The White Desert
by Courtney Ryley Cooper · English · Gutenberg #20155 · 413,014 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The White Desert
Author: Courtney Ryley Cooper
Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer
Release date: December 21, 2006 [eBook #20155]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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THE WHITE DESERT
by
COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
Author of
The Cross-Cut, Etc.
Frontispiece by Anton Otto Fischer
[Frontispiece: It was easier to accept the more precipitous journey,
straight downward.]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers ---------- New York
Copyright, 1922,
by Little, Brown, And Company
All Rights Reserved
Published February, 1922
Reprinted March, 1922
To a Certain Little Gray Lady
who seems to like everything
I write, the main reason being
the fact that she is
MY MOTHER
THE WHITE DESERT
CHAPTER I
It was early afternoon. Near by, the smaller hills shimmered in the
radiant warmth of late spring, the brownness of their foliage and
boulders merging gradually upward to the green of the spruces and pines
of the higher mountains, which in turn gave way before the somber
blacks and whites of the main range, where yet the snow lingered from
the clutch of winter, where the streams ran brown with the down-flow of
the continental divide, where every cluster of mountain foliage
sheltered a mound of white, in jealous conflict with the sun. The
mountains are tenacious of their vicious traits; they cling to the snow
and cold and ice long after the seasons have denoted a time of warmth
and summer's splendor; the columbine often blooms beside a ten-foot
drift.
But down in the hollow which shielded the scrambling little town of
Dominion, the air was warm and lazy with the friendliness of May. Far
off, along the course of the tumbling stream, turbulently striving to
care for far more than its share of the melt-water of the hills, a
jaybird called raucously as though in an effort to drown the sweeter,
softer notes of a robin nesting in the new-green of a quaking aspen.
At the hitching post before the one tiny store, an old horse nodded and
blinked,--as did the sprawled figure beside the ramshackle
motor-filling station, just opened after the snow-bound months of
winter. Then five minutes of absolute peace ensued, except for the
buzzing of an investigative bottle-fly before the figure shuffled,
stretched, and raising his head, looked down the road. From the
distance had come the whirring sound of a motor, the forerunner of a
possible customer. In the hills, an automobile speaks before it is
seen.
Long moments of throbbing echoes; then the car appeared, a mile or so
down the cañon, twisting along the rocky walls which rose sheer from
the road, threading the innumerable bridges which spanned the little
stream, at last to break forth into the open country and roar on toward
Dominion. The drowsy gasoline tender rose. A moment more and a long,
sleek, yellow racer had come to a stop beside the gas tank, chortled
with greater reverberation than ever as the throttle was thrown open,
then wheezed into silence with the cutting off of the ignition. A
young man rose from his almost flat position in the low-slung driver's
seat and crawling over the side, stretched himself, meanwhile staring
upward toward the glaring white of Mount Taluchen, the highest peak of
the continental backbone, frowning in the coldness of snows that never
departed. The villager moved closer.
"Gas?"
"Yep." The young man stretched again. "Fill up the tank--and better
give me half a gallon of oil."
Then he turned away once more, to stare again at the great, tumbled
stretches of granite, the long spaces of green-black pines, showing in
the distance like so many upright fronds of some strange, mossy fern;
at the blank spaces, where cold stone and shifting shale had made
jagged marks of bareness in the masses of evergreen, then on to the
last gnarled bulwarks of foliage, struggling bravely, almost
desperately, to hold on to life where life was impossible, the dividing
line, as sharp as a knife-thrust, between the region where trees may
grow and snows may hide beneath their protecting boughs and the
desolate, barren, rocky, forbidding waste of "timber line."
Young he was, almost boyish; yet counterbalancing this was a
seriousness of expression that almost approached somberness as he stood
waiting until his machine should be made ready for the continuance of
his journey. The eyes were dark and lustrous with something that
closely approached sorrow, the lips had a tightness about them which
gave evidence of the pressure of suffering, all forming an expression
which seemed to come upon him unaware, a hidden thing ever waiting for
the chance to rise uppermost and assume command. But in a flash it was
gone, and boyish again, he had turned, laughing, to survey the gas
tender.
"Did you speak?" he asked, the dark eyes twinkling. The villager was
in front of the machine, staring at the plate of the radiator and
scratching his head.
"I was just sayin' I never seed that kind o' car before. Barry
Houston, huh? Must be a new make. I--"
"Camouflage," laughed the young man again. "That's my name."
"Oh, is it?" and the villager chuckled with him. "It shore had me
guessin' fer a minute. You've got th' plate right where th' name o' a
car is plastered usually, and it plum fooled me. That's your name,
huh? Live hereabouts--?"
The owner of the name did not answer. The thought suddenly had come to
him that once out of the village, that plate must be removed and tossed
to the bottom of the nearest stream. His mission, for a time at least,
would require secrecy. But the villager had repeated his question:
"Don't belong around here?"
"I? No, I'm--" then he hesitated.
"Thought maybe you did. Seein' you've got a Colorado license on."
Houston parried, with a smile.
"Well, this isn't all of Colorado, you know."
"Guess that's right. Only it seems in th' summer thet it's most o' it,
th' way th' machines pile through, goin' over th' Pass. Where you
headed for?"
"The same place."
"Over Hazard?" The villager squinted. "Over Hazard Pass? Ain't daft,
are you?"
"I hope not. Why?"
"Ever made it before?"
"No."
"And you're tacklin' it for the first time at this season o' th' year?"
"Yes. Why not? It's May, isn't it?"
The villager moved closer, as though to gain a better sight of Barry
Houston's features. He surveyed him carefully, from the tight-drawn
reversed cap with the motor goggles resting above the young, smooth
forehead, to the quiet elegance of the outing clothing and well-shod
feet. He spat, reflectively, and drew the back of a hand across
tobacco-stained lips.
"And you say you live in Colorado."
"I didn't say--"
"Well, it don't make no difference whether you did or not. I know--you
don't. Nobody thet lives out here'd try to make Hazard Pass for th'
first time in th' middle o' May."
"I don't see--"
"Look up there." The old man pointed to the splotches of white,
thousands of feet above, the swirling clouds which drifted from the icy
breast of Mount Taluchen, the mists and fogs which caressed the
precipices and rolled through the valleys created by the lesser peaks.
"It may be spring down here, boy, but it's January up there. They's
only been two cars over Hazard since November and they come through
last week. Both of 'em was old stagers; they've been crossin' th'
range for th' last ten year. Both of 'em came through here lookin'
like icicles 'an' swearing t' beat four o' a kind. They's mountains
an' mountains, kid. Them up there's th' professional kind."
A slight, puzzled frown crossed the face of Barry Houston.
"But how am I going to get to the other side of the range? I'm going
to Tabernacle."
"They's a train runs from Denver, over Crestline. Look up there--jest
to the right of Mount Taluchen. See that there little puff o' smoke?
That's it."
"But that'd mean--."
"For you t' turn around, go back to Denver, leave that there chariot o'
your'n in some garage and take the train to-morrow mornin'. It'd get
you t' Tabernacle some time in the afternoon."
"When would I get there--if I could make the Pass all right?"
"In about five hours. It's only fourteen mile from th' top. But--"
"And you say two other cars have gone through?"
"Yep. But they knowed every crook an' turn!"
For a long moment, the young man made no reply. His eyes were again on
the hills and gleaming with a sudden fascination. From far above, they
seemed to call to him, to taunt him with their imperiousness, to
challenge him and the low-slung high-powered car to the combat of
gravitation and the elements. The bleak walls of granite appeared to
glower at him, as though daring him to attempt their conquest; the
smooth stretches of pines were alluring things, promising peace and
quiet and contentment,--will-o-the-wisps, which spoke only their
beauty, and which said nothing of the long stretches of gravelly mire
and puddles, resultant from the slowly melting snows. The swirling
clouds, the mists, the drifting fogs all appeared to await him, like
the gathered hosts of some mighty army, suddenly peaceful until the
call of combat. A thrill shot through Barry Houston. His life had
been that of the smooth spaces, of the easy ascent of well-paved
grades, of streets and comforts and of luxuries. The very raggedness
of the thing before him lured him and drew him on. He turned, he
smiled, with a quiet, determined expression of anticipation, yet of
grimness.
"They've got me," came quietly. "I'm--I'm going to make the try!"
The villager grunted. His lips parted as though to issue a final
warning. Then, with a disgruntled shake of the head, he turned away.
"Ain't no use arguin' with you Easterners," came at last. "You come
out here an' take one look at these here hills an' think you can beat
Ole Lady Nature when she's sittin' pat with a royal flush. But go
on--I ain't tryin' t' stop you. 'Twouldn't be nothin' but a waste o'
breath. You've got this here conquerin' spirit in your blood--won't be
satisfied till you get it out. You're all th' same--I 've seen fellows
with flivvers loaded down till th' springs was flat, look up at them
hills an' figure t' get over an' back in time for supper. So go
on--only jis' remember this: once you get outside of Dominion an' start
up th' grade, there ain't no way stations, an' there ain't no
telephones, ner diner service, ner somebody t' bring y' th' evenin'
paper. You're buckin' a brace game when y' go against Hazard Pass at a
time when she ain't in a mood f'r comp'ny. She holds all th' cards,
jis' remember that--an' a few thet ain't in th' deck. But jis' th'
same," he backed away as Barry stepped into the racer and pressed a
foot on the starter, "I'm wishin' you luck. You'll need it."
"Thanks!" Houston laughed with a new exhilaration, a new spirit of
desire. "It can't do any more than kill me."
"Nope." The villager was shouting now above the exhaust of the
powerful engine, "But it shore can take a delight in doin' that! S'
long!"
"So long!" The gears meshed. A stream of smoke from the new oil spat
out for a second. Then, roaring and chortling with the beginning of
battle, the machine swept away toward the slight turn that indicated
the scraggly end of the little town of Dominion, and the beginning of
the first grade.
The exhilaration still was upon Barry Houston. He whistled and sang,
turning now and then to view the bright greenness of the new-leafed
aspens, to watch the circling sallies of the jaybirds, or to stare
ahead to where the blues and greens and purples of the foliage and
rocks merged in the distance. The grade was yet easy and there was no
evidence of strain upon the engine; the tiny rivulets which ran along
the slight ruts at each side of the road betokened nothing to him save
the slight possibility of chains, should a muddy stretch of
straightaway road appear later on. But as yet, that had not occurred,
and Barry was living for the moment.
The road began to twist slightly, with short raises and shorter level
stretches winding among the aspens and spruces, with sudden, jagged
turns about heavy, frowning boulders whose jutting noses seemed to
scrape the fenders of the car, only to miss them by the barest part of
an inch. Suddenly Barry found himself bending forward, eyes still on
the road in spite of his half-turned head, ears straining to catch the
slightest variation of the motor. It seemed to be straining,--yet the
long, suddenly straight stretch of road ahead of him seemed perfectly
level; downhill if anything. More and more labored became the engine.
Barry stopped, and lifting the hood, examined the carbureter. With the
motor idling, it seemed perfect. Once more he started,--only to stop
again and anxiously survey the ignition, test the spark plugs and again
inquire into the activities of the carbureter. At last, reassured, he
walked to the front of the machine, and with the screwdriver pried the
name plate from its position on the radiator and tossed it into the
tumbling, yellow stream beside the road. Then he turned back to the
machine,--only to stop suddenly and blink with surprise. The road was
not level! The illusion which comes to one at the first effort to
conquer a mountain grade had faded now. A few feet away was a deserted
cabin, built upon a level plot of ground and giving to Barry a chance
for comparison, and he could see that his motor had not been at fault.
Now the road, to his suddenly comprehending eyes, rose before him in a
long, steady sweep of difficult grades, upward, steadily upward, with
never a varying downfall, with never a rest for the motor which must
climb it. And this was just the beginning! For Barry could see beyond.
Far in the distance he could make it out, a twisting, turning, almost
writhing thing, cutting into the side of the mountain, a jagged scar,
searing its way up the range in flights that seemed at times to run
almost perpendicular and which faded, only to reappear again, like the
trail of some gigantic cut-worm, mark above mark, as it circled the
smaller hills, cut into the higher ones, was lost at the edge of some
great beetling rock, only to reappear once more, hundreds of feet
overhead. The eyes of Barry Houston grew suddenly serious. He reached
into the toolbox, and bringing forth the jack, affixed the chains,
forgetting his usually cheery whistle, forgetting even to take notice
when an investigative jay scrambled out upon a dead aspen branch and
chattered at him. The true meaning of the villager's words had come at
last. The mountains were frowning now, instead of beckoning, glowering
instead of promising, threatening instead of luring. One by one he
locked the chains into place, and tossing the jack once more into the
tool-box, resumed his place at the wheel.
"A six per cent. grade if it's an inch!" he murmured. "And this is
only the beginning. Wonder what I'm stepping into?"
The answer came almost before the machine had warmed into action. Once
more the engine labored; nor was it until Barry had answered its
gasping plea by a shift to second gear that it strengthened again. The
grade was growing heavier; once Barry turned his head and stared with
the knowledge that far beneath him a few tiny buildings dotted what
seemed to be a space of ground as level as a floor. Dominion! And he
had barely passed outside its environs!
He settled more firmly in his seat and gripped hard at the steering
wheel. The turns had become shorter; more, Barry found himself
righting the machine with sudden jerks as the car rounded the short
curves where the front wheels seemed to hang momentarily above
oblivion, as the chasms stretched away to seemingly bottomless depths
beneath. Gradually, the severity of the grade had increased to ten, to
twelve and in short pitches to even eighteen and twenty per cent! For
a time the machine sang along in second, bucking the raises with almost
human persistence, finally, however, to gasp and break in the smooth
monotony of the exhaust, to miss, to strain and struggle vainly, then
to thunder on once more, as Houston pressed the gears into low and
began to watch the motormeter with anxious eyes. The mercury was
rising; another half-hour and the swish of steam told of a boiling
radiator.
A stop, while the red, hissing water splattered from the radiator cock,
and the lifted hood gave the machine a chance to cool before
replenishment came from the murky, discolored stream of melted snow
water which churned beneath a sapling bridge. Panting and light-headed
from the altitude, Barry leaned against the machine for a moment, then
suddenly straightened to draw his coat tighter about him and to raise
the collar about his neck. The wind, whistling down from above, was
cold: something touched his face and melted there,--snow!
The engine was cool now. Barry leaped to the wheel and once more began
his struggle upward, a new seriousness upon him, a new grimness
apparent in the tightness of his lips. The tiny rivulets of the road
had given place to gushing streams; here and there a patch of snow
appeared in the highway; farther above, Barry could see that the white
was unbroken, save for the half-erased marks of the two cars which had
made the journey before him. The motor, like some refreshed animal,
roared with a new power and new energy, vibrant, confident, but the
spirit was not echoed by the man at the wheel. He was in the midst of
a fight that was new to him, a struggle against one of the mightiest
things that Nature can know, the backbone of the Rocky Mountains,--a
backbone which leered above him in threatening, vicious coldness, which
nowhere held surcease; it must be a battle to the end!
Up--up--up--the grades growing steadily heavier, the shifting clouds
enveloping him and causing him to stop at intervals and wait in
shivering impatience until they should clear and allow him once more to
continue the struggle. Grayness and sunshine flitted about him; one
moment his head was bowed against the sweep of a snow flurry, driving
straight against him from the higher peaks, the next the brilliance of
mountain sunshine radiated about him, cheering him, exhilarating him,
only to give way to the dimness of damp, drifting mists, which closed
in upon him like some great, gray garment of distress and held him in
its gloomy clutch until the grade should carry him above it and into
the sun or snow again.
Higher! The machine was roaring like a desperate, cornered thing now;
its crawling pace slackening with the steeper inclines, gaining with
the lesser raises, then settling once more to the lagging pace as
steepness followed steepness, or the abruptness of the curve caused the
great, slow-moving vehicle to lose the momentum gained after hundreds
of feet of struggle. Again the engine boiled, and Barry stood beside
it in shivering gratitude for its warmth. The hills about him were
white now; the pines had lost their greenness to become black
silhouettes against the blank, colorless background Barry Houston had
left May and warmth and springtime behind, to give way to the clutch of
winter and the white desert of altitude.
But withal it was beautiful. Cold, harassed by dangers that he never
before knew could exist, disheartened by the even more precipitous
trail which lay ahead, fighting a battle for which he was unfitted by
experience, Houston could not help but feel repaid for it all as he
flattened his back against the hot radiator and, comforted by the
warmth, looked about him. The world was his--his to look upon, to
dissect, to survey with the all-seeing eyes of tremendous heights, to
view in the perspective of the eagle and the hawk, to look down upon
from the pinnacles and see, even as a god might see it. Far below lay
a tiny, discolored ribbon,--the road which he had traversed, but now
only a scratch upon the expanse of the great country which tumbled away
beneath him. Hills had become hummocks, towering pines but blades of
grass, streams only a variegated line in the vast display of Nature's
artistry. And above--
Barry Houston looked upon it with dazzled eyes. The sun had broken
forth again, to stream upon the great, rounded head of Mount Taluchen,
and there to turn the serried snows to a mass of shell-pink pearl, to
smooth away the glaring whiteness and paint instead a down-like
coverlet of beauty. Here and there the great granite precipices stood
forth in old rose and royal purple; farther the shadows melted into
mantles, not of black, but of softest lavender; mound upon mound of
color swung before him as he glanced from peak to peak,--the colors
that only an artist knows, tintings instead of solid grounds,
suggestions rather than actualities. Even the gnarled pines of timber
line, where the world of vegetation was sliced off short to give way to
the barrenness of the white desert, seemed softened and freed from
their appearance of constant suffering in the pursuit of life. A lake
gleamed, set, it seemed, at an upright angle upon the very side of a
mountain; an ice gorge glistened with the scintillation of a million
jewels, a cloud rolled through a great crevice like the billowing of
some soft-colored crepe and then--
Barry crouched and shivered, then turned with sudden activity. It all
had faded, faded in the blast of a shrilling wind, bringing upon its
breast the cutting assault of sleet and the softer, yet no less vicious
swirl of snow. Quickly the radiator was drained and refilled. Once
more, huddled in the driver's seat, Barry Houston gripped the wheel and
felt the crunching of the chain-clad wheels in the snow of the roadway.
The mountains had lured again, only that they might clutch him in a
tighter embrace of danger than ever. Now the snow was whirling about
him in almost blinding swiftness; the small windshield counted for
nothing; it was only by leaning far outside the car that he could see
to drive and then there were moments that seemed to presage the end.
Chasms lurked at the corners, the car skidded and lurched from one side
of the narrow roadway to the other; once the embankment crumbled for an
instant as a rear wheel raced for a foothold and gained it just in
time. Thundering below, Barry could hear the descent of the dirt and
small boulders as they struck against protruding rocks and echoed forth
to a constantly growing sound that seemed to travel for miles that it
might return with the strength of thunder. Then for a moment the sun
came again and he stared toward it with set, anxious eyes. It no
longer was dazzling; it was large and yellow and free from glare. He
swerved his gaze swiftly to the dashboard clock, then back to the sun
again. Four o'clock! Yet the great yellow ball was hovering on the
brim of Mount Taluchen; dusk was coming. A frightened glance showed
him the black shadows of the valleys, the deeper tones of coloring, the
vagueness of the distance which comes with the end of day.
Anxiously he studied his speedometer as the road stretched out for a
space of a few hundred feet for safety. Five miles--only five miles in
a space of time that on level country could have accounted for a
hundred. Five miles and the route book told plainly that there were
four more to go before the summit was reached. Anxiously--with a
sudden hope--he watched the instrument, with the thought that perhaps
it had broken, but the slow progress of the mile-tenths took away that
possibility. He veered his gaze along the dashboard, suddenly to
center it upon the oil gauge. His jaw sagged. He pressed harder upon
the accelerator in a vain effort. But the gauge showed no indication
that the change of speed had been felt.
"The oil pump!" came with a half gasp. "It's broken--I'll have to--"
The sentence was not finished. A sudden, clattering roar had come from
beneath the hood, a clanking jangle which told him that his eyes had
sought the oil gauge too late,--the shattering, agonizing cacophony of
a broken connecting rod, the inevitable result of a missing oil supply
and its consequent burnt bearing. Hopelessly, dejectedly Barry shut
off the engine and pulled to one side of the road,--through sheer force
of habit. In his heart he knew that there could be no remedy for the
clattering remonstrance of the broken rod, that the road was his
without question, that it was beyond hope to look for aid up here where
all the world was pines and precipices and driven snow, that he must go
on, fighting against heavier odds than ever. And as he realized the
inevitable, his dull, tired eyes saw from the distance another, a
greater enemy creeping toward him over the hills and ice gorges,
through the valleys and along the sheer walls of granite. The last,
ruddy rim of a dying sun was just disappearing over Mount Taluchen.
CHAPTER II
Hazard Pass had held true to its name. There were yet nearly four
miles to go before the summit of nearly twelve thousand feet elevation
could be reached and the downward trip of fourteen miles to the nearest
settlement made. And that meant--
Houston steadied himself and sought to figure just what it did mean.
