CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

In the late afternoon, at a stage in the journey, he crossed a city on the heels of the party and again was an unobtrusive passenger in a coach, avoiding the sleeping cars. He slept a bit, as best he could, but mostly he pondered, fiercely awake, bitterly resolute. He fought away his memory of the betrayal of a trust; he indulged in no fond hopes in regard to one whom he now knew as Lida Kennard. He was concentrating on his determination to go back to the drive, not as master, but as a volunteer who would carry his cant dog with the rest of them, as humble as the plainest toiler. He did not try at that time to plan a course of action to be followed after he was back on the Flagg drive. He was going, that was all!

It was a hideous threat, the menace that Craig was conveying into the north country in the persons of those gunmen from the city! There had been plenty of fights over rights on the river, but they had always been clean fights, where muscles and fists counted for the victory.

Craig had claimed that the bluff of the guns would be sufficient. Latisan was not agreeing, and on that account he was finding the outlook a dark one.

The train on which he was riding was an express headed for Canada, and was due to pass the junction with the Adonia narrow-gauge at about two o’clock in the morning. There was no scheduled stop at the junction; the afternoon train connected and served the passengers from downcountry.

Latisan had bought a ticket to the nearest regular stopping place of the express. He began to wonder whether Craig, with the influence of the Comas to aid him and his fifteen fellow passengers in an argument, had been able to secure special favors.

To the conductor, plucking out the hat check before the regular stop the hither side of the junction, he said, “By any chance, does this train ever stop at the Adonia narrow-gauge station?”

“It happens that it stops to-night by special orders.”

Latisan paid a cash fare and rode on.

The coach in which he sat was the last car on the train; the smoker and sleeping cars were ahead.

When the train made its unscheduled stop, Latisan stepped down and was immediately hidden in the darkness. He saw Craig and his crew on the station platform; the headlight of a narrow-gauge locomotive threw a radiance which revealed them. Therefore, it was plain, Craig had wired for a special on the Adonia line.

Only one car was attached to the narrow-gauge engine; Latisan went as close as he dared. There was no room for concealment on that miniature train. It puffed away promptly, its big neighbor on the standard-gauge roared off into the night, and Latisan was left alone in the blackness before the dawn. And he felt peculiarly and helplessly alone! In spite of his best efforts to keep up his courage, the single-handed crusader was depressed by Craig’s command of resources; there was a sort of insolent swagger in the Comas man’s ability to have what he wanted.

Latisan knew fairly well the lay of the land at the junction, but he was obliged to light matches, one after the other, in order to find the lane which led to the stables of the mill company whose men had been drafted by him on one occasion to load his dynamite. The night was stiflingly black, there were no stars and not a light glimmered anywhere in the settlement.

He stumbled over the rough ground that had been rutted by the wheels of the jigger wagons. The muffled thud of the hoofs of dozing horses guided him in his search for the stables, and he found the door of the hostlers’ quarters and pounded.

“You’ll have to go see the super; I don’t dare to let a hoss out of here without orders,” said the man who listened to his request.

“Tell me where his house is, and lend me a lantern.”

The hostler yawned and mumbled and complained because he had been disturbed, but he fumbled for the lantern, lighted it, and gave it to Latisan, along with directions how to find the super’s home.

That minor magnate was hard to wake, but he appeared at an open upper window after a time and listened.

“We can’t spare a horse in mud time, with the hauling as heavy as it is. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Ward Latisan.”

“Hold that lantern up side of your face and let me see!”

The young man obeyed meekly.

“Excuse me for doubting your word of mouth,” said the super, after he had assured himself, “but we hardly expected to see you back in this region.” It was drawled with dry sarcasm.

“I haven’t the time to argue on that, sir. I have business north of here. I’ll hire a horse or I’ll buy a horse.”

“And you heard what I said, that I can’t spare one. By the way, Latisan, you may as well understand that I won’t do business with you, anyway. You got me in wrong with my folks and with the Three C’s, too, when you bribed my men to load that dynamite.”

“I can’t see why the Comas company——”

“I can. My folks can. If we get saw logs this year we’ve got to buy ’em through Rufus Craig. When you ran away and let Ech Flagg get dished——”

“His drive is coming through,” insisted Latisan, desperately, breaking in on speech in his turn.

“Where are you from, right now?” inquired the super.

“New York.”

“And a devil of a lot you must have found out about the prospect of logs from the independents, Flagg or anybody else. Don’t come up here and try to tell me my business; I’ve been here all the time. Good night!” He banged down the window.

And once more Ward was alone in the night, distracted and desolate. This testing of the estimation in which he was held in the north country after the debacle in Adonia made his despondency as black as the darkness which surrounded him.

He wanted to call to the super and ask if at least he could buy the lantern. He decided it would be better to borrow it.

He set away afoot by the road which led to Adonia. Farms were scattered along the highway and he stopped at the first house and banged on the door and entreated. At two houses he was turned away relentlessly. The third farmer was a wrinkled old chap who came down to the door, thumbing his suspenders over his shoulders.

“Ward Latisan, be ye?” He peered at the countenance lighted by the lantern. “Yes, I can see enough of old John in ye to prove what ye claim. I worked for old John when I was young and spry. And one time he speared his pick pole into the back of my coat and saved me from being carried down in the white water. And that’s why ye can have a hoss to go where ye want to go, and ye can bring him back when you’re done with him.”

Therefore, not by any merit of his own, Ward secured a mount and journeyed dismally toward the north. The farm horse was fat and stolid and plodded with slow pace; for saddle there was a folded blanket. With only the lantern to light the way, he did not dare to hurry the beast. It was not until wan, depressing light filtered from the east through the mists that he ventured to make a detour which would take him outside of Adonia. He realized that Craig would have arranged for tote teams to be waiting at Adonia, as he had had a special waiting at the junction, and was by that time far on his way toward Skulltree dam.

