THE BOSS OF THE "BUSTERS"
"If you don't like our looks nor ain't stuck on our kind,
Git back with the dames in the next car behind."
On and on went the yelping staccato of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt.
The Honorable Pulaski D. was discoursing on his favorite topic, and his
voice was heard above the rattle and jangle of the shaky old
passenger-coach that jolted behind some freight-cars.
"Forty years ago I rolled nigh onto a million feet into that brook
there!" shouted the lumber baron of the Umcolcus. His knotted, hairy
fist wagged under the young man's nose as he pointed at the car
window, his unwholesome breath fanned warmly on Wade's cheek, and
when he crowded over to look into the summer-dried stream his bristly
chin-whiskers tickled his seat-mate's ear. The September day was muggy
and human contact disquieting. Wade shrank nearer the open window. The
Honorable Pulaski did not notice the shrinking. He was accustomed to
crowd folks. His self-assertiveness expected them to get out of the way.
"Yes, sir, nigh onto a million in one spring, and half of it 'down pine'
and sounder'n a hound's tooth. Nothing here now but sleeper stuff. It's
a good many miles to the nearest saw-log, and that's where I'm cutting
on Jerusalem. I tell you, I've peeled some territory in forty years,
young man."
Wade looked at the red tongue licking lustfully between blue lips, and
then gazed on the ragged, bush-grown wastes on either side. While he had
been crowding men the Honorable Pulaski had been just as industriously
crowding the forest off God's acres. The "chock" of the axe sounded in
his abrupt sentences, the rasp of saws in his voice.
"We left big stumps those days." The hairy fist indicated the rotten
monuments of moss-covered punk shouldering over the dwarfed bushes.
"There was a lot of it ahead of us. Didn't have to be economical. Get
it down and yanked to the landings--that was the game! We're cutting
as small as eight-inch spruce at Jerusalem. Ain't a mouthful for a
gang-saw, but they taste good to pulp-grinders."
The train began to groan and jerk to a stand-still, and the old man
dove out of his seat and staggered down the aisle, holding to the
backs of the seats. At the last station he had spent ten minutes of
hand-brandishing colloquy on the platform with a shingle-mill boss
whom he had summoned to the train by wire. He was to meet a birch-mill
foreman here. Wade looked out at the struggling cedars and the white
birches, "the ladies of the forest," pathetic aftermath which was now
falling victim to axe and saw, and wondered with a flicker of grim humor
in his thoughts why the Honorable Pulaski did not set crews at work
cutting the bushes for hoop-poles and then clean up the last remnant
into toothpicks.
"He's a driver, ain't he?" sounded a voice in his ear. An old man
behind him hung his grizzled whiskers over the seat-back and pointed
an admiring finger at the retreating back of the lumber baron.
Wade wished that people would let him alone. He had some thoughts--some
very bitter thoughts--to think alone, and the world jarred on him. The
yelp of the Honorable Pulaski's monologue, that everlasting, insistent
bellow of voices in the smoking-car ahead, where the ingoing crew of
Britt's hundred men were trying to sing with drunken lustiness, and now
this amiable old fool of the grizzled whiskers, stung the dull pain of
his resentment at deeper troubles into sudden and almost childish anger.
"Once when I was swamping for him on Telos stream, he says to me, 'Man,'
he says, 'remember that the time that's lost when an axe is slicin' air
ain't helping me to pay you day's wages!' And I says to him, 'Mister
Britt,' says I--"
Dwight Wade, college graduate, former high-school principal, and at all
times in the past a cultured and courteous young gentleman, did the
first really rude and unpardonable act of his life. He twisted his chin
over his shoulder, scowled into the mild, dim, and watery eyes of his
interlocutor, and growled:
"Oh, cut it short! What in--" He checked the expletive, and snapped
himself up and across the aisle, and slammed down into another seat. The
red came over his face. He did not dare to look back at the old man. He
hearkened to the rip-roaring chorus in the smoking-car, and reflected
that as the new time-keeper he was now one of "Britt's Busters," and
that the demoralizing license of the great north woods must have entered
into his nature thus early. He grunted his disgust at himself under his
breath, and hunched his head down between his shoulders.
