SHARPENING TEETH ON PULASKI BRITT'S WHETSTONE
"The people in the city felt the shock of it that day.
And they said, in solemn gloom,
'The drive is in the boom,
And O'Connor's drawn his wages; clear the track and give
him room.'"
For a long time they rode side by side on the jumper without a word. Mr.
Ide decided that his reticent companion was pondering a plan for the
approaching interview, and was careful not to interrupt the train of
thought. He was infinitely disappointed and not a little vexed when Wade
turned to him at last and inquired, with plain effort to make his voice
calm, whether John Barrett had recovered sufficiently to go home.
"He? He went two weeks ago--he and his girl," snapped the little man,
impatiently.
After a moment he began to dig at the buttons of his fur coat, and
dipped his hand into his breast-pocket. He brought out a letter.
"Here's a line Barrett's girl left to be sent in to you the first
chance." He met the young man's reproachful gaze boldly. "When a man's
got real business to attend to," he snorted, "he ain't to blame if he
disremembers tugaluggin' a love-letter." He gave the missive into Wade's
hands, and went on, discontentedly: "What kind of a crazy-headed
performance was it those girls was up to when they came up into these
woods? I've had too much on my mind to try to get it out of my girl, and
probably I couldn't, anyway, if she took a notion not to tell me. She
has her own way about everything, just as her mother did before her," he
grumbled.
"I have no possible right to discuss Miss Nina Ide's movements, even
with her father. Miss Barrett's affairs are wholly her own. May I read
my letter?"
"May you read it?" blurted Ide, missing the delicacy of this
conventional request. "What in tophet do you think I've got to do with
your readin' your own letters?" And he subsided into offended silence,
seeking to express in this way his general dissatisfaction with events
as they were disposing themselves.
Though the cold wind stung bitterly, Wade held the open letter in his
bare hands, for he longed for the touch of the paper where her hand had
rested.
"MY DEAR DWIGHT,--We are going home. The darkness has not lifted
from us. For my light and my comfort I look into the north, where I
know your love is shining. My sister was sitting by my father's
side when I returned, and he was awake from his long dream and knew
her, but he had not spoken the truth to her, and if she knows she
has not told. And the cloud of it all is over us, and I cannot
speak to him or open my heart to him. He did not even ask where I
had been. It is as though he feared one word would dislodge the
avalanche under which he shrinks. And I have to write this of my
father! So we are going home. Love me. I need all your love. Take
all of mine in return."
When Wade folded it he found Rodburd Ide studying his face with shrewd
side glance.
"Have you any idea what 'Stumpage John' is goin' to do with the other
one--the left-hand one?" he inquired, blandly. "Favor each other
considerably, don't they? It told the story to me the first time I saw
them together, after the right-hand one got there to my place. You can't
hardly blame John for not takin' the left-hand one out with him, same as
my girl sort of expected he would, same as his own girl did, too, I
reckon."
"Did he say anything to--" stammered Wade, and hesitated.
"Nothin' to me," returned the magnate of Castonia, briskly. "Didn't have
to. Knowed I knew. Day he left he tramped up and down the river-bank for
more'n two hours, and then come to me with his face about the color of
the Hullin' Machine froth and asked me to call the girl Kate into the
back office of my store. I wasn't tryin' to listen or overhear, you
understand, but I heard him stutter somethin' about takin' her out of
the woods and puttin' her in school, and she braced back and put her
hands on her hips and broke in and told him to go to hell."
"What?" shouted Wade, in utter astonishment.
"Oh, not in them words," corrected Ide. "But that's what it come to so
far as meanin' went. And then she sort of spit at him, and walked out
and back to my house."
He clapped the reins smartly on the flank of the lagging horse, as
though this sort of conversation wasted time, and added: "She's still at
my house, and the girl says she's goin' to stay there--so I guess that
settles it. Now let's get down to some business that amounts to
somethin'! What are you goin' to say to Pulaski Britt?"
But if Dwight Wade knew, he did not say. He sat bowed forward, hands
between his knees, the letter between his palms, his jaw muscles ridged
under the tan of his cheeks, and so the long ride ended in silence.
When they were once in the Jerusalem cutting it was not necessary to
search long for the Honorable Pulaski Britt, ex-State senator. They
heard him bellowing hoarsely, and a moment later were looking down on
him from the top of a ramdown. A pair of horses were floundering in the
deep snow, one of them "cast" and tangled in the harness. The teamster
stood at one side holding the reins helplessly. The snow was spotted
with blood.