The sun was gone now, leaving grayness and blackness behind,
accentuated by the single strip of gleaming scarlet which flashed
across the sky above the brim of Mount Taluchen, the last vestige of
daylight. The wind was growing shriller and sharper, as though it had
waited only for the sinking of the sun to loose the ferocity which too
long had been imprisoned. Darkness came, suddenly, seeming to sweep up
from the valleys toward the peaks, and with it more snow. Barry
accepted the inevitable. He must go on--and that as swiftly as his
crippled machine, the darkness and the twisting, snow-laden,
treacherous road would permit.
Once more at the wheel, he snapped on the lights and huddled low, to
avail himself of every possible bit of warmth from the clanking,
discordant engine. Slowly the journey began, the machine laboring and
thundering with its added handicap of a broken rod and the consequent
lost power of one cylinder. Literally inch by inch it dragged itself
up the heavier grades, puffing and gasping and clanking, the rattling
rod threatening at every moment to tear out its very vitals. The heavy
smell of burnt oil drifted back to the nostrils of Barry Houston; but
there was nothing that he could do but grip the steering wheel a bit
tighter with his numbed hands,--and go on.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the indicator of the speedometer measured off a
mile in dragging decimals. The engine boiled and Barry stopped, once
more to huddle against the radiator, and to avail himself of its
warmth, but not to renew the water. No stream was near; besides, the
cold blast of the wind, shrilling through the open hood, accomplished
the purpose more easily. Again a sally and again a stop. And Barry
was thankful, as, huddled and shivering in his light clothing, he once
more sought the radiator. Vaguely there came to him the thought that
he might spend the night somewhere on the Pass and go on with the flush
of morning. But the thought vanished as quickly as it came; there was
no shelter, no blankets, nothing but the meager warmth of what fire he
might be able to gather, and that would fade the minute he nodded.
Already the temperature had sunk far beneath the freezing point; the
crackling of the ice in the gulleys of the road fairly shouted the fact
as he edged back once more from the radiator to his seat.
An hour--and three more after that--with the consequent stops and
pauses, the slow turns, the dragging process up the steeper inclines of
the road. A last final, clattering journey, and Barry leaped from the
seat with something akin to enthusiasm.
Through the swirling snow which sifted past the glare of his
headlights, he could discern a sign which told him he had reached the
summit, that he now stood at the literal top of the world.
But it was a silent world, a black world, in which the hills about him
were shapeless, dim hulks, where the wind whined, where the snow swept
against his face and drifted down the open space of his collar; a world
of coldness, of malice, of icy venom, where everything was a
threatening thing, and never a cheering aspect except the fact that the
grades had been accomplished, and that from now on he could progress
with the knowledge that his engine at least need labor no longer. But
the dangers! Barry knew that they had only begun. The descent would
be as steep as the climb he had just made. The progress must be
slower, if anything, and with the compression working as a brake. But
it was at least progress, and once more he started.
The engine clanked less now, the air seemed a bit warmer with the down
grade, and Barry, in spite of his fatigue, in spite of the
disappointment of a disabled car, felt at least the joy of having
conquered the thing which had sought to hold him back, the happiness of
having fought against obstacles, of having beaten them, and of knowing
that he now was on the down trail. The grade lessened for a few
hundred feet, and the machine slowed. Houston pressed on the clutch
pedal, allowing the car to coast slowly until the hill became steeper
again. Then he sought once more to shift into gear,--and stopped short!
Those few moments of coasting had been enough. Overheated, distended,
the bearings had cooled too suddenly about the crank shaft and frozen
there with a tightness that neither the grinding pull of the starter
nor the heavy tug of the down grade could loosen. Once more Barry
Houston felt his heart sink in the realization of a newer, a greater
foreboding than ever. A frozen crank shaft meant that from now on the
gears would be useless. Fourteen miles of down grade faced him. If he
were to make them, it must be done with the aid of brakes alone. That
was dangerous!
He cupped his hands and called,--in the vain hope that the stories of
Hazard Pass and its loneliness might not be true, after all. But the
only answer was the churning of the bank-full stream a hundred yards
away, the thunder of the wind through the pines below, and the eerie
echo of his own voice coming back to him through the snows.
Laboriously he left the machine and climbed back to the summit, there
to seek out the little tent house he had seen far at one side and which
he instinctively knew to be the rest room and refreshment stand of the
summer season. But he found it, as he had feared he would find it, a
deserted, cold, napping thing, without a human, without a single
comfort, or the possibility of fire or warmth through the night.
Summer, for Hazard Pass, at least, still was a full month away. For a
moment he shivered within it, staring about its bleak interior by the
aid of a flickering match. Then he went outside again. It was only a
shell, only a hope that could not be realized. It would be less of a
hardship to make the fight to reach the bottom of the Pass than to
attempt to spend the night in this flimsy contraption. In travel there
would be at least action, and Barry clambered down the hill to his
machine.
Again he started, the brake bands squeaking and protesting, the machine
sloughing dangerously as now and again its sheer weight forced it
forward at dangerous speeds until lesser levels could be reached and
the hold of the brake bands accomplish their purpose again. Down and
down, the miles slipping away with far greater speed than even Barry
realized, until at last--
He grasped desperately for the emergency brake and gripped tight upon
it, steering with one hand. For five minutes there had come the strong
odor of burning rubber; the strain had been too great, the foot-brake
linings were gone; everything depended upon the emergency now! And
almost with the first strain--
Careening, the car seemed to leap beneath him, a maddened, crazed
thing, tired of the hills, tired of the turmoil and strain of hours of
fighting, racing with all the speed that gravity could thrust upon it
for the bottom of the Pass. The brakes were gone, the emergency had
not even lasted through the first hill. Barry Houston was now a
prisoner of speed,--cramped in the seat of a runaway car, clutching
tight at the wheel, leaning, white, tense-faced, out into the snow, as
he struggled to negotiate the turns, to hold the great piece of runaway
machinery to the crusted road and check its speed from time to time in
the snowbanks.
A mile more--halted at intervals by the very thing which an hour or so
before Barry Houston had come almost to hate, the tight-packed banks of
snow--then came a new emergency. One chance was left, and Barry took
it,--the "burring" of the gears in lieu of a brake. The snow was
fading now, the air was warmer; a mile or so more and he would be safe
from that threat which had driven him down from the mountain
peaks,--the possibility of death from exposure, had he, in his light
clothing, attempted to spend the night in the open. If the burred
gears could only hold the car for a mile or so more--
But a sudden, snapping crackle ended his hope. The gears had meshed,
and meshing, had broken. Again a wild, careening thing, with no snow
banks to break the rush, the car was speeding down the steepest of the
grades like a human thing determined upon self-destruction.
A skidding curve, then a straightaway, while Barry clung to the wheel
with fingers that were white with the tightness of their grip. A
second turn, while a wheel hung over the edge, a third and--
The awful, suspended agony of space. A cry. A crash and a dull,
twisting moment of deadened Suffering. After that--blackness. Fifty
feet below the road lay a broken, crushed piece of mechanism, its
wheels still spinning, the odor of gasoline heavy about it from the
broken tank, one light still gleaming, like a blazing eye, one light
that centered upon the huddled, crumpled figure of a man who groaned
once and strove vaguely, dizzily, to rise, only to sink at last into
unconsciousness. Barry Houston had lost his fight.
How long he remained there, Barry did not know. He remembered only the
falling, dizzy moment, the second or so of horrible, racking suspense,
when, breathless, unable to move, he watched the twisting rebound of
the machine from which he had been thrown and sought to evade it as it
settled, metal crunching against metal, for the last time. After that
had come agonized hours in which he knew neither wakefulness nor the
quiet of total unconsciousness. Then--
Vaguely, as from far away, he heard a voice,--the sort of a voice that
spelled softness and gentleness. Something touched his forehead and
stroked it, with the caress that only a woman's hand can give. He
moved slightly, with the knowledge that he lay no longer upon the rocky
roughness of a mountain side, but upon the softness of a bed. A pillow
was beneath his head. Warm blankets covered him. The hand again
lingered on his forehead and was drawn away. A moment more and slowly,
wearily, Barry Houston opened his eyes.
It was the room of a mountain cabin, with its skiis and snowshoes; with
its rough chinkings in the interstices of the logs which formed the
mainstay of the house, with its four-paned windows, with its
uncouthness, yet with its comfort. Barry noticed none of this. His
eyes had centered upon the form of a girl standing beside the little
window, where evidently she had gone from his bedside.
Fair-haired she was, though Barry did not notice it. Small of build
and slight, yet vibrant with the health and vigor that is typical of
those who live in the open places. And there was a piquant something
about her too; just enough of an upturned little nose to denote the
fact that there was spirit and independence in her being; dark blue
eyes that snapped even as darker eyes snapped, as she stood, half
turned, looking out the window, watching with evident eagerness the
approach of some one Barry could not see. The lips carried a
half-smile of anticipation. Barry felt the instinctive urge to call to
her, to raise himself--
He winced with a sudden pain, a sharp, yet aching throb of agony which
involuntarily closed his eyes and clenched tight his teeth until it
should pass. When he looked again, she was gone, and the opening of a
door in the next room told him where. Almost wondering, he turned his
eyes then toward the blankets and sought to move an arm,--only again to
desist in pain. He tried the other, and it responded. The covers were
lowered, and Barry's eyes stared down upon a bandaged, splinted left
arm. Broken.
He grunted with surprise, then somewhat doggedly began an inspection of
the rest of his human machine. Gingerly he wiggled one toe beneath the
blankets. It seemed to be in working order. He tried the others, with
the same result. Then followed his legs--and the glorious knowledge
that they still were intact. His one free hand reached for his head
and felt it. It was there, plus a few bandages, which however, from
their size, gave Barry little concern. The inventory completed, he
turned his head at the sound of a voice--hers--calling from the doorway
to some one without.
"He's getting along fine, Ba'tiste." Barry liked the tone and the
enthusiastic manner of speaking. "His fever's gone down. I should
think--"
"Ah, _oui_!" had come the answer in booming bass. "And has he, what
you say, come to?"
"Not yet. But I think he ought to, soon."
"_Oui_! Heem no ver' bad. He be all right tomorrow."
"That's good. It frightened me, for him to be unconscious so long.
It's been five or six hours now, hasn't it?"
"Lemme see. I fin' heem six o'clock. Now--eet is the noon. Six hour."
"That's long enough. Besides, I think he's sleeping now. Come inside
and see--"
"Wait, _m' enfant_. M'sieu Thayer he come in the minute. He say he
think he know heem."
The eyes of Barry Houston suddenly lost their curiosity. Thayer? That
could mean only one Thayer! Barry had taken particular pains to keep
from him the information that he was anywhere except the East. For it
had been Fred Thayer who had caused Barry to travel across country in
his yellow speedster, Thayer who had formed the reason for the
displacement of that name plate at the beginning of Hazard Pass, Thayer
who--
"Know him? Is he a friend?"
"_Oui_. So Thayer say. He say he think eet is the M'sieu Houston, who
own the mill."
"Probably coming out to look over things, then?"
"_Oui_. Thayer, he say the young man write heem about coming. That is
how he know when I tell heem about picking heem up from the machine.
He say he know M'sieu Houston is coming by the automobile."
In the other room, Barry Houston blinked rapidly and frowned. He had
written Thayer nothing of the sort. He had-- Suddenly he stared
toward the ceiling in swift-centered thought. Some one else must have
sent the information, some one who wanted Thayer to know that Barry was
on the way, so that there would be no surprise in his coming, some one
who realized that his mission was that of investigation!
The names of two persons flashed across his mind, one to be dismissed
immediately, the other--
"I'll fire Jenkins the minute I get back!" came vindictively. "I'll--."
He choked his words. A query had come from the next room.
"Was that heem talking?"
"No, I don't think so. He groans every once in a while. Wait--I'll
look."
The injured man closed his eyes quickly, as he heard the girl approach
the door, not to open them until she had departed. Barry was thinking
and thinking hard. A moment later--
"How's the patient?" It was a new voice, one which Barry Houston
remembered from years agone, when he, a wide-eyed boy in his father's
care, first had viewed the intricacies of a mountain sawmill, had
wandered about the bunk houses, and ridden the great, skidding bobsleds
with the lumberjacks in the spruce forests, on a never-forgotten trip
of inspection. It was Thayer, the same Thayer that he once had looked
upon with all the enthusiasm and pride of boyhood, but whom he now
viewed with suspicion and distrust. Thayer had brought him out here,
without realizing it. Yet Thayer had known that he was on the way.
And Thayer must be combatted--but how? The voice went on, "Gained
consciousness yet?"
"No." The girl had answered. "That is--"
"Of course, then, he hasn't been able to talk. Pretty sure it's
Houston, though. Went over and took a look at the machine. Colorado
license on it, but the plates look pretty new, and there are fresh
marks on the license holders where others have been taken off recently.
Evidently just bought a Colorado tag, figuring that he'd be out here
for some time. How'd you find him?"
The bass voice of the man referred to as Ba'tiste gave the answer, and
Barry listened with interest. Evidently he had struggled to his feet
at some time during the night--though he could not remember it--and
striven to find his way down the mountain side in the darkness, for the
story of Ba'tiste told Barry that he had found him just at dawn, a full
five hundred yards from the machine.
"I see heem move," the big voice was saying, "jus' as I go to look at
my trap. Then Golemar come beside me and raise his hair along his neck
and growl--r-r-r-r-r-u-u-f-f-f--like that. I look again--it is jus' at
the dawn. I cannot see clearly. I raise my gun to shoot, and Golemar,
he growl again. Then I think eet strange that the bear or whatever he
is do not move. I say to Golemar, 'We will closer go, _ne c'est pas_?'
A step or two--then three--but he do not move--then pretty soon I look
again, close. Eet is a man, I pick heem up, like this--and I bring
heem home. _Ne c'est pas_, Medaine?"
Her name was Medaine then. Not bad, Barry thought. It rather matched
her hair and the tilt of her nose and the tone of her laugh as she
answered:
"I would say you carried him more like a sack of meal, Ba'tiste. I'm
glad I happened along when I did; you might have thrown him over your
shoulder!"
A booming laugh answered her and the sound of a light scuffle, as
though the man were striving to catch the girl in his big embrace. But
the cold voice of Thayer cut in:
"And he hasn't regained consciousness?"
"Not yet. That is, I think he's recovered his senses, all right, and
fallen immediately into a heavy sleep."
"Guess I'll go in and stay with him until he wakes up. He's my boss,
you know--since the old man died. We've got a lot of important things
to discuss. So if you don't mind--"
"Certainly not." It was the girl again. "We'll go in with you."
"No, thanks. I want to see him alone."
Within the bedroom, Barry Houston gritted his teeth. Then, with a
sudden resolve, he rested his head again on the pillow and closed his
eyes as the sound of steps approached. Closer they came to the bed,
and closer. Barry could feel that the man was bending over him,
studying him. There came a murmur, almost whispered:
"Wonder what the damn fool came out here about? Wonder if he's wise?"
CHAPTER III
It was with an effort that Houston gave no indication that he had
heard. Before, there had been only suspicions, one flimsy clue leading
to another, a building-block process, which, in its culmination, had
determined Barry to take a trip into the West to see for himself. He
had believed that it would be a long process, the finding of a certain
telegram and the possibilities which might ensue if this bit of
evidence should turn out to be the thing he had suspected. He had not,
however, hoped to have from the lips of the man himself a confession
that conditions were not right at the lumber mill of which Barry
Houston now formed the executive head; to receive the certain statement
that somewhere, somehow, something was wrong, something which was
working against the best interests of himself and the stern necessities
of the future. But now--
Thayer had turned away and evidently sought a chair at the other side
of the room. Barry remained perfectly still. Five minutes passed.
Ten. There came no sound from the chair; instinctively the man on the
bed knew that Thayer was watching him, waiting for the first flicker of
an eyelid, the first evidence of returning consciousness. Five minutes
more and Barry rewarded the vigil. He drew his breath in a shivering
sigh. He turned and groaned,--quite naturally with the pain from his
splintered arm. His eyes opened slowly, and he stared about him, as
though in non-understanding wonderment, finally to center upon the
window ahead and retain his gaze there, oblivious of the sudden tensity
of the thin-faced Thayer. Barry Houston was playing for time, playing
a game of identities. In the same room was a man he felt sure to be an
enemy, a man who had in his care everything Barry Houston possessed in
the world, every hope, every dream, every chance for the wiping out of
a thing that had formed a black blot in the life of the young man for
two grim years, and a man who, Barry Houston now felt certain, had not
held true to his trust. Still steadily staring, he pretended not to
notice the tall, angular form of Fred Thayer as that person crossed the
brightness of the window and turned toward the bed. And when at last
he did look up into the narrow, sunken face, it was with eyes which
carried in them no light of friendship, nor even the faintest air of
recognition. Thayer put forth a gnarled, frost-twisted hand.
"Hello, kid," he announced, his thin lips twisting into a cynical smile
that in days gone by had passed as an affectation. Barry looked
blankly at him.
"Hello."
"How'd you get hurt?"
"I don't know."
"Old Man Renaud here says you fell over the side of Two Mile Hill. He
picked you up about six o'clock this morning. Don't you remember?"
"Remember what?" The blank look still remained. Thayer moved closer
to the bed and bending, stared at him.
"Why, the accident. I'm Thayer, you know--Thayer, your manager at the
Empire Lake mill."
"Have I a manager?"
The thin man drew back at this and stood for a moment staring down at
Houston. Then he laughed and rubbed his gnarled hands.
"I hope you've got a manager. You--you haven't fired me, have you?"
Barry turned his head wearily, as though the conversation were ended.
"I don't know what you are talking about."
"You--don't--say, you're Barry Houston, aren't you?"
"I? Am I?"
"Well, then, who are you?"
The man on the bed smiled.
"I'd like to have you tell me. I don't know myself."
"Don't you know your name?"
"Have I one?"
Thayer, wondering now, drew a hand across his forehead and stood for a
moment in disconcerted silence. Again he started to frame a question,
only to desist. Then, hesitatingly, he turned and walked to the door.
"Ba'tiste."
"Ah, _oui_!"
"Come in here, will you? I'm up against a funny proposition. Mr.
Houston doesn't seem to be able to remember who he is."
"Ah!" Then came the sound of heavy steps, and Barry glanced toward the
door, to see framed there the gigantic form of a grinning, bearded man,
his long arms hanging with the looseness of tremendous strength, his
gray eyes gleaming with twinkling interest, his whole being and build
that of a great, good-humored, eccentric giant. His beard was
splotched with gray, as was the hair which hung in short, unbarbered
strands about his ears. But the hint of age was nullified by the cocky
angle of the blue-knit cap upon his head, the blazing red of his
double-breasted pearl-buttoned shirt, the flexible freedom of his
muscles as he strode within. Beside him trotted a great gray
cross-breed dog, which betokened collie and timber wolf, and which
progressed step by step at his master's knee. Close to the bed they
came, the great form bending, the twinkling, sharp eyes boring into
those of Houston, until the younger man gave up the contest and turned
his head,--to look once more upon the form of the girl, waiting
wonderingly in the doorway. Then the voice came, rumbling, yet
pleasant:
"He no remember, eh?"
"No. I know him all right. It's Barry Houston--I've been expecting
him to drop in most any day. Of course, I haven't seen him since he
was a kid out here with his father--but that doesn't make any
difference. The family resemblance is there--he's got his father's
eyes and mouth and nose, and his voice. But I can't get him to
remember it. He can't recall anything about his fall, or his name or
business. I guess the accident--"
"Eet is the--" Ba'tiste was waving one hand vaguely, then placing a
finger to his forehead, in a vain struggle for a word. "Eet is
the--what-you-say--"
"Amnesia." The answer had come quietly from the girl. Ba'tiste turned
excitedly.
"Ah, _oui_! Eet is the amnesia. Many time I have seen it--" he waved
a hand--"across the way, _ne c'est pas_? Eet is when the mind he will
no work--what you say--he will not stick on the job. See--" he
gesticulated now with both hands--"eet is like a wall. I see eet with
the shell shock. Eet is all the same. The wall is knock down--eet
will not hold together. Blooey--" he waved his hands--"the man he no
longer remember!"
This time the stare in Barry Houston's eyes was genuine. To hear a
girl of the mountains name a particular form of mental ailment, and
then to further listen to that ailment described in its symptoms by a
grinning, bearded giant of the woods was a bit past the comprehension
of the injured man. He had half expected the girl to say "them" and
"that there", though the trimness of her dress, the smoothness of her
small, well-shod feet, the air of refinement which spoke even before
her lips had uttered a word should have told him differently. As for
the giant, Ba'tiste, with his outlandish clothing, his corduroy
trousers and high-laced, hob-nailed boots, his fawning, half-breed dog,
his blazing shirt and kippy little knit cap, the surprise was all the
greater. But that surprise, it seemed, did not extend to the other
listener. Thayer had bobbed his head as though in deference to an
authority. When he spoke, Barry thought that he discerned a tone of
enthusiasm, of hope:
"Do they ever get over it?"
"Sometime, yes. Sometime--no. Eet all depend."
"Then there isn't any time limit on a thing like this."
"No. Sometime a year--sometime a week--sometime never. It all depend.
