King Spruce Part 25

"You've teamed me all night, Lane--from Withee's camp to here. I have asked questions, and you haven't answered me; but now, by ----, say what you want of me, and let's have this thing over!"

It was an air that would have cowed an inferior in John Barrett's office in the city, where tyranny swelled the folds of a frock-coat and was framed in the door of a money vault.

But this weary man in knickerbockers, his puffy face mottled by the hues of self-indulgence and haggard after a night of ceaseless tramping along a woods trail, was not an object of awe as he squatted beside the pool like a giant frog.

The woodsman who stood over him, his gaunt face seamed and brown, his bony frame erect to the height that had won him the sobriquet of "Ladder" Lane, seemed now the man of dignity and authority. He was of the woods. He was in the woods. Two nights without sleep, miles of bitter struggle through the forest to report that conflagration roaring north to Misery township, and now puffing its stifling breath upon them, and the agony of recollection that John Barrett's crossing his path had dragged out--all these gave no sign in "Ladder" Lane's features and mien. Even his voice was steady with a repression almost humble.

What John Barrett did not know was that this humbleness was that of one who stood in the presence of a mighty problem, awed by it. In the long hours of self-communion, as he had plodded on, driving the timber baron before him, he had pondered that problem until his weary brain reeled.

Introspection had always made his simple nature dizzy.

Now the tumult and torment in his soul frightened him. Over and over again in the darkness of the night, as he had followed at the heels of Barrett, he had whispered, in a half-frightened manner, to himself: "I told him to keep away! And now he's here!"

He had looked at the back of the man, stumbling ahead of him in the lantern-light, and had pitied him in a sort of dull, wondering fashion.

He had pitied him because he knew that Barrett, despoiler of his home, seducer of his wife, was helpless in his hands. And because "Ladder"

Lane realized that grief and isolation had made him over into such a one as sane men flout or fear, he was afraid of himself.

"This here is as good a place as any, Mr. Barrett," he said.

By striving to be calm, even to the point of being humble, Lane tried to tame the dreadful beast that he knew his inner being had become. But Barrett, p.r.i.c.king his ears at this humbleness, was too foolish to understand. In the mystery of the night he had feared cruelly. With day to reinforce his prestige, it occurred to him that the man was cowed by his presence and by the reflection that a person of influence cannot be kidnapped with impunity.

"I can make it hot for you, Lane, for dragging me out of camp and running me all over creation," he bl.u.s.tered, grasping at what he considered his opportunity to regain mastery. "But I'm willing to settle and call quits. I've always been ready to settle. Now, out with it, man-fashion! How much will it take?"

Another of those red flashes from the sullen coals of many and long years' hatred roared up in Lane like the torching of a pitch-tree. He had been trying for hours to beat those flashes down, for they made him afraid.

He trembled, blinking hard to see past the red. His hands fumbled nervously at his sides, as though seeking something that they could seize upon for steadiness. If the wind would only blow upon his face--a wind of the woods, clear, cool, and hale--he felt that he might get his grip on manhood once more.

But the woods sent up to him only the fire-breath. It whispered destruction.

If he only could look up to a bit of blue sky he felt that it might charm the red flare from his eyes.

But the yellow pall that masked the sky was the hue of combat, not peace.

All out-doors seemed full of menace. The nostrils found only bitter air.

The smarting eyes saw only the sickly yellow. A normal man would have cursed at the oppression of it all, without exactly knowing why every nerve was on the rack. The recluse of Jerusalem Mountain, out of gear with all the world, with mind diseased by the chronic obsession of bitter injury, stood there under the glowering sky of that day of ravage and ruin, and felt himself becoming a madman. And yet he set a single idea before him for realization, and tried to keep his gaze on that alone, and to be calm. And the idea was an idea of forcing an atonement.

How crudely conceived, Lane could not realize, for his mind was pa.s.sing the stage of clear comprehension.

"I probably haven't got enough money with me," went on the timber baron, sullenly. "But my word is good in a matter like this. I don't want it talked about--you don't want it talked about. I'll overlook--you'll overlook! Give me your figures, and you'll get every dollar."

And still Lane was calm, and replied in a voice that quavered from an emotion that Barrett failed to understand.

"When you stole my wife away, Mr. Barrett, there were men that came to me and advised me what they would do if a rich man came along and took a woman from them, just to amuse himself for a little."

"There are people trying to stick their noses into business that doesn't concern them, Lane," snorted the baron, regardless that one edge of this apothegm threatened himself.

"I've been alone a good deal since it happened," went on Lane, in a curious, dull monotone, "and I've spent most of my time thinking what I'd say to you and do to you if you stood before me. I hoped it never would happen that you'd stand before me, man to man. I didn't hunt you up to find out what I'd do or say, for I was afraid."

He shivered, and Barrett, in his fool's blindness, stiffened his shoulders with a sudden air of importance, and allowed himself to scowl with a suggestion that perhaps Lane was wise to avoid him.

"You see, I was always making it end up in my mind that I should kill you. There didn't seem to be any other natural end to it. I had to kill you to square it. And that's why I was afraid. It was always one way in my thoughts. I never could--never can plan out any other way to end it; and murder is an awful thing, sir."

Barrett, who had been straightening, crouched farther back on his haunches and lost his important air.

"In my thoughts I always gave you half an hour to think it over, and stayed looking at you, and then killed you." There was a sudden convulsion of Lane's features, a smoulder in his eyes, that thrilled Barrett as though some one had whispered in his ear--"Lunatic."

The warden's groping hands had clutched the heavy lineman's climbers dangling from his belt, and were now set about them so tightly that muscles were ridged on the bony surface. Barrett became gray with fear.