Latisan beat the flanks of the old horse with the extinguished lantern and made what speed he could along the blazed trail that would take him to the tote road of the Noda basin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Unreconciled, all her woman’s nature protesting, she had come to a settled realization that the fight must happen; Vittum was putting it in words. Now that the struggle was imminent—on the eve of it—she wanted to go down on her knees and beg them to give up the project; but she did not dare to weaken their determination or wound their pride. She crouched on her cot of spruce boughs in anguished misery.

“Nobody has got to the point of using hatchets and guns on this river,” corroborated a man on the other side of the fire from Vittum.

Other men pitched their voices higher then, giving up the cautious monotone of the preceding conference.

“Is any man afeard?” asked Vittum.

They assured him with confidence and gay courage that no man was afraid.

“I didn’t hear any of you Injuns pipe up,” said Vittum. “You ain’t very strong on talk, anyway. But I’d kind of like to know how you feel in this matter. We all understood—all of us regulars—that we was coming up here to fight when it got to that point. You have grabbed in later and perhaps didn’t understand it. We ain’t asking you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

The Indians were silent. Even Felix Lapierre said nothing when Vittum questioned him with a glance. The French Canadian turned to Frank Orono, squatting within arm’s reach, and patted him on the shoulder. It became plain that there was an understanding which did not require words.

Orono rose slowly; he grinned. From the breast of his leather jacket he brought forth a cow’s horn and shook it over his head, and its contents rattled sharply. The other Indians leaped up. They were grinning, too.

Orono began a slow march around the camp fire, lifting his knees high, stepping slowly, beating the rattling horn into the palm of his hand. Behind him in single file, imitating his step, marched the other Indians. The smiles faded out of their countenances; their jaws were set, and deep in their throats they growled a weird singsong.

“My Gawd!” yelped Vittum. “It’s the old Tarratine war dance and it just fits my notions right now, and I’m in on it!”

He scrambled to his feet and fell into line at the rear of the Indians. Every man in the Flagg crew followed suit. They imitated the Indian singsong as best they were able, their voices constantly giving forth greater volume until they were yelling their defiance to the Three C’s company and all its works.

The men far out on the deadwater, pushing against the bars of the capstan, heard the tumult on the shore and shouted the chorus of their challenging chantey.

Between Lida and the men who were circling the fire there was a veil of mist, and in the halation her champions loomed with heroic stature. She did not want them to suppose that she was indifferent; courage of her own leaped in her. The campaign which she had waged with them had given her an experience which had fortified the spirit of the Flaggs. She stepped forth from her little tent and walked down and stood in the edge of the light cast by the camp fire. They cheered her, and she put aside her qualms and her fears as best she was able.

When she was back in her tent she did not shield her ears from the challenging chantey, as she had done before, and she heard with fortitude the vociferous pledges of faith in the morrow.

The dawn came so sullenly and so slowly that the day seemed merely a faded copy of the night.

A heavy fog draped the mountains and was packed in stifling masses in the river valley.

Crews in shifts marched tirelessly around the capstans of the headworks. Their voices out in the white opaqueness sounded strangely under the sounding-board of the fog.

It was a brooding, ominous, baleful sort of a day, when shapes were distorted in the mists and all sounds were magnified in queer fashion and the echoes played pranks with distances and locations and directions.

Out of the murky blank came one who had gone a-scouting. He touched his cap to the girl and reported to her and to all who were in hearing.

“The Three C’s chief pirate has got along. Craig is down at the dam. I was able to crawl up mighty close in the fog. I heard him. He’s ugly!”

“I reckoned he would be a mite peevish as soon as the news of the social happenings along the river for the past few days got to him,” said Vittum. “It’s no surprise to me—been expecting him!”

“He’s got a special edge on his temper—has been all bunged up by an auto accident, so I heard him giving out to the men he was talking to.”

“And what’s he saying of particular interest to us?”

“Says he’s going to stick right at Skulltree and kill us off singly and in bunches, just as we happen to come along.”

“News is news, and it’s good or bad according to the way you look at it,” declared the old man. “Does that fresh news scare anybody?”

There was a vigorous chorus of denial; when one man averred that the statement only made the fight more worth while he was indorsed with great heartiness.

“All right!” agreed Vittum. “We’ll consider that point settled.” He drew a long breath; he inquired with anxious solicitude; “Did you overhear him saying anything about Latisan? He might have heard something, coming in fresh from outside.”

The scout gave the girl a glance of apology; he was a tactless individual in shading facts. “Of course, all that Three C’s bunch is liars, and Craig worst of all. But I did hear him say that Latisan is loafing in New York and is prob’ly in jail by this time.”

The girl rose and walked away, and the fog shut her from their sight immediately. She heard the old man cursing the incautious scout. “Why the blazes didn’t you smooth it? You’ve gone to work and hurt her feelings. She made her mistake, and she admits it. We all make our mistakes,” said the rebuker. “But she’s true blue! I ain’t laying up anything against Latisan because he doesn’t show up. It’s because the girl is here that we are making men of ourselves right now. She’s deserving of all we can give her. By gad! say I, she’s going to make good with our help.”

She was a considerable distance down the river path, but she heard that speech and the shout of the men indorsing the declaration.

Lida hastened as rapidly as she was able along the path that led to Skulltree; she had reconnoitered on the previous day—going as near the dam as she dared, trying to make the lay of the land suggest some method by which battle might be avoided.

While she ran down the path that morning she was arriving at some definite conclusions. The news about Director Craig had put desperate courage into her. The upper and the nether millstones of men and events in the north country had begun their grim revolutions; she resolved to cast herself between those stones in an effort to save faithful men who were innocent of fault.

When the dull rumble of the sluiceway waters informed her that she was near the camp of the enemy she went more cautiously, and when she heard the voices of men she called, announcing that she desired to speak with Director Craig.

Somebody replied, after a pause which indicated that considerable amazement had been roused by a woman’s voice.

