AT THE MEETING OF THE TRAILS
I
JOSEPHINE STONE sat a rapt listener to this, the first relation of the
inner story of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company’s
operations. She had only grasped in a dazed way the tremendous
significance it had to her personally. The magnetic nearness of the
master mind that had created and developed the huge enterprise and its
subsidiaries single-handed diverted her thoughts for the time being from
her own personal interest in the matter. Here close to her was that rare
type, a man of dreams with the will and initiative to weave reality from
the gossamer skeins of his picturesque imagination—a genius and a man of
purpose.
The thought that struck her was: What must this man have gone through in
all those years! He had not referred to that. His stress had been on
the might and achievements of the North Star. But the North Star was
Acey Smith; a man’s greatest achievements in life are no more than the
expression and embodiment of the hidden emotions that rule his being.
These things must have come, not alone from the desire for revenge on his
usurper, but from the irresistible urge of a great protagonist soul for
self-expression—the consciousness of power—the restless fire that
consumes a conqueror. What might this man not have been under other
circumstances?
She glanced shyly at his face as he proceeded in low, musical tones with
the tale. The bitter, sinister lines were gone from it now, and in their
place there sat the tragedy of it all; the lonely years he struggled and
fought and pitted himself against the giants of his time—anonymously,
because of his terrible affliction, that loon-cry, and the calamitous
circumstances of his birth. About those unhappy features, she
intuitively knew, he was extremely sensitive—secret sorrows that until
now had been sealed books. He had dared have no sympathetic confidante
and no solace in his periods of relaxation but the voice of his violin up
in the solitary confines of this Cup of Nannabijou. Now—now she
understood that terrible heart-hunger that had wailed to her on the notes
of the number he played last night.
But there was that yet that she had not learned.
“When war broke out and Canada offered her all in the cause of
civilisation,” he was saying, “I experienced the thrill that gripped the
manhood of British nations round the world. I wanted to get in on a bit
of the fighting, and I wanted to fight under my father’s name. I found a
way.
“Instructions went out to the executives of the North Star that the
directing heads of the company were called away temporarily on war duty,
and Hon. J. J. Slack was put in absolute charge in the interim. A. C.
Smith, superintendent, it was announced, was being despatched on
confidential business and would be absent from his duties for an
indefinite period, his chief assistant taking care of his work in the
meantime. This all looked plausible enough because two of the North
Star’s most powerful tugs had been sent overseas when the first call for
boats of their type went out.
“Before I enlisted I left a sealed envelope containing explicit
instructions as to the disposition of the affairs of the North Star, in
case I did not return, with Sir David Edwards-Jones, president of the
Regal Bank of Canada, a man I had grown to estimate as the soul of
thoroughness and honour. Those instructions were to be returned to me
with the seals unbroken if I did come back. Then one night, unnoticed, I
took a midnight train for the West.
“I stained my skin the copper tint it had been before old Joseph Stone
bleached it with his formula, and in Vancouver enlisted as Private
Alexander Carlstone. None that knew me as Acey Smith knew my name,
number or battalion except Yvonne Kovenay, a rather wonderful young woman
who was head of the North Star’s intelligence department. I confided
that much to her, under pledges of strictest secrecy, in order that I
might be kept in touch with the affairs of the North Star while I was at
the front.
“From what you told me that day on Amethyst Island, Miss Stone, I gather
that you have heard most there was to know about the record of Alexander
Carlstone with the Canadian army; except that the story as it was passed
on by others gives me much more credit for deeds of valour than is coming
to me. How I slipped away unnoticed from the base hospital and reverted
to the role of Acey Smith is a little story in itself, but we have no
time for those details now. The fighting was almost over and I wanted to
get back to Canada as quickly as possible, lest in the process of
demobilisation my identity should be learned.
“Incidentally, news had come to me that Gildersleeve was organising a new
company to enter into competition with the North Star’s pulpwood
activities along the North Shore.”
II
“Before the war, the North Star had succeeded in acquiring all the larger
and more valuable timber concessions on the upper reaches of Lake
Superior, with the exception of the block known as the Nannabijou Limits.
This vast area of pulpwood was considered the most desirable of all, and
the cutting rights there meant the domination of the pulp and paper
industry in Northern Ontario.
