LAW AND LUMBER
Rain fell the following fortnight in a steady downpour that did not
cease, even for an hour. Ragged, smokelike clouds hung over the valley
at Thirty-Mile, dragged so low by their own weight that they not only
hid the upper peaks but shrouded the lower ridges as well. They drove
by in interminable files of grey, making sluiceways of every cut and
drenching continually the men of the construction gang who, in spite of
the chill of that downfall, still sweated at their labor. But both
Steve and Fat Joe, for all that they caught each day a deeper note in
the hoarse complaints of those same men--a note no less ominous than
was that newer, hoarser one of the swollen river--nevertheless were
duly thankful that the leaden sky had at least a tinsel lining. It
might have snowed.
Each morning now as he stepped outside the shack Joe turned
methodically toward the north, to cock his head and squint and sniff,
questioningly. He was waiting for the first flurry which would herald
those months of bitter whiteness to follow; and each morning his short
nod was a brief of satisfaction at the continued height of the mercury.
They made the most of that open fall, bad as was the weather. Without
pause they toiled forward those wet days, or rather backward, for they
had stopped, there at the edge of the river, in the work on that
section of the rail-bed which, none too even-surfaced but almost
arrow-straight, ran from the upper end of their valley to the very
mouth of the Reserve Company's country.
A month earlier it had been Steve's plan to span that mile or so of
swamp and bridge the river before the cold weather set in. Nor was his
altered order of campaign due in any way to the storm which had raised
the river and made of the alder-dotted stretch of flat bog-meadow an
oozing, quaking morass. It no longer represented merely a positive not
too alluring problem in engineering--that strip of swamp and open
water. It had taken on a newer, strategic importance. And the change
in Steve's plans, so far as the work at Thirty-Mile was concerned, was
as much due to the news which Fat Joe brought home with him, one night
toward the end of the next week, as it was the result of the interview
which he had held with Hardwick Elliott himself.
Joe had been a whole day absent on the north end of the line. Alone he
had been over every foot of that all but completed stretch which ended
at the border of swampland, there at headquarters, troubling himself
not at all over the unevenness of the roadbed, satisfied entirely with
the surety he gained with every inspected mile, that a train-load of
logs or a dozen train-loads, would stay on the rails when the rails
were laid, and the day came to set wheels rolling. But the further
report he brought back with him was far less reassuring.
"I wonder," Joe mused aloud that night, "I wonder, now, why any man who
knows anything about handling timber should go to work bothering
himself with skidways leadin' down to the river, when he knows, as well
as Harrigan should know, that it ain't comin' out that way? It don't
seem good sense nor logic to me, unless----"
He stopped there and left his own opinion unfinished. Since the
evening Harrigan had stepped out of the main bunkhouse and disappeared,
black rage in his face and a promise to return upon his lips, that
lumberman's red head had been conspicuous only because it was absent
from the landscape. So far Harrigan had failed to reappear and Fat
Joe's method of apprising his chief of his return to the Reserve
Company's pay-roll was distinctly characteristic. But Steve's
reception of the news was little more than listless. He seemed to
change the subject entirely.
"I don't see why it wouldn't be just as easy, or easier," he replied,
"to cross here on pilings, practically the whole distance, as it would
be to fill and bridge, too. And if we were to look at it in that
light, then why wouldn't it be still easier to drive those piles, say
next February or March, while the swamp is still crusted over and hard.
It would afford us some sort of a footing to work on then, other than
black ooze and lilypads. Wouldn't it seem so to you?"
Garry Devereau's agreement was quick with enthusiasm, but Fat Joe who
was better schooled in those slow-syllabled discussions, barely nodded
his head.
"We'd still have that track north of here to lay," he advised, "when we
work in from the south with steel."
"Surely," Steve admitted. "Of course. But wouldn't that be a better
bet than to stand to see our embankment and bridge----"
He broke off there, just as Joe had hesitated a moment before. The
undercurrent of meaning for which the latter's ears were waiting came
to the surface, however, when Steve began again.
