But he blushed under the Cougar's meaning glance.
"I reckon he'll drop in on his way up," Bender had assured Helen. But
he did not. She yet allowed herself to hope--hoped on while the weeks
drew into months, each of which brought a check for household expenses.
Soon the snows blanketed the prairies; heavy frost vied with the cold at
her heart; and he had not come. Jenny's reticence kept the truth from
leaking out; but such things may not be hid, and about Christmas-time it
was whispered through the settlements that Carter had left his wife.
*XIII*
*THE CAMP*
That was a hard winter. From five feet of snow the settlements thrust
up, grim, ugly blotches on the whiteness. And it was very cold. Once
the spirit dropped down, down, down to seventy-two below zero--one
hundred and four degrees of frost. Fifty was normal, forty, rather
warm. Also it stormed, and when the blizzard cut loose, earth, air, or
sky was not merged in blanched chaos.
Nestling snugly in the heart of the spruce, Carter's camp, however, was
free of the blizzard. Let the forest heave to upper air-currents,
tossing skeleton branches with eerie creakings, yet the gangs worked in
comfort, cutting and hauling logs, while outside a hundred-mile wind
might be herding the drifts.
By New Year's his work was well in hand. Eight million feet of logs lay
on the ice, filling Silver Creek bankful like a black flood for a long
half-mile. Not that this had been accomplished without friction. Such
jettison of humanity as drifts to a lumber-camp does not shake down to
work in a day. From earth's four corners a gallows crew of Swedes,
French, Russians, Irish, Canadians, Yankees drifted in, and for one
month thereafter internecine war raged in the bunk-houses. Then, having
bit, gouged, and kicked itself into some sort of a social status, the
camp concentrated upon the boss.
The choppers, strangers to him, soon took his measure. A swift answer to
a mutinous glance, an order quietly drawled, and the relation was duly
fixed. But it was different with the teamsters. They, with their
teams, were all drawn from the settlements and knew him personally or by
report. Even Hines had condescended to accept three dollars a day and
board at the hand of his enemy. But than this no man can greater offend
against his neighbors--to rise superior in the common struggle for
existence. From them he obtained no credit for the initiative which had
conjured the camp out of nothing. Now that it was in full swing, each
man felt that he could have done the trick himself. A man may have no
honor in his own country; so, as always was, always will be, they, the
weak, snarled at him, the strong carrying their envious spite to the
length of trying to kill the goose which was laying the golden egg.
Though the money earned this winter would make an easy summer, they
struck at the source of supply--wasted his fodder, tipped over his
sleds, cast logs off to lighten their loads, manifested their jealousy
in a hundred mean ways.
The matter of the fodder he easily corrected. Discovering the teams one
evening bedded to their bellies with his choicest hay, he sent for
Bender, who expressed himself profanely over the waste.
"If this keeps up we'll be out of hay an' a job in another month,"
Carter said. "What's got into them?"
"Search me," the giant foreman answered. "They know a heap better.
Pure malice, I reckon."
"Got a good man in your gang?"
"Big Hans, the loader. He's licked every man in his outfit."
"Well, put him in charge of the stables, with fifty cents a day raise."
"Don't need the raise," Bender suggested. "He'd sooner fight than eat."
"Oh, give it to him."
Events justified the expenditure. At the end of a week it were, indeed,
difficult to locate a feature of Big Hans's face--to distinguish nose
from cheek or discover his mouth. But beyond this uncertainty of visage
there was nothing undecided about Hans. He had worked steadily through
the teamsters and come out on top. The waste stopped.
The derelict logs and loads were not so easily settled. Once, sometimes
twice, a month business called Carter to Winnipeg, and, though Bender
ruled the camp with an iron fist, one pair of eyes cannot keep tab on
fifty teamsters. Driving in one evening, Carter counted fifteen
cast-off loads between the dumps and the skidways. The last lay within
three hundred yards of the skids, where a halloo would have brought the
Cougar--loading boss--and a dozen men to the teamster's aid.
That was the last straw. Through gray obscurity of snowy dusk Carter
stared at the dark mass as though it incarnated the mulish obstinacy
which dogged his enterprise. Perhaps it did, to him, for he muttered:
"I'm real sorry for you. Must have troubled you some to make back to
the stables. Guess you wasn't late for supper."
Vexed, indignant, he drove slowly by the skidways, where the sleds
stood loaded for the morning trip. Enormous affairs, built on his own
plans, fourteen feet across the bunks, they were loaded squarely with
four tiers of logs, then ran up to a single log. In the gloom they
loomed like hay-stacks, and a stranger to the woods would have sworn
that no single team could start one. But they ran on rounded runners
over iced tracks, and Carter knew that they were not overloaded.
"No kick there," he muttered.
Farther on a rise in the trail gave him a view of the camp across a wide
slough: a jumble of log buildings that shouldered one another over the
inequalities of a narrow, open strip between slough and forest. Under
the rising moon the sod roofs, flat and snow-clad, gleamed faintly.
Patches of yellow, frosted windows blotched the mass of the walls.
