King Spruce Part 49

No one ever explained exactly how it happened!

The warden, who was at the top of the pitch and who did it, gazed a moment, saw what he had done, and fled with a howl of abject terror, never to appear on Enchanted again. The men at the snub-post stated afterwards that he came to them, hearing Pulaski Britt's orders, elbowed them aside with an oath, and took the hawser. He probably undertook to loosen the coils to make a half-hitch; but a game warden has no business with a snub-line when the devil is in it.

It gave one triumphant shriek at its release, and then--"Toom! Toom!

Toom!"--it began to sing its horrible ba.s.s note. It was slipping faster and faster around the snubbing-post under the strain of Tommy Eye's load, which it had been holding back.

Tommy Eye knew without looking--knew without understanding. He knew--that most terrible knowledge of all woods terrors--that he was "sluiced." He screamed once--only once--and the horses came into their collars. Their hot breath was on the back of Pulaski Britt's neck when he started--started with a hoa.r.s.e oath above which sang the shrill yelp of his whip-lash, and behind him, on the icy slope, slid the great load of logs now released from anchorage to the snubbing-post and guided only by the nerve of Tommy Eye.

"Jump, Mr. Wade! Jump!" gasped the teamster. But Wade drove the peak of his cant-dog into a log and clung to the upright handle. He looked back. The great hawser spun itself off the spindle of the post and chased down the hill in spirals, utterly loose and free.

It was no dare-devil spirit that held him on the load. His soul was sick with horrible fear. It was something that was almost subconsciousness that kept him there. Perhaps it was pity--pity for Tommy Eye, so brave a martyr at his post of duty. In the flash of that instant when the great load gathered speed he stiffened himself to leap, then he looked at Tommy's patched coat and remembered his oft-repeated little boast: "I've never left my hosses yet!" And so if Tommy could stay with his horses, he, Dwight Wade, could stay with Tommy! There was a queer thrill in his breast and the sting of sudden tears in his eyes as he decided.

The first rush of the descent was along an incline, steep but even.

There were benches below--each shelf ten feet or so of jutting level--that broke the descent. Wade saw the jumper of Pulaski Britt strike the first bench. The old man went off the seat into the air, and when he fell he dropped his reins, clutched the seat, and kneeled, facing the pursuers, his face ghastly with terror. He crouched there, not daring to turn. Even if he had held his reins they would have been as useless in his hands as strips of fog. Ledges and trees hemmed either side. There was only the narrow road for his flying horses, and they ran straight on, needing neither whip nor admonitions.

The groan of five thousand feet of timber chafing the bind-chains when their great load struck the shelf was like the groan of an animal in agony. The chains held. It was Tommy who had seen to every link and every loop. Then, for the first time in his life, Wade heard the scream of horses in mortal fear. The lurch of the forward sled lifted the pole, and for one dreadful instant both animals kicked free and clear in air.

Tommy Eye shot two words at them like bullets. "Steady, boys!" he yelled. His head was hunched between his shoulders. His arms were out-stretched and rigid. Tommy Eye, master of horses! It was his lift on the bits at just the fraction of a second when they needed it that set them on their feet when the pole dropped. And down the next descent they swooped.

From his height Wade looked straight into the eyes of Pulaski Britt. It seemed that with every plunge of their hoofs Tommy Eye's horses would smash that puffy face. The checks of the benches, when the huge load struck and staggered from time to time, allowed Britt's lighter equipage a little start. But the mighty projectile that drove on him down the smooth slopes gained with every yard, for the thrusting pole swept the horses off their feet in plunge after plunge. And then it was Tommy Eye's desperate coolness that helped them to their infrequent footing.

All of the man's face that Wade could see was a ridged jaw muscle above the faded collar of his coat. The peak of his cap hid all but that.

There was a curve at the foot of the snub slope. The wall of trees that closed the vista was disaster spelled by bolled trunk and st.u.r.dy limb.

There stood the nether millstone: the upper was rushing down, and the grist would be flesh of horses and men. No man could see any other alternative. That horses, shaken every now and then on the up-c.o.c.ked pole as helplessly as kittens, could bring that load around the curve was not a hope; it could be nothing but a dream of desperation.

As to what Tommy Eye dreamed or thought, his pa.s.senger had no hint.

