King Spruce Part 47

And in the end Mr. Ide went, nipping his thin lips, not wholly convinced as to the logic of the step, but with his opinion of Dwight Wade's courage and self-reliance decidedly heightened, and he reflected with comfort that those were the qualities he had sought in his partnership.

CHAPTER XXV

SHARPENING TEETH ON PULASKI BRITT'S WHETSTONE

"The people in the city felt the shock of it that day.

And they said, in solemn gloom, 'The drive is in the boom, And O'Connor's drawn his wages; clear the track and give him room.'"

For a long time they rode side by side on the jumper without a word. Mr.

Ide decided that his reticent companion was pondering a plan for the approaching interview, and was careful not to interrupt the train of thought. He was infinitely disappointed and not a little vexed when Wade turned to him at last and inquired, with plain effort to make his voice calm, whether John Barrett had recovered sufficiently to go home.

"He? He went two weeks ago--he and his girl," snapped the little man, impatiently.

After a moment he began to dig at the b.u.t.tons of his fur coat, and dipped his hand into his breast-pocket. He brought out a letter.

"Here's a line Barrett's girl left to be sent in to you the first chance." He met the young man's reproachful gaze boldly. "When a man's got real business to attend to," he snorted, "he ain't to blame if he disremembers tugaluggin' a love-letter." He gave the missive into Wade's hands, and went on, discontentedly: "What kind of a crazy-headed performance was it those girls was up to when they came up into these woods? I've had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, and probably I couldn't, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. She has her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her," he grumbled.

"I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide's movements, even with her father. Miss Barrett's affairs are wholly her own. May I read my letter?"

"May you read it?" blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of this conventional request. "What in tophet do you think I've got to do with your readin' your own letters?" And he subsided into offended silence, seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with events as they were disposing themselves.

Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in his bare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand had rested.

"MY DEAR DWIGHT,--We are going home. The darkness has not lifted from us. For my light and my comfort I look into the north, where I know your love is shining. My sister was sitting by my father's side when I returned, and he was awake from his long dream and knew her, but he had not spoken the truth to her, and if she knows she has not told. And the cloud of it all is over us, and I cannot speak to him or open my heart to him. He did not even ask where I had been. It is as though he feared one word would dislodge the avalanche under which he shrinks. And I have to write this of my father! So we are going home. Love me. I need all your love. Take all of mine in return."

When Wade folded it he found Rodburd Ide studying his face with shrewd side glance.

"Have you any idea what 'Stumpage John' is goin' to do with the other one--the left-hand one?" he inquired, blandly. "Favor each other considerably, don't they? It told the story to me the first time I saw them together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can't hardly blame John for not takin' the left-hand one out with him, same as my girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, I reckon."

"Did he say anything to--" stammered Wade, and hesitated.

"Nothin' to me," returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. "Didn't have to. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank for more'n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color of the Hullin' Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into the back office of my store. I wasn't tryin' to listen or overhear, you understand, but I heard him stutter somethin' about takin' her out of the woods and puttin' her in school, and she braced back and put her hands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to h.e.l.l."

"What?" shouted Wade, in utter astonishment.

"Oh, not in them words," corrected Ide. "But that's what it come to so far as meanin' went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked out and back to my house."

He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, as though this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: "She's still at my house, and the girl says she's goin' to stay there--so I guess that settles it. Now let's get down to some business that amounts to somethin'! What are you goin' to say to Pulaski Britt?"

But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, hands between his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridged under the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence.

When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary to search long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. They heard him bellowing hoa.r.s.ely, and a moment later were looking down on him from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in the deep snow, one of them "cast" and tangled in the harness. The teamster stood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spotted with blood.

"You've let that horse calk himself, you beef-brained son of a bladder-fish!" roared Britt. "You ain't fit to drive a rockin'-horse with wooden webbin's!" He dove upon the struggling animal, and, hooking his great fists about the bit-rings, dragged the horse to his feet.

"Stripped to the fetlocks!" mourned the owner. He surveyed the bleeding leg and whirled on the teamster. "That's the second pair you've put out of business for me in a week. Me furnishing hundred-and-fifty-dollar horses for you to paint the snow with!" He ploughed across to where the man stood holding the reins, and struck him full in the face, and the fellow went down like a log, blood flying from his face. "Mix some of your five-cent blood with blood that's worth something!" he yelped. "If there's got to be rainbow-snow up this way, I know how to furnish it cheaper."

"That's a nice, interestin' gent down there for you to tackle just now on your business proposition," observed Ide, sourly. "Now, suppose you use common-sense, and turn around and go back to Enchanted!"

But the Honorable Pulaski suddenly heard the jangle of their jumper-bell, and stared up at them.

"Gettin' lessons on how to run a crew, Ide?" he asked. And seeing that the teamster was up and fumbling blindly at the tangled harness, he advanced up the slope. "I 'ain't ever forgiven you for takin' Tommy Eye away from me. That man's a _teamster_! It was a nasty trick, and perhaps your young whelp of a partner there has found out enough about woods law by this time to understand it."

"Mr. Britt--" began Wade.

"I don't want to talk to you at all!" snapped the tyrant, flapping his hand in protest.

"Nor I to you!" retorted Wade, in sudden heat. "But as Mr. Ide's partner I have taken charge of the woods end of our operation, and I've got business to talk with you. We haven't begun to land our logs yet because--"

"It's a wonder to me that you've got any cut down, you dude!" snorted Britt, contemptuously.

"Because we haven't had an understanding about the drive," went on the young man, trying to keep his temper. "Now, about logs coming down Enchanted and into Jerusalem--"

"You'll pay drivin' fees for every stick."

"And you'll take our drive with yours?"

"No, sir. I won't put the iron of a pick-pole into a log with your mark on it!" declared Britt.[5]

[Footnote 5: Lest the remarkable att.i.tude of the Honorable Pulaski D.

Britt be considered an improbable resource of fiction, the author hastens to state that the Maine legislature, in considering the repeal of a log-driving charter, had exactly this situation submitted to it.]

"Mr. Britt," said Wade, his voice trembling in the stress of his emotions, "as an operator in this section, as a man who is asking you straight business questions as courteously as I know how, I am ent.i.tled to decent treatment, and it will be better for all of us if I get it."

"Threats, hey?" demanded Britt, malignantly.

"No threats, sir. If you won't take our drive for the usual fees and guarantee its delivery, will you let us drive it independently?"

"Not with my water--and you'll pay fees just the same!"

"_Your_ water! Who made you the boss of G.o.d's rains and rivers? Have you any charter, giving you the right to turn the State waters of Blunder Lake from their natural outlet and keep everybody else from using them?"

Britt clacked his finger in his hard palm and blurted contemptuous "Phuh!" through his beard.

"Show me any such charter, Mr. Britt, or tell me where to find the record of it, and I'll accept the law."

"h.e.l.l on your law!" cried the tyrant of the Umcolcus.

"Aren't you willing to let the law decide it, Mr. Britt?"

"h.e.l.l on your law!"

Three times more did Wade, his face burning in his righteous anger, his voice trembling with pa.s.sion, ask the question. Three times did the Honorable Pulaski Britt fling those four words of maddening insult back at him. And Wade, his face going suddenly white, s.n.a.t.c.hed the reins from Ide's hands, struck the horse, whirled him into the trail, and drove away madly. Down the aisles of the forest followed those four words as long as Pulaski Britt felt that their iteration could reach the ears of listeners.

"So you finished your business with him, did you?" inquired Ide, at last, allowing himself, as a true prophet, a bit of a sneer.