King Spruce Part 36

"Chorus!" exhorted the lyrist. And they bellowed jovially:

"Knick, knock, Hickory dock, And he'd hit ye on the head!"

Larry leaped back, whirled his stick so rapidly that its bright peeled surface seemed to spit sparks, and again got over the boss's indifferent guard with a whack that echoed hollowly.

MacLeod was too angry to retreat. He was too angry to see clearly, and his brain rang dizzily with the blows he had received. His injured shoulder ached with the violence of his exertions. But his pride kept him up, and forced him to meet the fresh attack that Gorman made--an attack in which that master seemed to be fencing mostly to mark the time of his jeering song:

"Old Watson was a good old man, And taught the Bible cla.s.s, But he didn't like the story Of the jawbone of the a.s.s.

'Why didn't he make a popple-club,'

So Uncle Watson said, 'And scotch the tribe of the Phlistereens By bangin' 'em on the head?'"

The blow that time staggered MacLeod.

"Chorus!" called "Poet" Larry. But before he could rap his antagonist at the end of that roaring iteration the Honorable Pulaski was between them, having at last contrived to fight his way through the ranks of the crowding men. He narrowly missed getting the blow intended for the boss.

He yanked the sled-stake out of the nerveless grasp of the sweating and discomfited MacLeod, and raised it.

"Be careful, Mr. Britt," yelped Gorman. His mien changed from gay insouciance to bitter fury. "You've struck me once in my life, and I took it and went on my way, because I was getting your grub and your pay. You strike me to-day, and I'll split your head open like a rotten punkin!"

Britt had begun to rant that he could thrash the whole Enchanted crew single-handed. He was maddened by the lamblike demeanor of his own men.

But he knew a desperate and dangerous man when he saw him. At that moment Larry Gorman was dangerous. The tyrant lowered his club and backed away, muttering some wordless recrimination at which the poet curled his lip. Seeing his chance, Tommy Eye hooked his legs about the uprights and slid down the ladder with one dizzy plunge, struck the ground in squatting fashion, and shot head-first into the ranks of his protectors.

But after that masterly raillery of Gorman's there was no fight left in the "Busters." And his vengeful bearding of the Honorable Pulaski left the autocrat himself speechless and helpless.

Tommy Eye's trembling hand fingered his chin, his wistful eyes peered over the shoulders of his new friends, and he knew he was safe. The "Busters," nudging each other and growling half-humorous comment, began to sift out of the yard of the Durfy hovel, and lounge back along the trail towards the Jerusalem camp.

"D--n ye for cowards!" yelled the Honorable Pulaski, viciously flinging the ash sled-stake after them.

"Oh, but they're not cowards!" cried Larry. In his bushman's soul he realized that even now a chance taunt, a random p.r.i.c.k of word, might start the fight afresh. "Every man-jack there is known to me of old, and the good, brave boys they are! But your money ain't greasy enough, Mr.

Britt, to make good men as them fight to take away a comrade's man-rights."

The "Busters" nodded affirmation and kept on. One man stepped back and hallooed: "Right ye are, Larry Gorman! And when ye try to get your Enchanted logs first through the Hulling Machine next spring, ye'll find that we're the kind of gristle that can't be chawed. That'll be man's business, and no Teamster Tommy Eye to stub a toe over!"

There was a grin on the man's face, but none the less it was a challenge, and Larry accepted it.

"Sure, and we'll be there!" he called. "We'll be there with hair a foot long, pick-pole[3] in one hand, peavy-stick[4] in the other, ready for a game of jack-straws in the white water and a fist-jig on the bank!"

[Footnote 3: An ashen pole, shod with an iron screw-point.]

[Footnote 4: The Maine variety of the cant-dog, ill.u.s.trated on the cover.]

"And will ye write it all into a song, Larry Gorman?"

"All into a song it shall go!"

And roaring a good-natured cheer over their shoulders, the "Busters"

filed away into the mouth of Pogey Notch.

"You may as well move, boys," ordered Rodburd Ide. "This business here isn't swampin' yards nor buildin' camps!"

The men for Enchanted cheerfully shouldered dunnage-sacks, and in their turn set off up the Notch.

"Here's Tommy Eye's bill of his time, Mr. Britt," said Gorman, holding out a crumpled paper to the choking tyrant. Tommy himself had prudently departed, bulwarked by his new comrades.

"I'll not pay it!" bl.u.s.tered Britt. "He broke the contract!"

"No more does he want you to pay it," replied Larry, serenely, speaking in behalf of the amiable prodigal. "He says to credit it on that one drink of whiskey he took out of your bottle, and when he earns more money workin' for honest men he'll pay ye the rest."

He tore the paper across and across, snapped the bits in Britt's face, turned, and followed the crew.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HOME-MAKERS OF ENCHANTED

"The clank of the press and the scream of the saws, The grunt of the grinder that slavers and chaws At the fibre o' pulp-wood, the purr of the plane, Sing only one song to the big woods o' Maine.

So here's for a billion down race-way and sluice-- h.e.l.l for the hemlock, the pine, and the spruce."

--Off for the Woods.

John Barrett was first to break the embarra.s.sed silence that fell upon the four men left at the camp. Rodburd Ide's brows were wrinkled, and his lips were parting to ask the questions that his curiosity urged.

Britt was wrathfully gazing after the insolent Larry. Dwight Wade had taken up his pack and calipers, and was waiting for Ide with some impatience.

"Mr. Wade," began the Umcolcus baron, nervously, "I hope you will understand my position in this matter, and see why it was necessary to make some change in the plan we discussed on Jerusalem."

"I sha'n't try to understand it," snapped Wade. "You volunteered promises. I took those promises to the person most interested, and you've seen fit to drop out from under. That ends our business--all the business we had in common, Mr. Barrett."

But the baron was anxious to placate. He began guarded explanations, to which Ide was listening intently, but Wade cut them short with a scorn there was no mistaking.

"The only sort of interest I took in that unfortunate girl has been maliciously misinterpreted, Mr. Barrett. She was thrown on my hands in a way that you thoroughly understand. Mr. Ide, as a plantation officer, has relieved me of the responsibility. You can talk with him hereafter."

"But what--what are you going to say to him?" faltered Barrett, forced to show his anxious fear, since Wade was moving away.

In his physical weakness, in the illness that was sapping his nerve, he became wistfully paltering.

"Nothing," replied the young man, curtly, but with a decisiveness there was no misunderstanding. "The matter has ceased to be any business of mine. My business hereafter--and I say this to my partner--is concerned wholly and entirely with certain lumbering operations on Enchanted township."

He went away, following the crew. Rodburd Ide, eager to be gone, and seeing in the affair thus flatly dropped by Wade only a phase of the older animosity between Britt and the young man--a quarrel that might seek any avenue for expression, even a State pauper--demanded of Barrett:

"Do you lay any special claim to the girl?" His tone was that of an official only.

"Of course he doesn't," broke in Britt, seeing that his a.s.sociate was groping for a reply. "We did think of trying to help her, but what's the use? There isn't any more grat.i.tude in that sculch than there is in a pine knot. Send her back to the tribe."

The little Castonia magnate looked relieved.

"She's all right with my girl till I get home," he said. "Then the affair will take care of itself, like all those things do."