DURING THE PUGWASH HANG-UP
"With eddies and rapids it's middlin' tough,
To worry a log-drive through.
But to manage a woman is more than enough
For a West Branch driving crew."
--Leeboomook Song.
Just how Tommy Eye escaped so nimbly from the ruck of the fight at the
foot of Pugwash Hill he never knew nor understood, his wits not being of
the clearest that day--and the others being too busy to notice.
But he did escape. One open-handed buffet sent him reeling into and
through some wayside bushes. He sat on his haunches on the other side a
moment like a jack-rabbit and surveyed the stirring scene, and then made
for higher ground. At the end of an enervating sixty-days' sentence in
the county jail--his seventeenth summer "on the bricks" for the same old
bibulous cause; second offence, and no money left to pay the fine--Tommy
did not feel fit for the fray.
He sat on a bowlder at the top of the rise for a little while and gazed
down on them--the hundred men of "Britt's Busters," bound in for the
winter cutting on Umcolcus waters. They were fighting aimlessly, "mixing
it up" without any special vindictiveness, and Tommy, an expert in
inebriety, sagely concluded that they were too drunk to furnish
amusement. So he rolled over the bowlder and nestled down to ease his
headache, knowing, as a teamster should know, that Britt's tote wagons
were to hold up at the Pugwash for a half-hour's rest and bait.
For that matter, a fight at the Pugwash was no novel incident--not for
Tommy Eye, at least, veteran of many a woods campaign.
The hang-up at the hill is a teamster's rule as ancient as the tote
road.
And the fight of the ingoing crew is as regular as the halt. All the way
from the end of the railroad the men have been crowded on the wagons,
with nothing to do but express personal differences of opinion. Every
other man is a stranger to his neighbor, for employment offices do not
make a specialty of introductions. As the principal matter of argument
on the tote wagons is which is the best man, the Pugwash Hill wait,
where there is soft ground and elbow-room, makes a most inviting
opportunity to settle disputes and establish an _entente cordiale_ that
will last through all the winter.
Two other men--two men who had been on the outskirts of the fray from
its beginning--came leisurely up the hill, and sat down on the bowlder
behind which was couched Tommy Eye.
One was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt; the other was Colin MacLeod.
The Honorable Pulaski tucked the end of a big cigar into the opening in
his bristly gray beard where his mouth was hidden, and lighted it. As an
after-thought he offered one to MacLeod. The young man, his elbows on
his knees, his flushed face turned aside, shook his head sullenly.
"Well, you're having a run of cuss-foolishness that even our champion
fool, Tommy Eye himself, couldn't match," snorted the old man, rolling
his tongue around his cigar.
Tommy, behind the rock, tipped one ear up out of the moss.
"Here you go pouncing into that car to-day, where my new time-keeper
was, and go to picking a fuss with him, and--"
"He was the one that started it, Mr. Britt," said the boss, in the dull
monotone of one who has said the same thing many times before.
"Don't bluff me!" snapped the Honorable Pulaski. "You were gossiping
over a lot of his private business with that Ide girl--and bringing me
into it, too. You can't fool me! Old Jeff back in the car heard it all.
The young feller had a right to put in an oar to stop you, and he did
it, and I'll back him in it."
"Yes, and you went and introduced him to Miss Ide--that's some more of
your backin'," said MacLeod, bitterly.
"Just common politeness--just common politeness!" cried Britt, waving
his cigar impatiently. "That girl hasn't said she'd marry you, has she?
No! I knew she hadn't. Well, she's got a right to talk with nice young
men that I introduce to her, and there's nothing to it to make a fuss
over, MacLeod--only common politeness. You're making a fool of yourself,
and setting the girl herself against you by acting jealous like that
before the face and eyes of every one. That's enough time and talk
wasted on girls. Now, quit it, and get your mind on your work. You
understand that I won't have any more of this scrapping in my crew."
With a blissful disregard of consistency, he gazed through smoke-clouds
down at the men below, who were listlessly exchanging blows or rolling
on the ground, locked in close embrace.
MacLeod stood up, and tugged the collar of his wool jacket away from his
throat.
"I ain't much of a man to talk my business over with any one, Mr.
Britt," he said. "But you are putting this thing on a business basis,
and you don't have the right to do it. I ain't engaged to Nina Ide, and
I 'ain't asked her to be engaged to me, for the time 'ain't come right
yet. But there ain't nobody else in God's world goin' to have her but
me. She ain't too good for me, even if her father is old Rod Ide. I'll
have money some day myself. I've got some now. I can buy the clothes
when I need 'em, if that's all that a girl likes. But it ain't all they
like--not the kind of a girl like Nina Ide is. She knows a man when she
sees him. She knows that I'm a man, square and straight, and one that
loves her well enough to let her walk on him, and that's the kind of a
man for a girl born and bred on the edge of the woods."
He drew up his lithe, tall body, and snapped his head to one side with
almost a click of the rigid neck.
