Jim found Zaanan Frame at his desk, Tiffany’s _Justices’ Guide_ open
before him as it always was in his moments of leisure. Zaanan nodded.
“Set,” he said.
“Judge,” said Jim, “I’ve been invited to help beat you at the next
election.”
“Um!”
“They tell me a corporation hasn’t a chance with you.”
“Some hain’t,” said Zaanan, briefly.
“And that a laboring-man gets all the best of it.”
“An even chance is the best of it for a poor feller,” said Zaanan.
“Calc’late you was fetchin’ me news?” The old man’s eyes twinkled.
“Moran’s a convincin’ talker,” he observed, after a brief pause.
Jim made no reply.
“Thinkin’ of throwin’ in with him?” Zaanan asked.
Jim started to speak, but stopped, startled. It seemed to him for an
instant that Marie Ducharme sat before him. He could see her move with
the wonderful grace that was hers; he could see the sure, graceful lines
of her figure; he could see her face, mobile, intelligent, with
possibilities that would have made it interesting, even compelling, but
for the expression of sullen discontent that masked it. So real, so
material did she seem, that it seemed to Jim he could stretch out his
hand and touch her. Then she was gone.
Jim’s teeth clicked together, and his good, square-cornered jaw set.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, with that sudden
resolution which seemed to have become a part of him. “I’m going to
chase Michael Moran out of Diversity County.”
“Um! Hain’t you perty busy savin’ your own goods from the fire?”
“I’ll keep mine and add something of his,” Jim said, grimly.
“Wa-al, sich things has been done. Ever hear tell of Watt Peters and his
bear? Watt he was campin’ with a crowd back in the timber, huntin’ bear.
One day he was cruisin’ round and come on to a old he-bear consid’rable
more sudden than he calc’lated on. Watt he never got famous for
boldness, so this time he clean forgot he was huntin’ bear and turned
and run for all was in him. Seems like he irritated that bear somehow,
for he turned to and chased Watt ’most to camp. Watt he tripped over a
root and like to busted his neck. Old bear he kept a-comin’. Wasn’t
anything for it but to shoot, so Watt he up and shot. Dummed if he
didn’t kill that there bear deader ’n a door-nail. Fellers in camp came
a-runnin’ out.
“‘’Most catched you, didn’t he?’ says a feller.
“‘Catched me!’ says Watt. ‘What you mean, catched me?’
“‘He was a-chasin’ you, wasn’t he?’
“Watt he looked scornful-like and answered right up:
“‘Think I want to lug a bear two mile into camp?’ says he. ‘No, sir, I
lured this here bear in so’s I could kill him handy to where I wanted
him. I jest figgered to make him carry himself into camp,’ says he.
Wa-al, young feller, things does happen that way sometimes, but it looks
to me right now like the bear was chasin’ you.”
“I know Moran is in with Welliver and his bunch. I know Moran is at the
bottom of the trouble we’re having at the mill. He’s having our logs
spiked, and a man of his is tampering with our machinery. I know it, but
I can’t prove it even to myself. The first thing I do is to make
certain.”
“If I was goin’ to take a drive,” said Zaanan. “I’d take the River Road.
Calc’late I’d drive till I come to where a beech and a maple’s growin’
so clost it looks like they come up from one root, and I’d up and hitch
there. Then I’d walk off to the right, takin’ care to make plenty of
noise so’s not to seem like I was sneakin’. About that election, Jim, I
calc’late I’m obleeged to you. G’-by, Jim.”
“Good-by, Judge,” said Jim.
He went to the livery for a rig and presently was driving out the River
Road according to Zaanan’s directions. It seemed like a long time before
he discovered Zaanan’s landmark, but it appeared at last, and Jim was
interested to see that another horse had been tied there not long ago.
The marks of its pawing hoofs were visible in the soft soil; the work of
its teeth showed on the bark of the tree. It was here that Dolf Springer
had tied not many hours before.
Jim looked about him for some indication of man’s presence that would
show him how to proceed, but there was none. Away from him on all sides
stretched a growth of scrub-oak and jack-pine, with here and there the
grayed and splintered shaft of an ancient pine that had been riven by
lightning or broken off by wind or age. There was no path, no sign of
human usage.
Forgetting Zaanan’s caution to proceed noisily, Jim walked slowly,
almost stealthily, through the underbrush. He did so unconsciously; it
was the natural impulse of one walking into the unknown. At times he
stopped to look about him, dubious if he had not alighted at the wrong
landmark.
