Lost Farm Camp Part 17

"Ya-a-s," drawled Avery whimsically, studying the other's face. "It's my land, and my asbestos, and you're my partner, and Swickey's my gal, and I reckon I kin pay the man what's eddicatin' her as much as I dum'

please."

"If the man is willing," replied David.

"If he ain't, it won't be for because ole Hoss Avery don't pay him enough. We're goin' halves on this here deal the same as the trappin'

and the eddicatin' and sech." He put his hand on David's shoulder and whispered, "Listen to thet!"

It was Swickey, perched in Avery's armchair, spelling out letter by letter the first page of her "Robinson Crusoe," to Smoke, who sat on his haunches before her, well aware that she demanded his individual attention to the story, yet his inner consciousness told him that it was a good half-hour past supper-time.

CHAPTER XII-"US AS DON'T KNOW NOTHIN'"

With the June rains came the drive, thousand after thousand of glistening logs that weltered in the slow rise and fall of the lake, crowding, rolling, blundering against each other, pounding along sh.o.r.e on the rocks, and shouldering incessantly at the chain-linked booms that sagged across the upper end of the conglomeration of timbers.

Rain-dappled s.p.a.ces appeared here and there in that undulating floor of uneasy logs, round which two floating windla.s.ses were slowly worming another boom from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. Round and round the capstans stepped red-shirt, blue-shirt, gray-shirt, their calked boots gnawing a splintered, circular path on the windla.s.s rafts.

Below the three cabins, and close to the river, stood the smoking w.a.n.gan of weathered tents, flopping in the wind that whipped the open fireplace smoke across the swinging pots, and on down the gorge, where it hung eddying in the lee of rain-blackened cliffs.

Peaveys stood like patient sentinels, their square steel points thrust in stranded logs. Pike-poles lay here and there, their sharp screw-ends rusting in the rain. They seemed slight and ineffectual compared with the stout peaveys, whose dangling steel fingers hung suggestively ready to grasp with biting spur the slippery timber; and _Y-hey!_ from the men, and the log would grumble over the shingle and plunge in the lake with a surly rolling from side to side. But the peavey's attenuated brother, the pike-pole, was a worker of miracles in the hands of his master, the driver.

Ross, who had been watching with keen interest the manuvres of the rivermen, stood with his shoulders against a b.u.t.tress of the dam, m.u.f.fled in sou'wester and oilskins. Logs were shooting from the ap.r.o.n of the sluiceway and leaping to the lift of the foaming back-water, like lean hunters taking the billowy top of a wind-tossed hedge. A figure came toward where he stood and called to him, but the roar of the water through the sluiceway drowned his voice. Then Harrigan, brushing the rain from his face, stood before him.

"Here you! get a roll on that log there, or-"

He pointed to where two of the crew were standing, knee-deep in the backwash of the stream, tugging at a balky timber that threatened to hang up the logs that charged at it and swung off in the current again.

"No, you won't," said David, turning his face to Harrigan. "Thought I was one of the crew loafing?" A faint twinkle shone beneath his half-closed lids. It vanished as he leveled his clear gray eyes on Harrigan's. "That's the fourth mistake you've made regarding me. Aren't you getting tired of it? I am."

Harrigan had not seen Ross since the shooting, and, taken aback by suddenly coming upon him, he stared at David a little longer than the occasion seemed to warrant.

Coolly the younger man lifted his sou'wester and ran his fingers through his hair. "It's on this side," he said, disclosing a red seam above his ear, "if that's what you are looking for. Shot any deer lately?"

"You go to h.e.l.l!"

Ross stepped up to him and pointed across the opposite hill to where the dim crest of Timberland Mountain loomed in the rain.

"Bas...o...b..& Company haven't bid high enough for the raw material, including you. That's all."

Harrigan's loose, heavy features hardened to a cold mask of hate as the full meaning of David's words struck home. Then the sluggish blood leaped to his face and he stooped for the peavey at his feet, but David's foot was on it like a flash. "None of that!"

They faced each other, shoulder to shoulder, David's eyes measuring the distance to Harrigan's jaw. In the intense silence the patter of rain on their oilskins sounded like the roll of kettledrums.

"Hey, Denny!" Up on the dam a dripping figure waved its arms.

"I'll git you yit, you-"

"Swallow it!" David's voice rang out imperiously. The wound above his ear tingled with the heat of blood that swept his face.

Harrigan drew back and turned toward the beckoning figure.

"Go ahead," said David; "I don't carry a gun."

As Fisty swung heavily along the sh.o.r.e, Avery came from down river with one of the men.

"They're pilin' up at the 'Elbow,'" he said, as he approached. "They's a full head of water comin' through the gates, but she's a-goin' to tie up."

"That means the outfit will be here indefinitely," said David.

"Reckon it do. Comin' up to the house?"

"No; I think I'll go over and see if Smoke is all right."

"Thet's right: I'll send Swickey over with some grub fur him," said Avery, as he moved on up the slope.

"Well, it's pretty tough on old Smoke, chained up and worrying himself out of appet.i.te, because he can't understand it all," thought David, as he climbed the easy slope to the stable.

The clink and rustle of a chain in the straw came to him as he unlocked the rusty padlock and opened the door. Smoke stood blinking and sniffling. Then on his hind legs, chain taut from collar to manger, he strained toward his master, whimpering and half strangled by his effort to break loose. David drew an empty box to the stall and sat down.

"Smoke," he said playfully, "we're going back to Boston pretty soon.

Then no more hikes down the trail; no more rabbits and squirrels to chase; and no more Swickey to spoil you. Just Wallie and the horses and maybe a cat or two to chase."

The dog sat on his haunches, tongue lolling, but eyes fixed unwaveringly on David's face. He whined when Swickey's name was mentioned, and while David listlessly picked a straw to pieces, he turned and gnawed savagely at his chain. Surely they had made a mistake to shut him away from the good sun and the wind and the rain. The consciousness of unseen presences stamping past his door, strange voices, new man-smells, the rumbling of logs in the river, the scent of smoke from the w.a.n.gan, all combined to irritate him, redoubling his sense of impotency as a champion and guardian of his adopted household.

The door of the main camp opened and closed. With the slant of the rain beating against her came Swickey, a quaint figure in her father's cap and gay-colored mackinaw. She had a bowl of table sc.r.a.ps for Smoke, who ceased whining and stood watching her approach. David took the basin from her hands and gravely offered her a seat on the box; but she declined with a quick smile and dropped on her knees beside Smoke, caressing his short, pointed ears and muscular fore-shoulders. The dog sniffed at his food disdainfully. What did meat and bones amount to compared with prospective liberty? With many words and much crooning she cajoled him into a pretense of eating, but his little red eyes sought her face constantly as he crunched a bone or nosed out the more appetizing morsels from the pan.

"Dave," she said, addressing him with the innocent familiarity of the backwoods, "you're goin' to take Smoke to his real home again, ain't you?"

"Yes, I'll have to, I think. But this is as much his real home as Boston was."

"Are you comin' back again?"

"I think so, Swickey. Why?"

"Are you goin' to bring Smoke back when you come?"

"I'm afraid not. You see he belongs to Mr. Bas...o...b..the surveyor. He was coming up here to get Smoke and-and talk with me about certain things, but he was called home by wire. Had to leave immediately."

"What's it mean-'called home by wire'?"

"By telegraph. You remember the telegraph wires in the station at Tramworth?"

"Yip. Hundreds of 'em."

"Well, people call telegraphing, 'wiring,' and a telegram a 'wire.'"

"Ain't telegraph its real name?"