A MARK TO SHOOT AT
An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand
and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen
silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.
"Well, well, well," he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly
at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his
thin lips. "Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and
die in peace."
"Oh, Dad, what a thing to say," Sophie protested.
"Figuratively, my dear, figuratively," he assured her. "Merely my way of
saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you
can smile again."
He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed. They went into the
house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland
Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of
delicious brown crispness. After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a
cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle
in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.
"Come out and let's make the round of the works, you two," Carr
suggested at last.
"You go, Wes," Sophie said. "I have promised to help a struggling young
housewife with some sewing this afternoon."
So they set forth, Carr and Thompson, on a path through the woods toward
where the donkey engines filled the valley with their shrill tootings
and the shudder of their mighty labor. And as they went, Carr talked.
"All this was virgin forest when you went away," said he. "The first axe
was laid to the timber a year ago last spring. I want you to take
particular notice of this timber. Isn't it magnificent stuff? We are
sending out a little aëroplane spruce, too. Not a great deal, but every
little helps."
It was a splendid forest that they traversed, a level area clothed with
cedar and spruce and fir, lifting brown trunks of six and seven-foot
girth to a great height. And in a few minutes they came upon a falling
gang at work. Two men on their springboards, six feet above the ground,
plying an eight-foot saw. They stood to watch. Presently the saw ate
through to the undercut, a deep notch on the leaning side, and the top
swayed, moved slowly earthward. The sawyers leaped from their narrow
footing. One cried "Tim-b-r-r-r." And the tree swept in a great arc,
smiting the earth with a crash of breaking boughs and the thud of an
arrested landslide.
Beyond that there was a logged space, littered with broken branches,
stumps, tops, cut with troughs plowed deep in the soil, where the
donkey had skidded out the logs. And there was the engine puffing and
straining, and the steel cables running away among the trees, spooling
up on the drums, whining and whistling in the iron sheaves. It was like
war, Thompson thought, that purposeful activity, the tremendous forces
harnessed and obedient to man--only these were forces yoked to man's
needs, not to his destruction.
They lingered awhile watching the crew work, chatted with them in spare
moments. Then Carr led Thompson away through the woods again, and
presently took him across another stretch of stumps where men were
drilling and blasting out the roots of the ravished trees, on to fields
where grain and grass and root crops were ripening in the September sun,
and at last by another cluster of houses to the bank of the river again.
Here Carr sat down on a log, and began to fill a pipe.
"Well," he said, "what do you think of it?"
"For eighteen months' work you have made an astonishing amount of
headway," Thompson observed. "This is hard land to clear."
"Yes," Carr admitted. "But it's rich land--all alluvial, this whole
valley. Anything that can be grown in this latitude will grow like a
village scandal here."
He lighted his pipe.
"I tried high living and it didn't agree with me," Carr said abruptly.
"I have tried a variety of things since I left the North, and none of
them has seemed worth while. I'm not a philanthropist. I hate
charitable projects. They're so damned unscientific--don't you think
so?"
Thompson nodded.
"You know that about the time you left, discharged soldiers were
beginning to drift back," Carr continued. "Drift is about the word. The
cripples of war will be taken care of. Their case is obvious, too
obvious to be overlooked or evaded. But there are returned men who are
not cripples, and still are unfit for military duty. They came back to
civilian existence, and a lot of them didn't fit in. The jobs they could
get were not the jobs they could do. As more and more of them came home
the problem grew more and more acute. It is still acute, and I rather
think it will grow more acute until the crisis comes with the end of the
war and God knows how many thousands of men will be chucked into civil
life, which cannot possibly absorb them again as things are going at
present. It's a problem. Public-spirited men have taken it up. The
government took the problem of the returned soldier into consideration.
So far as I know they are still considering it. The Provincial
Legislature talked--and has done nothing. The Dominion Government has
talked a lot, but nothing more than temporary measures has come out of
it. Nothing practical. You can't feed men with promises of after-the-war
reconstruction.
"All this was apparent to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or
two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned
soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to
do--and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we
could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we
went at it.
"I formed a joint stock company. We secured all the timber limits in
this valley. We got together a little group for a start. They were
returned men, some physically handicapped, but eager to do something for
themselves. A man with that spirit always makes good if he gets a
chance. We put in machinery and gear, put up a small sawmill for
ourselves, tore into the logging business, cleared land, built houses.
