CHAPTER I

THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT

by

RIDGWELL CULLUM

G.P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1922

BY RIDGWELL CULLUM

THE DEVIL'S KEG

THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH

THE BROODING WILD

THE NIGHT RIDERS

THE WATCHERS OF THE PLAINS

THE COMPACT

THE TRAIL OF THE AXE

THE ONE WAY TRAIL

THE SHERIFF OF DYKE HOLE

TWINS OF SUFFERING CREEK

THE GOLDEN WOMAN

THE WAY OF THE STRONG

THE LAW BREAKERS

THE SON OF HIS FATHER

THE MEN WHO WROUGHT

THE PURCHASE PRICE

THE TRIUMPH OF JOHN KARS

THE LAW OF THE GUN

THE HEART OF UNAGA

TO MY NEPHEW

GEOFFREY FREDERICK BURGHARD

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

The story of the Sachigo wood-pulp mills, told in this book, is entirely

a work of imagination. But as I have had to draw very largely on my

knowledge of the wood-pulp trade of Eastern Canada, and the conditions

under which it is carried on, I desire it to be clearly understood that

this story contains no portraiture of any person or persons, living or

dead, and contains no representation of any business organisation

connected with the trade.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

I.--THE CRISIS

II.--THE MAN WITH THE MAIL

III.--IDEPSKI

IV.--THE "YELLOW STREAK"

V.--NANCY MCDONALD

VI.--NATHANIEL HELLBEAM

PART TWO

EIGHT YEARS LATER

I.--BULL STERNFORD

II.--FATHER ADAM

III.--BULL LEARNS CONDITIONS

IV.--DRAWING THE NET

V.--THE PROGRESS OF NANCY

VI.--THE LONELY FIGURE

VII.--THE SKANDINAVIA MOVES

VIII.--AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS

IX.--ON THE OPEN SEA

X.--IN QUEBEC

XI.--DRAWN SWORDS

XII.--AT THE CHATEAU

XIII.--DEEPENING WATERS

XIV.--THE PLANNING OF CAMPAIGN

XV.--THE SAILING OF THE _Empress_

XVI.--ON BOARD THE _Empress_

XVII.--THE LONELY FIGURE AGAIN

XVIII.--BULL STERNFORD'S VISION OF SUCCESS

XIX.--THE HOLD-UP

XX.--ON THE HOME TRAIL

XXI.--THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT

XXII.--DAWN

XXIII.--NANCY

XXIV.--THE COMING OF SPRING

XXV.--NANCY'S DECISION

XXVI.--THE MESSAGE

XXVII.--LOST IN THE TWILIGHT

THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE CRISIS

They sat squarely gazing into each other's eyes. Bat Marker had only one

mood to express. It was a mood that suggested determination to fight to

a finish, to fight with the last ounce of strength, the last gasp of

breath. He was sitting at the desk, opposite his friend and employer,

Leslie Standing, and his small grey eyes were shining coldly under his

shaggy, black brows. His broad shoulders were squared aggressively.

There was far less display in the eyes of Leslie Standing. They were

wide with a deep pre-occupation. But then Standing was of very different

type. His pale face, his longish black hair, brushed straight back from

an abnormally high forehead, suggested the face of a student, even a

priest. Harker was something of the roused bull-dog, strong, rugged,

furious; a product of earth's rough places.

"Give us that last bit again."

Bat's tone matched his attitude. It was abrupt, forceful, and he thrust

out a hand pointing at the letter from which the other had been reading.

Standing's eyes lit with a shadow of a smile as he turned again to the

letter.

"There's just one thing more. It's less pleasant, so I've kept

it till the last. Hellbeam is in Quebec. So is his agent--the

man Idepski. My informant tells me he saw the latter leaving the

steam-packet office. It suggests things are on the move your way

again. However, my man is keeping tab. I'll get warning through

at the first sign of danger."

Standing looked up. His half smile had gone. There was doubt in his

eyes, and the hand grasping the letter was not quite steady. But when he

spoke his tone was a flat denial of the physical sign that Bat had been

quick to observe.

"Charlie Nisson's as keen as a needle," Standing said. "His whisper's a

sight more than another fellow's shout."

Bat regarded the letter. He watched the other lay it aside on a pile of

papers. He was thinking, thinking hard. And his thought was mostly of

the man whose shaking hand betrayed him. Suddenly an explosive movement

brought his clenched fist down on the table with a thud.

"Hell!" he cried, in a fury of impatience. "What's the use? The danger

sign's hoisted. I know it. You know it. Nisson knows it. Well? Say,

Hellbeam's been in Quebec a score of times since--since--. That don't

worry a thing. No. He's got big finance in the Skandinavia bunch in

Quebec. We know all about that. It's Idepski. Idepski ain't visiting the

packet office for his health. He ain't figgerin' on a joy trip up the

Labrador coast. No. That's the signal, sure. Idepski at the packet

office. Their darn mud-scow mostly runs here, to Sachigo, and there

ain't a thing along the way to interest Idepski--but Sachigo. We'll be

getting word from Charlie Nisson in some hurry."

"Yes, we'll get it in a hurry."

Standing nodded. He was transparently perturbed. Bat watched him

closely. Then, in a moment, his mind was made up.

"See right here, Les," he cried, in a tone he vainly endeavoured to

restrain. "I've figgered right along this thing would need to happen

sometime. You can't beat a feller like Hellbeam all the time and leave

him without a kick. It don't need me to tell you that. But I want to get

a square eye on the whole darn game. Maybe you don't get all you did to

that guy when you cleaned him out of ten million dollars on Wall Street

seven years ago.

"Say, you were a mathematical professor at a Scottish University before

you reckoned to buck the game on Wall Street, weren't you?" he went on,

more moderately. He forced a grin into eyes that were scarcely

accustomed. "One of those guys who mostly make two and two into four,

and by no sort of imagination can cypher 'em into five. I know. You

figgered out that Persian Oil gamble to suit yourself, and forgot to

figger that Hellbeam was at the other end of it. No. The other feller

don't cut any ice with you while you're playing around with figgers.

It's only afterwards you find that figgers ain't the whole game, and

wrostling ten million dollars out of one of the biggest railroad kings

and bank presidents in America has something to it liable to hand you

nightmare. Well, you got that nightmare. So did I. You've had it for

most the whole of the last seven years. But it ain't a nightmare now.

It's dead real, which is only a way of sayin' Hellbeam's set his dogs on

a hot trail, and we're the poor darn gophers huntin' our holes right up

here on the Labrador coast.

"Oh, yes. I know what you'd say. You've said it all before. Hellbeam

hasn't a kick comin'. You were both operators on Wall Street. You were

both playing the financial game as all the world knows it. You beat him

on a straight financial fight. It was just a matter of the figgers which

it's your job to play around with.

"Now I'm just going to say the thing that's in my mind," he went on, his

tone changing again to something clumsily persuasive. "You can take it

easy from me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You

passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of

penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is

mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by

accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when

they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a

thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you

to know it when I'm telling you the things in my mind. Hellbeam's got a

mighty big kick coming. It's the biggest kick any feller of his sort can

have. He's the money power of Sweden. He's one of the big money powers

of the States. He lives for money and the power it hands him. Well? This

is how I figger. Just how you played him up I can't say. But it's his

job to juggle around with figgers same as it's yours, and if you beat

him out of ten million dollars you must have played a slicker hand than

him. All of which says you must have got more to windward of the law

than him--and he knows it. Why, it's easy. The feller who has the money

power to hold the crown jewels of Sweden from falling into the hands of

yahoo politicians out to grab the things they haven't the brains to come

by honestly, is mostly powerful enough to buy up the justice he needs,

or any other old thing. Hellbeam means to get his hands on you. He's

going to get you across the darn American border. And when he's got you

there he's going to send you down, by hook or crook, to the worst hell

an American penitentiary can show you. It's seven years since you hurt

him. But that ain't a circumstance. If it takes him seventy-seven he'll

never quit your trail."

Bat paused, and, for a moment, turned from the wide black eyes he had

held seemingly fascinated while he was talking. It almost seemed that

the emotions stirring in his broad bosom were too overpowering for him,

and he needed respite from their pressure. But he came again. He was

bound to. It was his nature to drive to the end at whatever cost to

himself.

"I'm handing you this stuff, Les, because I got to," he went on. "It

ain't because I'm liking it. No, sir. And if you've the horse sense I

reckon you have, you'll locate my object easy. Those words of Nisson's

have told us plain we got to fight. We got to fight like hell. And the

time's right now. Oh, yes, we're going to fight. You an' me, just the

same as we've fought a heap of times before. There ain't a feller I know

who's got more fight in him than you--when you feel that way.

But--well, say, you just need a boost to make you feel like it. You

ain't like me who wants to fight most all the time. No. Well--I'm going

to hand you that boost."

"How?"

Standing's unruffled interrogation was in sharp contrast with the

other's earnestness. There was a calm tolerance in it. The tolerance of

a temperament given to philosophy rather than passion. Perhaps it was a

mask. Perhaps it was real. Whatever it was, Bat's next words sent the

hot fire of a man's soul leaping into his eyes.

"When your boy's born, what then?"

"Ah!"

Bat's fists clenched at the sound of the other's ejaculation. It was the

nervous clenching at a sound that threatened danger. Swift as a shot he

followed up his challenge.

"Your pore gal's down there in Quebec hopin' and prayin' to hand you

that boy child you reckon Providence is going to send you. Well, when he

gets along, and Hellbeam's around--and--"

Bat broke off. Standing had risen from his chair. He had moved swiftly,

his lean figure propelled towards the window by long, nervous strides.

His voice came back to the man at the table, while his eyes gazed down

upon the waters of Farewell Cove, over the widespread roofs of the great

groundwood mill, the building of which was the result of his seven

years' sojourn on the Labrador coast.

"You've handed it me, Bat," he said, in a quick, nervous way. "I'll

fight. I know. You guess I'm scared at Nisson's news. Maybe I am, I

don't know. I'm not a man of iron guts. Maybe I never shall be. It's

hell to me to feel a shadow dogging my every step. Yes, you're right.

It's been a nightmare, and now--why, now it's real. But get your mind at

rest. I'm going to fight Hellbeam all I know. And with the thought of

Nancy, and the boy she's going to give me, I don't need a thing else.

No."

"That's how I figgered."

Bat's delight softened his hard eyes for the moment, and his attitude

relaxed as Standing went on.

"You reckon I've no imagination," he said. "You reckon I'm just a

calculating machine that can juggle figures better than any other

machine." He shook his dark head. "I guess you don't do me full justice.

When I quit the university on the other side it was because I had built

myself up a big dream. I crossed to the United States with my

imagination full of the things I hoped to do. It was the chance I looked

for. And I found it in Hellbeam, and the Persian Oils it was his hobby

to manipulate. I jumped in and grabbed it with both hands. And, as you

say, I beat him at his own game. But that was only part of my dream. The

next part you also know, though you choose to think it was only as a

refuge from Hellbeam that I came here to Sachigo. I admit circumstances

have modified my original dream, but then I dreamed my first dream as a

man unmarried. Now I have added to it in the thought of the son my

wife's going to present me with. After beating Hellbeam and making the

fortune I desired, I didn't flee here to the coast of Labrador as a mere

refuge from the man you tell me I robbed. No. This place served its

purpose that way, it's true. But it was the place I selected long since

for the fulfilment of the second part of my dream.

"Bat--Bat, old friend. It isn't I who lack imagination. It's you, with

your bull-dog, fighting nature. Years ago, way back there in my rooms at

the university, I took up a study that interested me mightily. It was

when the European war was on, and was doing its best to unship the

brains of half the world. I took it up to relieve myself of the strain

of things. And it inspired me with a desire to achieve something that

looked well-nigh impossible. I was watching the Swedes, the

Skandinavians generally, and I saw them getting fat and rich by holding

the rest of the world to ransom for paper and wood pulp--the stuff we

call here groundwood. It was then that my dream was born. Oh, yes, it's

changed a bit since then. But not so much. All I learned at that time

told me there was only one country in the world that was due to hold the

world's paper industry, and that country was yours--Canada. The

illimitable forests of the country are one of the most amazing features

of it. The water power--yes, and even the climate. But I saw all

Skandinavia's advantage. Hitherto they've had a complete monopoly.

Geographically they were in the thick of the world. The whole darn thing

was in their lap. But they have a weakness which you could never find in

this country. Their forests are being eaten into. Their lumber is

receding farther and farther from their mills. Their labour is

difficult. Well, I set to work with a map and those figures which you

guess are my strong point. I played around with all the information of

Quebec and Labrador I could get hold of. Then, after worrying around

awhile, I realised that, with only eighteen hundred sea miles dividing

Britain from Labrador, given the cheapness of power, sufficiently

extensive plant and forest limits and adequate shipping, I could put

groundwood on the European market in favourable competition with

Skandinavia. By this means I could build up an industry which means the

wealth of Canada for the Canadians, and establish the paper industry of

the world within the heart of our British Empire. So it was Farewell

Cove and Sachigo on the coast of Labrador for me. And the locality had

nothing to do with the man who guesses I robbed him."

It was Bat who was held silent now. He nodded his head at the narrow

back that remained turned on him.

"Well, since then," Standing went on, "seven years have passed.

Circumstances have forced modifications on my plans. Hellbeam is the

circumstance. You say we are the gophers hunting our holes. Maybe you're

right. Anyway Hellbeam's shadow is haunting me. It's haunting me in that

I know--_I_ feel--that the fulfilment of this dream is not for me. Why?"

He turned abruptly from the window. His pale face was even paler under

the excitement burning in his dark eyes. He thrust out a hand, a

delicate, long-fingered hand pointing at his friend and faithful

servant.

"Say, you reckon I've no imagination. Listen. I see the time coming when

all you say of Hellbeam's purpose will be fulfilled, and my dream

shattered and tumbling about my head. If Hellbeam succeeds, can I let

this thing happen? Can I sacrifice this great purpose in such a personal

disaster? No. My hope is in my little wife, that dear woman who's given

herself to me with the full knowledge of the threat hanging over my

future. She and I have dreamed a fresh dream. And she's even now

fulfilling her part of that dream. Yes, you're right. I'm going to fight

for our dream with every ounce that's in me. I know my failings. I'm at

heart a coward. But I'm out to fight though the gates of hell are agape

waiting for me. And when I'm beaten, and Hellbeam's satisfied his kick,

my boy, my little son, will step into my shoes and carry on the work

till it's complete. Oh, yes, I say 'my son.' Nancy will see to it that

she gives me a son. And, by God, how I will fight for him!"

Bat was silent before the tide of his friend's passion. He listened to

the strange mixture of clear thinking and unreasoning faith with a

feeling of something like awe of a man whom he had long since given up

attempting to fathom. He was a rough lumberman, a mill-boss, who, by

sheer force, had raised himself from the dregs of a lumber camp to a

position where his skill and capacity had full play. And in his utter

lack of education it was impossible that he should be able to fathom a

nature so complex, so far removed from his sphere of culture.

