THE "CANNED THUNDER" OF CASTONIA
"A woodsman hates a coward as he hates diluted rye,
Stiff upper-lip for livin', stiff backbone when you die!"
When April came, and with caressing fingers began to stroke the
softening snow from the mountain flanks, she found full half a million
of the Enchanted cut still on the yards.
"If it's to be a gamble, let's make it a good one," Rodburd Ide had
counselled his partner. "Pile on every stick that winter's back will
carry. Pile till it breaks!"
Dwight Wade had a trustworthy "kitchen cabinet" of advisers in old
Christopher Straight, Tommy Eye, and the chopping-boss; and with them as
counsellors he ventured further than his own narrow experience would
have prompted.
On nights when April slept and the trickling slopes were stiffened by
the cold, the crew of the Enchanted stole a march on spring. They awoke
at sundown with the owls. They ate breakfast in the gloom of early
evening. And, with the moon holding her lantern for them in the serene
skies, they rushed their logs into the waiting arms of Blunder valley.
That those arms would surrender the timber when the time was ripe seemed
more certain as the days went by. The word of their zealous young man of
law was encouraging. There had been pleas, representations, digging
over of old charters, hunt through dusty records, citation of
precedents, and some very direct talk regarding a thorough legislative
investigation of conditions in the north country to regulate the rights
of independent operators.
It was admittedly too big a question to be hurried. Litigation fattens
by what it feeds on. Grown ponderous, it marches, slow and dignified, in
short stages between terms, and sits and rests and puffs at every
cross-road of argument, exception, appeal, and writ of error. Even that
exigency of five millions of timber waiting in Blunder valley could not
hasten the settlement of the young reformer's main contention or the big
question. But there are in this life some deeper sentiments than
enthusiasm in reform. The old college friendship between Dwight Wade,
famous centre of Burton's eleven, and the little quarter-back whom he
had shielded was one of those deeper sentiments. And now the lawyer, for
the sake of that friendship, was willing to buy Dwight Wade's success in
Blunder valley by honorable compromise on certain points where
compromise was honorable.
With a man open to sane reason and moral decency a compromise might have
been effected. But after Pulaski D. Britt had craftily drawn out proffer
of a truce and proposition of a trade in one phase of the great question
of water-rights, he burst into a bellow of "blackmail" that echoed from
end to end of the State. The words bristled in the newspapers controlled
by the land barons and was rolled on the tongues of gossip. And as
humanity in general, selfish in its easy-going way and jealous of
resolute activity, likes to believe ill of reformers, men were readier
to believe Britt than to give a motive of honest friendship its due. The
jeers of the mob make what some people like to call "public opinion."
And sometimes when public opinion is loudly gabbling and can be
politely referred to in case of doubt, there can be found judges who
will listen with one ear to the voices of the street and with the other
to the specious representations of the man in power.
So it came about that the judge presiding at the _nisi prius_ term in
the great county dominated by Pulaski D. Britt hearkened in chambers to
some very distressing details set before him by that gentleman and
certain other "employers of labor" and "developers of the great timber
interests." The judge pursed his lips and with his tongue clucked
horrified astonishment at stories of brutal assaults made "on members of
Pulaski Britt's crew" (this being Dwight Wade's desperate defence of
himself, as pictured by Britt), and other tales of lunatics provoked to
deeds of violence towards aforesaid "developers"; of incendiaries
spirited away from officers; of men stolen out of Britt's crew (poor
Tommy Eye's rescue from torture, as revamped for evidence by the
Honorable Pulaski D. Britt); and, lastly, of that desperate and
malignant attempt on the life of Honorable Pulaski D. Britt when a load
of timber was sluiced at him from the shoulder of Enchanted Mountain.
Dwight Wade had not put into the hands of his lawyer the details of
those pitiful secrets of the woods; for not only his honor as a man set
a seal on his lips, but the sacredness of his love imposed higher
obligation still. So his lawyer listened, amazed, incredulous, but
incapable of refuting these tales in the categorical way that the law
demands.
So much, then, for what "the gang" had done for Pulaski D. Britt and his
interests. Britt lacked neither words nor will to make the story a black
one.
