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The Man in the Twilight

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Title: The Man in the Twilight

Author: Ridgwell Cullum


        
Release date: January 22, 2005 [eBook #14756]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT ***

THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT

by

RIDGWELL CULLUM

G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press

1922







BY RIDGWELL CULLUM

   THE DEVIL'S KEG
   THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH
   THE BROODING WILD
   THE NIGHT RIDERS
   THE WATCHERS OF THE PLAINS
   THE COMPACT
   THE TRAIL OF THE AXE
   THE ONE WAY TRAIL
   THE SHERIFF OF DYKE HOLE
   TWINS OF SUFFERING CREEK
   THE GOLDEN WOMAN
   THE WAY OF THE STRONG
   THE LAW BREAKERS
   THE SON OF HIS FATHER
   THE MEN WHO WROUGHT
   THE PURCHASE PRICE
   THE TRIUMPH OF JOHN KARS
   THE LAW OF THE GUN
   THE HEART OF UNAGA






TO MY NEPHEW
GEOFFREY FREDERICK BURGHARD
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED




THE AUTHOR TO THE READER


The story of the Sachigo wood-pulp mills, told in this book, is entirely
a work of imagination. But as I have had to draw very largely on my
knowledge of the wood-pulp trade of Eastern Canada, and the conditions
under which it is carried on, I desire it to be clearly understood that
this story contains no portraiture of any person or persons, living or
dead, and contains no representation of any business organisation
connected with the trade.




CONTENTS


PART ONE

       I.--THE CRISIS
      II.--THE MAN WITH THE MAIL
     III.--IDEPSKI
      IV.--THE "YELLOW STREAK"
       V.--NANCY MCDONALD
      VI.--NATHANIEL HELLBEAM


PART TWO

EIGHT YEARS LATER

       I.--BULL STERNFORD
      II.--FATHER ADAM
     III.--BULL LEARNS CONDITIONS
      IV.--DRAWING THE NET
       V.--THE PROGRESS OF NANCY
      VI.--THE LONELY FIGURE
     VII.--THE SKANDINAVIA MOVES
    VIII.--AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS
      IX.--ON THE OPEN SEA
       X.--IN QUEBEC
      XI.--DRAWN SWORDS
     XII.--AT THE CHATEAU
    XIII.--DEEPENING WATERS
     XIV.--THE PLANNING OF CAMPAIGN
      XV.--THE SAILING OF THE _Empress_
     XVI.--ON BOARD THE _Empress_
    XVII.--THE LONELY FIGURE AGAIN
   XVIII.--BULL STERNFORD'S VISION OF SUCCESS
     XIX.--THE HOLD-UP
      XX.--ON THE HOME TRAIL
     XXI.--THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT
    XXII.--DAWN
   XXIII.--NANCY
    XXIV.--THE COMING OF SPRING
     XXV.--NANCY'S DECISION
    XXVI.--THE MESSAGE
   XXVII.--LOST IN THE TWILIGHT




THE MAN IN THE TWILIGHT

PART I




CHAPTER I

THE CRISIS


They sat squarely gazing into each other's eyes. Bat Marker had only one
mood to express. It was a mood that suggested determination to fight to
a finish, to fight with the last ounce of strength, the last gasp of
breath. He was sitting at the desk, opposite his friend and employer,
Leslie Standing, and his small grey eyes were shining coldly under his
shaggy, black brows. His broad shoulders were squared aggressively.

There was far less display in the eyes of Leslie Standing. They were
wide with a deep pre-occupation. But then Standing was of very different
type. His pale face, his longish black hair, brushed straight back from
an abnormally high forehead, suggested the face of a student, even a
priest. Harker was something of the roused bull-dog, strong, rugged,
furious; a product of earth's rough places.

"Give us that last bit again."

Bat's tone matched his attitude. It was abrupt, forceful, and he thrust
out a hand pointing at the letter from which the other had been reading.

Standing's eyes lit with a shadow of a smile as he turned again to the
letter.

    "There's just one thing more. It's less pleasant, so I've kept
    it till the last. Hellbeam is in Quebec. So is his agent--the
    man Idepski. My informant tells me he saw the latter leaving the
    steam-packet office. It suggests things are on the move your way
    again. However, my man is keeping tab. I'll get warning through
    at the first sign of danger."

Standing looked up. His half smile had gone. There was doubt in his
eyes, and the hand grasping the letter was not quite steady. But when he
spoke his tone was a flat denial of the physical sign that Bat had been
quick to observe.

"Charlie Nisson's as keen as a needle," Standing said. "His whisper's a
sight more than another fellow's shout."

Bat regarded the letter. He watched the other lay it aside on a pile of
papers. He was thinking, thinking hard. And his thought was mostly of
the man whose shaking hand betrayed him. Suddenly an explosive movement
brought his clenched fist down on the table with a thud.

"Hell!" he cried, in a fury of impatience. "What's the use? The danger
sign's hoisted. I know it. You know it. Nisson knows it. Well? Say,
Hellbeam's been in Quebec a score of times since--since--. That don't
worry a thing. No. He's got big finance in the Skandinavia bunch in
Quebec. We know all about that. It's Idepski. Idepski ain't visiting the
packet office for his health. He ain't figgerin' on a joy trip up the
Labrador coast. No. That's the signal, sure. Idepski at the packet
office. Their darn mud-scow mostly runs here, to Sachigo, and there
ain't a thing along the way to interest Idepski--but Sachigo. We'll be
getting word from Charlie Nisson in some hurry."

"Yes, we'll get it in a hurry."

Standing nodded. He was transparently perturbed. Bat watched him
closely. Then, in a moment, his mind was made up.

"See right here, Les," he cried, in a tone he vainly endeavoured to
restrain. "I've figgered right along this thing would need to happen
sometime. You can't beat a feller like Hellbeam all the time and leave
him without a kick. It don't need me to tell you that. But I want to get
a square eye on the whole darn game. Maybe you don't get all you did to
that guy when you cleaned him out of ten million dollars on Wall Street
seven years ago.

"Say, you were a mathematical professor at a Scottish University before
you reckoned to buck the game on Wall Street, weren't you?" he went on,
more moderately. He forced a grin into eyes that were scarcely
accustomed. "One of those guys who mostly make two and two into four,
and by no sort of imagination can cypher 'em into five. I know. You
figgered out that Persian Oil gamble to suit yourself, and forgot to
figger that Hellbeam was at the other end of it. No. The other feller
don't cut any ice with you while you're playing around with figgers.
It's only afterwards you find that figgers ain't the whole game, and
wrostling ten million dollars out of one of the biggest railroad kings
and bank presidents in America has something to it liable to hand you
nightmare. Well, you got that nightmare. So did I. You've had it for
most the whole of the last seven years. But it ain't a nightmare now.
It's dead real, which is only a way of sayin' Hellbeam's set his dogs on
a hot trail, and we're the poor darn gophers huntin' our holes right up
here on the Labrador coast.

"Oh, yes. I know what you'd say. You've said it all before. Hellbeam
hasn't a kick comin'. You were both operators on Wall Street. You were
both playing the financial game as all the world knows it. You beat him
on a straight financial fight. It was just a matter of the figgers which
it's your job to play around with.

"Now I'm just going to say the thing that's in my mind," he went on, his
tone changing again to something clumsily persuasive. "You can take it
easy from me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You
passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of
penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is
mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by
accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when
they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a
thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you
to know it when I'm telling you the things in my mind. Hellbeam's got a
mighty big kick coming. It's the biggest kick any feller of his sort can
have. He's the money power of Sweden. He's one of the big money powers
of the States. He lives for money and the power it hands him. Well? This
is how I figger. Just how you played him up I can't say. But it's his
job to juggle around with figgers same as it's yours, and if you beat
him out of ten million dollars you must have played a slicker hand than
him. All of which says you must have got more to windward of the law
than him--and he knows it. Why, it's easy. The feller who has the money
power to hold the crown jewels of Sweden from falling into the hands of
yahoo politicians out to grab the things they haven't the brains to come
by honestly, is mostly powerful enough to buy up the justice he needs,
or any other old thing. Hellbeam means to get his hands on you. He's
going to get you across the darn American border. And when he's got you
there he's going to send you down, by hook or crook, to the worst hell
an American penitentiary can show you. It's seven years since you hurt
him. But that ain't a circumstance. If it takes him seventy-seven he'll
never quit your trail."

Bat paused, and, for a moment, turned from the wide black eyes he had
held seemingly fascinated while he was talking. It almost seemed that
the emotions stirring in his broad bosom were too overpowering for him,
and he needed respite from their pressure. But he came again. He was
bound to. It was his nature to drive to the end at whatever cost to
himself.

"I'm handing you this stuff, Les, because I got to," he went on. "It
ain't because I'm liking it. No, sir. And if you've the horse sense I
reckon you have, you'll locate my object easy. Those words of Nisson's
have told us plain we got to fight. We got to fight like hell. And the
time's right now. Oh, yes, we're going to fight. You an' me, just the
same as we've fought a heap of times before. There ain't a feller I know
who's got more fight in him than you--when you feel that way.
But--well, say, you just need a boost to make you feel like it. You
ain't like me who wants to fight most all the time. No. Well--I'm going
to hand you that boost."

"How?"

Standing's unruffled interrogation was in sharp contrast with the
other's earnestness. There was a calm tolerance in it. The tolerance of
a temperament given to philosophy rather than passion. Perhaps it was a
mask. Perhaps it was real. Whatever it was, Bat's next words sent the
hot fire of a man's soul leaping into his eyes.

"When your boy's born, what then?"

"Ah!"

Bat's fists clenched at the sound of the other's ejaculation. It was the
nervous clenching at a sound that threatened danger. Swift as a shot he
followed up his challenge.

"Your pore gal's down there in Quebec hopin' and prayin' to hand you
that boy child you reckon Providence is going to send you. Well, when he
gets along, and Hellbeam's around--and--"

Bat broke off. Standing had risen from his chair. He had moved swiftly,
his lean figure propelled towards the window by long, nervous strides.
His voice came back to the man at the table, while his eyes gazed down
upon the waters of Farewell Cove, over the widespread roofs of the great
groundwood mill, the building of which was the result of his seven
years' sojourn on the Labrador coast.

"You've handed it me, Bat," he said, in a quick, nervous way. "I'll
fight. I know. You guess I'm scared at Nisson's news. Maybe I am, I
don't know. I'm not a man of iron guts. Maybe I never shall be. It's
hell to me to feel a shadow dogging my every step. Yes, you're right.
It's been a nightmare, and now--why, now it's real. But get your mind at
rest. I'm going to fight Hellbeam all I know. And with the thought of
Nancy, and the boy she's going to give me, I don't need a thing else.
No."

"That's how I figgered."

Bat's delight softened his hard eyes for the moment, and his attitude
relaxed as Standing went on.

"You reckon I've no imagination," he said. "You reckon I'm just a
calculating machine that can juggle figures better than any other
machine." He shook his dark head. "I guess you don't do me full justice.
When I quit the university on the other side it was because I had built
myself up a big dream. I crossed to the United States with my
imagination full of the things I hoped to do. It was the chance I looked
for. And I found it in Hellbeam, and the Persian Oils it was his hobby
to manipulate. I jumped in and grabbed it with both hands. And, as you
say, I beat him at his own game. But that was only part of my dream. The
next part you also know, though you choose to think it was only as a
refuge from Hellbeam that I came here to Sachigo. I admit circumstances
have modified my original dream, but then I dreamed my first dream as a
man unmarried. Now I have added to it in the thought of the son my
wife's going to present me with. After beating Hellbeam and making the
fortune I desired, I didn't flee here to the coast of Labrador as a mere
refuge from the man you tell me I robbed. No. This place served its
purpose that way, it's true. But it was the place I selected long since
for the fulfilment of the second part of my dream.

"Bat--Bat, old friend. It isn't I who lack imagination. It's you, with
your bull-dog, fighting nature. Years ago, way back there in my rooms at
the university, I took up a study that interested me mightily. It was
when the European war was on, and was doing its best to unship the
brains of half the world. I took it up to relieve myself of the strain
of things. And it inspired me with a desire to achieve something that
looked well-nigh impossible. I was watching the Swedes, the
Skandinavians generally, and I saw them getting fat and rich by holding
the rest of the world to ransom for paper and wood pulp--the stuff we
call here groundwood. It was then that my dream was born. Oh, yes, it's
changed a bit since then. But not so much. All I learned at that time
told me there was only one country in the world that was due to hold the
world's paper industry, and that country was yours--Canada. The
illimitable forests of the country are one of the most amazing features
of it. The water power--yes, and even the climate. But I saw all
Skandinavia's advantage. Hitherto they've had a complete monopoly.
Geographically they were in the thick of the world. The whole darn thing
was in their lap. But they have a weakness which you could never find in
this country. Their forests are being eaten into. Their lumber is
receding farther and farther from their mills. Their labour is
difficult. Well, I set to work with a map and those figures which you
guess are my strong point. I played around with all the information of
Quebec and Labrador I could get hold of. Then, after worrying around
awhile, I realised that, with only eighteen hundred sea miles dividing
Britain from Labrador, given the cheapness of power, sufficiently
extensive plant and forest limits and adequate shipping, I could put
groundwood on the European market in favourable competition with
Skandinavia. By this means I could build up an industry which means the
wealth of Canada for the Canadians, and establish the paper industry of
the world within the heart of our British Empire. So it was Farewell
Cove and Sachigo on the coast of Labrador for me. And the locality had
nothing to do with the man who guesses I robbed him."

It was Bat who was held silent now. He nodded his head at the narrow
back that remained turned on him.

"Well, since then," Standing went on, "seven years have passed.
Circumstances have forced modifications on my plans. Hellbeam is the
circumstance. You say we are the gophers hunting our holes. Maybe you're
right. Anyway Hellbeam's shadow is haunting me. It's haunting me in that
I know--_I_ feel--that the fulfilment of this dream is not for me. Why?"

He turned abruptly from the window. His pale face was even paler under
the excitement burning in his dark eyes. He thrust out a hand, a
delicate, long-fingered hand pointing at his friend and faithful
servant.

"Say, you reckon I've no imagination. Listen. I see the time coming when
all you say of Hellbeam's purpose will be fulfilled, and my dream
shattered and tumbling about my head. If Hellbeam succeeds, can I let
this thing happen? Can I sacrifice this great purpose in such a personal
disaster? No. My hope is in my little wife, that dear woman who's given
herself to me with the full knowledge of the threat hanging over my
future. She and I have dreamed a fresh dream. And she's even now
fulfilling her part of that dream. Yes, you're right. I'm going to fight
for our dream with every ounce that's in me. I know my failings. I'm at
heart a coward. But I'm out to fight though the gates of hell are agape
waiting for me. And when I'm beaten, and Hellbeam's satisfied his kick,
my boy, my little son, will step into my shoes and carry on the work
till it's complete. Oh, yes, I say 'my son.' Nancy will see to it that
she gives me a son. And, by God, how I will fight for him!"

Bat was silent before the tide of his friend's passion. He listened to
the strange mixture of clear thinking and unreasoning faith with a
feeling of something like awe of a man whom he had long since given up
attempting to fathom. He was a rough lumberman, a mill-boss, who, by
sheer force, had raised himself from the dregs of a lumber camp to a
position where his skill and capacity had full play. And in his utter
lack of education it was impossible that he should be able to fathom a
nature so complex, so far removed from his sphere of culture.

His devotion to the ex-university professor was based on a splendid
gratitude such as only the native generosity of his temper could bestow.
The man had once served him in his extremity. Even to this day he never
quite realised how the thing had come about, and Leslie Standing refused
to talk of it. All he knew was that as mill-boss of an obscure mill, far
in the interior of Quebec, away down south of Sachigo, he had fought one
of those sudden battles with a lumber-jack which seem to spring up
without any apparent reason. And in the desperateness of it, in the
fierce height to which his battling temper had arisen, he had killed his
man. Even so, these things were sufficiently common for little notice of
the matter to have been taken. But it so happened that the dead man was
the hero of the workers of the mill, and Bat Harker was their well-hated
boss. Forthwith, in their numbers, the workers at once determined that
Bat should pay the penalty. They seized and imprisoned him, while they
sent down country to get him duly tried and condemned. It was then the
miracle happened.

It happened in the night, with the appearance of a lean, tall man, with
a high forehead, and smooth black hair, and the clothes of civilisation
to which Bat Harker was little enough accustomed. He entered his prison
room seemingly without question. He told Bat that if he cared to get
away he had the means awaiting him outside. And the prisoner who had
visions of hanging, or at best, a long term of imprisonment, snatched at
the helping hand held out. And Leslie Standing had brought him in safety
straight to Farewell Cove, where together, with the vast capital which
the former had wrung from the Swedish financier, Nathaniel Hellbeam,
they had undertaken the creation of the great mill of Sachigo.

Bat, in his wonder at the apparent ease of his rescue, had sought
information. But little enough had been forthcoming. Leslie Standing had
only smiled in his pensive fashion.

"Money," he had said calmly. "Just money. It can do most things."

That was all. And thenceforward the subject had been taboo. Even after
seven years of intimate relations, Bat was still mystified on the
subject, he was still guessing.

Now, as he listened to his friend's expressions of faith, so strangely
jumbled with calculated purpose, he sat at the table groping helplessly.
Suppose--suppose that faith were to be shattered. What then? His mind
was concerned, deeply concerned. And he dared not put his fears into
words.

Standing came back to his chair.

"Here, we've talked these things enough," he said. "You've got my word.
Just don't worry a thing. If Hellbeam's dogs get around, well--we're
here first. All I want is news of Nancy. And that'll be along any old
time now. When I get that--."

The door of the office was thrust open, and an olive-hued face appeared.
It was the clerk who worked in direct contact with the owner of the
Sachigo mill. He was one-third nigger, another French Canadian, and the
rest of him was Indian. It was a combination that appealed to the man
who employed him.

"They've 'phoned it through from the wireless at the headland, Boss,"
the man said without preamble, pushing a sheet of paper into Leslie
Standing's hand.

He had gone as swiftly and silently as he came, and the door was closed
softly behind him.

Standing was gazing across at Bat. He had not even glanced at the
message.

"I'd like to bet," he cried, his eyes alight with a smiling excitement.
Then he shook his head. "No. I wouldn't bet on it. It's too sacred.
Nancy--my Nancy--."

He broke off, and glanced down at the paper. In a moment the smile fell
from his eyes. When he looked up it was to flash a keen glance at the
rugged face beyond the desk.

"Here, listen," he cried, with a sharp intake of breath.

"Watch _Lizzie_ for U.G.P. Signed--Nisson."

Bat nodded.

"U.G.P. That's Union Great Peninsular Railroad. That's Hellbeam's. It
means--."

"It means Hellbeam's men are aboard. The packet _Lizzie_ is due at our
quay in less than an hour."

Standing tore the message into small fragments and dropped them into the
wastepaper basket beside him. Only was his emotion displayed in the
deliberate care with which he reduced the paper to the smallest possible
fragments.




CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITH THE MAIL


The calm waters of Farewell Cove lay a-shimmer under the slanting rays
of the sun. A wealth of racing white cloud filled the dome of the summer
sky, speeding under the pressure of a strong top wind. Even the harsh
world of Labrador was smiling under the beneficence of the brief summer
season.

Leslie Standing stood for a moment before passing down the winding
woodland trail on his way to the water-front below. The view of it all
was irresistible to him in his present mood, and he feasted his eyes
hungrily while the resolve he had taken yielded an inflexible hardening.

Bat Harker was less affected by the things spread out before him. He was
concerned only for the mood of the man beside him. So he waited with
such patience as his hasty nature could summon.

"It's all good, Bat, old friend," Standing said, after a moment's silent
contemplation. "It's too good to lose. It's too good for us to stand for
interference from--Nathaniel Hellbeam."

Bat grunted some sort of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over
the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen
deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the
fussy approach of the bluff packet boat.

It was a scene of amazing natural splendour which the works of man had
no power to destroy. Farewell Cove was a perfect natural harbour,
deep-set amidst surrounding, lofty, forest-clad hills. It was wide and
deep, a veritable sea-lake, backing inland some fifteen miles behind the
wide headland gateway to the East, which guarded its entrance from the
storming Atlantic. Its shores were of virgin forest, peopled with the
delicate-hued spruce, and all the many other varieties of soft, white,
long-fibred timber demanded in the manufacture of the groundwood pulp
needed for the world's paper industry.

Far as the eye could see, in every direction, it was the same; forest
and hill. And, in the heart of it all, the great watercourse of the
Beaver River debouched upon the cove which linked it with the ocean
beyond. It was a world of forest, seeming of limitless extent.