His devotion to the ex-university professor was based on a splendid

gratitude such as only the native generosity of his temper could bestow.

The man had once served him in his extremity. Even to this day he never

quite realised how the thing had come about, and Leslie Standing refused

to talk of it. All he knew was that as mill-boss of an obscure mill, far

in the interior of Quebec, away down south of Sachigo, he had fought one

of those sudden battles with a lumber-jack which seem to spring up

without any apparent reason. And in the desperateness of it, in the

fierce height to which his battling temper had arisen, he had killed his

man. Even so, these things were sufficiently common for little notice of

the matter to have been taken. But it so happened that the dead man was

the hero of the workers of the mill, and Bat Harker was their well-hated

boss. Forthwith, in their numbers, the workers at once determined that

Bat should pay the penalty. They seized and imprisoned him, while they

sent down country to get him duly tried and condemned. It was then the

miracle happened.

It happened in the night, with the appearance of a lean, tall man, with

a high forehead, and smooth black hair, and the clothes of civilisation

to which Bat Harker was little enough accustomed. He entered his prison

room seemingly without question. He told Bat that if he cared to get

away he had the means awaiting him outside. And the prisoner who had

visions of hanging, or at best, a long term of imprisonment, snatched at

the helping hand held out. And Leslie Standing had brought him in safety

straight to Farewell Cove, where together, with the vast capital which

the former had wrung from the Swedish financier, Nathaniel Hellbeam,

they had undertaken the creation of the great mill of Sachigo.

Bat, in his wonder at the apparent ease of his rescue, had sought

information. But little enough had been forthcoming. Leslie Standing had

only smiled in his pensive fashion.

"Money," he had said calmly. "Just money. It can do most things."

That was all. And thenceforward the subject had been taboo. Even after

seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the

subject, he was still guessing.

Now, as he listened to his friend's expressions of faith, so strangely

jumbled with calculated purpose, he sat at the table groping helplessly.

Suppose--suppose that faith were to be shattered. What then? His mind

was concerned, deeply concerned. And he dared not put his fears into

words.

Standing came back to his chair.

"Here, we've talked these things enough," he said. "You've got my word.

Just don't worry a thing. If Hellbeam's dogs get around, well--we're

here first. All I want is news of Nancy. And that'll be along any old

time now. When I get that--."

The door of the office was thrust open, and an olive-hued face appeared.

It was the clerk who worked in direct contact with the owner of the

Sachigo mill. He was one-third nigger, another French Canadian, and the

rest of him was Indian. It was a combination that appealed to the man

who employed him.

"They've 'phoned it through from the wireless at the headland, Boss,"

the man said without preamble, pushing a sheet of paper into Leslie

Standing's hand.

He had gone as swiftly and silently as he came, and the door was closed

softly behind him.

Standing was gazing across at Bat. He had not even glanced at the

message.

"I'd like to bet," he cried, his eyes alight with a smiling excitement.

Then he shook his head. "No. I wouldn't bet on it. It's too sacred.

Nancy--my Nancy--."

He broke off, and glanced down at the paper. In a moment the smile fell

from his eyes. When he looked up it was to flash a keen glance at the

rugged face beyond the desk.

"Here, listen," he cried, with a sharp intake of breath.

"Watch _Lizzie_ for U.G.P. Signed--Nisson."

Bat nodded.

"U.G.P. That's Union Great Peninsular Railroad. That's Hellbeam's. It

means--."

"It means Hellbeam's men are aboard. The packet _Lizzie_ is due at our

quay in less than an hour."

Standing tore the message into small fragments and dropped them into the

wastepaper basket beside him. Only was his emotion displayed in the

deliberate care with which he reduced the paper to the smallest possible

fragments.

CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITH THE MAIL

The calm waters of Farewell Cove lay a-shimmer under the slanting rays

of the sun. A wealth of racing white cloud filled the dome of the summer

sky, speeding under the pressure of a strong top wind. Even the harsh

world of Labrador was smiling under the beneficence of the brief summer

season.

Leslie Standing stood for a moment before passing down the winding

woodland trail on his way to the water-front below. The view of it all

was irresistible to him in his present mood, and he feasted his eyes

hungrily while the resolve he had taken yielded an inflexible hardening.

Bat Harker was less affected by the things spread out before him. He was

concerned only for the mood of the man beside him. So he waited with

such patience as his hasty nature could summon.

"It's all good, Bat, old friend," Standing said, after a moment's silent

contemplation. "It's too good to lose. It's too good for us to stand for

interference from--Nathaniel Hellbeam."

Bat grunted some sort of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over

the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen

deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the

fussy approach of the bluff packet boat.

It was a scene of amazing natural splendour which the works of man had

no power to destroy. Farewell Cove was a perfect natural harbour,

deep-set amidst surrounding, lofty, forest-clad hills. It was wide and

deep, a veritable sea-lake, backing inland some fifteen miles behind the

wide headland gateway to the East, which guarded its entrance from the

storming Atlantic. Its shores were of virgin forest, peopled with the

delicate-hued spruce, and all the many other varieties of soft, white,

long-fibred timber demanded in the manufacture of the groundwood pulp

needed for the world's paper industry.

Far as the eye could see, in every direction, it was the same; forest

and hill. And, in the heart of it all, the great watercourse of the

Beaver River debouched upon the cove which linked it with the ocean

beyond. It was a world of forest, seeming of limitless extent.

But the feast that had inspired Leslie Standing's words was less the

banquet which Nature had spread than the things which expressed the

labours he and his companion had expended during the past seven years.

He was concerned for the endless forests. He appreciated the great

waterfall to the west, where the Beaver River fell off the highlands of

the interior and precipitated itself into the cove below. These were the

two things in Nature he had demanded to make his work possible. For the

rest, the rugged immensity of scenery, the mighty contours of the aged

land about him, the vastness of the harsh primordial world, so

inhospitable, so forbidding under the fierce climate which Nature had

imposed, made no appeal. It served, and so it was sufficient. The lights

and shades under the summer sunlight were full of splendour. No artist

eye could have gazed upon it all and missed its appeal. But these men

lived amidst it the year round, and they had learned something of the

fear which the ruthless northland inspires. To them the beauty of the

open season was a mockery, a sham, the cruel trap of a heartless

mistress.

It was on the wide southern foreshore, just below where the falls of the

Beaver River thundered into the chasm which the centuries of its flood

had hewn in the granite rock, that Standing had founded his great mill.

It lay there, in full view from the hillside, amidst a tangle of stoutly

made roads, where seven years ago not even a game track had existed. He

had set it up beside his water-power, and had given it the name which

belonged to the ruined trading post he had found on the southern

headland of the cove when first he had explored the region. Sachigo. A

native, Labrador word which meant "Storm." The trading post had since

been re-built into a modern wireless station, and so had become no

longer the landmark it once had been. But Standing's whim had demanded

the necessity for preserving the name, if only for the sake of its

meaning.

In seven years the translation of the wilderness had been well-nigh

complete. Its vast desolation remained. That could never change under

human effort. It was one of the oldest regions of the earth's land,

driven and beaten and desolated under a climate beyond words in its

merciless severity. But now the place was peopled. Now human dwellings

dotted the forest foreshore of the cove. And the latter were the homes

of the workers who had come at the mill-owner's call to share in his

great adventure.

Then there was shipping in the cove. A fleet of merchant shipping

awaiting cargoes. There was a built inner harbour, with quays, and

warehouses. There were travelling cranes, and every appliance for the

loading of the great freighters with all possible dispatch. There were

light railways running in every direction. There were sheltering "booms"

in the river mouth crammed with logs, and dealt with by an army of river

men equipped with their amazing peavys with which they thrust, and

rolled, and shepherded the vast mass of hewn timber towards the

slaughterhouse of saws. Then, immediately surrounding the mill, there

was a veritable town of storehouses and offices and machine shops of

every description. There were power-houses, there were buildings in the

process of construction, and the laid foundations of others projected.

It was a world of active human purpose lost in the heart of an immense

solitude which it was nevertheless powerless to disturb.

"Yes, it's all too good to have things happen, Bat," Standing went on

presently. "Hark at the roar of the falls. What is it? Five hundred

thousand horsepower of water, summer and winter. Listen to the drone of

the grinders." He shook his head. "It's a great song, boy, and they

never get tired of singing it. There's only thirty-six of 'em at

present. Thirty-six. We'll have a hundred and thirty-six some day. Look

down there at the booms." He stood pointing, a tall, lean figure on the

hillside. "Tens of thousands of logs, and hundreds of men. We'll

multiply those again and again--one day. It's fine. The freighters lying

at anchor awaiting their cargoes. Some day we'll have our own ships--a

big fleet of 'em. See the smoke pennants floating from our smoke stacks.

They're the triumphant pennants of successful industry, eh? We can't

have too many such flags flying. One day we'll have trolley cars running

along the shores of the cove to bring the workers in to the mill. It'll

be like a veritable Atlantic City. Oh, it's a great big dream. There's

nothing amiss. No."

"Only the _Lizzie_ getting in."

Bat was without apparent appreciation. He was thinking only of the

message they had received, and the threat it contained.

Standing glanced round at the sturdy figure beside him. A half smile lit

his sallow features. Then he turned again and sought out the tubby

vessel approaching the wharf below. But it was only for a moment. Some

subtle thought impelled him, and he glanced back at the house on the

hillside he had just left, the house he had erected for the woman whose

devotion had taught him the real meaning of life.

It was a long, low, rambling, gabled building. It was an extensive

timber-built home with a wide verandah and those many vanities and

conceits of building that would never have been permitted had it been

intended for bachelordom. He remembered how Nancy and he had designed it

together. He remembered the delight with which they had looked forward

to its completion, and ultimately their boundless joy in the task of

its furnishing. He remembered how Nancy had insisted that it should

contain not only their home, but his own private office, from which he

could control the great work he had set his hand to. It had been her

ardent desire to be always near him, always there to support him under

the burden of his immense labours. And remembering these things a fierce

desire leapt within him, and he turned again to the man at his side.

"Yes, she's getting in, Bat," he said. "But I just wanted to get a peek

at things. Well, I've seen all I want, old friend. Now I'm ready. Fight?

Oh, yes, I'm ready to fight. Come on." And he laughed as he hurried down

the woodland trail to the water-side.

* * * * *

The two men had reached the quay-side, which was lined with bales of

wood-pulp stacked ready for shipment. Farther down its length the cranes

were rattling their chains, swinging their burdens out over the holds of

the vessel taking in its moist cargo. The stevedores were vociferously

busy, working against time. For, in the brief open season, time was the

very essence of the success demanded for the mills. The noise, the babel

of it all was usually the choicest music to Standing and his manager.

But just now they were less heeding. Their eyes were turned upon the

small steamer plugging its deliberate way over the water towards them.

It was a small, heavily-built tub of a vessel calculated to survive the

worst Atlantic storms.

Bat's face was without any expression of undue emotion. But the hard

lines about his clean-shaven mouth were sharply set. Standing was asurge

with an excitement that fired his dark eyes. His wide-brimmed hat was

thrust back from his forehead, and he stood with his hands thrust deeply

in the pockets of his moleskin trousers. His nervous fingers were

playing with loose coins and keys which they found irresistible.

The _Lizzie_ came steadily on.

"We'll know the whole game in minutes now."

Standing could keep silent no longer. Bat nodded.

"Yep."

Orders from the bridge of the packet boat rang out over the water. Then

Standing went on.

"I want to find Idepski aboard," he said. He was scarcely addressing his

companion. "It would be good to get Master Walter here, fifty-three

degrees north." A short, hard laugh punctuated his words. Then he turned

abruptly. "Who's running No. 10 camp?"

Just for an instant Bat withdrew his gaze from the approaching vessel.

He flashed a keen look of enquiry into the eyes of the questioner.

"Ole Porson," he said.

"I thought so. He's a good boy. He'll do."

Standing nodded. The cold significance of his tone was not lost on his

companion. Maybe Bat understood the thing that was passing in the

other's mind. At any rate he turned again to the broad-beamed tub

steaming so busily towards them.

"I see old Hardy on the bridge," Standing went on a moment later. Then

he added: "Fancy navigating the Labrador coast for forty years. No, I

couldn't do it. I wouldn't have the--guts."

Bat still remained silent. He understood. The other was talking because

it was impossible for him to refrain.

"They're standing ready to make fast," Standing said sharply. He drew a

quick breath. Then his manner changed and his words came pensively.

"Say, it's a queer life--a hell of a life. The sea folk, I mean. It's

about the worst on earth. Think of it, cooped within those timbers that

are never easy till they lie at anchor in the shelter of a harbour. I'd

just hate it. Their life? What is it? It's not life at all. Hard work,

hard food, hard times, and hard drinking--when they're ashore--most of

them. I think I can understand. They surely need something to drown the

memory of the threat they're always living under. No, they don't live.

They exist. Here, let's stand clear. They're coming right in."

* * * * *

The bustle of landing was in full swing. Even with so small a craft as

the _Lizzie_ there was commotion. Orders flew from lip to lip. Creaking

cables strained at unyielding bollards. Gangways clattered out from

deck, and ran down on to the quay with a crash. Hatches were flung open

and the steam winches rattled incessantly.

Standing and Harker were looking on from a vantage point well clear of

the work of unloading. The captain of the vessel, "Old Man" Hardy, was

with them. The seaman was beaming with that satisfaction which belongs

to the master when his vessel is safely in port.

"Oh, I guess it ain't been too bad a trip," he was saying. "Takin' the

'ins' with the 'outs,' I'd say it was a fairish passage, which is mostly

as it should be, seein' it's my last voyage in the old barge. Y'see, you

folks are kind of robbing me of this blessed old kettle," he explained,

with a grin that lit up the whole of his mahogany features. "Y'see we're

loaded well-nigh rail under with stuff for your mill, which don't leave

a dog's chance for the other folks along the coast. The Company guesses

they got to put on a two thousand tonner. The _Myra_. I haven't a kick

comin'. She's all a seaboat. Still, I'm kind of sorry, don't you know.

I've known the _Lizzie_ since she came off the stocks, which is mostly

forty years, and we're mighty good friends, which ain't allus the way.

I'd say, too, I'm getting old for a change. Still--."

Standing shook his head.

"What do they say? 'Hardy' by name, 'Hardy' by nature. The toughest and

best sailorman on the Labrador coast! Well, I'm sorry you don't feel

good about it. But," he added with a smile, "it means a good deal to us

getting a bigger packet."

Captain Hardy nodded.

"Thankee kindly. It's good to know folks reckon a fellow something more

than just part of a kettle of scrap like this old packet. But I'd have

been glad to finish my job with her. Still, times don't stand around

even in Labrador." He finished up with something in the nature of a

sigh.

