CHAPTER TWENTY

With that thought came her reaction. She began to realize that as long as Dick had been her companion, her guardian, she had not been conscious of the real exaltation of determination which now glowed in her. She felt courage born of sacred zeal. She was alone, but no longer did that thought trouble her. Because she was alone it was up to her! She walked on with a steadier stride. If she appeared at the drive under the convoy of old Dick she was only a girl sent to whine a confession of fault and to wheedle men to help her repair it. Would it not be well to take those men fully into her confidence? She was resolved to tell them that she loved Ward Latisan; she was admitting this truth to herself and she was in a mood to tell all the truth to honest men who would be able to understand. She was going north to inspire faith and courage and loyalty. Would not the known granddaughter of Echford Flagg be able to exert that compelling moral influence over the crew? Those men were primitive enough to understand the urge of honest love of woman for a man; and there was the spirit of chivalrous romance in the north country. She knew it.

Her heart was bolder as she walked on, but her feet ached and the rough road wearied her. She met no human being; she sat for a time on a wayside bowlder, hoping that some straggling tote team would come up from the south and overtake her.

The road snaked along in the Noda Valley, and from time to time she was close to the turbid flood which swept down ice cakes and flotsam. From her bowlder she could see a broad and calm stretch—a deadwater of which she did not know the name.

Then, close to the shore where she waited, came a canoe headed upriver. Two men were in it, paddling sturdily, taking advantage of eddies and backwash. Fresh from the city as she was, she felt a thrill of sudden terror; the men were Indians and wore the full regalia of tribal dress.

As a child she had seen and remembered well the Tarratines of the region; they had been dressed like other woodsmen. These Indians with feathers and beads put a strange fear into her in that solitude. She slid from the rock and crouched behind it. She grasped the staff of the cant dog more firmly; it was her only weapon of defense. But when her fingers felt the depressions of the totem mark she turned from terror to hope. Latisan, at their first meeting, had referred to the status of Echford Flagg among the Tarratines. Courage was back in her again, along with her new hope. She leaped to her feet and called to the Indians and flourished a salute. They hesitated a moment, then drove their craft to the shore a pebble toss away from her.

She did not speak to them—she held the staff so that the emblem was shown to them. They disembarked, approached slowly, peered at the totem, and saluted with upraised palms.

“I have the right to carry it,” she told them. “It is Echford Flagg’s. He gave it into my hands. He said it is known along the river and will help me. I want to go north to his drive. He has sent me. It is on his business!”

She received no immediate encouragement from their manner; they looked at each other and turned their gaze again to her.

“Frank Orono,” said one, patting his hand on his beaded breast. “Him brother, Louis Orono.”

“The drive is up there. If you’re going only a little way in that direction won’t you take me along in your canoe?” she pleaded, confessing, “I’m so tired. There was an accident to the team—I’ve had to walk.”

“You see!” said Frank Orono, stroking his hand over the feathers of his headdress. “Big time for tribe. All dressed up. Him, me, we go to Olamon Island. Governor live there—Chief Susep Nicola. His girl she marry to-night. Big time!” He grinned. That evidence of human feeling in the countenance which had been so impassive heartened the girl.

“And if I can get as far as Olamon with you——”

They ducked their heads in permission.

“Maybe Chief Susep send you on. Chief he much like him!” Frank Orono pointed to the staff. “Chief cut in totem sign, his own hands. You come. Be all right.”

They spread a blanket for her in the middle of the canoe and paddled on.

It was then past midafternoon of her crowded day.

When at last they swung around a wooded point and beheld the Indian village of Olamon the dusk was deepening. Many lights twinkled and a huge bonfire waved flaming tongues.

“Big time!” chuckled Frank Orono. “Pretty girl—nice feller she marry. Chief be glad to see you—you tell him!”

Those who were gathered at the pull-out place surveyed her with curiosity. The bonfire lighted the scene and many were able to see the totem mark on the staff of the cant dog. Those saluted her respectfully and passed the word to others, who came crowding about.

Therefore, when the brothers Orono escorted her into the presence of Sachem Nicola, Lida entertained the confidence of one who was among friends. The chief—or rather, the elected governor of the tribe—dwelt in a modest cottage, and with him was the priest who had come for the wedding ceremony. It was the priest who displayed the liveliest interest in the girl and he promptly began to seek the reason that had brought her north with that emblem of authority. He questioned her with kindness, but with much vigor.

But Susep Nicola asked no questions. He seemed to accept her presence as a quite natural thing. A Tarratine never puts a question to a guest; the guest may explain or state his business in his own good time. The sachem set a chair for her and relieved her of the staff and her bag. He put his finger on the emblem and smiled. There was inquiry in his eyes whether she knew and understood. She bowed her head.

As best she could she parried the questions of the inquisitive priest without making it appear that she was trying to hide anything. “It’s an errand, and Mr. Flagg was kind enough to loan the staff as my token in these parts. You know he is ill and cannot go about any more. He must leave certain things to others.”

