AS FOUGHT BEFORE THE "IT-'LL-GIT-YE CLUB"
"We dug him out of his blankets, and hauled him out to the
light--
His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but now he
wanted to fight.
And screaming a string of curses, he struck as he raved and
swore--
Floored Joe Lacrosse and the swamping boss and announced
he was ready for more."
--The Fight at Damphy's.
Civilization sets her last outpost at Castonia in the plate-glass
windows of Rodburd Ide's store. Civilization had some aggravating
experiences in doing this. Four times hairy iconoclasts from the deep
woods came down, gazed disdainfully at these windows as an effort to put
on airs, and smashed them with rocks dug out of the dusty road. Four
times Rodburd Ide collected damages and renewed the windows--and in the
end civilization won out.
Those experienced in such things can tell a Castonia man anywhere by the
pitch of his voice. Everlastingly, Umcolcus pours its window-jarring
white waters through the Hulling Machine's dripping ledges. Here enters
Ragmuff stream, bellowing down the side of Tumbledick, a mountain that
crowds Castonia close to the river. Most of the men of the settlement do
their talking on the platform of Ide's store, with the spray spitting
into their faces and the waters roaring at them. And go where he will, a
Castonia man carries that sound in his ears and talks like a fog-horn.
The satirists of the section call Ide's store platform "The Blowdown."
In the woods a blowdown is a wreck of trees. On Ide's platform the
loafers are the wrecks of men. Here at the edge of the woods, at the
jumping-off place, the forest sets out its grim exhibits and mutely
calls, "Beware!" There are men with one leg, men with one arm, men with
no arms at all; there are men with hands maimed by every vagary of
mischievous axe or saw. There are men with shanks like broomsticks--men
who survived the agonies of freezing. There is always a fresh
subscription-paper hung on the centre post in Ide's store, meekly
calling for "sums set against our names" to aid the latest victim.
Wade, looking at this pathetic array of cripples as he slowly swung
himself over the wheel of the stage, felt that he was in congenial
company; for the foot that MacLeod had so brutally jabbed with his
spikes had stiffened in its shoe. It ached with a dull, rancor-stirring
pain. When he limped across the platform into the store, carrying the
girl's valise, he hobbled ungracefully. The loungers looked after him
with fraternal sympathy.
"The boss spiked him down to the deepo," advised Tommy, slatting sweat
from his forehead with muddy forefinger. "He's the new time-keeper."
"Never heard of the boss calkin' the chaney man before," remarked Martin
McCrackin, rapping his pipe against his peg-leg to dislodge the dottle.
Tommy twisted his face into a prodigious wink, jabbed a thumb over his
shoulder towards the store door, and gazed archly around at the circle
of faces.
"He cut the boss out with the Ide girl!" He whispered this hoarsely.
The listeners looked at the door where Wade and the girl had
disappeared, and then stared at one another. They had viewed the arrival
of the stage with the dull lethargy of the hopelessly stranded. Now they
displayed a reviving interest in life.
"And that was all he done to him--step on his foot?" demanded a thin
man, impatiently twitching the stubs of two arms, off at the elbows.
"Old P'laski got in!" said Tommy, with meaning. "Used his old elbows for
pick-holes and fended Colin off."
"It will git him, though!" said another. He had shapeless stumps of legs
encased in boots like exaggerated whip-sockets.
"You bet it will git him!" agreed McCrackin.
Rodburd Ide, busy, chatty, accommodating little man, trotted out of the
store at this instant with a handful of mail to distribute among his
crippled patrons.
"That's what the river boys call this crowd here," he said, over his
shoulder, to Wade, who followed him. "The 'It-'ll-git-ye Club.' I guess
It _will_ get ye some time up in this section! Here's the last one, Mr.
Wade. Aholiah Belmore--that's the man with the hand done up. Shingle-saw
took half his fin. Well, 'Liah, don't mind! No one ever saw a whole
shingle-sawyer. It's lucky it wasn't a snub-line that got ye. There's
what a snub-line can do, Mr. Wade."