As to what they intended to do, the Honorable Pulaski declaimed, with
quivering finger rapping tattoo on the map of the Blunder valley, his
voice hoarse with emotion and the perspiration of apprehensiveness
streaking his puffy cheeks.
And with past enormities standing undefended, what might not a judge
believe as to future atrocities when the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had
made the prediction, his chief exhibit of intended outlawry being five
millions of timber stranded in Blunder valley, and requiring "stolen
water" to move it? His last argument was an uncontradicted allegation of
attempted compromise, his last word "Blackmail!" shot at the face of the
opposing lawyer while his stubby finger vibrated under the lawyer's
nose.
Therefore, at the end of it all, the clerk of courts wrote, the judge
signed, and five minutes after the ink was dry High Sheriff Bennett
Rodliff buttoned his coat over the folded paper and set his face towards
Enchanted.
Forty-eight hours later, having travelled by train, by stage, by sledge,
and on foot, he stood before Dwight Wade in the midst of his crew at the
landings in Blunder valley, gave the paper to him, and watched his face
while he read it. Being a man who enjoyed his own authority and exulted
in the power of the law when it dealt crushing blows, the high sheriff
noted with satisfaction that the young man's face grew pale under its
tan.
"Get the sense, do you?" inquired the sheriff, allowing himself the
relaxation of a chew of tobacco after his headlong rush into the north;
"it's an injunction. You can't meddle with Blunder Lake dam; can't h'ist
gates; can't take water!" He gazed about him at the heaped logs piled in
the bed of the stream. "Kind o' seems to me," he observed, with smug
rebuke, "that I'd have been slow in landin' logs down here till I knowed
what the law court was goin' to do about these water-rights. Law steps
slow and careful, and this whole thing has got to wait till it gets way
up to the full bench. Lettin' you have water here might be an admission
by the big crowd that they was all wrong on the chief proposition. The
big crowd ain't that kind!"
Wade had read the injunction through to its bitter end. Every stilted
phrase, every estopping, restraining word of its redundancy, was like a
bar between him and his hopes. It was a temporary injunction. But the
date set for a hearing on the question of permanency was a date that
made those log-piles in Blunder valley loom in his dizzy gaze like
monuments to buried expectations.
"Where was our lawyer when this damnable document was issued?" he cried,
shaking the paper under the sheriff's nose. His heart was aflame against
the thing called Law. The sheriff stood there as Law's representative,
expressing in his blank face such unfeeling acceptance of the situation
as hopeless, that Wade wanted to jam the paper between those jaws
wagging blandly on their tobacco.
"Oh, he was there!" remarked Rodliff, dryly. "Perhaps if he hadn't been
there your case would have come off better. Judges ain't got much use
for lawyers when the shyster kind get shown up in a graft game. The
fellow who named this Blunder valley years ago," he observed, running
his eyes over the log-piles once more, "must have had a gift of
second-sight. Rod Ide's always been cal'lated to be level-headed. It's a
wonder to me he let you fool him into this. I've heard considerable
about it outside. But it's worse than I'd reckoned on."
For a sickening instant the thing showed to Wade in its blackest light.
To be sure, it was the Law that struck down his hands. But it was plain
that the Law was, after all, only a part of the game--and his enemies
had invoked it and had won.
"Look here, men!" shouted the high sheriff, turning from his survey of
this defeated wretchedness, "I want you to take note of what I've done
here. I've served an injunction on your boss. It means that he's got to
leave Blunder Lake dam alone. Him and all his crew! Understand?"
The men had been slowly gathering near on the log-piles, in order to get
drift of what this visit meant. Some of them had private reasons for
wondering what business a high sheriff was on; all of them were curious.
And the sheriff saw Tommy Eye in the forefront.
"By-the-way, Eye," he called, "the wardens want you! You'd better come
along out with me and save trouble."
"I'm an outlaw," cried Tommy, defiantly, "and I won't come with nobody!"
The sheriff blinked at the man who had been his uncomplaining prisoner
for so many summers, and seemed to be trying to digest this defiance.
"I'm an outlaw!" repeated the man. "I ain't to work for nobody. I've
jacked my job here. I'm just plain outlaw. I ain't responsible to
nobody. Nobody ain't responsible for me. You tell that to everybody
concerned. I'm an outlaw!"
Rodliff, still with wondering eyes on Tommy, slowly worked a revolver
out of his hip-pocket.