The work going forward was full of interest. But it was not the work

that held Standing, or the watchful eyes of Bat Harker. Their sole

interest was in the personality of the crew and the five passengers,

mostly "drummers," from the great business houses of Quebec and

Montreal, who were struggling to land their trunks of samples and get

them off to the offices of the mill so as to complete their trade before

the _Lizzie_ put to sea again. Not one of these escaped their

observation.

"You seem to keep much the same crew right along, Hardy," Standing said

pleasantly. "I suppose they like shipping with a good skipper. I seem to

recognise most of their faces."

"Oh, yes. They're mostly the same boys," Hardy agreed, obviously

appreciating the compliment. "But I guess I lost four boys this trip.

They skipped half an hour before putting to sea. It happens that way now

and then, if they're only soused enough when they get aboard. They're a

crazy lot with rye under their belts. I just had to replace 'em with

some dockside loafers, or lie alongside another day."

Standing nodded. A man was moving down the gangway bearing a large,

grey, official-looking sack on his shoulders. He was a slight, dark man

with a curiously foreign cast about his features.

"The mail?" he enquired. And a curious sharpness flavoured his demand.

Then he added, with studied indifference. "One of your--dockside

loafers?"

Captain Hardy laughed. He continued to laugh as he watched the

unhandiness of the man staggering down the gangway under his burden.

"Yep. The mail," he said. "And I'd hate to set that feller to work on a

seaman's job. He's about as unhandy as a doped Chinaman. I'd say Masters

is playing safe keeping him from messing up the running gear while we're

discharging. Say, get a look at it."

A great laugh accompanied the old man's words as the foreign-looking

creature tripped on the gangway, and only saved himself from a bad fall

by precipitating his burden upon the quay. There was no responsive

laughter in Standing. And Bat Harker's features remained rigidly

unsmiling. Standing turned sharply.

"Maybe you can spare that boy to run those mails up to my office," he

said. "It's a good healthy pull up the hill for him, and my folks are

full to the neck with things. I'd be glad."

"Sure he can." Captain Hardy was only too delighted to be able to oblige

so important a customer of his company. He promptly shouted at the

landing officer.

"Ho, you! Masters! Just let that darn Dago tote them mails right up to

Mr. Standing's office. He ain't no sort of use out of hell down

here--anyway."

The mate's reply came back with an appreciative grin.

"Ay, sir," he cried, and forthwith hurled the order at the mail carrier

with a plentiful accompaniment of appropriate adjectives.

"Thanks," Standing turned away. His smiling luminous eyes were shining.

"I'll get right along up, Captain. There's liable to be things need

seeing to in that mail before you pull out. You'd best come along, too,

Bat," he added pointedly.

Standing hurried away. A sudden fierce passion was surging through his

veins. Nisson was right. He knew it--now. And in a fever of impatience

he was yearning to come to grips with those who would rob him of the

hopes in which his whole being was bound up.

CHAPTER III

IDEPSKI

The two men reached the office on the hillside minutes before the mail

carrier. They took the hill direct, passing hurriedly through the aisles

of scented woods which shadowed its face. The other, the stranger, was

left with no alternative but the roadway, zigzagging at an easier

incline.

Standing passed into the house. His confidential man of many races

looked up from his work. The quick, black eyes were questioning. He was

perhaps startled at the swift return of the man whom he regarded above

all others.

Standing spoke coldly, emphatically.

"There's a man coming along up. He's a sailorman, and he's dressed in

dirty dungaree, and he's carrying a sack of mail. Now see and get this

clearly, Loale. It's important. It's so important I can't stand for any

sort of mistake. When he comes you've got to send him right into my room

with the mail-bag. I want him to take it in _himself_. You get that?"

The half-breed's eyes blinked. It was rather the curious attitude of an

attentive dog. But that was always his way when the master of the

Sachigo Mill spoke to him.

Pete Loale was quite an unusual creature. He looked unkempt and unclean,

with his yellow, pock-marked skin, and his clothes that would have

disgraced a second-hand dealer's stores of waste. But for all his lack

in these directions there was that in the man which was more than worth

while. Out of his black eyes looked a world of intelligence. There was

also a resource and initiative in him that Standing fully appreciated.

"Sure I get that," he said simply. Then he repeated in the manner of a

child determined to make no mistake. "He's to take that mail-bag right

into your office--_himself_."

"That's it. Don't knock on my door. Don't let him think there's a soul

inside that room. Just boost him right in. You get that?"

The half-breed nodded.

"I'll just say: 'Here you! Just push that darn truck right inside that

room, an' don't worry me with it, I'm busy.' That how?" The man hunched

his slim shoulders into a shrug.

"See you do it--just that way," Standing said. Then he turned to Bat.

"We'll get inside," he went on. "He'll be right along."

They passed into the office. The door closed behind them and Standing

moved over to his seat at the crowded desk.

"Wal?"

Bat was still standing. He failed to grasp his friend's purpose. His wit

was unequal to the rapid process of the other's swiftly calculating

mind.

Standing littered his writing-pad with papers. He picked up a pen and

jabbed it in the inkwell. Then he flung it aside and adopted a

fountain-pen which he drew from his waistcoat pocket. His eyes lit with

a half-smile as he finally raised them to the rugged face before him.

"You sit right over there by that window, Bat," he said easily. "If you

get a look out of it you'll be amazed at the number of things to

interest you." He nodded as Bat moved away with a grin and took the

chair indicated. "That's it. Just sit around, and you won't see or even

hear the fellow with the mail fall in through the door. And maybe,

sitting there, you'll want to smoke your foul old pipe. Sort of pipe of

peaceful meditation. Yes, I'd smoke that pipe, old friend, but you can

cut out the peaceful meditation. You need to be ready to act quick when

I pass the word. It's going to be easy. So easy I almost feel sorry

for--Idepski."

"It _is_--Idepski?" Bat filled and lit his pipe.

"It surely is. No other. And--I'm glad. Now we'll quit talk, old friend.

Just smoke, and look out of that window, and--think like hell."

Bat's understanding of his friend was well founded. The extreme nervous

tension in Standing was obvious. It was in the wide, dark eyes. It was

in the constant shifting of the feet which the table revealed. For the

time, at least, the cowardice Standing claimed for himself was entirely

swamped. He was stirred by the headlong excitement of battle in a manner

that left Bat more than satisfied.

Once Bat turned from his contemplation of the piled-up country beyond

the valley. It was at the sound of Standing's fiercely scratching pen.

And his quick gaze took in the luxury of the setting for the little

drama he felt was about to be enacted.

It was a wide, pleasant room, built wholly of red pine, and polished as

only red pine will polish. There was a thick oriental carpet on the

floor, and all the mahogany furniture was upholstered in red morocco.

There were a few carefully selected pictures upon the walls, hung with

an eye to the light upon each. But it was not an extravagant room. It

suggested the homeland of Scotland, from which the owner of it all

hailed. The Canadian atmosphere only found expression in the great steel

stove which stood in one corner, and the splendid timber of which the

walls of the room were built.

But Bat's eyes swiftly returned to their allotted task, and his reeking

pipe did its duty with hearty goodwill. There was the sound of strident

voices in the outer room, and the rattle of the door handle turning with

a wrench.

The door swung open. The next moment there was the sound of a sack

pitched upon the soft pile of the carpet. And through the open doorway

the harsh voice of Loale pursued the intruder in sharp protest.

"Say, do you think you're stowing cargo in your darn, crazy old barge?"

he cried. "If you fancy throwing things around you best get out an' do

it. Guess you ain't used to a gent's office, you darn sailorman--"

But the door was closed with a slam and the rest of the protest was cut

off. Bat swung about in his chair to discover a picture not easily to be

forgotten.

Standing had left his desk. He was there with his back against the

closed door, and his lean figure towered over the shorter sailorman in

dungaree, who stood gazing up at him questioningly. The sight appealed

to the grim humour of the manager. He wanted to laugh. But he refrained,

though his eyes lit responsively as he watched the smile of irony that

gleamed in the mill-owner's eyes.

"Well, well." Standing's tone lost none of the aggravation of his smile.

"Say, I'd never have recognised you, Idepski, if it hadn't been that I

was warned you'd shipped on the _Lizzie_." He laughed outright. "I can't

help it. You wouldn't blame me laughing if you could see yourself. Last

time I had the pleasure of encountering you was in Detroit. That's years

ago. How many? Nearly seven. It seems to me I remember a bright-looking

'sleuth,' neat, clean, spruce, with a crease to his pant-legs like a

razor edge, a fellow more concerned for his bath than his religion. Say,

where did you raise all that junk? From old man Hardy's slop-chest?

Hellbeam makes you work for your money when you're driven to wallowing

in a muck-hole like the _Lizzie_. It isn't worth it. You see, you've run

into the worst failure you've made in years. But I only wish you could

see the sorry sort of sailorman you look."

Standing's right hand was behind him, and Bat heard the key turn in the

lock of the door. He waited. But the trapped agent never opened his

lips.

Idepski had seen Standing and the other down at the quay-side. He had

left them there when he started up the hill. Yet--A bitter fury was

driving him. He realised the trap that had been laid. He realised

something of the deadly purpose lying behind it. So he remained silent

under the scourge that was intended to hurt.

For all the filthy dungarees tucked into the clumsy legs of high leather

sea boots, the dirty-coloured handkerchief knotted about his neck, the

curious napless cloth cap with its peak pulled down over one eye, that

curious cap which seems to be worn by no one else in the world but

seafaring men, it was easy enough for Bat to visualise the dapper

picture, that other picture of Walter Idepski that Standing had

described. The man possessed a well-knit, sinuous figure which his

dungarees could not disguise. His alert eyes were good-looking. And,

cleaned of the black, stubbly growth of beard and whisker, an amazing

transformation in his looks would surely have been achieved. But Bat's

interest was less with these things than with the possible reaction the

man might contemplate.

For the moment, however, the situation was entirely dominated by

Standing, who displayed no sign of relaxing his hold upon it. He flung

out a pointing hand, and Bat saw it was grasping the door key.

"You'd best take that chair, Idepski," he ordered. "You've opened war on

me, but there's no need to keep you standing for it. You'll take that

seat against my writing table. But first, Bat, here, is going to relieve

you of the useless weapons I see you've got on you. Get those, Bat!

There's a gun and a sheath knife, and they're clumsily showing their

shape under his dungarees."

It was the word the mill-manager had awaited. He was on his feet in an

instant. Idepski stirred to action. He turned to meet him.

"Keep your darn hands off!" he cried fiercely. "By--"

His hand had flown to his hip. But he was given no time. Bat was on him

like an avalanche, an avalanche of furious purpose. The fighting spirit

in him yearned, and in a moment his victim was caught up in a crushing

embrace. There was a short, fierce struggle. But Idepski was no match

for the super lumber-jack.

While Bat held on, the tenacious hands of Standing tore the weapons he

had discovered from their hiding places. Then in a moment Idepski found

himself sprawling in the chair he had been invited to take.

Standing's appreciation was evident as he watched the man draw a gold

cigarette case from the breast pocket of his overalls as though nothing

had occurred. It was an act of studied coolness that did not for a

moment deceive, but it pleased. However, his next effrontery pleased the

mill-owner still more.

"Say, boys," Idepski observed quietly, as he opened the case and

extracted a cigarette. "I guess I'm kind o' glad you left me this. But I

don't figger you're out for loot, anyway." Then he glanced up at the man

watching him so interestedly. "Maybe you'll oblige me with a light," he

demanded, and cocked up the cigarette he had thrust between his lips

with an exaggerated impertinence.

The action was quite irresistible and Standing nodded.

"Sure," he said smilingly, and picked up the matchbox lying on his

table.

He struck a match and held it while the other obtained the required

light. Then he passed round the desk to the seat he had originally

occupied.

Idepski leant back in his chair, and luxuriated in a deep inhalation of

smoke. Bat watched him from his place at the window. Standing placed the

revolver and sheath knife he had taken possession of in a drawer in the

desk, and closed it carefully.

"Well, what's the play?" Idepski addressed himself solely to Standing.

"I guess you've said a deal calculated to rile, and your pardner's done

more," he went on. "Still--anyway we're mostly men and not school-kids.

What's the play?"

Standing, too, was leaning back in his chair.

"It's easy," he said, after a moment's thoughtful regard. Suddenly he

drew his chair up to the table, and, leaning forward, folded his arms

upon the littered blotting pad in front of him. "It's seven years since

Hellbeam--blazed the war trail," he said deliberately. "I know he's

persistent. He's angry. And he's the sort of man who doesn't cool down

easily. But it's taken him seven years to locate me here. And during all

that time I've been looking on, watching his every move." He shook his

head. "He's badly served, for all his wealth. He was badly served from

the start. You should never have let me beat you in that first race

across the border. I got away with every cent of the stuff, and--you

shouldn't have let me. You certainly were at fault. However, it doesn't

matter."

Idepski removed his cigarette from his lips and dropped the ash of it in

the waste basket.

"No. It doesn't matter, because I'll get you--in the end," he retorted

coldly.

"Perhaps."

Standing shrugged. But there was no indifference in his eyes. The acid

sharpness of Idepski's retort had driven straight home. If the agent

failed to detect it, the watchful eyes of Bat missed nothing. To him the

danger signal lay in the curious flicker of his friend's eyelids. The

sight impelled him. He jumped in and took up the challenge in the blunt

fashion he best understood.

"Guess you've got nightmare, boy," he said, with a sneering laugh. "I

ain't much at figgers, but it seems to me if it's taken you seven years

to locate us here, it's going to take you seventy-seven gettin' Standing

back across that border. Work it out."

Idepski had no intention of being drawn. He replied without turning.

"You think that?" he said easily. "Say, don't worry a thing; I'm

satisfied. Just as sure as the sun'll rise to-morrow, Hellbeam'll get

Leslie Martin, or Standing as he chooses to call himself now, just where

he needs him. And if I know Hellbeam that'll be in the worst

penitentiary the United States can produce. Guess you're going to wish

you hadn't, Mister--Standing."

Perhaps Idepski knew his man, and understood the weakness of which Bat

was so painfully aware. Perhaps he was just fencing, or even putting up

a bluff in view of his own position. Whatever his purpose the effect of

his added threat was instant.

Standing's luminous eyes hardened. The muscles of his jaws gripped. He

sat up, and his whole attitude expressed again that fighting mood in

which Bat rejoiced.

"That's all right," he said sharply. "That's just talk. You've come a

hell of a long way with those boys of yours down at the _Lizzie_ to

worry out some body-snatching. That's all right. I don't just see how

you've figgered to do it. But that's your affair. The point is, I'm

going to do the body-snatching instead of you. And it's quite clear to

me how I intend doing it. You're going a trip--right off. And it's a

trip from which you won't get a chance of getting back to Quebec under

this time next year. You see, winter's closing down in a month, and

Labrador and Northern Quebec aren't wholesome territory for any man to

set out to beat the trail in winter, especially with folks around

anxious to stop him. You reckon I'm to pass a while in a States

penitentiary. Well, meanwhile you're going to try what this country can

show you in the way of a--prison ground. And you're going to try it for

at least a year. You'll be treated white. But you'll need to work for

your grub like other folks, and if you don't feel like working you won't

eat. We're fifty-three degrees north here, and our ways are the tough

ways of the tough country we live in. There's no sort of mercy in this

country. Bat, here, is going to see you on your trip, and, if you take

my advice, you won't rile Bat. He's got it in him, and in his hands, to

make things darn unpleasant for you. You've a goodish nerve, and maybe

you've goodish sense. You'll need 'em both for the next twelve months.

