Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 48

The girl did not reply; she had no plans; she did not understand such matters.

"We'll have to decide on the head of water you'll need, and I take it you'll allow us enough for the ca.n.a.l so that we can save our drive."

Craig was trying hard to offer compromise, but he was not able to repress all his sarcastic venom. "There's the matter of sorting and the other details. I'll have to ask for your views, Miss Kennard, because any misunderstanding may be dangerous, so I have been informed."

She looked helplessly from Craig to Latisan. The latter's aloofness, which he had displayed ever since he first appeared to her that day, his present peculiar relationship to the affair, his insistence that he must serve alone, made her problem more complex. Her vivid yearning was to give all into Latisan's keeping, but she did not dare to propose it.

She looked at Vittum and Felix, seeking advice. The French Canadian smiled and shrugged his shoulders, evading responsibility. He did not understand such matters, either.

"I suppose I might be able to dig up some sort o' general ideas, give me time enough," said Vittum, when her eyes questioned him anxiously. "But I'm sort of hazy right now." He winked at her and ducked his head to indicate Latisan.

"I'm afraid!" she phrased the lament with a doleful motion of her lips rather than with spoken words.

"It can't be said but what he'll be impartial--the best one to ask,"

mumbled Vittum, stepping close to her. "He ain't hired by either side, as I understand it!" He was ironic, but there was a suggestion which she grasped desperately. She went to Latisan. Their conversation was in an undertone and the bystanders did not hear the words.

When she returned to Craig, Lida, confident in her new poise, rea.s.sured, informed in a fashion which fortified her self-reliance, met the Comas man with a demeanor which did credit to the granddaughter of Echford Flagg.

"I have not tried to involve Mr. Latisan in any way. I have asked his advice as an expert." She looked straight into the shifting eyes of the Comas director. "Last fall he was at Tech, and took a special course in hydraulic engineering. You know that, of course, Mr. Craig!" She paused till he bowed to admit the truth with which she insisted on displacing the lie which had followed Latisan in the north country. "And Mr.

Latisan has had a great deal of practical experience on his own drives.

It seems absolutely necessary to have a sorting gap here, with men of both crews handling the logs. When our timber is through the sluiceway--the daily run of logs--we are to be given a head of water which will take us through the gorge. As to the logs upriver--the rear--we are willing to join drives with you, Mr. Craig, so that we may use all the water together." She set back her shoulders. "That plan will serve us this season. For another season the independents will have laws of their own from the legislature. I'm quite sure that the independents have waked up and know now what some special legislative acts can do for their interests."

"I beg your pardon for breaking in, Miss Kennard," said Latisan, from his distance. "But this seems to be the time for me to say to Mr. Craig, in the presence of witnesses, that the same plan goes for the Tomah region. The independents over there can't be licked, sir."

"Nor the Latisans," shouted somebody in the Flagg crew.

That friendly corroboration of the young man's inmost determination served as a challenge. The drive master walked toward Craig and shook his fist. "No, nor the Latisans! We have a sawmill, and we're not worrying about the logs to feed it. But you understand, Mr. Craig, that the independents must have gangway on the river for their cut. And we know how to get gangway!"

He went back to his tree and resumed his whittling.

"To me the future looks very promising," said Lida. "We're all a little disturbed now, Mr. Craig, but we're coming to a perfect understanding.

Don't you think so?"

Craig did not reply at once, and she added, with ingenuous affectation of desiring to bring forward reasons for his agreement, "If the Comas company does join drives with us you will have the help of a perfectly wonderful crew, Mr. Craig. I'm told that we're a week or ten days ahead of the usual time--and the men have never seemed to be considering mere wages!"

The Three C's director rolled his eyes, avoiding her candidly provoking regard. He shifted his gaze to Latisan, who had turned his back on the group and was still whittling placidly, propped against a tree by his shoulder. "Wonderful teamwork," growled the Comas man. "But sticking out for anything else will be a fool stunt. Miss Kennard, there's a lawyer over there in the woods, somewhere! The thing to do now seems to be to hunt him up so that he can help us to pa.s.s papers of agreement." He swung his hand to indicate the bateau. "Will you go with me?"

She hesitated. Then she smiled amiably on Craig. "I think I'd rather walk along the path, sir. I'll meet you and the lawyer at this end of the dam."

Craig trudged down to the boat and was swept away into the fog.

Latisan did not turn; he kept on whittling.

"Mr. Latisan!" she invited. "May I have your company to the dam? I'm sorry to trouble you, but I may be obliged to refer to you for further advice."

