Time dragged after that. Once the bid was on its way to Chicago, there
was nothing to do but wait. It was a delay which lengthened from June
until July, thence into late summer and early autumn, while the hills
turned brown with the colorings of the aspens, while Mount Taluchen and
its surrounding mountains once more became grim and forbidding with the
early fall of snow.
The time for the opening of the bids had passed, far in the distance, but
there had come no word. Ba'tiste, long since taken into as much of a
partnership agreement as was possible, went day after day to the post
office, only to return empty-handed, while Houston watched with more
intensity than ever the commercial columns of the lumber journals in the
fear that the contract, after all, had gone somewhere else. But no
notice appeared. Nothing but blankness as concerned the plans of the
Mountain Plains and Salt Lake Railroad.
Medaine he saw but seldom,--then only to avoid her as she strove to avoid
him. Houston's work was now in the hills and at the camp, doing exactly
what the Blackburn mill was doing, storing up a reasonable supply of
timber and sawing at what might or might not be the first consignment of
ties for the fulfillment of the contract. But day after day he realized
that he was all but beaten.
His arm had healed now and returned to the strength that had existed
before the fracture. Far greater in strength, in fact, for Houston had
taken his place in the woods side by side with the few lumberjacks whom
he could afford to carry on his pay roll. There, at least, he had right
of way. He had sold only stumpage, which meant that the Blackburn camp
had the right to take out as much timber as it cared to, as long as it
was paid for at the insignificant rate of one dollar and fifty cents a
thousand feet. Thayer and the men in his employ could not keep him out
of his own woods, or prevent him from cutting his own timber. But they
could prevent him from getting it to the mill by an inexpensive process.
From dawn until dusk he labored, sometimes with Ba'tiste singing lustily
beside him, sometimes alone. The task was a hard one; the snaking of
timber through the forest to the high-line roadway, there to be loaded
upon two-wheeled carts and dragged, by a slow, laborious, costly process,
to the mill. For every log that he sent to the saw in this wise, he knew
that Thayer was sending ten,--and at a tenth of the cost. But Houston
was fighting the last fight,--a fight that could not end until absolute,
utter failure stood stark before him at the end of the road.
September became October with its rains, and its last flash of brilliant
coloring from the lower hills, and then whiteness. November had arrived,
bringing with it the first snow and turning the whole, great, already
desolate country into a desert of white.
It was cold now; the cook took on a new duty of the maintenance of hot
pails of bran mash and salt water for the relief of frozen hands. Heavy
gum-shoes, worn over lighter footgear and reaching with felt-padded
thickness far toward the knee, encased the feet. Hands numbed, in spite
of thick mittens; each week saw a new snowfall, bringing with it the
consequent thaws and the hardening of the surface. The snowshoe rabbit
made its appearance, tracking the shadowy, silent woods with great,
outlandish marks. The coyotes howled o' nights; now and then Houston, as
he worked, saw the tracks of a bear, or the bloody imprints of a mountain
lion, its paws cut by the icy crust of the snow as it trailed the elk or
deer. The world was a quiet thing, a white thing, a cold, unrelenting
thing, to be fought only by thick garments and snowshoes. But with it
all, it gave Houston and Ba'tiste a new enthusiasm. They at least could
get their logs to the mill now swiftly and with comparative ease.
Short, awkward-appearing sleds creaked and sang along the icy,
hard-packed road of snow, to approach the piles of logs snaked out of the
timber, to be loaded high beyond all seeming regard for gravitation or
consideration for the broad-backed, patient horses, to be secured at one
end by heavy chains leading to a patent binder which cinched them to the
sled, and started down the precipitous road toward the mill. Once in a
while Houston rode the sleds, merely for the thrill of it; for the
singing and crunching of the logs against the snow, the grinding of bark
against bark, the quick surge as the horses struck a sharp decline and
galloped down it, the driver shouting, the logs kicking up the snow
behind the sled in a swirling, feathery wake.
