King Spruce Part 15

"No, Mr. Britt, we just want the chance to be human beings!" cried a tense and piercing voice. The girl had reappeared in the door of the hut. Above the meek lamentations of those about her, her voice was as the scream of a young hawk above the baaing of sheep. She pushed her way through them and stood before the Honorable Pulaski, palpitating, glowing, splendid in her fury. But she propped her brown hands on her hips--a woman of the mob--and Wade noted the att.i.tude, and flushed at the shamed thought of the likeness to Elva Barrett.

In this crisis, by right of her intelligence, her daring, her superiority, the girl seemed to take her place at the head of the pathetic herd.

"That's what we want, Mr. Britt. You're driving us down to the settlements again. And then some bow-legged old farmer will lose a sheep by bears or a hen by hawks, and we'll be set upon and driven back once more to the woods. And then you'll come and huff and puff and blow our house down and chase us away to the settlement. 'The law! The law!' you keep braying like a mule. You kick us one way; the settlements kick us another. Mr. Britt, I didn't ask to be put on this earth! But now that I'm here I've a right to ground enough to set my feet on, and so have these people. We are using no more of your stolen ground here than we'd be using in another place, and here we stay!" She stamped her foot.

"You young whippet," snorted the Honorable Pulaski, "don't sneer to me about the law when I've got eviction-papers in my pocket and the high sheriff of this county at my back."

"How about the law that makes wild-land owners pay squatters for improvements to land?" demanded the girl. "I know some law, too."

"Do you call those hog-pens improvements?" He swept his fat hand at the huts.

"You may pay some one a dollar an acre for that blue sky above us and claim that, too. You may claim all of G.o.d's open country here in the big woods. But I know that you can't shut even paupers out from the lakes and the streams any more than you can take away the sunlight from us."

"I don't know where you got your law, young woman, but I'd advise you to get better posted on the difference between right of way to State waters and squatting on private land. Now, I ain't got time to--"

"We'll not go back to the settlement--not one of us." She set her feet apart and bent a fiery gaze on him.

Britt looked away from her to his circle of supporters. The deputies stooped over their gun-barrels to hide furtive grins at sight of the timber baron thus baited by a girl on his preserves. Even the broad face of the sheriff was crinkled suspiciously. The tyrant flamed with the quick pa.s.sion for which he was noted in the north country.

"Look here, Rodliff!" His voice was like cracking twigs. "Pile the dunnage out of those huts. If any one gets in your way drive a stake and tie 'em to it." He thrust his bulgy nose into the air to sniff the direction of the wind. "Then set fire to every d--n crib. The wind's all right to carry it towards the bog."

"I don't believe you've got law enough in your pocket to do a thing like that, Mr. Britt," broke in Wade, with heat.

"You don't, hey?"

"Not to throw old men and women and children out of their houses and leave them shelterless a dozen miles from a building. There must be another way of getting at this eviction matter, Mr. Britt--one that's different from burning a hornet's nest."

"This don't happen to be any of your special business!" roared the tyrant. "If it was, you'd stand by property interests instead of backing State paupers."

"Mr. Sheriff, are you going to do that thing?"

"I'm here by order of the court, to do what Mr. Britt wants done to protect his property," replied the officer. "I'm to execute, not to plan nor ask questions."

"King Spruce runs this country up here, not human feelin's," muttered old Christopher in Wade's ear. "You won't get any satisfaction by b.u.t.tin' in. I'm ready to move. I don't like to see such things done, and I don't believe you do. Come on!" He swung his meal-bag upon his shoulders.

But the young man lingered doggedly, his eyes on the face of the girl.

"Buckin' a high sheriff and his posse ain't ever been reckoned as a profitable business speculation in these parts," mumbled the guide. "It wouldn't amount to a hoorah in tophet, and you'd probably wind up in the county jail."

The girl was gazing shrewdly at this sudden champion. There was no shade of coquetry in her glance. It was the frank gaze of man to man.

"I protest, Mr. Britt!" cried Wade.

"And that's all the good it will do," snorted that angry master of the situation. "Rodliff, you've got my orders!"

Young Jed, sidling near Britt, with the mien of a Judas and with manifest intent to curry favor, whimpered:

"We don't back her up in all she says, Mr. Britt. We ain't got rights and we know it, but we've got feelin's. Be ye goin' to do the us'al thing about damages, Mr. Britt?"

