Mern's mercenaries were not cowards. They had served valiantly as guards
of strike breakers, had fought in many forays, had winged their
attackers, and had been winged in return. At mill gates they had
resisted mobs and had endured missiles; they had ridden on trucks,
protecting goods and drivers, through lanes of howling, hostile
humanity; they had thrown the cordon of their bodies around dock
workers.
But the gunmen's exploits in intrepidity had been, of and in the cities.
The environment at Skulltree was the Great Open.
They were not backed by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was
not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were
precariously perched in space, so it seemed--standing on the stringers
of the dam, peering into a void of shrouding mists and thunderous
waters, the wilderness all about them!
In their battles in past times they had been able to see the foe; now
they were called on to fight a noise--the bodeful detonations of blasts,
to right, to left--here and there.
There was a foe; he was on his way. They did not know what sort of ruin
he purposed to wreak as the climax of his performance. Craig himself did
not know, so he affirmed in reply to anxious queries, and the boss's
uncertainty and increasing consternation added to the peculiar
psychological menace of the thing.
"Give us orders, Mr. Craig!" pleaded the captain of the guards. "Show us
something to fight against. How many of 'em are there? Where are they?
"It's that damnable Latisan, working single-handed. I'm sure of it. Go
get him!"
"If you don't get him, he's going to blow up this dam," stated the
frightened lawyer.
A far-flung bomb of dynamite landed in the water and shot a geyser
spraying against the fog pall.
"I'm taking that guess for gospel," affirmed the chief gunman, wiping
spray from his face. "Mr. Craig, you can't expect us to hang on here,
facing a thing like what's coming!"
"Shoot him!" gasped the Comas director, but he was revolving on unsteady
feet and the aimlessness of his gaze revealed that he had no definite
idea of procedure; his incertitude wrecked all the courage of his
supporters.
"It can't be done, sir. Not in this fog! We'd better get ashore----"
"And let him wreck this dam?"
"If he's going to wreck it, we'd better be off it."
In his fear Craig became insulting, and that attitude ended his control
of the situation. "You're hired with money, you cowards! Now earn it!"
"This is where your money can't buy something for you, Mr. Craig," the
captain of the gunmen declared, and then he led the retreat of his squad
across Skulltree dam and into the woods on the far shore from the
portentous, invisible peril.
And with dire extremity clearing for the moment his clouded vision,
enabling him to look squarely at the matter of service and loyalty as he
was able to command it, Craig knew that when his money failed him in the
north country he had no other resource. He had blinked that fact in the
past, having found that in ordinary affairs his dollars were dominant;
but this extraordinary event was knocking out from under him all the
props of confidence; he felt bitterly alone all of a sudden.
"We'll have to vamoose off this dam," declared the deputy sheriff.
"You've got your duty as an officer of the law," shouted Craig,
desperately feeling that in the case of this man, at least, he was
making an appeal to something that was not covered by a money
consideration.
"And I've got my common sense, too!" retorted the sheriff. He started
away.
"So have I," agreed the attorney, a lawyer who had obeyed a telegram and
had joined the Craig expedition at the shire town of the county the
night before.
"There's an injunction!" stormed the field director.
"And there's a lunatic with a sack of dynamite." The lawyer crooked his
arm across his face; a missile from the white void had splashed near by
and water sprayed him. "You have told me that Latisan is no longer in
Flagg's service. I'm not depending now on law, Mr. Craig, I'm depending
on my legs."
He fled on the trail of the officer. But he left a pregnant thought in
Craig's mind: Latisan was not an employee of Echford Flagg. As a matter
of fact, Craig owned to himself--his clarity of vision persisting in
that time of overwhelming disaster, in the wreck of the hopes built on
the power of his money--that the thing had now become almost wholly a
personal, guerrilla warfare between himself and Latisan; and when the
truth came out, if the matter were forced to that issue, Craig would
lack the backing of authority fully as much as Latisan lacked it then,
in his assault on property. The bluff of the guns had not worked! Craig
was realizing that in hiring such men, as he had on the spur of the
moment, his rage instead of his business good judgment had prevailed.
There were the repeated warnings of his superiors! The law would be
obliged to investigate if Skulltree dam were wrecked, and would probe to
the bottom of the moving reasons! Scandal, rank scandal! Craig could
behold President Horatio Marlow as he sat that day with upraised,
monitory forefinger, urging the touchy matter of credits and reputation.
Craig could hear Dawes, the attorney: "That talk puts the thing up to
you square-edged!"
Down from the mist-shrouded cliff was advancing a vengeful man who
walked with the footsteps of thunder.
As Craig had looked ahead, basing his judgment on his experience with
men and matters, it had seemed an easy matter to guard Skulltree with
money and law. But in this astounding sortie of Latisan's, Comas money
was of no use and Craig was developing an acute fear of the law which,
invoked, would take matters into court. Over and over, his alarmed
convictions pounded on his caution.
He crouched under a rain of dirt and pebbles--then he ran away.
When he reached the far shore he jumped into a bateau that was pulled up
there. With all the power of his lungs he yelled for rowers. He was
obliged to confess loudly and unreservedly that he was giving up the
fight--was seeking a way of stopping Latisan--before any of his men
would come from the shelter of woods and fog and serve him.
