Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 14

Flagg instantly grabbed at a wooden spill that made a marker in the volume and nipped back the pages. He shook aloft his clinched left hand.

He raised his voice and boomed. "'And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.'"

Flagg beat his knotted fist on the open page. "Do you hear that, Latisan? That's for you. I hunted it up. I haven't had time till now to read the Bible like I should. Plenty of good stuff in it--but in the Old Testament, mind you! Too much turn-your-cheek stuff in the New Testament. 'Eye for an eye.' Do you know who said that?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry to admit it, but----"

"G.o.d Almighty said it. Said it to Moses on the mount. First straight-arm orders from G.o.d to man. It ought to be good enough for you and me, hadn't it? Take it for rule o' conduct, and if Rufe Craig says anything to you on the drive refer him here--to headquarters!" Again he beat his fist on the page.

"I don't know what part of the Bible Craig ought to study, sir, but some of it ought to be good for him. I'm just from the train. They wouldn't load our dynamite at the junction. Craig is behind that!"

"Wouldn't haul our dynamite?" raged Flagg. "And he has been shipping his canned thunder through here for Skulltree by the carload! Latisan, you're falling down on the job. When I, myself, was attending to it, my dynamite was loaded for Adonia all right enough!"

The drive master did not reply to that amazing shifting of blame to him.

"Did you say what ought to be said to that conductor?"

"When I started to say something he bawled me out for using that kind of language on railroad property."

Flagg lifted the useless right hand with his left, let it fall again, and groaned. "How many times, and where, did you hit him? And then what did you say?"

"I did not hit him, sir. I said nothing more. And there was a lady present."

Flagg choked and struggled with words before he could speak. "Do you mean to tell me you're allowing any ladee"--he put exquisite inflection of sarcasm on the word--"to stand betwixt you and your duty, when that duty is plain? Latisan, they tell me that you're a sapgag where women are concerned. I'm told that you have been down to the city and----"

"Mr. Flagg, we'll stick to the subject of the dynamite!" broke in the young man, sharply.

"Women are the same thing and belong in the talk."

"Then we'll stick to the dynamite that comes in boxes." Latisan was just as peremptory as the master and was hurrying his business; he felt the dog of the Latisan temperament slipping neck from the leash. "You may have been able to make 'em haul dynamite for you, in spite of the law. I can't make 'em, it seems. I'm here merely to report, and to say that I'll have the dynamite up from the junction just the same." He started for the door.

"By tote team--three times the cost! My Gawd! why ain't I out and around?" lamented the Adonia Jeremiah.

Latisan wanted to say that he would pay the extra cost of transportation out of his own pocket, if that would save argument, but he did not dare to trust himself. He hurried out of the big house and slammed the door.

On his way down the hill he was obliged to marshal a small host of reasons for hanging on to his job; the desire to quit then and there was looming large, potent, imperative.

He was still scowling when he tramped into the office of the tavern where many loafers were a.s.sembled. Through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw Martin Brophy beckoning, and went to the desk. Brophy ran his s.m.u.tted finger along under a name; "Mrs. Dana Haines Everett, New York City."

"She has been asking for you. Matter o' business, she says. I've had to give her the front parlor for her room. Say, she's the kind that gets what she goes after, I reckon. Is eating her supper served in there private. Never was done in my tavern before."

"Business--with me?" demanded Latisan. "Brophy, what's her own business in these parts?"

"Can't seem to find out," admitted the landlord, and the young man bestowed on Brophy an expansive grin which was a comment on the latter's well-known penchant for gimleting in search of information. "Will say, however, that she's a widder--gra.s.s if I ain't much mistook--believes that a woman is equal to a man and should have all a man's privileges about going around by her lonesome if she so feels."

"Well, you seem to have extracted a fair amount of information, considering that she's hardly got her feet planted."

"Oh," confessed Brophy, "it came out because I made her mad when I hinted that it was kind of queer for a woman to be traveling around alone up here. Well, now that they're voting, you can look for 'most anything. What shall I tell her from you when I take in her pie?"

"I'll wait on the lady after I eat my supper."

When the drive master was ushered into the parlor-presence by the landlord, the lady was sitting in front of an open Franklin stove, smoking a cigarette. She had made a change in attire since her arrival, the new garb suggesting that she proposed to suit herself to the nature of the region to which she had come. She was in knickerbocker costume, had tipped back her chair, one foot on the hearth and the other foot propped on her knee, and she asked Latisan to sit down, pointing to a chair beside her. She offered a cigarette with a real masculine offhandedness. The caller faltered something about a pipe. She insisted that he smoke his pipe. "It rather puts strangers at their ease, don't you think, a little tobacco haze in the room?"

Latisan, packing the bowl of his briar, agreed.

"I take it that you're well acquainted with this region?"

"Fairly so, though I know the Tomah country better."

"You're a guide, I understand."

"I don't understand where you got that information, madam," replied the drive master, a bit p.r.i.c.ked.

"I don't remember that anybody did tell me that in so many words.

Somehow it was my impression. But no matter. Please listen a moment."

She smiled on him, checking his attempt at a statement regarding himself; she had conned her little speech and used her best vocabulary to impress this woodsman. "No doubt you have something very important in the way of occupation. A man of your bearing is bound to. You needn't thank me for a compliment--I'm very frank. That's the way to get on and accomplish things quickly. So I'm frank enough to say it's my habit to meet men on the plane of man to man. Please do not regard me as a woman--that sort of stuff is old-fashioned in these days. I vote and pay taxes. Yet if I were merely a woman you gave evidence on the station platform to-day that you know how to protect one from insults. I was attracted by that trait in you--and afterwards minded your own business quite after my heart. I need outdoor life. I'm up here early for the first fishing. I want to tour the woods. I may invest in timberlands.

Putting out of your mind all this foolish s.e.x matter--as I have explained my man-to-man theory--will you go with me? I'll have a cook, of course. Pardon my sudden reference to pay--I'll pay you twice what you're getting now--providing you're working for wages."

"I am working for wages. And I can't leave the work."

"What is it?"

"I'm the master of the Flagg drive on these waters."

"And you prefer to boss rough men and endure hardship rather than to come with me?"

The bitterness of the last interview with Flagg was still with Latisan.

"If it was a matter of preference--but that isn't the way of it!" He returned her gaze and flushed. In spite of his resolve to go on with the battle that was ahead, he was tempted, and acknowledged to himself the fact; but Flagg was trying him cruelly.

"You have been the drive master here for a long time--that's why you cannot be spared?" She tossed away her cigarette and gave him earnest attention.

"I'm just beginning my work with Flagg."

"Then of course you're not vital. Let the man who used to be master----"

"That was Flagg, himself. He's laid up with paralysis."

"Oh!" she drawled, provokingly. "A matter of conscientiousness--loyal devotion--champion of the weak--or a young man's opportunity to be lord of all for the future!"

"He's an old devil to work for, and the job promises no future," blurted Latisan, his manner leaving no doubt as to his feelings.

"Then come with me," she invited. "If I get to own timberlands, who knows?"

He shook his head. "There are reasons why I can't quit--not this season."

"I hoped I'd seem to you like a good and sufficient reason," she returned, insinuatingly; in her anxiety to make a quick job of it, in her cynical estimate of men as she had been finding them out in the city, she was venturing to employ her usual methods as a temptress, naturally falling into the habit of past procedure.

She found it difficult to interpret the sudden look he gave her, but her perspicacity warned her that she was on the wrong tack with this man of the north country.