“The government had withheld the Nannabijou Limits from being thrown on
the market in deference to a pledge made to the people by a former
premier that it would never be leased until the company tendering for it
erected a mill at Kam City capable of manufacturing into paper every
stick of wood taken from it.
“The North Star until then had been an exporter, sending most of its
pulpwood to mills in eastern Canada in which it held stock and to
customers in United States. I had early conceived that to make the North
Star hold its place it must by one means or another acquire the
Nannabijou Limits. Before the war, plans were all completed for the
building of a pulp and paper mill at Kam City to comply with the
government stipulation. The outbreak of hostilities, however, brought
about such chaos in the business world that the project had to be
abandoned.
“My absence at the war and the consequent inactivity of the North Star in
the matter of expansion had given Gildersleeve the opportunity he had
been quietly watching for. When I returned I discovered that he was
organising international capital on a large scale with the express
purpose of securing the rights on the Nannabijou. If he succeeded I knew
too well what it meant, and that would be the ultimate elimination of the
North Star as a factor on the upper lakes.
“The North Star immediately purchased a site for a plant in Kam City, let
a contract for the erection of a pulp and paper mill building and placed
an order for the necessary machinery and equipment. With these proofs of
our good intentions we went to the provincial government and put in our
application for cutting rights on the Nannabijou. The Kam City Pulp and
Paper Company, subsidiary of the International Investment Corporation, of
which Gildersleeve had been made president, simultaneously made a bid for
the limits. They too bought a site in Kam City and made preparations for
the erection of a mill.
“As an established Canadian company employing hundreds of workmen the
year round, not to mention the lever we had in political affairs, the
advantage, at the start, was with us; but parliament, as is the wont of
parliaments, haggled over the matter for many weary months. Finally,
they awarded the lease to the North Star, on a year to year basis, with a
particular stipulation that our mills be grinding wood from the
Nannabijou Limits at full capacity on October twenty-third of this year.
That would give us plenty of leeway, for we expected to commence the
installation of our machinery in June.
“Strange as it appeared at the time, the Kam City Pulp and Paper Company
continued their building operations with no apparent prospect of limits
to draw a raw supply from. I suspected Gildersleeve had a card up his
sleeve, but was at a loss to determine what trickery he planned until the
announcement reached us that the company in the States which was building
the North Star’s pulp and paper manufacturing machinery had gone into
liquidation and could not make delivery.
“This was indeed a calamity, for the construction of certain of the
machines used in paper-making cannot be completed in less than
twenty-seven months’ time. Nowhere else could we secure equipment
anywhere within the time limit set by the government. The full meaning
of the coup that had been put over the North Star by its unscrupulous
rival was realised when we learned that the failure of the pulp and paper
machinery manufacturers with whom the North Star had its order was
brought about by money-market manipulators in Gildersleeve’s syndicate.
By this underhand method the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills had actually
gained possession of the plant the North Star had on order.
“The North Star was faced with cancellation of its rights on the limits
and possible financial difficulties through the immense amount of money
it had invested in a mill that would now be a white elephant on its
hands. The Kam City Pulp and Paper Company lost no time in drawing the
attention of the government to the fact that the North Star was
installing no machinery to grind the pulp poles it was booming at the
limits; and further that we had no machinery nor any prospect of securing
any. The Kam City Company applied for an order to restrain the North
Star from further cutting operations and again applied for the lease
under the former terms of offer.
“The order of restraint was not issued, but the government, after
investigation, issued a fiat that in case the Kam City Company were in a
position to manufacture paper to the full capacity demanded in the North
Star’s agreement, and the North Star were not in that position, the
rights of the North Star on the Nannabijou Limits were to be cancelled
and turned over to the Kam City Company on October twenty-third.
Furthermore, the fiat ordained that the North Star could continue cutting
and booming poles at the limits until that date, if it so desired; but it
must make delivery of all poles cut in time and in sufficient quantities
to start the Kam City Company’s mills on contract time, and to keep them
running full capacity until the opening of navigation the following year.
