"Brady, he says it vas the new roat into the pridge timbers. In one
place it goes like hell over a pank down to a lake, with a quick turn at
the pottom. 'The Pig Glide,' Brady calls it."
"I'll go out an' look at it."
A half-hour's walk brought him to the hill. Debouching from heavy
timber, the trail inclined for two hundred yards, then sheered down at
an angle of forty-five degrees to a lake below. As the smith had said,
an abrupt turn at the bottom added to the trail's difficulties. Too
steep for ice-sledding, hay had been spread over the face of the hill,
and with this to ease the descent Carter could see no reason for the
broken sleds.
A man had been told off to respread the hay after each passage, and he
grinned at Carter's question. "Bust 'em here? You bet! How? Well,
they come down on a gallop. Teams is coming now, so if you set down in
the scrub there you'll see 'em do it."
It was as he said. One after the other the teams emerged from the
forest, gathered speed on the incline, and came flying down the hill,
the great sleds cracking and groaning under the strain of enormous loads
as they skidded around the bottom turn. Michigan Red came last, and
Carter's anger could not altogether drown a thrill as he watched the red
teamster take the hill. Whooping, whip-cracking, blacks stretched on the
gallop, he tore down that plumb hill-side and skidded round the turn,
load balanced on one runner. It split, with a pistol report, but the
steel shoe held and he passed safely on and down the lake.
"He was the first to cut loose," the trackman explained. "T'others
followed his dare."
"Well, they'll have to quit it. Warn each man, Joe, an' report all to
me that disobey."
When, that evening, Joe reported that all but Michigan Red had obeyed
the order, he sensed hot anger under the boss's calm. Expecting an
explosion, he was the more surprised when, after a thoughtful pause,
Carter dismissed him with an order to take a couple of hand-rakes out on
the job the following morning. To the Cougar he gave orders that the
red teamster was to load last. Obedient, the Cougar sent Michigan Red
to break track into a new skidway; thus all of his fellows had passed on
down the glide while Michigan was still loading.
"Load him light--dry logs, an' not too many," Carter had ordered. But,
incensed at the delay, the teamster indulged in such sarcastic allusions
to the frailty of the loaders' female ancestors that the ribald crew
piled the logs on till his load bulked like a hay-stack. None other
than the blacks could have started the sled out from the skids; and
while, with jerks and sudden snatches, the fierce brutes worked it out
of deep snow to the iced tracks, the loaders looked admiringly on. It
was a triumph in driving. Man and team worked like a clock, and,
returning blasphemous answers to the loaders' compliments, Michigan slid
off down the trail.
To make up for his lost time, he urged the blacks to a trot, and so came
swinging down the incline at twice his usual speed. Not till he reached
the very edge did he see that the hay had been raked off the face of the
hill. A mask of ice, it glittered in the sun.
Half-way down Carter stood with Joe. Looking up, they saw Michigan
poised on the top log, a red, sinister figure against the sky. He
seemed to pause, throw back on his lines--a quick, involuntary movement.
Then, craning forward, he glanced down that glittering stretch--a
comprehensive look that took in Carter, Joe, and their plan.
"Give him a forkful under the runners as he goes by," Carter whispered.
"Otherwise we'll kill his team."
A second, as aforesaid, the red teamster paused; then, loosing his
lines, he leaned over and lashed the stallion under the soft of the
belly.
"My God!" Joe cried.
He saw the black brute rear, snorting--saw the blacksnake bite the
mare's flank--saw the pair plunge over the grade; then water bathed his
eyes. He heard, however--heard the rush and roar, a thunder of hoofs as
the long, steel calkings cut through the ice and struck fire from the
face of the hill. He felt the wind as the sled passed, and waited for
the crash--which did not come.
A voice, cold, deliberate, restored his vision. "I didn't think it was
in horse-flesh." Carter was gazing after team and sled, now a black
patch on the snow of the lake. "Beat us this time, Joe," he continued;
"but we'll fix him to-morrow."
That evening, however, the red teamster enjoyed the fruits of his
exploit. It seasoned the beans at supper, sweetened the stable choring.