He pointed to the armless man and to the man with the shapeless legs.
"All done at the same time--bight took 'em and wound 'em round the
snub-post."
"And it's a pity it wa'n't our necks instead of our legs and arms,"
growled one of the men--"trimmed like a saw-log and no good to nobody!"
"Never say die--never say die!" chirruped the jovial "Mayor of
Castonia." He threw back his head in his favorite attitude, thrust out
his gray chin beard and tapped his pencil cheerily against the obtrusive
false teeth showing under his smoothly shaven upper lip. "Your
subscription-papers are growing right along, boys. The first thing you
know you'll have enough to buy artificial arms and legs, such as we were
looking at in the advertisements the other day. It beats all what they
can make nowadays--teeth, arms, legs, and everything."
"They can't make new heads, can they?" inquired Tommy Eye, whose mien
was that of a man who had something important to impart and was casting
about for a way to do it gracefully.
"Who needs a new head around here?" smilingly inquired the "mayor."
"Him," jerked out Tommy, pointing to Wade. "Leastwise, he will in about
ten minutes after the boss gits here." And having thus delicately opened
the subject, Tommy's tongue rushed on. "He was good to me when I didn't
know it!" His finger again indicated the time-keeper. "I ain't goin' to
see him done up any ways but in a fair fight. But _he's_ comin'. There's
blood in his eyes and hair on his teeth. I heard him a-talkin' it over
to himself--and he's goin' to kill the 'chaney man' for a-gittin' his
girl away from him. Now," concluded Tommy, with a hysterical catch in
his throat, "if it can be made a fair fight, knuckles up and man to man,
then, says I, here's your fair notice it's comin'. But there's a girl in
it, and girls don't belong in a fair fight--and I'm afeard--I'm afeard!
You'd better run, 'chaney man.'"
Nina Ide was in the door behind her father. Her face was crimson, and
she winked hard to keep the tears of vexed shame back--for the faces of
the loungers told her that Tommy had been imparting other confidences.
She did not dare to steal even a glance at Wade. She was suffering too
much herself from the brutal situation.
"'A girl!' 'His girl!'" repeated Ide, seeing there was something he did
not understand. "Whose--"
"Father!" cried his daughter. And when he would have continued to
question, snapping his sharp eyes from face to face, she stamped her
foot in passion and cried, "Father!" in a manner that checked him. He
stood surveying her with open mouth and staring eyes.
Dwight Wade had fully understood the quizzical glances that were
levelled at him. It was not a time--in this queer assemblage--for the
observance of the rigid social conventions. Taking the father aside
would be misconstrued--and slander would still pursue the girl.
"Mr. Ide," he cried, his eyes very bright and his cheeks flushing, "I
want you and the others to understand this thing. It's all a mistake.
Mr. Britt introduced me to your daughter, and I paid her a few
civilities, such as any young lady might expect to receive. But I seem
to have stirred up a pretty mess. It's a shameful insult to your
daughter--this--this--oh, that man MacLeod must be a fool!"
"He is!" said the girl, indignantly.
"And he's a fighter," muttered Tommy Eye.
Rodburd Ide clutched his beard and blinked his round eyes, much
perplexed.
"It isn't a very nice thing, any way you look at it--this having two
young men scrapping through this region about my girl. It isn't that I
don't expect her to get some attention, but this is carrying attention
too far." He took her by the arm and led her to one side. "Nina, there
is nothing between you and Colin MacLeod?"
"Nothing, father. We have danced together at the hall, and he has walked
home with me--and that's the only excuse he has for making a fool of
himself in this way."
"And--and this new man, here?"
"I never saw him till this very day! And he's in love with John
Barrett's daughter. Oh, what an idiot MacLeod is! This stranger will
think we're all fools up here!" Tears of rage and shame filled her eyes.
Ide's gaze, wandering from her face to Wade and then to the loafers, saw
one of Britt's great wagons topping the distant rise, and he heard a
wild chorus of hailing yells.