He cursed them with the vigor of a master of galley slaves when the
bateau was frothing along the deadwater. Then he bellowed into the fog,
seeking a replying hail which would locate for him the Flagg crew. There
was no repentance in him; his was a panic of compromise--a headlong rush
to save himself from consequences. There was just as much uncertainty
about what Latisan would do as there was about the dynamiter's exact
location in that fog.
Therefore, Craig announced himself with raucous staccato of: "I quit! I
quit! Get that man! Tell him I quit!"
Men hailed from the shore and their voices guided the rowers. Craig
leaped from the bow of the bateau and waded for the last few yards.
"Go stop him! Bring him here!" He tossed his arms.
"Huh!" scoffed old Vittum. "That's a job for somebody who can tell which
way the next stroke of lightning is heading."
"I'll give five hundred dollars to the man who'll get to him and stop
him before he smashes that dam!"
Craig added to the other visions which had been torturing him the
possible catastrophe of the Comas logs roaring through past the mouth of
a useless canal; he could look ahead still farther and see the grins of
the sawmill men down the Noda, setting their own prices.
Once more Craig was finding that his money was getting him nothing that
day, and his sense of helplessness was revealed by his sagging jowls and
dolorous eyes; and he had always depended on what money could buy!
There was no alacrity for service shown by any man of Flagg's crew.
"We're not afraid," said Felix Lapierre, breaking on Craig's furious
taunts. "We have promise' to keep off and let him make good for
himself--the lone hand--that's it!"
"That's it!" agreed Vittum.
"He has made good," bleated the Comas man. "If he goes any farther it
will only be bad."
The dialogue was taking place disjointedly in the silences between the
blasts. But Craig made himself heard above the next explosion. "He's
ripping hell out of that dam now. Get to him. A thousand dollars for the
man who stops him!"
"No man in this crew needs any of your money!" Lida was defiantly in
front of the Comas director. "But if you're ready to listen to reason
after this----"
She broke off and turned from him.
Before they realized that she had volunteered, she was away in the fog.
In a moment they heard her voice, raised in a thrilling call, appealing
to the avenger.
"That'll fetch him back--even if he was two miles deep in hell," Craig
was informed by one of the men. "It's a lucky thing for the Three C's
that she's on the job to-day."
The Comas director stood holding to a tree. He shivered every time an
explosion clanged its echoes from cliff to cliff.
And when, after a waiting that was agony, the dreadful bombardment
ceased, Craig staggered to the bateau and sat down on its prow.
"I don't blame you for looking that way," said Vittum. "If Latisan had
been driven to get that dam to-day you would have lost your drive for
the canal; and, before God and your directors, you would have been
responsible!"
When Latisan came out of the fog he had put away, somewhere, the sack
which had held destruction.
When he had gone away from them, entering upon the perils of his
undertaking, he was calm and resolute. Now that he was back, a champion
who had prevailed single-handed, he was pale, trembling, and broken;
they did not understand, at first.
Lida came with him, trying to soothe him, pleading and protesting; he
constantly muttered broken speech and seemed to be trying to control a
mood that was half frenzy. He left her and stumbled across the open
space to Craig.
"Everything else you have done--it's nothing as bad as this last. You
sent her where you didn't dare to go yourself. Good God! you Comas
sneak, I ought to kill you where you sit! For all you cared you were
making me a murderer of an innocent girl!"
"You had to be stopped. She went before I knew what she was going to
do."
"And if she hadn't gone on her own account you would have tried to hire
her to do it! It's always a case of what you can buy with your
money--that's your style, Craig. Now you're up against something you
can't buy. I'm still working alone--understand that? If you want to
report me as an outlaw, go ahead! I'm giving you squarer warning than
you gave me on the Tomah when you smashed the Latisans. If I smash that
dam down there I'll be smashing you! I'll do it if you put as much as a
toothpick in the way of the independent drives. I'll blow the bottom out
of your canal, in the bargain. And if you think you or your gang can
locate me over there"--he pointed in the direction of the hills of the
watershed between the rivers basins--"try it! I know every hole in those
hills. I'll keep bombing your drives till you can't keep a man on the
job. That's the kind of an outlaw I am from now on."
"It's between us now, Latisan. I'll own up to it. It has come to that."
"Yes, it's between renegades. I'm admitting that I'm one," retorted
Ward.
Craig stood up. If there was any of the spirit of Three C's bluster left
in him he was concealing it successfully.
"Latisan, all these men have heard me say that I quit. I lost my head
and was pushing the thing too far, considering it from a business
standpoint. Can I be any more honest than that?"
"It sounds all right, but I take stock in you only to the extent that
you'll stay in line if I stay on the job. I shall stay, as I have warned
you."
"Suppose we talk turkey about the common rights at Skulltree!"
"You'll have to talk with Miss Kennard about her grandfather's
interests. I'm simply a chance comer here!"
Latisan walked away and leaned against a tree.