But the feast that had inspired Leslie Standing's words was less the
banquet which Nature had spread than the things which expressed the
labours he and his companion had expended during the past seven years.
He was concerned for the endless forests. He appreciated the great
waterfall to the west, where the Beaver River fell off the highlands of
the interior and precipitated itself into the cove below. These were the
two things in Nature he had demanded to make his work possible. For the
rest, the rugged immensity of scenery, the mighty contours of the aged
land about him, the vastness of the harsh primordial world, so
inhospitable, so forbidding under the fierce climate which Nature had
imposed, made no appeal. It served, and so it was sufficient. The lights
and shades under the summer sunlight were full of splendour. No artist
eye could have gazed upon it all and missed its appeal. But these men
lived amidst it the year round, and they had learned something of the
fear which the ruthless northland inspires. To them the beauty of the
open season was a mockery, a sham, the cruel trap of a heartless
mistress.

It was on the wide southern foreshore, just below where the falls of the
Beaver River thundered into the chasm which the centuries of its flood
had hewn in the granite rock, that Standing had founded his great mill.
It lay there, in full view from the hillside, amidst a tangle of stoutly
made roads, where seven years ago not even a game track had existed. He
had set it up beside his water-power, and had given it the name which
belonged to the ruined trading post he had found on the southern
headland of the cove when first he had explored the region. Sachigo. A
native, Labrador word which meant "Storm." The trading post had since
been re-built into a modern wireless station, and so had become no
longer the landmark it once had been. But Standing's whim had demanded
the necessity for preserving the name, if only for the sake of its
meaning.

In seven years the translation of the wilderness had been well-nigh
complete. Its vast desolation remained. That could never change under
human effort. It was one of the oldest regions of the earth's land,
driven and beaten and desolated under a climate beyond words in its
merciless severity. But now the place was peopled. Now human dwellings
dotted the forest foreshore of the cove. And the latter were the homes
of the workers who had come at the mill-owner's call to share in his
great adventure.

Then there was shipping in the cove. A fleet of merchant shipping
awaiting cargoes. There was a built inner harbour, with quays, and
warehouses. There were travelling cranes, and every appliance for the
loading of the great freighters with all possible dispatch. There were
light railways running in every direction. There were sheltering "booms"
in the river mouth crammed with logs, and dealt with by an army of river
men equipped with their amazing peavys with which they thrust, and
rolled, and shepherded the vast mass of hewn timber towards the
slaughterhouse of saws. Then, immediately surrounding the mill, there
was a veritable town of storehouses and offices and machine shops of
every description. There were power-houses, there were buildings in the
process of construction, and the laid foundations of others projected.
It was a world of active human purpose lost in the heart of an immense
solitude which it was nevertheless powerless to disturb.

"Yes, it's all too good to have things happen, Bat," Standing went on
presently. "Hark at the roar of the falls. What is it? Five hundred
thousand horsepower of water, summer and winter. Listen to the drone of
the grinders." He shook his head. "It's a great song, boy, and they
never get tired of singing it. There's only thirty-six of 'em at
present. Thirty-six. We'll have a hundred and thirty-six some day. Look
down there at the booms." He stood pointing, a tall, lean figure on the
hillside. "Tens of thousands of logs, and hundreds of men. We'll
multiply those again and again--one day. It's fine. The freighters lying
at anchor awaiting their cargoes. Some day we'll have our own ships--a
big fleet of 'em. See the smoke pennants floating from our smoke stacks.
They're the triumphant pennants of successful industry, eh? We can't
have too many such flags flying. One day we'll have trolley cars running
along the shores of the cove to bring the workers in to the mill. It'll
be like a veritable Atlantic City. Oh, it's a great big dream. There's
nothing amiss. No."

"Only the _Lizzie_ getting in."

Bat was without apparent appreciation. He was thinking only of the
message they had received, and the threat it contained.

Standing glanced round at the sturdy figure beside him. A half smile lit
his sallow features. Then he turned again and sought out the tubby
vessel approaching the wharf below. But it was only for a moment. Some
subtle thought impelled him, and he glanced back at the house on the
hillside he had just left, the house he had erected for the woman whose
devotion had taught him the real meaning of life.

It was a long, low, rambling, gabled building. It was an extensive
timber-built home with a wide verandah and those many vanities and
conceits of building that would never have been permitted had it been
intended for bachelordom. He remembered how Nancy and he had designed it
together. He remembered the delight with which they had looked forward
to its completion, and ultimately their boundless joy in the task of
its furnishing. He remembered how Nancy had insisted that it should
contain not only their home, but his own private office, from which he
could control the great work he had set his hand to. It had been her
ardent desire to be always near him, always there to support him under
the burden of his immense labours. And remembering these things a fierce
desire leapt within him, and he turned again to the man at his side.

"Yes, she's getting in, Bat," he said. "But I just wanted to get a peek
at things. Well, I've seen all I want, old friend. Now I'm ready. Fight?
Oh, yes, I'm ready to fight. Come on." And he laughed as he hurried down
the woodland trail to the water-side.

       *       *       *       *       *

The two men had reached the quay-side, which was lined with bales of
wood-pulp stacked ready for shipment. Farther down its length the cranes
were rattling their chains, swinging their burdens out over the holds of
the vessel taking in its moist cargo. The stevedores were vociferously
busy, working against time. For, in the brief open season, time was the
very essence of the success demanded for the mills. The noise, the babel
of it all was usually the choicest music to Standing and his manager.

But just now they were less heeding. Their eyes were turned upon the
small steamer plugging its deliberate way over the water towards them.
It was a small, heavily-built tub of a vessel calculated to survive the
worst Atlantic storms.

Bat's face was without any expression of undue emotion. But the hard
lines about his clean-shaven mouth were sharply set. Standing was asurge
with an excitement that fired his dark eyes. His wide-brimmed hat was
thrust back from his forehead, and he stood with his hands thrust deeply
in the pockets of his moleskin trousers. His nervous fingers were
playing with loose coins and keys which they found irresistible.

The _Lizzie_ came steadily on.

"We'll know the whole game in minutes now."

Standing could keep silent no longer. Bat nodded.

"Yep."

Orders from the bridge of the packet boat rang out over the water. Then
Standing went on.

"I want to find Idepski aboard," he said. He was scarcely addressing his
companion. "It would be good to get Master Walter here, fifty-three
degrees north." A short, hard laugh punctuated his words. Then he turned
abruptly. "Who's running No. 10 camp?"

Just for an instant Bat withdrew his gaze from the approaching vessel.
He flashed a keen look of enquiry into the eyes of the questioner.

"Ole Porson," he said.

"I thought so. He's a good boy. He'll do."

Standing nodded. The cold significance of his tone was not lost on his
companion. Maybe Bat understood the thing that was passing in the
other's mind. At any rate he turned again to the broad-beamed tub
steaming so busily towards them.

"I see old Hardy on the bridge," Standing went on a moment later. Then
he added: "Fancy navigating the Labrador coast for forty years. No, I
couldn't do it. I wouldn't have the--guts."

Bat still remained silent. He understood. The other was talking because
it was impossible for him to refrain.

"They're standing ready to make fast," Standing said sharply. He drew a
quick breath. Then his manner changed and his words came pensively.
"Say, it's a queer life--a hell of a life. The sea folk, I mean. It's
about the worst on earth. Think of it, cooped within those timbers that
are never easy till they lie at anchor in the shelter of a harbour. I'd
just hate it. Their life? What is it? It's not life at all. Hard work,
hard food, hard times, and hard drinking--when they're ashore--most of
them. I think I can understand. They surely need something to drown the
memory of the threat they're always living under. No, they don't live.
They exist. Here, let's stand clear. They're coming right in."

       *       *       *       *       *

The bustle of landing was in full swing. Even with so small a craft as
the _Lizzie_ there was commotion. Orders flew from lip to lip. Creaking
cables strained at unyielding bollards. Gangways clattered out from
deck, and ran down on to the quay with a crash. Hatches were flung open
and the steam winches rattled incessantly.

Standing and Harker were looking on from a vantage point well clear of
the work of unloading. The captain of the vessel, "Old Man" Hardy, was
with them. The seaman was beaming with that satisfaction which belongs
to the master when his vessel is safely in port.

"Oh, I guess it ain't been too bad a trip," he was saying. "Takin' the
'ins' with the 'outs,' I'd say it was a fairish passage, which is mostly
as it should be, seein' it's my last voyage in the old barge. Y'see, you
folks are kind of robbing me of this blessed old kettle," he explained,
with a grin that lit up the whole of his mahogany features. "Y'see we're
loaded well-nigh rail under with stuff for your mill, which don't leave
a dog's chance for the other folks along the coast. The Company guesses
they got to put on a two thousand tonner. The _Myra_. I haven't a kick
comin'. She's all a seaboat. Still, I'm kind of sorry, don't you know.
I've known the _Lizzie_ since she came off the stocks, which is mostly
forty years, and we're mighty good friends, which ain't allus the way.
I'd say, too, I'm getting old for a change. Still--."

Standing shook his head.

"What do they say? 'Hardy' by name, 'Hardy' by nature. The toughest and
best sailorman on the Labrador coast! Well, I'm sorry you don't feel
good about it. But," he added with a smile, "it means a good deal to us
getting a bigger packet."

Captain Hardy nodded.

"Thankee kindly. It's good to know folks reckon a fellow something more
than just part of a kettle of scrap like this old packet. But I'd have
been glad to finish my job with her. Still, times don't stand around
even in Labrador." He finished up with something in the nature of a
sigh.

The work going forward was full of interest. But it was not the work
that held Standing, or the watchful eyes of Bat Harker. Their sole
interest was in the personality of the crew and the five passengers,
mostly "drummers," from the great business houses of Quebec and
Montreal, who were struggling to land their trunks of samples and get
them off to the offices of the mill so as to complete their trade before
the _Lizzie_ put to sea again. Not one of these escaped their
observation.

"You seem to keep much the same crew right along, Hardy," Standing said
pleasantly. "I suppose they like shipping with a good skipper. I seem to
recognise most of their faces."

"Oh, yes. They're mostly the same boys," Hardy agreed, obviously
appreciating the compliment. "But I guess I lost four boys this trip.
They skipped half an hour before putting to sea. It happens that way now
and then, if they're only soused enough when they get aboard. They're a
crazy lot with rye under their belts. I just had to replace 'em with
some dockside loafers, or lie alongside another day."

Standing nodded. A man was moving down the gangway bearing a large,
grey, official-looking sack on his shoulders. He was a slight, dark man
with a curiously foreign cast about his features.

"The mail?" he enquired. And a curious sharpness flavoured his demand.
Then he added, with studied indifference. "One of your--dockside
loafers?"

Captain Hardy laughed. He continued to laugh as he watched the
unhandiness of the man staggering down the gangway under his burden.

"Yep. The mail," he said. "And I'd hate to set that feller to work on a
seaman's job. He's about as unhandy as a doped Chinaman. I'd say Masters
is playing safe keeping him from messing up the running gear while we're
discharging. Say, get a look at it."

A great laugh accompanied the old man's words as the foreign-looking
creature tripped on the gangway, and only saved himself from a bad fall
by precipitating his burden upon the quay. There was no responsive
laughter in Standing. And Bat Harker's features remained rigidly
unsmiling. Standing turned sharply.

"Maybe you can spare that boy to run those mails up to my office," he
said. "It's a good healthy pull up the hill for him, and my folks are
full to the neck with things. I'd be glad."

"Sure he can." Captain Hardy was only too delighted to be able to oblige
so important a customer of his company. He promptly shouted at the
landing officer.

"Ho, you! Masters! Just let that darn Dago tote them mails right up to
Mr. Standing's office. He ain't no sort of use out of hell down
here--anyway."

The mate's reply came back with an appreciative grin.

"Ay, sir," he cried, and forthwith hurled the order at the mail carrier
with a plentiful accompaniment of appropriate adjectives.

"Thanks," Standing turned away. His smiling luminous eyes were shining.
"I'll get right along up, Captain. There's liable to be things need
seeing to in that mail before you pull out. You'd best come along, too,
Bat," he added pointedly.

Standing hurried away. A sudden fierce passion was surging through his
veins. Nisson was right. He knew it--now. And in a fever of impatience
he was yearning to come to grips with those who would rob him of the
hopes in which his whole being was bound up.




CHAPTER III

IDEPSKI


The two men reached the office on the hillside minutes before the mail
carrier. They took the hill direct, passing hurriedly through the aisles
of scented woods which shadowed its face. The other, the stranger, was
left with no alternative but the roadway, zigzagging at an easier
incline.

Standing passed into the house. His confidential man of many races
looked up from his work. The quick, black eyes were questioning. He was
perhaps startled at the swift return of the man whom he regarded above
all others.

Standing spoke coldly, emphatically.

"There's a man coming along up. He's a sailorman, and he's dressed in
dirty dungaree, and he's carrying a sack of mail. Now see and get this
clearly, Loale. It's important. It's so important I can't stand for any
sort of mistake. When he comes you've got to send him right into my room
with the mail-bag. I want him to take it in _himself_. You get that?"

The half-breed's eyes blinked. It was rather the curious attitude of an
attentive dog. But that was always his way when the master of the
Sachigo Mill spoke to him.

Pete Loale was quite an unusual creature. He looked unkempt and unclean,
with his yellow, pock-marked skin, and his clothes that would have
disgraced a second-hand dealer's stores of waste. But for all his lack
in these directions there was that in the man which was more than worth
while. Out of his black eyes looked a world of intelligence. There was
also a resource and initiative in him that Standing fully appreciated.

"Sure I get that," he said simply. Then he repeated in the manner of a
child determined to make no mistake. "He's to take that mail-bag right
into your office--_himself_."

"That's it. Don't knock on my door. Don't let him think there's a soul
inside that room. Just boost him right in. You get that?"

The half-breed nodded.

"I'll just say: 'Here you! Just push that darn truck right inside that
room, an' don't worry me with it, I'm busy.' That how?" The man hunched
his slim shoulders into a shrug.

"See you do it--just that way," Standing said. Then he turned to Bat.
"We'll get inside," he went on. "He'll be right along."

They passed into the office. The door closed behind them and Standing
moved over to his seat at the crowded desk.

"Wal?"

Bat was still standing. He failed to grasp his friend's purpose. His wit
was unequal to the rapid process of the other's swiftly calculating
mind.

Standing littered his writing-pad with papers. He picked up a pen and
jabbed it in the inkwell. Then he flung it aside and adopted a
fountain-pen which he drew from his waistcoat pocket. His eyes lit with
a half-smile as he finally raised them to the rugged face before him.

"You sit right over there by that window, Bat," he said easily. "If you
get a look out of it you'll be amazed at the number of things to
interest you." He nodded as Bat moved away with a grin and took the
chair indicated. "That's it. Just sit around, and you won't see or even
hear the fellow with the mail fall in through the door. And maybe,
sitting there, you'll want to smoke your foul old pipe. Sort of pipe of
peaceful meditation. Yes, I'd smoke that pipe, old friend, but you can
cut out the peaceful meditation. You need to be ready to act quick when
I pass the word. It's going to be easy. So easy I almost feel sorry
for--Idepski."

"It _is_--Idepski?" Bat filled and lit his pipe.

"It surely is. No other. And--I'm glad. Now we'll quit talk, old friend.
Just smoke, and look out of that window, and--think like hell."

Bat's understanding of his friend was well founded. The extreme nervous
tension in Standing was obvious. It was in the wide, dark eyes. It was
in the constant shifting of the feet which the table revealed. For the
time, at least, the cowardice Standing claimed for himself was entirely
swamped. He was stirred by the headlong excitement of battle in a manner
that left Bat more than satisfied.

Once Bat turned from his contemplation of the piled-up country beyond
the valley. It was at the sound of Standing's fiercely scratching pen.
And his quick gaze took in the luxury of the setting for the little
drama he felt was about to be enacted.

It was a wide, pleasant room, built wholly of red pine, and polished as
only red pine will polish. There was a thick oriental carpet on the
floor, and all the mahogany furniture was upholstered in red morocco.
There were a few carefully selected pictures upon the walls, hung with
an eye to the light upon each. But it was not an extravagant room. It
suggested the homeland of Scotland, from which the owner of it all
hailed. The Canadian atmosphere only found expression in the great steel
stove which stood in one corner, and the splendid timber of which the
walls of the room were built.

But Bat's eyes swiftly returned to their allotted task, and his reeking
pipe did its duty with hearty goodwill. There was the sound of strident
voices in the outer room, and the rattle of the door handle turning with
a wrench.

The door swung open. The next moment there was the sound of a sack
pitched upon the soft pile of the carpet. And through the open doorway
the harsh voice of Loale pursued the intruder in sharp protest.

"Say, do you think you're stowing cargo in your darn, crazy old barge?"
he cried. "If you fancy throwing things around you best get out an' do
it. Guess you ain't used to a gent's office, you darn sailorman--"

But the door was closed with a slam and the rest of the protest was cut
off. Bat swung about in his chair to discover a picture not easily to be
forgotten.

Standing had left his desk. He was there with his back against the
closed door, and his lean figure towered over the shorter sailorman in
dungaree, who stood gazing up at him questioningly. The sight appealed
to the grim humour of the manager. He wanted to laugh. But he refrained,
though his eyes lit responsively as he watched the smile of irony that
gleamed in the mill-owner's eyes.

"Well, well." Standing's tone lost none of the aggravation of his smile.
"Say, I'd never have recognised you, Idepski, if it hadn't been that I
was warned you'd shipped on the _Lizzie_." He laughed outright. "I can't
help it. You wouldn't blame me laughing if you could see yourself. Last
time I had the pleasure of encountering you was in Detroit. That's years
ago. How many? Nearly seven. It seems to me I remember a bright-looking
'sleuth,' neat, clean, spruce, with a crease to his pant-legs like a
razor edge, a fellow more concerned for his bath than his religion. Say,
where did you raise all that junk? From old man Hardy's slop-chest?
Hellbeam makes you work for your money when you're driven to wallowing
in a muck-hole like the _Lizzie_. It isn't worth it. You see, you've run
into the worst failure you've made in years. But I only wish you could
see the sorry sort of sailorman you look."

Standing's right hand was behind him, and Bat heard the key turn in the
lock of the door. He waited. But the trapped agent never opened his
lips.

Idepski had seen Standing and the other down at the quay-side. He had
left them there when he started up the hill. Yet--A bitter fury was
driving him. He realised the trap that had been laid. He realised
something of the deadly purpose lying behind it. So he remained silent
under the scourge that was intended to hurt.

For all the filthy dungarees tucked into the clumsy legs of high leather
sea boots, the dirty-coloured handkerchief knotted about his neck, the
curious napless cloth cap with its peak pulled down over one eye, that
curious cap which seems to be worn by no one else in the world but
seafaring men, it was easy enough for Bat to visualise the dapper
picture, that other picture of Walter Idepski that Standing had
described. The man possessed a well-knit, sinuous figure which his
dungarees could not disguise. His alert eyes were good-looking. And,
cleaned of the black, stubbly growth of beard and whisker, an amazing
transformation in his looks would surely have been achieved. But Bat's
interest was less with these things than with the possible reaction the
man might contemplate.

For the moment, however, the situation was entirely dominated by
Standing, who displayed no sign of relaxing his hold upon it. He flung
out a pointing hand, and Bat saw it was grasping the door key.

"You'd best take that chair, Idepski," he ordered. "You've opened war on
me, but there's no need to keep you standing for it. You'll take that
seat against my writing table. But first, Bat, here, is going to relieve
you of the useless weapons I see you've got on you. Get those, Bat!
There's a gun and a sheath knife, and they're clumsily showing their
shape under his dungarees."

It was the word the mill-manager had awaited. He was on his feet in an
instant. Idepski stirred to action. He turned to meet him.

"Keep your darn hands off!" he cried fiercely. "By--"

His hand had flown to his hip. But he was given no time. Bat was on him
like an avalanche, an avalanche of furious purpose. The fighting spirit
in him yearned, and in a moment his victim was caught up in a crushing
embrace. There was a short, fierce struggle. But Idepski was no match
for the super lumber-jack.

While Bat held on, the tenacious hands of Standing tore the weapons he
had discovered from their hiding places. Then in a moment Idepski found
himself sprawling in the chair he had been invited to take.

Standing's appreciation was evident as he watched the man draw a gold
cigarette case from the breast pocket of his overalls as though nothing
had occurred. It was an act of studied coolness that did not for a
moment deceive, but it pleased. However, his next effrontery pleased the
mill-owner still more.

"Say, boys," Idepski observed quietly, as he opened the case and
extracted a cigarette. "I guess I'm kind o' glad you left me this. But I
don't figger you're out for loot, anyway." Then he glanced up at the man
watching him so interestedly. "Maybe you'll oblige me with a light," he
demanded, and cocked up the cigarette he had thrust between his lips
with an exaggerated impertinence.

