DICK TURNS GENTLEMAN
These repeated warnings against Foster Wait began to get on Scott’s
nerves. And yet there was very little that he could do to protect
himself. He never carried a gun, and felt that he was safer without one.
He was obliged to travel around over the forest continuously inspecting
the logging job, and he could not devote all his time to watching for
Foster Wait. He tried to forget it and go about his business as though
Foster did not exist but he could not help thinking how many
opportunities there were for this man to shoot him down from ambush, and
it made him nervous. If Foster would only do something and show his
hand, he could do something himself but till then he could only wait.
A few days later something happened which put him more than ever on his
guard. He was up near the ridge where they were making up the trains of
logs for the skid teams. There was an enormous red-oak log forty-five
inches in diameter lying in the skid road, and Jimmy Barnes, Scott’s
best teamster, was waiting there with a team of large blacks ready to
take it down. This particular team was untrained and very nervous. They
had been assigned to Jimmy because he was the only teamster in camp who
was willing and able to handle them.
This one big oak log was in itself heavy enough for a load, but they
never hauled a single log for fear it would roll sideways and become
unmanageable. They always fastened a small log on behind to serve as a
rudder. Jimmy was waiting for them to attach the small log. His team was
getting so restless at the delay that he drove them around and hooked
the heavy logging tongs to the end of the oak log. Not that he had any
idea of trying to take it down alone, but just to give the team
something to do and stop them from fretting.
He had hardly straightened up from hooking on the tongs when the bushes
beside the team were burst apart with a great commotion and Foster Wait
jumped down the low bank into the skid road.
The team made one wild lunge which almost jerked Jimmy off his feet and
stopped trembling. The plunge turned the great log sideways on the
slope, and it balanced uncertainly for a second on the stub of a small
bush. Jimmy saw his chance, shouted wildly to the team and slapped them
with the lines. If he could give that log another jerk before it started
to roll he might be able to straighten it out. But the team balked. They
trembled and jerked nervously but they refused to move, in spite of
Jimmy’s efforts.
Slowly the stub was bent down and the six-ton log was free. It rolled
slowly down on to the horses. It had not yet gathered much momentum, but
if it had been a smaller log it would have broken their legs. As it was,
it just shoved their hind legs out from under them and they suddenly
found themselves sitting on the revolving log with the heavy tongs and
the logging chains clanking beside them at every turn of the log.
It was too much for any team to bear. For a few yards they sat on that
grinding log and ran with their front feet. Then with one mighty,
terrified effort they succeeded in jumping clear of the log and plunged
desperately down the skid road. But the tongs still held, and the big
log rolled sullenly from side to side and held them back. Jimmy tried
desperately to stay by his team, but an unexpected roll of the log threw
him into the brush, the lines were jerked out of his hands and the team
was completely out of control. The next instant the log struck a rock,
the tongs pulled loose, and the freed team tore wildly down the steep
skid road at breakneck speed.
Scott took his eyes from the rapidly disappearing team long enough to
take a glance at Foster and he felt sure that he saw a gleam of
satisfaction on his face. When the team was out of sight and Jimmy had
dug himself out of the brush Foster suddenly found himself the object of
half a dozen pairs of angry eyes. He was frightened by the ugly looks of
these men, but he succeeded in holding himself in check long enough to
throw a bluff.
“Some frisky team,” he remarked genially. “Any of you-all see a hound
dog go by this way?”
“I seen _one_,” MacAndrews exclaimed with an angry glare, “but he ain’t
gone by yet.”
The others snorted their amusement and Foster turned red. “I’ve lost
mine,” he mumbled as he apologetically backed into the brush.
“Better keep him away from here,” Mac shouted after him. “We’ll tie a
can on him pretty quick.”
Before Foster succeeded in breaking through the brush beside the road
his flush had changed to a deadly pallor.
“Who is that cuss?” MacAndrews demanded with a vicious snap of his jaws.
“That is Foster Wait,” Scott said.
“Well, he is hanging around here more than is good for his health. He
scared that team on purpose.”
“I thought so, too,” Scott exclaimed, and he added a little anxiously,
“did you say he had been around here before?”
“Turns up somewhere around the job almost every day. He’ll come once too
often some day. I expect that team is ruined.”
