King Spruce Part 20

"I've paid a big price for you this night," he went on, more gently, "and it isn't to a cur of that kind that I'll be giving you. MacLeod, here's your lantern! Away, now!"

"And I'll go, I say, if you'll tell me they've lied. Colin, darling, tell me!" But he started away, spurred by a ripping oath from the Honorable Pulaski. She tore herself from the restraining grasp of Wade and ran after her lover.

At her movement, Abe, cowering in the gloom away from the torch-lighted area of ledge, started behind her with canine loyalty. He had followed her into the fire zone when his mother had screamed command into his ear. His mother and this girl, her protegee, were the only ones who ever looked at him without disgust.

"Abe!" shouted "Ladder" Lane. He spoke in a peculiar tone--a tone in which the fool evidently recognized something of an old-time authority; for he uttered a little bleat, in curious contrast with his giant bulk, and halted. "Fire, Abe!" cried Lane, brandishing his arm in the direction of the distant flamings. "Mother want her saved from fire.

Fetch, Abe!"

It was a tone of authority that the witling recognized, and it commanded his weak will and giant strength. He sped after the girl, seized her in spite of her furious protest, and bore her back to the cabin, her struggles exciting only his amiable grins.

Lane rushed him and his burden into his hut.

"Now, Abe, mother say watch her. No go into the fire! Watch till I come!" He came out with placid confidence that his order would be obeyed, and the mien of the giant gave excellent confirmation.

"Men," he said, grimly, looking round on their faces, "I'd rather trust that girl to the fool than to all of the rest of humankind; but I've had reasons in my life to distrust men, and the higher the men the more I distrust them. Don't any of you interfere in that duet in there. There's only one thing that I ask you to do here till I come back--whoever stays here--feed the animals. You can't corrupt them." He was "Ladder" Lane once more, sour in his satire.

"Where are you going, Lane?" demanded Britt.

The old man shook a telephone cut-in sender at him.

"I'm going through the woods ahead of that fire to tap the Attean line and send my report and call for men," he said, calmly. "I'm still the fire warden of Jerusalem region."

He set away, striding over the ledges, his lantern winking between his thin legs.

"Looks like a cross between a lightning-bug and a grampy-long-shanks,"

observed the sheriff, his cheerfulness increased by the happy disposal of his troublesome prisoners. "Travelling on underpinning like that, he'll have his word in before daybreak."

But Pulaski Britt had not yet satisfied the curiosity that stirred as soon as greater matters had been settled. He ran after the warden, shouting an order to wait.

The little group heard the colloquy, for Lane did not stop, and the Honorable Pulaski had to bellow his question.

"Say, Lane, in case anything should happen to you! Ain't you going to let me do the square thing? If this girl is yours, say the word. I'll look after her. Is she yours?"

"No!" yelled the old man, with a fury in his tones like the rasp of a file on their flesh as they listened. And the next words seemed to be a cry wrung from him without his will: "If she were, I'd have killed you and Colin MacLeod before this!"

He went flitting down the slope of Jerusalem like a will-o'-the-wisp, and they stood in silence and watched him out of sight.

That night the tenantry of Jerusalem k.n.o.b divided itself silently and sullenly into groups which ignored each other.

Britt and his people took blankets from the fire station, and established makeshift camps down in the fringe of the trees.

Wade and Christopher Straight went apart, and composed themselves as best they could on some gray moss that tufted the ledge. Their duty was plain. That fire threatened Enchanted, once it should sweep through the chimney draught of Pogey Notch. They must stay there and fight it at the pa.s.s through which it was marching to invade their territory. Rodburd Ide promised to have the Enchanted crew following them within a week. It might be that their men were already on the way. Their route lay through Pogey, and Wade would be there ready to captain them.

The camp was left to the girl and her unkempt guardian. She sat silent and full of bitter rage; but she understood the vagaries of the fool's character well enough to realize that after Lane's orders to Abe even her persuasions could have no effect; the valley fires that lighted the windows of the camp gave effective point to Lane's commands. The giant crouched by the open door and gazed upon the sullen glowings in the vast pit below, muttering his fears to himself.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE BARONY OF "STUMPAGE JOHN"

"Wilderness lord of the olden time, Stalwart and plumed pine; They have dragged thee down to the roaring town From the realms that once were thine.

And he who reigns in thy stately stead Has never a time o' truce, For the axe and saw and the grinder's maw Have doomed thee, too, King Spruce."

--Kin o' Ktaadn.

