The Man in the Twilight Part 14

But the yarns don't fit. You see, the mill's gone right ahead. The capital's there, sure. They've just built and built. There's more than twice the 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the 'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the _Myra_ and they sc.r.a.pped the _Lizzie_, I never guessed to get a full cargo.

Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast.

It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving all the time. They're bright folk, sure."

The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest.

The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest. Instantly activity reigned upon the deck, and the discharge of cargo was in full swing.

Bull Sternford was one of the first to pa.s.s down the gangway. Clad in the pleasant tweeds of civilisation, part hidden under a close-b.u.t.toned pea-jacket, he bulked enormously. His more than six feet of height was lost against his ma.s.sive breadth of shoulder. Then, too, his keen face under a beaver cap, and his shapely head with its mane of hair, were things to deny his body that attention it might otherwise have attracted.

For all that, at least one pair of critical eyes lost no detail of his personality. Bat Harker was un.o.btrusively standing amongst the piled bales of groundwood that stacked the wharf from end to end. There was nothing about him to single him out from those who stood on the quay.

The rough clothing of his original calling was very dear to him, and he clung to it tenaciously. He seemed to have aged not one whit in the added eight years. His iron-grey hair was just as thick and colourful as before. There was no added line in his hard face. His girth was no less and no more. And his eyes, penetrating, steady, had the same spirit shining in them.

He had laboured something desperately in the past eight years. With the pa.s.sing of Leslie Standing from the life of Sachigo he had realized a terrible loss. His loss had more than embarra.s.sed him. There was even a moment when it shook his purpose. But with him Sachigo was a religion, and his faith saved him. For a while, in both letter and spirit, he obeyed his orders, and Sachigo stood still. Then his philosophy carried the day. It was his dictum that no one could stand still on Labrador without freezing to death. He saw the application of it to his beloved mill. It must be "forward" or decay. So he sc.r.a.pped his original orders, and drove with all his force.

Bull stared about him for the fascination of his journey up the cove was still on him. His pre-occupation left him watching the hurried, orderly movement going on about him.

"That all your baggage?"

The demand was harsh, and Bull swung round with a start. He was gazing down into the upturned face of Bat Harker, who was pointing at the suit case he was carrying.

"Guess I've a trunk back there in the hold somewhere," Bull replied indifferently, taking his interrogator for a quayside porter.

"That's all right. I'll have one of the boys tote it up. Best come right along. It's quite a piece up to the office. You've a letter for me?"

"I've a letter for Mr. Bat Harker."

The doubt in Bull's tone set a genuine grin in the other's eyes.

"Sure. That's me. Bat Harker. Maybe you don't guess I look it. Don't worry. Just pa.s.s it over."

Bull groped in an inner pocket, surprise affording him some amus.e.m.e.nt.

His interest in Sachigo had abruptly focussed itself on this man.

"I'm kind of sorry," he said. "I surely took you for some sort of--porter."

Bat laughed outright, and glanced down at his work-stained clothing.

"Wal, that ain't new," he said. Then his eyes resumed their keen regard.

"We don't need to wait around though. The skitters are mighty thick down here. Sachigo's gettin' a special breed I kind o' hate. That letter, an'--we'll get along."

Bull drew out Father Adam's letter and waited while the other tore it open. Bat glanced at the contents and jumped to the signature. Then he thrust out a gnarled and powerful hand.

"Shake," he cried. And there could be no doubting his good will. "Glad to have you around, Mr. Bull Sternford."

Bull Sternford was seated in the luxurious chair that had once known Leslie Standing. His pea-jacket was removed and his cap was gone. The room was warm, and the sun beyond the window was radiant. Beyond the desk Bat was seated, where his wandering gaze could drift to the one object of which it never tired. He was at the window which looked out upon the mill below.

He was reading Father Adam's letter. Sternford was silently regarding his squat figure. He was waiting and wondering, speculating as to the hard-faced, uncultured creature who had built up all the amazing details that made up an industrial city in a territory that was outlawed by Nature.

