King Spruce Part 53

The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" had listened to this recital intently. It agreed forebodingly. In fact, in special session the club pa.s.sed a vote of dismal prophecy for the whole Jerusalem operation.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PARADE PAST RODBURD IDE'S PLATFORM

"'Twas a hundred wet miles to the handiest rail, And his home it was fifty more; And behind on our bateau's bubblin' trail Raced Death with his m.u.f.fled oar."

--Ballad of the Drive.

Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye's," as sombre prophets, were distinctly cheered by the sight of Boss Colin MacLeod borne past Rodburd Ide's store on a litter. They were hurrying him to the hospital down-river, and he had his teeth set into his lip to keep back the groans.

"No, sir! No fifty more miles of that for you, my boy," declared Ide, when he was told that MacLeod's arm and leg were broken. "Into my house you go, and the doctor comes here." And MacLeod was put to bed in the spare room, weeping quietly.

"It was the head-works warp done it, Mr. Wade," he moaned, turning hollow eyes upon his sympathizer. "Broke and snapped back. I told him man's strength couldn't warp them logs across against that wind, but he was bound to make us do it. He said I was a coward, Mr. Wade. But I took the place at the guide-block to show I wasn't. And then he cursed me for gettin' hurt!"

When Wade left the room he found Kate Arden waiting outside. During the days he had been at Castonia the girl had appeared to avoid him. She had paled when he spoke to her, replied curtly, and hurried away as though she feared he was about to broach some topic that would distress her.

Yet it was not towards him merely that she had displayed that apprehensive reserve. Not even to Nina Ide did she open her heart, and Nina told Wade of this with wonderment and grief. She had been docile, even to the subterfuge of sitting silent by John Barrett's bedside when Elva Barrett had resigned her trust to seek Dwight Wade in the wilderness. She had made no comment, asked no questions. She had showed dumb grat.i.tude, and eagerly sought such household tasks as could be intrusted to her untrained hands. But wistful shrinking, the air of a wild thing confined but not tamed, was with her ever.

Now, when she faced Wade outside the door, her eyes shone like stars, her cheeks flamed, and the old fearlessness and determination were in her features.

"I shall take care of him," she said. "I shall nurse him, and no one but me! I shall know how, Mr. Wade. He'll need me now. You go and tell them all that I shall nurse him. No one else shall do it."

It was the woods mate claiming her own. It was more than love as convention has cla.s.sed it. It was the fire, lighted by the primordial torch of pa.s.sion, which burns and does not reason, not to be smothered by rebuff or abuse; its pride not the calculating pride of a resentment that can divorce it from its object, but the pride of blind, utter loyalty through all.

Dwight Wade had gone near enough to the heart of things to understand this love.

He looked at her a little while, sympathy lighting his eyes and vibrating in his voice as he answered her:

"You shall have him, poor little girl, because he needs you."

He opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and left them alone together.

Two days later the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" realized the full climax of ominous prophecy and was correspondingly content. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was brought out from Jerusalem dead-water and taken down-river, a helpless hulk of a man grunting stertorous breaths, the right hand, which had waved command all those years along Umcolcus, now hanging helpless at his side, his right leg dangling uselessly as they lifted him along to a wagon.

It was the fate that the choleric tyrant had invited. That last and mightiest rage of his life, when with swollen veins and purple face he had stamped about the head-works platform, had done for Pulaski Britt and his weakened blood-vessels what those who knew him well had predicted. Wade was not surprised, for the suppression of Britt by this means and at this frantic climax in Britt's affairs was too entirely logical. It came to him suddenly that he felt a sense of relief, and then he wondered with shame whether he had hoped for it. Then he dismissed the speculation as unprofitable and not agreeable. The tyrant was in chains of his own forging. His logs came limping along in scattered squads, and were sent through the sorting-gap and down-river.

The new master of the corporation drive was not cordial when he appeared, hurrying towards headwaters. But he was not hostile, either.

He surlily demanded expedition at the Castonia sorting-gap, and went on up-river.

There are some combatants who, seeing a crisis approaching, feel that it is their best policy to sit down and wait until the crisis comes to them. This implies the calculation that perhaps the crisis may go around the other way, but it is not the policy for the intrepid. In his present mood Dwight Wade decided to go to meet the crisis, with head erect and shoulders back.

He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving a.s.sociation, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was the fault of Dwight Wade's resolute determination to face the issue.

The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt.

Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer's cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which had pounded emphasis.

In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John Barrett's office in "Castle Cut 'Em."

On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June, and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the days between himself and the free life out-of-doors.

"Mr. Ide was tellin' me why you are goin' and where you are goin'," said MacLeod, with simple earnestness. Kate Arden was sitting with her head on his knee, and he was smoothing her hair gently. "I wanted the little girl to stay here while I talked this to you. I told you about my dream once, man-fas.h.i.+on. I've told her about it. I ain't excusin' or screenin'

myself. I didn't know, that's all. I never tried to fool this little girl, Mr. Wade. They lied who said I did. I pitied her, Mr. Wade. But it's a hard place to start in lovin' a girl where I saw her first--and I'd seen some one else before I saw her. But I know now, sir. I've told her so all these days that she's been with me, so true and tender. I reckon I never was in love before. I wouldn't have acted that way with you, sir, if I really was in love and trusted. But there ain't no mistake this time, Mr. Wade!" He gulped, a sob in his throat and a smile in his eyes. "I'm her man for ever and ever. She knows it and she's glad. And I know she's all mine, and I'm the happiest man in the whole north country."

He broke in upon Wade's eager burst of congratulation.

"There's just one more word I wanted to say--sort of in the way of business, Mr. Wade." There was a peculiar expression upon his face.

"Maybe when you're outside some one--_some one_ may drop a word or inquire about her business--you know--something about her." His look of strange significance became deeper, and Wade understood. "All is, you might say that she and Colin MacLeod are goin' to get married, and Colin MacLeod ain't askin' anybody for her--only herself and G.o.d. G.o.d ain't denyin' His Fathers.h.i.+p to a girl as good as she is. Colin MacLeod ain't askin' anything else--ain't allowin' anything else. Say that to 'em.

He's got his own two hands and eleven hundred dollars saved, and the big woods for her and for him. She and I wouldn't be happy outside the big woods, Mr. Wade. Say it all to 'em, sir, if any one drops a word to you--and they probably will, because you've had words with them. You'll know how to say it. But make it plain that it will be dangerous business for any man to reach out his hand to her or to me with anything in it--and tell 'em it's Colin MacLeod says that," he added, bitterly.

"The only things you need, Colin," cried Wade, advancing towards him, "are good-will and friends.h.i.+p, and both are in the hand I give you."

At the door he turned.

"Will you wait until I come back, Colin?" he asked. "I would like to stand up with you when you are married--Nina Ide and I."

"I'll wait, Mr. Wade," returned the other, tears of grat.i.tude springing to his eyes. "And may luck go with you in this business."

That fervent wish, put again into words, followed him next morning when he departed from Castonia. This time it was Tommy Eye who said it--Tommy Eye, fresh down with the rear of the drive, and a very timorous and apprehensive figure of an outlaw. But he seemed to be a little disappointed after Wade had a.s.sured him that the matter of Blunder Lake dam would be a.s.sumed by the Enchanted Company, and that Tommy himself had nothing to fear.

"I reckon you can do it, Mr. Wade. You can do most anything you set out to," sighed Tommy. "Howsomever, I kind of figgered on that outlaw business to keep me away from down-river. The city ain't good for the likes of me. They begin to rattle the keys of the calaboose the minute I get off'n the train."

"Tommy," commanded Wade, severely, "don't you go down-river this season.

You stay here and attend to the work we've got marked out for you."

"That's just as good a wheel-trig as the outlaw proposition would be,"

declared Tommy, his face clearing. "Orders from you settles things, Mr.

Wade. Here I stay."

On the morning of his departure Rodburd Ide's daughter walked with Wade to the store, where the stage started. In the days of their late intimacy the girl had grown into his heart. The sincerity of a sister, self-reliance and womanly sympathy had characterized her att.i.tude towards him from the first; and she had welcomed a friends.h.i.+p which lifted her to a comrade's level. She was as yet an altruist in matters of the heart; she frankly and openly interested herself only in the loves of others.

Wade knew all the unspoken words that her sympathy dictated when, standing out before them all, she clasped his hand before he clambered over the wheel of the old stage.

He saw no very clear horizon for his own love, but his comrade's smile heartened him, and the flutter of her handkerchief carried its message of good courage when the stage pitched down the slope that hid Castonia settlement.

The road to "Castle Cut 'Em" lay before him. At that moment the Honorable John Barrett loomed so largely as a foe that Dwight Wade's thoughts were of his fight. Of his love he hardly dared to think at all.

The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" watched the departure of the stage that day with more than usual interest, also with somewhat deeper gloom.

The knowledge that Dwight Wade and his partner had a.s.sumed all blame for the destruction of Blunder Lake dam was current in all the north country.

King Spruce's delay in visiting punishment only made the situation graver in the estimation of the prophets of evil. King Spruce had many weapons, and in the past had promptly seized the one nearest at hand and dealt a crus.h.i.+ng blow when provocation was given. The fact that the new drive-master had pa.s.sed on without even as much as a threat of retribution was taken as an ominous presage. It was agreed that when King Spruce remained grimly silent so long, in order to revolve a project of retaliation, he must be whittling an especially mighty bludgeon.

The members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" very frankly expressed thoughts of this tenor to the half-dozen men who arrived at Castonia in the early morning to take the stage down-river with Wade. The men gloomily agreed.

Two of them showed signs of funk at the last moment, and had to be coaxed on board the stage by the young man.