Scott had been so absorbed in Foster Wait that he had forgotten the team
for a moment. Now he found that Jimmy had run down the mountain in
search of them, and he followed as fast as he could run.
Was Foster hanging around the logging operation trying to get a chance
at him or was he up to some other mischief? It did not seem likely that
he was looking for him. Why should he come there where there were so
many people when he could so very easily catch him out in the woods
alone? No, he must be up to something else. And Scott determined that he
would make it his business to find out what it was as soon as possible.
He watched all along the road for traces of the runaway team. At each
turn in the road he expected to find them piled up against a tree or in
the ditch, but although the road was badly scratched up in places as
though they had stumbled or slipped badly they had evidently made it.
Some of the men whom he passed told him that the team had passed safely
at that point and was going strong. When he came in sight of the landing
beside the railroad track he spied the big blacks standing in a little
bunch of men. Jimmy was rubbing them down and trying to soothe their
ruffled nerves.
They were pretty well lathered up from the long run, and one of them had
an ugly cut in his side but otherwise they seemed to be all right. They
had left the road on the turn by the skidway and had run between two
trees. The space had not been wide enough for the double-tree, and the
sudden jerk had thrown one of the horses. Before they could untangle
themselves from the broken harness the men had caught them.
“Better take them to the barn, Jimmy,” Scott said, when he had looked
them over carefully and noticed their violently heaving flanks and
trembling legs.
“I’ll take them over and doctor that cut and the harness,” Jimmy
replied, “but I’ll have them out after lunch. If they had a run like
that every day for a couple of weeks they might get down to where a
fellow could handle them.” It was the second time they had run away with
Jimmy, and he was getting a little peevish. He was afraid that they
might endanger his reputation as the best teamster in the mountains.
Scott knew what was the matter. “Never mind, Jimmy, you are doing fine.
Nobody else could handle them at all. Once you have trained them they
will be the best team on the job.”
“They are that now,” Jimmy replied stoutly. “They have the record for
coming down that mountain, anyway. By the way, did you get that guy who
scared them?”
“No, we hadn’t any proof that he did it on purpose so we let him go.”
“I don’t need any proof,” Jimmy retorted angrily. “That’s the third time
he’s tried it, and if I ever catch him around here again I’m going to
lose a peavey in him.”
Scott did not say anything, but he made a mental note of what Jimmy said
about it being Foster’s third attempt to scare the big black team. It
was the first link in the chain of evidence he intended to collect
against him.
As long as he was down in the valley and it was so near noon Scott
decided to go in to dinner. He was still staying at the hotel, not
because he liked it, but it enabled him to keep in touch with local
gossip through the station agent and he thought it might give him a
better chance to see Hopwood. He was doubtful whether it would be a good
thing for Hopwood to come around camp with that strange iron hat. The
men would undoubtedly tease him, and he did not know how Hopwood would
take it.
As he passed the bunk house he heard some one singing inside. It was not
usual for any one to be in the bunk house at that time of day, unless it
was the bull cook, and it did not sound like him. Scott stepped in and
found one of the swampers sprawled on a bench and crooning a maudlin
song. His first thought was that the man might have been hurt in the
runaway, but certainly some one would have mentioned it if he had.
“Sick, Dick?” Scott asked.
The man looked at him with bleary eyes and arose with a ludicrous
attempt at dignity. Scott saw at once that the man was drunk.
“No, shur,” the man replied with an elaborate bow which almost upset
him.
“Then why aren’t you at work?” Scott asked sharply.
“Becaush I don’t have to work for anybody,” Dick replied with another
deep bow which brought him unexpectedly to his hands and knees on the
bench in front of him. “I’m a gentleman, I am,” he added as he
straightened himself with difficulty.
Scott looked at him with disgust. “When Mac comes in tell him I said to
give you your time,” he exclaimed impatiently and turned to the door.
“Time,” Dick exclaimed. “Give me my time. I’ve got all the time there
is. I’m a gentleman, I tell you.”
Scott turned back with a new thought. “Where did you get that stuff?” he
asked sternly.
Dick winked at him slowly and shook his head. “A gentleman would never
tell,” he replied knowingly.
Scott slammed the door in disgust and left him still explaining his
gentility to the empty room.
Here was another thing he had to investigate.