“Well,” admitted the priest, plainly struggling with a hankering to ask her bluntly what service a girl could perform for Flagg on the drive, “the ladies in these days are into all the affairs of men as well as on the juries, so we must consider it as quite natural that you have been sent up here by Mr. Flagg. At any rate, we should be grateful that you are here,” he declared, gallantly.

“It’s on account of the accident to my team that I’m forced to intrude at a time like this,” she apologized to Nicola. He was an old man, gaunt and bowed, and his festal trappings seemed rather incongruous decorations.

“But you bring my brother’s staff, and it makes you welcome for yourself and stands for him because he cannot come.”

He called, and a woman appeared. He gave directions, and the woman offered to conduct Lida to a room in the cottage.

“You are honored guest,” said the governor. “In an hour the wedding takes place in the church, and then the wedding supper!”

“To which I beg permission to escort you,” said the priest, bowing low as Lida went from the room.

She laid off her woods panoply of cap and jacket and made herself fit for the festival to such an extent as her scanty wardrobe would permit.

Before the wedding procession started for the church she was presented to the bride, Nicola’s youngest daughter. The woman who had shown Lida to her room had gossiped a bit. The bride was the fruit of the governor’s second marriage and had inherited her French Canadian mother’s beauty. And the groom was a French Canadian, a strapping chap, a riverman of repute.

Lida was told that the men of the river, the jacks of the driving crews far and near, were making much of the wedding on account of their liking for Felix Lapierre. She had looked from her window and had seen bateaus come sweeping down, loaded with shouting men, the oars flashing in the light of torches set in the bows of the big boats. She felt more confident in regard to the morrow; those bateaus would be going back to the north and she had determined to make her plea for passage. In her anxiety the halt for the night was irksome. But she concealed her feelings and took her place in the procession, a post of honor that was deferentially assigned to her by the chief.

The flares of moving torches lighted all and the smoke from them wavered above the plumes of the festal costumes and spread the illumination among the swaying boughs of the spruces and the pines.

An Indian brass band of pretensions rather more than modest led the way toward the church. The rear guard was made of rivermen who marched in ragged formation, scuffling, elbowing one another, shouting jokes, making merry after their manner. Their boots, spurred with drivers’ spikes, crunched into the hard earth and occasionally struck fire from an outcropping of ledge. They pulled off those boots at the door of the church and went into the place, tiptoeing in their stocking feet.

So Alice and Felix were joined in marriage.

Lida sat beside the girl’s mother during the ceremony.

The tears that are shed by womankind at weddings form a baptism for sentiments which cannot be easily translated into exact understanding. It had begun to seem very far away in time and space, that tragedy of the morning in Adonia, that wreck of a man’s love, and the blasting of what Lida had admitted to herself was her own fond hope. Now, in this scene, hearing the words which gave lovers the sacred right to face the world hand in hand, her own grievous case came back to her in poignant clearness. She wept frankly; there had been honest tears in the mother’s eyes. The two looked at each other and then the mother’s hand slid into the girl’s and mutely expressed for the stranger what could not be put into words. There were no questions and no replies—the situation required none.

For the more casual guests, the rivermen and others, the supper was spread out of doors near the water. It was a simple feast which had been cooked over coals in the open.

The sachem’s party ate in a large room; by day it served the women of the tribe as a workshop. The walls were gay with the handicraft which had been hung up to clear a space for the tables. There were braided or woven baskets of all sizes and every hue; there were beaded skins and frippery of feathered gewgaws and moccasins and miniature canoes and plaques of birch, hand carved. And subordinating all else, even the scents and savors of the food, was the perfume of the sweet grass.

Outdoors, in a circle of torches, the band played merry airs.

“You should not be sad, mam’selle,” reproved Father Leroque, who had constituted himself Lida’s squire at supper. “This is a very merry occasion.”

“I feel all the more as if I were intruding—bringing my troubles here.”

The chatter of many voices made a shield for conversation between the two. The priest hesitated for some time; then he made sure that nobody was listening and leaned closer to her.

“I beg your pardon, mam’selle, if I seem presumptuous in touching on a matter regarding which you have not given me your confidence. I may be allowed to mention a bit of news. It came to me just before we sat down to supper. News travels fast in this region, you may know. From mouth to mouth it flies. Bateaus have come up the river, and the men of those bateaus have listened to timber cruisers and have heard from the drivers of tote teams who have come scattering through the woods below. There is the news of an engagement. I trust I may be allowed to speak of the news to you because it is my thought that you are the young lady concerned.”

She was not able to reply.

“And there is more news,” he persisted. “Pardon me if I mention that, too. It is my province to console those who are in trouble, as best I may. Perhaps there is some way in which I can help you. I think highly of young Latisan. I know him because my duties have taken me into the Tomah region. There has been trouble between you and him—a misunderstanding. Is there any way in which I can be a mediator—as his friend?”