Sometime he get a shock--something happen quick, sudden--blooey--he
come back, he say 'where am I', and he be back again, same like he was
before!" Ba'tiste gesticulated vigorously. Thayer moved toward the
door.
"Then I guess there's nothing more for me to do, except to drop in
every few days and see how he's getting along. You'll take good care
of him?"
"Ah, _oui_."
"Good. Want to walk a piece down the road--with me, Medaine?"
"Of course. It's too bad, isn't it--"
Then they faded through the doorway, and Barry could hear no more. But
he found himself looking after them, wondering about many
things,--about the girl and her interest in Fred Thayer, and whether
she too might be a part of the machinery which he felt had been set up
against him; about the big, grinning Ba'tiste, who still remained in
the room; who now was fumbling about with the bedclothes at the foot of
the bed and--
"Ouch! Don't--don't do that!"
Barry suddenly had ceased his thoughts to jerk his feet far up under
the covers, laughing and choking and striving to talk at the same time.
At the foot of the bed, Ba'tiste, his eyes twinkling more than ever,
had calmly rolled back the covering and just as calmly tickled the
injured man's feet. More, one long arm had outstretched again, as the
giant once more reached for the sole of a foot, to tickle it, then to
stand back and boom with laughter as Barry involuntarily sought to jerk
the point of attack out of the way. For a fourth time he repeated the
performance, followed by a fourth outburst of mirth at the recoil from
the injured man. Barry frowned.
"Pardon me," he said rather caustically. "But I don't get the joke."
"Ho, ho!" and Ba'tiste turned to talk to the shaggy dog at his side.
"_L'enfant_ feels it! _L'enfant_ feels it!"
"Feel it," grunted Houston. "Of course I feel it! I'm ticklish."
"You hear, Golemar?" Ba'tiste, contorted with merriment, pointed
vaguely in the direction of the bed, "M'sieu l' Nobody, heem is
ticklish!"
"Of course I'm ticklish. Who isn't, on the bottom of his feet?"
The statement only brought a new outburst from the giant. It nettled
Houston; further, it caused him pain to be jerking constantly about the
bed in an effort to evade the tickling touch of the trapper's big
fingers. Once more Ba'tiste leaned forward and wiggled his fingers as
if in preparation for a new assault, and once more Barry withdrew his
pedal extremities to a place of safety.
"Please don't," he begged. "I--I don't know what kind of a game you're
playing--and I'm perfectly willing to join in on it when I feel
better--but now it hurts my arm to be bouncing around this way. Maybe
this afternoon--if you've got to play these fool games--I'll feel
better--"
The thunder of the other man's laugh cut him off. Ba'tiste was now, it
seemed, in a perfect orgy of merriment. As though weakened by his
laughter, he reeled to the wall and leaned there, his big arms hanging
loosely, the tears rolling down his cheeks and disappearing in the gray
beard, his face reddened, his whole form shaking with series after
series of chuckles.
"You hear heem?" he gasped at the wolf-dog. "M'sieu l' Nobody, he will
play with us this afternoon! M'sieu l' Ticklefoot! That is heem, my
Golemar, M'sieu l' Ticklefoot! Oh, ho--M'sieu l' Ticklefoot!"
"What in thunder is the big idea?" Barry Houston had lost his reserve
now. "I want to be a good fellow--but for the love of Mike let me in
on the joke. I can't get it. I don't see anything funny in lying here
with a broken arm and having my feet tickled. Of course, I'm grateful
to you for picking me up and all that sort of thing, but--"
Choking back the laughter, Ba'tiste returned to the foot of the bed and
stood wiping the tears from his eyes.
"Pardon, _mon ami_," came seriously at last. "Old Ba'teese must have
his joke. Listen, Ba'teese tell you something. You see people here
today, _oui_, yes? You see, the petite Medaine? Ah, _oui_!" He
clustered his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss toward the ceiling.
"She is the, what-you-say, fine li'l keed. She is the--_bon bébé_!
You no nev' see her before?"
Barry shook his head. Ba'tiste went on.
"You see M'sieu Thayer? _Oui_? You know heem?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Never saw him before."
"So?" Batiste grinned and wagged a finger, "Ba'teese he like the
truth, yes, _oui_. Ba'teese he don't get the truth, he tickle M'sieu's
feet."
"Now listen! Please--"
"No--no!" The giant waved a hand in dismissal of threat. "Old
Ba'teese, he still joke. Ba'teese say he tell you something. Eet is
this. You see those people? All right. _Bon_--good. You don' know
one. You know the other. Yes? _Oui_? Ba'teese not know why you do
it. Ba'teese not care. Ba'teese is right--in here." He patted his
heart with a big hand. "But you--you not tell the truth. I know. I
tickle your feet."
"You're crazy!"
"So, mebbe. Ba'teese have his trouble. Sometime Ba'teese wish he go
crazy--like you say."
The face suddenly aged. The twinkling light left the eyes. The big
hands knitted, and the man was silent for a long moment. Then, "But
Ba'-teese he know--see?" He pointed to his head, then twisting, ran
his finger down his spine. "When eet is the--what-you-say,
amnesia--the nerve eet no work in the foot. I could tickle, tickle,
tickle, and you would not know. But with you--blooey--right away, you
feel. So, for some reason, you are, what-you-say?--shamming. But you
are Ba'teese' gues'. You sleep in Ba'teese' bed. You eat Ba'teese'
food. So long as that, you are Ba'teese' friend. Ba'teese--" he
looked with quiet, fatherly eyes toward the young man on the
bed--"shall ask no question--and Ba'teese shall tell no tales!"
CHAPTER IV
The simple statement of the gigantic trapper swept the confidence from
Houston and left him at a disadvantage. His decision had been a hasty
one,--a thing to gain time, a scheme by which he had felt he could, at
the proper time, take Thayer off his guard and cause him to come into
the open with his plans, whatever they might be. Fate had played a
strange game with Barry Houston. It had taken a care-free,
happy-go-lucky youth and turned him into a suspicious, distrustful
person with a constantly morbid strain which struggled everlastingly
for supremacy over his usually cheery grin and his naturally optimistic
outlook upon life. For Fate had allowed Houston to live the youth of
his life in ease and brightness and lack of worry, only that it might
descend upon him with the greatest cloud that man can know. And two
years of memories, two years of bitterness, two years of ugly
recollections had made its mark. In all his dealings with Thayer,
conducted though they might have been at a distance, Barry Houston
could not place his finger upon one tangible thing that would reveal
his crookedness. But he had suspected; had come to investigate, and to
learn, even before he was ready to receive the information, that his
suspicions had been, in some wise at least, correct. To follow those
suspicions to their stopping place Barry had feigned amnesia. And it
had lasted just long enough for this grinning man who stood at the foot
of the bed to tickle his feet!
And how should that grotesque giant with his blazing red shirt and
queer little cap know of such things as amnesia and the tracing of a
deadened nerve? How should he,--then Barry suddenly tensed. Had it
been a ruse? Was this man a friend, a companion--even an accomplice of
the thin-faced, frost-gnarled Thayer--and had his simple statement been
an effort to take Barry off his guard? If so, it had not succeeded,
for Barry had made no admissions. But it all affected him curiously;
it nettled him and puzzled him. For a long time he was silent, merely
staring at the grinning features of Ba'tiste. At last:
"I should think you would wait until you could consult a doctor before
you'd say a thing like that."
"So? It has been done."
"And he told you--"
"Nothing. He does not need to even speak to Ba'teese." A great
chuckle shook the big frame "Ba'teese know as soon as _l' M'sieu
Doctaire_."
"On good terms, aren't you? When's he coming again?"
"_Parbleu_!" The big man snapped his fingers. "Peuff! Like that.
Ba'teese call heem, and he is here."
Houston blinked. Then, in spite of his aching head, and the pain of
the swollen, splint-laced arm he sat up in bed.
"What kind of--"
"Old Ba'teese, he mus' joke," came quickly and seriously from the other
man. "Ba'teese--he is heem."
"A doctor?"
Slowly the big man nodded. Barry went on "I--I--didn't know. I
thought you were just a trapper. I wondered--"
"So! That is all--jus' a trapper."
Quietly, slowly, the big man turned away from the bed and stood looking
out the window, the wolf-dog edging close to him as though in
companionship and some strange form of sympathy. There was silence for
a long time, then the voice of Ba'tiste came again, but now it was soft
and low, addressed, it seemed, not to the man on the bed, but to
vacancy.
"So! Ba'teese, he is only a trapper now. Ba'teese, he had swear he
never again stand beside a sick bed. But you--" and he turned swiftly,
a broken smile playing about his lips--"you, _mon ami_, you, when I
foun' you this morning, with your head twisted under your arm, with the
blood on your face, and the dust and dirt upon you--then you--you look
like my Pierre! And I pick you up--so!" He fashioned his arms as
though he were holding a baby, "and I look at you and I say--'Pierre!
Pierre!' But you do not answer--just like he did not answer. Then I
start back with you, and the way was rough. I take you under one
arm--so. It was steep. I must have one arm free. Then I meet
Medaine, and she laugh at me for the way I carry you. And I was glad.
Eet made Ba'teese forget."
"What?" Barry said it with the curiosity of a boy. The older man
stared hard at the crazy design of the covers.
"My Pierre," came at last. "And my Julienne. Ba'teese, he is all
alone now. Are you all alone?" The question came quickly. Barry
answered before he thought.
"Yes."
"Then you know--you know how eet feel. You know how Ba'teese think
when he look out the window. See?" He pointed, and Barry raised
himself slightly that he might follow the direction of the gesture.
Faintly, through the glass, he could see something white, rearing
itself in the shadows of the heavy pines which fringed the cabin,--a
cross. And it stood as the guardian of a mound of earth where pine
boughs had been placed in smooth precision, while a small vase, half
implanted in the earth, told of flowers in the summer season. Ba'tiste
stared at his palms. "Julienne," came at last. "My wife." Then, with
a sudden impulse, he swerved about the bed and sat down beside the sick
man. "Ba'teese--" he smiled plaintively--"like to talk about
Pierre--and Julienne. Even though eet hurt."
Barry could think only in terms of triteness.
"Have they been gone long?"
The big man counted on his fingers.
"One--two--t'ree year. Before that--_bon_!" He kissed his fingers
airily. "Old Ba'teese, he break the way--long time ago. He come down
from Montreal, with his Julienne and his Pierre--in his arm, so. He
like to feel big and strong--to help other people. So, down here where
there were few he came, and built his cabin, with his Pierre and his
Julienne. And, so happy! Then, by'm'by, Jacques Robinette come too,
with his petite Medaine--"
"That's the girl who was here?"
"Ah, _oui_. I am _l' M'sieu Doctaire_. I look after the sick for
ten--twenty--thirty mile. Jacques he have more head. He buy land." A
great sweep of the arm seemed to indicate all outdoors. "Ev'where--the
pine and spruce, it was Jacques! By'm'by, he go on and leave Medaine
alone. Then she go 'way to school, but ev' summer she come back and
live in the big house. And Ba'teese glad--because he believe some day
she love Pierre and Pierre love her and--"
Another silence. At last:
"And then war came. My Pierre, he is but eighteen. But he go.
Ba'teese want him to go. Julienne, she say nothing--she cry at night.
But she want him to go too. Medaine, she tell funny stories about her
age and she go too. It was lonely. Ba'teese was big. Ba'teese was
strong. And Julienne say to him, 'You too--you go. You may save a
life.' And Ba'teese went."
"To France?"
Ba'tiste bowed his head.
"Long time Ba'teese look for his Pierre. Long time he look for
Medaine. But no. Then--" his face suddenly contorted "--one night--in
the cathedral at St. Menehould, I find heem. But Pierre not know his
_père_. He not answer Ba'teese when he call 'Pierre! Pierre!' Here,
and here, and here--" the big man pointed to his breast and face and
arms--"was the shrapnel. He sigh in my arms--then he is gone.
Ba'teese ask that night for duty on the line. He swear never again to
be _l' M'sieu Doctaire_. All his life he help--help--help--but when
the time come, he cannot help his own. And by'm'by, Ba'teese come
home--and find that."
He pointed out into the shadows beneath the pines.
"She had died?"
"Died!" The man's face had gone suddenly purple. His eyes were
glaring, his hands upraised and clutched. "No! Murder! Murder, mon
ami! Murder! Lost Wing--he Medaine's Indian--he find her--so! In a
heap on the floor--and a bullet through her brain. And the money we
save, the ten thousan' dollar--eet is gone! Murder!"
A shudder went over the young man on the bed. His face blanched. His
lips lost their color. For a moment, as the big French-Canadian bent
over him, he stared with glazed, unseeing eyes, at last to turn dully
at the sharp, questioning voice of the trapper:
"Murder--you know murder?"
There was a long moment of silence. Then, as though with an effort
which took his every atom of strength, Houston shook himself, as if to
throw some hateful, vicious thing from him, and turned, with a parrying
question:
"Did you ever find who did it?"
"No. But sometime--Ba'teese not forget. Ba'teese always wait.
Ba'teese always look for certain things--that were in the deed-box.
There was jewelry--Ba'teese remember. Sometime--" Then he switched
again. "Why you look so funny? Huh? Why you get pale--?"
"Please--" Barry Houston put forth a hand. "Please--" Then he
straightened. "Ba'tiste, I'm in your hands. You can help me, or you
can harm me. You know I was shamming when I acted as though I had lost
my identity. Now--now you know there's something else. Will you--"
He ceased suddenly and sank back. From without there had come the
sound of steps. A moment later, the door opened, and shadows of a man
and a girl showed on the floor. Thayer and Medaine had returned. Soon
they were in the room, the girl once more standing in the doorway,
regarding Barry with a quizzical, half-wondering gaze, the man coming
forward and placing one gnarled hand on the Canadian's shoulder,
staring over his head down into the eyes of the injured man on the bed.
"I couldn't go back to the mill without making one more try," he
explained. "Has he shown any signs yet?"
Barry watched Ba'teese closely. But the old man's face was a blank.
"Signs? Of what?"
"Coming to--remembering who he is."
"Oh." Ba'tiste shrugged his shoulders. "I have give eet up."
"Then--"
"So far Ba'teese is concern'," and he looked down on the bed with a
glance which told Barry far more than words, "he is already name. He
is M'sieu Nobody. I can get no more."
Thayer scratched his head. He turned.
"Anyway, I'm going to make one more attempt at it. See what you can
do, Medaine."
The girl came forward then, half smiling, and seated herself beside the
bed. She took Barry's hand in hers, then with a laugh turned to Thayer.
"What shall I do? Make love to him?"
"Why not?" It was old Ba'tiste edging forward, the twinkle once more
in his eyes. "Bon--good! Make love to him."
"Do you suppose it would help?" The girl was truly serious now.
"Why not?"
"I don't think--" Thayer had edged forward, nervously. Ba'tiste
pushed him gently.
"Peuff! And when did M'sieu Thayer become _l' M'sieu Doctaire_?
Ba'teese say ask him if he like you."
Medaine laughed.
"Do you like me?"
Brown eyes met blue eyes. A smile passed between them. It was with an
effort that Houston remembered that he was only playing a part.
"I certainly do!"
"Ask him, 'Do you like me better than anybody you ever--'"
"What sense is there to all this?"
"Blooey! And why should you ask? Why should you stand with a frown on
your face? Peuff! It is ugly enough already!" To Barry, it was quite
evident that there was some purpose behind the actions of Old Ba'tiste,
and certainly more than mere pleasantry in his words. "You ask Medaine
to help Ba'teese, and then _facher vous_! Enough. Ask him, Medaine."
"But--" the girl was laughing now, her eyes beaming, a slight flush
apparent in her cheeks--"maybe he doesn't want me to--"
"Oh, but I do!" There was something in the tone of Barry Houston which
made the color deepen. "I--I like it."
"That's enough!" Thayer, black-featured, his gnarled hands clenched
into ugly knots, came abruptly forward. "I thought this was a serious
thing; I didn't know you were going to turn it into a burlesque!"
"Perhaps M'sieu Thayer has studied the practice of medicine?"
"No. But--"
"Nor, pardon, the practice of politeness. Ba'teese will not need your
help."
"Whether you need it or not, I'll come back when you're through with
this infernal horseplay. I--"
"Ba'teese choose his guests."
"You mean--"
"Ba'teese mean what he say."
"Very well, then. Come on, Medaine."
The girl, apparently without a thought of the air of proprietorship in
the man's tone, rose, only to face Ba'tiste. The Canadian glowered at
her.
"And are you chattel?" he stormed. "Do you stand in the cup of his
hand that he shall tell you when to rise and when to sit, when to walk
and where to go?"
She turned.
"You were abrupt, Fred. I'm glad Ba'tiste reminded me. Personally, I
don't see why I should have been drawn into this at all, or why I
should be made the butt of a quarrel over some one I never saw before."
"I'm sorry--terribly sorry." Barry was speaking earnestly and holding
forth his hand. "I shouldn't have answered you that way--I'm--"
"We'll forget it all." A flashing smile had crossed the girl's lips.
"Fred never knows how to take Ba'tiste. They're always quarreling this
way. The only trouble is that Fred--" and she turned to face him
piquantly--"always takes in the whole world when he gets mad. And that
includes me. I think," and the little nose took a more upward turn
than ever, "that Ba'tiste is entirely right, Fred. You talked to me as
though I were a sack of potatoes. I won't go with you, and I won't see
you until you can apologize."
"There's nothing to apologize for!"
Thayer jammed on his hat and stamped angrily out the door. Medaine
watched him with laughing eyes.
"He'll write me a letter to-night," came quietly. Then, "Lost Wing!"
"Ugh!" It was a grunt from outside.
"I just wanted to be sure you were there. Call me when Mr. Thayer has
passed the ridge."
"Ugh!"
Medaine turned again to Ba'tiste, a childish appearance of confidence
in her eyes, her hand lingering on the chair by the bed.
"Were you really fooling, Ba'tiste--or shall we continue?"
"Perhaps--" the twinkle still shone in the old man's eyes--"but not
now. Perhaps--sometime. So mebbe sometime you--"
"Wah--hah--hai-i-e-e-e!" The Sioux had called from without. Medaine
turned.
"When you need me, Ba'tiste," she answered, with a smile that took in
also the eager face on the bed, "I'll be glad to help you. Good-by."
That too included Barry, and he answered it with alacrity. Then for a
moment after she had gone, he lay scowling at Ba'tiste, who once more,
in a weakened state of merriment, had reeled to the wall, followed as
usual by his dog, and leaned there, hugging his sides. Barry growled:
"You're a fine doctor! Just when you had me cured, you quit! I'd
forgotten I even had a broken arm."
"So?" Ba'tiste straightened. "You like her, eh? You like the petite
Medaine?"
"How can I help it?"
"_Bon_! Good! I like you to like Medaine. You no like Thayer?"
"Less every minute."
"Bon! I no like heem. He try to take Pierre's place with Medaine.
And Pierre, he was strong and tall and straight. Pierre, he could
smile--_bon_! Like you can smile. You look like my Pierre!" came
frankly.
"Thanks, Ba'tiste." Barry said it in wholehearted manner. "You don't
know how grateful I am for a little true friendliness."
"Grateful? Peuff! You? Bah, you shall go back, and they will ask who
helped you when you were hurt, and you--you will not even remember what
is the name."
"Hardly that." Barry pulled thoughtfully at the covers. "In the first
place, I'm not going back, and in the second, I haven't enough true
friends to forget so easily. I--I--" Then his jaw dropped and he lay
staring ahead, out to the shadows beneath the pines and the stalwart
cross which kept watch there. "I--"
"You act funny again. You act like you act when I talk about my
Julienne. Why you do eet?"
Barry Houston did not answer at once. Old scenes were flooding through
his brain, old agonies that reflected themselves upon his features, old
sorrows, old horrors. His eyes grew cold and lifeless, his hands white
and drawn, his features haggard. The chuckle left the lips of Ba'tiste
Renaud. He moved swiftly, almost sinuously to the bed, and gripped the
younger man by his uninjured arm. His eyes came close to Barry
Houston, his voice was sharp, tense, commanding:
"You! Why you act like that when I talk about murder? Why you get
pale, huh? Why you get pale?"
CHAPTER V
The gaze of Ba'tiste Renaud was strained as he asked the question, his
manner tense, excited. Through sheer determination, Barry forced a
smile and pulled himself back to at least a semblance of composure.
"Maybe you know the reason already--through Thayer. But if you
don't--Ba'tiste, how much of it do you mean when you say you are a
man's friend?"
"Ba'teese may joke," came quietly, "but Ba'teese no lie. You look like
my Pierre--you help where it has been lonesome. You are my frien'."
"Then I know you are not going to ask me for something that hurts in
telling. And at least, I can give you my word of honor that it isn't
because of my conscience!"
