King Spruce Part 31

"I've been listening an hour," said Barrett, despondently, "and it's big stuff that's coming down. Our loss by fire was small change to what this means to us, Pulaski. Withee has devilled my lands until there isn't a wind-break left."

A roar like the awful voice of a park of artillery throbbed past them on the volleying wind.

"I feel as though it was kissing a thousand dollars good-bye every time I hear one of those noises," said Britt. "The devil can play jack-straws in the Umcolcus region after this night, and find a new bunch every day."

At last they looked dismally out on the dawn. The great gale had blown overhead and away, the rearguard clouds chasing it, and the hard growth, stripped of every vestige of leaf, gave pathetic testimony to the bitterness of the conflict of the night.

The two lumber barons, staring anxiously up at the slopes of the black growth for signs of ravage, were confronted by Tommy Eye, meek, repentant, and shaky.

"Sure, the witherlicks and the swamp swogons did howl last night, gents, and they all did say as how Tommy Eye ought to be ashamed of the size of his drink. And I've come back to you to get my kick." He turned humbly.

The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt accepted the invitation with alacrity, and dealt the kick with a vigor that fetched a squawk from the teamster.

The timber tyrant's mood that morning welcomed such an opportunity, even as a surcharged cloud welcomes a lightning-rod or a farm-house chimney.

But once the kick had been dealt the Honorable Pulaski felt less wire on the edge of his meat-axe temper.

"And now I'll take my discharge," said Tommy. "MacLeod gave me an order on you for my pay."

Britt s.n.a.t.c.hed away the paper and tore it up.

"Get into that hovel and look after your horses." But when Tommy turned to go his employer called him back. "I've got another job for you just now, you snake-chaser. You need to chew fresh air, and you'll find a lot of it on top of Jerusalem. I don't know just how much you understood of our business in the w.a.n.gan camp last night, Eye, and I don't care. You know me well enough to understand that if you ever blab any of it I'll have your ha' slet out of you!" Tommy cringed under a furious glare. "It will depend on how well you do an errand for me now whether or not I feed you to bobcats. You get that, do you?"

Again the teamster bowed his wistful a.s.sent.

"I wish I hadn't let Sheriff Rodliff and his men leave," remarked Britt to "Stumpage John," eying Tommy with some disfavor. "But perhaps this fool can do the trick better than a sheriff's posse. Sending the posse might make talk and stir suspicions."

"The quieter it's done the better," suggested Barrett. "After my talk with Wade--which was pretty soft, as I remember it--it will seem natural for me to send after the girl--and by just such a messenger as this."

"So we'll send the fool--you're right!" affirmed Britt. "Tommy," he directed, wagging a thick finger under the man's attentive nose to mark his commands, "you hump up to that fire station on Jerusalem as quick as leg-work will get you there, and you'll find a young girl. There are not enough young girls up there so that you'll make any mistake in the right one. You tell the one that's in charge, or whoever claims to be in charge, that the girl has been sent for. You'll probably find that fellow Dwight Wade takin' the responsibility. Tell him that it's all right, and that the gentleman he made the talk with is prepared to back up all promises. Bring the girl back with you."

"Girls was never much took with me, and I never was handy in makin' up to girls," protested Tommy, his face puckering in alarm. "She prob'ly won't come, and then I'll get kicked again."

"You'll get kicked again mighty sudden if you don't do as I tell you, and do it quick and do it right!" roared Britt, starting off the camp platform. And Tommy, cowed by his tyrant, stood not upon the order of his going. He was trotting with a dog-waddle when he disappeared up the Jerusalem trail.

"He ought to be back by noon," said Britt. "In the mean time we'll eat breakfast and then cruise for blowdowns. And I'm thinkin' it isn't goin'

to be a very humorous forenoon for timber-land owners."

Nor was it. Dolefully and silently they traversed wastes of splintered devastation, blocked ram-downs, choked twitch-roads, and hideous snarls of cross-piled timber.

CHAPTER XVII

THE AFFAIR AT DURFY'S CAMP

"The boss was a-thinkin' to swat him, but allowed he had better not, For 'twas trouble bad that Dumphy had, whatever it was he'd got."

When the timber barons came in sight of the camp at noon, Tommy Eye, returned emissary, was seated on the edge of the w.a.n.gan platform with att.i.tude and countenance of alarmed expectancy. By his side was old Christopher Straight, the guide who had accompanied Dwight Wade from Castonia settlement.

"I done it--I said as you said for me to say," Tommy began, eagerly, "and Mr. Straight here will tell you the same. I said it first to old Noah up there, and he was startin' off with his animiles like as they done with the ark stranded, and he swore me up hill and down, and--"

"Shut up!" barked the Honorable Pulaski, in a perfectly fiendish temper after the sights of that forenoon. "Did you bring that girl? And if you didn't, why not?"