“He has gone away,” she choked. “I don’t know where he is. It was my fault. If I could have explained, it might have helped, but he would not wait to hear me through.”

The priest’s gentleness had conquered her resolution to keep her secret till she reached the men of the Flagg drive. He perceived her bitter need of sympathy.

“I respect confidences, even those given me outside the pale of my church’s confessional. Young Latisan is like his grandfather—tinder for a stray spark. If I know your fault—if I can tell him, when I see him, what you would have liked to tell him——”

Hurriedly, in low tones, stammering in her eagerness, she did reveal who she was, what she had tried to do, and what she hoped to be able to do.

He was instantly alive to her cause with all the sympathy that was in him—an especially sincere sympathy because as a missionary priest he was close to the hearts of all the folk of the north country, probing their affairs with an innocent but vivid interest and striving always to aid with earnest zeal.

Though Lida had parried his questions at first, protecting her secret, she was now grateful because he had persisted; his manner and his nature removed him from the ranks of mere busybodies. A comforting sense arose from having confided in him.

“In the Tomah I will find young Latisan; I am on my way across the mountains, mam’selle. He must be awake and himself by now; he must have gone home. When I tell him the truth he will lift all the trouble from your shoulders. But till he comes you must be brave. And who knows? You may be able to smooth the path! If you plead your grandfather’s cause up here, I believe even the great Comas company will listen and be kind. There are many outside this door who have come down from the drives to have a bit of fun at the wedding. There must be Flagg men. I will find out.”

“Let me go with you,” she urged, anxiously.

He demurred.

“But I’ll not speak to them. If I can see them—only a few of them—the real men of our drive—I believe I shall find courage to go on.”

She prevailed, though he was doubtful and warned her that the babbling of the new gossip might be embarrassing.

And so it proved as Father Leroque feared; men perceived only the beguilement of Ward Latisan and had heard only the sordid side of the happenings in Adonia; the girl was glad because she was hid in the gloom outside the circle of light that was the nimbus of the bonfire. They were laughing as they discussed a matter which had eclipsed the interest in the wedding. Her cheeks were hot and she was scarcely restrained by the priest’s monitory palm on her shoulder.

Men were feasting and gossiping; they were herded around the fire, squatting Turk fashion, steaming pannikins on the ground by their sides, heaped plates on their knees.

“Fifteen of us,” stated a man, answering a question. “And prob’ly more to follow. Ben Kyle has gone up there in a hurry, grudge and all, and is hiring for the Comas. If there ain’t going to be any fight we may as well work for the Three C’s.”

“Stay here!” commanded Father Leroque, patting the girl’s arm. “Stay where they can’t see you.” He stepped forward into the firelight. “Do I understand that the Flagg crew is breaking up?”

“Fifteen of us in this bunch,” restated the man, rapping his pannikin to dislodge the tea leaves and holding it out for more of the beverage. “Wedding brought us down—the news we hear is going to keep us going. Flagg is done.”

“Yes, if his men desert him. You mustn’t do it; it isn’t square.”

The priest found it easy to locate the recreants among the other rivermen; they shifted their eyes under his rebuking gaze. “Go back to your work. Another will come in young Latisan’s place.”

“All respect to you, Father! But we can’t do it,” said the spokesman. “We’re Latisan’s men. The rest of the gang will laugh us out of the crew if we go back.”

“I’ll have Latisan himself on the job inside of a few days, my men,” declared the priest, stoutly.

He had promised to them another who would take the drive master’s place; now he promised Latisan. The men were merely puzzled; they were not convinced.

“Will you go back?”

“We can’t go back.” It was said with conviction, and a mumble of voices indorsed him. “Still, all respect to you, Father! But Latisan won’t fit any longer even if he does go back. He has let himself be goofered.”

Father Leroque had set up his temporary altar in many a lumber camp; he knew woodsmen; therefore, he knew that argument with those men would be idle.

“You have heard,” he said to Lida when the two walked away deeper into the shadows. “I’m sorry. But so the matter stands.”

“But if I go now and talk to them—confess to them——”

“They are Latisan’s own men, and the story is fresh, and their resentment is hot. You will not prevail, mam’selle. And if you fail to-night with those men you risk failing with all. You must go on to the drive—talk to the others who are still loyal. I fear much, I must warn you, but I will not try to keep you from what seems to be your duty. It would be too great unhappiness for you if you should go back now, feeling that you had not done your best.”

The bandsmen had eaten of the wedding feast and were again valorously making gay music outside the workshop building from whose windows poured light and laughter.

“I can’t go back in there—I can’t!” sobbed Lida. “Right now I want to hide away.”

With gentle understanding the priest escorted her to the door of the sachem’s cottage. “I will pray for you, that the morning may bring good courage again. I will talk with you then—in the morning.”

She stammered broken words of gratitude and escaped to the covert of the little room.