In his nasty state of mind he glowered at a passenger who came into the
car at the front. It was a girl, and a pretty girl at that. She nodded a
cheery greeting to the old man of the grizzled whiskers, and with a
smile still dimpling her cheeks flashed one glance at Wade. It was not
a bold look, and yet there was the least bit of challenge in it. The
sudden pout on her lips might have been at thought of confiding her
fresh, crisp skirts to the dusty seat; and yet, when she turned and shot
one more quick glance at the young man's sour countenance, the pout
curled into something like disdain, and a little shrug of her shoulders
hinted that she had not met the response that she was accustomed to find
on the faces of young men who saw her for the first time.
While Wade was gazing gloomily and abstractedly at the fair profile
and the nose, tip-tilted a wee bit above the big white bow of her veil
tied under her chin, one of the crew lurched from the door of the
smoking-car, caught off his hat, and bowed extravagantly. It was Tommy
Eye. He had to clutch the brake-wheel to keep himself from falling. But
his voice was still his own. He broke out lustily:
"Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl,
That I have left behind me.
I'm all cut loose for to wrassle with the spruce,
Way up where she can't find me.
Oh, there ain't no--"
An angry face appeared over his shoulder in the door of the smoker, two
big hands clutched his throat, jammed the melody into a hoarse squawk,
and then the songster went tumbling backward into the car and out of
sight.
Almost immediately his muscular suppressor crossed the platform and came
into the coach, snatching the little round hat off the back of his head
as he entered. Wade knew him. His employer had introduced them at the
junction as two who should know each other. It was Colin MacLeod, the
"boss."
"And Prince Edward's Island never turned out a smarter," the Honorable
Pulaski had said, not deigning to make an aside of his remarks. "Landed
four million of the Umcolcus logs on the ice this spring, busted her
with dynamite, let hell and the drive loose, licked every pulp-wood boss
that got in his way with their kindlings, and was the first into Pea
Cove boom with every log on the scale-sheet. That's this boy!" And he
fondled the young giant's arm like a butcher appraising beef.
Wade paid little attention to him then. With his ridged jaw muscles, his
hard gray eyes, and the bullying cock of his head, he was only a part of
the ruthlessness of the woods.
But now, as he came up the car aisle, his face flushed, his eyes eager,
his embarrassment wrinkling on his forehead, Wade looked at him with the
sudden thought that the boss of the "Busters" was merely a boy, after
all.
"It was only Tommy Eye, Miss Nina," explained MacLeod, his voice
trembling, his abashed admiration shining in his face. "He's just
out of jail, you know." He looked at Wade and then at the old man
of the grizzled whiskers, and raised his voice as though to gain a
self-possession he did not feel. "Tommy always gets into jail after
the drive is down. He's spent seventeen summers in jail, and is
proud of it."
"But there ain't no better teamster ever pushed on the webbin's," said
the old man, admiration for all the folks of the woods still unflagging.
The girl did not display the same enthusiasm, either for Tommy Eye's
mishaps or for the bashful giant who stood shifting from foot to foot
beside her seat.
"Crews going into the woods ought to be nailed up in box-cars, that's
what father says. And when they go through Castonia settlement I wish
they were in crates, the same as they ship bears."
"How is your father since spring?" asked the young boss, stammeringly,
trying to appear unconscious of her scorn.
"Oh, he's all right," she returned, carelessly, patting her hand on her
lips to repress a yawn.
"And is every one in Castonia all right?"
"You can ask them when you get there," she replied, a bit ungraciously.
"I tell you, I was pretty surprised to see you get aboard the train down
here at Bomazeen. I--"
She canted her head suddenly, and looked sidewise at him with an
expression half satiric, half indignant.
"Do you think that all the folks who ever go anywhere in this world are
river drivers and"--she shot a quick and disparaging glance at the still
glowering Wade--"drummers?"
MacLeod noticed the look and its scorn with delight, and grasped at this
opportunity to get outside the platitudes of conversation. But in his
eagerness to be news-monger he did not soften his "out-door voice,"
deepened by many years of bellowing above the roar of white water.