“Come along, whoever you are! Mr. Craig is on the dam.”

A man who kept jerking his head around to stare frankly at her led her along the string piece of the great structure.

Their meeting—she and the Comas director—was like a rencontre in the void of space; on the water side of the dam the mists matched the hue of the glassy surface and the blending masked the water; on the other side, the fog filled the deep gorge where the torrent of the sluiceway thundered.

She was obliged to go close to him in order to emerge from the vapor into his range of vision and to make her voice heard above the roar of the water. His one visible eye surveyed her with blank astonishment; near as she was to him, he did not recognize her at first in her rough garb of the woods.

“Mr. Craig, I was”—she stressed the verb significantly—“an employee in the Vose-Mern agency in New York. I met you in their office.”

He clasped his hands behind him as if he feared to have them free in front of him; her proximity seemed to invite those hands, but his countenance revealed that he was not in a mood then to give caresses. “Was, eh? May I ask what you are right now?”

“I’m doing my best to help in getting the Flagg drive down the river—without trouble!”

“Trouble!” He was echoing her again; it was as if, in his waxing ire, he did not dare to launch into a topic of his own. “What do you call it, what has been happening upriver?”

“I presume you mean that dams have been blown to get water for our logs.”

“Our dams!” he shouted.

“I’m a stranger up here. I don’t know whose dams they were. I have heard all kinds of stories about the rights in the dams, sir.”

“I can’t say to you what I think—and what I want to say! You’re a girl, confound it! I’ll only make a fool of myself, talking to you about our rights and our property. But I can say to you, about your own work, that you have been paid by our money to do a certain thing.”

She opened her eyes on him in offended inquiry.

“I take it that you’re the same one who called herself Miss Patsy Jones when you operated at Adonia.”

“I did use that name—for personal reasons.”

He did not moderate his wrath. “Here I find that Patsy Jones is Miss Kennard of the Vose-Mern agency. We have paid good money to the agency. When I settled for the last job I added two hundred dollars as a present to you.”

“I have not received the gift, sir. It does not belong to me. I’m here on my own account. I came north at my own expense without notifying Chief Mern that I was done with the agency; and strictly personal reasons, also, influenced me on that point.” She was trying hard to keep her poise, not loosing her emotions, preserving her dignity with a man of affairs and phrasing her replies with rather stilted diction. “I have my good reasons for doing all I can in my poor power to help the Flagg drive go through.”

The fact that her name was Kennard meant nothing to Rufus Craig, a New Yorker who had never bothered himself with the ancient tales of the Noda country. He did not understand what interest she could have in opposing the Comas company; he could see only the ordinary and sordid side of the affair. He looked her up and down and curled his lip.

“You have been a traitor!”

“Not to the right, sir, when I found out what the right was.”

“I think you’ll have a chance to say something about that in court, in your defense! You have put the devil into those men and I’m giving you warning.”

“I shall tell the truth in court, Mr. Craig. You may or you may not find that promise a warning of my own to you and your corporation methods.”

He blinked and looked away from her. “I’m busy! What are you doing here on this dam? What do you want of me? Is it more detective work?” he sneered. “Are you getting ready to double-cross the new gang you’re hitched up with. For what reason you went over to ’em God only knows!”

“He does know!” she returned, earnestly. She stepped closer to him. “I came down here to plead that you’ll let the Flagg logs go through this dam.”

“I will not.” His anger had driven him to the extreme of obstinacy.

“Mr. Craig, that stand means a wicked fight between men who are not paid to fight.”

“You’ve had a lot of influence in making men blow our dams. Use that influence in keeping ’em away from this one, and there’ll be no fight.” He turned away, but she hastened forward and put herself in front of him.

“I cannot do it, sir! That will be asking our men to give up all they have been struggling for. I don’t know what the law is—or what the law will say. Please listen to me! Keep the men from fighting—this season! Then allow the law to put matters right up here. The Flagg logs have gone down the river every year before this one. The good Lord has furnished the water for all. Mr. Craig, out of the depths of my heart I entreat you.” She had tried hard to keep womanly weakness away. She wanted to conduct the affair on the plane of business good sense; but anxiety was overwhelming her; she broke down and sobbed frankly.

What appeared to be recourse to woman’s usual weapons served to make him more furious. “The matter is before the courts. There’s a principle involved. This dam stays as it is. That’s final!”

“I’m pleading for a helpless old man who cannot come here to talk for his own rights.”

“Look here, my girl, you’re merely a smart trickster from the city—a turncoat who can’t give one good excuse for being a traitor to your employers.”

“I can give an excuse!”

“I’ve had enough of this,” he retorted, brutally, pricked by the reflection that his corporation would disown him and his methods if he failed to make good. “Can’t you see that you’re driving me insane with your girl’s folly? You’re lucky because I haven’t brought officers up here and ordered your arrest for conspiracy. You belong in jail along with that fool of a Latisan.” His rage broke down all reserve. “Do you see what he did to me in New York?” He pointed to his bandaged face. “I’ll admit that he did have some sort of an excuse. You have none.”

“I have this,” she said. “Mr. Craig! I am Echford Flagg’s granddaughter.”

The shell of his skepticism was too thick!

“Do you think I am a complete fool? Flagg has no kin whatever!”

“How long have you been acquainted in these parts?”

“Three years,” he admitted; but he scowled his sentiment of utter disbelief in her claim.

“I am what I say I am,” she insisted. “Does that make any difference in your stand here to-day?”

“Not a bit!”

They surveyed each other for some time, the mists swirling slowly about their heads.

“If I shed any more tears and do any more pleading, sir, you’ll have good reasons for believing that I have no blood of the Flaggs in me! Do you still think I’m not what I say I am?”

He sliced the fog contemptuously with the edge of his palm. “You can’t talk that stuff to me!” She understood the futility of appeal; he turned from her and she looked for a moment on the bulging scruff of his obstinate neck.

