The Trail Of The Axe Part 7

"No, ma. But he's a good sawyer--and I need such men."

The old woman looked up quickly.

"I was thinking of Jim Truscott."

"That's how I guessed."

"Well? What do you think?"

Dave shook his head.

"I haven't seen Jim yet," he said. "Ma, we ain't Jim's judges."

"No."

"I'm going down to the depot," Dave said after a while. "Guess I've got some messages to send. I'm getting anxious about that strike. They say that neither side will give way. The railway is pretty arbitrary on this point, and the plate-layers are a strong union. I've heard that the brakesmen and engine-drivers are going to join them. If they do, it's going to be bad for us. That is, in a way. Strikes are infectious, and I don't want 'em around here just now. We've got to cut a hundred thousand foot a day steady, and anything delaying us means--well, it's no use thinking what it means. We've got to be at full work night and day until we finish. I'll get going."

He pushed his plate away and rose from the table. He paused while he filled and lit his pipe, then he left the house. Joe Hardwig's news had disturbed him more than he cared to admit, and he did not want to discuss it, even with his mother.

CHAPTER V

JIM TRUSCOTT RETURNS

Dave was on the outskirts of the village when he fell in with Parson Tom. Tom was on ahead, but he saw the great lumbering figure swinging along the trail behind him, and waited.

"h.e.l.lo, Dave," he greeted him, as he came up. "It's ages since I've seen you."

The master of the mills laughed good-naturedly.

"Sure," he said, "my loafing days are over. I'll be ground hollow before I'm through. The grindstone's good and going. It's good to be at work, Tom. I mean what you'd call at your great work. When I'm through you shall have the finest church that red pine can build."

"Ah, it's good to hear you talk like that. I take it things are running smoothly. It's not many men who deserve to make millions, but I think you are one of the few."

Dave shook his head.

"You're prejudiced about me, Tom," he replied smiling, "but I want that money. And when I get it we'll carry out all our schemes. You know, the schemes we've talked over and planned and planned. Well, when the time comes, we won't forget 'em----"

"Like most people do. h.e.l.lo!" The parson was looking ahead in the direction of a small crowd standing outside Harley-Smith's saloon.

There was an anxious look in his clear blue eyes, and some comprehension. The crowd was swaying about in unmistakable fashion, and experience told him that a fight was in progress. He had seen so many fights in Malkern. Suddenly he turned to Dave--

"Where are you going?" he inquired.

"To the depot."

"Good. I'll just cut along over there. That must be stopped."

Dave gazed at the swaying crowd. Several men were running to join it.

Then he looked down from his great height at the slim, athletic figure of his friend.

"Do you want any help?" he inquired casually.

Parson Tom shook his head.

"No," he said, with a smile of perfect confidence. "They're children, all simple children. Big and awkward and unruly, if you like, but all children. I can manage them."

"I believe you can," said Dave. "Well, so long. Don't be too hard on them. Remember they're children."

Tom Chepstow laughed back at him as he hurried away.

"All right. But unruly children need physical correction as well as moral. And if it is necessary I shan't spare them."

He went off at a run, and Dave went on to the depot. He knew his friend down to his very core. There was no man in the village who was the parson's equal in the n.o.ble art of self-defense. And it was part of his creed to meet the rougher members of his flock on their own ground. He knew that this militant churchman would stop that fight, and, if necessary, bodily chastise the offenders. It was this wholesome manliness that had so endeared the "fighting parson" to his people.

They loved him for his capacity, and consequently respected him far more than they would have done the holiest preacher that ever breathed.

He was a man they understood.

The spiritual care of a small lumbering village is not lightly to be entered upon. A man must be peculiarly fitted for it. In such a place, where human nature is always at its crudest; where muscle, and not intellect, must always be the dominant note; where life is lived without a thought for the future, and the present concern is only the individual fitness to execute a maximum of labor, and so give expression to a savage vanity in the triumph of brute force, the man who would set out to guide his fellows must possess qualities all too rare in the general run of clergy. His theology must be of the simplest, broadest order. He must live the life of his flock, and teach almost wholly by example. His preaching must be lit with a local setting, and his brush must lay on the color of his people's every-day life.

Besides this, he must possess a tremendous moral and physical courage, particularly the latter, for to the lumber-jack nothing else so appeals. He must feel that he is in the presence of a man who is always his equal, if not his superior, in those things he understands. Tom Chepstow was all this. He was a lumberman himself at heart. He knew every detail of the craft. He had lived that life all his manhood's days.

Then he possessed a rare gift in medicine. He had purposely studied it and taken his degrees, for no one knew better than he the strength this added to his position. He shed his healing powers upon his people, a gift that reaped him a devotion no sanct.i.ty and G.o.dliness could ever have brought him. Parson Tom was a practical Christian first, and attended only to spiritual welfare when the body had been duly cared for.

Dave went on to the depot, where he despatched his messages. Then he extracted from Jenkins Mudley all the information he possessed upon the matter of the plate-layers' strike, and finally took the river trail back to the mills.

His way took him across the log bridge over the river, and here he paused, leaning upon the rail, and gazed thoughtfully down the woodland avenue which enclosed the turbulent stream.

Somehow he could never cross that bridge without pausing to admire the wonderful beauty of his little friend's surroundings. He always thought of this river as his friend. How much it was his friend only he knew.

But for it, and its peculiarities, his work would be impossible. He did not have to do as so many lumbermen have to, depend on the spring freshet to carry his winter cut down to his mill. The melting snows of the mountains kept the river flowing, a veritable torrent, during the whole of the open season, and at such time he possessed in it a never-failing transport line which cost him not one cent.

The hour he had allowed for his dinner was not yet up, and he felt that he could indulge himself a little longer, so he refilled his pipe and smoked while he gazed contemplatively into the depths of the dancing waters below him.

But his day-dreaming was promptly interrupted, and the interruption was the coming of Betty, on her way home to her dinner from the schoolhouse up on the hillside. He had seen her only once since the day that brought him the news of his contract. That was on the following Sunday, when he went, as usual, to Tom Chepstow's for supper.

Just at that moment Betty was the last person he wanted to see. That was his first thought when he heard her step on the bridge. He had forgotten that this was her way home, and that this was her dinner-time. However, there was no sign of his reluctance in his face when he greeted her.

"Why, Betty," he said, as gently as his great voice would let him, "I hadn't thought to see you coming this way." Then he broke off and studied her pretty oval face more closely. "What's wrong?" he inquired presently. "You look--you look kind of tired."

He was quite right. The girl looked pale under her tan, and there was an unusual darkness round her gentle brown eyes. She looked very tired, in spite of the smile of welcome with which she greeted him.

"Oh, I'm all right, Dave," she said at once. But her tone was cheerless, in spite of her best effort.

He shook his great head and knocked his pipe out.

"There's something amiss, child. Guess maybe it's the heat." He turned his eyes up to the blazing sun, as though to rea.s.sure himself that the heat was there.

Betty leant beside him on the rail. Her proximity, and the evident sadness of her whole manner, made him realize that he must not stay there. At that moment she looked such a pathetic little figure that he felt he could not long be responsible for what he said. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her.