Ba'tiste was silent after that, walking slowly about the room, shaggy
head bent, hands clasped behind his back, studious, as though striving
to fathom what had been on the man's mind. As for Barry, he stared
disconsolately at vacancy, living again a thing which he had striven to
forget. It had been forced upon him, this partial admission of a cloud
in the past; the geniality, the utter honesty, the friendliness of the
old French-Canadian, the evident dislike for a man whom he, Barry, also
thoroughly distrusted, had lowered the younger man's guard. The tragic
story of Pierre and Julienne had furthered the merest chance
acquaintance into what seemed the beginning, at least, of closest
friendship. Houston had known Ba'tiste for only a matter of a few
hours,--yet it seemed months since he first had looked upon the funny
little blue cap and screaming red shirt of the Canadian; and it was
evident that Renaud had felt the same reaction. Barry Houston, to this
great, lonely man of the hills, looked like a son who was gone, a son
who had grown tall and straight and good to look upon a son upon whom
the old man had looked as a companion, and a chum for whom he had
searched in every battle-scarred area of a war-stricken nation, only to
find him,--too late. And with this viewpoint, there was no shamming
about the old man's expressions of friendship. More, he took Barry's
admission of a cloud in the past as a father would take it from a son;
he paced the floor minute after minute, head bowed, gray eyes half
closed, only to turn at last with an expression which told Barry
Houston that a friend was his for weal or woe, for fair weather or
foul, good or evil.
"Eet is enough!" came abruptly. "There is something you do not want to
tell. I like you--I not ask. You look like my Pierre--who could do no
wrong. So! _Bon_--good! Ba'teese is your frien'. You have trouble?
Ba'teese help."
"I've had plenty of that, in the last two years," came quietly. "I
think I've got plenty ahead of me. What do you know about Thayer?"
"He no good."
"Why?"
"Ba'teese don' know. On'y he have narrow eyes too close together. He
have a quirk to his mouth Ba'teese no like. He have habit nev' talkin'
about himself--he ask you question an' tell you nothing. He have
hatchet-face; Ba'teese no like a man with a hatchet-face. Beside, he
make love to Medaine!"
Barry laughed.
"Evidently that's a sore spot with you, Ba'tiste."
"No. Ba'teese no care. But if my Pierre had live, he would have make
love to her. She would have marry him. And to have M'sieu Thayer take
his place? No! Mebbe--" he said it hopefully, "mebbe you like
Medaine, huh?"
"I do! She's pretty, Ba'tiste."
"Mebbe you make love?"
But the man on the bed shook his head.
"I can't make love to anybody, Ba'tiste. Not until I've--I've found
something I'm looking for. I'm afraid that's a long way off. I
haven't the privileges of most young fellows. I'm a little--what would
you call it--hampered by circumstance. I've--besides, if I ever do
marry, it won't be for love. There's a girl back East who says she
cares for me, and who simply has taken it for granted that I think the
same way about her. She stood by me--in some trouble. Out of every
one, she didn't believe what they said about me. That means a lot.
Some way, she isn't my kind; she just doesn't awaken affection on my
part, and I spend most of my time calling myself a cad over it. But
she stood by me--and--I guess that's all that's necessary, after all.
When I've fulfilled my contract with myself--if I ever do--I'll do the
square thing and ask her to marry me."
Ba'tiste scowled.
"You dam' fool," he said. "Buy 'em present. Thank 'em, _merci
beaucoup_. But don' marry 'em unless 'you love 'em. Ba'teese, he
know. Ba'teese, he been in too many home where there is no love."
"True. But you don't know the story behind it all, Ba'tiste. And I
can't tell you except this: I got in some trouble. I'd rather not tell
you what it was. It broke my father's heart--and his confidence in me.
He--he died shortly afterward."
"And you--was it your fault?"
"If you never believe anything else about me, Ba'tiste, believe this:
that it wasn't. And in a way, it was proven to him, before he went.
But he had been embittered then. He left a will--with stipulations. I
was to have the land he owned out here at Empire Lake; and the flume
site leading down the right side of Hawk Creek to the mill. Some one
else owns the other side of the lake and the land on the opposite bank
of the stream."
"_Oui_. Medaine Robinette."
"Honestly? Is it hers?"
"When she is twenty-one. But go on."
"Father wouldn't leave me the mill. He seemed to have a notion that
I'd sell it all off--and he tied everything up in a way to keep me from
doing anything like that. The mill is rented to me. The land is mine,
and I can do everything but actually dispose of it. But on top of that
comes another twist: if I haven't developed the business within five
years into double what it was at the peak of its best development, back
goes everything into a trust fund, out of which I am to have a hundred
dollars a month, nothing more. That's what I'm out here for, Ba'tiste,
to find out why, in spite of the fact that I've worked day and night
now for a year and a half, in spite of the fact that I've gone out and
struggled and fought for contracts, and even beaten down the barriers
of dislike and distrust and suspicion to get business--why I can't get
it! Something or some one is blocking me, and I'm going to find out
what and who it is! I think I know one man--Thayer. But there may be
more. That's why I'm playing this game of lost identity. I thought I
could get out here and nose around without him knowing it. When he
found out at once who I was, and seemed to have had a previous tip that
I was coming out here, I had to think fast and take the first scheme
that popped into my head. Maybe if I can play the game long enough, it
will take him off his guard and cause him to work more in the open.
They may give me a chance to know where I stand. And I've got to know
that, Ba'tiste. Because--" and his voice was vibrant with
determination, "I don't care what happens to me personally. I don't
care whether five minutes after I have made it, I lose every cent of
what I have worked for. But I do care about this; I'm going to make
good to my father's memory. I'm going to be able to stand before a
mirror and look myself straight in the eye, knowing that I bucked up
against trouble, that it nearly whipped me, that it took the unfairest
advantage that Fate can take of a man in allowing my father to die
before I could fully right myself in his eyes, but that if there is a
Justice, if there is anything fair and decent in this universe, some
way he'll know, some way he'll rest in peace, with the understanding
that his son took up the gauntlet that death laid down for him, that he
made the fight, and that he won!"
"_Bon_--good!" Old Ba'tiste leaned over the foot of the bed. "My
Pierre--he would talk like that. _Bon_? Now--what is it you look for?"
"In the first place, I want to know how so many accidents can happen in
a single plant, just at the wrong time. I want to know why it is that
I can go out and fight for a contract, and then lose it because a saw
has broken, or an off-bearer, lugging slabs away from the big wheel,
can allow one to strike at just the wrong moment and let the saw pick
it up and drive it through the boiler, laying up the whole plant for
three weeks. I want to know why it is that only about one out of three
contracts I land are ever filled. Thayer's got something to do with
it, I know. Why? That's another question. But there must be others.
I want to know who they are and weed them out. I've only got three and
a half years left, and things are going backward instead of forward."
"How you intend to fin' this out?"
"I don't know. I've got one lead--as soon as I'm able to get into
town. That may give me a good deal of information; I came out here, at
least, in the hope that it would. After that, I'm hazy. How big a
telegraph office is there at Tabernacle?"
"How big?" Ba'tiste laughed. "How _petite_! Eet is about the size of
the--what-you-say--the peanut."
"Is there ever a time when the operator isn't there?"
"At noon. He go out to dinner, and he leave open the door. If eet is
something you want, walk in."
"Thanks." A strange eagerness was in Houston's eyes. "I think I'll be
able to get up to-morrow. Maybe I can walk over there; it's only a
mile or two, isn't it?"
But when to-morrow, came, it found a white, bandaged figure sitting
weakly in front of Ba'tiste's cabin, nothing more. Strength of purpose
and strength of being had proved two different things, and now he was
quite content to rest there in the May sunshine, to watch the
chattering magpies as they went about the work of spring
house-building, to study the colors of the hills, the mergings of the
tintings and deeper hues as the scale ran from brown to green to blue,
and finally to the stark red granite and snow whites of Mount Taluchen.
Ba'tiste and his constant companion, Golemar, were making the round of
the traps and had been gone for hours. Barry was alone--alone with the
beauties of spring in the hills, with the soft call of the meadow lark
in the bit of greenery which fringed the still purling stream in the
little valley, the song of the breeze through the pines, the sunshine,
the warmth--and his problems.
Of these, there were plenty. In the first place, how had Thayer known
that he was on the way from the East? He had spoken to only two
persons,--Jenkins, his bookkeeper, and one other. To these two persons
he merely had given the information that he was going West on a bit of
a vacation. He had deliberately chosen to come in his car, so that
there might be every indication, should there be such a thing as a spy
in his rather diminutive office, that he merely intended a jaunt
through a few States, certainly not a journey half across the country.
But just the same, the news had leaked; Thayer had been informed, and
his arrival had been no surprise.
That there had been need for his coming, Barry felt sure. At the
least, there was mismanagement at the mill; contract after contract
lost just when it should have been gained told him this, if nothing
more. But--and he drew a sheet of yellow paper from his pocket and
stared hard at it--there was something else, something which had
aroused his curiosity to an extent of suspicion, something which might
mean an open book of information to him if only he could reach
Tabernacle at the right moment and gain access to the telegraph files
without the interference of the agent.
Then suddenly he ceased his study of the message and returned it to his
pocket. Two persons were approaching the cabin from the opposite
hill,--a girl whom he was glad to see, and a man who walked, or rather
rolled, in the background: Medaine Robinette and a sort of rear guard
who, twenty or thirty feet behind her, followed her every step, trotted
when she ran down the steep side of an embankment, then slowed as she
came to a walk again. A bow-legged creature he was, with ill-fitting
clothing and a broad "two-gallon" hat which evidently had been
bequeathed to him by some cow-puncher, long hair which straggled over
his shoulders, and a beaded vest which shone out beneath the scraggly
outer coat like a candle on a dark night. Instinctively Barry knew him
to be the grunting individual who had waited outside the door the night
before,--Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a
self-constituted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a
human being. Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication
that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem to care.
Closer she came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of
delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping
stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and
the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile
of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat
before the rise began, leading to where he rested. More like some
graceful, agile boy was she than a girl. Her clothing was of that type
which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin in the West,--a
riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was
drawn tight upon her head and encased in the shielding confines of a
cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting
twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something
pink and soft and pretty. Barry wondered what it could be,--then
brightened with sudden hope.
"Wonder if she's bringing them to me?"
The answer came a moment later as she faced him, panting slightly from
the exertion of the climb, the natural flush of exercise heightened by
her evident embarrassment.
"Oh, you're up!" came in an almost disappointed manner. Then with a
glance toward the great cluster of wild roses in her arms, "I don't
know what to do with these things now."
"Why?" Barry's embarrassment was as great as hers. "If--if it'll do
any good, I'll climb back into bed again."
"No--don't. Only I thought you were really, terribly ill and--"
"I am--I was--I will be. That is--gosh, it's a shame for you to go out
and pick all those and then have me sitting up here as strong as an ox.
I--"
"Oh, don't worry about that." She smiled at him with that sweetness
which only a woman can know when she has the advantage. "I didn't pick
them. Lost Wing"--she pointed to the skulking, outlandishly dressed
Indian in the background--"attended to that. I was going to send them
over by him. But I didn't have anything to do, so I just thought I'd
bring them myself."
"Thanks for that, anyway. Can't I keep them just the same--to put on
the table or something?"
"Oh, if you care to." Barry felt that she was truly disappointed that
he wasn't at the point of death, or at least somewhere near it.
"Where's Ba'tiste."
"Out looking after his traps, picking them up I think, for the summer.
He'll be back soon. Is there--"
"No. I usually come over every day to see him, you know." Then the
blue eyes lost their diffidence to become serious. "Do you remember
yet who you are?"
"Less right at this minute than at any other time!" spoke Barry
truthfully. "I'm out of my head entirely!" He reached for the flowers.
"Please don't joke that way. It's really serious. When I was
across--army nursing--I saw a lot of just such cases as yours. Shell
shock, you know. One has to be awfully careful with it."
"I know. But I'm getting the best of care. I--ouch!" His interest
had exceeded his caution. The unbandaged hand had waved the flowers
for emphasis and absently gripped the stems. The wild roses fluttered
to the ground. "Gosh!" came dolefully, "I'm all full of thorns. Guess
I'll have to pick 'em out with my teeth."
"Oh!" Then she picked up the roses and laid them gingerly aside. "You
can't use your other hand, can you?"
"No. Arm's broken."
"Then--" she looked back toward Lost Wing, hunched on a stump, and
Barry's heart sank. She debated a moment, at last to shake her head.
"No--he'd want to dig them out with a knife. If you don't mind." She
moved toward Houston and Barry thrust forth his hand.
"If you don't mind," he countered and she sat beside him. A moment
later:
"I must look like a fortune teller."
"See anything in my palm besides thorns?"
"Yes. A little dirt. Ba'tiste evidently isn't a very good nurse."
"I did the best I could with one hand. But I was pretty grimy. I--I
didn't know," and Barry grinned cheerfully, "I was going to be this
lucky."
She pretended not to hear the sally. And in some way Barry was glad.
He much rather would have her silent than making some flippant remark,
much rather would he prefer to lean comfortably back on the old bench
and watch the quiet, almost childish determination of her features as
she sought for a grip on the tiny protuberances of the thorns, the soft
brownness of the few strands of hair which strayed from beneath the
boyish cap, the healthy glow of her complexion, the smallness of the
clear-skinned hands, the daintiness of the trim little figure. Much
rather would he be silent with the picture than striving for answers to
questions that in their very naïveness were an accusation. Quite
suddenly Barry felt cheap and mean and dishonest. He felt that he
would like to talk about himself,--about home and his reasons for being
out here; his hopes for the mill which now was a shambling,
unprofitable thing; about the future and--a great many things. It was
with an effort, when she queried him again concerning his memory, that
he still remained Mr. Nobody. Then he shifted the conversation from
himself to her.
"Do you live out here?"
"Yes. Didn't Ba'tiste tell you? My house is just over the hill--you
can just see one edge of the roof through that bent aspen."
Barry stared.
"I'd noticed that. Thought it was a house, but couldn't be sure. I
thought I understood Ba'tiste to say you only came out here in the
summer."
"I did that when I was going to school. Now I stay here all the year
'round."
"Isn't it lonely?"
"Out here? With a hundred kinds of birds to keep things going? With
the trout leaping in the streams in the summer time, and a good gun in
the hollow of your arm in the winter? Besides, there's old Lost Wing
and his squaw, you know. I get a lot of enjoyment out of them when
we're snowed in--in the winter. He's told me fully fifty versions of
how the Battle of Wounded Knee was fought, and as for Custer's last
battle--it's wonderful!"
"He knows all about it?"
"I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin,
looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand
pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could
be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's
an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog
has fleas."
"Then it isn't history?"
"Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of
gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his
squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right
time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old,
both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from
Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good
deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good
deal of land."
"So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests
around here are yours."
"They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm--"
She stopped and laughed.
"Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one."
"He never could keep anything to himself."
"What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself."
"Honestly? You don't look it."
"Don't I? I ought to. I've got a beard and everything. See?" He
pulled his hand away for a moment to rub the two-days' growth on his
face. "I tried to shave this morning. Couldn't make it. Ba'tiste
said he'd play barber for me this afternoon. Next time you come over
I'll be all slicked up."
Again she laughed, and once more pursued the remaining thorns.
"How do you know there'll be a next time?"
"If there isn't, I'll drive nails in myself, so you'll have to pull 'em
out." Then seriously. "You do come over here often, don't you?"
"Of course--" then, the last thorn disposed of, she rose--"to see
Ba'tiste. I look on him as a sort of a guardian. He knew my father.
But let's talk about yourself. You seem remarkably clear in your mind
to be afflicted with amnesia. Are you sure you don't remember
anything--?"
"No--not now. But," and Barry hedged painfully, "I think I will. It
acts to me like a momentary thing. Every once in a while I get a flash
as though it were all coming back; it was just the fall, I'm sure of
that. My head's all right."
"You mean your brain?"
"Yes. I don't act crazy, or anything like that, do I?"
"Well," and she smiled quizzically, "of course, I don't know you, so I
have nothing to go by. But I must admit that you say terribly foolish
things."
Leaving him to think over that, she turned, laughed a good-by, and with
the rolling, bow-legged old Lost Wing in her wake, retraced the path to
the top of the hill, there to hesitate a moment, wave her hand quickly,
and then, as though hurrying away from her action, disappeared. Barry
Houston sat for a long time, visualizing her there on the brow of the
hill, her head with its long-visored cap tilted, her hand upraised, her
trimness and her beauty silhouetted against the opalesque sky,
dreaming,--and with a bit of heartache in it. For this sort of thing
had been his hope in younger, fairer days. This sort of a being had
been his make-believe companion of a Castle in Spain. This sort of a
joking, whimsical girl had been the one who had come to him in the
smoke wreaths and tantalized him and promised him--
But now, his life was gray. His heart was not his own. His life was
at best only a grim, drab thing of ugly memories and angered
determinations. If a home should ever come to him, it must be in
company with some one to whom he owed the gratitude of friendship in
time of need; not love not affection, but the paying of a debt of
deepest honor. Which Barry would do, and faithfully and honestly and
truthfully. As for the other--
He leaned against the bark slabs of the cabin. He closed his eyes. He
grinned cheerily.
"Well," came at last, "there's no harm in thinking about it!"
CHAPTER VI
It was thus that Ba'tiste found him, still dreaming. The big voice of
the Canadian boomed, and he reached forward to nudge Barry on his
injured shoulder.
"And who has been bringing you flowers?" he asked.
"Medaine. That is--Miss Robinette."
"Medaine? Oh, ho! You hear, Golemar?" he turned to the fawning
wolf-dog. "He calls her Medaine! Oh, ho! And he say he will marry,
not for love. Peuff! We shall see, by gar, we shall see! Eh,
Golemar?" Then to Barry, "You have sit out here too long."
"I? Nothing of the kind. Where's the axe? I'll do some fancy
one-handed woodchopping."
And while Ba'tiste watched, grinning, Barry went about his task,
swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work. Nor
did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness. He only knew that he
was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the
cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for
him that he was in a new world to make a new fight and that he was
strangely, inordinately happy Time after time the axe glinted, to
descend upon the chopping block, until at last the pile of stovewood
had reached its proper dimensions, and old Ba'tiste came from the
doorway to carry it in. Then, half an hour later, they sat down to
their meal of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee,--a great, bearded
giant and the younger man whom he, in a moment of impulsiveness, had
all but adopted. Ba'tiste was still joking about the visit of Medaine,
Houston parrying his thrusts. The meal finished, Ba'tiste went forth
once more, to the hunt of a bear trap and its deadfall, dragged away by
a mountain lion during the last snow. Barry sought again the bench
outside the cabin, to sit there waiting and hoping,--in vain. At last
came evening, and he undressed laboriously for a long rest. Something
awaited him in Tabernacle,--either the opening of a book of schemes, or
at least the explanation of a mystery, and that meant a walk of quite
two miles, the exercise of muscles which still ached, the straining of
tendons drawn by injury and pain. But when the time came, he was ready.
"_Bon_--good!" came from Ba'tiste, as they turned into the little
village of Tabernacle the next day, skirted the two clapboarded stores
forming the "main business district," and edged toward the converted
box car that passed as a station. "_Bon_--the agent he is leaving."
Barry looked ahead, to see a man crossing an expanse of flat country
toward what was evidently a boarding house. Ba'tiste nudged him.
"You will walk slowly, as though going into the station to loaf.
Ba'tiste will come behind--and keep watch."
Barry obeyed. A moment more and he was within the converted box car,
to find it deserted and silent, except for the constant clackle of the
telegraph key, rattling off the business of a mountain railroad system,
like some garrulous old woman, to any one who would listen. There was
no private office, only a railing and a counter, which Barry crossed
easily. A slight crunching of gravel sounded without. It was
Ba'tiste, now lounging in the doorway, ready at a moment to give the
alarm. Houston turned hastily toward the file hook and began to turn
the pages of the original copy which hung there.
A moment of searching and he leaned suddenly forward. Messages were
few from Tabernacle; it had been an easy matter for him to come upon
the originals of the telegrams he sought, in spite of the fact that
they had been sent more than two weeks before. Already he was reading
the first of the night letters:
Barry Houston,
Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Co.,
212 Grand Building, Boston, Mass.
Please order six-foot saw as before. Present one broken to-day through
crystallization.
F. B. THAYER.
"That's one of 'em." Houston grunted the words, rather than spoke
them. "That was meant for me all right--humph!"
The second one was before him now, longer and far more interesting to
the man who bent over the telegraph file, while Ba'tiste kept watch at
the door. Hastily he pulled a crumpled message from his pocket and
compared them,--and grunted again.
"The same thing. Identically the same thing, except for the addresses!
Ba'tiste," he called softly, "what kind of an operator is this fellow?"
"No good. A boy. Just out of school. Hasn't been here long."
"That explains it." Houston was talking to himself again. "He got the
two messages and--" Suddenly he bent forward and examined a notation
in a strange hand:
"Missent Houston. Resent Blackburn."
It explained much to Barry Houston, that scribble of four words. It
told him why he had received a telegram which meant nothing to him, yet
caused suspicion enough for a two-thousand-mile trip. It explained
that the operator, in sending two messages, had, through
absent-mindedness, put them both on the wire to the same person, when
they were addressed separately, that he later had seen his mistake and
corrected it. Barry smiled grimly.
"Thanks very much, Operator," he murmured. "It isn't every mistake
that turns out this lucky."