“Very well, Mr. Craig! If talk can’t convince you, I’ll try another way!”

She ran along the string piece and the curtain of the fog closed in behind her.

During her absence from the deadwater there had been a rallying of forces.

All the men were called in from the headworks and the booms. In that following conference over the methods of the impending battle the riverjacks were able to express themselves with more sanguinary vehemence than would have been allowed in the presence of the girl.

They felt that the fog was a particularly fortunate circumstance, and with grim haste they set about taking advantage of the mask that would hide their advance. In single file they began their march down the river shore. There were men who bore cant dogs; others were armed with pike poles. But there was no intent to cut and thrust. It was to be a man’s fight with the flat of those weapons, with the tools of the job, honest thwacks given and taken. If one of them had ventured to pack an edged weapon or a gun he would have been shamed among his fellows.

Halfway to the dam they met the girl, hurrying back. She understood. She did not ask questions. But when they halted she explained her own movements.

“I took it on myself to go to Director Craig,” she said. “I was hoping I might be able to make him look at the thing in the right way. I did not apologize for you or for what has been done. If I could prevent this trouble I would make any sacrifice of myself.”

“We know that,” stated Vittum, and he was indorsed by whole-souled murmurs.

“But he would not listen to me. And all I can say to you men is this: God bless you and help you!”

They thanked her and then they stood aside from the path, offering her a way for retreat to the rear.

But she turned and walked on toward the dam. She shook her head when they protested. “No, I claim it as my right to go with you.” She was even brave enough to relieve the tenseness of the situation by a flash of humor. “I don’t believe one of those Comas cowards will get near enough to hurt any one of you. Haven’t we found them out already? But if anybody in this crew does get hurt, you’ll find me in full charge of the field hospital!”

There was no more talk after that; they trod softly on the duff under the trees; they dodged the ledges where their spike-soled boots might have rasped.

“Did you note where the main bunch is, miss?” whispered the old man at her side.

“I saw only one man except Craig. The director was out on the dam, near the gates.”

“Where the cap’n is, there the gang must be. We’ll use that tip.”

The men deployed as soon as they were in the open space near the end of the dam.

Even though they had had the protection of the fog up to that point, they knew their attack could not be made wholly a surprise; they were depending on their resoluteness and on being able to beat their way to a control of the gates.

Two men appeared to them in the fog.

“Now just a moment before you start something for which you’ll be sorry,” said one of the men. “I’m from the shire town and I’m attorney for the Comas corporation.” He pointed to a man at his side, who pulled aside his coat lapel and exhibited a badge. “This is a deputy sheriff. The courts are protecting this property by an injunction.”

“We’ve got only your word for that,” stated the old man.

“You have been warned in law. That’s all I’m here for. Now unless you keep off this property you must take the consequences.”

The lawyer and the officer marched away and were effaced by the fog.

“It’s too bad it ain’t a clear day,” remarked the spokesman to the crew. “We’d prob’ly be able to see the injunction that’s guarding this dam. But I ain’t going to let a lawyer tell me about anything I can’t see.”

“But there’s a thing I can see,” called one of the men who had gone skirmishing in the direction which the attorney and sheriff had taken. “Here’s a Comas crowd strung along the wings o’ the dam. I can see what they’re lugging! Come on, men! It’s a cant-dog, pick-pole fight.”

The attackers went into the fray with a yell.

The defenders of the dam were on higher ground; some of them thrust with the ugly weapons, others swung the strong staves and fenced. There was the smash of wood against wood, the clatter of iron. Men fell and rolled and came up! They who were bleeding did not seem to mind.

“They’re backing up,” yelled one of the Flagg crew. “Damn ’em, they’re getting ready to run, as usual!”

There did seem to be some sort of concerted action of retreat on the part of the defenders.

“Look out for tricks,” counseled Vittum, getting over the guard of an antagonist and felling him.

A few moments later the line of the defense melted; the Comas men dodged somewhere into the fog. The assailants had won to the higher level of the dam’s wing.

And then that level melted, too!

It was a well-contrived trap—boards covered with earth—a surface supported by props which had been pulled away by ropes. More than half the Flagg men tumbled into deep and muddy water and threshed helplessly in a struggling mass until the others laid down their weapons and pulled the drowning men out.

The attacking army retired for repairs and grouped on the solid shore. Except for the roar of the sluiceway and the gasping of the men who were getting breath there was something like calm after the uproar of the battle.

Out of the fog sounded the voice of Director Craig.

“We have given you your chance to show how you respect the law. What you have done after a legal warning is chalked up against you. Now that you have proclaimed yourselves as outlaws I have something of my own to proclaim to you. I am up here——”

A stentorian voice slashed in sharply, and Craig’s speech was cut off.

The voice came from one who was veiled in the fog, but they all knew it for Ward Latisan’s. “Yes, Craig, you’re here—here about five hours ahead of me because you had the cash to hire a special train. However, I know the short cuts for a man on horseback. I’m here, too!”

His men got a dim view of him in the mists; he loomed like a statue of heroic size on the horse. Then he flung himself off and came running down the shore.

He went straight to Lida and faced her manfully; but his eyes were humbly beseeching and his features worked with contrite apology. “I know now who you are, Miss Kennard. I don’t mean to presume, in the case of either you or your men. But will you allow me to speak to them?”

“Yes,” she assented, trying to hold her poise, helped by his manner.

He turned quickly from her eyes as if her gaze tortured him.

“I have been a coward, men. I ran away from my job. I’m ashamed of myself. I can’t square myself, but let me do my bit to-day.”

“I don’t know what you can do—with that gang o’ sneaks—after real men have had to quit,” growled Vittum, unimpressed.

“Maybe I’m sneak enough these days to know how to deal with ’em,” confessed Latisan, bitterly. “I stayed back there just now while the fight was on, but I knew a man fight wouldn’t get us anything from them.”