You see we are quite a community. And we are a self-supporting
community. Some of these men own stock in the company. Any returned men
can find a place for himself here. There is room and work and security
and ultimate independence here for any man willing to cooperate for the
common welfare. This valley runs for miles. As fast as the land is
logged off it is open for soldier entry. There is room here for five
hundred families. So you see there is a lot of scope.
"It was in the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered.
And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity
in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to
me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these
men needed was backing and direction."
Carr looked away across the clearing. His glance swept the houses, and
fields, and the distant woods where the logging crews labored.
"And there are valleys and valleys," he said thoughtfully; "when they
are cleared and cultivated there is endless room in them for people who
want elbow-room, who want to live without riding on the other fellow's
back.
"Better get in with us, Wes," he said abruptly. "I'm getting old. It
won't be long before I have to quit. This thing will need a pilot for a
long time yet. Men will always have to have a leader. You can do good
here. Big oaks, you know, from little acorns. I mean, if this project
continues to achieve success, it might blaze the way for a national
undertaking. We said that a country that was worth living in was worth
fighting for. We are liars and cheats if we do not make it so for those
who did our fighting."
"I wouldn't mind taking a hand in this game," Thompson said. "But the
war is still on. If that were over--well, yes, Toba Valley looks good to
me."
"You aren't out of it for good, then?"
Thompson shook his head.
Carr put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. "Ah, well," he said. "It won't
be long now. You'll be back. You can put on an aërial mail service for
us, as your first undertaking."
He chuckled, and they left their log and strolled back toward the house.
* * * * *
"Come and I'll show you what the valley looks like, Wes," Sophie said to
him, when they had finished dinner, and Carr had his nose buried in mail
just that evening arrived.
She led him a hundred yards upstream to where a footbridge slung upon
steel cables spanned the Toba, crossed that and a little flat on the
north side, and climbed up the flank of a slide-scarred hill until she
came out on a little plateau.
"Look," she waved her hand, panting a little from the steepness of the
climb.
Five hundred feet below, the valley of the Toba spread its timbered
greenness, through which looped in sweeping curves the steel-gray of the
river. In a great bend immediately beneath them lay the houses of the
settlement, facing upon the stream. Farther along were isolated
homesteads which he had not seen. Back of these spread little gardens,
and the green square of cultivated fields, and beyond in greater expanse
the stump-dotted land that was still in the making.
The smoke of the donkey-engines was vanished, fires grown cold with the
end of the day's work. But upriver and down the spoil of axe and saw lay
in red booms along the bunk. He could mark the place where he had stood
that afternoon and watched a puffing yarder bunt a string of forty-foot
logs into the booming-ground. He could see figures about in the gardens,
and the shrill voices and laughter of children echoed up to them on the
hill.
"It is a great view, and there is more in it than meets the eye,"
Thompson said. "Eh, little woman? The greatest war of all, the biggest
struggle. One that never ends. Man struggling to subdue his environment
to his needs."
Sophie smiled understandingly. She looked over the valley with a wistful
air.
"Did you ever read 'The Sons of Martha'?" she asked. Do you remember
these lines:
"'Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven,
Not as an altar to any creed,
But simple service simply given
To his own kind in their common need.'"
"It is a noble mark to shoot at," Thompson said.
He fell silent. Sophie went on after a minute.
"Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this.
There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect,
who think he is greater than any general. I'm proud of dad. He wanted to
do something. What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at
what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service. I gave
that up after you went away." She snuggled one hand into his. "It didn't
seem worth while--nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this."
She waved her hand again over the valley. Thompson's eyes gleamed. It
was good to look at, good to think of. It was good to be there. He
remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had
looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France.
And he shuddered a little.
Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.
"What is it?" she whispered anxiously.
"It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from
seeing it with you. I'd like to take a hand in this," he said quietly.
"I was just comparing it with other things--and wondering."
"Wondering what?"
"If I'll get back to this--and you," he said, with his arms around her.
"Oh, well, I've got three months' leave. That's a lot."
Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes. Her voice shook.
"You will be ordered to the front again?"
He nodded. "Very likely."
"I don't want you to go," she broke out passionately. "You mustn't. Oh,
Wes, Wes!"
"Do you think I like the prospect any better?" he said tenderly. "But I
am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet.