At times he stayed at the bunk house with the lumberjacks, silent as they
were silent, or talking of trivial things which were mighty to them,--the
quality of the food, the depth of the snow, the fact that the little gray
squirrels were more plentiful in one part of the woods than another, or
that they chattered more in the morning than in the afternoon. Hours he
spent in watching Old Bill, a lumberjack who, in his few moments of
leisure between the supper table and bed, whittled laboriously upon a
wooden chain, which with dogged persistence he had lugged with him for
months. Or perhaps staring over the shoulder of Jade Hains, striving to
copy the picture of a motion-picture star from a worn, dirty, months-old
magazine; as excited as they over the tiny things in life, as eager to
seek a bunk when eight o'clock came, as grudging to hear the clatter of
alarm clocks in the black coldness before dawn and to creak forth to the
watering and harnessing of the horses for the work of the day. Some way,
it all seemed to be natural to Barry Houston, natural that he should
accept this sort of dogged, humdrum, eventless life and strive to think
of nothing more. The other existence, for him, had ended in a blackened
waste; even the one person in whom he had trusted, the woman he would
have been glad to marry, if that could have repaid her in any way for
what he thought she had done for him, had proved traitorous. His
letters, written to her at general delivery, St. Louis, had been
returned, uncalled for. From the moment that he had received that light,
taunting note, he had heard nothing more. She had done her work; she was
gone.
December came. Christmas, and with it Ba'tiste, with flour in his hair
and beard, his red shirt pulled out over his trousers, distributing the
presents which Houston had bought for the few men in his employ. January
wore on, bringing with it more snow. February and then--
"Eet is come! Eet is come!" Ba'tiste, waving his arms wildly, in spite
of the stuffiness of his heavy mackinaw, and the broad belt which sank
into layer after layer of clothing at his waist, came over the brow of
the raise into camp, to seize Houston in his arms and dance him about, to
lift him and literally throw him high upon his chest as one would toss a
child, to roar at Golemar, then to stand back, brandishing an opened
letter above his head. "Eet is come! I have open eet--I can not wait.
Eet say we shall have the contract! Ah, _oui! oui! oui! oui_! We shall
have the contract!"
Houston, suddenly awake to what the message meant, reached for the
letter. It was there in black and white. The bid had been accepted.
There need now be but the conference in Chicago, the posting of the
forfeit money, and the deal was made.
"Eet say five thousand dollars cash, and the rest in a bond!" came
enthusiastically from Ba'tiste. "Eet is simple. You have the mill, you
have the timber. Ba'teese, he have the friend in Denver who will make
the bond."
"But how about the machinery; we'll need a hundred-thousand-dollar plant
before we're through, Ba'tiste."
"Ah!" The old French-Canadian's jaw dropped. "Ba'teese, he is like the
child. He have not think of that. He have figure he can borrow ten
thousand dollar in his own name. But he have not think about the
machinery."
"But we must think about it, Ba'tiste. We've got to get it. With the
equipment that's here, we never could hope to keep up with the contract.
And if we can't do that, we lose everything. Understand me, I'm not
thinking of quitting; I merely want to look over the battlefield first.
Shall we take the chance?"
Big Ba'tiste shrugged his shoulders.
"Ba'teese, he always try to break the way," came at last. "Ba'teese, he
have trouble--but he have nev' been beat. You ask Ba'teese--Ba'teese say
go ahead. Somehow we make it."
"Then to-morrow morning we take the train to Denver, and from there I'll
go on to Boston. I'll raise the money some way. I don't know how. If I
don't, we're only beaten in the beginning instead of at the end. We'll
simply have to trust to the future--on everything, Ba'tiste. There are
so many things that can whip us, that--" Houston laughed shortly--"we
might as well be gamblers all the way through. We'll never fulfill the
contract, even with the machinery, unless we can get the use of the lake
and a flume to the mill. We may be able to keep it up for a month or
two, but that will be all. The expense will eat us up. But one chance
is no greater than the other, and personally, I'm at the point where I
don't care."
"_Oui_! Ba'teese, he have nothing. Ba'teese he only fight for the
excitement. So, to-morrow we go!"
And on the next day they went, again to go over all the details of their
mad, foundationless escapade with Chance, to talk it all over in the old
smoking car, to weigh the balance against them from every angle, and to
see failure on every side. But they had become gamblers with Fate; for
one, it was his final opportunity, to take or disregard, with a faint
glimmer of success at one end of the vista, with the wiping out of every
hope at the other. They tried not to look at the gloomy side, but that
was impossible. As the train ground its way up the circuitous grades,
Houston felt that he was headed finally for the dissolution. But there
was at least the consolation about it that within a short time the
uncertainty of his life would be ended; the hopes either crushed forever,
or realized, that--
"Ba'tiste!" They were in the snowsheds at Crestline, and Houston had
pointed excitedly toward a window of the west-bound train, just pulling
past them on the way down the slope. A woman was there, a woman who had
turned her head sharply, but with not enough speed to prevent a sight of
her by the French-Canadian who glanced quickly and gasped:
"The Judas!"