Opinion agreed that it was now "up" to the boss, but split on his
probable action, one-half the stable agreeing with Hines that Michigan
surely earned his discharge, the other half holding that settlement by
battle would be the certain ending. Neither event, however, had come to
pass by bedtime, and the mystery was intensified by the chucklings of
the road gang, which came in from work long after the teamsters retired.
Next morning, too, the loaders--evidently in the secret--added to the
suspense by asking the teamsters if they intended to toboggan down the
glide that trip.
"Bet you don't!" they yelled after Michigan Red.
Though not exactly nervous, the mystery yet affected the red teamster.
As his load slid through the forest uneasiness manifested itself in
thoughtful whistlings, broken song snatches, unnecessary talk to his
horses. Not that he was a whit afraid. The half-dozen or so men whom he
expected would try to enforce the new order could not have prevented him
from at least sending his team at the grade. The fierce soul of him
thrilled at the thought of opposition, and, coming out of the forest, he
set a pace that would have ridden down opposition.
But he reined in at the hill. Instead of the force of his imaginings,
only Joe Legault stood at the foot of the glide. The hay had been
respread on its face, but--the road gang had built a rough bridge over a
deep gully, and now the glide led, straight as an arrow, out to the
lake. The racking curve was utterly abolished.
Grinning, Joe said: "The boss allows that it's your privilege to kill
your own horses. So go it if you wanter. Hain't going to hurt his
sleds none."
Michigan walked his horses.
Carter had won out. Moreover, he had done it without the loss of
prestige that would have ensued by the usual brutal methods in vogue in
lumber-camps. Law, of a man or people, cannot endure, of course,
without force behind it. Yet behind his imperturbability, quiet
taciturnity, the men felt the power to enforce his commands. So his
authority was no more called in question. Not that envious spite ceased
to dog him. Hines, Shinn, and their coterie stood always ready to stir
up discontent, foment trouble.
It was their sympathy that caused the cook to maintain one can of poor
baking-powder to be valid excuse for leaving. But Carter disposed of
minor troubles with the same easy good-humor that he had given to big
ones.
"I reckon you've been scandalously mistreated," he told the cook. "I'm
right sorry to lose you. Must you go?"
Mollified, the cook stayed.
Then Baldy, chief of the "tote"-trail teamsters, rose to the point that
"thirty hun'red was load enough for drifted trails."
"Thirty it is, Baldy," Carter cheerfully answered, and Baldy yanked
forty and forty-five hundred all winter over the worst of trails.
He had proved himself in the mastership of men just at the time that
opportunity was holding out her hand, and proof and fruit of his winning
came the very day that saw the last load delivered at the dumps. "It is
a go!" The wire which announced, with this bit of slang, the successful
financing of his railroad projects was brought in by Baldy from Lone
Tree, and with it buttoned against his heart Carter made his way to the
stables where the teamsters were, as they thought, bedding up for the
last time.
"We have feed for three months left," he said, "and I can promise work
through the summer. At what?" He turned, smiling, on Brady. "Never
mind; all those that want it kin have it till freeze-up. In the mean
time I'll feed an' care for your teams till the log-drive is down."
Grumblers from the cradle, kickers born, teamsters and choppers had
looked forward to this last day in camp, swearing all that ten dollars a
day would not hire them for an hour longer. No, sirree--not an hour!
Now they looked their doubt.
"What's the pay?" Brady asked.
"Half a dollar a day more'n you're getting."
"That beats farming in these parts. You kin sign me, boss."
And me--me--me! The answers floated in from all over the stable. Only
a few of the older men elected to return to their farms, and after all
had spoken Carter turned to Michigan Red, who occupied his old perch on
the stallion's stall.
"Well, Red?"
"Didn't s'pose you'd need me."
Carter went on writing. He could afford to be generous. He had beaten
the man at every point; to retain him where another would have
discharged him was, indeed, the crowning of his victory, and Michigan
knew it. Had he doubted, he had but to read it in the countenances of
his fellows. A good gambler, however, he hid resentment, and where a
poor loser would have taken his discharge he accepted re-employment.
His red beard split in a sneering grin. "Oh, guess I'll trouble you for
a little longer."
