The Snow-Burner
by Henry Oyen · English · Gutenberg #36121 · 511,526 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Snow-Burner
Author: Henry Oyen
Release date: May 16, 2011 [eBook #36121]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36121
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SNOW-BURNER ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: THE SNOW-BURNER TOPPLED AND FELL FACE DOWNWARD ON THE
GROUND]
THE SNOW-BURNER
BY HENRY OYEN
Author of "The Man-Trail"
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916,
By George H. Doran Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT 1914, 1915, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE NATURAL MAN
I. "Help!" 9
II. The Girl 16
III. Toppy Gets A Job 21
IV. "Hell-Camp" Reivers 31
V. Toppy Overhears a Conversation 39
VI. "Nice Boy!" 44
VII. The Snow-Burner's Creed 51
VIII. Toppy Works 62
IX. A Fresh Start 67
X. The Duel Begins 74
XI. "Hell-Camp" Court 77
XII. Toppy's First Move 94
XIII. Reivers Replies 100
XIV. "Joker and Deuces Wild" 106
XV. The Way of the Snow-Burner 115
XVI. The Screws Tighten 131
XVII. Tilly's Warning 139
XVIII. "Canny by Nature" 145
XIX. The Fight 150
XX. Toppy's Way 162
XXI. The End of the Boss 165
PART TWO: THE SUPER MAN
XXII. The Cheating of the River 175
XXIII. The Girl Who Was Not Afraid 183
XXIV. The Woman's Way 193
XXV. Gold! 202
XXVI. The Look in a Woman's Eyes 212
XXVII. On the Trail of Fortune 219
XXVIII. The Snow-Burner Hunts 229
XXIX. The White Man's Will 233
XXX. Any Means to an End 238
XXXI. The Squaw-Man 241
XXXII. The Scorn of a Pure Woman 245
XXXIII. Shanty Moir 251
XXXIV. The Bargain 256
XXXV. The Test of the Bottle 261
XXXVI. The Snow-Burner Begins To Weaken 265
XXXVII. Into the Jaws of the Bear 270
XXXVIII. MacGregor Roy 277
XXXIX. James MacGregor's Story 283
XL. The White Man's Sentiment 293
XLI. Shanty-Moir-Temperance Advocate 301
XLII. The Snow-Burner Works for Two 305
XLIII. "The Penalty of a White Man's Mind" 309
XLIV. The Madness of "Hell-Camp" Reivers 316
XLV. A Surprise for Shanty Moir 320
XLVI. A Fight that was a Fight 327
XLVII. The Snow-Burner Pays 332
THE SNOW BURNER
PART ONE: THE NATURAL MAN
CHAPTER I--HELP
The brisk November sunrise, breaking over the dark jack-pines, lighted
up the dozen snow-covered frame buildings comprising the so-called town
of Rail Head, and presently reached in through the uncurtained windows
of the Northern Light saloon, where it shone upon the curly head of
young Toppy Treplin as, pillowed on his crossed forearms, it lay in
repose on one of the saloon tables.
It was a sad, strange place to find Toppy Treplin, one-time All-American
halfback, but for the last four years all-around moneyed loafer and
waster. Rail Head was far from the beaten path. It lay at the end of
sixty miles of narrow-gauge track that rambled westward into the Big
Woods from the Iron Range Railroad line, and it consisted mainly of a
box-car depot, an alleged hotel and six saloons--none of the latter being
in any too good repute with the better element round about.
The existence of the saloons might have explained Toppy's presence in
Rail Head had their character and wares been of a nature to attract one
of his critical tastes; but in reality Toppy was there because the Iron
Range Limited, bearing Harvey Duncombe's private hunting-car, had
stopped for a moment the night before out where the narrow-gauge met the
Iron Range Railroad tracks.
Toppy, at that fated moment, was out on the observation platform alone.
There had been a row and Toppy had rushed out in a black rage. Within,
the car reeked with the mingled odours of cigarette-smoke and spilled
champagne. Out of doors the first snowfall of the season, faintly tinted
by a newly risen moon, lay unmarked, undefiled.
A girl--small, young, brisk and business-like--alighted from the car ahead
and walked swiftly across the station platform to the narrow-gauge train
that stood waiting. The anger and champagne raging in him had moved
Toppy to one of those wild pranks which had made his name among his
fellows synonymous with irresponsibility.
He would get away from it all, away from Harvey Duncombe and his
champagne, and all that sort of thing. He would show them!
Toppy had stepped off. The Limited suddenly glided away. Toppy lurched
over to the narrow gauge, and that was the last thing he had remembered
of that memorable night.
As the sun now revealed him, Mr. Robert Lovejoy Treplin, in spite of his
deplorable condition, was a figure to win attention of a not entirely
unfavourable sort. Still clad in mackinaw and hunting-clothes, his two
hundred pounds of bone and muscle and just a little too much fat were
sprawled picturesquely over the chair and table, the six-foot
gracefulness of him being obvious despite his rough apparel and awkward
position.
His cap had fallen off and the sun glinted on a head of boyish brown
curls. It was only in the lazy, good-natured face, puffy and
loose-lipped, that one might read how recklessly Toppy Treplin had lived
since achieving his football honours four years before.
The sun crept up and found his eyes, and Toppy stirred. Slowly, even
painfully, he raised his head from the table and looked around him. The
crudeness of his surroundings made him sit up with a start. He looked
first out of the window at the snow-covered "street." Across the way he
saw a small, unpainted building bearing a scraggly sign, "Hotel." Beyond
this the jack-pines loomed in a solid wall.
Toppy shuddered. He turned his face toward the man behind the bar, who
had been regarding him for some time with a look of mingled surprise and
amusement. Toppy shuddered again.
The man was a half-breed, and he wore a red woollen shirt. Worse, there
was not a sign of a mirror behind the bar. It was distressing.
"Good morning, brother," said Toppy, concealing his repugnance. "Might I
ask you for a little information this pleasant morning?"
The half-breed grinned appreciatively but sceptically.
"Little drink, I guess you mean, don't you?" said he. "Go 'head."
Toppy bowed courteously.
"Thank you, brother, thank you. I am sorely puzzled about two little
matters--where am I anyway, and if so, how did I get here?"
The grin on the half-breed's face broadened. He pointed at the table in
front of Toppy.
"You been sleeping there since 'bout midnight las' night," he exclaimed.
Toppy waved his left hand to indicate his displeasure at the inadequacy
of the bartender's reply.
"Obvious, my dear Watson, obvious," he said. "I know that I'm at this
table, because here I am; and I know I've been sleeping here because I
just woke up. Let's broaden the range of our information. What town is
this, if it is a town, and if it is, how did I happen to come here, may
I ask?"
The half-breed's grin disappeared, gradually to give place to an
expression of amazement.
"You mean to say you come to this town and don't know what town it is?"
he demanded. "Then why you come? What you do here?"
Toppy's brow corrugated in an expression of deep puzzlement.
"That's another thing that's rather puzzling, too, brother," he replied.
"Why did I come? I'd like to know that, too. Like very, very much to
know that. Where am I, how did I come here, and why? Three questions I'd
like very, very much to have answered."
He sat for a moment in deep thought, then turned toward the bartender
with the pleased look of a man who has found an inspiration.
"I tell you what you do, brother--you answer the first two questions and
in the light of that information I'll see if I can't ponder out the
third."
The half-breed leaned heavily across the single-plank bar and watched
Toppy closely.
"This town is Rail Head," he said slowly, as if speaking to some one of
whose mental capacity he had great doubts. "You come here by last
night's train. You bring the train-crew over to have a drink; then you
fall asleep. You been sleeping ever since. Now you remember?"
"Ah!"
The puzzled look went out of Toppy's eyes.
"Now I remember. Row with Harvey Duncombe. Wanted me to drink two to his
one. Stepped outside. Saw little train. Saw little girl. Stepped off big
train, got on little train, and here I am. Fine little business."
"You went to sleep in the train coming up, the conductor told me,"
volunteered the half-breed. "You told them you wanted to go as far as
you could, so they took you up here to the end of the line. You remember
now, eh, why you come here?"
"Only too well, brother," replied Toppy wearily. "I--I just came to see
your beautiful little city."
The bartender laughed bitterly.
"You come to a fine place. Didn't you ever hear 'bout Rail Head?" he
asked. "I guess not, or you wouldn't have come. This town's the
jumping-off place, that's what she is. It's the most God-forsaken,
hopeless excuse for a town in the whole North Country. There's only two
kind of business here--shipping men out to Hell Camp and skinning them
when they come back. That's all. What you think of that for a fine town
you've landed in, eh?"
"Fine," said Toppy. "I see you love it dearly, indeed."
The half-breed nodded grimly.
"It's all right for me; I own this place. Anybody else is sucker to come
here, though. You ain't a Bohunk fool, so I don't think you come to hire
out for Hell Camp. You just got too drunk, eh?"
"I suppose so," said Toppy, yawning. "What's this Hell Camp thing?
Pleasant little name."
"An' pleasant little place," supplemented the man mockingly. "Ain't you
never heard 'bout Hell Camp? 'Bout its boss--Reivers--the 'Snow-Burner'?
Huh! Perhaps you want hire out there for job?"
"Perhaps," agreed Toppy. "What is it?"
"Oh, it ain't nothing so much. Just big log-camp run by man named
Reivers--that's all. Indians call him Snow-Burner. Twenty-five, thirty
miles out in the bush, at Cameron Dam. That's all. Very big camp.
Everybody who comes to this town is going out there to work, or else
hiding out."
"I see. But why the name?"
"Hell Camp?" The bartender's grin appeared again; then, as if a second
thought on the matter had occurred to him, he assumed a noncommittal
expression and yawned. "Oh, that's just nickname the boys give it. You
see, the boys from camp come to town here in the Spring. Then sometimes
they raise ----. That's why some people call it Hell Camp. That's all.
Cameron Dam Camp is the right name."
"I see." Toppy was wondering why the man should take the trouble to lie
to him. Of course he was lying. Even Toppy, with his bleared eyes, could
see that the man had started to berate Hell Camp even as he had berated
Rail Head and had suddenly switched and said nothing. It hurt Toppy's
head. It wasn't fair to puzzle him this morning. "I see. Just--just a
nickname."
"That's all," said the bartender. Briskly changing the subject he said:
"Well, how 'bout it, stranger? You going to have eye-opener this
morning?"
"I suppose so," said Toppy absently. He again turned his attention to
the view from the window. On the low stairs of the hotel were seated
half a dozen men whose flat, ox-like faces and foreign clothing marked
them for immigrants, newly arrived, of the Slavic type. Some sat on
wooden trunks oddly marked, others stood with bundles beneath their
arms. They waited stolidly, blankly, with their eyes on the hotel door,
as oxen wait for the coming of the man who is going to feed them. Toppy
looked on with idle interest.
"I didn't think you could see anything like that this far away from
Ellis Island," he said. "What are those fellows, brother?"
"Bohunks," said the bartender with a contemptuous jerk of the head.
"They waiting to hire out for the Cameron Dam Camp. The agent he comes
to the hotel. Well, what you going to have?"
"Bring me a whisky sour," said Toppy, without taking his eyes off the
group across the street. The half-breed grinned and placed before him a
bottle of whisky and a glass. Toppy frowned.
"A whisky sour, I said," he protested.
"When you get this far in the woods," laughed the man, "they all come
out of one bottle. Drink up."
Once more Toppy shuddered. He was bored by this time.
"Your jokes up here are worse than your booze," he said wearily.
He poured out a scant drink and sat with the glass in his hand while his
eyes were upon the group across the street. He was about to drink when a
stir among the men drew his attention. The door of the hotel opened
briskly. Toppy suddenly set down his glass.
The girl who had got on the narrow-gauge out at the junction the night
before had come out and was standing on the stairs, looking about her
with an expression which to Toppy seemed plainly to spell, "Help!"
CHAPTER II--THE GIRL
Toppy sat and stared across the street at her with a feeling much like
awe. The girl was standing forth in the full morning sunlight, and
Toppy's first impulse was to cross the street to her, his second to hide
his face. She was small and young, the girl, and beautiful. She was a
blonde, such a blonde as is found only in the North. The sun lighted up
the aureole of light hair surrounding her head, so that even Toppy
behind the windows of the Northern Light caught a vision of its
fineness. Her cheeks bore the red of perfect health showing through a
perfect, fair complexion, and even the thick red mackinaw which she wore
did not hide the trimness of the figure beneath.
"What in the dickens is she doing here?" gasped Toppy. "She doesn't
belong in a place like this."
But if this were true the girl apparently was entirely unconscious of
it. Among that group of ox-like Slavs she stood with her little chin in
the air, as much at home, apparently, as if those men were all her good
friends. Only she looked about her now and then as if anxiously seeking
a way out of a dilemma.
"What can she be doing here?" mused Toppy. "A little, pretty thing like
her! She ought to be back home with mother and father and brother and
sister, going to dancing-school, and all the rest of it."
Toppy was no stranger to pretty girls. He had met pretty girls by the
score while at college. He had been adored by dozens. After college he
had met still more. None of them had interested him to any inconvenient
extent. After all, a man's friends are all men.
But this girl, Toppy admitted, struck him differently. He had never seen
a girl that struck him like this before. He pushed his glass to one
side. He was bored no longer. For the first time in four years the full
shame of his mode of living was driven home to him, for as he feasted
his eyes on the sun-kissed vision across the street his decent instincts
whispered that a man who squandered and swilled his life away just
because he had money had no right to raise his eyes to this girl.
"You're a waster, that's what you are," said Toppy to himself, "and
she's one of those sweet----"
He was on his feet before the sentence was completed. In her perplexity
the girl had turned to the men about her and apparently had asked a
question. At first their utter unresponsiveness indicated that they did
not understand.
Then they began to smile, looking at one another and at the girl. The
brutal manner in which they fixed their eyes upon her sent the blood
into Toppy's throat. White men didn't look at a woman that way.
Then one of the younger men spoke to the girl. Toppy saw her start and
look at him with parted lips. The group gathered more closely around.
The young man spoke again, grimacing and smirking bestially, and Toppy
waited for no more. He was a waster and half drunk; but after all he was
a white man, of the same breed as the girl on the stairs, and he knew
his job.
He came across the snow-covered street like Toppy Treplin of old bent
upon making a touchdown. Into the group he walked, head up, shouldering
and elbowing carelessly. Toppy caught the young speaker by both
shoulders and hurled him bodily back among his fellows. For an instant
they faced Toppy, snarling, their hands cautiously sliding toward hidden
knives. Then they grovelled, cringing instinctively before the better
breed.
Toppy turned to the girl and removed his cap. She had not cried out nor
moved, and now she looked Toppy squarely in the eye. Toppy promptly hung
his head. He had been thinking of her as something of a child. Now he
saw his mistake. She was young, it is true--little over twenty
perhaps--but there was an air of self-reliance and seriousness about her
as if she had known responsibilities beyond her years. And her eyes were
blue, Toppy saw--the perfect blue that went with her fair complexion.
"I beg pardon," stammered Toppy. "I just happened to see--it looked as if
they were getting fresh--so I thought I'd come across and--and see if
there was anything--anything I could do."
"Thank you," said the girl a little breathlessly. "Are--are you the
agent?"
Toppy shook his head. The look of perplexity instantly returned to the
girl's face.
"I'm sorry; I wish I was," said Toppy. "If you'll tell me who the agent
is, and so on--" he included most of the town of Rail Head in a
comprehensive glance--"I'll probably be able to find him in a hurry."
"Oh, I couldn't think of troubling you. Thank you ever so much, though,"
she said hastily. "They told me in the hotel that he was outside here
some place. I'll find him myself, thank you."
She stepped off the stairs into the snow of the street, every inch and
line of her, from her solid tan boots to her sensible tassel cap,
expressing the self-reliance and independence of the girl who is
accustomed and able to take care of herself under trying circumstances.
The bright sun smote her eyes and she blinked, squinting deliciously.
She paused for a moment, threw back her head and filled her lungs to the
full with great drafts of the invigorating November air. Her mackinaw
rose and fell as she breathed deeply, and more colour came rushing into
the roses of her cheeks. Apparently she had forgotten the existence of
the Slavs, who still stood glowering at her and Toppy.
"Isn't it glorious?" she said, looking up at Toppy with her eyes
puckered prettily from the sun. "Doesn't it just make you glad you're
alive?"
"You bet it does!" said Toppy eagerly. He saw his opportunity to
continue the conversation and hastened to take advantage. "I never knew
air could be as exciting as this. I never felt anything like it. It's my
first experience up here in the woods; I'm an utter stranger around
here."
Having volunteered this information, he waited eagerly. The girl merely
nodded.
"Of course. Anybody could see that," she said simply.
Toppy felt slightly abashed.
"Then you--you're not a stranger around here?" he asked.
She shook her head, the tassels of her cap and her aureole of light hair
tossing gloriously.
"I'm a stranger here in this town," she said, "but I've lived up here in
the woods, as you call it, all my life except the two years I was away
at school. Not right in the woods, of course, but in small towns around.
My father was a timber-estimator before he was hurt, and naturally we
had to live close to the woods."
"Naturally," agreed Toppy, though he knew nothing about it. He tried to
imagine any of the girls he knew back East accepting a stranger as a man
and a brother who could be trusted at first hand, and he failed.
"I say," he said as she stepped away. "Just a moment, please. About this
agent-thing. Won't you please let me go and look for him?" He waved his
hands at the six saloons. "You see, there aren't many places here that a
lady can go looking for a man in."
She hesitated, frowning at the lowly groggeries that constituted the
major part of Rail Head's buildings.
"That's so," she said with a smile.
"Of course it is," said Toppy eagerly. "And the chances are that your
man is in one of them, no matter who he is, because that's about the
only place he can be here. You tell me who he is, or what he is, and
I'll go hunt him up."
"That's very kind of you." She hesitated for a moment, then accepted his
offer without further parley. "It's the employment agent of the Cameron
Dam Company that I'm looking for. I am to meet him here, according to a
letter they sent me, and he is to furnish a team and driver to take me
out to the Dam."
Then she added calmly, "I'm going to keep books out there this Winter."
CHAPTER III--TOPPY GETS A JOB
Toppy gasped. In the first place, he had not been thinking of her as a
"working girl." None of the girls that he knew belonged to that class.
The notion that she, with the childish dimple in her chin and the roses
in her cheeks, was a girl who made her own living was hard to
assimilate; the idea that she was going out to a camp in the woods--out
to Hell Camp--to work was absolutely impossible!
"Keep books?" said Toppy, bewildered. "Do they keep books in a--in a
logging-camp?"
It was her turn to look surprised.
"Do you know anything about Cameron Dam?" she asked.
"Nothing," admitted Toppy. "It's a logging-camp, though, isn't it?"
"Rather more than that, as I understand it," she replied. "They are
building a town out there, according to my letter. There are over two
hundred people there now. At present they're doing nothing but logging
and building the dam; but they say they've found ore out there, and in
the Spring the railroad is coming and the town will open up."
"And--and you're going to keep books there this Winter?"
She nodded. "They pay well. They're paying me seventy-five dollars a
month and my board."
"And you don't know anything about the place?"
"Except what they've written in the letter engaging me."
"And still you're going out there--to work?"
"Of course," she said cheerfully. "Seventy-five-dollar jobs aren't to be
picked up every day around here."
"I see," said Toppy. He remembered Harvey Duncombe's champagne bill of
the night before and grew thoughtful. He himself had shuddered a short
while before, at waking in a bar where there was no mirror, and he had
planned to wire Harvey for five hundred to take him back to
civilisation. And here was this delicate little girl--as delicate to look
upon as any of the petted and pampered girls he knew back
East--cheerfully, even eagerly, setting her face toward the wilderness
because therein lay a job paying the colossal sum of seventy-five
dollars a month! And she was going alone!
A reckless impulse swayed Toppy. He decided not to wire Harvey.
"I see," he said thoughtfully. "I'll go find this agent. You'd better
wait inside the hotel."
He crossed the street and systematically began to search through the six
saloons. In the third place he found his man shaking dice with an
Indian. The agent was a lean, long-nosed individual who wore thick
glasses and talked through his nose.