"Oh, that ain't a drummer! That's Britt's new chaney man--the
time-keeper and the wangan store clerk." MacLeod knew that a girl born
and bred in Castonia settlement, on the edge of the great forest, needed
no explanation of "chaney man," the only man in a logging crew who could
sleep till daylight, and didn't come out in the spring with callous
marks on his hands as big as dimes. But he seemed to be hungry for an
excuse to stay beside her, where he could gaze down on the brown hair
looped over her forehead and her radiantly fair face, and could catch
a glimpse of the white teeth. "Britt was tellin' me on the side that
he's been teachin' school or something like that, and--say, you've
heard of old Barrett, who controls all the stumpage on the Chamberlain
waters--that rich old feller? Well, Britt, being hitched up with
Barrett more or less, and knowin' all about it--"
Wade was now upright in his seat, but the absorbed foreman, catching at
last a gleam of interest in the gray eyes upraised to his, did not
notice.
"--Britt says that Mister School-teacher there went to work and fell in
love with Barrett's girl, and now she's goin' to marry a rich feller in
the lumberin' line that her dad picked out for her, and instead of goin'
to war or to sea, like--"
Wade, maddened, sick at heart, furious at the old tattler who had thus
canvassed his poor secret with his boss, had tried twice to cry an
interruption. But his voice stuck in his throat.
Now he leaped up, leaned far over the seat-back in front of him, and
shouted, with face flushed and eyes like shining steel:
"That's enough of that, you pup!"
In the sudden, astonished silence the old man dragged his fingers
through his grizzled whiskers and whined plaintively:
"Ain't he peppery, though, about anybody talking? He shet me up, too!"
"It's my business you're talking!" shouted Wade, beating time with
clinched fist. "Drop it."
MacLeod, primordial in his instincts, lost sight of the provocation, and
felt only the rebuff in the presence of the girl he was seeking to
attract. He had no apology on his tongue or in his heart.
"It will take a better man than you to trig talk that I'm makin'," he
retorted. "This isn't a district school, where you are licked if you
whisper!" He sneered as he said it, and took one step up the aisle.
With the bitter anger that had been burning in him for many days now
fanned into the white-heat of Berserker rage, Wade leaped out of his
seat. Between them sat the girl, looking from one to the other, her
cheeks paling, her lips apart.
At the moment, with a drunken man's instinctive knowledge of ripe
occasions, Tommy Eye lurched out once more on the smoker platform and
began to carol the lay that had consoled him on so many trips from town:
"Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl,
That I have left behind me."
There sounded the clang of the engine bell far to the front. There was
the premonitory and approaching jangle of shacklings, as car after car
took up its slack.
"Look after your man there, MacLeod!" cried the girl. "The yank will
throw him off."
"Let him go, then!" gritted the foreman. The flame in Wade's eyes was
like the red torch of battle to him. Not for years had a man dared to
give him that look.
Suddenly the car sprang forward under their feet as the last shackle
snapped taut. The boss was driven towards Wade, and let himself be
driven. The other braced himself, blind in his fury, realizing at last
the nature of the blood lust.
A squall, fairly demoniac in intensity, stopped them. MacLeod recognized
the voice, and even his passion for battle yielded. When the Honorable
Pulaski D. Britt, baron of the Umcolcus, yelled in that fashion it meant
obedience, and on this occasion the squall was reinforced by a shriek
from the girl. And MacLeod whirled, dropping his fists.
There on the platform stood Britt, clutching the limp and soggy Tommy
Eye by the slack of his jacket. The Honorable Pulaski, jealous of every
second of time, had remained in conversation to the last with his birch
foreman. He stepped aboard just as Tommy, jarred from his feet, was
pitching off the other side of the platform. The Honorable Pulaski
snatched for him and held on, at the imminent risk of his own life.
Already both of them were leaning far out, for Tommy Eye, in the
blissful calm of his spirit, was making no effort to help himself.
In an instant MacLeod was down the car aisle and had pulled both back to
safety.
"Why in blastnation ain't you staying in this hog-car here, where you
belong, you long-legged P.I. steer?" roared the old man, his anger ready
the moment his fright subsided. "What do I hire you for? You came near
letting me lose the best teamster in my whole crew. Now get into that
car and stay in that car till we get to the end of this railroad."