The action was quite irresistible and Standing nodded.

"Sure," he said smilingly, and picked up the matchbox lying on his
table.

He struck a match and held it while the other obtained the required
light. Then he passed round the desk to the seat he had originally
occupied.

Idepski leant back in his chair, and luxuriated in a deep inhalation of
smoke. Bat watched him from his place at the window. Standing placed the
revolver and sheath knife he had taken possession of in a drawer in the
desk, and closed it carefully.

"Well, what's the play?" Idepski addressed himself solely to Standing.
"I guess you've said a deal calculated to rile, and your pardner's done
more," he went on. "Still--anyway we're mostly men and not school-kids.
What's the play?"

Standing, too, was leaning back in his chair.

"It's easy," he said, after a moment's thoughtful regard. Suddenly he
drew his chair up to the table, and, leaning forward, folded his arms
upon the littered blotting pad in front of him. "It's seven years since
Hellbeam--blazed the war trail," he said deliberately. "I know he's
persistent. He's angry. And he's the sort of man who doesn't cool down
easily. But it's taken him seven years to locate me here. And during all
that time I've been looking on, watching his every move." He shook his
head. "He's badly served, for all his wealth. He was badly served from
the start. You should never have let me beat you in that first race
across the border. I got away with every cent of the stuff, and--you
shouldn't have let me. You certainly were at fault. However, it doesn't
matter."

Idepski removed his cigarette from his lips and dropped the ash of it in
the waste basket.

"No. It doesn't matter, because I'll get you--in the end," he retorted
coldly.

"Perhaps."

Standing shrugged. But there was no indifference in his eyes. The acid
sharpness of Idepski's retort had driven straight home. If the agent
failed to detect it, the watchful eyes of Bat missed nothing. To him the
danger signal lay in the curious flicker of his friend's eyelids. The
sight impelled him. He jumped in and took up the challenge in the blunt
fashion he best understood.

"Guess you've got nightmare, boy," he said, with a sneering laugh. "I
ain't much at figgers, but it seems to me if it's taken you seven years
to locate us here, it's going to take you seventy-seven gettin' Standing
back across that border. Work it out."

Idepski had no intention of being drawn. He replied without turning.

"You think that?" he said easily. "Say, don't worry a thing; I'm
satisfied. Just as sure as the sun'll rise to-morrow, Hellbeam'll get
Leslie Martin, or Standing as he chooses to call himself now, just where
he needs him. And if I know Hellbeam that'll be in the worst
penitentiary the United States can produce. Guess you're going to wish
you hadn't, Mister--Standing."

Perhaps Idepski knew his man, and understood the weakness of which Bat
was so painfully aware. Perhaps he was just fencing, or even putting up
a bluff in view of his own position. Whatever his purpose the effect of
his added threat was instant.

Standing's luminous eyes hardened. The muscles of his jaws gripped. He
sat up, and his whole attitude expressed again that fighting mood in
which Bat rejoiced.

"That's all right," he said sharply. "That's just talk. You've come a
hell of a long way with those boys of yours down at the _Lizzie_ to
worry out some body-snatching. That's all right. I don't just see how
you've figgered to do it. But that's your affair. The point is, I'm
going to do the body-snatching instead of you. And it's quite clear to
me how I intend doing it. You're going a trip--right off. And it's a
trip from which you won't get a chance of getting back to Quebec under
this time next year. You see, winter's closing down in a month, and
Labrador and Northern Quebec aren't wholesome territory for any man to
set out to beat the trail in winter, especially with folks around
anxious to stop him. You reckon I'm to pass a while in a States
penitentiary. Well, meanwhile you're going to try what this country can
show you in the way of a--prison ground. And you're going to try it for
at least a year. You'll be treated white. But you'll need to work for
your grub like other folks, and if you don't feel like working you won't
eat. We're fifty-three degrees north here, and our ways are the tough
ways of the tough country we live in. There's no sort of mercy in this
country. Bat, here, is going to see you on your trip, and, if you take
my advice, you won't rile Bat. He's got it in him, and in his hands, to
make things darn unpleasant for you. You've a goodish nerve, and maybe
you've goodish sense. You'll need 'em both for the next twelve months.
After that it's up to you. But if you try kicking between now and then,
why--God help you."

Standing beckoned Bat from his seat at the window. He held up the door
key.

"You best take this," he said. "No. 10. And he starts out right away. He
needs to be well on the road before the _Lizzie_ puts to sea."

Bat took the key. He moved away and unlocked the door, and remained
beside it grimly regarding the man who had listened without comment to
the sentence passed on him, without the smallest display of emotion.
Idepski was smoking his second cigarette.

"No. 10. I s'pose that's one of your lumber camps." Idepski looked up
from his contemplation of the cigarette. His dark eyes were levelled at
the man across the writing table. "A tough place, eh? or you wouldn't be
sending me there." He laughed in a fashion that left his eyes coldly
enquiring.

Standing inclined his head. He was without mercy, without pity.

"It's a tough camp in a tough country," he said deliberately. "It's a
camp where you'll get just as good a time as you choose to earn. The boy
who runs it learnt his job in the forests of Quebec, and you'll likely
understand what that means. Well, you're going right off now. But
there's this I want to tell you before I see the last of you--for a
year. I know you, Idepski. I know you for all you are, and all you're
ever likely to be. You're an unscrupulous blackmailer and crook. You're
a parasite battening yourself on the weakness of human nature, taking
your toll from whichever side of a dispute will pay you best. You're
taking Hellbeam's money in the dispute between him and me, and you'll go
on taking it till you pull off the play he's asking, or get broken in
the work of it. That's all right as far as I'm concerned. You've nerve,
you've courage, or you wouldn't be the crook you are. I guess you'll go
on because I've no intention of competing with Hellbeam for your
services. But I want you to understand clearly you've jumped into a
mighty big fight. This is a country where a fight can go on without the
prying eyes of the laws of civilisation peeking into things. And by that
I take it you'll understand I reckon to make war to the knife. You came
here prepared to use force. That's all right. We shan't hesitate to use
force on our side. And we're going to use it to the limit. If peace is
only to be gained at the cost of your life you're going to pay that
cost--if it suits me. That's all I've to say at the moment. For the
present, for a year, you'll be safely muzzled. You see, I don't need to
worry with those boys you brought with you. You best go along with Bat
now. He'll fix things ready for your trip."

The dismissal was complete, and Bat was prompt to accept his cue. He
moved towards the man smoking at the table, much in the fashion of a
warder advancing to take possession of his prisoner after sentence of
the court.

It was at that moment that the cold mask of indifference fell from the
agent. Hardy as he was, the contemplation of his momentary failure,
which was about to cost him twelve months of hardship in one of the
roughest lumber camps in Labrador, robbed him of something of that nerve
which was his chief asset. He glanced for the first time at the burly
figure of Bat. He contemplated the rugged features of the man whose
battling instinct was his strongest characteristic. He read the purpose
in the grim set of the square jaws, and in the unyielding light of the
grey eyes peering out from under shaggy brows. And that which he read
reduced him to a feeling of impotence. He flung a look of fury and hate
at the man behind the desk.

"Maybe that's all you've to say," he cried, his jaws snapping viciously
over his words, his eyes fiercely alight. "You think you've won when
you've only gained a moment's respite. You can't win. You don't know.
Oh, yes. I guess you can send me along out of the way. You can do just
all you reckon. And if it suits you, you can shoot me up or any other
old thing. You forget Hellbeam. You tell me I'm a crook and a
blackmailer, you give me credit for nerve and courage. That's all right.
You think these things, and I don't have to worry. But you've robbed
Hellbeam. You've robbed him like any common 'hold-up'--of millions. It's
not for you to talk of crooks and blackmailers. The laws of the States
are going to find you the crook, and Hellbeam'll see they don't err for
leniency. Hellbeam'll get you as sure as God. You've got months to think
it over, and when you've done I reckon you won't fancy shouting. Well,
I'm ready for this joy spot you call No. 10. I'm not going to kick. I've
sense enough to know when the drop's on me. But you'll see me again. Oh,
yes, you'll see me again because you're not going to shoot me up. For
all your talk you haven't the nerve. You'll see me again, and when you
do--well, don't forget Hellbeam's at the other end of this business.
Guess I'm ready."

The man stood up. And as he stood his eyes looked squarely into those of
Bat.

"Get on with it," he cried, and flung the remains of his lighted
cigarette on the pile of the carpet, and trod it viciously underfoot
with his heavy sea boot.

       *       *       *       *       *

Standing was alone. He was alone with the thoughts his encounter with
Idepski had inspired. Judging by the expression of his reflective eyes
they were scarcely those of a man confident of victory. Had Bat been
there to witness, the task he was at that moment engaged upon would
surely have been robbed of half its satisfaction.

But Bat had gone. And with him had gone the man who was to learn the
rigours of a Labrador winter under conditions of hardship he had not yet
realised. Meanwhile Standing was free to think as his emotions guided
him, with no watchful eyes to observe.

"You'll see me again, and when you do--well, don't forget Hellbeam's at
the other end of this business."

The words haunted. The threat of them appealed to an imagination that
was a-riot.

After a time Standing stirred restlessly. He sat up and brushed the
litter of paper aside. Then he leant back in his chair and his fine eyes
were lit with an agony of doubt and disquiet. The poisonous seed of the
agent's retort had fallen upon fruitful soil.

But after awhile the tension seemed to relax, and his gaze wandered from
the grey daylight beyond the window and was suddenly caught and held by
the mail bag, still lying where the man had flung it. It was like the
swift passing of a summer storm. The man's whole expression underwent a
complete transformation. The mail! The mail from Quebec--unopened!

He sprang to his feet. For the moment Idepski, Hellbeam, everything was
forgotten. His thought had bridged the miles between Farewell Cove and
the ancient city of the early French, Nancy! That woman--that devoted
wife who was striving with all the power of a frail body to serve him.
There would be a letter in that mail from Nisson, telling him--Yes.
There might even be a letter from Nancy herself.

The sack was in his hands. He had broken the seals. He shook out the
contents upon the floor. A packet of less than half a hundred letters,
and the rest was an assortment of parcels of all shapes and sizes. It
was the letter packet that interested him, and he untied the string that
held it.

A swift search produced the expected. Standing looked for the
handwriting of Charles Nisson, the shrewd, obscure lawyer in the country
town of Abercrombie. He had never yet failed him. He would not be likely
to. A bulky letter remained in his hand. The others lay scattered
broadcast upon the desk.

For some moments he held the letter unopened. The lean fingers felt the
bulk of the envelope, while feverish eyes surveyed, and read over and
over the address in the familiar small, cramped handwriting. The impulse
of the moment was to tear open the letter forthwith, to snatch at the
tidings he felt it to contain. But something deterred. Something left
him doubting, hesitating. It was what Bat had called his "yellow
streak." Suppose--suppose--But with all his might he thrust his fears
aside. He tore off the outer cover and unfolded the closely written
pages.

Long, silent moments passed, broken only by the shuffling of the sheets
of the letter as he turned them. Not once did he look up from his
reading. Right through to the end, the dreadful, bitter end, he read the
hideous news his loyal friend had to impart. Twice, during the reading,
the sharp intake of breath, that almost whistled in the silence of the
room, told of an emotion he had no power to repress, and at the finish
of it all the mechanically re-folded page's fell from shaking, nerveless
fingers upon the littered desk.

His eyes remained lowered gazing at the fallen letter. His hands
remained poised where the letter had fallen from them. His face had lost
its healthful hue. It was grey, and drawn, and the lips that parted as
he muttered had completely blanched.

"Dead!" he whispered without consciousness of articulation. "Dead!
Nancy! My boy! Both! Oh, God!"




CHAPTER IV

THE "YELLOW STREAK"


The grey, evening light was significant of the passing season. A chilly
breeze whipped about the faces of the men at the fringe of the woods.
They were resting after a long tramp of inspection through the virgin
forests. It was on a ledge, high up on the hillside of the northern
shore of the cove, where the ground dropped away in front of them
several hundreds of feet to the waters below. Behind them was a backing
of standing timber which sheltered them from the full force of the
biting wind.

It was nearly a week since Bat Harker had returned from his mission to
No. 10 Camp. He had returned full of satisfaction at the completion of
his task, and comforted by the knowledge that the horizon of the mill
had been cleared of threatening clouds for at least the period of a
year. Then he encountered the ricochet of the blow which Fate had dealt
his friend and employer.

It had been within half an hour of his return, while yet the stains and
dust of his journey remained upon him, while yet he was yearning for
that rest for his body to which it was entitled.

Bat had concluded the report of his journey, and the two men were
closeted together in the office on the hillside. The lumberman had had
no suspicion of the thing that had happened in his absence, and Standing
had given no indication. Standing seemed unchanged. There had been the
customary smile of welcome in his eyes. There had been the cordial
handshake of friendship. Maybe Standing had talked less, and the
searching questions usual in him had not been forthcoming. Maybe there
was a curiously tired, strained look in his eyes. But that was all.

At the conclusion of his report Bat had bent eagerly forward over the
desk which stood between them. His hard eyes were smiling. His whole
manner was that of a man anticipating something pleasant.

"Say, Les," he cried, "guess you've maybe some news for me, too. It's
more than a month since--and you were expecting--Things all right?"

Standing reached towards the drawer beside him, and as he did so there
was a sound. It was a curious, inarticulate sound that Bat interpreted
into a laugh. The other opened the drawer and drew out the folded pages
of a letter. These he passed across the table, and his eyes were without
a shadow of the laugh which Bat thought he had heard.

"Best read it," he said. "Take your time. I'll just finish these figures
I'm working on."

It was the curious, cold tone that stirred Bat to his first misgiving.

He took the letter. There were pages of it. He set them in order and
commenced to read. And meanwhile Standing remained apparently engrossed
in his figures.

He read the letter through. He read it slowly, carefully. Then, like
the other had done, the man to whom it was addressed, he read it a
second time. And as he read every vestige of his previous satisfaction
passed from him. A cold constriction seemed to fasten upon his strong
heart. And a terrible realisation of the tragedy of it all took
possession of him. At the end of his second reading he handed the letter
back to its owner without comment of any sort, without a word, but with
a hand that, for once in his life, was unsteady.

"That was in the mail Idepski brought," Standing said, as he returned
the letter to its place, and shut and locked the drawer.

"You remember?" he went on, pointing. "He flung it down there. Just by
the door. Yes, it was just there, because I stood against the door, and
was only just clear of it."

He paused and his hand remained pointing at the spot where the mail bag
had lain. It was as if the spot held him fascinated. Then his arm
lowered slowly, and his hand came to rest on the edge of the table,
gripping it with unnecessary force.

"Seems queer," he went on, after a while. Then he shook his head. "Think
of it. Nancy--my Nancy. Dead! She died giving birth to my boy. And
he--he was stillborn. Why? I--I can't seem to realize it. I--don't--" He
paused, and a strained, hunted look grew in his eyes. "No. It's easy.
It's just Fate. That's it. There's no escape."

He drew a deep breath and one lean hand smoothed back his shining black
hair. Then his eyes came back to the face of the man opposite, and the
agony in them was beyond words. After a moment their terrible expression
became lost as he bent over his work. "I'm glad you're back, Bat," he
said, without looking up.

"There's a hell of a lot of orders to get out. We're running close up
to winter."

The lumberman understood. At a single blow this man's every hope had
been smashed and ground under the heel of an iron fate. The wife, the
woman he had worshipped, had given her life to serve him, and with her
had gone the man-child, about whom had been woven the entire network of
a father's hopes and desires.

A week had passed since Bat had witnessed the voiceless agony of his
friend. A week of endless labour and unspoken fears. He knew Standing as
it is given to few to know the heart of another. His sympathy was real.
It was of that quality which made him desire above all things to render
the heartbroken man real physical and moral help. But no opening had
been given him, and he feared to probe the wound that had been
inflicted. During those first seven days Standing seemed to be obsessed
with a desire to work, to work all day and every night, as though he
dared not pause lest his disaster should overwhelm him.

Now it was Sunday. Night and day the work had gone on. No less than ten
freighters had been loaded and dispatched since Bat's return, and only
that morning two vessels had cast off, laden to the water-line, and
passed down on the tide for the mouth of the cove. At the finish of the
midday meal Standing had announced his intentions for the afternoon.

"We need to get a look into the lumber on the north side, Bat," he said.
"You'd best come along with me. How do you think?"

And Bat had agreed on the instant.

"Sure," he said. "There's a heap to be done that way if we're to start
layin' the penstocks down on that side next year."

So they had spent the hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through
the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their
talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of
long-fibred timber they were inspecting.

But somehow to Bat the whole thing was unreal. It meant nothing. It
could mean nothing. He felt like a man walking towards a precipice he
could not avoid. He felt disaster, added disaster, was in the air and
was closing in upon them. He knew in his heart that this long, weary
inspection, all the stuff they talked, all the future plans they were
making for the mill was the merest excuse. And he wondered when Standing
would abandon it and reveal his actual purpose. The man, he knew, was
consumed by a voiceless grief. His soul was tortured beyond endurance.
And there was that "yellow streak," which Bat so feared. When, when
would it reveal itself? How?

Now, at last, as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the
waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He
was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was
stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for
some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's
deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on
down at the mill, whose future was the greatest concern of his life.
Standing, too, was gazing out over the waters. But his darkly brooding
eyes were on the splendid house he had set up on the opposite hillside.
It was the home about which his every earthly hope had centred. And even
now, in his despair, it remained a magnet for his hopeless gaze.

Winter was already in the bite of the air and in the absence of the
legions of flies and mosquitoes as well as in the chilly grey of the
lapping waters below them. It was doubtless, too, searching the heart of
these men whose faces gave no indication of the sunlight of summer
shining within.

"Bat!"

The lumberman turned sharply. He spat out a stream of tobacco juice and
waited.

"Bat, old friend, it's no use." Standing had swung himself into a
sitting posture. He was leaning forward on the tree-trunk with his
forearms folded across his knees. "We've done a lot of talk, and we've
searched these forests good. And it's all no use. None at all. There's
going to be no penstocks set up this side of the water next year--as far
as I'm concerned. I've done. Finished. Plumb finished. I'm quitting.
Quitting it all."

The lumberman ejected a masticated chew and took a fresh one.

"You see, old friend, I'll go crazy if I stop around," Standing went on.
"I've been hit a pretty desperate punch, and I haven't the guts to stand
up to it. When it came I set my teeth. I wanted to keep sane. I reminded
myself of all I owed to the folks working for us. I thought of you. And
I tried to bolster myself with the schemes we had for beating the
Skandinavians out of this country's pulp-wood trade. Yes, I tried. God,
how I tried! But my guts are weak, and I know what lies ahead. For
nearly six weeks I've been working things out, and for a week I've been
wondering how I should tell you. I brought you here to tell you.

"I want you to understand it good," he went on, after the briefest
pause. "I can't stand to live on in the house that Nancy and I built up.
Every room is haunted by her. By her happy laugh, and by memories of the
hours we sat and talked of the boy-child we'd both set our hearts on. I
just can't do it without going stark, staring, raving mad. I can't."

"That's how I figgered. I've watched it in you, Les. Tell me the rest."

Bat chewed steadily. It was a safety-valve for his feelings.

"The rest?" Standing turned to gaze out at the house across the water.
"If it weren't for you, Bat, I'd close right down. I'd leave everything
standing and--get out," he went on slowly. "The whole thing's a
nightmare. Look at it. Look around. The forests of soft wood. The
township we've set up. The harnessed water power. That--that house of
mine. It's all nightmare, and I don't want it. I'm afraid. I'm scared to
death of it."

Bat moved away from the stump he had been propped against. He passed
across to the edge of the ledge and stood gazing down on the scenes
below.

"You needn't worry for me," he said. "It don't matter a cuss where or
how I hustle my dry hash. I was born that way. Fix things the way you
feel. Cut me right out."

The man's generosity was a simple expression of his rugged nature. His
love of that great work below him, in the creation of which he had taken
so great a part, was nothing to him at that moment. He was concerned
only for the man, who had held out a succouring hand, and led him, in
his darkest moments, to safety and prosperity.

Standing shook his head at the broad back squared against the grey,
wintry sky.

"I didn't mean it that way, old friend," he said.

Bat swung around. His grey eyes were wide. His face seemed to have
softened out of its usual harsh cast.

"But I do, Les," he cried. "You don't need to figger a thing about me.
You're hurt, boy. You're hurt mighty sore. Cut me right out of your
figgers, and do the things that's goin' to heal that sore. If there's a
thing I can do to help you, why, I guess I'd be glad to know it."