Then slowly, studiously, he compared the messages again, the one he had
received, and the one on the hook which read:
J. C. Blackburn,
Deal Building, Chicago, Ill.
Our friend reports Boston deal put over O. K. Everything safe.
Suggest start preparations for operations in time compete Boston for
the big thing. Have Boston where we want him and will keep him there.
THAYER.
It was the same telegram that Barry Houston had received and puzzled
over in Boston, except for the address. He had been right then; the
message had not been for him; instead it had been intended decidedly
_not_ for him and it meant--what? Hastily Houston crawled over the
railing, and motioning to Ba'tiste, led him away from the station.
Around the corner of the last store he brought forth his telegram and
placed it in the big man's hands.
"That's addressed to me,--but it should have gone to some one else.
Who's J. C. Blackburn of Chicago?"
"Ba'teese don't know. Try fin' out. Why?"
"Have you read that message?"
The giant traced out the words, almost indecipherable in places from
creasing and handling. He looked up sharply.
"Boston? You came from Boston?"
"Yes. That must refer to me. It must mean what I've been suspecting
all along,--that Thayer's been running my mill down, to help along some
competitor. You'll notice that he says he has me where he wants me."
"_Oui_--yes. But has he? What was the deal?"
"I don't know. I haven't been in any deal that I know of, yet he must
refer to me. I haven't any idea what he means by the reference to
starting operations, or that sentence about the 'big thing.' There
isn't another mill around here?"
"None nearer than the Moscript place at Echo Lake."
"Then what can it be?" Suddenly Houston frowned with presentiment.
"Thayer's been going with Medaine a good deal, hasn't he?"
"_Oui_--yes. When Ba'teese can think of no way to keep him from it."
"It couldn't be that he's made some arrangement with her--about her
forest lands?"
"They are not hers yet. She does not come into them until she is
twenty-one."
"But they are available then?"
"_Oui_. And they are as good as yours."
"Practically the same thing, aren't they? How much of the lake does
she own?"
"The east quarter, and the forests that front on eet, and the east bank
of Hawk Creek."
"Then there would be opportunity for everything, for skidways into the
lake, a flume on her side and a mill. That must be--"
"Ba'teese would have hear of eet."
"Surely. But Thayer might have--"
"Ba'teese would have hear of eet," came the repetition. "No, eet is
something else. She would have ask Ba'teese and Ba'teese would have
said, 'No. Take nothing and give nothing. _M'sieu_ Thayer, he is no
good.' So eet is not that. You know the way back? _Bon_--good. Go
to the cabin. Ba'teese will try to learn who eet is, this Blackburn."
They parted, Ba'teese to lounge back into the tiny town, Houston to
take the winding road which led back to the cabin. A pretty road it
was, too, one which trailed along beside the stream, now clear with
that sharp brilliancy which is characteristic of the mountain creek, a
road fringed with whispering aspens, bright green in their new foliage,
with small spruce and pine. Here and there a few flowers showed; by
the side of the road the wild roses peeped up from the denser growths
of foliage, and a vagrant butterfly or so made the round of blossom
after blossom. It was spring-summer down here, sharp contrast indeed
to the winter which lurked above and which would not fade until June
had far progressed. But with it all, its beauty, its serenity, its
peace and soft moistness, Houston noticed it but slightly. His
thoughts were on other things: on Thayer and his duplicity, on the
possibilities of the future, and the methods of combating a business
enemy he felt sure was lurking in the background.
It meant more to Houston than the mere monetary value of a
loss,--should a loss come. Back in the family burying ground in Boston
was a mound that was fresher than others, a mound which shielded the
form of a man who had died in disappointment, leaving behind an edict
which his son had sworn to carry through to its fulfillment. Now there
were obstacles, and ones which were shielded by the darkness of
connivance and scheming. The outlook was not promising. Yet even in
its foreboding, there was consolation.
"I at least know Thayer's a crook. I can fire him and run the mill
myself," Barry was murmuring to himself, as he plodded along. "There
may be others; I can weed them out. At least saws won't be breaking
every two weeks and lumber won't warp for lack of proper handling.
Maybe I can get somebody back East to look after the office there and--"
He ceased his soliloquy as he glanced ahead and noticed the trim figure
of Medaine Robinette swinging along the road, old Lost Wing, as usual,
trailing in her rear, astride a calico pony and leading the saddle
horse which she evidently had become tired of riding. A small switch
was in one hand, and she flipped it at the new leaves of the aspens and
the broad-leafed mullens beside the road. As yet, she had not seen
him, and Barry hurried toward her, jamming his cap into a pocket that
his hand might be free to greet her. He waved airily as they came
closer and called. But if she heard him, she gave no indication.
Instead, she turned--swiftly, Houston thought--and mounted her horse.
A moment later, she trotted past him, and again he greeted her, to be
answered by a nod and a slight movement of the lips. But the eyes had
been averted. Barry could see that the thinnest veneer of politeness
had shielded something else as she spoke to him,--an expression of
distaste, of dislike, almost loathing!
CHAPTER VII
"Why?"
Barry Houston could not answer the self-imposed question. He could
only stand and stare after her and the trotting, rolling Indian, as
they moved down the road and disappeared in the shadow of the aspens at
the next curve. She had seen him; there could be no doubt of that.
She had recognized him; more, Houston felt sure that she had mounted
her horse that she might better be able to pass him and greet him with
a formal nod instead of a more friendly acknowledgment. And this was
the girl who, an afternoon before, had sat beside him on the worn old
bench at the side of Ba'tiste's cabin and picked thorns from the palm
of his hand,--thorns from the stems of wild roses which she had brought
him! The enigma was too great for Houston. He could only gasp with
the suddenness of it and sink back into a dullness of outlook and
viewpoint which he had lost momentarily. It was thus that old friends
had passed him by in Boston; it was thus that men who had been glad to
borrow money from him in other days had looked the other way when the
clouds had come. A strange chill went over him.
"Thayer's told her!"
He spoke the sentence like a man repeating the words of an execution.
His features suddenly had grown haggard. He stumbled slightly as he
made the next rise in the road and went on slowly, silently, toward the
cabin.
There Ba'tiste found him, slumped on the bench, staring out at the
white and rose pinks of Mount Taluchen, yet seeing none of it. The big
man boomed a greeting, and Barry, striving for a smile, answered him.
The Canadian turned to his wolf-dog.
"_Peuff_! Golemar! Loneliness sits badly upon our friend. He is
homesick. Trot over the hill and bring to him the petite Medaine! Ah
_oui_," he laughed in immense enjoyment at his raillery, "bring to him
the petite Medaine to make him laugh and be happy." Then, seeing that
the man was struggling vainly for a semblance of cheeriness, he slid
beside him on the bench and tousled his hair with one big hand. "Nev'
min' old Ba'teese," he said hurriedly; "he joke when eet is no time.
You worry, huh? So, mebbe, Ba'teese help. There are men at the
boarding house."
"The Blackburn crowd?"
"So. Seven carpenters, and others. They work for Blackburn, who is in
Chicago. They are here to build a mill."
"A mill?" Barry looked up now with new interest. "Where?"
"Near the lake. The mill, eet will be sawing in a month. The rest,
the big plant, eet will take time for that."
"On Medaine's land then!" But Ba'tiste shook his head.
"No. Eet is on the five acres own' by Jerry Martin. He has been try'
to sell eet for five year. Eet is no good--rocks and rocks--and rocks.
They build eet there."
"But what can they do on five acres? Where will they get their lumber?"
The trapper shrugged his shoulders.
"Ba'teese on'y know what they tell heem."
"But surely, there must be some mistake about it. You say they are
going to start sawing in a month, and that a bigger plant is going up.
Do you mean a complete outfit,--planers and all that sort of thing?"
"So!"
Houston shook his head.
"For the life of me, I can't see it. In the first place, I have the
only timber around here with the exception of Medaine's land, and you
say that she doesn't come into that until next year. But they're going
to start sawing at this new mill within a month. My timber stretches
back from the lake for eight miles; they either will have to go beyond
that and truck in the logs for that distance, which would be ruinous as
far as profits are concerned, or content themselves with scrub pine and
sapling spruce. I don't see what they can make out of that. Isn't
that right? All I know about it is from what I've heard. I've never
made a cruise of the territory around here. But it's always been my
belief that with the exception of the land on the other quarter of the
lake--"
"That is all."
"Then where--"
But again Ba'tiste shrugged his shoulders. Then he pulled long at his
grizzled beard, regarding the wolf-dog which sat between his legs,
staring up at him.
"Golemar," came at last. "There is something strange. Peuff! We
shall fin' out, you and me and _mon ami_." Suddenly he turned.
"M'sieu Thayer, he gone."
"Gone? You mean he's run away?"
"By gar, no. But he leave hurried. He get a telephone from long
distance. Chicago."
"Then--"
"Ba'teese not know. M'sieu Shuler in the telephone office, he tell me.
Eet is a long call, M'sieu Shuler is curious, and he listen in while
they, what-you-say, chew up the rag. Eet is a woman. She say to meet
her in Denver. This morning M'sieu Thayer take the train.
_Bon_--good!"
"Good? Why?"
"What you know about lumber?"
Houston shook his head.
"A lot less than I should. It wasn't my business, you know. My father
started this mill out here during boom times, when it looked as though
the railroad over Crestline would make the distance between Denver and
Salt Lake so short that the country would build up like wild fire. He
got them to put in a switch from above Tabernacle to the mill and
figured on making a lot of money out of it all. But it didn't pan out,
Ba'tiste. First of all, the railroad didn't go to Salt Lake and in the
second--"
"The new road will," said the French-Canadian. "Peuff! When they
start to build eet, blooey! Eet will be no time."
"The new road? I didn't know there was to be one."
"_Ah, oui, oui, oui_!" Ba'tiste became enthusiastic. "They shall make
eet a road! Eet will not wind over the range like this one. Eet shall
come through the mountains with a six-mile tunnel, at Carrow Peak where
they have work already one, two, t'ree year. Then eet will start out
straight, and peuff! Eet will cut off a hundred mile to Salt Lake.
Then we will see!"
"When is all this going to happen?"
The giant shrugged his shoulders.
"When the railroad, eet is ready, and the tunnel, eet is done. When
that shall be? No one know. But the survey, eet is made. The land,
eet is condem'. So it must be soon. But you say you no know lumber?"
"Not more than any office man could learn in a year and a half. It
wasn't my business, Ba'tiste. Father thought less and less of the mill
every year. Once or twice, he was all but ready to sell it to Thayer,
and would have done it, I guess, if Thayer could have raised the money.
He was sick of the thing and wanted to get rid of it. I had gone into
the real estate business, never dreaming but that some day the mill
would be sold and off our hands. Then--then my trouble came along, and
my father--left this will. Since then, I've been busy trying to stir
up business. Oh, I guess I could tell a weathered scantling from a
green one, and a long time ago, when I was out here, my father taught
me how to scale a log. That's about all."
"Could you tell if a man cut a tree to get the greatest footage? If
you should say to a lumberjack to fell a tree at the spring of the
root, would you know whether he did it or not? Heh? Could you know if
the sawyer robbed you of fifty feet on ever' log? No? Then we shall
learn. To-morrow, we shall go to the mill. M'sieu Thayer shall not be
there. Perhaps Ba'tiste can tell you much. _Bien_! We shall take
Medaine, _oui_? Yes?"
"I--I don't think she'd go."
"Why not?"
"I'd rather--" Houston was thinking of a curt nod and averted eyes.
"Maybe we'd better just go alone, Ba'tiste."
"_Tres bien_. We shall go into the forest. We shall learn much."
And the next morning the old French-Canadian lived true to his promise.
Behind a plodding pair of horses hitched to a jolting wagon, they made
the journey, far out across the hills and plateau flats from
Tabernacle, gradually winding into a shallow cañon which led to places
which Houston remembered from years long gone. Beside the road ran the
rickety track which served as a spur from the main line of the
railroad, five miles from camp,--the ties rotten, the plates loosened
and the rails but faintly free from rust; silent testimony of the fact
that cars traveled but seldom toward the market, that the hopes of
distant years had not been fulfilled. Ahead of them, a white-faced
peak reared itself against the sky, as though a sentinel against
further progress,--Bear Mountain, three miles beyond the farthest
stretch of Empire Lake. Nearer, a slight trail of smoke curled upward,
and Ba'tiste pointed.
"The mill," he said. "Two mile yet."
"Yes, I remember in a hazy sort of way." Then he laughed shortly.
"Things will have to happen and happen fast if I ever live up to my
contract, Ba'tiste."
"So?"
"Yes, I put too much confidence in Thayer. I thought he was honest.
When my father died, he came back to Boston, of course, and we had a
long talk. I agreed that I was not to interfere out here any more than
was necessary, spending my time, instead, in rounding up business. He
had been my father's manager, and I naturally felt that he would give
every bit of his attention to my business. I didn't know that he had
other schemes, and I didn't begin to get on to the fact until I started
losing contracts. That wasn't so long ago. Now I'm out here, and if
necessary, I'll stay here and be everything from manager to lumberjack,
to pull through."
"_Bon_! My Pierre, he would talk like that." Then the old man was
silent for a moment. "Old Ba'tiste, he has notice some things. He
will show you. Golemar! Whee!"
In answer to the whining call of the giant, the wolf-dog, trotting
beside the lazy team, swerved and nipped at the horses' heels. The
pace became a jogging trot. Soon they were in view of the long, smooth
mound of sawdust leading to the squat, rambling saw shed. A moment
more and the bunk house, its unpainted clapboards blackened by the rain
and sun and snows, showed ahead. A half-mile, then Ba'tiste left the
wagon and, Barry following him, walked toward the mill and its whining,
groaning saws.
"Watch close!" he ordered. "See ever'thing they do. Then remember.
Ba'tiste tell you about it when we come out."
Within they went, where hulking, strong-shouldered men were turning the
logs from the piles without, along the skidways and to the carriage of
the mill, their cant hooks working in smooth precision, their muscles
bulging as they rolled the great cylinders of wood into place, steadied
them, then stood aside until the carriages should shunt them toward the
sawyer and the tremendous, revolving wheel which was to convert them
into "board feet" of lumber. Hurrying "off-bearers", or slab-carriers,
white with sawdust, scampered away from the consuming saw, dragging the
bark and slab-sides to a smaller blade, there to be converted into
boiler fuel and to be fed to the crackling fire of the stationary
engine, far at one end of the mill. Leather belts whirred and slapped;
there was noise everywhere, except from the lips of men. For they,
these men of the forest, were silent, almost taciturn.
To Barry, it all seemed a smooth-working, perfectly aligned thing: the
big sixteen-foot logs went forward, rough, uncouth things, to be
dragged into the consuming teeth of the saw; then, through the sheer
force of the blade, pulled on until brownness became whiteness, the
cylindrical shape a lopsided thing with one long, glaring, white mark;
to be shunted back upon the automatic carriage, notched over for a
second incision, and started forward again, while the newly sawn boards
traveled on to the trimmers and edgers, and thence to the drying racks.
Log after log skidded upon the carriage and was brought forward, while
Houston, fascinated, watched the kerf mark of the blade as it tore away
a slab-side. Then a touch on the arm and he followed Ba'tiste without.
The Canadian wandered thoughtfully about a moment, at last to approach
a newly stacked pile of lumber and lean against it. A second more and
he drew something to his side and stared at it.
"Oh, ho!" came at last. "M'sieu Houston, he will, what-you-say, fix
the can on the sawyer."
"Why?"
"First," said Ba'tiste quietly, "he waste a six-inch board on each
slab-side he take off. Un'stand? The first cut--when the bark, eet is
sliced off. He take too much. Eet is so easy. And then--look." He
drew his hand from its place of concealment, displaying a big thumb
measuring upon a small ruler. "See? Eet is an inch and a quarter.
Too thick."
"I know that much at least. Lumber should be cut at the mill an inch
and an eighth thick to allow for shrinkage to an inch--but not an inch
and a quarter."
"Bon!" Ba'tiste grinned. "Eet make a difference on a big log. Eight
cuts of the saw and a good board, eet is gone."
"No wonder I don't make money."
"There is much more. The trimmer and the edger, they take off too
much. They make eight-inch boards where there should be ten, and ten
where there should be twelve. You shall have a new crew."
"And a new manager," Houston said it quietly. The necessity for his
masquerade was fading swiftly now.
"And new men on the kilns. See!"
Far to one side, a great mass of lumber reared itself against the sky,
twisted and warped, the offal of the drying kilns. Ba'tiste shrugged
his shoulders.
"So! When the heat, eet is made too quick, the lumber twist. Eet is
so easy--when one wants some one to be tired and quit!"
To quit! It was all plain to Barry Houston now. Thayer had tried to
buy the mill when the elder Houston was alive. He had failed. Now, he
was striving for something else to make Houston the newcomer, Houston,
who was striving to succeed without the fundamentals of actual logging
experience, disgusted with the business and his contract with the dead.
The first year and a half of the fight had passed,--a losing
proposition; Barry could see why now, in warped lumber and thick-cut
boards, in broken machinery and unfulfilled contracts. Thayer wanted
him to quit; his father's death had tied up the mill proper to such an
extent that it could neither be leased nor sold for a long time. But
the timber could be bought on a stumpage basis, the lake and flume
leased, and with a new mill--
"I understand the whole thing now!" There was excitement in the tone.
"They can't get this mill--on account of the way the will reads. I
can't dispose of it. But they know that with the mill out of the way,
and the whole thing a disappointment, that I should be willing to
contract my timber to them and lease the flume. Then they can go ahead
with their own plans and their own schemes. It's the lake and flume
and timber that counts, anyway; this mill's the cheapest part of it
all."
"Ah, _oui_!" The big man wagged his head in sage approval. "But it
shall not be, eh?"
Houston's lips went into a line,
"Not until the last dog dies!"
CHAPTER VIII
"Ah, _oui_!" Evidently Ba'tiste liked the expression. "Eet shall not
be until--what-you-say--the last dog, eet is dead. Come! We will go
into the forest. Ba'tiste will show you things you should know."
And to the old wagon again they went, to trail their way up the narrow
road along the bubbling, wooden flume which led from the lake, to
swerve off at the dam and turn into the hills again. Below them, the
great expanse of water ruffled and shimmered in the May sun; away off
at the far end, a log slid down a skidway, and with a booming splash
struck the water, to bury itself for a hundred feet, only to rise at
last, and bobbing, go to join others of its kind, drifting toward the
dam with the current of the stream which formed the lake. In the
smoother spaces, trout splashed; the reflections of the hills showed in
the great expanse as the light wind lessened, allowing the surface to
become glass-like, revealing also the twisted roots and dead branches
of trees long inundated in forming the big basin of water.
Evidently only a few men were working in the hills; the descent of the
logs was a thing spaced by many minutes, and the booming of the splash
struck forth into the hills to be echoed and re-echoed. Houston stared
gloomily at the skid, at the lake and the small parcel of logs drifting
there.
"All for nothing," came at last. "It takes about three logs to make
one--the way they're working."
"_Oui_! But M'sieu Houston shall learn."
Barry did not answer. He had learned a great deal already. He knew
enough to realize that his new effort must be a clean sweep,--from the
manager down. Distrust had enveloped him completely; even to the last
lumberjack must the camp be cleaned, and the start made anew with a
crew upon whom he could depend for honesty, at least. How the rest of
the system was to work out, he did not know. How he was to sell the
lumber which he intended milling, how he was to look after both the
manufacturing and the disposing of his product was something beyond
him, just at this moment. But there would be a way; there must be.
Besides, there was Ba'tiste, heavy-shouldered, giant Ba'tiste, leaning
over the side of the wagon, whistling and chiding the faithful old
Golemar, and some way Houston felt that he would be an ally always.
The wagon had turned into the deeper forest now redolent with the heavy
odor of the coniferous woods, and Ba'tiste straightened. Soon he was
talking and pointing,--now to describe the spruce and its short,
stubby, upturned needles; the lodgepole pines with their straighter,
longer leaves and more brownish, scaly bark; the Englemann spruce; the
red fir and limber pine; each had its characteristic, to be pointed out
in the simple words of the big Canadian, and to be catalogued by the
man at his side. A moment before, they had been only pines, only so
many trees. Now each was different, each had its place in the mind of
the man who studied them with a new interest and a new enthusiasm, even
though they might fall, one after another, into the maw of the saw for
the same purpose.
"They are like people, _oui_!" Old Ba'tiste was gesticulating. "They
have their, what-you-say, make-ups. The lodgepole, he is like the man
who runs up and looks on when the crowd, eet gathers about some one who
has been hurt. He waits until there had been a fire, and then he comes
in and grows first, along with the aspens, so he can get all the room
he wants. The spruce, he is like a woman, yes, _oui_. He looks better
than the rest--but he is not. Sometime, he is not so good. Whoa!"
The road had narrowed to a mere trail; Ba'tiste tugged on the reins,
and motioning to Barry, left the wagon, pulling forth an axe and heavy,
cross-cut saw as he did so. A half-hour later, Golemar preceding them,
they were deep in the forest. Ba'tiste stopped and motioned toward a
tall spruce.
"See?" he ordered, as he nicked it with his axe, "you cut heem as far
above the ground as he is thick through. Now, first, the undercut."