"Yes, I'm the Cameron Dam agent," he drawled, curiously eying Toppy from
head to toe. "Simmons is my name. What can I do for you?"
"I want a job," said Toppy. "A job out at Hell Camp."
The agent laughed shortly at the name.
"You're wise, are you?" he said. "And still you want a job out there?
Well, I'm sorry. That load of Bohunks across the street fills me up. I
can't use any more rough labour just at present. I'm looking for a
blacksmith's helper, but I guess that ain't you."
"That's me," said Toppy resolutely. "That's the job I want--blacksmith's
helper. That's my job."
The agent looked him over with the critical eye of a man skilfully
appraising bone and muscle.
"You're big enough, that's sure," he drawled. "You've got the shoulders
and arms, too, but--let's see your hands."
Toppy held up his hands, huge in size, but entirely innocent of
callouses or other signs of wear. The agent grinned.
"Soft as a woman's," he said scornfully. "When did you ever do any
blacksmithing? Long time ago, wasn't it? Before you were born, I guess."
Toppy's right hand shot out and fell upon the agent's thin arm. Slowly
and steadily he squeezed until the man writhed and grimaced with pain.
"Wow! Leggo!" The agent peered over his thick glasses with something
like admiration in his eyes. "Say, you're there with the grip, all
right, big fellow. Where'd you get it?"
"Swinging a sledge," lied Toppy solemnly. "And I've come here to get
that job."
Simmons shook his head.
"I can't do it," he protested. "If I should send you out and you
shouldn't make good, Reivers would be sore."
"Who's this man Reivers?"
The agent's eyes over his glasses expressed surprise.
"I thought you were wise to Hell Camp?" he said.
"Oh, I'm wise enough," said Toppy impatiently. "I know what it is. But
who's this Reivers?"
"He's the boss," said Simmons shortly. "D'you mean to say you never
heard about Hell-Camp Reivers, the Snow-Burner?"
"No, I haven't," replied Toppy impatiently. "But that doesn't make any
difference. You send me out there; I'll make good, don't worry." He
paused and sized his man up. "Come over here, Simmons," he said with a
significant wink, leading the way toward the door. "I want that job; I
want it badly." Toppy dived into his pockets. Two bills came to
light--two twenties. He slipped them casually into Simmons' hand. "That's
how bad I want it. Now how about it?"
The fashion in which Simmons' thin fingers closed upon the money told
Toppy that he was not mistaken in the agent's character.
"You'll be taking your own chances," warned Simmons, carefully pocketing
the money. "If you don't make good--well, you'll have to explain to
Reivers, that's all. You must have an awful good reason for wanting to
go out."
"I have."
"Hiding from something, mebbe?" suggested Simmons.
"Maybe," said Toppy. "And, say--there's a young lady over at the hotel
who's looking for you. Said you were to furnish her with a sleigh to get
out to Cameron Dam."
An evil smile broke over the agent's thin face as he moved toward the
door.
"The new bookkeeper, I suppose," he said, winking at Toppy. "Aha! Now I
understand why you----"
Toppy caught him two steps from the door. His fingers sank into the
man's withered biceps.
"No, you don't understand," he hissed grimly. "Get that? You don't
understand anything about it."
"All right," snapped the cowed man. "Leggo my arm. I was just joshing.
You can take a joke, can't you? Well, then, come along. As long as
you're going out you might as well go at once. I've got to get a double
team, anyhow, for the lady, and you've got to start now to make it
before dark. Ready to start now?"
"All ready," said Toppy.
At the door the agent paused.
"Say, you haven't said anything about wages yet," he said quizzically.
"That's so," said Toppy, as if he had forgotten. "How much am I going to
get?"
"Sixty a month."
The agent couldn't understand why the new man should laugh. It struck
Toppy as funny that a little girl with a baby dimple in her chin should
be earning more money than he. Also, he wondered what Harvey Duncombe
and the rest of the bunch would have thought had they known.
Toppy followed the agent to the stable behind the hotel, where Simmons
routed out an old hunchbacked driver who soon brought forth a team of
rangy bays drawing a light double-seated sleigh.
"Company outfit," explained Simmons. "Have to have a team; one horse
can't make it. You can ride in the front seat with the driver. The lady
will ride behind."
As Toppy clambered in Simmons hurriedly whispered something in the ear
of the driver, who was fastening a trace. The hunchback nodded.
"I got this job because I can keep my mouth shut," he muttered. "Don't
you worry about anybody pumping me."
He stepped in beside Toppy; and the bays, prancing in the snow, went
around to the front of the hotel on the run. There was a wait of a few
minutes; then Simmons came out, followed by the girl carrying her
suitcase. Toppy sprang out and took it from her hand.
"You people are going to be together on a long drive, so I'd better
introduce you," said Simmons. "Miss Pearson, Mr. ----"
"Treplin," said Toppy honestly.
"Treplin," concluded Simmons. "New bookkeeper, new blacksmith's helper.
Get in the back seat, Miss Pearson. Cover yourself well up with those
robes. Bundle in--that's right. Put the suitcase under your feet. That's
right. All right, Jerry," he drawled to the driver. "You'd better keep
going pretty steady to make it before dark."
"Don't nobody need to tell me my business," said the surly hunchback,
tightening the lines; and without any more ado they were off, the snow
flying from the heels of the mettlesome bays.
For the first few miles the horses, fresh from the stable and
exhilarated to the dancing-point by the sun, air and snow, provided
excitement which prevented any attempt at conversation. Then, when their
dancing and shying had ceased and they had settled down to a steady,
long-legged jog that placed mile after mile of the white road behind
them with the regularity of a machine, Toppy turned his eyes toward the
girl in the back seat.
He quickly turned them to the front again. Miss Pearson, snuggled down
to her chin in the thick sleigh-robes, her eyes squinting deliciously
beneath the sharp sun, was studying him with a frankness that was
disconcerting, and Toppy, probably for the first time in his life, felt
himself gripped by a great shyness and confusion. There was wonderment
in the girl's eyes, and suspicion.
"She's wise," thought Toppy sadly. "She knows I've been hitting it up,
and she knows I made up my mind to come out here after I talked with
her. A fine opinion she must have of me! Well, I deserve it. But just
the same I've got to see the thing through now. I can't stand for her
going out all alone to a place with a reputation like Hell Camp. I'm a
dead one with her, all right; but I'll stick around and see that she
gets a square deal."
Consequently the drive, which Toppy had hoped would lead to more
conversation and a closer acquaintance with the girl, resolved itself
into a silent, monotonous affair which made him distinctly
uncomfortable. He looked back at her again. This time also he caught her
eyes full upon him, but this time after an instant's scrutiny she looked
away with a trace of hardness about her lips.
"I'm in bad at the start with her, sure," groaned Toppy inwardly. "She
doesn't want a thing to do with me, and quite right at that."
His tentative efforts at opening a conversation with the driver met
instant and convincing failure.
"I hear they've got quite a place out here," began Toppy casually.
"None of my business if they have," grunted the driver.
Toppy laughed.
"You're a sociable brute! Why don't you bark and be done with it?"
The driver viciously pulled the team to a dead stop and turned upon
Toppy with a look that could come only from a spirit of complete
malevolence.
"Don't try to talk to me, young feller," he snapped, showing old yellow
teeth. "My job is to haul you out there, and that's all. I don't talk.
Don't waste your time trying to make me. Giddap!"
He cut viciously at the horses with his whip, pulled his head into the
collar of his fur coat with the motion of a turtle retiring into its
shell, and for the rest of the drive spoke only to the horses.
Toppy, snubbed by the driver and feeling himself shunned, perhaps even
despised, by Miss Pearson, now had plenty of time to think over the
situation calmly. The crisp November air whipping his face as the sleigh
sped steadily along drove from his brain the remaining fumes of Harvey
Buncombe's champagne. He saw the whole affair clearly now, and he
promptly called himself a great fool.
What business was it of his if a girl wanted to go out to work in a
place like Hell Camp? Probably it was all right. Probably there was no
necessity, no excuse for his having made a fool of himself by going with
her. Why had he done it, anyhow? Getting interested in anything because
of a girl was strange conduct for him. He couldn't call to mind a single
tangible reason for his actions. He had acted on the impulse, as he had
done scores of times before; and, as he had also done scores of times
before, he felt that he had made a fool of himself.
He tried to catch the girl's eyes once more, to read in them some sign
of relenting, some excuse for opening a conversation. But as he turned
his head Miss Pearson also turned and looked away with uncompromising
severity. Toppy studied the purity of her profile, the innocence of the
baby dimple in her chin, out of the corner of his eye. And as he turned
and glanced at the evil face of the hunchback driver he settled himself
with a sigh, and thought--
"Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that I've been a fool, I am
glad that I'm here."
At noon the road plunged out of the scant jack-pine forest into the
gloom of a hemlock swamp. Toppy shuddered as he contemplated what the
fate of a man might be who should be unfortunate enough to get lost in
that swamp. A mile in the swamp, on a slight knoll, they came to a tiny
cabin guarding a gate across the road. An old, bearded woodsman came out
of the cabin and opened the gate, and the hunchback pulled up and
proceeded to feed his team.
"Dinner's waiting inside," called the gate-tender. "Come in and eat,
miss--and you, too; I suppose you're hungry?" he added to Toppy.
"And hurry up, too," growled the hunchback. "I give you twenty minutes."
"Thank you very much," said the girl, diving into her suitcase. "I've
brought my own lunch."
She brought out some sandwiches and proceeded to nibble at them without
moving from the sleigh. Toppy tumbled into the cabin in company with the
hunchback driver. A rough meal was on the table and they fell to without
a word. Toppy noticed that the old woodsman sat on a bench near the door
where he could keep an eye on the road. Above the bench hung a pair of
field-glasses, a repeating shotgun and a high-power Winchester rifle.
"Any hunting around here?" asked Toppy cheerily.
"Sometimes," said the old watcher with a smile that made Toppy wonder.
He did not pursue the subject, for there was something about the lonely
cabin, the bearded old man, and the rifle on the wall that suggested
something much more grim than sport.
The driver soon bolted his meal and went back to the sleigh. Toppy
followed, and twenty minutes after pulling up they were on the road
again. With each mile that they passed now the swamp grew wilder and the
gloom of the wilderness more oppressive. To right and left among the
trees Toppy made out stretches of open water, great springs and little
creeks which never froze and which made the swamp even in Winter a
treacherous morass.
Toward the end of the short afternoon the swamp suddenly gave way to a
rough, untimbered ridge. Red rocks, which Toppy later learned contained
iron ore, poked their way like jagged teeth through the snow. The sleigh
mounted the ridge, the runners grating on bare rock and dirt, dipped
down into a ravine between two ridges, swung off almost at right angles
in a cleft in the hills--and before Toppy realised that the end of the
drive had come, they were in full view of a large group of log buildings
on the edge of a dense pine forest and were listening to the roar of the
waters of Cameron Dam.
CHAPTER IV--"HELL-CAMP" REIVERS
In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that
it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw
it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six
were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side.
These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which
Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and
overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the
enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building
was larger than the other six combined--was built of huge logs,
apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the
road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great
double door.
Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback
swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built
double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, "Office and
Store." Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the
sign, "Blacksmith Shop," and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short
man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith's hammer
in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably
this was the man for whom he was to work.
"Hey, Jerry," greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that
labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.
"Hey, Scotty," replied the hunchback.
"Did ye bring me a helper?"
"Yes," grunted Jerry.
"Good!" said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.
The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a
standstill.
"This is where you go," he said, indicating the office with a nod.
"You," he grunted to Toppy, "sit right where you are till we go see the
boss."
An Indian squaw, nearly as broad as she was tall, came waddling out of
the store as Miss Pearson stepped stiffly from the sleigh. Toppy wished
for courage to get out and carry the girl's suitcase, but he feared that
his action would be misinterpreted; so he sat still, eagerly watching
out of the corner of his eyes.
"I carry um," said the squaw as the girl dragged forth her baggage. "You
go in."
Then the sleigh drove abruptly ahead toward the great building at the
end of the road, and Toppy's final view of the scene was Miss Pearson
stumping stiffly into the office-building with the squaw, the suitcase
held in her arms, waddling behind. Miss Pearson did not look in his
direction.
And now Toppy had his first shock. For he saw that the building toward
which they were hurrying was not a building at all, but merely a
stockade-wall, which seemed to surround all of the camp except the six
buildings which were outside. What he had thought a huge doorway was in
reality a great gate.
This gate swung open at their approach, and Toppy's second shock came
when he saw that the two hard-faced men who opened it carried in the
crooks of their arms wicked-looking, short-barrelled repeating shotguns.
One of the men caught the horses by the head as soon as they were
through the gate, and brought them to a dead stop, while the other
closed the gate behind them.
"Can't you see the boss is busy?" snapped the man who had stopped the
team. "You wait right here till he's through."
Toppy now saw that they had driven into a quadrangle, three sides of
which were composed of long, low, log buildings with doors and windows
cut at frequent intervals, the fourth side being formed by the
stockade-wall through which they had just passed. The open space which
thus lay between four walls of solid logs was perhaps fifty yards long
by twenty-five yards wide. In his first swift sight of the place Toppy
saw that, with the stockade-gate closed and two men with riot-guns on
guard, the place was nothing more nor less than an effective prison.
Then his attention was riveted spellbound by what was taking place in
the yard.
On the sunny side of the yard a group of probably a dozen men were
huddled against the log wall. Two things struck Toppy as he looked at
them--their similarity to the group of Slavs he had seen back in Rail
Head, and the complete terror in their faces as they cringed tightly
against the log wall. Perhaps ten feet in front of them, and facing
them, stood a man alone. And Toppy, as he beheld the terror with which
the dozen shrank back from the one, and as he looked at the man, knew
that he was looking upon Hell-Camp Reivers, the man who was called The
Snow-Burner.
Toppy Treplin was not an impressionable young man. He had lived much and
swiftly and among many kinds of men, and it took something remarkable in
the man-line to surprise him. But the sight of Reivers brought from him
a start, and he sat staring, completely fascinated by the Manager's
presence.
It was not the size of Reivers that held him, for Toppy at first glance
judged correctly that Reivers and himself might have come from the same
mold so far as height and weight were concerned. Neither was it the
terrible physical power which fairly reeked from the man; for though
Reivers' rough clothing seemed merely light draperies on the huge
muscles that lay beneath, Toppy had played with strong men,
professionals and amateurs, enough to be blasé in the face of a physical
Colossus. It was the calm, ghastly brutality of the man, the complete
brutality of an animal, dominated by a human intelligence, that held
Toppy spellbound.
Reivers, as he stood there alone, glowering at the poor wretches who
cowered from him like pygmies, was like a tiger preparing to spring and
carefully calculating where his claws and fangs might sink in with most
damage to his victims. He stood with his feet close together, his thumbs
hooked carelessly in his trousers pockets, his head thrust far forward.
Toppy had a glimpse of a long, thin nose, thin lips parted in a sneer,
heavily browed eyes, and, beneath the back-thrust cap, a mass of curly
light hair--hair as light as the girl's! Then Reivers spoke.
"Rosky!" he said in a voice that was half snarl, half bellow.
There was a troubled movement among the dozen men huddled against the
wall, but there came no answer.
"Rosky! Step out!" commanded Reivers in a tone whose studied ferocity
made Toppy shudder.
In response, a tall, broad-shouldered Slav, the oldest and largest man
in the group, stepped sullenly out and stood a yard in front of his
fellows. He had taken off his cap and held it tightly in his clenched
right hand, and the expression on his flat face as he stood with hanging
head and scowled at Reivers was one half of fear and half of defiance.
"You no can hit me," he muttered doggedly. "I citizen; I got first
papers."
Reivers's manner underwent a change.
"Hit you?" he repeated softly. "Who wants to hit you? I just want to
talk with you. I hear you're thinking of quitting. I hear you've planned
to take these fellows with you when you go. How about it, Rosky?"
"I got papers," said the man sullenly. "I citizen; I quit job when I
want."
"Yes?" said Reivers gently. It was like a tiger playing with a hedgehog,
and Toppy sickened. "But you signed to stay here six months, didn't
you?"
The gentleness of the Manager had deceived the thick-witted Slav and he
grew bold.
"I drunk when I sign," he said loudly. "All these fellow drunk when they
sign. I quit. They quit. You no can keep us here if we no want stay."
"I can't?" Still Reivers saw fit to play with his victim.
"No," said the man. "And you no dare hit us again, no."
"No?" purred Reivers softly. "No, certainly not; I wouldn't hit you.
You're quite right, Rosky. I won't hit you; no."
He was standing at least seven feet from his man, his feet close
together, his thumbs still hooked in his trousers pockets. Suddenly, and
so swiftly that Rosky did not have time to move, Reivers took a step
forward and shot out his right foot. His boot seemed barely to touch the
shin-bone of Rosky's right leg, but Toppy heard the bone snap as the
Slav, with a shriek of pain and terror, fell face downward, prone in the
trampled snow at Reivers' feet.
And Reivers did not look at him. He was standing as before, as if
nothing had happened, as if he had not moved. His eyes were upon the
other men, who, appalled at their leader's fate, huddled more closely
against the log wall.
"Well, how about it?" demanded Reivers icily after a long silence. "Any
more of you fellows think you want to quit?"
Half of the dozen cried out in terror:
"No, no! We no quit. Please, boss; we no quit."
A smile of complete contempt curled Reivers' thin upper lip.
"You poor scum, of course you ain't going to quit," he sneered. "You'll
stay here and slave away until I'm through with you. And don't you even
dare think of quitting. Rosky thought he'd kept his plans mighty
secret--thought I wouldn't know what he was planning. You see what
happened to him.
"I know everything that's going on in this camp. If you don't believe
it, try it out and see. Now pick this thing up--" he stirred the groaning
Rosky contemptuously with his foot--"and carry him into his bunk. I'll be
around and set his leg when I get ready. Then get back to the rock-pile
and make up for the time it's taken to teach you this lesson."
The brutality of the thing had frozen Toppy motionless where he sat in
the sleigh. At the same time he was conscious of a thrill of admiration
for the dominant creature who had so contemptuously crippled a fellow
man. A brute Reivers certainly was, and well he deserved the name of
Hell-Camp Reivers; but a born captain he was, too, though his dominance
was of a primordial sort.
Turning instantly from his victim as from a piece of business that is
finished, Reivers looked around and came toward the sleigh. Some
primitive instinct prompted Toppy to step out and stretch himself
leisurely, his long arms above his head, his big chest inflated to the
limit. At the sight of him a change came over Reivers' face. The
brutality and contempt went out of it like a flash. His eyes lighted up
with pleasure at the sight of Toppy's magnificent proportions, and he
smiled a quick smile of comradeship, such as one smiles when he meets a
fellow and equal, and held out his hand to Toppy.
"University man, I'll wager," he said, in the easy voice of a man of
culture. "Glad to see you; more than glad! These beasts are palling on
me. They're so cursed physical--no mind, no spirit in them. Nothing but
so many pounds of meat and bone. Old Campbell, my blacksmith, is the
only other intelligent being in camp, and he's Scotch and believes in
predestination and original sin, so his conversation's rather trying for
a steady diet."
Toppy shook hands, amazed beyond expression. Except for his shaggy
eyebrows--brows that somehow reminded Toppy of the head of a bear he had
once shot--Reivers now was the sort of man one would expect to meet in
the University Club rather than in a logging-camp. The brute had
vanished, the gentleman had appeared; and Toppy was forced to smile in
answer to Reivers' genial smile of greeting. And yet, somewhere back in
Reivers' blue eyes Toppy saw lurking something which said, "I am your
master--doubt it if you dare."
"I hired out as blacksmith's helper," he explained. "My name's Treplin."
He did not take his eyes from Reivers'. Somehow he had the sensation
that Reivers' will and his own had leaped to a grapple.
Reivers laughed aloud in friendly fashion.
"Blacksmith's helper, eh?" he said. "That's good; that's awfully good!