There was only the patch of cheek showing under the tilted cap. But the reins were just as tight, the out-stretched arms just as steady. Wade crouched low, his eyes on that rigid jaw muscle.

Suddenly, with a yell like the cry of something wild, Eye sprang to his feet, bestriding the logs, bracing himself for some mighty effort. They were at the Curve of Death! There came a surge on the tight reins, eight hoofs dug the snow in one frantic thrust, and they went around--they went around! With horses and driver straining to one side the great load pitched, swerved, and, after one breathless instant, swept on in the road around the curve.

Twenty rods farther on they struck the hay, spread thickly for the trig--the checking of the runners. And the sled-runners, biting it, jerked and halted, the bind-chains creaked, the chafing logs groaned--and they were stopped! The lathering horses stood with legs wide spraddled, their heads lowered, their snorting noses puffing up the snow.

Tommy Eye dug the tobacco from his cheek and thoughtfully tossed it away. Britt's team had disappeared, reins dragging, the horses running madly, the whitened, puffy face flashing one last look as it winked out of sight among the trees.

"I've dreamed of such a thing as this," observed Tommy, at last, a strange tremor in his tones. "I've dreamed of chasin' old P'laski Britt, me settin' on five thousand feet of wild timber and lookin' down into his face and seein' him a-wonderin' whether they'd let him into the front door of h.e.l.l or make him go around to the back. It's the first time he was ever run good and plenty, and I done it--but," he sighed, "it was d.a.m.nation whilst it lasted!"

He turned now and gazed long and wistfully at Wade.

"Ye stuck by me, didn't ye, Mr. Wade?" he said, softly. "Stuck by me jest like I was a friend, and not old, drunken Tommy Eye! I reckon we'll shake on that!" And when they clasped hands he asked, with the wistful, inexpressible pathos of his simple devotion to duty: "What was it all about? I jest only know they sluiced me!"

And Wade gasped an explanation, Tommy Eye staring at him with wrinkling brows and squinting eyes.

"Come to arrest me for northin' I hadn't done?" he shrilled. "Come to take me off'n a job where I was needed, and where I was earnin' my honest livin'?"

"They had the warrant, and Britt swore out the lying complaint."

"Mr. Wade," said Tommy, after a solemn pause, "I've done a lot of things in this life to be ashamed of--but jest gittin' drunk, that's all. I ain't never done a crime. But jest now, if it hadn't been for that toss-up between supper in camp or hot broth in tophet to-night, I'd be travellin' down-country, pulled away from you when you need me worst, and all on account of P'laski Britt. If that's the chances an honest man runs in this world, I'm an outlaw from now on!"

Wade stared at him in amazement, for there was a queer significance in Tommy's tone.

"An outlaw!" repeated Tommy, slapping his breast. "Yes, s'r, I'm an outlaw! An outlaw so fur as P'laski Britt is concerned. I've showed him I can run him! Did you see him lookin' at me? He'll dream of me after this when he has the nightmare."

He took Wade by the arm.

"I 'ain't been sayin' much, Mr. Wade, but I see how things are gettin'

ready to move in this valley. You ain't built for an outlaw. But you need one in your business. I'm the one from now on."

He pulled his thin hand out of his mitten and shook it towards the north in the direction in which Blunder Lake lay.

"You need an outlaw in your business, I say! I'm tough from now on. I'll be so tough in April that you'll have to discharge me. There's no knowin' what an outlaw will do, is there, Mr. Wade? I'd ruther go to jail as an outlaw than as a drunk, like I've done every summer. They look up to outlaws. They make drunks scrub the floors and empty the slops." His voice trembled. "Oh, you needn't worry, Mr. Wade! I'll be proud to be an outlaw. And I ain't northin' but old Tommy Eye, anyway."

He slid down off the load and went between the horses' heads, and fondled them and kissed them above their eyes.

"Brace up, old fellers!" he said. "You won't have to pull no more to-day. I reckon you've done your stunt!"

"I--I don't understand this outlaw business, Tommy," stammered Wade, looking down on him from the load. Tommy peered up, his head between the s.h.a.ggy manes of the horses.

