"That's about it. Credit ran out and the work stopped and things began
to rust, and now St. Marys has gone to sleep again and does a little
farming and trade with the Indians."
"In fact, it's a sort of rural tragedy?"
"Yes. You'll see the half-finished ditch just before we cross the
bridge. I'm afraid St. Marys has that kind of a sick feeling that
generally knocks the stuffing out of a municipality. Come on, let's
have some lunch."
The two disappeared toward the dining car, but Clark did not stir. His
eyes, which were gray and keen, still fixed themselves contemplatively
on the ragged wilderness. His lips were pressed tight, his jaw
slightly thrust out. Water rights--industries--unlimited power--land
for an industrial city; all this and much more seemed to hurl itself
through his brain. Presently he took a railway folder out of his bag
and examined one of those maps which invariably indicate that the
railway which has published the folder owns the only direct route
between important points and that all other lines meander aimlessly in
comparison. He noted, although he already knew it, that St. Marys,
Ontario, was just across the river from St. Marys, Michigan; that Lake
Superior flung itself down the rapids that roared between, and that to
the south the country was fairly well settled--but to the north the
wilderness stretched almost unbroken to the sub-arctics.
A quarter of an hour passed when a long whistle announced the approach
to the town. At the sound a new light came into the gray eyes, the
traveler closed his bag with a snap and began to put on his coat. Just
at that moment the porter hurried up.
"This isn't Minneapolis, sir."
Clark drew a long breath. "I know it--have changed my mind. I'm for
St. Mary's now."
He stepped off almost before the train came to a halt and looked
curiously about.
"Good day," he said to the nearest man. "Will you please tell me who
is mayor and where I will find him?"
Now it happened that the individual to whom this query was addressed
was none other than Bowers, the town solicitor, for Bowers had a habit
of deserting his office about train time and surveying new arrivals
from a corner of the platform with the lurking hope of unearthing
something which might relieve the monotony of days which were not only
wearisome but unprofitable. When the stranger spoke to him, the lawyer
noticed that he was of medium height with a strong barrel-like body and
rather sloping shoulders. His face was smooth, his jaw somewhat heavy,
his eyes exceedingly keen, and he carried with him an indefinable air
of authority. He observed, also, that the voice had in it something
peculiarly clear and incisive. With a little thrill and a sudden
flicker of the flame of hope, he pointed down the street that led to
the river.
"Filmer is the mayor and his store is at the second corner down. His
office is just behind."
The stranger nodded and strode briskly off. Presently Bowers heard
another voice.
"Who's that, do you suppose, commercial?"
The lawyer wrinkled his brows. "In a way, yes, but in another way, no.
That fellow isn't selling anything, he's a buyer."
As the stranger approached Filmer's store, he noted that it was the
largest building in sight, as well it might be. It was the local
emporium, and so successfully had Filmer managed his business that the
Hudson Bay Company saw nothing inviting in competition. From a plow to
a needle, from an ax to a kettle, from ammunition to sugar, Filmer had
all things, and what he had not he secured with surprising promptness.
He had been mayor so long that his first term was now almost forgotten.
By ability, courage, and fairness he was easily the leader in the
community. Broad and strong, with a ruddy, good natured face, a fine
tenor voice, a keen sense of humor and repartee, he was universally
popular. No one had known Filmer to complain or repine, though there
must have been moments when he longed for touch with those of his own
caliber. His was the case of a big man who though bigger than his
surroundings accepted them cheerfully. Thus, when Filmer looked up and
saw the stranger standing at his office door he was conscious of a
curious feeling of anticipation.
It was noted in the store that when the murmur of voices, a mingling of
the stranger's penetrating tones and Filmer's fuller, richer note, had
lasted for a moment, the mayor got up and banged the door shut, after
which there drifted out only a suggestion of conversation. It was not
until an hour later that the door opened and the two came slowly out,
the stranger as brisk as ever. Filmer was pulling thoughtfully at his
glossy black whiskers. Both paused on the wide front step.
"Then at eight this evening, Mr. Clark?" said Filmer.
"At eight," answered the stranger, staring keenly at the river.
"Won't you come and stay with me while you are here, it's just as
comfortable as the hotel?" Filmer laughed softly.
Clark shook his head. "Thanks, I'll have too much to do while I am
here. I'd better be alone." And with that he set off walking smartly
up the long rambling street that led to the abandoned power canal.
