Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 35

They were recklessly determined to help the girl make good! That was the urgeful sentiment which their thoughts inscribed on the invisible oriflamme of the warfare that was waged for the new Joan along the waters of the Noda.

It was not especially because she was the granddaughter of Echford Flagg. His wages had never bought more than perfunctory service from crews. She was herself--and she had confessed her debts.

When she told them why she was wearing Latisan's cap and jacket, when she owned to her error and laid the blame on herself, when she pleaded with them to help her in undoing the bitter mischief, she won a devotion that questioned nothing.

"Men, he will come back. He will understand it all when he is himself again. And if you and I are able to show him that we have done his work well he will hold up his head once more as he has a right to do."

"G.o.d bless ye, girl, ye can't keep yourself apart from Latisan in this thing," declared an old man. "It's for the two o' ye that we do our work from now on! And it's for all of us, as well! For we'll ne'er draw happy breaths till we can stand by and see you meet him on the level--eye to eye--like one who has squared all accounts between you two! And the old grands'r, as well. What say, boys?"

But cheers could not serve their emotions then. They pulled off their caps and scrubbed their rough hands across their jackets and walked to her in single file and shook her hand in pregnant silence.

And then the timber went through; the drive was beating all the past records.

When they needed water they took it. They blew their own dams and were very careless with dynamite when they came upon other dams of whose ownership they were not so sure.

"You see, miss, rights are well mixed up all through this region," said old Vittum, who had been spokesman for his fellows on her first meeting with them. He gave her a demure wink. "The main idea is, G.o.d is making this water run downhill just now, and it doesn't seem right for mortal man to stop it from running."

They "manned the river," as the drivers say. That meant overlapping crews, day and night.

No squad was out of sight of another; a yell above the roar of the flood or a cap brandished on the end of a pike pole summoned help to break a forming jam or to card logs off ledges or to dislodge "jillpokes" which had stabbed their ends into the soggy banks of the river. Men ate as they ran and they slept as they could. Some of them, s.n.a.t.c.hing time to eat, sitting on the sh.o.r.e, went sound asleep after a few mouthfuls and slumbered with their faces in their plates till a companion kicked them back into wakefulness. They grinned and were up again!

As for Lida Kennard, she was treated with as much tender care as if she were a reigning princess on tour. She protested indignantly because they would not allow her to rough it along with them. They made soft beds of spruce tips at their camping sites and they gave her the post of honor in a big bateau.

In the rush of affairs she did not pause to wonder whether she was offending any of the proprieties by staying on with the drive; she had become the Flagg spirit incarnate and was not troubling herself with petty matters.

Old Vittum and Felix were her advisers, and they prized her presence as an a.s.set of inestimable value; she allowed them to think for her in that crisis.

"It's a tough life, miss, the best we can make it for you," admitted Vittum. "But if you can stick and hang till Skulltree is pa.s.sed it means that the boys will keep the glory of doing in 'em!"

From rendering service according to her ability they could not prevent her, though the men protested. She helped the cooks. Hurrying here and there, following the scattered men of the crews, she tugged great cans of hot coffee. When the toilers saw her coming and heard her voice they took desperate chances on the white water, jousting with their pike poles like knights in a tourney.

She put into the hearts of the crew the pa.s.sion of derring do!

The drive that spring was not a sordid task--it was high emprise, it was a joyous adventure!

Then the logs which had raced in the rapids came to the upper reaches of the slow deadwater of the flowage of the Skulltree dam; the flowage reached far back that year.

At Skulltree was the crux of the situation, as Flagg had insisted, ragefully.

From the early days there had been a dam at that point; it was common property and conserved the water to be loosed to drive logs over the shallow rapids below.

The Three C's had spent more money on that dam, claiming that bigger drives needed extra water. The dam had been raised. The flowage vastly increased the extent of the deadwater, slowing the logs of the independents, whose towage methods were crude. The changes which had been made needed the sanction of impending legislation, required the authority of a charter for which application had been made. In the meantime the Three C's were holding the water and would be impounding logs; these logs were to be diverted through the new, artificial ca.n.a.l.

In a.s.serting their rights the corporation folks were endangering the independent drives which were destined for the sawmills of the Noda.

Day by day, as the drive went on, the girl listened to the talk among her men until she understood, in some measure, the situation. All the reckless haste was made of no account unless their logs were to be permitted to pa.s.s the Skulltree dam.

Vittum explained to her that the law was still considering the question of "natural flowage." The dam had been changed from time to time in past years until the matter was in doubt.

"But the way the thing stands now there ain't much of that nat'ral flowage," he told her. "I claim that we have the right to go through, law or no law. Word was served early on Latisan that he must hold up at Skulltree this year and wait for the law."

"Did he say what he proposed to do?" she asked.