Well, old man, I don't care what you hired out for, or what your right
name is; you're a developed human being and you'll be somebody to talk
to when these brutes grow too tiresome." He turned to Jerry, the driver.
"Well?" he said curtly.
"She's in the office now," he said.
"All right." Reivers turned and went briskly toward the gate. "Turn Mr.
Treplin over to Campbell. You'll live with Campbell, Treplin," he called
over his shoulder, as he went through the gate. "And you hit the back
trail, Jerry, right away."
As Jerry swung the team around Toppy saw that Reivers was going toward
the office with long, eager strides.
CHAPTER V--TOPPY OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION
Old Campbell, the blacksmith, had knocked off from the day's work when,
a few minutes later, Toppy stepped from the sleigh before the door of
the shop.
"Go through the shop to that room in the back," said Jerry. "You'll find
him in there." And he drove off without another word.
Toppy walked in and knocked at a door in a partition across the rear of
the shop.
"Come in," spluttered a moist, cheery voice, and Toppy entered. The old
blacksmith, naked to the waist and soaped from shoulders to ears, looked
up from the steaming tub in which he was carefully removing every trace
of the day's smut. He peered sharply at Toppy, and at the sight of the
young man's good-natured face he smiled warmly through the suds.
"Come in, come in. Shut the door," he cried, plunging back into the hot
water. "I tak' it that you're my new helper? Well--" he wiped the suds
from his eyes and looked Toppy over--"though it's plain ye never did a
day's blacksmithing in your life, I bid ye welcome, nevertheless. Ye
look like an educated man. Well, 'twill be a pleasure and an honour for
me to teach ye something more important than all ye've learned
before--and that is, how to work.
"I see ye cam' withoot baggage of any kind. Go ye now across to the
store before it closes and draw yerself two blankets for yer bunk. By
the time you're back I'll have our supper started and then we'll proceed
to get acqua'nted."
"Tell me!" exploded Toppy, who could hold in no longer. "What kind of a
man or beast is this Reivers? Why, I just saw him deliberately break a
man's leg out there in the yard! What kind of a place is this, anyhow--a
penal colony?"
Campbell turned away and picked up a towel before replying.
"Reivers is a great man who worships after strange gods," he said
solemnly. "But you'll have plenty of time to learn about that later. Go
ye over to the store now without further waiting. Ye'll find them closed
if ye dally longer; and then ye'll have a cold night, for there's no
blankets here for your bunk. Hustle, lad; we'll talk about things after
supper."
Toppy obeyed cheerfully. It was growing dark now, and as he stepped out
of the shop he saw the squaw lighting the lamps in the building across
the street. Toppy crossed over and found the door open. Inside there was
a small hallway with two doors, one labelled "Store," the other
"Office." Toppy was about to enter the store, when he heard Miss
Pearson's voice in the office, and her first words, which came plainly
through the partition, made him pause.
"Mr. Reivers," she was saying in tones that she struggled to make firm,
"you know that if I had known you were running this camp I would never
have come here. You deceived me. You signed the name of Simmons to your
letter. You knew that if you had signed your own name I would not be
here. You tricked me.
"And you promised solemnly last Summer when I told you I never could
care for you that you would never trouble me again. How could you do
this? You've got the reputation among men of never breaking your word.
Why couldn't you--why couldn't you keep your word with me--a woman?"
Toppy, playing the role of eavesdropper for the first time, scarcely
breathed as he caught the full import of these words. Then Reivers began
to speak, his deep voice rich with earnestness and feeling.
"I will--I am keeping my word to you, Helen," he said. "I said I would
not trouble you again; and I will not. It's true that I did not let you
know that I was running this camp; and I did it because I wanted you to
have this job, and I knew you wouldn't come if you knew I was here. You
wouldn't let me give you, or even loan you, the three hundred dollars
necessary for your father's operation.
"I know you, Helen, and I know that you haven't had a happy day since
you were told that your father would be a well man after an operation
and you couldn't find the money to pay for it. I knew you were going to
work in hopes of earning it. I had this place to fill in the office
here; I was authorised to pay as high as seventy-five dollars for a good
bookkeeper. Naturally I thought of you.
"I knew there was no other place where you could earn seventy-five
dollars a month, and save it. I knew you wouldn't come if I wrote you
over my own name. So I signed Simmons' name, and you came. I said I
would not trouble you any more, and I keep my word. The situation is
this: you will be in charge of this office--if you stay; I am in charge
of the camp. You will have little or nothing to do with me; I will
manage so that you will need to see me only when absolutely necessary.
Your living-rooms are in the rear of the office. I live in the stockade.
Tilly, the squaw, will cook and wash for you, and do the hard work in
the store. In four months you will have the three hundred dollars that
you want for your father.
"I had much rather you would accept it from me as a loan on a simple
business basis; but as you won't, this is the next best thing. And you
mustn't feel that you are accepting any favour from me. On the contrary,
you will, if you stay, be solving a big problem for me. I simply can not
handle accounts. A strange bookkeeper could rob me and the company
blind, and I'd never know it. I know you won't do that; and I know that
you're efficient.
"That's the situation. I am keeping my word; I will not trouble you. If
you decide to accept, go in and take off your hat and coat and tell
Tilly to prepare supper for you. She will obey your orders blindly; I
have told her to. If you decide that you don't want to stay, say the
word and I will have one of the work-teams hooked up and you can go back
to Rail Head to-night.
"But whichever you do, Helen, please remember that I have not broken--and
never will break--my promise to you."
Before Reivers had begun to speak Toppy had hated the man as a
contemptible sneak guilty of lying to get the girl at his mercy. The end
of the Manager's speech left him bewildered. One couldn't help wanting
to believe every word that Reivers said, there were so much manliness
and sincerity in his tone. On the other hand, Toppy had seen his face
when he was handling the unfortunate Rosky, and the unashamed brute that
had showed itself then did not fit with this remarkable speech. Then
Toppy heard Reivers coming toward the door.
"I will leave you; you can make up your mind alone," he said. "I've got
to attend to one of the men who has been hurt. If you decide to go back
to Rail Head, tell Tilly, and she'll hunt me up and I'll send a team
over right away."
He stepped briskly out in the hallway and saw Toppy standing with his
hand on the door of the store.
"Oh, hello, there!" he called out cheerily. "Campbell tell you to draw
your blankets? That's the first step in the process of becoming a--guest
at Hell Camp. Get a pair of XX; they're the warmest."
He passed swiftly out of the building.
"I say, Treplin," he called back from a distance, "did you ever set a
broken leg?"
"Never," said Toppy.
"I'll give you 'Davis on Fractures' to read up on," said Reivers with a
laugh. "I think I'll appoint you M.D. to this camp. 'Doctor Treplin.'
How would that be?"
His careless laughter came floating back as he made his way swiftly to
the stockade.
For a moment Toppy stood irresolute. Then he did something that required
more courage from him than anything he had done before in his life. He
stepped boldly across the hallway and entered the office, closing the
door behind him.
CHAPTER VI--"NICE BOY!"
"Miss Pearson!" Toppy spoke as he crossed the threshold; then he stopped
short.
The girl was sitting in a big chair before a desk in the farther corner
of the room. She was dressed just as she had been on the drive; she had
not removed cap, coat or gloves since arriving. Her hands lay palms up
in her lap, her square little shoulders sagged, and her face was pale
and troubled. A tiny crease of worry had come between her wonderful blue
eyes, and her gaze wandered uncertainly, as if seeking help in the face
of a problem that had proved too hard for her to handle alone. At the
sight of Toppy, instead of giving way to a look of relief, her troubled
expression deepened. She started. She seemed even to shrink from him.
The words froze in Toppy's mouth and he stood stock-still.
"Don't!" he groaned boyishly. "Please don't look at me like that, Miss
Pearson! I--I'm not that sort. I want to help you--if you need it. I heard
what Reivers just said. I----What do you take me for, anyhow? A mucker who
would force himself upon a lady?"
The anguish in his tone and in his honest, good-natured countenance was
too real to be mistaken. He had cried out from the depths of a clean
heart which had been stirred strangely, and the woman in the girl
responded with quick sympathy. She looked at him with a look that would
have aroused the latent manhood in a cad--which Toppy was not--and Toppy,
in his eagerness, found that he could look back.
"Why did you come out here?" she asked plaintively. "Why did you decide
to follow me, after you had heard that I was coming here? I know you did
that; you hadn't intended coming here until you heard. What made you do
it?"
"Because you came here," said Toppy honestly.
"But why--why----"
Toppy had regained control of himself.
"Why do you think I did it, Miss Pearson?" he asked quietly.
"I--I don't want to think--what I think," she stammered.
"And that is that I'm a cad, the sort of a mucker who forces his
attentions upon women who are alone."
"Well--" she looked up with a challenge in her eyes--"you had been
drinking, hadn't you? Could you blame me if I did?"
"Not a bit," said Toppy. "I'm the one whose to blame. I'm the goat. I
don't suppose I had a right to butt in. Of course I didn't. I'm a big
fool; always have been. I--I just couldn't stand for seeing you start out
for this Hell Camp alone; that's all. It's no reason, I know, but--there
you are. I'd heard something of the place in the morning and I had a
notion it was a pretty tough place. You--you didn't look as if you were
used to anything of the sort----Well," he wound up desperately, "it didn't
look right, your going off alone among all these roughnecks; and--and
that's why I butted in."
She made no reply, and Toppy continued:
"I didn't have any right to do it, I know. I deserve to be suspected----"
"No!" she laughed. "Please, Mr. Treplin! That was horrid of me."
"Why was it?" he demanded abruptly. "Especially after you knew--after
this morning. But--here's the situation: I thought you might need a
side-kicker to see you through, and I appointed myself to the job. You
won't believe that, I suppose, but that's because you don't know how
foolish I can be."
He stopped clumsily, abashed by the wondering scrutiny to which she was
subjecting him. She arose slowly from the chair and came toward him.
"I believe you, Mr. Treplin," she said. "I believe you're a decent sort
of boy. I want to thank you; but why--why should you think this
necessary?"
She looked at him, smiling a little, and Toppy, wincing from her "boy,"
grew flustered.
"Well, you're not sorry I came?" he stammered.
For reply she shook her head. Toppy took a long breath.
"Thanks!" he said with such genuine relief that she was forced to smile.
"But I'm a perfect stranger to you," she said uncertainly. "I can't
understand why you should feel prompted to sacrifice yourself so to help
me."
"Sacrifice!" cried Toppy. "Why, I'm the one----" He stopped. He didn't
know just what he had intended to say. Something that he had no business
saying, probably. "Anybody would have done it--anybody who wasn't a
mucker, I mean. You can't have any use for me, of course, knowing what
kind of a dub I've been, but if you'll just look on me as somebody you
can trust and fall back on in case of need, and who'll do anything you
want or need, I--I'll be more than paid."
"I do trust you, Mr. Treplin," she said, and held out her hand. "But--do
I look as if I needed a chaperon?"
Toppy trembled at the firm grip of the small, gloved fingers.
"I told you I'd heard what Reivers said," he said hastily. "I didn't
mean to; I was just coming in to get some blankets. I don't suppose
you're going to stay here now, are you?"
She began to draw off her gloves.
"Yes," she said quietly. "Mr. Reivers is a gentleman and can be depended
upon to keep his word."
Toppy winced once more. She had called him a "decent boy"; she spoke of
Reivers as a "gentleman."
"But--good gracious, Miss Pearson! Three hundred dollars----if that's
all----"
He stopped, for her little jaw had set with something like a click.
"Are you going to spoil things by offering to lend me that much money?"
she asked. "Didn't you hear that Mr. Reivers had offered to do it? And
Mr. Reivers isn't a complete stranger to me--as you are."
She placed her gloves in a pocket and proceeded to unbutton her
mackinaw.
"I don't think you could mean anything wrong by it," she continued. "But
please don't mention it again. You don't wish to humiliate me, do you?"
"Miss Pearson!" stammered Toppy, miserable.
"Don't, please don't," she said. "It's all right." Her natural high
spirits were returning. "Everything's all right. Mr. Reivers never
breaks his word, and he's promised--you heard him, you say? And you've
promised to be my--what did you call it?--'side-kicker,' so everything's
fine. Except--" a look of disgust passed over her eyes--"your drinking.
Oh," she cried as she saw the shame flare into Toppy's face, "I didn't
mean to hurt you--but how can nice boys like you throw themselves away?"
Nice boy! Toppy looked at his toes for a long time. So that was what she
thought of him! Nice boy!
"Do you know much about Reivers?" he asked at last, as if he had
forgotten her words. "Or don't you want to tell me about him?" He had
sensed that he was infinitely Reivers' inferior in her estimation, and
it hurt.
"Certainly I do," she said. "Mr. Reivers was a foreman for the company
that my father was estimator for. When father was hurt last Summer Mr.
Reivers came to see him on company business. It's father's spine; he
couldn't move; Reivers had to come to him. He saw me, and two hours
after our meeting he--he asked me to marry him. He asked me again a week
later, and once after that. Then I told him that I never could care for
him and he went away and promised he'd never trouble me again. You heard
our conversation. I hadn't seen or heard of him since, until he walked
into this room. That's all I know about him, except that people say he
never breaks his word."
Toppy winced as he caught the note of confidence in her voice and
thought of the sudden deadly treachery of Reivers in dealing with Rosky.
The girl with a lithe movement threw off her mackinaw.
"By Jove!" Toppy exploded in boyish admiration. "You're the bravest
little soul I ever saw in my life! Going against a game like this, just
to help your father!"
"Well, why shouldn't I?" she asked. "I'm the only one father has got.
We're all alone, father and I; and father is too proud to take help from
any one else; and--and," she concluded firmly, "so am I. As for being
brave--have you anything against Mr. Reivers personally?"
Thoroughly routed, Toppy turned to the door. "Good night, Miss Pearson,"
he said politely.
"Good night, Mr. Treplin. And thank you for--going out of your way." But
had she seen the flash in Toppy's eye and the set of his jaw she might
not have laughed so merrily as he flung out of the room.
In the store on the other side of the hallway Toppy was surprised to
find Tilly, the squaw, waiting patiently behind a low counter on which
lay a pair of blankets bearing a tag "XX." As he entered, the woman
pushed the blankets toward him and pointed to a card lying on the
counter.
"Put um name here," she said, indicating a dotted line on the card and
offering Toppy a pencil tied on a string.
Toppy saw that the card was a receipt for the blankets. As he signed, he
looked closely at the squaw. He was surprised to see that she was a
young woman, and that her features and expression distinguished her from
the other squaws he had seen by the intelligence they indicated. Tilly
was no mere clod in a red skin. Somewhere back of her inscrutable Indian
eyes was a keen, strong mind.
"How did you know what I wanted?" Toppy asked as he packed the blankets
under his arm.
The squaw made no sign that she had heard. Picking up the card, she
looked carefully at his signature and turned to hang the card on a hook.
"So you were listening when Reivers was talking to me, were you?" said
Toppy. "Did you listen after he went out?"
"Mebbe," grunted Tilly. "Mebbe so; mebbe no." And with this she turned
and waddled back into the living-quarters in the rear of the store.
Toppy looked after her dumbfounded.
"Huh!" he said to himself. "I'll bet two to one that Reivers knows all
about what we said before morning. I suppose that will mean something
doing pretty quick. Well, the quicker the better."
CHAPTER VII--THE SNOW-BURNER'S CREED
When Toppy returned to the room in the rear of the blacksmith-shop he
found Campbell waiting impatiently.
"Eh, lad, but you're the slow one!" greeted the gruff old Scot as Toppy
entered. "You're set a record in this camp; no man yet has been able to
consume so much time getting a pair of blankets from the wannigan. Dump
'em in yon bunk in the corner and set the table. I'll have supper in a
wink and a half."
Toppy obediently tossed his blankets into the bunk indicated and turned
to help to the best of his ability. The place now was lighted generously
by two large reflector-lamps hung on the walls, and Toppy had his first
good view of the room that was to be his home.
He was surprised at its neatness and comfort. It was a large room,
though a little low under the roof, as rooms have a habit of being in
the North. In the farthest corner were two bunks, the sleeping-quarters.
Across the room from this, a corner was filled with well filled
bookshelves, a table with a reading-lamp, and two easy chairs, giving
the air of a tiny library. In the corner farthest from this was the
cook-stove, and in the fourth corner stood an oilcloth-covered table
with a shelf filled with dishes hung above it. Though the rough edges of
hewn logs shown here and there through the plaster of the walls, the
room was as spick and span as if under the charge of a finicky
housewife. Old Campbell himself, bending over the cook stove, was as
astonishing in his own way as the room. He had removed all trace of the
day's smithing and fairly shone with cleanliness. His snow-white hair
was carefully combed back from his wide forehead, his bushy
chin-whiskers likewise showed signs of water and comb, and he was garbed
from throat to ankles in a white cook's apron. He was cheerfully humming
a dirge-like tune, and so occupied was he with his cookery that he
scarcely so much as glanced at Toppy.
"Now then, lad; are you ready?" he asked presently.
"All ready, I guess," said Toppy, giving a final look at the table.
"You've forgot the bread," said Campbell, also looking. "You'll find it
in yon tin box on the shelf. Lively, now." And before Toppy had dished
out a loaf from the bread-box the old man had a huge platter of steak
and twin bowls of potatoes and turnips steaming on the table.
"We will now say grace," said Campbell, seating himself after removing
the big apron, and Toppy sat silent and amazed as the old man bowed his
head and in his deep voice solemnly uttered thanks for the meal before
him.
"Now then," he said briskly, raising his head and reaching for a fork as
he ended, "fall to."
The meal was eaten without any more conversation than was necessary.
When it was over, the blacksmith pushed his chair leisurely back from
the table and looked across at Toppy with a quizzical smile.
"Well, lad," he rumbled, "what would ye say was the next thing to be
done by oursel's?"
"Wash the dishes," said Toppy promptly, taking his cue from the
conspicuous cleanliness of the room.
"Aye," said Campbell, nodding. "And as I cook the meal----"
"I'm elected dish-washer," laughed Toppy, springing up and taking a
large dish-pan from the wall. He had often done his share of
kitchen-work on hunting-trips, and soon he had the few dishes washed and
dried and back on the shelf again. Campbell watched critically.
"Well enough," he said with an approving jerk of his head when the task
was completed. "Your conscience should be easier now, lad; you've done
something to pay for the meal you've eaten, which I'll warrant is
something you've not often done."
"No," laughed Toppy, "it just happens that I haven't had to."
"'Haven't had to!'" snorted Campbell in disgust. "Is that all the
justification you have? Where's your pride? Are you a helpless infant
that you're not ashamed to let other people stuff food into your mouth
without doing anything for it? I suppose you've got money. And where
came your money from? Your father? Your mother? No matter. Whoever it
came from, they're the people who've been feeding you, but by the great
smoked herring! If you stay wi' David Campbell you'll have a change,
lad. Aye, you'll learn what it is to earn your bread in the sweat of
your brow. And you'll bless the day you come here--no matter what the
reason that made you come, and which I do not want to hear."
Toppy bowed courteously.
"I've got no come-back to that line of conversation, Mr. Campbell," he
said good-naturedly. "Whenever anybody accuses me of being a bum with
money I throw up my hands and plead guilty; you can't get an argument
out of me with a corkscrew."
Old Campbell's grim face cracked in a genial smile as he rose and led
the way to the corner containing the bookshelves.
"We will now step into the library," he chuckled. "Sit ye down."
He pushed one of the easy chairs toward Toppy, and from a cupboard under
the reading-table drew a bottle of Scotch whisky of a celebrated brand.
Toppy's whole being suddenly cried out for a drink as his eyes fell on
the familiar four stars.
"Say when, lad," said Campbell, pouring into a generous glass. "Well?"
He looked at Toppy in surprise as the glass filled up. Something had
smitten Toppy like a blow between the eyes----"How can nice boys like you
throw themselves away?" And the pity of the girl as she had said it was
large before him.
"Thanks," said Toppy, seating himself, "but I'm on the wagon."
The old smith looked up at him shrewdly from the corners of his eyes.