After that it's up to you. But if you try kicking between now and then,

why--God help you."

Standing beckoned Bat from his seat at the window. He held up the door

key.

"You best take this," he said. "No. 10. And he starts out right away. He

needs to be well on the road before the _Lizzie_ puts to sea."

Bat took the key. He moved away and unlocked the door, and remained

beside it grimly regarding the man who had listened without comment to

the sentence passed on him, without the smallest display of emotion.

Idepski was smoking his second cigarette.

"No. 10. I s'pose that's one of your lumber camps." Idepski looked up

from his contemplation of the cigarette. His dark eyes were levelled at

the man across the writing table. "A tough place, eh? or you wouldn't be

sending me there." He laughed in a fashion that left his eyes coldly

enquiring.

Standing inclined his head. He was without mercy, without pity.

"It's a tough camp in a tough country," he said deliberately. "It's a

camp where you'll get just as good a time as you choose to earn. The boy

who runs it learnt his job in the forests of Quebec, and you'll likely

understand what that means. Well, you're going right off now. But

there's this I want to tell you before I see the last of you--for a

year. I know you, Idepski. I know you for all you are, and all you're

ever likely to be. You're an unscrupulous blackmailer and crook. You're

a parasite battening yourself on the weakness of human nature, taking

your toll from whichever side of a dispute will pay you best. You're

taking Hellbeam's money in the dispute between him and me, and you'll go

on taking it till you pull off the play he's asking, or get broken in

the work of it. That's all right as far as I'm concerned. You've nerve,

you've courage, or you wouldn't be the crook you are. I guess you'll go

on because I've no intention of competing with Hellbeam for your

services. But I want you to understand clearly you've jumped into a

mighty big fight. This is a country where a fight can go on without the

prying eyes of the laws of civilisation peeking into things. And by that

I take it you'll understand I reckon to make war to the knife. You came

here prepared to use force. That's all right. We shan't hesitate to use

force on our side. And we're going to use it to the limit. If peace is

only to be gained at the cost of your life you're going to pay that

cost--if it suits me. That's all I've to say at the moment. For the

present, for a year, you'll be safely muzzled. You see, I don't need to

worry with those boys you brought with you. You best go along with Bat

now. He'll fix things ready for your trip."

The dismissal was complete, and Bat was prompt to accept his cue. He

moved towards the man smoking at the table, much in the fashion of a

warder advancing to take possession of his prisoner after sentence of

the court.

It was at that moment that the cold mask of indifference fell from the

agent. Hardy as he was, the contemplation of his momentary failure,

which was about to cost him twelve months of hardship in one of the

roughest lumber camps in Labrador, robbed him of something of that nerve

which was his chief asset. He glanced for the first time at the burly

figure of Bat. He contemplated the rugged features of the man whose

battling instinct was his strongest characteristic. He read the purpose

in the grim set of the square jaws, and in the unyielding light of the

grey eyes peering out from under shaggy brows. And that which he read

reduced him to a feeling of impotence. He flung a look of fury and hate

at the man behind the desk.

"Maybe that's all you've to say," he cried, his jaws snapping viciously

over his words, his eyes fiercely alight. "You think you've won when

you've only gained a moment's respite. You can't win. You don't know.

Oh, yes. I guess you can send me along out of the way. You can do just

all you reckon. And if it suits you, you can shoot me up or any other

old thing. You forget Hellbeam. You tell me I'm a crook and a

blackmailer, you give me credit for nerve and courage. That's all right.

You think these things, and I don't have to worry. But you've robbed

Hellbeam. You've robbed him like any common 'hold-up'--of millions. It's

not for you to talk of crooks and blackmailers. The laws of the States

are going to find you the crook, and Hellbeam'll see they don't err for

leniency. Hellbeam'll get you as sure as God. You've got months to think

it over, and when you've done I reckon you won't fancy shouting. Well,

I'm ready for this joy spot you call No. 10. I'm not going to kick. I've

sense enough to know when the drop's on me. But you'll see me again. Oh,

yes, you'll see me again because you're not going to shoot me up. For

all your talk you haven't the nerve. You'll see me again, and when you

do--well, don't forget Hellbeam's at the other end of this business.

Guess I'm ready."

The man stood up. And as he stood his eyes looked squarely into those of

Bat.

"Get on with it," he cried, and flung the remains of his lighted

cigarette on the pile of the carpet, and trod it viciously underfoot

with his heavy sea boot.

* * * * *

Standing was alone. He was alone with the thoughts his encounter with

Idepski had inspired. Judging by the expression of his reflective eyes

they were scarcely those of a man confident of victory. Had Bat been

there to witness, the task he was at that moment engaged upon would

surely have been robbed of half its satisfaction.

But Bat had gone. And with him had gone the man who was to learn the

rigours of a Labrador winter under conditions of hardship he had not yet

realised. Meanwhile Standing was free to think as his emotions guided

him, with no watchful eyes to observe.

"You'll see me again, and when you do--well, don't forget Hellbeam's at

the other end of this business."

The words haunted. The threat of them appealed to an imagination that

was a-riot.

After a time Standing stirred restlessly. He sat up and brushed the

litter of paper aside. Then he leant back in his chair and his fine eyes

were lit with an agony of doubt and disquiet. The poisonous seed of the

agent's retort had fallen upon fruitful soil.

But after awhile the tension seemed to relax, and his gaze wandered from

the grey daylight beyond the window and was suddenly caught and held by

the mail bag, still lying where the man had flung it. It was like the

swift passing of a summer storm. The man's whole expression underwent a

complete transformation. The mail! The mail from Quebec--unopened!

He sprang to his feet. For the moment Idepski, Hellbeam, everything was

forgotten. His thought had bridged the miles between Farewell Cove and

the ancient city of the early French, Nancy! That woman--that devoted

wife who was striving with all the power of a frail body to serve him.

There would be a letter in that mail from Nisson, telling him--Yes.

There might even be a letter from Nancy herself.

The sack was in his hands. He had broken the seals. He shook out the

contents upon the floor. A packet of less than half a hundred letters,

and the rest was an assortment of parcels of all shapes and sizes. It

was the letter packet that interested him, and he untied the string that

held it.

A swift search produced the expected. Standing looked for the

handwriting of Charles Nisson, the shrewd, obscure lawyer in the country

town of Abercrombie. He had never yet failed him. He would not be likely

to. A bulky letter remained in his hand. The others lay scattered

broadcast upon the desk.

For some moments he held the letter unopened. The lean fingers felt the

bulk of the envelope, while feverish eyes surveyed, and read over and

over the address in the familiar small, cramped handwriting. The impulse

of the moment was to tear open the letter forthwith, to snatch at the

tidings he felt it to contain. But something deterred. Something left

him doubting, hesitating. It was what Bat had called his "yellow

streak." Suppose--suppose--But with all his might he thrust his fears

aside. He tore off the outer cover and unfolded the closely written

pages.

Long, silent moments passed, broken only by the shuffling of the sheets

of the letter as he turned them. Not once did he look up from his

reading. Right through to the end, the dreadful, bitter end, he read the

hideous news his loyal friend had to impart. Twice, during the reading,

the sharp intake of breath, that almost whistled in the silence of the

room, told of an emotion he had no power to repress, and at the finish

of it all the mechanically re-folded page's fell from shaking, nerveless

fingers upon the littered desk.

His eyes remained lowered gazing at the fallen letter. His hands

remained poised where the letter had fallen from them. His face had lost

its healthful hue. It was grey, and drawn, and the lips that parted as

he muttered had completely blanched.

"Dead!" he whispered without consciousness of articulation. "Dead!

Nancy! My boy! Both! Oh, God!"

CHAPTER IV

THE "YELLOW STREAK"

The grey, evening light was significant of the passing season. A chilly

breeze whipped about the faces of the men at the fringe of the woods.

They were resting after a long tramp of inspection through the virgin

forests. It was on a ledge, high up on the hillside of the northern

shore of the cove, where the ground dropped away in front of them

several hundreds of feet to the waters below. Behind them was a backing

of standing timber which sheltered them from the full force of the

biting wind.

It was nearly a week since Bat Harker had returned from his mission to

No. 10 Camp. He had returned full of satisfaction at the completion of

his task, and comforted by the knowledge that the horizon of the mill

had been cleared of threatening clouds for at least the period of a

year. Then he encountered the ricochet of the blow which Fate had dealt

his friend and employer.

It had been within half an hour of his return, while yet the stains and

dust of his journey remained upon him, while yet he was yearning for

that rest for his body to which it was entitled.

Bat had concluded the report of his journey, and the two men were

closeted together in the office on the hillside. The lumberman had had

no suspicion of the thing that had happened in his absence, and Standing

had given no indication. Standing seemed unchanged. There had been the

customary smile of welcome in his eyes. There had been the cordial

handshake of friendship. Maybe Standing had talked less, and the

searching questions usual in him had not been forthcoming. Maybe there

was a curiously tired, strained look in his eyes. But that was all.

At the conclusion of his report Bat had bent eagerly forward over the

desk which stood between them. His hard eyes were smiling. His whole

manner was that of a man anticipating something pleasant.

"Say, Les," he cried, "guess you've maybe some news for me, too. It's

more than a month since--and you were expecting--Things all right?"

Standing reached towards the drawer beside him, and as he did so there

was a sound. It was a curious, inarticulate sound that Bat interpreted

into a laugh. The other opened the drawer and drew out the folded pages

of a letter. These he passed across the table, and his eyes were without

a shadow of the laugh which Bat thought he had heard.

"Best read it," he said. "Take your time. I'll just finish these figures

I'm working on."

It was the curious, cold tone that stirred Bat to his first misgiving.

He took the letter. There were pages of it. He set them in order and

commenced to read. And meanwhile Standing remained apparently engrossed

in his figures.

He read the letter through. He read it slowly, carefully. Then, like

the other had done, the man to whom it was addressed, he read it a

second time. And as he read every vestige of his previous satisfaction

passed from him. A cold constriction seemed to fasten upon his strong

heart. And a terrible realisation of the tragedy of it all took

possession of him. At the end of his second reading he handed the letter

back to its owner without comment of any sort, without a word, but with

a hand that, for once in his life, was unsteady.

"That was in the mail Idepski brought," Standing said, as he returned

the letter to its place, and shut and locked the drawer.

"You remember?" he went on, pointing. "He flung it down there. Just by

the door. Yes, it was just there, because I stood against the door, and

was only just clear of it."

He paused and his hand remained pointing at the spot where the mail bag

had lain. It was as if the spot held him fascinated. Then his arm

lowered slowly, and his hand came to rest on the edge of the table,

gripping it with unnecessary force.

"Seems queer," he went on, after a while. Then he shook his head. "Think

of it. Nancy--my Nancy. Dead! She died giving birth to my boy. And

he--he was stillborn. Why? I--I can't seem to realize it. I--don't--" He

paused, and a strained, hunted look grew in his eyes. "No. It's easy.

It's just Fate. That's it. There's no escape."

He drew a deep breath and one lean hand smoothed back his shining black

hair. Then his eyes came back to the face of the man opposite, and the

agony in them was beyond words. After a moment their terrible expression

became lost as he bent over his work. "I'm glad you're back, Bat," he

said, without looking up.

"There's a hell of a lot of orders to get out. We're running close up

to winter."

The lumberman understood. At a single blow this man's every hope had

been smashed and ground under the heel of an iron fate. The wife, the

woman he had worshipped, had given her life to serve him, and with her

had gone the man-child, about whom had been woven the entire network of

a father's hopes and desires.

A week had passed since Bat had witnessed the voiceless agony of his

friend. A week of endless labour and unspoken fears. He knew Standing as

it is given to few to know the heart of another. His sympathy was real.

It was of that quality which made him desire above all things to render

the heartbroken man real physical and moral help. But no opening had

been given him, and he feared to probe the wound that had been

inflicted. During those first seven days Standing seemed to be obsessed

with a desire to work, to work all day and every night, as though he

dared not pause lest his disaster should overwhelm him.

Now it was Sunday. Night and day the work had gone on. No less than ten

freighters had been loaded and dispatched since Bat's return, and only

that morning two vessels had cast off, laden to the water-line, and

passed down on the tide for the mouth of the cove. At the finish of the

midday meal Standing had announced his intentions for the afternoon.

"We need to get a look into the lumber on the north side, Bat," he said.

"You'd best come along with me. How do you think?"

And Bat had agreed on the instant.

"Sure," he said. "There's a heap to be done that way if we're to start

layin' the penstocks down on that side next year."

So they had spent the hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through

the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their

talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of

long-fibred timber they were inspecting.

But somehow to Bat the whole thing was unreal. It meant nothing. It

could mean nothing. He felt like a man walking towards a precipice he

could not avoid. He felt disaster, added disaster, was in the air and

was closing in upon them. He knew in his heart that this long, weary

inspection, all the stuff they talked, all the future plans they were

making for the mill was the merest excuse. And he wondered when Standing

would abandon it and reveal his actual purpose. The man, he knew, was

consumed by a voiceless grief. His soul was tortured beyond endurance.

And there was that "yellow streak," which Bat so feared. When, when

would it reveal itself? How?

Now, at last, as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the

waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He

was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was

stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for

some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's

deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on

down at the mill, whose future was the greatest concern of his life.

Standing, too, was gazing out over the waters. But his darkly brooding

eyes were on the splendid house he had set up on the opposite hillside.

It was the home about which his every earthly hope had centred. And even

now, in his despair, it remained a magnet for his hopeless gaze.

Winter was already in the bite of the air and in the absence of the

legions of flies and mosquitoes as well as in the chilly grey of the

lapping waters below them. It was doubtless, too, searching the heart of

these men whose faces gave no indication of the sunlight of summer

shining within.

"Bat!"

The lumberman turned sharply. He spat out a stream of tobacco juice and

waited.

"Bat, old friend, it's no use." Standing had swung himself into a

sitting posture. He was leaning forward on the tree-trunk with his

forearms folded across his knees. "We've done a lot of talk, and we've

searched these forests good. And it's all no use. None at all. There's

going to be no penstocks set up this side of the water next year--as far

as I'm concerned. I've done. Finished. Plumb finished. I'm quitting.

Quitting it all."

The lumberman ejected a masticated chew and took a fresh one.

"You see, old friend, I'll go crazy if I stop around," Standing went on.

