The Winds of Chance Part 15

It was a still, clear morning, but autumn was in the air and a pale sun lacked the necessary heat to melt a skin of ice which, during the night, had covered stagnant pools. The damp moss which carpets northern forests was h.o.a.ry with frost and it crackled underfoot. Winter was near and its unmistakable approach could be plainly felt.

A saw-pit had been rigged upon a sloping hillside--it consisted of four posts about six feet long upon which had been laid four stringers, like the sills of a house; up to this scaffold led a pair of inclined skids. Resting upon the stringers was a sizable spruce log which had been squared and marked with parallel chalk- lines and into which a whip-saw had eaten for several feet.

Balanced upon this log was Tom Linton; in the sawdust directly under him stood Jerry Quirk. Mr. Linton glared downward, Mr. Quirk squinted fiercely upward. Mr. Linton showed his teeth in an ugly grin and his voice was hoa.r.s.e with fury; Mr. Quirk's gray mustache bristled with rage, and anger had raised his conversational tone to a high pitch. Both men were perspiring, both were shaken to the core.

"DON'T SHOVE!" Mr. Quirk exclaimed, in shrill irritation. "How many times d'you want me to tell you not to shove? You bend the infernal thing."

"I never shoved," Linton said, thickly. "Maybe we'd do better if you'd quit hanging your weight on those handles every time I lift.

If you've got to chin yourself, take a limb--or I'll build you a trapeze. You pull down, then lemme lift--"

Mr. Quirk danced with fury. "Chin myself? Shucks! You're petered out, that's what ails you. You 'ain't got the grit and you've throwed up your tail. Lift her clean--don't try to saw goin' up, the teeth ain't set that way. Lift, take a bite, then leggo. Lift, bite, leggo. Lift, bite--"

"Don't say that again!" shouted Linton. "I'm a patient man, but--"

He swallowed hard, then with difficulty voiced a solemn, vibrant warning, "Don't say it again, that's all!"

Defiance instantly flamed in Jerry's watery eyes. "I'll say it if I want to!" he yelled. "I'll say anything I feel like sayin'! Some folks can't understand English; some folks have got lignumvity heads and you have to tell 'em--"

"You couldn't tell me anything!"

"Sure! That's just the trouble with you--n.o.bODY can tell you anything!"

"I whip-sawed before you was born!"

Astonishment momentarily robbed Mr. Quirk of speech, then he broke out more indignantly than ever. "Why, you lyin' horse-thief, you never heard of a whip-saw till we bought our outfit. You was for tying one end to a limb and the other end to a root and then rubbin' the log up and down it."

"I never meant that. I was fooling and you know it. That's just like you, to--"

"Say, if you'd ever had holt of a whip-saw in all your useless life, the man on the other end of it would have belted you with the handle and buried you in the sawdust. I'd ought to, but I 'ain't got the heart!" The speaker spat on his hands and in a calmer, more business-like tone said: "Well, come on. Let's go.

This is our last board."

Tom Linton checked an insulting remark that had just occurred to him. It had nothing whatever to do with the subject under dispute, but it would have goaded Jerry to insanity, therefore it clamored for expression and the temptation to hurl it forth was almost irresistible. Linton, however, prided himself upon his self- restraint, and accordingly he swallowed his words. He clicked his teeth, he gritted them--he would have enjoyed sinking them into his partner's throat, as a matter of fact--then he growled, "Let her whiz!"

In unison the men resumed their interrupted labors; slowly, rhythmically, their arms moved up and down, monotonously their aching backs bent and straightened, inch by inch the saw blade ate along the penciled line. It was killing work, for it called into play unused, under-developed muscles, yes, muscles which did not and never would or could exist. Each time Linton lifted the saw it grew heavier by the fraction of a pound. Whenever Quirk looked up to note progress his eyes were filled with stinging particles of sawdust. His was a tearful job: sawdust was in his hair, his beard, it had sifted down inside his neckband and it itched his moist body. It had worked into his underclothes and he could not escape it even at night in his bed. He had of late acquired the habit of repeating over and over, with a pertinacity intensely irritating to his partner, that he could taste sawdust in his food--a statement manifestly false and well calculated to offend a camp cook.

After they had sawed for a while Jerry cried: "Hey! She's runnin'

out again." He accompanied this remark by an abrupt cessation of effort. As a result the saw stopped in its downward course and Tom's chin came into violent contact with the upper handle.

The man above uttered a cry of pain and fury; he clapped a hand to his face as if to catch and save his teeth.

Jerry giggled with a shameless lack of feeling. "Spit 'em out," he cackled. "They ain't no more good to you than a mouthful of popcorn." He was not really amused at his partner's mishap; on the contrary, he was more than a little concerned by it, but fatigue had rendered him absurdly hysterical, and the constant friction of mental, spiritual, and physical contact with Tom had fretted his soul as that sawdust inside his clothes had fretted his body. "He, he! Ho, ho!" he chortled. "You don't shove. Oh no! All the same, whenever I stop pullin' you b.u.t.t your brains out."

