"'TWAS DONE BY TOMMY THUNDER"
"Twenty a month for daring death--or fighting from dawn
to dark--
Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public
park.
We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry
crew--
A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash
drive goes through."
--Ballad of the Drive.
Wade's poor beast was staggering when at last he topped the horseback
overlooking Enchanted valley. He himself plodded behind the jumper,
clinging to it, walking to keep awake. He had started in the dusk, he
had been nearly twenty-four hours on the road from Castonia, and it was
growing dusk again. He was too utterly weary to be surprised when Tommy
Eye came hurrying down from a knoll that commanded a long view of the
tote road. The light of a little camp-fire glowed on the knoll, and he
saw that a horse was tethered there.
"I'm gettin' to be a worse outlaw than ever, Mr. Wade," declared the
teamster. "I've stole one of your hosses, and grub and hay from the
store camp, and I'm livin' here in the woods. I've been waitin' for
you," he added, wistfully. "I might have slept a little last night when
I didn't know, but I reckon I didn't. I figgered you'd come. I've been
waitin' for you. They can't say I'm one of your men, Mr. Wade. I'm
livin' here in the woods."
"Look here, Eye," blurted his employer, roughly, "I haven't any time nor
taste for fool talk just now. You take the horse back to camp and get on
your job." He started on.
"You don't sound as though you'd got what you went after," cried Tommy,
unabashed. He came trotting behind. "You didn't get satisfaction, then,
Mr. Wade! Injunction still there, hey? You didn't get--"
"What did you suppose I'd get from Pulaski Britt, you infernal fool?"
His own brutality towards the faithful servitor made him ashamed. But
the spirit of evil that had taken possession of him was speaking through
lips that he surrendered in weariness of body and bitterness of soul.
And when a shade of repentance smote him at sight of Tommy trotting
sorrowfully at his side, he gasped out of his woe. "He has dynamited our
booms, Tommy. Did it with his own hands. And now"--he threw up his arms
towards Blunder Lake--"wait till to-morrow!"
Tommy Eye stopped without a word and let Wade go on.
"Wait till to-morrow?" he mumbled, as he scrambled back up the knoll.
"Wait till to-morrow, when I've got a two-hoss load of canned thunder
planted under Blunder dam, and the devil helpin' me by puttin' them two
to sleep ev'ry night, snorin' like quill-pigs?" He waited until Wade had
stumbled out of sight, then cinched upon his horse the blankets that had
served for couch during his vigil, mounted, and urged the animal through
the woods, kicking heels into its flanks.
There were men of the crew who heard an unwonted sound in the midnight
hush of the Enchanted camp. It was a dull, heavy, earth-thudding noise
that swept down from the north over the tree-tops and travelled on
through the forest. Men awoke and asked themselves what had awakened
them, and went to sleep again, and knew not what it meant.
Wade did not hear the sound. Exhaustion had fettered his senses when he
crawled into his bunk in the office camp. What he did hear, as he roused
himself in the gray of early dawn to set his hand to the desperate task
he was resolved upon, was the splattering rush of a horse's feet in the
spring ooze of the tote road and a human voice that shrieked,
hysterically: "Man the river, damn ye! Man the river!"
It was Tommy Eye. He was crouched on the back of his horse when the men
came tumbling out. His little eyes were like fire-points. The wattles of
his neck were blood-gorged. He spat froth as he raved at them.
"Man the river, I tell ye! She's b'ilin' full from bank to bank. Ben
Rodliff's injunction busted to blazes and the Enchanted drive started
slam-whoopin', and it's me that's done it!"
"You hellion, have you blowed Blunder dam?" shouted the chopping-boss,
while Dwight Wade was still gasping for words.
