CHAPTER XXV
SHARPENING TEETH ON PULASKI BRITT'S WHETSTONE
"The people in the city felt the shock of it that day. And they said, in solemn gloom, 'The drive is in the boom, And O'Connor's drawn his wages; clear the track and give him room.'"
For a long time they rode side by side on the jumper without a word. Mr.Ide decided that his reticent companion was pondering a plan for theapproaching interview, and was careful not to interrupt the train ofthought. He was infinitely disappointed and not a little vexed when Wadeturned to him at last and inquired, with plain effort to make his voicecalm, whether John Barrett had recovered sufficiently to go home.
"He? He went two weeks ago--he and his girl," snapped the little man,impatiently.
After a moment he began to dig at the buttons of his fur coat, anddipped his hand into his breast-pocket. He brought out a letter.
"Here's a line Barrett's girl left to be sent in to you the firstchance." He met the young man's reproachful gaze boldly. "When a man'sgot real business to attend to," he snorted, "he ain't to blame if hedisremembers tugaluggin' a love-letter." He gave the missive into Wade'shands, and went on, discontentedly: "What kind of a crazy-headedperformance was it those girls was up to when they came up into thesewoods? I've had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, andprobably I couldn't, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. Shehas her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her," hegrumbled.
"I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide's movements, evenwith her father. Miss Barrett's affairs are wholly her own. May I readmy letter?"
"May you read it?" blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of thisconventional request. "What in tophet do you think I've got to do withyour readin' your own letters?" And he subsided into offended silence,seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with eventsas they were disposing themselves.
Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in hisbare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand hadrested.
"MY DEAR DWIGHT,--We are going home. The darkness has not lifted from us. For my light and my comfort I look into the north, where I know your love is shining. My sister was sitting by my father's side when I returned, and he was awake from his long dream and knew her, but he had not spoken the truth to her, and if she knows she has not told. And the cloud of it all is over us, and I cannot speak to him or open my heart to him. He did not even ask where I had been. It is as though he feared one word would dislodge the avalanche under which he shrinks. And I have to write this of my father! So we are going home. Love me. I need all your love. Take all of mine in return."
When Wade folded it he found Rodburd Ide studying his face with shrewdside glance.
"Have you any idea what 'Stumpage John' is goin' to do with the otherone--the left-hand one?" he inquired, blandly. "Favor each otherconsiderably, don't they? It told the story to me the first time I sawthem together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can'thardly blame John for not takin' the left-hand one out with him, same asmy girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, Ireckon."
"Did he say anything to--" stammered Wade, and hesitated.
"Nothin' to me," returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. "Didn't haveto. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank formore'n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color ofthe Hullin' Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into theback office of my store. I wasn't tryin' to listen or overhear, youunderstand, but I heard him stutter somethin' about takin' her out ofthe woods and puttin' her in school, and she braced back and put herhands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to hell."
"What?" shouted Wade, in utter astonishment.
"Oh, not in them words," corrected Ide. "But that's what it come to sofar as meanin' went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked outand back to my house."
He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, asthough this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: "She's still atmy house, and the girl says she's goin' to stay there--so I guess thatsettles it. Now let's get down to some business that amounts tosomethin'! What are you goin' to say to Pulaski Britt?"
But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, handsbetween his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridgedunder the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence.
When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary tosearch long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. Theyheard him bellowing hoarsely, and a moment later were looking down onhim from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in thedeep snow, one of them "cast" and tangled in the harness. The teamsterstood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spottedwith blood.
"You've let that horse calk himself, you beef-brained son of abladder-fish!" roared Britt. "You ain't fit to drive a rockin'-horsewith wooden webbin's!" He dove upon the struggling animal, and, hookinghis great fists about the bit-rings, dragged the horse to his feet."Stripped to the fetlocks!" mourned the owner. He surveyed the bleedingleg and whirled on the teamster. "That's the second pair you've put outof business for me in a week. Me furnishing hundred-and-fifty-dollarhorses for you to paint the snow with!" He ploughed across to where theman stood holding the reins, and struck him full in the face, and thefellow went down like a log, blood flying from his face. "Mix some ofyour five-cent blood with blood that's worth something!" he yelped. "Ifthere's got to be rainbow-snow up this way, I know how to furnish itcheaper."