"Yes, miss! I'll have to be excused from repeating what he said, in the way he said it, but the gist of it was that he was going through. He said he would use some kind of flowage, and hoped that when the lawyers got done talking in court it would be decided that the aforesaid nat'ral flowage was the kind that had been used by him."

She pulled off Ward's cap and turned it about in her hand, surveying it judiciously. "I can seem to see just how he looked when he said it."

"He said it loud, miss, because the man he was talking to was a good ways off. He was a sheriff. He couldn't get very nigh to Latisan. We was holding the man off with our pick poles because he was trying to serve a paper."

"An injunction?"

"I don't know," confessed the relator mildly. "Somehow, none of us seemed to be at all curious that day to find out what it was. Sheriff nailed it to a tree and then somebody touched a match to it. Latisan said he reckoned it must have been an invitation to Felix's wedding, but it was just as well that n.o.body ever read it, because the crew was too busy to go, anyway!"

"Are Comas men guarding Skulltree dam?"

"They sure are, miss!"

She and the old man were seated on the sh.o.r.e of the deadwater. The evening dusk was deepening.

Near them the cook's fires were leaping against the sides of the blackened pots; in the pungent fragrance of the wood smoke which drifted past there were savory odors which were sent forth when the cook lifted off a cover to stir the stew. The peacefulness of the scene was profound; that peace, contrasted with the prospect of what confronted her men if Flagg's logs were to go through, stirred acute distress in the girl. Coming down through the riot of waters she had not had time to think. Their logs were ahead; the laggards of the corporation drive were following. She had wondered because even the cowards, as they had shown themselves to be, had not put more obstructions in the way. There had been abortive interference, but it was evident that the Three C's had been making the first skirmishes perfunctory affairs, depending on dealing the big blow at Skulltree.

In the Flagg crew it was a subject for frequent comment that Rufus Craig had not appeared in the north country to take command of his forces in those parlous times when the Three C's interests were threatened. In council Lida and her advisers began to wonder how much information regarding the Flagg operations had filtered to the outside or whether the defeated Comas bosses were not apprehensively withholding word to headquarters that they had been beaten in the race on the upper waters.

"Craig would be here before this if he knew what was going on," averred Vittum. "They're either ashamed or scared to send him word, and they think it can all be squared for 'em at Skulltree." He sighed and turned his eyes from her anxious stare.

Near her were rivermen who were waiting for their suppers. She was aware of a very tender feeling toward those men who had been risking their lives in the rapids in order to indulge her in a hope which she had made known to them. She reflected on what the sarcastic Crowley had said when he told her that in that region she was among he-men. "If you're not careful, you'll start something you can't stop," he had threatened.

Could she stop these men from going on to violent battle? Would she be honest with her grandfather and Latisan if she did try to prevent them from winning their fight? All past efforts would be thrown away if Skulltree dam were not won.

Out on the deadwater were several floating platforms; the men called them "headworks." On the platforms were capstans. The headworks were anch.o.r.ed far in advance of the drifting logs, around which were thrown pocket booms; men trod in weary procession, circling the capstans, pushing against long ashen bars, and the dripping tow warp hastened the drift of the logs.

As the men of the sea have a chantey when they heave at a capstan, so these men of the river had their chorus; it floated to her over the quiet flood.

Come, all, and riffle the ledges! Come, all, and bust the jam!

And for aught o' the bluff of the Comas gang we don't give one good-- Hoot, toot and a hoorah!

We don't give a tinker's dam!

"That's exactly how they feel, miss," said the old man. "They're on their way. They can't be stopped."

But the declaration depressed rather than cheered her. Those men had taken up her cause valiantly and with single-hearted purpose, and she was obliged to a.s.sume responsibility for what they had done and what they would do to force the situation at Skulltree. In the rush of the drive, with the logs running free, the river was open to all and Latisan's task was in the course of fulfillment and the Flagg fortunes were having fair opportunity in the compet.i.tion. But now compet.i.tion must become warfare, so it seemed. She shrank from that responsibility, but she could not evade it--could not command those devoted men to stop with the job half finished.

The priest's promise to find Latisan had been living with her, consoling the hours of her waiting. Her load had become so heavy that her yearning for Latisan's return had become desperate and anguished.

The slow drag of the logs in the deadwater gave her time for pondering and she was afraid of her thoughts.

She was not accusing Latisan of being an inexcusable recreant where duty was concerned; she was understanding in better fashion the men and the manners of the north country and she realized the full force of the reasons for his flight and why the situation had overwhelmed him. Her pity and remorse had been feeding her love.

But the priest had promised. Latisan must know. Why did he not come to her and lift the dreadful burden in her extremity?

Old Vittum, sitting on a bleached trunk among the dry kye stranded on the sh.o.r.e, plucked slowly the spills of a pine ta.s.sel, staring down between his knees. "You've seen how they have worked, miss, for every ounce that's in 'em. But I don't know how they'll fight if they don't have a real captain--a single head to plan--the right man to lead off.