"Suppose, Joe," he pursued lazily, "suppose you had contracted with a
railroad--an infant road too young even to be named--to move for you
more timber than either of us will ever own; contracted in apparent
good faith, when all along in your heart you were certain that the
railroad itself would never be able to fulfill its half of the bargain?
Granting such a state of affairs, Joe, what do you suppose you would
do?"
Garry was not quite certain that evening which was uppermost--the
earnestness or quiet amusement which surely underlay that question. He
only knew that both existed. But Fat Joe understood. As he had done
many times before now he wrinkled his forehead and pondered.
"Maybe I'd hire me a red-headed river-dog," came his answer pat.
"Maybe I'd hire me a bully-boy boss of white water, to build me some
skidways to the nearest floodwater, so's I could teach the infant
railroad you mention that business was business, contract or no
contract."
"Of course you would!" Steve agreed instantly, and he might have been
complimenting a first primer favorite so pleased was his tone. "Of
course you would. I'm afraid that was too easy for you, wasn't it,
Joe? But now suppose you were bent on proving to everybody, and
particularly to those who had fathered it, what an unfortunate weakling
this immature, unnamed child of constructive silence really was. In
that event how do you figure you'd conduct yourself?"
Joe smiled oddly, a little balefully. It was magic-quick, that change
in his expression--as swift as was the thought behind it.
"I'd have my logs all cut and ready to haul as an excuse, wouldn't I?"
he inquired with simulated anxiety. "Could I tell folks, through the
newspapers for instance, that I wasn't strong for letting my timber lie
for the grubs to lunch on, if I had to square myself?"
"Quite naturally." Until then Steve's face had kept its preternatural
gravity. He grinned ever so faintly now. "Very naturally you'd want
to save your winter cut."
"Then I'd like to have 'em build a bridge somewheres along the river I
aimed to drive--a bridge and a nice dirt embankment, all dressed up
with rails and ties and things on top. I'm allowed to suppose I've got
an awful long standin' score, ain't I, along with all this timber?
Well, that's what I'd like to have 'em do, then. And when I opened her
up, a few miles up river, and she began to roar; when that first head
of water hit the bridge and the sticks begun to grind, I suppose I'd
take up my position on the bank where I could watch real well. I'd
light me a long, black cigar and murmur, sort of languid and
sympathetic, 'There goes your railroad, gents!'"
Before the finish of that speech was reached Garry had begun to follow.
When Joe drew down one corner of his mouth and puffed aloft an
imaginary cloud of smoke by way of added vividness, his own laughter
mingled with Steve's quieter appreciation. But his contribution to the
conversation was not as complacent as Fat Joe's had been.
"Such a move in itself would be outside the letter of the contract," he
expostulated. "Why, they wouldn't dare do anything; they wouldn't dare
to begin driving the river before your time was up, much less do damage
to your completed work. What excuse--what legal excuse--could they
give, even though they were morally certain that you were bound to
fail?"
Very slowly, almost pityingly, Joe turned toward him.
"Legal!" he droned. "Moral?" And then he laughed his clear tenor
outburst which barely escaped being a giggle. "Dear child, judiciously
speaking, law and lumber and morals and mill-feet don't mix. They
don't mix at all, in this section of the country. If they wanted to
bother their heads with an alibi, they could say it was top of flood,
and they weren't eager to be hung up, just because a brass-buttoned
conductor promised 'em a through express in the morning. They could
say-- But what good would explanations do us, huh, if they sent a half
million logs sky-hootin' into our bridge? It wouldn't save our
construction, would it?"
He wheeled back to Steve, his manner brisk.
"Do we leave that stretch open?" he asked. "Is that the way you have
it figured?"
"I'm afraid we'd better," Steve said.
And from the very deliberation of that reply Garry Devereau realized
how vital was the point which they had been weighing so irresponsibly.
