King Spruce Part 30

"Bless the saints!" he gasped; "it was one drink he said, and sure with my eyes shut I couldn't see how big was the drink." He felt the thrill of the mighty potation from head to toes. His meek spirit became exalted. "If I should go out now," he mumbled, "he would say that I stole it. But I will stay here with the bottle in my hand just as it was when I took the one drink. I will show him. And, after all, it is not much he can do to me--now!" He rubbed a consolatory palm over his glowing stomach. He stood there, beginning at last to rock slowly from heel to toe, until he heard voices and footsteps. The preoccupied barons had not lingered over their repast. "No, I'll not run away. I'll not steal," muttered Tommy Eye, "but--but I'll just crawl under the bunk, here, to think over the s.n.a.t.c.h of a speech I'll make to him. And a bit later I'll feel more like bein' kicked."

From the safe gloom of his covert he noted that they had brought back with them the boss, Colin MacLeod. Britt turned down the wooden b.u.t.ton over the latch of the door and gave his guests cigars.

They smoked in silence for a while, and then Britt spat with a snap of decision into the open fire and spoke.

"MacLeod, a while ago, when we were talkin' about Rodburd Ide's girl, Nina, I told you that I wouldn't interfere in your woman affairs again--or you told me not to interfere--I forgot just which!" There was a little touch of grim irony in his tones--irony that he promptly discarded as he went on. "About that Ide girl--you ought to know that you can't catch her--after what has happened. I know something about women myself. The girl never took to you. If she had cared anything about you she would have run to you and cried over you when you were lying there in the road where Dwight Wade tossed you. That's woman when she's in love with a man. Don't break in on what I'm saying! This isn't any session of cheap men sittin' down to gossip over love questions. It may sound like it, but it's straight business. Don't be a fool any longer. But there's a girl that you have courted and a girl that thinks a lot of you, because I heard her say so one night on Jerusalem k.n.o.b.

You ought to marry that girl."

The Honorable Pulaski again checked retort by sharp command.

"That girl isn't of the blood of the Skeets and Bushees, and you know it. She is a pretty girl, and once she is away from that gang and dressed in good clothes she will make a wife that you'll be proud of.

Now, what do you say, Colin? Will you marry that girl?"

MacLeod stared from the face of his employer to the face of John Barrett, the latter displaying decidedly more interest than the questioner. Then he stood up and dashed his cigar angrily into the fire.

Blood flamed on his high cheek-bones and his gray eyes glittered.

"What has marryin' got to do with my job, or what have you got to do with my marryin'?" he asked, in hot anger.

The Honorable Pulaski continued bland and conciliating.

"Keep on all your clothes, Colin, my boy," he counselled. "Don't say anything to me that you'll be sorry for after I've shown you that I'm only doin' you a friendly turn. But I've found out a mighty interesting thing about this girl--Kate Arden, they call her. As a friend of yours I'm givin' you the tip. It would be too bad to have a girl with a nice tidy little sum of money comin' to her slip past you when all you have to do is to reach and take her."

The boss's face was surly.

"You must have been talkin' with some one in Barn Withee's crew," he suggested.

"And what does Withee's crew say?" demanded Britt, with heat.

"It wasn't a sewin'-circle I was attendin' out on that fire-line,"

retorted MacLeod, with just as much vigor. "There was somethin' bein'

talked, but I didn't stop to listen."

"Look here, MacLeod," cried his employer. Britt came close to him and clutched the belt of his wool jacket. "There are some nasty liars in these woods just now. There are some of them that will go to state-prison for attempted blackmail. You are too bright a man not to realize which is your own side. I know you well enough to believe that all the lunatics and slanderers this side of Castonia couldn't turn you against your friends. And you've got no two better friends than John Barrett and I."

"I'm not gainsaying it, Mr. Britt. But what has joinin' this matrimonial agency of yours got to do with your friends.h.i.+p or my work?"

"I've found out, Colin, that this girl has got money comin' to her from her folks. She doesn't know about it yet. No one knows about it, except us here. She never belonged to the Skeets and Bushees. She was stolen.

This money has been waitin' for her. Barrett and I are bank-men, and things like this come to our attention when no one else would hear of it. There's--there's--" Britt paused and slid a look at Barrett from under an eyebrow c.o.c.ked inquiringly. Barrett slyly spread ten fingers.

"There's ten thousand dollars comin' to her in clean cash, Colin. Now, what do you think of that?"

"I think it's a ratty kind of a story," said MacLeod, bluntly.

Britt's temper flared.