Father Leroque went back to the wedding party and called the governor out into the night. For a long time the two conferred, walking to and fro under the big pines.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

There was no talk at breakfast; the family copied the manner of the governor, who had greeted Lida with a single word, gestured her to her chair, and now ate in silence. All his festal trappings had been laid aside; he was a grave, wrinkled man in the ordinary attire of a woodsman. In her new humility Lida wondered how she would summon courage to ask for canoemen to take her north. The impulse to keep on toward the drive was no longer so keen and courageous and absorbing, she realized. She had dreamed vividly when she stood in the presence of Echford Flagg; but she had begun to face practicality, and the difficulties frightened her.

Before the breakfast was finished, Father Leroque came in; he had lodged in the quarters provided for his visits, a small room in the vestry.

The sisters who taught the boys and girls of the community had brought his food. But he sat at the elbow of the governor’s wife and drank the coffee that she poured for him. He was cheery, vivacious, and he smiled consolingly on Lida, who was not able to return his morning optimism. His arrival broke the fetters of silence, and even Susep Nicola joined in the chatter which the priest kept stirring.

Lida kept her gaze on the floor and saw the broad shaft of sunlight shift slowly and relentlessly, marking the passage of precious time.

“I must go,” she said, suddenly, looking into the countenance of Nicola.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I ought to have been on my way before.”

“It’s for you to say when you go; you are welcome here,” he returned. “I have waited for you to say.” It was according to his code of hospitality—the guest must indicate desire. He rose. His wife brought to Lida the jacket and the cap. But the chief picked up the Flagg cant dog and carried it when he led the way to the door.

Father Leroque seemed to understand what was in Lida’s mind just then. “You are worried about how you are to travel, is it not so? You do not need to ask, mam’selle!” He bowed her to the door.

In front of the sachem’s house hung a broad disk of tanned moosehide in a frame. Nicola pounded on the makeshift gong with a mallet. Men assembled quickly in front of him, coming as if they had expected the summons.

“You know. I have told you,” said the chief. He stroked his hand over the totem mark on the cant dog handle. “You know how our brother has been the good friend of the Tarratines on this river.”

One step in advance of the others of the throng stood Felix Lapierre, the bridegroom.

“How many?” asked the chief.

“Twenty,” said Felix. “And all very much happy to do the good service.”

The priest smiled into the amazed eyes of the girl. “For your conveyance? Ah no, mam’selle. For your good help on the drive. They are rivermen—the best. Felix Lapierre leads them and you shall see for yourself what a king of the white water he is. He will be your right-hand man on the drive. It is all very fine, eh, mam’selle?”

She was staring from face to face, overwhelmed. She could not reply.

“We talk it over—him and me—last night,” said Nicola, indicating the priest by a respectful bow. “It’s for my brother, and the blood of my brother.” He bowed to her.

“And all so very happy,” repeated Felix. His black eyes sparkled and he flung up his hands in the gay spirit of emprise. “You must not care because some have run away. They would not be good in a crew if they feel that way now. We feel good. We shall work for you; we are your men.”

The big matter, this astounding making good of her forces, this rallying of volunteers in such chivalrous and unquestioning fashion—she found herself unable to handle the situation in her thoughts or treat it with spoken words just then. But the other—the human thing——

“It’s—it’s the honeymoon,” she stammered. “It will be taking you away from your wife.”

“She’s my girl,” put in Nicola. “She tells him to go.”

Father Leroque perceived Lida’s distressful inability to pull herself together at that moment, and he employed his ready tact, giving her time for thought. “It’s quite a natural thing, this taking away of the new bridegroom for the service of the Flaggs,” he declared with a chuckle. “There’s even a song—I think it was written by Poet O’Gorman. Do you know it, Felix? I can see by your grin that you do. Very well. Let’s have it. As I remember it, it states the case according to the Flagg methods.”

Lapierre pulled off his cap; his eyes were alight with merriment; he sang gayly:

“You see!” suggested the priest, archly, smiling, palms spread. “When Flagg calls, the honeymoon must wait. It promises good adventure, and Felix would be sorry if he were not in it.”

Cap in hand, Lapierre swept his arm in a broad gesture of respectful devotion. It was a touch of gallantry which raised the affair above the prosaic details of mere business and which made the relations closer than those of employer and employed.

In Lida gratitude was succeeding amazement, and the glow of that gratitude was warming her courage into life again. When she had stepped from Nicola’s door a few moments before she felt bitterly alone and helpless and she had no eye for the glory of the day. Suddenly the sunshine seemed transcendently cheery. All the aspects of the case were changed. Now she could go on to the drive as one of the Flaggs should go—with loyal men at her back to replace those who had deserted. She could hearten a broken crew with men, not merely with a strange girl’s plaintive story and appeal.

“We’re ready, mam’selle,” said Felix.

The women of the community were gathered in front of the sachem’s house.

Lapierre went smiling to his bride and put his arm about her; but when he started to draw her toward Lida the latter anticipated the coming by running to meet them. She took the little bride in her arms.

The priest, Felix, and the governor swapped looks and nods which indorsed an understanding that was wordless between the young women.

