steam-clouds at regular intervals from his "meerschaum" pipe. After
twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of Canal
Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their
leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning
them to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed,
swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his
march at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the fact
that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night
silence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end of
the power-dam.
The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and
inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars.
Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet
rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels
caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at
the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him
a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the
liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic
a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for
it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another.
More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out
from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long,
arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept
over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place.
When the supports had reached out over half of the river's span, and the
water was dotted with the shoulders of men gracefully slanted against
the current, Jimmy gave orders to begin placing the flash-boards. Heavy
planks were at once slid across the supports, where the weight of the
racing water at once clamped them fast. Spikes held the top board beyond
the possibility of a wrench loose. The smooth, quiet river, interrupted
at last, murmured and snarled and eddied back, only to rush with
increased vehemence around the end of the rapidly growing obstruction.
The policeman, passing back and forth on Canal Street, heard no sound
of the labour going on. If he had been an observant policeman, he would
have noted an ever-changing tone in the volume of sound roaring up from
the eddy below the dam. After a time even he remarked on a certain
obvious phenomenon.
"Sure!" said he; "now, that's funny!"
He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were,
after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, east side; and
Canal Street, east side, seemed peaceful.
The river had fallen absolutely silent. The last of Jimmy's flash-boards
was in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce's Tower
struck two.
Jimmy and his men, having thus raised the level of the dam a good three
feet, emerged dripping from the west-side canal, and cheerfully took
their way northward to where, in the chilly dawn, their companions were
sleeping the sleep of the just. As they passed the riffles they paused.
A heavy grumbling issued from the logs jammed there, a grumbling brutish
and sullen, as though the reluctant animals were beginning to stir. The
water had already backed up from the raised dam.
Of course the affair, from a river-driver's standpoint, at once became
exceedingly simple. The slumbering fifteen were aroused to astounded
drowsiness. By three, just as the dawn was beginning to differentiate
the east from the west, the regular _clank, clank, clink_ of the
peavies proclaimed that due advantage of the high water was being
seized. From then until six was a matter of three hours more. A great
deal can be accomplished in three hours with flood-water. The last
little jam "pulled" just about the time the first citizen of the west
side discovered that his cellar was full of water. When that startled
freeman opened the front door to see what was up, he uttered a
tremendous ejaculation; and so, shortly, came to the construction of a
raft.
Well, the papers got out an extra edition with scare-heads about
"Outrages" and "High-handed Lawlessness!" and factory owners by the
canals raised up their voices in bitterness over flooded fire-rooms; and
property owners of perishable cellar goods howled about damage suits;
and the ordinary citizen took to bailing out the hollow places of his
domain. Toward nine o'clock, after the first excitement had died, and
the flash-boards had been indignantly yanked from their illegal places,
a squadron of police went out to hunt up the malefactor. The latter
they discovered on a boom-pole directing the sluicing. From this
position he declined to stir. One fat policeman ventured a toppling yard
or so on the floating timber, threw his hands aloft in loss of
equilibrium, and with a mighty effort regained the shore, where he sat
down, panting. To the appeals of the squad to come and be arrested,
Jimmy paid not the slightest heed. He puffed periodically on his
"meerschaum" pipe, and directed the sluicing. Through the twenty-foot
gate about a million feet an hour passed. Thus it happened that a little
after noon Jimmy came peaceably ashore and gave himself up.
"You won't have no more trouble below," he observed to McGann, his
lieutenant, watching reflectively the last logs shoot through the gate.
"Just tie right into her and keep her hustling." Then he refilled his
pipe, lit it, and approached the expectant squad.
At the station-house he was interviewed by reporters. That is, they
asked questions. To only one of them did they elicit a reply.
"Didn't you know you were breaking the law?" inquired the _Eagle_ man.
"Didn't you know you'd be arrested?"
"Sure!" replied Jimmy, with obvious contempt.
