King Spruce Part 11

"That's what I'm here for," replied the boss, with grim significance.

"Then go and offer an apology to that young lady. Do it, and I'll cancel the one you owe to me."

If Wade had been seeking to provoke, he could have chosen no more unfortunate words.

"Apology!" howled MacLeod. "Do ye hear it, boys? Talkin' to me like I was a Micmac and didn't know manners! Here's an Umcolcus apology for ye, ye putty-faced dude!"

His lunge was vicious, but in his contempt for his adversary it was wholly unguarded. A woodsman's rules of battle are simple. They can be reduced to the single precept: Do your man! Knuckles, b.u.t.ting head, a kick like a game-c.o.c.k with the spiked boots, grappling and choking--not one is called unfair. MacLeod simply threw himself at his foe. It was blood-l.u.s.t panting for the clutch of him.

Those who told it afterwards always regretfully said it was not a fight--not a fight as the woods looks at such diversions. No one who saw it knew just how it happened. They simply saw that it had happened.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WADE STOOD ABOVE THE FALLEN FOE"]

To the former football centre of Burton it was an opening simple as "the fool's gambit" in chess. His tense arms shot forward, his hands clasped the wrists of the flying giant with snaps like a steel trap's clutch, his head hunched between his shoulders, he went down and forward, tugging at the wrists, and by his own momentum MacLeod made his helpless somersault over the college man's broad back.

And as he whirled, up lunged the shoulders in a mighty heave, and the woodsman fell ten feet away--fell with the soggy, inert, bone-cracking thud that brings a groan involuntarily from spectators. He lay where he fell, quivered after a moment, rolled, and his right arm twisted under his body in sickening fas.h.i.+on.

The girl gave a sharp cry, gathered her skirts about her, and ran away up the street.

"He's got it!" said 'Liah Belmore, with the professional decisiveness of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club."

"I've read about them things bein' done by the Dagoes in furrin' parts,"

remarked Martin McCrackin, gazing pensively on the prostrate boss, "but I never expected to see it done in a woods fight."

There was silence then for a moment--a silence so profound that the breathing of the spectators could be heard above the summer-quieted murmur of the Hulling Machine. Wade walked over and stood above the fallen foe. He was not gainsaid. Woods decorum forbids interference in a fair fight.

As he stood there a rather tempestuous arrival broke the tenseness of the situation. From the mouth of a woods road leading into the tangled mat of forest at the foot of Tumbled.i.c.k came a little white stallion drawing a muddy gig.

Under the seat swung a battered tin pail in which smouldered dry fungi, giving off a trail of smoke behind--the smudge pail designed to rout the black-flies of summer and the "minges" of the later season.

An old man drove--an old man, whose long white hair fluttered from under a tall, pointed, visorless wool cap with a knitted k.n.o.b on its apex.

Whiskers, parted by his onrush, streamed past his ears.

He pulled up so suddenly in front of Ide's store that his little stallion skated along in the dust.

"Hullo," he chirped, c.o.c.king his head to peer, "Cole MacLeod down!"

He whirled, leaped off the back of the seat, and ran nimbly to the prostrate figure.

"Broken!" he jerked, fumbling the arm. "No--no! Out of joint!"

"Let the man alone," commanded Wade. "He'll need proper attendance."

"Proper attendance!" shrilled the little old man, with snapping eyes.

"Proper attendance! And I guess that you haven't travelled much that you don't know me. Here, two of you, come and sit on this man! I'll have him right in a jiffy. Don't know me, eh?" He again turned a scornful gaze on the time-keeper. "Prophet Eli, the natural bone-setter, mediator between the higher forces and man, disease eradicator, the 'charming man'--I guess this is your first time out-doors! Here, two of you come and hold Cole MacLeod!"

When Wade, knitting his brows, manifested further symptoms of interference, Rodburd Ide took him by the arm and led him aside.

"Let the old man alone," he said. "He'll know what to do. A little cracked, but he knows medicine better than half the doctors that ever got up as far as this."

They heard behind them a dull snap and a howl of pain from MacLeod.

"There she goes back," said Ide. "He's lived alone on Tumbled.i.c.k for twenty years, and I suppose there's a story back of him, but we never found it out this way. We just call him Prophet Eli and listen to his predictions and drink his herb tea and let him set broken bones and charm away disease--and there's no kick coming, for he will never take a cent from any one."