He progressed steadily with quick energetic steps, an alert and
suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank
walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house
of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden
walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. On his left,
still further west, was the home of Worden, the local magistrate. This
was a comfortable old place by the river, with a neglected field
between it and the highway. Scattered here and there were stores,
small buildings with high, wooden fronts, in the upper part of which
lived the proprietor and his family. On the right, street after street
started intermittently northward and died, houseless, at the railway
line, beyond which lay the unbroken bush. Still further up was the
County jail, set four square in a large lot that had been shorn of
trees. It was of gray stone, massive and forbidding and iron barred.
Clark stopped here for a moment and looked back at St. Marys with its
flaming maples and its scattered roofs from which rose plumes of light,
gray smoke. His eyes half closed as though in some sudden
introspection, till, turning abruptly, he struck off over a road that
led across a mile of level land and came presently to the grave of the
industrial hopes of the town. It was an ugly scar in the face of the
helpless earth.
Climbing the half completed embankment, he looked west, where through
the clearing he could see the waters of Superior, then down stream to
the tail of the rapids that roared half a mile further on. It came to
him that nothing is so ugly as a well meant effort which has been left
unfinished. Where he stood there had, a year or so before, been little
rivulets which, escaping from the mighty flood of the rapids, lost
themselves in thickets of birch, hemlock, and cedar, and tinkled and
leaped musically to the lower stretches of the river, whilst great
trout lay winnowing their currents of white water. But of this beauty
there was now but a disordered gash, a hundred feet wide and a thousand
feet long, where rusting tools were scattered amongst mounds of
splintered rock that lay in piles just as the blast of dynamite had
left them. An untidy ruin, thought Clark, who had his own ideas of how
things should be put away.
But he was, nevertheless, intensely interested, scanning it all
shrewdly. He picked up fragments of stone, and, breaking them,
examined their texture with the utmost care. Once or twice he walked
along the top of the unfinished embankment throughout its entire
length, running a keen eye over the outlines of the excavation. After
half an hour which concluded with one long concentrated stare, he
pushed on deliberately through the soaked and tangled undergrowth till
he came to the edge of the rapids themselves. Here he sat on a rock
and looked long and earnestly, and so motionless was he that, after a
little while, he seemed to blend completely with earth, sky, and water.
Immediately at his feet the rush of the river grasped at the rough
shore as though to pluck it into the deeps, and here were eddies in
which he could see the polished stones at the bottom. But further out,
where the full weight of water began to be felt, were the first of the
great, white horses that stretched to the other shore, a tossing,
leaping, irresistible herd. Under the great bridge at his right, the
river took its first dip, a smooth and shining slope, streaked with
tiny furrows of speed that wrinkled like waving metallic lines. Below
that came the rapids in their first fury, with scattered cellars into
which the flood swept to uprear itself in a second into pyramids of
force and foam. This seemed to fascinate Clark, and he peered with
unwinking eyes till a sharp clatter just over his head caused him to
look up. Still he did not move his body, and a kingfisher on a branch,
after regarding him for an instant with bright suspicious eyes, flung
himself into the air and hovered over a nearby eddy with an irregular
flapping of quick, blue wings. Then, like a bullet, he dived into the
flashing stream immediately at Clark's feet, and emerged with diamond
drops flying from his brilliant plumage and a small, silver fish
curving in his sharp, serrated beak, till, a second later, he darted
into the covert with his prey. The bird had dared the rapids and found
that which he sought. Clark's gray eyes had seen it all, and he smiled
understandingly.
The mayor, after the departure of his visitor, stood thoughtfully in
front of the store, while his eye followed the stranger's figure
dreamily up the street, and stood like one who has that whereof to
ponder. It is true that he had offered to accompany the new comer on
his pilgrimage, but equally true that Clark had politely but definitely
declined, and it was something new for the mayor to have his suggestion
thus put aside. In this case, however, he felt no resentment, and
presently strolled to the house of Worden, the magistrate, where he
found Worden, a large man with a small, kindly face, sitting in his
study which immediately faced the lawn. On the other side was the
river. Worden was apparently dividing his time between an unfinished
judgment, for which there seemed no pressing demand, and a satisfying
contemplation of the great stream which here was flecked with foam from
the tumult above.
The mayor sat for some time talking to him, surrounded by tiers of
homemade shelves packed with law books, along whose tattered, leather
backs Worden had a habit of running a tobacco-stained forefinger while
he relighted a pipe which seemed in continual need of attention. The
talk was long and earnest. The mayor's cigar went out with a smell of
varnish where it lay on the edge of the judge's desk, but the two were
so interested that they did not notice it.