"Looks like an overcut to me."
"Oh, ho! Ah, _oui_, so eet is! But eet is called the undercut. Eet
makes the tree fall the way you want heem!"
The axe gleamed in blow after blow. A deep incision appeared in the
trunk of the tree, and at the base of it Ba'tiste started the saw,
Barry working on the other end with his good arm. Ten minutes of work
and they switched to the other side. Here no "undercut" was made; the
saw bit into the bark and deep toward the heart of the tree in a
smooth, sharp line that progressed farther, farther--
"_Look out_!"
A crackling sound had come from above. Ba'tiste abandoned the saw, and
with one great leap caught Houston and pulled him far to one side, as
with a roar, the spruce seemed to veritably disintegrate, its trunk
spreading in great, splintered slabs, and the tree proper crashing to
the ground in the opposite direction to which it should have fallen,
breaking as it came. A moment Ba'tiste stood, with his arm still about
the younger man, waiting for the dead branches, severed from other
trees, to cease falling, and the disturbed needles and dust of the
forest to settle. Then, pulling his funny little knit cap far down
over his straggly hair, he came forth, to stand in meditation upon the
largest portion of the shattered tree.
"Eet break up like an ice jam!" came at last. "That tree, he is not
made of wood. Peuff! He is of glass!"
Barry joined him, studying the splintered fragments of the spruce,
suddenly to bend forward in wonderment.
"That's queer. Here's a railroad spike driven clear into the heart."
"Huh? What's that?" Ba'tiste bent beside him to examine the rusty
spike, then hurried to a minute examination of the rest of the tree.
"And another," came at last. "And more!"
Four heavy spikes had revealed themselves now, each jutting forth at a
place where the tree had split. Ba'tiste straightened.
"Ah, _oui_! Eet is no wonder! See? The spike, they have been in the
tree for mebbe one, two, t'ree year. And the tree, he is not strong.
When the winter come, last year, he split inside, from the frost, where
the spike, he spread the grain. But the split, he does not show. When
we try to cut heem down and the strain come, blooey, he, what-you-say,
bust!"
"But why the spikes?"
"Wait!" Ba'tiste, suddenly serious, turned away into the woods, to go
slowly from tree to tree, to dig at them with his knife, to squint and
stare, to shin a few feet up a trunk now and then, examining every
protuberance, every round, bulbous scar. At last he shouted, and
Houston hurried to him, to find the giant digging excitedly at a
lodgepole. "I have foun' another!"
The knife, deep in the tree, had scratched on metal. Five minutes more
and they had discovered a third one, farther away. Then a fourth, a
fifth; soon the number had run to a score, all within a small radius.
Ba'tiste, more excited than ever, ranged off into the woods, leaving
Barry to dig at the trees about him and to discover even more metal
buried in the hearts of the standing lumber. For an hour he was gone,
to return at last and stand staring about him.
"The spike, they are all in this little section," he said finally. "I
have cruise' all about here--there are no more."
"But why should trees grow spikes?"
"Ah, why? So that saws will break at the right time! Eet is easy for
the iron hunter at the mill to look the other way--eef he knows what
the boss want. Eet is easy for the sawyer to step out of the way while
the blade, he hit a spike!"
A long whistle traveled over Houston's lips. This was the explanation
of broken saws, just at the crucial moment!
"Simple, isn't it?" he asked caustically. "Whenever it's necessary for
an 'accident' to happen, merely send out into the woods for a load of
timber from a certain place."
"Then the iron hunter--the man who look for metal in the wood--he look
some other place. Beside," and Ba'tiste looked almost admiringly at a
spike-filled tree. "Eet is a good job. The spike, they are driven
deep in the wood, they are punched away in, so the bark, eet will close
over them. If the iron hunter is not, what-you-say, full of pepper,
and if he is lazy, then he not find heem, whether he want to or not.
M'sieu Thayer, he have a head on him."
"Then Thayer--"
"Why not?"
"But why? He was the only man on the job out here. He didn't have to
fill a whole section of a forest full of spikes when he wanted to break
a saw or cause me trouble."
"Ah, no. But M'sieu--that is, whoever did eet--maybe he figure on the
time when you yourself try to run the mill. Eh?"
"Well, if he did," came sharply, "he's figured on this exact moment.
I've seen enough, Ba'tiste. I'm going to Denver and contract myself an
entirely new crew. Then I'm coming back to drop this masquerade I've
been carrying on--and if you'll help me--run this place myself.
Thayer's out--from the minute I can get a new outfit. I'm not going to
take any chances. When he goes, the whole bunch here goes with him!"
"Ah, _oui_!" Ba'tiste grinned with enthusiasm. "You said a
what-you-say--large bite! Now," he walked toward the saw, "we shall
fell a tree that shall not split."
"If you don't mind, I'd rather go back and look around the place. I
want to get lined up on everything before I start to Denver."
"Ah, _oui_." Together, led by the wolf-dog, they made their way to the
wagon again, once more to skirt the lake and to start down the narrow
roadway leading beside the flume. A half-hour more and there came the
sound of hammers and of saws. They stopped, and staring through the
scraggly trees, made out the figures of half a dozen men busily at work
upon the erection of a low, rambling building. All about them were
vast piles of lumber, two-by-fours, scantlings, boardings,
shingles,--everything that possibly could be needed in the building of
not one, but many structures. Ba'tiste nodded.
"The new mill."
"Yes. Probably being built out of my lumber. It's a cinch they didn't
transport it all the way from Tabernacle."
"Nor pay M'sieu Houston. Many things can happen when one is the
manager."
Barry made no answer. For another mile they drove in silence, at last
to come into the clearing of Barry's mill, with its bunk house, its
cook house, its diminutive commissary, its mill and kilns and sheds.
Houston leaped from the wagon to start a census and to begin his
preparations for a cleaning-out of the whole establishment. But at the
door of the commissary he whirled, staring. A buggy was just coming
over the brow of the little hill which led to the mill property. Some
one had called to him,---a woman whose voice had caused him to start,
then, a second later, to go running forward.
She was beside Thayer in the buggy, leaning forth, one hand extended as
Barry hurried toward her, her black eyes flashing eagerness, her full,
yet cold lips parted, her olive-skinned cheeks enlivened by a flush of
excitement as Houston came to her, forgetful of the sneer of the man at
her side, forgetful of the staring Ba'tiste in the background,
forgetful of his masquerade, of everything.
"Agnes!" he gasped. "Why did you--"
"I thought--" and the drawling voice of Fred Thayer had a suddenly
sobering effect on Houston, "that you weren't hurt very bad. Your
memory came back awful quick, didn't it? I thought she'd bring you to
your senses!"
CHAPTER IX
Houston pretended not to hear the remark. The woman in the buggy was
holding forth her hands to him and he assisted her to the ground.
"Well," she asked, in a sudden fawning manner, "aren't you glad to see
me, Barry? Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"Of course." He took her in his arms. "I--I was so surprised, Agnes.
I never thought of you--"
"Naturally you didn't." It was Thayer again. "That's why I sent for
her. Thought you'd get your memory back when--"
"I've had my memory for long enough--" Houston had turned upon him
coldly--"to know that from now on I'll run this place. You're through!"
"Barry!" The woman had grasped his arm. "Don't talk like that. You
don't know what you're saying!"
"Please, Agnes--"
"Let him rave, if that's the way he wants to repay faithfulness."
"Wait until I've talked to you, Barry. You haven't had time to think.
You've jumped at conclusions. Fred just thought that I could--"
"This hasn't anything to do with you, Agnes. There hasn't been
anything wrong with me. My brain's been all right; I've known every
minute what I've been doing. This man's crooked, and I know he's
crooked. I needed time, and I shammed forgetfulness. I've gotten the
information I need now--and I'm repeating that he's through! And every
one else in this camp goes with him!"
"I'm not in the habit of taking insults! I--"
Thayer moved forward belligerently, one hand reaching toward a cant
hook near by. But suddenly he ceased. Ba'tiste, quite naturally, had
strolled between them.
"M'sieu Houston have a broke' arm," had come very quietly. Thayer
grunted.
"Maybe that's the reason he thinks he can insult every one around here."
Ba'tiste looked down upon him, as a Newfoundland would look upon a
snapping terrier.
"M'sieu Houston insult nobody."
"But--"
The voice of the big man rose to a roar.
"Ba'teese say, M'sieu Houston insult nobody. Un'stan'? Ba'teese say
that! Ba'teese got no broke' arm!"
"Who is this man?" The woman had turned angrily toward Barry; "What
right has he to talk this way? The whole thing's silly, as far as I
can see, Barry. This man, whoever he is, has been stuffing you full of
stories. There--"
"This man, Agnes," and Barry Houston's voice carried a quality he never
before had used with Agnes Jierdon, "is the best friend I ever had.
You'll realize it before long. He not only has saved my life, but he's
going to help me save my business. I want you to know him and to like
him."
A quick smile flashed over the full lips.
"I didn't know, Barry. Pardon me."
Houston turned to the introduction, while Agnes Jierdon held forth a
rather limp hand and while Ba'tiste, knit cap suddenly pulled from
straggly gray hair, bent low in acknowledgment. Thayer, grumbling
under his breath, started away. Houston went quickly toward him.
"You understood me?"
"Perfectly. I'm fired. I was good enough for your father, but you
know more than he did. I was--"
"We won't go into that."
"There's nothing about it that I'm ashamed of."
Still the sneer was there, causing Barry's bandaged arm to ache for
freedom and strength. "I don't have to go around hiding my past."
Houston bit down a retort and forced himself to the question:
"How long will it take you to get out of here?"
"I'll be out to-night. I don't stay where I'm not wanted. Needn't
think I'll hang around begging you for a job. There are plenty of 'em,
for men like me."
"One that I know of, in particular. I asked you when you could get
out."
"An hour, if you're so impatient about it. But I want my check first."
"You'll get it, and everybody else connected with you. So you might as
well give the word."
For a moment, Thayer stared at him in malignant hate, his gnarled hands
twisting and knotting. Then, with a sudden impulse, he turned away
toward the mill. A moment later the whistle blew and the saws ceased
to snarl. Barry turned back to Agnes and Ba'tiste. The woman caught
impulsively at his arm.
"Where on earth am I going to live, Barry?" she questioned. "I don't
want to go back to town. And I can't stay in this deserted place, if
every one is leaving it."
"I'll keep the cook. She can fix you a room in one of the cottages and
stay there with you. However, it would be best to go back."
"But I won't." She shook her head with an attempt at levity. "I've
come all this distance, worried to death every moment over you, and now
I'm going to stay until I'm sure that everything's all right. Besides,
Barry," she moved close to him, "you'll need me. Won't you? Haven't I
always been near you when you've needed me? And aren't you taking on
the biggest sort of job now?"
Houston smiled at her. True, she had always been near in time of
trouble and it was only natural that now--
"Of course," came his answer. "Come, I'll have you made comfortable in
the cottage." Then, as he started away, "May I see you, Ba'tiste,
sometime to-night?"
"Ah, _oui_." The Canadian was moving toward his wagon and the waiting
dog. "In the cabin."
Three hours later, the last of the men paid off, Agnes installed in the
best of three little cottages in care of the motherly old cook, Barry
Houston approached the door of Ba'tiste's cabin, the wolf-dog, who had
picked him up a hundred yards away, trotting beside him. There was a
light within; in the shadows by the grave, a form moved,--old Lost
Wing. Medaine was there, then. Barry raised his hand to knock,--and
halted. His name had been mentioned angrily; then again,--followed by
the voice of the girl:
"I don't know what it is, Ba'tiste. Fred wouldn't tell me, except that
it was something too horrible for me to know. And I simply can't do
what you say. I can't be pleasant to him when I feel this way."
"But--"
"Oh, I know. I want to be fair, and I try to be. I speak to him when
I meet him; isn't that enough? We're not old friends; we're hardly
even acquaintances. And if there is something in his past to be
ashamed of, isn't it best that we simply remain that way? I--"
Then she ceased. Houston had knocked on the door. A second later, he
entered the cabin, to return Medaine Robinette's cool but polite
greeting in kind, and to look apprehensively toward Ba'tiste Renaud.
But the old man's smile was genuine.
"We have been talk' about you, _oui_, yes!" he said. "Eh, Medaine?"
It was one of his thrusts. The girl colored, then turned toward the
door.
"I'm afraid I've stayed longer than I intended," she apologized. "It's
late. Good night."
Then she was gone. Houston looked at Ba'tiste, but the old
French-Canadian merely waved a big hand.
"Woman," he said airily, "peuff! She is strange. Eet is nothing. Eet
will pass. Now," as though the subject had been dismissed, "what mus'
Ba'teese do?"
"At the mill? I wish, if you don't mind, that you'd guard it for me.
I'm going to Denver on the morning train to hire a new crew. I don't
want Thayer to do anything to the mill in my absence."
"Ah, _oui_. It shall be. You will sleep here?"
"If you don't mind? It's nearer Tabernacle."
"Bon--good! Golemar!" And the dog scratched at the door. "Come, we
shall go to the mill. We are the watchmen, yes?"
"But I didn't mean for you to start to-night. I just thought--"
"There is no time like the minute," answered the Canadian quietly.
"To-night, you shall be Ba'teese, _oui_, yes. Ba'teese shall be you."
Pulling his knit cap on his head, he went out into the darkness and to
the guardianship of the mill that belonged--to a man who looked like
his Pierre. As for Houston, the next morning found him on the
uncomfortable red cushions of the smoking car as the puffing train
pulled its weary, way through the snowsheds of Crestline Mountain, on
the way over the range. Evening brought him to Denver, and the three
days which followed carried with them the sweaty smell of the
employment offices and the gathering of a new crew. Then, tired,
anxious with an eagerness that he never before had known, he turned
back to the hills.
Before, in the days agone, they had been only mountains, reminders of
an eruptive time in the cooling of the earth,--so many bumpy places
upon a topographical railroad map. But now,--now they were different.
They seemed like home. They were the future. They were the housing
place of the wide spaces where the streams ran through green valleys,
where the sagebrush dotted the plateau plains, and where the world was
a thing with a rim about it; hills soft blue and brown and gray and
burning red in the sunlight, black, crumpled velvet beneath the moon
and stars; hills where the pines grew, where his life awaited him, a
new thing to be remolded nearer to his own desires, and where lived
Ba'tiste, Agnes--and Medaine.
Houston thought of her with a sudden cringing.
In that moment as he stood outside the door of Ba'tiste's cabin, he had
heard himself sealed and delivered to oblivion as far as she was
concerned. He was only an acquaintance--one with a grisly shadow in
his past--and it was best that he remain such. Grudgingly, Barry
admitted the fact to himself, as he sat once more in the red-plush
smoking car, surrounded by heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced men, his new
crew, en route to Empire Lake. It was best. There was Agnes, with her
debt of gratitude to be paid and with her affection for him, which in
its blindness could not discern the fact that it was repaid only as a
sense of duty. There was the fight to be made,--and the past. Houston
shuddered with the thought of it. Things were only as they should be;
grimly he told himself that he had erred in even thinking of happiness
such as comes to other men. His life had been drab and gray; it must
remain so.
Past the gleaming lakes and eternal banks of snow the train crawled to
the top of the world at Crestline, puffed and clattered through the
snowsheds, then clambered down the mountain side to Tabernacle. With
his dough-faced men about him, Houston sought transportation, at last
to obtain it, then started the journey to the mill.
Into the cañon and to the last rise. Then a figure showed before him,
a gigantic form, running and tumbling through the underbrush at one
side of the road, a dog bounding beside him. It was Ba'tiste, excited,
red-faced, his arms waving like windmills, his voice booming even from
a distance:
"M'sieu Houston! M'sieu Houston! Ba'teese have fail! Ba'teese no
good! He watch for you--he is glad you come! Ba'teese ashame'!
Ashame'!"
He had reached the wagon now, panting, still striving to talk and
failing for lack of breath, his big hands seeking to fill in the spaces
where words had departed. Houston leaned toward him, gripping him by a
massive shoulder.
"What's happened? What's--"
"Ba'teese ashame'!" came again between puffs of the big lungs.
"Ba'teese watch one, two, t'ree night. Nothin' happen. Ba'teese think
about his lost trap. He think mebbe there is one place where he have
not look'. He say to Golemar he will go for jus' one, two hour.
Nobody see, he think. So he go. And he come back. Blooey! Eet is
done! Ba'teese have fail!"
"But what, Ba'tiste? It wasn't your fault. Don't feel that way about
it? Has anything happened to Agnes?"
"No. The mill."
"They've--?"
"Look!"
They had reached the top of the rise. Below them lay something which
caused Barry Houston to leap to his feet unmindful of the jolting
wagon, to stand weaving with white-gripped hands, to stare with
suddenly deadened eyes--
Upon a blackened, smoldering mass of charred timbers and twisted
machinery. The remainder of all that once had been his mill!
CHAPTER X
Words would not come for a moment. Houston could only stare and
realize that his burden had become greater than ever. In the wagons
behind him were twenty men, guaranteed at least a month of labor, and
now there was nothing to provide it. The mill was gone; the blade was
still hanging in its sockets, a useless, distempered thing; the boiler
was bent and blackened, the belting burned; the carriages and muley
saws and edgers and trimmers were only so much junk. He turned at last
to Ba'tiste, to ask tritely what he knew could not be answered:
"But how did it happen, Ba'tiste? Didn't any one see?"
The Canadian shrugged his shoulders.
"Ba'teese come back. Eet is done."
"Let's see Agnes. Maybe she can tell us something."
But the woman, her arms about Houston's neck, could only announce
hysterically that she had seen the mill burning, that she had sought
help and had failed to find it.
"Then you noticed no one around the place?"
"Only Ba'tiste."
"But that was an hour or so before."
The big French-Canadian had moved away, to stand in doleful
contemplation of the charred mass. The voice of Agnes Jierdon sank low:
"I don't know, Barry. I don't want to accuse--"
"You don't mean--"
"All I know is that I saw him leave the place and go over the hill.
Fifteen minutes later, I saw the mill burning and ran down there. All
about the place rags were burning and I could smell kerosene. That's
all I saw. But in the absence of any one else, what should a person
think?"
Houston's lips pressed tight. He turned angrily, the old grip of
suspicion upon him,--suspicion that would point in time of stress to
every one about him, suspicion engendered by black days of
hopelessness, of despair. But in an instant, it all was gone; the
picture of Ba'tiste Renaud, standing there by the embers, the honesty
of his expression of sorrow, the slump of his shoulders, while the dog,
unnoticed, nuzzled its cold nose in a limp hand, was enough to wipe it
all out forever. Houston's eyes went straight to those of Agnes
Jierdon and centered there.
"Agnes," came slowly, "I want to ask a favor. No matter what may
happen, no matter what you may think personally, there is one man who
trusts me as much as you have trusted me, and whom I shall trust in
return. That man is Ba'tiste Renaud, my friend. I hope you can find a
friend in him too; but if you can't, please, for me, never mention it."
"Why, of course not, Barry." She laughed in an embarrassed manner and
drew away from him. "I just thought I'd tell you what I knew. I
didn't have any idea you were such warm comrades. We'll forget the
whole incident."
"Thank you." Then to Ba'tiste he went, to bang him on the shoulder,
and with an effort to whirl him about. "Well!" he demanded, in an echo
of Ba'tiste's own thundering manner, "shall we stand here and weep?
Or--"
"Eet was my fault!" The French-Canadian still stared at the ruins.
"Eet is all Ba'teese' fault--"
"I thought you were my friend, Ba'tiste."
"_Sacre_! I am."
"Then show it! We'll not be able to make a case against the
firebugs--even though you and I may be fairly sure who did it. Anyway,
it isn't going to break us. I've got about fifteen thousand in the
bank. There's enough lumber around here to build a new saw-shed of a
sort, and money to buy a few saws, even if we can't have as good a
place as we had before. We can manage. And I need help--I won't be
able to move without you. But--"
"_Oui_?"
"But," and Barry smiled at him, "if you ever mention any responsibility
for this thing again--you're fired. Do we understand each other?"
Very slowly the big trapper turned and looked down into the frank,
friendly eyes of the younger man. He blinked slightly, and then one
tremendous arm encircled Houston's shoulder for just a moment. At last
a smile came, to grow stronger. The grip about the shoulders
tightened, suddenly to give way to a whanging blow, as Batiste, jovial
now, drew away, pulled back his shoulders and squared himself as though
for some physical encounter.
"Ah, _oui_!" He bellowed. "_Oui, oui, oui_! _Bon_--good! Ba'teese,
he un'stan'. Now what you want me to do?"
"Take this bunch of men and turn to at clearing away this wreckage.
Then," and he smiled his confidence at Renaud, "make your plans for the
building of a saw-shed. That is--if you really want to go through with
it?"
"Ah, _oui--oui_!" The Canadian waved his arms excitedly and summoned
his men. For a moment, Barry stood watching, then returning to Agnes,
escorted her toward her cottage.
"Don't you think," he asked, as they walked along, "that you'd better
be going back? This isn't just the place for a woman, Agnes."
"Why not?"
