King Spruce Part 23

"Do fire wardens up this way earn their pay, sleeping, like cats, in the daytime?"

Lane had stepped just inside the door, his moccasins noiseless on the shaved poles.

"How near is that fire to the black growth, and how are they fighting it?" demanded Barrett.

"It started on Misery"--Lane began, in the same tone that had characterized his former reports.

But at his first word Barrett jerked his head around, stared wildly, stood up, and then sat down astride the wooden bench. With his eyes still on the man at the door, he fumbled for the pannikin of whiskey and gulped it down. Lane went on talking.

"And if they can get enough men ahead of it perhaps they can stop it in Pogey Notch," Lane concluded.

The hands that clutched the gun trembled, but his eyes were steady, with a red sparkle in them. The lumber king endured that stare for a few moments, like one writhing under the torture of a focussed sun-gla.s.s. He glanced to right and left, as though seeking a chance for flight. The only exit was the door, and the tall, grim man stood there with his rifle across his arm.

"Say it, Lane! Say it!" hoa.r.s.ely cried Barrett, at last, unable to endure the silence and the doubt.

"I have nothing to say--not now," said Lane. "I'll wait here until you eat your supper. My lantern is hanging on the nail there, cook. Will you fill it and light it?"

There was a subtle, strange menace in his bearing that the cook and Withee, staring, their mouths gaping, could not understand. But it was plain that the man at the table understood all too well.

"Why didn't you take it when I sent you the offer?" asked Barrett, his voice beginning to tremble. "I wanted to settle. It was up to me to settle. It was a bad business, Lane, but I--"

"It's a private matter you're opening up here before listeners, Mr.

Barrett," broke in Lane. "It's my business with you, and you haven't got the right to do it. Just now you go ahead and eat your supper. You'll need it, for you're going to take a walk with me."

In his perturbation, forced to eat, as it seemed, by the quiet insistence of the warden, Barrett swallowed a few mouthfuls of food. But he cowered, with side glances at the grim man by the door. Then he pushed his plate away, choking. Maddened by the silent watchfulness, he stood up.

"I'll see you in the office," he muttered. "I'll tell you now and before witnesses that I'm ready to settle. I've always been ready to settle. It would have been settled long ago if you had let my man talk with you.

Now, let's not have any trouble, Lane, over what's past and gone. I'll do anything that's reasonable."

He shot an appealing glance at Withee.

"We'll take Withee with us," he declared. "We'll talk in the office."

"We'll talk under no roof of yours and on no land belonging to you,"

answered Lane, firmly. "We'll talk private matters before no third party. If you're done your supper, Mr. Barrett, you'll come with me where we can stand out man to man in G.o.d's open country with no peekers and listeners--and that's more for your sake than it is for mine. I've done nothing in this life that I'm ashamed of."

"Do you take me for a fool?" roared the land baron, hiding fear under an a.s.sumption of his usual manner. "Do you think I'm going into the woods alone with you?"

"You are, Mr. Barrett."

"By ----, I won't!"

"I'm no hand for a threat," grated Lane, in a low, strange voice, "but you'll come with me. You know why you'll come with me, because you know what I'm likely to do to you if you don't come."

Barrett looked past the man at the door. The dingle was full of crowding faces, for the altercation had called every man out. There was some consolation for Barrett in the spectacle of this silent, wondering mob.

After all, he was on his own land, and these men must acknowledge him as their master.

"Here! a hundred dollars apiece to the men who grab that lunatic and take that rifle away from him!" he shouted, darting a quivering finger at the warden. But before any one made a move Withee stepped forward into the lamplight. With open, waving palm he imposed non-interference on his crew.

"Hold on, Mr. Barrett," said he. "Before we run into trouble by arresting a man that's an officer, we want to know whys and wherefores."

"Don't you know why he wants to make me go away into the woods?" bawled the lumber king.

"We can't very well know without bein' told," replied Withee, and an answering grumble from his men indorsed him.

"He wants to murder me--murder me in cold blood!" Barrett fairly screamed this. "I know what his reason is," he added, seeing that their faces showed no conviction.

"I've known Linus Lane ever since he came into this region," said Withee, breaking the awed hush that followed the baron's startling words. "I never knew him to be anything but peaceable and square. A little speck odd, maybe, but quiet and peaceable and square. Most of the men here know him that way, too."

Another answering mumble of a.s.sent.

"Odd!" echoed Barrett, grasping at the suggestion. "You've said it. He's a lunatic. He will kill me."

"What for?" called the chopping-boss, bluntly. His natural desire to get at the meat of things quickly was stimulated by ardent curiosity.

"You are all sticking your noses into a matter that doesn't belong to you!" cried Lane, his well-known crustiness showing itself, though it was evident that he was hiding some deeper emotion. "I want this man to go with me. It's business. And he's going!" His voice was almost a snarl, but there was a resoluteness in the tone that awed them more than violence would have done.

"Are you going to give me up to a murderer?" bleated Barrett, for his study of the faces in the lamplight did not rea.s.sure him.

"Hadn't you better let us step out, and you talk your business over with him right here, Linus?" inquired Withee, conciliatingly.

"He's going with me, and he's going now!" shouted Lane, his repression breaking. "The man that gets in our way will get hurt."

He banged his rifle-b.u.t.t on the floor, and those who looked on him shrank before his awful rage.

"Put on your hat, Barrett, and walk out!" he shrilled. "Make way, there!

This is my man, by ---- and he knows in his dirty heart why he's mine."

But Barnum Withee's quiet woodsman's soul was not of a nature to be intimidated, and his instincts of fairness, when it was between man and man, had been made acute by many years of woods adjudication.

"Hold on a minute, Linus!" he entreated, stepping between the two men with upraised hand. "You are both under my roof, and you've both eaten my bread to-day. I never got between men in a fair, square quarrel. I won't now. But you've got a gun, and he hasn't. I don't want to know your business. But if there's trouble between you it's got to be settled fair. You can't drag a man out of my camp to do him dirty--and it would be the same if it was only young Harry there that you were tryin' to take."

"Good talk!" yelled the boss.

"I'll give a hundred dollars--" began Barrett, seeing the advantage swinging his way; but Withee broke in with indignation.

"No more of that talk, Mr. Barrett!" he cried. "I'll run my own crew when it comes to pay or to orders. Now, Warden Lane, what are you going to do with this man when you get him where you want to take him?"

"I don't know!" snapped Lane, to the amazement of his listeners. And he added, enigmatically, "I can tell better after I've asked him some questions."

"Ain't you ready to tell us that you'll use him man-fashion?" persisted Withee.

The deep emotion which "Ladder" Lane had been trying to hide whetted the bitterness of his usual att.i.tude towards mankind.

"I'm not ready to let any fool mix himself into my affairs. We've argued this question long enough, John Barrett. Now you--step--out!" He leaped aside from the door, c.o.c.ked the rifle, and motioned angrily with its muzzle.

"Stay right where you are, Mr. Barrett," said the old operator, resolutely. "I'll stand for fair play."