The Rainy Day Railroad War Part 11

"You all know me," he cried, "an' if ye don't know me ye've heard of me!

I reckon Dan Connick is pretty well known hereabouts. Wal, that's me.

Never was licked, never was talked back to. These men behind me are all a good deal like me. I know the most o' you men. I should hate to hurt ye. Your wives are up there waitin' for ye to come home. Ye'd better go."

But the crowd made no movement to retreat. Parker still stood at their head.

"Ye'd better go!" bellowed Connick. "Understand? I said ye'd better go.

Go an' mind your business, an' if ye do that, not a man in my crew will step a foot on the Sunk-haze sh.o.r.e. But if ye stay here and meddle, then down come your houses and out go your cook-stoves. You know me! Get back on sh.o.r.e."

A tremendous roar from his men emphasized his demand.

"If ye want these hearties loose up there, ye can have 'em in about two minutes!" he cried, threateningly.

The Sunkhaze contingent rubbed elbows significantly, mumbled in conference, and scuffled slowly toward the sh.o.r.e.

"Are you going to back down, men?" Parker shouted.

"We've got wives an' children an' houses up there, mister," said a voice from the crowd, "an' it's a cold night to be turned out-o'-doors. We know these fellers better'n what you do."

"But, men," persisted Parker, "they won't dare to sack your village.

Such things are not done in these days. The law--"

"Law!" burst from Connick, jeeringly. "Law! Law!" echoed his men, with mocking laughter.

"Why," yelled Connick, "there ain't deputy sheriffs enough in this county to round us up once we get acrost the Poquette divide! There ain't a deputy sheriff that will dare to poke his nose within ten miles of our camps."

"That's right, Mr. Parker," agreed one of the Sunkhaze crowd. "Once a crew burnt a smokin'-car when they were comin' up from--"

"No yarns now, no yarns now!" Connick thrust himself against the Sunkhaze men and roughly elbowed them back. "Get on sh.o.r.e an' stay there."

Parker was left standing alone on the ice. His supporters scuffled away, muttering angry complaints, but offering no resistance. When the giant woodsman returned after hastening their departure, he was faced by the young man, still defiant. Connick c.o.c.ked his head humorously and looked down on the engineer. Under all the big man's apparent fierceness there had been a flash of rough jocoseness in his tones at times. Parker saw plainly that he and his followers viewed the whole thing as a "lark,"

and entertained little respect for their adversaries.

"Connick, I warn you--" Parker began; but the giant chuckled, and said, tauntingly:

"'Cluck, cluck!' said the bear.

"I want to say to you, sir, that you are dealing with a large proposition if you propose to interfere with this railroad property. My backers--"

"'Bow-wow!' said the fish." The woodsman cried the taunt more insolently, and yet with a jeering joviality that irritated Parker more than downright abuse would have done.

He started toward his engine, but Connick put out his big arm to interpose.

"Poodle," he said, "I've got a place for you. I'm the champion dog-catcher of the West Branch region." He reached for Parker's collar, but Parker ducked under his arm, and as he came up struck out with a force that sent the astonished giant reeling backward. Fury and desperation were behind the blow.

"Wal, of all the--" gasped Connick, pushing back his cap and staring in astonishment. His men laughed.

"I'll wring your neck, you bantam!" he bawled; and he came down on Parker with a rush.

On that slippery surface the odds were with the defensive. Moreover, Parker, having an athlete's confidence in his fists, suddenly responded to the instincts of primordial man. He leaped lightly to one side, caught the rushing giant's foot across his instep, and as Connick's moccasined feet went out from under him, the young engineer struck him behind the ear. He fell with a dismal thump of his head on the ice, and lay without motion.

But Parker's panting triumph was shortlived. As he stood over the giant, gallantly waiting for him to rise, he discovered that the rules of scientific combat were not observed in the woods. A half-dozen brawny woodsmen leaped upon him, seized him, threw him down, tied his arms and legs with as little ceremony as if he were a calf, and tossed him upon the ice-boat.

Connick had risen to a sitting posture, and viewed the struggle with mutterings of wrath while he rubbed his b.u.mped head.