The next morning the court-room was crowded. Jimmy pleaded guilty, and
was fined five hundred dollars or ninety days in jail. To the surprise
of everybody he fished out a tremendous roll and paid the fine. The
spectators considered it remarkable that a river-boss should carry such
an amount. They had not been present at the interview between Jimmy and
his principal the night before.
The latter stood near the door as the little man came out.
"Jimmy," said Mr. Daly, distinctly, so that everyone could hear, "I am
extremely sorry to see you in this trouble; but perhaps it may prove a
lesson to you. Next time you must understand that you are not supposed
to exceed your instructions."
Thus did the wily Daly publicly disclaim his liability.
"Yes, sir," said Jimmy, meekly. "Did you get the logs in time, Mr.
Daly?"
They looked at each other steadily. Then, for the first and only time,
the black and white mask of Jimmy's inscrutability melted away. In his
left eye appeared a faint glimmer. Then the left eyelid slowly
descended.
V
THE FIFTH WAY
The prophet confessed four things as beyond his understanding--the way
of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a
ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid--but we
of modern times must add a fifth, and that is the way of justice. For
often a blunderer caught red-handed escapes with slight punishment,
while the clever man who transgresses, yet conceals his transgression
craftily, pays at the end of a devious sequence with his life. Of this
fashion was the death of Regis Brugiere.
It happened that in the fall of the year two strangers came to Ste.
Jeanne for the purpose of shooting grouse, and Regis Brugiere hired
himself to them as guide. His duties were not many. He had simply to
drive them from one hardwood belt to another. But in his leisure he
often followed them about, and so fell in love with Jim.
Jim was a black-and-white setter dog. Regis Brugiere watched him as he
trotted carefully through the woods, his four legs working like pistons,
his head high, his soft, intelligent eyes spying for the likely cover.
Then when he caught a faint whiff of the game, he would stop short, and
look around, and wag his tail. Not one step would he take toward
assuring his point until the man had struggled through the thicket to
his side. Thus his master obtained many shots at birds flushing wild
before the dog which otherwise he would not have had.
But when the bird lay well, then Jim would tread carefully forward as
though on eggs, until, his nostrils filled with the warm body-scent, he
stood rigid, a living statue of beauty. A moment of breathless
excitement ensued. With a burst of sound the bird roared away. There
followed the quick crack of the fowling-piece, a cloud of feathers in
the air, a long slanting fall. Jim looked up, eager but self-controlled.
"Fetch, Jim," said the man.
At once the dog bounded away, to return after a moment in the pride of
an army with banners, carrying the grouse daintily between his jaws.
Or the shot failed. Jim waited until he heard the click of the gun as
its breech closed after reloading, then moved forward with well-bred
restraint to sniff long and inquiringly where the bird had been.
These things Regis Brugiere saw, following the hunt through the
thickets, so that he broke the tenth commandment and coveted Jim with a
great love. He worshipped the dog's aloof dignity, his gentlemanly
demeanour of unhasting grace in the woods, his well-bred far-away gaze
as he sat on his haunches staring into the distance.
So Regis Brugiere stole Jim, the black-and-white setter, and concealed
him well. To him it was a little thing to do. He did not know Jim's
value, for in the north country a dog is a dog. After the strangers had
gone, bewailing their loss, Regis Brugiere loaded a toboggan with
supplies and traps and set out into the northwest on his annual trapping
excursion. He took with him Jim, by now entirely accustomed to his new
master.
The two journeyed far through the forest, over many rivers and muskegs,
through many swamps and ranges of hills. Regis Brugiere drew the
toboggan after him. The task should have been Jim's, but to the trapper
that would have seemed like harnessing Ignace St. Cloud, the seigneur
of Ste. Jeanne, to an apple-cart. So Jim ranged at large in diagonals
having a good time, while the man enjoyed himself by watching the
animal. In due course they came to a glade through which ran a soggy,
choked, little spring-creek. Here Regis Brugiere kicked off his
snow-shoes with an air of finality. Here he erected a cabin, and
established himself and Jim.
