Latisan took the forenoon train down from Adonia to the junction the
next day. He was keeping his own counsel about his intent.
He had done some busy thinking during the evening after he left the new
star boarder in her parlor. In spite of his efforts to confine his
attention, in his thoughts, to business, he could not keep his mind
wholly off her attractive personality and her peculiar proposition. He
was obliged to whip up his wrath in order to get solidly down to the
Flagg affairs.
By the time he went to sleep he knew that he was determinedly ugly.
There was the slur of Flagg about his slack efficiency in meeting the
schemes of Craig. There was the ireful consciousness that the
narrow-gauge folks were giving him a raw deal on that dynamite matter.
They had hauled plenty of explosive for the Comas--for Craig. To admit
at the outset of his career on the Noda that he could not get what the
Three C's folks were getting--to advertise his impotency by making a
twenty-mile tote trip over slushy and rutted roads--was a mighty poor
send-off as a boss, he told himself. He knew what sort of tattle would
pursue him.
The stout young man--that "drummer"--was at the station. Latisan was
uncomfortably conscious that this person had been displaying more or
less interest in him. In the dining room at breakfast, in the office
among the loafers, and now at the railroad station the stranger kept his
eyes on Latisan.
The drive master was just as ugly as he had been when he went to sleep.
He was keeping his temper on a wire edge for the purposes of the job of
that day, as he had planned the affair. He did not go up to the
impertinent drummer and cuff his ears, but the stranger did not know how
narrowly he escaped that visitation of resentment.
The fellow remained on the platform when the train pulled out; it
occurred to Latisan that the fresh individual maybe wished to make sure
of a clear field in order to pursue his crude tactics with the lady of
the parlor.
After the arrival at the junction Latisan had matters which gave him no
time to ponder on the possible plight of the lady.
As he had ascertained by cautious inquiry, the crew of the narrow-gauge
train left it on its spur track unattended while they ate at a boarding
house. There were workmen in the yard of a lumber mill near the station,
loafing after they had eaten their lunches from their pails. The Flagg
dynamite was in a side-tracked freight car of the standard gauge.
Latisan promptly learned that the lumber-yard chaps were ready and
willing to earn a bit of change during their nooning. He grabbed in with
them; the boxes of dynamite were soon transferred to the freight car of
the narrow-gauge and stacked in one end of the car. Latisan paid off his
crew and posted himself on top of the dynamite. In one hand he held a
coupling pin; prominently displayed in the other hand was a fuse.
"I'm in here--the dynamite is here," he informed the conductor when that
official appeared at the door of the car, red-faced after hearing the
news of the transfer. "I'm only demanding the same deal you have given
the Three C's. You know you're wrong. Damn the law! I'm riding to Adonia
with this freight. What's that? Go ahead and bring on your train crew."
He brandished coupling pin and fuse. "If you push me too far you'll have
a week's job picking up the splinters of this train."
Bravado was not doing all the work for Latisan in that emergency. The
conductor's conscience was not entirely easy; he had made an exception
in the case of the Three C's--and Craig, attending to the matter before
he went to New York, had borne down hard on the need of soft-pedal
tactics. The conductor was not prepared to risk things with canned
thunder in boxes and an explosive young man whose possession just then
was nine points and a considerable fraction.
Latisan was left to himself.
At last the train from downcountry rumbled in, halted briefly, and went
on its way. From his place in the end of the freight car Latisan could
command only a narrow slice of outdoors through the open side door.
Persons paraded past on their way to the coach of the narrow-gauge. He
could see their backs only. There had been a thrill for him in the job
he had just performed; he promptly got a new and more lively thrill even
though he ridiculed his sensations a moment later. Among the heads of
the arrivals he got a glimpse of an object for which he had stretched
his neck and strained his eyes--the anxious soul of him in his eyes--on
the street in New York City. He saw a green toque with a white quill.
