Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 41

"I don't doubt it. I feel that way," yelped Craig. "But this message has come over three or four hundred miles of wire--relayed, at that, and I think the man who started the word from a fire-outpost station wasn't entirely right in his head. There's no other way of accounting for the statement that Ward Latisan's cap and Eck Flagg's cant dog are bossing the Flagg drive."

"Don't get wrought up by crazy guff!"

"But here are some statements that I _am_ wrought up over," declared the director, brandishing the paper. "I've got to believe 'em. They sound straight. Three of our new hold dams in streams that feed the Noda have been blown. The water has been used to sweep the Flagg logs in ahead of ours. The lip of the Tougas Lake has been blown, too, and if we lose that water it's apt to leave us high and dry; our Tougas operation is a long way in from the main river. They've shot blue blazes out of Carron Gorge and have taken the water along with 'em. Merry h.e.l.l is to pay all up and down that river, Mern."

The agency chief did not relish Craig's bellicose manner, nor the glare in his one eye that showed, nor the imputation of vindictive rebuke in his rasping tones.

"Craig, I never saw a log in a river. I know nothing about your drives.

Why are you pitching into me?"

"Why? Why? Because this message says that the girl you sent north--the girl who was paid by our money--this report says that she has gone up there and has put the very devil into Flagg's men; is making 'em do things that the worst pirates on the river never dared to do before.

What kind of a she wildcat did you hand me, anyway? Mern, a thousand tons of liquid fire poured into the valley of the Noda couldn't hurt us like that girl is hurting us. Who is she? What is she? Get your word to her! Call her off!"

That was no time for equivocation. Craig's frenzy demanded candor and threatened reprisal if the truth were not forthcoming. Mern told part of the truth.

"She has called her own self off, Craig, so far as this agency is concerned. I have no further control over her actions."

Chief Mern was not conscious of any especial surprise after Craig had reported that section of his news which could be understood. The granddaughter of Flagg could not be expected to do other than she was doing. In his honest regard for the helper who had served him so long and efficiently, the chief was wondering whether he ought to reveal her ident.i.ty to the Comas man, trying to estimate the danger of such a revelation. Craig was not stating that his news hinted who she was.

As to the details of the drive, he was more explicit. He raged on while Mern pondered. "The Flagg drive is a week ahead of time. It must be near Skulltree dam. I ought to have been up there and I don't understand why the infernal fools have been so slow in getting word to me."

He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Look here, Mern, I never ought to do another stroke of business with you, but I'm in too much of a hurry to go anywhere else."

The business instincts of the head of the agency were stirred; the Comas money had been good picking in the past. "I don't think I should be held responsible for an operative who has severed connections. Craig, you have probably made your own mistakes in depending on helpers."

"Don't you make any mistake this time, Mern! I want a dozen or fifteen men--gunmen. Can you furnish 'em?"

"Sure thing! Within an hour."

"I have promised results to my folks this season. I've got to deliver.

My job depends on it, after all the talk I've made at headquarters."

"Will your headquarters back up my operatives?"

"I'll do that! I'm playing this game on my own hook. There'll be no fight. The bluff will be enough, if I have the men. And if I have to--well, there's a fight between lumberjacks every season on that river, and there's a big wall of woods between Skulltree dam and New York, Mern! I'll take my chances up behind that wall. Get the men for me."

"When are you leaving?"

"One o'clock this afternoon--Grand Central."

"I'll deliver the men to you there."

Craig stamped away across the gla.s.s-littered floor and disappeared.

"Well," averred the chief when Latisan came out from behind the part.i.tion, "it looks as if somebody had been attending to your job for you, son! Also looks as if there might be considerable more doing right away!"

"So that's more of your devilish business, is it, sending gunmen to fight honest workers?" demanded the drive master, with venom.

"Business is still business with me in spite of the looks of this office," returned Mern, unruffled. "Latisan, you can't beef about not getting a square deal--and I've put you in the way of getting a tip. It looks to me----"

"Just the same as it looks to me!" cried the young man. "We're fully agreed as to all the looks! Good day!"