Over a circumference of forty miles then he set his traps, for the
beaver, the mink, the fox, the fisher, the muskrat, and the other
fur-bearing animals of the north. At regular intervals he visited these
traps one after the other, crunching swiftly along on his snow-shoes.
Jim always accompanied him. When the snow was deep, he wallowed
painfully after in the tracks made by Regis Brugiere. When it was not so
deep, he looked for grouse or ptarmigan, investigated many strange
things, or ran at large over the frozen surfaces of the little lakes.
At the trapping-places Jim had to stay behind. The man left with him his
capote and snow-shoes, which Jim imagined himself to be guarding
faithfully. Thus he was satisfied.
Then on the return journey the two had fun. Regis Brugiere liked to pick
Jim up and throw him bodily into the deepest snow. Jim liked to have
him do so, and would disappear with an ecstatic yelp. In a moment he
would burst out of the drift and would dance about on the tips of his
toes growling fiercely in mock deprecation of a repetition for which he
hoped. These were the only occasions in which Jim relaxed his solemnity.
At all other times his liquid brown eyes were mournful with the
tempered, delicious sorrow of affection.
In the woods Jim acquired bad habits. He reverted to the original dog.
Finding that Regis Brugiere paid little attention to the grouse so
carefully pointed, Jim resolved to hunt on his own account. At first his
conscience hurt him so that the act amounted to sin. But afterward the
delighted applause of his new master reassured him. He crouched, he
trailed, he flushed, he chased, he broke all the commandments of a
sporting-dog's morality. In this was demoralisation, but also great
profit. For Jim came to be an adept at surprising game in the snow. His
point now became exactly what it used to be in the primordial dog--a
pause of preparation before the spring. Jim was beautifully independent.
Except in the matter of delicacies, he supported himself.
But one thing he knew not, and that was the deer. To him they were as
horses or sheep. He could not understand, nor did he care greatly, why
they should flee so suddenly when he appeared. So Regis Brugiere tried
to teach him, but vainly. Thus it happened that often Jim had to be left
at home, for to a solitary trapper the deer is a necessity. There is in
him food and clothing.
At such times Regis Brugiere was accustomed to pile high the fireplace
with wood in order that his friend might be comfortable during his
absence. Then he would leave the dog disconsolate. On the first of these
occasions Jim effected an escape, and rejoined his master at a distance
with every symptom of delight. Regis Brugiere, returning disgusted,
found the cabin-door sprawled wide: Jim had learned to pull it toward
him with his teeth. Shortly the trapper was forced to make a latch so
that the dog could not pull it ajar by the strength of his jaws and
legs. Perhaps it is well here to explain that ordinarily such a
cabin-door merely jams shut against the spring of a wand of hickory.
Now mark you this: If Regis Brugiere had not coveted and stolen the dog
Jim, he would not have been forced to construct the latch; without the
latch, he could easily have pushed open the door by leaning against it;
if he could have pushed open the door, all would have been well with
both himself and Jim. And in this we admire the wonder of the fifth
way--the way of justice by which a man's life is bartered for a fault.
One morning in the midwinter, when it was very cold with seventy degrees
of frost, Regis Brugiere resolved to hunt the deer. As usual, he filled
the fireplace, spread a robe for Jim's accommodation, thrust the
latch-string through the small hole bored for that purpose, and set out
in the forest. When he reached the swamp edge, he removed his snow-shoes
and began carefully to pick his way along the fallen tops. Mounting on a
snow-covered root, he thrust his right foot down into an unsuspected
crevice, stumbled, and fell forward on his face.
When the blur of pain had cleared away, and he was able to take stock of
what had happened, Regis Brugiere found that he had snapped the bones of
his leg short off below the knee.
The first part of his journey home to the cabin was one of profanity;
the second of prayer; the third of grim silence. In the first he lost
his rifle; in the second his courage; in the third his knowledge of
what was about him. Like a crippled rabbit he dragged himself over the
snow, a single black spot against the whiteness. The dark forest-trees
gathered curiously about his wavering consciousness to look down on him
in aloof compassion. And over him, invisible, palpable, hovered the
dreadful north-country cold, waiting to stoop.