The day was eventful for another reason. Coming up from a short visit
to the settlements, Bender handed Carter a letter that evening, the
superscription of which sent the dark blood flooding over his neck, for
it was the first he had seen of Helen's writing these months. Was this
the answer of his longing? Had she sent--at last? His fingers trembled
as he tore the wrapping, then he paused, staring. It was his last
check, returned without an explanatory scrap.
"She's hired to teach her old school again." Bender answered his blank
look.
*XV*
*TRAVAIL*
If the white months seemed to lag with Carter up at the camp, they
dragged wearily with Helen down in the settlements. Christmas had been
particularly dreary, for it did not require a woman's marvellous memory
for anniversaries for her to live over again every incident and
experience of last Yuletide. In their living-room Carter had built a
chimney and fireplace of mud, Cree style, and on Christmas Eve she had
cuddled in against his broad breast and talked of a sweet possibility.
They had the usual pretty quarrel over sex and names--has the tongue one
good enough for the first-born? Then he had hung her stocking, and none
other would suit him, forsooth, but the one she was wearing. He had
laughed away her blushing protestations, and had kissed the white foot
and toes that squirmed in his big hand. Sitting alone this Christmas,
she had blushed at the memory; then a gush of tears had cooled her hot
cheeks, tears of mingled sorrow and thankfulness that their pretty dream
had not taken form in flesh.
One January morning she sat, chin in hands, and stared across the
humming stove at the white drift outside. Nels, the Swedish hired man,
had killed three pigs for winter meat the day before, and with a touch
of humor that was foreign to his bleached complacency had set them on
all-fours in the snow. Stiff, frozen--so hard, indeed, that the
house-dog retired disconsolately after a fruitless tug at an iron
ear--they poked marble shoulders out of a drift. The eye of one was
closed in a cunning wink. His neighbor achieved a grin. The mouth of
the third was open and thrown back, as though defying death with
derisive laughter.
Steeped in thought, Helen did not see the grim grotesques. These months
she had undergone three distinct changes of feeling. First she was
becomingly repentant. Viewed under the softening perspectives of time
and distance, Carter's crudities waned, while his strength and virtues
waxed. The insignificant sloughed away from his personality, leaving
only the strong, the virile. During this stage she formed small plans
towards reconciliation, and bided patiently at home, ceasing her visits
to Mrs. Leslie. Not that she felt them wrong, but, besides the shame
natural to her position, she liked to feel that she was gratifying what
she deemed her husband's prejudice; she experienced the satisfaction
which accrues from a penance self-imposed.
When, however, he did not return, she relapsed into hurt silence--would
not speak of him to Jenny, nor listen when Bender dropped in on one of
his periodical visits with news from the camp. Lastly came cold
resentment, anger at the grass-widowhood that was being thrust upon her,
a feeling that was the more unbearable because she secretly admired his
boldness in cutting the knot of their difficulties. She recognized the
wisdom of the act. Had he not taken the initiative, the process of
disenchantment would have continued till she herself might have taken
the first step to end their misery. But the knowledge did not mitigate
the sting. He had forced the separation! The thought rankled and grew
more bitter day by day.
This morning she was in a particularly dangerous mood. Conscious of her
original good intention, knowing that her fault had been the product of
conditions as much as her own weakness, she was ripe for revolt against
the entire scheme of things that had forced the lot of crabbed age upon
her flushed youth, compelling her to sit by a lonely fire. And as she
sat and brooded a clash of bells broke up her meditations; the door
opened, letting in a bitter blast that froze the warm interior air into
chilly fog, from the centre of which Mrs. Leslie emerged, heavily furred
and voluble as ever.
"Anchorite!" she screamed. "Or is it anchoress? Three, four--no, six
visits you owe me. Explain! Bad weather? Hum!" She tilted her pretty
nose. "If I couldn't fib more artistically, Helen, I'd adhere to the
painful truth. You were afraid--of hubby."
"I--I wasn't!"
Mrs. Leslie surveyed the girl's flushed anger with sarcastic pity.
"Tut! tut! More fibs. Huddled over that stove, you make the loveliest
study of despair. You have been crying, too."
"I--I haven't!" The lines of Huddled Despair flowed into Radiant Anger.
"Your eyes are red?"
"Well, if they are--if I did--it was through anger."