For a few moments Standing remained silent. Perhaps he was pondering
upon what he had to say. Perhaps he was simply gaining time to suppress
the emotions which the selflessness of the other had inspired.

"Here," he cried at last, "I best tell you the whole story that's in my
mind. I told you I've been figuring it out. Well, it's figured to the
last decimal. You think you know me. Maybe you do. Maybe you know only
part of the things I know about myself. If you knew them all I'd hate to
think of the contempt you'd have to hand me. You see, Bat, I'm a coward,
a terrible moral coward. Oh, I'm not scared of any man living when it
comes to a fight. But my mind's full of ghosts and nightmares ready to
jump at me with every doubt, every new effort where I can't figure the
end. Years ago, when I was a youngster, I yearned for fortune. And I
realised that I had it in me to get it quick by means of that crazy
talent for figures you reckon is so wonderful. I got the chance and
jumped, for it. But every step I took left me scared to the verge of
craziness. When I hit up against Hellbeam I got a desire to beat him
that was irresistible, and I jumped into the fight with my heart in my
mouth. It was easy--so easy. Hellbeam was a babe in my hands. I could
play with him as a spider plays with its victim, and when, like a
spider, I'd bound him with my figures, hand and foot, I was free to suck
his blood till I was satiated. I did all that, and then my nightmare
descended upon me again. You know how I fled with Hellbeam's hounds on
my heels. I was terrified at the enormity of the thing I'd done. I could
have stood my ground and beaten him--and them. But moral cowardice
overwhelmed me and drove me to these outlands. God, what I suffered! And
after all I haven't the certainty that I deserved it."

Bat came back to his stump and stood against it while Standing passed a
weary hand across his forehead.

"The happenings since then you know as well as I do. I don't need to
talk of them. I mean, how I met and married Nancy, when she was widow of
that no-account McDonald feller, the editor of _The Abercrombie
Herald!_"

Bat nodded.

"Yes, sure, I know, Les. When you married Nancy an' made her
thirteen-year-old daughter--your daughter."

"Yes. I'd almost forgotten. Yes, there's her girl, Nancy. She's still at
school. Well, anyway, you know, these things, all of 'em. But what you
don't know is that you--you Bat, old friend, are solely responsible for
all the work that's being done here. You, old friend, are responsible
that I've enjoyed seven years of something approaching peace of mind.
You, you with your bulldog fighting spirit, you with your hell-may-care
manner of shouldering responsibility, and facing every threat, have been
the staunch pillar on which I have always leant. Without you I'd have
gone under years ago, a victim of my own mental ghosts. No, no, Bat," he
went on quickly, as the lumberman shook his head in sharp denial, "it's
useless. I know. Leaning on you I've built up around me the reality of
that original dream, with the other things I've now lost, and with every
ounce in me I've worked for its fulfilment.

"Well, what's the logic of it all?" he continued, after a moment's
pause. "Yes, it is the logic of it. You may argue that for seven years
I've been doing a big work and there's no reason, in spite of what's
happened, that I should now abandon it all. But there is. And in your
strong old heart you'll know the thing I say is true--if cowardly.
During seven years, or part of them, I've known a happiness that's
compensated for every terror I've endured. Nancy's been my guardian
angel, and the boy, that was to be born, was the beacon light of my
life. My poor little wife has gone, and that beacon light, the son we
yearned for, has been snuffed right out. And in the shadows left I see
only the groping hand of Hellbeam reaching out towards me. In the end
that hand will get me, and crush the remains of my miserable life out. I
know. Just as sure as God, Hellbeam's going to get me."

The sweat of terror stood on the man's high forehead, and he wiped it
away.

Bat flung a clenched fist down upon the tree stump.

"You're wrong, Les. You're plumb wrong. If it means murder I swear
before God Hellbeam'll never lay hands on you. Hellbeam? Gee! Let him
set his nose north of 'fifty' and I'll promise him a welcome so hot
that'll leave hell like a glacier. As for his darn agents? Why, say, I
want to feel sorry for 'em 'fore they start. Idepski's hating himself
right--"

"I know," cried Standing impatiently. "I know it all. Everything you've
said you mean, but--it won't save me. But we can leave all that. There's
the other things. Why should I go on living here, working, slaving,
haunted by the terror of Hellbeam? With my boy, my wife, to fight for it
was worth all the agony. But without them--why? Why in the name of
sanity should I go on? To beat the Skandinavians out of Canada's trade,
and claim it all for a country that doesn't care a curse? To build up a
great name that in the end must be dragged in the mire of public
estimation? Not on your life, Bat. No, no. I'm going to cut adrift. I'm
going to quit. I'm going to lose myself in these forests, and live the
remaining years of my life free to run to earth at the first shot of the
hunter's gun. It's all that's left me--as I see it."

"And all this?" Bat said, reaching out one great hand in the direction
of the Cove. "An' that school gal 'way down at Abercrombie, learning her
knitting, an' letters, an' crying her dandy eyes out for the mother who
had to leave her there when she passed over to you? Say, Les, you best
go on. Jest go right on an' I'll say my piece after."

Standing sat up. A deep earnestness was in the dark eyes that looked
fearlessly into Bat's. He took the other at his word and went on. He had
nothing to conceal.

"The mill? Why, I want to pass it over to your care, Bat," he said,
permitting one swift regretful glance in the direction of the grey
waters below them. Then he spoke almost feverishly. "Here's the
proposition. I'm going to hand you full powers--through Charles Nisson.
You'll run this thing on the lines laid down. If you fancy carrying on
the original proposition of extension, well and good. If not, just carry
on and leave the rest for--later. You'll be manager for me through
Nisson. I shan't remove one cent of capital. I don't want Hellbeam's
money beyond the barest grub stake. It'll remain under Nisson's
guardianship for your use in running this mill. You'll simply satisfy
Nisson. For the rest I shan't interfere. You're drawing a big salary
now. Well, seeing I go out of the work, that salary will be doubled.
That's for the immediate. Then there's the future. I've a notion. Maybe
it's a crazy notion. But it's mine and I mean to test it. Here. We
reckon to build up this enterprise for one great, big purpose. It was my
dream to break the Skandinavian ring governing the groundwood trade of
this country. It was work that appealed to my imagination. I wanted to
build this great thing and pass it on to my boy. It seemed to me fine.
Worth while. It was a man's work, and it seemed to me a life well spent.
I had the guts then--with your support, and the support the thought of
my son gave me. I haven't the guts now. The notion fired you, too. It
fired you, and it'll grieve you desperately to see it abandoned. It
shan't be abandoned. Once in the woods of this queer country I found a
man--such a man as is rarely found. He was a man into whose hands I
could put my life. And I guess there's no greater trust one man can have
in another. He was a man of immense capacity. A man of intellect for all
he had no schooling but the schooling of Quebec's rough woods. That man
was you, Bat. I'd like to say to you: 'Here's the property. You know the
scheme. Go on. Carry it through.' But I can't. I can't because one man
can't do it. Well, the woods gave me one man, and they're going to give
me another to take the place of the weak-gutted creature who intends to
'rat.' I'm going to find you a partner, a man with brain and force like
yourself. A man of iron guts. And when I've found him I'm going to send
him on to you. And if you approve him he shall be full partner with you
in this concern the day that sees the Canadian Groundwood Trust
completed, and the breaking of the Skandinavian ring. Do you follow it
all? You and this man will be equal partners in the mill, and every
available cent of its capital--the capital I made Hellbeam provide.
It'll be yours and his, solely and alone. I--I shall pass right out of
it. Hellbeam has no score against you. He has no penitentiary preparing
for you. You are not concerned with him. Whatever he may have in store
for me he can do nothing to you, and the money I beat him out of will
have passed beyond his reach."

"And this man you figger to locate? You reckon to take a chance on your
judgment?"

Bat's challenge came on the instant.

"On mine, and--yours." Standing's eyes were full of a keen confidence.
And Bat realised something of the sanity lying behind a seemingly mad
proposition. "He'll own nothing until he and you have completed the work
as we see it. To own his share in the thing he must prove his capacity.
He'll be held by the tightest and strongest contract Charles Nisson can
draw up."

Bat spat out his chew. He replaced it with a pipe, and prepared to flake
off its filling from a plug of tobacco. Standing watched him with the
anxious eyes of a prisoner awaiting sentence. With the cutting of the
first flakes of tobacco, Bat looked up.

"And this little gal-child, with the same name as the mother who just
meant the whole of everything life could hand you? This kiddie with her
mother's blood running in innocent veins? She's your Nancy's daughter
and I guess your marriage made her yours."

"She's another man's child."

Standing's retort was instant. And the tone of it cut like a knife.

Bat regarded him keenly. His knife had ceased from its work on the plug.

"That's so," he said after a while. Then his gaze drifted in the
direction of the house across the water, and the expression in the grey
depths of his eyes became lost to the man who could not forget that the
remaining child of his wife was the offspring of another man. "It seems
queer," he went on reflectively. "That woman, your Nancy, was about the
best loved wife, a fellow could think of. She was all sorts of a woman
to you. Guess she was mostly the sun, moon, an' stars of your life. Yet
her kiddie, a pore, lonesome kiddie, was toted right off to school so
she couldn't butt in on you. You've never seen her, have you? And she
was blood of the woman that set you nigh crazy. Only her father was
another feller. No, Les." He shook his head, and went on filling his
pipe. "No, Les, this mill and all about it can go hang if that pore,
lone kiddie is wiped out of your reckoning. Maybe I'm queer about
things. Maybe I'm no account anyway when it comes to the things of life
mostly belonging to Sunday School. But I'd as lief go back to the woods
I came from, as handle a proposition for you that don't figger that
little gal in it. You best take that as all I've to say. There's a heap
more I could say. But it don't matter. You're feelin' bad. Things have
hit you bad. And you reckon they're going to hit you worse. Maybe you're
right. Maybe you're wrong. Anyway these things are for you, though I'd
be mighty thankful to help you. You want to go out of it all. You want
to follow up some queer notion you got. You reckon it's going to give
you peace. I hope so. I do sure. The thing you've said goes with me
without shouting one way or the other. It grieves me bad. But that's no
account anyway. But there's that gal standing between us, and she's
going to stand right there till you've finished the things you're maybe
going to say."

For a moment the men looked into each other's eyes. It was a tense
moment of sudden crisis between them.

"Well?"

Bat's unyielding interrogation came sharply. Standing nodded.

"I hadn't thought, Bat," he said. Then he drew a deep breath. "I surely
hadn't, but I guess you're right. She's my stepdaughter. And I've a
right to do the thing you say. Yes. It's queer when I think of it," he
went on musingly. "When I married her mother the girl didn't seem to
come into our reckoning. She was at school, and I never even saw her.
Then her mother wanted her left there, anyway till her schooling was
through. Everything was paid. I saw to that. But--yes, I guess you're
right. It's up to me, and I'll fix it."

"The mill?"

"She shall have equal share when the time comes."

"When the whole work's put through?"

"Yes. And meanwhile she'll be amply provided for." Standing spread out
his hands deprecatingly. "You see, we did things in a hurry, Bat. There
was always Hellbeam. And my Nancy understood that. I wonder--"

Bat smoked on thoughtfully, and presently the other roused himself from
the pre-occupation into which he had fallen.

"Does that satisfy?" he demanded.

Bat nodded.

"I'll do the darnedest I know, Les," he said in his sturdy fashion. "Fix
that pore gal right. Hand her the share she's a right to--when the time
comes along. Do that an' I'll not rest till the Skandinavians are left
hollerin'. That kid's your daughter, for all she ain't flesh and blood
of yours, an' you ain't ever see her. And anyway she's flesh of your
Nancy, which seems to me hands her even a bigger claim."

He moved away from his leaning post and his back was turned to hide that
which looked out of his eyes.

"I'm grieved," he went on, in his simple fashion, "I'm so grieved about
things I can't tell you, Les. I always guessed to drive this thing
through with you. I always reckoned to make good to you for that thing
you did by me. Well, there's no use in talkin'. You reckon this notion
of yours'll make you feel better, it's goin' to hand you--peace. That
goes with me. Oh, yes, all the time, seein' you feel that way. But--say,
we best get right home--or I'll cry like a darn-fool kid."




CHAPTER V

NANCY MCDONALD


Charles Nisson was standing at the window. His eyes were deeply
reflective as he watched the gently falling snow outside. He was a
sturdy creature in his well-cut, well-cared-for black suit. For all he
was past middle life there was little about him to emphasise the fact
unless it were his trim, well-brushed snow-white hair, and the light
covering of whisker and beard of a similar hue. He looked to be full of
strength of purpose and physical energy.

His back was turned on the pleasant dining-room of his home in
Abercrombie, a remote town in Ontario, where he and his wife had only
just finished breakfast. Sarah Nisson was sitting beside the anthracite
stove which radiated its pleasant warmth against the bitter chill of
winter reigning outside. She was still consuming the pages of her bulky
mail.

A clock chimed the hour, and the wife looked up from her letter. She
turned a face that was still pretty for all her fifty odd years, in the
direction of the man at the window.

"Ten o'clock, Charles," she reminded him. Then her enquiring look melted
into a gentle smile. "The office has less attraction with the snow
falling."

"It has less attraction to-day, anyway," the lawyer responded without
turning. A short laugh punctuated his prompt reply.

"You mean the Nancy McDonald business?"

Sarah Nisson laid her mail aside.

"Yes." The lawyer sighed and turned from his contemplation of the snow.
He moved across to the stove. "I'm a bit of a coward, Sally," he went
on, holding out his hands to the warmth. "The lives of other people are
nearly as interesting as they are exasperating. They seem just as
foolishly ordered as we believe our own to be well and truly ordered. I
don't know who it was said 'all men are fools,' or liars, or something,
but I guess he was right. Yes, we're all fools. I really don't know how
we manage to get through a day, let alone a lifetime, without absolute
disaster. We spend most of our time abusing Providence for the result of
our own shortcomings, when really we ought to be mighty polite and
thankful to the blind good fortune that lets us dodge the results of our
follies."

"All of which I suppose has to do with the way Leslie Martin, or Leslie
Standing, as he calls himself now, is acting."

"Well, most of it."

The man's eyes had become seriously reflective again.

Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head. She leant her ample proportions
towards the stove and emulated her husband's attitude, warming her plump
hands. Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was
calmly serene. Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she
were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of
the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.

"The death of his poor wife almost seems to have unhinged him," she
said, with a troubled pucker of her brows. "But--but I don't wonder, I
really don't. She was the sweetest girl. Poor soul. And that bonny wee
boy. But there, I can't bear to think of it all. You mustn't blame him
too much, Charles. I guess you don't in your heart. It's just as his
attorney you feel mad about things. It's best to remember you were his
friend first, and only his adviser, and man of business, after. The
whole thing makes me feel I want to cry. And that poor girl coming to
see you to-day. The other Nancy, I mean. I don't think I'd feel so bad
about things if it wasn't for her. You know, I like Leslie. And I was as
fond of his wife as I just could be, for all she made a fool of herself
when she married that hateful James McDonald, who was no better than a
revolutionary. Thank goodness he died and got out before he could do any
harm. But I do think Leslie and poor Nancy were selfish about her
child. I don't believe it was so much him as Nancy. From the moment
Leslie came on the scene it was she who kept the poor child at college.
She never even let him see her. And she's such a bonny girl, too. Do you
know, I believe Nancy's death, and even the death of the baby boy,
wouldn't have meant half so much to Leslie if he'd had Nancy's own girl
with him. She'd have got herself right into his heart with her bonny
ways, and her hazel eyes that look like great, big smiling flowers. Then
her hair. She's a lovely, lovely child. I wish she was mine. I'd like to
have her right here always. Couldn't you fix it that way?"

The man shook his head.

"I'd like to--but--"

"But what?"

"You see there's a whole lot to think about," the lawyer went on
seriously. "Why, I don't even know how to get through my interview with
her to-day without lying to her like a politician. Now just get a look
at the position. Here's a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of
sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her,
head full of 'whys,' and 'wherefores.' Sixteen's well-nigh grown up
these days, mind you. Her mother's dead, and curiously the fact didn't
seem to break her up as you'd have expected it to. Why?" The man
shrugged. "It's not because she lacks feeling. Oh, no. Maybe it's
because of the strength of those feelings. Remember her mother married
Leslie when the child was thirteen. A good understanding age. She was
never allowed to see her father. No. She was packed off to school and
kept there--"

"Yes, I know," Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth. "And just at the
time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three
years. God doesn't give us women our babies to treat them as if they
weren't our own flesh and blood. Young Nancy was left to those maiden
dames at college, who don't know more about a child than is laid down by
highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for
their posts. They haven't a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head
with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say
she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've
done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned
her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with
her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe
'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature
enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and
lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much
chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians.
It's a shame, just a real shame. Why, if that poor, lonesome child came
right along to me, I'd--"

"Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and--hooking
him." The lawyer shook his head and smiled. "You know, Sally, you're
almost an outrage on the subject of marriage. Sometimes I wonder the
sort of tricks I was up against when I--"

A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing
charge.

"You were due at the office long ago, Charles," his wife admonished. "If
you aren't careful I'll have to pack you off right away."

"That's all right, Sally," the man demurred. "I won't go further with
that. I'll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted."
His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't
understand why she was packed off to school--and kept there? Of course
she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She
must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's
new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anything of the
child, she understands it that way. I felt that when she came to see her
mother, and went to her funeral. Now then, Nancy's coming to see me
to-day. Remember she's sixteen. She's got to learn from me the
settlement Leslie's made on her. She's got to learn further that she
isn't likely to ever see her stepfather. She knows I'm his business man.
She knows I'm his friend. Well, when she's financially independent, do
you think she'll feel like rushing into our arms, here, for a home,
feeling the way I believe she does about her parent? It's going to be
difficult, and--damned unpleasant. And for all I'm ready to help Leslie
anyway I know, I'd rather see anybody on his behalf than that kiddie,
with her wide, honest, angry eyes and red hair. I'm not going to press
our home on her, Sally, because, sooner or later, if she accepted it,
which I don't believe she would, she'd have to learn things of Leslie,
and--well, the affairs you know about. That must not be. She's not going
to learn these things from us. I'm going to do the best I know for the
child, and when it comes to the matter of a home she must choose for
herself. There's always her mother's folk, or even James McDonald's
folk--"

"God forbid! No. Oh, no." The woman's instant denial was horrified. "Not
the McDonald lot. They're all revolutionaries. All of them. It's--it's
unthinkable. It certainly is."

The man moved away.

"That's so," he agreed. "Well, anyway, I'll do the best I know for the
child, Sally. You can trust me."

The woman's anxiety abated, and she rose from her chair.

"I know that, Charles," she said. "But the McDonalds! They're--"

"Sure they are." The man laughed. "Well, good-bye, my dear. I'll tell
you all about it when I've fixed things. Thank goodness it's quit
snowing and the sun's shining again. I wish I felt as good as it looks
outside here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles Nisson had become a lawyer without any marked inclination or
enthusiasm for his profession. It had been simply a matter of following
the father before him. It would have been much the same if his father
had been a farmer, or a politician, or anything else. The son was
patient, temperate, and of no great ambition. But he was also keenly
intelligent. Without impulse, or striking originality, but with a
tremendous capacity for hard work, he was bound to be moderately
successful in any career. In his father's profession his temperament was
particularly suited, and in spite of lacking enthusiasm he had become
unquestionably a better lawyer than the country attorney he had
succeeded.

Just now his mind was filled with unease. The matter of his forthcoming
interview with a child of sixteen years had only small place in the
affairs which disturbed him. His real concern was for his friend, Leslie
Standing, and the disaster, which, in a seemingly overwhelming rush had
befallen at far-off Sachigo. Again his trouble had no relation to these
things as they affected his own worldly affairs. It was of the man
himself he was thinking.

He knew it all now. He had painfully learned the complete story of
disaster. And, to his sturdy mind, it was a deplorable example of almost
unbelievable human weakness.

Standing had conveyed his final determination to abandon his Labrador
enterprise in the correspondence which had passed between them during
the three months which had elapsed since the funeral of his wife and
stillborn child. And during that time their friendship had been sorely
tested. There had been times when the lawyer's native patience had been
unequal to the strain. There had been times when his temper had leapt
from under the bonds which so strongly held it. But for all the ordeals
of that prolonged correspondence, for all he deplored the pitiful
weakness in the other, his friendship remained, and he finally accepted
his instructions. But the whole thing left him very troubled.

As the hour of noon approached, his trouble showed no sign of abatement.
It was the reverse. There were moments, as he sat in the generously
upholstered chair before his desk, in the comfortable down-town office
which overlooked Abercrombie's principal thoroughfare, that he felt like
abandoning all responsibility in the chaos of his friend's affairs. But
this was only the result of irritation, and had no relation to his
intentions. He knew well enough that everything in his power would be
done for the man who never so surely needed his help as now.

