Kindred of the Dust Part 2

"Thank you, Mr. McKaye."

"Mind you don't abuse your monopoly. If you do, I'll take it away from you."

"You are very kind, sir. And I can have the Sawdust Pile, sir?"

"Yes; since Donald gave it to you. However, I wish you'd tear down that patchwork fence and replace it with a decent job the instant you can afford it."

"Ah, just wait," old Brent promised. "I know how to make things neat and pretty and keep them s.h.i.+pshape. You just keep your eye on the Sawdust Pile, sir." The old wind-bitten face flushed with pride; the faded sea-blue eyes shone with joyous antic.i.p.ation. "I've observed your pride in your town, sir, and before I get through, I'll have a prettier place than the best of them."

A few days later, The Laird looked across the Bight of Tyee from his home on Tyee Head, and through his marine gla.s.ses studied the Sawdust Pile. He chuckled as he observed that the ramshackle shanty had disappeared almost as soon as it had been started and in its place a small cottage was being erected. There was a pile of lumber in the yard--bright lumber, fresh from the saws--and old Caleb Brent and the motherless Nan were being a.s.sisted by two carpenters on the Tyee Lumber Company's pay-roll.

When Donald came home from school that night, The Laird asked him about the inhabitants of the Sawdust Pile with relation to the lumber and the two carpenters.

"Oh, I made a trade with Mr. Brent and Nan. I'm to furnish the lumber and furniture for the house, and those two carpenters weren't very busy, so Mr. Daney told me I could have them to help out. In return, Mr. Brent is going to build me a sloop and teach me how to sail it."

The Laird nodded.

"When his little home is completed, Donald," he suggested presently, "you might take old Brent and his girl over to our old house in town and let them have what furniture they require. See if you cannot manage to saw off some of your mother's antiques on them," added whimsically. "By the way, what kind of shanty is old Brent going to build?"

"A square house with five rooms and a cupola fitted up like a pilot-house. There's to be a flagpole on the cupola, and Nan says they'll have colors every night and morning. That means that you hoist the flag in the morning and salute it, and when you haul it down at night, you salute it again. They do that up at the Bremerton navy-yard."

"That's rather a nice, sentimental idea," Hector McKaye replied. "I rather like old Brent and his girl for that. We Americans are too p.r.o.ne to take our flag and what it stands for rather lightly."

"Nan wants me to have colors up here, too," Donald continued. "Then she can see our flag, and we can see theirs across the bight."

"All right," The Laird answered heartily, for he was always profoundly interested in anything that interested his boy. "I'll have the woods boss get out a nice young cedar with, say, a twelve-inch b.u.t.t, and we'll make it into a flagpole."

"If we're going to do the job navy-fas.h.i.+on, we ought to fire a sunrise and sunset gun," Donald suggested with all the enthusiasm of his sixteen years.

"Well, I think we can afford that, too, Donald."

Thus it came about that the little bra.s.s cannon was installed on its concrete base on the cliff. And when the flagpole had been erected, old Caleb Brent came up one day, built a little mound of smooth, sea-washed cobblestones round the base, and whitewashed them.

Evidently he was a prideful little man, and liked to see things done in a seamanlike manner. And presently it became a habit with The Laird to watch night and morning, for the little pin-p.r.i.c.k of color to flutter forth from the house on the Sawdust Pile, and if his own colors did not break forth on the instant and the little cannon boom from the cliff, he was annoyed and demanded an explanation.

III

Hector McKaye and his close-mouthed general manager, Andrew Daney, were the only persons who knew the extent of The Laird's fortune. Even their knowledge was approximate, however, for The Laird disliked to delude himself, and carried on his books at their cost-price properties which had appreciated tremendously in value since their purchase. The knowledge of his wealth brought to McKaye a goodly measure of happiness--not because he was of Scottish ancestry and had inherited a love for his baubees, but because he was descended from a fierce, proud Scottish clan and wealth spelled independence to him and his.

The Laird would have filled his cup of happiness to overflowing had he married a less mediocre woman or had he raised his daughters as he had his son. The girls' upbringing had been left entirely in their mother's hands. Not so with young Donald, however--wherefore it was a byword in Port Agnew that Donald was his father's son, a veritable chip of the old block.

