The Man in the Twilight Part 20

The manager was prompt to take his cue.

"It's not mine," he said. "It must be yours, Miss McDonald. If it isn't I guess you'd best have it till we find its owner."

The girl smiled from one to the other.

"Thanks ever so much," she said, with frank pleasure. "I'll keep it till we find the owner. It's a lovely thing."

She took the glittering pen from the fleshy fingers holding it. And just for an instant her hand encountered the banker's. It was only for an instant, however. A moment later the door was closed carefully behind her by the man who had thought Elas crazy to employ a woman.

"Well?"

Elas Peterman was seated behind his desk again. His challenging smile was directed at the heavily breathing figure of the banker who had hurried back to his chair.

The great man laughed. It was a curious, unpleasant laugh. His heavy cheeks were flushed, and his eyes glittered curiously.

"You're a judge, Elas, my boy," he exclaimed, with clumsy geniality.

"Oh, yes. But you are a young man. There is power in that young woman's eyes." He laughed again. "Oh, no, I think of the young woman. It not her capability is. See you look to your place in Skandinavia. Let her go.

She may not buy this Sachigo as I think to buy it. She will buy the men we would drive from our path."

CHAPTER VI

THE LONELY FIGURE

The girl was leaning against the storm-ripped bole of a fallen tree. The great figure of her companion was silhouetted against the brilliant sky-line. He was contemplating the distance at the brink of a sheer-cut ravine, which dropped away at his feet to giddying depths.

Nancy gazed out beyond him. For the moment he held no interest for her.

She only had eyes for the splendid picture of Nature. They were on high ground, a great shoulder lifted them clear above their surroundings. Far as the eye could see was a l.u.s.treless green world of unbroken forest. It seemed to have neither beginning nor end. To the girl's imagination there could be no break in it until the eternal snows of the Arctic were reached.

The breadth of it all was a little overwhelming. Nancy was gazing upon just one portion of the Skandinavia's untouched forest limits, and somehow it left her with a feeling of protest.

She pointed with one gauntleted hand, stirred to an impulse she could not deny.

"It's too beautiful," she said. "It isn't fair: it's not right. To think it's all ours, and we have the right to destroy it."

The man turned. He gazed back at this unusual vision of a beautiful, well-gowned woman in the heart of the forests. He grinned ironically, this great, rough-bearded creature, in hard cord clothing, and with his well-worn fur cap pressed low over his lank hair that reached well-nigh to his shoulders.

"Why not?" he demanded roughly. "Oh, yes. It's Skandinavia's, every mile of it. An' I guess there's hundreds an' hundreds of 'em. Ain't that what Canada's forests are for? To feed us the stuff we're needin'? But you don't need to worry any. We ain't cuttin' that stuff for years. Guess the waterways out there are mostly a mean outfit that wouldn't raft a bunch of lucifers. We need to wait permanent railroad for haulage."

Nancy accepted the statement without reply. It was impossible to stir a man like Arden Laval to any sort of sympathy. He was hardened, crude, first, last and all the time. He was big and brutal. His limbs were like to the trees his men were accustomed to fell, and his hands reminded her of the hind limbs of the mutton. She felt he had a mind that matched his physical development.

Nancy McDonald was nearing the end of her third month of forest travel.

The s.h.a.gaunty valley lay behind her, desolated by the fierce axe of the men who lived by their slaughter. She had seen it all. She had studied the re-afforestation which followed on the heels of the axemen. And the seeming puerility of this effort to salve the wounds inflicted upon Nature had filled her with pitying contempt.

She knew the whole process of the forest industry by heart now. It fascinated her. Oh, yes. It was picturesque, it was real, vital. The men on the river driving down to the booms had stirred her greatest admiration. These supermen with their muscles of iron, with the hearts of lions, and the tongues and habits of beasts of the forest. But they were men, wonderful men for all their savage crudity. So, too, with the transporters and freighters handling sixty-foot logs as though dealing with matchwood. But above all, and before all, the axemen made their appeal.

There was nothing comparable with the rough skill of these creatures.