He refreshed his memory with the details of the deed of settlement for
the abandoned stepdaughter. Then, as the hands of the clock approached
the hour of his appointment, he sat back yielding his whole
concentration upon those many problems confronting him.

What, he asked himself, was going to become of Standing now that he had
cut himself adrift from that anchorage which had held him safe for the
past seven years? He strove to follow the driving of the man's curiously
haunted mind. He had declared his intention of going away. Where?
Definite information had been withheld. He was going to devote himself
to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind.
What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming.
Was it good, or--bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle
of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his
friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the
shock it had sustained.

No. Speculation was useless. The crude facts were like a brick wall he
had to face. Standing's wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left
to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child. The
responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung
upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his
worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any
possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and
all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the
unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole thing was
mad--utterly--

The muffled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons. One
swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional
instinct. He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his
table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.

"Miss McDonald to see you," he announced, in the modulated tone which
was part of his professional make-up.

The lawyer rose at once. He moved toward the door with a smiling
welcome. The sex and personality of his visitor demanded this departure
from his custom.

Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had
departed. She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen.
In her simple college girl's overcoat, with its muffling of fur about
the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure
concealed. Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that
confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer
countries.

But these things passed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer. He was
smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap. It was the
wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark
lashes, that inspired his smiling interest. It was the level brows, so
delicately pencilled, and dark as were the eyelashes. It was the perfect
nose, and lips, and chin, and the chiselled beauty of oval cheeks, all
in such classic harmony with the girl's wealth of vivid hair.

Nancy returned his gaze without the shadow of a smile. She had come at
this man's call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College,
which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three
or four most impressionable years of her life. And she knew the purpose
of the summons.

There was a deep abiding resentment in her heart. It was not against
this man or his wife. From these two she had received only kindness and
affection. It was directed against the stepfather whom she believed to
be the cause of the banishment she had had to endure. Furthermore, she
could never forget that her banishment was only terminated that she
might gaze at last upon the dead features of her dearly loved mother
before the cold earth hid them from view forever.

The lawyer understood. He had understood from her reply to his letter
summoning her. There was no need for the confirmation he read now in her
unsmiling eyes.

"You sent for me?" she said.

Nancy's voice was deep and rich for all her youth. Then with a display
of some slight confusion, she suddenly realised the welcoming hand
outheld. She took it hurriedly, and the brief hand clasp completely
broke down the barrier she had deliberately set up.

"Oh, it's a shame, Uncle Charles," she cried, almost tearfully.
"It's--it's a shame. I know. I'm just a kid--a fool kid who hasn't a
notion, or a feeling, or--or anything. I'm to be treated that way. When
he says 'listen,' why, I've just got to listen. And when he says 'obey,'
I've got to obey, because the law says he's my stepfather. He's robbed
me of my mother. Oh, it's cruel. Now he's going to rob me of everything
else I s'pose. Who is he? What is he that he has the power to--to make
me a sort of slave to his wishes? I've never seen him. I hate him, and
he hates me, and yet--oh--I'm kind of sorry," she said, in swift
contrition at the sight of the old man's evident distress. "I--I--didn't
think. I--oh, I know it's not your fault, uncle. It's just nothing to do
with you. You've always been so kind and good to me--you and Aunt Sally.
You've got to send for me and tell me the things he says, because--"

"Because I'm his 'hired man.' But also because I'm his friend."

The lawyer spoke kindly, but very firmly. He knew the impulsive nature
of this passionate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised,
none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of
childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her
father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven
him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he
might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world
saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures. So he checked
the impulsive flow of the child's protest. He held out his hands.

"You'd best let me take your coat, my dear," he said, with a smile the
girl found it impossible to resist. "Maybe you'd like to remove your
overshoes, too. There's a big talk to make, and I want to get things
fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before
you go back to Marypoint."

The child capitulated. But she needed no assistance. Her coat was
removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him,
the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.

"Guess I'll keep my rubbers on," she said. Then she added with a laugh
which a moment before must have been impossible. "That way I'll feel I
can run away when I want to. What next?"

"Why, just sit right here."

The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk. His movements
were swift now. He had no desire to lose the girl's change of mood.

And Nancy submitted. She took the chair set for her while the man she
loved to call "Uncle Charlie" passed round to his. He gave her no time
for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.

"Now, my dear," he said earnestly, "you came here feeling pretty bad
about things, and maybe I don't blame you. But there isn't the sort of
thing waiting on you you're guessing. Before we get to the real business
I just want to tell you the things in my mind. Of course, as you say,
you're a 'kid' yet--a school-kid, eh? That's all right. But I know you
can get a grip of things that many much older girls could never hope to.
That's why I want to tell you the things I'm going to. Now you've worked
it out in your mind that your stepfather is just a heartless, selfish
creature who has no sort of use for you, and just wants to forget your
existence. He married your mother, but had no idea of taking on her
burdens--that's you. It isn't so. It wasn't so. I know, because this man
is my friend, and I know all there is to know about him. The whole thing
has been deplorable. You've been the victim of circumstances that I may
not explain even to you. But I promise you this, your stepfather is not
the man to have desired to cut you out of your mother's life."

"Who did then? Mother?"

The girl's beautiful face flushed under her stirring emotions. The man
shook his head.

"Circumstances. Yes, those circumstances I told you of. Those
circumstances I can't explain." Charles Nisson picked up a typescript
and held it out to the child.

"I want you to take this. It's not the deed, but a true copy. I want you
to read it over and think about it, and when you get back to Marypoint,
and feel like talking to those teachers you trust there, you can tell
them what it contains, and hear what they have to say about it, and see
if they won't think better of your stepfather than you do. You needn't
read it now," as the girl turned the pages and glanced down the
confusion of legal phraseology. "I'm going to tell you what it contains
in plain words. But I want you to have it, and read it, and think over
it, because I want you to try and get a real understanding of the man
whose signature is set to the original deed."

"Yes," he went on, meditatively, and in a tone of real regret. "I'd be
pretty glad to have you think better of him. I think just now he needs
the kind thought of anyone who belongs to him. He's in pretty bad
trouble--someways."

The girl looked up. A curious anxiety was shining in her eyes.

"Trouble?" she demanded. "You mean he's done wrong? What d'you mean?
What sort of--trouble?"

The man shook his head.

"No. It's not that. It's--your mother. You know, Nancy, he loved your
mother in a way that leaves a good man broken to pieces when he loses
the object of his love. Every good thought he ever had was bound up in
your mother. And your mother was his strong support, and literally his
guiding star. You've lost your mother. You know how you felt. Well, I
can't tell you, but think, try and think what it would be if you'd lost
just every hope in life, too--the same as he has."

"I'd--I'd want to die," the girl cried impulsively.

"Yes. So would anyone. So does he. Just as far as the world's concerned
he's dead now. You'll never see him, or hear from him. Nor will anyone
else--except me. He'll never come into your life after this. He'll never
claim his legal guardianship of you, beyond that document. To you he's
dead, leaving you heir to what is contained in that deed. He's just a
poor devil of a man hunted and haunted through the rest of his existence
by the memory of a love that was more than life to him. Try and think
better of him, Nancy, my dear. He's got enough to bear. I think he
deserves far better than he's ever likely to get handed to him. I tell
you solemnly, my dear, whatever sins he may have committed, and most of
us have committed plenty," he added, with a gentle smile, "he's done you
no real hurt. And now he's only doing that good by you I would expect
from him."

Nancy sighed deeply, and it needed no words of hers to tell the man of
law how well he had fought his friend's battle. A deep wave of childish
pity had swept away the last of a resentment which had seemed so bitter,
so implacable. It was the generous heart of the child, shorn, for the
moment, of its inheritance from her father. Her even brows had puckered,
and the man knew that tears, real tears of sympathy, were not far off.

"Tell me," she said, in a low voice. "Tell me some more."

But the man shook his head. "I can't tell you more," he said gently.
"Where your stepfather is, or where he will be to-morrow, I may not tell
you. Even when your mother was alive you were not permitted to know
these things. That was due to the 'circumstances' I told you of. It just
remains for me to tell you the contents of that document. They're as
generous as only your stepfather knows how to make them. He's appointed
me your trustee. And he's settled on you a life annuity of $10,000.
There are a few simple conditions. You will remain at college till your
education is complete, and, until you are twenty-one I shall have
control of your income. That is," he explained, "I shall see that you
don't handle it recklessly. During that time, subject to my approval,
you can make your home with whom you like. After you've passed your
twenty-first birthday you are as free as air to go or come, to live
where you choose, and how you choose. And your income will be
forthcoming from this office--every quarter. Do you understand all that,
my dear? It's so very simple. Your stepfather has gone to the limit to
show you how well he desires for you, and how free of his authority he
wants you to be. There is another generous act of his that will be made
clear to you when the time comes. But that is for the future--not now.
His last word to me," he went on, picking up a letter, "when he sent me
the deed duly signed, was: 'Tell this little girl when you hand her
these things, it isn't my wish to trouble her with an authority which
can have little enough appeal for her. Tell her that her mother was my
whole world, and it is my earnest desire that her daughter should have
all the good and comfort this world can bestow. If ever she needs
further help she can have it without question, and that she only has to
appeal to my friend and adviser, Charles Nisson, for anything she
requires.'"

The man laid the letter aside and looked up.

"That's the last paragraph of the last communication I had from him. And
they're not the words of a monstrous tyrant who is utterly heartless,
eh?"

The girl made no answer. Her emotion was too strong for her. Two great
tears rolled slowly down her beautiful cheeks.

The lawyer rose from his chair. He came round the desk and laid a gentle
hand on the heaving shoulder, while Nancy strove to wipe her tears away
with a wholly inadequate handkerchief.

"That's right, my dear," he said very gently. "Wipe them away. There's
no need to cry. Leslie's done all a man in his peculiar position can do
for you. You've got the whole wide world before you, and everything you
can need for comfort--thanks to him. Now let's forget about it all. Just
take that paper back to school with you. And maybe you'll write, or come
and let me know what you think about it. If you feel like making your
home with us, why, that way you'll just complete our happiness. If you
feel like going to your mother's sister, Anna Scholes, I shan't refuse
you. Anyway, think about it all. That's my big talk and it's finished.
Just get your overcoat on, and we'll get right along home to food."




CHAPTER VI

NATHANIEL HELLBEAM


The room was furnished with extreme modern luxury. The man standing over
against the window with his broad back turned, somehow looked to be in
perfect keeping with the setting his personal tastes had inspired. He
was broad, squat, fat. His head and neck were set low upon his
shoulders, and the hair oil was obvious on the longish dark hair which
seemed to grow low down under his shirt collar.

The other man, seated in one of the many easy chairs, was in strong
contrast. His was the familiar face of the agent, Idepski, dark, keen,
watchful. He was smoking the cigarette to which he had helped himself
from the gold box standing near him on the ornate desk.

"You seem to have made a bad mess of things."

Nathaniel Hellbeam turned from the window and came back to his desk with
quick, short, energetic strides.

He presented a picture of inflamed wrath. His fleshy, square face was
flushed and almost purple. His small eyes were hot with anger. They
snapped as he launched his harshly spoken verdict. His whole manner
bristled with merciless intolerance.

He was enormously fat, and breathed heavily through clean shaven lips
that protruded sensually. His age was doubtful, but suggested something
under middle life. It was the gross bulk of the man that made it almost
impossible to estimate closely. The only real youth about him was his
dark, well oiled hair which possessed not a sign of greying in it.

He flung himself into the wide chair which gaped to receive him, and
glared at the dark face of his visitor.

"What in the hell do I pay you for?" he cried brutally, lapsing, in his
anger, into that gutteral Teutonic accent which it was his life's object
to avoid. "A wild cat's scheme it was I tell you from the first. You go
to this Sachigo with your men. You think to get this 'sharp' asleep, or
what? You find him wide awake waiting for you to arrive. What then? He
jumps quick. So quick you can't think. You a prisoner are. You go where
he sends you. You live like a swine in the woods. You are made to work
for your food. And a year is gone. A year! Serve you darn right. Oh,
yes. Bah! You quit. You understand? I pay you no more. You are a fool, a
blundering fool. I wash my hands with you."

Idepski sat still, patient, as once before he had sat under the whip
lash of a man's tongue. And he continued smoking till the great banker's
last word was spoken.

Then he stirred, and removed his cigarette from his thin lips.

"That's all right, Mr. Hellbeam," he said coldly. "It seems like you've
a right to all you've said. It seems, I said. But the 'fool' talk." He
shook his head. "My best enemies don't reckon me that--generally. The
game I'm playing has room enough for things that look like blunders. I
allow that. It doesn't matter. You see, I know more of this feller
Martin maybe than you do. I guess he's a mighty big coward, except when
he's got the drop on a feller. I've given him the scare of a lifetime,
and I've unshipped him from his safe anchorage on that darn Labrador
coast. Do you know what's happened? I'll tell you. He's quit Sachigo.
From what I can learn he's sold out his mill to that uncouth hoodlum,
Harker, who was sort of his partner, and quit. Where? I don't know yet.
Why has he quit? Why, because he knows we've located his hiding, and
will get him if he remains. You reckon I've mussed things up." He shook
his head. "He was well-nigh safe up there on Labrador--and I knew it. We
had to get him out of it. Well, I've got him out. He's bolted like a
gopher, and it's up to me to locate him. I shall locate him. I'm glad
he's quit that hellish country. I've had a year of it, and it's put the
fear of God into me. You needn't worry. I'm quite ready to quit your
pay. But I'm going on with this thing, sure. You see, I owe him quite a
piece for myself--now. I've been through the hell he intended me to go
through when he sent me along up to be held prisoner by that skunk, Ole
Porson. I'm going to pay him for that--good. I don't want your pay--now.
One day I'll hand that feller over to you--and when you've doped him
plenty--you'll have paid me." He rose leisurely from his comfortable
chair. "May I take another of your good cigarettes?" he went on, with a
half smile in his cold eyes. "You see, I won't get another, seeing I'm
quitting you."

He deliberately helped himself without waiting for permission, while his
eyes dwelt on the gold box containing them.

But the financier's mood had changed. The keen mind was busy behind his
narrow eyes. Perhaps Idepski understood the man. Perhaps the coolness of
the agent appealed to the implacable nature of the Swede. Whatever it
was the hot eyes had cooled, and the fleshy cheeks had returned to
their normal pasty hue. He raised a hand pointing.

"Sit down and smoke all you need," he said, in the sharp, autocratic
fashion that was his habit. "We aren't through yet." Then, for a few
moments, he regarded the slim figure as it lay back once more in the
armchair. "Say," he began, abruptly, "you reckon to go on for--yourself?
Yes? You're a good hater."

He went on as the other inclined his head.

"I like a good hater. Yes. Well, just cut out all I said. We'll go on. I
guess you'll need to blunder some before we get this swine. You're bound
to. But I want him. I want him bad. If it's good for you to go on for
yourself, that's good for me. There's a lifetime ahead yet, and I don't
care so I see him down--right down where I need him. Maybe I won't get
the money, but we'll get him, and that'll do. Yes, cut out what I said,
and go ahead. Tell me about it."

Idepski displayed neither enthusiasm nor added interest. He accepted the
position with seeming indifference. Hellbeam to him was just an
employer. A means to those ends which he had in view. If Hellbeam turned
him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski
appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration. Besides,
he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford
to do without him in this matter. His intolerant, hectic temper mattered
nothing at all. He paid for the privilege of its display, and he paid
well. So--

"There's nothing much to tell," the agent returned, with a shrug. "I'm
going to get him--that's all. See here, Mr. Hellbeam," he went on after
a pause, with a sudden change to keen energy, "you're a mighty big power
in the financial world, and to be that I guess you've had to be some
judge of the other feller. That's so. You most generally know when he's
beat before you begin. And when he squeals it don't come as a surprise.
Well, that's how it is with me, only it's a bigger thing to me because
it sometimes happens to mean the difference between life and death. Say,
when you put up your bluff at a feller, and watch him square in the
eyes, and you see 'em flicker and shift, do you reckon you've lit on the
'yellow streak,' that lies somewhere in most folk? I guess so. Well,
that's how I know my man. I've seen it in this bum, Leslie Standing as
he calls himself now. And when I saw it I knew he was beat, for all he'd
the drop on me. Since then my notion's proved itself. He's lit out. He's
cut from his gopher hole at Sachigo. An' when a gopher gets away from
his hole, the man with the gun has him dead set. But say, that muss up
you reckon I made doesn't look that way when you know the things it's
taught me. While I was way up at that penitentiary camp on the Beaver
River I kept all my ears and eyes wide, and I learned most of the things
a feller's liable to learn in this world when he acts that way. I
learned something of the notions lying back of this feller's work up
there. Say, he hadn't finished with you when he took that ten millions
out of you." An ironical smile lit the man's dark eyes as he thrust home
his retaliation for the financier's insults. "Not by a lot," he went on,
with a smiling display of teeth that conveyed nothing pleasant. "They've
a slogan up there that means a whole heap, and it comes from him, and
runs through the whole work going on, right down to the Chink camp
cooks. Guess that mill is only beginning. It's the ground work of a
mighty big notion. And the notion is to drive the Skandinavians out of
Canada's pulp trade, and very particularly the Swedes, as represented by
the interests of Nathaniel Hellbeam. Guess you sit right here in New
York, but up there they've got you measured up to the last pant's
button."

"They that think?"

The financier's bloated cheeks purpled as he put his clumsy
interrogation.

"Oh, yes. This feller Standing reckons he's made a big start, and there
are mighty big plans out. When he and that clownish partner of his,
Harker, are through, Sachigo'll be the biggest proposition in the way of
groundwood pulp in the world. They've forests such as you in Skandinavia
dream about when your digestion's feeling good. They've a water power
that leaves Niagara a summer trickle. They've got it all with a sea
journey of less than eighteen hundred miles to Europe. But there's more
than that. When Sachigo's complete it's to be the parent company of a
mighty combine that's going to take in all the mills of Canada outside
Nathaniel Hellbeam's group. And then--then, sir, the squeeze'll start
right in. And it isn't going to stop till the sponge--that's Nathaniel
Hellbeam--is wrung dry."

"You heard all this--when you were held prisoner and working like a
swine in Martin's forests?"

The smile in Hellbeam's eyes was no less ironical than the agent's.

"When I was working like a swine."

"These lumber-jacks. They knew all that in Standing's mind is?"

"No. But I learned it all."

"How?"

The demand was instant, and a surge of force lay behind it.

"Because some I saw. Some I picked up from general talk. And the rest I
pieced together because it's my job to think hard when the game's
against me. But it don't matter. You know that the things I've told you
are right. It's news to you, but you know it's right, because you're
thinking hard, and the game's against--you."

"Yes."

The financier's admission was the act of a man who has no hesitation in
looking facts in the face and acknowledging them. Idepski's deductions
were irrefutable, because the Swede was a shrewd business man with a
full appreciation of the man who had lightened his finances by ten
million dollars.

For some moments the fleshy face was turned towards the window which
yielded the hum of busy traffic many stories below them. His narrow eyes
were earnestly reflective, but there was no concern in them. To the
waiting man he was simply measuring the threat against him, and probing
its possibilities for mischief.

"Yet this fellow. He on the run is--Yes?"

The eyes were smiling as they came back again to Idepski's face. The
agent nodded, flinging his cigarette end into the porcelain cuspidore
beside the desk.

"Which makes me all the more sure of the game," he said confidently.
"He's rattled. He's so scared to death for himself, and for his purpose,
he's getting out. It's as clear as daylight to me. He feels he's plumb
against it if he stops around. He knows we've located him. He knows what
he's done to me. He knows all he wants to know of you. Well, he reckons
there's no sort of chance for him at Sachigo. And if he stops there's no
sort of chance for this purpose of his. He reckons to call off the
hounds on his own trail, while the feller Harker carries on the good
work of squeezing the Swedes. That's how I see it. And I guess I'm
right. Remember I had a year of hell up there to think in, and when I
finally got clear away I had two months' solitary chasing of those woods
to think in, and then, when I made the coast, I had the trip down with
the folks on the boat to listen to. He's scared for his life, and of
anything you hope to hand him. But he's more scared for the purpose that
made him set up that mill at Sachigo."

Hellbeam leant back in his chair. His great paunch protruded invitingly
and he clasped his hands over it.