When Lida turned from the governor’s daughter she saw the governor himself coming toward her. He held out the cant dog; it lay across his palms and he tendered it respectfully.

She winked the mist of tears from her eyes and struggled with a hysterical desire to babble many words.

“Hush!” warned the priest. “We all know!”

There, in a golden silence, she realized how cheap and base was the clinking metal of speech that had been the currency of herself and others in the crowded town.

The river, slowed by the deadwater, was mute, though its foam streaks showed where it had crashed through the gorges above. A few chickadees chirruped bravely. There were no other sounds while the girl took the Flagg scepter in her own hands.

She walked with Felix to the shore, where the flotilla of canoes lay upturned at the pull-out place. Again the Oronos were assigned to her, and she was comforted much because they no longer seemed like strangers.

“Au revoir!” called Father Leroque when the canoes were afloat on the brown flood. “I’m making haste to the Tomah, mam’selle, to keep my promise!”

He had already accomplished so much for her! In her new thanksgiving spirit she was finding it easy to believe that he could bring about what her self-acknowledged love for Latisan so earnestly desired.

In single file, holding close to the shore, the canoes went toward the north. There was no talk between those who paddled; against the brown shore the canoes were merely moving smudges.

Rufus Craig, coming down the middle of the deadwater in one of the great bateaus of the Comas company, paid no attention to the smudges. The bateau rode high and rapidly on the flood that moved down the channel. Craig was writing in his notebook and four oarsmen were obeying his command to dip deep and pull strong.

Craig had met Ben Kyle by appointment at the foot of the Oxbow portage and he had found Kyle to be particularly malevolent and entirely willing—and Kyle had gone north to the Flagg drive in the pay of the Three C’s.

It had been a profitable interview, as Director Craig viewed it.

Now he was chasing along the trail of rumor to Adonia; the rumor was encouraging. If Latisan really had been pried out of the section, Craig saw an opportunity to run back to New York to make a private settlement with Mern and enjoy a little relaxation before the pressing matters of the drive in full swing claimed all his attention. Right then, according to all appearances, the Comas business up-country was doing very well in the hands of the understrapper bosses. Therefore, Director Craig smiled over the pages of his notebook.

The brown smudges in single file went on and on. Noon at the foot of the portage at Oxbow! Lida sniffed the wood smoke of the cook fire and ate her lunch and drank her tea.

Up the narrow trail of the gorge she followed at the rear of her men; the canoes, upturned on their shoulders, glistened in the sparkling sunshine. She was bringing real aid in a time of stress, as one of the Flaggs should! More and more that consciousness heartened her.

Quiet water at the put-in, then rapids where the canoes were poled, the irons clinking on the rocks over which the turbid waters rolled; more calm stretches where haste was made.

A night in the open at a camping site where a couch of boughs was piled for her under a deftly contrived shelter of braided branches of hemlocks.

And on in the first flush of the morning toward the drive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kyle waded in the shallows where men were rolling logs, shouting to be heard above the roar of the waters.

“We hired for a fight,” said the men who hated the Comas. “But it doesn’t look like one is going to be made.”

“We’ve always stood behind Eck Flagg,” said the old stand-bys of the crew. “But we ain’t getting a square chance for honest work.”

It was plain that the spirit was being beaten out of them under the hammer of Kyle’s harangue—whether it was the adventurous spirit which craved fight or the honest spirit which had sent them north to the job.

When the night came down, after they had cleaned their pannikins of food, steaming hot, from the cook’s kettles, while they smoked around the fire which drove away the evening chill, Kyle paced to and fro among the groups, declaiming, detracting, and urging. He knew that he was prevailing, though slowly. Woodsmen in shifting their allegiance are not swayed by sudden impulse. His voice rang among the trees in the silence of the evening.

“Latisan is a sneak—Latisan is a runaway! Eck Flagg is next to a dead man!” Over and over he made those declarations, battering discouragement into their slow comprehension in order to win them to the Comas company. “And Latisan has thrown down real men for the sake of a girl! Do you want to get the Big Laugh when you show yourselves downriver?”

Voyagers who came from the southward, leaving their canoes below the falls, moved silently, after the fashion of the Tarratines. They halted on a shadowed slope within the range of Kyle’s raucous voice, and Lida stepped forward to listen. The red flames lighted a circle among the trees, and she beheld the seated groups and saw the swaggering malcontent who paced to and fro.

“I’m with the Three C’s now, first, last, and all the time! Their money is waiting for you, men. Come, with the real folks, I tell you!”

And again, with even more fantastic trimmings, he set forth the story of Latisan’s flight with a girl who had seduced him from his duty in the north.

Lida snatched the Flagg cant dog from the hands of Felix; he had been the bearer of her scepter. He blinked when he looked at her. The far-flung light of the camp fire, reflected in her eyes, had set veritable torches there. Her lips were apart and her white teeth were clenched and her face was ridged with resolution.

