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SCOTT BURTON IN THE BLUE RIDGE
* * * * * *
Stories by EDWARD G. CHEYNEY
SCOTT BURTON, FORESTER
SCOTT BURTON ON THE RANGE
SCOTT BURTON AND THE TIMBER THIEVES
SCOTT BURTON, LOGGER
SCOTT BURTON IN THE BLUE RIDGE
* * * * * *
[Illustration: JIMMY TRIED DESPERATELY TO STAY HIS TEAM.]
SCOTT BURTON IN THE BLUE RIDGE
by
E. G. CHEYNEY
Author of “Scott Burton, Forester,”
“Scott Burton, Logger,” etc.
D. Appleton and Company
New York :: 1924 :: London
Copyright, 1924, by
D. Appleton and Company
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
I. Off to a New Job
II. The Mystery of the Two Stores
III. The Old Man’s Story
IV. Old Jarred
V. Hopwood
VI. Scott Talks with the Agent
VII. Scott Receives “Aid” from His Boss
VIII. Scott Loses His Neutrality
IX. Scott Makes Another Rescue
X. Scott Meets Jarred
XI. A Visit to Jarred’s Cabin
XII. Scott Asks for Bids
XIII. Foster Wait Demands the Contract
XIV. Scott Makes a Trip to Washington
XV. Scott Hears Some Rumblings of the Old Feud
XVI. Scott Has an Interview with Sewall
XVII. Hopwood Takes a Trip
XVIII. Dick Turns Gentleman
XIX. Hopwood Throws Away His Iron Hat
XX. An Attempt at Arson
XXI. Scott Finds the Still
XXII. Hopwood Gets Jarred’s Promise
XXIII. A Close Call
XXIV. Scott Goes after the Marshal
XXV. Hopwood Sends Foster a Message
XXVI. Foster Revives the Feud
XXVII. Scott Arrives at the Village
XXVIII. The End of the Feud
XXIX. Jarred and Sewall Meet
SCOTT BURTON IN THE BLUE RIDGE
CHAPTER I
OFF TO A NEW JOB
The ticking of the old grandfather clock in the neat little New England
house was the only sound to break the stillness. So still it was that
any one approaching the house could have heard the clock distinctly and
would certainly have overlooked the silent figure in the old
rocking-chair. But a man was sitting there, nevertheless, completely
absorbed in his own thoughts.
An old gentleman appeared in the doorway and stood there for an instant
before he saw him. Then his face lighted up.
“Hello, Scott! I thought you had gone out and I wanted to talk to you
about your new assignment. Mother tells me that you have your sailing
orders now.”
The son looked at him with a smile, but his face still wore a puzzled
frown.
“Yes,” he said, “I have my sailing orders, but—”
“Good or bad?” his father interrupted anxiously. “You don’t look
overjoyed with them.” The old man was really worried.
“I don’t know just what to think of them,” Scott frowned once more and
opened the letter for the hundredth time. “They have assigned me to a
timber sales job in the North Carolina mountains.”
“Well, that sounds good enough. They say that is a beautiful country and
it is a place I have always wanted to see.”
“Oh, the country is all right,” Scott said brightening, “and I am crazy
to go there, only I had my mind set on going back to my old place in the
southwest.” And again he frowned. “It is not the country but the job
that I am afraid of. Sometimes I am almost sorry that I caught those
range thieves out there in Arizona.”
“Why, Scottie boy! If it had not been for that you would never be where
you are in the Service to-day,” his father remonstrated proudly.
“Oh, I know that it made me solid with the Forest Service and gave me a
chance at a supervisor’s job years before I would ordinarily have had
one, but they have been using me as a sort of detective ever since. I
was lucky enough to catch those timber thieves in Florida, but I am no
sleuth and I’ll fall down on that job sooner or later.”
“But, Scott, I don’t believe this is detective work. I expect they have
heard what a tremendous success you made of your own logging job last
winter and want you to look after the logging work down there.”
“Yes,” Scott admitted, “I think you are partly right. But why transfer
me down there when there are local men who understand those methods?
Logging in New Hampshire and logging in North Carolina are very
different propositions.”
“Maybe the local men cannot handle it and they know you can,” his father
suggested proudly.
“Of course that’s what you think, dad,” Scott said affectionately, “and
it may be what they think, but I am afraid that there is something else
wrong.”
This rather gloomy conversation was broken up by Mrs. Burton, who had
come to the doorway unnoticed. “Well, well, why worry over something you
don’t either of you know anything about? Maybe we do not know what you
are going to do in North Carolina, but we do know that you have to leave
us in the morning and we don’t want to waste what time we have left
worrying. Come on in to supper.”
Scott laughed. “All right, mother, you always say the sensible thing.
I’ll bet there is nothing wrong with the supper no matter what may be
the matter with the new job.”
So they went in to supper cheerfully enough and all three spent the
evening poring very busily over the atlas, and trying to see what they
could find out about the new country. Caspar, the little town where the
headquarters were located, was not shown on the old map, but they found
out a great deal about the country in general, and it was bedtime before
they knew it.
“There,” Mrs. Burton exclaimed cheerfully as they said good night, “I am
satisfied. I’d be willing to go to that country on any old kind of a
job.”
Scott was not ordinarily given to worrying much and by the time his
train pulled out of the quiet little Massachusetts village the next
morning he was looking forward eagerly to seeing this new country and
had forgotten all the imaginary troubles which the new work might bring.
His orders were to report direct to Caspar, but he had half a day
between trains in Washington and took the opportunity to visit the
Forest Service offices. He met a few friends and became personally
acquainted with a number of men who had before that been to him only a
name attached to the end of an official letter, but he learned nothing
definite in regard to his new work. The chief of the particular branch
in which Scott was employed was out of the office and the inspector who
was to meet him in Caspar had already gone to North Carolina. That
looked as though there must be something unusual there, but Scott
resolutely refused to worry about it any more and settled down in the
car seat to enjoy the scenery of Virginia, which was altogether new to
him.
The little shanties scattered all through the country and the grinning
black faces which crowded one end of the platform at every station
reminded him of Florida, but the country itself was very different.
Instead of the flat sand-plains covered with dense stands of yellow pine
the train wound through rolling clay hills and hardwood forests until it
lost itself in the foothills of the mountains just as the sun went down.
Scott peered eagerly out of the car window until he could no longer see
even the telegraph poles beside the track.
Morning found him at a junction point in the heart of the mountains.
These mountains were not like the Rocky Mountains as he had known them
in the southwest. There was none of that stark grandeur of the bare
rocky slopes and flat-top mesas, but there was a peaceful beauty about
them which reminded him more of the overgrown Massachusetts hills; soft
green slopes towering above the valley to a surprising height,
considering the low absolute altitude of the range. There was as much
difference between the valley and the mountain peak as there usually was
in the Rockies, but Scott remembered that the valleys in the Rockies
were as high as many of these peaks.
A little branch line carried him down a narrow valley between what
appeared to be flat-topped, unbroken ridges clothed in every kind of
hardwood tree that Scott had ever heard of, and capped with a rim of
dark green spruce which fitted over it like a black cape. Here and there
a peak rose conspicuously above the level ridge.
“It must be great in those forests,” Scott thought, “and the views from
those peaks ought to be worth seeing. I tell you there has got to be a
lot of trouble in this job if I can’t enjoy myself in this country.”
He was trying to catch a glimpse of a particularly high peak which
showed itself every now and then above the dark spruce ridge when the
conductor called, “Caspar,” and Scott had to hurry to get his pack sack
and suit case off the train at his headquarters.