The men of the crew made no demonstration; they were awkwardly silent. The arrival of the deserter who confessed that he had been a coward did not encourage them at a time when they had failed ridiculously in their first sortie. He had ceased to be a captain who could inspire. He was one man more in a half-whipped crew, that was all.

They who had been dumped over the dam dragged slimy mud from their faces and surveyed him with sullen rebuke, remembering sharply that he had run away from the girl whose cause they had taken up.

The others, their faces marked with welts from blows, gazed and sniffed disparagingly.

But when he spoke out to the girl and her crew they listened with increasing respect because a quick shift to manly resolution impressed them.

His tone was tensely low and the noise of the tumbling water shielded his voice from eavesdroppers on the dam. “I stood back there in the fog and I heard what was said about an injunction. It’s bad business, running against the courts, men. That injunction hangs over the crew of Echford Flagg. I am not one of that crew. What I may do is on my own account, and I’ll stand the blame of it. All I ask is that you step aside and let me alone.”

“That ain’t the way we want to play this game,” declared Vittum.

“It isn’t a square game, men, and that’s why you mustn’t play it. It isn’t a riverman fight to-day. I came north from New York on the train with Craig. He brought a gang of gunmen with him. They’re hidden there in the fog. He means to go the limit, hoping to get by with it because you made the first attack. It’s up to me from now on.”

“What in the name of the horn-headed Sancho do you think you can do all alone against guns?” demanded Vittum, scornfully.

“Think?” repeated Latisan. “I’ve had plenty of time for thinking on my way up here. Let me alone, I say!”

Lida went to him and put her hand on his arm, and he trembled; it seemed almost like a caress. But by no tenderness in his eyes or his expression was he indicating that he considered himself back on his former footing with her.

“Miss Kennard, don’t keep me from trying to square myself with the Flagg crew, if I can. I’m not hoping that anything can square me with you; it’s past hope.”

He moved away, but she clung to him. “I must know what you intend to do. I’ll not accept a reckless sacrifice—no, I’ll not.”

“One evening in Adonia you gave me a lecture on duty and self-respect, Miss Kennard. I wish I’d taken your advice then. But that advice has never left my thoughts. I’m taking it now. I entreat you, don’t let me shame myself again. This is before men,” he warned her, in low tones. “Give me my fighting chance to make good with them—I beg you!”

He set back his shoulders, turned from her, and shouted Craig’s name till the Comas director replied.

“Craig, yon in the fog! Do you hear?”

“I hear you, Latisan!”

“Do our logs go through Skulltree by your decent word to us?”

“I’ll never give that word, my man!”

“Then take your warning! The fight is on—and this time I’m in it.”

“I’m glad to be informed. I have an announcement of my own to make. Listen!” He gave a command. Instantly, startlingly, in the fog-shrouded spaces of the valley rang out a salvo of gun fire. Many rifles spat. The sound rolled in long echoes along the gorge and was banged back by the mountain sides.

“Latisan, those bullets went into the air. If you and your men come onto this dam——”

“There’s only one kind of a fight up here among honest men—and you won’t stand for it, eh?”

“We’ve got your number! You’re declared outlaws. These men will shoot to kill.”

In the chorus from the Flagg crew there were howls and groans.

“And argument won’t bring to you any sense of reason and decency, will it?” demanded the drive master.

“We shall shoot to kill!” insisted the magnate of the Comas corporation.

“All right! If those are your damnable principles, I’ll go according to ’em.”

The girl caught his hands when he started away. “You must not! No matter what you are—no matter what you know I am, now. He’ll understand when we tell him—down there! There’s more to life than logs!”

“I have my plans,” he assured her, quietly. “You must realize how much this thing means to me now.”

The unnatural silence in the ranks of the Flagg crew, after Latisan’s declaration had been voiced, provoked Craig to venture an apprehensive inquiry. “You don’t intend to come ramming against these guns, do you?”

“Hold your guns off us! I’m going away. And these men are going with me.”

“That’s good judgment.”

“But I’m coming back! I won’t sneak up on you. That isn’t my style of fighting. You’ll hear me on the way. I’ll be coming down almighty hard on my heels. Remember that, Craig!”

Lida was at his side when he marched away up the shore toward the Flagg camp at the deadwater, and his men trailed him, mumbling their comments on the situation and wondering by what sort of miracle he would be able to prevail over armed gangsters who were paid to kill.

“I’m going to ask you all to excuse me for playing a lone hand from now on, boys,” said the drive master, standing in front of them when they were gathered at the camping place. “If they weren’t working a dirty trick with their guns, I’d have you along with me just as I intended in the past. But you have had your fun while I’ve been making a fool of myself! Give me my chance now!”

He bowed to Lida and walked up the shore alone. No one stayed him. The girl locked together her trembling fingers, straining her eyes till he disappeared.

He knew the resources and methods of the drive. Soon he came upon a bateau pulled high on the river bank. There were boxes in the bateau, covered by a tarpaulin whose stripings of red signaled danger. He found a sack in the craft. He pried open one of the boxes and out of the sawdust in which they were packed he drew brown cylinders and tucked them carefully into the sack. The cylinders were sticks of dynamite. The sack was capacious and he stuffed it full. The bag sagged heavily with the weight of the load when he swung it over his shoulder and started up the bank, away from the river.

When Latisan walked away from Lida the mist again had lent its illusion, and he seemed to become of heroic size before the gray screen hid him from her sight.

Vittum tried pathetically to relieve the stress of the silence.

“The last peek at him made him look big enough to do ’most anything he sets out to do.”

“Yes! But how can he fight them all single-handed?” She was pale and trembling.

“If I’m any judge, by the direction he took just now he has gone up and tapped our stock of canned thunder, miss. And if I ain’t mistook about his notions, he is going to sound just about as big as he looked when we got that last peek!”

