Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 7

"He has always had a razor edge to his temper. Maybe you know what put the wire edge onto it?" It was query with the c.o.c.k of an eyebrow accompanying.

"What I know about Mr. Flagg is only a general reputation of being a hard man. I can say that much to you because I told him the same thing.

And that's as far as I care to gossip about an employer," stated Ward, stiffly.

"That's a safe stand," said Brophy, unperturbed. "Keep to it and they can't be running to him with stories about what you have said. But he don't pay me wages and I can say what I feel like saying. A new boss ought to know a few things about the man who hires him. It's my disposition to set a good chap on the right road with a tip. Whatever you may say to Flagg in the way of chat, don't you ever try to bring up the subject of his family affairs."

"I'm not at all likely to," snapped Latisan, with asperity.

"Oh, such a subject is easy out when folks get to going confidential,"

pursued the persistent Brophy. The suggestion that he would ever be on confidential terms with Flagg provoked an ill-tempered rebuke from Ward, but Brophy paid no attention.

"If you lose your job with him, as you probably will, Latisan, let it be in the straight way of business, as he conducts it, instead of being by some fool slip of your tongue about family matters." He puffed at his cigar complacently and still was giving no heed to Ward's manifest repugnance at being made the repository of gossip.

"Eck's wife died when the daughter Sylvia was small, and he sent the girl off to school somewheres when she was big enough to be sent. And she fell in with a dude kind of a fellow and came back home married to him. She was so much in love that she dared to do a thing like that with Eck Flagg--and that's being in love a whole lot, I'll say. Well, none of us knew what was said back and forth in the family circle, but we figured that the new husband's cheeks didn't tingle with any kisses that Eck gave him. At any rate, Eck set Kennard to work--that was the name, Alfred Kennard. Eck was never much good at ciphering. Office had been in his hip pocket, where he carried his timebook and his scale sheet.

Kennard had an education and it came about that Eck let Alf do the ciphering; then he let him keep the books; then he let him handle contracts and the money; then he gave him power of attorney so that Alf wouldn't be hampered whilst Eck was away in the woods. Just handed everything over for the first and the only time in his life, figuring that it was all in the family. I guess that Alf went to figuring the same way, seeing that he was good at figures; felt that what was Eck's was his, or would be later--and Alf proceeded to cash in. Stole right and left, that was the amount of it. Prob'ly reckoned he'd rather have a sore conscience than have his feelings all ripped to pieces when he asked Eck for money.

"We all knew when Eck found out that he had been properly trimmed by the only man he had ever trusted.

"It happened in the dooryard of the big house up there, when Eck came home, wised up, and tackled Alf. Eck felt that the inside of the house might get mussed up by his language, so he stood in the yard and hollered for Alf to come out. We all went up and stood around; it seemed to be a free show, all welcome. We got the full facts in the case from Eck.

"Sylvia came out on the heels of Alf, and she had with her the little Lida, Eck's granddaughter. And after Eck had had his say to Alf and had thrown him over the fence, he gave Sylvia her choice--stay with her father or go away with Alf. Well, she had loved Alf well enough to come home and face Eck with him; she loved Alf enough to turn her back on Eck and face the world with her husband. Natural, of course! Eck tried to grab the little girl away--to save his own from the thieves, so he said.

Sylvia fought him off and hung to the girl. It was a tough sight, Latisan! And he stood there and shook his fists and cast 'em all off for ever and aye. That's his nature--no allowance made if anybody does him dirt.

"I'll admit that Eck did make an allowance later, after Alf died and the news of it got back here to Adonia. Lida was grown up to around sixteen by that time. I got this from Rickety d.i.c.k. Know him?"

Latisan, relighting his pipe, shook his head with an indifferent wag.

"Well, you soon will. He cooks and waits and tends on Eck. Looks up to Eck. Loves Eck--and that's going some! d.i.c.k told me about the allowance Eck made for once in his life after I had touched d.i.c.k up by telling him that Eck Flagg never made an allowance to anybody. Eck allowed to d.i.c.k that Lida was too young to choose the right way that day in the yard.

When she had grown up Eck sent old d.i.c.k to hunt for her in the city, to tell her she could come back to him, now that she was old enough to make her choice. Said Sylvia couldn't come back. Now that was a devil of a position to put a girl in. What? Hey?"

Latisan nodded, displaying faint interest.

"And Sylvia right then was in bed with her never-get-over, so d.i.c.k told me. Of course Lida wouldn't come back. And she was working her fingers to the bone to take care of her mother. Old d.i.c.k cried like a baby when he was telling me. He cries pretty easy, anyway. He never dared to give to Eck the word that Lida sent back. She's got the spirit of the Flaggs, so I judge from what d.i.c.k told me. She wouldn't even take the eggs and the truck d.i.c.k lugged down, though d.i.c.k had bought 'em with his own money; she thought the stuff came from her grandfather. d.i.c.k had to hide 'em under the table when he came away. And so Eck has crossed Lida off for ever and aye. Now that's some story, ain't it?"

"I haven't enjoyed it," said Ward, brusquely.