"Maybe you're right," he said, with an air intended to conciliate.
"Anyway you've picked up some pieces and set them together so they make
a fancy shape. But--it isn't good. No. Here, I think, too. I see
another, way from you. Without this fellow Sachigo is--nothing. See? I
care nothing because of this Harker. No. The other--that's different.
Yes. He the brain has. All this piece you make. He is capable of it. But
he is on the run. Good. I still sleep well while he runs. Sachigo? Bah!
It is nothing without Leslie Martin. Now, go you. Hunt this man. Maybe
your year of the woods will help you," he said, with biting emphasis.
"You know the woods? Well, don't quit his trail. Get him. Get him
alive."

"Oh, I shall get him. Your urging ain't needed. I'll get him as you
say--alive. And he knows it."

Idepski's cold eyes hardened with a frigid hatred as he spoke. He had
only been paid for the work hitherto. Now he was implacable.

"But it's Sachigo I mean to watch," he went on, after a brief pause. "I
mean to play in that direction. It's the home burrow where you lay your
traps once your quarry's on the run."

Hellbeam nodded.

"That's good sense."

"Sure it is," retorted the agent. "I'm glad you see it that way," he
added with a smile under which the financier grew restive once more.

"Yes. Well, see you get him. Money? It doesn't matter. Get him! Get
him!" he reiterated fiercely. "You understand me? It doesn't matter how
you get him. I can deal with the rest."

Suddenly he raised a clenched fist, fat, and strong, and white, and
extended his thumb. He turned it downwards and pressed its extremity on
the gold mounted blotting pad before him with a force that bent the
knuckle backwards. "Get him so I can crush him--like that," he cried.
"Get him alive. I want him alive. See?"

"I see. I'll get him--sure. You needn't worry a thing."

And as Walter Idepski rose to take his departure, for all his nerve, he
felt glad that the passion of this Swede's hate was not directed against
him.




PART II

EIGHT YEARS LATER




CHAPTER I

BULL STERNFORD


A great gathering thronged the heart of the clearing. There were men of
every shade of colour, men of well-nigh every type. They stood about in
a wide circle, whose regularity remained definite even under the
stirring of fierce excitement. They had gathered for a fight, a great
fight between two creatures, full human in shape and splendid manhood,
but bestial in the method of the battle demanded. It was a battle with
muscles of iron, and hearts that knew no mercy, and body and mind tuned
only to endure and conquer. It was a battle that belonged to the savage
out-world, acknowledging only the vicious laws of "rough and tough."

The rough creatures stood voiceless and well-nigh breathless. The
combatants were well matched and redoubtable, even in a community whose
only deity was physical might and courage and the skill of the wielded
axe. The lust of it all was burning fiercely in every heart.

The sun poured out its flood of summer upon a world of virgin forest.
The sky was without blemish. A dome of perfect azure roofed in the
length and breadth of Nature's kingdom. Nevertheless the fairness of the
summer day, with its ravishing accompaniment of soft, mystery sounds
from an unseen world and the lavish beauty of shadowed woods were fit
setting for the pulsing of savage emotions. It was far out in the lost
world of Northern Quebec. It was far, far beyond the widest-flung
frontiers of civilisation. It was out there where man soon learns to
forget his birthright, and readily yields to the animal in him.

It was a scene of mighty slaughter amongst the giants of the forest.
Hundreds sprawled in the path of man's gleaming axe. Giants they were,
hoary with age, and gnarled with the sinews built up by Nature to resist
her fiercest storms. They lay there, in every direction, reaching up
with tattered arms outstretched, as though appealing for the light, the
warmth, and the sweetness of life they would know no more.

Amidst this carnage a great camp was growing up. There were huts
completed. There were huts only in the skeleton. They were dotted about
in a fashion apparently without order or purpose. Yet long before the
falling of the first snow, order would reign everywhere and man's
purpose would be achieved.

The bunkhouses, the stores, the offices, the stables, they must all be
ready before the coming of the "freeze-up." Summer is the time of
preparation. Winter is the season when the lumber-jack's work must go
forward without cessation or break of any sort. Not even the excuse of
sickness can be accepted. There is no excuse. The lumber-jack must work,
or sink to the dregs of a life that has already created in him a spirit
of indifference to the laws of God and man. So the life of the forest is
hard and fierce, and the battle of it all is long.

But the men who seek it are more than equal to the task. They are of all
sorts, and all races. They drift to the forest from all ranks of life by
reason of the spirit driving them. They come from the universities of
the world. They come straight from the gates of the penitentiary. They
come from the land, the sea, the office. They come from all countries,
and they come for every reason. The call of the forest is deep with
significance. Its appeal is profound. Its life is free, and shadowed,
and afar.

For long moments the clinch of the fighting men remained unbroken. They
lay there upon the ground locked in a deadly embrace. A spasmodic jolt,
a violent, muscular heave. The result was changed position, while the
clinch remained unrelaxed. There were movements of gripping hands. There
were changes of position in the intertwined legs clad in their hard cord
trousers. The heavily-booted feet stirred and stirred again in response
to the impulse of the searching brains of the fighters, and every slight
movement had deep meaning for the onlookers.

Yet none of these movements revealed the inspiration of passion. They
were calculated and full of purpose. It was devilish purpose driving
towards the objects of the fight. The stirring fingers yearned to reach
the eyes of the adversary to blind him, and leave his organs of vision
gouged from their sockets. The bared, strong teeth were only awaiting
that dire chance to close upon the enemy's flesh, whether ear, or nose,
or throat. Then the knee and foot. They were striving under ardent will
for that inhuman maiming which would leave the victim crippled for life.

Each movement of the fighters was estimated by the onlookers at its due
worth. They understood it all, the skill, the chance of it. Not one of
them but had fought just such a battle in his time, and not a few
carried the scars of it, and would continue to carry the scars of it for
the rest of their days.

The moments of quiescence yielded to a spasmodic violence. There was a
wild rolling, and the unlocking of mighty, clinging legs. One
dishevelled head was raised threateningly. It remained poised for a
fraction of time over the upturned face of the man lying in a position
of disadvantage. Then it lunged downwards. And as it descended, a sound
like the clipping of teeth came back to the taut strung senses of the
onlookers. A sigh escaped from a hundred throats.

"Bull missed it that time."

Abe Kristin whispered his comment. The two men beside him had nothing to
add at the moment. Their eyes were intent for the next development.

Suddenly the fair-haired giant who had missed his attack seemed to
disengage himself from the under man's desperate hold. It was impossible
to ascertain the means he employed. But he clearly released himself and
one hammer fist swung up. It crashed sickeningly down on the upturned
face, and a whistling breath escaped the emotional Abe.

"Gee! He's takin' a chance! That ain't the play in a 'rough and tough,'"
he muttered.

"Nope. You're right, Abe," Luke Gats agreed without turning. "He's
crazy. Gee! It's a chance. But he's maybe rattled. Bull's been fightin'
over an hour."

"Here get it!" Tug Burke was pointing with a cant-hook in his
excitement. "Get it quick. See? He's--"

The man's excitement found reflection in the whole concourse of
onlookers. There was a furious movement in the human body crushed on the
ground beneath the man they called Bull. Its knees came up under his
adversary's body with a terrific jolt. The purpose of maiming was
obvious.

"Gee! I'm glad."

Tug's relief found an echo in the sigh that escaped his companions. The
intended victim had promptly swung his body clear and the threatened
injury was averted. But his retaliation was instant. His great open hand
spread over the man's face, smothering it; and it seemed the sought-for
goal had been reached.

"Gouge! Gouge!"

The cry roared in hoarse, excited tones from every direction. Unanimity
displayed the general feeling. The man whose face had been smothered was
Arden Laval, the camp boss, the man they hated as only forest-men can
hate. The other was a giant youngster, not long a member of the camp,
the usual object for victimisation by such a man as the French Canadian
boss.

The demand remained unsatisfied. The fingers remained spread out over
the man's eyes, but the foul act was never perpetrated. The younger
man's efforts were directed towards a deeper, more significant purpose,
and perhaps less cruel. He could have blinded in a twinkling. But he
refrained. Instead, he pressed up mightily with a fore-arm crooked under
the back of the man's neck, his smothering hand pressed down with all
his enormous strength.

"The darn fool! Why in hell don't he--?"

Abe was interrupted by the excited voice of the man with the cant-hook.

"God A'mighty!" Tug cried. "Do you get it? Gouge? It ain't good enough
fer Master Bull. He's playin' bigger. He's playin' fer dollars while we
was reck'nin' cents. Look! It'll crack sure! His gorl-darn neck! He
means--!"

"To kill!"

Luke Gat's jubilation was dreadful to witness. His hard, be-whiskered
features were alight with fiendish joy. This youngster had gone beyond
all expectations. No less than the life of the greatest bully in the
lumber world would satisfy him.

"Say, the nerve! He'll break the life out o' the skunk," he exulted.
"The kid means crackin' his neck, sure as God!"

"Ken he do it?" Tug had thrust forward.

"Laval ain't the feller he was," mused Abe. "He shouldn't a let the boy
get that holt. It's goin' back. It certainly is."

The men stood hushed before the terrible significance of what they
beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough
to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest
emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully,
Arden Laval, who only held his position by reason of his fighting
powers. They would be infinitely pleased to witness his end. All the
more sure was their delight that it should come at the hands of this
pleasant-voiced young giant, who had come amongst them out of the very
lap of civilisation. Later on they would laugh at the thought of the
redoubtable Laval in the hands of this "kid," as they considered him.
But for the moment they were held enthralled by the excitement of it
all.

The moments prolonged. The thrusting hand, and the crushing arm were
forcing, forcing slowly, in their terrible strangle hold. The face of
the camp boss was hidden from the spectators under the smothering hand.
But the perilous angle at which his dark head was thrust back was there
for all to see. His struggles, in that merciless hold, were becoming
less violent. There was despair in their impotence.

The man called Bull was fighting with no less desperation. His youthful,
resilient muscles were extended to the last ounce of their power, and an
active, steely-tempered brain lay behind his every effort. The memory of
months of brutal injustice and bullying, the bitterness of which had
galled beyond endurance, supported this last mighty effort. Yes, for all
he was bred in the gentle life of civilisation, for all ruthless cruelty
had no place in his normal temper, his one desire now was to kill, to
slay this brute-man who had made his life unendurable.

It was an awful moment. It was terrible even to these hardy men of the
forests. The spectacle of a slow, deliberate killing was incomparable
with the blood feuds to which they were used. There were those whose
nerves prompted them to shout for haste. There were some even who
welcomed the prolonged agony of the victim. But none shouted, none
spoke or stirred. Furthermore, not one pair of shining eyes revealed the
quality of mercy. Bull's right was his own. If he demanded death it was
his due. Certainly it was the due of the bully, Laval.

On the far side of the circle a sudden commotion broke up the tense
expectancy of the onlookers. Every eye responded, and the unanimity of
the change of interest suggested the desire for relief. The commotion
continued. There was some sort of struggle going on. Then, in a moment,
it ceased. A tall, lean, dark-clad figure leapt into the arena and flung
itself upon the combatants.

The circle had re-formed. Again were eyes fastened upon the point of
fascination which had held them so long. But now a buzz of talk hummed
on the summer air.

"What in hell!" demanded Luke, in the bitterness of disappointment.

"Here, I'm--"

Tug Burke made a move to break into the arena. But the powerful hand of
Abe was fastened about one of his arms in a grip of iron.

"Say, quit, kid!" he cried hoarsely.

The man's harsh tones were stirred out of their usual quiet.

"Stop right here," he went on. "There's just one feller on this earth
has a right to butt in when Death's flappin' his wings around. That's
Father Adam. Maybe you're feeling sick to think Laval's going to get
clear with his life. Maybe I am. Father Adam ain't buttin' in ordinary.
He's savin' that hothead kid the blood of a killin' on his hands. Guess
I'm glad."

The next moments were abounding with amazing incident. It seemed as
though a flying, priestly figure had been absorbed in the life-and-death
struggle. He seemed to become part of it. Then, with kaleidoscopic
suddenness, the men lay apart, and the death strangle hold of Bull
Sternford was broken. And the magic of it all lay in the fact that the
stranger was standing over the prone combatants, his dark, bearded face,
and wide, shining black eyes turned upon the living fury gazing up out
of the eyes of the man who had been robbed of his prey.

"There's going to be no killing, Bull." Father Adam spoke quietly,
deliberately, but with cold decision.

There was no yielding in his pale, ascetic features. One hand slipped
quickly into a pocket of his short, black, semi-clerical coat, as he
allowed his eyes to glance down at the still prostrate camp boss.

"And you, Laval," he cried, with more urgency, "get out quick. Get right
out to your shanty and stop there. Later I'll come along and fix up your
hurts."

Young Bull Sternford leapt to his feet. His youthful figure towered. His
handsome blue eyes were ablaze with almost demoniac fury. His purpose
was obvious. A voiceless passion surged as he started to rush again upon
his victim.

But the priestly figure, with purpose no less, instantly barred the way.

"Quit," he cried sharply. "What I say, goes."

Bull halted. He halted within a yard of the automatic pistol whose
muzzle was covering him. He stood for a second staring stupidly. And
something of his madness seemed to pass out of his eyes. Then, in a
moment, his voice rang out harshly.

"Get away. Let me get at him. Oh, God, I'll smash him! I'll--!"

"You'll quit right now!" Father Adam still barred the way with the
threatening gun. He raised the muzzle the least shade. "There's this gun
says you're not going to have murder on your hands, boy; and there's a
man behind it knows how to make it stop your mad attempt. That's
better," he went on, as, even in his fury the younger man drew back in
face of the threat. "Say, you've done enough, boy. You've done all you
need. He's deserved everything he's got, the same as most of us deserve
the bad times we get. You've licked him like the good man you are.
You've licked him without any filthy maiming, or unnecessary cruelty.
Now leave him his life. He'll never trouble you again. Let it go at
that."

The calm of the man, the gentleness of his tones were irresistible. The
fury of the youth died hard, but it so lessened in face of the simple
exhortation that it had passed below the point where insanity rules.

Suddenly a great, bleeding hand was raised to his mane of fair hair, and
he smoothed it back off his forehead helplessly.

"Why? Why?" he demanded. Then spasmodically: "Why should--he--get away
with it? He's handed me a dog's life He's--"

He broke off. His emotions were overwhelming.

Father Adam's dark eyes never wavered. They squarely held their grip on
the stormy light shining in the other's. Laval had not stirred. He still
lay sprawled on the ground. Quite abruptly the hand gripping the
automatic pistol was thrust into the pocket of the black coat. When it
was removed it was empty. The man took a quick step towards the
half-dazed Bull.

"Come along, boy," he said persuasively, taking him by the arm. "Come
right over to my shanty," he went on. "You'll feel better in a while.
You'll feel better all ways, and glad you--didn't." Then he paused,
holding the man's unresisting arm. He looked down at Laval who displayed
belated signs of movement. "Get up, Laval," he ordered, returning to a
coldness that displayed his inner feeling. "Get up, and--get out. Get
away right now, and thank God your neck's still whole."

He waited for the obedience he demanded, and waiting he realised by the
quiescence of the man beside him that all danger had passed.

Laval staggered to his feet. He stood up, a giant in the prime of early
manhood, but bowed under the weight of physical hurt, and the knowledge
of his first defeat. He stood for a moment as though uncertain. Then he
moved slowly towards the crowding onlookers, finally passing through
them on his way to his quarters pursued by a hundred contemptuous,
unpitying glances, while busy tongues expressed regret at his escape. It
was the scowl of the wolf pack in its merciless regard for a fallen
leader.

Very different was the general attitude when Father Adam led the victor
away. Hard faces were a-grin. The tongues that cursed the defeated camp
boss hurled jubilant laudations at the unresponsive youth, who towered
even amongst these great creatures. But for the presence of Father Adam,
who seemed to exercise a miraculous restraining influence, these
lumber-jacks would have crowded in and forcibly borne their champion to
the suttler's store for those copious libations, which, in their
estimate, was the only fitting conclusion to the scene they had
witnessed. As it was they made way. They stood aside in spontaneous and
real respect, and the two men passed on in silence leaving the crowd to
disperse to its labours.




CHAPTER II

FATHER ADAM


The hush of the forest was profound. For all the proximity of the busy
lumber camp its calm was unbroken.

It was a break in the endless canopy of foliage, a narrow rift in the
dark breadth of the shadowed woods.

It was one of those infinitesimal veins through which flows the
life-blood of the forest.

A tiny streamlet trickled its way over a bed of decayed vegetation often
meandering through a dense growth of wiry reeds in a channel set well
below the general level. Banks of attenuated grass and rank foliage
lined its course, and the welcome sunlight poured down upon its water in
sharp contrast with the twilight of the forest.

Clear of the crowding trees a rough shanty stood out in the sunlight. It
was a crazy affair constructed of logs laterally laid and held in place
by uprights, with walls that looked to be just able to hold together
while suffering under the constant threat of collapse. The place was
roofed with a thatch of reeds taken from the adjacent stream-bed, and
its doorway was protected by a sheet of tattered sacking. There was also
a window covered with cotton, and a length of iron stove-pipe protruding
through the thatch of the roof seemed to threaten the whole place with
fire at its first use.

Inside there was no attempt to better the impression. There was no
furnishing. A spread of blankets on a waterproof sheet laid on a bed of
reeds formed the bed of its owner, with a canvas kit-bag stuffed with
his limited wardrobe serving as a pillow. There were several upturned
boxes to be used as seats, and a larger box served the purpose of a
table and supported a tiny oil lamp. There was not even the usual wood
stove connected up to the protruding stove-pipe. A smouldering fire was
burning between two large sandstone blocks, which, in turn, supported a
cooking pot. An uncultured Indian of the forests would have demanded
greater comfort for his resting moments.

But Father Adam had no concern for comfort of body. He needed his
blankets and his fire solely to support life against the bitterness of
the night air. For the rest the barest, hardest food kept the fire of
life burning in his lean body.

Squatting on his upturned box he gazed out upon the sunlit stream below
him. His dark eyes were full of a pensive calm. His body was inclining
forward, supported by arms folded across his knees. An unlit pipe thrust
in the corner of his mouth was the one touch that defeated the efforts
of his flowing hair and dark beard to suggest a youthful hermit
meditating in the doorway of his retreat.

Bull Sternford was seated on another box at the opposite side of the
doorway. He, too, had a pipe thrust between his strong jaws. But he was
smoking. Beyond the dressings applied to a few abrasions he bore no
signs of his recent battle. But there still burned a curiously fierce
light in his handsome blue eyes.

"You shouldn't have butted in, Father," he said, in a tone which
betrayed the emotion under which he was still labouring. "You just
shouldn't." Then with a movement of irritation: "Oh, I'm not a feller
yearning for homicide. No. It's not that. You know Arden Laval," he went
on, his brows depressing. "Of course you do. You must know him a whole
heap better than I do. Well? Say, I guess that feller hasn't a right to
walk this earth. He boasts the boys he's smashed the life clean out of.
He's killed more fool lumber-jacks than you could count on the fingers
of two hands. He wanted my scalp to hang on his belt. That man's a
murderer before God. But he's beyond the recall of law up here. And he
stops around on the fringe looking for the poor fool suckers who don't
know better than to get within his reach. Gee, it was tough! I'd a holt
on him I wouldn't get in a thousand years, and I'd nearly got the life
out of him. I'd stood for all his dirt weeks on end. He made his set at
me because I'm green and college-bred. But he called me a
'son-of-a-bitch!' Think of it! Oh, I can't rest with that hitting my
brain. It's no use. I'll have to break him. God, I'll break him yet. And
I'll see you aren't around when I do it."

The man's voice had risen almost to a shout. His bandaged hands clenched
into fists like limbs of mutton. He held them out at the man opposite,
and in his agony of rage, it gave the impression he was threatening.

Father Adam stirred. He reached down into the box under him and picked
up a pannikin. Then he produced a flask from an inner pocket. He
unscrewed the top and poured out some of its contents. He held it out to
the other.

"Drink it," he said quietly.

The blue eyes searched the dark face before them. In a moment excitement
had begun to pass.

"What is it?" Bull demanded roughly.

"It's brandy, and there's dope in it."

"Dope?"

"Yes. Bromide. You'll feel better after you've swallowed it. You see I
want to make a big talk with you. That's why I brought you here. That's
why I stopped you killing that feller--that, and other reasons. But I
can't talk with you acting like--like I'd guess Arden Laval would act.
Drink that right up. And you needn't be scared of it. It'll just do you
the good you need."

Father Adam watched while the other took the pannikin. He watched him
raise it, and sniff suspiciously at its contents. And a shadowy smile
lit his dark eyes.

"It's as I said," he prompted. Then he added: "I'm not a--Cæsar."

The youth glanced across at him, and for the first time since his battle
a smile broke through the angry gleam of his eyes. He put the pannikin
to his lips and gulped down the contents.

Father Adam drew a deep sigh. It was curious how this act of obedience
and faith affected him. The weight of his responsibility seemed suddenly
to have become enormous.

