The Protector Part 26

"How are you getting to work?" he asked.

Salter pointed to the foot of the rock they stood upon. "I reckoned if we could put a shot in yonder, we might cut out stone enough to clear the b.u.t.ts of the larger logs that are keying up the jamb."

"You're wasting time--starting at the wrong place."

"It's possible, but what am I to do? I'd sooner split that boulder or chop down to the king log there, but the boys can't get across."

"I think I could," Vane answered. "I'll try, if it's necessary."

Salter expostulated, "I want to point out that you're the boss director of this company. I don't know what you're making out of it, but you can hire men to do the kind of work you think of undertaking for three dollars a day."

"We'll let the boys try it, if they're willing." Vane raised his voice.

"Are any of you open to earn twenty dollars? I'll pay that to the man who'll put a stick of giant-powder in yonder boulder, and another twenty to whoever can find the king log and chop it through."

Three or four of them crept cautiously along the driftwood bridge. It heaved and worked beneath them; the foam sluiced across it, and the stream forced the thinner tops of shattered trees above the barrier. It was obvious that the men were risking life and limb, and there was a cry from the rest when one of them went down and momentarily disappeared. He scrambled to his feet again, but those behind him stopped, bracing themselves against the stream, knee-deep in rushing froth. Most of them had followed rough and dangerous occupation in the bush; but they were not professional river-Jacks trained to high proficiency in log-driving, and one turning shouted to the watchers on the bank.

"This jamb's not solid," he explained. "She's working open and shutting; and you can't tell where the breaks are." He stooped and rubbed his leg, and Vane understood him to add: "Figured I had it smashed."

Vane swung round towards Carroll, who was standing close by. "We give them a lead."

Salter ventured another remonstrance: "Stay where you are. How are you going to manage if the boys can't tackle the thing?"

"They haven't as much at stake as I have," was Vane's reply. "I'm a director of the company as you pointed out. Give me two sticks of giant-powder, some fuse, and detonators."

After cramming the blasting material into his pocket, Vane called to Carroll: "Are you coming with me?"

"Since I can't stop you, I suppose I'd better go," Carroll replied.

They sprang down the bank. Vane crawled out on the working timber, with Carroll, who carried a heavy hammer, a few feet behind him. The perilous bridge they traversed groaned beneath their feet, but they had joined the other men before they came to any particularly troublesome opening.

Then the cl.u.s.ter of wet figures was brought up by a gap filled with leaping foam, in the midst of which brushwood swung to and fro and projecting branches ground on one another. Whether there was solid timber a foot or two beneath, or only the entrance to some cavity by which the stream swept through the barrier, there was nothing to show, but Vane set his lips and jumped. He alighted on something that bore him, and when the others followed, floundering and splashing, the deliberation which had hitherto characterised their movements suddenly deserted them. They had reached the limit beyond which it was no longer useful.

When they had crossed the gap, Vane and those behind him blundered on in hot fury. They had risen to the demand on them, and the curious psychic change had come; now they must achieve success or face annihilation. But in this there was nothing unusual; it is the alternative offered to many a log-driver, miner, and sailor-man.

Neither Vane nor Carroll, nor any of those who a.s.sisted them, had any clear recollection of what they did. Somehow they reached the boulder; somehow they plied axe or iron-hooked peevie, while the unstable, foam-lapped platform rocked beneath their feet. Every movement entailed a peril no one could calculate, but they savagely toiled on. When Vane began to swing a hammer above a drill, or whom he got it from, he did not know, any more than he remembered when he had torn off and thrown away his jacket, though the sticks of giant-powder, which had been in his pocket, lay close by upon the stone. Sparks sprang from the drill which Carroll held and fell among the coils of snaky fuse; but that did not trouble either, and it was only when Vane was breathless that he changed places with his companion.

About them, bowed figures that breathed in stertorous gasps grappled desperately with grinding, smashing logs. Sometimes they were forced up in harsh distinctness by a dazzling glare; sometimes they faded into blurred shadows as the pulsating flame upon the bank sank a little or was momentarily blown aside; but all the while gorged veins rose on bronzed foreheads and toil-hardened muscles were taxed to the uttermost.

