Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 8

Near noon they arrived at a wayside baiting place, a log house in a clearing. They ate there and the horses were fed. There was plenty of snow in the woods and the first rains of April had iced the surface so that the slipping had been good.

As if the chewing of food had unlocked Flagg's close-set jaws, he talked a bit to Latisan after the meal and while the horses were put to the jumper.

"I'm going to swing off here and ride down to Skulltree dam. I'm hearing reports of something going on there."

They heard something very definite in the way of reports before they reached Skulltree. The sound of explosions came booming through the trees. It was dynamite. Its down-thrusting thud on the frozen ground was unmistakable.

"I knew that all those boxes of canned thunder that have been going through Adonia, with the Three C's on the lid, weren't intended to blow up log jams," vouchsafed Flagg, after a few oaths to spice his opinion of the Comas company.

Latisan knew something about the lay of the land at Skulltree, himself.

When he was a young chap the Latisans had operated in a small way as a side-line on the Noda waters. There was a rift in the watershed near Skulltree. There was a canon leading down to the Tomah end, and the waters of the gorge were fed by a chain of ponds whose master source was near the Noda. The Latisans had hauled over to the pond from the Noda Valley.

When Flagg pulled his horses to a halt on the edge of a cliff which commanded a view of the Skulltree and its purlieus, he sat in silence for five minutes until he had taken in every detail of what was going on there.

Every little while there was an explosion across the river among the trees, and clotted frozen earth and rocks shot up into the air. When the horses leaped in fright Flagg slashed them and swore. It was plain that his ire was mounting as he made sure of what was taking place.

They were blasting a rude ca.n.a.l from the Noda across the low horseback which divided the Noda waters from Tomah ponds. It meant the diversion of flowage. It was contemptuous disregard of the Noda rights in favor of the million-dollar paper mill of the Three C's on the Tomah lower waters. Rufus Craig had said something to young Latisan about the inexpediency of picking up a million-dollar paper mill and lugging it off in a shawl strap. It would be easier to blow a hole through the earth and feed in the logs from the Noda.

"By the red-hot hinges of Tophet!" bawled Flagg, having made sure that the enormity he was viewing was not a dream. He cut his whip under the bellies of his horses, one stroke to right and the other to left, and the animals went over the cliff and down the sharp slope, skating and floundering through the snow. The descent at that place would have been impossible for horses except for the snow which trigged feet and runners in some degree; it was damp and heavy; but the frantic threshing of the plunging beasts kicked up a smother of snow none the less. It was like a thunderbolt in a nimbus--the rush of Flagg down the mountain.

Rufus Craig was in the shack at the end of Skulltree dam--his makeshift office. Somebody called to him, and from his door he beheld the last stages of Flagg's harebrained exploit, a veritable touch-and-go with death.

"There ain't much doubt about who it is that's coming for a social call," said the understrapper who had summoned the field director. "And the question is whether he's bound for h.e.l.l or Skulltree."

Craig did not comment; he had the air of one who had been expecting a visitor of this sort and was not especially astonished by the mode of getting there suddenly, considering the spur for action.

Tempestuous was the rush of the horses across the narrow flats between the cliff and the end of the dam. So violently did Flagg jerk them to a standstill in front of the shack, one horse fell and dragged down the other in a tangle of harness. Flagg left them to struggle to their feet as best they were able. He leaped off the jumper and thrust with the handle of his whip in the direction of the dynamite operations.

The old man's features were contorted into an arabesque--a pattern of maniacal rage. His face was purple and its hue was deepened because it was set off against the snow which crusted his garments after his descent through the drifts. Knotted veins stood out on his forehead.

There was no coherence in the noises he was making in his effort to speak words. He kept jabbing with his whip handle.

Evidently Craig's first thought was that the menace of the whip was for him; he half put up a curved arm to ward off blows. In spite of his attention to Flagg he surveyed Latisan with considerable astonishment.

Ward had not recovered his poise. A pa.s.senger is usually more perturbed than a driver in desperate situations. That crazy dash down the cliff had frightened him into speechless and numb pa.s.sivity. He still clung to the jumper seat with his stiffened fingers.

"Before you do anything you'll be sorry for, Mr. Flagg, let me a.s.sure you that we have the law behind us in what we're doing," suggested Craig, with nervous haste. "The legislature extended our charter for development purposes and a special act protects us."

Flagg strode away a dozen paces and then came back with better command over his faculties of speech. "d.a.m.n your legislature! What right has it got to tamper with a landbreak that G.o.d Almighty has put between waters?"

"The act was pa.s.sed, Mr. Flagg. There was an advertised hearing. If you were interested you should have been there."

"What does a legislature know about conditions up here?" demanded Flagg, with fury. "They loaf around in swing chairs and hearken to the first one who gets to 'em. They pa.s.s laws with a joker here and a trick there, and they don't know what the law is really about. You're stealing my water. By the G.o.ds! there's no law that allows a thief to operate. And if you've got a law that helps you steal I'll take my chance on keeping my own in spite of your pet and private law."