"You run up to the house, girl," he said.
"I'll not," she replied. And when he began to frown at her she clasped
his arm with both her hands and murmured: "He's a stranger and a
gentleman, father, and they're abusing him. He is nothing to me. He's in
love with another girl. It was through being obliging and kind to me
that this horrible mistake has been made. Now, I'll not run away and
leave him to suffer any more."
Rodburd Ide, an indulgent father, scratched his nose reflectively.
"It isn't the style of the Ide family to leave friends on the chips,
Nina," he said--"not even when they're brand new friends. We know what
an ingoing lumber crew is, and he probably doesn't, and it's the green
man that always gets the worst of it. So I'll tell you what to do:
Invite him up to the house, and you entertain him until P'laski and I
can get this thing smoothed over."
Tommy Eye, hovering near in piteous trepidation lest his kindly offices
should miscarry, overheard the invitation that father and daughter
extended to the young man, who was gloomily eying the approach of the
wagon.
"Yess'r, they've got the right of it," stammered Tommy, unluckily.
"You'll git it if ye don't--and the 'It-'ll-git-ye Club' will see ye git
it. Ye'd best run!"
Wade looked into the flushed face of the girl, at the officious father
of commiserating countenance, and at the loungers who had heard Tommy's
condescending counsel and were looking at him with a sort of scornful
pity.
Again that strange, sullen, gnawing rage at the general attitude of the
world seized upon him. He felt a bristling at the back of his neck and
in his hair--the primordial bristling of the beast's mane.
"It is kind of you to invite a stranger," he said, "but I fear that
among these peculiar people even that kindness would be misconstrued. I
belong with Britt's crew. I'll stay here."
There was that in his voice which checked further appeal. The girl stood
back against the wall of the store.
The Honorable Pulaski was the first off the wagon, and he greeted Ide
with rough cordiality. When the latter began to whisper rapidly in his
ear, he shook his head.
"I've wasted a good deal of valuable time and some temper holding those
two young fools apart to-day," he snapped. "The last thing MacLeod
wanted to do was to lick me. Now, I'm too old to be mixed up in love
scrapes. I'm going over to measure that spool stock, and the one that's
alive when I get back, I'll load him onto the wagon and we'll keep on up
the river." He strode away, leaving the "mayor" champing his false teeth
in resentful disappointment.
But the autocrat of Castonia had a courage of his own. He set back his
head and marched up to MacLeod, who was standing in the middle of the
road, his jacket thrown back, his thumbs in his belt.
"Colin," he demanded, indifferent as to listeners, "what's all this
about my girl? Can't she come along home, minding her own business like
the good girl that she is, without a fuss that has set all the section
wagging tongues? I thought you were a different chap from this!"
"He had his lie made up when he got here, did he?" growled MacLeod.
"I believe what my own girl says," the father retorted.
"So he's got as far as that, has he? I tell ye, Rod Ide, if you don't
know enough--don't care enough about your own daughter to keep her out
of the clutches of a cheap masher like that--the kind I've seen many a
time before--then--it's where I grab in. Ye'll live to thank me for it.
I say, ye will! You don't know what you're talking about now. But you'll
know your friends in the end."
He put up one arm, stiffened it against Ide's breast, and slowly but
relentlessly pushed him aside.
Viewed in the code of larrigan-land, the situation was one that didn't
admit of temporizing or mediation. The set faces of the men who looked
on showed that the trouble between these two, brooding through the hours
of that long day, was now to be settled. As for his men, Colin MacLeod
had his prestige to keep--and a man who had suffered a stranger to carry
off the girl he loved without fitting rebuke could have no prestige in a
lumber camp. And it was prestige that made him worth while, made him a
boss who could get work out of men.
The uncertain quantity in the situation was the stranger.
With one movement of heads, all eyes turned to him.
He was not a woodsman, and they expected from him something different
from the usual duello of the woods.
They got it!