The rivermen did not lounge on the ground, as they usually did when they were resting. They stood, tensely waiting for what Latisan’s manner of resolution had promised.

Lida asked no more questions; she was unable to control her tones. She had been given a hint of Ward’s intentions by what the old man had said about the “canned thunder.” She did not dare to be informed as to the probable details of those intentions; to know fully the nature of the risk he was running would have made the agony of her apprehensiveness unendurable.

It seemed to them, waiting there, that what Latisan had undertaken was never going to happen. They were not checking off the time in minutes; for them time was standing still. The far grumble of waters in the gorge merely accentuated the hush—did not break upon the profound silence. When a chickadee lilted near at hand the men started nervously and the girl uttered a low cry; even a bird’s note had power to trip their nervous tension.

The sound for which they were waiting came to them at last.

It was a sound with a thud in it!

Listeners who possessed an imagination would have found a suggestion of the crash of the hammer of Thor upon the mountain top.

“He looked big enough for that when he left us!” muttered the old man. He had never heard of the pagan divinity whom men called Thor. His mind was on the river gladiator who had declared that he would come down heavy on his heels when he started.

The brooding opacity which wrapped the scene made the location of the sound uncertain; but it was up somewhere among the hills. The echoes battered to and fro between the cliffs.

Before those echoes died the sound was repeated.

“He’s coming slow, but he’s come sure!” Vittum voiced their thoughts. “Them’s the footsteps of Latisan!”

On they came! And as they thrust their force upon the upper ledges there was a little jump of the earth under the feet of those who stood and waited.

There was something indescribably grim and bodeful in those isochronal batterings of the solid ground. The echoes distracted the thoughts—made the ominous center of the sounds a matter of doubt. That uncertainty intensified the threat of what was approaching the dam of Skulltree.

There were other sounds, after a few moments. Rifles were cracking persistently; but it was manifestly random firing.

The old man stepped to Lida and grasped her hand and held it. “Don’t be ’feared for him, miss. They’re only guessing! He’ll be knowing the ledges—every lift of ’em that’s betwixt him and them. They’ll never get him with their popguns. But he’ll get them!” he declared, with venom. “I wonder what Craig is thinking now, with his old bug eyes poking into that fog and doing him as much good as if he was stabbing a mill pond with his finger!”

The rifle fire died away, after a desultory patter of shots.

“They’re running!” said one of the crew. “They must be on the run!”

“You bet they’re running,” agreed the old man. “The Three C’s hasn’t got money enough to hire men, to stand up in front of what’s tromping down toward Skulltree! Heavier and heavier on his heels!”

Measuredly slow, inexorably persistent, progressed the footsteps of the giant blasts.

Latisan’s men needed no eye-proof in order to understand the method.

The drive master was hurling the dynamite sticks far in advance of himself and to right and to left, making his own location a puzzling matter. The men had seen him bomb incipient jams in that fashion, lighting short fuses and heaving the explosive to a safe distance.

The blasts were nearer and still nearer, and more frequent; the ground quaked under their feet; in the intervening silences they heard the whine and the rustle of upthrown litter in the air, the patterings and plops of debris raining into the spaces of the deadwater.

Behind the attack was the menace of the bodefully unseen—the lawlessness of the fantastically unprecedented.

“I don’t blame the fellers with the guns, if they have quit,” commented Vittum. “They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

There was a foe; he was on his way. They did not know what sort of ruin he purposed to wreak as the climax of his performance. Craig himself did not know, so he affirmed in reply to anxious queries, and the boss’s uncertainty and increasing consternation added to the peculiar psychological menace of the thing.

“Give us orders, Mr. Craig!” pleaded the captain of the guards. “Show us something to fight against. How many of ’em are there? Where are they?

“It’s that damnable Latisan, working single-handed. I’m sure of it. Go get him!”

“If you don’t get him, he’s going to blow up this dam,” stated the frightened lawyer.

A far-flung bomb of dynamite landed in the water and shot a geyser spraying against the fog pall.

“I’m taking that guess for gospel,” affirmed the chief gunman, wiping spray from his face. “Mr. Craig, you can’t expect us to hang on here, facing a thing like what’s coming!”

“Shoot him!” gasped the Comas director, but he was revolving on unsteady feet and the aimlessness of his gaze revealed that he had no definite idea of procedure; his incertitude wrecked all the courage of his supporters.

“It can’t be done, sir. Not in this fog! We’d better get ashore——”

“And let him wreck this dam?”

“If he’s going to wreck it, we’d better be off it.”

In his fear Craig became insulting, and that attitude ended his control of the situation. “You’re hired with money, you cowards! Now earn it!”

“This is where your money can’t buy something for you, Mr. Craig,” the captain of the gunmen declared, and then he led the retreat of his squad across Skulltree dam and into the woods on the far shore from the portentous, invisible peril.

And with dire extremity clearing for the moment his clouded vision, enabling him to look squarely at the matter of service and loyalty as he was able to command it, Craig knew that when his money failed him in the north country he had no other resource. He had blinked that fact in the past, having found that in ordinary affairs his dollars were dominant; but this extraordinary event was knocking out from under him all the props of confidence; he felt bitterly alone all of a sudden.

“We’ll have to vamoose off this dam,” declared the deputy sheriff.

“You’ve got your duty as an officer of the law,” shouted Craig, desperately feeling that in the case of this man, at least, he was making an appeal to something that was not covered by a money consideration.

“And I’ve got my common sense, too!” retorted the sheriff. He started away.

“So have I,” agreed the attorney, a lawyer who had obeyed a telegram and had joined the Craig expedition at the shire town of the county the night before.

“There’s an injunction!” stormed the field director.

“And there’s a lunatic with a sack of dynamite.” The lawyer crooked his arm across his face; a missile from the white void had splashed near by and water sprayed him. “You have told me that Latisan is no longer in Flagg’s service. I’m not depending now on law, Mr. Craig, I’m depending on my legs.”