"I've been hit a pretty desperate punch, and I haven't the guts to stand

up to it. When it came I set my teeth. I wanted to keep sane. I reminded

myself of all I owed to the folks working for us. I thought of you. And

I tried to bolster myself with the schemes we had for beating the

Skandinavians out of this country's pulp-wood trade. Yes, I tried. God,

how I tried! But my guts are weak, and I know what lies ahead. For

nearly six weeks I've been working things out, and for a week I've been

wondering how I should tell you. I brought you here to tell you.

"I want you to understand it good," he went on, after the briefest

pause. "I can't stand to live on in the house that Nancy and I built up.

Every room is haunted by her. By her happy laugh, and by memories of the

hours we sat and talked of the boy-child we'd both set our hearts on. I

just can't do it without going stark, staring, raving mad. I can't."

"That's how I figgered. I've watched it in you, Les. Tell me the rest."

Bat chewed steadily. It was a safety-valve for his feelings.

"The rest?" Standing turned to gaze out at the house across the water.

"If it weren't for you, Bat, I'd close right down. I'd leave everything

standing and--get out," he went on slowly. "The whole thing's a

nightmare. Look at it. Look around. The forests of soft wood. The

township we've set up. The harnessed water power. That--that house of

mine. It's all nightmare, and I don't want it. I'm afraid. I'm scared to

death of it."

Bat moved away from the stump he had been propped against. He passed

across to the edge of the ledge and stood gazing down on the scenes

below.

"You needn't worry for me," he said. "It don't matter a cuss where or

how I hustle my dry hash. I was born that way. Fix things the way you

feel. Cut me right out."

The man's generosity was a simple expression of his rugged nature. His

love of that great work below him, in the creation of which he had taken

so great a part, was nothing to him at that moment. He was concerned

only for the man, who had held out a succouring hand, and led him, in

his darkest moments, to safety and prosperity.

Standing shook his head at the broad back squared against the grey,

wintry sky.

"I didn't mean it that way, old friend," he said.

Bat swung around. His grey eyes were wide. His face seemed to have

softened out of its usual harsh cast.

"But I do, Les," he cried. "You don't need to figger a thing about me.

You're hurt, boy. You're hurt mighty sore. Cut me right out of your

figgers, and do the things that's goin' to heal that sore. If there's a

thing I can do to help you, why, I guess I'd be glad to know it."

For a few moments Standing remained silent. Perhaps he was pondering

upon what he had to say. Perhaps he was simply gaining time to suppress

the emotions which the selflessness of the other had inspired.

"Here," he cried at last, "I best tell you the whole story that's in my

mind. I told you I've been figuring it out. Well, it's figured to the

last decimal. You think you know me. Maybe you do. Maybe you know only

part of the things I know about myself. If you knew them all I'd hate to

think of the contempt you'd have to hand me. You see, Bat, I'm a coward,

a terrible moral coward. Oh, I'm not scared of any man living when it

comes to a fight. But my mind's full of ghosts and nightmares ready to

jump at me with every doubt, every new effort where I can't figure the

end. Years ago, when I was a youngster, I yearned for fortune. And I

realised that I had it in me to get it quick by means of that crazy

talent for figures you reckon is so wonderful. I got the chance and

jumped, for it. But every step I took left me scared to the verge of

craziness. When I hit up against Hellbeam I got a desire to beat him

that was irresistible, and I jumped into the fight with my heart in my

mouth. It was easy--so easy. Hellbeam was a babe in my hands. I could

play with him as a spider plays with its victim, and when, like a

spider, I'd bound him with my figures, hand and foot, I was free to suck

his blood till I was satiated. I did all that, and then my nightmare

descended upon me again. You know how I fled with Hellbeam's hounds on

my heels. I was terrified at the enormity of the thing I'd done. I could

have stood my ground and beaten him--and them. But moral cowardice

overwhelmed me and drove me to these outlands. God, what I suffered! And

after all I haven't the certainty that I deserved it."

Bat came back to his stump and stood against it while Standing passed a

weary hand across his forehead.

"The happenings since then you know as well as I do. I don't need to

talk of them. I mean, how I met and married Nancy, when she was widow of

that no-account McDonald feller, the editor of _The Abercrombie

Herald!_"

Bat nodded.

"Yes, sure, I know, Les. When you married Nancy an' made her

thirteen-year-old daughter--your daughter."

"Yes. I'd almost forgotten. Yes, there's her girl, Nancy. She's still at

school. Well, anyway, you know, these things, all of 'em. But what you

don't know is that you--you Bat, old friend, are solely responsible for

all the work that's being done here. You, old friend, are responsible

that I've enjoyed seven years of something approaching peace of mind.

You, you with your bulldog fighting spirit, you with your hell-may-care

manner of shouldering responsibility, and facing every threat, have been

the staunch pillar on which I have always leant. Without you I'd have

gone under years ago, a victim of my own mental ghosts. No, no, Bat," he

went on quickly, as the lumberman shook his head in sharp denial, "it's

useless. I know. Leaning on you I've built up around me the reality of

that original dream, with the other things I've now lost, and with every

ounce in me I've worked for its fulfilment.

"Well, what's the logic of it all?" he continued, after a moment's

pause. "Yes, it is the logic of it. You may argue that for seven years

I've been doing a big work and there's no reason, in spite of what's

happened, that I should now abandon it all. But there is. And in your

strong old heart you'll know the thing I say is true--if cowardly.

During seven years, or part of them, I've known a happiness that's

compensated for every terror I've endured. Nancy's been my guardian

angel, and the boy, that was to be born, was the beacon light of my

life. My poor little wife has gone, and that beacon light, the son we

yearned for, has been snuffed right out. And in the shadows left I see

only the groping hand of Hellbeam reaching out towards me. In the end

that hand will get me, and crush the remains of my miserable life out. I

know. Just as sure as God, Hellbeam's going to get me."

The sweat of terror stood on the man's high forehead, and he wiped it

away.

Bat flung a clenched fist down upon the tree stump.

"You're wrong, Les. You're plumb wrong. If it means murder I swear

before God Hellbeam'll never lay hands on you. Hellbeam? Gee! Let him

set his nose north of 'fifty' and I'll promise him a welcome so hot

that'll leave hell like a glacier. As for his darn agents? Why, say, I

want to feel sorry for 'em 'fore they start. Idepski's hating himself

right--"

"I know," cried Standing impatiently. "I know it all. Everything you've

said you mean, but--it won't save me. But we can leave all that. There's

the other things. Why should I go on living here, working, slaving,

haunted by the terror of Hellbeam? With my boy, my wife, to fight for it

was worth all the agony. But without them--why? Why in the name of

sanity should I go on? To beat the Skandinavians out of Canada's trade,

and claim it all for a country that doesn't care a curse? To build up a

great name that in the end must be dragged in the mire of public

estimation? Not on your life, Bat. No, no. I'm going to cut adrift. I'm

going to quit. I'm going to lose myself in these forests, and live the

remaining years of my life free to run to earth at the first shot of the

hunter's gun. It's all that's left me--as I see it."

"And all this?" Bat said, reaching out one great hand in the direction

of the Cove. "An' that school gal 'way down at Abercrombie, learning her

knitting, an' letters, an' crying her dandy eyes out for the mother who

had to leave her there when she passed over to you? Say, Les, you best

go on. Jest go right on an' I'll say my piece after."

Standing sat up. A deep earnestness was in the dark eyes that looked

fearlessly into Bat's. He took the other at his word and went on. He had

nothing to conceal.

"The mill? Why, I want to pass it over to your care, Bat," he said,

permitting one swift regretful glance in the direction of the grey

waters below them. Then he spoke almost feverishly. "Here's the

proposition. I'm going to hand you full powers--through Charles Nisson.

You'll run this thing on the lines laid down. If you fancy carrying on

the original proposition of extension, well and good. If not, just carry

on and leave the rest for--later. You'll be manager for me through

Nisson. I shan't remove one cent of capital. I don't want Hellbeam's

money beyond the barest grub stake. It'll remain under Nisson's

guardianship for your use in running this mill. You'll simply satisfy

Nisson. For the rest I shan't interfere. You're drawing a big salary

now. Well, seeing I go out of the work, that salary will be doubled.

That's for the immediate. Then there's the future. I've a notion. Maybe

it's a crazy notion. But it's mine and I mean to test it. Here. We

reckon to build up this enterprise for one great, big purpose. It was my

dream to break the Skandinavian ring governing the groundwood trade of

this country. It was work that appealed to my imagination. I wanted to

build this great thing and pass it on to my boy. It seemed to me fine.

Worth while. It was a man's work, and it seemed to me a life well spent.

I had the guts then--with your support, and the support the thought of

my son gave me. I haven't the guts now. The notion fired you, too. It

fired you, and it'll grieve you desperately to see it abandoned. It

shan't be abandoned. Once in the woods of this queer country I found a

man--such a man as is rarely found. He was a man into whose hands I

could put my life. And I guess there's no greater trust one man can have

in another. He was a man of immense capacity. A man of intellect for all

he had no schooling but the schooling of Quebec's rough woods. That man

was you, Bat. I'd like to say to you: 'Here's the property. You know the

scheme. Go on. Carry it through.' But I can't. I can't because one man

can't do it. Well, the woods gave me one man, and they're going to give

me another to take the place of the weak-gutted creature who intends to

'rat.' I'm going to find you a partner, a man with brain and force like

yourself. A man of iron guts. And when I've found him I'm going to send

him on to you. And if you approve him he shall be full partner with you

in this concern the day that sees the Canadian Groundwood Trust

completed, and the breaking of the Skandinavian ring. Do you follow it

all? You and this man will be equal partners in the mill, and every

available cent of its capital--the capital I made Hellbeam provide.

It'll be yours and his, solely and alone. I--I shall pass right out of

it. Hellbeam has no score against you. He has no penitentiary preparing

for you. You are not concerned with him. Whatever he may have in store

for me he can do nothing to you, and the money I beat him out of will

have passed beyond his reach."

"And this man you figger to locate? You reckon to take a chance on your

judgment?"

Bat's challenge came on the instant.

"On mine, and--yours." Standing's eyes were full of a keen confidence.

And Bat realised something of the sanity lying behind a seemingly mad

proposition. "He'll own nothing until he and you have completed the work

as we see it. To own his share in the thing he must prove his capacity.

He'll be held by the tightest and strongest contract Charles Nisson can

draw up."

Bat spat out his chew. He replaced it with a pipe, and prepared to flake

off its filling from a plug of tobacco. Standing watched him with the

anxious eyes of a prisoner awaiting sentence. With the cutting of the

first flakes of tobacco, Bat looked up.

"And this little gal-child, with the same name as the mother who just

meant the whole of everything life could hand you? This kiddie with her

mother's blood running in innocent veins? She's your Nancy's daughter

and I guess your marriage made her yours."

"She's another man's child."

Standing's retort was instant. And the tone of it cut like a knife.

Bat regarded him keenly. His knife had ceased from its work on the plug.

"That's so," he said after a while. Then his gaze drifted in the

direction of the house across the water, and the expression in the grey

depths of his eyes became lost to the man who could not forget that the

remaining child of his wife was the offspring of another man. "It seems

queer," he went on reflectively. "That woman, your Nancy, was about the

best loved wife, a fellow could think of. She was all sorts of a woman

to you. Guess she was mostly the sun, moon, an' stars of your life. Yet

her kiddie, a pore, lonesome kiddie, was toted right off to school so

she couldn't butt in on you. You've never seen her, have you? And she

was blood of the woman that set you nigh crazy. Only her father was

another feller. No, Les." He shook his head, and went on filling his

pipe. "No, Les, this mill and all about it can go hang if that pore,

lone kiddie is wiped out of your reckoning. Maybe I'm queer about

things. Maybe I'm no account anyway when it comes to the things of life

mostly belonging to Sunday School. But I'd as lief go back to the woods

I came from, as handle a proposition for you that don't figger that

little gal in it. You best take that as all I've to say. There's a heap

more I could say. But it don't matter. You're feelin' bad. Things have

hit you bad. And you reckon they're going to hit you worse. Maybe you're

right. Maybe you're wrong. Anyway these things are for you, though I'd

be mighty thankful to help you. You want to go out of it all. You want

to follow up some queer notion you got. You reckon it's going to give

you peace. I hope so. I do sure. The thing you've said goes with me

without shouting one way or the other. It grieves me bad. But that's no

account anyway. But there's that gal standing between us, and she's

going to stand right there till you've finished the things you're maybe

going to say."

For a moment the men looked into each other's eyes. It was a tense

moment of sudden crisis between them.

"Well?"

Bat's unyielding interrogation came sharply. Standing nodded.

"I hadn't thought, Bat," he said. Then he drew a deep breath. "I surely

hadn't, but I guess you're right. She's my stepdaughter. And I've a

right to do the thing you say. Yes. It's queer when I think of it," he

went on musingly. "When I married her mother the girl didn't seem to

come into our reckoning. She was at school, and I never even saw her.

Then her mother wanted her left there, anyway till her schooling was

through. Everything was paid. I saw to that. But--yes, I guess you're

right. It's up to me, and I'll fix it."

"The mill?"

"She shall have equal share when the time comes."

"When the whole work's put through?"

"Yes. And meanwhile she'll be amply provided for." Standing spread out

his hands deprecatingly. "You see, we did things in a hurry, Bat. There

was always Hellbeam. And my Nancy understood that. I wonder--"

Bat smoked on thoughtfully, and presently the other roused himself from

the pre-occupation into which he had fallen.

"Does that satisfy?" he demanded.

Bat nodded.

"I'll do the darnedest I know, Les," he said in his sturdy fashion. "Fix

that pore gal right. Hand her the share she's a right to--when the time

comes along. Do that an' I'll not rest till the Skandinavians are left

hollerin'. That kid's your daughter, for all she ain't flesh and blood

of yours, an' you ain't ever see her. And anyway she's flesh of your

Nancy, which seems to me hands her even a bigger claim."

He moved away from his leaning post and his back was turned to hide that

which looked out of his eyes.

"I'm grieved," he went on, in his simple fashion, "I'm so grieved about

things I can't tell you, Les. I always guessed to drive this thing

through with you. I always reckoned to make good to you for that thing

you did by me. Well, there's no use in talkin'. You reckon this notion

of yours'll make you feel better, it's goin' to hand you--peace. That

goes with me. Oh, yes, all the time, seein' you feel that way. But--say,

we best get right home--or I'll cry like a darn-fool kid."

CHAPTER V

NANCY MCDONALD

Charles Nisson was standing at the window. His eyes were deeply

reflective as he watched the gently falling snow outside. He was a

sturdy creature in his well-cut, well-cared-for black suit. For all he

was past middle life there was little about him to emphasise the fact

unless it were his trim, well-brushed snow-white hair, and the light

covering of whisker and beard of a similar hue. He looked to be full of

strength of purpose and physical energy.

His back was turned on the pleasant dining-room of his home in

Abercrombie, a remote town in Ontario, where he and his wife had only

just finished breakfast. Sarah Nisson was sitting beside the anthracite

stove which radiated its pleasant warmth against the bitter chill of

winter reigning outside. She was still consuming the pages of her bulky

mail.