Houston leaped from his seat and ran to the vestibule of the car, but in
vain. It was closed; already the other last coach of the other train was
pulling past and gaining headway with the easier grade. Wondering, he
returned to his seat beside his partner.
"It was she, Ba'tiste," came with conviction. "I got a good look at her
before she noticed me. Then, when I pointed--she turned her head away."
"But Ba'teese, he see her."
"She's going back. What do you suppose it can mean? Can she be--"
"Ba'teese catch the nex' train to Tabernacle so soon as we have finish
our business. Eet is for no good."
"I wonder--" it was a hope, but a faint one--"if she could be coming back
to make amends, Ba'tiste? That--that other thing seemed so unlike the
person who had been so good to me, so apart from the side of her nature
that I knew--"
"She have a bad mouth," Ba'tiste repeated grimly. "She have a bad eye,
she have a bad tongue. A woman with a bad tongue, she is a devil.
You--you no see it, because she come to you with a smile, when every one
else, he frown. You think she is the angel, yes, _oui_? But she come to
Ba'teese different. She talk to you sof' and she try to turn you against
your frien'. Yes. _Oui_? _Ne c'est pas_? Ba'teese see her with the
selfish mouth. Peuff! He see her when she look to heem out from the
corner of her eye--so. Ba'teese know. Ba'teese come back quick, to keep
watch!"
"I guess you're right, Ba'tiste. It won't do any harm. If she's
returned for a good purpose, very well. If not, we're at least prepared
for her."
With that resolution they went on to Denver, there to seek out the few
friends Ba'tiste possessed, to argue one of them into a loan of ten
thousand dollars on the land and trustworthy qualities which formed the
total of Ba'tiste's resources, to gain from the other the necessary bond
to cover the contract,--a contract which Barry Houston knew only too well
might never be fulfilled. But against this fear was the booming
enthusiasm of Ba'tiste Renaud:
"Nev' min'. Somehow we do eet. Ah, _oui_! Somehow. If we make the
failure, then it shall be Ba'teese who will fin' the way to pay the bond.
Now, Ba'teese, he go back."
"Yes, and keep watch on that woman. She's out here for something'--I
feel sure of it--something that has to do with Thayer. Before you go,
however, make the rounds of the employment agencies and tell them to send
you every man they can spare, up to a hundred. We'll give them work to
the extent of five thousand dollars. They ought to be able to get enough
timber down to keep us going for a while anyway--especially with the
roads iced."
"Ah. _Oui_. It is the three o'clock. _Bon voyage, mon_ Baree!"
It was the first time Ba'tiste Renaud ever had dropped the conventional
"M'sieu" in addressing Houston, and Barry knew, without the telling,
without the glowing light in the old man's eyes, that at least a part of
the great loneliness in the trapper's heart had departed, that he had
found a place there in a portion of the aching spot left void by a
shrapnel-shattered son to whom a father had called that night in the
ruined cathedral,--and called in vain. It caused a queer pang of
exquisite pain in Houston's heart, a joy too great to be expressed by the
reflexes of mere pleasure. Long after the train had left Denver, he
still thought of it, he still heard the old man's words, he still sat
quiet and peaceful in a new enthusiasm of hope. The world was not so
blank, after all. One man, at least, believed in him fully.
Came Chicago and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of
the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing,
Houston went onward toward Boston.
And Ba'tiste was not there to boom enthusiastically regarding the chances
of the future, to enlarge upon the opportunities which might arise for
the fulfillment of a thing which seemed impossible.
Coldly, dispassionately, now that it was done, that the word of the
Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Company had been given to deliver the
materials for the making of a great railroad, had guaranteed its
resources and furnished the necessary bond for the fulfillment of a
promise, Barry Houston could not help but feel that it all had been rash,
to say the least. Where was the machinery to be obtained? Where the
money to keep things going? True, there would be spot cash awaiting the
delivery of every installment of the huge order, enough, in fact, to
furnish the necessary running expenses of a mill under ordinary
circumstances. But the circumstances which surrounded the workings of
the Empire Lake project were far from ordinary. No easy skidways to a
lake, no flume, no aerials; there was nothing to cut expenses. Unless a
miracle should happen, and Houston reflected that miracles were few and
far between, that timber must be brought to the mill by a system that
would be disastrous as far as costs were concerned. Yet, the contract
had been made!
