Blazed Trail Stories, and Stories of the Wild Life Part 3

"You can't take that whiskey into camp," said Darrell.

"Oh, I guess so," replied Silver Jack, easily, hoping for the peaceful solution. "There ain't enough to get anybody full. Have a taster, Darrell; it's pretty good stuff."

"I mean it," repeated Darrell. "You got to go back." He seized the horses' bits and began to lead them in the reversing circle.

"Hold on there!" cried Silver Jack. "You let them horses alone! You d.a.m.n little runt! Let them alone I say!" The robe was kicked aside, and Silver Jack prepared to descend.

Richard Darrell twisted his feet out of his snow-shoe straps. "You can't take that whiskey into camp," he repeated simply.

"Now look here, Darrell," said the other in even tones, "don't you make no mistake. I ain't selling this whiskey; I'm _giving_ it away. The law can't touch me. You ain't any right to say where I'll go, and, by G.o.d, I'm going where I please!"

"You got to go back with that whiskey," replied Darrell.

Silver Jack threw aside his coat, and advanced. "You get out of my way, or I'll kick you out, like I done at Bay City."

In an instant two blows were exchanged. The first marked Silver Jack's bronze-red face just to the left of his white eyebrow. The second sent Richard Darrell gasping and sobbing into the snow-bank ten feet away. He arose with the blood streaming from beneath his mustache. His eager, nervous face was white; his chipmunk eyes narrowed; his great hands, held palm backward, clutched spasmodically. With the stealthy motion of a cat he approached his antagonist, and sprang. Silver Jack stood straight and confident, awaiting him. Three times the aggressor was knocked entirely off his feet. The fourth he hit against the cutter body, and his fingers closed on the axe which all voyagers through the forest carry as a matter of course.

"He's gettin' ugly. Come on, Hank!" cried Silver Jack.

The other man, with a long score to pay the walking boss, seized the iron starting-bar, and descended. Out from the inscrutable white forest murder breathed like a pestilential air. The two men talked about it easily, confidently.

"You ketch him on one side, and I'll come in on the other," said the man named Hank, gripping his short, heavy bar.

The forest lay behind; the forest, easily penetrable to a man in moccasins. Richard Darrell could at any moment have fled beyond the possibility of pursuit. This had become no mere question of a bar-room fisticuff, but of life and death. He had begged abjectly from the pain of a cuff on the ear; now he merely glanced over his shoulder toward the safety that lay beyond. Then, with a cry, he whirled the axe about his head and threw it directly at the second of his antagonists. The flat of the implement struck heavily, full on the man's forehead. He fell, stunned. Immediately the other two precipitated themselves on the weapons. This time Silver Jack secured the axe, while Darrell had to content himself with the short, heavy bar. The strange duel recommenced, while the horses, mildly curious, gazed through the steam of their nostrils at their warring masters.

Overhead the ravens of the far north idled to and fro. When the three men lay still on the trampled snow, they stooped, nearer and nearer.

Then they towered. One of the men had stirred.

Richard Darrell painfully cleared his eyes and dragged himself to a sitting position, sweeping the blood of his shallow wound from his forehead. He searched out the axe. With it he first smashed in the whiskey jugs. Then he wrecked the cutter, chopping it savagely until it was reduced to splinters and twisted iron. By the time this was done, his antagonists were in the throes of returning consciousness. He stood over them, dominant, menacing.

"You hit th' back trail," said he, "d.a.m.n quick! Don't you let me see you 'round these diggings again."

Silver Jack, bewildered, half stunned, not understanding this little cowardly man who had permitted himself to be kicked from the saloon, rose slowly.

"You stand there!" commanded Darrell. He opened a pocket-knife, and cut the harness to bits, leaving only the necessary head-stalls intact.

"Now git!" said he. "Pike out!--fer Beeson Lake. Don't you stop at no Camp Twenty-eight!"

Appalled at the prospect of the long journey through the frozen forest, Silver Jack and his companion silently led the horses away. As they reached the bend in the trail, they looked back. The sun was just setting through the trees, throwing the illusion of them gigantic across the eye. And he stood there huge, menacing, against the light--the dominant spirit, Roaring d.i.c.k of the woods, the incarnation of Necessity, the Man defending his Work, the Foreman!

III

THE SCALER

Once Morrison & Daly, of Saginaw, but then lumbering at Beeson Lake, lent some money to a man named Crothers, taking in return a mortgage on what was known as the Crothers Tract of white pine. In due time, as Crothers did not liquidate, the firm became possessed of this tract.

They hardly knew what to do with it.