Mrs. Leslie accepted the modified admission. "That's right, my dear.
He--no man is worth the compliment of regretful tears. They are all
foolish, selfish, fickle as children. They cry for love like a child
for the moon, throw it away when the toy wearies, howl if another tries
to pick it up. They only value the unattainable. Bah!"
The ejaculation was comical in its feigned disgust, but just then Helen
had ears only for the serious or sympathetic--preferably the latter.
"Tell me, Elinor," she asked, "do you really think I have deserved this
at his hands?"
"No." For once in her life Mrs. Leslie dealt in undiluted
truth--because, perhaps, lying would not serve her purpose. "One could
understand his pique--" With incredible hardihood, considering the part
she herself had played, she commented: "Really, my dear, you ought not
to have done it. But he has been altogether too severe--unforgiving. I
don't see how you stand it. I should freeze these cold nights without
some one to warm my feet on."
"To think"--speech was such a relief after months of bitter silence, and
Helen never even noticed the other's funny climax--"to think that this
should be dealt to me by a man of whose very existence I was unconscious
a short two years ago! Is he a god to exercise such power--to command
me to eat the bread-and-water of affliction during his pleasure? Why, I
was twenty-two before I ever saw him! Doesn't it seem ridiculous--silly
as though one pebble on a beach were to establish limits for another?
They roll and rub where and with whom they list, and why shouldn't I?"
Ignoring the fact that monogamy was her sex's greatest achievement, and
that the first woman who bartered love for protection, cookery for
maintenance, had not driven such a bad bargain, she finished: "Wouldn't
it be funny if pebbles were condemned to rub and roll in definite pairs
till winds and waves had buried one or other affinity deep in the sands.
Why--"
"In other words," Mrs. Leslie interrupted, "why should vertical
distances count for more than horizontal--death for more than
distance--seven feet under the sod carry advantages and opportunities
that do not go with seventy miles above? There isn't any reason. It is
just so."
"Well, I won't stand it!" Rebellion inhered in Helen's stamp. "I
won't! I won't! I won't!"
Mrs. Leslie shrugged her hopelessness. "Thousands of women have to.
What _can_ you do, my dear?"
"Do?" the girl answered, hotly. "I have already done it--applied for
and secured my old school. Unfortunately, I must remain here till the
spring term opens."
Now to accuse Mrs. Leslie of trailing a definite purpose were to reveal
lamentable ignorance of her ruling traits. She was no fell adventuress
of romance, stealthy of plot, remorseless in pursuit. Persistence was
foreign to her light character. Unstable as water, she veered like a
shuttlecock under the breath of emotion, yet, withal, grasped speedily
at such straws as the winds of opportunity brought within reach. If she
lacked force to plot Carter's capture, or to revenge herself for his
slight through Helen, she was willing enough now that the wind served.
"In the mean time," she said, "you will stay with me?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that!" Oh, complex feminine nature! Helen balked at
the freedom of her agonizings. The quick earnestness of her answer told
of the hope that still glowed in the ashes of despair.
But Mrs. Leslie turned hope against her. "Oh yes," she mocked. "You
were not afraid of him; certainly not. But that is not the way to get
him back, my dear. If you would regain your recreant, give him a rival."
Now, though this piece of worldly wisdom was strictly in line with
Helen's crooked parable of the pebbles, the idea sounded grossly common
in plain words. Hastily she said, "You don't suppose that I would--"
"No! no!" Mrs. Leslie skilfully retrieved her error. "I only meant that
it would be as well to keep him on the anxious seat. Never let a man
feel too sure of you--it isn't healthy, for him or you. I wouldn't wait
here till it pleased him to extend magnificent forgiveness for so small
a fault. Go out--visit--let him see that you can be happy without
him--that you have still attractions for others."
"But I don't care. Why do you persist, Elinor, in hinting that I still
love him? I don't."
"Then you'll come with me?"
"I'd like to, but I can't leave Jenny alone with Nels."
Mrs. Leslie might have replied that this was exactly what she would have
to do when school opened; instead, she contemplated the love which
masqueraded behind this unparalleled obstinacy from sphinxlike eyes.