"You've let that horse calk himself, you beef-brained son of a
bladder-fish!" roared Britt. "You ain't fit to drive a rockin'-horse
with wooden webbin's!" He dove upon the struggling animal, and, hooking
his great fists about the bit-rings, dragged the horse to his feet.
"Stripped to the fetlocks!" mourned the owner. He surveyed the bleeding
leg and whirled on the teamster. "That's the second pair you've put out
of business for me in a week. Me furnishing hundred-and-fifty-dollar
horses for you to paint the snow with!" He ploughed across to where the
man stood holding the reins, and struck him full in the face, and the
fellow went down like a log, blood flying from his face. "Mix some of
your five-cent blood with blood that's worth something!" he yelped. "If
there's got to be rainbow-snow up this way, I know how to furnish it
cheaper."
"That's a nice, interestin' gent down there for you to tackle just now
on your business proposition," observed Ide, sourly. "Now, suppose you
use common-sense, and turn around and go back to Enchanted!"
But the Honorable Pulaski suddenly heard the jangle of their
jumper-bell, and stared up at them.
"Gettin' lessons on how to run a crew, Ide?" he asked. And seeing that
the teamster was up and fumbling blindly at the tangled harness, he
advanced up the slope. "I 'ain't ever forgiven you for takin' Tommy Eye
away from me. That man's a _teamster_! It was a nasty trick, and perhaps
your young whelp of a partner there has found out enough about woods
law by this time to understand it."
"Mr. Britt--" began Wade.
"I don't want to talk to you at all!" snapped the tyrant, flapping his
hand in protest.
"Nor I to you!" retorted Wade, in sudden heat. "But as Mr. Ide's partner
I have taken charge of the woods end of our operation, and I've got
business to talk with you. We haven't begun to land our logs yet
because--"
"It's a wonder to me that you've got any cut down, you dude!" snorted
Britt, contemptuously.
"Because we haven't had an understanding about the drive," went on the
young man, trying to keep his temper. "Now, about logs coming down
Enchanted and into Jerusalem--"
"You'll pay drivin' fees for every stick."
"And you'll take our drive with yours?"
"No, sir. I won't put the iron of a pick-pole into a log with your mark
on it!" declared Britt.[5]
[Footnote 5: Lest the remarkable attitude of the Honorable Pulaski D.
Britt be considered an improbable resource of fiction, the author
hastens to state that the Maine legislature, in considering the repeal
of a log-driving charter, had exactly this situation submitted to it.]
"Mr. Britt," said Wade, his voice trembling in the stress of his
emotions, "as an operator in this section, as a man who is asking you
straight business questions as courteously as I know how, I am entitled
to decent treatment, and it will be better for all of us if I get it."
"Threats, hey?" demanded Britt, malignantly.
"No threats, sir. If you won't take our drive for the usual fees and
guarantee its delivery, will you let us drive it independently?"
"Not with my water--and you'll pay fees just the same!"
"_Your_ water! Who made you the boss of God's rains and rivers? Have you
any charter, giving you the right to turn the State waters of Blunder
Lake from their natural outlet and keep everybody else from using them?"
Britt clacked his finger in his hard palm and blurted contemptuous
"Phuh!" through his beard.
"Show me any such charter, Mr. Britt, or tell me where to find the
record of it, and I'll accept the law."
"Hell on your law!" cried the tyrant of the Umcolcus.
"Aren't you willing to let the law decide it, Mr. Britt?"
"Hell on your law!"
Three times more did Wade, his face burning in his righteous anger, his
voice trembling with passion, ask the question. Three times did the
Honorable Pulaski Britt fling those four words of maddening insult back
at him. And Wade, his face going suddenly white, snatched the reins from
Ide's hands, struck the horse, whirled him into the trail, and drove
away madly. Down the aisles of the forest followed those four words as
long as Pulaski Britt felt that their iteration could reach the ears of
listeners.
"So you finished your business with him, did you?" inquired Ide, at
last, allowing himself, as a true prophet, a bit of a sneer.
"I got just what I went after," snarled the young man. "I got in four
words the fighting rules of these woods, explained by the head devil of
them all, and, by ----, if that's the only way for an honest man to save
his skin up here, they can have the fight on those lines! Take the
reins, Mr. Ide; I want to straighten this thing in my mind."
Little passed between them on the return journey, but they talked far
into the night, leaning towards each other across the little splint
table in the office camp.
The next morning they climbed the side of Enchanted, following the main
road that had been swamped to Enchanted Stream. On the upper slopes they
came upon the log-yards, and heaps of great, stripped spruces piled
ready for the sleds. Farther up the slopes they heard the monotonous
"whush-wish" of the cross-cut saws and the crackling crash of falling
trees.