He fled on the trail of the officer. But he left a pregnant thought in Craig’s mind: Latisan was not an employee of Echford Flagg. As a matter of fact, Craig owned to himself—his clarity of vision persisting in that time of overwhelming disaster, in the wreck of the hopes built on the power of his money—that the thing had now become almost wholly a personal, guerrilla warfare between himself and Latisan; and when the truth came out, if the matter were forced to that issue, Craig would lack the backing of authority fully as much as Latisan lacked it then, in his assault on property. The bluff of the guns had not worked! Craig was realizing that in hiring such men, as he had on the spur of the moment, his rage instead of his business good judgment had prevailed.

There were the repeated warnings of his superiors! The law would be obliged to investigate if Skulltree dam were wrecked, and would probe to the bottom of the moving reasons! Scandal, rank scandal! Craig could behold President Horatio Marlow as he sat that day with upraised, monitory forefinger, urging the touchy matter of credits and reputation. Craig could hear Dawes, the attorney: “That talk puts the thing up to you square-edged!”

Down from the mist-shrouded cliff was advancing a vengeful man who walked with the footsteps of thunder.

As Craig had looked ahead, basing his judgment on his experience with men and matters, it had seemed an easy matter to guard Skulltree with money and law. But in this astounding sortie of Latisan’s, Comas money was of no use and Craig was developing an acute fear of the law which, invoked, would take matters into court. Over and over, his alarmed convictions pounded on his caution.

He crouched under a rain of dirt and pebbles—then he ran away.

When he reached the far shore he jumped into a bateau that was pulled up there. With all the power of his lungs he yelled for rowers. He was obliged to confess loudly and unreservedly that he was giving up the fight—was seeking a way of stopping Latisan—before any of his men would come from the shelter of woods and fog and serve him.

He cursed them with the vigor of a master of galley slaves when the bateau was frothing along the deadwater. Then he bellowed into the fog, seeking a replying hail which would locate for him the Flagg crew. There was no repentance in him; his was a panic of compromise—a headlong rush to save himself from consequences. There was just as much uncertainty about what Latisan would do as there was about the dynamiter’s exact location in that fog.

Therefore, Craig announced himself with raucous staccato of: “I quit! I quit! Get that man! Tell him I quit!”

Men hailed from the shore and their voices guided the rowers. Craig leaped from the bow of the bateau and waded for the last few yards.

“Go stop him! Bring him here!” He tossed his arms.

“Huh!” scoffed old Vittum. “That’s a job for somebody who can tell which way the next stroke of lightning is heading.”

“I’ll give five hundred dollars to the man who’ll get to him and stop him before he smashes that dam!”

Craig added to the other visions which had been torturing him the possible catastrophe of the Comas logs roaring through past the mouth of a useless canal; he could look ahead still farther and see the grins of the sawmill men down the Noda, setting their own prices.

Once more Craig was finding that his money was getting him nothing that day, and his sense of helplessness was revealed by his sagging jowls and dolorous eyes; and he had always depended on what money could buy!

There was no alacrity for service shown by any man of Flagg’s crew.

“We’re not afraid,” said Felix Lapierre, breaking on Craig’s furious taunts. “We have promise’ to keep off and let him make good for himself—the lone hand—that’s it!”

“That’s it!” agreed Vittum.

“He has made good,” bleated the Comas man. “If he goes any farther it will only be bad.”

The dialogue was taking place disjointedly in the silences between the blasts. But Craig made himself heard above the next explosion. “He’s ripping hell out of that dam now. Get to him. A thousand dollars for the man who stops him!”

“No man in this crew needs any of your money!” Lida was defiantly in front of the Comas director. “But if you’re ready to listen to reason after this——”

She broke off and turned from him.

Before they realized that she had volunteered, she was away in the fog.

In a moment they heard her voice, raised in a thrilling call, appealing to the avenger.

“That’ll fetch him back—even if he was two miles deep in hell,” Craig was informed by one of the men. “It’s a lucky thing for the Three C’s that she’s on the job to-day.”

The Comas director stood holding to a tree. He shivered every time an explosion clanged its echoes from cliff to cliff.

And when, after a waiting that was agony, the dreadful bombardment ceased, Craig staggered to the bateau and sat down on its prow.

“I don’t blame you for looking that way,” said Vittum. “If Latisan had been driven to get that dam to-day you would have lost your drive for the canal; and, before God and your directors, you would have been responsible!”

When Latisan came out of the fog he had put away, somewhere, the sack which had held destruction.

When he had gone away from them, entering upon the perils of his undertaking, he was calm and resolute. Now that he was back, a champion who had prevailed single-handed, he was pale, trembling, and broken; they did not understand, at first.

Lida came with him, trying to soothe him, pleading and protesting; he constantly muttered broken speech and seemed to be trying to control a mood that was half frenzy. He left her and stumbled across the open space to Craig.

“Everything else you have done—it’s nothing as bad as this last. You sent her where you didn’t dare to go yourself. Good God! you Comas sneak, I ought to kill you where you sit! For all you cared you were making me a murderer of an innocent girl!”

“You had to be stopped. She went before I knew what she was going to do.”

“And if she hadn’t gone on her own account you would have tried to hire her to do it! It’s always a case of what you can buy with your money—that’s your style, Craig. Now you’re up against something you can’t buy. I’m still working alone—understand that? If you want to report me as an outlaw, go ahead! I’m giving you squarer warning than you gave me on the Tomah when you smashed the Latisans. If I smash that dam down there I’ll be smashing you! I’ll do it if you put as much as a toothpick in the way of the independent drives. I’ll blow the bottom out of your canal, in the bargain. And if you think you or your gang can locate me over there”—he pointed in the direction of the hills of the watershed between the rivers basins—“try it! I know every hole in those hills. I’ll keep bombing your drives till you can’t keep a man on the job. That’s the kind of an outlaw I am from now on.”

