Then I'll Come Back to You Part 28

"You need a nurse," he stated sulkily at last. He finished the light with a vicious blast. "You need a chaperon!"

But once again, just before he slept, Steve heard him mutter to himself, less injuredly, as he heaved over in his bunk.

"This has been a very busy evening," he opined.

CHAPTER XV

LAW AND LUMBER

Rain fell the following fortnight in a steady downpour that did not cease, even for an hour. Ragged, smokelike clouds hung over the valley at Thirty-Mile, dragged so low by their own weight that they not only hid the upper peaks but shrouded the lower ridges as well. They drove by in interminable files of grey, making sluiceways of every cut and drenching continually the men of the construction gang who, in spite of the chill of that downfall, still sweated at their labor. But both Steve and Fat Joe, for all that they caught each day a deeper note in the hoa.r.s.e complaints of those same men--a note no less ominous than was that newer, hoa.r.s.er one of the swollen river--nevertheless were duly thankful that the leaden sky had at least a tinsel lining. It might have snowed.

Each morning now as he stepped outside the shack Joe turned methodically toward the north, to c.o.c.k his head and squint and sniff, questioningly. He was waiting for the first flurry which would herald those months of bitter whiteness to follow; and each morning his short nod was a brief of satisfaction at the continued height of the mercury.

They made the most of that open fall, bad as was the weather. Without pause they toiled forward those wet days, or rather backward, for they had stopped, there at the edge of the river, in the work on that section of the rail-bed which, none too even-surfaced but almost arrow-straight, ran from the upper end of their valley to the very mouth of the Reserve Company's country.

A month earlier it had been Steve's plan to span that mile or so of swamp and bridge the river before the cold weather set in. Nor was his altered order of campaign due in any way to the storm which had raised the river and made of the alder-dotted stretch of flat bog-meadow an oozing, quaking mora.s.s. It no longer represented merely a positive not too alluring problem in engineering--that strip of swamp and open water. It had taken on a newer, strategic importance. And the change in Steve's plans, so far as the work at Thirty-Mile was concerned, was as much due to the news which Fat Joe brought home with him, one night toward the end of the next week, as it was the result of the interview which he had held with Hardwick Elliott himself.

Joe had been a whole day absent on the north end of the line. Alone he had been over every foot of that all but completed stretch which ended at the border of swampland, there at headquarters, troubling himself not at all over the unevenness of the roadbed, satisfied entirely with the surety he gained with every inspected mile, that a train-load of logs or a dozen train-loads, would stay on the rails when the rails were laid, and the day came to set wheels rolling. But the further report he brought back with him was far less rea.s.suring.

"I wonder," Joe mused aloud that night, "I wonder, now, why any man who knows anything about handling timber should go to work bothering himself with skidways leadin' down to the river, when he knows, as well as Harrigan should know, that it ain't comin' out that way? It don't seem good sense nor logic to me, unless----"

He stopped there and left his own opinion unfinished. Since the evening Harrigan had stepped out of the main bunkhouse and disappeared, black rage in his face and a promise to return upon his lips, that lumberman's red head had been conspicuous only because it was absent from the landscape. So far Harrigan had failed to reappear and Fat Joe's method of apprising his chief of his return to the Reserve Company's pay-roll was distinctly characteristic. But Steve's reception of the news was little more than listless. He seemed to change the subject entirely.

"I don't see why it wouldn't be just as easy, or easier," he replied, "to cross here on pilings, practically the whole distance, as it would be to fill and bridge, too. And if we were to look at it in that light, then why wouldn't it be still easier to drive those piles, say next February or March, while the swamp is still crusted over and hard.

It would afford us some sort of a footing to work on then, other than black ooze and lilypads. Wouldn't it seem so to you?"

Garry Devereau's agreement was quick with enthusiasm, but Fat Joe who was better schooled in those slow-syllabled discussions, barely nodded his head.

"We'd still have that track north of here to lay," he advised, "when we work in from the south with steel."

"Surely," Steve admitted. "Of course. But wouldn't that be a better bet than to stand to see our embankment and bridge----"

He broke off there, just as Joe had hesitated a moment before. The undercurrent of meaning for which the latter's ears were waiting came to the surface, however, when Steve began again.