"Go ahead, Flagg," said Craig, impudently, no longer apprehensive about the whip. "I'm not your guardian to save you from trouble. There's water enough for all of us."

"You have swept the slopes so clean for your cursed pulp-wood slivers that you have dried up the brooks, and there isn't enough water any more, and you know it. Your d.a.m.nation ca.n.a.l will suck the life out of the Noda."

"You listen to me, Flagg!" adjured Craig, getting back all his confidence as the executive of a powerful corporation. "Another special act allows us to raise this dam and conserve the water so that there'll be plenty after we use our share for the ca.n.a.l. You're safe and----"

"Safe!" raged the old man, and again the veins knotted on his forehead and he panted for breath. Latisan wanted to urge him to be careful.

Flagg was exhibiting the dread symptoms of apoplexy. "Safe! I'll be locked into this dam by you, with sluiceway refused to me--that's what it will come to--you offering me a cut price for the logs I can't get down to the Adonia sawmills. If you can't kill one way, as you killed off the Latisans, you'll kill in another way. You're a devilish thief, Craig. I wonder if the men who hire you know what you are. Special acts, hey? That legislature has given a robber a loaded gun without knowing it. By the bald-headed jeesicks! I've got a drive coming down this river! And for fifty years, every spring, it has gone through. It's going through this year, too, and if you're underfoot here you'll be walked on. And that's just as good as your trumped-up law; it's better--it's justice."

Flagg acted like a man who did not dare to remain longer in the presence of such an enemy; his big hands were doubling into hard fists; he was shaking in all his muscles. He leaped back onto the seat of his jumper, swung his team and sent his horses leaping up a whiplash road which traversed the cliff--a road he had disdained in his wild impatience to meet his foe.

When they reached the level of the wooded country Flagg had something to say about his abrupt departure from Craig, as if the master feared that his employe might suspect that there was an element of flight in the going-away. "There's a law against killing a man, and I've got to respect that law even if I do spit on special acts that those gum-sh.o.e.rs have put through. I didn't go down to their legislature and fight special acts, Latisan. I found these waters running downhill as G.o.d Almighty had set 'em to running. I have used 'em for my logs. And if any man tries now to steal my water at Skulltree, or block me with a raised dam, there's going to be one devil of a fight at Skulltree and I'll be there in the middle of it. What I wanted to do to Craig to-day can well wait till then when the doing can count for full value."

Ward had been casting solicitous side glances at the empurpled face and the swollen veins. He did not dare to counsel Flagg as to his motions or his emotions. But he felt sure that an old man could not indulge in such transports without danger. He knew something about the effects of an embolism. His violent grandfather had been a victim of a fit of flaming anger in his old age.

"I'll be in the middle of it, a club in each hand," promised Flagg. And his molten ponderings kept alight the fires in his face.

They halted for the night at one of the Flagg store depots and were lodged in the office camp, reserved sacred to the master and his boss.

Latisan slept in the bunk above the master.

Flagg had been silent all the evening, poring over the accounts that the storekeeper had turned over.

He sighed frequently; he seemed to be weary. After a time he kicked off his larrigans and rolled into his bunk, ready dressed as he had stood.

He seemed to lack the volition to remove his clothing.

He was snoring calmly when Latisan went to sleep.

Sometime in the night the young man awoke. The sounds which he heard below him were not the snores of a man who was sleeping peacefully.

There was something ominous about the spasmodic and stertorous breathing.

Latisan slipped to the floor and lighted a lamp. He found the wide eyes of Flagg staring from the gloom of the bunk.

"What is it, Mr. Flagg? What is the matter?" he asked, with solicitude.

Flagg slowly reached with his left hand, picked up his right hand, and when he released it the hand fell as helplessly as so much dead flesh.

"That's it," he said, without apparent emotion. "It's a shock." He employed the colloquial name for a stroke of paralysis. "My mother was that way. I've been afraid of it--have expected it, as you might say.

Mother lived ten years after her shock. I hope to G.o.d I won't. For it has taken me just when I'm ready to put up my best fight--and it's my good right hand, Latisan, my right hand!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

That was Flagg's reiterated lament on the journey back to Adonia. "It's my right hand, Latisan!"

Ward had insisted on being the charioteer for the stricken master, promising to rush back to headwaters and take charge of the crew. He tried to console the old man by urging that getting in touch as soon as possible with capable doctors might restore his strength. "It may be only a clot in the brain, sir. Such cases have been helped."

"It's my right hand. It's like my mother's. She never could lift it again."

They had started before dawn; a gibbous moon shed enough light on the tote road to serve Latisan. Flagg was couched on a sled, his blanket propped up by hay. His scepter, the curiously marked cant dog, lay beside him. He had made sure of that before he allowed the team to start.

"I propose to be your right hand in so far as I'm able, Mr. Flagg,"

declared Latisan, at last, p.r.i.c.ked by the repeatedly iterated plaint.