“It’s between us now, Latisan. I’ll own up to it. It has come to that.”

“Yes, it’s between renegades. I’m admitting that I’m one,” retorted Ward.

Craig stood up. If there was any of the spirit of Three C’s bluster left in him he was concealing it successfully.

“Latisan, all these men have heard me say that I quit. I lost my head and was pushing the thing too far, considering it from a business standpoint. Can I be any more honest than that?”

“It sounds all right, but I take stock in you only to the extent that you’ll stay in line if I stay on the job. I shall stay, as I have warned you.”

“Suppose we talk turkey about the common rights at Skulltree!”

“You’ll have to talk with Miss Kennard about her grandfather’s interests. I’m simply a chance comer here!”

Latisan walked away and leaned against a tree.

Craig approached Lida. “We have already had some talk about the matter, I believe. I retreat from the position I have taken. Evidently we must make mutual allowances. What have you thought out about the details of a plan to let your logs through?”

The girl did not reply; she had no plans; she did not understand such matters.

“We’ll have to decide on the head of water you’ll need, and I take it you’ll allow us enough for the canal so that we can save our drive.” Craig was trying hard to offer compromise, but he was not able to repress all his sarcastic venom. “There’s the matter of sorting and the other details. I’ll have to ask for your views, Miss Kennard, because any misunderstanding may be dangerous, so I have been informed.”

She looked helplessly from Craig to Latisan. The latter’s aloofness, which he had displayed ever since he first appeared to her that day, his present peculiar relationship to the affair, his insistence that he must serve alone, made her problem more complex. Her vivid yearning was to give all into Latisan’s keeping, but she did not dare to propose it.

She looked at Vittum and Felix, seeking advice. The French Canadian smiled and shrugged his shoulders, evading responsibility. He did not understand such matters, either.

“I suppose I might be able to dig up some sort o’ general ideas, give me time enough,” said Vittum, when her eyes questioned him anxiously. “But I’m sort of hazy right now.” He winked at her and ducked his head to indicate Latisan.

“I’m afraid!” she phrased the lament with a doleful motion of her lips rather than with spoken words.

“It can’t be said but what he’ll be impartial—the best one to ask,” mumbled Vittum, stepping close to her. “He ain’t hired by either side, as I understand it!” He was ironic, but there was a suggestion which she grasped desperately. She went to Latisan. Their conversation was in an undertone and the bystanders did not hear the words.

When she returned to Craig, Lida, confident in her new poise, reassured, informed in a fashion which fortified her self-reliance, met the Comas man with a demeanor which did credit to the granddaughter of Echford Flagg.

“I have not tried to involve Mr. Latisan in any way. I have asked his advice as an expert.” She looked straight into the shifting eyes of the Comas director. “Last fall he was at Tech, and took a special course in hydraulic engineering. You know that, of course, Mr. Craig!” She paused till he bowed to admit the truth with which she insisted on displacing the lie which had followed Latisan in the north country. “And Mr. Latisan has had a great deal of practical experience on his own drives. It seems absolutely necessary to have a sorting gap here, with men of both crews handling the logs. When our timber is through the sluiceway—the daily run of logs—we are to be given a head of water which will take us through the gorge. As to the logs upriver—the rear—we are willing to join drives with you, Mr. Craig, so that we may use all the water together.” She set back her shoulders. “That plan will serve us this season. For another season the independents will have laws of their own from the legislature. I’m quite sure that the independents have waked up and know now what some special legislative acts can do for their interests.”

“I beg your pardon for breaking in, Miss Kennard,” said Latisan, from his distance. “But this seems to be the time for me to say to Mr. Craig, in the presence of witnesses, that the same plan goes for the Tomah region. The independents over there can’t be licked, sir.”

“Nor the Latisans,” shouted somebody in the Flagg crew.

That friendly corroboration of the young man’s inmost determination served as a challenge. The drive master walked toward Craig and shook his fist. “No, nor the Latisans! We have a sawmill, and we’re not worrying about the logs to feed it. But you understand, Mr. Craig, that the independents must have gangway on the river for their cut. And we know how to get gangway!”

He went back to his tree and resumed his whittling.

“To me the future looks very promising,” said Lida. “We’re all a little disturbed now, Mr. Craig, but we’re coming to a perfect understanding. Don’t you think so?”

Craig did not reply at once, and she added, with ingenuous affectation of desiring to bring forward reasons for his agreement, “If the Comas company does join drives with us you will have the help of a perfectly wonderful crew, Mr. Craig. I’m told that we’re a week or ten days ahead of the usual time—and the men have never seemed to be considering mere wages!”

The Three C’s director rolled his eyes, avoiding her candidly provoking regard. He shifted his gaze to Latisan, who had turned his back on the group and was still whittling placidly, propped against a tree by his shoulder. “Wonderful teamwork,” growled the Comas man. “But sticking out for anything else will be a fool stunt. Miss Kennard, there’s a lawyer over there in the woods, somewhere! The thing to do now seems to be to hunt him up so that he can help us to pass papers of agreement.” He swung his hand to indicate the bateau. “Will you go with me?”

She hesitated. Then she smiled amiably on Craig. “I think I’d rather walk along the path, sir. I’ll meet you and the lawyer at this end of the dam.”

Craig trudged down to the boat and was swept away into the fog.

Latisan did not turn; he kept on whittling.

”Mr. Latisan!“ she invited. ”May I have your company to the dam? I’m sorry to trouble you, but I may be obliged to refer to you for further advice.“

”I feel called on to remark,“ said old Vittum, always an irrepressible commentator when comment seemed to be necessary, speaking after Latisan and Lida had walked away into the mist—”I’ll say to all that she knows her business.“

”But it was Latisan who advised her,“ objected a literalist.

”Hell! I ain’t speaking of this drive,“ snapped the old man. ”I’m complimenting her on a job where she doesn’t need anybody’s advice!“