That night came the heavy snow for which the loggers had been waiting,
and a rush of activity followed in Hell Camp. The logs which had lain in
the woods for want of sleighing now were accessible. Following the snow
came hard, freezing nights, and the main ice-roads which Reivers had
driven into the timber for miles became solid beds of ice over which a
team could haul log loads to the extent of a carload weight. It was
ideal logging-weather, and the big camp began to hum.
The mastery of Reivers once more showed itself in the way in which he
drove his great crew at top speed and beyond. The feeling against him on
the part of the men had risen to silent, tight-lipped heat as the news
went around of how the old Magyar with the ear-rings had met his death.
Each man in camp knew that he might have been in the old man's shoes;
each knew that Reivers' anger might fall on him next. In the total of a
hundred and fifty men in camp there was probably not one who did not
curse Reivers and rage against his rule, and there were few who, if the
opportunity had offered, would not cheerfully have taken his life.
The feeling against him had unified itself. Before, the men had been
split into various groups on the subject of the boss. They remained
divided now, but on one thing they were unanimous: the Snow-Burner had
gone too far to bear. Men sat on the bunk-edges in the stockade and
cursed as they thought of the boss and the shotgun guards that rendered
them helpless. Reivers permitted no firearms of any kind in camp save
those that were carried by his gunmen.
The gunmen when not on guard kept to their quarters, in the building
just outside of the stockade gate, where Reivers also lived. When armed,
they were ordered to permit no man to approach nearer than ten feet to
them--this to prevent a possible rushing and wresting the weapons from
their hands. So long as the guards were there in possession of their
shotguns the men knew that they were helpless. Driven to desperation
now, they prayed for the chance to get those guns into their own hands.
After that they promised themselves that the score of brutality would be
made even.
Then came the time for rush work, and under the lash of Reivers' will
the outraged men, carried off their feet, were driven with a ferocity
that told how completely Reivers ignored the spirit of revolt which he
knew was fomenting against him. He quit playing with them, as he
expressed it; he began to drive.
Long before daylight began to grey the sky above the eastern timber-line
the men were out at their posts, waiting for sufficient light to begin
the day's work. Once the work began it went ahead with a fury that
seemed to carry all men with it. Reivers was everywhere that a man dared
to pause for a moment to shirk his job. He used his hands now, for a
broken leg or rib laid a man up, and he had use for the present for
every man he could muster. He scarcely looked at the men he hit,
breaking their faces with a sudden, treacherous blow, cursing them
coldly until, despite their injuries, they leaped at their work, then
whirling away to fall upon some other luckless one elsewhere.
He was a fury, a merciless elemental force, with no consideration for
the strength and endurance of men; sparing no one any more than he
spared himself, and rushing his whole force along at top speed by sheer
power of the spirit of leadership that possessed him. Men ceased for the
time being to growl and pray that the Snow-Burner would get his just
due. They had no thought nor energies for anything but keeping pace in
the whirlwind rush of work through which the Snow-Burner drove them.
In the blacksmith-shop the same condition prevailed as elsewhere in the
camp. The extra hurry of the work in the timber meant extra accidents,
which meant breakages. There were chain-links to be forged and fitted to
broken chains; sharp two-inch calks to be driven into the horses' shoes,
peaveys and cant-hooks to be repaired. Besides the regular
blacksmith-work of the camp, which was quite sufficient to keep Campbell
and one helper comfortably employed, there was now added each day a bulk
of extra work due to the strain under which men, horses and tools were
working.
Old Campbell, grimly resolute that Reivers should have no excuse to fall
foul of him, drove himself and his helper at a speed second only to that
with which he had so roughly greeted Toppy to the rough world of bodily
labour. But the Toppy who now hammered and toiled at Campbell's side was
a different man from the champagne-softened youth who had come into camp
a little while before. The puffiness was gone from under his eyes, the
looseness from his lips and the fat from around the middle. Through his
veins the blood now surged with no taint of cumbering poison; his
tissues tingled with life and healthiness.
Day by day he did his share and more in the shop-work, and instead of
the old feeling of fatigue, which before had followed any prolonged
exertion, felt his muscles spring with hardness and new life at each
demand made upon them. The old joy of a strong man in his strength came
back in him. Stripped to the waist he stretched himself and filled his
great lungs with deep drafts, his arms like beams stretched out and
above his head. Under the clean skin, rosy and moist from exertion, the
muscles bunched and relaxed, tautened instantly to iron hardness or
rippled softly as they were called upon, in the perfect co-ordination
which results in great athletes. Old Campbell, similarly stripped,
stared at the marvel of a giant's perfect torso, beside which his own
work-wrought body was ugly in its unequal development.
"Losh, man! But you're full grown!" he growled in admiration. "I've seen
but one man who could strip anywhere near to you."
"Who was he?" asked Toppy.
"The Snow-Burner."
Day by day Toppy hammered and laboured at Campbell's side, holding his
end up against the grim old smith, and day by day he felt his muscles
growing toward that iron condition in which there is no tiring.
Presently, to Scotty's vexation, he was doing more than his share,
ending the day with a laugh and waking up in the morning as fresh as if
he had not taxed his energies the day before.
At first he continued to favour his injured ankle, lest a sudden strain
delay its recovery. Each night he massaged and bandaged it
scientifically. Later on, when he felt that it was stronger, he began to
exercise it, slowly raising and lowering himself on the balls of his
feet. In a couple of weeks the old spring and strength had largely come
back, and Campbell snorted in disgust at the antics indulged in by his
helper when the day's work was done.