"Because--well for one thing, this is a man's life out here, not a
woman's. There's no place for you--nothing to interest you or hold
you. I can't guarantee you any company except that of a cook--or some
one like that."
"But Mr. Thayer--" and Houston detected a strange tone in the
voice--"spoke of a very dear friend of yours, in whom I might be
greatly interested."
"A friend of mine?"
"Yes--a Miss Robinette. Fred said that she was quite interested in
you."
Houston laughed.
"She is--by the inverse ratio. So much, in fact, that she doesn't care
to be anywhere near me. She knows--" and he sobered, "that there's
something--back there."
"Indeed?" They had reached the cottage and the subject was
discontinued. Agnes lingered a moment on the veranda. "I suppose I'm
never to see anything of you?"
"That's just it, Agnes. It makes me feel like a cad to have you out
here--and then not to be able to provide any entertainment for you.
And, really, there's no need to worry about me. I'm all right--with
the exception of this broken arm. And it'll be all right in a couple
of weeks. Besides, there's no telling what may happen. You can see
from the burning of this mill that there isn't any love lost between
Thayer and myself."
"Why, Barry! You don't think he had anything to do with it?"
"I know he did. Directly or indirectly, he was back of it. I haven't
had much of a chance to talk to you, Agnes, but this much is a
certainty: Thayer is my enemy, for business reasons. I know of no
other. He believes that if he can make the going rough enough for me
that I'll quit, lease him my stumpage, and let him go into business for
himself. So far, he hasn't had much luck--except to tie me up. He may
beat me; I don't know. Then again, he may not. But in the meanwhile,
you can see, Agnes, that the battlefield is going to be no place for a
woman."
"But, Barry, you're wrong. I think you've done an injustice to--"
"Please don't tell me that, Agnes. I put so much faith in your
beliefs. But in this case, I've heard it from his own lips--I've seen
his telegrams. I know!"
The woman turned quickly. For a moment she examined, in an absent sort
of way, the blossoms of a climbing rose, growing, quite uninvited, up
the porch pillar of the cottage. Then:
"Maybe you're right, Barry. Probably I will go away. But I want to be
sure that you're all right first."
"Would you care to go to the village to-night? There's a picture show
there--and we could at least get a dish of ice cream and some candy."
"I think not," came the answer in a tired voice. "It's so far;
besides, all this excitement has given me a headache. Go back to your
work and forget about me. I think that I'll go to bed immediately I've
had something to eat."
"You're not ill?"
"Only a headache--and with me, bed is always the best place for that.
I suppose you'll go to Denver in the morning for new saws?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll wait until you return before I make up my mind. Good-by."
She bent forward to be kissed, and Barry obeyed the command of her lips
with less of alacrity than ever before. Nor could he tell the reason.
Five minutes more and he was back at the mill, giving what aid he could
with his uninjured arm.
Night, and he traveled with Ba'tiste to his cabin, only to fret
nervously about the place and at last to strike out once more, on foot,
for the lumber camp. He was worried, nervous; in a vague way he
realized that he had been curt, almost brusque, with a woman for whom
he felt every possible gratitude and consideration. Nor had he
inquired about her when work had ended for the day. Had the excuse of
a headache been made only to cover feelings that had been deeply
injured? Or had it meant a blind to veil real, serious illness? For
three years, Barry Houston had known Agnes Jierdon in day-to-day
association. But never had he remembered her in exactly the light that
he had seen her to-day. There had been a strangeness about her, a
sharpness that he could not understand.
He stopped just at the entrance to the mill clearing and looked toward
the cottage. It was darkened. Barry felt that without at least the
beckoning of a light to denote the wakefulness of the cook, he could
not in propriety go there, even for an inquiry regarding the condition
of the woman whom he felt that some day he would marry. Aimlessly he
wandered about, staring in the moonlight at the piled-up remains of his
mill, then at last he seated himself on a stack of lumber, to rest a
moment before the return journey to Ba'tiste's cabin. But suddenly he
tensed. A low whistle had come from the edge of the woods, a hundred
yards away, and Barry listened attentively for its repetition, but it
did not come. Fifteen minutes he waited, then rose, the better to
watch two figures that had appeared for just a moment silhouetted in
the moonlight at the bald top of a small hill. A man and a woman were
walking close together,--the woman, it seemed, with her head against
the man's shoulder; the man evidently with his arm about her.
There was no time for identities. A second more and they had faded
into the shadows. Barry rose and started toward the darkened cottage,
only to turn again into the road.
"Foolishness!" he chided himself as he plodded along. "She doesn't
know any one but Thayer--and what if she does? It's none of my
business. She's the one who has the claim on me; I have none on her!"
And with this decision he walked on. A mile--two. Then a figure came
out of the woods just ahead of him, cut across the road and detoured
into the scraggly hills on the other side, without noticing the
approaching Houston in the shadows. But Barry had been more fortunate.
The moonlight had shown full on the man's lean face and gangling form;
it was undoubtedly Fred Thayer. He was still in the neighborhood, then.
Had he been the man in the woods,--the one who had stood silhouetted on
the hill top? Barry could only guess. Again he chided himself for his
inquisitiveness and walked on. Almost to Ba'tiste's cabin he went; at
last to turn from the road at the sound of hoofbeats, then to stare as
Medaine Robinette, on horseback, passed him at a trot, headed toward
her home, the shadowy Lost Wing, on his calico pony, straggling along
in the rear. The next morning he went to Denver, still wondering, as
he sought to make himself comfortable on the old red plush seats,
wondering whether the girl he had seen in the forest with the man he
now felt sure was Fred Thayer had been Agnes Jierdon or Medaine
Robinette, whom, in spite of her coldness to him, in spite of her
evident distaste and revulsion that was so apparent in their meetings,
had awakened within him a thing he had believed, in the drabness of his
gray, harassed life, could never exist,--the thrill and the yearnings
of love.
It was a question which haunted him during the days in which he cut
into his bank account with the purchase of the bare necessities of a
sawmill. It was a question which followed him back to Tabernacle,
thence across country to camp. But it was one that was not to be
answered. Things had happened again.
Ba'tiste was not at the mill, where new foundations had appeared in
Houston's absence. A workman pointed vaguely upward, and Barry hurried
on toward the lake, clambering up the hill nearest the clearing, that
he might take the higher and shorter road.
He found no Ba'tiste but there was something else which held Houston's
interest for a moment and which stopped him, staring wonderingly into
the distance. A new skidway had made its appearance on the side of the
jutting mountain nearest the dam. Logs were tumbling downward in slow,
but steady succession, to disappear, then to show themselves, bobbing
jerkily outward toward the center of the lake. That skidway had not
been there before. Certainly, work at the mill had not progressed to
such an extent that Ba'tiste could afford to start cutting timber
already. Houston turned back toward the lower camp road, wondering
vaguely what it all could mean, striving to figure why Ba'tiste should
have turned to logging operations instead of continuing to stress every
workman's ability on the rebuilding of the burned structure. A mile he
went--two--then halted.
A thunderous voice was booming belligerently from the distance:
"You lie--un'stan'? Ba'teese say you lie--if you no like eet,
jus'--what-you-say--climb up me! Un'stan'? Climb up me!"
Houston broke into a run, racing along the flume with constantly
increasing speed as he heard outburst after outburst from the giant
trapper, interjected by the lesser sounds of argumentative voices in
reply. Faintly he heard a woman's voice, then Ba'tiste's in sudden
command:
"Go on--you no belong here. Ba'tiste, he handle this. Go 'long!"
Faster than ever went Barry Houston, at last to make the turn of the
road as it followed the flume, and to stop, breathless, just in time to
escape colliding with the broad back of the gigantic Canadian, squared
as he was, half across the road. Facing him were five men with shovels
and hammers, workmen of the Blackburn camp, interrupted evidently in
the building of some sort of contraption which led away into the woods.
Houston looked more closely, then gasped. It was another flume; they
were making a connection with his own; already water had been diverted
from the main flume and was flowing down the newly boarded conduit
which led to the Blackburn mill. A lunge and he had taken his place
beside Renaud.
"What's this mean?" he demanded angrily, to hear his words echoed by
the booming voice of his big companion:
"Ah, _oui_! Yes--what this mean? Huh?"
The foreman looked up caustically.
"I've told you about ten times," he answered, addressing himself to
Ba'tiste. "We're building a connection on our flume."
"Our flume?" Houston gasped the words. "Where do you get that 'our'
idea? I own this flume and this lake and this flume site--"
"If your name's Houston, I guess you do," came the answer. "But if you
can read and write, you ought to know that while you may own it, you
don't use it. That's our privilege from now on, in cold black and
white. As far as the law is concerned, this is our flume, and our
water, and our lake, and our woods back there. And we're going to use
all of 'em, as much as we please--and it's your business to stay out of
our way!"
CHAPTER XI
The statement took Houston off his feet for a moment; but recovery came
just as quickly, a recoil with the red splotches of anger blazing
before his eyes, the surge of hot blood sweeping through his veins, the
heat of conflict in his brain. His good hand clenched. A leap and he
had struck the foreman on the point of the chin, sending him reeling
backward, while the other men rushed to his assistance.
"That's my answer to you!" shouted Houston. "This is my flume and--"
"Run tell Thayer!" shouted the foreman, and then with recovering
strength, he turned for a cant hook. But Ba'tiste seized it first, and
with a great wrench, threw it far out of the way. Then, like some
great, human trip hammer, he swung into action, spinning Houston out of
the way as he went forward, his big fists churning, his voice bellowing
his call of battle:
"Climb up me! Climb up me!"
The foreman stooped for a club,--and rose just in time to be lifted
even higher, at the point of Ba'tiste's right fist then to drop in a
lump. Then they were all about him, seeking for an opening, fists
pounding, heavy shoes kicking at shins, while in the rear, Houston,
scrambling around with his one arm, almost happy with the enthusiasm of
battle, swung hard and often at every opportunity, then swerved and
covered until he could bring his fist into action again.
The fight grew more intense with a last spurt, then died out, as
Ba'tiste, seizing the smallest of the men, lifted him bodily and
swinging him much after the fashion of a sack of meal, literally used
him as a battering ram against the rest of the attacking forces. For a
last time, Houston hit a skirmisher and was hit in return. Then
Ba'tiste threw his human weapon from him, straight into the mass of men
whom he had driven back for a second, tumbling them all in a
scrambling, writhing heap at the edge of the flume.
"Climb up me!" he bellowed, as they struggled to their feet. "Ah,
_oui_?" And the big arms moved threateningly. "Climb up me!"
But the invitation was not accepted. Bloody, eyes discolored, mouth
and nose steadily swelling, the foreman moved away with his battered
crew, finally to disappear in the forest. Ba'tiste reached for the
cant hook, and balancing it lightly in one hand, sought a resting place
on the edge of the flume. Houston sat beside him.
"What on earth can it all mean?" he asked, after a moment of thought.
"They go back--get more men. Mebbe they think they whip us, _oui_?
Yes? Ba'teese use this, nex' time." He balanced the cant hook,
examining it carefully as though for flaws which might cause it to
break in contact with a human target. Barry went on:
"I was talking about the flume. You heard what that fellow said--that
they had the woods, the lake and the flume to use as they pleased?
How--"
"Mebbe they think they jus' take it."
"Which they can't. I'm going back to the camp and get more men."
"No." Ba'tiste grinned. "We got enough--you an' Ba'teese. I catch
'em with this. You take that club. If they get 'round me, you,
what-you-say, pickle 'em off."
But the expected attack did not come. An hour they waited, and a hour
after that. Still no crowd of burly men came surging toward them from
the Blackburn camp, still no attempt was made to wrest from their
possession the waterway which they had taken over as their rightful
property.
Houston studied the flume.
"We'll have to get some men up here and rip out this connection," came
at last. "They've broken off our end entirely."
"Ah, _oui_! But we will stay here. By'm'by, Medaine come. We will
send her for men."
"Medaine? That was she I heard talking?"
"_Oui_. She had come to ask me if she should bring me food. She was
riding. Ba'teese sen' her away. But she say she come back to see if
Ba'teese is all right."
Houston shook his head.
"That's good. But I'm afraid that you won't find her doing anything to
help me out."
"She will help Ba'teese," came simply from the big man, as the
iron-bound cant hook was examined for the fiftieth time. "Why they no
come, huh?"
"Search me. Do you suppose they've given it up? It's a bluff on their
part, you know, Ba'tiste. They haven't any legal right to this land or
flume or anything else; they just figured that my mill was burned and
that I wouldn't be in a position to fight them. So they decided to
take over the flume and try to force us into letting them have it."
"Here comes somebody!" Ba'tiste's grip tightened about the cant hook
and he rose, squaring himself. Houston seized the club and stood
waiting a few feet in the rear, in readiness for any one who might
evade the bulwark of blows which Ba'tiste evidently intended to set up.
Far in the woods showed the shadowy forms of three men, approaching
steadily and apparently without any desire for battle. Ba'tiste turned
sharply. "Your eye, keep heem open. Eet may be a blind."
But Houston searched the woods in vain. There were no supporters
following the three men, no deploying groups seeking to flank them. A
moment more, and Ba'tiste, with a sudden exclamation, allowed his cant
hook to drop to the ground.
"Wade!"
"Who?" Houston came closer.
"Eet is Thayer and Wade, the sheriff from Montview, and his deputy.
Peuff! Have he fool heem too?"
Closer they came, and the sheriff waved a hand in friendly greeting.
Ba'tiste returned the gesture. Thayer, scowling, black-faced, dropped
slightly to the rear, allowing the two officials to take the lead--and
evidently do the talking. The sheriff grinned as he noticed the cant
hook on the ground. Then he looked up at Ba'tiste Renaud.
"What's been going on here?"
"This man," Ba'tiste nodded grudgingly toward the angular form of Fred
Thayer, "heem a what-you-say a big bomb. This my frien', M'sieu
Houston. He own this flume. This Thayer's men, they try to jump it."
"From the looks of them," chuckled the sheriff, "you jumped them.
They've got a young hospital over at camp. But seriously, Ba'tiste, I
think you're on the wrong track. Thayer and Blackburn have a perfect
right to this flume and to the use of the lake and what stumpage they
want from the Houston woods."
"A right?" Barry went forward. "What right? I haven't given them--"
"You're the owner of the land, aren't you?"
"Yes, in a way. It was left to me conditionally."
"You can let it out and sell the stumpage if you want to?"
"Of course."
"Then, what are you kicking about?"
"I--simply on account of the fact that these men have no right to be on
the land, or to use it in any way. I haven't given them permission."
"That's funny," the sheriff scratched his head; "they've just proved in
court that you have."
"In court? I--?"
"Yeh. I've got an injunction in my pocket to prevent you from
interfering with them. Judge Bardley gave it in Montview about an hour
ago, and we came over by automobile."
"But why?"
"Why?" the sheriff stared at him. "When you give a man a lease, you
have to live up to it in this country."
"But I've given no one--"
"Oh, show it to him, sheriff." Thayer came angrily forward. "No use
to let him stand there and lie."
"That's what I want to see!" Houston squared himself grimly. "If
you've got a lease, or anything else, I want to look at it."
"You know your own writing, don't you?" The sheriff was fishing in his
pockets.
"Of course."
"You'd admit it if you saw it?"
"I'm not trying to hide anything. But I know that I've not given any
lease, and I've not sold any stumpage and--"
"Then, what's this?" The sheriff had pulled two legal documents from
his pocket, and unfolding them, had shown Houston the bottom of each.
Barry's eyes opened wide.
"That's--that's my signature," came at last.
"This one's the same, isn't it?" The second paper was shoved forward.
"Yes."
"Then I don't see what you're kicking about. Do you know any one named
Jenkins, who is a notary public?"
"He works in my office in Boston."
"That's his writing, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And his seal."
"I suppose so." Bewildered, Houston was looking at the papers with
glazed eyes. "It looks like it."
"Then," and the sheriff's voice went brusque, "what right have you to
try to run these men off of property for which you've given them a
bona-fide lease, and to which you've just admitted your signature as
genuine?"
"I've--I've given no lease. I--"
"Then look 'em over. If that isn't a lease to the lake and flume and
flume site, and if the second one isn't a contract for stumpage at a
dollar and a half a thousand feet,--well, then, I can't read."
"But I'm telling you that I didn't give it to them." Houston had
reached for the papers with a trembling hand. "There's a fraud about
it somewhere!"
"I don't see where there can be any fraud when you admit your
signature, and there's a notary's seal attached."
"But there is! I can't tell you why--but--"
"Statements like that don't count in law. There are the papers and
they're duly signed and you've admitted your signature. If there's any
fraud about it, you've got the right to prove it. But in the
meanwhile, the court's injunction stands. You've leased this land to
these men, and you can't interfere with them. Understand?"
"All right." Houston moved hazily back, away from the flume site.
Ba'tiste stood staring glumly, wondering, at the papers which had been
returned to the sheriff. "But I know this, that it's a
fakery--somehow--and I'll prove it. I have absolutely no memory of
ever signing any such papers as that, or of even talking to any one
about selling stumpage at a figure that you should know is ridiculous.
Why, you can't even buy the worst kind of timber from the government at
that price! I don't remember--"
"Didn't I tell you?" Thayer had turned to the sheriff. "There he goes
pulling that loss of memory stunt again. That's one of his best little
bets," he added sneering, "to lose his memory."
"I've never lost it yet!"
"No--then you can forget things awfully easy. Such as coming out here
and pretending not to know who you were. Guess you forgot your
identity for a minute, didn't you? Just like you forgot signing this
lease and stumpage contract! Yeh, you're good at that--losing your
memory. You never remember anything that happens. You can't even
remember the night you murdered your own cousin, can you?"
"That's a--"
"See, sheriff? His memory's bad." All the malice and hate of pent-up
enmity was in Fred Thayer's voice now. One gnarled hand went forward
in accusation. "He can't even remember how he killed his own cousin.
But if he can't, I can. Ask him about the time when he slipped that
mallet in his pocket at a prize fight and then went on out with his
cousin. Ask him what became of Tom Langdon after they left that prize
fight. He won't be able to tell you, of course. He loses his memory;
all he will be able to remember is that his father spent a lot of money
and hired some good lawyers and got him out of it. He won't be able to
tell you a thing about how his own cousin was found with his skull
crushed in, and the bloody wooden mallet lying beside him--the mallet
that this fellow had stolen the night before at a prize fight! He
won't--"
White-hot with anger, Barry Houston lurched forward, to find himself
caught in the arms of the sheriff and thrown back. He whirled,--and
stopped, looking with glazed, deadened eyes into the blanched,
horrified features of a girl who evidently had heard the accusation, a
girl who stood poised in revulsion a moment before she turned, and,
almost running, hurried to mount her horse and ride away. And the
strength of anger left the muscles of Barry Houston. The red flame of
indignation turned to a sodden, dead thing. He could only realize that
Medaine Robinette now knew the story. That Medaine Robinette had heard
him accused without a single statement given in his own behalf; that
Medaine, the girl of his smoke-wreathed dreams, now fully and
thoroughly believed him--a murderer!
CHAPTER XII
Dully Houston turned back to the sheriff and to the goggle-eyed
Ba'tiste, trying to fathom it all. Weakly he motioned toward Thayer,
and his words, when they came, were hollow and expressionless:
"That's a lie, Sheriff. I'll admit that I have been accused of murder.
I was acquitted. You say that nothing counts but the court action--and
that's all I have to say in my behalf. The jury found me not guilty.
In regard--to this, I'll obey the court order until I can prove to the
judge's satisfaction that this whole thing is a fraud and a fake. In
the meanwhile--" he turned anxiously, almost piteously, "do you care to
go with me, Ba'tiste?"
Heavily, silently, the French-Canadian joined him, and together they
walked down the narrow road to the camp. Neither spoke for a long
time. Ba'tiste walked with his head deep between his shoulders, and
Houston knew that memories were heavy upon him, memories of his
Julienne and the day that he came home to find, instead of a waiting
wife, only a mound beneath the sighing pines and a stalwart cross above
it. As for Houston, his own life had gone gray with the sudden
recurrence of the past. He lived again the first days of it all, when
life had been one constant repetition of questions, then solitude,
questions and solitude, as the homicide squad brought him up from his
cell to inquire about some new angle that they had come upon, to
question him regarding his actions on the night of the death of Tom
Langdon, then to send him back to "think it over" in the hope that the
constant tangle of questions might cause him to change his story and
give them an opening wedge through which they could force him to a
confession. He lived again the black hours in the dingy courtroom,
with its shadows and soot spots brushing against the window, the twelve
blank-faced men in the jury box, and the witnesses, one after another,
who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again
through the agony of the new freedom--the freedom of a man imprisoned
by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel--when first he had
gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had
occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to
fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to
his grave, believing almost to the last that it had been his money and
the astuteness of his lawyers that had obtained freedom for a guilty
son, certainly not a self-evidence of innocence that had caused the
twelve men to report back to the judge that they had been unable to
force their convictions "beyond the shadow of a doubt." A nightmare
had it been and a nightmare it was again, as drawn-featured,
stoop-shouldered, suddenly old and haggard, Barry Houston walked down
the logging road beside a man whose mind also had been recalled to
thoughts of murder. A sudden fear went over the younger man; he
wondered whether this great being who walked at his side had believed,
and at last in desperation, he faced him.