In the Maine woods it is not the practice to haul to landings until the
tree crop is practically all down and yarded on the main roads. This
practice in the case of the Enchanted operation that winter was
providential; for in the conference of the night before Rodburd Ide and
his partner had definitely abandoned Enchanted Stream. That decision
left them the alternative of Blunder Stream. It was the only plan that
fitted with Rodburd Ide's new hopes based on the log contract in his
breast-pocket. For months he had dimly foreseen this crisis without
clear conception as to how it was to be met. But the possibilities of
the gamble had fascinated him.
In his calculations he had tried to keep prudence to the fore. But he
had been waiting so long that at last prudence became dizzy in the swirl
of possibilities. He had never intended to make Dwight Wade his mere
cat's-paw. But the vehement courage of that sturdy young man, as
displayed in the battle of Castonia, had touched something in Rodburd
Ide's soul. All through his quiet life he had seen might and mastery
make money out of the woods. And so at last he himself ventured,
trusting much to the might and mastery he found in this self-reliant
young gentleman whom Fate had flung into his life. Gasping at the
boldness of it, he was willing that the whole winter's cut of the
Enchanted operation should be landed upon Blunder Stream. That there was
a way to get their water he admitted to himself, but he did not dare to
think much upon the means. Dwight Wade, driven by fierce anger against
Pulaski Britt, who blocked his way to the girl whom his own hands could
win but for Britt, smote the splint table and declared that there should
be a spring flood in Blunder Stream.
"And if you fear lawsuits, being a man of property, Mr. Ide, you should
not know what I intend to do. You may be held as a partner. Dissolve
that partnership. You may be held as an employer. Discharge me when this
log-cut is landed. Protect yourself. I have only my two hands for them
to attach."
The little man blinked at him admiringly, and then patted his shoulder.
"You needn't tell me what you intend to do. You are the one for this
end, and I can trust you. But when it comes to responsibility and the
law, Wade, if those thieves try it on, after all they've stolen, you'll
find Rod Ide right with you. You're my partner, and you'll stay my
partner," declared Ide, stoutly.
He repeated it as they swung around the upper granite dome of Enchanted,
and looked down the western slope into Blunder valley.
"There's the place for your main road, Wade," he said--"down that
shoulder there! Swamp a half-mile of the steep pitch and you'll come
into the Cameron road, and it will take you to the stream. You'll need
about fifteen hundred feet of snub-line for that sharp incline there,
and I'll have it up to you by the time you are ready for it. Put the
swale hay to the rest of the pitches. It will trig better than gravel.
Don't let 'em put a chain round a runner. You want to keep your road so
smooth that every load of logs will go down there like a boy down a barn
rollway. Sprinkle your levels and keep 'em glare ice. By ----, it's a
beauty of an outlook for a landing-job! Cut your high slopes this trip.
Keep your logs above the level of that shoulder, and every hoss team
will make a four-turn day of it. We'll save a dollar a thousand on the
landing-proposition alone, over and above the Enchanted road chance! And
up there--" He gazed to the north up the valley over the wooded ridges,
and then hushed his voice, as though there lay somewhere in that blue
distance a thing that he feared.
"Up there is a lake of water, Mr. Ide, that God designed to flow down
this valley, and it's going to find its own channel again--somehow! I
hope that doesn't sound like cheap boasting. It's only my idea of the
right."
He led the way back around the granite dome above the spruce benches,
and the old man followed in silence.
Two hours later Rodburd Ide was off and away for Castonia, his
jumper-bell jangling its echoes among the trees. He had hope in his
heart and a letter in his pocket. The hope was his own. The letter was
addressed to John Barrett's daughter, and the superscription had brought
a little scowl to the brows of the magnate of Castonia. Somehow it
seemed like communication with the enemy. But Dwight Wade, writing it in
the stillness of the night, while the little man snored in his bunk, had
seemed in his own imaginings to be putting into that letter, as one lays
away for safe keeping in a casket, all that heart and soul held of love
and candor and tenderness. It was as though he intrusted those into her
hands to preserve for him against the day when he might take them back
into life and living once more. Just now they did not seem to belong to
this life on Enchanted; they did not harmonize with the bitter
conditions. He pressed down the envelope's seal with the fantastic
reflection that he was sending out of the conflict witnesses in whose
presence he might stand ashamed.
Therefore, it was not treason that Rodburd Ide bore in the pocket of his
big fur coat. Dwight Wade had sent tenderer emotions to the rear. He
stood at the front, ready to meet iron with iron and fire with fire.