There was no mistaking the intention which righteous anger had stirred in her, but when she started down the slope Felix leaped and ventured to restrain her with a touch on her arm. “Is it well to let the Comas know that you are here or what you are going to do? Pardon, mam’selle, but think!”

“The lies! The lies!”

“Yes, mam’selle, but you can tell them the truth when he is not there to hear.”

“But now he is there, and I cannot go to the men.”

“In a little while you may go; he will not be there. And if he does not know what is going on up here, after his back is turned, maybe we shall have day after day to push our logs in ahead of all the others,” explained the riverman. “They will be days worth much.” Then with the imagery of his race he added, “Those days will be gold beads on our rosary, mam’selle!” He smiled into her eyes, from which the fires were departing. “Please wait here with the the others.”

He whispered to several of the Indians; when he sauntered down the slope the four summoned Tarratines stole to right and left, masking themselves in the shadows, flanking the champion who was going alone.

Most of the men of the crew recognized Felix Lapierre when he walked into the circle of light. They leaped up, surrounded him, their mouths full of hilarious congratulation, of excuses why they had not attended the wedding, of awkward jokes and questions. They could not understand why he had come north so soon. He shook his head, mildly refusing to satisfy their curiosity.

Kyle stood for a time; then he resumed his pacing. He no longer had listeners. Like children, the rivermen were wholly absorbed in a new toy—a bridegroom who had so suddenly deserted the handsomest girl between Adonia and The Forks.

“Oh, let him alone,” advised Kyle, whetting his new grouch. “If they ain’t running away with girls in this region, they’re running away from ’em!”

Felix swung around and faced the speaker. “Do you speak of me?” he asked, quietly.

“Take it that way if you want to.”

“Your tongue seems to be very busy, I have that to say to you. From up there on the hill I heard what you have to say about M’sieu Latisan, that he has run away with a girl.”

“And he has.”

“You lie!”

That retort snapped the trigger on Kyle’s inflamed temper. “You damnation squaw man!” he yelped, and drove a blow at the French Canadian; and Felix, following the fighting custom of his clan of the Laurentian Valley, ducked low, leaped high, and kicked Kyle under the hook of the jaw. It was the coup à pied. Kyle staggered and went down. When he struggled up and weakly attacked again, the antagonist met him face to face and smashed a stunning blow between Kyle’s eyes; he fell and remained on his back.

“One for me, and one for my wife he has insult’,” cried Felix. He spun around, searching their faces. “Do any of you like to back him up?”

“Not on your life,” said a spokesman. “He doesn’t belong in this crew.”

“I’m much oblige’,” said Felix, politely. He whistled, and the four Indians rushed out from the shadows. “If he is not of the crew, then if he goes away it does not matter.”

He commanded the Indians, and they lifted Kyle and started off with him.

“He’ll not be hurt,” Felix assured the men of the crew. “He’ll go down the river where it’s better for him.”

Nobody offered protest. They were glad to be rid of that bellowing, insistent voice of the trouble-maker.

Their attention was wholly engaged with the involuntary departure of Kyle, and they did not observe Lapierre when he walked away; they turned to ask more questions, to be informed what this abduction signified, but Felix was nowhere to be seen. Men called but he did not reply.

Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute’s flash of drama against the background of the night, into which they stared with searching eyes while they made clamor like quacking ducks that had been startled from sleep by a prowler! Curiosity was lashing them. They were wonted to their reckless adventure in the white water; it had become dull toil. This affair was something real in the way of excitement, with a mystery which tantalized them. Again they called into the night, seeking an explanation.

The prologue by which the Comas agent had been removed as tempter and tale-bearer had not been staged by Felix for calculated effect; he had thought only of getting Kyle out of the way. But never was an audience in more keenly receptive mood for a sequel than were those men who crowded closely in the patch of camp-fire radiance and asked questions of one another.

To them when they were in that mood came one who made the drama more poignant. They were hushed, they blinked uncertainly, they found it unreal, unbelievable.

For here was a girl, far north at the head of the drive in the season of the roaring waters. She came slowly from the night and stood at the edge of the circle of light. She was wearing Latisan’s jacket and cap—there was no mistaking the colors, the checkings and the stripes; a drive master needs to signal his whereabouts to a crew just as a fire captain must make himself conspicuous by what he wears.

They glanced at her garb, amazed by it. Then her face claimed all their attention, for she said to them, her voice steady, her eyes meeting theirs frankly, “I have overheard the talk a man has just made about a girl who coaxed Ward Latisan away from his work here. I am the girl.”

It seemed as if men had been holding their breath since her appearance; in the profound silence the exhalations of that breath could be heard.

“But Ward Latisan did not run away with me from his duty. My being here answers that lie. And I have even a better answer—a reason why I would be the last one in the world to interfere willingly with his work this spring.” She stepped close to them, nearer the fire, so that they could see what she held forth, tightly clutched in both hands. “This is Echford Flagg’s cant dog—he told me it would be known by all his men. He gave it into my keeping for a sign that he has sent me north. And I have a right to carry it. I am Lida Kennard. I am Echford Flagg’s granddaughter.”