At last, when a trunk rolled beneath him, Carroll missed a stroke and realised with a shock of dismay that it was not the drill he had brought his hammer down upon.

"I couldn't help it," he gasped. "Where did I hit you?"

"Get on," Vane said hoa.r.s.ely. "I can hold the drill."

Carroll struck for a few more minutes, after which he flung down the hammer and inserted the giant-powder into the holes sunk in the stone.

Next he lighted the fuse; and, warning the others, they hastily recrossed the dangerous bridge. They had reached the edge of the forest when a flash sprang up amidst the foam and a sharp crash was followed by a deafening, drawn-out uproar. Rending, grinding, smashing, the jamb broke up, hammered upon the partly shattered boulder, and carrying it away or driving over it washed in tremendous ruin down the rapid. When the wild clamour had subsided, Salter gave the men some instructions, and then as they approached the lamp noticed Vane's reddened hand.

"That looks a nasty smash; you want to get it seen to," he remarked.

"I'll get it dressed at the settlement; we'll make an early start to-morrow," said Vane. "We were lucky in breaking the jamb; but you'll have the same trouble over again any time a heavy flood brings down an unusual quant.i.ty of driftwood."

"It's what I'd expect," agreed Salter.

"Then something will have to be done to prevent it. I'll go into the matter when I reach the city."

Carroll and Vane walked back to the shack, where the former bound up his comrade's injured hand, and, after a rest, left the mine early next morning. Vane got his hand dressed when they reached the little mining town at the head of the railroad, and on the following day they arrived in Vancouver.

CHAPTER XXI

VANE YIELDS A POINT.

The short afternoon was drawing towards its close when Vane came out of a building in Hastings Street, Vancouver.

"The meeting went satisfactorily, taking it all round," he remarked to Carroll, who was with him.

"I think so," agreed his companion. "But I'm far from sure that Horsfield was pleased with the stockholders' decision."

Vane nodded in a thoughtful manner. After returning from the mine, he had gone inland to examine a new irrigation property he had been asked to take an interest in, and had only got back in time for a meeting of the Clermont shareholders, which Nairn had arranged in his absence. The meeting was just over, and though Vane had been forced to yield to a majority on some points, he had secured the abandonment of a proposition he considered dangerous.

"Though I don't see what the man could have gained by it, I'm inclined to believe that if Nairn and I had been absent he'd have carried his reconstruction scheme," he said. "That wouldn't have pleased me."

"I thought it injudicious," Carroll commented.

"It was only because we must raise more money I agreed to the issue of the new shares," Vane went on. "We ought to pay a fair dividend on such a moderate sum."

"You think you'll get it?"

"I've not much doubt."

Vane was capable and forceful; but his abilities were rather of a practical than a diplomatic order, and he was occasionally addicted to headstrong action. Knowing that he had a very cunning antagonist intriguing against him, his companion had misgivings.

"Shall we walk back to the hotel?" he asked.

"No," said Vane; "I'll go across and see how Celia Hartley's getting on.

I'm afraid I've been forgetting her."

"Then I'll come too. You may need me; there are matters you're not to be trusted with alone."

Just then Nairn came down the steps and waved his hand to them. "Ye will no forget that Mrs. Nairn is expecting both of ye this evening."

He pa.s.sed on, and they set off together across the city towards the district where Celia lived. Though the quarter in question may have been improved out of existence since, some little time ago rows of low-rented shacks stood upon mounds of sweating sawdust which had been dumped into a swampy hollow. Leaky, frail, and fissured, they were not the kind of places any one who could help it would choose to live in; but Vane found the sick girl still installed in one of the worst of them. She looked pale and haggard; but she was busily at work upon some millinery, and the light of a tin lamp showed Drayton and Kitty Blake sitting near her.

"You oughtn't to be at work; you don't look fit," Vane said to Celia, and hesitated a moment before he continued: "I'm sorry we couldn't find that spruce; but, as I told Drayton, we're going back to try again."

The girl smiled bravely. "Then you'll find it next time. I'm glad I'm able to do a little; it brings a few dollars in."

"But what are you doing?"