The Rapids Part 17

"I suppose there's no way out of it?"

"None whatever," grunted Stoughton, who was lining his basket with moss and objected to being thus recalled. "What the devil has this to do with dividends?"

"Nothing, I admit, but why in thunder did we start this game anyway?

Why couldn't we just take things easy and go fishing. We've all got enough."

Wimperley stretched his arms above his head in delicious fatigue.

"Keep away from second causes; this is no place for them. Four years ago you were meant to go fishing to-day in this very stream. Why worry about it?"

"I'm thinking about one R.F.C.," came back Riggs reflectively, "just like the rest of you."

"Well," sounded the dry voice of Birch, "so am I. And all this is very apropos. It ill.u.s.trates the general condition of affairs, especially that mess of trout you had on the moss a while ago. We're all trout, we and the shareholders. You, Wimperley, are that five pounder. We all rose to the fly of one R.F.C., and we were all landed in the back woods. There are more trout in that stream, and, if we stand for it, the fishing is still good, but I've got the sting of the fly still in my gills. Also I'm thinking about one Henry Marsham."

Stoughton nodded sagely. "That's right, but if you liked fishing, Birch, you wouldn't drag in shareholders in that churlish fashion.

What about blast furnaces, Riggs? We haven't heard a whisper yet.

Wonder what Clark is thinking of?"

"Oh Lord!" murmured the little man, "if we only had iron!"

Fisette, who was dipping his dishes in a pot of hot water, turned his head ever so slightly. The others had either forgotten about him or concluded that their conversation was beyond a half-breed. But not a word had escaped the sharp ears of the man who moved so silently beside the fire. 'Iron!' They had iron, but apparently did not know it.

Fisette felt in his pocket for the small angular fragment he always carried, and was about to hand it to Wimperley, when again he remembered Clark's command. He was to say nothing to any one. So the half-breed, with wonder in his soul, laid more wood on the fire and, squatting in the shadow of a rock, stared at the stream now shrouded in the gloom, and waited for what might come.

"But there's none in this d.a.m.ned country," blurted Stoughton, "so get back to Birch's picture of the shareholders on the moss."

"Trouble is I can't get away from it." Riggs' small voice was so plaintive that the others laughed, then dropped into a reverie while there came the murmur of the hidden stream and the small unceasing voices of the dusk that blend into the note which men call silence.

Very softly and out of the south drifted a melodious sound.

"Six o'clock at the works," drawled Birch, snapping his watch. "Does that suggest anything?"

An hour later two buckboards drew up in front of the hotel and the four stepped down, a little stiff, but utterly content. As Riggs took his basket from Fisette, he coughed a little awkwardly.

"Look here, you fellows, I'm going to send my fish to R.F.C. with our compliments. It's only decent."

"Well," remarked Birch reflectively, "you might as well. It's the only compliment we're paying this trip."

A profound sleep strengthened their resolution, and when next morning Clark announced that he had arranged a trip up the lake, they acceded at once. In half an hour the company's big tug steamed out into Lake Superior, and the four, wrapped in big coats, for the water was like ice and the air chill, waited for the hour when Clark should run dry.

"You're going back this evening?" he said as the vessel rounded the long pine covered point that screened the rapids from the open lake.

Birch nodded.

"We'll get through by this afternoon. There isn't any more to show you." Clark spoke with a certain quick incisiveness and his eyes seemed unusually keen and bright.

"We've seen all we want to see."

The other man glanced at him sharply and said nothing. Then, as the big tug plowed on, the great expanse of Superior opened before them, a gigantic sheet of burnished gla.s.s edged with shadowy sh.o.r.es, and a long island whose soft outline seemed to float indistinctly on the unruffled water. As they steamed, Clark told them of the giant bark canoes that once came down from the lake heavy with fur, to unload at the Hudson Bay store at St. Marys, and disappear as silently as they came laden with colored cotton and Crimea muskets and lead and powder. He told of lonely voyageurs and the Jesuit priests who, traveling utterly alone, penetrated these wilds with sacrificial courage, carrying the blessed Sacrament to the scattered lodges of Sioux and Huron. Then, shifting abruptly, he talked of his own coming to St. Marys and the chance talk on a train that turned his attention to that Arcadia till, as the moments pa.s.sed, he himself began to take on romantic proportions and appear in the imagination of his hearers as a sort of modern voyageur, who had discovered a new commercial kingdom.

"These logs," he said abruptly, "are from our limits."

The others glanced over the tug's high bows and saw nearing them a great brown raft towed by a small puffing vessel.