Beyond, dark spruce towered against the sky-line. It spread, that
gloomy mantle of spruce, illimitable as night itself, northward to the
frozen circle, its vast expanse unbroken by other centre of warmth and
light. Solitary splash of life, the camp emphasized the profundities of
environing space, accentuated their loneliness.
Reining in, Carter gazed thoughtfully at this, the work of his hands.
The clear air gave him many voices. He could hear Big Hans swearing
quaintly in the stables. A teamster sang on his way to the cook-house.
An oblong of brighter yellow flashed out of a mass. That was the
cook-house door opening to admit the singer. Came a murmur and clatter
of dishes; then light and sound vanished. Suddenly, far off, a long
howl troubled the silence. Wild, mournful, tremulous, it was emblematic
of his problem. Here, a hundred miles beyond the stretch of the law's
longest finger, the law of the wolf pack still obtained--only the strong
hand could rule.
The howl also signalled his arrival at a conclusion. "They're at
supper," he muttered. "I'll tackle them there an' now."
First he went to the office, a rough log-hut which he shared with
Bender. The giant lay, smoking, in his bunk, but he sprang up at
Carter's news. "An' I busted the head of the Russian on'y yesterday for
pitching off a load! Who's at the bottom of it? Now you've got me.
Michigan Red's as mean as any. Jes' this morning he busted two
whiffle-trees running, an' I happened along jes' in time to save the
third. Of course, his runners was froze down hard, an' him snapping his
heavy team like all get out.
"'From your looks,' I says to him, 'I'd have allowed you'd sense enough
to loosen your bobs!' He on'y grinned. 'Clean forgotten, boss. Kick
that hinter bunker, will you?' That man," Bender finished, "has gall
enough to fix out a right smart tannery."
Carter frowned. The man, a red-haired, red-bearded fellow, with a
greenishly pale face and cold, bleak eyes, had come in from the wheat
settlements about the Prairie Portage, driving a huge team of blacks.
The one, a stallion, rose sixteen and a half hands to the crest of his
swelling shoulder. Reputed a man-killer, he wore an iron muzzle in
stable or out. His mate, a rat-tailed mare, equally big, differed only
in the insignia of wickedness, wearing a kicking-strap in harness, a
log-chain in the stable. Man and team were well mated.
"If he'd make his pick on me!" Bender growled on, "'twould have been
pie-easy. I'd have smashed him one, an' you could have handed out his
walking-papers. But no! It's you he's laying for. 'Your boss ain't big
enough to do it,' he says, when I tell him that there'll be other things
than busted whiffle-trees if he don't look out. 'You're a privileged
character till I'm through with him.' An' that's just the way of it.
He'll swallow all I kin give him while waiting for you."
Carter's nod confirmed Bender's reasoning. No one else could play his
hand in this game of men. The giant had deferred to that unwritten law
of the woods which reads that every man must win his own battles. "Know
anything of him?" he asked.
"Cougar ran acrost him once in Michigan. Don't lay no stress on his
character, but says he's mighty good with his hands."
"Well, come along to the cook-house."
As they opened the cook-house door a hundred men looked up from the
three tables which ran the length of the long log-hut. These bristled
with tinware, and between them and the stove three cookees ran back and
forth with smoking platters of potatoes, beans, and bacon. At the upper
end a reflector lamp shed a bright light over the cook and his pots; but
tables were dimly lighted by candles stuck upright at intervals in their
own grease. Their feeble flicker threw red shirts and dark, hairy faces
into Rembrandt shadow. Hot, oily, flushed from fast and heavy eating,
intensely animal, they peered through the reek of steaming food at
Carter.
'"I won't keep you a minute," he answered the resentment which his
interruption had called to all the faces. "I jes' want to say that too
many logs have been dumped by the trail of late. Now if any teamster
thinks that the loaders are stacking it on him, he can report to the
foreman, who'll see him righted. But if, after this--"
"More beans!" A laugh followed the harsh interruption. The faces turned
to Michigan Red. When the others paused he had continued eating, and
now, his greenish face aglow with insolence, he was holding an empty
platter out to the nearest cookee.
It was a difficult situation. There was no mistaking his intent, yet
the interruption was timed so cunningly as to leave no actual cause of
offence. Behind Carter, Bender bristled with rage, ready to sweep
casuistical distinctions aside with his fist. Malignantly curious, the
faces turned back to Carter.
He waited quietly till the red teamster was served; paused even then,
for, as the latter fell to his eating, shovelling beans into his mouth
with knife loaded the length of the blade, Carter experienced an
uncomfortable twinge of memory. The squared elbows, nimble knife, bent
head grossly caricatured himself in the first days of his marriage, and
vividly recalled Helen's gentle tutelage. For a second he saw himself
with her eyes, then pride thrust away the vision.
"After this"--he began where he had left off--"any teamster who dumps a
load without permission or good cause will be docked time and charged
for his board."
"More pork!" It was the red teamster again. Resting an elbow on the
table while he held out the plate behind him, he permitted his bleak
glance to wander along the grins till it brought up on Carter.
Choking with anger, Bender stepped, but Carter laid a hand on his arm
while he spoke to the cook. "This man has a tape-worm. Send him the
pot."
Blunt and to the point, the answer exactly suited lumberman primitive
humor. As the door closed behind them Bender's chuckles echoed the
men's roaring laugh. "Fixed him that time," he commented. "But he come
back right smart."
"Can't come too soon. It all helps to fill in."
Bender sensed the sadness in his tone, and the big heart of him was
troubled. These months past he had seen Carter pile task on task,
seeking an anodyne for unhappiness in ceaseless toil. Every night the
office lights burned unholy hours. Waking this particular night, long
after twelve, Bender saw that Carter was still at his desk.
"Time you hired a book-keeper," he remonstrated. "Trail you are
travelling ends in the 'sylum."
"Book-keeper couldn't do this work."
"No?" Bender sat up. "What's the brand?"
"Figuring--grading contrac's, bridges, trestles, timbering."
"For what?"
"A railroad."
Bender snorted. "Shore! You ain't surely calculating on the C.P.'s
building the branch?"
"No."
The monosyllable discouraged further questioning, but Bender stuck to
his main objection. "Well, if you keep this gait you'll railroad
yourself into the graveyard. It is two now; at five you'll be out with
the loaders."
"Correct."
The giant straightened up in his bunk. "Good God, man! Don't you never
sleep?"
"I'll sleep to-morrow night. Now, shut up!"
Growling, Bender subsided, and long after he had slid again into the
land of dreams, Carter stared at the opposite wall with eyes that gave
him neither the bales, boxes, ranged along its length, nor the shirts,
socks, overalls, and other lumbermen's supplies on the rough shelving.
He saw only Helen's flower face blossoming out of the blackness of the
far corner.
The replica of himself that he had seen that night in Michigan Red was
but the climax of similar, if milder, experiences. Naturally enough,
his Winnipeg trips had brought him in contact with people of more or
less refinement. He met them at hotels, or in the parlors of his
business acquaintances when, as sometimes happened, they invited him to
dinner. Such circumstances had simply forced him to set a guard on his
speech and manners--to imitate those about him. There had been nothing
slavish in his imitation--no subtraction from the force of his
personality. It was rather the grafting of the strong, wild plant with
the fruit of hot-house culture. It inhered in a dawning realization that
manners, courtesy, social customs were based on consideration for
others' happiness, besides being pleasant of themselves.
Not that he was ready to admit the fact as sufficient excuse for Helen's
treatment of himself. Hurt pride forbade. "She didn't give me a
chance," he murmured. "I'd have come to it--in time. She was ashamed."
Yet each concession to social custom became an argument for her, and was
turned against him in the nightly conflict between pride, passion, love,
and reason. Often love would nearly win. While her face smiled from
the corner, love would whisper: "She is yours. Six hours' ride will
take you to her."
But pride always answered, "Wait till she sends for you." And he would
turn again to his figuring.
For pride had enlisted ambition in its aid. Long ago his clear sight
had shown him the need of a competing railroad, and gradually a scheme
had grown upon him. What man had done, man could do. If a great trunk
road could develop from the imagination of one man, a transverse line
that should strike south and find an outlet on the American border could
hatch from the brain of another. He would build it himself. Already he
had broached the matter to his financial backers, and they had given it
favorable consideration--more, were interesting other capitalists in the
project. So, in camp, on trail, his every spare moment was given to the
working out of construction estimates.
Only once was his resolution shaken. From Lone Tree the camp "tote"
trail slid due northeast, passing the settlements a half-dozen miles to
the east. Save on this one occasion, when the need of men and teams
caused him to take the other, he always used the "tote" trail. And even
this time he did not dally in the settlements. Having advertised his
need at the Assiniboin mission, Flynn's, and the post-office, he headed
up for the camp as dusk blanketed the prairies. Dark brought him to his
own forks, where, reining in, he gazed long at a yellow blotch on the
night, his own kitchen light. A five-minute trot would put him with
her! Love urged go! Pride said nay! And while they battled his ponies
shivered in the bitter wind. He waited, waited, waited. Which would
have won out will never be known, for presently a cutter dashed out of
the gloom, swung round on his trail, and, as he turned out to let it by,
he caught voices, Helen's and Mrs. Leslie's, in lively chatter.
Leaning over, he lashed his ponies, raced them into the camp.
After that he turned with renewed assiduity to his figures. Still, they
are dry things, matters of intellect, useless for the alleviation of
feeling. One emotion requires another for its cure, and the trouble
with Michigan Red promised more forgetfulness than could be obtained
from the most intricate calculations. That is why he had said, "He
can't come back too soon."
He quickened at the thought of the coming struggle. In himself the red
teamster embodied the envy, spite, disaffection which, from the first,
had clogged Carter's enterprise. He materialized the vexatious forces,
impalpable things that Carter had been fighting, and he felt the relief
which comes to the man who at last drives a mysterious enemy out to the
open.
*XIV*
*THE RED TEAMSTER*