"Suppose, Joe," he pursued lazily, "suppose you had contracted with a railroad--an infant road too young even to be named--to move for you more timber than either of us will ever own; contracted in apparent good faith, when all along in your heart you were certain that the railroad itself would never be able to fulfill its half of the bargain?

Granting such a state of affairs, Joe, what do you suppose you would do?"

Garry was not quite certain that evening which was uppermost--the earnestness or quiet amus.e.m.e.nt which surely underlay that question. He only knew that both existed. But Fat Joe understood. As he had done many times before now he wrinkled his forehead and pondered.

"Maybe I'd hire me a red-headed river-dog," came his answer pat.

"Maybe I'd hire me a bully-boy boss of white water, to build me some skidways to the nearest floodwater, so's I could teach the infant railroad you mention that business was business, contract or no contract."

"Of course you would!" Steve agreed instantly, and he might have been complimenting a first primer favorite so pleased was his tone. "Of course you would. I'm afraid that was too easy for you, wasn't it, Joe? But now suppose you were bent on proving to everybody, and particularly to those who had fathered it, what an unfortunate weakling this immature, unnamed child of constructive silence really was. In that event how do you figure you'd conduct yourself?"

Joe smiled oddly, a little balefully. It was magic-quick, that change in his expression--as swift as was the thought behind it.

"I'd have my logs all cut and ready to haul as an excuse, wouldn't I?"

he inquired with simulated anxiety. "Could I tell folks, through the newspapers for instance, that I wasn't strong for letting my timber lie for the grubs to lunch on, if I had to square myself?"

"Quite naturally." Until then Steve's face had kept its preternatural gravity. He grinned ever so faintly now. "Very naturally you'd want to save your winter cut."

"Then I'd like to have 'em build a bridge somewheres along the river I aimed to drive--a bridge and a nice dirt embankment, all dressed up with rails and ties and things on top. I'm allowed to suppose I've got an awful long standin' score, ain't I, along with all this timber?

Well, that's what I'd like to have 'em do, then. And when I opened her up, a few miles up river, and she began to roar; when that first head of water hit the bridge and the sticks begun to grind, I suppose I'd take up my position on the bank where I could watch real well. I'd light me a long, black cigar and murmur, sort of languid and sympathetic, 'There goes your railroad, gents!'"

Before the finish of that speech was reached Garry had begun to follow.

When Joe drew down one corner of his mouth and puffed aloft an imaginary cloud of smoke by way of added vividness, his own laughter mingled with Steve's quieter appreciation. But his contribution to the conversation was not as complacent as Fat Joe's had been.

"Such a move in itself would be outside the letter of the contract," he expostulated. "Why, they wouldn't dare do anything; they wouldn't dare to begin driving the river before your time was up, much less do damage to your completed work. What excuse--what legal excuse--could they give, even though they were morally certain that you were bound to fail?"

Very slowly, almost pityingly, Joe turned toward him.

"Legal!" he droned. "Moral?" And then he laughed his clear tenor outburst which barely escaped being a giggle. "Dear child, judiciously speaking, law and lumber and morals and mill-feet don't mix. They don't mix at all, in this section of the country. If they wanted to bother their heads with an alibi, they could say it was top of flood, and they weren't eager to be hung up, just because a bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned conductor promised 'em a through express in the morning. They could say-- But what good would explanations do us, huh, if they sent a half million logs sky-hootin' into our bridge? It wouldn't save our construction, would it?"

He wheeled back to Steve, his manner brisk.

"Do we leave that stretch open?" he asked. "Is that the way you have it figured?"

"I'm afraid we'd better," Steve said.

And from the very deliberation of that reply Garry Devereau realized how vital was the point which they had been weighing so irresponsibly.