"Well, Ba'tiste," came in strained tones, "I might as well hear it now
as at any other time. They've about got me whipped, anyway, so you'll
only be leaving a sinking ship."
"What you mean?" The French-Canadian stopped.
"Just the plain facts. I'm about at the end of my rope; my mill's all
but gone, my flume is in the hands of some one else, my lake is leased,
and Thayer can make as many inroads on my timber as he cares to, as
long as he appeases the court by paying me the magnificent sum of a
dollar and a half a thousand for it. So, you see, there isn't much
left for me."
"What you do?"
"That depends entirely on you--and what effect that accusation made.
If you're with me, I fight. If not--well frankly--I don't know."
"'Member the mill, when he burn down?"
"Yes."
"You no believe Ba'teese did heem. _Oui_, yes? Well, now I no believe
either!"
"Honestly, Ba'tiste?" Houston had gripped the other man's arm. "You
don't believe it? You don't--"
"Ba'teese believe M'sieu Houston. You look like my Pierre. My Pierre,
he could do no wrong. Ba'teese satisfy."
It sent a new flow of blood through the veins of Barry Houston,--that
simple, quiet statement of the old trapper. He felt again a surge of
the fighting instinct, the desire to keep on and on, to struggle until
the end, and to accept nothing except the bitterest, most absolute
defeat. He quickened his pace, the French-Canadian falling in with
him. His voice bore a vibrant tone, almost of excitement:
"I'm going back to Boston to-night. I'm going to find out about this.
I can get a machine at Tabernacle to take me over the range; it may
save me time in catching a train at Denver. There's some fraud,
Ba'tiste. I know it.--and I'll prove it if I can get back to Boston.
We'll stop by the cottage down here and see Miss Jierdon; then I'm
gone!"
"She no there. She, what-you-say, smash up 'quaintance with Medaine.
She ask to go there and stay day or two."
"Then she'll straighten things out, Ba'tiste. I'm glad of it. She
knows the truth about this whole thing--every step of the way. Will
you tell her?"
"_Oui_. Ba'teese tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he
say. But Ba'teese--"
"What?"
The trapper was silent a moment. At last:
"You like her, eh?"
"Medaine?"
"No--the other."
"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my
one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and
testified for me. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You
go Boston to-night?"
"Yes."
And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor
car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen
frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and
the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of
miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the
highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries
were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the
straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in
Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the
mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing
that would give him back his birthright.
Weazened, wrinkle-faced little Jenkins met him at the office, to stare
in apparent surprise, then to rush forward with well-simulated
enthusiasm.
"You're back, Mr. Houston! I'm so glad. I didn't know whether to send
the notice out to you in Colorado, or wire you. It just came
yesterday."
"The notice? Of what?"
"The M. P. & S. L. call for bids. You've heard about it."
But Houston shook his head. Jenkins stared.
"I thought you had. The Mountain, Plains and Salt Lake Railroad. I
thought you knew all about it."
"The one that's tunneling Carrow Peak? I've heard about the road, but
I didn't know they were ready for bids for the western side of the
mountain yet. Where's the notice?"
"Right on your desk, sir."
Abstractedly, Houston picked it up and glanced at the
specifications,--for railroad ties by the million, for lumber, lathes,
station-house material, bridge timbers, and the thousands of other
lumber items that go into the making of a road. Hastily he scanned the
printed lines, only at last to place it despondently in a pocket.
"Millions of dollars," he murmured. "Millions--for somebody!"
And Houston could not help feeling that it was for the one man he
hated, Fred Thayer. The specifications called for freight on board at
the spurs at Tabernacle, evidently soon to have competition in the way
of railroad lines. And Tabernacle meant just one thing, the output of
a mill which could afford to put that lumber at the given point cheaper
then any other. The nearest other camp was either a hundred miles
away, on the western side, or so far removed over the range in the
matter of altitude that the freight rates would be prohibitive to a
cheaper bid. Thayer, with his ill-gotten flume, with his lake, with
his right to denude Barry Houston's forests at an insignificant cost,
could out-bid the others. He would land the contract, unless--
"Jenkins!" Houston's voice was sharp, insistent. The weazened man
entered, rubbing his hands.
"Yes, sir. Right here, sir."
"What contracts have we in the files?"
"Several, sir. One for mining timber stulls, logs, and that sort of
thing, for the Machol Mine at Idaho Springs; one for the Tramway
company in Denver for two thousand ties to be delivered in June; one
for--"
"I don't mean that sort. Are there any stumpage contracts?"
"Only one, sir."
"One? What!"
"The one you signed, sir, to Thayer and Blackburn, just a week or so
before you started out West. Don't you remember, sir; you signed it,
together with a lease for the flume site and lake?"
"I signed nothing of the sort!"
"But you did, sir. I attested it. I'll show it to you in just a
moment, sir. I have the copy right here."
A minute later, Barry Houston was staring down at the printed lines of
a copy of the contract and lease which had been shown him, days before,
out in the mountains of Colorado. Blankly he looked toward the servile
Jenkins, awaiting the return of the documents, then toward the papers
again.
"And I signed these, did I?"
"You certainly did, sir. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon.
I remember it perfectly."
"You're lying!"
"I don't lie, sir. I attested the signature and saw you read both
contracts. Pardon, sir, but if any one's lying, sir--it's yourself!"
CHAPTER XIII
Ten minutes after that, Barry Houston was alone in his office. Jenkins
was gone, discharged; and Houston felt a sort of relief in the
knowledge that he had departed. The last of the Thayer clan, he
believed, had been cleaned out of his organization--and it was like
lightening a burden to realize it.
That the lease and stumpage contract were fraudulent, Barry Houston was
certain. Surely he had seen neither of them; and the signing must have
been through some sort of trickery of which he was unaware. But would
such a statement hold in court? Houston learned, a half-hour later,
that it wouldn't, as he faced the family attorney, in his big, bleak,
old-fashioned office.
"It's all right, Barry, for you to tell me that you didn't sign it,"
came the edict. "I'd believe you--because I feel sure you wouldn't lie
to me. But it would be pretty thin stuff to tell to a jury. There is
the contract and the lease in black and white. Both bear your
signature which, you have declared in the presence of witnesses, to be
genuine. Even when a man signs a paper while insane, it's a hard job
to pull it back; and we certainly wouldn't have any witnesses who could
swear that you had lost your reason."
"Nope," he concluded, giving the papers a flip, as though disposing of
the whole matter, "somebody has just worked the old sewing-machine
racket on you--with trimmings. This is an adaptation of a game that is
as old as the hills--the one where the solicitors would go up to a
farmhouse, sell a man a sewing-machine or a cream separator at a
ridiculous figure, let him sign what he thought was a contract to pay a
certain amount a month for twelve months--and then take the promissory
note which he really had signed down to the bank and discount it.
Instead of a promissory note, they made this a contract and a lease.
And just to make it good, they had their confederate, a legalized
notary public, put his seal upon it as a witness. You can't remember
when all this happened?"
"According to Jenkins--who put the notary seal on there--the whole
thing was put over about a week or so before I left for the West.
That's the date on them too. About that time, I remember, I had a good
many papers to sign. A lot of legal stuff, if you'll remember, came up
about father's estate, in which my signature was more of a form than
anything else. I naturally suspected nothing, and in one or two
instances signed without reading."
"And signed away your birthright--to this contract and lease. You did
it with no intention of giving your land and flume and flume site away,
that's true. If one of the men would be willing to confess to a
conspiracy, it would hold water in court. Otherwise not. You've been
bunked, and your signature is as legal and as binding as though you had
read that contract and lease-form a hundred times over. So I don't see
anything to do but to swallow your medicine with as little of a wry
face as possible."
It was with this ultimatum that Houston turned again for the West, glad
to be out of Boston, glad to be headed back once more for the
mountains, in spite of the fact that the shadows of his life had
followed him even there, that the ill luck which seemed to have been
perched continuously on his shoulders for the past two years still
hovered, like a vulture, above him. What he was going to do, how he
could hope to combat the obstacles which had arisen was more than he
could tell. He had gone into the West, believing, at worst, that he
would be forced to become the general factotum of his own business.
Now he found there was not even a business; his very foundations had
been swept from beneath him, leaving only the determination, the grim,
earnest resolution to succeed where all was failure and to fight to
victory--but how?
Personally, he could not answer the question, and he longed for the
sight of the shambling little station at Tabernacle, with Ba'tiste, in
answer to the telegram he had sent from Chicago, awaiting him with the
buggy from camp. And Ba'tiste was there, to boom at him, to call
Golemar's attention to the fact that a visit to a physician in Boston
had relieved the bandaged arm of all except the slightest form of a
splint, and to literally lift Houston into the buggy, tossing his
baggage in after him, then plump in beside him with excited happiness.
"_Bon_!" he rumbled. "It is good you are back. Ba'teese, he was
lonely. Ba'teese, he was so excite' when he hear you come. He have
good news!"
"About what?"
"The railroad. They are near' through with the tunnel. Now they shall
start upon the main road to Salt Lake. And they shall need
timbers--_beaucoup_! Ties and beams and materials! They have ask for
bids. Ah, _oui_. Eet is, what-you-say, the swollen chance! M'sieu
Houston shall bid lower than--"
"How, Ba'tiste?" Houston asked the question with a dullness that
caused the aged trapper to turn almost angrily upon him.
"How? Is eet putty that you are made of? Is eet--but no, Ba'teese,
he, what-you-say, misplace his head. You think there is no chance, eh?
Mebbe not. Me'bbe--"
"I found a copy of that contract in our files. The clerk I had in the
office was in the conspiracy. I fired him and closed everything up
there; as far as a Boston end to the business is concerned, there is
none. But the damage is done. My lawyer says that there is not a
chance to fight this thing in court."
"Ah, _oui_. I expec' that much. But Ba'teese, he think, mebbe, of
another way. Eh, Golemar?" He shouted to the dog, trotting, as usual,
beside the buggy. "Mebbe we have a, what-you-say, punch of luck."
Then, silent, he leaned over the reins. Houston too was quiet,
striving in vain to find a way out of the difficulties that beset him.
At the end of half an hour he looked up in surprise. They no longer
were on the way to the mill. The road had become rougher, hillier, and
Houston recognized the stream and the aspen groves which fringed the
highway leading to Ba'tiste's cabin. But the buggy skirted the cabin,
at last to bring into sight a snug, well-built, pretty little cottage
which Houston knew, instinctively, to be the home of Medaine Robinette.
At the veranda, Ba'tiste pulled on the reins and alighted.
"Come," he ordered quietly.
"But--"
"She have land, and she have a part of the lake and a flume site."
Houston hung back.
"Isn't it a bad bet, Ba'tiste? Have you talked to her?"
"No--I have not seen her since the day--at the flume. She is
here--Lost Wing is at the back of the cabin. We will talk to her, you
and I. Mebbe, when the spring come, she will lease to you the lake and
the flume site. Mebbe--"
"Very well." But Houston said it against his will. He felt, in the
first place, that he would be presuming to ask it of her,--himself a
stranger against whom had come the accusation of murder, hardly denied.
Yet, withal, in a way, he welcomed the chance to see her and to seek to
explain to her the deadly thrusts which Fred Thayer had sent against
him. Then too a sudden hope came; Ba'tiste had said that Agnes Jierdon
had become friendly with her; certainly she had told the truth and
righted the wrongs of malicious treachery. He joined Ba'tiste with a
bound. A moment more and the door had opened, to reveal Medaine,
repressed excitement in her eyes, her features a trifle pale, her hand
trembling slightly as she extended it to Ba'tiste. Houston she
received with a bow,--forced, he thought. They went within, and
Ba'tiste pulled his queer little cap from his head, to crush it in the
grasp of his massive hands.
"We have come for business, Medaine," he announced, with a slight show
of embarrassment. "M'sieu Houston, he have need for a flume site."
"But I don't see where I could be of any assistance. I have no right--"
"Ah! But eet is not for the moment present. Eet is for the
springtime."
She seemed to hesitate then and Houston took a sudden resolve. It
might as well be now as later.
"Miss Robinette," he began, coming forward, "I realize that all this
needs some explanation. Especially," and he halted, "about myself."
"But is that any of my affair?" Her old pertness was gone. She seemed
white and frightened, as though about to listen to something she would
rather not hear. Houston answered her as best he could:
"That depends upon yourself, Miss Robinette. Naturally, you wouldn't
want to have any business dealings with a man who really was all that
you must believe me to be. It isn't a pleasant thing for me to talk
about--I would like to forget it. But in this case, it has been
brought up against my will. You were present a week ago when Thayer
accused me of murder."
"Yes."
"Eet was a big lie!"
"Wait just a minute, Ba'tiste." Cold sweat had made its appearance on
Barry Houston's forehead. "I--I--am forced to admit that a part of
what he said was true. When I first met Ba'tiste here, I told him
there was a shadow in my life that I did not like to talk about. He
was good enough to say that he didn't want to hear it. I felt that out
here, perhaps I would not be harassed by certain memories that have
been rather hard for me to bear in the last couple of years. I was
wrong. The thing has come up again, in worse form than ever and
without giving me a chance to make a denial. But perhaps you know the
whole story?"
"Your story?" Medaine Robinette looked at him queerly. "No--I never
have heard it."
"Then you've heard--"
"Only accusations."
"Is it fair to believe only one side of a thing?"
"Please, Mr. Houston," and she looked at him with a certain note of
pleading, "you must remember that I--well, I didn't feel that it was
any of my business. I didn't know that circumstances would throw you
at all in my path."
"But they have, Miss Robinette. The land on my side of the creek has
been taken from me by fraud. It is absolutely vital that I use every
resource to try to make my mill what it should be. It still is
possible for me to obtain lumber, but to get it to the mill
necessitates a flume and rights in the lake. I've lost that. We've
been hoping, Ba'tiste and myself, that we would be able to induce you
to lease us your portion of the lake and a flume site. Otherwise, I'm
afraid there isn't much hope."
"As I said, that doesn't become my property until late spring, nearly
summer, in fact."
"That is time enough. We are hoping to be able to bid for the railroad
contract. I believe it calls for the first shipment of ties about June
first. That would give us plenty of time. If we had your word, we
could go ahead, assemble the necessary machinery, snake a certain
amount of logs down through the snow this winter and be in readiness
when the right moment came. Without it, however, we can hardly hope
for a sufficient supply to carry us through. And so--"
"You want to know--about heem. You have Ba'teese's word----"
"Really--" she seemed to be fencing again.
Houston, with a hard pull at his breath, came directly to the question.
"It's simply this, Miss Robinette. If I am guilty of those things, you
don't want to have anything to do with me, and I don't want you to.
But I am here to tell you that I am not guilty, and that it all has
been a horrible blunder of circumstance. It is very true in one
sense--" and his voice lowered--"that about two years ago in Boston, I
was arrested and tried for murder."
"So Mr. Thayer said."
"I was acquitted--but not for the reason Thayer gave. They couldn't
make a case, they failed absolutely to prove a thing which, had I
really been guilty, should have been a simple matter. A worthless
cousin, Tom Langdon, was the man who was murdered. They said I did it
with a wooden mallet which I had taken from a prize fight, and which
had been used to hammer on the gong for the beginning and the end of
the rounds. I had been seen to take it from the fight, and it was
found the next morning beside Langdon. There was human blood on it. I
had been the last person seen with Langdon. They put two and two
together--and tried to convict me on circumstantial evidence. But they
couldn't convince the jury; I went free, as I should have done. I was
innocent!"
Houston, white now with the memories and with the necessity of
retailing again in the presence of a girl who, to him, stood for all
that could mean happiness, gritted his teeth for the determination to
go on with the grisly thing, to hide nothing in the answers to the
questions which she might ask. But Medaine Robinette, standing beside
the window, the color gone from her cheeks, one hand lingering the
curtains, eyes turned without, gave no evidence that she had heard.
Ba'tiste, staring at her, waited a moment for her question. It did not
come. He turned to Houston.
"You tell eet!" he ordered. There was something of the father about
him,--the father with a wayward boy, fearful of the story that might
come, yet determined to do everything within his power to aid a person
he loved. Houston straightened.
"I'll try not to shield myself in any way," came at last. The words
were directed to Ba'tiste, but meant for Medaine Robinette. "There are
some things about it that I'd rather not tell--I wish I could leave
them out. But--it all goes. My word of honor--if that counts for
anything--goes with it. It's the truth, nothing else.
"I had come home from France--invalided back. The records of the
Twenty-sixth will prove that. Gas. I was slated for out here--the
recuperation hospital at Denver. But we managed to persuade the army
authorities that I could get better treatment at home, and they gave me
a disability discharge in about ten months--honorable, of course.
After a while, I went back to work, still weak, but rather eager to get
at it, in an effort to gather up the strands which had become tangled
by the war. I was in the real-estate business then, for myself. Then,
one afternoon," his breath pulled sharp, "Tom Langdon came into my
office."
"He was your cousin?" Ba'tiste's voice was that of a friendly
cross-examiner.
"Yes. I hadn't seen him in five years. We had never had much to do
with him; we," and Houston smiled coldly with the turn that Fate had
given to conditions in the Houston family, "always had looked on him as
a sort of a black sheep. He had been a runaway from home; about the
only letters my uncle ever had received from him had asked for money to
get him out of trouble. Where he had been this time, I don't know. He
asked for my father and appeared anxious to see him. I told him that
father was out of town. Then he said he would stay in Boston until he
came back, that he had information for him that was of the greatest
importance, and that when he told father what it was, that he, Langdon,
could have anything my father possessed in the way of a job and a
competence for life. It sounded like blackmail--I could think of
nothing else coming from Tom Langdon--and I told him so. That was
unfortunate. There were several persons in my office at the time. He
resented the statement and we quarreled. They heard it and later
testified."
Houston halted, tongue licking at dry lips. Medaine still gave no
indication that she had heard. Ba'tiste, his knit cap still crushed in
his big hands, moved forward.
"Go on."
"Gradually, the quarrel wore off and Tom became more than friendly,
still harping, however, on the fact that he had tremendous news for my
father. I tried to get rid of him. It was impossible. He suggested
that we go to dinner together and insisted upon it. There was nothing
to do but acquiesce; especially as I now was trying to draw from him
something of what had brought him there. We had wine. I was weak
physically. It went to my head, and Tom seemed to take a delight in
keeping my glass full. Oh," and he swerved suddenly toward the woman
at the window, "I'm not trying to make any excuses for myself. I
wanted if--after that first glass or two, it seemed there wasn't enough
in the world. He didn't force it on me--he didn't play the part of a
tempter or pour it down my throat. I took it readily enough. But I
couldn't stand it. We left the cafe, he fairly intoxicated, myself
greatly so. We saw the advertisement of a prize fight and went,
getting seats near the ring-side. They weren't close enough for me. I
bribed a fellow to let me sit at the press stand, next to the
timekeeper, and worried him until he let me have the mallet that he was
using to strike the gong.
"The fight was exciting--especially to me in my condition. I was
standing most of the time, even leaning on the ring. Once, while in
this position, one of the men, who was bleeding, was knocked down. He
struck the mallet. It became covered with blood. No one seemed to
notice that, except myself--every one was too excited. A moment more
and the fight was over, through a knock-out. Then I stuck the mallet
in my pocket, telling every one who cared to hear that I was carrying
away a souvenir. Langdon and I went out together.
"We started home--for he had announced that he was going to spend the
night with me. Persons about us heard him. It was not far to the
house and we decided to walk. On the way, he demanded the mallet for
himself and pulled it out of my pocket. I struggled with him for it,
finally however, to be bested, and started away. He followed me a
block or so, taunting me with his superior strength and cursing me as
the son of a man whom he intended to make bow to his every wish. I ran
then and, evading him, went home and to bed. About four o'clock in the
morning, I was awakened by the police. They had found Tom Langdon
dead, with his skull crushed, evidently by the blow of a club or a
hammer. They said I did it."
A slight gasp traveled over the lips of Medaine, still by the window.
Ba'tiste, his features old and lined, reached out with one big hand and
patted the man on the shoulder. Then for a long time, there was
silence.
"Eet is the lie, eh?"
"Ba'tiste," Houston turned appealingly to him "as I live, that's all I
know. I never saw Langdon after he took that mallet from me. Some one
killed him, evidently while he was wandering around, looking for me.
The mallet dropped by his side. It had blood on it--and they accused
me. It looked right--there was every form of circumstantial evidence
against me. And," the breath pulled hard, "what was worse, everybody
believed that I killed him. Even my best friends--even my father."
"Ba'teese no believe it."
"Why?" Houston turned to him in hope,--in the glimmering chance that
perhaps there was something in the train of circumstances that would
have prevented the actuality of guilt. But the answer, while it
cheered him, was rather disconcerting.
"You look like my Pierre. Pierre, he could do no wrong. You look like
heem."
It was sufficient for the old French-Canadian. But Houston knew it
could carry but little weight with the girl by the window. He went on:
"Only one shred of evidence was presented in my behalf. It was by a
woman who had worked for about six months for my father,--Miss
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