Behind her came crowding the Tarratines.

“Men have deserted from your crew. Here are others to take their places,” she announced with pride.

She was dealing with men who were bashed by utter stupefaction; she noted it and her self-reliance grew steadier. She drove the point of the cant dog into the soft duff with a manner after the heart of Flagg himself. She spread her freed hands to them in appeal. “I have come here to tell you the truth.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

But then, the inspiring night which had brought the granddaughter of Echford Flagg with her story, her confession, her plea, and her still strong faith in the awakening of Ward Latisan when he was able to know the truth! She did not gloss her own involuntary fault; she was frank in the statement that she loved the man whom she had harmed by her mistake. She knew it was the truth; she took them into her confidence. Then there was more than mere courage in the men of the drive—they were sharers in the spirit of romance which put the dynamic zeal of fanatics behind those logs. The girl’s cause was linked with Latisan’s and was a compelling force.

Like racing horses the Flagg timber rushed along, crowding the river from side to side.

The stream drives, breaking the bonds of the ice, had caught the top pitch of the floods and were hurled into the boiling rapids.

But there was more than the mere thrust of the roaring waters behind those tumbling logs.

The Flagg drive had a soul that year!

It was what the Comas corporation lacked.

Behind the Flagg logs were honest men, pityingly loyal—still to Latisan—and behind the toilers was a dominating spirit that was a combination of courage, wild enthusiasm, loyalty, and devotion in a campaign that now was entered upon with tempestuous fervor in the presence of Lida Kennard. When that fervor went smashing against the Three C’s crowd the men who were animated only by a corporation’s wages became cowards and stepped aside and gave the champions the right of way.

The slogan of Flagg men was, “Gangway for the girl!”

They had taken up her cause; they had enrolled themselves with a perfect abandon of all considerations of self; for them, getting down that timber was merely a means to a much-desired end.

They were recklessly determined to help the girl make good! That was the urgeful sentiment which their thoughts inscribed on the invisible oriflamme of the warfare that was waged for the new Joan along the waters of the Noda.

It was not especially because she was the granddaughter of Echford Flagg. His wages had never bought more than perfunctory service from crews. She was herself—and she had confessed her debts.

When she told them why she was wearing Latisan’s cap and jacket, when she owned to her error and laid the blame on herself, when she pleaded with them to help her in undoing the bitter mischief, she won a devotion that questioned nothing.

“Men, he will come back. He will understand it all when he is himself again. And if you and I are able to show him that we have done his work well he will hold up his head once more as he has a right to do.”

“God bless ye, girl, ye can’t keep yourself apart from Latisan in this thing,” declared an old man. “It’s for the two o’ ye that we do our work from now on! And it’s for all of us, as well! For we’ll ne’er draw happy breaths till we can stand by and see you meet him on the level—eye to eye—like one who has squared all accounts between you two! And the old grands’r, as well. What say, boys?”

But cheers could not serve their emotions then. They pulled off their caps and scrubbed their rough hands across their jackets and walked to her in single file and shook her hand in pregnant silence.

And then the timber went through; the drive was beating all the past records.

When they needed water they took it. They blew their own dams and were very careless with dynamite when they came upon other dams of whose ownership they were not so sure.

“You see, miss, rights are well mixed up all through this region,” said old Vittum, who had been spokesman for his fellows on her first meeting with them. He gave her a demure wink. “The main idea is, God is making this water run downhill just now, and it doesn’t seem right for mortal man to stop it from running.”

They “manned the river,” as the drivers say. That meant overlapping crews, day and night.

No squad was out of sight of another; a yell above the roar of the flood or a cap brandished on the end of a pike pole summoned help to break a forming jam or to card logs off ledges or to dislodge “jillpokes” which had stabbed their ends into the soggy banks of the river. Men ate as they ran and they slept as they could. Some of them, snatching time to eat, sitting on the shore, went sound asleep after a few mouthfuls and slumbered with their faces in their plates till a companion kicked them back into wakefulness. They grinned and were up again!

As for Lida Kennard, she was treated with as much tender care as if she were a reigning princess on tour. She protested indignantly because they would not allow her to rough it along with them. They made soft beds of spruce tips at their camping sites and they gave her the post of honor in a big bateau.

In the rush of affairs she did not pause to wonder whether she was offending any of the proprieties by staying on with the drive; she had become the Flagg spirit incarnate and was not troubling herself with petty matters.

Old Vittum and Felix were her advisers, and they prized her presence as an asset of inestimable value; she allowed them to think for her in that crisis.

“It’s a tough life, miss, the best we can make it for you,” admitted Vittum. “But if you can stick and hang till Skulltree is passed it means that the boys will keep the glory of doing in ’em!”

From rendering service according to her ability they could not prevent her, though the men protested. She helped the cooks. Hurrying here and there, following the scattered men of the crews, she tugged great cans of hot coffee. When the toilers saw her coming and heard her voice they took desperate chances on the white water, jousting with their pike poles like knights in a tourney.