“To their own surprise, as well as that of every one else who had been
following the news, the North Star’s legal representatives appearing
before the legislature received definite orders not to apply for an
extension of time in the matter of the North Star’s agreement, nor to
attempt to protest the Kam City Company’s right to the lease. They were
instructed instead to concentrate their efforts for the inclusion of a
clause in the government’s agreement with the Kam City Company specifying
that, should the latter company fail to make good to the letter in their
contract by the date named, from any cause whatsoever, the order giving
them access to the limits should be cancelled and the North Star should
remain in peaceful possession with the privilege of acquiring and
installing the necessary machinery at its mills as expeditiously as might
be within the bounds of reason.
“That famous ‘Act of God’ clause, as it has since been nicknamed, was
fought out for days on the floor of the House; but the North Star finally
won, its representatives stressing the fact that the North Star had been
arbitrarily dealt with by the government because it had been debarred
from fulfilling its agreement through circumstances over which it had no
control, and, what was fair for an established company already in
possession, should be fair enough for an outside company which was
seeking to take its right away from it. The law-makers at Toronto were
sportsmen enough to see the point, though they could not possibly see how
we could benefit from it.
“The public was quite as much at sea, and it was freely conceded that the
directing heads of the North Star were madmen, though people who knew the
North Star intimately were contented to wait and see what came out of it
all.”
III
“With the approach of the greatest crisis in the history of the North
Star, another important matter claimed immediate attention. Your
twenty-first birthday, Miss Stone, fell one week before cancellation of
the North Star’s rights on the limits must be prevented. I’ll confess
that when I sent you for in the name of ‘J.C.X.’ I saw an opportunity of
thus mixing in a little more mystery to keep our rivals guessing just
what we were about.
“By an odd coincidence, Norman T. Gildersleeve and your friend, Mr.
Hammond, were bound for Kam City on the same train that brought you from
the West. The North Star’s intelligence department had been keeping
close tab on Gildersleeve. So far as I can gather, he must have gained
some vague notion as to the truth of the North Star’s direction and
control. He had been filling our camps with cheap private detectives of
the transom and keyhole peeking type, some of whom were entertained to
exciting adventures but gained no knowledge worth while. Gildersleeve
was growing certain the North Star had some trump card to play, and he
thought to take a leaf out of the North Star’s book of methods to get at
the bottom of it and frustrate it. He concocted a wild scheme of
appearing to disappear personally and gain admission to the limits in the
disguise of a preacher. He was egotistic enough to believe that what his
detectives had failed in he could accomplish himself.
“Our agents kept me apprised of his every move, even to his inveigling
young Hammond to undertake a seemingly mysterious mission to the limits
to divert attention from his own operations. In many respects it
appealed to me as a nice bit of comedy, but Gildersleeve and Hammond were
shadowed day and night; the former for obvious reasons and the latter to
see that no harm befell him. Our newspapers meanwhile published all
sorts of conflicting news stories of Gildersleeve’s disappearance; much
to the discomfiture of Gildersleeve’s one confidante, a Kam City lawyer
named Winch. Just by way of adding to the gaiety of nations, I wrote an
editorial on the subject of aphasia, inferring that it was this trouble
that had suddenly afflicted. Mr. Gildersleeve and had it published in
our string of dailies.
“Gildersleeve might have been allowed to play out his little fiasco to
his heart’s content for all the interference it would have proved to the
North Star’s plans had he not been rash enough to think he could spirit
you away from Amethyst Island right under our eyes. The plot was to get
Hammond to cultivate your acquaintance and thus unwittingly lead you into
the hands of a gang of low-brows who were to carry you off in a yacht and
keep you on the lake until after the twenty-third of October.”
“But why should Mr. Gildersleeve have desired to carry me off?” cried
Josephine Stone in perplexity.
“Because,” replied Acey Smith, “he believed you were in some way
essential to the plans the North Star had on foot. His first and only
attempt to seize you was staged in the woods that day you made the trip
up to the cliffs with Louis Hammond. It was nipped in the bud, without
either you or Hammond knowing about it, by the North Star’s faithful
Indian trackers.
“There was no second attempt because I took no further chances. When I
could not induce you to voluntarily leave the island at once, I had you
carried off by Ogima Bush, the only man I could trust to handle so
delicate an undertaking. A ruse used simultaneously to implicate
Gildersleeve in his disguise as the camp preacher worked so successfully
that he was arrested by the Mounted Police, and his company had to
forfeit a thousand dollars bail in order to get him out of jail and an
extremely embarrassing situation.