For instead of waiting for the champion of the Umcolcus to take the
initiative, this city man calmly walked off the store platform at this
juncture and bearded the champion.
"And there ye have it--two bucks and one doe!" grunted old Martin. "The
same old woods wrassle."
The boss dropped his hands at his side as the time-keeper approached. He
grinned evilly when he noted the limp. Wade came close and spoke without
anger.
"I see you are still determined to be a fool, MacLeod. I want no trouble
with you. Aren't you willing to settle all this fuss like a man?"
"That's what I'm here for," replied the boss, with grim significance.
"Then go and offer an apology to that young lady. Do it, and I'll cancel
the one you owe to me."
If Wade had been seeking to provoke, he could have chosen no more
unfortunate words.
"Apology!" howled MacLeod. "Do ye hear it, boys? Talkin' to me like I
was a Micmac and didn't know manners! Here's an Umcolcus apology for ye,
ye putty-faced dude!"
His lunge was vicious, but in his contempt for his adversary it was
wholly unguarded. A woodsman's rules of battle are simple. They can be
reduced to the single precept: Do your man! Knuckles, butting head, a
kick like a game-cock with the spiked boots, grappling and choking--not
one is called unfair. MacLeod simply threw himself at his foe. It was
blood-lust panting for the clutch of him.
Those who told it afterwards always regretfully said it was not a
fight--not a fight as the woods looks at such diversions. No one who saw
it knew just how it happened. They simply saw that it had happened.
[Illustration: "WADE STOOD ABOVE THE FALLEN FOE"]
To the former football centre of Burton it was an opening simple as "the
fool's gambit" in chess. His tense arms shot forward, his hands clasped
the wrists of the flying giant with snaps like a steel trap's clutch,
his head hunched between his shoulders, he went down and forward,
tugging at the wrists, and by his own momentum MacLeod made his helpless
somersault over the college man's broad back.
And as he whirled, up lunged the shoulders in a mighty heave, and the
woodsman fell ten feet away--fell with the soggy, inert, bone-cracking
thud that brings a groan involuntarily from spectators. He lay where he
fell, quivered after a moment, rolled, and his right arm twisted under
his body in sickening fashion.
The girl gave a sharp cry, gathered her skirts about her, and ran away
up the street.
"He's got it!" said 'Liah Belmore, with the professional decisiveness of
the "It-'ll-git-ye Club."
"I've read about them things bein' done by the Dagoes in furrin' parts,"
remarked Martin McCrackin, gazing pensively on the prostrate boss, "but
I never expected to see it done in a woods fight."
There was silence then for a moment--a silence so profound that the
breathing of the spectators could be heard above the summer-quieted
murmur of the Hulling Machine. Wade walked over and stood above the
fallen foe. He was not gainsaid. Woods decorum forbids interference in a
fair fight.
As he stood there a rather tempestuous arrival broke the tenseness of
the situation. From the mouth of a woods road leading into the tangled
mat of forest at the foot of Tumbledick came a little white stallion
drawing a muddy gig.
Under the seat swung a battered tin pail in which smouldered dry fungi,
giving off a trail of smoke behind--the smudge pail designed to rout the
black-flies of summer and the "minges" of the later season.
An old man drove--an old man, whose long white hair fluttered from under
a tall, pointed, visorless wool cap with a knitted knob on its apex.
Whiskers, parted by his onrush, streamed past his ears.
He pulled up so suddenly in front of Ide's store that his little
stallion skated along in the dust.
"Hullo," he chirped, cocking his head to peer, "Cole MacLeod down!"
He whirled, leaped off the back of the seat, and ran nimbly to the
prostrate figure.
"Broken!" he jerked, fumbling the arm. "No--no! Out of joint!"
"Let the man alone," commanded Wade. "He'll need proper attendance."
"Proper attendance!" shrilled the little old man, with snapping eyes.