A clock chimed the hour, and the wife looked up from her letter. She

turned a face that was still pretty for all her fifty odd years, in the

direction of the man at the window.

"Ten o'clock, Charles," she reminded him. Then her enquiring look melted

into a gentle smile. "The office has less attraction with the snow

falling."

"It has less attraction to-day, anyway," the lawyer responded without

turning. A short laugh punctuated his prompt reply.

"You mean the Nancy McDonald business?"

Sarah Nisson laid her mail aside.

"Yes." The lawyer sighed and turned from his contemplation of the snow.

He moved across to the stove. "I'm a bit of a coward, Sally," he went

on, holding out his hands to the warmth. "The lives of other people are

nearly as interesting as they are exasperating. They seem just as

foolishly ordered as we believe our own to be well and truly ordered. I

don't know who it was said 'all men are fools,' or liars, or something,

but I guess he was right. Yes, we're all fools. I really don't know how

we manage to get through a day, let alone a lifetime, without absolute

disaster. We spend most of our time abusing Providence for the result of

our own shortcomings, when really we ought to be mighty polite and

thankful to the blind good fortune that lets us dodge the results of our

follies."

"All of which I suppose has to do with the way Leslie Martin, or Leslie

Standing, as he calls himself now, is acting."

"Well, most of it."

The man's eyes had become seriously reflective again.

Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head. She leant her ample proportions

towards the stove and emulated her husband's attitude, warming her plump

hands. Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was

calmly serene. Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she

were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of

the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.

"The death of his poor wife almost seems to have unhinged him," she

said, with a troubled pucker of her brows. "But--but I don't wonder, I

really don't. She was the sweetest girl. Poor soul. And that bonny wee

boy. But there, I can't bear to think of it all. You mustn't blame him

too much, Charles. I guess you don't in your heart. It's just as his

attorney you feel mad about things. It's best to remember you were his

friend first, and only his adviser, and man of business, after. The

whole thing makes me feel I want to cry. And that poor girl coming to

see you to-day. The other Nancy, I mean. I don't think I'd feel so bad

about things if it wasn't for her. You know, I like Leslie. And I was as

fond of his wife as I just could be, for all she made a fool of herself

when she married that hateful James McDonald, who was no better than a

revolutionary. Thank goodness he died and got out before he could do any

harm. But I do think Leslie and poor Nancy were selfish about her

child. I don't believe it was so much him as Nancy. From the moment

Leslie came on the scene it was she who kept the poor child at college.

She never even let him see her. And she's such a bonny girl, too. Do you

know, I believe Nancy's death, and even the death of the baby boy,

wouldn't have meant half so much to Leslie if he'd had Nancy's own girl

with him. She'd have got herself right into his heart with her bonny

ways, and her hazel eyes that look like great, big smiling flowers. Then

her hair. She's a lovely, lovely child. I wish she was mine. I'd like to

have her right here always. Couldn't you fix it that way?"

The man shook his head.

"I'd like to--but--"

"But what?"

"You see there's a whole lot to think about," the lawyer went on

seriously. "Why, I don't even know how to get through my interview with

her to-day without lying to her like a politician. Now just get a look

at the position. Here's a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of

sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her,

head full of 'whys,' and 'wherefores.' Sixteen's well-nigh grown up

these days, mind you. Her mother's dead, and curiously the fact didn't

seem to break her up as you'd have expected it to. Why?" The man

shrugged. "It's not because she lacks feeling. Oh, no. Maybe it's

because of the strength of those feelings. Remember her mother married

Leslie when the child was thirteen. A good understanding age. She was

never allowed to see her father. No. She was packed off to school and

kept there--"

"Yes, I know," Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth. "And just at the

time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three

years. God doesn't give us women our babies to treat them as if they

weren't our own flesh and blood. Young Nancy was left to those maiden

dames at college, who don't know more about a child than is laid down by

highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for

their posts. They haven't a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head

with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say

she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've

done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned

her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with

her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe

'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature

enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and

lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much

chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians.

It's a shame, just a real shame. Why, if that poor, lonesome child came

right along to me, I'd--"

"Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and--hooking

him." The lawyer shook his head and smiled. "You know, Sally, you're

almost an outrage on the subject of marriage. Sometimes I wonder the

sort of tricks I was up against when I--"

A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing

charge.

"You were due at the office long ago, Charles," his wife admonished. "If

you aren't careful I'll have to pack you off right away."

"That's all right, Sally," the man demurred. "I won't go further with

that. I'll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted."

His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't

understand why she was packed off to school--and kept there? Of course

she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She

must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's

new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anything of the

child, she understands it that way. I felt that when she came to see her

mother, and went to her funeral. Now then, Nancy's coming to see me

to-day. Remember she's sixteen. She's got to learn from me the

settlement Leslie's made on her. She's got to learn further that she

isn't likely to ever see her stepfather. She knows I'm his business man.

She knows I'm his friend. Well, when she's financially independent, do

you think she'll feel like rushing into our arms, here, for a home,

feeling the way I believe she does about her parent? It's going to be

difficult, and--damned unpleasant. And for all I'm ready to help Leslie

anyway I know, I'd rather see anybody on his behalf than that kiddie,

with her wide, honest, angry eyes and red hair. I'm not going to press

our home on her, Sally, because, sooner or later, if she accepted it,

which I don't believe she would, she'd have to learn things of Leslie,

and--well, the affairs you know about. That must not be. She's not going

to learn these things from us. I'm going to do the best I know for the

child, and when it comes to the matter of a home she must choose for

herself. There's always her mother's folk, or even James McDonald's

folk--"

"God forbid! No. Oh, no." The woman's instant denial was horrified. "Not

the McDonald lot. They're all revolutionaries. All of them. It's--it's

unthinkable. It certainly is."

The man moved away.

"That's so," he agreed. "Well, anyway, I'll do the best I know for the

child, Sally. You can trust me."

The woman's anxiety abated, and she rose from her chair.

"I know that, Charles," she said. "But the McDonalds! They're--"

"Sure they are." The man laughed. "Well, good-bye, my dear. I'll tell

you all about it when I've fixed things. Thank goodness it's quit

snowing and the sun's shining again. I wish I felt as good as it looks

outside here."

* * * * *

Charles Nisson had become a lawyer without any marked inclination or

enthusiasm for his profession. It had been simply a matter of following

the father before him. It would have been much the same if his father

had been a farmer, or a politician, or anything else. The son was

patient, temperate, and of no great ambition. But he was also keenly

intelligent. Without impulse, or striking originality, but with a

tremendous capacity for hard work, he was bound to be moderately

successful in any career. In his father's profession his temperament was

particularly suited, and in spite of lacking enthusiasm he had become

unquestionably a better lawyer than the country attorney he had

succeeded.

Just now his mind was filled with unease. The matter of his forthcoming

interview with a child of sixteen years had only small place in the

affairs which disturbed him. His real concern was for his friend, Leslie

Standing, and the disaster, which, in a seemingly overwhelming rush had

befallen at far-off Sachigo. Again his trouble had no relation to these

things as they affected his own worldly affairs. It was of the man

himself he was thinking.

He knew it all now. He had painfully learned the complete story of

disaster. And, to his sturdy mind, it was a deplorable example of almost

unbelievable human weakness.

Standing had conveyed his final determination to abandon his Labrador

enterprise in the correspondence which had passed between them during

the three months which had elapsed since the funeral of his wife and

stillborn child. And during that time their friendship had been sorely

tested. There had been times when the lawyer's native patience had been

unequal to the strain. There had been times when his temper had leapt

from under the bonds which so strongly held it. But for all the ordeals

of that prolonged correspondence, for all he deplored the pitiful

weakness in the other, his friendship remained, and he finally accepted

his instructions. But the whole thing left him very troubled.

As the hour of noon approached, his trouble showed no sign of abatement.

It was the reverse. There were moments, as he sat in the generously

upholstered chair before his desk, in the comfortable down-town office

which overlooked Abercrombie's principal thoroughfare, that he felt like

abandoning all responsibility in the chaos of his friend's affairs. But

this was only the result of irritation, and had no relation to his

intentions. He knew well enough that everything in his power would be

done for the man who never so surely needed his help as now.

He refreshed his memory with the details of the deed of settlement for

the abandoned stepdaughter. Then, as the hands of the clock approached

the hour of his appointment, he sat back yielding his whole

concentration upon those many problems confronting him.

What, he asked himself, was going to become of Standing now that he had

cut himself adrift from that anchorage which had held him safe for the

past seven years? He strove to follow the driving of the man's curiously

haunted mind. He had declared his intention of going away. Where?

Definite information had been withheld. He was going to devote himself

to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind.

What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming.

Was it good, or--bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle

of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his

friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the

shock it had sustained.

No. Speculation was useless. The crude facts were like a brick wall he

had to face. Standing's wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left

to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child. The

responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung

upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his

worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any

possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and

all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the

unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole thing was

mad--utterly--

The muffled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons. One

swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional

instinct. He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his

table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.

"Miss McDonald to see you," he announced, in the modulated tone which

was part of his professional make-up.

The lawyer rose at once. He moved toward the door with a smiling

welcome. The sex and personality of his visitor demanded this departure

from his custom.

Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had

departed. She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen.

In her simple college girl's overcoat, with its muffling of fur about

the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure

concealed. Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that

confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer

countries.

But these things passed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer. He was

smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap. It was the

wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark

lashes, that inspired his smiling interest. It was the level brows, so

delicately pencilled, and dark as were the eyelashes. It was the perfect

nose, and lips, and chin, and the chiselled beauty of oval cheeks, all

in such classic harmony with the girl's wealth of vivid hair.

Nancy returned his gaze without the shadow of a smile. She had come at

this man's call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College,

which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three

or four most impressionable years of her life. And she knew the purpose

of the summons.

There was a deep abiding resentment in her heart. It was not against

this man or his wife. From these two she had received only kindness and

affection. It was directed against the stepfather whom she believed to

be the cause of the banishment she had had to endure. Furthermore, she

could never forget that her banishment was only terminated that she

might gaze at last upon the dead features of her dearly loved mother

before the cold earth hid them from view forever.

The lawyer understood. He had understood from her reply to his letter

summoning her. There was no need for the confirmation he read now in her

unsmiling eyes.

"You sent for me?" she said.

Nancy's voice was deep and rich for all her youth. Then with a display

of some slight confusion, she suddenly realised the welcoming hand

outheld. She took it hurriedly, and the brief hand clasp completely

broke down the barrier she had deliberately set up.

"Oh, it's a shame, Uncle Charles," she cried, almost tearfully.

"It's--it's a shame. I know. I'm just a kid--a fool kid who hasn't a

notion, or a feeling, or--or anything. I'm to be treated that way. When

he says 'listen,' why, I've just got to listen. And when he says 'obey,'

I've got to obey, because the law says he's my stepfather. He's robbed

me of my mother. Oh, it's cruel. Now he's going to rob me of everything

else I s'pose. Who is he? What is he that he has the power to--to make

me a sort of slave to his wishes? I've never seen him. I hate him, and

he hates me, and yet--oh--I'm kind of sorry," she said, in swift

contrition at the sight of the old man's evident distress. "I--I--didn't

think. I--oh, I know it's not your fault, uncle. It's just nothing to do

with you. You've always been so kind and good to me--you and Aunt Sally.

You've got to send for me and tell me the things he says, because--"

"Because I'm his 'hired man.' But also because I'm his friend."

The lawyer spoke kindly, but very firmly. He knew the impulsive nature

of this passionate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised,

none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of

childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her

father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven

him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he

might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world

saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures. So he checked

the impulsive flow of the child's protest. He held out his hands.

"You'd best let me take your coat, my dear," he said, with a smile the

girl found it impossible to resist. "Maybe you'd like to remove your

overshoes, too. There's a big talk to make, and I want to get things

fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before

you go back to Marypoint."

The child capitulated. But she needed no assistance. Her coat was

removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him,

the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.

"Guess I'll keep my rubbers on," she said. Then she added with a laugh

which a moment before must have been impossible. "That way I'll feel I

can run away when I want to. What next?"

"Why, just sit right here."

The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk. His movements

were swift now. He had no desire to lose the girl's change of mood.

And Nancy submitted. She took the chair set for her while the man she

loved to call "Uncle Charlie" passed round to his. He gave her no time

for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.

"Now, my dear," he said earnestly, "you came here feeling pretty bad

about things, and maybe I don't blame you. But there isn't the sort of

thing waiting on you you're guessing. Before we get to the real business

I just want to tell you the things in my mind. Of course, as you say,

you're a 'kid' yet--a school-kid, eh? That's all right. But I know you

can get a grip of things that many much older girls could never hope to.

That's why I want to tell you the things I'm going to. Now you've worked

it out in your mind that your stepfather is just a heartless, selfish

creature who has no sort of use for you, and just wants to forget your

existence. He married your mother, but had no idea of taking on her

burdens--that's you. It isn't so. It wasn't so. I know, because this man

is my friend, and I know all there is to know about him. The whole thing

has been deplorable. You've been the victim of circumstances that I may

not explain even to you. But I promise you this, your stepfather is not

the man to have desired to cut you out of your mother's life."

"Who did then? Mother?"

The girl's beautiful face flushed under her stirring emotions. The man

shook his head.

"Circumstances. Yes, those circumstances I told you of. Those

circumstances I can't explain." Charles Nisson picked up a typescript

and held it out to the child.

"I want you to take this. It's not the deed, but a true copy. I want you

to read it over and think about it, and when you get back to Marypoint,

and feel like talking to those teachers you trust there, you can tell

them what it contains, and hear what they have to say about it, and see

if they won't think better of your stepfather than you do. You needn't

read it now," as the girl turned the pages and glanced down the

confusion of legal phraseology. "I'm going to tell you what it contains

in plain words. But I want you to have it, and read it, and think over

it, because I want you to try and get a real understanding of the man

whose signature is set to the original deed."

"Yes," he went on, meditatively, and in a tone of real regret. "I'd be

pretty glad to have you think better of him. I think just now he needs

the kind thought of anyone who belongs to him. He's in pretty bad

trouble--someways."

The girl looked up. A curious anxiety was shining in her eyes.

"Trouble?" she demanded. "You mean he's done wrong? What d'you mean?

What sort of--trouble?"

The man shook his head.

"No. It's not that. It's--your mother. You know, Nancy, he loved your

mother in a way that leaves a good man broken to pieces when he loses

the object of his love. Every good thought he ever had was bound up in

your mother. And your mother was his strong support, and literally his

guiding star. You've lost your mother. You know how you felt. Well, I

can't tell you, but think, try and think what it would be if you'd lost

just every hope in life, too--the same as he has."

"I'd--I'd want to die," the girl cried impulsively.