"Blowed Blunder dam!" shrieked Tommy, "Why, I've blowed Blunder dam so
high that Ben Rodliff's injunction can't get to it in a balloon. I've
blowed a gouge ten feet deep in the bed-rock. I've let the innards out
of Blunder Lake. She's runnin' valley-full, ice-cakes dancin' jigs on
the black water! And when they ask who done it, tell 'em it was
me--Tommy Eye, the outlaw! Tommy Eye, with a two-hoss load of canned
thunder!" He tried to shake his fists above his head, but groaned, and
one arm dropped as though it were helpless. Blood was caked on his hand
and wrist. He did not wait for Wade to ask the question.
"It's the pay I got for wakin' 'em up in time to run, Mr. Wade. I give
'em a chance. They give me a thirty-thirty! They'd have give me more if
they could have shot straighter. I'm an outlaw, but there ain't no blood
on my head, Mr. Wade."
He slid off the horse and staggered towards the cook camp.
"Gimme mine in my hand, cook!" he called. "I'll eat it while I'm
runnin'. For it's man the river, boys!"
And the rest of them ate running, too. Wade led them, determined that no
one should head him in the race. He heard the husky breathing of the
hundred runners at his back when he swept around the granite dome of
Enchanted and came in view of the valley. They stopped, panting, and
surveyed the scene for a moment. They saw the tumbling waters, yeasty
and brown. They heard the groan and grunt of dissolving log-piles as the
fierce tide tore at them and bore away the logs. And each man took a new
grip on his cant-dog handle and loped on.
It was plain that Tommy Eye had spoken the truth. That flood was not the
mere outrush through shattered dam-gates. Blunder Lake was emptying
itself through a rent deeper than nature had set in its side. In a
stream-bed of intervales and broad levels the Enchanted drive would have
been scattered to its own disaster. But Blunder valley was slashed deep
between the hills. The turbid flood that raced there was penned. The
log-herds could only butt the granite cliffs and surge on. There was but
one outlet--the mad current of Blunder Stream pouring down to its
junction with the Umcolcus.
They "manned the river," scattering along, one man posted at a curve in
sight of another. A hat waved meant that a jam was forming and called
for help. And when timber jack-strawed too wildly to be readily loosened
by cant-dog and pick-pole they dynamited. There was no time for
"knittin'-work" on that drive.
Tommy Eye, with meal-sack slung over his shoulder, made himself
custodian of the "canned thunder." It was Larry Gorman, woodsman poet,
who first called him "Tommy Thunder." If you go into the north country
you can probably find some one to sing you the song that Larry Gorman
composed, the first verse running:
"Come, listen, good white-water chaps. Who was that man, I wonder,
Who turned himself to an outlaw bold and put the bang-juice under?
Who was it cracked the neck of her, 'way up at old Lake Blunder,
When hell broke loose and sluiced our spruce?
'Twere done by Tommy Thunder!"
His was the recklessness of mania. Men who saw him coming along the
shore with his horrid burden dodged into the woods. Where and when he
slept no one knew. Daytime and night-time he was racing to where logs
had cob-piled. Roars that boomed among the hills told that he had
arrived. In the first gray of morning men saw him warming his dynamite
over a camp-fire, and shuddered and hurried away. To find the king log
of a jam and drop his cartridge where it would have instant effect, he
took chances that made men turn their backs. It isn't pleasant to see a
man macerated by grinding logs or scattered across the sky.
No word passed between Tommy Eye and Dwight Wade. Those days and nights
when the Enchanted drive was on its roaring way down Blunder Stream
towards the Umcolcus River were not the sort of days that invited
conversation. On the ordinary stream-drives to the main river, in the
desperate hurry of the driving-pitch, men work as many hours as they can
stand up. With the drive under control, they can at least stop sluicing
in the dead hours of the night. But the Enchanted drive that spring was
a wild beast that never closed its eyes. As it raged along they did not
dare to leave it alone for an hour. Men raced beside it, clutched at it,
clung as long as they were able, and dropped off, stunned by the stupor
of exhaustion.
After a few hours some one's prodding foot stirred them back to
wakefulness, and they stumbled up and began the fight once more. Outside
of a charge in battle, there is no place where individual rivalry is so
keen and eager as in a driving-crew on hard waters. Men do not require
to be urged to do their utmost. "Coward" and "shirk" are sneers that cut
deeply down-river.