He scrambled up as if to interfere, but as his antagonist had by this time been disposed of, he roared a few sharp orders, and his willing crew set at work. Men with axes chopped holes a few feet apart in a circle about the engine. There were many choppers, and although the ice was three feet thick, the water soon came bubbling through. As soon as a hole was cut, other men stuck down their huge cross-cuts and began to saw the ice.

All too soon Parker, craning his neck where he lay on the ice-boat, heard an ominous buckling and crackling of ice, and saw his faithful Swogon disappear below the surface of the lake, her mighty splash sending the water gushing like a silvery geyser into the moonlight. The attached sleds, loaded with the rails and spikes and other material, followed like a line of huge, frightened beavers seeking their hole.

"There," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Connick, wiping the sweat from his brow, "when that hole freezes up the Poquette Carry Railro'd will be canned for a time, anyway. Now three cheers for Colonel Gid Ward!"

The cheers were howled vociferously.

He pointed to the men of the settlement, who were now joined by their wives and children, and were watching operations from the bank.

"Three cheers for the brave men and the sweet ladies o' Sunkhaze!"

Loud laughter followed these cheers. The people on the sh.o.r.e remained discreetly silent.

"Three groans for the Poquette Railro'd!"

The hoa.r.s.e cries rang out on the crisp night wind, and at the close one of those queer, splitting, wide-reaching, booming crackles, heard in the winter on big waters, spread across the lake from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

"Even the old lake's with us!" a woodsman shouted.

Connick and his men had finished what they had come to Sunkhaze to do.

They climbed aboard the huge ice-craft. The sheet was paid off, and with dragging peavey-sticks instead of centerboard to hold the contrivance into the wind, the boat moved away on its tack across the lake.

"Say good-by to your friend here!" Connick bellowed. "He says he thinks he'll go with us, strange country for to see."

"Tell inquirin' admirers that his address in futur' will be north pole, shady side," another rough humorist added.

The men on the sh.o.r.e did not reply. They understood perfectly the uncertain temper of "larking" woodsmen. There had been cases in times past when a taunting word had turned rude jollity into sour hankering for revenge.

The bottle began to go about on the sleds, and the refrain of a lumberman's chorus, with its riotous, "Whoop fa la larry, lo day!" came floating back to Sunkhaze long after the great sail had merged itself with the silvery radiance of the brilliant surface of the lake.

"Apparently there's other folks as have new schemes of travellin' acrost Spinnaker Lake," observed the postmaster, breaking a long silence in the group of spectators. "Wal, I did all I could to post him on what he might expect when Gid Ward got his temper good an' started. It's too bad to see that property dumped that way, tho."

"Ain't Gid Ward ever goin' to suffer for any of his actions?" demanded Parker's foreman, disgustedly.

"What are we goin' to do?" bleated another man.

"I'll write a letter to the high sheriff," said the postmaster, and then he added, bitterly, "an' he'll prob'ly wait till it's settled goin' in the spring, same's he did when we sent down that complaint about Ward's men wreckin' Johnson's store. An' by that time he'll forget all about comin'. Talk about kings and emperors! If we hain't got one on West Branch waters, then you can brand me for a liar with one of my own date stamps."

Parker maintained grim silence as he lay on the sled. No one spoke to him. The men were too busy with songs and rough jests over the business of the evening. The engineer would not confess to himself that he was frightened, but the wantonness and alacrity with which the irresponsible men had destroyed valuable property impressed him with ominous apprehension of what they might do to him. He wondered what revenge Connick was meditating.

It was a strange and tedious ride for the young man. The woodsmen sat jammed so closely about him that he could see only the frosty stars glimmering wanly in the moonlight. When the songs and the roaring conversations were stilled for a moment, he could hear the lisp of the runners on the smooth surface and the slashing grind of the iron-clad peavey-sticks.

Although the bodies of his neighbors had kept the cold blast from him, he staggered on his numb feet when they untied his bonds at Poquette and ordered him to get off the sled. Connick came along and gazed on the young man grimly while they were freeing him.