and had something cheerful to say about poverty making light luggage.

In that fashion she fared toward the north, after she had forced a pledge from the old man that he would keep her secret until her work was done; she was guilelessly unaware that Flagg’s perspicacity had penetrated her secret.

Dick plodded toward the south.

There, in the midst of the forest, dwarfed by the big trees, they seemed to be weak reeds for the support of the Flagg fortunes.

Before a bend of the road shut them from sight of each other they turned and waved a farewell which renewed the pledge.