"Oh, aye!" he grunted. "I see. Well, by the puffs under your eyes ye
have overdone it; and for fleeing the temptations of the world I know of
no better place ye could go to than this. For it's certain neither
temptations nor luxuries will be found in Hell Camp while the
Snow-Burner's boss."
"Now you interest me," said Toppy grimly. "The Snow-Burner--Hell-Camp
Reivers--Mr. Reivers--the boss. What kind of a human being is he, if he is
human?"
Campbell carefully mixed his whisky with hot water.
"You saw him manhandle Rosky?" he asked, seating himself opposite Toppy.
"Yes; but it wasn't manhandling; it was brute-handling, beast-handling."
"Aye," said the Scot, sipping his drink. "So think I, too. But do you
know what Reivers calls it? An enlightened man showing a human clod the
error of his ways. Oh, aye; the Indians were smart when they named him
the Snow-Burner. He does things that aren't natural."
"But who is he, or what is he? He's an educated man, obviously--'way
above what a logging-boss ought to be. What do you know about him?"
"Little enough," was the reply. "Four year ago I were smithing in Elk
Lake Camp over east of here, when Reivers came walking into camp. That
was the first any white men had seen of him around these woods, though
afterward we learned he'd lived long enough with the Indians to earn the
name of the Snow-Burner.
"It were January, and two feet of snow on the level, and fifty below.
Reivers came walking into camp, and the nearest human habitation were
forty mile away. 'Red Pat' Haney were foreman--a man-killer with the
devil's own temper; and him Reivers deeliberately set himself to arouse.
A week after his coming, this same Reivers had every man in camp looking
up to him, except Red Pat.
"And Reivers drove Pat half mad with that contemptuous smile of his, and
Pat pulled a gun; and Reivers says, 'That's what I was waiting for,' and
broke Pat's bones with his bare hands and laid him up. Then, says he,
'This camp is going on just the same as if nothing had happened, and I'm
going to be boss.' That was all there was to it; he's been a boss ever
since."
"And you don't know where he came from? Or anything else about him?"
"Oh, he's from England--an Oxford man, for that matter," said Campbell.
"He admitted that much once when we were argufying. He'll be here soon;
he comes to quarrel with me every evening."
"Why does an Oxford man want to be 'way out here bossing a
logging-camp?" grumbled Toppy.
Campbell nodded.
"Aye, I asked that of him once," he said. "'Though it's none of your
business,' says he, 'I'll tell you. I got tired of living where people
snivel about laws concerning right and wrong,' says he, 'instead of
acknowledging that there is only one law ruling life--that the strong can
master the weak.' That is Mr. Reivers' religion. He was only worshipping
his strange gods when he broke Rosky's leg, for he considers Rosky a
weaker man than himself, and therefore 'tis his duty to break him to his
own will."
"A fine religion!" snapped Toppy. "And how about his dealings with you?"
The Scot smiled grimly.
"I'm the best smith he ever had," he replied, "and I've warned him that
I'd consider it a duty under my religion to shoot him through the head
did he ever attempt to force his creed upon me." He paused and held up a
finger. "Hist, lad. That's him coming noo. He's come for his regular
evening's mouthfu' of conversation."
Toppy found himself sitting up and gripping the arms of his chair as
Reivers came swinging in. He eagerly searched the foreman's countenance
for a sign to indicate whether Tilly, the squaw, had communicated the
conversation she had heard between Toppy and Miss Pearson, but if she
had there was nothing to indicate it in Reivers' expression or manner.
His self-mastery awoke a sullen rage in Toppy. He felt himself to be a
boy beside Reivers.
"Good evening, gentlemen," greeted Reivers lightly, pulling a chair up
to the reading-table. "It is a pleasure to find intelligent society
after having spent the last hour handling the broken leg of a miserable
brute on two legs. Bah! The whisky, Scotty, please. I wonder what
miracles of misbreeding have been necessary to turn out alleged human
beings with bodies so hideous compared to what the human body should be.
Treplin, if you or I stripped beside those Hunkies the only thing we'd
have in common would be the number of our legs and arms."
He drew toward him a tumbler which Campbell had pushed over beside the
bottle and, filling the glass three-quarters full, began to drink slowly
at the powerful Scotch whisky as another man might sip at beer or light
wine. Old Campbell rocked slowly to and fro in his chair.
"'He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword,'" he quoted
solemnly. "No man is a god to set himself up, lord over the souls and
bodies of his fellows. They will put out your light for you one of these
days, Mr. Reivers. Have care and treat them a little more like men."
Reivers smiled a quick smile that showed a mouthful of teeth as clean
and white as a hound's.
"Let's have your opinion on the subject, Treplin," he said. "New
opinions are always interesting, and Scotty repeats the same thing over
and over again. What do you think of it? Do you think I can maintain my
rule over those hundred and fifty clods out there in the stockade as I
am ruling them, through the law of strength over weakness? Do you think
one superior mind can dominate a hundred and fifty inferior organisms?
Or do you think, with Scotty here, that the dregs can drag me down?"
Toppy shook his head. He was in no mood to debate abstract problems with
Reivers.
"Count me out until I'm a little acquainted with the situation," he
said. "I'm a stranger in a strange land. I've just dropped in--from
almost another world you might say."
In a vain attempt to escape taking sides in what was evidently an old
argument he hurriedly rattled off the story of his coming to Rail Head
and thence to Hell Camp, omitting to mention, however, that it was Miss
Pearson who was responsible for the latter part of his journey. Reivers
smote his huge fist upon the table as Toppy finished.
"That's the kind of a man for me!" he laughed. "Got tired of living the
life of his class, and just stepped out of it. No explanations; no
acknowledgement of obligations to anybody. Master of his own soul. To ----
with the niceties of civilisation! Treplin, you're a man after my own
scheme of life; I did the same thing once--only I was sober.
"But let's get back to our subject. Here's the situation: This camp is
on a natural town-site. There's water-power, ore and timber. To use the
water-power we must build a dam; to use the timber we must get it to the
saws. That takes labour, lots of it--muscle-and-bone labour. Labour is
scarce up here. It is too far from the pigsties of towns. Men would
come, work a few days, and go away. The purpose of the place would be
defeated--unless the men are kept here at work.
"That's what I do. I keep them here. To do it I keep them locked up at
night like the cattle they are. By day I have them guarded by armed
man-killers--every one of my guards is a fugitive from man's silly laws,
principally from the one which says, 'Thou shalt not kill.'
"But my best guard is Fear--by which I rule alike my guards and the poor
brutes who are necessary to my purpose. There you are: a hundred and
fifty of them, fearing and hating me, and I'm making them do as I
please. No foolishness about laws, about order, about right or wrong.
Just a hundred and fifty half-beasts and myself out here in the woods.
As a man with a trained mind, do you think I can keep it up? Or do you
think there is mental energy enough in that mess of human protoplasm to
muster up nerve enough to put out my light, as Scotty puts it? It's a
problem that furnishes interesting mental gymnastics."
He propounded the problem with absolutely no trace of personal interest.
To judge by his manner, the matter of his life or death meant nothing to
him. It was merely an interesting question on which to expend the energy
fulminating in his mind. In his light-blue eyes there seemed to gleam
the same impersonal brutality which had shown out when he so casually
crippled Rosky.
"Oh, it's an impossible proposition, Reivers!" exploded Toppy, with the
picture of the writhing Slav in his mind's eye. "You've got to consider
right and wrong when dealing with human beings. It isn't natural; Nature
won't stand it."
"Ah!" Reivers' eyes lighted up with intellectual delight. "That's an
idea! Scotty, you hear? You've been talking about my perishing by the
sword, but you haven't given any reason why. Treplin does. He says
Nature will revolt, because my system is unnatural." He threw back his
head and laughed coldly. "Rot, Treplin--silly, effeminate, bookish rot!"
he roared. "Nature has respect only for the strong. It creates the
weaker species merely to give the stronger food to remain strong on."
Old Scotty had been rocking furiously. Now he stopped suddenly and broke
out into a furious Biblical denunciation of Reivers' system. When he
stopped for breath after his first outbreak, Reivers with a few words
and a cold smile egged him on. Toppy gladly kept his mouth shut. After
an hour he yawned and arose from his chair.
"If you'll excuse me, I'll turn in," he said. "I'm too sleepy to listen
or talk."
Without looking at him Reivers drew a book from his pocket and tossed it
toward him.
"'Davis on Fractures'," he grunted. "Cram up on it to-morrow. There will
be need of your help before long. Go on, Scotty; you were saying that a
just retribution was Nature's law. Go on."
And Toppy rolled into his bunk, to lie wide awake, listening to the
argument, marvelling at the character of Reivers, and pondering over the
strange situation he had fallen into. He scarcely thought of what Harvey
Duncombe and the bunch would be thinking about his disappearance. His
thoughts were mainly occupied with wondering why, of all the women he
had seen, a slender little girl with golden hair should suddenly mean so
much to him. Nothing of the sort ever had happened to him before. It was
rather annoying. Could she ever have a good opinion of him?
Probably not. And even if she could, what about Reivers? Toppy was
firmly convinced that the speech which Reivers had made to Miss Pearson
was a false one. Reivers might have a great reputation for always
keeping his word, but Toppy, after what he had seen and heard, would no
more trust to his morals than those of a hungry bear. If Tilly, the
squaw, told Reivers what she had heard, what then? Well, in that case
they would soon know whether Reivers meant to keep his promise not to
bother Miss Pearson with his attentions. Toppy set his jaw grimly at the
thought of what might happen then. The mere thought of Reivers seemed to
make his fists clench hard.
He lay awake for a long time with Reivers' voice, coldly bantering
Campbell, constantly in his ears. When Reivers finally went away he fell
asleep. Before his closed eyes was the picture of the girl as, in the
morning, she had kicked up the snow and looked up at him with her eyes
deliciously puckered from the sun; and in his memory was the stinging
recollection that she had called him a "nice boy."
CHAPTER VIII--TOPPY WORKS
At daylight next morning began Toppy's initiation as a blacksmith's
helper. For the next four days he literally earned his bread in the
sweat of his brow, as Campbell had warned him he would. The dour old
Scot took it as his religious duty to give his helper a severe
introduction to the world of manual labour, and circumstances aided him
in his aim.
Two dozen huge wooden sleighs had come from the "wood-butcher"--the camp
carpenter-shop--to be fitted with cross-rods, brace-irons and runners.
Out in the woods the ice-roads, carefully sprinkled each night, were
alternately freezing and thawing, gradually approaching the solid
condition which would mean a sudden call for sleighs to haul the logs,
which lay mountain-high at the rollways, down to the river. One cold
night and day now, and the call would come, and David Campbell was not
the man to be found wanting--even if handicapped by a helper with hands
as soft as a woman's.
Toppy had no knowledge or skill in the trade, but he had strength and
quickness, and the thoughts of Reivers' masterfulness, and the "nice
boy" in the mouth of the girl, spurred him to the limit. The heavy
sledgework fell to his lot as a matter of course. A twenty-pound sledge
was a plaything in Toppy's hand--for the first fifteen minutes.
After that the hammer seemed to increase progressively in weight, until
at the end of the first day's work Toppy would gladly have credited the
statement that it weighed a ton. Likewise the heavy runner-irons, which
he lifted with ease on the anvil in the morning, seemed to grow heavier
as the day grew older. Had Toppy been in the splendid condition that had
helped him to win his place on the All-American eleven four years
before, he might have gone through the cruel period of breaking-in
without faltering. But four years of reckless living had taken their
toll. The same magnificent frame and muscles were there; the great heart
and grit and sand likewise. But there was something else there, too; the
softening, weakening traces of decomposed alcohol in organs and tissues,
and under the strain of the terrific pace which old Campbell set for
Toppy, abused organs, fibres and nerves began to creak and groan, and
finally called out, "Halt!"
It was only Toppy's grit--the "great heart" that had made him a
champion--and the desire to prove his strength before Reivers that kept
him at work after the first day. His body had quit cold. He had never
before undergone such expenditure of muscular energy, not even in the
fiercest game of his career. That was play; this was torture. On the
second morning his body shrank involuntarily from the spectacle of the
torturing sledge, anvil and irons, but pride and grit drove him on with
set jaw and hard eyes. Quit? Well, hardly. Reivers walked around the
camp and smiled as he saw Toppy sweating, and Toppy swore and went on.
On the third day old Campbell looked at him with curiosity.
"Well, lad, have ye had enough?" he asked, smiling pityingly. "Ye can
get a job helping the cookee if you find man's work too hard for ye."
Toppy, between clenched teeth, swore savagely. He was so tired that he
was sick. The toxins of fatigue, aided and abetted by the effects of
hard living, had poisoned him until his feet and brain felt as heavy as
lead. It hurt him to move and it hurt him to think. He was groggy, all
but knocked out; but something within him held him doggedly at the tasks
which were surely mastering him.
That night he dragged himself to bed without waiting for supper. In the
morning Campbell was amazed to see him tottering toward his accustomed
place in the shop; for old Campbell had set a pace that had racked his
own iron, work-tried body, and he had allowed Toppy two days in which to
cry enough.
"Hold up a little, lad," he grumbled. "We're away ahead of our job.
There's no need laying yourself up. Take you a rest."
"You go to ----!" exploded the overwrought Toppy. "Take a rest yourself if
you need one; I don't."
He was working on his nerve now, flogging his weary arms and body to do
his bidding against their painful protests; and he worked like a madman,
fearing that if he came to a halt the run-down machinery would refuse to
start afresh.
It was near evening when a teamster drove up with a broken sleigh from
which Campbell and the man strove in vain to tear the twisted runner.
Reivers from the steps of the store looked on, sneering. Toppy, his lips
drawn back with pain and weariness, laughed shrilly at the efforts of
the pair.
"Yank it off!" he cried contemptuously. "Yank it off--like this."
He drove a pry-iron under the runner and heaved. It refused to budge.
Toppy gathered himself under the pry and jerked with every ounce of
energy in him. The runner did not move. His left ankle felt curiously
weak under the awful strain. Across the way he heard Reivers laugh
shortly. Furiously Toppy jerked again; the runner flew into the air.
Toppy felt the weak ankle sag under him in unaccountable fashion, and he
fell heavily on his side and lay still.
"Sprained his ankle," grunted the teamster, as they bore him to his
bunk. "I knew something had to give. No man ever was made to stand up
under that lift."
"But I yanked it off!" groaned Toppy, half wild with pain. "I didn't
quit--I yanked the darn thing off!"
"Aye," said old Campbell, "you yanked it off, lad. Lay still now till we
have off your shoe."
"And holy smoke!" said the teamster. "What a yank! Hey! Whoap! Holy,
red-roaring--he's gone and fainted!"
This latter statement was not precisely true. Toppy had not fainted; he
had suddenly succumbed to the demands of complete exhaustion. The
overdriven, tired-out organs, wrenched and abused tissues, and
fatigue-deadened nerves suddenly had cried, "Stop!" in a fashion that
not all of Toppy's will-power could deny. One instant he lay flat on his
back on the blankets of his bunk, wide awake, with Campbell tugging at
the laces of his shoes; the next--a mighty sigh of peace heaved his big
chest. Toppy had fallen asleep.
It was not a natural sleep, nor a peaceful one. The racked muscles
refused to be still; the raw nerve-centres refused to soothe themselves
in the peace of complete senselessness. His whole body twitched. Toppy
tossed and groaned. He awoke some time in the night with his stomach
crying for food.
"Drink um," said a voice somewhere, and a sturdy arm went under his head
and a bowl containing something savoury and hot was held against his
lips.
"Hello, Tilly," chuckled Toppy deliriously. It was quite in keeping with
things that Tilly, the squaw, should be holding his head and feeding him
in the middle of the night. He drank with the avidity of a man parched
and starving, and the hot broth pleasantly soothed him as it ran down
his throat.
"More!" he said, and Tilly gave him more.
"Good fellow, Tilly," he murmured. "Good medicine. Who told you?"
"Snow-Burner," grunted Tilly, laying his head on the pillow. "He send
me. Sleep um now."
"Sure," sighed Toppy, and promptly fell back into his moaning, feverish
slumber.
CHAPTER IX--A FRESH START
When he awoke again to clear consciousness, it was morning. The sun
which came in through the east window shone in his eyes and lighted up
the room. Toppy lay still. He was quite content to lie so. An
inexplicable feeling of peace and comfort ruled in every inch of his
being. The bored, heavy feeling with which for a long time past he had
been in the custom of facing a new day was absolutely gone. His tongue
was cool; there was none of the old heavy blood-pressure in his head;
his nerves were absolutely quiet. Something had happened to him. Toppy
was quite conscious of the change, though he was too comfortable to do
more than accept his peaceful condition as a fact.
"Ho, hum! I feel like a new man," he murmured drowsily. "I wonder--ow!"
He had stretched himself leisurely and thus became conscious that his
left ankle was bandaged and sore. His cry brought old Campbell into the
room--Campbell solemnly arrayed in a long-tailed suit of black, white
collar, black tie, spick and span, with beard and hair carefully washed
and combed.
"Hello!" gasped Toppy sleepily. "Where you going--funeral?"
"'Tis the Sabbath," said Campbell reverently, as he came to the side of
the bunk. "And how do ye feel the day, lad?"
"Fine!" said Toppy. "Considering that I had my ankle sprained last
evening."
The Scot eyed him closely.
"So 'twas last evening ye broke your ankle, was it?" he asked cannily.
"Why, sure," said Toppy. "Yesterday was Saturday, wasn't it? We were
cleaning up the week's work. Why, what are you looking at me like that
for?"
"Aye," said Campbell, his Sunday solemnity forbidding the smile that
strove to break through. "Yesterday was Saturday, but 'twas not the
Saturday you sprained your leg. A week ago Saturday that was, lad, and
ye've lain here in a fever, out of your head, ever since. Do you mind
naught of the whole week?"
Toppy looked up at Campbell in silence for a long time.
"Scotty, if you have to play jokes----"
"Jokes!" spluttered Campbell, aghast. "Losh, mon! Didna I tell ye 'twas
the Sabbath? No, 'tis no joke, I assure you. You did more than sprain
your ankle when ye tripped that Saturday. You collapsed completely. Lad,
you were in poor condition when you came to camp, and had I known it I
would not have broken you in so hard. But you're a good man, lad; the
best man I ever saw, if you keep in condition. And do you really feel
good again?"
"Why, I feel like a new man," said Toppy. "I feel as if I'd had a course
of baths at Hot Springs."
Campbell nodded.
"The Snow-Burner said ye would. It's Tilly he's had doctoring ye. She's
been feeding you some Indian concoction and keeping ye heated till your
blankets were wet through. Oh, you've had scandalous good care, lad;
Reivers to set your ankle, Tilly to doctor ye Indian-wise, and Miss
Pearson and Reivers to drop in together now and anon to see how ye were
standing the gaff. No wonder ye came through all right!"
The room seemed suddenly to grow dark for Toppy. Reivers again--Reivers
dropping in to look at him as he lay there helpless on his back. Reivers
in the position of the master again; and the girl with him! Toppy
impatiently threw off his covering.
"Gimme my clothes, Scotty," he demanded, swinging himself to the edge of
the bunk. "I'm tired of lying here on my back."
Campbell silently handed over his clothing. Toppy was weak, but he
succeeded in dressing himself and in tottering over to a chair.
"So Miss Pearson came over here, did she?" he asked thoughtfully. "And
with Reivers?"
"Aye," said Scotty drily. "With Reivers. He has a way with the women,
the Snow-Burner has."
Toppy debated a moment; then he broke out and told Campbell all about
how Reivers had deceived Miss Pearson into coming to Hell Camp. The old
man listened with tightly pursed lips. As Toppy concluded he shook his
head sorrowfully.
"Poor lass, she's got a hard path before her then," he said. "If, as you
say, she does not wish to care for Reivers."
"What do you mean?"
"Well," said Campbell slowly, "ye'll be understanding by this time that
the Snow-Burner is no ordinar' man?"
"He's a fiend--a savage with an Oxford education!" exploded Toppy.
"He is--the Snow-Burner," said Campbell with finality. "You know what he
is toward men. Toward women--he's worse!"