Presently Filmer got up and Worden followed him to the porch expressing
entire approval of all that had been discussed, and, as Filmer struck
across to the street, he returned to his study and gazed at the
judgment with apparent contempt.
From Worden's, the mayor walked across to the jail and sought out
Manson. The latter was in his small office which seemed crowded with
its single occupant's bulk, and adjoined the high forbidding walls of
the jail itself. In St. Marys the chief constable was a man of place,
and the jail an edifice that at times took on a singular interest, and
if such a capacious establishment as it actually was might seem
superfluous in Arcadia it must be remembered that in seasons of the
year the lumberjacks rolled in from the northern parts with six months'
wages and a great thirst that demanded to be quenched, and a perfectly
natural and well meaning desire to offer combat at sight, which they
generally did. Then, too, there were fugitives from justice who
slipped across the river by night in canoes, and miners from the silver
country far to the west, and sometimes crime was also the product of
isolation.
Manson, a tall man, broad, dark, and heavy voiced, seemed by nature
designed to meet just such contingencies. Outwardly he was the epitome
of authority and inwardly he had a mind as stiff as his back. In his
own domain he was as Jove on Olympus, and when he moved abroad he was a
perambulating reminder of the strong arm of the law. The jail was
conveniently arranged to hold the court room on an upper story, so that
Manson could pop a prisoner up out of his cell to be tried and
sentenced, and pop him back forthwith, and all the time the unfortunate
was, so to speak, one of the family and continually under the paternal
eye.
Had a listener been outside the door, he would have gleaned that the
mayor's visit was, in this case, not as amicable as that just made to
Worden. He talked long and arduously, but every now and then Manson's
deep bass boomed out heavy with argument, and his massive fist crashed
ponderously on the table. Presently Filmer drew a long breath and,
stepping out on the trim gravel path, glanced up quizzically at the
chief constable who looked as though enthroned on his own doorstep.
"Mr. Mayor," came the deep voice, "I don't take any stock in your
scheme. It's no good and there's a nigger in the fence somewhere. I
was right before, and I am right this time."
Filmer laughed softly. "Well, John, you're a hell of a good jailer, we
all admit that, but I don't put you down as any permanent prophet.
However, you will come, won't you?"
Manson nodded, a nod which said that though he would come it could not
affect his fixed opinion, whereupon the mayor laughed again, and set
off to finish his afternoon pilgrimage, and it is but fair to follow
him a little further since he was a shrewd man, active and courageous,
and though he did not know it, the result of the various visits he made
that day was to be imprinted indelibly on the history of St. Marys.
Banishing Manson from a mind which was already busy with his next move,
he retraced his steps as far as the cottage of Dibbott, the Indian
agent, who at this hour of the day, might have been found moving
mountainously in his long garden and pottering amongst his perennials,
smoking an enormous pipe which he regretfully laid aside only in order
that he might eat.
Now, since the citizens of St. Marys were, without their knowledge,
about to enter upon a period of great importance, glance at Dibbott,
not the least of them, as his small, blue eyes caught the approaching
figure of the mayor. Six feet when he straightened, his shoulders were
bent, but still broad and strong. His face was fiery, not only from
his full blooded habit but also from long canoe voyages. He was a
placid man--placid yet at times suddenly choleric, and he regarded St.
Marys and his own particular plot of land with an undying and tranquil
affection. Dibbott's position was, in a sense, enviable, for he stood
as administrator between the government and the local Indian tribes, in
whose eyes he was the representative of authority.
Year after year he made official visits of visible grandeur to the
settlements of his wards, journeying in a great canoe in the middle of
which he rested enthroned, the brim of his hat pulled far down over a
scarlet, sunburnt nose, a steady wisp of smoke from his big pipe
floating back into the face of the laboring Indian behind him. It may
be that it was in the silence and mysterious appeal of these journeys
that Dibbott got the dignity which sat so naturally on his great, gray
head.
The mayor liked the old man, and Dibbott knew it, so they talked
amicably while Dibbott, turning every now and then in surprise, pushed
out his full red lips as though rising to a fly, and darted quick,
little glances as Filmer unfolded his story beside a late phlox. And
when the mayor concluded, Dibbott did not move but began to rumble in a
deep, throaty, ruminative voice something that sounded like one hundred
and thirty thousand dollars at six per cent.
On his way back to the office, Filmer saw Bowers' lean figure across
the street. He crooked a masterful finger. "Come here!"
The lawyer came over very deliberately and the two went on together.
"There is a man up at the rapids who says he's ready at any time to
take over the town canal debentures."