King Spruce Part 33

"Every man who can handle brush and mattock is expected to be at the head of a fire in time of trouble!" chirped the "Mayor of Castonia." He tipped back his head to beam amiably on his partner. "Did it get through onto us, Wade?"

"The rain stopped it half-way up Pogey."

"Then G.o.d was good to us! Isn't that so, Mr. Barrett?" And the cheerful little man trotted along to grip the hand of "Stumpage John." That gentleman glowered sullenly, and tried to explain his gloom by muttering about "blowdowns" being worse than fires. He looked ill. As he came down the trail a fever had been rising in his blood. He went away by himself, and sat down feeling faint and weak.

"Old Enchanted is all right," said Ide. "There's a thousand acres of black growth there, every tree standin' with its arm about its brother.

You mustn't let 'em devil you, Mr. Barrett!" he called.

Mr. Barrett, his lowering gaze on Wade, agreed mentally.

"Well, this is certainly a convention of the timber interests!" cried the brisk little autocrat of Castonia. He pointed up the trail, where the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was advancing alone.

Wade withdrew un.o.bstrusively, and stood beside Nina Ide. Perhaps he hoped that her talk might bring some word of Elva Barrett.

But at last even Rodburd Ide's cheery consciousness became impressed by the fact that neither Britt nor Barrett seemed to relish any chat on timber topics. And he broke upon a constrained silence to suggest to Wade that they proceed--taking it for granted that now his partner's way lay to the north, along with his own.

"There's--there's--" Wade stammered, and now for the first time Ide and his daughter marked the girl of the Skeet settlement leaning moodily against the side of the Durfy hovel, the unkempt Abe hovering apprehensively in the background.

"Ah ha!" piped Ide. "There are the remnants, eh? We met the rest of the colony hiperin' out of the woods. They've gone to Little Lobster, girl, and the old woman is worryin' about you."

Wade stared straight at Barrett. The timber baron understood the challenge of his eyes. He was commanded to declare his intentions. In spite of himself, he scowled. It was a scowl of recalcitrancy. And the young man, angered by the presence of Britt and the evident appearance of treachery, shot his bolt.

"There is a piece of good-fortune for this poor girl, Mr. Ide. Mr.

Barrett proposes to educate her, and he's going to take her with him out of the woods."

"She has been gettin' a lot of attention lately," blurted the Honorable Pulaski, with malice and derision. "For the past three or four days, Rodburd, your young partner here has been her steady company. They have just come strollin' alone together down the Lovers' Lane from Jerusalem k.n.o.b." He fixed his keen eyes on the astonished face of Nina Ide. His narrow nature believed that, like other girls, she could be stirred to quick jealousy. And knowing her influence over her father, he foresaw trouble ahead for the partnership between Ide and Wade. "Seems to be in the air up this way now for the young men to gallivant through the woods with the Skeet girl. Wade here seems to have cut out Colin MacLeod."

Then the coa.r.s.e old jester sneered into the indignant face Wade turned to him.

"It will be a good thing for her to go to school," said Ide, a little puzzled by the evident antagonism of these men. "It will be kind of you, Mr. Barrett."

"Say, look here, Ide," cried Britt, in his irritation suddenly deciding to play the strong hand with this young interloper, "your friend Wade here, being a school-teacher, seems to have school on the brain. He also seems to be full of ready-made plans for men older and better than he is. From things that come to me, he has picked up a lot of foolishness about these Skeets and Bushees and this girl since he's been cruisin'

round these woods. Mr. Barrett and myself have made arrangements to take care of the rest of that pauper settlement, and the Skeets probably told you so when you met them."

Ide nodded acknowledgment.

"We'll look after the girl, too." He walked up to Wade and snapped his fingers, unable to resist his desire to bully. "Now, young fellow, you've been stickin' your nose pretty deep into other men's business.

Take it out, or I'll twist it off your face. Any one would think that this girl matter was runnin' the world in these parts. There's been too much talk about what's of no consequence. Go along with your partner.

You're on my land. Keep movin'."

But all of Dwight Wade's stubborn obstinacy rose in his breast; all his youthful chivalry flamed in his face.

"I've no more business with you, Britt!" he said, significantly; and Britt's face flamed with the remembrance of a certain knock-down blow.

"My business is with you, Mr. Barrett, and you know what it is. You keep the word that you've given me about this girl, or I'll set you before the people of this State in your right colors--and you needn't croak blackmail to me, for you can't frighten me."

"I--I--don't see that it's any business of yours--of yours, Wade,"

stammered the pacificatory Ide, catching the courage of protest from the rather indignant face his daughter turned on the young man.