Regis Brugiere, by the grace of a woodsman's perseverance and the
instinct of a wild creature, gained at last the clearing in which his
cabin stood. Behind him wavered a long, deep-gouged furrow-trail,
pitiful attest of suffering. His strength was water, but he was home.
After a long time he reached the door, and rested. The incident was
cruel, but it was only one of many in a cruel way of life.
The twilight was coming down with thronging mysterious voices. Among
them clamoured fiercely the voice of the cold. Regis Brugiere felt its
breath on his heart, and, in alarm, broke through the apathy of his
condition. It was time to recall his forces, to enter where could be
found provisions and warmth. Painfully he turned on his right side and
prepared to reach the latch-string. His first movement brought him an
agony to be endured only with teeth and eyes closed, only by summoning
to the minute task of thrusting his hand upward along the rough door all
the forces of his being down to the last shred of vitality. At once the
indomitable spirit of the woods-runner answered the call. Regis Brugiere
concentrated his will on a pinpoint. Like a sprinter his volition was
fixed on a goal, beyond which lay collapse.
Inch by inch the hand kept on, blindly groping. It reached the
latch-string; passed it by.
Then, like a flame before it expires, the spirit of Regis Brugiere
blazed out. With strange contortions of the body and writhings of the
face his form came upright, the arm still reaching. So it swayed for a
moment, then fell. The man's will-power ran from him in a last supreme
effort. Twice more he struggled blindly, but the efforts were feeble. At
last with a sigh he gave himself to the cold, which had been waiting.
And the cold was kind. Regis Brugiere fell asleep.
Five days later Jim, the black-and-white setter-dog, ceased his restless
wanderings to and fro, ceased trying to leap to the oiled window beyond
which lay the forest and food in abundance, ceased vain clawings below
the shelf-high supplies of flour and bacon, to curl himself by the door
as near as possible to the master who lay without. There he starved,
dreaming in a merciful torpor of partridges in the snow. Thus was the
way of justice fulfilled in the case of Regis Brugiere and the
setter-dog Jim.
VI
THE LIFE OF THE WINDS OF HEAVEN
I
Barbara hesitated long between the open-work stockings and the
plain-silk, but finally decided on the former. Then she vouchsafed a
pleased little smile to her pleasant little image in the mirror, and
stepped through the door into the presence of her aunt. The aunt was
appropriately astonished. This was the first time Barbara had spread her
dainty chiffon wings in the air of the great north woods. Strangely,
daintily incongruous she looked now against the rough walls of the
cabin, against the dark fringe of the forest beyond the door.
Barbara was a petite little body with petite little airs of babylike
decision. She knew that her greatest attraction lay in the strange
backward poise of her head, bringing her chin, pointed and adorable, to
the tilt of maddening charm. She was perfectly aware, too, of her very
full red lips, the colour of cherries, but with the satiny finish of the
peach; and she could not remain blind to the fact that her light hair
and her velvet-black eyes were in rare and delicious contrast. All these
things, and more, Barbara knew because a dozen times a day her mirror
swore them true. That she was elusively, teasingly, judicially, calmly
distracting she knew because, ever since she could remember, men had
told her so with varying degrees of bitter humour. She accepted the
fact, and carried herself in all circumstances as a queen surrounded by
an indefinite number of rights matured to her selection.
After her plain old backwoods aunt had admired and exclaimed over the
butterfly so unexpectedly developed from the brown tailor-made
chrysalis, Barbara determined to take a walk. She knew that over through
that cool, fascinating forest, only a half-mile away, dwelt the Adamses.
The Adamses, too, were only of the woods people, but they were human,
and chiffon was chiffon, in the wilderness as in the towns. So Barbara
announced her intention, and stepped into the sunlight.