As though a girl--such a girl as he judged her to be--would still be
wearing the same hat, all those months later! But that hat and the very
cock of the angle of the quill formed, in a way, the one especially
vivid memory of his life. However, he had a vague, bachelor notion that
women's hats resembled their whims--often changed and never twice alike,
and he based no hopes on what he had seen.
Whoever she was, she was on the train. But there were stations between
the junction and Adonia--not villages, but the mouths of roads which led
far into remote regions where a green toque could not be traced readily.
He acutely desired to inform himself regarding the face under that hat.
But he had made possession the full ten points of his law, sitting on
that load of dynamite. What if he should allow that train crew an
opening and give Echford Flagg complete confirmation of the report that
his drive master was a sapgag with women?
After the intenseness of the thrill died out of him he smiled at the
idea that a chance meeting in New York could be followed up in this
fashion in the north country. At any rate, he had something with which
to busy his thoughts during the slow drag of the train up to Adonia, and
he was able to forget in some measure that he was sitting on dynamite
and would face even more menacing explosives of another kind when the
drive was on its way.
He posted himself in the side door of the car when the train rolled
along beside the platform at Adonia. He had ordered men of the Flagg
outfit to be at the station with sleds, waiting for the train; they were
on hand, and he shouted to them, commanding them to load the boxes and
start north.
There was a man displaying a badge on the platform--a deputy sheriff who
had his eye out for bootleggers headed toward the driving crews; the
conductor ran to the officer and reported that Latisan had broken the
law relating to the transportation of explosives; the trainman proposed
to shift the responsibility, anticipating that the sheriff might give
official attention to the cargo.
Just then Latisan spied the green toque; the face was concealed because
the head was bowed to enable the toque's wearer to pick her way down the
steps of the coach.
The drive master leaped from the door of the car and his men scrambled
past him to enter.
"About that dynamite----"
Latisan elbowed aside the questioning sheriff, and looked straight past
the officer. "If you go after me on that point you'll have to go after
Craig and the Three C's, too--and I'll put the thing up to the county
attorney myself. Right now I'm busy."
The men were lugging out the boxes. "If anybody gets in your way, boys,
drop a box on his toes," he shouted, starting up the platform.
"Leave it to us, Mr. Latisan," bawled one of the crew.
The drive master had his eyes on the girl who was walking ahead of him.
He could hardly believe that the voicing of his name attracted her
attention. She did not know his name! But she stopped and whirled about
and stared at him.
It was surely the girl of the cafeteria!
She plainly shared Latisan's amazement, but there was in her demeanor
something more than the frank astonishment which was actuating him.
He pulled off his cap and hurried to her and put out his hand. "I saw
you--I mean I saw your hat. I thought it might be you--but I looked for
you in New York--for that hat----" He knew he was making a fool of
himself by his excitement and incoherence. "I have been thinking about
you----" He was able to check himself, for her eyes were showing
surprise of another sort. Her manner suggested to Latisan that she, at
any rate, had not been thinking especially about him during the months.
She had recovered her composure.
"It is not surprising about the hat, Mr.--I believe I heard somebody
call your name--Mr. Latisan?" There was an inflection of polite query,
and he bowed. "My sarcastic friends are very explicit about this hat
serving as my identifier."
"I didn't mean it that way. I don't know anything about girls' hats. But
to see you away up here----"
She forced a flicker of a smile.
"It seems quite natural to find you here in the woods, though I believe
you did tell me that your home is over Tomah way."
He was not able to understand the strange expression on her countenance.
And she, on her part, was not able to look at him with complete
composure; she remembered the character given to this man by Craig, and
she had ventured to give him something else in her report--the swagger
of a _roue_ and a black mustache!
There was an awkward moment and he put his cap back on his head. He
looked about as if wondering if she expected friends. He had treasured
every word of hers in the cafeteria. She had spoken of the woods as if
her home had been there at one time.