Craig approached Lida. "We have already had some talk about the matter,
I believe. I retreat from the position I have taken. Evidently we must
make mutual allowances. What have you thought out about the details of a
plan to let your logs through?"
The girl did not reply; she had no plans; she did not understand such
matters.
"We'll have to decide on the head of water you'll need, and I take it
you'll allow us enough for the canal so that we can save our drive."
Craig was trying hard to offer compromise, but he was not able to
repress all his sarcastic venom. "There's the matter of sorting and the
other details. I'll have to ask for your views, Miss Kennard, because
any misunderstanding may be dangerous, so I have been informed."
She looked helplessly from Craig to Latisan. The latter's aloofness,
which he had displayed ever since he first appeared to her that day, his
present peculiar relationship to the affair, his insistence that he
must serve alone, made her problem more complex. Her vivid yearning was
to give all into Latisan's keeping, but she did not dare to propose it.
She looked at Vittum and Felix, seeking advice. The French Canadian
smiled and shrugged his shoulders, evading responsibility. He did not
understand such matters, either.
"I suppose I might be able to dig up some sort o' general ideas, give me
time enough," said Vittum, when her eyes questioned him anxiously. "But
I'm sort of hazy right now." He winked at her and ducked his head to
indicate Latisan.
"I'm afraid!" she phrased the lament with a doleful motion of her lips
rather than with spoken words.
"It can't be said but what he'll be impartial--the best one to ask,"
mumbled Vittum, stepping close to her. "He ain't hired by either side,
as I understand it!" He was ironic, but there was a suggestion which she
grasped desperately. She went to Latisan. Their conversation was in an
undertone and the bystanders did not hear the words.
When she returned to Craig, Lida, confident in her new poise, reassured,
informed in a fashion which fortified her self-reliance, met the Comas
man with a demeanor which did credit to the granddaughter of Echford
Flagg.
"I have not tried to involve Mr. Latisan in any way. I have asked his
advice as an expert." She looked straight into the shifting eyes of the
Comas director. "Last fall he was at Tech, and took a special course in
hydraulic engineering. You know that, of course, Mr. Craig!" She paused
till he bowed to admit the truth with which she insisted on displacing
the lie which had followed Latisan in the north country. "And Mr.
Latisan has had a great deal of practical experience on his own drives.
It seems absolutely necessary to have a sorting gap here, with men of
both crews handling the logs. When our timber is through the
sluiceway--the daily run of logs--we are to be given a head of water
which will take us through the gorge. As to the logs upriver--the
rear--we are willing to join drives with you, Mr. Craig, so that we may
use all the water together." She set back her shoulders. "That plan will
serve us this season. For another season the independents will have laws
of their own from the legislature. I'm quite sure that the independents
have waked up and know now what some special legislative acts can do for
their interests."
"I beg your pardon for breaking in, Miss Kennard," said Latisan, from
his distance. "But this seems to be the time for me to say to Mr. Craig,
in the presence of witnesses, that the same plan goes for the Tomah
region. The independents over there can't be licked, sir."
"Nor the Latisans," shouted somebody in the Flagg crew.
That friendly corroboration of the young man's inmost determination
served as a challenge. The drive master walked toward Craig and shook
his fist. "No, nor the Latisans! We have a sawmill, and we're not
worrying about the logs to feed it. But you understand, Mr. Craig, that
the independents must have gangway on the river for their cut. And we
know how to get gangway!"
He went back to his tree and resumed his whittling.
"To me the future looks very promising," said Lida. "We're all a little
disturbed now, Mr. Craig, but we're coming to a perfect understanding.
Don't you think so?"
Craig did not reply at once, and she added, with ingenuous affectation
of desiring to bring forward reasons for his agreement, "If the Comas
company does join drives with us you will have the help of a perfectly
wonderful crew, Mr. Craig. I'm told that we're a week or ten days ahead
of the usual time--and the men have never seemed to be considering mere
wages!"
The Three C's director rolled his eyes, avoiding her candidly provoking
regard. He shifted his gaze to Latisan, who had turned his back on the
group and was still whittling placidly, propped against a tree by his
shoulder. "Wonderful teamwork," growled the Comas man. "But sticking out
for anything else will be a fool stunt. Miss Kennard, there's a lawyer
over there in the woods, somewhere! The thing to do now seems to be to
hunt him up so that he can help us to pass papers of agreement." He
swung his hand to indicate the bateau. "Will you go with me?"
She hesitated. Then she smiled amiably on Craig. "I think I'd rather
walk along the path, sir. I'll meet you and the lawyer at this end of
the dam."
Craig trudged down to the boat and was swept away into the fog.
Latisan did not turn; he kept on whittling.
"Mr. Latisan!" she invited. "May I have your company to the dam? I'm
sorry to trouble you, but I may be obliged to refer to you for further
advice."
"I feel called on to remark," said old Vittum, always an irrepressible
commentator when comment seemed to be necessary, speaking after Latisan
and Lida had walked away into the mist--"I'll say to all that she knows
her business."
"But it was Latisan who advised her," objected a literalist.
"Hell! I ain't speaking of this drive," snapped the old man. "I'm
complimenting her on a job where she doesn't need anybody's advice!"