"Yes. So would anyone. So does he. Just as far as the world's concerned

he's dead now. You'll never see him, or hear from him. Nor will anyone

else--except me. He'll never come into your life after this. He'll never

claim his legal guardianship of you, beyond that document. To you he's

dead, leaving you heir to what is contained in that deed. He's just a

poor devil of a man hunted and haunted through the rest of his existence

by the memory of a love that was more than life to him. Try and think

better of him, Nancy, my dear. He's got enough to bear. I think he

deserves far better than he's ever likely to get handed to him. I tell

you solemnly, my dear, whatever sins he may have committed, and most of

us have committed plenty," he added, with a gentle smile, "he's done you

no real hurt. And now he's only doing that good by you I would expect

from him."

Nancy sighed deeply, and it needed no words of hers to tell the man of

law how well he had fought his friend's battle. A deep wave of childish

pity had swept away the last of a resentment which had seemed so bitter,

so implacable. It was the generous heart of the child, shorn, for the

moment, of its inheritance from her father. Her even brows had puckered,

and the man knew that tears, real tears of sympathy, were not far off.

"Tell me," she said, in a low voice. "Tell me some more."

But the man shook his head. "I can't tell you more," he said gently.

"Where your stepfather is, or where he will be to-morrow, I may not tell

you. Even when your mother was alive you were not permitted to know

these things. That was due to the 'circumstances' I told you of. It just

remains for me to tell you the contents of that document. They're as

generous as only your stepfather knows how to make them. He's appointed

me your trustee. And he's settled on you a life annuity of $10,000.

There are a few simple conditions. You will remain at college till your

education is complete, and, until you are twenty-one I shall have

control of your income. That is," he explained, "I shall see that you

don't handle it recklessly. During that time, subject to my approval,

you can make your home with whom you like. After you've passed your

twenty-first birthday you are as free as air to go or come, to live

where you choose, and how you choose. And your income will be

forthcoming from this office--every quarter. Do you understand all that,

my dear? It's so very simple. Your stepfather has gone to the limit to

show you how well he desires for you, and how free of his authority he

wants you to be. There is another generous act of his that will be made

clear to you when the time comes. But that is for the future--not now.

His last word to me," he went on, picking up a letter, "when he sent me

the deed duly signed, was: 'Tell this little girl when you hand her

these things, it isn't my wish to trouble her with an authority which

can have little enough appeal for her. Tell her that her mother was my

whole world, and it is my earnest desire that her daughter should have

all the good and comfort this world can bestow. If ever she needs

further help she can have it without question, and that she only has to

appeal to my friend and adviser, Charles Nisson, for anything she

requires.'"

The man laid the letter aside and looked up.

"That's the last paragraph of the last communication I had from him. And

they're not the words of a monstrous tyrant who is utterly heartless,

eh?"

The girl made no answer. Her emotion was too strong for her. Two great

tears rolled slowly down her beautiful cheeks.

The lawyer rose from his chair. He came round the desk and laid a gentle

hand on the heaving shoulder, while Nancy strove to wipe her tears away

with a wholly inadequate handkerchief.

"That's right, my dear," he said very gently. "Wipe them away. There's

no need to cry. Leslie's done all a man in his peculiar position can do

for you. You've got the whole wide world before you, and everything you

can need for comfort--thanks to him. Now let's forget about it all. Just

take that paper back to school with you. And maybe you'll write, or come

and let me know what you think about it. If you feel like making your

home with us, why, that way you'll just complete our happiness. If you

feel like going to your mother's sister, Anna Scholes, I shan't refuse

you. Anyway, think about it all. That's my big talk and it's finished.

Just get your overcoat on, and we'll get right along home to food."

CHAPTER VI

NATHANIEL HELLBEAM

The room was furnished with extreme modern luxury. The man standing over

against the window with his broad back turned, somehow looked to be in

perfect keeping with the setting his personal tastes had inspired. He

was broad, squat, fat. His head and neck were set low upon his

shoulders, and the hair oil was obvious on the longish dark hair which

seemed to grow low down under his shirt collar.

The other man, seated in one of the many easy chairs, was in strong

contrast. His was the familiar face of the agent, Idepski, dark, keen,

watchful. He was smoking the cigarette to which he had helped himself

from the gold box standing near him on the ornate desk.

"You seem to have made a bad mess of things."

Nathaniel Hellbeam turned from the window and came back to his desk with

quick, short, energetic strides.

He presented a picture of inflamed wrath. His fleshy, square face was

flushed and almost purple. His small eyes were hot with anger. They

snapped as he launched his harshly spoken verdict. His whole manner

bristled with merciless intolerance.

He was enormously fat, and breathed heavily through clean shaven lips

that protruded sensually. His age was doubtful, but suggested something

under middle life. It was the gross bulk of the man that made it almost

impossible to estimate closely. The only real youth about him was his

dark, well oiled hair which possessed not a sign of greying in it.

He flung himself into the wide chair which gaped to receive him, and

glared at the dark face of his visitor.

"What in the hell do I pay you for?" he cried brutally, lapsing, in his

anger, into that gutteral Teutonic accent which it was his life's object

to avoid. "A wild cat's scheme it was I tell you from the first. You go

to this Sachigo with your men. You think to get this 'sharp' asleep, or

what? You find him wide awake waiting for you to arrive. What then? He

jumps quick. So quick you can't think. You a prisoner are. You go where

he sends you. You live like a swine in the woods. You are made to work

for your food. And a year is gone. A year! Serve you darn right. Oh,

yes. Bah! You quit. You understand? I pay you no more. You are a fool, a

blundering fool. I wash my hands with you."

Idepski sat still, patient, as once before he had sat under the whip

lash of a man's tongue. And he continued smoking till the great banker's

last word was spoken.

Then he stirred, and removed his cigarette from his thin lips.

"That's all right, Mr. Hellbeam," he said coldly. "It seems like you've

a right to all you've said. It seems, I said. But the 'fool' talk." He

shook his head. "My best enemies don't reckon me that--generally. The

game I'm playing has room enough for things that look like blunders. I

allow that. It doesn't matter. You see, I know more of this feller

Martin maybe than you do. I guess he's a mighty big coward, except when

he's got the drop on a feller. I've given him the scare of a lifetime,

and I've unshipped him from his safe anchorage on that darn Labrador

coast. Do you know what's happened? I'll tell you. He's quit Sachigo.

From what I can learn he's sold out his mill to that uncouth hoodlum,

Harker, who was sort of his partner, and quit. Where? I don't know yet.

Why has he quit? Why, because he knows we've located his hiding, and

will get him if he remains. You reckon I've mussed things up." He shook

his head. "He was well-nigh safe up there on Labrador--and I knew it. We

had to get him out of it. Well, I've got him out. He's bolted like a

gopher, and it's up to me to locate him. I shall locate him. I'm glad

he's quit that hellish country. I've had a year of it, and it's put the

fear of God into me. You needn't worry. I'm quite ready to quit your

pay. But I'm going on with this thing, sure. You see, I owe him quite a

piece for myself--now. I've been through the hell he intended me to go

through when he sent me along up to be held prisoner by that skunk, Ole

Porson. I'm going to pay him for that--good. I don't want your pay--now.

One day I'll hand that feller over to you--and when you've doped him

plenty--you'll have paid me." He rose leisurely from his comfortable

chair. "May I take another of your good cigarettes?" he went on, with a

half smile in his cold eyes. "You see, I won't get another, seeing I'm

quitting you."

He deliberately helped himself without waiting for permission, while his

eyes dwelt on the gold box containing them.

But the financier's mood had changed. The keen mind was busy behind his

narrow eyes. Perhaps Idepski understood the man. Perhaps the coolness of

the agent appealed to the implacable nature of the Swede. Whatever it

was the hot eyes had cooled, and the fleshy cheeks had returned to

their normal pasty hue. He raised a hand pointing.

"Sit down and smoke all you need," he said, in the sharp, autocratic

fashion that was his habit. "We aren't through yet." Then, for a few

moments, he regarded the slim figure as it lay back once more in the

armchair. "Say," he began, abruptly, "you reckon to go on for--yourself?

Yes? You're a good hater."

He went on as the other inclined his head.

"I like a good hater. Yes. Well, just cut out all I said. We'll go on. I

guess you'll need to blunder some before we get this swine. You're bound

to. But I want him. I want him bad. If it's good for you to go on for

yourself, that's good for me. There's a lifetime ahead yet, and I don't

care so I see him down--right down where I need him. Maybe I won't get

the money, but we'll get him, and that'll do. Yes, cut out what I said,

and go ahead. Tell me about it."

Idepski displayed neither enthusiasm nor added interest. He accepted the

position with seeming indifference. Hellbeam to him was just an

employer. A means to those ends which he had in view. If Hellbeam turned

him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski

appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration. Besides,

he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford

to do without him in this matter. His intolerant, hectic temper mattered

nothing at all. He paid for the privilege of its display, and he paid

well. So--

"There's nothing much to tell," the agent returned, with a shrug. "I'm

going to get him--that's all. See here, Mr. Hellbeam," he went on after

a pause, with a sudden change to keen energy, "you're a mighty big power

in the financial world, and to be that I guess you've had to be some

judge of the other feller. That's so. You most generally know when he's

beat before you begin. And when he squeals it don't come as a surprise.

Well, that's how it is with me, only it's a bigger thing to me because

it sometimes happens to mean the difference between life and death. Say,

when you put up your bluff at a feller, and watch him square in the

eyes, and you see 'em flicker and shift, do you reckon you've lit on the

'yellow streak,' that lies somewhere in most folk? I guess so. Well,

that's how I know my man. I've seen it in this bum, Leslie Standing as

he calls himself now. And when I saw it I knew he was beat, for all he'd

the drop on me. Since then my notion's proved itself. He's lit out. He's

cut from his gopher hole at Sachigo. An' when a gopher gets away from

his hole, the man with the gun has him dead set. But say, that muss up

you reckon I made doesn't look that way when you know the things it's

taught me. While I was way up at that penitentiary camp on the Beaver

River I kept all my ears and eyes wide, and I learned most of the things

a feller's liable to learn in this world when he acts that way. I

learned something of the notions lying back of this feller's work up

there. Say, he hadn't finished with you when he took that ten millions

out of you." An ironical smile lit the man's dark eyes as he thrust home

his retaliation for the financier's insults. "Not by a lot," he went on,

with a smiling display of teeth that conveyed nothing pleasant. "They've

a slogan up there that means a whole heap, and it comes from him, and

runs through the whole work going on, right down to the Chink camp

cooks. Guess that mill is only beginning. It's the ground work of a

mighty big notion. And the notion is to drive the Skandinavians out of

Canada's pulp trade, and very particularly the Swedes, as represented by

the interests of Nathaniel Hellbeam. Guess you sit right here in New

York, but up there they've got you measured up to the last pant's

button."

"They that think?"

The financier's bloated cheeks purpled as he put his clumsy

interrogation.

"Oh, yes. This feller Standing reckons he's made a big start, and there

are mighty big plans out. When he and that clownish partner of his,

Harker, are through, Sachigo'll be the biggest proposition in the way of

groundwood pulp in the world. They've forests such as you in Skandinavia

dream about when your digestion's feeling good. They've a water power

that leaves Niagara a summer trickle. They've got it all with a sea

journey of less than eighteen hundred miles to Europe. But there's more

than that. When Sachigo's complete it's to be the parent company of a

mighty combine that's going to take in all the mills of Canada outside

Nathaniel Hellbeam's group. And then--then, sir, the squeeze'll start

right in. And it isn't going to stop till the sponge--that's Nathaniel

Hellbeam--is wrung dry."

"You heard all this--when you were held prisoner and working like a

swine in Martin's forests?"

The smile in Hellbeam's eyes was no less ironical than the agent's.

"When I was working like a swine."

"These lumber-jacks. They knew all that in Standing's mind is?"

"No. But I learned it all."

"How?"

The demand was instant, and a surge of force lay behind it.

"Because some I saw. Some I picked up from general talk. And the rest I

pieced together because it's my job to think hard when the game's

against me. But it don't matter. You know that the things I've told you

are right. It's news to you, but you know it's right, because you're

thinking hard, and the game's against--you."

"Yes."

The financier's admission was the act of a man who has no hesitation in

looking facts in the face and acknowledging them. Idepski's deductions

were irrefutable, because the Swede was a shrewd business man with a

full appreciation of the man who had lightened his finances by ten

million dollars.

For some moments the fleshy face was turned towards the window which

yielded the hum of busy traffic many stories below them. His narrow eyes

were earnestly reflective, but there was no concern in them. To the

waiting man he was simply measuring the threat against him, and probing

its possibilities for mischief.

"Yet this fellow. He on the run is--Yes?"

The eyes were smiling as they came back again to Idepski's face. The

agent nodded, flinging his cigarette end into the porcelain cuspidore

beside the desk.

"Which makes me all the more sure of the game," he said confidently.

"He's rattled. He's so scared to death for himself, and for his purpose,

he's getting out. It's as clear as daylight to me. He feels he's plumb

against it if he stops around. He knows we've located him. He knows what

he's done to me. He knows all he wants to know of you. Well, he reckons

there's no sort of chance for him at Sachigo. And if he stops there's no

sort of chance for this purpose of his. He reckons to call off the

hounds on his own trail, while the feller Harker carries on the good

work of squeezing the Swedes. That's how I see it. And I guess I'm

right. Remember I had a year of hell up there to think in, and when I

finally got clear away I had two months' solitary chasing of those woods

to think in, and then, when I made the coast, I had the trip down with

the folks on the boat to listen to. He's scared for his life, and of

anything you hope to hand him. But he's more scared for the purpose that

made him set up that mill at Sachigo."

Hellbeam leant back in his chair. His great paunch protruded invitingly

and he clasped his hands over it.

"Maybe you're right," he said, with an air intended to conciliate.

"Anyway you've picked up some pieces and set them together so they make

a fancy shape. But--it isn't good. No. Here, I think, too. I see

another, way from you. Without this fellow Sachigo is--nothing. See? I

care nothing because of this Harker. No. The other--that's different.

Yes. He the brain has. All this piece you make. He is capable of it. But

he is on the run. Good. I still sleep well while he runs. Sachigo? Bah!

It is nothing without Leslie Martin. Now, go you. Hunt this man. Maybe

your year of the woods will help you," he said, with biting emphasis.

"You know the woods? Well, don't quit his trail. Get him. Get him

alive."

"Oh, I shall get him. Your urging ain't needed. I'll get him as you

say--alive. And he knows it."

Idepski's cold eyes hardened with a frigid hatred as he spoke. He had

only been paid for the work hitherto. Now he was implacable.

"But it's Sachigo I mean to watch," he went on, after a brief pause. "I

mean to play in that direction. It's the home burrow where you lay your

traps once your quarry's on the run."

Hellbeam nodded.

"That's good sense."

"Sure it is," retorted the agent. "I'm glad you see it that way," he

added with a smile under which the financier grew restive once more.

"Yes. Well, see you get him. Money? It doesn't matter. Get him! Get

him!" he reiterated fiercely. "You understand me? It doesn't matter how

you get him. I can deal with the rest."