"Good Heavens!"
"Not that he is a woman-chaser. No; 'tis not his way. But--yon man has
the strongest will in him I've ever seen in mortal man, and 'tis the
will women bow to." He pulled his whiskers nervously and looked away.
"I've known him four year now, and no woman in that time that he has set
his will upon but in the end has--has followed him like a slave."
Toppy's fists clenched, and he joyed to find that in spite of his
illness his muscles went hard.
"Ye've seen Tilly," continued Scotty with averted eyes. "Ye'll not be so
blind that ye've not observed that she's no ordinar' squaw. Well, three
years ago Tilly was teacher in the Chippewa Indian School--thin and
straight--a Carlisle graduate and all. She met Reivers, and shunned
him--at first. Reivers did not chase her. 'Tis not his way. But he bent
his will upon her, and the poor girl left her life behind her and
followed him, and kept following him, until ye see her as she is now.
She would cut your throat or nurse ye as she did, no matter which, did
he but command her. And she's not been the only one, either.
"Nor have the rest of them been red."
"The swine!" muttered Toppy.
"More wolf than swine, lad. Perhaps more tiger than wolf. I don't think
Reivers intends to break his word to yon lass. But I suspect that he
won't have to. No; as it looks now, he won't. Given the opportunity to
put his will upon her and she'll change her mind--like the others."
"He's a beast, that's what he is!" said Toppy angrily. "And any woman
who would fall for him would get no more than she deserves, even if
she's treated like Tilly. Why, anybody can see that the man's instincts
are all wrong. Right in an animal perhaps, but wrong in a human being.
The right kind of women would shun him like poison."
"I dunno," said Campbell, rubbing his chin. "Yon lass over in the office
is as sweet and womanly a little lass as I've seen sin' I was a lad. And
yet--look ye but out of the window, lad!"
Toppy looked out of the window in the direction in which Campbell
pointed. The window commanded a view of the gate to the stockade.
Reivers was standing idly before the gate. Miss Pearson was coming
toward him. As she approached he carelessly turned his head and looked
her over from head to foot. From where he sat Toppy could see her smile.
Then Reivers calmly turned his back upon her, and the smile on the
girl's face died out. She stood irresolute for a moment, then turned and
went slowly back toward the office, glancing occasionally over her
shoulder toward the gate. Reivers did not look, but when she was out of
sight he began to walk slowly toward the blacksmith-shop.
"Bah!" Toppy turned his eyes from the window in mingled anger and
disgust. He sat for a moment with a multitude of emotions working at his
heart. Then he laughed bitterly.
"Well, well, well!" he mocked. "You'd expect that from a squaw, but not
from a white woman."
"Mr. Reivers is a remarkable man," said Campbell, shaking his head.
"Sure," said Toppy, "and it's a mistake to look for a remarkable woman
up here in the woods."
"I dunno." The smith looked a little hurt. "I dunno about that, lad. Yon
lass seems remarkably sweet and ladylike to me."
"Sure," sneered Toppy, pointing his thumb toward the gate. "That looked
like it, didn't it?"
"As for that, you've heard what I've told you about the Snow-Burner and
women," said Campbell sorrowfully. "He has a masterful way with them."
"A fine thing to be masterful over a little blonde fool like that!"
Campbell scowled.
"Even though you have no respect for the lass," he said curtly, "I see
no reason why you should put it in words."
"Why not? Why shouldn't I, or any one else, put it in words after that?"
Toppy fairly shouted the words. "She's made the thing public herself.
She came creeping up to him right out where anybody who was looking
could see her, and there won't be a man in camp to-morrow but'll have
heard that she's fallen for Reivers. Apparently she doesn't care; so why
should I, or you, or anybody else? Reivers has got a masterful way with
women! Ha, ha! Let it go at that. It's none of my business, that's a
cinch."
"No," agreed Campbell; "not if you talk that way, it's none of your
business; that's sure."
Toppy could have struck him for the emphatic manner in which he uttered
the words. But Toppy was beginning to learn to control himself and he
merely gritted his teeth. The sudden stab which he had felt in his heart
at the sight of the girl and Reivers had passed. In one flash there had
been overthrown the fine structure which he had built about her in his
thoughts. He had placed her high above himself. For some unknown reason
he had looked up to her from the first moment he had seen her. He had
not considered himself worthy of her good opinion. And here she was
flaunting her subservience to Reivers--to a cold, sneering brute--before
the eyes of the whole camp!
The rage and pain at the sight of the pair had come and gone, and that
was all over. And now Toppy to his surprise found that it didn't make
much difference. The girl, and what she was, what she thought of him, or
of Reivers, no longer were of prime importance to him. He didn't care
enough about that now to give her room in his thoughts.
Reivers was what mattered now--Reivers, with his air of contemptuous
dominance; Reivers, who had looked on and laughed when Toppy was tugging
at the runner of the broken sleigh. That laugh seemed to ring in Toppy's
ears. It challenged him even as it contemned him. It said, "I am your
master; doubt it if you dare"; even as Reivers' cold smile had said the
same to Rosky and the huddled bunch of Slavs.
The girl--that was past. But Reivers had roused something deeper,
something older, something fiercer than the feelings which had begun to
stir in Toppy at the sight of the girl. Man--raw, big-thewed, world-old
and always new man--had challenged unto man. And man had answered. The
petty considerations of life were stripped away. Only one thing was of
importance. The world to Toppy Treplin had become merely a place for
Reivers, the Snow-Burner, and himself to settle the question which had
cried for settlement since the moment when they first looked into each
other's eyes: Which was the better man?
Toppy smiled as he stretched himself and noted the new life that seemed
to have come into his body. He knew what it meant. That strenuous siege
of work and a week of fevered sweating had driven the alcohol out of his
system. He was making a fresh start. A few weeks at the anvil now, and
he would be in better shape than at any time since leaving school. He
set his jaw squarely and heaved his big arms high above his head.
"Well, Treplin," came an unmistakable voice from the doorway, "you're
looking strenuous for a man just off the sickbed."
CHAPTER X--THE DUEL BEGINS
"I'm feeling pretty good, thank you, Reivers," said Toppy quietly,
though the voice of the man had thrilled him with the challenge in it.
He turned his head slowly and looked up from his chair at Reivers with
an expression of great serenity. The Big Game had begun between them,
and Toppy was an expert at keeping his play hidden.
"Much obliged for strapping up my ankle, Reivers," he said. "Silly
thing, to sprain an ankle; but thanks to your expert bandaging it'll be
ready to walk on soon."
"It wasn't a bad sprain," said Reivers, moving up and standing in front
of him. That was Reivers all through. Toppy was sitting; Reivers was
standing, looking down on him, his favourite pose. The black anger
boiled in Toppy's heart, but by his expression one could read only that
he was a grateful young man.
"No, it wasn't a bad sprain," continued Reivers, his upper lip lifting
in its customary smile of scorn, "but--a man who attempts such heavy
lifts must have no weak spot in him."
Toppy twisted himself into a more comfortable position in his chair and
smiled.
"'Attempts' is hardly the right word there, Reivers. Pardon me for
differing with you," he laughed. "You may remember that the attempt was
a success."
A glint of amusement in Reivers' cold eyes showed that he appreciated
that something more weighty than a mere question of words lay beneath
that apparently casual remark. For an instant his eyes narrowed, as if
trying to see beyond Toppy's smile and read what lay behind, but Toppy's
good poker-face now stood him in good stead, and he looked blandly back
at Reivers' peering eyes and continued to smile. Reivers laughed.
"Quite right, Treplin; obliged to you for correcting me," he said. "A
chap gets rusty out here, where none of the laws of speech are observed.
I'll depend upon you to bring me back to form again--later on. Is your
ankle really feeling strong?"
For answer Toppy rose and stood on it.
"Well, well!" laughed Reivers. "Then Miss Pearson's sympathy was all
wasted. What's the matter, Treplin? Aren't you glad to hear that
charming young lady is enough interested in you to hunt me up and ask me
to step in and see how you are this morning?"
"Not particularly," replied Toppy, although he was forced to admit to
himself a glow at this explanation of the girl's conversation with
Reivers.
"What are you interested in?" said Reivers suddenly.
Toppy looked up at him shrewdly.
"I tell you what I'd like to do, Reivers; I'd like to learn the
logging-business--learn how to run a camp like this--run it efficiently, I
mean."
"Worthy ambition," came the instant reply, "and you've come to the right
school. How fortunate for you that you fell into this camp! You might
have got into one where the boss had foolish ideas. You might even have
fallen in with a humanitarian. Then you'd never have learned how to make
men do things for you, and consequently you'd never have learned to run
a camp efficiently.
"Thank your lucky stars, Treplin, that you fell in with me. I'll rid you
of the silly little ideas about right and wrong that books and false
living have instilled in your head. I believe you've got a good
head--almost as good as mine. If, for instance, you were in a situation
where it was your life or the other fellow's, you'd survive. That's the
proof of a good head. Want to learn the logging-business, do you? Good!
Is your ankle strong enough for you to get around on?"
Toppy took an ax-handle from the corner and, using it as a cane, hobbled
around the room.
"Yes, it will stand up all right," he said. "What's the idea?"
"Come with me," laughed Reivers, swinging toward the door. "We're just
in time for lesson number one on how to run a camp efficiently."
CHAPTER XI--"HELL-CAMP" COURT
As Reivers led the way out of the shop Toppy saw that Miss Pearson was
standing in the door of the office across the way. He saw also that she
was looking at him. He did not respond to her look nor volunteer a
greeting, but deliberately looked away from her as he kept pace with
Reivers, who was setting the way toward the gate of the stockade.
It was a morning such as the one when, back in Rail Head, the girl had
kicked up the snow and said to him, "Isn't it glorious?" But since then
Toppy felt bitterly that he had grown so much older, so disillusioned,
that never again would he be guilty of the tender feelings that the girl
had evoked that morning. The sun was bright, the crisp air invigorating,
and the blood bounded gloriously through his young body. But Toppy did
not wax enthusiastic.
He was grimly glad of the mighty stream of life that he felt surging
within him; he would have use for all the might later on. But no more.
The world was a harder, a less pretty place than he, in his
inexperience, had fancied it before coming to Hell Camp.
"What's this lesson?" he asked gruffly of Reivers. "What are you going
to show me?"
"A little secret in the art of keeping brute-men satisfied with the
place in life which a superior mind has allotted to them," replied
Reivers. "What is the first need of the brute? Food, of course. And the
second is--fight. Give the lower orders of mankind, which is the kind to
use in running a camp efficiently, plenty of food and fight, and the
problem of restlessness is solved.
"That's history, Treplin, as you know. If these foolish, timid
capitalists and leaders of men who are searching their petty souls for a
remedy to combat the ravages of the modern disease called Socialism only
would read history intelligently, they would find the remedy made to
order. Fight! War! Give the lower brutes war; let 'em get out and
slaughter one another, and they'd soon forget their pitiful, clumsy
attempts to think for themselves. Give them guns with a little sharp
steel on the end of the barrel, turn them loose on each other--any excuse
would do--and they'd soon be so busy driving said steel into one
another's thick bodies that the leaders could slip the yoke back on
their necks and get 'em under hand again, where they belong.
"And they'd be happier, too, because a man-brute has got to have so much
fighting, or what he calls his brain begins to trouble him; and then he
imagines he has a soul and is otherwise unhappy. If there is fighting,
or the certain prospect of fighting, there's no alleged thinking.
There's the solution of all difficulties with the lower orders. Of
course you've noticed how perfectly contented and happy the men in this
camp are?" he laughed, turning suddenly on Toppy.
"Yes," said Toppy. "Especially Rosky and his bunch."
The Snow-Burner smiled appreciatively.
"Rosky, poor clod, hadn't had any fighting. I'd overlooked him. Had I
known that thoughts had begun to trouble his poor, half-ox brain, I'd
have given him some fighting, and he'd have been as content for the next
few weeks as a man who--who's just been through delirium tremens.
"He had no object in life, you see. If he'd had a good enemy to hate and
fight, he wouldn't have been troubled by thoughts, and consequently he
wouldn't now be lying in his bunk with his leg in splints.
"There is the system in a nutshell--give a man an enemy to hate and wish
to destroy, and he won't be any trouble to you during working-hours or
after. That's what I do--pick out the ones who might get restless and set
them to hating each other. And now," he concluded, as they reached the
gate and passed through, "you'll have a chance to see how it works out."
The big gate, opened for them by two armed guards, swung shut behind
them, and Toppy once more looked around the enclosure in which he had
had his first glimpse of the Snow-Burner's system of handling the men
under him. The place this morning, however, presented a different, a
more impressive scene. It was all but filled with a mass of rough-clad,
rough-moving, rough-talking male humanity.
Perhaps a hundred and fifty men were waiting in the enclosure. For the
greater part they were of the dark, thick and heavily clumsy type that
Toppy had learned to include under the general title of Bohunk; but here
and there over the dark, ox-like faces rose the fair head of a tall man
of some Northern breed. Slavs comprised the bulk of the gathering; the
Scandinavians, Irish, Americans--the "white men," as they called
themselves--were conspicuous only by contrast and by the manner in which
they isolated themselves from the Slavs.
And between the two breeds there was not much room for choice. For while
the faces of the Slavs were heavy with brute stupidity and malignity,
those of the North-bred men reeked with fierceness, cruelty and crime.
The Slavs were at Hell Camp because they were tricked into coming and
forced to remain under shotgun rule; the others were there mostly
because sheriffs found it unsafe and unprofitable to seek any man whom
the Snow-Burner had in his camp. They were "hiding out." Criminals, the
majority of them, they preyed on the stupid Slavs as a matter of course;
and this situation Reivers had utilised, as he put it, "to keep his men
content."
Though there was a gulf of difference between the extreme types of the
crowd, Toppy soon realised that just now their expressions were
strangely alike. They were all impatient and excited. The excitement
seemed to run in waves; one man moved and others moved with him. One
threw up his head and others did likewise. Their faces were expectant
and cruel. It was like the milling of excited cattle, only worse.
"Come along, Treplin," said Reivers, and led the way toward the centre
of the enclosure. The noises of the crowd, the talking, the short
laughter, the shuffling, ceased instantly at his appearance. The crowd
parted before him as before some natural force that brushed all men
aside. It opened up even to the centre of the yard, and then Toppy saw
whither Reivers was leading.
On the bare ground was roped off a square which Toppy, with practised
eye, saw was the regulation twenty-four-foot prize-fight ring. Rough,
unbarked tamarack poles formed the corner-posts of the ring, and the
ropes were heavy wire logging-cable. A yard from one side of the ring
stood a table with a chair upon it. Reivers, with a careless, "Take a
seat on the table and keep your eyes open," stepped easily upon the
table, seated himself in the chair and looked amused as the men
instinctively turned their faces up toward him.
"Well, men," he said in a voice which reached like cold steel into the
far corners of the enclosure, "court is open. The first case is Jan
Torta and his brother Mikel against Bill Sheedy, whom they accuse of
stealing ninety-eight dollars from them while they slept."
As he spoke the names two young Slavs, clumsy but strongly built, their
heavy faces for once alight with hate and desire for revenge, pushed
close to one side of the ring, while on the other side a huge red-haired
Celt, bloated and evil of face, stepped free of the crowd.
"Bill stole the money, all right," continued Reivers, without looking at
any of them. "He had the chance, and being a sneak thief by nature he
took it. That's all right. The Torta boys had the money; now Bill's got
it. The question is: Is Bill man enough to keep it? That's what we're
going to settle now. He's got to show that he's a better man than the
two fellows he took the money from. If he isn't, he's got to give up the
money, or the two can have him to do what they want to with him. All
right, boys; get 'em started there."
At his brisk order four men whom Toppy had seen around camp as guards
stepped forward, two to Sheedy, two to the Torta brothers, and proceeded
first to search them for weapons, next to strip them to the waist.
Sheedy hung back.
"Not two av um tuh wanst, Mr. Reivers?" he asked humbly. "One after deh
udder it oughta be; two tuh wanst, that ain't no way."
"And why not, Bill?" asked Reivers gently. "You took it from both of
them, didn't you? Then keep it against both of 'em, Bill. Throw 'em in
there, boys!"
Toppy looked around at the rows of eager faces that were pressing toward
the ringside. Prize-fights he had witnessed by the score. He had even
participated in one or two for a lark, and the brute lust that springs
into the eyes of spectators was no stranger to him. But never had he
seen anything like this. There was none of the restraint imposed upon
the human countenance by civilisation in the fierce faces that gathered
about this ring.
Out of the dull eyes the primitive killing-animal showed unrestrained,
unashamed. No dilettante interest in strength or skill here; merely the
bare bloodthirsty desire to see a fellow-animal fight and bleed. Up
above, the sky was clean and blue; the rough log walls shut out the rest
of the world; the breathing of a mob of excited men was the only sound
upon the quiet Sunday air. It was the old arena again; the merciless,
gore-hungry crowd; the maddened gladiators; and upon the chair on the
table, Reivers, lord of it all, the king-man, to whom it was all but an
idle moment's play.
Reivers, above it all, untouched by it all, and yet directing and
swaying it all as his will listed. Laws, rules, teachings, creeds--all
were discarded. Primitive force had for the nonce been given back its
rule. And over it, and controlling it, as well as each of the maddened
eight-score men around the ring--Reivers.
And so thoroughly did Reivers dominate the whole affair that Toppy,
sitting carelessly on the edge of the table, was conscious of it, and
knew that he, too, felt instinctively inclined to do as the men did--to
look to Reivers for a sign before daring to speak or make a move. The
Snow-Burner was in the saddle. It wasn't natural, but every phase of the
situation emanated from his master-man's will. It was even his wish that
Toppy should sit thus at his feet and look on, and his wish was
gratified.
But it was well that the visor of Toppy's cap hid his eyes, else Reivers
might have wondered at the look that flashed up at him from them.
"Throw 'em in!" snapped Reivers, and the handlers thrust the three
combatants, stripped to the waists but wearing calked lumberjack shoes,
through the ropes.
A cry went up to the sky from a hundred and fifty throats around the
ringside--a cry that had close kinship with the joyous, merciless
"Au-rr-ruh" of a wolf about to make its kill. Then an instant's silence
as the rudely handled fighters came to their feet and faced for action.
Then another hideous yelp rent the still air; the fighters had come
together!
"Queer ring-costumes, eh, Treplin?" came Reivers' voice mockingly. "Our
own rules; the feet as well as the hands. Lord, what oxen!"
The two Slavs had sprung upon their despoiler like two maddened cattle.
Sheedy, rushing to meet them, head down, swung right and left overhand;
and with a mighty smacking of hard fist on naked flesh, one Torta rolled
on the ground while his brother stopped in his tracks, his arms pressed
to his middle. The crowd bellowed.
"Yes, I knew Sheedy had been a pug," said Reivers judicially.
Sheedy deliberately took aim and swung for the jaw of the man who had
not gone down. The Slav instinctively ducked his head, and the blow,
slashing along his jawbone, tore loose his ear. Half stunned, he dropped
to his knees, and Sheedy stepped back to poise for a killing kick. But
now the man who had been knocked down first was on his feet, and with
the scream of a wounded animal he hurled himself through the air and
went down, his arms close-locked around Sheedy's right leg. Sheedy
staggered. The ring became a little hell of distorted human speech.
Sheedy bellowed horrible curses as he beat to a pulp the face that
sought to bury itself in his thigh; his assailant screeched in Slavish
terror; and the bull-like roar of his brother, rising to his feet with
cleared senses and springing into the battle, intermingled with both.
Sheedy's red face went pale.
Around the ringside the faces of the Slavs shone with relief. The fight
was going their way; they roared encouragement and glee in their own
guttural tongue. The others--Irish, Americans, Scandinavians--rooting for
Sheedy only because he was of their breed, were silent.
"Hang tough, Bill," said one man quietly; and then in a second the
slightly superior brains in Sheedy's head had turned the battle. Like a
flash he dropped flat on his back as his fresh assailant reached out to
grip him. The furious Slav followed him helplessly in the fall; and a
single gruff, appreciative shout came from the few "white men."