"Along comes that college dude," he snarled, "just thrown over by a city
girl and lookin' for some one else to make love to, and he cuts in"--his
voice broke--"you see what he done, Mr. Britt! He helped her off the
train before I could get there. He put her on the stage, and rode away
with her while you were makin' me handle the men. And he's ridin' with
her now, damn him, and he's a-talkin' with her and laughin' at me behind
my back!" He shook both fists at the road to Castonia settlement,
winding over the hill, and there were tears on his cheeks.
"He probably isn't laughing very much," replied Britt, dryly. "Not since
you plugged that spike boot of yours down on his foot there on the depot
platform. A nasty trick, MacLeod, that was."
"I wish I'd 'a' ground it off," muttered the boss. He struck his spikes
against the bowlder with such force that a stream of fire followed the
kick.
"He can't do it--he can't do it, Mr. Britt! He can't steal her! I've
loved her too long, and I'll have her. You just gave off your orders to
me about fighting. You don't say anything to those cattle down there
fighting about nothin'. You let them settle their troubles. Here I am!"
He struck his breast. "For five years, first up in the dark of the
mornin', last to bed in the dark of the night. I've sweat and swore and
frozen in the slush and snow and sleet, driving your crew to make money
for you. And I've waded from April till September, I've broken jams and
taken the first chance in the white water, so that I could get your
drive down ahead of the rest. And now, when it comes to a matter of hell
and heaven for me, you tell me I can't stand like a man for my own. You
call it wastin' time!"
He bent over the Honorable Pulaski, his face purple, his eyes red. Britt
took out his cigar and held it aside to blink up at this disconcerting
young madman.
"I tell you, you are taking chances, Mr. Britt. You have bradded me on,
and told me that a man of the woods always gets what he wants if he goes
after it right. Twice to-day you have stood between me and what I want.
You've let a college dude take the sluice ahead of me. I know you pay me
my money, but don't you do that again. I'm going to have that girl, I
say! The man that steps in ahead of me, he's goin' to die, Mr. Britt,
and the man that steps between me and that man, when I'm after him, he
dies, too. And if that sounds like a bluff, then you haven't got Colin
MacLeod sized up right, that's all!"
The Honorable Pulaski winked rapidly under the other's savage regard. He
knew when to bluster and he knew when to palter.
"MacLeod," he said, at last, getting up off the rack with a grunt, "what
a man that works for me does in the girl line is none of my business.
But after that kind of brash talk I might suggest to you that a cell in
state-prison isn't going to be like God's out-doors that you're roaming
around in now."
The boss sneered contemptuously.
"Furthermore, this college dude, that you are talking about as though he
were a water-logged jill-poke, was something in the football line when
he was in college--I don't know what, for I don't know anything about
such foolishness--but, anyway, from what I hear, it was up to him to
break the most arms and legs, and he did it, I understand. This is only
in advice, MacLeod--only in advice," he cried, flapping a big hand to
check impatient interruption. "You saw when Tommy Eye, the drunken fool,
fell under the train at the junction to-day, as he is always doing, that
feller Wade picked him up with one hand and lugged him like a pound of
sausage-meat--saved the fool's life, and didn't turn a hair over it. So,
talk a little softer about killing, my boy, and, best of all, wait till
you find out that he wants the girl or the girl wants _you_!"
He walked down the hill.
"Go to blazes with your advice, you old fool!" growled MacLeod, under
his breath. "He's lookin' for it; he's achin' for it! He gave me a look
to-day that no man has given me in ten years and had eyes left open to
look a second time. He'll get it!"
As he turned to follow his employer he saw the recumbent Tommy, and went
out of his way far enough to give him a vicious kick.
"Get onto the wagons, you rum-keg, or you'll walk to Castonia!"
"Be jigged if I won't walk!" groaned Tommy, surveying the retreating
back of the boss with sudden weak hatred. "So there was a man who saved
my life to-day when I didn't know it! And there was another man who
kicked me when I did know it! It's the chaney man he's after, and the
chaney man was good to me! I'll make a fair fight of it if my legs hold
out, and that's all any man could do."
The horses were still munching fodder, and the gladiators, thankful for
an excuse to stop the fray, were stupidly listening to a harangue by the
Honorable Pulaski, who was explaining what would be allowed and what
would not be allowed in his camps.
Tommy Eye ducked around the bushes and took the road with a woodsman's
lope, his wobbly knees getting stronger as the exercise cleared his
brain.
A woodman's lope is not impressive, viewed with a sprinter's eye. Nor is
a camel's stride. But either is a great devourer of distance. So it
happened that Tommy Eye, sweat-streaked and breathing hard, caught up
with the sluggish Castonia stage while it was negotiating the last
rock-strewn hill a half-mile outside the settlement.
Dwight Wade, time-keeper of the Busters, heard the stertorous puffing,
and looked around to see Tommy Eye clinging to the muddy axle and towing
behind. Tommy divided an amiable and apologetic grin between Wade and
the girl beside him.
"I'm only--workin' out--the--the budge!" Tommy explained, between the
jerks of the wagon. "Don't mind me!"
Down the half-mile of dusty declivity into Castonia, the only smooth
road between the railroad and the settlement, the stage made its usual
gallant dash with chuckling axle-boxes and the spanking of splay hoofs.
And Tommy Eye came limply slamming on behind.