The Rapids Part 7

Clark leaned back in his chair. "You know how, years ago, the Hudson Bay Company built block houses for their factors? Well, I want one such as the company used to build, and I expect to be ready to occupy it within six weeks."

Belding had learned not to ask too many questions, so, for a moment thought hard. "Where?" he ventured.

"You remember where the old Hudson Bay lock is,--just a hundred feet beyond that. By the way, do you know how to build a block house?"

Belding got a little red. He had designed power houses and pulp mills and ca.n.a.ls and head gates, but a block house baffled him.

"In those days," began Clark ruminatively, "they were places of defense. Two stories, the bottom one of stone so that the Indians couldn't set fire to it. That part is eight feet high and had loopholes. On top is the other story built of logs, and, by the way, I want my logs peeled and varnished, and with a pitched roof. That part overhangs the other by about five feet all round, and that was to make it possible to drop things on the Indians if they did get up to the loopholes. Got the idea? And, by the way, I want the Hudson Bay lock cleaned out and rebuilt just as it was before. No cement--but random masonry and gates of hewn timber--they hewed everything a hundred years ago--gra.s.s around it and a sign saying what it was and when. Fix it up and make a job of it--that's all, and make that block house bas.e.m.e.nt of field stone--you can see why."

Whereupon Clark turned to a pile of letters and telegrams and promptly forgot all about Belding.

In six weeks, to a day, he moved in, and it is a question whether any of his subsequent achievements occasioned such interest in St. Marys.

Old inhabitants were there who had memories of the Hudson Bay Company and the thirty foot bark canoes that once voyaged from Lake Superior, and, treading the upper reaches of a branch of the rapids, slid into the old lock and were let gingerly down while the crew held their paddles against the rough stone walls of the tiny but ancient chamber.

Now the thing in its entirety had been recreated. The block house sat squat beside the lock, with its mushroom top projecting just as in years before. Clark, it seemed, was, after all traditional, and not one who lived entirely in the future, and with this touch of romance he took new attributes. His j.a.panese cook inhabited the lower story through which one entered to mount to the main floor. Inside the place revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more diminutively impressive. One pa.s.sed it on the way to the works, and often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were the two voices to which the brain of this extraordinary man took most heed.

VI.--CONCERNING IRON, WOOD AND A GIRL

A year pa.s.sed and the folk of St. Marys had not yet accustomed themselves to drawing water from a tap and turning on the light with a switch ere Clark began a frontal attack on the resources of the country to the north. It was typical of his methods that he invariably used new agencies by which to approach affairs which, in the main, differed from those already existing. Thus he called on many and widely separated individuals, who, answering his imperious summons, fell straightway under the spell of his remarkable personality, and found themselves shortly in positions of increasing responsibility. They became the heads of various activities, but, in a way, the secondary heads, for Clark retained all kings.h.i.+p for himself. So it came that as months pa.s.sed he was surrounded by a constantly increasing band of active and loyal retainers.

Such was John Baudette, for whom Clark had sent to talk pulp wood, but, it is recorded, that Baudette's manner and bearing changed not at all when Clark stared at him across the big flat topped desk and remarked evenly that he wanted pulp wood and was a.s.sured that there was an ample supply within fifty miles.

Baudette's hard blue eyes met the stare placidly. "Yes, there is pulp wood north of here."

"I know it, because I've had some," said Clark, "but I want fifty thousand cords next May and seventy-five thousand the year after."

Baudette felt in a way more at home, but he had never contemplated seventy-five thousand cords of wood. "Am I to go and take it?"

Clark laughed, then settled back with the shadow of a smile on his lips, and bent on the woodsman that swift inspection which discomforted so many. It embarra.s.sed Baudette not at all. He was rather small and of slight build, but he was constructed in the manner of a bundle of steel wire that enfolds a heart of inflexible determination. On casual inspection he did not appear to be a strong man, but his body was a ma.s.s of tireless sinew. His eyes were of that cold, hard blue which is the color of fort.i.tude, his face clean shaven and rather thin; his jaw slightly underhung, his lips narrow and tightly compressed. In demeanor he was quiet and almost shy, but it was the quietness of one who has spent his days in the open, and the shyness of a life which has dealt with simple things in a simple but efficient way. The longer Clark looked at him the more he liked this new discovery. Presently he began to talk.

"I want a man to take charge of my forest department, and one who has got his experience at the expense of some one else. We need pulp wood in larger quant.i.ties than have been required in this country before.

Next year we begin to grind wood that you will cut this winter."

The little man neither moved nor took his eyes from Clark's face, and the latter, with the faintest twitch of his lip, went on.

"I'm satisfied that this wood exists in ample quant.i.ties and the rest is up to you. You can have any reasonable salary you ask for."

"Where are the timber limits?" Baudette said quietly. He was, apparently, uninterested in the matter of salary.

Clark flattened out a big map of the district that obliterated the piles of letters and telegrams. Baudette's eyes brightened. He loved maps, but never before had he seen one so minute and comprehensive.

"That's compiled from all available surveys and records. It took three months to make it. I was getting ready for you."

Baudette nodded. He was interested in how the thing was compiled, and his eyes traced the birth and flow of rivers and the great sweep of well remembered lakes. Presently Clark's voice came in again.

"Where's the best pulp wood? We've been getting it from everywhere."