"Come down off'n that pile!" he shouted. "I want you!"
But once the revolver was out the target was not visible. Three leaps,
his calk boots biting the logs, put Tommy out of sight behind the pile.
Two minutes later they heard him among the trees far up the slope of
Blunder valley. He was still shouting his declaration of outlawry, and
the diminuendo of tone indicated that he was running like a deer.
The high sheriff shoved back his revolver, scowling up at the grinning
faces on the log-piles. But he found no hint of similar amiability in
Wade's expression when he turned to face the young man; and after
surveying him up and down with much disfavor, he shook his fist in a
gesture that embraced them all, and started away, flinging over his
shoulder the contemptuous remark that he seemed to have "lighted in a
pretty tough gang." The significance of that expressed conviction was
not lost on the young man. It revealed what machination was doing.
Britt, bulwarked by the courts and public sentiment, was not to be
fought by the outlawry he had invoked as the code of combat.
An hour later Dwight Wade was urging his horse towards Castonia. If
Rodburd Ide or a message from Rodburd Ide were on the way north he would
meet the situation so much the sooner. The sting of his bitter thoughts
and the goad of his impatience would not allow him to stay at Enchanted.
He wanted to know the exact facts "outside." He did not dare to
jeopardize his partner by the rashness his bitter anger once
contemplated.
A half-mile down the tote road Tommy Eye dashed at him from the covert
of the spruces.
"I reckoned you'd be goin', Mr. Wade!" he panted. "I ain't intendin' to
bother you--but what did Ben Rodliff say that was--that paper that he
clubbed you with?"
The pitiful intensity of his loyal anxiety struck Wade to the heart. "It
was an injunction, Tommy," he explained, patiently. "It's an order from
the court. Oh, it's horribly unjust! It may be law, but it isn't
justice; for justice would take into account a man's common rights, and
wouldn't tie them up by pettifogging delays." He was talking as much to
himself as to the poor fellow who clung to the thill. The words surged
into his mouth out of his full soul. "I have been square with men,
Tommy, square and decent. I believe in law, and I want to respect it.
But when law obeys Pulaski Britt's bidding, and takes you by the throat
and kneels on you and chokes you, and lets such a man as Britt walk past
on his own business, free and clear, it's law that's devil-made."
But the incantation of that law was having its effect on a nature that
was more docile than it realized. In his hot anger he had said he would
fight Britt with the tyrant's own lawless choice of weapons. He looked
back and remembered that he had intended to do so. A sheriff with a gold
badge and a bit of paper had prevailed over his bitter resolution when
Pulaski Britt and his army at his back would have failed to cow him.
The dull roll of a distant detonation came to them in the little silence
that followed on Wade's outburst. It came from the west, where men of
the Enchanted crew were at work widening the granite jaws of Blunder
gorge to give clear egress to the Enchanted drive. In that moment of his
utter despair the roar of the rend-rock was a mocking voice.
"And that's all there is to an injunction?" demanded Tommy. "Ben Rodliff
hands you a paper, and spits tobacker-juice on the snow, and calls you a
fool, and goes down past here, like he did a little while ago, swingin'
his reins and singin' a pennyr'yal hymn? Only has to do that to tie up
the whole Enchanted drive that we hundred men have sweat and froze and
worked to get onto the landings?"
"Only that, Tommy," replied Wade, bitterly. "The law is sitting there on
Blunder dam. You can't see it, but it's there, and it says, 'Hands
off!'"
"There's something you can see, though," Tommy declared. "You can see
two men in a shack that's been built over the gates of Blunder Lake dam.
One sleeps daytimes, the other sleeps nights, and they've both got
Winchesters. I've been there private and personal, and looked 'em
over."
"I don't want any of my men lurking about that dam," commanded Wade.
Tommy Eye cinched his worn belt one notch tighter over his thin haunches
and buttoned his checkered wool jacket. "I ain't one of your men," he
growled, with such sudden and sullen change in demeanor that Wade stared
at him in amazement. "I've gone into the outlaw business, and I've told
you so, and I've told Ben Rodliff so."
They heard the thudding boom of dynamite once more, and the absolutely
fiendish look that came into Tommy's face as he turned his gaze towards
Blunder valley enlightened his employer.