"Jenny must be dying to see her friends in Lone Tree," she suggested.
"Let her take a vacation. As for Nels--he can bach it."
Helen looked troubled. It was really astonishing to see how she ran
from liberty. But she had, perforce, to make some show of living up to
her professions, so she called Jenny and anxiously inquired if she
_didn't_ want to visit her friends. Unfortunately, Jennie had been
oppressed these many days with a longing to see the good doctor, and the
expression of her wish carried the day for Mrs. Leslie.
"Oh, well," she sighed; and Mrs. Leslie prudently confined her laugh
within her own hollow sepultures.
Accepting the invitation with misgivings, she was astonished, on her
return home, to find how thoroughly she had enjoyed her two weeks'
visit. Yet it was only natural. Besides the change, Mrs. Leslie had
been at pains to amuse and entertain her. There were cosey chats over
the teacups on matters dear to the feminine heart, and daily
sleigh-rides--mad dashes over hard-packed trails to music of jingling
bells. Once the drive was extended as far as Regis barracks, twenty
miles to the west, and Helen was introduced to captains of the mounted
police in scarlet splashed with gold, their ladies, the agents and
clerks of the government land office--pleasant people at first sight, of
whom she was to learn more. Of nights, Molyneux and other
remittance-bachelors would drop in, and, with drawn curtains excluding
the vast arctic night, there would be music, songs, games. Small wonder
that she enjoyed herself, or that, the ice thus broken, she gravitated
between home and the Leslies' during the remainder of that winter.
Speaking of Molyneux, a greater surprise inhered in the fact that she
had been able to meet him without embarrassment, a condition that was
due to the tact and real consideration which he displayed. At their
first meeting he paused only for a pleasant greeting; next, he ventured
a chat; and these lengthened until he felt safe in staying out an
evening.
He marked his greatest gain the day that--Leslie being under the weather
with a cold--she allowed him to drive her home. By those gentlemen, the
romanticists, this fact would not have been accorded a tender
implication. They paint love in colors fast as patent dyes: good girls
love once; or, if a second passion be grudgingly allowed, it is only
after the first is safely bestowed in cold storage underground. In face
of the fact that the little god occasionally shoots a double arrow, that
the sigh of many a wife would be unwelcome if intelligible to her
husband, that many a maid has slipped into spinsterhood between two
passions, they lay down as the basic principle of ethical romance the
canon that neither wife nor maid can entertain two loves other than in
sequence.
Now Helen may not have been in this case, and if she had it goes without
saying that she would never have admitted the preference even to
herself. For she had been raised in the very shadow of the aforesaid
canon. Yet he had certainly won on her--for good reason. In person he
was above the average of good looks; his manners touched standard. In
that he, alone of the English set, had been able to wring a living from
the stern northland without the aid of a fat allowance, he commanded her
respect. Also she thought that he was trying to sink his past--he
entertained the same illusion--and as every good girl loves to imagine
herself as an "influence," the thought gave her satisfaction. Molyneux
had no cause of complaint.
To do him justice, he tried, in a slovenly fashion, yet still tried, to
live up to this, the one pure love of his life--purity must be
interpreted as applying to his intention rather than motive. Of all the
remittance-men who frequented Mrs. Leslie's house, he, at this time,
showed the least moral taint. Often he thrust in between Helen and
things offensive. Though, during Helen's visits, Mrs. Leslie made some
attempt to put her house in order, she could not always bridle her male
guests, who smoked Leslie's imported tobacco and offered herself veiled
love. But Molyneux sterilized most of their blackguardism, nipping
entendre with a chilly stare, destroying double meanings by instant and
literal interpretation--did it so effectually that she never noticed the
pervading sensualism. Indeed, he did it so much as to draw Mrs.
Leslie's fire. "Virtuous boy," she said, teasing him one day. "You
almost convert me to the true-love theory."
His grimace gauged the depth of his reformation. To him as to Mrs.