Buck up, sweetheart. I had six months' training, a year in fighting
planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of
uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever. Don't worry. I was silly
to say what I thought, I suppose."
"Nevertheless, it is true," she said. "You may go again and never come
back. But I suppose one must face that. Thousands of women have had to
face it. Why should I be exempt?"
She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.
"We shall simply have to keep that in the background. I want to forget
everything but that you are here and that I'm happy," she whispered,
with her arms about his neck. "I want to forget everything else--until
it's time for you to go."
"Amen," Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently,
hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below
the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley
floor.
* * * * *
There will be those who, having followed so far, will desire further
light. They will ask naïvely: Did Wes Thompson go back to the front and
get killed? Did they marry and find lasting happiness?
To these curious folk who seek explicit detail, I can only point out
that Wes Thompson had three months' leave which ran into November, and
that to Sophie that ninety days loomed like a stay of execution. I would
ask them further to recall the eleventh of November, 1918--and so the
first question is duly answered.
As for the second--I am no soothsayer. I cannot foretell the future.
Most certainly they married. At once--with a haste prudery and lovers of
formalism might term indecent.
Whether they live happily who can say? Somewhere between the day he
first looked on Sophie Carr at Lone Moose and the day he fell five
thousand feet to earth in a flaming battle-plane, keeping his life by
one of war's miracles, Wes Thompson lived and loved and suffered perhaps
a little more than falls to the common lot. He sloughed off prejudices
and cant and ignorance and narrowness in those six years as a tree sheds
its foliage in autumn.
A man may come to doubt the omnipotence of God without denying his
Maker. He may scorn churchly creeds and cleave to the Golden Rule. He
may hate greed and oppression, and injustice and intolerance, and
ruthless exploitation of man by man--and still hold firm faith in
humanity, still yearn to love his neighbor as himself.
To do good, to fight hard and play fair, to love faithfully and to
desire love, to go out of the world when his time should come with the
knowledge of having at least tried to make it a little better for those
who were in it, and for those who should come after. That was Wes
Thompson's working philosophy of life--if he might be said to have a
philosophy--although he certainly never formulated it in words.
He married a woman whom he loved dearly, who loved him, was proud of
him, who saw life as he did--through tolerant, comprehending eyes. So if
you ask whether they found real and lasting happiness I can only cite
you bald facts. I cannot prophesy. But I wish my chances were as good.
THE END
* * * * * *
THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
THE BLUE WINDOW
The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle
western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept
off her feet, but in the end she proves true blue.
PEACOCK FEATHERS
The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is
poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.
THE DIM LANTERN
The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.
THE GAY COCKADE
Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of
character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.
THE TRUMPETER SWAN
Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday affairs.
But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place.
THE TIN SOLDIER
A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot
in honor break--that's Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his
humiliation and helps him to win--that's Jean. Their love is the story.
MISTRESS ANNE
A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy
service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other
strong, and both need Anne.
CONTRARY MARY
An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.
GLORY OF YOUTH
A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new--how far should
an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer
love.
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK
MARGARET PEDLER'S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
TO-MORROW'S TANGLE
The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it
must be played fairly.
RED ASHES
A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation--and had
only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him?
THE BARBARIAN LOVER
A love story based on the creed that the only important things between
birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it.
THE MOON OUT OF REACH
Nan Davenant's problem is one that many a girl has faced--her own
happiness or her father's bond.
THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE
How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy's strange prophecy.
THE HERMIT OF FAR END
How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart.
THE LAMP OF FATE
The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing.
THE SPLENDID FOLLY
Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from each
other?
THE VISION OF DESIRE
An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness
that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal.
WAVES OF DESTINY
Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis--the
compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler's widely popular novels.
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK.
THE NOVELS OF
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
A NEW NAME
ARIEL CUSTER
BEST MAN, THE
CITY OF FIRE, THE
CLOUDY JEWEL
DAWN OF THE MORNING
ENCHANTED BARN, THE
EXIT BETTY
FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE
GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE
LO, MICHAEL!
MAN OF THE DESERT, THE
MARCIA SCHUYLER
MIRANDA
MYSTERY OF MARY, THE
NOT UNDER THE LAW
PHOEBE DEANE
RE-CREATIONS
RED SIGNAL, THE
SEARCH, THE
STORY OF A WHIM, THE
TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME
TRYST, THE
VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A
WITNESS, THE
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK