King Spruce Part 50

So much, then, for what "the gang" had done for Pulaski D. Britt and his interests. Britt lacked neither words nor will to make the story a black one.

As to what they intended to do, the Honorable Pulaski declaimed, with quivering finger rapping tattoo on the map of the Blunder valley, his voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion and the perspiration of apprehensiveness streaking his puffy cheeks.

And with past enormities standing undefended, what might not a judge believe as to future atrocities when the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had made the prediction, his chief exhibit of intended outlawry being five millions of timber stranded in Blunder valley, and requiring "stolen water" to move it? His last argument was an uncontradicted allegation of attempted compromise, his last word "Blackmail!" shot at the face of the opposing lawyer while his stubby finger vibrated under the lawyer's nose.

Therefore, at the end of it all, the clerk of courts wrote, the judge signed, and five minutes after the ink was dry High Sheriff Bennett Rodliff b.u.t.toned his coat over the folded paper and set his face towards Enchanted.

Forty-eight hours later, having travelled by train, by stage, by sledge, and on foot, he stood before Dwight Wade in the midst of his crew at the landings in Blunder valley, gave the paper to him, and watched his face while he read it. Being a man who enjoyed his own authority and exulted in the power of the law when it dealt crus.h.i.+ng blows, the high sheriff noted with satisfaction that the young man's face grew pale under its tan.

"Get the sense, do you?" inquired the sheriff, allowing himself the relaxation of a chew of tobacco after his headlong rush into the north; "it's an injunction. You can't meddle with Blunder Lake dam; can't h'ist gates; can't take water!" He gazed about him at the heaped logs piled in the bed of the stream. "Kind o' seems to me," he observed, with smug rebuke, "that I'd have been slow in landin' logs down here till I knowed what the law court was goin' to do about these water-rights. Law steps slow and careful, and this whole thing has got to wait till it gets way up to the full bench. Lettin' you have water here might be an admission by the big crowd that they was all wrong on the chief proposition. The big crowd ain't that kind!"

Wade had read the injunction through to its bitter end. Every stilted phrase, every estopping, restraining word of its redundancy, was like a bar between him and his hopes. It was a temporary injunction. But the date set for a hearing on the question of permanency was a date that made those log-piles in Blunder valley loom in his dizzy gaze like monuments to buried expectations.

"Where was our lawyer when this d.a.m.nable doc.u.ment was issued?" he cried, shaking the paper under the sheriff's nose. His heart was aflame against the thing called Law. The sheriff stood there as Law's representative, expressing in his blank face such unfeeling acceptance of the situation as hopeless, that Wade wanted to jam the paper between those jaws wagging blandly on their tobacco.

"Oh, he was there!" remarked Rodliff, dryly. "Perhaps if he hadn't been there your case would have come off better. Judges ain't got much use for lawyers when the shyster kind get shown up in a graft game. The fellow who named this Blunder valley years ago," he observed, running his eyes over the log-piles once more, "must have had a gift of second-sight. Rod Ide's always been cal'lated to be level-headed. It's a wonder to me he let you fool him into this. I've heard considerable about it outside. But it's worse than I'd reckoned on."

For a sickening instant the thing showed to Wade in its blackest light.

To be sure, it was the Law that struck down his hands. But it was plain that the Law was, after all, only a part of the game--and his enemies had invoked it and had won.

"Look here, men!" shouted the high sheriff, turning from his survey of this defeated wretchedness, "I want you to take note of what I've done here. I've served an injunction on your boss. It means that he's got to leave Blunder Lake dam alone. Him and all his crew! Understand?"

The men had been slowly gathering near on the log-piles, in order to get drift of what this visit meant. Some of them had private reasons for wondering what business a high sheriff was on; all of them were curious.

And the sheriff saw Tommy Eye in the forefront.

"By-the-way, Eye," he called, "the wardens want you! You'd better come along out with me and save trouble."

"I'm an outlaw," cried Tommy, defiantly, "and I won't come with n.o.body!"

The sheriff blinked at the man who had been his uncomplaining prisoner for so many summers, and seemed to be trying to digest this defiance.

"I'm an outlaw!" repeated the man. "I ain't to work for n.o.body. I've jacked my job here. I'm just plain outlaw. I ain't responsible to n.o.body. n.o.body ain't responsible for me. You tell that to everybody concerned. I'm an outlaw!"

Rodliff, still with wondering eyes on Tommy, slowly worked a revolver out of his hip-pocket.

"Come down off'n that pile!" he shouted. "I want you!"

But once the revolver was out the target was not visible. Three leaps, his calk boots biting the logs, put Tommy out of sight behind the pile.

Two minutes later they heard him among the trees far up the slope of Blunder valley. He was still shouting his declaration of outlawry, and the diminuendo of tone indicated that he was running like a deer.

The high sheriff shoved back his revolver, scowling up at the grinning faces on the log-piles. But he found no hint of similar amiability in Wade's expression when he turned to face the young man; and after surveying him up and down with much disfavor, he shook his fist in a gesture that embraced them all, and started away, flinging over his shoulder the contemptuous remark that he seemed to have "lighted in a pretty tough gang." The significance of that expressed conviction was not lost on the young man. It revealed what machination was doing.

Britt, bulwarked by the courts and public sentiment, was not to be fought by the outlawry he had invoked as the code of combat.

An hour later Dwight Wade was urging his horse towards Castonia. If Rodburd Ide or a message from Rodburd Ide were on the way north he would meet the situation so much the sooner. The sting of his bitter thoughts and the goad of his impatience would not allow him to stay at Enchanted.

He wanted to know the exact facts "outside." He did not dare to jeopardize his partner by the rashness his bitter anger once contemplated.

A half-mile down the tote road Tommy Eye dashed at him from the covert of the spruces.

"I reckoned you'd be goin', Mr. Wade!" he panted. "I ain't intendin' to bother you--but what did Ben Rodliff say that was--that paper that he clubbed you with?"

The pitiful intensity of his loyal anxiety struck Wade to the heart. "It was an injunction, Tommy," he explained, patiently. "It's an order from the court. Oh, it's horribly unjust! It may be law, but it isn't justice; for justice would take into account a man's common rights, and wouldn't tie them up by pettifogging delays." He was talking as much to himself as to the poor fellow who clung to the thill. The words surged into his mouth out of his full soul. "I have been square with men, Tommy, square and decent. I believe in law, and I want to respect it.

But when law obeys Pulaski Britt's bidding, and takes you by the throat and kneels on you and chokes you, and lets such a man as Britt walk past on his own business, free and clear, it's law that's devil-made."

But the incantation of that law was having its effect on a nature that was more docile than it realized. In his hot anger he had said he would fight Britt with the tyrant's own lawless choice of weapons. He looked back and remembered that he had intended to do so. A sheriff with a gold badge and a bit of paper had prevailed over his bitter resolution when Pulaski Britt and his army at his back would have failed to cow him.

The dull roll of a distant detonation came to them in the little silence that followed on Wade's outburst. It came from the west, where men of the Enchanted crew were at work widening the granite jaws of Blunder gorge to give clear egress to the Enchanted drive. In that moment of his utter despair the roar of the rend-rock was a mocking voice.

"And that's all there is to an injunction?" demanded Tommy. "Ben Rodliff hands you a paper, and spits tobacker-juice on the snow, and calls you a fool, and goes down past here, like he did a little while ago, swingin'

his reins and singin' a pennyr'yal hymn? Only has to do that to tie up the whole Enchanted drive that we hundred men have sweat and froze and worked to get onto the landings?"

"Only that, Tommy," replied Wade, bitterly. "The law is sitting there on Blunder dam. You can't see it, but it's there, and it says, 'Hands off!'"

"There's something you can see, though," Tommy declared. "You can see two men in a shack that's been built over the gates of Blunder Lake dam.

One sleeps daytimes, the other sleeps nights, and they've both got Winchesters. I've been there private and personal, and looked 'em over."

"I don't want any of my men lurking about that dam," commanded Wade.

Tommy Eye cinched his worn belt one notch tighter over his thin haunches and b.u.t.toned his checkered wool jacket. "I ain't one of your men," he growled, with such sudden and sullen change in demeanor that Wade stared at him in amazement. "I've gone into the outlaw business, and I've told you so, and I've told Ben Rodliff so."

They heard the thudding boom of dynamite once more, and the absolutely fiendish look that came into Tommy's face as he turned his gaze towards Blunder valley enlightened his employer.

"That sounds good to me!" shrieked the teamster. It was as though one of the docile Dobbins of the hovel had suddenly perked up ears and tail and begun to play the part of a beast of prey.