He put his hands against MacLeod's breast and shoved him backward into
the door, where Tommy Eye, grinning in fatuous ignorance of the danger
he had passed through, had just disappeared ahead of him. The angry
shame of a man cruelly humiliated twisted MacLeod's features, but he
allowed his imperious despot to push him into the car, casting a last
appealing look at the girl. Britt slammed the door and stood on the
platform, bracing himself by a hand on either side the casing, and
peered through the dingy glass to make sure that his crew was now under
proper discipline.
"He's a driver and a master," piped up Grizzly Whiskers, with the
appositeness of a Greek chorus.
"There's the song about him, ye know:
"Oh, the night that I was married,
The night that I was wed,
Up there come Pulaski Britt
And stood at my bed-head.
Said he, 'Arise, young married man,
And come along with me.
Where the waters of Umcolcus
They do roar along so free.'"
"I'll bet he went, at that," volunteered a man farther back in the car.
"When Britt is after men he gits' em, and when he gits 'em he uses 'em."
"Mr. Britt," he shouted down the car aisle as the old man entered, "that
was brave work you done in savin' Tommy's life!"
"Go to the devil with your compliments!" snapped Britt. "If it wasn't
that I was losing my best teamster I wouldn't have put out my little
finger to save him from mince-meat."
He saw the girl, turned over a seat to face her, and began to fire rapid
questions at her regarding her father and mother and the latest news of
Castonia settlement. When the conversation languished, as it did soon on
account of the inattention of the young woman, the Honorable Pulaski
caught the still flaming eye of Dwight Wade, and crooked his finger to
summon him. Wade merely scowled the deeper. The Honorable Pulaski
serenely disregarded this malevolence as a probable optical illusion,
and when Wade did not start beckoned again.
"Come here, you!" he bellowed. "Can't you see that I want you?"
With new accession of fury at being thus baited, the young man started
up, resolved to take his employer aside and free his mind on that matter
of news-mongering. But the bluff and busy tyrant was first, as he always
was in his dealings with men.
"Here, Wade," he shouted, "you shake hands with the prettiest girl
in the north country! This is Miss Nina Ide, and this is my new
time-keeper, Dwight Wade. He's going to find that there's more in
lumbering than there is in being a college dude or teaching a school.
Sit down, Wade."
He pulled the young man into the seat.
"Entertain this young lady," he commanded. "She don't want to talk with
old chaps like me. Her father--well, I reckon you know her father! Oh,
you don't? Well, he's first assessor of Castonia settlement, runs the
roads, the schools, and the town, has the general store and post-office,
and this pretty daughter that all the boys are in love with."
And at the end of this delicate introduction he pushed brusquely between
them, and went back to talk with his elderly admirer in the rear of the
car.
Wade looked into the gray eyes of the girl sullenly. There was an angry
sparkle in her gaze.
"Well, Mr. Wade, you may think from what that old fool said that I'm
suffering to be entertained. If you think any such thing you can change
your mind and go back."
She had not a city-bred woman's self-poise, he thought. Her manner was
that of the country belle, spoiled the least bit by flattery and
attention. And yet, as he looked at her, he thought that he had never
seen fairer skin to set off the flush of angry beauty. For others there
was something alluring in the absolute whiteness of her teeth, peeping
under the curve of her lip, in the nose (the least bit _retrousse_), in
the looped locks of brown hair crossing her temples. Yet there was no
admiration in his eyes.
"I hope you won't hold me guilty of being the intruder," he said,
coldly.
"Not if you move your brogans over to some seat where there is more room
for them," she returned, with a click of her white teeth that showed
mild savagery. This young man who was in love with some one else, and
who had scowled at her, was decidedly not to her liking, she thought, in
spite of his regular features, his firm chin, his clean-cut mouth
unhidden by beard, and his brown eyes.
Wade flushed, rose, bowed with hat lifted to a rather ironical height,
and took his seat alone, well to the front of the car. He saw MacLeod's
baleful face framed in the little window of the smoking-car's door. For
mile after mile, as the train jangled on, it remained there.
