Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 5

He did not lower his crest. "You all know what is happening this season. You know why I have sent out for men. The Three C's crowd has started stealing from my crews. I want men who have a grudge against the Three C's. I want men who will fight the Three C's. Rufe Craig proposes to steal the Noda as he has stolen the Tomah. He has been making his brags of what he'll do to me. He won't do it, even if I have to make a special trip to h.e.l.l and hire a crew of devils. Now let me test out this crowd." He was searching faces with a keen gaze. "All proper men to the front ranks! Let me look at you!"

A slow movement began in the throng; men were pushing forward.

"Lively on the foot!" yelled Flagg. "I'm standing here judging you by the way you break this jam of the jillpokes. Walk over the cowards, you real men! Come on, you bully chaps! Come running! Hi yoop! Underfoot with 'em!"

He swung his cant dog and kept on adjuring.

The real adventurers, the excitement seekers, the sc.r.a.ppers, drove into the press of those who were in the way. The field became a scene of riot. The bullies were called on to qualify under the eyes of the master. There were fisticuffs aplenty because husky men who might not care to enlist with old Eck Flagg were sufficiently muscular and ugly to strike back at attackers who stamped on their feet and drove fists into their backs.

Flagg, on the porch, followed all phases of the scattered conflict, estimated men by the manner in which they went at what he had set them to do, and he surveyed them with favor when they crowded close to the edge of his rostrum, dwelling with particular interest on the faces which especially revealed that they had been up against the real thing in the way of a fight. Behind and around the gladiators who had won to the porch pressed the cordon of malcontents who cursed and threatened.

"Much obliged for favor of prompt reply to mine of day and date," said Flagg, with his grim humor. He drove his cant-dog point into the floor of the porch and left the tool waggling slowly to and fro. He leaped down among the men. He did not waste time with words. He went among them, gripping their arms to estimate the biceps, holding them off at arm's length to judge their height and weight. He also looked at their teeth, rolling up their lips, horse-trader fashion. The drive provender did not consist of tender tidbits; a river jack must be able to chew tough meat, and the man in the wilderness with a toothache would have poor grit for work in bone-chilling water after a sleepless night.

Flagg carried a piece of chalk in his right hand. When he accepted a man he autographed the initials "E F" on the back of the fellow's shirt or jacket, in characteristic handwriting. "Show your back as you go north,"

he proclaimed for the benefit of the strangers to his custom. "My initials are good for stage team, tote team, lodging, and meals--the bills are sent to Flagg. The sooner you start the sooner you'll get to headwaters."

A big chap followed at Flagg's back as the despot moved among the men.

He was Ben Kyle, Flagg's drive boss, the first mate of the Flagg ship of state. He was writing down the names of the men as they were hired.

Occasionally the master called on the mate to give in an opinion when a candidate ran close to the line between acceptance or rejection.

Flagg began to show good humor beyond his usual wont. He was finding men who suited him. Many of them growled anathema against the Three C's.

They had worked for that corporation. They had been obliged to herd with roughscuff from the city employment agencies, unskilled men who were all the time coming and going and were mostly underfoot when they were on the job. One humorist averred that the Three C's had three complete sets of crews--one working, one coming in, and one going out.

Kyle began to loosen up and copy some of Flagg's good humor.

He encouraged the wag who had described the three shifts to say more about the Comas crews; he had some witticisms of his own to offer.

And so it came to pa.s.s that when he tackled one hulking and bashful sort of a chap who stuttered, Kyle was in most excellent mood to have a little fun with a b.u.t.t. Even Echford Flagg ceased operations to listen, for the humor seemed to be sharp-edged enough to suit his satiric taste.

"You say you're an ox teamster!" bawled the boss. "Well, well! That's good. Reckon we'll put some oxen onto the drive this spring so as to give you a job. How much do you know about teaming oxen?"

After a great deal of mirth-provoking difficulty with b and g, the man meekly explained that he did know the b.u.t.t end of a gad from the brad end.

"Who in the crowd has got an ox or two in his pocket?" queried Kyle. "We can't hire an ox teamster for the drive"--he dwelt on oxen for the drive with much humorous effect--"without being sure that he can drive oxen.

It would be blasted aggravating to have our drive hung up and the oxen all willing enough to pull it along, and then find out that the teamster was no good."

Martin Brophy, tavernkeeper, was on the porch, enjoying the events that were staged in front of his place that day.