Wade, rushing from point to point, cant-dog in hand, his shoes mere
pulp, his clothes in tatters, saw men asleep with their faces in the tin
plates that the cookee had heaped with food. They had gone to sleep with
the first mouthful, hungry as demons, but overcome the moment their feet
stopped moving.
Some he found asleep where they were posted to "card"[6] certain ledges.
He beat them about the head with the flat of his hand, and they awoke
and thanked him with wistful smiles that touched his heart. But brutal
force had started the Enchanted drive, brutal force marked its rush, and
it had to be brutal force that could keep it going. Brutal force took
toll in the logs that were splintered by dynamite, but it was a toll
that circumstances demanded. A man unwilling to take the chances that
Tommy Eye took would have wasted thousands of feet instead of hundreds,
and Wade knew it, and gulped words of gratitude when they met, hurrying
on the shore.
[Footnote 6: To disentangle and set free logs caught in the rocks.]
Half-way to the Umcolcus, Lazy Tom Stream enters Blunder, and here Wade
found Barnum Withee rushing in his logs and eager to accept an
invitation to join drives. Withee was asking no questions. He did not
need to. He understood. What had been done upstream was none of his
business. He could declare that much when he got his drive down, and
could defend himself from complicity. In the mean time he would take
advantage of the situation.
There were now one hundred and sixty herders of the wild flock, with
Barnum Withee, one of the best men on the river, to take command of the
rear.
So Wade went to the front--to Castonia, sweeping down the swollen
Umcolcus in one of Withee's bateaux with four men at the oars. He had
played violence against violence in the big game. It was natural to
suppose that Pulaski Britt by this time had his fists clinched ready to
retaliate.
On either side of his bateau as he hurried to Castonia the logs ran
free. But they were all his own logs, this advance-guard, marked with
the double diamond and cross.
Had Rodburd Ide done his part, and were they being held at Castonia?
He found the booms set again, Rodburd Ide in command at the sorting-gap,
and various members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sitting along the shore
with guns across their knees. Every able-bodied man in Castonia was on
the booms with a pick-pole, and already the double-diamond logs were
swirling and herding in the logan.
"It's done, and they'll have us into court, but, by ----, we'll have
some ready money to fight 'em with!" screamed the little man, grasping
Wade's hand as the bateau swung broadside to the sorting-gap platform.
And when he had heard the story of "Tommy Thunder, outlaw," that his
partner hurriedly related, his mouth parted in a grin, even though his
forehead puckered with apprehension.
"But will it let us out, Wade?" he asked. "The man took it on himself
out of his grudge against Britt. But will it let us out?"
"It's your money that is in this thing, and not mine," returned the
young man, "and I suppose it's natural for you to think of your property
first. But as for me, Mr. Ide, I'll take what profits are coming to me
from this operation, and I'll stand in with poor old Tommy Eye, jointly
indicted, jointly in the dock, jointly in jail, till the last dollar is
spent. For he did just what I meant to do!"
For an instant Ide's eyes flickered. Then they became shiny.
"My boy," he said, "the Enchanted Township Lumber Company is
incorporated, and you and I own the stock. With your consent, I'm goin'
to make over ten shares of that stock to Thomas Eye before I sleep
to-night. I reckon this company stands ready to fight its battles and
protect its members."
"Mr. Ide," gulped Wade, contritely, "forgive me for that hasty speech.
But God help me, partner, I've been in hell since I saw you last, and
I'm full of the fires of it! I think you can understand."
He crouched there in the bateau, clutching the gunwale with hands that
trembled until they shook his body to and fro. His face was streaked
with the grime of days and nights of toil. His eyes were haggard with
sleeplessness. Fasting had hollowed his cheeks. Such lines as only the
bitter things of life can set in the human countenance were traced deep
upon the brown skin. In his rags and his weariness he was as one who had
been conquered instead of one who had fulfilled. The little man of
Castonia reached down and patted his shoulder with a hand that had a
father's sympathy in its touch.