"That's a nice, interestin' gent down there for you to tackle just nowon your business proposition," observed Ide, sourly. "Now, suppose youuse common-sense, and turn around and go back to Enchanted!"
But the Honorable Pulaski suddenly heard the jangle of theirjumper-bell, and stared up at them.
"Gettin' lessons on how to run a crew, Ide?" he asked. And seeing thatthe teamster was up and fumbling blindly at the tangled harness, headvanced up the slope. "I 'ain't ever forgiven you for takin' Tommy Eyeaway from me. That man's a _teamster_! It was a nasty trick, and perhapsyour young whelp of a partner there has found out enough about woodslaw by this time to understand it."
"Mr. Britt--" began Wade.
"I don't want to talk to you at all!" snapped the tyrant, flapping hishand in protest.
"Nor I to you!" retorted Wade, in sudden heat. "But as Mr. Ide's partnerI have taken charge of the woods end of our operation, and I've gotbusiness to talk with you. We haven't begun to land our logs yetbecause--"
"It's a wonder to me that you've got any cut down, you dude!" snortedBritt, contemptuously.
"Because we haven't had an understanding about the drive," went on theyoung man, trying to keep his temper. "Now, about logs coming downEnchanted and into Jerusalem--"
"You'll pay drivin' fees for every stick."
"And you'll take our drive with yours?"
"No, sir. I won't put the iron of a pick-pole into a log with your markon it!" declared Britt.[5]
[Footnote 5: Lest the remarkable attitude of the Honorable Pulaski D.Britt be considered an improbable resource of fiction, the authorhastens to state that the Maine legislature, in considering the repealof a log-driving charter, had exactly this situation submitted to it.]
"Mr. Britt," said Wade, his voice trembling in the stress of hisemotions, "as an operator in this section, as a man who is asking youstraight business questions as courteously as I know how, I am entitledto decent treatment, and it will be better for all of us if I get it."
"Threats, hey?" demanded Britt, malignantly.
"No threats, sir. If you won't take our drive for the usual fees andguarantee its delivery, will you let us drive it independently?"
"Not with my water--and you'll pay fees just the same!"
"_Your_ water! Who made you the boss of God's rains and rivers? Have youan
y charter, giving you the right to turn the State waters of BlunderLake from their natural outlet and keep everybody else from using them?"
Britt clacked his finger in his hard palm and blurted contemptuous"Phuh!" through his beard.
"Show me any such charter, Mr. Britt, or tell me where to find therecord of it, and I'll accept the law."
"Hell on your law!" cried the tyrant of the Umcolcus.
"Aren't you willing to let the law decide it, Mr. Britt?"
"Hell on your law!"
Three times more did Wade, his face burning in his righteous anger, hisvoice trembling with passion, ask the question. Three times did theHonorable Pulaski Britt fling those four words of maddening insult backat him. And Wade, his face going suddenly white, snatched the reins fromIde's hands, struck the horse, whirled him into the trail, and droveaway madly. Down the aisles of the forest followed those four words aslong as Pulaski Britt felt that their iteration could reach the ears oflisteners.
"So you finished your business with him, did you?" inquired Ide, atlast, allowing himself, as a true prophet, a bit of a sneer.
"I got just what I went after," snarled the young man. "I got in fourwords the fighting rules of these woods, explained by the head devil ofthem all, and, by ----, if that's the only way for an honest man to savehis skin up here, they can have the fight on those lines! Take thereins, Mr. Ide; I want to straighten this thing in my mind."
Little passed between them on the return journey, but they talked farinto the night, leaning towards each other across the little splinttable in the office camp.
The next morning they climbed the side of Enchanted, following the mainroad that had been swamped to Enchanted Stream. On the upper slopes theycame upon the log-yards, and heaps of great, stripped spruces piledready for the sleds. Farther up the slopes they heard the monotonous"whush-wish" of the cross-cut saws and the crackling crash of fallingtrees.
