King Spruce Part 22

There were two bunks in the little office camp, one above the other.

"Ladder" Lane curled his long legs and tucked himself into the gloom of the lower bunk. His eyes, red-rimmed and glowing with strange fire under their knots of gray brow, noted a rifle lying on wooden braces against a log of the camp wall. He rose, clutched it eagerly, and "broke it down."

Its magazine was full. He jacked in a cartridge, laid the rifle on the bunk between himself and the wall, and lay down again.

Most men, after the vigil of a night and bitter struggle of the day, would have slept. Lane lay with eyes wide-propped. His mind seemed to be wrestling with a mighty problem. Once in awhile he groaned. At other times his teeth ground together. Twice he put the rifle back on the wall, shuddering as though it were some fearsome object. Twice he got up and retook it, and the last time muttered as though his resolution were clinched.

After the resolution had been formed he may have dozed. At any rate, the first he heard of Barrett and Withee they had sat down on the steps of the office camp, and the loud, brusque, and authoritative voice of one of them went on in some harangue that had evidently been progressing for a long time previously.

"Damme, Withee, I tell you again that you've robbed me right and left!

You left tops in the woods to rot that had a pulp log scale in 'em. You devilled the township without sense or system. You cut out the stands near the waterways without leaving a tree for new seed. You left strips standing that will go down like a row of bricks in the first big gale we have. But what's the use in going over all that again? You know you haven't used me right. The sum and substance is, you pay me a lump sum and square me for damages to that township or I'll cancel this season's stumpage contract. I'm using you just as I propose to use the rest of the thieves up here."

There was silence for a little time. The voice of the other man was subdued, even disheartened.

"I've said about all I can say, Mr. Barrett," he ventured. "Of course, you're rich and I'm poor, and if you cancel the contract I can't afford to go to law. But I've borrowed ten thousand dollars to put into this season's operation, and I've got it tied up in supplies and outfit. I've just got located and my camps finished. The way things have worked for me, I ain't made any money for three years, and I've put my shoulder to the wheel and my own hands to the axe. The operator can't make money, Mr. Barrett, the way he's ground between the owners of stumpage and the men down-river who buy his logs in the boom. You talk of closing your contract with me! Do you know of a man who can afford to do any better by you than I have--just as long as things are the way they are now?"

"Oh, I reckon you're about all alike," returned the lumber baron, ungraciously. "I've been a fool to believe anything stumpage buyers have told me. I ought to have come up here every year and looked after my property. But that would be prowling around in these woods that aren't fit for a human being to live in, and neglecting my other business to keep you fellows from stealing. Not for me! I've got something better to do. Clod-hoppers that don't want to stay in their fields all day with a gun kill one crow and hang it on a stake for the live ones to see. I'm sorry for you, Withee, but I'm going to make a special example of you."

"It don't seem hardly fair to pick me out of all the rest, Mr. Barrett."

"Well, it's business!" snapped the other. "And business in these days isn't conducted on the lines of a Sunday-school picnic."

"Ladder" Lane, who had been staring straight up at the poles of the bunk above his head, had not moved or glanced to right or left since the brusque, tyrannical voice outside had begun to declaim. Now he swung his feet off the bunk and sat on its edge. He fumbled behind him for the rifle and dragged it across his knees.

The night had fallen. The one window of the office camp admitted a sallow light. From the main camp came the drone of an accordion and the mumble of many voices. Lane realized that supper had been eaten.

"You're right about business, Mr. Barrett," Withee went on, a touch of resentment in his voice. "Your Bangor scale is 'business.' You talk about wasting tops! If an operator leaves the taper of the top on a log, he's hauling a third more weight to the landing, and then your Bangor scale gives him a third less measure than on the short log."

"The legislature established the scale; I didn't," retorted Barrett.

"Yes, but you rich folks can tell the legislature what to do, and it does it! We fellows that wear larrigans haven't anything to say about it." In his grief and despair he allowed himself to taunt his tyrant.

"Your legislature has peddled away all the rights on the river to men with power enough to grab 'em. Look here, Mr. Barrett, while you toasted your shins last winter we worked here like n.i.g.g.e.rs, in the cold and the snow, the frost and the wet--and the first man to get his drag out of our work was you. You got your stumpage-money. And when my logs were in the water, first the Driving a.s.sociation that you're a director in, with its legislative charter all right and tight, took its toll. Then the River Dam and Improvement Company took its toll, and you're a director in that. Then the Lumbering a.s.sociation, owned by your bunch, had its boomage tolls. Then the little private inside clique had its pay for 'taking care of logs,' as they call it. Then on top of all the rest, the gang had its tolls for running and shoring logs in the round-up boom, and finally the man who bought 'em scaled down the landing-measure on which you drew stumpage. I couldn't help myself. None of us fellows that operate can help ourselves. It's all tied up. We had to take what was given. Your tolls for this, that, and the other figured up about as much as stumpage. And when the last and final drag was made out of my little profits--there were no profits! I came out in debt, Mr. Barrett. That's all there was to show for a winter's hard work away from my home and family, in these woods that you say ain't fit for a human bein' to live in. That's what you're doin' to us--and you're all standin' together against us poor fellows to do it."