It was always the same. This man accepted him as did every other
lumber-jack throughout the forests of Quebec. He was a father whose
patient affection for his lawless children was never failing, a man of
healing, with something of the gentleness of a woman. An adviser and
spiritual guide who never worried them, and yet contrived, perhaps all
unknown to themselves, to leave them better men for their knowledge of
him. He came, and he departed. Whence he came and whither he went no one
enquired, no one seemed to know. He just moved through the twilight
forests like a ghostly, beneficent shadow, supreme in his command of
their rugged hearts.

Bull set the pannikin on the ground beside him. His smile had deepened.

"You needn't to tell me that, Father," he said, almost humbly. "There
isn't a feller back there in the camp," he added with a jerk of his
head, "that would have hesitated like me when you handed him your dope.
Thanks. Say, that darn stuff's made me feel easier."

"Good."

The missionary removed his empty pipe, and Bull hastily dragged his
pouch from a pocket in his buckskin shirt. He held it out.

"Help yourself," he invited. And the other took it. For a moment Bull
looked on at the thoughtful manner in which Father Adam filled his pipe.
Then a curiosity he could no longer restrain prompted him.

"This big talk," he said. "What's it about?"

The missionary's preoccupation vanished. His eyes lit and he passed back
the pouch.

"Thanks, boy," he said in his amiable way. "Guess I'll need to smoke,
too--you see our talk needs some hard thinking. Pass me a stick from
that fire."

Bull did as he was bid. And the missionary's eyes were on the fair head
of the man as he leant down over the smouldering embers stewing his own
meagre midday meal.

Bull Sternford was a creature of vast stature and muscular bulk. It was
no wonder that the redoubtable Laval had run up against defeat. The camp
boss had lived for twenty years the hard life of the forests. His body
was no less great than this man's. His experience in physical battle was
well-nigh unlimited. But so, too, was his debauchery.

Bull Sternford was younger. He was clean and fresh from one of the
finest colleges of the world. He was an athlete by training and nature.
Then, too, his mentality was of that amazing fighting quality which
stirs youth to go out and seek the world rather than vegetate in the
nursery of childhood. It was all there written in his keen, blue eyes,
in the set of his jaws of even white teeth. It was all there in the
muscular set of his great neck, and in the poise of his handsome head,
and in the upright carriage of his breadth of shoulder. Even his walk
was a thing to mark him out from his fellows. It was bold, perhaps even
there was a suggestion of arrogance in it. But it was only the result of
the military straightness of his body.

Little wonder, then, a man of Arden Laval's brutal nature should mark
him down as desired victim. This man was "green." He was educated. He
possessed a spirit worth breaking. Later he would learn. Later he would
become a force in the calling of the woods. Now he would be easy.

The brute had sought every opportunity to bait and goad the man to his
undoing. For months he had "camped on his trail," and Bull had endured.
Then came that moment of the filthy epithet, and Bull's spirit broke
through the bonds of will that held it. The insult had been hurled at
the moment and at the spot where the battle had been fought. Bull had
flung himself forthwith at the throat of the French Canadian almost
before the last syllable of the insult had passed the man's lips. And
the end of nearly a two hours' battle had been the downfall of the
bully, with the name of Bull Sternford hailed as a fighting man in his
place.

The firebrand was passed to the waiting missionary. He sucked in the
pleasant fumes of a lumberman's tobacco. Then the stick was flung back
to its place in the fire.

Father Adam nursed one long leg, which he flung across the other, while
his wide, intelligent eyes gazed squarely into the eyes of the man
opposite.

"Tell me," he said. "What brought you into the life of the woods? What
left you quitting the things I can see civilisation handed you? This is
the life of the wastrel, the fallen, the man who knows no better. It's
not for men starting out in possession of all those things--you have."

Bull sat for a moment without replying. Father Adam's "dope" had done
its work. His passionate moments had vanished like an ugly dream. His
turbulent spirit had attained peace. Suddenly he looked up with a frank
laugh.

"Now, why in hell should I tell you?"

It was an irresistible challenge. The missionary nodded his approval.

"Yes. Why--in hell--should you?"

He, too, laughed. And his laugh miraculously lit up his ascetic
features.

Instantly Bull flung out one bandaged hand in a sweeping gesture.

"Why shouldn't I--anyway?" he cried, with the abandon of a man
impatient of all subterfuge. "Guess I ought to turn right around and ask
who the devil you are to look into my affairs? Who are you to assume the
right of inquisitor?" He shook his head. "But I'm not going to. Now I'm
sane again I know just how much you did for me. I meant killing Laval.
Oh, yes, there wasn't a thing going to break my hold until he was
dead--dead. You got me in time to save me from wrecking my whole life.
And you got in at--the risk of your own. If I'd killed him all the
things and purposes I've worried with since I left college would have
been just so much junk; and I'd have drifted into the life of a bum
lumber-jack without any sort of notion beyond rye whiskey, and the camp
women, and a well swung axe. You saved me from that. You saved me from
myself. Well, you're real welcome to ask me any old thing, and I'll hand
you all the truth there is in me. I'm an 'illegitimate.' I'm one of the
world's friendless. I'm a product of a wealthy man's licence and
unscruple. I'm an outcast amongst the world's honest born. But it's no
matter. I'm not on the squeal. Those who're responsible for my being did
their best to hand me the things a man most needs. Mind, and body, and
will. Further, they gave me all that education, books, and college can
hand a feller. More than that, my father, who seems to have had more
honesty than you'd expect, handed me a settlement of a hundred thousand
dollars the day I became twenty-one. I never knew him, and I never knew
my mother. The circumstances of my birth were simply told me on my
twenty-first birthday. I know no more. And I care nothing to hunt out
those spectres that don't figger to hand a feller much comfort. The rest
is easy. I hope I'm a feller of some guts--"

Father Adam nodded, and his eyes lit.

"Sure," was all he commented.

"Anyway, I feel like it," Bull laughed. "When I learned all these
things I started right in to think. I thought like hell. I said to
myself something like this: 'There's nothing to hold me where I am.
There's no one around to care a curse. There's that feeling right inside
the pit of my stomach makes me feel I want to make good. I want to build
up around me all that my birth has refused me. A name, a life circle, a
power, a--anyway, get right out and do things! Well, what was I going to
do? It needed thinking. Then I hit the notion."

He laughed again. He was gazing in at himself and laughing at the
conceits he knew were real, and strong, and vital.

"Say." He nodded at the prospect through the doorway. "There it is. This
country's beginning. We don't know half it means to the world yet. Well,
I hadn't enough capital to play with, so I resolved right away to start
in and learn a trade from its first step to its topmost rung, and to
earn my keep right through. Meanwhile my capital's lying invested
against the time I open out. I'm going to jump right into the groundwood
pulp business when the time comes. And out of that I mean to build a
name that folks won't easily forget. Well, I guess you won't find much
that's interesting in all this. It don't sound anything particularly
bright or new. But for what it is it's my notion, and--I'm going to put
it through. That's why I'm here. I'm learning my job from the bottom."

The decision and force of the man were remarkable. The conciseness of
his story, and his indifference to the tragedy of his birth, indicated a
level mind under powerful control. And Father Adam knew he had made no
mistake.

"It's the best story I've heard in years," he replied, a whimsical smile
lighting his dark eyes.

"Is it?"

Bull's smile was no less whimsical.

"Yes. You've guts of iron, boy. And I've been looking years for just
such a man."

"That sounds--tough," Bull laughed, but he was interested. "What's the
job you want him for? Are you yearning to hand out a killing? Is it a
trip--a trip to some waste space of God's earth that 'ud freeze up a
normal heart? Do you want a feller to beat the laws of God and man? Guts
of iron! It certainly sounds tough, and I'm not sure you've found the
feller you're needing."

"I am."

Father Adam was no longer smiling. The gravity of his expression gave
emphasis to his words.

Bull was impressed. His laugh died out.

"I don't know I'm yearning," he said deliberately. "Anyway I don't quit
the track I've marked out. That way there's nothing doing. It's a crank
with me; I can't quit a notion."

"You don't have to."

"No?"

They were regarding each other steadily.

"Here, it's not my way to beat around," the missionary exclaimed
suddenly. "When you find the thing you need you've got to act quick and
straight. Just listen a while, while I make a talk. Ask all you need as
I go along. And when I've done I'd thank you for a straight answer and
quick. An answer that'll hold you, and bind you the way your own notions
do."

"That's talk."

Bull nodded appreciatively. The missionary let his gaze wander to the
pleasant sunlight through the doorway, where the flies and mosquitoes
were basking.

"There was a fellow who started up a groundwood mill 'way out on the
Labrador coast. He was bright enough, and a mighty rich man. And he'd
got a notion--a big notion. Well, I know him. I know him intimately. I
don't know if he's a friend to me or not. Sometimes I think he isn't.
Anyway, that doesn't matter to you. The thing that does matter is, he
set out to do something big. His notions were always big. Maybe too big.
This notion was no less than to drive the Skandinavians out of the
groundwood trade of this country. He figured his great mill was to be
the nucleus of an all-Canadian and British combination, embracing the
entire groundwood industry of this country. It was to be Canadian trade
for Canada with the British Empire."

Bull emitted a low whistle.

"An elegant slogan," he commented.

He shifted his position. In his interest his pipe had gone out, and he
leant forward on his upturned box.

"Yes," Father Adam went on. "And, like your notion, it was something not
easily shifted from his mind. It was planned and figured to the last
detail. It was so planned it could not fail. So he thought. So all
concerned thought. You see, he had ten million dollars capital of his
own; and he was something of a genius at figures and finance--his people
reckoned. He was a man of some purpose, and enthusiasm, and--something
else."

"Ah!"

Bull's alert brain was prompt to seize upon the reservation. But denial
was instant.

"No. It wasn't drink, or women, or any foolishness of that sort," the
missionary said. "The whole edifice of his purpose came tumbling about
his ears from a totally unexpected cause. Something happened. Something
happened to the man himself. It was disaster--personal disaster. And
when it came a queer sort of weakness tripped him, a weakness he had
always hitherto had strength to keep under, to stifle. His courage
failed him, and the bottom of his purpose fell out like--that."

Father Adam clipped his fingers in the air and his regretful eyes
conveyed the rest. Then, after a moment, he smiled.

"He'd no--iron guts," he said, with a sigh. "He had no stomach for
battle in face of this--this disaster that hit him."

"It has no relation to his--undertaking?"

"None whatever. I know the whole thing. We were 'intimates.' I know his
whole life story. It was a disaster to shake any man."

The missionary sighed profoundly.

"Yes, I knew him intimately," he went on. "I deplored his weakness. I
censured it. Perhaps I went far beyond any right of mine to condemn. I
don't know. I argued with him. I did all I could to support him. You
see, I appreciated the splendid notion of the thing he contemplated.
More than that, I knew it could be carried out."

He shook his head.

"It was useless. This taint--this yellow streak--was part of the man. He
could no more help it than you could help fighting to the death."

"Queer."

A sort of pitying contempt shone in the younger man's eyes.

"Queer?" Father Adam nodded. "It was--crazy."

"It surely was."

The missionary turned back to the prospect beyond the doorway. But it
was only for a moment. He turned again and went on with added urgency.

"But the scheme wasn't wholly to be abandoned. It was--say, here was the
crazy proposition he put up. You see I was his most intimate friend. He
said: 'The forests are wide. They're peopled with men of our craft.
There must be a hundred and more men capable of doing this thing. Of
putting it through. Well, the forests must provide the man, or the idea
must die.' He said: 'We must find a man!' He said: 'You--you whose
mission it is to roam the length and breadth of these forests--you may
find such a man. If you do--when you do--if it's years hence--send him
along here, and there's ten million dollars waiting for him, and all
this great mill, and these timber limits inexhaustible waiting for him
to go right ahead. It doesn't matter a thing who he is, or what he is,
or where he comes from, so long as he gets this idea--sticks to it
faithfully--and puts it through. I want nothing out of it for myself.
And the day he succeeds in the great idea all that would have been mine
shall be his.'"

As Father Adam finished, he looked into the earnest, wonder-filled eyes
of the other.

"Well?" he demanded.

Bull cleared his throat.

"The mill? Where is it?" He demanded.

"Sachigo. Farewell Cove."

"Sachigo! Why it's--"

"The greatest groundwood mill in the world."

There was a note of pride and triumph in the missionary's tone. But it
passed unheeded. Bull was struggling with recollection.

"This man? Wasn't it Leslie Standing who built it? Didn't it break him
or something? That's the story going round. There was something--"

Father Adam shook his head.

"There's ten million dollars says it didn't. Ten millions you can handle
yourself."

"Gee!"

Bull drew a sharp breath. Strong, forceful as he was the figure was
overwhelming.

"This--all this you're saying--offering? It's all real, true?" Bull
demanded at last.

"All of it."

"You want me to go and take possession of Sachigo, and ten--Say, where's
the catch?"

"There's no 'catch'--anywhere."

The denial was cold. It was almost in the tone of affronted dignity. The
missionary had thrust his hand in a pocket. Now he produced a large,
sealed envelope. Bull's eyes watched the movement, but bewilderment was
still apparent in them. Suddenly he raised a bandaged hand, and smoothed
back his hair.

Father Adam held out the sealed letter. It was addressed to "Bat
Harker," at Sachigo Mill.

"Here," he said quietly. "You're the man with iron guts Leslie Standing
wants for his purpose. Take this. Go right off to Sachigo and take
charge of the greatest enterprise in the world's paper industry. You're
looking to make good. It's your set purpose to make good in the
groundwood industry. Opportunities don't come twice in a lifetime. If
you've the iron courage I believe, you'll grab this chance. You'll grab
it right away. Will you? Can you do it? Have you the nerve?"

There was a taunt in the challenge. It was calculated. There was
something else. The missionary's dark eyes were almost pleading.

Bull seized the letter. He almost snatched it.

"Will I do it? Can I do it? Have I the nerve?" he cried, in a tone of
fierce exulting. "If there's a feller crazy enough to hand me ten
million dollars and trust me with a job--if it was as big as a war
between nations--I'd never squeal. Can I? Will I? Sure I will. And
time'll answer the other for you. Iron guts, eh! I tell you in this
thing they're chilled steel."

"Good!"

Father Adam was smiling. A great relief, a great happiness stirred his
pulses as he stood up and moved over to the miserable fire with its
burden of stewing food.

"Now we'll eat," he said. And he stooped down and stirred the contents
of the pot.




CHAPTER III

BULL LEARNS CONDITIONS


The _Myra_ ploughed her leisurely way up the cove. There was dignity in
the steadiness with which she glided through the still waters. The
cockleshell of the Atlantic billows had become a thing of pride in the
shelter of Farewell Cove. Her predecessor, the _Lizzie_, had never risen
above her humble station.

Her decks were wide and clean. Her smoke-stack had something purposeful
in its proportions. The bridge was set high and possessed a spacious
chart house. She had an air of importance not usual to the humble
coasting packet.

"Old man" Hardy was at his post now. One of his officers occupied the
starboard side of the bridge, while he and another looked out over the
port bow.

"It's a deep water channel," the skipper said, with all a sailor's
appreciation. "That's the merricle that makes this place. It'ud take a
ten-thousand tonner with fathoms to spare right away up to the mooring
berth. Guess Nature meant Sachigo for a real port, but got mussed fixing
the climate."

Bull Sternford was leaning over the rail. For all summer was at its
height the thick pea-jacket he was wearing was welcome enough. His keen
eyes were searching, and no detail of the prospect escaped them. He was
filled with something akin to amazement.

"It compares with the big harbours of the world," he replied. "And I'd
say it's not without advantages many of the finest of 'em lack. Those
headlands we passed away back. Why, the Atlantic couldn't blow a storm
big enough to more than ripple the surface here inside." He laughed.
"What a place to fortify. Think of this in war time, eh?"

The grizzled skipper grinned responsively.

"It's all you reckon," he said. "But she needs humouring. You need to
get this place in winter when ice and snow make it tough. This cove
freezes right around its shores. You'd maybe lay off days to get inside,
only to find yourself snow or fog bound for weeks on end. We make it
because we have to with mails. But you can't run cargo bottoms in
winter. It's a coasting master's job in snow time. It's a life study.
You can get in, and you can get out--if you've nerve. If you're short
that way you'll pile up sure as hell."

He turned away to the chart room, and a moment later the engine-room
telegraph chimed his orders to those below.

Bull was left with his busy thoughts.

It was a remarkable scene. The forest slopes came right down almost to
the water's edge on either hand. They came down from heights that rose
mountainously. And there, all along the foreshore were dotted
timber-built habitations sufficient to shelter hundreds of workers.
Their quality was staunch and picturesque, and pointed much of the
climate rigour they were called upon to endure. But they only formed a
background to, perhaps, the most wonderful sight of all. A road and
trolley car line skirted each foreshore, and the mind behind the
searching eyes was filled with admiration for the skill and enterprise
that had transplanted one of civilisation's most advanced products here
on the desperate coast of Labrador. Many of the forest whispers of
Sachigo had been incredible. But this left the onlooker ready to believe
anything of it.

The mill, and the township surrounding it, were already within view, a
wide-scattered world of buildings, occupying all the lower levels of the
territory on both sides of the mouth of the Beaver River before it rose
to the heights from which its water power fell.

Bull was amazed. And as he gazed, his wonder and admiration were
intensified a hundredfold by his self-interest. This place was to be in
his control, possibly his possession if he made good. He thrust back the
fur cap pressed low on his forehead.

His thought leapt back on the instant to the man who had sent him down
to this Sachigo. Father Adam, with his thin, ascetic features, his long,
dark hair and beard, his tall, spare figure. His patient kindliness and
sympathy, and yet with the will and force behind it which could fling
the muzzle of a gun into a man's face and force obedience. He had sent
him. Why? Because--oh, it was all absurd, unreal. And yet here he was on
the steamer; and there ahead lay the wonders of Sachigo. Well, time
would prove the craziness of it all.

"Makes you wonder, eh?" The coasting skipper was at his side again. "You
know these folks needed big nerve to set up this enterprise. It keeps me
guessing at the limits where man has to quit. I've spent my life on this
darn coast, an' never guessed to see the day when trolley cars 'ud run
on Labrador, and the working folk 'ud sit around in their dandy houses,
with electric light making things comfortable for them, and electric
heat takin' the place of the cordwood stove it seemed to me folk never
could do without. Can you beat it? No. You can't. Nor anyone else."

"Who is it? A corporation?" Bull asked, knowing full well the answer. He
wanted to hear, he wanted to learn all that this man could tell him.

Hardy shook his head.

"Standing," he said. "That was the guy's name who started it all up.
But," he added thoughtfully, "I never rightly knew which feller it was.
If it was Standing, or that tough hoboe feller who calls himself Bat
Harker. They never talk a heap. But since Leslie Standing passed out o'
things eight years back--the time I was first handed command of this
kettle--the mill's jumped out of all notion. Those trolleys," he pointed
at the foreshore of the cove: "They started in to haul the 'hands' to
their work only two years back. I'd say it's Bat Harker. But he looks
more like a longshore tough than a--genius."

He shrugged expressively. Then he shook his head.

"No," he went on. "I don't know a thing but what any guy can learn who
comes along up this coast. I've thought a heap. An', like you, I've ast
questions all the time. But you don't learn a thing of this enterprise
but the things you see. Bat Harker don't ever talk." He laughed in quiet
enjoyment. "He's most like a clam mussed up in a cement bar'l. There
don't seem any clear reason either. The only thing queer to me was
Standing's 'get out.' There was talk then when that happened along. But
it was jest talk. Canteen talk. Something sort of happened. No one
seemed rightly to know. They guessed Bat was a tough guy who'd boosted
him out--some way. Then I heard his wife had quit and he was all broke
up. Then they said he'd made losses of millions on stock market gambles.
But the yarns don't fit. You see, the mill's gone right ahead. The
capital's there, sure. They've just built and built. There's more than
twice the 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the
'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the _Myra_
and they scrapped the _Lizzie_, I never guessed to get a full cargo.
Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all
the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast.
It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving
all the time. They're bright folk, sure."

The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The
business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest.

       *       *       *       *       *

The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then
she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final
order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest. Instantly activity
reigned upon the deck, and the discharge of cargo was in full swing.

Bull Sternford was one of the first to pass down the gangway. Clad in
the pleasant tweeds of civilisation, part hidden under a close-buttoned
pea-jacket, he bulked enormously. His more than six feet of height was
lost against his massive breadth of shoulder. Then, too, his keen face
under a beaver cap, and his shapely head with its mane of hair, were
things to deny his body that attention it might otherwise have
attracted.