"I'm not expecting anybody to meet me--here--to-day," she informed him,
understanding his side glances. She was showing incertitude,
uneasiness--as if she were slipping back into a former mood after the
prick of her surprise. "There's a hotel here, I suppose."
He took her traveling case from her hand, muttering a proffer to assist
her. They walked away together. For the second time the loafers at
Adonia saw Latisan escorting a strange woman along the street, and this
one, also, was patently from the city, in spite of her modest attire.
"Seems to be doing quite a wholesale business, importing dynamite and
wimmen," observed a cynic.
"According to the stories in Tomah, he has put in quite a lot of time
looking over the market in regard to that last-named," agreed another
detractor.
"And when Eck Flagg gets the news I'd rather take my chances with the
dynamite than with the wimmen," stated the cynic.
"I guess I talked to you like an idiot at first," said Latisan, when he
and his companion were apart from the persons on the station platform.
"I'm getting control of my surprise. I remember you told me you were
homesick for the woods. That's why you're up here, I suppose."
"It's one reason, Mr. Latisan."
"I'm sorry it isn't a better time of year. I'd like to--to--If you
aren't going to be tied up too much with friends, I could show you
around a little. But right now I'm tied up, myself. I'm drive master for
Echford Flagg--you remember about speaking of him."
"Yes; but I shall not trouble Mr. Flagg," she hastened to say. "He will
not be interested in me simply on account of my friends. You are very
busy on the drive, are you?" she questioned, earnestly.
"Oh yes. I've got to start for headwaters in the morning." There was
doleful regret in his tones.
He was rather surprised to find so much pleased animation in her face;
truly, this girl from the city acted as if she were delighted by the
news of his going away; she even seemed to be confessing it. "I'm glad!"
she cried. Then she smoothed matters after a glance at his grieved and
puzzled face. "I'm glad to hear a man say that he's devoted to his work.
So many these days don't seem to take any interest in what they're
doing--they only talk wages. Yours must be a wonderful work--on the
river--the excitement and all!"
"Yes," he admitted, without enthusiasm.
The street was muddy and they went slowly; he hung back as if he wanted
to drag out the moments of their new companionship.
He cast about for a topic; he did not feel like expatiating on the
prospects ahead of him in his work. "If you're going to make much of a
stop here----"
She did not take advantage of his pause; he hoped she would indicate the
proposed length of her stay, and he was worrying himself into a panic
for fear she would not be in Adonia on his next visit to report to
Flagg.
"I wish we had a better hotel here, so that you'd stay all contented for
a time--and--and enjoy the country hereabouts."
"Isn't the hotel a fit place for a woman who is unaccompanied?"
"Oh, that isn't it! It's the slack way Brophy runs it. The help
question! Martin does the best he knows how, but he finds it hard to
keep table girls here in the woods. Has to keep falling back on his
nephew, and the nephew isn't interested in the waiter job. Wants to
follow his regular line."
"And what's that?" she asked, holding to a safe topic.
"Running Dave's stable. Nephew says the horses can't talk back."
She stopped and faced him. "Do you think the landlord would hire me as a
waitress?" She had come to Adonia in haste, leaving her plans to hazard.
Now she was obeying sudden inspiration.
If she had slapped him across the face she could not have provoked more
astonishment and dismay than his countenance showed.
"I have done much waiting at tables." She grimly reflected on the cafes
where she had sought the most for her money. "I'm not ashamed to confess
it."
He stammered before he was able to control his voice. "It isn't that.
You ought to be proud to work. I mean I'm glad--no, what I mean is I
don't understand why--why----"
"Why I have come away up here for such a job?"
"I haven't the grit to ask any questions of you!" he confessed,
plaintively, his memory poignant on that point.
The stout "drummer" had been trailing them from the station. When they
halted he passed them slowly, staring wide-eyed at the girl, asking her
amazed questions with his gaze. She flung the Vose-Mern operative a look
of real fury; she had come north in a fighting mood.