For they had seen, even as the Slav stumbled, Bill Sheedy's left leg
shoot up like a catapult, burying the calked shoe to the ankle in the
man's soft middle and flinging him to one side, a shuddering, senseless
wreck. The man with his arms around Sheedy's leg looked up and saw. He
was alone now, alone against the big man who had knocked him down with
such ease. Toppy saw the man's mouth open and his face go yellow.
"Na, na, na!" he cried piteously, as Sheedy's blows again rained upon
him. "I give up, give up, give up!"
He tried to bury his face in Bill's thigh; and Bill, mad with success,
strove to pound him loose.
"Kill him, Bill!" said one of the Irishmen quietly. "You got him now;
kill him."
"Stop." Reivers did not raise his voice. He seemed scarcely interested.
Yet the roars around the ring died down. Sheedy stopped a blow half
delivered and dropped his arms. The Slav released his clawlike hold and
ran, sobbing, toward his prostrate brother.
"All right, Bill; you keep the money--for all them," said Reivers. "Clear
out the ring, boys, and get that other pair in there."
The guards, springing into the ring as if under a lash, picked up the
senseless man and thrust him like a sack of grain through the ropes and
on to the ground at the feet of a group of his countrymen. Toppy saw
these pick the man up and bear him away. The man's head hung down limply
and dragged on the ground, and a thin stream of blood ran steadily out
of one side of his mouth. His brother followed, loudly calling him by
name.
"Very efficacious, that left leg of Bill's; eh, Treplin?" said Reivers
lightly. "Bill was the superior creature there. He had the wit and will
to survive in a crisis; therefore he is entitled to the rewards of the
superior over the inferior, which in this case means the ninety-eight
dollars which the Torta boys once had. That's justice--natural justice
for you, Treplin; and all the fumbling efforts of the lawmakers who've
tried through the ages to reduce life to a pen-and-paper basis haven't
been able to change the old rule one bit.
"I'll admit that courts and all the fakery that goes with them have
reduced the thing to a battle of brains, but after all it's the same old
battle; the stronger win and hold. And," he concluded, waving his hand
at the crowd, "you'll admit that Bill, and those Torta boys wouldn't be
at their best in a contest of intelligence."
Toppy refused Reivers the pleasure of seeing how the brutality of the
affair disgusted him.
"Why don't you follow the thing out to its logical conclusion?" he said
carelessly. "The thing isn't settled as long as the Torta boys can
possibly make reprisals. To be a consistent savage you'd have to let 'em
go to it until one had killed the other. But even you don't dare to do
that, do you, Reivers?"
Reivers laughed, but the look that he bent on Toppy's bland face
indicated that he was a trifle puzzled.
"Then you wouldn't be running the camp efficiently, Treplin," he said.
"It wouldn't make any difference if they were all Tortas; but Bill's a
valuable man. He furnishes some one a bellyful of hating and fighting
every week. No; I wouldn't have Bill killed for less than two hundred
dollars. He's one of my best antidotes for the disease of discontent."
The guards now had pulled two other men up to the ropes and were
searching and stripping them. Toppy stared at the disparity in the sizes
of the men as the clothes were pulled off them. One stood up strong and
straight, the muscles bulging big beneath his dark skin, his neck short
and heavy, his head cropped and round. He wore a small, upturned
moustache and carried himself with a certain handy air that indicated
his close acquaintance with ring-events. The other man was short and
dark, obviously an Italian; the skin of his body was a sickly white, his
face olive green. He stood crouched, and beneath his ragged beard two
teeth gleamed, like the fangs of a snarling dog.
"Antonio, the Knife-Expert, and Mahmout, the Strangling Bulgarian,"
announced Reivers laughingly. "Tony tried to stick Mahmout because of a
little lady back in Rail Head, and made such a poor job of it that
Mahmout has offered to meet him in the ring; Tony with his knife,
Mahmout with his wrestling-tricks. Start 'em off."
The Bulgarian was under the ropes and upright in the ring before the
Italian had started. He was in his stocking-feet, and despite the
clumsiness of his build he moved with a quickness and ease that told of
the fine co-ordination of the effective athlete. When the Italian
entered the ring he held his right hand behind his back, and in the hand
gleamed the six-inch blade of a wicked-looking stiletto.
A shiver ran along Toppy's spine, but he continued to play the game.
"Evidently Mahmout isn't a valuable man; you don't care what happens to
him," he said.
"Not particularly," replied Reivers seriously. "He's a good man on the
rollways--nothing extra. Still, I hardly believe Tony can kill him--not
this time, at least."
The faces around the ring grew fiercer now. Growled curses and
exclamations came through clenched teeth. Here was the spectacle that
the brute-spirit hungered for--the bare, living flesh battling for life
against the merciless, gleaming steel.
The big Bulgarian moved neatly forward, bent over at the waist, his
strong arms extended, hands open before him in the practised wrestler's
guard and attack. His feet did not leave the ground as he sidled
forward, and his eyes never moved from the Italian's right arm. The
latter, snarling and panting, retreated slightly, then began to circle
carefully, his small eyes searching for the opening through which he
could leap in and drive home his steel.
The Bulgarian turned with him, his guard always before him, as a bull
turns its head to face the circling wolf. Without a sound the knife-man
suddenly stopped and lunged a sweeping slash at the menacing hands.
Mahmout, grasping for a hold on hand or wrist, caught the tip of the
blade in his palm, and a slow bellow of rage shook him as he saw the
blood flow. But he did not lower his guard nor take his eyes from his
opponent.
The Italian retreated and circled again. A horrible sneer distorted his
face, and the knife flashed in the sunlight as he slashed it to and fro
before the other's hands. The crowd growled its appreciation. Three
times Antonio leaped forward, slashed, and leaped back again; and each
time the blood flowed from Mahmout's slashed fingers. But the wrestler's
guard never lowered nor did he falter in his set plan of battle. He was
working to get his man into a corner.
The Italian soon saw this and, leaping nimbly sidewise, lunged for
Mahmout's ribs. The right arm of the Bulgarian dropped in time to save
his life, but the knife, deflected from its fatal aim, ripped through
the top muscles of his back for six inches. The mob roared at the fresh
blood, but Mahmout was working silently. In his spring the Italian had
only leaped toward another corner of the ring.
Mahmout leaped suddenly toward him. Antonio, stabbing swiftly at the
hands reached out for him, jumped back. A cry from a countryman in the
crowd warned him. Swiftly he glanced over his shoulder, saw that he was
cornered, and with a low, sweeping swing of the arm he threw the knife
low at Mahmout's abdomen.
The blade glinted as it flashed through the air; it thudded as it struck
home; but the death-cry which the mob yelped out died short. With the
expert's quickness Mahmout had flung his huge forearms before the
speeding blade. Now he held his left arm up. The stiletto, quivering
from the impact, had pierced it through.
With a fierce roar Mahmout plucked out the knife, hurled it from the
ring and dived forward. The Italian fought like a fury, feet, teeth and
fingernails making equal play. He sank his teeth in the injured left
arm. Mahmout groped with his one sound hand and methodically clamped a
hold on an ankle. He made sure that the hold was a firm one; then he
wrenched suddenly--once. The Italian screamed and stiffened straight up
under the appalling pain. Then he fell flat to the ground, and Toppy saw
that his right foot was twisted squarely around and that the leg lay
limp on the ground like a twisted rag.
"Stop," said Reivers, and Mahmout stepped back. "Take Tony's knife away
from him, boys. Mahmout wins--for the time being."
"Inconsistent again," muttered Toppy. "Your scheme is all fallacies,
Reivers. You give Tony a knife with which he may kill Mahmout at one
stroke, but you don't let Mahmout finish him when he's got him down. Why
don't you carry your system to its logical conclusion?"
"Why don't I?" chuckled Reivers, stepping down from the table. "Why,
simply because Signor Antonio is the camp cook, and cooks are too scarce
to be destroyed unnecessarily. Now come along, Treplin. Court's
adjourned; a light docket to-day. I've been thinking of your wanting to
learn how to run a logging-camp. I'm going to give you a change of jobs.
You'll be no good in the blacksmith-shop till your ankle's normal again.
Come along; I'll show you what I've picked out for you."
He turned away from the ring as from a finished episode in the day's
work. That was over. Whether Torta or Antonio lived or died, were whole
or crippled for the rest of their lives, had no room in his thoughts. He
strode toward the gate as if the yard were empty, and the crowd opened a
way far before him. Outside the gate he led the way around the stockade
toward where the river roared and tumbled through the chutes of Cameron
Dam.
A cliff-like ledge, perhaps thirty feet in height, situated close to one
end of the dam, was Reivers' objective, and he led Toppy around to the
side facing the river. Here the dirt had been scraped away on the face
of the ledge, and a great cave torn in the exposed rock. The hole was
probably fifty feet wide, and ran from twelve to fifteen feet under the
brow of the ledge. Toppy was surprised to see no timbers upholding the
rocky roof, which seemed at any moment likely to drop great masses of
jagged stone into the opening beneath.
"My little rock-pile," explained Reivers lightly. "When my brutes aren't
good I put 'em to work here. The rock goes into the dam out there. Just
at present Rosky's band of would-be malcontents are the ones who are
suffering for daring to be dissatisfied with the--ah--simplicity, let us
say, of Hell Camp."
He laughed mirthlessly.
"I'm going to put you in charge of this quarry, Treplin. You're to see
that they get one hundred wheelbarrows of rock out of here per hour.
You'll be here at daylight to-morrow."
Toppy nodded quietly.
"What's the punishment here?" he asked, puzzled. "It looks like nothing
more than hard work to me."
Reivers smiled the same smile that he had smiled upon Rosky.
"Look at the roof of that pit, Treplin," he said. "You've noticed that
it isn't timbered up. Occasionally a stone drops down. Sometimes several
stones. But one hundred barrows an hour have to come out of there just
the same. And those rocks up there, you'll notice, are beautifully sharp
and heavy."
Toppy felt Reivers' eyes upon him, watching to see what effect this
explanation would have, and consequently he no more betrayed his
feelings than he had at the brutal scenes of the "court."
"I see," he said casually. "I suppose this is why you made me read up on
fractures?"
"Partly," said Reivers. He looked up at the jagged rocks in the roof of
the pit and grinned. "And sometimes an accident here calls for a job for
a pick and shovel. But I'm just, Treplin; only the malcontents are put
to work in here."
"That is, those who have dared to declare themselves something besides
your helpless slaves."
"Or dared to think of declaring themselves thus," agreed Reivers
promptly.
"I see." Toppy was looking blandly at the roof, but his mind was working
busily.
"Just why do you give me charge of this hole, Reivers--if you don't mind
my asking? Isn't it rather an unusual honour for a green hand to be put
over a crew like this?"
"Unusual! Oh, how beastly banal of you, Treplin!" laughed Reivers
carelessly. "Surely you didn't expect me to do the usual thing, did you?
You say you want to learn how to handle a camp like this. You're an
interesting sort of creature, and I'd like to see you work out in the
game of handling men, so I give you this chance. Oh, I'll do great
things for you, Treplin, before I'm done with you! You can imagine all
that I've got in store for you."
The smile vanished and he turned away. He was through with this
incident, too. Without another word or look at Toppy he went back to the
stockade, his mind already busy with some other project. Toppy stood
looking after him until Reivers' broad back disappeared around the
corner of the stockade.
"No, you clever devil!" he muttered. "I can't imagine. But whatever it
is, I promise I'll hand it back to you with a little interest, or
furnish a job for a pick and shovel."
He walked slowly back to the blacksmith-shop. He was glad to be left
alone. Though he had permitted no sign of it to escape him, Toppy had
been enraged and sickened at what he had seen in the stockade. He
admitted to himself that it was not the fact that men had been disabled
and crippled, nor the brutal rules that had governed, nor that men had
been exposed to death at the hands of others before his eyes, that had
stirred him so. It was--Reivers. Reivers sitting up there on the table
playing with men's bodies and lives as with so many cards--Reivers, the
dominant, lord over his fellows.
The veins swelled in Toppy's big neck as he thought of Reivers, and his
hitherto good-natured face took on a scowl that might have become some
ancestral man-captain in the days of mace and mail, but which never
before had found room on Toppy's countenance--not even when the opposing
half-backs were guilty of slugging. But he was playing another game now,
an older one, a fiercer one, and one which called to him as nothing had
called before. It was the man-game now; and out there in the old, stern
forest, spurred by the challenge of the man who was his natural enemy,
the primitive fighting-man in Toppy shook off the restraint with which
breeding, education and living had cumbered him, and stood out in a
fashion that would have shocked Toppy's friends back East.
Near the shop he met Miss Pearson. By her manner he saw that she had
been waiting for him, but Toppy merely raised his cap and made to pass
on.
"Mr. Treplin!" There was astonishment at his rudeness in her
exclamation.
"Well?" said Toppy.
"Your ankle?"
"Oh, yes. Pardon me for not expressing my thanks before. It's almost
well--thanks to you and Mr. Reivers."
She made a slight shrinking movement and stood looking at him for a
moment. She opened her lips, but no words came.
"Old Scotty told me about your kindness in coming to see me, you and Mr.
Reivers together," said Toppy. "It was a relief to learn that your
confidence in Reivers was justified."
She looked up quickly, straight into his eyes. A troubled look swept
over her face. Then with a toss of the head she turned and crossed the
road, and Toppy swung on his way to the room in the rear of the shop and
closed the door behind him with a vicious slam.
CHAPTER XII--TOPPY'S FIRST MOVE
Next morning, in the cold stillness which precedes the coming of
daylight in the North, Toppy stood leaning on his axe-handle cane and
watched his crew of a dozen men file out of the stockade gate and turn
toward the stone-quarry. They walked with the driven air of prisoners
going to punishment. In the darkness their squat, shapeless figures were
scarcely human. Their heads hung, their steps were listless, as if they
had just completed a hard day's work instead of having arisen from a
hearty breakfast.
The complete lack of spirit evinced by the men irritated Toppy. Was
Reivers right after all? Were they nothing but clods, undeserving of
fair and intelligent treatment?
"Hey! Wake up there! You look like a bunch of corpses. Show some life!"
cried Toppy, in whom the bitter morning air was sending the red blood
tingling.
The men did not raise their heads. They quickened their stumbling steps
a little, as a heavy horse shambles forward a little under the whip. One
or two looked back, beyond where Toppy was walking at the side of the
line. Treplin with curiosity followed their glances. A grim-lipped
shotgun guard with a hideous hawk nose had emerged from the darkness,
and with his short-barrelled weapon in the crook of his arm was
following the line at a distance of fifty or sixty feet. Toppy halted
abruptly. So did the guard.
"What's the idea?" demanded Toppy. "Reivers send you?"
"Yes," said the guard gruffly.
"Does it take two of us to make this gang work?" Toppy was irritated.
Reivers, he knew, would have handled the gang alone.
"The boss sent me," said the guard, with a finality that indicated that
for him that ended the discussion.
The daylight now came wanly up the gap made in the forest by the
brawling river, and the men stood irresolute before the quarry and
peered up anxiously at the roof of the pit.
"Grab your tools," said Toppy. "Get in there and get to it."
The men, some of them taking picks and crowbars, some wheelbarrows, were
soon ready to begin the day's work. But there was a hitch somewhere.
They stood at the entrance to the pit and did not go in. They looked up
at the threatening roof; then they looked anxiously, pleadingly, at
Toppy. But Toppy was thinking savagely of how Reivers would have handled
the gang alone and he paid no attention.
"Get in there!" he roared. "Come on; get to work!"
Accustomed to being driven, they responded at once to his command.
Between two fears, fear of the dropping rocks and fear of the man over
them, they entered the quarry and began the day's work. The guard took
up a position on a slight eminence, where he was always in plain sight
of the men, whether in the cave or wheeling the rock out to the dam. He
held his gun constantly in the hollow of his arm, like a hunter.
Ten minutes after the first crowbar had clanged against rock in the
quarry there was a rumbling sound, a crash, a scream; and the men came
scrambling out in terror. Their rush stopped abruptly just outside the
cave. Toppy was standing directly before them; the man with the gun had
noisily cocked his weapon and brought the black barrel to bear on the
heads of the men. Half of them slunk at once back into the cave. One of
the others held up a bleeding hand to Toppy.
"Ah, pleess, bahss, pleess," he pleaded. "Rock kill us next time.
Pleess, bahss!"
There was a moment of silence while Toppy looked at the men's
terror-stricken faces. The shotgun guard rattled the slide on his gun.
The men began to retreat into the cave, their helplessness and
hopelessness writ large upon their flat faces.
"Hold on there!" said Toppy suddenly. After all, a fellow couldn't do
things like that--drive helpless cattle like these to certain injury,
even possible death. "I'll take a look in there."
He hobbled and shouldered his way through the men and entered the pit. A
few rocks had dropped from the roof, luckily falling in a far corner
beyond where the men were working. But Toppy saw at once how serious
this petty accident was; for the whole roof of the cave now was
loosened, and as sure as the men pounded and pried at the rocks beneath
they would bring a shower of stone down upon their heads.
"Like rats in a trap," he thought. "Hi!" he called. "Get out of here.
Get out!"
Down near the dam he had noticed a huge pile of old timbers which
probably had been used for piling while the dam was being put in.
Thither he now led his men, and shouldering the largest piece himself he
hobbled back to the cave followed by the gang, each bearing a timber. A
sudden change had come over the men as he indicated what he was going to
do. They moved more rapidly. Their terror was gone. Some of them smiled,
and some talked excitedly. Under Toppy's direction they went to work
with a vim shoring up the loosened roof of the cave. It was only a
half-hour's work to place the props so that the men working beneath were
free of any serious danger from above. Toppy could sense the change of
feeling toward him that had come over the men as they saw the timbers go
into place, and he was forced to admit that it warmed him comfortably.
They sprang eagerly to obey his slightest behest, and the gratitude in
their faces was pitiful to behold.
"Now jump!" said Toppy when the roof was safely propped. "Hustle and
make up the time we've lost."
As he came out of the cave the place fairly rang with noise as the men
furiously tore loose the rock and dumped it in the barrows. Toppy took a
long breath and wiped his brow. The hawk-nosed guard spat in disgust.
"Will you do me a favour?" said Toppy, suddenly swinging toward him.
"What is it?" asked the man.
"Take a message to Mr. Reivers from me. Tell him your services are no
longer required at this spot. Tell him I said you looked like a fool,
standing up there with your bum gun. Tell him--" Toppy, despite his sore
ankle, had swung up the rise and was beside the guard before the latter
thought of making a move--"that I said I'd throw you and your gun in the
river if you didn't duck. And for your own information--" Toppy was
towering over the man--"I'll do it right now, unless you get out of
here--quick!"
The guard's shifty eyes tried to meet Toppy's and failed. Against the
Slavs he would have dared to use his gun; they were his inferiors.
Against Toppy he did not dare even so much as to think of the weapon,
and without it he was only a jail-rat, afraid of men who looked him in
the eyes.
"The boss sent me here," he said sullenly.
Toppy leaned forward until his face was close to the guard's. The man
shrank.
"Duck!" said Toppy. That was all. The guard moved away with an alacrity
that showed how uncomfortable the spot had become to him.
"You'll hear about this!" he whined from a distance.
And Toppy laughed, laughed carelessly and loudly, rampant with the
sensation of power. The men, scurrying past with barrows of rock, noted
the retreat of the guard and smiled. They looked up at Toppy with
slavish admiration, as lesser men look up to the champion who has
triumphed before their eyes. One or two of the older men raised their
hats as they passed him, their Old-World serf-like way of showing how
they felt toward him.
"Jump!" ordered Toppy gruffly. "Get a move on there; make up that lost
time."
Reivers had said that a hundred barrows an hour must be dumped into the
dam. With a half hour lost in shoring up the roof, there were fifty
loads to be caught up during the day if the average was to be
maintained. Carefully timing each load and keeping tally for half an
hour, Toppy saw that a hundred loads per hour was the limit of his gang
working at a normal pace. To get out the hundred loads they must keep
steadily at work, with no time lost because of the falling rocks from
above.