"That sounds good to me!" shrieked the teamster. It was as though one of
the docile Dobbins of the hovel had suddenly perked up ears and tail and
begun to play the part of a beast of prey.
When Tommy ran back into the spruces Wade shouted after him, insistently
and angrily. But he did not reply, and after a time Wade drove on,
cursing soulfully the whole innate devilishness of the woods. That
another weak nature had run amuck after the fashion to which he had
become accustomed in his woods experience seemed probable; but he had
neither time nor inclination to chase Tommy Eye. As to Blunder Lake dam,
he reflected that the eternal vigilance of the Winchesters guaranteed
Pulaski Britt's interests in that direction, and, soul-sick of the whole
wicked situation, he was glad that the Winchesters were there. He had
failed. He could at least own that much man-fashion to Rodburd Ide.
It was a messenger that he met--not the partner himself. And as he had
anticipated, the messenger summoned him to Castonia. The last few miles
of his journey took him along the bank of the Umcolcus. The big river
had already thrown off its winter sheathing and was running full and
free. It was waiting for the northern lakes, still ice-bound, to
surrender their waters and sweep the logs down to it.
Rodburd Ide's stout soul uttered no complaints when the two had locked
themselves in the little back office of the store. But his mute distress
and bewilderment in the face of calamity sanctioned by the law touched
his young partner more than complaints would have done. The fighting
spirit was gone out of the little man.
"I didn't reckon it could go against us that bad, not after what the
lawyer said. He seemed to know his business, Wade. But maybe he was too
honest to fight a crowd like that. It's a crusher to come after hopes
was up like mine was. I even went to work the minute the ice slid
down-river, and set our sheer-booms above the logan and got the
sortin'-gap ready. I was that sure our logs were comin' down. But it
ain't your fault, Wade, and it ain't mine. It's just as I told you once
before. It's what we're up against!"
And then, striving for a pretext to end the doleful session, he invited
Wade to walk up the river-bank. He wanted to show him the site for the
new great mills. "They can't steal that much away from me, my boy," he
said, trying to be cheerful. "The mills will have to buy out of the
corporation drive this year, seeing that we're coopered on our contract.
That means so much more good profit for Britt and his crowd. They've got
their smell of what's comin', too, and that's probably why they fought
so hard to get the injunction. They're in for a big make and their own
prices this year. But the more I know about that charter of the Great
Independent the more trouble I can see for the old crowd when the next
legislature gets to tearin' this thing to pieces. The G. I.'s know what
they're doin'. They'll have their rights. And when the big wagon starts
little fellers like you and me can climb aboard and ride, too. But the
big wagon won't start till next year," he added, sadly.
Out-of-doors they did not talk. The roar of the Hulling Machine
dominated everything, and the spume-clouds swaying above it spat in
their faces. On the platform of Ide's store the pathetic brotherhood of
the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sat in silent conclave, stunned into a queer
stupor by the bellow of the Hulling Machine, even as habitual
opium-eaters succumb to the blissful influence of the drug.
Above the falls an island divided the river. On the channel side the
waters raced turbulently. The island sentinelled the mouth of the
logan that deeply indented the shore on the quiet side of the river.
Ide had installed a system of sheer-booms. They spanned the current
diagonally, and were to be the silent herders that would edge the
log-flocks away from the banks, crowd them to centre at the sorting-gap,
and keep them running free. Below the sorting-gap there were two
sheer-booms--divergent. One ushered the down-river logs back into the
current that dashed towards the Hulling Machine. The other would swing
the logs of the Enchanted drive into the quiet holding-ground of the
logan.
[Illustration: "'WHAT I SAY ON THIS RIVER GOES!'"]
The thought of the heaped logs in Blunder valley, the memory of the
dynamite bellowing its farewell to him over the tree-tops, and now the
spectacle of these empty booms, had the eloquence of despair and the
pathos of failure for Dwight Wade. And as the two of them--he and his
partner--stood there and gazed silently, they were forced to face bitter
accentuation of their stricken fortunes. Pulaski D. Britt, master of the
Umcolcus drive, came on his way north at the head of his men. It was an
army marching with all its impedimenta. There were many huge bateaux
swung upon trucks that had hauled them around the white-water. Men
launched them into the eddy above the Hulling Machine, and began to load
them with tents, cordage, and the wangan stores.
