THE COMING OF SPRING
It had been a hard day. Bull Sternford had spent it dealing with
complicated financial schedules, an amazing, turbulent sea of figures,
until his powers and patience had temporarily exhausted themselves.
In a final fit of irritation he had flung his work aside, and risen from
his desk. The insufferable heat of the room, and the reek of his own
pipe disgusted him. So he had moved over to the window where the cold
air of early spring drifted in through the open ventilating slot in the
storm sash.
His gaze was on the Cove below, where the snow-laden ice was discoloured
by the moist slush of thaw, and the open waters, far down towards the
distant headlands, had so deeply encroached upon the claims of winter.
A great, premature thaw had set in. It was the real spring thaw a month
or more early. Skert Lawton, who controlled the water power of the mill,
had warned him of its coming. Bat too had spoken out of his years of
experience of the moods of Labrador's seasons. But somehow the sight of
it all gave him none of the joy with which it had inspired the others.
The evil night of threatened disaster had become only a memory. Nearly
six weeks had passed since Nancy McDonald had craved the privilege of
caring for the man who had so nearly given his life in the saving of the
mill and all the great purpose it represented. Now he was mercifully
returned to health and strength under the devoted care that had been
bestowed upon him. The mill was again in full work. And the human army
it employed had returned to their peace-time labours in the full
determination to undo the grievous hurt which the mischief of the
Skandinavia's agents and their own folly had inflicted. In the relief of
reaction, they, no less than their employers, had redoubled their
efforts.
All outward sign of the trouble through which the mill had passed had
long since been cleared away under the driving power of the forceful Bat
Harker. The scars of fire remained here and there. But they were no more
than a reminder for those who were ready to forget the folly they had
once committed.
Everything was moving on now as Bull and his comrades would have had it.
Only that morning word had come through that Ray Birchall was on his way
from London for the purpose of his report, and expected to reach Sachigo
in three weeks' time. Could anything, then, be better than this early
thaw? It was a veritable act of Providence that the London man's
inspection of the mills, and all the property involved would take place
under the most active conditions.
It should have been a time of rejoicing and mental ease. It should have
been a time of stirring hope. A moment for complaisant contemplation of
a great purpose achieved. But the man at the window regarded the thing
he looked upon without any display of pleasurable feeling. The sight of
it literally seemed to deepen the unease which looked out of his eyes.
In the midst of Bull's pre-occupation the door from the outer office was
thrust open, and Bat Harker's harsh voice jarred the silence of the
room.
"Gettin' a peek at things," he cried, stumping heavily across the thick
carpet. "Well, it looks good to me, too. Say, if this lasts just one
week we'll be as clear of snow as hell's sidewalks." Then he flung open
his rough pea-jacket and pushed his cap back from his lined forehead.
"Gee, it's hot!"
The lumberman was standing at Bull's side, and his deep-set eyes were
following the other's gaze with twinkling satisfaction. Bull nodded and
moved away.
"Yep," he ejaculated. "It should be good for us."
He passed over to the radiators and shut them off. Then he went over to
the wood-stove and closed down the dampers. Then, with a curious
absent-mindedness, he stood up and held out his hands to the warmth
radiating from the stove.
Bat was watching him interestedly. And at sight of his final attitude
he broke into one of his infrequent chuckles and flung himself into a
chair.
"Say, what in--? Feeling cold?" he demanded.
Bull's hands were promptly withdrawn, and, in spite of his mood, a half
smile at his own expense lit his troubled eyes.
"That's all right," he said. "It's on me, sure. I guess my head must be
full of those figures still."
He returned to the window and stood with his back to his companion. Bat
watched him for some moments.
Bull had changed considerably in the last few weeks. The lumberman had
been swift to observe it. Somehow the old enthusiasm had faded out. The
keen fighting nature he had become accustomed to, with its tendency to
swift, almost reckless action, had become less marked. The man was
altogether less buoyant.
At first it had seemed to Bat's searching mind as if the effects of that
desperate trip through the forests, and the subsequent battle down at
the mill, had left its mark upon him, had somehow wrought one of those
curious, weakening changes in the spirit of the man which seemed so
unaccountable. Later, however, he dismissed the idea for a shrewder and
better understanding.
He helped himself to a chew of tobacco and kicked a cuspidore within his
reach.
"The fire-bugs are out," he said. "The last of 'em. I jest got word
through. It's the seventh. An' it's the tally."
It was a sharp, matter-of-fact statement. He was telling of a human
killing, and there was no softening.
Bull nodded. He glanced over his shoulder.
"You mean--?"
"They shot five of 'em to death. The last two they hanged." A grim set
of the jaws, as Bat made the announcement, was his only expression of
feeling.