"Don't you accuse me of lyin'," he roared. "The girl has got the money comin', I say."

"Maybe it _is_ comin'," replied the boss, doggedly; "but has she got any name comin'? Has she got any folks comin'? Has she got anything comin'

except somebody's hush-money?"

The woodsman's keen scenting of the trail discomposed the Honorable Pulaski for a moment. But after a husky clearing of his throat he returned to the work in hand.

"Folks, you fool! You can't dig folks up out of a cemetery. If her folks had been alive they'd have hunted up their girl years ago. They were good folks. You needn't worry about that. There's no need now to bother the girl about her folks or the money. She wouldn't know how to handle it if she had it in her own hands. It needs a man to care for her and the cash. We don't want a cheap hyena to fool her and get it. You're the man, Colin. Marry her, and the ten thousand will be put into your fist the day the knot is tied."

"It sounds snide and I won't do it," growled MacLeod, seeming to fairly bristle in his obstinacy. "Not if she was Queen of Sheby."

"Le' him go, then!" murmured a voice under the bunk. "Here's a gen'lum puffick--ick--ly willin'."

The Honorable Pulaski turned to behold the simpering face of drunken Tommy Eye peering wistfully from his retirement.

"I'll do it ch-cheaper, so 'elp me!" said Tommy, pounding down the empty bottle to mark emphasis.

"Yank that drunken hog out o' there, MacLeod!" roared Britt, after a preface of horrible oaths. And when Tommy stood before him, swaying limply in the boss's clutch, he cuffed him repeatedly, first with one hand, then with the other. The smile on the man's face became a sickly grimace, but he did not whimper.

"'Spected kickin'," he murmured. "Jus' soon be cuffed." He held up the empty bottle that he still clung to desperately. "Want to 'splain 'bout one drink--" he began. But Britt wrenched the bottle from his hand, raised it as though to beat out Tommy's brains, and, relenting, smashed it into a corner.

"So you've laid there and listened to our private business," he said, malevolently. "You've heard more than is good for you, Eye."

"Didn't hear nossin'," protested Tommy. "Was thinkin' up speech. Jus'

heard him say he wouldn't marry--marry--"

"Marry who?"

"'Queen of Sheby,' says he, with all her di'monds. I'll marry her. I'll settle down wiz Queen of Sheby."

"He's too drunk to know anything," said MacLeod. "Open the door, Mr.

Britt, and I'll toss him out."

And he flung the soggy Tommy out on the carpet of pine-needles with as little consideration as though he were a bag of oats.

He turned at the door and looked from Britt to Barrett.

"You've put a big thing up to me, gents, and you've sprung it on me like a crack with a sled-stake. If I got dizzy and answered you short it was your own fault. Give me a night to sleep on it."

Outside he twisted his hand into the collar of Tommy Eye and started towards the main camp, dragging the inebriate. "I'll see that he keeps his mouth shut, gents," he called back to them.

"You needn't worry, John," announced Britt, closing the door and pulling out another cigar. "He'll do it." He waited for the sulphur to burn from the match, and lighted his tobacco, a smile of triumph wrinkling under his beard.

"You don't usually tackle Pulaski D. Britt for good, practical advice without gettin' it," he went on. "The girl is crazy after MacLeod.

You'll find MacLeod square when he makes a promise. He's got fool notions about those things. And when she's married to him and settled down here in these woods, where she belongs, the chap that wants to make her Exhibit A in a slander against John Barrett will find himself up against a mighty tough proposition. You see that, don't you? Now the next thing is to get her out of the hands of that gang that want to use her against you."

He mused a moment.

"All that we need to do is to send a man up to Jerusalem to-morrow, and say that you're all ready to start for outside and propose to take the girl along. If any one in this world has any rights over her, you have.

They can't refuse. And now we'll go to bed, John, for if ever two men needed sleep, I reckon we're the ones."

But it was not unbroken slumber that came to them. The big winds outside roared with the sound of a bursting avalanche. Over the camp the sawing limbs of the interlaced crowns shrieked and groaned. There were deeper, further, and more mystic sounds, like mighty 'cellos. And when the great blow was at its height the w.a.n.gan camp, built upon the roots of the splay-foot spruces, swayed with the writhing of the roots, creaked in its timbers, and seemed to toss like a craft on a crazy sea. There were noises near at hand in the woods like the detonations of heavy guns.

Every now and then the earth s.h.i.+vered, and thunderous echoes boomed down the forest aisles.

"Do you hear 'em John?" called Britt, at last. He had long been awake, and had marked the restless stirrings of the other in the bunk below him.