"Pulp wood,--ten thousand cords there. It doesn't take long to chew it up at the rate we're going. I want to speak to Baudette."

He motioned to the bridge and the big tug drew in slowly beside its smaller brother, while he talked to a brown-faced man who leaned over the rail and answered in monosyllables, his sharp eyes taking in the group behind the general manager. The tug sheered off and put on speed, while Wimperley and the rest held their breath as they skirted the straining boom that inclosed the raft. Presently the high, sharp bow turned sh.o.r.eward, steam was cut off and the tug made fast to the sheer side of a little bluff that rose steeply out of deep water.

Clark stepped out on a narrow gang plank that just reached the land.

"You fellows haven't seen this north country yet, and I'd like you to get something of it on foot. This is part of our concession secured from the provincial government and I want you to walk over just a little of it. As directors you ought to."

"Come on," said Wimperley under his breath. "It's the last chapter, he's nearly dry."

The trail was narrow and newly cut. Treading at first on smooth rock, the Philadelphians took it briskly, jumping over stones and logs and pausing now and then at vistas of the lake. They were a little short of breath when the path dipped to low ground and struck straight across a tangled ravine. Here the bush was thicker, and the air warm and moist. Gradually the four coats came off.

"Hold on a minute, Clark," panted Stoughton who was beginning to sweat.

"It's better over here, come along."

But if it was better they did not notice it. Wimperley stumbled over a root and plunged one hand up to the wrist in slimy mud. Riggs was breathing hard and his nostrils dilated, but he plugged doggedly on.

Birch, now very red in the face, stepped close behind Stoughton, his cheeks stinging from the swish of branches released by the man just ahead. Stoughton, his heart pumping, was in the lead, and desperately trying to catch the steadily progressing figure of Clark. He felt almost like murder. Ten minutes more and the Philadelphians had lost all traces of refinement. Wimperley's trousers were torn at the knee and his white, scratched skin showed through. Riggs had dropped coat and waistcoat beside the trail, his collar was off, his small body tired and twisted, and from his lips streamed language to which he had long been a stranger. Birch had lagged far behind but plowed on with a cold determination. He was breathing audibly through his nose, his watch chain was dangling on a cedar branch a quarter of a mile back, a sharp pain throbbed in a barked shin and his boots were full of water.

Still in the lead was Stoughton, who, regardless of all else, had put down his head and was crashing heavily through the underbrush like a young bull moose answering the call of his distant and amorous mate.

Clark was quite invisible. Presently the four halted. Humanity had gone its limit. Birch dragged himself up and they stared at each other with furious eyes.

"Lend me a handkerchief," panted Riggs.

Stoughton felt in his pocket, pulling one out with a cascade of pine needles, when from three hundred feet ahead came a voice:

"I'm where we stop, you fellows, come on up."

"That's just where he is." Birch's difficult speech had something in it that was almost deadly. "He's asked for it and he's going to get it right here. Come on."

They trailed slowly up, a small, bedraggled, indecent procession, lost to everything except utter weariness and a spirit of cold revenge. In Stoughton's heavy heart was the thought that Clark had unexpectedly made their job vastly easier than they antic.i.p.ated. The latter was on a little knoll that rose roundly from the encircling bush. He seemed cool and comfortable, and this stirred them to deeper anger. His features were expressionless, save that his lips twitched ever so slightly. The Philadelphians dropped and lay limply, and there was silence for perhaps five minutes when Birch lifted a haggard face and spoke.

"Look here, Clark, I don't know the reason for this fool expedition, none of us do, but it serves well enough to lead up to the point of other fool expeditions on a larger scale."

"Yes?" said Clark with a lift in his voice.

"It does. Now I'd like to go back about four years when you said that three millions would do you. In between now and then is a long story and I haven't got breath to tell it, but to-day you've had seven and we're deeper in the woods than ever we were."

"Go ahead, I'm following you."

"The long and the short of it is that we've had enough."

"Of me?" The voice was very quiet.

"Yes, d.a.m.n it, of you; that is, in your present position of general manager. You can have one or two of the subsidiary companies but not the whole darn thing, and--"

"The point is," cut in Wimperley, "that we're afraid of you. We've not paid a dividend and, as things go, there's not any likelihood that we ever will. It's not easy to talk like this, and don't think we under-estimate what you've done. No other man I know of could have done it, but there's a limit to the money available in the State of Pennsylvania for this business--and we've reached it--that's all."

"And if you want to know what's upset the apple-cart," chirped Riggs with a little shiver--for they were all taking turns by now--"it's that fool proposal to build a railway through this unG.o.dly wilderness." The little man glanced about him with visible abhorrence.