By some uncanny alchemy, hard cash appears to soften the heads and relax the muscles of rich men's sons--at least, such had been old Hector's observation, and on the instant that he first gazed upon the face of his son, there had been born in him a mighty resolve that, come what might, he would not have it said of him that he had made a fool of his boy. And throughout the glad years of his fatherhood, with the stern piety of his race and his faith, he had knelt night and morning beside his bed and prayed his G.o.d to help him not to make a fool of Donald--to keep Donald from making a fool of himself.

When Donald entered Princeton, his father decided upon an experiment.

He had raised his boy right, and trained him for the race of life, and now The Laird felt that, like a thoroughbred horse, his son faced the barrier. Would he make the run, or would he, in the parlance of the sporting world, "dog it?" Would his four years at a great American university make of him a better man, or would he degenerate into a sn.o.b and a drone?

With characteristic courage, The Laird decided to give him ample opportunity to become either, for, as old Hector remarked to Andrew Daney: "If the lad's the McKaye I think he is, nothing can harm him.

On the other hand, if I'm mistaken, I want to know it in time, for my money and my Port Agnew Lumber Company is a trust, and if he can't handle it, I'll leave it to the men who can--who've helped me create it--and Donald shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Tools,"

he added, "belong to the men that can use them."

When Donald started East for college, old Hector accompanied him as far as Seattle. On the way up, there was some man-talk between them.

In his youth, old Hector had not been an angel, which is to state that he had been a lumberjack. He knew men and the pa.s.sions that beset them--particularly when they are young and l.u.s.ty--and he was far from being a prude. He expected his son to raise a certain amount of wild oats; nay, he desired it, for full well he knew that when the fires of youth are quenched, they are liable to flare disgracefully in middle life or old age.

"Never pig it, my son," was his final admonition. "Raise h.e.l.l if you must, but if you love your old father, be a gentleman about it. You've sprung from a clan o' men, not mollycoddles."

"Hence the expression: 'When Hector was a pup,'" Donald replied laughingly. "Well, I'll do my best, father--only, if I stub my toe, you mustn't be too hard on me. Remember, please, that I'm only half Scotch."

At parting, The Laird handed his son a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.

"This is the first year's allowance, Donald," he informed the boy gravely. "It should not require more than a hundred thousand dollars to educate a son of mine, and you must finish in four years. I would not care to think you dull or lazy."

"Do you wish an accounting, father?"

The Laird shook his head.

"Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, my son. I'll read the accounting in your eye when you come back to Port Agnew."

"Oh!" said young Donald.

At the end of four years, Donald graduated, an honor-man in all his studies, and in the lobby of the gymnasium, where the athletic heroes of Princeton leave their record to posterity, Hector McKaye read his son's name, for, of course, he was there for commencement. Then they spent a week together in New York, following which old Hector announced that one week of New York was about all he could stand. The tall timber was calling for him.

"Hoot, mon!" Donald protested gaily. He was a perfect mimic of Sir Harry Lauder at his broadest. "Y'eve nae had a bit holiday in all yer life. Wha' spier ye, Hector McKaye, to a trip aroond the worl', wi' a wee visit tae the auld clan in the Hielands?"

"Will you come with me, son?" The Laird inquired eagerly.

"Certainly not! You shall come with me. This is to be my party."

"Can you stand the pressure? I'm liable to prove an expensive traveling companion."

"Well, there's something radically wrong with both of us if we can't get by on two hundred thousand dollars, dad."

The Laird started, and then his Scotch sense of humor--and, for all the famed wit of the Irish, no humor on earth is so unctuous as that of the Scotch--commenced to bubble up. He suspected a joke on himself and was prepared to meet it.

"Will you demand an accounting, my son?"

Donald shook his head.

"Keeping books was ever a sorry trade, father, I'll read the accounting in your eye when you get back to Port Agnew."

"You braw big scoundrel! You've been up to something. Tell it me, man, or I'll die wi' the suspense of it."

"Well," Donald replied, "I lived on twenty-five hundred a year in college and led a happy life. I had a heap of fun, and nothing went by me so fast that I didn't at least get a tail-feather. My college education, therefore, cost me ten thousand dollars, and I managed to squeeze a roadster automobile into that, also. With the remaining ninety thousand, I took a flier in thirty-nine hundred acres of red cedar up the Wiskah River. I paid for it on the instalment plan --yearly payments secured by first mortgage at six per cent., and----"

"Who cruised it for you?" The Laird almost shouted. "I'll trust no cruiser but my own David McGregor."