"And I don't see that it is the business of any of you!" stormed Kate Arden. She came close to the group of men and stood with brown hands propped on her hips, her head thrown back, and the insolent stare of her black eyes seeking face after face. "I'll be pa.s.sed about from hand to hand no longer. I don't want any old purple-faced fool to send me to school." Barrett winced. "And as for you," she sneered, turning on Wade, "you attend to your own business until I ask you to help me in mine."

The Honorable Pulaski saw his opportunity.

"Colin MacLeod!" he bawled.

And with a rush that betrayed his impatience, the boss of the Busters came out of his hiding-place up the trail.

The girl gave a sharp cry of joy at sight of him.

But MacLeod, half-way to them, saw the girl on the horse and stopped as suddenly as he had started. Even at that distance they noted that his face worked with piteous embarra.s.sment.

"You've given in your promise, MacLeod! Don't forget that!" roared Britt. "There's the boy for you, my girl! He wants to marry you. Go with him!"

"And you'll be a fool of a gir-rl if ye do!" squalled a voice. It was Tommy Eye, yelling from the top of the Durfy hovel, to which he had clambered un.o.bserved. "I know I'm a drunk. I know I ain't worth anything to anybody!" he gabbled. "But ye saved my life once, Mr. Wade, when I didn't know it!" He flapped entreating hands at Wade, and that young man stepped in front of the furious Britt with such determination on his face that the woods tyrant halted. "But ye'll be a fool gir-rl, I say! I was under the bunk last night when they planned it. He don't love ye! I heard him say so. He called you names! Colin MacLeod, ye ain't the liar enough to stand out here and say ye didn't."

MacLeod, his adoring eyes on Nina Ide, had no word to say. The features of Kate Arden, who stared at him with her heart in her eyes, twisted with a promise of bitter tears. This, then, was the girl of Castonia, with whom they had taunted her!

"It's only for grudge and money he's goin' to marry you!" persisted Tommy. "May I rest forever in purgatory with no ma.s.ses for my soul if that ain't the truth!"

With the instinct of the animal repulsed, the girl read more in the face of MacLeod than she understood from the declaration of Tommy Eye.

She looked from face to face again, but the flame was gone from her eyes. There they stood, the silent, hostile, bitter phalanx from outside--oppressors and scorners. There she stood--alone!

And she fell face down upon the ground--the only mother she had ever known--a heart-broken, weary, lonely, sobbing child.

Nina Ide reached her before the others moved. Twice the girl fought her way out of her arms. Twice the sympathetic little mother-heart of the Castonia beauty conquered the rebel and retook her, whispering to her eagerly. And she held her tear-streaked face close to her shoulder, and patted the grimy little fingers between which tears were trickling.

There was something inexpressibly pathetic even in the unkemptness of the stricken girl, in her torn dress and the brown skin of face and hands, touched here and there by the stain of exposure to the blackened forest. And in her loneliness, feeling for the first time in her life real sympathy from one of her s.e.x, gathering with grateful nostrils the faint perfume that whispered of the refinement and comfort that her heart had sought almost unconsciously and had never found, at last the girl ceased her struggles and clung to her new friend. The waif's true instinct was proving this friend's sincerity more surely than the whispered a.s.surances proved it. And Nina Ide bent to her ear, and murmured:

"We will hate him together, poor little girl! He is not a good man to have a girl's love."

"When the hysterics are all over," remarked the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically, "we'll take the young woman off your hands."

"You'll not take her off _my_ hands!" retorted Nina, with spirit. "She's going back home with me."

"You haven't got any rights over her!" barked Britt.

"Perhaps, then, Mr. Barrett is ready to stand up and say what his rights are," suggested Wade, with bitter hint of retaliation in his tones.

Barrett, pale with the illness that was seizing him, grew paler yet with anger and terror, for he feared exposure.

The Honorable Pulaski picked up the gage of battle with all the alacrity of his irascible nature.

"For a dog-fight, that girl will be as good a bone as anything else!" he growled, under his breath. And then he whirled on his heel and bellowed:

"Wake up there, MacLeod! If you can't make love to the girl you are goin' to marry, I reckon you can at least fight a little to get her!

Call in the crew!"

He walked up to Ide. "Better call off your girl, Rod," he advised, bluffly. "This isn't any of her business, or yours either."

"I figure that a Skeet girl belongs as much to us as to you," snapped the doughty little man from Castonia. "If my girl takes interest enough in her to invite her home, I think you'd better let her go."