That was as close as they came to anything resembling a discussion of
the change which was growing more and more noticeable in the bearing of
the men at Thirty-Mile. As far as all outward evidence was concerned,
Steve seemed to ignore it utterly, to retreat oftener and oftener
behind his habit of silence which even Fat Joe, after several
unsuccessful, garrulous attempts, gave over trying to penetrate. And
even Garry, who had greater respect for the other man's preoccupation
because he felt that he understood it better, tried also to hide all
evidence of the bitterness which it was re-awakening in him. Yet, at
that, Garry's surmise was erroneous; his conclusion wide of the mark.
For it was not the hunger of his own heart; it was neither intolerance
of restraint nor mental rebellion against the duties which were holding
him so close up-river, that had caused the chief engineer of the East
Coast work to withdraw so completely within himself, although, many
times each day, his eyes did wander toward the south and Morrison.
During that bleak period, as Garry had guessed, Steve's thoughts were
often of Barbara, but they were not sombre thoughts. The very hardness
of his life schooling had taught him too well how little of wisdom
there is in fretting against the day of action, when that day cannot be
hurried nor controlled. Steadfastedly he refused to let himself brood.
If he could not go to her he would not, nevertheless, allow himself to
dwell upon that impossibility. Instead his spirit ranged ahead to a
hopeful, more or less indefinite and not too distant date when his
absence might not seem to threaten too great a cost to those whose
matters lay in his trust.
Garry's conclusion, borne of his own lesson in doubt, was wide of the
mark. It was not heartache. The thoughts Steve had of her were his
serenest thoughts, those days during which his body labored
prodigiously and his brain groped for the solution of an affair that
had not been his own, until he had chosen to make it so. It was the
problem of Garrett Devereau which lay behind Stephen O'Mara's hours of
gravity--that perplexing problem which Miriam Burrell, level of eye and
brave of tongue, had brought to him for help. And in the end, as is
usually the way, events of themselves finally gave Steve the
opportunity to say all that he knew could not be introduced by him.
Time showed the way just when he had reached the point of acknowledging
that such an opportunity was beyond his own power to bring about.
He had had little chance for conversation with Garry in those days,
except for a word or two over a hastily snatched breakfast, or perhaps
at supper at night, and at night he was usually too tired to talk. But
the other's growing restlessness had not escaped his notice. For a
while Garry had seemed to accept his continuance there at camp as a
matter of course, and for that very reason neither Fat Joe nor Steve
had dignified the thought of his possible departure by so much as a
single spoken word. Garry's own actions first began to indicate how
incessantly he was debating that question within his own brain.
There came, times without number, an uneasy, far-focused look into his
eyes; came hours on end when he would sit, every debonaire effort at
lightness abandoned, staring moodily into the fire, motionless save for
his nervous hands which never seemed to rest. Joe found it harder to
entice him with the poker deck; oftener than not Steve had to repeat
his question a second time, seeking to inveigle him into a discussion
of what-not, before Garry even heard. And one night toward the end of
the week the latter finally reached the point of voicing for their ears
a decision which was old in anticipation to them. They were on the
point of going to bed. Garry had risen, and then paused. He hesitated
and crooked his arms and yawned, a trifle too carelessly that evening.
"Well, this finishes another day," he remarked, nor did he realize how
soulful were the words. "And I cleaned up the last of the stock-room
to-day, Joe. A swift but accurate workman, eh? I'll leave behind a
record unblemished by oversight or sloth. And now--now it's about
time, I suppose, I was going back to town."
It was out, nor could the yawn conceal his eagerness. His back was
turned, but Steve knew what light was in his eyes. Steve's
carelessness was a far neater thing than Garry's had been.
"What's your hurry?" he inquired easily. "Why rush away? And if you
think your industry has betrayed you into idleness, you're reasoning
poorly to-night. Want another job?"
Bantering indifference was the keynote of that reply. Mutually they
had adopted it from the very first. It smacked of the free-masonry
which always marked Steve's conversations with Fat Joe, were they
earnest or frivolous beneath the surface. It is always recognizable in
the speech of friends such as they, differentiated from actual
indifference by an intimacy of inference between the lines which makes
such discourse almost foreign to uninitiated ears. But Garry's answer
was not in kind. Steve was caught so far off his guard by the question
which came flinging back at him that he was glad Garry had not turned.