“That was the beginning of the end. I went to Montreal while the
Gildersleeve crowd were frantically concentrating their nimble brains to
force a settlement of a strike among the North Star’s tugmen. In
Montreal I made final arrangements for the transfer of the estate of
Joseph Stone to his rightful heiress, Josephine Stone, after having had
the loan of it for the nineteen years it was left in my trust.
“There were just two little details left for me to complete when I
returned. The one was to give you an account of the manner in which I
managed your property while it was held in trust and the other was to see
that there were no poles for the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills to grind
on the twenty-third.
“Come look!”
He led her to the edge of the cliff, pointing to the empty bay in front
of the camp below.
“Oh,” cried Josephine Stone, “the booms are gone. What became of them?”
“They went out last night in the freshet caused by the breaking of the
beaver-dam in Solomon Creek during the storm.”
“But those poles,” questioned the girl, “weren’t they very valuable?”
“They had not yet been paid for by the Kam City Company and they were
still the North Star’s property,” he told her. “And they can be
salvaged—but by no effort could they be salvaged to start the Kam City
Company’s mills on time, much less to keep them in continuous supply all
winter. They will be salvaged to be ground and manufactured into paper
at the North Star’s own mills next year.”
“Still the storm last night was an accident. If it had not happened—”
“I did not say it was the storm,” he reminded her. “Just what made the
beaver-dam go out will always remain a mystery. Ogima Bush the Medicine
Man, who had led his Indians to believe the dam contained an evil spirit
that was bringing misfortune to them, held some sort of a pagan
incantation down there last night which might or might not explain a
lot.”
“The Indians told Mrs. Johnson he was killed in the storm.”
“Who—Ogima? Not much. Ogima Bush has as many lives as a cat. But the
chances are he’ll never be seen in this locality again.”
Josephine Stone turned to him. “But what about yourself?” she asked.
“In your account of the North Star’s operations and the final disposition
of the property you have not said one word as to the provisions made for
the man who engineered it all.”
“Oh, that too has been taken care of,” he replied. “During my
trusteeship of the estate I drew a salary quite commensurate with the
services I rendered. I made a few investments also that are turning out
well.”
“But your plans for the future?”
“I had not thought of that,” Acey Smith answered, his eyes fixing in that
peculiar abstraction that made him an enigma among men. “Always I have
had the gift of visualising the future; of seeing clearly what was ahead
of me until now. But beyond what is now accomplished, beyond to-day,
everything appears like a void—a nothingness. To put it that way, I feel
like one who peruses the last chapters of an exciting tale and knows,
though he has not yet seen the author’s finis, that the end is near.”
Something tragically prophetic in his tones, a detachedness of his manner
and a realisation of his terrible loneliness of spirit smote Josephine
Stone. Her lips trembled and her eyes filled.
“Come, come, little girl,” he chided banteringly, “you must not cry on
this of all your birthdays.”
But she had turned from him. “I was thinking,” she murmured, “of Captain
Alexander Carlstone, the Man That Might Have Been.”
Her shoulders were quivering. The man’s arms went out as though to sweep
her exquisite little form to him, but by a tremendous effort of will he
desisted and they dropped to his side. A paroxysm went through his frame
and his hands went cupping to his mouth to muffle and strangle the cursed
cry of the loon that was rising in his throat.
When she turned his face was the old grim, sinister mask. “Let’s go,” he
urged almost gruffly. “I had planned to have you reach Amethyst Island
early this afternoon and go over on a special tug to Kam City as soon as
you could get ready. The Indians are waiting with a sedan in the bush
just a few hundred yards below the water-gate.”
He paused suddenly in their progress toward the pathway leading down from
the summit. “My pack-sack!” he exclaimed staring at the empty place
where it had hung on the little jackpine.
He strode over to the rim of the cliff and looked down. “Might have had
better sense than to have hung it there,” he ruminated. “Wind shook it
loose and it has fallen down to the gully below. Oh, well, I’ll come
back up for it after I see you down to the island. I’ll have to remember
that.”