"Hey, Martin, isn't there a gad in the cultch under your office desk?"

"Most everything has been left there, from an umbrella to a clap o'

thunder," admitted Brophy. "I'll look and see."

"Better not go to fooling too much, Ben," warned the master. "I've seen fooling spoil good business a lot of times."

It was rebuke in the hearing of many men who were showing keen zest in what might be going to happen; it was treating a right-hand man like a child. Kyle resented it and his tone was sharp when he replied that he knew what he was doing. He turned away from the glaring eyes of the master and took in his hand the goad which Brophy brought.

There was a sudden tautness in the situation between Flagg and Kyle, and the crowd noted it. The master was not used to having his suggestions flouted.

The boss thrust the goad into the hand of the bashful fellow. "There's a hitchpost right side of you, my man. Make believe it's a yoke of oxen.

What are your motions and your style of language in getting a start. Go to it!"

The teamster swished the goad in beckoning fashion after he had rapped it against the post in imitation of knocking on an ox's nose to summon attention. His efforts to vault lingually over the first "double-u"

excited much mirth. Even the corners of Flagg's mouth twitched.

"Wo, wo hysh! Gee up, Bright! Wo haw, Star!" Such was the opening command.

"They don't hear you," declared Kyle. "Whoop 'er up!"

The teamster did make a desperate effort to drive his imaginary yoke of oxen. He danced and yelled and brandished the goad as a crazy director might slash with his baton. He used up all his drive words and invective.

Kyle could not let the joke stop there after the man had thrown down the goad, wiped his forehead, and declared that it wasn't fair, trying to make him start a hitching post.

"Pick up your gad," commanded the boss. He dropped on his hands and knees. "Now you show us what you can do. I'm a yoke of oxen."

"You ain't."

"I tell you I am. Get busy. Start your team."

"That's about enough of that!" warned Flagg, sourly. "Kyle, get up onto your feet where you belong."

But the spirit of jest made the boss reckless and willfully disobedient.

He insisted doggedly on his role as a balky ox and scowled at the teamster. "If you want a job you'll have to show _me_!"

The teamster adjured Mr. Kyle in very polite language, and did not bring the swishing goad within two feet of the scornful nose; the candidate wanted a job and was not in a mood to antagonize a prospective boss.

"You're a h.e.l.l of a teamster!" yapped Kyle. "What's your system? Do you get action by feeding an ox lollypops, kissing him on the nose and saying, 'Please,' and 'Beg your pardon'?"

The big chap began to show some spirit of his own under the lash of the laughter that was encouraging Kyle.

"I ain't getting a square deal, mister. That post wa'n't an ox; you ain't an ox."

"I am, I tell you! Start me."

"You vow and declare that you're an ox, do you, before all in hearing?"

"That's what!" Mr. Kyle was receiving the plaudits and encouragement of all his friends who enjoyed a joke, and was certain in his mind that he had that bashful stutterer sized up as a quitter. Flagg folded his arms and narrowed his eyes--his was the air of one who was allowing fate to deal with a fool who tempted it.

The candidate did not hurry matters. He spat meditatively into first one fist and then into the other. He grasped the goad in both hands. He looked calculatingly at Mr. Kyle, who was on his hands and knees, and was c.o.c.king an arch and provocative look upward, approving the grins of the men near him.

When the teamster did snap into action his manner indicated that he knew how to handle balky oxen. First he cracked Mr. Kyle smartly over the bridge of the nose. "Wo haw up!" was a command which Kyle tried to obey in a flame of ire, but a swifter and more violent blow across the nose sent him back on his heels, his eyes shut in his agony.

"Gee up into the yoke, you crumpled-horn hyampus!" The teamster welted the goad across Kyle's haunches and further encouraged the putative ox by a thrust of a full inch of the brad.

When the boss came onto his feet with a berserker howl of fury and started to attack, the ox expert yelled, "Dat rat ye, don't ye try to hook your horns into me!" Then he flailed the stick once more across Kyle's nose with a force that knocked the boss flat on his back.

Echford Flagg stepped forward and stood between the two men when Kyle struggled to his feet and started toward the teamster with the mania of blood l.u.s.t in his red eyes. The master put forth a hand and thrust back the raging mate. Flagg said something, but for a time he could not be heard above the tempest of howling laughter.

It was riotous abandonment to mirth. Men hung helplessly to other men or flapped their hands and staggered about, choking with their merriment.