He wandered the aisle of the sleeper, fidgeting from one end to the
other, as neither magazines, nor the spinning scenery without held a
counter-attraction for his gloomy thoughts. When night at last came, he
entered the smoking compartment and slumped into a seat in a far corner,
smoking in a detached manner, often pulling on his cigar long after
lengthy minutes of reflection had allowed its ashes to cool.
About him the usual conversation raged, the settling of a nation's
problems, the discussion of crime waves, Bolshevism and the whatnot that
goes with an hour of smoking on a tiresome journey. From Washington and
governmental affairs, it veered to the West and dry farming, thence to
the cattle business; to anecdotes, and finally to ghost stories. And
then, with a sudden interest, Houston forgot his own problems to listen
attentively, tensely, almost fearfully. A man whom he never before had
seen, and whom he probably never would see again, was talking,--about
something which might be as remote to Houston as the poles. Yet it held
him, it fascinated, it gripped him!
"Speaking of gruesome things," the talker had said, "reminds me. I'm a
doctor--not quite full fledged, I'll admit, but with the right to put M.
D. after my name. Spent a couple of years as an interne in Bellstrand
Hospital in New York. Big place. Any of you ever been there?"
No one had. The young doctor went on.
"Quite a place for experiments. They've got a big room on the fifth
floor where somebody is always dissecting, or carrying out some kind of
investigations into this bodily thing we call a home. My work led me
past there a good deal, and I'd gotten so I hardly noticed it. But one
Sunday night, I guess it was along toward midnight, I saw something that
brought me up short. I happened to look in and saw a man in there,
murdering another one with a wooden mallet."
"Murdering him?" The statement had caused a rise from the rest of the
auditors. The doctor laughed.
"Well, perhaps I used too sentimental a phrase. I should have said,
acting out a murder. You can't very well murder a dead man. The fellow
he was killing already was a corpse.
"You mean--"
"Just what I'm saying. There were two or three assistants. Pretty big
doctors, I learned later, all of them from Boston. They had taken a
cadaver from the refrigerator and stood it in a certain position. Then
the one man had struck it on the head with the mallet with all the force
he could summon. Of course it knocked the corpse down--I'm telling you,
it was gruesome, even to an interne! The last I saw of them, the doctors
were working with their microscopes--evidently to see what effect the
blow had produced."
"What was the idea?"
"Never found out. They're pretty close-mouthed about that sort of thing.
You see, opposite sides in a trial are always carrying out experiments
and trying their level best to keep the other fellow from knowing what's
going on. I found out later that the door was supposed to have been
locked. I passed through about ten minutes later and saw them working on
another human body--evidently one of a number that they had been trying
the tests on. About that time some one heard me and came out like a
bullet. The next thing I knew, everything was closed. How long the
experiments had been going on, I couldn't say. I do know, however, that
they didn't leave there until about three o'clock in the morning."
"You--you don't know who the men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be
casual, had asked the question. The young doctor shook his head.
"No--except that they were from Boston. At least, the doctors were. One
of the nurses knew them. I suppose the other man was a district
attorney--they usually are around somewhere during an experiment."
"You never learned with what murder case it was connected?"
"No--the fact is, it passed pretty much out of my mind, as far as the
details were concerned. Although I'll never forget the picture."
"Pardon me for asking questions. I--I--just happen to come from Boston
and was trying to recall such a case. You don't remember what time of
the year it was, or how long ago?"
"Yes, I do. It was in the summer, along about two or two and a half
years ago."
Houston slumped back into his corner. Ten minutes later, he found an
opportunity to exchange cards with the young physician and sought his
berth. To himself, he could give no reason for establishing the identity
of the smoking-compartment informant. He had acted from some sort of
subconscious compulsion, without reasoning, without knowing why he had
catalogued the information or of what possible use it could be to him.
But once in his berth, the picture continued to rise before him; of a big
room in a hospital, of doctors gathered about, and of a man "killing"
another with a mallet. Had it been Worthington? Worthington, the
tired-eyed, determined, over-zealous district attorney, who, day after
day, had struggled and fought to send him to the penitentiary for life?
Had it been Worthington, striving to reproduce the murder of Tom Langdon
as he evidently had reconstructed it, experimenting with his experts in
the safety of a different city, for points of evidence that would clinch
the case against the accused man beyond all shadow of a doubt?
Instinctively Houston felt that he just had heard an unwritten,
unmentioned phase of his own murder case. Yet--if that had been
Worthington, if those experts had found evidence against him, if the
theories of the district attorney had been verified on that gruesome
night in the "dead ward" of Bellstrand Hospital--
Why had this damning evidence been allowed to sink into oblivion? Why
had it not been used against him?