He began to see the method of Reivers' apparent madness in placing him
in charge of the gang. With the gang working in the dead, terrorised
fashion that had characterised their movements before the timbers were
in place, Toppy knew that he would have failed; he could not have got
out the hundred loads per hour. Reivers would have proved him to be his
inferior; for Reivers, with his inhumanity, would have driven the gang
as if no lives nor limbs hung on the tissue.
Toppy smiled grimly as he looked at his watch and marked new figures on
the tally sheet. The men, pitifully grateful for the protecting timbers,
had taken hold of their work with such new life that the rock was going
into the dam at the rate of one hundred and twenty loads an hour.
"Move number one!" muttered Toppy, snapping shut his watch. "I wonder
what the Snow-Burner's come-back will be when he knows. Hey, you
roughnecks! Keep moving, there; keep moving!"
The men responded cheerfully to his every command. They could gladly
obey his will; they were safe under him; he had taken care of them, the
helpless ones. That evening, when they filed back into the stockade
under Toppy's watchful eye, one of the older men, a swarthy old fellow
with large brass rings in his ears, sank his hat low as he passed in.
"Buna nopte, Domnule," he said humbly.
"What did he say?" demanded Toppy of one of the young men who knew a
little English.
"Plees, bahss; old man, he Magyar," was the reply. "He say, 'Good night,
master.'"
Toppy stood dumfounded while the line passed through the gate.
"Well," he said with a grin, "what do you know about that?"
CHAPTER XIII--REIVERS REPLIES
Reivers did not come to the shop that night for his evening diversion,
nor did Toppy see him at all during the next day. But in the morning
following he saw that Reivers had taken cognizance in his own peculiar
way of Toppy's action in driving the shotgun guard away from the quarry.
As the line of rock men filed out of the stockade in the chill half
light Toppy saw that the best worker of his gang, a cheerful, stocky man
called Mikal, was missing. In his place, walking with the successful
plug-ugly's insolent swagger, was none other than Bill Sheedy, the
appointed trouble-maker of Hell Camp; and Toppy knew that Reivers had
made another move in his tantalising game.
He went hot despite the raw chilliness at the thought of it. Reivers was
playing with him, too, playing even as he had played with Rosky! And
Toppy knew that, like Rosky, the Snow-Burner had selected him, too, to
be crushed--to be marked as an inferior, to be made to acknowledge
Reivers as his master.
Reivers had read the challenge which was in Toppy's eyes and had, with
his cold smile of complete confidence and contempt, taken up the gauge.
The substitution of Bill Sheedy, Reivers' pet troublemaker, for an
effective workman was a definite move toward Toppy's humiliation.
There was nothing in Toppy's manner, however, to indicate his feelings
as he followed the line to the quarry. Toppy allowed Sheedy's swagger,
by which he plainly indicated that he was hunting for trouble, to go as
if unobserved. Sheedy, being extremely simple of mind, leaped instantly
to the conclusion that Toppy was afraid of him and swaggered more
insolently than ever. He was in an irritable mood this morning, was Bill
Sheedy; and as soon as the gang was out of sight of the stockade--and,
thought Toppy bitterly, therefore out of possible sight of Reivers--he
began to vent his irritation upon his fellow-workmen.
He shouldered them out of his way, swore at them, threatened them with
his fists, kicked them carelessly. There was no finesse in Bill's
method; he was mad and showed it. When the daylight came up the river
sufficiently strong to begin the day's work, Bill had worked himself up
to a proper frame of mind for his purpose. He stood still while the
other men willingly seized their tools and barrows and tramped into the
quarry.
Toppy apparently did not notice. So far as he indicated by his manner he
was quite oblivious of Sheedy's existence. Bill stood looking at Toppy
with a scowl on his unpretty face, awaiting the order to go in with the
other men. The order did not come. Toppy was busy directing the men
where to begin their work. He did not so much as look at Bill. Bill
finally was forced to call attention to himself.
"----!" he growled, spitting generously. "Yah ain't goin' tuh git me tuh
wurruk in no hole like that."
"All right, Bill," said Toppy instantly. "All right."
Bill was staggered. His simple mind failed utterly to comprehend that
there might lie something behind Toppy's apparently humble manner. Bill
could see only one thing--the straw-boss was afraid of him.
"Yah ---- know it, it's all right!" he spluttered. "If it ain't I'd ----
soon make it all right."
"Sure," said Toppy, and without looking toward Bill he hurried into the
quarry to see how the timbers were standing the strain. Bill stood
puzzled. He had bluffed the straw-boss, sure enough; but still the thing
wasn't entirely satisfactory. The boss didn't seem to care whether he
worked or whether he loafed. Bill refused to be treated with such little
consideration. He was of more importance than that.
"Hey, you!" he called as Toppy emerged from the pit. "I'm going to wheel
rock down to the dam, that's what I'm going tuh do. Going to wheel it;
but yuh ain't goin' tuh make me go in there and dig it. See? I'm going
to wheel rock."
Now for the first time Toppy seemed to consider Bill.
"What makes you think you are?" he said quietly. He was looking at his
watch, but Bill noticed that in spite of his sore ankle and cane the
boss had managed to move near to him in uncannily swift fashion.
"You know you can't work here now," Toppy continued before Bill's thick
wits had framed an answer. "You won't go into the quarry, so I can't use
you."
Bill stared as if bereft of all of his faculties. The boss had slipped
his watch back into his pocket. He had turned away.
"Can't use me--can't----Say! Who says I can't work here?" roared Bill,
shaking his fists. He was standing on the plank on which the
wheelbarrows were rolled out of the cave, blocking the way of the men
with the first loads of the day.
"Look out, Bill!" said Toppy softly, turning around. Instinctively Bill
threw up his guard--threw it up to guard his jaw. Toppy's left drove into
his solar plexus so hard that Bill seemed to be moulded on to the fist,
hung there until he dropped and rolled backward on the ground.
"Get along there!" commanded Toppy to the wheel-barrowmen. "The way's
clear. Jump!"
Grinning and snatching glances of ridicule at the prostrate Sheedy, they
hurried past. They dumped their loads in the dam and came back with
empty barrows, and still Sheedy lay there, like a dumped grain-sack, to
one side of their path. The flat faces of the men cracked with grins as
they looked worshipfully at Toppy.
"Jump!" said he. "Get a move on, you roughnecks"
And they grinned more widely in sheer delight at his rough ordering.
Bill Sheedy lay for a long time as he had fallen. The blow he had
stopped would have done for a pugilist in good condition, and Sheedy's
midriff was soft and fat. Finally he raised his head and looked around.
Such surprise and wobegoneness showed in his expression that the
grinning Slavs laughed outright at him. Bill slowly came to a sitting
posture and drew a hand across his puzzled brow while he looked dully at
the laughing men and at Toppy. Then he remembered and he dropped his
eyes.
"Get on your way, Bill," said Toppy casually. "If you're not able to
walk, I'll have half a dozen of the men help you. You're through here."
Bill lurched unsteadily to his feet and staggered away a few steps. That
terrific punch and the iron-calm manner of the man who had dealt it had
scared him. His first thought was to get out of reach; his second, one
of anger at the Bohunks who dared to laugh at him, Bill Sheedy, the
fighting man!
But the fashion in which the men laughed took the nerve out of Bill.
They were laughing contemptuously at him; they looked down upon him;
they were no longer afraid. And there were a dozen of them, and they
laughed together; and Bill Sheedy knew that his days as camp bully were
over. The straw-boss was looking at him coldly, and Bill moved farther
away. Fifteen minutes later the straw-boss, who had apparently been
oblivious of his presence, swung around and said abruptly:
"What's the matter, Bill? Why don't you go back to Reivers?"
Bill's growled reply contained several indistinct but definitely profane
characterisations of Reivers.
"I can't go back to him," Sheedy said sullenly.
"Why not?" laughed Treplin. "He's your friend, isn't he? He let you keep
the money you'd stolen, and all that."
"Keep----!" growled Sheedy. "He's got that himself. Made me make him a
present of it, or--or he'd turn me over for a little trouble I had down
in Duluth."
Toppy stiffened and looked at him carefully.
"Telling the truth, Bill?"
"Ask him," replied Sheedy. "He don't make no bones about it; he gets
something on you and then he grafts on you till you're dry."
Toppy stood silent while he assimulated this information. His scrutiny
of Sheedy told him that the man was telling the truth. He felt grateful
to Sheedy; through him he had got a new light on Reivers' character,
light which he knew he could use later on.
"Through making an ass of yourself here, Bill?" he asked briskly. Bill's
answer was to hang his head in a way that showed how thoroughly all the
fight was taken out of him.
"All right, then; grab a wheelbarrow and get into the pit. Keep your end
up with the other men and there'll be no hard feelings. Try to play any
of your tricks, and it's good night for you. Now get to it, or get out."
Sheedy's rush for a wheelbarrow showed how relieved he was. He had been
standing between the devil and the deep sea--between Reivers with his
awful displeasure and Toppy with his awful punch; and he was eager to
find a haven.
"I ain't trying any tricks," he muttered as he made for the quarry. "The
Snow-Burner--he's the one. He copped me dough and sent me down here and
told me to work off my mad on you."
"Well, you've worked it off now, I guess," said Toppy curtly. "Dig in,
now; you're half a dozen loads behind."
Sheedy did not fill the place of the man he had supplanted, for in his
mixed-ale condition he was unable to work a full day at a strong man's
pace. However, he did so well that when Toppy checked up in the evening
he found that his tally again was well over the stipulated average of a
hundred loads of rock per hour.
"Move two," he thought. "I wonder what comes next?"
CHAPTER XIV--"JOKER AND DEUCES WILD"
When Toppy went back to the shop that evening he found old Campbell
cooking the evening meal with only his right hand in use, the left being
wrapped in a neat bandage.
"That's what comes of leaving me without a helper," grumbled the Scot as
Toppy looked enquiringly at the injured hand. "I maun have ye back, lad;
I will not be knocking my hands to pieces doing two men's work to please
any man. And yet--" he cocked his head on one side and looked fondly at
the bandage--"I dunno but what 'twas worth it. I'm an auld man, and it's
long sin' I had a pretty lass make fuss over me."
"What?" snapped Toppy.
"Oh, go on with ye, lad," teased Scotty, holding the bandage up for his
admiration. "Can not you see that I'm by nature a fav'rite with the
ladies? Yon lass in the office sewed this bandage on my old meat hook.
"'Does it hurt, Mr. Campbell?' says she. 'Not as much as something
that's heavy on my mind, lass,' says I. 'What's that?' she says. 'Mr.
Reivers and you, lass,' says I; and I told her as well as an old man can
tell a lass who's little more than a child just what the Snow-Burner is.
'I can't believe it,' says she. 'He's a gentleman.' 'More's the pity,' I
says. 'That's what makes him dangerous.' 'Were you not afraid of him at
first?' says I. 'Yes,' she says. 'Tell me honest, as you would your own
father,' says I, 'are you not afraid of him now?'
"With that she gave me a look like a little fawn that has smelled the
wolf circling 'round it, but she will not answer. 'He can't be what you
say he is,' she says, trembling. 'Lass,' says I, 'a week ago you would
never have believed it possible that you'd ever wish aught to do with
him. Now you walk with him and talk with him, and smile when he does.'
And I told her of Tilly.
"'It's not so,' says she. 'It can't be so. Mr. Reivers is a gentleman,
not a brute. He's too strong and fine,' says she, 'for such conduct.'
And the bandage being done, I was dismissed with a toss of the head.
Aye, aye, lad; but 'twas fine to have her little fingers sewing away
around my old hand. Yon's a fine, sweet lass; but I fear me Reivers has
set his will to win her."
Toppy made no reply. Campbell's words aroused only one emotion in him--a
fresh flare of anger against Reivers. For it was Reivers, and his
strength and dominance, that was responsible. Toppy already was sorry
for the swift judgment that he had passed on the girl on Sunday, and for
the rudeness which, in his anger, he had displayed toward her. He knew
now the power that lay in Reivers' will, the calm, compelling fire that
lurked in his eyes.
Men quailed before those eyes and did their bidding. And a girl, a
little girl who must naturally feel grateful toward him for her
position, could hardly be expected to resist the Snow-Burner's
undeniable fascinations. Why should she? Reivers was everything that
women were drawn to in men--kinglike in his power of mind and body,
striking in appearance, successful in whatever he sought to do.
It was inevitable that the girl should fall under his spell, but the
thought of it sent a chill up Toppy's spine as from the thought of
something monstrous. He raged inwardly as he remembered how clearly the
girl had let him see his own insignificance in her estimation compared
with Reivers. She had refused to believe Campbell; Toppy knew that she
would refuse to listen to him if he tried to warn her against Reivers.
The fashion in which he slammed the supper-dishes on the table brought a
protest from Scotty.
"Dinna be so strong with the dishes, lad; they're not iron," said he.
"You 'tend to your cooking," growled Toppy. "I'll set this table."
Campbell paused with a spoon in midair and gaped at him in astonishment.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the black scowl on Toppy's brow
checked his tongue. Silently he turned to his cooking. He had seen that
he was no longer boss in the room behind the shop.
After supper Campbell brought forth a deck of cards and began to play
solitaire. Toppy threw himself upon his bunk and lay in the darkness
with his troublesome thoughts. An unmistakable step outside the door
brought him to his feet, for he had an instinctive dislike to meeting
Reivers save face to face and standing up. Reivers came in without
speaking and shut the door behind him. He stood with his hand on the
knob and looked over at Toppy and shook his head.
"Treplin, how could you disappoint me so?" he asked mockingly. "After I
had reposed such confidence in you, too! I'm sorely disappointed in you.
I never looked for you to be a victim of the teachings of weak men and I
find--ye gods! I find that you're a humanitarian!"
By this and this only did Reivers indicate that he had knowledge of how
Toppy had protected his men.
Toppy looked steadily across the room at him, a grim smile on his lips.
"Did Bill Sheedy call me that?" he asked drily. "Shame on him if he did;
I didn't make him slip me the Torta boys' money as a present."
Reivers' laugh rang instantly through the room.
"So you've won Bill's confidences already, have you?" he said without
the slightest trace of shame or discomfiture. "Dear old Bill! He
actually seemed to be under the impression that he had a title to that
money--until I suggested otherwise. I ask you, Treplin, as a man with a
trained if not an efficient mind, is Bill Sheedy a proper man to possess
the title to ninety-eight dollars?"
He swung across the room, laughing heartily, and reached into the
cupboard for Scotty's whiskey. As he did so his eyes fell upon the cards
which Scotty was placing upon the table, and for the first time Toppy
saw in his eyes the gleam of a human weakness. Reivers stood, paused,
for an instant, his eyes feasting upon the cards. It was only an
instant, but it was enough to whisper to Toppy the secret of the
Snow-Burner's passion for play. And Toppy exulted at this chance
discovery of the vulnerable joint in Reivers' armour; for Toppy--alas for
his misspent youth!--was a master-warrior when a deck of cards was the
field of battle.
"It's none of my funeral, Reivers," he said carelessly, strolling over
to the table where Campbell went on playing, apparently oblivious to the
conversation. "I don't know anything about Sheedy. Of course, if you're
serious, the Torta boys are the only ones in camp who've got any right
to the money."
Reivers stopped short in the act of pouring himself a drink. Campbell,
with his back toward Reivers, paused with a card in his hand. Toppy
yawned and dropped into a chair from which he could watch Campbell's
game.
"But that's none of my business," he said as if dropping the subject.
"There's a chance for your black queen, Scotty."
Reivers poured himself his tumbler full of Scotch whiskey, drew up a
third chair to the table and sat down across from Toppy. The latter
apparently was absorbed in watching Campbell's solitaire. Reivers took a
long, contented sip of his fiery tipple and smiled pleasantly.
"You turned loose an idea there, Treplin," he said. "But can you make
your premise stand argument? Are you sure that the Torta boys are the
ones who have a right to that ninety-eight dollars? On what grounds do
you give them the exclusive title to the money?"
"It's theirs. Bill stole it from them. You said he did. That's all I
know about it," said Toppy, scarcely raising his eyes from the cards.
"Why do you say it was theirs, Treplin?" persisted Reivers smilingly.
"Merely because they had it in their possession! Isn't that so? You
don't know how they came by it, but because they had it in their
possession you speak of it as theirs. Very well. Bill Sheedy took it
away from them. It was in his possession, so, following your line of
logic, it was his--for a short while.
"I took it from Bill. It's in my possession now. Therefore, if your
premise is sound, the money is mine. Why, Treplin, I'm really obliged to
you for furnishing me such a clear title to my loot. It was--ah--beginning
to trouble my conscience." He laughed suddenly, punctuating his laughter
with a blow of his fist on the table.
"All rot, Treplin; all silly sophistry which weak men have built up to
protect themselves from the strong! The infernal lie that because a man
is in possession of a certain thing it is his to the exclusion of the
rest of the world! Property-rights! I'll tell you the truth--why this
money is mine, why I'm the one who has the real title to it. I was able
to take it, and I am able to keep it. There's the natural law of
property-rights, Treplin. What do you say to that?"
"Fine!" laughed Toppy, throwing up his hands in surrender. "You bowl me
over, Reivers. The money is yours; and--" he glanced at the cards "--and
if you and I should play a little game of poker, joker and deuces wild,
and I should take it away from you, it would be mine; and there you
are."
The words had slipped out of him, apparently without any aim; but Toppy
saw by the sudden glance which Reivers dropped to the cards that the
gambling-hunger in the Snow-Burner had been awakened.
"Joker and deuces wild," he repeated as if fascinated. "Yes, that ought
to help make a two-handed game fast."
The whole manner of the man seemed for the moment changed. For the first
time since Toppy had met him he seemed to be seriously interested.
Previously, when he played with the lives and bodies of men or devilled
their minds with his wiles, his interest had never been deeper than that
of a man who plays to keep himself from being bored. He was the master
in all such affairs; they could furnish him at their best but an idle
sort of interest. But not even the Snow-Burner was master of the
inscrutable laws of Chance. Nor was he master of himself when cards were
flipping before his eyes. Toppy had guessed right; Reivers had a
weakness, and it was to be "card-crazy."
"Get over there on that other table with your solitaire, Campbell!" he
ordered. He reached into Campbell's liquor-cabinet and drew out a fresh
pack of cards, which he tossed to Toppy. "You started something, Mr.
Humanitarian," he continued, clearing the table. "Open the deck and cut
for deal. Then show me what you've got to stack up against this
ninety-eight dollars." And he slapped a wad of crumpled bills on the
table.
Toppy nonchalantly reached into his pockets. Then he grinned. The two
twenty-dollar bills which he had paid the agent back in Rail Head for
the privilege of hiring out to Hell Camp were all the money he had with
him. He was broke. He debated with himself a moment, then unhooked his
costly watch from the chain and pushed it across to Reivers.
"You can sell that for five hundred--if you win it," he said. "I'll play
it even against your ninety-eight bucks. Give me forty-nine to start
with. If you win them give me forty-nine more, and the watch is yours.
Right?"
"Right," said Reivers, keeping the watch and dividing his roll with
Toppy. "Dollar jack-pots, table-stakes. Deal 'em up."
Toppy lost ten dollars on the first hand almost before he realised that
the game had begun. He called Reivers' bet and had three fours and
nothing else in his hand. Reivers had two of the wild deuces and a king.
Toppy shook his head, like a pugilist clearing his wits after a
knockdown. Why had he called? He knew his three fours weren't good. His
card-sense had told him so. He had called against his judgment. Why?
Suddenly, like something tangible pressing against his brain, he felt
Reivers' will thrusting itself against his. Then he knew. That was why
he had called. Reivers had willed that he do so, and, catching him off
his guard, had had his way.
"Good work!" said Toppy, passing the cards. He was himself again; his
wits had cleared. He allowed Reivers to take the next three pots in
succession without a bet. Reivers looked at him puzzled. The fourth pot
Toppy opened for five dollars and Reivers promptly raised him ten. After
the draw Toppy bet a dollar, and Reivers again raised it to ten more.