"Why," roared the tyrant, bluffly, "ain't the land-owners always made it worth your while to move? It's all business, boys! Don't let fools bust in. We don't want fire here. Get to Little Lobster as quick as the Lord'll let ye. We'll have six months' supply of pork, flour, and plug tobacco there waitin' for ye--all with the land-owners' compliments.

We've always believed that the easiest way is the best way, but you don't buy that way by buckin'. Buck, and the trade is all off--and you get thrown into another county. Close your girl's mouth and keep it shut."

"There!" grunted old Christopher, "if ye haven't got any more sympathy to waste on critters like that"--a jab of his thumb at young Jed--"you'd better come along."

But at sight of woe on the faces of the women, and mute entreaty in the eyes of the girl, Wade still lingered.

"She's speakin' for herself," whispered young Jed, hoa.r.s.ely. "She don't want to leave the woods because your boss, Colin MacLeod, is courtin'

her, and she's waitin' to see him, now that he's back from down-country."

Riotous laughter "guffled" in the throat of Pulaski Britt as he stared from the scarlet face of the girl to Wade's confusion.

"Courtin' her, hey? Another case of it? I say, Rodliff, pretty soon there won't be a whole arm or leg left on my boss if this young man here keeps chasin' him round the country and breaks a bone on him for ev'ry girl the two of 'em get against together."

He laughed to the full content of his soul, and then turned on the girl.

"Why, you ragged little fool, Colin MacLeod is crazier than a hornet in a thras.h.i.+n'-machine over Rod Ide's girl. He's up in camp now with an arm in a sling to make him remember a fight he and this young dude here got into over her. And he's up there beyond Pogey Notch sitting on a stump swearing at the choppers and bragging with every other breath that he'll kill the dude and marry the girl--and I don't reckon he's changed his mind in two days since I saw him last."

"You lie!" screamed the girl.

"Hold on, there, Miss Spitfire," broke in the sheriff, himself highly amused by the humor of the situation as it appeared to him, "there isn't a man between Castonia and Blunder Lake but what is talking about it.

A hundred men saw the fight. I reckon five hundred have heard MacLeod ravin' about how much he loves the Ide girl. So if he ever courted you it must have been just for the sake of getting used to the game." Even the fawning male citizens of Misery Gore cackled their little chorus in the laughter that followed the high sheriff's jest.

She drew back slowly and gazed on them all, her lips rolled away from her white teeth. Those jeering faces from "outside" represented property, law, the smug self-satisfaction of all who despised Misery Gore's squalid breed.

They stood there in the midst of the land they so arrogantly claimed, ready to toss her away once more in the everlasting game of battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k. They were afraid for the dollars that made them different from the wretches of Misery. They gloried in their dollars--they mocked her in that moment, the bitterness of which only her heart understood. Let them look out for their dollars, then!

Up there where the blue hills divided was sitting Colin MacLeod calling on the name of another woman and nursing a wound received for that woman's sake. Let him look out for himself!

"We can make the Blake-cutting camps with you to-night," said Britt, his mind on business once again. "We'll take good care of you, and you might as well start one time as another. Out with the stuff and down with the houses, Rodliff."

At the orders the men began to busy themselves, paying no further attention to Misery's inhabitants.

The girl ran into the hut, lifted one of the cedar splints that made the floor, and took out a section of iron gas-pipe--the most prized possession of the tribe. It was their wand of plenty. It was Mother Nature's crutch. Out of it flowed bounty.

Into the unplugged end she poured all the kerosene there was in a battered can. Then she stuffed into the tube a ma.s.s of wicking.

It was a torch--the torch for the blueberry barrens. Dragged after one, it left a blazing trail such as no other form of fire could produce.

There was a flicker of fire in the rusty stove. She thrust the wicking into the coals, and on the iron stalk a flame-flower sprang into huge blossom.

She burst through the hut's rear window and ran straight for the edge of the clearing, towards the fuel piled high in the forest aisles.

In that moment of blind and desperate fury she realized that the wind was swinging into the north. It was there that MacLeod was sitting at the foot of Pogey Notch. Ah, what a furnace-flue that would make!

She did not pause to reason. Her single wild desire was to send the fire leaping towards him.

The roar of voices behind--voices entreating, voices of malediction--made her smile. Above all was the Honorable Pulaski's bull roar. She began to drag the torch.

"Catch her! d.a.m.nation, catch that girl!" howled Britt.