Bat thrust the letter away and looked up.

"Father Adam didn't write that letter for you? He just handed it out to you to bring along?"

"That's how," Bull nodded.

"Sure." Bat's tone became reflective. "He must have wrote that letter years, and held it against the time he located you. He's queer."

Bull laughed.

"Maybe he is," he said, "I don't know about that. But he's one h.e.l.l of a good man," he went on warmly. "Do you know him? But of course you do.

Say, he's just father and mother to every darn lumber-jack that haunts the forests of Quebec, and it don't worry him if his children are h.e.l.lhound or honest. There's that to him sets me just crazy. I'd like to see his thin, tired face, always smiling." He stirred. And the warmth died abruptly out of his manner. "Say, you knew me--at the wharf?"

"Sure. I knew you before you came along. We've a wireless out on the headland."

"I see. Father Adam warned you I was coming. He told you--"

"The whole darn yarn. Sure."

Bull laughed grimly.

"That he guessed to shoot me to small meat if I didn't do as he said?"

"If you didn't cut out homicide from your notions of--sport."

"Yes. It was tough," Bull regretted. "But I'm glad--now."

"Yep. Guess any straight sort of feller would feel that way--after."

The lumberman's regret was unnoticed by the other.

Suddenly Bull leant forward in his chair. A smile, half whimsical, half incredulous, lit his eyes. He thrust his elbows on the desk and supported his face in his hands.

"It just beats h.e.l.l!" he cried. "It certainly does. Oh, I'm awake all right. Sure, I am. One time I wasn't sure. Two months back I was lying around a lousy summer camp getting ready to take a hand in the winter cut for the Skandinavia Corporation. I was within two seconds of breaking a man's life--the rotten camp boss. And now? Why, now I'm sitting around in dandy tweeds in the boss chair of a swell office, with a crazy notion back of my head I'm here to beat the game with the greatest groundwood mill in the world, and ten million dollars capital behind me. Maybe there's folks wouldn't guess I'm awake, but I allow I am. But the whole thing sets me thinking of the fairy stories I used to read when I was a kid, and never could see the horse sense in wasting time over."

Bat helped himself to a chew from a fragment of plug tobacco.

"Here, listen," Bull went on, after the briefest pause. "It's my 'show down.' I don't understand a thing. I'm mostly a kid from college with a yearning for fight. So far I've learned some of the things the forest can teach the feller who wants to learn. They're the rough things. And I like rough things. I've some grip on groundwood. And the making of groundwood's the main object of my life. That, and the notion of licking h.e.l.l out of the other feller. That's me, and those are the things made Father Adam send me along down to Sachigo. Well, it's up to you." He spread out his hands, "Where do I stand? How do I stand? And why in the name of all that's crazy am I sitting in this boss chair--right now?"

Bat swung one trunk-like leg across the other. His movement suggested an easing of mind and a measure of enjoyment. He pointed at the window and nodded in its direction.

"Quite a place," he said, in a tone and with a pride that had no relation to the other's demands. "Makes you feel man ain't the b.u.m sort of inseck in the scheme of things some highbrows ain't happy not tellin'

you. There's folks who guess it's Nature the proposition that matters.

It's her does it all, an' keeps on doin' it all the time. But Nature's most like one mighty foolish, extravagant female. That sort o' woman who don't care but to please the notion of the moment. And when that's done, goes right on to please the next. Wal, anyway I guess she's got her uses if it's only to hand chances to the guy that's lookin' on. Take a look right down there below," he went on. "That's the truck the guy lookin'

on has sweppen up in Nature's trail. It's taken most of fifteen years collectin' it. We've had to push that broom hard. And now I guess you're going to boost your weight behind it too. There's other things to collect, and that's what we want from you. You got nerve. You got big muscle, and education, too. Well, you'll handle the biggest sweeper of us all. Does it scare you?"

"Not a thing." Bull was smiling confidently.