"Bub," he murmured, "I'm goin' to take some other time to tell you what
I think of you. Just now I want you to go down to the house. My Nina
will know what to do for you and what to say to you. She has some
letters for you to read before you go to sleep, and I reckon they'll
give you pleasant dreams."
Kate Arden opened the door and welcomed him with a smile, the first he
had ever seen on her face. His heart came into his mouth at sight of
her. Never had she seemed so like Elva Barrett. But before he had word
with her Nina Ide came running, floury hands outspread, her face alight
above her housewife's tire. She stood on tiptoe, put her arms around his
neck, and kissed him.
"Brother Dwight! Brother Dwight!" she half sobbed. "Oh, Brother Dwight,
I didn't know--I didn't realize--I didn't understand, or I would have
held you back until you had torn these two arms from my shoulders. I
prayed for you and watched for you. They buy their logs with blood up
there. But it shall not be with your blood, Dwight. I have hated father
all these days. He knew what you were going back to, and didn't stop
you!"
"It was all my own affair, little girl," Wade returned, gently--"my
duty, to which I was bound by fair man-promise. And I've got our logs
into the river, but it has been the kind of work that blisters souls,
Sister Nina!" His voice had a pathetic quaver of weariness.
"I was at the sorting-gap when the first one came, and I knelt and
kissed it," she said, smiling at him from misty eyes. "And then I wrote
to the one of all the world and told her about a hero."
An hour later he lay asleep in a darkened room, the tense lines gone
from his face, his lax hand spread over a letter, finding the sweetest
solace in slumber he had known for many a day.
At the first peep of light next morning he was at the sorting-gap in
full command, removing a burden of responsibility from Rodburd Ide which
had made that little man a quaking wreck of his ordinarily self-reliant
self; for in every log that had come spinning around the upper bend of
the Umcolcus his fears had seen the peak of Pulaski Britt's rushing
bateau.
That the river tyrant would come, furious beyond words, was a fact
accepted by Dwight Wade, and Wade was ready to meet him. But every hour
that passed without bringing the drive-master meant so much more towards
the success of the Enchanted drive.
The logs came in stampeding droves. Withee's were mixed among the
"double diamonds," but there were no delays at the sorting-gap. Two
crews fed them through--one for day and one for night, with a dozen
lanterns lighting their work. Wade was resolved that Britt should lack
at least one argument in the bitter contention. The sorting should be
done faithfully and promptly, and the down-river drive should be hurried
on its way. But at the end of four days not one of the logs nicked with
the "double hat," Britt's registered mark, had shown up. Nor did Britt
himself appear.
A sullen, suffering man of Britt's crew, who came walking into Castonia
with hand held above his head to ease the agony of a felon, brought the
first news.
Blunder Lake dam had been blown up, he reported, and such a chasm had
been opened in the bed-rock that the lake had vomited its waters to the
west until the bed of Britt's shallow canal to the east was above the
water-line. Britt had only his splash dams along Jerusalem for a
driving-head. In the past years the pour of the canal had given him a
current in Jerusalem dead-water. Now he was trying to warp his logs
across there with head-works and anchor. But the south wind was howling
against him, and no human muscle could turn the windlass, even when the
oaths of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt dinned in the ears of his
toilers. All this the new-comer related.
"And it's something awful to hear!" said the man. "He walks the platform
of that head-works, back and forth and back and forth. He cusses God and
the angels, the wind and all it blows across. And then when he is well
worked up to cussin', he 'tends to the case of the devil that blowed up
Blunder Lake dam. And his face is as red as my shirt, and the veins
stick out on his for'ead as big as a baby's finger. They say that you
can't cuss only about so much without somethin' happenin' to you. I've
read about the cap'n of a ship that done it too much once, and his ghost
is still a-sailin'. All I've got to say is that if Pulaski Britt don't
stop, he'll get his."
The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" had listened to this recital intently. It
agreed forebodingly. In fact, in special session the club passed a vote
of dismal prophecy for the whole Jerusalem operation.