"I have left the city to escape just such men as that--men who aren't
willing to let a girl have a square chance. I lost my last position
because I slapped a cheap insulter's face in a hotel dining hall." She
looked over Latisan's head when she twisted the truth. "I came north, to
the woods, just as far as that railroad would take me. I hate a city!"
Then she looked straight at him, and there was a ring of sincerity in
her tone. "I'm glad to be where those are!" She pointed to the trees
which thatched the slopes of the hills.
"You're speaking of friends of mine!"
They had stopped, facing each other. Crowley, lashed by looks from the
girl and Latisan, had hurried on toward the tavern.
Lida knew that the drive master was having hard work to digest the
information she had given him.
"They are standing up straight and are honest old chaps," he went on. He
was looking into her eyes and his calm voice had a musing tone. "I like
to call them my friends."
He was trying hard to down the queer notions that were popping up. He
would not admit that he was suspecting this girl of deceit. But she was
so manifestly not what she claimed that she was! Still, there were
reverses that might----
"I am alone in a strange land--nobody to back my word about myself. I
must call on a reliable witness. You know the witness." She put up her
hand and touched her hat. Then came laughter--first from her and then
from Latisan--to relieve the situation. "You saw me wearing it more than
six months ago. What better proof of my humble position in life do you
want?"
"I don't dare to tell you what you ought to be, Miss----"
"Patsy Jones," she returned, glibly; his quest for her name could not be
disregarded.
"But what you are right now is good enough because it's honest work."
"Do you think I can get the job?"
"I am a witness of Martin Brophy's standing offer to give one thousand
dollars for a table girl who won't get homesick or get married."
"Take me in and collect the reward, Mr. Latisan. I'm a safe
proposition, both ways."
"I hope not!" he blurted--and then marched on with the red flooding
beneath his tan.
And though he strove to put all his belief in her word about herself, he
was conscious of a persistent doubt, and was angered by it.
"If you please, I'll do the talking to Mr. Brophy--is that his
name?--when we reach the hotel," said the girl. "You really do not know
me." There was a flash of honesty, she felt, in that statement, and she
wanted to be as honest as she could--not wholly a compound of lies in
her new role. "It might seem queer, my presenting myself under your
indorsement, as if we had been acquainted somewhere else. Gossip up here
is easily started, isn't it?"
"It is."
He surrendered her bag to her at the porch, as if his services had been
merely the cursory politeness of one who was traveling her way. It was
in Latisan's mind to go along to the big house on the ledges and inform
Flagg what had been done that day, and glory in the boast that there was
a new man in the region who could make a way for himself in spite of
Flagg's opinions as to the prowess of an old man.
Latisan was feeling strangely exhilarated. She had come there to stay!
Martin Brophy was in the desperate state of need to chain a girl like
that one to a table leg in his desire to keep her. And she had announced
her own feelings in the matter! She was in the Noda--the girl who had
stepped out of his life never to enter it again, so he had feared in
his lonely ponderings. He was in the mood of a real man at last! He was
resolved to take no more of Echford Flagg's contumely. He was heartsick
at the thought of starting north and leaving her in the tavern, to be
the object of attentions such as that cheap drummer man bestowed when he
passed them on the street.
The plea of the lady of the tavern parlor had made merely a ripple in
his resolves. He had not thought of her or her proposition during that
busy day.
Now he was wondering whether the fight for Flagg--the struggle against
Craig, even for vengeance, was worth while.
Lida was having no difficulty in locating the landlord. He stood just
beyond the dining-room door and was proclaiming that he was the boss and
was shaking his fist under the nose of a surly youth who had allowed
several dishes to slide off a tray and smash on the floor.
"Do you want to hire a waitress from the city?" she demanded.
"You bet a tin dipper I do," snapped back Brophy.
"I'm ready to begin work at once. If you'll show me my room----"
"You go up one flight, by them stairs there, and you pick out the best
room you can find--the one that suits you! That's how much I'm willing
to cater to a city waitress. And you needn't worry about wages."