"Prob'ly not. I wasn't telling it thinking you'd give three cheers when I finished. But I've been warning you not to make a foolish break by stubbing your toe over the family topic. I've heard what has happened to the Latisans over Tomah way. You're our real sort, and I'm blasted sorry for you. I reckon you need a job and I'm trying to help you hold it. I like your looks, young Latisan. I hate the Comas crowd. Craig has never set down to my table but what he has growled about the grub. The cheap rowdies he hires for his operations on these waters come through here with bootleg booze and try to wreck my house. I'd like to be friends with you, young Latisan, and if you feel that way about it, put it there!"

Brophy held out a fat hand and Latisan grasped it cordially.

"In my position I hear all the news," stated the landlord. "I'll sift the wheat out of the chaff and hand you what's for your own good. And now you'll have to excuse me whilst I go and pound steak and dish up dinner and wait on the table. That's the trouble with running a tavern up here in the woods. I can't keep help of the girl kind. They either get homesick or get married."

There was an ominous crash in the dining room.

Brophy swore roundly and extricated his rotund haunches from the arms of his chair. "There goes Dirty-Shirt Sam! I have to double him as hostler and waiter. He'd smash the feed pails in the stable if they wasn't galvanized iron."

He pounded with heavy gait across the office and flung open the dining-room door, disclosing a lop-sided youth who was listlessly kicking broken dishes into a pile.

"You're fourteen dollars behind your wages, already, with dishes you've dropped and smashed," shouted Brophy. "I'd give a thousand dollars for the right kind of a girl to stay here and wait on tables if she wouldn't get married or homesick. I'll make it a standing offer." He cuffed the youth in a circle around the heap of broken crockery and went on his way to the kitchen.

Latisan smoked and reflected on the nature of Echford Flagg as Brophy had exposed it from the family standpoint.

Then he looked at the sullen youth who was sweeping up the fragments of the dishes. The whimsical notion occurred to Ward that he might post Brophy on the advantages of a cafeteria plan of operating his hostelry.

But he had by these thoughts summoned the memory of one certain cafeteria, and of a handsome girl who sat across from him and who had so suddenly been swallowed up in the vortex of the city throngs--gone forever--only a memory that troubled him so much and so often that he was glad when his own Tomah men appeared to him, asking for commands and taking his mind off a constantly nagging regret.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The set-off of the Flagg expedition in the gray of early dawn had an element of picaresque adventure about it.

Latisan was making an estimate of his crew while he mixed with the men, checking them up, as they a.s.sembled again in front of the tavern of Adonia. Old Cap'n Blackbeard would have cheerfully certified to the eminent fitness of many of them for conscienceless deeds of derring-do.

The nature of Flagg's wide-flung summons and his provocative method of selection must needs bring into one band most of the toughest nuts of the region, Latisan reflected, and he had brought no milk-and-water chaps from the Tomah. He had come prepared for what was to face him. He had led his willing men in more or less desperate adventures in his own region; his clan had been busy pa.s.sing the word among the strangers that old John Latisan's grandson was a chief who had the real and the right stuff in him. It was plain that all the men of the crew were receiving the information with enthusiasm. Some of them ventured to pat him on the shoulder and volunteered profane promises to go with him to the limit.

They did not voice any loyalty to Flagg. Flagg was not a man to inspire anything except perfunctory willingness to earn wages. The men saw real adventure ahead if they followed at the back of a heroic youth who was avenging the wrongs dealt to his family fortunes.

There were choruses of old river chanteys while the men waited for the sleds. A devil-may-care spirit had taken possession of the crew. Latisan began to feel like the brigand chief of bravos.

He was jubilantly informed by one enthusiast that they were all in luck--that Larry O'Gorman, the woods poet, had picked that crew as his own for that season on the river.

The songs of Larry O'Gorman are sung from the Mirimichi to the Megantic.

He is a.n.a.lyst as well as bard. He makes it a point--and he still lives and sings--to attach himself only to forces which can inspire his lyre.

It was conveyed to the new boss that already was Larry busy on a new song. Ward, his attention directed, beheld the lyricist seated on the edge of the tavern porch, absorbed in composition, writing slowly on the planed side of a bit of board, licking the end of a stubby pencil, rolling his eyes as he sought inspiration.

A bit later Larry rehea.r.s.ed his choristers and Latisan heard the song.

Come, all ye bold and bully boys--come lis-sun unto me!

'Tis all abowit young Latis-an, a riverman so free.

White water, wet water, he never minds its roar, 'Cause he'll take and he'll kick a bubble up and ride all safe to sh.o.r.e.

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

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

We don't give a tinker's dam.

Every man in the crowd was able to come in on the simple chorus.

They were singing when Echford Flagg appeared to them. He was riding on a jumper, with runners under it, and he was galloping his strapping bay horses down from the big house on the ledges. On the bare ground the runners shrieked, and he snapped his whip over the heads of the horses.

"What is this, a singing school or a driving crew?" he demanded, raucously.

"The sleds have just come, sir," explained Latisan, who had been marshaling the conveyances.

"Listen, all ye!" shouted Flagg. "Nothing but dunnage bags go on those sleds till the runners. .h.i.t the woods tote road and there's good slipping on the snow. The man who doesn't hoof it till then hears from me."

He ordered Latisan to get onto the jumper seat beside him, slashed his horses with the whip, and led the way toward the north.

There was no word between the two for many a mile.