"I can tell you better, perhaps, Mr. Britt," broke in old Christopher, calmly. "She has been left on Mr. Wade's hands, and Mr. Wade feels that he ought to be careful. Warden Lane, who had charge of her, seems to have lost his wits. All last night--it was an awful night, gentlemen, on Jerusalem--he was out on the ledges raving and howling. I think that a matter that Mr. Barrett will understand was troubling up his conscience, if that's the word for it. This mornin' he seemed to be clean out of his head. He knocked the saplin's off his cages and let out the animals, and they followed him off down into the woods--"

"Moose, bobcat, fisher-cat--" But Tommy ceased his enumeration to dodge a vicious sweep of Britt's palm.

"I guess he left the place for good, seeing he took his rifle and his pack," continued the guide. "I thought the timber owners might like to know that their fire station is abandoned. As for the girl," he hastened to add, "Mr. Wade told me to say that for reasons that Mr. Britt would understand he didn't think she ought to come here."

"Because she's lost her head over my boss, MacLeod, eh?" demanded Britt.

"You saw yourself that the girl wasn't to be controlled easily when the young man was present," said Christopher, mildly. "So he believes if there is business to be talked to her and about her it will be better to meet somewhere else."

"The blasted coward is afraid to come with her or let her come," sneered the Honorable Pulaski. "Well, we'll go up there; and we'll take a few men along and find out who's runnin' this thing--a college dude or the men who own these timber lands." Mr. Barrett would have advised more pacificatory talk. But Mr. Britt was in a mood too generally unamiable that day to heed prudence and wise counsel.

"You'll have only your own trouble for your trip," remarked Straight.

"This man here said that Mr. Barrett was all ready to leave the woods.

Mr. Wade has left the top of the mountain with the girl, and will meet Mr. Barrett to the south of Pogey Notch. You'll not have to go out of your way, sir," he explained.

"Well, where?" snapped Britt.

"I'm here prepared to lead Mr. Barrett to the place, and I suggest that if he's ready we'll be on our way. You'll probably want to fetch the Half-way House at nightfall, sir."

This patent distrust of Pulaski Britt and his designs angered that gentleman quite beyond the power of even his profanity. But he knew Christopher Straight too well to attempt to bulldoze that hard-eyed old woodsman.

"Is this select a.s.sembly too good to have me come along?" he inquired, his thick lips curling under his beard.

"I think Mr. Wade will be glad to have you there," said Christopher, mildly. "He didn't say anything to the contrary. He expects Mr. Barrett to have some one to keep him company as far as the stage road, though he thought it probably would be a woodsman. But Mr. Wade gave particular instructions about any crowd comin' along, and he'll not meet any one if your boss MacLeod is in the party. That's straight talk. He's had all the trouble with your boss that he cares for."

After a withering survey of Straight, which the old guide endured with much composure, Britt beckoned Barrett away with a jerk of his head, and the two strolled behind the horse-hovel.

"There you have it, John," he snarled, more ireful as a champion than the unhappy princ.i.p.al. "It's a put-up job. He's goin' to plaster the girl onto you. It's his play. He's goin' to use it for all it's worth."

"It will be better for me to take her out than to have him chase along after me with the girl and the story--if that's the way he feels; and it's plain that he means to make trouble," said Barrett, moodily. "I can put her away somewhere in a boarding-school, and--"

The Honorable Pulaski broke upon this doleful capitulation with contemptuous brusqueness.

"You talk like a fool, John! Take that girl outside these woods and give her an education? File her teeth so that she can set 'em into your throat? You teach her to read and to write and to know things, and that's what it will amount to in the end. The girl has got to stay here!" He embraced the big woods in a vigorous gesture. "She belongs here! And the only way to keep her here is to put her in the hands of a man that--"

Colin MacLeod had followed them to their retreat behind the hovel, and was standing at a little distance, looking at them.

"Come here, Colin!" And Britt advanced to meet him and clutched his arm, the arm that Dwight Wade had dislocated in that memorable battle in Castonia. "Boy, if you are a coward, now is your time to own it. Old Straight has come down here to tell us that Wade has that girl in his hands. He knows what she's worth. He wants to meet Barrett and myself.

You can guess why. He proposes to get hold of that money. He knows we control it. We can't help ourselves if she chooses to stay with him."

The able old liar of the Umcolcus knew his man as the harper knows his instrument. He felt the muscles ridge under his clutch.

"He has sent word that he won't have you at the meeting. Ask Straight!