Four men had carried MacLeod to the wagon. His forehead was bleeding but he was conscious, for the sudden wrench and bitter pain of the dislocated shoulder had stirred his faculties.

"Well, you've had it out, have you?" demanded the Honorable Pulaski, coming around the corner of the store and taking in the scene. "What did I tell you, MacLeod? Listen to me next time!"

"And you listen to me, too!" squalled MacLeod, his voice breaking like a child's. "This thing ain't over! It's me or him, Mr. Britt. If he goes in with your crew, I stay out. If you want him, you can have him, but you can't have me. And you know what I've done with your crews!"

"You don't mean that, Colin," bl.u.s.tered Britt.

"G.o.d strike me dead for a liar if I don't."

"It's easier to get time-keepers than it is bosses," said the Honorable Pulaski, with the brisk decision natural to him. He whirled on Wade.

"You'd better go home, young man. You're too much of a royal Bengal tiger to fit a crew of mine." He turned his back and began to order his men aboard the tote teams.

Wade stood looking after them as the wagons "rucked" away, his face working with an emotion he could not suppress.

"Well, that's Pulaski all over!" remarked Ide at his elbow. "He'll fell a saw-log across a brook any time so as to get across without wetting his feet, and then go off and leave the log there."

He stood back and looked the young man over from head to feet, with the shrewd eye of one appraising goods.

"Mr. Wade," he said, at last, "will you step into my back office with me a moment?"

When they were there, the store-keeper perched himself on a high stool, hooked his toes under a round, thrust his face forward, and said:

"Here's my business, straight and to the point. I'm a little something in the lumbering line up this way, myself. What with land, stumpage rights, and tax t.i.tles I've got two towns.h.i.+ps, but they're off the main river, and I haven't done much with 'em. I'm going to be honest, and admit I can't do much with 'em so long as Britt and his gang control roll-dams, flowage, and the water for the driving-pitch the way they do.

They haven't got the law with 'em, but that makes no difference to that crowd, the way they run things. Now, you don't know the logging business, but a bright chap like you can learn it mighty quick. And you've shown to-day that there are some things you don't have to learn, and that's how to handle men--and that's the big thing in this country as things are now. What I want to ask you, fair and plain, is, do you want a job?"

"What, as a prize-fighter?" asked the young man, surlily.

"No, s'r, but as a boss that can boss, and has got the courage to hold up his end on this river! I know this all sounds as though I were temporarily out of my head in a business way, but you've made a reputation in the last half hour here that's worth ten thousand to the man that hires you. There's money in the lumbering business, Mr. Wade.

The men that are in it right are getting rich. But you've got to get into it picked end to. Here's the way you and I are fixed: you might wait for ten years and not find the opportunity I'm offering you. I might wait ten years and not find just the man I could afford to take in with me. I've sized you. I know what sort your references will be when I ask for 'em. You seem right. Are you interested enough to listen to figures?"

And then Ide, accepting amazed silence as a.s.sent, rattled off into his details. At the end of half an hour Wade was listening with a new gleam of resolution in his eyes. At the end of an hour he was blotting his signature at the bottom of a preliminary article of agreement that was to serve until a lawyer could draw one more ample.

"And now," said Ide, slamming his safe door and whirling the k.n.o.b, "it's past supper-time and my folks are waitin'. And it's settled that you stay. I say, it's settled! Where else would you stop in this G.o.d-forsaken bunch of shacks? I've got a big house and something to eat.

Come along, Mr. Wade! I'm hungry, and we'll do the rest of our talkin'

on the road."

The young man followed him without a word. And thus entered Dwight Wade into the life of Castonia, and into the battle of strong men in the north woods.

In front of the store, as they issued, the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" was still in session, as though waiting for something. They got what they were waiting for.

"Boys," announced their satisfied "mayor," "I want to introduce to you my new partner, Mr. Dwight Wade--though he don't really need any introduction in this region after to-day. Bub!" he called to a youngster, "get a wheelbarrow and carry Mr. Wade's duffle up to my house." He pointed to the young man's meagre baggage that had been thrown off the tote wagon.

As Wade turned away he caught the keen eye of Prophet Eli fixed on him.

The eye was a bit wild, but there was humor there, too. And the cracked falsetto of the old man's voice followed him as he walked away beside his new sponsor: