King Spruce Part 32

He'll give you the message. The dude knows he wouldn't stand the show of a s...o...b..ll in tophet with you there where the girl could see you. If you're a coward, say so, and we'll look further."

"By ----, I'm no coward, and you know it!" growled the boss.

"He's licked you once and cut you out with one girl," persisted Britt.

"The whole Umcolcus knows that! When they find out that he's got away with a girl that has been in love with you, and with ten thousand dollars in the bargain, why, boy, even Tommy Eye will dare to put up his fists to you!"

In MacLeod's tumultuous mind it was no longer love's choice between Nina Ide and Kate Arden; it was the hard, bitter pa.s.sion of the primitive man--the instinct to grasp what a foe is coveting for the sake of humiliating that foe. Again MacLeod felt himself thrust forth by circ.u.mstances to be the champion of his kind. That man from the city was of the other sort.

"Mr. Britt," he choked, "let me at him once more!"

"Oh, that will be all right!" said the baron; "but we're not pulling off a prize-fight, MacLeod. Sc.r.a.ps are interestin' enough when there isn't more important business on hand. There happens to be business just now.

The whole idea is, are you ready to marry the girl?"

MacLeod had approached them grimly resolved to be defiant on that point.

The flicker in his eyes now was the shadow of that resolution departing.

"If it's him against me again," he snarled, "I'll marry a quill-pig and ask no questions."

"Not exactly cheerful talk to hear from a prospective bridegroom marryin' money and good looks," commented the Honorable Pulaski, dryly; "but a promise is a promise, MacLeod, and I never knew you to break one you made me. Shake!"

By the way in which both Barrett and MacLeod turned inquiring gaze on him, the Umcolcus baron understood that he was tacitly elected autocrat of the situation, and he proceeded about his task with the briskness characteristic of his habit of command.

"John, you get your dinner, bid us an affectionate farewell, and go along with old Straight. Go alone. Tell him you left all your duffel at Withee's camp and don't need any guide. I'll look after the rest of it.

Chris Straight can hide his dude and the girl, but he can't pull up the ground behind him."

They started off promptly after the noon snack, the taciturn Christopher offering no comment on Mr. Barrett's amiable compliance, and apparently blandly unsuspicious that the Honorable Pulaski concealed guile under a demeanor which had suddenly become pacific.

Men who had made their warfare more by craft and less by brute strength would have been more wily. John Barrett and Pulaski Britt had always been too confident of their own power to think subterfuge necessary.

Barrett, especially, as he strode along at the heels of old Christopher, was so well content with his own first essay in duplicity that his taking-down was correspondingly humiliating. They were resting, he and the old guide, after a tough scramble around a blowdown that they had encountered a mile or so from Britt's camps.

With a jerk of his chin Christopher indicated a far-off sound on the back trail.

"Pretty busy, that woodp.e.c.k.e.r is, Mr. Barrett!"

"Stumpage John" a.s.sented, wondering at the same time how such an old woodsman could misinterpret that chip-chop. "The fool Indian ought to make allowance for a blowdown," he reflected, angrily. "He's following too close."

"In this world you expect cheap men to lie and cheat," remarked Christopher, serenely. "But you don't hardly expect State senators and candidates for governor to be that sort."

"What the devil do you mean?" demanded Barrett, with heat.

"I mean that Britt's Indian, Newell Sockbeson, is following us and makin' a double-blaze for--well, I suppose it's so that Pulaski Britt and his men can chase us up. As to why, you probably know better than I do, Mr. Barrett."

The timber baron stared at this disconcerting old plain-speaker without finding fit words for reply.

"It can hardly be that he's goin' to all that trouble simply to get the girl. Mr. Wade is ready to turn the girl over to you, Mr. Barrett. Why is it that men ain't willin' to play fair in this world? What does Pulaski Britt want to meddle in this thing for?"

"I think you're wrong about the Indian following us," paltered the millionaire. "You're only guessin' about that, Straight."

"When I see Pulaski Britt talk to an Indian, when I see that Indian pack a lunch, take a camp-axe, and hide at the mouth of the trail, I don't have to guess, Mr. Barrett. Some of us old fellows of the woods see a whole lot of things without seemin' to take much notice." He got up off the tree-trunk where he had been sitting and made ready to take the trail again, swinging his pack to his shoulders.

"There wouldn't have been any misunderstanding if Wade had sent the girl back by the messenger," protested Barrett. "And if he didn't have something up his sleeve he would have done so. The girl is nothing to him, and he's meddling in affairs that are none of his business."

"You'd better save that talk and tell it to him," said the old guide, grimly. "I'm going to take you to where we arranged to meet if every man that Britt can rake and sc.r.a.pe on his ten townships comes followin' at my back. I've thought it over, and the more witnesses there are to some things the better it is for all concerned--or the worse!"

And reflecting on what these words might mean, and now a little dubious as to the sagacity of Pulaski Britt in handling delicate negotiations, "Stumpage John" plodded on with less content in his heart.

Two miles farther down the trail, at a place that Barrett recognized as the old Durfy camps, Straight signalled by discharging his rifle, and Dwight Wade came into sight with the girl. Foolish Abe of the Skeets followed far behind like a sheepish dog, uncertain whether to expect kick or caress.

"You may as well know first as last that the whole pack is followin' a little way behind," snorted old Christopher, in disgust. "Britt sent an Indian to snuff the trail and blaze the way. I did your errand, that's all. You've got time to get away. You may want to keep on tryin' to do business with a crowd that ain't square. I don't!" He turned and walked away, sat down, and filled his pipe.

"I had Straight explain to you why it was better to meet privately here," declared Wade, with honest resentment glowing in his eyes. "But I'm not going to run. I've had hard work to get this young woman to consider your proposition to educate her, Mr. Barrett." He held her by the hand, and spoke out with a candor that convinced the lumberman that here there was neither reservation nor complicity. The girl eyed him sulkily, without interest, as she looked at all outsiders. "I have told this young woman that you, as a timber-land owner, are sorry for all the troubles that the Skeets and Bushees have had in years past, and want to make up in some way. I've told her you're ready to send her to some good boarding-school. As she can't read or write, she doesn't know what this means, and she can't express her thanks. But I'm sure that later she'll understand your kindness and generosity. The girl is untrained, and she knows it. I hope you'll overlook any lack of grat.i.tude, Mr. Barrett.

She'll know how to express it some day."

John Barrett, looking into a face which recalled the face of the daughter whom he loved and cherished in his city home, felt one throb of strange emotion, and then realized in all his selfish nature that affection is more a matter of habit and cultivation than an affair of instinct. After one thrill his soul shrank from her. He had not expected the girl to be so like. He caught himself wishing that he had not made the compact with the inexorable Britt, and listened for the noise of the men-pack with shame and some regret. On the other hand, this girl, unkempt for all her beauty, insolent with the insolence of ignorance, staring at him from under her knitted brows, was impossible, he reflected, as an a.s.set of a man with a reputation to preserve and an ambition to fulfil. Instead of feeling the instinct of tenderness, he looked at this wild young thing of the woods with uneasy fear in his shifting eyes.

With honest resentment, Wade noted the baron's reluctance to make his word good.

"You think I'm a meddler, Mr. Barrett," he said, coming close to the other, "but don't think that I'm satisfying any personal grudge when I ask that you care for this poor girl! Perhaps you would have done so anyway, without my suggestion. I hope so."

"I think I could arrange my own business without any outside help," said Barrett, dryly. He began to feel that he could get out of the situation better if he aroused his own resentment.

"Mr. Barrett, it was chance that put the girl in my way and taught me her story. I've been Don Quixote enough to see her through this thing.

I'm sorry it happens to be you on the other side. I'm afraid you don't give me credit for unselfishness."

"I'll allow you all the credit you deserve," said "Stumpage John,"

sullenly. "I understand, without your telling me, that you are gentleman enough to keep this matter behind your teeth on account of my family. I thank you, Wade. I'll take charge of the girl from now on."

He looked back up the trail anxiously, and the young man's gaze followed. A man loafed into sight from among stubs blackened by fire.

"There's Newell Sockbeson," remarked old Christopher. "I heard him making his last blaze a few minutes ago."

"I don't know just what your plan is, Mr. Barrett," said Wade, the red in his cheeks. "I've been hoping that you trusted me to act the gentleman, even if I couldn't act the friend. Mr. Straight and I stand here as witnesses that you have taken charge of this girl." He now spoke low. "But you haven't told me that you indorse the little plan I adopted to relieve you from any explanations and to make the thing seem natural to her."

Wade's face showed that he expected a frank promise.

"Mr. Straight will go to the stage road with you," added the young man.

At this hint of watchfulness the face of Barrett darkened. "As a school-teacher, I know something of the boarding-schools of the State, and I'll--" The timber baron's temper flamed at this plain intent to advise.

"I've taken charge of the girl, I say! Your responsibility ends. You were apologizing a moment ago for meddling. Now, don't go to--"

"I didn't apologize," replied Wade, with decision. "And I don't intend to. And my responsibility ends only when I know that this unfortunate creature is placed in a good school to get the advantages that she has been robbed of all these years."

The hot retort from Barrett ended in his throat with a cluck. "The devil!" he blurted, staring down the trail.

Dwight Wade, whirling to look to the south, could not indorse that sentiment. Close at hand was Nina Ide, riding a horse with the grace of a boy, whose attire she had adopted with a woods girl's scorn of conventions. Wade hurried to meet her, cap in hand and eager questions on his lips. The color mounted to her face, and she shook out the folds of a poncho, looped across the saddle, and draped it over her knees.

"No, it's not strange, either," she broke in to say. "Your partner--and that's father--had to come up here on business, and I've come along with him, just as I always do when he comes here in the partridge season."

She patted a gun-b.u.t.t. "But I didn't expect to find fire and smoke and lightning and rain and tornadoes up here, any more than I looked for you at Pogey Notch when you were supposed to be exploring for a winter's operation on Enchanted. Now you will have to explain to your partner here!" And he turned from her smiling face to shake hands with Rodburd Ide.