The menace of the expression, the challenge in the attitude, and this
insolent espionage, all following the insults of his gossiping tongue,
wrought upon the young man's feelings like a file on metal. As his
resentment gnawed, it was in his mind to go and smash his fist through
the little window into the middle of that lowering countenance.
To him came the Honorable Pulaski, bristling and bustling.
"They're telling me back there, young man, that you and Colin came near
to having some sort of rumpus a little while ago. Now, I can't have
anything of that sort going on among my men. You mind _your_ business.
I'll make _him_ mind _his_. But what's it all about, anyway? Why were
you going to fight like roosters at sight?"
Wade looked at his pompous red face and into his eyes with their
yellowish sclerotic, and choked back the recrimination he had intended.
The thought of opening his heart's poor secret by bandying words with
this man made him quiver.
"As well to talk to a Durham bull," he reflected.
"Why, you poor college dude," went on his employer, scornfully, "Colin
MacLeod would break you in two and use you to taller his boots, a piece
in each hand. You're hired to keep books and peddle wangan stuff
according to the prices marked! Keep your place, where you belong. Don't
go to stacking muscle against the boss of the Busters."
The former centre of Burton College's football eleven stiffened his
muscles and set his nails into his palms to keep from hot retort. What
was the use? What did college training avail if it didn't help a
gentleman to hold his tongue at the right time?
"Now, remember what I've told you," ordered Britt, "and I'll go and set
MacLeod to the right-about, so that you won't have to be afraid of him
if you mind your own business."
He went away into the smoking-car. Between the opening and the closing
of the door there puffed out a louder jargon from the orgy. It then
settled into its dull diapason of maudlin voices.
For the rest of the journey, to the end of the forest railroad spur,
Wade sat and looked out into the hopeless and ragged ruin left by the
axes. The sight fitted with his mood. Britt, back from his interview
with MacLeod, and serene in the power of the conscious autocrat, sat by
himself and figured endlessly with a stubby lead-pencil. Wade looked
around only once at the girl. When he did he caught her looking at him,
and she immediately snapped her eyes away indignantly.
At last the engine gave a long shriek that wailed away in echoes among
the stumps. It was a different note from its careless yelps at the
infrequent crossings.
"Here we are!" bellowed Britt, cheerfully, stuffing away his papers and
coming up the car for his little bag. He stopped opposite Wade.
"Remember what I told you about minding your business," he commanded,
brusquely. "You may be a college graduate, but MacLeod is your boss. He
won't hurt you if you keep your place!"
In medicine there are cumulative poisons--the effect of small doses at
intervals amounting in the end to a single large dose.
In matters of heart, temper, and moral restraint there are cumulative
poisons, too. Dwight Wade, struggling up as the train jolted to a halt,
felt that this last insult, coming as it did out of that brusque,
rough-sneering, culture-despising spirit of the woods, exemplified in
Pulaski D. Britt, had put an end to self-restraint.
It was the same brusque, money-worshipping, intolerant spirit of the
woods that sounded in John Barrett's voice when he had sneered at Wade's
pretensions to his daughter's hand. There it was now in those roaring
voices in the smoking-car. And yet he had come to it--hating it--fleeing
from the sight of men of his kind when his little temple of love seemed
closed to him, and the world had jeered at him behind his back! He
looked through the dirty car windows at the little shacks of the
railroad terminus, heard the bellow of voices, gritted his teeth in
ungovernable rage at Britt's last words, and determined to--well, he
hardly knew what he did propose to do.
But it should be something to show them all that he could no longer be
bossed and insulted and jeered at--all in that bumptious, braggadocio,
bucko spirit of the woods!
Both platforms of the cars were swarming with men--men rigged in queer
garb: wool leggings, wool jackets striped off in bizarre colors or
checked like crazy horse-blankets. Each man in sight carried his heavy
brogan shoes hung about his neck.
They were singing in fairly good time, and Wade listened to the words
despite himself:
"Oh, here I come from the Kay-ni-beck,
With my old calk boots slung round my neck
Here we come--yas, a-here we come--
A hundred men and a jug of rum.
WHOOP-fa-dingo!
Old Prong Jones!"
