SCOTT HEARS SOME RUMBLINGS OF THE OLD FEUD
Scott stopped for a day in Asheville to make some business arrangements
for starting the logging operations in case he was awarded the contract
and then hurried back to Caspar. He found Hopwood, who had constituted
himself his faithful follower, waiting for him in the corner of the
hotel yard.
“I knew you’d come back,” Hopwood remarked in a tone of extreme
satisfaction.
“Why?” Scott asked. “Did any one think that I was not coming back?”
Hopwood nodded. “They all said you had run away like all the others, and
Foster has been taking most of the credit for it.”
Scott ground his teeth. “I suppose that will set him up in business
again with the rest of the family.”
“A lot of them believed it, but now that you have come back he will
probably have to leave the country himself. None of them will believe
him now.”
“Well, tell them that I have come back, Hopwood, and I’ve come back to
stay. They will find out before I am through that I am not very badly
scared after all.”
“Has any one taken the logging contract?” Hopwood asked eagerly. “It
would help me if I could predict it right,” he added wistfully.
Scott looked at him curiously a moment. The more he saw of Hopwood the
harder it was for him to believe him an idiot. In any event it was
perfectly clear that he was devoted to him and he decided to make him
his confidant. It could not do him much harm if the man of the iron hat
did not keep faith in this and it might make him a closer friend.
“Yes, Hopwood, some one has bid on it. You can safely predict that the
logging will begin in ten days, for—but you must not publish this part
of it—if no one else takes the job I am going to resign and take it
myself.”
“Oh!” Hopwood exclaimed with a gasp of satisfaction. “I won’t tell them
but you don’t know how much good it will do me to know that.” And
without waiting to make his usual mysterious disappearance he walked
quickly into the woods to carry the news of Scott’s return.
Scott was not surprised to find that no one had responded to his call
for bids. He had found out in Asheville that there was practically no
chance of any one showing any interest in it. He hoped no one would. He
had to confide his plans to the station agent because he had to send a
number of telegrams. Probably Caspar had never done such a business in
telegrams before in all its existence, even when the feud was at its
height.
For the next week Scott devoted all his time to a careful study of the
area which was to be logged. From breakfast till supper-time every day
he hiked over the mountains, running out the boundary lines, sketching
the topography and tentatively locating the logging roads. This work led
him through the territory and by the cabins of many of the Waits but he
did not see any of them. They seemed to be sulking in their tents.
It seemed to Scott to be a strange country. Long straight slopes
stretched unbroken to the high, level ridges. They were grooved every
quarter mile or less with shallow draws and not far below the ridge in
these draws were springs which sent tiny, crystal-clear streams of
ice-cold water trickling down into the valley. The low places and also
many of the higher slopes were covered with a solid mat of rhododendron
and laurel, so thick that a man was obliged to break or cut his way
through it. It was the densest growth he had ever seen outside of the
cane brakes of Florida. The great masses of white flowers made a
wonderful sight, but after he had tried to run a line through the stuff
for a couple of days he could no longer see the flowers.
But the ridges were the strangest of all. They were narrow but straight
and level, so level that the old Indian trails followed them rather than
the valleys. And the big red oaks came right up to the top. Only at long
intervals did the ridges dip to a low pass; otherwise, they stretched
for miles as level as the floor and were clear of underbrush.
It was on one of these level, open trails that Scott had the scare of
his life. He had been familiar with razorback hogs in Florida. He had
seen one tear a hound to pieces one day and had learned to fear the
animals as he feared nothing else in the forest. Tall, thin and capable
of great speed, they were entirely different from any hogs he had ever
seen at home. Their heads were half as long as their bodies, with large
tusks and powerful jaws, and they were fearless. Once they had made up
their minds to charge, nothing would turn them. One had to kill them or
get out of the way.
One morning as Scott was going out to work he saw an old sow with a
litter of very small pigs in a clump of bushes beside the trail, and he
gave her a wide berth. That evening on the way home he had forgotten all
about her. He was absorbed in his plans for the logging job and wholly
oblivious of his surroundings. The razorback never entered his head.
A large red oak three feet in diameter had fallen across the trail and
Scott vaulted it mechanically, hardly knowing what he was doing. His
feet had scarcely struck the ground when he heard a vicious “woof,” and
the old sow darted out from under the other end of the log headed
straight for him under a full head of steam.