Presently he fancied he heard voices and stopped to listen with
straining ears. Unquestionably there were voices. Jim drew nearer
softly, and in a few moments reached a point where words and tones and
inflections could be distinguished. There was a man’s voice and a
child’s voice. Jim stopped again and listened. The conversation he
overheard was not a conversation; it was a ritual. As the words came to
Jim he knew it was but one repetition of what had been conned and
repeated many times before. Yet there was fire in it, fire and fierce
determination.
“Where is your mother?” asked the man’s voice.
“Dead,” answered the child’s.
“Who killed her?” asked the man.
“She killed herself,” said the child.
“Why?”
“On account of me.”
“Did she do right?”
“Yes.”
“Who do you hate?”
“Michael Moran,” said the child.
“What have you got to do?”
“Pay Michael Moran.”
“You won’t ever forget?”
“I won’t ever forget,” said the child.
“See to it that you don’t,” the man said, fiercely.
It was evident the ritual was at an end; that this last was an
admonition, not a part of it. Jim shivered but he knew he had not gone
astray, that here was the man Zaanan had sent him to see. He retired
softly a hundred feet, then called aloud and floundered toward the spot
where the ritual had been spoken.
Jim had not traversed half the distance before a man stepped from behind
a mound. It was the same big, handsome, somber man whom Dolf Springer
had called upon; it was Steve Gilders. Under his arm was the rifle that
had sent a shiver up Dolf’s spine.
“Lookin’ for somebody?” he demanded.
“Yes. Judge Frame sent me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ashe.”
“Own the new mills down to Diversity?”
“Yes. Are you the man I came to see?”
“Calc’late so. Names is handy in talkin’ to folks. Mine’s Steve.”
Jim thought it best not to ask additional names.
“What was you wantin’?” Steve asked.
“Somebody’s playing hob with my machinery and driving spikes into my
logs for me to rip off sawteeth on. I think Michael Moran is at the
bottom of it, but I want to prove it to myself.”
“If you kin prove it—what?”
“I’ll have a better conscience to go after the man.”
“Not after him personal. You won’t lay hands on him? You hain’t
figgerin’ on doin’ anythin’ to his body, be you? ’Cause I can’t have
that. That hain’t your concern. It’s a job for somebody else.”
“No. But I’m going to drive him out of Diversity.”
Steve smiled. “If you was to take his money away from him and his power
away from him, why I’d be glad. It ’u’d hurt him mighty bad. But I
calc’late he hain’t goin’ to be drove out of Diversity. I figger he’s
goin’ to stay here permanent—permanent as them in Diversity’s
graveyard.”
Jim wondered if the man were not off the mental perpendicular; but a
glance at his fine if stern face, his clear eyes, his bearing, argued
strongly in favor of his sanity. Perhaps the man was possessed of some
Old Testament spirit of vengeance; perhaps here was a Northern relative
of the blood feud of the Kentucky mountains. In spite of himself he felt
apprehensive for Moran’s sake.
“You want proofs, eh? Be you enured to walkin’?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Jim.
“Seven miles to the loggin’-road,” said Steve.
“I’d better care for my horse then.”
“I’ll see to him. You set right where you be.” It was a command. Jim
recognized it as such and obeyed.
It was not long before Steve returned. He did not take Jim to his shanty
as he had taken Dolf Springer, but led him straight through the woods
toward the southeast. Steve tramped silently. The things his eyes saw,
the things his ears heard, and the thoughts moving in his mind were
company enough for him. As for Jim, he had difficulty enough maintaining
the pace without wasting breath in unnecessary words.
After an hour’s steady going Steve stopped suddenly.
“Set,” he said. “You hain’t used to this.”
Jim sank down without a word. Steve leaned against a maple trunk, for
they were now getting into the edge of the hardwood, and took out his
pipe. Neither spoke for fifteen minutes. Then Steve straightened up and
nodded. Jim got to his feet and followed.
In another hour Steve spoke again: “Road’s right over there. First
landin’s half a mile up.”
They turned to the left and shortly were in last season’s slashings.
Narrow lanes among the trees, uneven, impassable to teams at this season
of the year, marked the tote roads, which in winter would be cared for
more skilfully than many a city boulevard, iced, kept clear of refuse,
so that heavily ladened sleds might pass smoothly, carrying logs from
cutting to landings.
Jim heard the toot of a locomotive whistle and looked at his watch.
“Must be the empty trucks up from the mill,” he said.
Steve nodded.
The engine with its trail of trucks passed them at their right, whistled
again, and at last came to a stop. Jim knew the stop was at the landing
from which came his logs.
“Where’s the camp?” he asked.
“T’other side of the track.”