The girl passed Wade, going down the aisle before he left his seat. He
came behind her. But they were obliged to wait at the door. The men
crowded close upon both platforms. Each man had a meal-sack stuffed with
his possessions. They were all elbowing each other, and the result was a
congestion that the kicks of the Honorable Pulaski and the cuffings of
Colin MacLeod did little to break.
The boss of the Busters kept stealing glances at the girl, as though to
challenge her notice, and perhaps her admiration, as she saw him thus a
master of men.
It was then that the spirit of anger and rebellion seething in Dwight
Wade--the cumulative poison of his many insults--stirred him to bitter
provocation in his own turn.
The girl carried a heavy leather suit-case, and now, waiting for the
press of men to escape from the car, she rested it against a seat, and
sighed in weariness and vexation.
With quiet masterfulness Wade took it from her hand and smiled into the
astonished gray eyes that flashed back over her shoulder at him. It was
a smile that not even a maiden, offended as she had been, could resist.
"I will assist you to--to--I believe it is a stage-coach that takes us
on," he said. "Let me do this, so that you won't remember me simply as a
man whose own troubles made him a boor."
MacLeod's look of fury as he saw the act fell full upon them both, and
the girl resented it.
"I thank you," she returned, smiling at her squire with a little
exaggeration of cordiality. And when at last the platforms were cleared
they stepped out, still talking.
All about them men were kneeling, fastening the latchets of their
spike-sole shoes.
"Rod Ide's gal has got a new mash!" hiccoughed one burly chap, leering
at them as they passed. At the instant MacLeod, at their heels, struck
the man brutally across the mouth, shouldered Wade roughly, and spoke
to the girl, his round hat crumpled in his big fist.
"Miss Nina," he stammered, "I'm--I'm sorry for forgetting that you were
in that car awhile back. But you know I ain't used to takin' talk of
that sort. So, let me see you safe aboard the stage, like an old friend
should."
"This gentleman will look after me," said the girl. She tried to be
calm, but her voice trembled. A city woman, confident of the regard due
to woman, would not have feared so acutely. But Nina Ide, bred on the
edge of the forest, was accustomed to see the brute in man spurn
restraint. The passions flaming in the eyes of these two were familiar
to her. She expected little more from the gentleman in the way of
consideration for her feelings than she did from the lumber-jack. "You
go along about your business, Colin," she said, hastily. "I can attend
to mine."
"Give me that!" snarled the boss, his eyes red under their meeting
brows. In his rage he forgot the deference due the woman.
"See if you can take it!" growled back the other. With him the girl was
only the means to the end that his whole nature now lusted for. He
forgot her.
Wade looked for the young giant to strike. But the woods duello has its
vagaries.
MacLeod lifted one heavy shoe and drove its spiked sole down upon Wade's
foot, the brads puncturing the thin leather. With his foe thus anchored,
he clutched for the valise. But ere his victim had time to strike, the
furious, flaming, bristling face of the Honorable Pulaski was between
them, and his elbows, hard as pine knots, drove them apart with wicked
thrustings. As they staggered back the old lumber baron, used to playing
the tyrant mediator, grabbed an axe from the nearest man of the crew.
"I'll brain the one that lifts a finger!" he howled. "What did I tell
you about this? Who is running this crew? Whose money is paying you? Get
back, you hounds!"
Once more, though he gasped in the pure madness of his rage, MacLeod was
cowed by his despot. He turned and began marshalling the crew aboard
great wagons that were waiting at the station.
"You take your seat in that wagon, young man!" roared Britt, shaking
that hateful, hairy fist under Wade's nose. "We'll see about all this
later! Get onto that wagon!"
At the opposite side of the station was the mail-stage, a dusty, rusty
conveyance with a lurching canopy of cracked leather above its four
seats, and four doleful horses waiting the snap of the driver's whip.
Without a word to Britt, Wade led the way to the coach, and set the
suit-case between the seats. He limped as he walked, and his teeth were
set in pain.
He gave his hand to the girl, and she silently accepted the assistance
and took her place in the coach.
Then he turned to meet the fiery gaze of the Honorable Pulaski, who had
followed close on their heels, choking with expletives.