Leslie the text could be fitted: "Can the leopard change his spots or
the Ethiop his skin?" Really he had not changed in quality or purpose;
it was the same Molyneux in pursuit of the same end. His tactics were
merely altered to suit his game. He would, of course, have denied
this--probably with the warmth of honest conviction. At times his
reflections on the subject attained highly moral altitudes. He had
known from the first that Helen could never live with Carter! Duty
certainly called him to end her bondage! Yes, he believed himself
honest, and would continue to so believe until some unexpected check
loosed the Old Adam again. This was proved by the flashes of passion at
the very thought of failure. It would have been much more natural for
him to have attempted a raid on Carter's Eden. But, warned by previous
experience, he waited, waited, waited, and watched as the snake may have
watched the maiden Eve over the threshold of Adam's garden. Now that
time seemed to have verified his prediction, that, albeit with hesitant
steps, Helen was approaching the gate of her own accord, he held back
the hot hand that fain would have plucked her forth lest he should
startle her into flight.
There were many watchers of the girl's progression during the winter
months: Mrs. Leslie, who might be said to await the moment when a shove
might throw the girl off her balance headlong into Molyneux's arms; the
settlers, who anticipated such a denouement with scandalous tongues; the
remittance-men, who betted on the result, basing odds on her lonely
condition. To these there could be but one end. Always the human soul
reaches for happiness, and the fact that she had once mistaken Dead Sea
fruit for love's golden apples would not prevent her from tiptoeing to
pluck again. Would she pluck?
Molyneux, for one, was sure that she would, and, having the courage of
his conviction, put his hope into speech, choosing an opportune time.
Nels always drove her over to Leslie's, and at first brought her home.
But by the middle of February the latter part of the task fell by
consent of all to Molyneux, and he spoke while driving her home one
afternoon.
"Read this," he said, handing her a telegram that called him to his
father's death-bed.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, impulsively.
"For what," he questioned, "his sickness or my absence?"
"Both," she frankly answered. "You have been--very nice to me. I shall
miss you."
Now this was all very proper, but when he stated that he should be gone
at least seven weeks she ought to have veiled her concern. But she did
not, and the regret that swam in the hazel eyes strengthened his
purpose. "Before I go I must say something. How long is our present
relation to last?"
The raise of her eyebrows might have meant anything. He took it as
encouragement, and ran on, "You know that I love--have always loved
you."
Here, according to the canons, she ought to have withered him. Instead
she gave him the truth. "I am not blind."
"Thanks for your candor. Now, a step further--do you intend to remain
his bondwoman?"
This was harder, yet her answer correctly interpreted her feeling.
"I--I--really don't know."
The doubt spurred him. "You do not love him. You could not--after the
way he has treated you. You must have love. A glance at your face
would tell a dullard that it is as necessary to your existence as air or
water. You cannot be happy without it. It is life to you; more than
sustenance. You must be wrapped in it, touch it at every point, feel it
everywhere around you. Your being cries out for a passion
all-absorbing; you will take nothing less. I would--"
"Give me such love?" She had thrilled under his truthful analysis of
her nature, and now she cried out the passion of her sex, the eternal
desire for a love everlasting as that of a mother. "Is such
possible?--a love that never stales, that endures after the hot blood
cools and beauty fades? Could you love me through old age? No, no! A
woman can, but never a man!"
"I can! By God! I can!" he cried, blazing in response to her passion.
"I'll prove it, for sooner or later you are going to love me."
She laughed a little wearily. "There spake the bold man. Well--you
have my good wishes."
"Your--good--wishes?"
"Don't flatter yourself." Her staying hand checked his enthusiasm.
"You said just now that I didn't love--my husband. Perhaps you are
right. I don't know. I have no standard by which to judge, and only
love could supply one. So far--you have failed to do so. I like
you--very much; but--if I ever love again, the man must lift me out of
myself, make me forget--him, myself, the whole world."
"I'll do it!" he confidently exclaimed; then, sobering, added: "I want
you to promise one thing. It isn't much--simply to give serious thought
to your position while I am away--to remember what I have just told you
and to forget that first foolish mistake that cost me so much. Now will
you?"
"Surely," she honestly answered.
"And--if possible--give me an answer?"
She nodded, and he was content to leave it there. They were now on the
last mile, and they made it in silence, he plunged in delicious reverie,
she very thoughtful. Looking up as the cutter rolled and bumped over
the frozen stable-yard, he caught her looking at him with soft
compassion.
"Well?"