The parasol completed her sense of happiness. She raised it, and
slanted it over her shoulder, and drew one of its round tips across her
face, playing out to herself a pretty little comedy as she sauntered
deliberately down the trail between the stumps and tangled blackberry
vines of the clearing. She tilted her chin, and glanced shyly from
beneath the brim of her big hat at the solemn stumps, and looked just as
pretty as she possibly could for the benefit of the bold, noisy finches.
With her light summer dress and her picture-hat and her open-work
stockings and her absurd little high-heeled, silver-buckled shoes she
had somehow regained the feminine self-confidence which her thick boots
and sober brown woods dress had filched from her. For the first time in
this whimsical visit to a new environment she was completely happy. Dear
little Barbara; she was only eighteen.
Pretty soon the trail entered the great, cool, green forest. Barbara
closed her parasol and carried it under one arm, while with the same
hand she swept her skirt clear of the ground. She was now a _grande
marquise_ in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Through little round holes in
the undergrowth she could see away down between the trees to dashes of
sunlight and green shadows. Always Barbara conducted herself as though,
in the vista, a cavalier was about to appear, who would sweep off his
plumed hat in a bow of knightly adoration. She practised the courtesy in
return, sinking on one little high-pointed heel with a downward droop of
her pretty head and an upward cast of her pretty eyes.
"Oui, c'est un reve, un reve doux d'amour," she hummed, as the hem of
her outspread skirt just swept the ground.
"_Phew!_" came a most terrible, dreadful sound from the thicket close at
hand.
Barbara dropped her parasol, and clasped her heart with both hands, and
screamed. From the thicket two slender ears pointed inquiringly toward
her, two wide brown eyes stared frightened into hers, a delicate nose
dilated with terror. "_Phew!_" snorted the deer again, and vanished in a
series of elastic stiff-legged springs.
"Oh!" cried Barbara. "You horrid thing! How you frightened me!"
She picked up her parasol, and resumed her journey in some perturbation
of mind, reflecting on the utter rudeness of the deer. Gradually the
trail seemed to become more difficult. After a time it was obstructed
by the top of a fallen basswood. Barbara looked about her. She was not
on the trail at all.
This was distinctly annoying. Barbara felt a little resentful on account
of it. She gathered her skirts closely about her ankles, and tried to
pick her way through the undergrowth to the right. The brush was
exceedingly difficult to avoid, and a little patch of briers was worse.
Finally an ugly stub ripped a hole in the chiffon skirt. This was
unbearable. Barbara stamped her foot in vexation. She wanted to cry; and
fully made up her mind to do so as soon as she should have regained the
trail. In a little while the high beech-ridge over which she had been
travelling ended in a narrow cedar-swamp. Then Barbara did a foolish
thing; she tried to cross the swamp.
At first she proceeded circumspectly, with an eye to the chiffon. It was
torn in a dozen places. Then she thrust one dear little slipper through
the moss into black water. Three times the stiff straight rods of the
tamarack whipped her smartly across the face. When finally she emerged
on the other side of the hundred feet of that miserable cedar-swamp, she
had ceased to hold up the chiffon skirt, and was most vexed.
"I think you're just _mean_!" she cried, pettishly, to the still forest;
and then caught her breath in the silence of awe.
The forest had become suddenly unfriendly; its kindliness had somehow
vanished. In all directions it looked the same; straight towering
trunks, saplings, undergrowth. It had shut her in with a wall of green,
and hurry in whatever direction she would, Barbara was always inclosed
in apparently the same little cell of leaves.
Frightened, but with determination, she commenced to walk rapidly in the
direction she believed would lead her out. The bushes now caught at her
unheeded. She tore through briers, popples, moose-maples alike. The
chiffon was sadly marred, the picture-hat stained and awry, the brave
little shoes with their silver buckles and their pointed high heels were
dull with wet. And suddenly, as the sun shadows began to lift in the
late afternoon, her determined stock of fortitude quite ran out. She
stopped short. All about her were the same straight towering trunks, the
saplings, the undergrowth. Nothing had changed. It was useless.