"I reckon I see through this now," he growled. "Tryin' to cut out the
cleanest feller in the Umcolcus with your dude airs! But Rod Ide's girl
ain't to be fooled by city notions. She knows a man when she sees him."
He chucked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of MacLeod, busy
with the laggard men. "Go aboard, and let this be an end of your
meddling, young man."
"You just speak for yourself and attend to your business, Mr. Britt!"
cried the girl, with a spirit that cowed even the tyrant's bluster.
"'Rod Ide's girl,' as you call her, can choose all her own affairs, and
you needn't scowl at me, for I'm not on your pay-roll and I'm not
afraid of you!"
She turned to Wade with real gentleness in her tones.
"I'm afraid he hurt you. It's a rough country up here. If you hadn't
been trying to help me it wouldn't have happened. He had no right to--"
She checked herself suddenly, and her cheeks flamed.
"That wasn't a fair twit about my sticking my nose into your affairs,
Miss Nina," protested Britt, and turning from her he visited his rage
vicariously on his time-keeper, taking him by the arm and starting to
drag him. "I told you to get aboard!" he rasped. "And when my men that I
hire don't do as I tell 'em to do, I kick 'em aboard--and a time-keeper
is no better than a swamper with me when he leaves this railroad. You
want to understand those things and save lots of trouble."
"You take your hand off my arm, Mr. Britt," said the young man. He did
not speak loudly, but there was something in his voice that impressed
the Honorable Pulaski, who knew men.
"Now," resumed Wade, "for reasons of my own and that I don't propose to
explain, I am going to ride to Castonia settlement on this mail-stage."
"It's safe to go on the wagon," persisted Britt, more mildly. "I tell
you, if you mind your own business, I won't let him lick you."
With face gray and rigid at an insult that the old man couldn't
understand, Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, turned his back, and
climbed aboard the coach. The girl moved along to the farther end, and
gropingly and blindly, without thought as to where he was sitting, he
took the place beside her.
He remembered that as they drove away Britt shook that hairy fist at
him, and that some rude roisterer on the wagons lilted some doggerel
about "the chaney man." And through a sort of red mist he saw the face
of Colin MacLeod.
They were miles along the rough road before he looked at the girl. At
the movement of his head she turned her own, and in the piquant face
above the big white bow of the veil he saw real sympathy.
He did not speak, but he looked into her clear eyes--eyes that had the
country girl's spirit and a resourcefulness beyond her years--and from
them he drew a certain comfort.
"Mr. Wade," she said, at last, "I'm only nineteen years old, but up in
Castonia settlement we see what men are without the wrappings on them. I
don't know much about real society, but I've read about it, and I guess
society women get sort of dazzled by the outside polish and don't see
things very clear. But up our way, with what they see of men, girls get
to be women young. You are a college graduate and a school-teacher and
all that, and I'm only nineteen, but--well, it just seems to me I can't
help reaching over like this--"
She patted his arm.
"--And what I feel like saying is, 'Poor boy!'"
There was such vibrant sympathy in her voice that though he set his
teeth, clinched his hands, and summoned all his resolution, his nervous
strain slackened and the tears came into his eyes--tears that had been
slowly welling ever since he had turned from John Barrett's door.
It was woman's attempt at consolation that broke through his restraint.
"I don't blame you much for squizzlin' a little," broke in the
stage-driver, who saw this emotion without catching the conversation.
"He did bring his huck down solid when he stamped. But I've been calked
myself, and a tobacker poultice allus does the business for me--northin'
better for p'isen in a wound."
The chaney man reached his hand to the girl under the shelter of the
seat-back.
"Shake!" he said, simply. "I've come up here to stay awhile, and it's
good to feel that I've got one friend that's--that's a woman."
"And you--" She faltered and paused to listen, lips apart.
"I've come to stay," he repeated, grimly.
He listened too.
Far behind them they heard the dull rumble of the heavy wagons over the
ledges. The raucous howling of the revellers had something wolf-like
about it. It seemed to close the line of retreat. Ahead were the big
woods, looming darkly on the mountain ridges--that vast region of man to
man, and the devil take the weak.
And again he said, not boastingly, but with a quiet setting of his tense
jaw muscles:
"I've come to stay."