Rodburd Ide and his young partner stood at one side, and surveyed this
scene of activity without speaking. And Britt marched up to them,
raucous and domineering with the masterfulness of the river tyrant. It
had long been the saying along the Umcolcus that Pulaski Britt got mad a
week before the driving season opened, and stayed mad a week after it
ended.
"Ide," he cried, "you and I seem to be always in trouble with each other
lately! But it's of your own makin', not mine! These sheer-booms that
you've stuck in here obstruct navigation. I want to get my boats up.
You've got to cut these booms loose."
"Mr. Britt," returned Ide, his tones quivering with passion, "two men in
each bateau crew can shove those booms down with pick-poles and let a
bateau over without wasting a minute's time. You've brought those
bateaux over all your own sheer-booms below here--you've got your own
booms above. You've been riding over 'em for thirty years. Now be
reasonable."
"You run back down there to your store and get onto your job of sellin'
kerosene and crackers," advised the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically.
"Don't you undertake to tell me my business. As river-master, I say
those logs obstruct navigation, and what I say on this river goes!"
"You talk, Britt, as though a title that you've grabbed onto, the same
as you have everything else along this river, amounted to anything in
law," objected the magnate of Castonia. "I own the land that those booms
are hitched to, and you're not goin' to bluff me by any of your
obstruction-to-navigation talk. You've managed to get most things along
this river this spring your own way, but I reckon I know when you've
gone about far enough. Don't try to rub it in!"
Mr. Britt, serene in his autocracy as drive-master, was in no mood to
bandy arguments nor waste time on such as Rodburd Ide.
He whirled away, lifted a wooden box from one of the wagons, and set it
down gingerly.
"MacLeod!" he called. The boss came away from the river-bank, where he
was superintending stowing of supplies. "Unpack this dynamite, and blow
damnation out of those booms--the sortin'-gap first!"
The man twisted his face in a queer grimace.
"I don't think I'll do it, Mr. Britt," he said, curtly.
He looked away from Britt when the tyrant began to storm at him, and
fixed his eyes on Wade's face with an expression there was no reading.
"No, I ain't no coward, either," he said, at last, interrupting his
employer's flow of invective. "But dynamitin' other folks' booms with
the folks lookin' at you ain't laid down in a river-driver's job; and I
ain't got any relish for nailin' boot-heels all next summer in a jail
workshop."
"I'll take the responsibility of this!" shouted Britt.
"Then you'd better do the job, sir," suggested MacLeod, firmly. "Law has
queer quirks, and I don't propose to get mixed into it."
There was no gainsaying the logic of the boss's position. The Honorable
Pulaski noted that the men had overheard. He noted also that there were
no signs of any volunteers coming from the ranks. And so, with the
impetuosity of his temper, when the eyes of men were upon him, he set
his own hand to the job. With a cant-dog peak he began to pry at the
box-cover.
And Colin MacLeod, hesitating a moment, walked straight up to Dwight
Wade--to that young man's discomposure, it must be confessed. Wade set
his muscles to meet attack. But MacLeod halted opposite him, folded his
arms, and gazed at him with something of appeal in his frank, gray eyes.
There was candor in his look. In their other meetings Wade had only seen
blind hate and unreasoning passion.
"Maybe you've got an idea that I'm a pretty cheap skate, Mr. Wade," he
blurted. "Maybe I am, but it ain't been so between me and men unless
there was women mixed in. My head ain't strong where women is mixed in.
You hold on and let me talk!" he cried, putting up his big hand. "I've
got eleven hundred dollars in the bank that I've saved, my two hands,
and a reputation of bein' square between men. That's all I've got, and I
want to keep all three. I had you sized up wrong at the start. I mixed
women in without any right to. I misjudged the cards as they laid. I
used you dirty, and I got what was comin' to me. Now I've found out. I
know how things stand with you all along the line, from there"--he
pointed south towards the outside world that held Elva Barrett--"to
there on Enchanted. And I'm sorry! I'm sorry I ever got mistaken, and
made things harder for a square man. You heard what I just said to Mr.
Britt. I wanted you to hear it. All is, I'd like to shake hands with you
and start fresh. It may have to be man to man between us yet on this
river, but, by ----, for myself I want it man-fashion."