"Makes you wonder," he went on, after a pause. "Makes you think of the
days when locomotives didn't run. Makes you think of the days when life
was just a pretty mean gamble with most of the odds dead against you. It
don't sound like these Sunday School days when the world sits around,
framed in a fancy-coloured halo, that couldn't stand for any wash-tub,
talkin' brotherhood an' human sympathy. It's tough when you think of the
bunch that sent those boys to fire our limits. They knew the full crime
of it, and knew the thing it would mean if we got hands on 'em. Well,
there it is. We got 'em. An' now ther' ain't a mother's son of 'em left
alive to tell the yarn of it all. It's been just cold, bloody murder.
An' the murder ain't on us. No, I guess the darn savage eatin' hashed
missioner ain't as bad a proposition as the civilised guys who paid the
price to get those toughs killed up in our forests. I can't feel no sort
of regret. It won't hand me a half-hour nightmare. But it makes me
wonder. It surely does."
He spat accurately into the cuspidore.
"Does the report hand you anything else?" Bull asked, without turning.
The other noticed the complete lack of real interest. He shrugged.
"The camps are all in full cut. They're not a cord behind."
Bat looked for a word, the lighting of an eye. There was none. And he
stirred in his chair, and exasperation drove him.
"Don't it make you feel good?" he demanded sharply. "It's the last guess
answered, unless there's a guess when that boy, Birchall, comes along.
Anyway, you don't figger ther's much guess to that, with the mill
runnin' full, an' every boom crashed full of logs. No. Here, Bull!" he
cried, with sudden vehemence. "Turn around, man. Turn right around an'
get a grip on it all. The game's won to the last detail. Can't you feel
good? Can't you feel like a feller gettin' out into the light after
years of the darkest hell? Don't it make you want to holler? Ain't
there a thing I can say to boost you? The boys down at the mill are
hoggin' work. The groundwood's on the quays like mountains. The mills
are roaring like blast furnaces. Can you beat it? Spring. The flies an'
skitters, an' shipping. Why, in a week I guess Father Adam'll be hittin
the trail for the forests, an'--"
"Nancy McDonald will be sailing for Quebec."
Bat was no longer gazing on the other's broad back and the mane of hair
which did its best to conceal his massive neck. Bull had turned. His
strong face was flushed. His fine eyes were hot. There could be no
mistaking the passionate emotion which the other had stirred.
The two men gazed into each other's eyes. Then with a curiously
expressive gesture of his great hands Bull turned to the chair standing
near, and flung himself into it.
The lumberman's eyes twinkled. He had done the thing he desired. "An'
you don't want her to?" he said deliberately.
Just for a moment it looked as though a headlong outburst was about to
reply to him. Then, quite suddenly, the hot light in Bull's eyes died
out and he smiled. He shook his head.
"No," he said in simple denial. "If she goes it means the end of Sachigo
for me."
"You reckon you'll quit?"
In a moment the lumberman remembered a scene which had been enacted
years ago on the high ground on the north shore of the Cove. He would
never forget it. It had been the final decision of another to quit
Sachigo. And the reason had been not dissimilar.
There was no reply. Bull sat staring blankly in front of him. His eyes
were on the wintry sky which was still broad with the light of day
beyond the window.
Presently his gaze lost its abstraction and came again to the strong,
lined face of the older man. "Yes, Bat," he said calmly, almost coldly,
"I'd have to quit. I just couldn't stand for it. Nancy's got right into
my life. She's the only thing I can see--now."
"Fer all she's a kind of prisoner right here, caught red-hand doin' the
damnedest she knows to break us in favour of the outfit that pays her?"
Bat smiled as he flung his challenge. But his tone, his words, were no
indication of his mood, or of the rapid thought passing behind his
shrewd eyes. A great sense of pleasure was asurge within him. He wanted
to tell of it. He wanted to reach out and grip the other's hand, and
tell him all that his words meant to him. But he refrained. Another
man's secret was involved, and that was sufficient. His lips were
sealed.
Bull stirred restlessly.
"Oh, psha!" he cried at last, with a force that displayed the tremendous
feeling he could no longer deny. "I know what you think, Bat. I'm crazy.
Well, maybe I am. Most men get crazy one time in their lives when a
woman gets around. It's no use. I just can't help it. I know all you're
thinking. Nancy McDonald belongs to our enemies. As you say she's done
her damnedest to break us. Maybe you reckon I ought to feel for her like
the devil does about holy water. Well, I don't. I'm plumb crazy for her,
and when spring clears up the waters of the Cove, and the _Myra_ comes
alongside, she's going right aboard, and will pass out of Labrador and
out of my life. I'm never going to get another sight of her. I'm never
going to get another sound of her dandy voice, or a sight of her pretty
eyes, and--Hell! What's the use. Oh, I know it all. You've no need to
tell me. We've made good. We've fought and won out. My contract's
complete, and everything's looking just as good for us as it knows
how--now. This mill. It's ours. Yours, and mine, and that other's, who I
don't know about. All I've to do is to sit around with the plums lying
in my lap. Well, I don't want those plums without Nancy. That's all. I
don't want a thing--without Nancy. All the dollars in America can burn
in hell for all I care, and as for groundwood pulp it's a damp mess of
fool stuff that don't signify to me if it finds its way to the bottom of
the North Atlantic. An added month of open season? What does it mean to
me? Work. Only work, and flies, and skitters. An added month of 'em.