For all that, at least one pair of critical eyes lost no detail of his
personality. Bat Harker was unobtrusively standing amongst the piled
bales of groundwood that stacked the wharf from end to end. There was
nothing about him to single him out from those who stood on the quay.
The rough clothing of his original calling was very dear to him, and he
clung to it tenaciously. He seemed to have aged not one whit in the
added eight years. His iron-grey hair was just as thick and colourful as
before. There was no added line in his hard face. His girth was no less
and no more. And his eyes, penetrating, steady, had the same spirit
shining in them.

He had laboured something desperately in the past eight years. With the
passing of Leslie Standing from the life of Sachigo he had realized a
terrible loss. His loss had more than embarrassed him. There was even a
moment when it shook his purpose. But with him Sachigo was a religion,
and his faith saved him. For a while, in both letter and spirit, he
obeyed his orders, and Sachigo stood still. Then his philosophy carried
the day. It was his dictum that no one could stand still on Labrador
without freezing to death. He saw the application of it to his beloved
mill. It must be "forward" or decay. So he scrapped his original orders,
and drove with all his force.

Bull stared about him for the fascination of his journey up the cove was
still on him. His pre-occupation left him watching the hurried, orderly
movement going on about him.

"That all your baggage?"

The demand was harsh, and Bull swung round with a start. He was gazing
down into the upturned face of Bat Harker, who was pointing at the suit
case he was carrying.

"Guess I've a trunk back there in the hold somewhere," Bull replied
indifferently, taking his interrogator for a quayside porter.

"That's all right. I'll have one of the boys tote it up. Best come right
along. It's quite a piece up to the office. You've a letter for me?"

"I've a letter for Mr. Bat Harker."

The doubt in Bull's tone set a genuine grin in the other's eyes.

"Sure. That's me. Bat Harker. Maybe you don't guess I look it. Don't
worry. Just pass it over."

Bull groped in an inner pocket, surprise affording him some amusement.
His interest in Sachigo had abruptly focussed itself on this man.

"I'm kind of sorry," he said. "I surely took you for some sort
of--porter."

Bat laughed outright, and glanced down at his work-stained clothing.

"Wal, that ain't new," he said. Then his eyes resumed their keen regard.
"We don't need to wait around though. The skitters are mighty thick down
here. Sachigo's gettin' a special breed I kind o' hate. That letter,
an'--we'll get along."

Bull drew out Father Adam's letter and waited while the other tore it
open. Bat glanced at the contents and jumped to the signature. Then he
thrust out a gnarled and powerful hand.

"Shake," he cried. And there could be no doubting his good will. "Glad
to have you around, Mr. Bull Sternford."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bull Sternford was seated in the luxurious chair that had once known
Leslie Standing. His pea-jacket was removed and his cap was gone. The
room was warm, and the sun beyond the window was radiant. Beyond the
desk Bat was seated, where his wandering gaze could drift to the one
object of which it never tired. He was at the window which looked out
upon the mill below.

He was reading Father Adam's letter. Sternford was silently regarding
his squat figure. He was waiting and wondering, speculating as to the
hard-faced, uncultured creature who had built up all the amazing details
that made up an industrial city in a territory that was outlawed by
Nature.

Bat thrust the letter away and looked up.

"Father Adam didn't write that letter for you? He just handed it out to
you to bring along?"

"That's how," Bull nodded.

"Sure." Bat's tone became reflective. "He must have wrote that letter
years, and held it against the time he located you. He's queer."

Bull laughed.

"Maybe he is," he said, "I don't know about that. But he's one hell of a
good man," he went on warmly. "Do you know him? But of course you do.
Say, he's just father and mother to every darn lumber-jack that haunts
the forests of Quebec, and it don't worry him if his children are
hellhound or honest. There's that to him sets me just crazy. I'd like to
see his thin, tired face, always smiling." He stirred. And the warmth
died abruptly out of his manner. "Say, you knew me--at the wharf?"

"Sure. I knew you before you came along. We've a wireless out on the
headland."

"I see. Father Adam warned you I was coming. He told you--"

"The whole darn yarn. Sure."

Bull laughed grimly.

"That he guessed to shoot me to small meat if I didn't do as he said?"

"If you didn't cut out homicide from your notions of--sport."

"Yes. It was tough," Bull regretted. "But I'm glad--now."

"Yep. Guess any straight sort of feller would feel that way--after."

The lumberman's regret was unnoticed by the other.

Suddenly Bull leant forward in his chair. A smile, half whimsical, half
incredulous, lit his eyes. He thrust his elbows on the desk and
supported his face in his hands.

"It just beats hell!" he cried. "It certainly does. Oh, I'm awake all
right. Sure, I am. One time I wasn't sure. Two months back I was lying
around a lousy summer camp getting ready to take a hand in the winter
cut for the Skandinavia Corporation. I was within two seconds of
breaking a man's life--the rotten camp boss. And now? Why, now I'm
sitting around in dandy tweeds in the boss chair of a swell office, with
a crazy notion back of my head I'm here to beat the game with the
greatest groundwood mill in the world, and ten million dollars capital
behind me. Maybe there's folks wouldn't guess I'm awake, but I allow I
am. But the whole thing sets me thinking of the fairy stories I used to
read when I was a kid, and never could see the horse sense in wasting
time over."

Bat helped himself to a chew from a fragment of plug tobacco.

"Here, listen," Bull went on, after the briefest pause. "It's my 'show
down.' I don't understand a thing. I'm mostly a kid from college with a
yearning for fight. So far I've learned some of the things the forest
can teach the feller who wants to learn. They're the rough things. And I
like rough things. I've some grip on groundwood. And the making of
groundwood's the main object of my life. That, and the notion of licking
hell out of the other feller. That's me, and those are the things made
Father Adam send me along down to Sachigo. Well, it's up to you." He
spread out his hands, "Where do I stand? How do I stand? And why in the
name of all that's crazy am I sitting in this boss chair--right now?"

Bat swung one trunk-like leg across the other. His movement suggested an
easing of mind and a measure of enjoyment. He pointed at the window and
nodded in its direction.

"Quite a place," he said, in a tone and with a pride that had no
relation to the other's demands. "Makes you feel man ain't the bum sort
of inseck in the scheme of things some highbrows ain't happy not tellin'
you. There's folks who guess it's Nature the proposition that matters.
It's her does it all, an' keeps on doin' it all the time. But Nature's
most like one mighty foolish, extravagant female. That sort o' woman who
don't care but to please the notion of the moment. And when that's done,
goes right on to please the next. Wal, anyway I guess she's got her uses
if it's only to hand chances to the guy that's lookin' on. Take a look
right down there below," he went on. "That's the truck the guy lookin'
on has sweppen up in Nature's trail. It's taken most of fifteen years
collectin' it. We've had to push that broom hard. And now I guess you're
going to boost your weight behind it too. There's other things to
collect, and that's what we want from you. You got nerve. You got big
muscle, and education, too. Well, you'll handle the biggest sweeper of
us all. Does it scare you?"

"Not a thing." Bull was smiling confidently.

Bat chuckled. His eyes were sparkling as he ruthlessly masticated his
tobacco. This man pleased him mightily.

"That's all right," he said. Then he went on after a silent moment while
he gazed thoughtfully out of the window. "It's right here," he
exclaimed. "Here's a mill, a swell mill that don't lack for a thing to
make it well-nigh perfect. I'll tell you about it. Its capacity. Its
present limit is six thousand tons dry weight groundwood pulp to the
week. That's runnin' full. There's a hundred and twenty grinders feeding
a hundred and eighty sheetin' machines. And they're figgered to use up
fifty-five thousand horse power of the five hundred thousand we got
harnessed on this great little old river that falls off the highlands.
That power is ours winter an' summer. It don't matter a shuck the
'freeze up.' It's there for us all the darn time. Then we've forest
limits to hand us the cordage for that output that could give us three
times what we're needing for a thousand years. Labour? We got it
plenty. And later, by closing in our system of foresting, I figger to
cut out present costs on a sight bigger output. The plans for all that
are fixed in my head. Then we come to the market for our stuff, an' I
guess that's the syrup in the pie. The world's market's waitin' on us.
It's ours before we start. Why? Our power don't cost us one cent a unit.
We're able to hand our folks a standard of living through the nature of
things that leaves wages easy. The river's wide, and full, and it's _our
own_. Then our sea passage to Europe's just eighteen hundred miles
instead of three thousand. An' these things mean our costs leave us
cutting right under other folks, and Skandinavia beat. There it is," he
cried, with a wide gesture of his knotted hands. "It's pie!"

Something of the lumberman's enthusiasm found reflection in Sternford's
eyes.

"But Nature's handed us a lemon in the basket of oranges," Bat went on,
with a shake of his head. "It's that woman in her again. Y'see, she
gives us just four months in the year to get our stuff out. Oh, she
don't freeze the cove right up. No. That's the tough of it. The
channel's mostly open. But storm, and fog, and ice, beats the
ocean-going skipper's power to navigate it with any sort o' safety. The
headlands are desperate narrow, and--well, there it is. We've four
months in the year to get our stuff out. It's a sum. Figger it yourself.
Set us goin' full. Six thousand tons in the week. What is it? Three
hundred thousand in the year. How many trips at ten thousand tons? Or
put the average tonnage lower. Say eight thousand. Forty trips. Four
months. A vessel making two trips on an average turn round. We need a
fleet of twenty 'bottoms,' to do it in the time. And they'll need to be
our own. You can't help yourself to the world's market, and fix prices,
and all the while fight for shipping in the open market. See?"

"Sure--I see."

Bat nodded approval.

"When we get that the rest can go through. Meanwhile there's sixty
grinders idle, which leaves us workin' half capacity. As it stands it's
a dandy enterprise. We're making a swell balance sheet. But profit ain't
the whole purpose. There's the rest."

The super lumber-jack turned again to the window with that fascination
that was almost pathetic.

"And the rest?"

Bull Sternford urged the other sharply, and Bat turned at once.

"Canada's groundwood for the Canadian, inside the Empire," he shot at
him.

The other nodded.

"The world's market for the country that can and should supply it," he
replied.

"The smashing of the darn Skandinavian ring," cried Bat, his deep-set
eyes alight.

"And drive them--back over the sea."

Bat suddenly leant across the table.

"That's it, boy," he cried. "That's it! Hellbeam and all his gang. The
Skandinavia Corporation. Smash 'em! Drive 'em to Hell! It ain't profit.
It's the trade. The A'mighty made Canada an' built the Canadian. He set
him right here to help himself to the things He gave him. It's being
filched by these foreigners--his birthright. They're fat on it. Did we
fight the world war for that? Not by a darn sight. We fought to hold a
place on the map for ourselves. And that's a proposition we've all got
to get our back teeth into."

"It sure is."

The mill manager sat back in his chair and chewed vigorously.

"That's it," he said. "How?" he went on. "Combination. Finance--and the
interest of the little, great old country across the water. It's all
planned and laid out by the feller that started up this proposition.
It's scheduled for you. Guess you'll find the last word of it writ out
in the locked book in this desk. It's clear and straight for the feller
with the nerve. That's you. Wal?"

Bat was watching--searching. He was looking for that flicker of an
eyelid he had learned to dread in the past. But he failed to discover
it. The wide, clear eyes of the younger man returned his regard
unwaveringly. The uncultured lumberman had stirred a responsive
enthusiasm, and somehow the project no longer seemed the crazy thing it
had once appeared to Bull Sternford.

"Guess my back teeth have got it," he said, with a smile. "You needn't
worry I'll let go."

Bat drew a deep breath. He stood up and spat his mangled chew into the
cuspidore.

"I'm glad. I'm real glad," he cried. "I'm a heap more glad you told me
those words without askin' the other things you need to know. But you
got to know 'em right away. Say, the day that fixes up the things we
been talkin' sees you with me and another masters of this mill an' all
it means. And while you're playin' your hand there's one big fat salary
for you to draw. This house and office is yours, an' me an' the mill's
ready to do all we know all the time, just the way you need it. Down in
Abercrombie there's the attorney, Charles Nisson, who's got the outfit
of papers that you're goin' to sign. And when you seen him, why you'll
get busy. Shake, boy," he cried, thrusting out one knotted hand. "Father
Adam sent you, and I don't guess he's made any mistake."

Bull had risen, and his height left him towering over the man across the
table.

"Now for the mill," he cried, as their hands fell apart. "The _Myra_
sails sundown to-morrow and I need to get a swift look around before
then. Say, you folk have kind of taken me on a chance--well, that's all
right. I'm glad."




CHAPTER IV

DRAWING THE NET


Nathaniel Hellbeam was contemplating the spiral of smoke rising from his
long cigar. He was dreaming pleasantly. He was dreaming of those
successful manipulations of finance it was his purpose to achieve. He
had lunched, so his dream was of the things which most appealed.

In the midst of his reflections the drub of the muffled telephone beat
its insistent tattoo. His dream vanished, and his senses became alert.
He leant forward in his chair and picked up the receiver.

"Yes," he said shortly. And it sounded more like the Teutonic, "Ja!"

Putting up the receiver again he leant his clumsy body back in his
chair. His small eyes no longer contained their dreaming light. They
were turned expectantly upon the polished mahogany door.

The door swung silently open.

"Mr. Idepski!" The announcement was made in a carefully modulated tone.

The agent passed into the great man's presence, slim, dark, confident.
Then the door closed without a sound.

"Well?"

There was no cordiality in the greeting. That was not Hellbeam's way
with a paid agent.

Idepski walked across to the chair always waiting to receive a visitor
and sat down.

"May I sit?" he inquired coolly, after the operation had been
performed.

Hellbeam nodded.

"Well?" he repeated.

The agent laid his hat on the ornate desk, and removed his gloves with
care and deliberation.

"I'm just back from Sachigo," he said.

"Hah!"

The financier settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and
returned his cigar to his gross mouth.

"Tell me," he demanded.

"Easy. Things are moving our way."

The dark eyes glanced over the table for the gold cigarette box that
always stood there.

"Help yourself," the banker ordered rather than invited.

Idepski needed no second bidding.

"You got all my code messages?" he asked. "Good," as the Swede nodded.
"Then you know the position of the mill. Say, that feller Harker needs a
sort of apology from me--also from you. The mill's a wonder. And he's
the guy that's fixed it that way. You haven't a thing in Skandinavia
comparable. I'd say you haven't a feller on your side capable of
touching the fringe of that tough's genius for organisation. It's him.
Not Martin--I mean Standing."

"And Standing?"

But Idepski was not to be deflected from his purpose.

"That's all right," he said easily. "I'm coming to him presently. I gave
you, at times, the whole length and breadth, and size, and capacity of
the Sachigo of to-day. You got all that stuff. But I've saved up the
plum. There's a new man come into it. His name's Sternford--Bull
Sternford. Guess it's him I need to tell you about before I pass on to
the other. It's taken me a while to locate all I needed. And I guess I
had luck or I wouldn't have got it all yet."

For once the man's smile reached his eyes.

"What's his position--in Sachigo?" Hellbeam demanded.

"Right on top of the business side of it."

"A financial man?"

The banker's interest was obviously stirred. But Idepski shook his dark
head.

"That's the queer of it," he said. "He's a youngster straight out of the
forest with no sort of record except as a pretty tough fighting
proposition. Here, let me hand it to you in my own way, and I'll answer
any sort of question after. I got men chasing up the forest camps. You
know that. Well, I get their reports right here in this city at my
office. They're read carefully, and anything that looks good is coded,
and sent on to me wherever I am. Well, right after I located this
feller, Sternford, coming into Sachigo, I got word of some stuff
reported from one of your own camps way out north-west of Lake St. Anac.
Guess it's about the farthest north in that direction, and it's cut off
from any other camp by a hundred miles. On the face of it the stuff
didn't seem to need more than a single thought. It was to say my man was
quitting the camp. He'd sifted it right through, but there wasn't a
'jack' in the camp with any sort of story worth wasting paper on. There
wasn't a trace of our man that way, and he proposed drawing another
cover. At the end of his report was one of those notes these boys never
seem able to resist mixing up with their official work. It told me of
one of those scraps that happened in the camps, and he seemed mighty
struck by it. It was between the camp boss, Arden Laval, and a kid
called Sternford. Say, when I read that name I jumped. I felt like
handing my feller promotion right away. Well, his story was good anyway.
It seems this camp boss is about the biggest bluff in the scrap way
known to that country. The kid licked him. They fought nearly two hours,
'rough and tough.' And the kid would have killed his man, but for the
interference of a missionary feller called Father Adam. He broke 'em
loose with a gun, and when he got 'em loose he took the kid right away
so he shouldn't hand out the homicide he reckoned to. This report was
more than two months old when I got it. Anyway I got it after a feller
called Bull Sternford, a queer name by the way, had jumped in on the
Sachigo proposition."

The agent flung away his cigarette and helped himself afresh.

"Well," he went on, smiling, "I guess it didn't take me thinking five
seconds. I set the wires humming asking a description of this fighting
kid. I got it. It was my man. The feller at Sachigo. Well?"

Idepski's smiling interrogation was full of satisfaction.

"Go on." The watchful eyes of the financier seemed to have narrowed.

"Now, by what chance does this feller, Bull Sternford, come straight
from one hell of a scrap in a far-off camp belonging to Skandinavia to
run the business end of Sachigo? What happened after that fool
missionary got him away? And--"

Idepski broke off, pondering. He flicked his cigarette ash without
regard for the carpet.

Hellbeam stirred in his chair impatiently. His lips seemed to become
more prominent. His small eyes seemed to become smaller.

"You ask that, yes? You?" he snorted. "A child may answer that thing.
You think? Oh, yes, you think." The hand supporting his cigar made a
gesture that implied everything disparaging. "Our man--this Martin--has
gone out of Sachigo because--of you? I tell you, no! Does a man give up
the money, the big plan he makes, at the sight of an--agent? He took you
in his hand and sent you to the swine life of the forest where he could
have crushed you like that." He gripped the empty air. "Then he
goes--where? You say he fears and quits. What does he fear? You?" The
man shook his head till his cheeks were shaken by the violence of his
movement. "He goes somewhere. But he does not quit. That is clear. Oh,
yes. The mill goes on. It grows and prospers. The man Harker remains.
Where comes the money for Sachigo to grow? Trade? Yes, some. But not
all. I know these things. The mill goes on--the same as with Martin
there. So Martin does not quit. He--just goes. Then who sets this Bull
Sternford in the mill? Why? He says, 'This man can do the things I
need.' Well? Say quick to your man, 'Do not leave this camp of
Skandinavia.' Martin is there, or near by. He must know this Father
Adam, too. He must be in touch with him. Maybe he watches the
Skandinavia work. Maybe he plays his game so. Maybe he goes from Sachigo
for that reason. Yes?"

The financier's undisguised contempt left the agent apparently
undisturbed.

"That's the simple horse sense of it," Idepski retorted promptly. "I get
all that. But you're wrong when you say, Martin's playing any other game
than lying low because of one hell of a scare. I know him. You think you
know him because you can't get away from judging a man from your end.
However, that don't matter a shuck. I've told that man of mine to stop
around. Don't worry. I told him that right away. I told him to watch
this missionary." He shook his head. "Nothing doing. The missionary has
quit. As I said, I'm right back from Sachigo. I didn't come back just to
hand you this stuff. I'm on my way up to this camp of yours. We've been
hunting this guy eight years--blind. Now there's a streak of daylight.
I'm going for that streak myself. Anyway, it's liable to be pleasanter
work than lumbering in the booms at Sachigo, and wondering when that
feller Bat Harker, was going to locate me through a lumber-jack's
outfit. And while I'm up there I mean to learn all I can of this Father
Adam. I don't look for much that way. He's just a missioner that every
feller in the forest's got a good word for, and anyway, it don't seem to
me the feller who jumped in on you, and touched your bank roll is the
sort to pass his time handlin' out tracts to the bums of the forest. I
came in on my way to pass you these things. I go north again to-night.
I'll be away quite a while, and, shut off up there, you'll not be likely
to get word easy. But you'll hear things when I've got anything to hand
you."

A sardonic light crept into Hellbeam's eyes as he listened to the final
assurance.

"So," he ejaculated with a nod.

The agent rose to go.

"Meanwhile," he said, leaning over the desk, "it might be well for you
to get a grip on the fact that Sachigo's going right on. It's the
greatest groundwood proposition in the world. I know enough of Harker to
realise his capacity to make it do just what he needs. And as for that
other--this Sternford kid--why, I gather he's a pretty live wire that's
set there for a reason. The slogan up there's much what it was, only the
words are changed."

Hellbeam sucked his cigar and removed it from his lips.

"Changed? How?" he demanded, without suspicion.

"It was 'Canadian trade for the Canadians,'" Idepski said, his dark eyes
snapping maliciously. "It's more personal since the fighting kid came
along. It reminds me of th

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