Next day the Pony Sawyer was wanting at the Mill and no one knew what
had become of him, the finest and steadiest man in the place. George
White was pleased to hear of it, for it was always his notion that
Quin would some day fire him and put Long Mac at the lever of the
Hoes.
"Ah," said Ginger, "we never can tell: some crooked business, I
dessay! They crack up M'Clellan 'sif he was a gawd-a-mighty, but to
my tumtum he ain't nothin' extra."
He put Shorty Gibbs from the Shingle Mill in Mac's place, and found
his usual pleasure in piling poor Shorty up. For of course Gibbs,
though he understood the Pony, couldn't run that lively animal at
Mac's pace. When Ginger stood up and groaned publicly at Shorty, the
new man was cross. It led to a scene at last, but one which only
puzzled the others. For Shorty Gibbs was one of the very quietest
men who breathed. He said he hated rows like "pison." When Ginger
came round to him the second time and said "Oh, hell," Shorty had had
enough. He stopped the Pony carriage and walked over to Ginger. He
nodded to him and said--
"Say, see here, Ginger!"
Ginger was an uninstructed man, he was very hard to teach.
"Get on with your work," said Ginger.
Shorty was up to his shoulder. He lifted an ingenuous face to the
sawyer.
"Ain't you bein' rather hard on a new hand, Ginger?" he asked
politely. And Ginger White mistook him, altogether. He swore. What
happened then the other men missed; it was all so quiet.
"Look here, you red-headed bastard," said Shorty in a conversational
tone, or as near it as the clatter of the Mill would allow, "look
here, you slab-sided hoosier, if you as much as open your head to me
agin I'll rip you up from your fork to your breast-bone. See!"
And Ginger saw.
"You can't bull-doze me," said Shorty, becoming openly truculent,
"any more than you can bull-doze Mac, you white-livered dog!"
White was never brave, but since the saws had killed Skookum his
nerve was bad indeed. There were spikes in every log for him by now.
He went back to the lever without a word and ran so slow that Gibbs
got a chance to clear the skids.
By the time Gibbs knew what was what with the Pony, Mac returned. He
had taken Ned somewhere to the neighbourhood of Seattle and left him
there. He went to see George Quin the moment he got into town. And
by that time there was news from Kamloops.
"I've planted him with an old partner of mine that runs a hotel back
o' Seattle," said Mac. "Jenkins will keep him away from too much
liquor. I rely on Jenkins."
George thanked him.
"But after all," said George, "I hear that the woman isn't dead, Mac,
and what's more she lets on that it wasn't my brother that hurt her."
He looked at the sawyer.
"Good girl," said Mac, "but he did it right enough, Sir; he talked of
nothing else all the way across."
"But if she dies what she says won't be everything," said George.
"It's best he should stay. Thank you for going with him. Gibbs is
taking your saw."
"Hell he is," said Mac pensively; "has he had trouble with White?"
But Quin hadn't heard of it. Just of late White hadn't gone to the
office with so many complaints. Since the spiking of the logs Quin
had been less easy to deal with. He was troubled in his mind about
Pete, and about Jenny. If Pete had spiked the logs, as Quin
believed, he was capable of anything. And poor little Jenny was
about to be a mother. It wouldn't be more than a month or two now.
Until Jenny had come into his life in real earnest, the Mill, the
Stick Moola, had been the man's whole desire. He loved it amazingly:
there wasn't a plank in it he didn't love, just as there wasn't a job
in it that he couldn't do in some fashion, and no fool's fashion
either. He had run the old Moola "good and strong," caring for
everything, seeing that it had the best of everything. There wasn't
a makeshift in it: it was a good Mill and Quin was a good manager.
An accident of any kind hit him hard. For accidents there must and
will be when saws are cutting lumber. To have a man killed troubled
him, even if it were a sheer accident. But to have a man killed by a
spiked log was very dreadful to him. It was the more dreadful that
he had provoked the spiking. It shook Quin up more than he had ever
been shaken. It broke his nerve a little, just as it had broken
Ginger's. And by now he was very fond of Jenny, even if he cursed
her, as he sometimes did. He dreaded this devil of a Pete, who
wasn't the kind of Siwash that one found among the meaner tribes, the
fishing, begging Indians. He had some red and ugly blood in him. He
got on Quin's nerves.
And then Mary was Pete's sister. If she hadn't been he would never
have known Jenny, and if he had given Pete a job it would have been
like giving it to any Siwash. Now Pete would be more than ever down
on them both. George began to think it worth while to find out where
Pete was. He sent up to Kamloops to ask. At the same time he sent
word to the hospital that Mary was to have anything she wanted.
There was a deal of good in George Quin, and somehow little Jenny
brought it out.
The poor girl in the hospital knew there was good in him. And in the
old days there had been good in Ned. Even now she loved him. When
they asked her how she had come to be injured, she declared that it
was not Ned who had done it. She said that as she lay swathed in
bandages before she knew how much she had been hurt. She said it
with white lips that trembled when she had seen herself for the first
time in the looking-glass. Perhaps few women would have been so
brave, for she knew that henceforth no one would look on her without
strange white bandages to hide the wound which her mad-man had made.
For she had been beautiful, and even now there was beauty in her eyes
and in the sunken cheek and curved chin that had been spared. But
henceforth she went half covered in white linen, since none but a
doctor could bear to look upon her without it.
"It wasn't Ned that did it," she said to the Law when it came to her.
"It was a stranger."
And everyone knew better than that, unless indeed too much liquor had
made Ned a stranger.
"I want to see Ned," she murmured. And yet she was very strong. A
weak thing would have died. But she loved life greatly, though she
wondered why. She made one of the nurses write to her man saying
that she wanted him. That brought Ned back from Seattle. George
received him sullenly. Jenny refused to see him.
"Watch out for Pete," said George when his brother went up-country.
"Pete, oh, to thunder with Pete," replied Ned.
"Look out for him," repeated George.
"You ain't wanting me to be scared of a Sitcum Siwash, are you?"
asked Ned angrily. "Perhaps you're scared of him yourself. You took
his klootchman anyhow. It's more'n I did."
George Quin was afraid of him. Many who knew his record would have
said that he was alike incapable of fear or love, but some might have
known that love for the mother of his first and unborn child took the
courage out of him and made him full of fears. Now he was always
"watching out."