"Now you'll see!" the cook confidently affirmed, as the long lash
writhed about Michigan's head. Exploding, it sent a trail of echoes
coursing through the forest. As is the pop of a pistol to the roar of a
cannon, so was his volley compared to that of Sliver. Then, to prove
himself in accuracy, Michigan snapped a fly from the cook's bare arm.
"A trifle close," he exclaimed, rubbing the spot. "Do it ag'in, Red,
an' I cut out your Sunday pudding."
Grinning, Michigan swung again, turned, as the lash writhed in mid-air,
and cracked it explosively within an inch of the roustabout's ear.
"Stan' still, you son of a gun!" he swore, as the poor simpleton
flinched. "Keep him in, boys. Stan' still, or I'll take it clean off
nex' crack.... Now we'll play you've a fly on the tip of your nose."
The play was too realistic, drawing a spot of blood. Yelling with pain,
the roustabout swore, begged, pleaded piteously to be let alone. But a
circle of grinning teamsters hedged him in on all sides save where the
red teamster stood with his whip. Man, in the aggregate, is always
cruel. Let a few hundred blameless citizens, fathers of families,
husbands, brothers, be gathered together and flicked with passion's
whip, and you have a mob equal to the barbarities of Caligula. And
these men were raw, wild as the woods. Shoving the simpleton back
whenever he tried to break, they stood grinning while Michigan cut
cracking circles about his head. Sometimes his hair moved under the wind
of the lash; sometimes it grazed his nose. There was no telling where
it would explode. He could not dodge it. Trying, the whip drew blood
from his neck.
"Stan' still, then!" the red teamster answered his yell of pain. "I
ain't responsible for your cavortings."
"Spoiling Red's aim!" the cook admonished, severely. "I never seed your
like!"
"Now open your mouth wide," the tormentor went on. "I'm agoin' to put
the tip in your mouth without techin' your lips--if you don't move.
Open wide!"
But the man's small wits were now completely gone. He opened his mouth
obediently, then, uttering a scream, a raucous, animal cry, he sprang at
his tormentor. But a dozen hands seized and dragged him back.
"Hold him, boys! I'll skin the tip of his nose for that."
As Michigan swung his whip the roustabout sent forth scream on scream.
Foam gathered on his lips. Terror had driven him insane.
"No, no!" the cook remonstrated. "That's enough, Red--that's enough!"
Unheeding, the teamster took aim, swung, then--another lash tangled in
his. Yelling with the sudden pain of a twisted wrist, he swung round on
Carter. Unobserved, he had run across from his office, snatched up
Sliver's whip, tangled Michigan's lash, and jerked it over his shoulder.
"Boys"--he now faced the flushed crowd--"I don't allow to mix up with
your fun, but what do you call this?"
One glance at the bloody weal on the roustabout's neck and the brutal
mob resolved into its individual components, each a unit of sorrow for
its share in the torture.
"Jest a poor fool at that." Carter laid his hand on the simpleton's
shoulder.
"Shore, shore! Yes!" the cook agreed. "It's too bad. We didn't go to
do that. No. We jest calculated to have a little fun, an' carried it a
leetle too far."
"That's so! That's so!" Carrots, Smith, and Sliver all seconded the
cook, all voicing repentant public opinion.
"No, Red didn't go to do that," the cook continued. "He moved. Red
didn't mean it; did you, Red?"
After that one yell of pain the red teamster's eyes had glued to a
handspike which lay near by. But the useless wrist checked the impulse,
and he stood, sullenly noting changed opinion.
"Is this a Sunday-school?" he answered, sneering. "Or mebbe a Young
Folks' Christian Endeavor? Sliver, what's the golden text?"
"Oh, shore, Red!" Sliver remonstrated.
"It's this." Carter looked round the group. "Any man who lays a hand
on this poor lad again gets his time." His glance fixed on Michigan
Red.
The red teamster shrugged. His chance had gone by, and he was acute
enough to recognize the fact. Not that he lacked courage or strength to
try it out, man for man--bite, gouge, kick, in the brutal fashion of the
lumber woods. Taken by surprise, he had lost his vantage, and now saw
that his adversary had cleverly ranged against him an adverse opinion.
"It's not him I'm laying for," he growled. "Some other day!"
The "other day" came a week later. Entering the stables at noon in
search of Brady, the water-hauler, Carter saw the red teamster perched
on the top rail of the black stallion's stall, in his hand the iron
muzzle which he had unstrapped that the brute might feed with ease. As
the beast snapped, rather than ate, his oats, he cast vicious, uneasy
glances from the tail of his eye at Red; but, indifferent to the brute's
mood and the anxious glances of his fellows, the teamster calmly chewed
his tobacco.
It was by just such tricks that he had gained ascendency over his
fellows. Whereas it was worth another man's life to step into their
stall, the blacks would stand and sweat in rage and fear while Michigan
slapped and poked their ribs. The devil in the beasts seemed to
recognize a superior in the pale-green fiend in the man.
"Brady here?" Carter asked. "Oh, there you are!"
He stood immediately behind the stallion, and as he spoke Michigan
brought the iron muzzle down with a thwack an the brute's ribs.
Snorting, it lashed out, just missing Carter. One huge, steel-shod
heel, indeed, passed on either side of his head. Under such
circumstances a start was a little more than justifiable; yet after that
tribute to surprise Carter stepped quietly beyond range and went on
talking to Brady.
"This afternoon you can hitch to the water-cart an' ice the track in to
them new skidways."
Then, turning, he eyed Michigan Red. "That's a techy beast of yourn,
friend."
"Techy?" Michigan sneered. "There ain't another man in this camp as kin
put the leathers on him!"
"No?"
"No!" Swinging his heels against the stall, Michigan added, "Not a
damned man."
Picking up a spear of hay, Carter chewed it while he looked over the
beast, now foaming with rage. It was a dare. He knew it--saw also the
amused interest in the on-lookers. They felt Michigan had him in the
door. "The leathers," he remarked, "are on him."
It was a skilful move, throwing the initiative back to the teamster.
Not one whit fazed, however, he exclaimed, in mock surprise, "Why,
damme, so they are!" Sliding down, he laid a hand on the stallion's
crest. Instantly the brute ceased his plunging, uneasy stepping, and
while the man stripped off the harness only long, slow shivers told of
smothered fury.
"There you are!" He threw collar and harness at Carter's feet.
"Look here, boss!" Brady remonstrated, as Carter picked them up. "I
wouldn't go to do it. Shure I wouldn't. The baste is a man-killer be
Red's own word. Luk at him for the proof."
Ears laid flat to his neck, glossy hide shivering, the whites of his
eyes showing viciously, chisel teeth protruding through grinning lips,
the stallion's appearance bore out his reputation.
"I wouldn't!" a dozen teamsters chorused.
Unheeding, Carter entered the stall. As he ranged alongside, the
stallion tried to rear, but was snapped back by his halter-chain. So
foiled, he humped his shoulders, dropping his head between his knees;
then, just when the teamsters expected to see the sixteen hundred pounds
of him grind Carter against the stall, he suddenly straightened and
stood still as before, save for the slow shivers.
"Mother of God!" Brady exclaimed. "What 'll that mane?"
Carter's hand rested on the beast's crest. What did it mean? Only the
red teamster knew. But whether the animal shook to the memory of some
torture, or merely mistook the firm hand for that of his master, he
moved but once while Carter adjusted and buckled the harness. That was
at the cinching of the bellyband; but he quickly quieted. The click of
the breeching-snaps sounded like breaking sticks through the stable, and
as he stepped out from the stall a score of breaths issued in one huge
sigh.
"Now hurry, Brady," he said. "The job will keep you humping till
sundown."
Respectful glances followed him away from the stable. He had touched his
men in a vulnerable spot, and though, hereafter, they might growl and
grumble--the lumberman's sole relaxation--he could count on a fair
amount of obedience from all but such malingerers as Shinn and Hines, or
a natural anarchist like Michigan Red. The latter took on the yoke of
authority only to defy it; and though even his bleak face lit up as
sunlight struggles through frost of a winter's morning, he soon found
cause for further trouble.
Dropping into the smith's shop a few days later, Carter found Seebach,
the German smith, ruefully contemplating a half-dozen disabled sleds.
"Herr Gott!" he exclaimed. "In one half-day these haf come in. Alretty
yet I works like t'ree tefils, an' this iss the leedle games they play
on me. It is that you gifs me a helper or I quit--eh?"
Too surprised to laugh over the other's ludicrous anger, Carter puzzled
over the breakage. As aforesaid, the sleds had been built on his own
plans to carry enormous loads. To four-by-six runners, shod with an
inch of steel, hardwood bunkers a foot square were fastened with solid
iron knees braced with inch iron. Every bolt and pin was on the same
massive plan. The best of a dozen patterns of as many logging-camps had
gone into the making of those sleds. Yet, though they ought to have
been good for twenty tons oh the roughest kind of a road, they were
racked, split, or twisted, bunkers torn off, ironwork on all badly
sprung.