"Proper attendance! And I guess that you haven't travelled much that you
don't know me. Here, two of you, come and sit on this man! I'll have him
right in a jiffy. Don't know me, eh?" He again turned a scornful gaze on
the time-keeper. "Prophet Eli, the natural bone-setter, mediator between
the higher forces and man, disease eradicator, the 'charming man'--I
guess this is your first time out-doors! Here, two of you come and hold
Cole MacLeod!"
When Wade, knitting his brows, manifested further symptoms of
interference, Rodburd Ide took him by the arm and led him aside.
"Let the old man alone," he said. "He'll know what to do. A little
cracked, but he knows medicine better than half the doctors that ever
got up as far as this."
They heard behind them a dull snap and a howl of pain from MacLeod.
"There she goes back," said Ide. "He's lived alone on Tumbledick for
twenty years, and I suppose there's a story back of him, but we never
found it out this way. We just call him Prophet Eli and listen to his
predictions and drink his herb tea and let him set broken bones and
charm away disease--and there's no kick coming, for he will never take a
cent from any one."
Four men had carried MacLeod to the wagon. His forehead was bleeding but
he was conscious, for the sudden wrench and bitter pain of the
dislocated shoulder had stirred his faculties.
"Well, you've had it out, have you?" demanded the Honorable Pulaski,
coming around the corner of the store and taking in the scene. "What did
I tell you, MacLeod? Listen to me next time!"
"And you listen to me, too!" squalled MacLeod, his voice breaking like a
child's. "This thing ain't over! It's me or him, Mr. Britt. If he goes
in with your crew, I stay out. If you want him, you can have him, but
you can't have me. And you know what I've done with your crews!"
"You don't mean that, Colin," blustered Britt.
"God strike me dead for a liar if I don't."
"It's easier to get time-keepers than it is bosses," said the Honorable
Pulaski, with the brisk decision natural to him. He whirled on Wade.
"You'd better go home, young man. You're too much of a royal Bengal
tiger to fit a crew of mine." He turned his back and began to order his
men aboard the tote teams.
Wade stood looking after them as the wagons "rucked" away, his face
working with an emotion he could not suppress.
"Well, that's Pulaski all over!" remarked Ide at his elbow. "He'll fell
a saw-log across a brook any time so as to get across without wetting
his feet, and then go off and leave the log there."
He stood back and looked the young man over from head to feet, with the
shrewd eye of one appraising goods.
"Mr. Wade," he said, at last, "will you step into my back office with me
a moment?"
When they were there, the store-keeper perched himself on a high stool,
hooked his toes under a round, thrust his face forward, and said:
"Here's my business, straight and to the point. I'm a little something
in the lumbering line up this way, myself. What with land, stumpage
rights, and tax titles I've got two townships, but they're off the main
river, and I haven't done much with 'em. I'm going to be honest, and
admit I can't do much with 'em so long as Britt and his gang control
roll-dams, flowage, and the water for the driving-pitch the way they do.
They haven't got the law with 'em, but that makes no difference to that
crowd, the way they run things. Now, you don't know the logging
business, but a bright chap like you can learn it mighty quick. And
you've shown to-day that there are some things you don't have to learn,
and that's how to handle men--and that's the big thing in this country
as things are now. What I want to ask you, fair and plain, is, do you
want a job?"
"What, as a prize-fighter?" asked the young man, surlily.
"No, s'r, but as a boss that can boss, and has got the courage to hold
up his end on this river! I know this all sounds as though I were
temporarily out of my head in a business way, but you've made a
reputation in the last half hour here that's worth ten thousand to the
man that hires you. There's money in the lumbering business, Mr. Wade.
The men that are in it right are getting rich. But you've got to get
into it picked end to. Here's the way you and I are fixed: you might
wait for ten years and not find the opportunity I'm offering you. I
might wait ten years and not find just the man I could afford to take in
with me. I've sized you. I know what sort your references will be when I
ask for 'em. You seem right. Are you interested enough to listen to
figures?"
And then Ide, accepting amazed silence as assent, rattled off into his
details. At the end of half an hour Wade was listening with a new gleam
of resolution in his eyes. At the end of an hour he was blotting his
signature at the bottom of a preliminary article of agreement that was
to serve until a lawyer could draw one more ample.