When Tommy ran back into the spruces Wade shouted after him, insistently and angrily. But he did not reply, and after a time Wade drove on, cursing soulfully the whole innate devilishness of the woods. That another weak nature had run amuck after the fas.h.i.+on to which he had become accustomed in his woods experience seemed probable; but he had neither time nor inclination to chase Tommy Eye. As to Blunder Lake dam, he reflected that the eternal vigilance of the Winchesters guaranteed Pulaski Britt's interests in that direction, and, soul-sick of the whole wicked situation, he was glad that the Winchesters were there. He had failed. He could at least own that much man-fas.h.i.+on to Rodburd Ide.

It was a messenger that he met--not the partner himself. And as he had antic.i.p.ated, the messenger summoned him to Castonia. The last few miles of his journey took him along the bank of the Umcolcus. The big river had already thrown off its winter sheathing and was running full and free. It was waiting for the northern lakes, still ice-bound, to surrender their waters and sweep the logs down to it.

Rodburd Ide's stout soul uttered no complaints when the two had locked themselves in the little back office of the store. But his mute distress and bewilderment in the face of calamity sanctioned by the law touched his young partner more than complaints would have done. The fighting spirit was gone out of the little man.

"I didn't reckon it could go against us that bad, not after what the lawyer said. He seemed to know his business, Wade. But maybe he was too honest to fight a crowd like that. It's a crusher to come after hopes was up like mine was. I even went to work the minute the ice slid down-river, and set our sheer-booms above the logan and got the sortin'-gap ready. I was that sure our logs were comin' down. But it ain't your fault, Wade, and it ain't mine. It's just as I told you once before. It's what we're up against!"

And then, striving for a pretext to end the doleful session, he invited Wade to walk up the river-bank. He wanted to show him the site for the new great mills. "They can't steal that much away from me, my boy," he said, trying to be cheerful. "The mills will have to buy out of the corporation drive this year, seeing that we're coopered on our contract.

That means so much more good profit for Britt and his crowd. They've got their smell of what's comin', too, and that's probably why they fought so hard to get the injunction. They're in for a big make and their own prices this year. But the more I know about that charter of the Great Independent the more trouble I can see for the old crowd when the next legislature gets to tearin' this thing to pieces. The G. I.'s know what they're doin'. They'll have their rights. And when the big wagon starts little fellers like you and me can climb aboard and ride, too. But the big wagon won't start till next year," he added, sadly.

Out-of-doors they did not talk. The roar of the Hulling Machine dominated everything, and the spume-clouds swaying above it spat in their faces. On the platform of Ide's store the pathetic brotherhood of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sat in silent conclave, stunned into a queer stupor by the bellow of the Hulling Machine, even as habitual opium-eaters succ.u.mb to the blissful influence of the drug.

Above the falls an island divided the river. On the channel side the waters raced turbulently. The island sentinelled the mouth of the logan that deeply indented the sh.o.r.e on the quiet side of the river.

Ide had installed a system of sheer-booms. They spanned the current diagonally, and were to be the silent herders that would edge the log-flocks away from the banks, crowd them to centre at the sorting-gap, and keep them running free. Below the sorting-gap there were two sheer-booms--divergent. One ushered the down-river logs back into the current that dashed towards the Hulling Machine. The other would swing the logs of the Enchanted drive into the quiet holding-ground of the logan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WHAT I SAY ON THIS RIVER GOES!'"]

The thought of the heaped logs in Blunder valley, the memory of the dynamite bellowing its farewell to him over the tree-tops, and now the spectacle of these empty booms, had the eloquence of despair and the pathos of failure for Dwight Wade. And as the two of them--he and his partner--stood there and gazed silently, they were forced to face bitter accentuation of their stricken fortunes. Pulaski D. Britt, master of the Umcolcus drive, came on his way north at the head of his men. It was an army marching with all its impedimenta. There were many huge bateaux swung upon trucks that had hauled them around the white-water. Men launched them into the eddy above the Hulling Machine, and began to load them with tents, cordage, and the w.a.n.gan stores.

Rodburd Ide and his young partner stood at one side, and surveyed this scene of activity without speaking. And Britt marched up to them, raucous and domineering with the masterfulness of the river tyrant. It had long been the saying along the Umcolcus that Pulaski Britt got mad a week before the driving season opened, and stayed mad a week after it ended.

"Ide," he cried, "you and I seem to be always in trouble with each other lately! But it's of your own makin', not mine! These sheer-booms that you've stuck in here obstruct navigation. I want to get my boats up.

You've got to cut these booms loose."