"I shall not worry, sir." She hurried up the stairs.
The hostler-waiter slammed down the tray with an ejaculation of
thankfulness. Brophy picked up the tray and banged it over the youth's
head. "You ain't done with the hash-wrassling till she has got her feet
placed. Sweep up that litter, stand by to do the heavy lugging, and take
your orders from her and cater to her--cater!"
Latisan, lingering on the porch, had hearkened and observed. He caught a
glimpse of himself in the dingy glass of the door. He scrubbed his hand
doubtfully over his beard. Then he turned and hurried away.
The single barber shop of Adonia was only a few yards from the door of
the tavern. There was one chair in the corner of a pool room.
Latisan overtook a man in the doorway and yanked him back and entered
ahead.
"I'm next!" shouted the supplanted individual.
"Yes, after me!" declared Latisan, grimly. He threw himself into the
chair. "Shave and trim! Quick!"
The barber propped his hands on his hips. "What's the newfangled idea of
shedding whiskers before the drive is down?"
"Shave!" roared Latisan. "And if you're more than five minutes on the
job I'll carve my initials in you with your razor."
So constantly did he apostrophize the barber to hurry, wagging a
restless jaw, that blood oozed from several nicks when the beard had
been removed.
"I've got a pride in my profession, just the same as you have in your
job," stormed the barber when Latisan refused to wait for treatment for
the cuts. "And I don't propose to have you racing out onto the
streets----"
But the drive master was away, obsessed by visions of that fresh
drummer presuming further in his tactics with the new waitress. The
barber, stung to defense of his art, grabbed a towel and a piece of alum
and pursued Latisan along the highway and into the tavern office,
cornered the raging drive master, and insisted on removing the evidences
which publicly discredited good workmanship. The affair was in the
nature of a small riot.
The guests who were at table in the dining room stared through the
doorway with interest. The new waitress, already on her job, gave the
affair her amused attention. Especially absorbed was the sullen youth
who halted in the middle of the room, holding a loaded tray above his
head. In his abstraction he allowed the tray to tip, and the dishes
rained down over Crowley, who was seated directly under the edge of the
tray.
Latisan strode in and took his seat at the small table with the city
stranger while Brophy was mopping the guest off; the city chap had
received his food on his head and in his lap.
The waitress came and stood demurely at one side, meeting the flaming
gaze of the Vose-Mern man with a look that eloquently expressed her
emotions. "Shall I repeat the order?"
"Don't be fresh!" snarled Crowley.
Latisan rapped his knuckles on the table warningly. "Be careful how you
talk to this lady!"
"What have you got to say about it?" The stout chap started to rise.
But Latisan was up first. He leaned over and set his big hand, fingers
outspread like stiff prongs, upon the man's head, and twisted the caput
to and fro; then he drove the operative down with a thump in his chair.
"This is what I've got to say! Remember that she is a lady, and treat
her accordingly, or I'll twist off your head and take it downstreet and
sell it to the bowling-alley man."
It was plain that the girl was finding a piquant relish in the affair.
From the moment when she came down the stairs and took the white apron
which Brophy handed to her she had ceased to be the city-wearied girl.
It was homely adventure, to be sure, but the very plainness of it, in
the free-and-easy environment of the north woods, appealed to her sense
of novelty. There was especial zest for her in this bullyragging of
Crowley by the man who was to be victim of the machinations by the
Vose-Mern agency. Her eyes revealed her thoughts. The city man opened
his mouth. He promptly shut it and turned sideways in his chair, his
back to Latisan. Detective Crowley was enmeshed in a mystery which he
could not solve just then. What was the confidential secretary doing up
there?
The girl smiled down on her champion--an expansive, charming, warming
smile. "I thank you! What will you have?"