"I didn't shove!" The ferocity of this denial was modified and m.u.f.fled by reason of the fact that a greater part of the speaker's hand was inside his mouth and his fingers were taking stock of its contents.

"All right, you didn't shove. Have it your own way. I said she was runnin' out again. We ain't cuttin' wedges, we're cuttin' boat- seats."

"Well, why don't you pull straight? I can't follow a line with you skinning the cat on your end."

"My fault again, eh?" Mr. Quirk showed the whites of his eyes and his face grew purple. "Lemme tell you something, Tom. I've studied you, careful, as man and boy, for a matter of thirty years, but I never seen you in all your hideousness till this trip. I got you now, though; I got you all added up and subtracted and I'll tell you the answer. It's my opinion, backed by figgers, that you're a dam'--" He hesitated, then with a herculean effort be managed to gulp the remainder of his sentence. In a changed voice he said: "Oh, what's the use? I s'pose you've got feelin's. Come on, let's get through."

Linton peered down over the edge of the log. "It's your opinion I'm a what?" he inquired, with vicious calmness.

"Nothing. It's no use to tell you. Now then, lift, bite, leg--Why don't you lift?"

"I AM lifting. Leggo your end!" Mr. Linton tugged violently, but the saw came up slowly. It rose and fell several times, but with the same feeling of dead weight attached to it. Tom wiped the sweat out of his eyes and once again in a stormy voice he addressed his partner: "If you don't get off them handles I'll take a stick and knock you off. What you grinnin' at?"

"Why, she's stuck, that's all. Drive your wedge--" Jerry's words ended in an agonized yelp; he began to paw blindly. "You did that a-purpose."

"Did what?"

"Kicked sawdust in my eyes. I saw you!"

Mr. Linton's voice when he spoke held that same sinister note of restrained ferocity which had characterized it heretofore. "When I start kicking I won't kick sawdust into your eyes! I'll kick your eyes into that sawdust. That's what I'll do. I'll stomp 'em out like a pair of grapes."

"You try it! You try anything with me," Jerry chattered, in a simian frenzy. "You've got a bad reputation at home; you're a malo hombre--a side-winder, you are, and your bite is certain death.

That's what they say. Well, ever see a Mexican hog eat a rattler?

That's me--wild hog!"

"'Wild hog.' What's wild about you?" sneered the other. "You picked the right animal but the wrong variety. Any kind of a hog makes a bad partner."

For a time the work proceeded in silence, then the latter speaker resumed: "You said I was a dam' something or other. What was it?"

The object of this inquiry maintained an offensive, nay an insulting, silence. "A what?" Linton persisted.

Quirk looked up through his mask of sawdust. "If you're gettin'

tired again why don't you say so? I'll wait while you rest." He opened his eyes in apparent astonishment, then he cried: "h.e.l.lo!

Why, it's rainin'."

"It ain't raining," Tom declared.

"Must be--your face is wet." Once more the speaker cackled shrilly in a manner intended to be mirthful, but which was in reality insulting beyond human endurance. "I never saw moisture on your brow, Tom, except when it rained or when you set too close to a fire."

"What was it you wanted to call me and was scared to?" Mr. Linton urged, venomously. "A dam' what?"

"Oh, I forget the precise epithet I had in mind. But a new one rises to my lips 'most every minute. I think I aimed to call you a dam' old fool. Something like that."

Slowly, carefully, Mr. Linton descended from the scaffold, leaving the whip-saw in its place. He was shaking with rage, with weakness, and with fatigue.

"'Old'? ME old? I'm a fool, I admit, or I wouldn't have lugged your loads and done your work the way I have. But, you see, I'm strong and vigorous and I felt sorry for a tottering wreck like you--"

"'Lugged MY loads'?" snorted the smaller man. "ME a wreck? My Gawd!"

"--I did your packing and your washing and your cooking, and mine, too, just because you was feeble and because I've got consideration for my seniors. I was raised that way. I honored your age, Jerry. I knew you was about all in, but I never CALLED you old. I wouldn't hurt your feelings. What did you do? You set around on your bony hips and criticized and picked at me. But you've picked my last feather off and I'm plumb raw. Right here we split!"

Jerry Quirk staggered slightly and leaned against a post for support. His knees were wobbly; he, too, ached in every bone and muscle; he, too, had been goaded into an insane temper, but that which maddened him beyond expression was this unwarranted charge of incompetency.

"Split it is," he agreed. "That'll take a load off my shoulders."

"We'll cut our grub fifty-fifty, then I'll hit you a clout with the traces and turn you a-loose."