"And now," said Ide, slamming his safe door and whirling the knob,
"it's past supper-time and my folks are waitin'. And it's settled
that you stay. I say, it's settled! Where else would you stop in this
God-forsaken bunch of shacks? I've got a big house and something to eat.
Come along, Mr. Wade! I'm hungry, and we'll do the rest of our talkin'
on the road."
The young man followed him without a word. And thus entered Dwight Wade
into the life of Castonia, and into the battle of strong men in the
north woods.
In front of the store, as they issued, the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" was
still in session, as though waiting for something. They got what they
were waiting for.
"Boys," announced their satisfied "mayor," "I want to introduce to you
my new partner, Mr. Dwight Wade--though he don't really need any
introduction in this region after to-day. Bub!" he called to a
youngster, "get a wheelbarrow and carry Mr. Wade's duffle up to my
house." He pointed to the young man's meagre baggage that had been
thrown off the tote wagon.
As Wade turned away he caught the keen eye of Prophet Eli fixed on him.
The eye was a bit wild, but there was humor there, too. And the cracked
falsetto of the old man's voice followed him as he walked away beside
his new sponsor:
"Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain,
Shang, ro-ango, whango-wey!
And as he was feelin' salutatious,
Chased old Pratt a mile, by gracious,
Licked old Shep and two dog Towsers,
Then marched back home with old Pratt's trousers.
Whango-whey!"
"Yes, as I was tellin' you a spell ago--just a little cracked!"
apologized Ide. "There's my house, there! The one with the tower. It
would look better to me, Mr. Wade, if only my wife had lived to enjoy it
with me." But his eyes lighted at sight of his daughter. She was
standing at the gate waiting for them. "Her own mother over again, and
the best girl in the whole north country, sir! It was man's work you did
there to-day for the sake of my girl and her good name--I only wish her
father had the muscle to do as much for her." He stretched out his puny
arms and shook his head wistfully. "But there's one thing I can do, Mr.
Wade. It can't be said that Rod Ide stood by and saw you get thrown out
of a job for his daughter's sake, and didn't make it square with you!"
"Is that the reason you are offering this partnership to me?" inquired
the young man, his pride taking alarm.
"No, sir!" replied the little man, with emphasis. But he added, out of
his honesty: "It's straight business between us, sir, but it wouldn't be
human nature if your best recommendation to me wasn't the fact that
you've done for my girl the service that her father ought to have done,
and I'm not goin' to try to separate that from our business. But before
I get done talking with you, I'll show you that by the time you've
helped me to win out against Pulaski Britt and old King Spruce you'll
have earned your share in this partnership."
And then, with an air that was distinctly triumphant, he pushed Wade
ahead of him through the gate, chatting voluble explanation to a girl
who listened with a welcoming light in her gray eyes. It was a light
that cheered a roving young man who had acquired friends by such a
dizzying train of circumstances.
They talked until far into the night, he and Rodburd Ide.
The next day Christopher Straight was called into the conference.
"There ain't any part of the north country that Christopher don't know,"
eulogized Ide, caressing the woodsman's arm. "Forty years trapper,
guide, and explorer--that's his record."
Wade gazed into the quiet eyes of the veteran as he grasped his hand,
and needed no further recommendation than the look old Christopher
returned. There are few men in the world with such appealing qualities
as those who have passed their lives in the woods and know what the
woods mean. Wade realized now, after his talk with Ide, the nature of
the task that he faced. Knowing that Christopher Straight was to be his
companion and guide, he was heartened, having seen the man.
And with intense eagerness to be away, he completed his modest
preparations for the exploring trip, and set forth towards the great
unknown of the north. He had Rodburd Ide's parting hand-clasp for
reassurance, his daughter's sincere godspeed for his comfort, and the
chance to do battle for his love. And he walked with Christopher
Straight with head erect and a heart full of new hope.