Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 47

"This is where your money can't buy something for you, Mr. Craig," the captain of the gunmen declared, and then he led the retreat of his squad across Skulltree dam and into the woods on the far sh.o.r.e from the portentous, invisible peril.

And with dire extremity clearing for the moment his clouded vision, enabling him to look squarely at the matter of service and loyalty as he was able to command it, Craig knew that when his money failed him in the north country he had no other resource. He had blinked that fact in the past, having found that in ordinary affairs his dollars were dominant; but this extraordinary event was knocking out from under him all the props of confidence; he felt bitterly alone all of a sudden.

"We'll have to vamoose off this dam," declared the deputy sheriff.

"You've got your duty as an officer of the law," shouted Craig, desperately feeling that in the case of this man, at least, he was making an appeal to something that was not covered by a money consideration.

"And I've got my common sense, too!" retorted the sheriff. He started away.

"So have I," agreed the attorney, a lawyer who had obeyed a telegram and had joined the Craig expedition at the shire town of the county the night before.

"There's an injunction!" stormed the field director.

"And there's a lunatic with a sack of dynamite." The lawyer crooked his arm across his face; a missile from the white void had splashed near by and water sprayed him. "You have told me that Latisan is no longer in Flagg's service. I'm not depending now on law, Mr. Craig, I'm depending on my legs."

He fled on the trail of the officer. But he left a pregnant thought in Craig's mind: Latisan was not an employee of Echford Flagg. As a matter of fact, Craig owned to himself--his clarity of vision persisting in that time of overwhelming disaster, in the wreck of the hopes built on the power of his money--that the thing had now become almost wholly a personal, guerrilla warfare between himself and Latisan; and when the truth came out, if the matter were forced to that issue, Craig would lack the backing of authority fully as much as Latisan lacked it then, in his a.s.sault on property. The bluff of the guns had not worked! Craig was realizing that in hiring such men, as he had on the spur of the moment, his rage instead of his business good judgment had prevailed.

There were the repeated warnings of his superiors! The law would be obliged to investigate if Skulltree dam were wrecked, and would probe to the bottom of the moving reasons! Scandal, rank scandal! Craig could behold President Horatio Marlow as he sat that day with upraised, monitory forefinger, urging the touchy matter of credits and reputation.

Craig could hear Dawes, the attorney: "That talk puts the thing up to you square-edged!"

Down from the mist-shrouded cliff was advancing a vengeful man who walked with the footsteps of thunder.

As Craig had looked ahead, basing his judgment on his experience with men and matters, it had seemed an easy matter to guard Skulltree with money and law. But in this astounding sortie of Latisan's, Comas money was of no use and Craig was developing an acute fear of the law which, invoked, would take matters into court. Over and over, his alarmed convictions pounded on his caution.

He crouched under a rain of dirt and pebbles--then he ran away.

When he reached the far sh.o.r.e he jumped into a bateau that was pulled up there. With all the power of his lungs he yelled for rowers. He was obliged to confess loudly and unreservedly that he was giving up the fight--was seeking a way of stopping Latisan--before any of his men would come from the shelter of woods and fog and serve him.

He cursed them with the vigor of a master of galley slaves when the bateau was frothing along the deadwater. Then he bellowed into the fog, seeking a replying hail which would locate for him the Flagg crew. There was no repentance in him; his was a panic of compromise--a headlong rush to save himself from consequences. There was just as much uncertainty about what Latisan would do as there was about the dynamiter's exact location in that fog.

Therefore, Craig announced himself with raucous staccato of: "I quit! I quit! Get that man! Tell him I quit!"

Men hailed from the sh.o.r.e and their voices guided the rowers. Craig leaped from the bow of the bateau and waded for the last few yards.

"Go stop him! Bring him here!" He tossed his arms.

"Huh!" scoffed old Vittum. "That's a job for somebody who can tell which way the next stroke of lightning is heading."

"I'll give five hundred dollars to the man who'll get to him and stop him before he smashes that dam!"

Craig added to the other visions which had been torturing him the possible catastrophe of the Comas logs roaring through past the mouth of a useless ca.n.a.l; he could look ahead still farther and see the grins of the sawmill men down the Noda, setting their own prices.