"Skipping a rope one, twa hundred times! What brand o' silliness do ye
call that?" he grumbled. "Ha' ye nothing useful to do wi' them long legs
of yourn, that you have to make a jumping-jack out o' yourself?"
At which Toppy smiled grimly and continued his training.
The rush of work had its compensations. Reivers, driving his force like
mad, had no time to waste either in bantering Toppy and Campbell in the
evening or in paying attention to Miss Pearson. All the power that was
in the Snow-Burner was concentrated upon the problem of getting out
every stick of timber possible while the favourable weather continued.
He spent most of his time in the timber up-river where the heaviest
logging was going on.
By day he raged in the thick of the men with only one thought or aim--to
get out the logs as fast as human and horse-power could do it. At night
the road-crews, repairing with pick and shovel and sprinkling-tanks the
wear and tear of the day's hauling, worked under Reivers' compelling
eyes. All night long the sprinkling-tanks went up and down the
ice-coated roads, and the drivers, freezing on the seats, were afraid to
stop or nod, not knowing when the Snow-Burner might step out from the
shadows and catch them in the act.
The number of accidents, always too plentiful in logging-camps,
multiplied, but Reivers permitted nothing short of broken bones to send
a man to his bunk. Toppy, besides his work in the shop, cared as best he
could for the disabled. Reivers had no time to waste that way now. The
two men hurt at the quarry were recovering rapidly. One day a tall, lean
"white man," a Yankee top-loader, came hobbling out of the woods with
his foot dangling at the ankle, and mumbling curses through a smashed
jaw.
"How did you get this?" asked Toppy, as he dressed the cruelly crushed
foot.
"Pinched between two logs," mumbled the man. "They let one come down the
skids when I wasn't lookin'. No fault of mine; I didn't have time to
jump. And then, when I'm standin' there leanin' against a tree, that
devil Reivers comes up and hands me this." He pointed to his cracked
jaw. "He'll teach me to get myself hurt, he says. ----! That ain't no man;
he's a devil! By ----! I know what I'd ruther have than the wages comin'
to me, and that's a rifle with one good cattridge in it and that ----
standin' afore me."
Yet that evening, when Reivers came to the top-loader's bunk and
demanded how long he expected to lie there eating his head off, the man
cringed and whimpered that he would be back on the job as soon as his
foot was fit to stand on. In Reivers' presence the men were afraid to
call their thoughts their own, but behind his back the mumblings and
grumblings of hatred were growing to a volume which inevitably soon must
break out in the hell-yelp of a mob ripe for murder.
Reivers knew it better than any man in camp. To indicate how it affected
him he turned the screws on tighter than ever. Once, at least, "they had
him dead," as they admitted, when he stood ankle-deep in the river with
the saw-logs thundering over the rollways to the brink of the bluff
above his head. One cunning twist of a peavey would have sent a dozen
logs tumbling over the brink on his head. Reivers sensed his danger and
looked up. He smiled. Then he turned and deliberately stood with his
back to the men. And no man dared to give his peavey that one cunning
twist.
During these strenuous days Toppy tried in vain to muster up sufficient
courage to reopen the conversation with Miss Pearson which had been so
suddenly interrupted by the cave-in at the quarry. He saw her every day.
She had changed greatly from the high-spirited, self-reliant girl who
had stood on the steps of the hotel back at Rail Head and told the whole
world by her manner that she was accustomed and able to take care of
herself. A stronger will than hers had entered her scheme of life.
Although she knew now that Reivers had tricked her into coming to Hell
Camp because he was confident of winning her, the knowledge made no
difference. The will of the man dominated and fascinated her. She feared
him, yet she was drawn toward him despite her struggles. She fought hard
against the inclination to yield to the stronger will, to let her
feelings make her his willing slave, as she knew he wished. The pain of
the struggle shone in her eyes. Her cheeks lost their bloom; there were
lines about the little mouth.
Toppy saw it, but an unwonted shyness had come upon him. He could no
longer speak to her with the frank friendliness of their previous
conversations. Something which he could not place had, he felt, set them
apart.
Perhaps it was the fact that he saw the fascinations which Reivers had
for her. Reivers was his enemy. They had been enemies from the moment
when they first had measured each other eye to eye. He felt that he had
one aim in life now, and one only; that was to prove to himself and to
Reivers that Reivers was not his master.
Beyond that he had no plans. He knew that this meant a grapple which
must end with one of them broken and helpless. The unfortunate one might
be himself. In that case there would be no need to think of the future,
and it would be just as well not to have spoken any more with the girl.
It might be Reivers. Then he would be guilty in her eyes of having
injured the man for whom the girl now obviously had feelings which Toppy
could construe in but one way. She cared for Reivers, in spite of
herself; and she would not be inclined to friendliness toward the man
who had conquered him, if conquered he should be.
The more Toppy thought it over the less enviable, to his notion, became
his standing with the girl. He ended by resolutely determining to put
her out of his thoughts. After all, he was no girl's man. He had no
business trying to be. For the present he saw one task laid out before
him as inevitable as a revealed fate--to prove himself with Reivers, to
get to grips with the cold-blooded master-man who had made him feel,
with every man in camp, that the place veritably was a Hell Camp.
Reivers' brutal dominance lay like a tangible weight upon Toppy's
spirit. He longed for only one thing--for the opportunity to stand up eye
to eye with him and learn who was the better man. Beyond that he did not
see, nor care. He had given up any thought that the girl might ever care
for him.