She surveyed his face with concern; his countenance was working with
emotion. In her new interest, she noted more particularly than in the
New York cafeteria, that he apparently was, in spite of what Craig had
said, a big, wholesome, naive chap who confessed to her by his eyes,
then and there, that he was honestly and respectfully surrendering his
heart to her, short though the acquaintance had been, and she was
thrilled by that knowledge. She was not responding to this new appeal,
she was sure, but she was gratified because the man was showing her by
his eyes that he was her slave, not merely a presumptuous conquest of
the moment, after the precipitate manner of more sophisticated males.
She repeated her question.
It was evident enough what Latisan wanted at that moment, but he had not
the courage to voice his wishes in regard to her; he had not enough
self-possession left to state his actual desires as to food, even. There
was one staple dish of the drive; he was heartily sick of that food, but
he could not think of anything else right then.
"Bub--bub--beans!" he stuttered.
She hurried away.
When she returned with her tray she did not interrupt any conversation
between the two men at the little table; the Vose-Mern man still had his
back turned on Latisan; the drive master sat bolt upright in a prim
attitude which suggested a sort of juvenile desire to mind his manners.
The girl's eyes were still alight with the spirit of jest. She placed
steak and potatoes and other edibles in front of Latisan. She gave the
gentleman from the agency a big bowl of beans.
"I didn't order those!"
"I'm sorry, sir. I must have got my orders mixed."
"You have! You've given that"--he stopped short of applying any epithet
to Latisan--"you've given him my order!"
"Won't you try our beans--just once? The cook tells me they were baked
in the ground, woodman style."
"Then give 'em to the woodsmen--it's the kind of fodder that's fit for
'em."
Latisan leaned across the table and tugged Crowley's sleeve. "Look me in
the eye, my friend!" The man who was exhorted found the narrowed, hard
eyes very effective in a monitory way. "I don't care what you eat, as a
general thing. But you have just slurred woodsmen and have stuck up your
nose at the main grub stand-by of the drive. You're going to eat those
beans this lady has very kindly brought. If you don't eat 'em, starting
in mighty sudden, I'll pick up that bowl and tip it over and crown you
with it, beans and all. Because I'm speaking low isn't any sign I don't
mean what I say!"
The beans were steaming under the stout man's nose. He decided that the
heat would be better in his stomach than on the top of his head; he had
just had one meal served that way. He devoured the beans and marched out
of the dining room, his way taking him past the sideboard where the new
waitress was skillfully arranging glasses after methods entirely
different from those of the sullen youth.
"Don't jazz the game any more--not with _me_," growled Crowley, fury in
his manner. "And I want to see you in private."
She stiffened, facing him. She knew that Latisan's earnest eyes were on
her. She assumed the demeanor of a girl who was resentfully able to take
care of herself, playing a part for the benefit of the drive master.
"Attend strictly to your end of the program, Crowley!"
"What do you mean--my end?"
"Protecting me from insults by these rough woodsmen. I suppose you are
doing the same for Miss Elsham." Her irony was biting. He scowled and
put his face close to hers.
"If you're up here on the job--it's not a lark. It's a case of he-men in
these parts. If you're not careful you'll start something you can't
stop."
"Keep away from me. They're watching us. You're bungling your part
wretchedly. Can't you understand that I'm on the case, too?"
She had planned her action, forestalling possibilities as well as she
was able. She was determined to be bold, trusting to events as they
developed.
"You will kindly remember that I'm on this case along with you, and you
can't make me jump through hoops!" Crowley, fresh from the city, narrow
in his urban conceit, was seeing red because of a petty humiliation he
had suffered in public.
Another man was seeing red for a different reason. Latisan strode across
the room, nabbed Crowley by the ear, and led him into the tavern office,
where the aching ear was twisted until the city man subsided into a
chair.
The girl appraised at its full value the rancor that was developing in
the Vose-Mern operative; his glaring eyes were accusing her.
But the adoring eyes of Latisan promised really more complicated
trouble for her.
It was borne in on her that there were dangerous possibilities in the
frank atmosphere of the north woods. Lida had the poignant feeling of
being very much alone just then--and she was afraid!