Suddenly he raised a clenched fist, fat, and strong, and white, and

extended his thumb. He turned it downwards and pressed its extremity on

the gold mounted blotting pad before him with a force that bent the

knuckle backwards. "Get him so I can crush him--like that," he cried.

"Get him alive. I want him alive. See?"

"I see. I'll get him--sure. You needn't worry a thing."

And as Walter Idepski rose to take his departure, for all his nerve, he

felt glad that the passion of this Swede's hate was not directed against

him.

PART II

EIGHT YEARS LATER

CHAPTER I

BULL STERNFORD

A great gathering thronged the heart of the clearing. There were men of

every shade of colour, men of well-nigh every type. They stood about in

a wide circle, whose regularity remained definite even under the

stirring of fierce excitement. They had gathered for a fight, a great

fight between two creatures, full human in shape and splendid manhood,

but bestial in the method of the battle demanded. It was a battle with

muscles of iron, and hearts that knew no mercy, and body and mind tuned

only to endure and conquer. It was a battle that belonged to the savage

out-world, acknowledging only the vicious laws of "rough and tough."

The rough creatures stood voiceless and well-nigh breathless. The

combatants were well matched and redoubtable, even in a community whose

only deity was physical might and courage and the skill of the wielded

axe. The lust of it all was burning fiercely in every heart.

The sun poured out its flood of summer upon a world of virgin forest.

The sky was without blemish. A dome of perfect azure roofed in the

length and breadth of Nature's kingdom. Nevertheless the fairness of the

summer day, with its ravishing accompaniment of soft, mystery sounds

from an unseen world and the lavish beauty of shadowed woods were fit

setting for the pulsing of savage emotions. It was far out in the lost

world of Northern Quebec. It was far, far beyond the widest-flung

frontiers of civilisation. It was out there where man soon learns to

forget his birthright, and readily yields to the animal in him.

It was a scene of mighty slaughter amongst the giants of the forest.

Hundreds sprawled in the path of man's gleaming axe. Giants they were,

hoary with age, and gnarled with the sinews built up by Nature to resist

her fiercest storms. They lay there, in every direction, reaching up

with tattered arms outstretched, as though appealing for the light, the

warmth, and the sweetness of life they would know no more.

Amidst this carnage a great camp was growing up. There were huts

completed. There were huts only in the skeleton. They were dotted about

in a fashion apparently without order or purpose. Yet long before the

falling of the first snow, order would reign everywhere and man's

purpose would be achieved.

The bunkhouses, the stores, the offices, the stables, they must all be

ready before the coming of the "freeze-up." Summer is the time of

preparation. Winter is the season when the lumber-jack's work must go

forward without cessation or break of any sort. Not even the excuse of

sickness can be accepted. There is no excuse. The lumber-jack must work,

or sink to the dregs of a life that has already created in him a spirit

of indifference to the laws of God and man. So the life of the forest is

hard and fierce, and the battle of it all is long.

But the men who seek it are more than equal to the task. They are of all

sorts, and all races. They drift to the forest from all ranks of life by

reason of the spirit driving them. They come from the universities of

the world. They come straight from the gates of the penitentiary. They

come from the land, the sea, the office. They come from all countries,

and they come for every reason. The call of the forest is deep with

significance. Its appeal is profound. Its life is free, and shadowed,

and afar.

For long moments the clinch of the fighting men remained unbroken. They

lay there upon the ground locked in a deadly embrace. A spasmodic jolt,

a violent, muscular heave. The result was changed position, while the

clinch remained unrelaxed. There were movements of gripping hands. There

were changes of position in the intertwined legs clad in their hard cord

trousers. The heavily-booted feet stirred and stirred again in response

to the impulse of the searching brains of the fighters, and every slight

movement had deep meaning for the onlookers.

Yet none of these movements revealed the inspiration of passion. They

were calculated and full of purpose. It was devilish purpose driving

towards the objects of the fight. The stirring fingers yearned to reach

the eyes of the adversary to blind him, and leave his organs of vision

gouged from their sockets. The bared, strong teeth were only awaiting

that dire chance to close upon the enemy's flesh, whether ear, or nose,

or throat. Then the knee and foot. They were striving under ardent will

for that inhuman maiming which would leave the victim crippled for life.

Each movement of the fighters was estimated by the onlookers at its due

worth. They understood it all, the skill, the chance of it. Not one of

them but had fought just such a battle in his time, and not a few

carried the scars of it, and would continue to carry the scars of it for

the rest of their days.

The moments of quiescence yielded to a spasmodic violence. There was a

wild rolling, and the unlocking of mighty, clinging legs. One

dishevelled head was raised threateningly. It remained poised for a

fraction of time over the upturned face of the man lying in a position

of disadvantage. Then it lunged downwards. And as it descended, a sound

like the clipping of teeth came back to the taut strung senses of the

onlookers. A sigh escaped from a hundred throats.

"Bull missed it that time."

Abe Kristin whispered his comment. The two men beside him had nothing to

add at the moment. Their eyes were intent for the next development.

Suddenly the fair-haired giant who had missed his attack seemed to

disengage himself from the under man's desperate hold. It was impossible

to ascertain the means he employed. But he clearly released himself and

one hammer fist swung up. It crashed sickeningly down on the upturned

face, and a whistling breath escaped the emotional Abe.

"Gee! He's takin' a chance! That ain't the play in a 'rough and tough,'"

he muttered.

"Nope. You're right, Abe," Luke Gats agreed without turning. "He's

crazy. Gee! It's a chance. But he's maybe rattled. Bull's been fightin'

over an hour."

"Here get it!" Tug Burke was pointing with a cant-hook in his

excitement. "Get it quick. See? He's--"

The man's excitement found reflection in the whole concourse of

onlookers. There was a furious movement in the human body crushed on the

ground beneath the man they called Bull. Its knees came up under his

adversary's body with a terrific jolt. The purpose of maiming was

obvious.

"Gee! I'm glad."

Tug's relief found an echo in the sigh that escaped his companions. The

intended victim had promptly swung his body clear and the threatened

injury was averted. But his retaliation was instant. His great open hand

spread over the man's face, smothering it; and it seemed the sought-for

goal had been reached.

"Gouge! Gouge!"

The cry roared in hoarse, excited tones from every direction. Unanimity

displayed the general feeling. The man whose face had been smothered was

Arden Laval, the camp boss, the man they hated as only forest-men can

hate. The other was a giant youngster, not long a member of the camp,

the usual object for victimisation by such a man as the French Canadian

boss.

The demand remained unsatisfied. The fingers remained spread out over

the man's eyes, but the foul act was never perpetrated. The younger

man's efforts were directed towards a deeper, more significant purpose,

and perhaps less cruel. He could have blinded in a twinkling. But he

refrained. Instead, he pressed up mightily with a fore-arm crooked under

the back of the man's neck, his smothering hand pressed down with all

his enormous strength.

"The darn fool! Why in hell don't he--?"

Abe was interrupted by the excited voice of the man with the cant-hook.

"God A'mighty!" Tug cried. "Do you get it? Gouge? It ain't good enough

fer Master Bull. He's playin' bigger. He's playin' fer dollars while we

was reck'nin' cents. Look! It'll crack sure! His gorl-darn neck! He

means--!"

"To kill!"

Luke Gat's jubilation was dreadful to witness. His hard, be-whiskered

features were alight with fiendish joy. This youngster had gone beyond

all expectations. No less than the life of the greatest bully in the

lumber world would satisfy him.

"Say, the nerve! He'll break the life out o' the skunk," he exulted.

"The kid means crackin' his neck, sure as God!"

"Ken he do it?" Tug had thrust forward.

"Laval ain't the feller he was," mused Abe. "He shouldn't a let the boy

get that holt. It's goin' back. It certainly is."

The men stood hushed before the terrible significance of what they

beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough

to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest

emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully,

Arden Laval, who only held his position by reason of his fighting

powers. They would be infinitely pleased to witness his end. All the

more sure was their delight that it should come at the hands of this

pleasant-voiced young giant, who had come amongst them out of the very

lap of civilisation. Later on they would laugh at the thought of the

redoubtable Laval in the hands of this "kid," as they considered him.

But for the moment they were held enthralled by the excitement of it

all.

The moments prolonged. The thrusting hand, and the crushing arm were

forcing, forcing slowly, in their terrible strangle hold. The face of

the camp boss was hidden from the spectators under the smothering hand.

But the perilous angle at which his dark head was thrust back was there

for all to see. His struggles, in that merciless hold, were becoming

less violent. There was despair in their impotence.

The man called Bull was fighting with no less desperation. His youthful,

resilient muscles were extended to the last ounce of their power, and an

active, steely-tempered brain lay behind his every effort. The memory of

months of brutal injustice and bullying, the bitterness of which had

galled beyond endurance, supported this last mighty effort. Yes, for all

he was bred in the gentle life of civilisation, for all ruthless cruelty

had no place in his normal temper, his one desire now was to kill, to

slay this brute-man who had made his life unendurable.

It was an awful moment. It was terrible even to these hardy men of the

forests. The spectacle of a slow, deliberate killing was incomparable

with the blood feuds to which they were used. There were those whose

nerves prompted them to shout for haste. There were some even who

welcomed the prolonged agony of the victim. But none shouted, none

spoke or stirred. Furthermore, not one pair of shining eyes revealed the

quality of mercy. Bull's right was his own. If he demanded death it was

his due. Certainly it was the due of the bully, Laval.

On the far side of the circle a sudden commotion broke up the tense

expectancy of the onlookers. Every eye responded, and the unanimity of

the change of interest suggested the desire for relief. The commotion

continued. There was some sort of struggle going on. Then, in a moment,

it ceased. A tall, lean, dark-clad figure leapt into the arena and flung

itself upon the combatants.

The circle had re-formed. Again were eyes fastened upon the point of

fascination which had held them so long. But now a buzz of talk hummed

on the summer air.

"What in hell!" demanded Luke, in the bitterness of disappointment.

"Here, I'm--"

Tug Burke made a move to break into the arena. But the powerful hand of

Abe was fastened about one of his arms in a grip of iron.

"Say, quit, kid!" he cried hoarsely.

The man's harsh tones were stirred out of their usual quiet.

"Stop right here," he went on. "There's just one feller on this earth

has a right to butt in when Death's flappin' his wings around. That's

Father Adam. Maybe you're feeling sick to think Laval's going to get

clear with his life. Maybe I am. Father Adam ain't buttin' in ordinary.

He's savin' that hothead kid the blood of a killin' on his hands. Guess

I'm glad."

The next moments were abounding with amazing incident. It seemed as

though a flying, priestly figure had been absorbed in the life-and-death

struggle. He seemed to become part of it. Then, with kaleidoscopic

suddenness, the men lay apart, and the death strangle hold of Bull

Sternford was broken. And the magic of it all lay in the fact that the

stranger was standing over the prone combatants, his dark, bearded face,

and wide, shining black eyes turned upon the living fury gazing up out

of the eyes of the man who had been robbed of his prey.

"There's going to be no killing, Bull." Father Adam spoke quietly,

deliberately, but with cold decision.

There was no yielding in his pale, ascetic features. One hand slipped

quickly into a pocket of his short, black, semi-clerical coat, as he

allowed his eyes to glance down at the still prostrate camp boss.

"And you, Laval," he cried, with more urgency, "get out quick. Get right

out to your shanty and stop there. Later I'll come along and fix up your

hurts."

Young Bull Sternford leapt to his feet. His youthful figure towered. His

handsome blue eyes were ablaze with almost demoniac fury. His purpose

was obvious. A voiceless passion surged as he started to rush again upon

his victim.

But the priestly figure, with purpose no less, instantly barred the way.

"Quit," he cried sharply. "What I say, goes."

Bull halted. He halted within a yard of the automatic pistol whose

muzzle was covering him. He stood for a second staring stupidly. And

something of his madness seemed to pass out of his eyes. Then, in a

moment, his voice rang out harshly.

"Get away. Let me get at him. Oh, God, I'll smash him! I'll--!"

"You'll quit right now!" Father Adam still barred the way with the

threatening gun. He raised the muzzle the least shade. "There's this gun

says you're not going to have murder on your hands, boy; and there's a

man behind it knows how to make it stop your mad attempt. That's

better," he went on, as, even in his fury the younger man drew back in

face of the threat. "Say, you've done enough, boy. You've done all you

need. He's deserved everything he's got, the same as most of us deserve

the bad times we get. You've licked him like the good man you are.

You've licked him without any filthy maiming, or unnecessary cruelty.

Now leave him his life. He'll never trouble you again. Let it go at

that."

The calm of the man, the gentleness of his tones were irresistible. The

fury of the youth died hard, but it so lessened in face of the simple

exhortation that it had passed below the point where insanity rules.

Suddenly a great, bleeding hand was raised to his mane of fair hair, and

he smoothed it back off his forehead helplessly.

"Why? Why?" he demanded. Then spasmodically: "Why should--he--get away

with it? He's handed me a dog's life He's--"

He broke off. His emotions were overwhelming.

Father Adam's dark eyes never wavered. They squarely held their grip on

the stormy light shining in the other's. Laval had not stirred. He still

lay sprawled on the ground. Quite abruptly the hand gripping the

automatic pistol was thrust into the pocket of the black coat. When it

was removed it was empty. The man took a quick step towards the

half-dazed Bull.

"Come along, boy," he said persuasively, taking him by the arm. "Come

right over to my shanty," he went on. "You'll feel better in a while.

You'll feel better all ways, and glad you--didn't." Then he paused,

holding the man's unresisting arm. He looked down at Laval who displayed

belated signs of movement. "Get up, Laval," he ordered, returning to a

coldness that displayed his inner feeling. "Get up, and--get out. Get

away right now, and thank God your neck's still whole."

He waited for the obedience he demanded, and waiting he realised by the

quiescence of the man beside him that all danger had passed.

Laval staggered to his feet. He stood up, a giant in the prime of early

manhood, but bowed under the weight of physical hurt, and the knowledge

of his first defeat. He stood for a moment as though uncertain. Then he

moved slowly towards the crowding onlookers, finally passing through

them on his way to his quarters pursued by a hundred contemptuous,

unpitying glances, while busy tongues expressed regret at his escape. It

was the scowl of the wolf pack in its merciless regard for a fallen

leader.

Very different was the general attitude when Father Adam led the victor

away. Hard faces were a-grin. The tongues that cursed the defeated camp

boss hurled jubilant laudations at the unresponsive youth, who towered

even amongst these great creatures. But for the presence of Father Adam,

who seemed to exercise a miraculous restraining influence, these

lumber-jacks would have crowded in and forcibly borne their champion to

the suttler's store for those copious libations, which, in their

estimate, was the only fitting conclusion to the scene they had

witnessed. As it was they made way. They stood aside in spontaneous and

real respect, and the two men passed on in silence leaving the crowd to

disperse to its labours.