He cast a glance behind him. Britt had the box open, and had dug out of
the sawdust some cylinders in brown-paper wrappings. When MacLeod
whirled again to face Wade the latter put out his hand without
reservation in face or gesture. Months before, such amazing repentance
and conversion might have astonished him, but now he understood the real
ingenuousness of the woods. Pulaski Britt, hardened by avarice and
outside associations, was not of the true life of the woods. This
impulsive boy, with his mighty muscles and his tender heart, was of the
woods, and only the woods.
MacLeod came one step nearer to Rodburd Ide, and pulled off his hat.
"If it ain't too much trouble, Mr. Ide, I wish you'd tell Miss Nina that
I've done it square and righted it fair. And don't scowl at me that way,
Mr. Ide! It was a dream--and I've woke up! It was a pretty wild
dream--and a man does queer things in his sleep. Your girl ain't for me
or my kind, and I know it, now that I've woke up. I'd like to tell her
so, and explain, but I don't know how to do it, Mr. Ide. You do it for
me. I ask you man-fashion!"
He started away from them hastily, strode back to the bateaux, and began
to swear at the men who had stopped work to gaze on the Honorable
Pulaski. The latter had already embarked in a bateau, carrying several
of those ominous sticks wrapped in their brown-paper cases.
"Britt," shrieked Ide, "we've been to law with you to find out our
rights! Ain't you willin' to take your own medicine?"
"Hell on your law!" blazed the drive-master, contemptuously.
"Give us time to get an injunction before you destroy our good
property," demanded the little man, choking with his ire.
For answer Britt shook one of the dynamite sticks above his head without
even turning to look back. His men crowded the boat over the boom at the
sorting-gap, and Britt lighted the fuse and tossed the explosive upon
the anchored log platform.
"Oh, if our men were only here instead of at Enchanted!" mourned Ide.
"They're just where we ought to have them, Mr. Ide," the young man
growled.
Britt was safely away up-river when the dynamite did its work; his men
had rowed like fiends. It was a beautiful job, viewed from the
stand-point of destruction. The downward thrust of the mighty force
splintered the platform into toothpicks and let the booms adrift.
The partners of Enchanted did not exchange comments. They gazed after
the destroyer. Taking his time, as though to prolong their distress,
Britt dynamited the booms above, and then stood up and jerked his arm as
a signal for his crew to follow. They went splashing up the river, six
oars to a bateau, and disappeared, one boat after the other, bound for
the mouth of Jerusalem Stream. Already the jaws of the Hulling Machine
were gulping down the gobbets of splintered logs.
"How soon can you replace those booms, Mr. Ide?" Wade edged the words
through his teeth, as a man stricken with lockjaw might have spoken. And
without waiting for reply, he hurried on. "Put 'em in, Mr. Ide, because
you're going to need 'em. And put along this shore all the men in
Castonia who can handle guns. Winchesters and dynamite, with 'Hell on
law' for a battle-cry! That's what he's given us. It's good enough for
me. Will you put those booms in, Mr. Ide?"
"I'll put 'em in, and I'll protect 'em after they're put in," declared
the little man, stoutly. The fighting spirit was in him again.
They looked at each other a moment, and turned and hurried back towards
the settlement. Neither man seemed to feel that words could help that
situation nor emphasize determination.
Prophet Eli was in front of Ide's store with his little white stallion
when the two arrived there. The old man surveyed Wade shrewdly when he
hastened to Nina Ide, who was waiting for a word with him.
"Boy! boy!" whispered the girl, clasping his tanned hand in both of
hers, "I don't like to see your eyes shine so! They're hard. But I know
how to soften them. I have a letter for you from the one woman of all
the world. Come with me and get it."
"Keep it for me," he muttered--"keep it until I come for it. I'm not fit
to touch it now. It might make a decent man of me, and--and--I don't
want to be--not just yet, Miss Nina." He whirled away, climbed upon his
jumper, and lashed his horse back along the trail towards Enchanted. The
words of that half-jeering ditty of Prophet Eli's followed him, as they
had on that memorable first day at Castonia, and grotesque as the lilt
was, it seemed to express the young man's flaming resolution:
"Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountains,
Shang, ro-ango, whango-whey!
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."