"Don't you try to, Mr. Wade!" he cried, earnestly. "There ain't no good in tryin' to understand outlaws. They ain't no kind to hitch up to very close. Don't you try to understand them!" And as he bent to unhook the trace-chains he muttered to himself: "I ain't sure as I understand much about 'em myself, but there's one outlawin' job that it's come to my mind can be done without takin' private lessons off'n Jesse James, or whoever is topnotcher in the line just now. In the mean time, let's see that warden try to arrest me!"

But as days went by it became apparent that the wardens and the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt considered that they had precipitated an affair on Enchanted whose possible consequences they did not care to face.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE "CANNED THUNDER" OF CASTONIA

"A woodsman hates a coward as he hates diluted rye, Stiff upper-lip for livin', stiff backbone when you die!"

When April came, and with caressing fingers began to stroke the softening snow from the mountain flanks, she found full half a million of the Enchanted cut still on the yards.

"If it's to be a gamble, let's make it a good one," Rodburd Ide had counselled his partner. "Pile on every stick that winter's back will carry. Pile till it breaks!"

Dwight Wade had a trustworthy "kitchen cabinet" of advisers in old Christopher Straight, Tommy Eye, and the chopping-boss; and with them as counsellors he ventured further than his own narrow experience would have prompted.

On nights when April slept and the trickling slopes were stiffened by the cold, the crew of the Enchanted stole a march on spring. They awoke at sundown with the owls. They ate breakfast in the gloom of early evening. And, with the moon holding her lantern for them in the serene skies, they rushed their logs into the waiting arms of Blunder valley.

That those arms would surrender the timber when the time was ripe seemed more certain as the days went by. The word of their zealous young man of law was encouraging. There had been pleas, representations, digging over of old charters, hunt through dusty records, citation of precedents, and some very direct talk regarding a thorough legislative investigation of conditions in the north country to regulate the rights of independent operators.

It was admittedly too big a question to be hurried. Litigation fattens by what it feeds on. Grown ponderous, it marches, slow and dignified, in short stages between terms, and sits and rests and puffs at every cross-road of argument, exception, appeal, and writ of error. Even that exigency of five millions of timber waiting in Blunder valley could not hasten the settlement of the young reformer's main contention or the big question. But there are in this life some deeper sentiments than enthusiasm in reform. The old college friendship between Dwight Wade, famous centre of Burton's eleven, and the little quarter-back whom he had shielded was one of those deeper sentiments. And now the lawyer, for the sake of that friendship, was willing to buy Dwight Wade's success in Blunder valley by honorable compromise on certain points where compromise was honorable.

With a man open to sane reason and moral decency a compromise might have been effected. But after Pulaski D. Britt had craftily drawn out proffer of a truce and proposition of a trade in one phase of the great question of water-rights, he burst into a bellow of "blackmail" that echoed from end to end of the State. The words bristled in the newspapers controlled by the land barons and was rolled on the tongues of gossip. And as humanity in general, selfish in its easy-going way and jealous of resolute activity, likes to believe ill of reformers, men were readier to believe Britt than to give a motive of honest friendship its due. The jeers of the mob make what some people like to call "public opinion."

And sometimes when public opinion is loudly gabbling and can be politely referred to in case of doubt, there can be found judges who will listen with one ear to the voices of the street and with the other to the specious representations of the man in power.

So it came about that the judge presiding at the _nisi prius_ term in the great county dominated by Pulaski D. Britt hearkened in chambers to some very distressing details set before him by that gentleman and certain other "employers of labor" and "developers of the great timber interests." The judge pursed his lips and with his tongue clucked horrified astonishment at stories of brutal a.s.saults made "on members of Pulaski Britt's crew" (this being Dwight Wade's desperate defence of himself, as pictured by Britt), and other tales of lunatics provoked to deeds of violence towards aforesaid "developers"; of incendiaries spirited away from officers; of men stolen out of Britt's crew (poor Tommy Eye's rescue from torture, as revamped for evidence by the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt); and, lastly, of that desperate and malignant attempt on the life of Honorable Pulaski D. Britt when a load of timber was sluiced at him from the shoulder of Enchanted Mountain.

Dwight Wade had not put into the hands of his lawyer the details of those pitiful secrets of the woods; for not only his honor as a man set a seal on his lips, but the sacredness of his love imposed higher obligation still. So his lawyer listened, amazed, incredulous, but incapable of refuting these tales in the categorical way that the law demands.