"Same old whine of the old crowd of operators," drawled Mr. Barrett. "If you old-fashioned chaps can't keep up with the modern business conditions you'd better get into something else and give the young fellows a chance."

"Get into the poor-house, perhaps," Withee replied, bitterly. "My father lumbered this river. I worked with him, before the big fellows had to have both crusts and the middle of the pie. I don't know how to do anything else. Every cent I've got in the world is tied up in my outfit.

For G.o.d's sake, Mr. Barrett, be fair with me!"

It was the pitiful appeal of the toil of the woods at its last stand.

But "Stumpage John" Barrett resolutely reflected the autocracy of giant King Spruce.

"This whole matter was gone over at our last directors' meeting, Withee.

We have decided, one and all, that we won't have our timber lands butchered and gashed and devilled to make profit for you fellows. Our charters give us our rights, and business is business. We've got to stand stiff, and we're going to stand stiff until we show you what's what. I told my a.s.sociates I would come up here and make an example, and I'm going to do it. Now, that's all, Withee! It's no good to argue. The timber interests can't afford to do any more fooling."

"Gents," broke in the voice of "Dirty-ap.r.o.n Harry," "cook sent me to say that your supper is ready."

"Tell cook I'm ready, too," snapped Barrett, grunting off the step. "I thought your cattle were never going to get out of that meal camp, Withee. You feed 'em too much! That's where your profits are going to."

Lane heard him snuffing.

"This smoke seems to be getting thicker, Withee. It must be something more than a bonfire, wherever it is."

"Cook is waiting to tell you," said Harry. "He didn't want to break in on your business talk, seein' that you was both so much took up with it.

Warden from Jerusalem was through here this morning to give alarm and call for fighters. He's takin' a nap in the office camp, waitin' for Mr.

Withee."

"A loafer like the rest of 'em!" snorted Barrett, starting away. "Dig him out, Withee, and send him to me. I'm going to eat."

At the sound of his retreating footsteps "Ladder" Lane unfolded his gaunt frame, stood up, and swung the rifle into the hook of his arm. He opened the office door and came upon Withee standing where Barrett had left him. In the gloom the operator's toil-stooped shoulders and bowed legs were outlined by the flare from the cook-camp. He continued his mutterings as he turned his head to look at Lane, his gray beard sweeping his shoulder.

"It's runnin' north from Misery, Mr. Withee," reported the warden. "It's runnin' in the slash and goin' fast. If it gets through Pogey Notch it means a crown fire in the black growth."

"I hope it'll burn every spruce-tree between Misery and the Canada line!" barked the furious old operator. "If I could stand here and put it out by spittin' on it I wouldn't open my mouth."

"I've 'phoned the alarm through Attean," went on Lane, calmly, with no apparent thought except his duty. "You ought to send twenty-five men."

"Not a man!" roared the operator. "Let the infernal hogs save their own timber lands. They want all the profit in 'em; let 'em stand all the loss, then."

"Look here, Withee," said the warden, implacably, "you know the law as well as I do. A fire warden has the same right as a sheriff to summon a posse when a fire is to be fought. Every man that is summoned and don't go pays a fine of ten dollars unless he is sick or disabled, and you'll have to stand good for your crew."

"I know it!" bellowed Withee, beside himself. "Some more of the devilish law they've cooked up to make us work like slaves for their profits.

Talk about monarchies! Talk about freedom, whether it's in a city or in the woods! We ain't anything but cattle. The rich men have stood together and made us so."

"I didn't make the law, Withee. I'm simply delivering my errand as the State orders me to do. I've done my duty. It's up to you." He sighed, shifted the rifle to the other arm, and mumbled behind his teeth, "Now I'll attend to a little matter of business that ain't the State's."

He started for the door of the meal camp, the operator on "Lazy Tom"

stumping angrily at his heels.

CHAPTER XII

THE CODE OF LARRIGAN-LAND

"Here's a good health to you, family man, From the depths of our hearts and the woods; Boughs for our bunks and salt hoss in junks Ain't hefty in way o' world's goods.

Keep your neck near her arms and your cheek near her kiss, And don't ever come here to the troubles o' This!

We've tasted of This and we know what it lacks-- We lonesome old baches-- Of peavies and patches, Bills, Tommies, and Jacks of the Axe."

--The Family Man.

Barrett was at the table, his back towards the door. He was filling a pannikin with whiskey from a silver-mounted flask. The cook, who had been silently admiring his smart suit of corduroy, was now more intently and longingly regarding the amber trickle from the mouth of the flask.

But John Barrett was not a man to ask menials to share his bowl with him. His shaven cheeks looked too hard even to permit the growth of beard.

The cook, whirling at the sound of Lane's moccasins on the chip dirt, was officious according to his promulgated code of politeness.

"Here's the warden from Jerusalem, Mr. Barrett. I done the honors of camp the best I could, seein' that you and Mr. Withee wa'n't here."

In mentioning honors, the cook had one lingering hope that the stumpage-king would share his flask with a State employe, and that he himself might partic.i.p.ate as one present and one willing.

But the timber baron did not turn his head. He stirred sugar in his whiskey and growled.