A lean brown forefinger slid slowly over the edge of the map. Clark noted its delicacy and strength. It halted a moment at St. Marys, then, as though Baudette counted the miles, traversed the sh.o.r.e of Superior and turned into a great bay to the westward. At the belly of the bay the finger struck inland following a wide river, and halted in a triangle of land where the river forked. Baudette looked up and nodded.

"Ah!" said Clark thoughtfully. "How much good wood is there?"

The forefinger commenced an irregular course during which it struck into salients that followed up lesser and tributary streams. It had enclosed perhaps five hundred square miles of Canadian territory when it reached its starting point.

"Four years' wood." Baudette's voice was still impressive.

The other man smiled as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map.

"Come back in two weeks," he said suddenly. "Good morning."

Baudette glanced at him, and went out so quietly that there was not the sound of a footstep. Clark's manner of speech and person had set him thinking as never before. Ten thousand cords of wood a year was the usual order of things, but of fifty thousand cords he had never dreamed.

He had a new set of sensations which filled him with a novel confidence in his own powers. He was reacting, like all the others, to the intimate touch of a communicative confidence. He pa.s.sed thoughtfully through the general office, noting as he closed the door that on a bench near Clark's door sat Fisette, a French halfbreed whom he knew.

He remarked also that Fisette's pockets were bulging, it seemed, with rocks.

A moment later Fisette was summoned. He went in, treading lightly on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, and leaning forward as though under a load on a portage. Clark's office always frightened him a little. The rumble of the adjoining power house, the great bulk of the buildings just outside, the ma.s.ses of doc.u.ments,--all of this spoke of an external power that puzzled and, in a way, worried him. He halted suddenly in front of the desk.

"Well?" said Clark, without offering him a seat, for Fisette was more at ease when he stood.

The half breed felt in his pockets. The other unrolled a duplicate of the map he had shown Baudette and held out his hand, in which Fisette placed some pieces of rock.

At the weight and chill of them, Clark experienced a peculiar thrill, then, under a magnifying gla.s.s he examined each with extreme care, turning them so that the light fell fair on edge and fracture. One after another he scrutinized, while the breed stood motionless.

"Where do they come from?" he said shortly.

The breed made a little noise in his throat, and his dark eyes rested luminously on the keen face. After a little he gathered the samples and disposed them on the map, laying each in that corner of the wilderness from which it had been broken. He did this with the deliberation of one who knew beyond all question. He had brought months of hards.h.i.+p and exposure in his pocket. By swamp and hill, valley and lake and rapid he had journeyed alone in search of the gray, heavy, s.h.i.+ny rock of which Clark had, months before, given him a fragment, with curt orders to seek the like. The small, angular pieces were all arranged, and his chief stared at them with profound geological interest. Fisette did not move. He had looked forward to this moment.

"They're no good," came the level voice, after a pause, "but you're in the right country. Go back for another two months. You'll get it yet.

It should be near this," he picked up a sample. "Take what men you want, or no, don't take any. I want you to do this yourself, and don't talk. Good morning."

Fisette nodded dumbly. The moment had come and gone and he felt a little paralyzed.

"Here, have a cigar."

He took one, such a cigar as he had never seen, large, dark and fat with a golden band around its plump middle. He glanced at Clark, who apparently had forgotten him, and went silently out. On the doorstep he paused, slid off the golden band and put it in his pocketbook, cupped a lighted match between his polished palms, took one long luxurious breath and started thoughtfully to town with wors.h.i.+p and determination in his breast.

Clark, from the office window, was looking down at his broad back in a moment of abstraction. At Fisette's departure he had suddenly plunged into one of those moods so peculiar to his temperament. Beside the halfbreed he seemed to perceive Stoughton, and with Baudette he discerned the figure of Riggs, and so on till there were marshalled before him the whole battalion of those who were caught up in the onward march. He realized, without any hesitation, that should Baudette fail in his work, the magnificent bulk of the great pulp mill would be but a futile sh.e.l.l. And should the prospecting pick of the half-breed not uncover that which he sought, the entire enterprise would lack its basic security. But it was characteristic of the man that this vision brought with it no depression, but seemed rather to point to ultimate success in the very blending of diverse elements that strove together towards the same end.

Two weeks later, Baudette returned and looked questioningly at his chief. In very few words he explained that the fortnight had been spent in the woods and that what he had said was correct.

Clark listened silently. Here was a man to his liking. When the lumberman finished he again unrolled the big map, but this time instead of the wavering red pencil line, there was the bold demarcation of a much greater area, which Belding's draughtsman had plotted in professional style. In the middle of it was the territory Baudette had previously indicated.

"I thought we'd better be safe, and got this--from the Government. Go to the chief accountant in the outside office. Give him an estimate of what money you need for the next six months--and get to work--Good morning."

Baudette merely nodded and disappeared. There was too much in his mind to admit of expressing it, but, even had he felt conversational, there was a finality about his dismissal that left no opening. He went away charged with a grim determination. Here was the chance he had been waiting for all his life.

And Clark had, by this time, labelled Baudette as a valuable and dependable man. He forthwith forgot all about him, and went back to the memory of Baudette's forefinger as it pushed its way up to the Magwa River. It flashed upon him that, in the course of a vehemently active life, he had built practically all things save one. At that he fell into a reverie which ended with the pressing of a b.u.t.ton that flashed a small red light on Belding's desk. A moment later he glanced keenly at his chief engineer.