That was as close as they came to anything resembling a discussion of the change which was growing more and more noticeable in the bearing of the men at Thirty-Mile. As far as all outward evidence was concerned, Steve seemed to ignore it utterly, to retreat oftener and oftener behind his habit of silence which even Fat Joe, after several unsuccessful, garrulous attempts, gave over trying to penetrate. And even Garry, who had greater respect for the other man's preoccupation because he felt that he understood it better, tried also to hide all evidence of the bitterness which it was re-awakening in him. Yet, at that, Garry's surmise was erroneous; his conclusion wide of the mark.

For it was not the hunger of his own heart; it was neither intolerance of restraint nor mental rebellion against the duties which were holding him so close up-river, that had caused the chief engineer of the East Coast work to withdraw so completely within himself, although, many times each day, his eyes did wander toward the south and Morrison.

During that bleak period, as Garry had guessed, Steve's thoughts were often of Barbara, but they were not sombre thoughts. The very hardness of his life schooling had taught him too well how little of wisdom there is in fretting against the day of action, when that day cannot be hurried nor controlled. Steadfastedly he refused to let himself brood.

If he could not go to her he would not, nevertheless, allow himself to dwell upon that impossibility. Instead his spirit ranged ahead to a hopeful, more or less indefinite and not too distant date when his absence might not seem to threaten too great a cost to those whose matters lay in his trust.

Garry's conclusion, borne of his own lesson in doubt, was wide of the mark. It was not heartache. The thoughts Steve had of her were his serenest thoughts, those days during which his body labored prodigiously and his brain groped for the solution of an affair that had not been his own, until he had chosen to make it so. It was the problem of Garrett Devereau which lay behind Stephen O'Mara's hours of gravity--that perplexing problem which Miriam Burrell, level of eye and brave of tongue, had brought to him for help. And in the end, as is usually the way, events of themselves finally gave Steve the opportunity to say all that he knew could not be introduced by him.

Time showed the way just when he had reached the point of acknowledging that such an opportunity was beyond his own power to bring about.

He had had little chance for conversation with Garry in those days, except for a word or two over a hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed breakfast, or perhaps at supper at night, and at night he was usually too tired to talk. But the other's growing restlessness had not escaped his notice. For a while Garry had seemed to accept his continuance there at camp as a matter of course, and for that very reason neither Fat Joe nor Steve had dignified the thought of his possible departure by so much as a single spoken word. Garry's own actions first began to indicate how incessantly he was debating that question within his own brain.

There came, times without number, an uneasy, far-focused look into his eyes; came hours on end when he would sit, every debonaire effort at lightness abandoned, staring moodily into the fire, motionless save for his nervous hands which never seemed to rest. Joe found it harder to entice him with the poker deck; oftener than not Steve had to repeat his question a second time, seeking to inveigle him into a discussion of what-not, before Garry even heard. And one night toward the end of the week the latter finally reached the point of voicing for their ears a decision which was old in antic.i.p.ation to them. They were on the point of going to bed. Garry had risen, and then paused. He hesitated and crooked his arms and yawned, a trifle too carelessly that evening.

"Well, this finishes another day," he remarked, nor did he realize how soulful were the words. "And I cleaned up the last of the stock-room to-day, Joe. A swift but accurate workman, eh? I'll leave behind a record unblemished by oversight or sloth. And now--now it's about time, I suppose, I was going back to town."

It was out, nor could the yawn conceal his eagerness. His back was turned, but Steve knew what light was in his eyes. Steve's carelessness was a far neater thing than Garry's had been.

"What's your hurry?" he inquired easily. "Why rush away? And if you think your industry has betrayed you into idleness, you're reasoning poorly to-night. Want another job?"

Bantering indifference was the keynote of that reply. Mutually they had adopted it from the very first. It smacked of the free-masonry which always marked Steve's conversations with Fat Joe, were they earnest or frivolous beneath the surface. It is always recognizable in the speech of friends such as they, differentiated from actual indifference by an intimacy of inference between the lines which makes such discourse almost foreign to uninitiated ears. But Garry's answer was not in kind. Steve was caught so far off his guard by the question which came flinging back at him that he was glad Garry had not turned.

"What else is there I could do?"

No man save one who was very, very tired could have spoken in such a tone; no man except one who has tried himself in the highest of courts--his own opinion of himself--could have put such a degree of contempt into so simple a query.