She had watched the flash and swing of the axe, with its edge like the finest razor. She had seen the standing muscles like whipcord writhing under sunburnt flesh as they served the lethal weapon. She had noted every blow, how it was calculated to a hair's-breadth, and fell without waste of one single ounce of power. And then the amazing result. The fallen tree stretched out on the exact spot and in the exact direction ready for the hauliers to bear straight away to the final transport station.

The summer days had been filled with vital interest. And at night, weary in body, Nancy still had time, lying in the amply, if crudely blanketed bed provided for her in some lumber-built shanty, to contemplate the lives of this strangely a.s.sorted race. She knew the pay of the forest men, from the haulier to the princely axeman and river-jack. She had seen their food, and their dwelling accommodation. She had heard such details as were possible of telling of their recreations, and had guessed the rest. And for all her admiration of their manhood she pitied, in her woman's way, and felt shame for the slavery of it all.

Oh, yes. She had no illusions. She was not weakly sentimental. She looked at it all with wide-open eyes. It was a well-paid animal life. It was a life of eating well, of sleeping well, of gambling, and drinking, and licence. But it was a life of such labour that only perfect physical creatures could face.

She felt that these folks were wage slaves in the crudest meaning of the words. There was nothing for them beyond their daily life, which was wholly animal. Of spirituality there was none. Of future there was none.

Their leisure was given over to their pastimes, while ahead the future lay always threatening. Stiffening muscles, disease, age. The king of them all in his youth, in age would be abandoned and driven forth, weary in body, aching in limbs, a derelict in the ranks of the world's labour.

She was gravely impressed by the things she saw, by the men she met.

Her summer had been an education which had stirred feelings and sympathies almost unguessed. It was the father, she could scarcely remember, making himself known to her. For all the ambitions firing her, the long, fascinating days in the forests of the s.h.a.gaunty had taught her of the existence of an "underdog," who, in himself, was the foundation upon which the personal ambition of the more fortunate was achieved. Without him to support the whole edifice of civilisation must crash to the ground, and life would go back again to the bosom of that Nature from which it sprang.

Her realisation inspired her with an added desire. It was a desire coming straight from an honest, unsophisticated heart. She registered a vow that whithersoever her ambitions might lead her, she would always remember the "underdog," and work for his betterment and greater happiness.

"So you can only cut the stuff here within reach of our light haulage system?" Nancy demanded at last. "The rest's gone. The real big stuff, I mean, down below in the valley. We're just driven to the plateau where the cut looks to me more like one in twenty than any better?"

Arden Laval left his position at the brink of the ravine. He came back to the girl in her modish costume that seemed so out of place beside the rough clothing that Covered his body.

"Why, I guess that's so," he said. "Still, it's a deal better than one in twenty." He laughed. "Sure. If it wasn't the darn booms 'ud need to go hungry."

The man's French temperament left him more than appreciative of the beauty he beheld. But he was wondering. He was searching his shrewd mind for the real explanation of Nancy's presence in these forests. To him it was amazing that the Skandinavia should send this girl, this good-looker, on a journey through their forests alone. He would willingly have asked the question. But he remembered her written commission, signed by Elas Peterman. So he was left with no alternative but to yield the utmost respect.

"Y'see, mam," he went on easily. "I guess I could talk quite a piece on this thing, but maybe you won't fancy my dope. Skandinavia's been badly spoilt by the cut in the s.h.a.gaunty Valley. You've seen it all. Guess you've come right through. Well, that being so, you'll understand the s.h.a.gaunty cut's been far above average. Now we're down to average.

That's all. That's how the Skandinavia's been spoilt."

He thrust his cap back from his forehead. It was a movement of irritation. Then he produced a plug of tobacco from his hip-pocket, and bit off a chew.

"I've been twenty odd years lumbering," he went on a moment later. "I've lumbered most every forest in Ontario and Quebec. There ain't more'n one bunch of plums like the s.h.a.gaunty. Mostly the forest's full of the sort of stuff we're handling here. These forests are average and I'd like to say to the Skandinavia, 'you've got to figger results on the average.'