She put into the hearts of the crew the passion of derring do!

The drive that spring was not a sordid task—it was high emprise, it was a joyous adventure!

Then the logs which had raced in the rapids came to the upper reaches of the slow deadwater of the flowage of the Skulltree dam; the flowage reached far back that year.

At Skulltree was the crux of the situation, as Flagg had insisted, ragefully.

From the early days there had been a dam at that point; it was common property and conserved the water to be loosed to drive logs over the shallow rapids below.

The Three C’s had spent more money on that dam, claiming that bigger drives needed extra water. The dam had been raised. The flowage vastly increased the extent of the deadwater, slowing the logs of the independents, whose towage methods were crude. The changes which had been made needed the sanction of impending legislation, required the authority of a charter for which application had been made. In the meantime the Three C’s were holding the water and would be impounding logs; these logs were to be diverted through the new, artificial canal.

In asserting their rights the corporation folks were endangering the independent drives which were destined for the sawmills of the Noda.

Day by day, as the drive went on, the girl listened to the talk among her men until she understood, in some measure, the situation. All the reckless haste was made of no account unless their logs were to be permitted to pass the Skulltree dam.

Vittum explained to her that the law was still considering the question of “natural flowage.” The dam had been changed from time to time in past years until the matter was in doubt.

“But the way the thing stands now there ain’t much of that nat’ral flowage,” he told her. “I claim that we have the right to go through, law or no law. Word was served early on Latisan that he must hold up at Skulltree this year and wait for the law.”

“Did he say what he proposed to do?” she asked.

“Yes, miss! I’ll have to be excused from repeating what he said, in the way he said it, but the gist of it was that he was going through. He said he would use some kind of flowage, and hoped that when the lawyers got done talking in court it would be decided that the aforesaid nat’ral flowage was the kind that had been used by him.”

She pulled off Ward’s cap and turned it about in her hand, surveying it judiciously. “I can seem to see just how he looked when he said it.”

“He said it loud, miss, because the man he was talking to was a good ways off. He was a sheriff. He couldn’t get very nigh to Latisan. We was holding the man off with our pick poles because he was trying to serve a paper.”

“An injunction?”

”I don’t know,“ confessed the relator mildly. ”Somehow, none of us seemed to be at all curious that day to find out what it was. Sheriff nailed it to a tree and then somebody touched a match to it. Latisan said he reckoned it must have been an invitation to Felix’s wedding, but it was just as well that nobody ever read it, because the crew was too busy to go, anyway!“

“Are Comas men guarding Skulltree dam?”

“They sure are, miss!”

She and the old man were seated on the shore of the deadwater. The evening dusk was deepening.

Near them the cook’s fires were leaping against the sides of the blackened pots; in the pungent fragrance of the wood smoke which drifted past there were savory odors which were sent forth when the cook lifted off a cover to stir the stew. The peacefulness of the scene was profound; that peace, contrasted with the prospect of what confronted her men if Flagg’s logs were to go through, stirred acute distress in the girl. Coming down through the riot of waters she had not had time to think. Their logs were ahead; the laggards of the corporation drive were following. She had wondered because even the cowards, as they had shown themselves to be, had not put more obstructions in the way. There had been abortive interference, but it was evident that the Three C’s had been making the first skirmishes perfunctory affairs, depending on dealing the big blow at Skulltree.

In the Flagg crew it was a subject for frequent comment that Rufus Craig had not appeared in the north country to take command of his forces in those parlous times when the Three C’s interests were threatened. In council Lida and her advisers began to wonder how much information regarding the Flagg operations had filtered to the outside or whether the defeated Comas bosses were not apprehensively withholding word to headquarters that they had been beaten in the race on the upper waters.

“Craig would be here before this if he knew what was going on,” averred Vittum. “They’re either ashamed or scared to send him word, and they think it can all be squared for ’em at Skulltree.” He sighed and turned his eyes from her anxious stare.

Near her were rivermen who were waiting for their suppers. She was aware of a very tender feeling toward those men who had been risking their lives in the rapids in order to indulge her in a hope which she had made known to them. She reflected on what the sarcastic Crowley had said when he told her that in that region she was among he-men. “If you’re not careful, you’ll start something you can’t stop,” he had threatened. Could she stop these men from going on to violent battle? Would she be honest with her grandfather and Latisan if she did try to prevent them from winning their fight? All past efforts would be thrown away if Skulltree dam were not won.

Out on the deadwater were several floating platforms; the men called them “headworks.” On the platforms were capstans. The headworks were anchored far in advance of the drifting logs, around which were thrown pocket booms; men trod in weary procession, circling the capstans, pushing against long ashen bars, and the dripping tow warp hastened the drift of the logs.

As the men of the sea have a chantey when they heave at a capstan, so these men of the river had their chorus; it floated to her over the quiet flood.