In the Maine woods it is not the practice to haul to landings until thetree crop is practically all down and yarded on the main roads. Thispractice in the case of the Enchanted operation that winter wasprovidential; for in the conference of the night before Rodburd Ide andhis partner had definitely abandoned Enchanted Stream. That decisionleft them the alternative of Blunder Stream. It was the only plan thatfitted with Rodburd Ide's new hopes based on the log contract in hisbreast-pocket. For months he had dimly foreseen this crisis withoutclear conception as to how it was to be met. But the possibilities ofthe gamble had fascinated him.
In his calculations he had tried to keep prudence to the fore. But hehad been waiting so long that at last prudence became dizzy in the swirlof possibilities. He had never intended to make Dwight Wade his merecat's-paw. But the vehement courage of that sturdy young man, asdisplayed in the battle of Castonia, had touched something in RodburdIde's soul. All through his quiet life he had seen might and masterymake money out of the woods. And so at last he himself ventured,trusting much to the might and mastery he found in this self-reliantyoung gentleman whom Fate had flung into his life. Gasping at theboldness of it, he was willing that the whole winter's cut of theEnchanted operation should be landed upon Blunder Stream. That there wasa way to get their water he admitted to himself, but he did not dare tothink much upon the means. Dwight Wade, driven by fierce anger againstPulaski Britt, who blocked his way to the girl whom his own hands couldwin but for Britt, smote the splint table and declared that there shouldbe a spring flood in Blunder Stream.
"And if you fear lawsuits, being a man of property, Mr. Ide, you shouldnot know what I intend to do. You may be held as a partner. Dissolvethat partnership. You may be held as an employer. Discharge me when thislog-cut is landed. Protect yourself. I have only my two hands for themto attach."
The little man blinked at him admiringly, and then patted his shoulder.
"You needn't tell me what you intend to do. You are the one for thisend, and I can trust you. But when it comes to responsibility and thelaw, Wade, if those thieves try it on, after all they've stolen, you'llfind Rod Ide right with you. You're my partner, and you'll stay mypartner," declared Ide, stoutly.
He repeated it as they swung around the upper granite dome of Enchanted,and looked down the western slope into Blunder valley.
"There's the place for your main road, Wade," he said--"down thatshoulder there! Swamp a half-mile of the steep pitch and you'll comeinto the Cameron road, and it will take you to the stream. You'll needabout fifteen hundred feet of snub-line for that sharp incline there,and I'll have it up to you by the time you are ready for it. Put theswale hay to the rest of the pitches. It will trig better than gravel.Don't let 'em put a chain round a runner. You want to keep your road sosmooth that every load of logs will go down there like a boy down a barnrollway. Sprinkle your levels and keep 'em glare ice. By ----, it's abeauty of an outlook for a landing-job! Cut your high slopes this trip.Keep your logs above the level of that shoulder, and every hoss teamwill make a four-turn day of it. We'll save a dollar a thousand on thelanding-proposition alone, over and above the Enchanted road chance! Andup there--" He gazed to the north up the valley over the wooded ridges,and then hushed his voice, as though there lay somewhere in that bluedistance a thing that he feared.
"Up there is a lake of water, Mr. Ide, that God designed to flow downthis valley, and it's going to find its own channel again--somehow! Ihope that doesn't sound like cheap boasting. It's only my idea of theright."
He led the way back around the granite dome above the spruce benches,and the old man followed in silence.
Two hours later Rodburd Ide was off and away for Castonia, hisjumper-bell jangling its echoes among the trees. He had hope in hisheart and a letter in his pocket. The hope was his own. The letter wasaddressed to John Barrett's daughter, and the superscription had broughta little scowl to the brows of the magnate of Castonia. Somehow itseemed like communication with the enemy. But Dwight Wade, writing it inthe stillness of the night, while the little man snored in his bunk, hadseemed in his own imaginings to be putting into that letter, as one laysaway for safe keeping in a casket, all that heart and soul held of loveand candor and tenderness. It was as though he intrusted those into herhands to preserve for him against the day when he might take them backinto life and living once more. Just now they did not seem to belong tothis life on Enchanted; they did not harmonize with the bitterconditions. He pressed down the envelope's seal with the fantasticreflection that he was sending out of the conflict witnesses in whosepresence he might stand ashamed.
Therefore, it was not treason that Rodburd Ide bore in the pocket of hisbig fur coat. Dwight Wade had sent tenderer emotions to the rear. Hestood at the front, ready to meet iron with iron and fire with fire.