The timber was situated some fifty miles from the railroad in a country that threw all sorts of difficulties across the logger's path, and had to be hauled from nine to fifteen miles to the river. Both Morrison and Daly groaned in spirit. Supplies would have to be toted in to last the entire winter, for when the snow came, communication over fifty miles of forest road would be as good as cut off. Whom could they trust among the lesser foremen of their woods force? Whom could they spare among the greater?

At this juncture they called to them Tim Shearer, their walking boss and the greatest riverman in the State.

"You'll have to 'job' her," said Tim, promptly.

"Who would be hired at any price to go up in that country on a ten-mile haul?" demanded Daly, sceptically.

"Jest one man," replied Tim, "an' I know where to find him."

He returned with an individual at the sight of whom the partners glanced toward each other in doubt and dismay. But there seemed no help for it.

A contract was drawn up in which the firm agreed to pay six dollars a thousand, merchantable scale, for all saw-logs banked at a rollway to be situated a given number of miles from the forks of Ca.s.s Branch, while on his side James Bourke, better known as the Rough Red, agreed to put in at least three and one-half million feet. After the latter had scrawled his signature he lurched from the office, softly rubbing his hairy freckled hand where the pen had touched it.

"That means a crew of wild Irishmen," said Morrison.

"And _that_ means they'll just slaughter the pine," added Daly. "They'll saw high and crooked, they'll chuck the tops--who are we going to send to scale for 'em?"

Morrison sighed. "I hate to do it: there's only Fitz can make it go."

So then they called to them another of their best men, named FitzPatrick, and sent him away alone to protect the firm's interests in the depths of the wilderness.

The Rough Red was a big broad-faced man with eyes far apart and a bushy red beard. He wore a dingy mackinaw coat, a dingy black-and-white checked-flannel s.h.i.+rt, dingy blue trousers, tucked into high socks and lumberman's rubbers. The only spot of colour in his costume was the flaming red sash of the _voyageur_ which he pa.s.sed twice around his waist. When at work his little wide eyes flickered with a baleful, wicked light, his huge voice bellowed through the woods in a torrent of imprecations and commands, his splendid muscles swelled visibly even under his loose blanket-coat as he wrenched suddenly and savagely at some man's stubborn cant-hook stock. A hint of reluctance or opposition brought his fist to the mark with irresistible impact. Then he would pluck his victim from the snow, and kick him to work with a savage jest that raised a laugh from everybody--excepting the object of it.

At night he stormed back through the forest at the head of his band, shrieking wild blasphemy at the silent night, irreverent, domineering, bold, with a certain tang of Irish good-nature that made him the beloved of Irishmen. And at the trail's end the unkempt, ribald crew swarmed their dark and dirty camp as a band of pirates a galleon.

In the work was little system, but much efficacy. The men gambled, drank, fought, without a word of protest from their leader. With an ordinary crew such performances would have meant slight accomplishment, but these wild Irishmen, with their bloodshot eyes, their ready jests, their equally ready fists, plunged into the business of banking logs with all the abandon of a carouse--and the work was done.

Law in that wilderness was not, saving that which the Rough Red chose to administer. Except in one instance, penalty more severe than a beating there was none, for the men could not equal their leader in breaking the greater and lesser laws of morality. The one instance was that of young Barney Mallan, who, while drunk, mishandled a horse so severely as to lame it. Him the Rough Red called to formal account.

"Don't ye know that horses can't be had?" he demanded, singularly enough without an oath. "Come here."

The man approached. With a single powerful blow of a starting-bar the Rough Red broke one of the bones of his tibia.

"Try th' lameness yerself," said the Rough Red, grimly. He glared about through the dimness at his silent men, then stalked through the door into the cook-camp. Had he killed Barney Mallan outright, it would have been the same. No one in the towns would have been a word the wiser.

On Thanksgiving Day the entire place went on a prolonged drunk. The Rough Red distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through the door into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplis.h.i.+ng this delicate jest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers of his maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen little fires that the coals had started, s.h.i.+fted the intoxicated Mallan's leg out of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from that roaring h.e.l.l-hole to the fringe of the solemn forest. And this brings us to FitzPatrick.

FitzPatrick was a tall, slow man, with a face built square. The lines of his brows, his mouth, and his jaw ran straight across; those of his temples, cheeks, and nose straight up and down. His eye was very quiet and his speech rare. When he did talk, it was with deliberation. For days, sometimes, he would e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e nothing but monosyllables, looking steadily on the things about him.

He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn, after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. The camp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have been identified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable. FitzPatrick entered the sleeping-camp, stood his slender scaling-rule in the corner, and peered about him through the dusk of a single lamp.

He saw a round stove in the centre, a littered and dirty floor, bunks filled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there, old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row of hard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with the light of the dare-devil in their eyes.

"Where is the boss?" asked FitzPatrick, steadily.

The Rough Red lurched his huge form toward the intruder.