THE PARADE PAST RODBURD IDE'S PLATFORM
"'Twas a hundred wet miles to the handiest rail,
And his home it was fifty more;
And behind on our bateau's bubblin' trail
Raced Death with his muffled oar."
--Ballad of the Drive.
Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye's," as sombre prophets, were
distinctly cheered by the sight of Boss Colin MacLeod borne past Rodburd
Ide's store on a litter. They were hurrying him to the hospital
down-river, and he had his teeth set into his lip to keep back the
groans.
"No, sir! No fifty more miles of that for you, my boy," declared Ide,
when he was told that MacLeod's arm and leg were broken. "Into my house
you go, and the doctor comes here." And MacLeod was put to bed in the
spare room, weeping quietly.
"It was the head-works warp done it, Mr. Wade," he moaned, turning
hollow eyes upon his sympathizer. "Broke and snapped back. I told him
man's strength couldn't warp them logs across against that wind, but he
was bound to make us do it. He said I was a coward, Mr. Wade. But I took
the place at the guide-block to show I wasn't. And then he cursed me for
gettin' hurt!"
When Wade left the room he found Kate Arden waiting outside. During the
days he had been at Castonia the girl had appeared to avoid him. She had
paled when he spoke to her, replied curtly, and hurried away as though
she feared he was about to broach some topic that would distress her.
Yet it was not towards him merely that she had displayed that
apprehensive reserve. Not even to Nina Ide did she open her heart, and
Nina told Wade of this with wonderment and grief. She had been docile,
even to the subterfuge of sitting silent by John Barrett's bedside when
Elva Barrett had resigned her trust to seek Dwight Wade in the
wilderness. She had made no comment, asked no questions. She had showed
dumb gratitude, and eagerly sought such household tasks as could be
intrusted to her untrained hands. But wistful shrinking, the air of a
wild thing confined but not tamed, was with her ever.
Now, when she faced Wade outside the door, her eyes shone like stars,
her cheeks flamed, and the old fearlessness and determination were in
her features.
"I shall take care of him," she said. "I shall nurse him, and no one but
me! I shall know how, Mr. Wade. He'll need me now. You go and tell them
all that I shall nurse him. No one else shall do it."
It was the woods mate claiming her own. It was more than love as
convention has classed it. It was the fire, lighted by the primordial
torch of passion, which burns and does not reason, not to be smothered
by rebuff or abuse; its pride not the calculating pride of a resentment
that can divorce it from its object, but the pride of blind, utter
loyalty through all.
Dwight Wade had gone near enough to the heart of things to understand
this love.
He looked at her a little while, sympathy lighting his eyes and
vibrating in his voice as he answered her:
"You shall have him, poor little girl, because he needs you."
He opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and left them alone
together.
Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" realized the full climax of
ominous prophecy and was correspondingly content. The Honorable Pulaski
D. Britt was brought out from Jerusalem dead-water and taken down-river,
a helpless hulk of a man grunting stertorous breaths, the right hand,
which had waved command all those years along Umcolcus, now hanging
helpless at his side, his right leg dangling uselessly as they lifted
him along to a wagon.
It was the fate that the choleric tyrant had invited. That last and
mightiest rage of his life, when with swollen veins and purple face he
had stamped about the head-works platform, had done for Pulaski Britt
and his weakened blood-vessels what those who knew him well had
predicted. Wade was not surprised, for the suppression of Britt by this
means and at this frantic climax in Britt's affairs was too entirely
logical. It came to him suddenly that he felt a sense of relief, and
then he wondered with shame whether he had hoped for it. Then he
dismissed the speculation as unprofitable and not agreeable. The tyrant
was in chains of his own forging. His logs came limping along in
scattered squads, and were sent through the sorting-gap and down-river.
The new master of the corporation drive was not cordial when he
appeared, hurrying towards headwaters. But he was not hostile, either.
He surlily demanded expedition at the Castonia sorting-gap, and went on
up-river.
There are some combatants who, seeing a crisis approaching, feel that it
is their best policy to sit down and wait until the crisis comes to
them. This implies the calculation that perhaps the crisis may go around
the other way, but it is not the policy for the intrepid. In his present
mood Dwight Wade decided to go to meet the crisis, with head erect and
shoulders back.
He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving
Association, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the
body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was
the fault of Dwight Wade's resolute determination to face the issue.
The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even
acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a
possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to
this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the
sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had
gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt.
Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by
letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer
intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows
of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the
legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer's
cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched
State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of
those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had
drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable
Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which
had pounded emphasis.
In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what
they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was
correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous
letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John
Barrett's office in "Castle Cut 'Em."
On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a
cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June,
and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the
days between himself and the free life out-of-doors.
"Mr. Ide was tellin' me why you are goin' and where you are goin'," said
MacLeod, with simple earnestness. Kate Arden was sitting with her head
on his knee, and he was smoothing her hair gently. "I wanted the little
girl to stay here while I talked this to you. I told you about my dream
once, man-fashion. I've told her about it. I ain't excusin' or screenin'
myself. I didn't know, that's all. I never tried to fool this little
girl, Mr. Wade. They lied who said I did. I pitied her, Mr. Wade. But
it's a hard place to start in lovin' a girl where I saw her first--and
I'd seen some one else before I saw her. But I know now, sir. I've told
her so all these days that she's been with me, so true and tender. I
reckon I never was in love before. I wouldn't have acted that way with
you, sir, if I really was in love and trusted. But there ain't no
mistake this time, Mr. Wade!" He gulped, a sob in his throat and a smile
in his eyes. "I'm her man for ever and ever. She knows it and she's
glad. And I know she's all mine, and I'm the happiest man in the whole
north country."
