King Spruce Part 24

"And you'll get your pay for it, Withee, my friend!" stuttered his creditor, eagerly. "I don't forget favors. You stand by me, and you'll get your pay."

"I haven't anything to sell, Mr. Barrett," said Withee, doggedly.

"But I've got something to give you," persisted the frightened magnate, edging near him, and striving to hint confidentially. "You stand by me, and when it comes to contracts--"

"I'm not buyin' anything, Mr. Barrett!" He signalled the lumber king back with protesting palm. "I'm simply tellin' Lane that he can't take a man out of my camp to do him dirty. And in that there's no fear and no favor!"

Lane gazed at the determined face of the operator and at the ma.s.sing men who crowded at the door, and whose nods gave emphatic approval of Withee's dictum. No one knew better than he the code of the woods; no one understood more thoroughly the quixotic prejudices and simple impulses which moved the isolated communities of the camps. Just then they would not have surrendered Barrett to an army, and Lane realized it.

The eyes focussed on him saw the tense ridges of his seamed face tighten and the gray of an awful pa.s.sion settle there.

"After all the rest of it, you're forcing me to stand here and put it in words, are you, you sneak?" he yelped, thrusting that boding visage towards the timber baron. "You're hiding behind these men! Well, let's see how long they'll stand in front of you! You've got to have 'em hear it, eh? Then you listen to it, woodsmen!" His voice broke suddenly into a frightful yell. "He stole my wife! He stole her! I say he stole her!

That's what I want of him, now that he's here where I can meet him in G.o.d's open country, plain man to plain man!"

"He's lying to you," quavered Barrett. But his eyes shifted, and the keen and candid gaze of the woodsmen detected his paltering.

"I was away earning an honest living, and he came along with his airs and his money and fooled her and stole her--stole her and threw her away. It was play for him; it was death for her, and d.a.m.nation for me.

I ain't blaming her, men"--his voice had a sob in it--"she was too young for me. I ought to have known better. Our little house was on his land that he had stolen from the people of this State. Then he came and stole _her_!"

He was now close to Barrett, his bony fist slashing the air over the baron's shrinking head.

"It wasn't that way," stammered Barrett. "I was up there with some friends fishing and exploring on my lands. It was years ago. The young woman cooked meals for us. I went farther north to some other townships of mine, and she went along to take care of camp. That's all there was to it, men!" He spread out his palms and tried to smile.

"You stole her!" iterated Lane. "I came home, men, and she was gone out of our little house. I found just four walls, cold and empty, the key under the rug, and a letter on the table--and I've got that letter, John Barrett! And when you were tired of her up there in the woods you tossed her away like you tossed the lemon-skins out of your whiskey-gla.s.s. You didn't wait to see where she fell--she and your child--your child! Curse you, Barrett, I've never wanted to meet you! I sent word to you to keep out of these woods. I sent that word by the man you asked to bribe me--as though your money could do everything for you in this world! You thought you could sneak in here after all these years, because I was tied on the top of Jerusalem. But I'm here! What do you think, men? The fire that is roaring up from Misery township was set by this man's own daughter--the child that he tossed away in the woods. You that know the Skeets and Bushees know her. She set the fire! That's why I'm here. It's his child--his and hers. I don't know whether heaven or h.e.l.l planned it, but now that I've met you, Barrett, you're going with me!"

He strode back to the door and stood there, the rifle again across the hook of his arm. His flaming eyes swept the faces in the dingle. Their eyes gave him a message that his woodsman's soul interpreted.

"There's the truth for you, men, since you had to have it!" he shouted.

"Once more I'm going to say to John Barrett--'Step out.' And if there's still a man among you that wants to keep that hound in this camp I'd like to have that man stand out and say why."

There was not a whisper from the throng. They stood gazing into the door with lips apart. Silently they crowded back, as though to afford free pa.s.sage.

Barrett noted the movement and wailed his terror.

"It means trouble for you, Withee, if you let him take me."

The old operator surveyed him with a lowering and disgusted stare.