Once more Craig was finding that his money was getting him nothing that day, and his sense of helplessness was revealed by his sagging jowls and dolorous eyes; and he had always depended on what money could buy!

There was no alacrity for service shown by any man of Flagg's crew.

"We're not afraid," said Felix Lapierre, breaking on Craig's furious taunts. "We have promise' to keep off and let him make good for himself--the lone hand--that's it!"

"That's it!" agreed Vittum.

"He has made good," bleated the Comas man. "If he goes any farther it will only be bad."

The dialogue was taking place disjointedly in the silences between the blasts. But Craig made himself heard above the next explosion. "He's ripping h.e.l.l out of that dam now. Get to him. A thousand dollars for the man who stops him!"

"No man in this crew needs any of your money!" Lida was defiantly in front of the Comas director. "But if you're ready to listen to reason after this----"

She broke off and turned from him.

Before they realized that she had volunteered, she was away in the fog.

In a moment they heard her voice, raised in a thrilling call, appealing to the avenger.

"That'll fetch him back--even if he was two miles deep in h.e.l.l," Craig was informed by one of the men. "It's a lucky thing for the Three C's that she's on the job to-day."

The Comas director stood holding to a tree. He shivered every time an explosion clanged its echoes from cliff to cliff.

And when, after a waiting that was agony, the dreadful bombardment ceased, Craig staggered to the bateau and sat down on its prow.

"I don't blame you for looking that way," said Vittum. "If Latisan had been driven to get that dam to-day you would have lost your drive for the ca.n.a.l; and, before G.o.d and your directors, you would have been responsible!"

When Latisan came out of the fog he had put away, somewhere, the sack which had held destruction.

When he had gone away from them, entering upon the perils of his undertaking, he was calm and resolute. Now that he was back, a champion who had prevailed single-handed, he was pale, trembling, and broken; they did not understand, at first.

Lida came with him, trying to soothe him, pleading and protesting; he constantly muttered broken speech and seemed to be trying to control a mood that was half frenzy. He left her and stumbled across the open s.p.a.ce to Craig.

"Everything else you have done--it's nothing as bad as this last. You sent her where you didn't dare to go yourself. Good G.o.d! you Comas sneak, I ought to kill you where you sit! For all you cared you were making me a murderer of an innocent girl!"

"You had to be stopped. She went before I knew what she was going to do."

"And if she hadn't gone on her own account you would have tried to hire her to do it! It's always a case of what you can buy with your money--that's your style, Craig. Now you're up against something you can't buy. I'm still working alone--understand that? If you want to report me as an outlaw, go ahead! I'm giving you squarer warning than you gave me on the Tomah when you smashed the Latisans. If I smash that dam down there I'll be smashing you! I'll do it if you put as much as a toothpick in the way of the independent drives. I'll blow the bottom out of your ca.n.a.l, in the bargain. And if you think you or your gang can locate me over there"--he pointed in the direction of the hills of the watershed between the rivers basins--"try it! I know every hole in those hills. I'll keep bombing your drives till you can't keep a man on the job. That's the kind of an outlaw I am from now on."

"It's between us now, Latisan. I'll own up to it. It has come to that."

"Yes, it's between renegades. I'm admitting that I'm one," retorted Ward.

Craig stood up. If there was any of the spirit of Three C's bl.u.s.ter left in him he was concealing it successfully.

"Latisan, all these men have heard me say that I quit. I lost my head and was pushing the thing too far, considering it from a business standpoint. Can I be any more honest than that?"

"It sounds all right, but I take stock in you only to the extent that you'll stay in line if I stay on the job. I shall stay, as I have warned you."

"Suppose we talk turkey about the common rights at Skulltree!"

"You'll have to talk with Miss Kennard about her grandfather's interests. I'm simply a chance comer here!"

Latisan walked away and leaned against a tree.

Craig approached Lida. "We have already had some talk about the matter, I believe. I retreat from the position I have taken. Evidently we must make mutual allowances. What have you thought out about the details of a plan to let your logs through?"