Scott was frightened as he had never been frightened before. With one
terrified spring he vaulted back over the log. That would have been
sufficient protection from an ordinary pig, but a fallen tree meant
nothing to a razorback. She cleared the tree without the slightest
hesitation and was close behind him.
This unexpected jump so terrified Scott that he bolted like a frightened
horse. He had never been a very fast runner but now he turned straight
down the side of the mountain and made a new life record. It seemed to
him that his feet were hitting the ground only about every thirty feet.
Below him he saw a stream with high, steep banks, and at one point a
tree had fallen across it. He made madly for that spot, somehow managed
to stay on the log, tripped and fell in a heap on the other side. He
scrambled to his feet expecting to find those ugly tusks at his very
throat only to find instead that the old sow was fully satisfied with
his retreat and was already trotting back up the slope to her babies.
Scott could not help laughing as he thought what a great show it would
have been for a spectator. The conqueror of Foster Wait breaking the
world’s record in his endeavors to get away from an angry pig. And yet
it might have been serious, and he knew that he would run as fast or
faster next time.
He was getting himself together for the climb back up the ridge when he
noticed a deeply worn trail along the edge of the little creek. He
thought at first that it was made by the razorbacks and the cattle which
roamed around the mountains in considerable numbers, but he was
surprised to find that the tracks were made by men, and some of them
very recently.
Where could such a well-worn path as that lead to away up there on the
mountainside? It might be a short cut over the ridge into the Tennessee
valley, but why should so many people be traveling that way on foot?
These people always rode horseback whenever they were going any
considerable distance. He determined to follow it up and find out for
himself. It was on the forest and it was his business to know about it.
The trail run obliquely upward across the face of the mountain and in
the next draw it ducked into a dense patch of rhododendron. There it was
very evident that the trail had been built for a purpose. It was cut out
clear two feet wide and had been used so long that the stubs had all
been worn down smooth.
While he was examining it he was startled by the sound of approaching
voices, raised high in argument if not in an actual quarrel. At first
the voices were too distant for the words to be distinguished. Scott had
no reason to avoid these people whoever they might be, and it never
occurred to him to hide till he caught a sentence distinctly.
“I tell you, Foster, it won’t do. You were licked and you are done for,
and that is all there is about it.”
Scott did not recognize the voice, but he had every reason to believe
that they were talking about him and he wanted to hear the rest of it.
He slipped back of a big oak tree beside the trail and listened. The
voices came nearer till he could distinguish both sides of the
conversation.
“I know it would work.” It was Foster speaking now, and his voice was
thick and sullen. “Why wouldn’t it work? If I started a fight, the
Morgans would have to fight; and if they fought, the Waits would have to
fight, and then we would clean them up. It’s time they were cleaned up.
They kept us from getting that logging contract and they’ll keep us from
getting anything else. I’m for cleaning them up, I tell you.”
“And I’m telling you that it won’t work,” the other voice answered
curtly.
“Why won’t it?” Foster persisted. “Are you afraid of them?”
“Afraid of them?” the other exclaimed contemptuously. “No, but I am not
fool enough to fall for your scheme. And neither will the others. You’re
down and out. You know it and you think you can get back on your feet by
starting a fight. Well, you can’t.”
Scott peeped around the tree and saw them standing at the entrance of
the tunnel into the rhododendron. One, as he already knew, was Foster
Wait. The other was a short man of medium build, and rather clean-cut
features. He seemed wide awake and altogether different from the other
Waits he had seen. Instinctively he felt from what Hopwood had said that
this man must be Sewall Wait, the brains of the family.
The smaller man was staring silently at Foster with a manner showing
both domination and disgust. Foster shifted uneasily from one foot to
the other and looked uncertainly about him. He was unable to look Sewall
steadily in the eye, but his braggart habit finally came to his rescue.
“Well, it doesn’t matter so much what you think. It is up to me to
decide and if I say fight, you will have to fight,” and he swaggered off
down the trail up which Scott had come.
Sewall looked after him contemptuously for a moment, shrugged his
shoulders, and turned into a faint trail which led straight down the
mountain.
When they were both out of sight Scott came out of his hiding place. He
decided to investigate the trail at some other time, and climbed back to
the ridge. What he had just heard gave him something to think about. He
knew now that there was nothing neutral about him. His sympathies were
all with old Jarred and he hurried home to warn him of his danger.