He broke in upon Wade's eager burst of congratulation.
"There's just one more word I wanted to say--sort of in the way of
business, Mr. Wade." There was a peculiar expression upon his face.
"Maybe when you're outside some one--_some one_ may drop a word or
inquire about her business--you know--something about her." His look of
strange significance became deeper, and Wade understood. "All is, you
might say that she and Colin MacLeod are goin' to get married, and Colin
MacLeod ain't askin' anybody for her--only herself and God. God ain't
denyin' His Fathership to a girl as good as she is. Colin MacLeod ain't
askin' anything else--ain't allowin' anything else. Say that to 'em.
He's got his own two hands and eleven hundred dollars saved, and the big
woods for her and for him. She and I wouldn't be happy outside the big
woods, Mr. Wade. Say it all to 'em, sir, if any one drops a word to
you--and they probably will, because you've had words with them. You'll
know how to say it. But make it plain that it will be dangerous business
for any man to reach out his hand to her or to me with anything in
it--and tell 'em it's Colin MacLeod says that," he added, bitterly.
"The only things you need, Colin," cried Wade, advancing towards him,
"are good-will and friendship, and both are in the hand I give you."
At the door he turned.
"Will you wait until I come back, Colin?" he asked. "I would like to
stand up with you when you are married--Nina Ide and I."
"I'll wait, Mr. Wade," returned the other, tears of gratitude springing
to his eyes. "And may luck go with you in this business."
That fervent wish, put again into words, followed him next morning when
he departed from Castonia. This time it was Tommy Eye who said it--Tommy
Eye, fresh down with the rear of the drive, and a very timorous and
apprehensive figure of an outlaw. But he seemed to be a little
disappointed after Wade had assured him that the matter of Blunder Lake
dam would be assumed by the Enchanted Company, and that Tommy himself
had nothing to fear.
"I reckon you can do it, Mr. Wade. You can do most anything you set out
to," sighed Tommy. "Howsomever, I kind of figgered on that outlaw
business to keep me away from down-river. The city ain't good for the
likes of me. They begin to rattle the keys of the calaboose the minute I
get off'n the train."
"Tommy," commanded Wade, severely, "don't you go down-river this season.
You stay here and attend to the work we've got marked out for you."
"That's just as good a wheel-trig as the outlaw proposition would be,"
declared Tommy, his face clearing. "Orders from you settles things, Mr.
Wade. Here I stay."
On the morning of his departure Rodburd Ide's daughter walked with Wade
to the store, where the stage started. In the days of their late
intimacy the girl had grown into his heart. The sincerity of a sister,
self-reliance and womanly sympathy had characterized her attitude
towards him from the first; and she had welcomed a friendship which
lifted her to a comrade's level. She was as yet an altruist in matters
of the heart; she frankly and openly interested herself only in the
loves of others.
Wade knew all the unspoken words that her sympathy dictated when,
standing out before them all, she clasped his hand before he clambered
over the wheel of the old stage.
He saw no very clear horizon for his own love, but his comrade's smile
heartened him, and the flutter of her handkerchief carried its message
of good courage when the stage pitched down the slope that hid Castonia
settlement.
The road to "Castle Cut 'Em" lay before him. At that moment the
Honorable John Barrett loomed so largely as a foe that Dwight Wade's
thoughts were of his fight. Of his love he hardly dared to think at all.
The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" watched the departure of the stage that day
with more than usual interest, also with somewhat deeper gloom.
The knowledge that Dwight Wade and his partner had assumed all blame
for the destruction of Blunder Lake dam was current in all the north
country.
King Spruce's delay in visiting punishment only made the situation
graver in the estimation of the prophets of evil. King Spruce had many
weapons, and in the past had promptly seized the one nearest at hand and
dealt a crushing blow when provocation was given. The fact that the new
drive-master had passed on without even as much as a threat of
retribution was taken as an ominous presage. It was agreed that when
King Spruce remained grimly silent so long, in order to revolve a
project of retaliation, he must be whittling an especially mighty
bludgeon.
The members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" very frankly expressed thoughts
of this tenor to the half-dozen men who arrived at Castonia in the early
morning to take the stage down-river with Wade. The men gloomily agreed.
Two of them showed signs of funk at the last moment, and had to be
coaxed on board the stage by the young man.
These were the sort of men that Wade had seen a year before in the
general rooms of "Castle Cut 'Em." They were independent operators and
stumpage-buyers, who had responded to the messengers and letters that
Wade had been sending out.
There were more of them who joined the party at the railroad; others
came into the train as it stopped here and there on the way to the
junction. All of them seemed impressed by that sense of gloom and
apprehension; there was not a sanguine face.
But in their unanimity of dolorousness they displayed a further
interesting characteristic. They seemed entirely ready to accept this
young man as their leader and their champion; in fact, as he went among
them, they confessed that they had come along only because he had
assured them that he would bear the brunt of the approaching conflict.
The experience of years had shown them that they had no one man or
combination of men among themselves who could go up against King Spruce.
They even distrusted each other's honesty, for every man realized all
the iniquity of the game of graft and grab that had characterized their
dealings with each other and with the main power in the past.
That they should let this new-comer lead them was because he had already
proved his mettle and his fearlessness, and the whole north country knew
it. He had beaten Pulaski Britt at his own game, he had defied King
Spruce, and now he was willing to beard the tyrant in his own castle,
and only asked their presence at his back in order that the sight of
them might prove his assertions and aid to win some grace for all of
them.
Therefore, they had answered his appeal and had gone with him. But they
went without alacrity, and were encouraged only by the despondent belief
that at least matters could not be made any worse.