At half-past four in the dark of the morning "Dirty-ap.r.o.n Harry's"

nickel alarm-clock purred relentlessly, and he rolled out of his bunk, his eyelids sticking like a blind puppy's. At seventeen, youth relishes morning naps. But, as cookee of Barnum Withee's camp on "Lazy Tom"

operation, he was chosen to be the earliest bird to crow. His first duty as chanticleer was to wake "Icicle Ike" and "Push Charlie," the teamsters, whose hungry charges were stamping impatient hoofs in the hovel. He dressed himself while stumbling across the dingle to the men's camp, his eyes still shut. This feat was not as difficult as it sounds.

The difference between Harry's night-gear and day raiment was merely a Scotch cap and the canvas robe of office that gave him his t.i.tle.

The teamsters grunted when he shook them, and followed him out of the frowsy, snore-fretted atmosphere of the big camp. They did their morning yawnings and stretching as they walked. When Duty calls "Time!" to a woodsman the body is on the dot, even if the soul lags unwillingly.

The humorists of the woods have it that the cookee pries up the sun when he jacks the big pot out of the bean-hole. For such an important operation, "Dirty-ap.r.o.n Harry" went at it listlessly.

The bean-hole was beyond the horse-hovel, sheltered in the angle of a little palisade of poles whose protection would be needed when the winter's snows drifted. Harry wearily dragged a hoe in that direction after he had kindled a fire in the cook-house stove. He did not look up to the first pearly sheen of sunrise streaming through the yellow of the frost-touched birches. The glory of the skies would wake him too soon.

He gave up the final fuddle of slumber grudgingly, his dull mind still piecing the visions of the night, his soul full of loathing for the workaday world of greasy pots and dirty tins. But when he turned the corner of the bean-hole shelter he dropped out of dreams with the suddenest jolt of his life. A black bear was trying to dig up the bean-pot, growling softly at the heat of the round stones she uncovered.

Two cubs sat near by, watching operations with great interest, their round ears up-c.o.c.ked, their jaws drooling expectantly. The big bear whirled promptly and cuffed the hoe out of Harry's limp grasp, leaped past him before his trembling legs could move him, and scuffed away into the woods, with her progeny crowding close to her sheltering bulk. The cookee sped in the other direction towards the hovel with as great alacrity.

"Bears?" echoed "Push Charlie," appearing with his pitchfork at the hovel door. "Stop your squawkin'. I seen half a dozen yistiddy, and all of 'em streakin' north up this valley. Heard 'em whooffing and barkin'

last night, travellin' past here on the hemlock benches." He pointed his fork at the terraced sides of the valley above them.

"It's only excursion parties bound for the Bears' Annooal Convention up at Telos Gorge," suggested "Icicle Ike," rapping the chaff out of a peck measure.

The cookee, woods-camp traditional b.u.t.t of jokes, stared from one to the other, trying to recover his composure.

"And Marm Bear there wanted to take along that pot of beans for the picnic dinner," added Charlie.

"I think it's goin' to be a general ma.s.s-meetin' to discuss the game laws," said Ike. "The boys who were swampin' the twitch-roads yistiddy told me that deer kept traipsin' past all day and--well, there goes three now."

White "flags" flitted through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing, and a startled "Whick-i-whick!" further up the valley-side hinted at the retreat of still others. Their departure was probably hastened by the cook's shrill "Who-e-e-e!" the general call for the camp. He came out of the cook-house scrubbing his hands and bare arms with a towel.

"Git that bean-pot here! What are you standin' round on one foot for?"

he demanded, testily. When the cookee began to stutter explanations, brandishing freckled arms to point the route of the fugitives, the cook interrupted, but now there was humor in his tones.

"Thunderation, you gents is sartinly slow to understand what's before your eyes! Don't you know why all these animiles is runnin' away from down there?" He jerked a red thumb over his shoulder towards the south.

"Ain't 'Stumpage John' Barrett down there with Withee, lookin' over that tract where we operated last season?"

Sly grins of appreciation appeared on the faces of the teamsters.

"Ain't you got any notion of what particular kind of language 'Stumpage John' has been lettin' out of himself for the last twenty-four hours?"

"Well, the idee is," said the cook, "he is down there cussin' to that extent that he's cussed every animile off'n Square-hole township.

Animiles is natcherally timid, delicate in the ears, and hates cussin'.

The deer come first because they can run fastest. Bears left as soon as they could, and is hurryin'. Rabbits will come next, and the quill-pigs are on the way. Then I reckon Barnum Withee will fetch up the rear. Oh, it must be somethin' awful down there!" He faced the south with grave mien. His listeners guffawed.

But a moment later "Push Charlie" stepped clear of the hovel and sniffed with canine eagerness. There was a subtle, elusive, acrid odor in the air. It seemed to billow up the valley, whose shoulders circ.u.mscribed their vision so narrowly.