He stood very straight and shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had displayed. Grim determination radiated from him.

"Good day to you, also!" Mern called after Latisan when he strode toward the door, then adding suggestively. "If any mail happens to come here for you, I'm to forward it along to that Skulltree dam, so I take it!"

The irony did not provoke any retort from the drive master. He went away with a rush, but his demeanor showed that he was not running away from anything or anybody. He was hastening toward something.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Latisan was on that one o'clock train when it left Grand Central station.

From the gallery of the concourse he had seen Craig march to the gate and give a packet into the hands of one of a group of men waiting there.

Then Craig had gone on quickly with the air of a cautious performer who did not care to be identified with the persons for whom he had provided transportation.

The drive master rode in a coach and felt safe from detection; he guessed that Craig would hide his battered face in the privacy of a drawing room. Latisan had trailed the operatives and saw them enter the smoking car.

In the late afternoon, at a stage in the journey, he crossed a city on the heels of the party and again was an un.o.btrusive pa.s.senger in a coach, avoiding the sleeping cars. He slept a bit, as best he could, but mostly he pondered, fiercely awake, bitterly resolute. He fought away his memory of the betrayal of a trust; he indulged in no fond hopes in regard to one whom he now knew as Lida Kennard. He was concentrating on his determination to go back to the drive, not as master, but as a volunteer who would carry his cant dog with the rest of them, as humble as the plainest toiler. He did not try at that time to plan a course of action to be followed after he was back on the Flagg drive. He was going, that was all!

It was a hideous threat, the menace that Craig was conveying into the north country in the persons of those gunmen from the city! There had been plenty of fights over rights on the river, but they had always been clean fights, where muscles and fists counted for the victory.

Craig had claimed that the bluff of the guns would be sufficient.

Latisan was not agreeing, and on that account he was finding the outlook a dark one.

The train on which he was riding was an express headed for Canada, and was due to pa.s.s the junction with the Adonia narrow-gauge at about two o'clock in the morning. There was no scheduled stop at the junction; the afternoon train connected and served the pa.s.sengers from downcountry.

Latisan had bought a ticket to the nearest regular stopping place of the express. He began to wonder whether Craig, with the influence of the Comas to aid him and his fifteen fellow pa.s.sengers in an argument, had been able to secure special favors.

To the conductor, plucking out the hat check before the regular stop the hither side of the junction, he said, "By any chance, does this train ever stop at the Adonia narrow-gauge station?"

"It happens that it stops to-night by special orders."

Latisan paid a cash fare and rode on.

The coach in which he sat was the last car on the train; the smoker and sleeping cars were ahead.

When the train made its unscheduled stop, Latisan stepped down and was immediately hidden in the darkness. He saw Craig and his crew on the station platform; the headlight of a narrow-gauge locomotive threw a radiance which revealed them. Therefore, it was plain, Craig had wired for a special on the Adonia line.

Only one car was attached to the narrow-gauge engine; Latisan went as close as he dared. There was no room for concealment on that miniature train. It puffed away promptly, its big neighbor on the standard-gauge roared off into the night, and Latisan was left alone in the blackness before the dawn. And he felt peculiarly and helplessly alone! In spite of his best efforts to keep up his courage, the single-handed crusader was depressed by Craig's command of resources; there was a sort of insolent swagger in the Comas man's ability to have what he wanted.

Latisan knew fairly well the lay of the land at the junction, but he was obliged to light matches, one after the other, in order to find the lane which led to the stables of the mill company whose men had been drafted by him on one occasion to load his dynamite. The night was stiflingly black, there were no stars and not a light glimmered anywhere in the settlement.

He stumbled over the rough ground that had been rutted by the wheels of the jigger wagons. The m.u.f.fled thud of the hoofs of dozing horses guided him in his search for the stables, and he found the door of the hostlers' quarters and pounded.