Father Adam's a whole man again now, thanks to that dandy child. He'll
pull right out to the forests again, and--she'll pull out too. I--"
"That's all right," Bat broke in drily. "I get all that. But why not
marry the gal? Marry her an' quit all this darn argument. I guess this
mill's goin' to hand you all you need to keep a wife on. That seems to
me the natural answer to the stuff that's worryin' you."
His eyes twinkled as he regarded the other's troubled face.
"Is it?"
Bull was on his feet. Hot, desperate irritation lay behind the retort
which Bat's gentle sarcasm had drawn forth. His eyes were alight, and he
passed an unsteady hand across his forehead in a superlatively impatient
gesture.
"Marry her?" he exploded. "Say, are you every sort of darn fool on God's
earth, man? How can I hope to marry her? What sort of use can a girl
like that have for the man who's beat her right out of everything she
ever hoped to achieve? I've had to treat her like any old criminal, and
hold her prisoner. I've brought her right down here leaving her in a
man's household without another woman in sight. Say, these cursed mills
have made it so I've had to commit every sort of rotten act a man can
commit against a high-spirited girl. And you ask me why I don't marry
her? You've been too long in the forests, Bat. Guess you've lost your
perspective. Nancy McDonald's no sort of chattel to be dealt with any
way we fancy. Get sense, man, an' talk it."
Bat's regard was unwavering before the other's angry eyes.
"Sense is a hell of a good thing to have an' talk," he said quietly. "I
most generally notice the feller yearnin' for someone else to get it an'
talk that way, mostly has least use for the thing he's preachin'. Maybe
Nancy feels the way you reckon. But that don't seem to me to worry a
deal. Still, maybe things have changed around since the days when I
hadn't sense to keep out of gunshot of a pair of dandy eyes. And anyway
I don't seem to remember the boys bein' worried with the sort of
argument you're handing out. If my memory's as good as I reckon, the
boys most gener'ly married the gal first, an' got busy wonderin' about
things after. All of which seems like so much hoss sense, seem' the
natur' of things is that most gals needs their minds made up for 'em.
You see, Bull, I kind o' fancy womenfolk ain't just ord'nary. They got a
bug that makes 'em think queer wher' men are concerned. Now Nancy's all
sorts of a gal, an' that bein' so I don't reckon she sees the hell-fire
crimes you've committed against her just the way you see 'em. I allow
they're pretty darn tough. Shootin' up her outfit an' dumpin' her into a
snowdrift up on Labrador's mighty hard sort of courtin'. Grabbin' her up
an' settin' her hospital nurse to her enemies, in a house full of a
bunch of tough men don't seem the surest way to make her smile on the
feller that did it. Then most generally beatin' the game she set out to
play looks like makin' fer trouble plenty. It sure seems that way. But
you never can tell with a woman, Bull. You just can't."
Bat shook his grizzled head in solemn denial, but his eyes were
laughing. Bull smothered his resentment. He, too, shook his head, and
somehow caught the infection of the other's smile.
"But she's ambitious," he said. "And she isn't the sort of girl to take
that easily. No."
Bat nodded and rose from his chair. Something of his purpose had been
achieved and he was satisfied. He felt he had said all that was needed
for the moment. So he prepared to take his departure.
"Maybe that's so, boy," he agreed readily. "But ambition's a thing that
changes with most every wind. That don't worry me a thing. Say, you've
sort of opened out about this thing to me, an' I ain't sure why. But I
kind of feel good about it. You're younger than me by years I don't
fancy reckonin'. I feel like I was an elder brother, an' I'm glad. Well,
that bein' so, I'd like to say right here ther's just one ambition in a
woman's life that counts. And she mostly gits it when she hits up
against the feller that's got the guts to make her think his way. When
that happens I guess you can roll up every other old schedule, an' pass
it into the beater to make new paper. It's the only use for it. See? But
I 'low I don't know women like I do groundwood, which was the stuff that
fetched me here right now. You see, I was feelin' good about things, an'
I fancied handin' you the news of them 'fire-bugs' myself. Guess it
hasn't handed you any sort of delirium so far, Bull, but it will later.
I allow ther' ain't room for two fevers at the same time in a man's
body. When you've set Nancy McDonald figgerin' your way, your
temperature's liable to go up on the other. So long, boy."