"What else is there I could do?"
No man save one who was very, very tired could have spoken in such a
tone; no man except one who has tried himself in the highest of
courts--his own opinion of himself--could have put such a degree of
contempt into so simple a query.
"Why--why----" Steve faltered, and then he took command of his own wits
again. "There's work enough, don't doubt that," he exclaimed, and
laughed a little. "Joe, here, will be another week or ten days
finishing with the fill up yonder; he'll do well if he manages it by
then, and that too with every available hand we have. I don't want to
rob him of a single man, if I can help it, but I've got to go ahead
with the line to the south. To put it concretely, I'm in need of a
rodman. Do you think you'd care to oblige?"
Again the hint of banter persisted, but Garry's jaw was tight when he
faced suddenly around.
"I will!" he flashed back, hoarsely. "I will, if it's a man's job.
But I'm done with filling a dinky pad with rows of figures, all day
long. I'm finished with this damned tallying of cans of beans and soap
and yards of rope! Do you understand? What _work_ would I have to do?"
Out of the corners of his eyes Steve saw consternation o'erspread Fat
Joe's face. His own was only amused.
"You'll have to swing an axe," he enumerated slowly, "and you'll have
to lug a rod and tripod. You'll wade through bog and fight your way
through underbrush. And then, for variety, swing an axe some more. If
you've never learned yet what it is to be really tired, Garry; if
you've never known what it is to go to bed wishing morning would never
come, you'll find out what that's like, too."
As soon as it was spoken Steve recognized the slip. Watching Garry's
eyes widen he knew that Garry had caught it also. For a moment a
torrent of words trembled on the latter's lips. And then he swallowed
and nodded shortly. The vague dreariness of his acceptance was fully
as electrical as the threatened outburst might have been.
"I'll try it," he said, very simply. "I'll have a try at it,
to-morrow."
And he pivoted on his heel and passed out.
Some minutes after he had gone Fat Joe, still a little dazed, rose
softly and unostentatiously, crossed to a shelf shoulder-high on the
wall and reached to remove a quart bottle of brandy which Steve,
returning home soaked through and through, had brought out and left
standing there. But Steve checked him in the very middle of that act.
"Let it stand, Joe," he directed. "Leave it where it is."
As slowly as he had reached for it Joe started to put the bottle back.
The very briefness of that order should have been warning enough, but
Joe found it impossible to keep to himself his disapproval.
"All right," he acquiesced, "only I can't help remindin' you, just the
same, that when a horse is runnin' his heart out it's kind of
superfluous to lay on the whip."
And then the whole accumulation of those days of silent perplexity, of
indecision and fruitless mental forays, spilled over upon Fat Joe's
entirely innocent head. Steve shot around and levelled a pre-emptory
finger.
"Whip--hell!" he barked. "Put that bottle back!"
Joe's fingers came away as though the glass had blistered them.
"Lands' sakes!" he exclaimed; and in a voice that was chastened and
meek when he had caught his breath: "Please, and it's back!"
Chronic ill-temper could hardly have persisted in the face of that
reply, and Steve's had been but a mood. His first chuckle was in
itself a plea for pardon. He supplemented it, aloud.
"I'm sorry, Joe--I'm worried. I've got a job on my hands that bothers
me. It appears to be simple enough, until I get to planning how to
tackle it, and then I can't make any headway at all. But there isn't
anything to be gained in hiding that stuff; that's one of the things I
need to know. It's better where it is."
Joe waved a hand in bland dismissal of the apology.
"My mistake," he averred, "though your harsh words have hurt me sore.
I don't quite savvy it yet, but it's your affair, not mine. You're
dealin' and bankin' the chips. And before now I've seen lots of
well-meanin' bystanders get all mussed up from trying to horn into
another man's pastime. At my age I'd ought to have knowed better!"