"I feel called on to remark," said old Vittum, always an irrepressible commentator when comment seemed to be necessary, speaking after Latisan and Lida had walked away into the mist--"I'll say to all that she knows her business."

"But it was Latisan who advised her," objected a literalist.

"h.e.l.l! I ain't speaking of this drive," snapped the old man. "I'm complimenting her on a job where she doesn't need anybody's advice!"

CHAPTER THIRTY

The sun at meridian that day burned away the mists, for it was May and the high sun was able to prevail.

The sluiceway of Skulltree dam was open and in the caldron of the gorge a yeasty flood boiled and the sunlight painted rainbows in the drifting spume. Rolling c.u.mbrously, end over end, at the foot of the sluice, lifting glistening, dripping flanks, sinking and darting through the white smother of the waters, the logs of the Flagg drive had begun their flight to the holdbooms of Adonia.

Lida and the taciturn squire whom she had drafted had climbed to the cliffs above the gorge in order to behold the first fruits of the compact which had been concluded with Craig and the Comas. Latisan went with her to the cliff because she had asked him to show her the way. His manner with her was not exactly shyness; she had been studying him, trying anxiously to penetrate his thoughts. He was reserved, but awkwardly so; it was more like embarra.s.sment; it was a mingling of deference and despair in the face of a barrier.

It was warm up there where the sun beat against the granite, and she pulled off the jacket which had been one of her credentials in the north country. "I took the liberty of wearing it--and the cap. I'll not need them any more."

She took the cap from her head. The breeze which had followed the calm of the mist fluttered a loose lock of her hair across her forehead and the sun lighted a glint within the tress. He gazed and blinked.

"I heard you had them--I heard it in Mern's office in New York," he said, with poor tact.

She offered them and he took the garments, clutching the cap and holding the jacket across his arm.

"I don't blame you for looking at me as you do," she went on, demurely and deprecatingly feminine at that moment. She smoothed her blouse with both hands and glanced down at her stained and ragged skirt. "It's my only warm dress and I've lived and slept in it--and I haven't minded a bit when the coffee slopped. I was trying to do my best."

He rocked his head voicelessly, helplessly--striving to fit speech to the thoughts that surged in him.

Then she made a request which perturbed him still more: "You came up here on horseback, I think you said. May I borrow the horse?"

"Do you mean that you're going away?" he gulped.

She spread her hands and again glanced down at her attire. She was hiding deeper motives behind the thin screen of concern for her wardrobe, trying to make a jest of the situation, and not succeeding.

"You must own up that I need to go shopping."

He turned from her to the chasm where the logs were tumbling along.

"And there's nothing to keep me here any longer, Mr. Latisan, now that you have come back!"

He faced her again, swinging with a haste that ground his heels sharply on the ledge. But she put up her hand when he opened his mouth.

"Do you think it will do us any good to bring up what has happened? I don't. I implore you not to mention it. You have come back to your work--it's waiting for you. After what you have done to-day you'll never need to lower your eyes before any man on this river. In my heart, when I gave you your cap and jacket, I was asking you to take back your work.

I ask you with all the earnestness that's in me! Won't you do it?" There was a hint of a sob in her tones, but her eyes were full of the confidence of one who felt that she was not asking vainly.

He did not hesitate. But words were still beyond the reach of his tongue. He dragged off the billyc.o.c.k hat which he had bought in town and scaled it far out into the turbid flood. He pulled off the wrinkled coat of the ready-made suit and tossed it down the side of the cliff. With the cap on his head and buckling the belt of the jacket he stood before her. "The men gave me my chance to-day; you're giving me a bigger one."

"Then I'm only wasting your time--up here!"

It had not been in Latisan's mind that he would make any reference to the past; she had implored him to keep silent and he was determined to obey. He was rigidly resolved to offer no plea for the future; this was the granddaughter--presumably the heiress of Echford Flagg, to be taken into her own after this service she had rendered. A Latisan of the broken Latisans had no right to lift his eyes to her!

If there had been a twinkle of hope for his comfort in her att.i.tude of reliance on him after he had arrived at Skulltree, there was none at that moment, for she had become distinctly dignified and distant. He swung back to that bitter conclusion which he had made a part of his convictions when he had pondered on the matter in his little room in New York--her frantically pledged affection had been only a part of her campaign of sacrifice. He was not blaming her for the pretense--he was not calling it deceit. She had fought for her own with such weapons as she could command in a time of stress.