"Mr. Barrett," he said, "I've told you that I have nothing to sell. All that I want to buy of you is stumpage, and I've got your figures on that and your opinion of me. I don't ask you to change anything." He turned away, muttering, "He'll have to think pretty hard if he can do anything more to me than what he's already threatened to do."

Calm once more, and inexorable as fate, Lane motioned towards the door.

"My final word, Barrett: March!"

As he gazed into the faces about him, not one gleam of friendliness anywhere, desperation or a flicker of courage spurred the magnate. In that moment John Barrett had none of the advent.i.tious aids of his autocracy--none of the bulwarks of "Castle Cut 'Em." He was only a man among them--fairly demanded by another man to settle a matter of the sort where primordial instinct prompts a universal code. He drove his hat on his head and strode through the door, his head bent.

Lane took his lighted lantern from the cook's hand and followed. He had his teeth set tight, as though resolved to say no more. But at the edge of the camp's lamplight he whirled and faced the crew. Barrett halted, too, as though hoping for some intervention.

"Look here, men," said Lane, "I want to thank you for being men in this thing. And seeing that you've been square with me I don't want to go away from here leaving any wrong idea behind me. I don't know just what's going to happen between this man and me, for a good deal depends on him. But you've known me long enough to know that I'm not the crust-hunting kind that cuts a deer's throat when he's helpless. You put your confidence in me when you put this man in my hands. And I'll say to you, I'll do the best I know!"

"We ain't givin' any advice to you that knows your business better'n we do," called out the boss of the choppers. "But let it be man to man--good woods style!"

"Good woods style!" echoed the crew, in hoa.r.s.e chorus. It was plain that their minds were dwelling on only one solution of the difficulty.

Lane stepped back and set the rifle against the log wall. "I was near forgetting," he said, apologetically. "I'm so used to carrying a rifle.

This belongs here."

"Take it," suggested Withee, with a touch of grimness in his tones.

"I don't need it," Lane answered, quietly. He whirled and started away, and Barrett sullenly preceded him. They clambered up the valley wall, the pale lantern-light tossing against the hemlock boughs. The crew of "Lazy Tom" watched in silence until the last flicker vanished among the trees of the Jerusalem trail.

"Well," said the chopping-boss, drawing a long breath, "it appears to me that there are some things that money can't do for old 'Stumpage John,'

big as he is in this world! One is, he's found he can't buy up the 'Lazy Tom' crew to back him in a dirty job of woman-stealin'."

"I'd like to be there when it happens," panted "Dirty-ap.r.o.n Harry,"

excitedly.

"When what happens?" demanded the boss.

"Well--well--I--I dunno!" confessed Harry.

"Umph!" snorted the boss, "now you're talkin' as though you know 'Ladder' Lane as well as I know him. The man who can stand here and tell what old Lane is goin' to do next can prophesy earthquakes and have 'em happen."

He pulled out his watch.

"Nine o'clock!" he roared. "Lights out and turn in!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE RED THROAT OF POGEY

"Though it ain't for me nor for any one To say how the awful thing was done, We know that the hand of a grief-crazed man Is set to many a desperate plan."

--On _Isle au Haut._

It was a saffron dawn. It was a dawn diffuse and weird. A smear of copper in the east marked the presence of the sun. For the rest, the sky was a sickly monochrome, a dirty yellow, a boding yellow. It was not a wind that blew; a wind has somewhat of freshness in it. It was simply smoky air--air that rolled sullenly--choking, heavy, bitter, acrid air that was to the nostrils what the sky was to the eye.

After they had toiled around the base of the mountain and were well into Pogey Notch, the man ahead, stumbling doggedly and stubbornly, found water. It was only a little puddle, cowering from the drouth. The trees had helped it to hide away. They had scattered their autumn foliage upon it, beeches and birches which were grateful, for the pool had humbly cooled their feet in the hot summer.

The man ahead, thirst giving him almost a canine scent, fell rather than kneeled beside the pool, thrust his face through the leaves, and guffled the stale water. Then he plunged his smarting eyes, wide open, into the shallow depths.

When he faced once more the smother of the smoke and the man who stood over him, he seemed to have a flash of new courage. His eyes blazed again, his rumpled gray hair seemed to bristle.

But his defiance was only the desperation of the coward at bay.