We're cutting down to the minimum because we've got to, to feed the booms right. Well, that's goin' on if I know my job. There's patch stuff better. I daresay there's new ground on our limits liable to hand us s.h.a.gaunty stuff. But that's just as I say, patch stuff, an' not average. If they want s.h.a.gaunty quality right through let 'em get out and get limits up on Labrador. I reckon there's a hundred years cutting up there that 'ud leave s.h.a.gaunty a bunch of weed gra.s.s. They say the folks out on the coast are worried to death there's so much stuff, an'

so big, an' good, an' soft, an' long-fibred. The jacks out that way are up to the neck in a h.e.l.l of a good time, sure. I get it they've time to sleep half the year, it's so easy. Well, it ain't that way here. We've no time singing hymns around this lay-out. It's h.e.l.l, here, keeping the darn booms fed. Speakin' for my outfit I'd say they're a pretty bright lot of boys. What a feller can do they can do, I guess. But there are times I get mighty sick chasing to get even the minimum. An' it's all the time kick. The Skandinavia seems to have got a grouch about now you couldn't beat with a tank of rye whisky. You've seen it all as far as I can show you, mam, and I'd be glad to know if you're satisfied I've done the things you want. If I have, and you feel good about it, I'd be thankful if you'd report the way we're workin' this camp. And if you've a spare moment to talk other things, you might say that the boys of my camp are mighty hard put to get the stuff, and they're as tough a gang of jacks as ever heard tell of the dog's life of the forest."

The man spoke with the fluency of real protest. He somehow felt he was on his defence in the presence of this woman representative of his employers. This girl was not there enduring the discomforts of the forests for amus.e.m.e.nt. She came with authority, and she seemed to possess great understanding. Arden Laval knew his own value. His record was one of long service with his company. Furthermore, his outfit was trusted with the pioneering work of the forest where judgment and enterprise, and great experience were needed. He felt it was the moment to talk, and to talk straight to this woman with the red hair who had invaded his domain. So he gave full rope to his feelings.

It was some moments before the girl replied, and the man waited expectantly. He was studying the far-off gaze of the pretty hazel eyes, and wondering at the thought moving behind them. At length Nancy withdrew her gaze from the forest.

"I shall certainly report the things I've seen," she said with a smile that found prompt response in the man's dark eyes. "You've certainly done your best to show me, and tell me, the exact position. I shall make a point of reporting all that. Yes, I've seen it all, thank you very much."

Then her smile suddenly vanished. The shrewd gaze of commercial interest replaced it.

"But these Labrador folk?" she demanded. "Is that stuff just--hearsay?"

The man shook his head. He was feeling easier.

"It's G.o.d's truth, mam." He spat out a stream of tobacco juice. "I know them forests. Say," his eyes had lost their smile, "I don't guess I figger to know the business side of things, I don't calculate to know if the folks on Labrador work with, or against the Skandinavia. But I do know that if they're up against us they've got us plumb beat before we start. They got the sort of lumber the jacks dream about when they got their bellies full on a Sat.u.r.day night, and they're going to wake up to find it Sunday mornin'. I'm just a lumberman, and if I hadn't fifteen years' record with the Skandinavia, and wasn't pouching two hundred and fifty bucks, and what I can make besides, a month, why, it 'ud be me for the coast where you can jamb the rivers in a three months' cut, and souse rye the rest of the year till the bugs look as big as mountains.

Guess it's the summer rose garden of the lumber-jack, for all it's under snow eight months in the year, when you can't tell your guts from an iceflow, and the skitters, in summer, mostly reach the size of a gasoline tank. It's a dog's life, mam, lumberin' anywhere. But they're lap-dogs out that way."

The man's words brought the return of the girl's smile. "Yes, I spose it's--tough," she observed thoughtfully. Then quite suddenly she spread out her hands. "Oh, yes," she exclaimed, with a sudden vehemence, "it's worse than tough. It's hopeless. Utterly hopeless. I've seen it. I've watched it. I had to. I couldn't escape it. It's so desperately patent.