But Lane's ferocity disappeared as suddenly as it had flared.

"It all goes to show that in this world most men don't do what they think they'll do, when it comes to a big matter. I don't want to kill you, now that I have you where I want you." He looked down on the frightened man with a sort of pitying scorn. "It would be like batting a sheep to death. I don't want even to talk about your taking her away.

It--it chokes in my throat! She's dead--and I guess she wanted to go away with you that time or she wouldn't have gone. That's just the way it seems to me now! And that's why I don't want to talk about it. It seems funny to feel that way, after all the thinking I've done about what I would do to you."

"The idea is, you're taking the sensible, business man's view of it,"

stammered Barrett. "I was young then, and up here in the woods, and--oh, as you say, it is better not to talk it over. We all make mistakes." He was pulling his wallet out of his corduroy coat. He evidently felt that the sight of money would prolong this "sensible, business man's view" of the situation. He did not want to take any more chances that the other and vengeful view would return, which had shown its flame in Lane's contorted face. "Now, I've got here--"

"To h.e.l.l with your dirty money!" shrieked the warden, in a frenzy that was a veritable explosion out of his calmness. He kicked the wallet from the hands of the amazed timber baron. And when Barrett tried to stammer something, Lane leaned down and yelled, cracking his fists in the other's shrinking face:

"That's the way you and your kind want to cure everything--a dollar bill greased with a grin and stuck onto the sore place! Put that kind of a plaster on your city sneaks if you want to. But do you think I want it--here?" He swung his arm in a huge gesture and embraced the woods.

"Your money is no good, John Barrett--here!" Another sweep of the long arm. Then he stooped and scrabbled up a handful of dry leaves. He pushed them into Barrett's face. "Here, sell me your soul and your decency for that! You won't? Why not? You get your handfuls of greasy money just as easy! You only grab out and take! I don't sell for any stuff that's come at as easy as that."

"Say what you want, Lane," stuttered the timber baron, huddling back from this madman.

"You'll pay in the way I'll tell you to pay," raged the creditor, thrusting his fierce face close. "You'll pay out of your pride and your heart instead of your pocket. That's the kind of coin you've stripped me of! You stole my wife. She's dead. Settle your accounts with her in h.e.l.l when you meet her there. But the girl--your young one--yours and hers--that you threw into the woods like you'd leave a blind kitten--"

"She was left with people who were paid well--" Barrett broke in, but Lane slapped him across the mouth.

"I know where she was left--left with a nest of skunks, so that you could hide your disgrace in the woods. I've watched her all these years.

I've been waiting for the right time to come. It's here. Your girl is up there on the top of Jerusalem Mountain in my camp, Barrett. An idiot--a dog on two legs--is guarding her. He's the only friend she's got. That's your daughter. Now, you're going to take her!"

"Take her?" echoed the cringing millionaire.

"Take her--that's what I said. It belongs to her. Now give it to her."

Barrett misinterpreted Lane's interest. His face lighted with a sudden thought that to him seemed a happy one.

"Look here, Lane," he said, eagerly, "I didn't realize but what the girl was getting on all right. I ought to have inquired. But I didn't dare to. A man in my position has to be careful. Now she needs some one to take care of her. I'll admit it. I'm sorry it hasn't been attended to before. Let this matter rest between us two without any stir. I'll give you ten thousand dollars to act as the girl's guardian. Take her out of these woods. And I'll put ten thousand more at interest for her."

"I take that sp.a.w.n--_I_ take her?" demanded Lane, beating his thin hand on his breast. "I'd as soon pick up a wood adder! Take _her_--the living reminder of what's made me what I am? Do you suppose I hate you any worse than I hate her for being what she is?" But he checked himself; a sudden emotion--a strange emotion--mastered him, and he sobbed as he muttered, "Poor little girl!" Then his anger flamed again. "By ----, Barrett, I ought to kill you now, anyway!" He clutched the irons at his belt. But after a moment, with a wrench of his shoulders, he pulled himself out of his frenzy.

"You are going to take that girl to your home. You are going to acknowledge her as your daughter. You are going to give her what belongs to her." He was grim now, not frenetic.

Barrett's whole body quivered. His voice was husky with appeal.

"I want to talk to you, man to man. I'm going to show you that I have confidence in you, Lane. I'm not saying this to any one else--only to you. It's a big matter, Lane. It will prove that I want to be square with you."

"You're going to take her, I say!"

"For ten years, Lane, the big lumber interests in this State have been trying to get the right man into the governor's chair. You are interested in timber. You are a State employe. We all need certain things, and now we are in a way to get them. I'm going to be the next governor of this State, Lane. I've got the pledges, from the State committee down through the ranks. I'm going to be nominated in the next State convention. I've spent fifty thousand already. Now, you see, I'm being frank and honest with you." His voice had a quaver. He was explaining as he would explain to a child. "All the timber interests are behind me. See what it means if I am turned down? A scandal would do it.

It's the petty scandal that kills a man in this State quicker than anything else--scandal or a laugh! I can't carry that girl out of the woods and declare her to be my daughter. It would kill all my chances for nomination. The papers would be full of it. And think of my family!"

Lane's crude idea of an atonement was not so vague now. His brain whirled more dizzily, for the problem was bigger--and so was the revenge. He chuckled. It was the spirit of revenge, after all, that was driving him, and his madman's soul now realized it and relished it. He looked up at the saffron sky and snuffed the scorching air. He felt the impulse seething up from the ruin of the forest, and with almost a sense of relief loosed the grip that had been holding him above the tide of his soul's fire and blood.