In a moment they were at the edge of the clearing and Jim could see the
landing, its skidways piled high with hardwood logs, beech, birch,
maple, with here and there a soft maple, an ash or an oak. The train
crew had already disappeared in the direction of the camp; only one man
was visible, standing in the doorway of the sealer’s shanty. He looked
after the trainmen, then emerged and mounted a skid way. With a big blue
crayon he marked log after log. These, Jim knew, were being selected to
go to his mill in the morning. Then the man returned to his shanty.
Presently he appeared with a blacksmith’s hammer. He mounted the skidway
again, knelt upon a marked log, and drove a spike into it near the
middle. This he proceeded to sink with a punch.
Steve did not so much as turn his head toward Jim. He merely watched the
man with a curious intentness. The man repeated the operation five times
on different logs, then returned his tools to the shanty and sauntered
away toward the camp.
Jim felt a hot flame of rage. With characteristic impulse he started to
his feet and would have demanded a reckoning of the man there and then,
but Steve caught him by the arm and drew him down.
“Hungry?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Maybe I am,” snapped Jim, “but I’m too mad to notice it.”
“Spring back here. I put a snack in my pocket.”
“What’s that man’s name, Steve?” Jim demanded.
“Kowterski—one of Moran’s Polacks,” said Steve, with bitterness in his
voice. “Them cattle is drivin’ good woodsmen out of the State. Moran’s
fetchin’ ’em in ’cause he kin drive ’em and abuse ’em and rob ’em. There
was a day when a lumberjack come out of the woods after the drive with
his pockets burnin’ with money. These fellers is lucky if they come out
even. I knowed one that come out last spring with fifteen dollars to
show for his winter’s work. Sometimes Moran gives ’em half a dollar on
Sundays—for church!” He stopped suddenly.
“Kowterski’s brother’s night-watchin’ for you,” he said, shortly.
“Thank you,” said Jim. “Now let’s go back.”
“Better eat a bite,” Steve said, and, taking Jim’s assent for granted,
led the way to the spring.
It was an hour before he consented to begin the backward tramp. It was
completed as silently as had been the coming. Steve led Jim past his
shanty, but not in sight of it, and to the road where the buggy stood.
“Wait,” he said, and shortly reappeared, leading the horse, which he
helped Jim to hitch.
Jim climbed to the seat and extended his hand. Steve made no movement to
take it.
“I’m more obliged to you than I can say,” Jim said.
“G’-by,” Steve said, briefly, and, turning his back, strode out of sight
among the scrub-oak and jack-pine.
The horse Jim drove was not intended by nature to travel rapidly from
place to place. He possessed two paces, one a studious walk, the other a
self-satisfied trot that was a negligible acceleration of movement. So
it was dusk when Jim reached Diversity. Slow as the progress was, it did
not give Jim time to cool down from the boiling-point he had reached;
instead, it irritated him, brought him where explosion was inevitable.
He returned his horse to the barn and started down the street toward the
mill, forgetful that he had eaten nothing but Steve’s snack since
breakfast. As he passed the hotel he saw Moran on the piazza—Moran, who
had taken a train yesterday to the city.
Jim stopped, gripped his temper with both hands, as it were, to hold it
in check, and spoke.
“You’re back soon,” he said.
“Didn’t get to the city at all. Wire met me halfway and called me back.”
“That’s good,” said Jim, with another of his sudden resolutions. “I’m
glad you’re here. Can you walk down to the mill with me? I want to show
you something.”
“Glad to,” said Moran, rising.
The older man attempted casual talk as they went along, but Jim’s
answers were monosyllabic, even brusk. Moran studied the young man’s
face out of the corner of his eye, wondering what was in the wind. He
was puzzled, uneasy, and he ceased his conversation and speculated on
possibilities.
Jim led him round to the rear of the mill. At the fire-room door he
paused and called, “Kowterski!”
Presently a bulky figure emerged from the gloom that was beyond the
doorway. The man was big, with a clumsy bigness, not so tall as Jim, but
heavier by fifty pounds. He came forward slowly.
“Here,” said Jim. “Come here.”
Kowterski recognized Jim and ducked his head.
“Evenin’, boss,” he said, then looked into Jim’s face. Something he saw
was disquieting, for he halted, took a step backward, started to raise
his hands.
Putting the weight of his body into the blow, Jim struck him. Kowterski
stumbled, went down. He lay still an instant where he had fallen, then
wallowed to his knees and remained in that position, mumblingly ridding
his mouth of blood and teeth.
“Git!” said Jim.
Kowterski rose, wavering, turned, and ran stumblingly away into the
darkness.
Jim turned to Moran. “Good night,” he said, shortly.
“You had something to show me,” said Moran, thrown from his habitual
poise.
“That was it,” Jim said, and disappeared into the fire-room.