Toppy called. Reivers, caught bluffing without a single pair, stared as
Toppy laid down his hand and revealed nothing but his original openers,
a pair of aces. A frown passed over Reivers' face. He peered sharply at
Toppy from beneath his overhanging brows, but Toppy was raking in the
pot as casually as if such play with a pair of aces was part of his
system.
"Good work!" said Reivers, and gathered the cards to him with a jerk.
Half a dozen hands later, on Reivers' deal, Toppy picked up his hand and
saw four kings.
"I'll pass," said he.
"I open for five," said Reivers.
"Take the money," laughed Toppy carelessly throwing his hand into the
discard. For an instant Reivers' eyes searched him with a look of
surprise. The glance was sufficient to tell Toppy that what he had
suspected was true.
"So he's dealing 'em as he wants 'em!" thought Toppy. "All right. He's
brought it on himself."
An hour later Reivers arose from the table with a smile. The money had
changed hands. Toppy was snapping his watch back on its chain, and
stuffing the bills into his pocket.
"Your money now, Treplin," laughed Reivers. "Until somebody takes it
away from you."
But there was a new note in his laughter. He had been beaten, and his
irritation showed in his laughter and in the manner in which, after he
had taken another big drink of whiskey, he paused in the doorway as he
made to leave.
"Great luck, Treplin; great luck with cards you have!" he said
laughingly. "Too bad your luck ends there, isn't it? What's that
paraphrase of the old saw? 'Lucky with cards, unlucky with women.' Good
night, Treplin."
He went out, laughing as a man laughs when he has a joke on the other
fellow.
"What did he mean by that?" asked Campbell, puzzled.
"I don't know," said Toppy. But he knew now that Tilly had told Reivers
of his talk with Miss Pearson the first evening in camp, and that
Reivers had saved it up against him.
CHAPTER XV--THE WAY OF THE SNOW-BURNER
In the morning, before the time for beginning the day's work, Toppy went
to the stockade; and with one of his English-speaking Slavs acting an
interpreter hunted up the Torta brothers and returned to them the stolen
money which he had won from Reivers. He did not consider it necessary to
go into the full details of how the money came to be in his possession,
or attempt to explain the prejudice of his kind against keeping stolen
goods.
"Just tell them that Sheedy gave up the money, and that it's theirs
again; and they'd better hide it in their shoes so they won't lose it,"
he directed the interpreter.
Whereat the latter, a garrulous young man who had been telling the camp
all about the wonderful new "bahss" in the quarry--a "bahss" who saved
men's lives--whenever he could get any one to listen, broke forth into a
wonderful tale of how the money came to be returned, and of the
wonderful "bahss" that stood before them, whom they should all take off
their caps to and worship.
For this was no ordinary man, this "bahss." No, he was far above all
other men. It was an honour to work under him. For instance, as to this
money: the "bahss" had heard how the red-haired one--Sheedy--had stolen,
how he oppressed many poor men and broke the noses of those who dared to
stand up against him.
The "bahss" had the interests of poor men at heart. What had he done? He
had struck the red-haired one such a mighty blow in the stomach that the
red-haired one had flown high in the air, and alighting on the ground
had been moved by the fear of death and disgorged the stolen money that
his conscience might be easy.
The story of how Toppy had propped up the roof of the stone quarry, and
saved the limbs and possibly lives of his workmen; how he had driven the
shotgun guard away, and how he had smitten Sheedy and laid him low
before all men, had circulated through the camp by this time. Everybody
knew that the new straw-boss, though fully as big and strong as the
Snow-Burner himself, was a man who considered the men under him as
something more than cattle and treated them accordingly. True, he drove
men hard; but they went willingly for him, whereas under the Snow-Burner
they hurried merely because of the chill fear that his eyes drove into
their hearts. In short, Toppy was just such a boss as all men wished to
work under--strong but just, firm but not inhuman.
Even Sheedy was loyal to him.
"He laid me out, all right," he grumbled to a group of "white men,"
"but, give him credit for it, he give me a chanct to get up me guard.
There won't be any breaking yer bones when yuh ain't lookin' from him.
And he wouldn't graft on yuh, either. He's right. That other ----, he--he
ain't human."
The fact that he had been humane enough, and daring enough, to prop up
the roof of the quarry had no effect on the "white men" toward
developing a respect for Toppy. They despised the Slavs too thoroughly
to be conscious of any brotherhood with them. But that he could put Bill
Sheedy away with a single punch, that he could warn Bill to put up his
guard and then knock him out with one blow, that was something to wring
respect even from that hard-bitten crew.
The Snow-Burner never had done anything like that. He had laid low the
biggest men in camp, but it was usually with a kick or with a blow that
was entirely unexpected. The Snow-Burner never warned any body. He
smiled, threw them off their guard, then smote like a flash of
lightning. He had whipped half a dozen men at once in a stand-up fight,
but they had been poor Bohunks, fools who couldn't fight unless they had
knives in their hands. But to tell a seasoned bruiser like Bill, the
best man with his fists in camp, to put up his hands and then beat him
to the knockout punch--that was something that not even the Snow-Burner
had attempted to do.
That was taking a chance, that was; and the Snow-Burner never took
chances. That was why these cruel-fierce "white men," though they
admired and applauded him for his dominance and his ruthlessness toward
the Slavs, hated Reivers with a hatred that sprang from the Northern
man's instinctive liking for fair play in a fight. They began naturally
to compare him with Toppy, who had played fair and yet won. And,
naturally, because such were the standards they lived and died by, they
began to predict that some day the Snow-Burner and Toppy must fight, and
they hoped that they might be there to see the battle.
So Toppy, this morning, as he came to the stockade, was in the position
of something of a hero to most of the rough men who slouched past him in
the gloom to their day's work. He had felt it before, this hero-worship,
and he recognised it again. Though the surroundings were vastly
different and the men about him of a strange breeding, the sense of it
was much the same as that he had known at school when, a sweater thrown
across his huge shoulders, he had ploughed his way through the groups of
worshipping undergrads on to the gridiron. It was much the same here.
Men looked up to him. They nudged one another as they passed, lowered
their voices when he was near, studied him appraisingly. Toppy had felt
it before, too often to be mistaken; and the youth in his veins
responded warmly. The respect of these men was a harder thing to win
than the other. He thought of how he had arrived in camp, shaky from
Harvey Duncombe's champagne, with no purpose in life, no standing among
men who were doing men's work. Grimly also he thought of how Miss
Pearson, that first evening, had called him a "nice boy." Would she call
him that now, he wondered, if she could see how these rough, tired men
looked up to him? Would Reivers treat him as a thing to experiment with
after this?
Thus it was a considerably elated Toppy, though not a big-headed one,
who led his men out of the stockade, to the quarry--to the blow that
Reivers had waiting for him there. His first hint that something was
wrong was when the foremost men, whistling and tool-laden, made for the
pit in the first grey light of day and paused with exclamations and
curses at its very mouth. Others crowded around them. They looked
within. Then, with fallen jaws, they turned and looked to the "bahss"
for an explanation, for help.
Toppy shouldered his way through the press and stepped inside. Then he
saw what had halted his men and made their faces turn white. To the last
stick the shoring-timbers had been removed from the pit, and the roof,
threatening and sharp-edged, hung ready to drop on the workmen below, as
it had before Toppy had wrought a change.
The daylight came creeping up the river and a wind began to blow. So
still was it there before the pit-mouth that Toppy was conscious of
these things as he stepped outside. The men were standing about with
their wheelbarrows and tools in their hands. They looked to him. His was
the mind and will to determine what they should do. They depended upon
him; they trusted him; they would obey his word confidently.
Toppy felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He wanted to take
off his cap, to bare his head to the chill morning wind, to draw his
hand across his eyes, to do something to ease himself and gather his
wits. He did none of these things. The instinct of leadership arose
strong within him. He could not show these men who looked up to him as
their unquestioned leader that he had been dealt a blow that had taken
the mastery from him.
For Toppy, in that agonised second when he glanced up at the unsupported
roof and knew what those loose rocks meant to any men working beneath,
realised that he could not drive his men in there to certain injury for
many, possibly death for some. It wasn't in him. He wasn't bred that
way. The unfeeling brute had been removed from his big body and spirit
by generations of men and women who had played fair with inferiors, and
by a lifetime of training and education.
He understood plainly the significance of the thing. Reivers had done
it; no one else would have dared. He had lifted Toppy up to a tiny
elevation above the other men in camp; now he was knocking him down. It
was another way for Reivers to show his mastery. The men who had begun
to look up to Toppy would now see how easily the Snow-Burner could show
himself his superior. Miss Pearson would hear of it. He would appear in
the light of a "nice boy" whom the Snow-Burner had played with.
These thoughts ran through Toppy's mind as he stood outside the pit,
with his white-faced men looking up to him, and groped for a way out of
his dilemma. Within he was sickened with the sense of a catastrophe;
outside he remained calm and confident to the eye. He stepped farther
out, to where he could see the end of the dam where he had secured the
props for the roof. It was as he had expected; the big pile of timbers
that had lain there was gone to the last stick. He turned slowly back,
and then in the grey light of coming day he looked into the playfully
smiling face of Reivers, who had emerged, it seemed, from nowhere.
"Looking for your humanitarian props, Treplin?" laughed the Snow-Burner.
"Oh, they're gone; they're valuable; they served a purpose which nothing
else would fill--quite so conveniently. I used them for a corduroy road
in the swamp. Between men and timbers, Treplin, always save your
timbers." His manner changed like a flash to one hurried and
business-like. "What're you waiting for?" he snarled. "Why don't you get
'em in there? Mean to say you're wasting company money because one of
these cattle might get a broken back?"
They looked each other full in the eyes, but Toppy knew that for the
time being Reivers had the whiphand.
"I mean to say just that," he said evenly. "I'm not sending any men in
there until I get that roof propped up again."
"Bah!" Reivers' disgust was genuine. "I thought you were a man; I find
you're a suit of clothes full of emotions, like all the rest!"
He seemed to drive away his anger by sheer will-force and bring the
cold, sneering smile back to his lips.
"So we're up against a situation that's too strong for us, are we, Mr.
Humanitarian?" he laughed. "In spite of our developed intelligence, we
lay down cold in the face of a little proposition like this! Good-bye to
our dreams of learning how to handle men! It isn't in us to do it; we're
a weak sister."
His bantering mood fled with the swiftness of all his changes. Toppy and
his aspirations as a leader--that was another incident of the day's work
that was over and done with.
"Go back to the shop, to Scotty, Treplin," he said quietly. "You're not
responsible for your limitations. Scotty says you make a pretty fair
helper. Be consoled. He's waiting for you."
He turned instantly toward the men. Toppy, with the hot blood rushing in
his throat, but helpless as he was, swung away from the pit without a
word. As he did so he saw that the hawk-faced shotgun guard had appeared
and taken his position on the little rise where his gun bore slantwise
on the huddled men before the pit, and he hurried to get out of sight of
the scene. His tongue was dry and his temples throbbing with rage, but
the cool section of his mind urged him away from the pit in silence.
Between clenched teeth he cursed his injured ankle. It was the ankle
that made him accept without return the shame which Reivers had put upon
him. The canny sense within him continued to whisper that until the
ankle was sound he must bide his time. Reivers and he were too nearly a
pair to give him the slightest chance for success if he essayed defiance
at even the slightest disadvantage.
Choking back as well as he could the anger that welled up within him, he
made his way swiftly to the blacksmith-shop. Campbell, bending over the
anvil, greeted Toppy cheerily as he heard the heavy tread behind him.
"The Snow-Burner promised he'd send you here, and----Losh, mon!" he gasped
as he turned around and saw Toppy's face. "What's come o'er ye? You look
like you're ripe for murder."
"There'll probably be murder done in this camp before the day's over,
but I won't do it," replied Toppy.
As he threw off his mackinaw preparatory to starting work he snapped out
the story of the situation at the quarry. Campbell, leaning on his
hammer, grew grim of lips and eyes as he listened.
"Aye; I thought at the time it were better for you had ye lost at poker
last night," he said slowly. "He's taking revenge. But they will put out
his light for him. Human flesh and blood won't stand it. The Snow-Burner
goes too far. He'll----Hark! Good Heavens! Hear that!"
For a moment they stood near the open doorway of the shop staring at one
another in horrified, mute questioning. The crisp stillness of the
morning rang and echoed with the sharp roar of a shotgun. The sound came
from the direction of the quarry. Across the street they heard the door
of the office-building open sharply. The girl, without hat or coat, her
light hair flying about her head, came running like a deer to the door
of the shop.
"Mr. Campbell, Mr. Campbell!" she called tremblingly, peering inside.
Then she saw Toppy.
"Oh!" she gasped. She started back a little. There were surprise and
relief in her exclamation, in her eyes, in her movement.
"I was afraid--I thought maybe----" She drew away from the door in
confusion. "I only wanted to know--to know--what that noise was."
But Toppy had stepped outside the shop and followed closely after her.
"What did you think it was, Miss Pearson?" he asked. "What were you
afraid of when you heard that shot? That something had happened between
Reivers and myself?"
"I--I meant to warn you," she said, greatly flustered. "Tilly told me all
about--a lot of things last night. She told me that she had told Reivers
all she heard you say to me that first night here, and that he--Mr.
Reivers, she said, was your enemy, and that he would--would surely hurt
you."
"Yes?"
"I didn't want to see you get hurt, because I felt it was because of me
that you came here. I--I don't want any one hurt because of me."
"That's all?" he asked.
She looked surprised.
"Why, yes."
Toppy nodded curtly.
"Then Tilly told you that Mr. Reivers had a habit of hurting people?"
At this the red in her cheeks rose to a flush. Her blue eyes looked at
him waveringly, then dropped to the ground.
"It isn't true! It can't be true!" she stammered.
"Did Tilly tell you--about herself?" he persisted mercilessly.
The next instant he wished the words unsaid, for she shrank as if he had
struck her. She looked very small just then. Her proud, self-reliant
bearing was gone. She was very much all alone.
"Yes." The word was scarcely more than a whisper and she did not look
up. "But it--it can not be so; I know it can not."
Toppy was no student of feminine psychology, but he saw plainly that
just then she was a woman who did not wish to believe, therefore would
not believe, anything ill of the man who had fascinated her. He saw that
Reivers had fascinated her; that in spite of herself she was drawn
toward him, dominated by him. Her mind told her that what she had heard
of the man was true, but her heart refused to let her believe. Toppy saw
that she was very unhappy and troubled, and unselfishly he forgot
himself and his enmity toward Reivers in a desire to help her.
"Miss Pearson!--Miss Pearson!" he cried eagerly. "Is there anything I can
do for you--anything in the world?"
"Yes," she said slowly. "Tell me that it isn't so--what Mr. Campbell and
Tilly have said about Mr. Reivers."
"I----" He was about to say that he could do nothing of the sort, but
something made him halt. "Has Reivers broken his word to you--about
leaving you alone?"
"No, no! He's--he's left me alone. He's scarcely spoken to me half a
dozen times."
Toppy looked down at her for several seconds.
"But you've begun to care for Reivers, haven't you?" he said.
The girl looked up at him uncertainly.
"I don't know. Oh, I don't know! I don't seem to have any will of my own
toward him. I seem to see him as a different man. I know I shouldn't;
but I can't help it, I can help it! He--he looks at me, and I feel as
if--as if--" her voice died down to a horrified whisper--"I were nothing,
and his wishes were the only things in the world."
Toppy bowed his head.
"Then I guess there's nothing for me to say."
"Don't!" she cried, stretching out her hand to restrain him as he turned
away. "Don't leave me--like that. You're so rude to me lately. I feel so
terribly alone when you--aren't nice to me."
"What difference can I make?" he said bitterly. "I'm not Reivers."
She looked up at him again.
"Oh!" she cried suddenly. "Won't you help me, Mr. Treplin? Can't you
help me?"
"Help you?" gasped Toppy. "May I? Can I? What can I do?"
He leaned toward her eagerly.
"What can I do" he repeated.
"Oh, I don't know!" she murmured in anguish. "But if you--if you leave
me--Oh! What was that?"
From the direction of the quarry had come a great scream of terror, as
if many men suddenly had cried out in fear of their lives. Then, almost
ere the echoes had died away, came another sound, of more sinister
significance to Toppy. There was a sudden low rumble; the earth under
their feet trembled; then the noise of a crash and a thud. Then it was
still again.
A chill seemed to pass over the entire camp. Men began running toward
the quarry with swift steps, their faces showing that they dreaded what
they expected to see. Toppy and Campbell looked silently at one another.
"Go into the office," he said quietly to the girl. "Come on, Scotty;
that roof's caved in." And without another word they ran swiftly toward
the quarry. As they reached the river-bank they heard Reivers' voice
quietly issuing orders.
"You guards pick those two fellows up and carry them to their bunks. You
scum that's left, pick up your tools and dig into that fallen rock.
Hustle now! Get right back to work!"
The first thing that Toppy saw as he turned the shoulder of the ledge
was that two of the older Slavs were lying groaning on the ground to one
side of where the pit mouth had been. Then he saw what was left of the
pit. The entire side of the ledge had caved down, and where the pit had
been was only a jumbled pile of jagged rock. Reivers stood in his old
position before the pile. The hawk-nosed shotgun guard stood up on the
little rise, his weapon ready. The remaining workmen were huddled
together before the pile of fallen stone. The terror in their faces was
unspeakable. They were like lost, driven cattle facing the butcher's
hammer.
"Grab those tools there! Get at it! The rock's right in front of you
now! Get busy!"
Reivers' voice in no way admitted that anything startling had occurred.
He glared at the cowering men, and in terror they began hastily to
resume their interrupted work, filling their wheelbarrows from the pile
of stone before them. Reivers turned toward Toppy who had bent over the
injured men. "Hello, Dr. Treplin," he laughed lightly. "A couple of jobs
there for you to experiment on. Get 'em out of here--to their bunks;
they're in the way. Patch 'em up if you can. If you can't they're not
much loss, anyhow. They're rather older than I like 'em."
The last words came carelessly over his shoulder as he turned back
toward the men who were toiling at the rock. A string of curses rolled
coldly from his lips. They leaped to obey him. He smiled contemptuously.
Toppy was relieved to see that the two men on the ground were apparently
not fatally hurt. With the aid of Campbell and two guards who had run up
he hurried to have the men placed in their bunks in the stockade. One of
the guards produced a surgeon's kit. Toppy rolled up his sleeves. It
wasn't as bad as he had feared it would be, apparently; only two
injured, where he had looked for some surely to be killed. One of the
men was growing faint from loss of blood from a wound in his right leg.
Toppy, turning his attention to him first, swiftly slit open the
trousers-leg and bared the injured limb.
"What--what the devil?" he cried aghast. The calf of the man's leg was
half torn away, and from knee to ankle the flesh was sprinkled with
buckshot-holes.
"They shot you?" he asked as he fashioned a tourniquet.
"Yes, bahass. Snow-Burner say, 'Get t' 'ell in there.' Rocks fall; we no
go in. Snow-Burner hold up hand. Man with gun shoot. I fall. Other men
go in. Pretty soon rocks fall. Other men come out. He shoot me. I no do
anything; he shoot me."
Toppy choked back the curse that rose to his lips, dressed the man's
wound to the best of his slight ability, and turned to the other, who
had been caught in the cave-in of the quarry-roof. His right leg and arm
were broken, and the side was crushed in a way that suggested broken
ribs. Toppy filled a hypodermic syringe and went to work to make the two
as comfortable as he knew how. That was all he could pretend to do. Yet
when he left the stockade it was with a feeling of relief that he looked
back over the morning. The worst had happened; the danger to the men was
over; and, so far as Toppy knew, the consequences were represented in
the two men whom he had treated and who, so far as he could see, were
sure to live. It hadn't turned out as badly as he was afraid it would.
As he passed the carpenter-shop he saw the "wood-butcher" sawing two
boards to make a cover for a long, narrow box. Toppy looked at him idly,
trying to think of what such a box could be used for around the camp. It
was too narrow for its length to be of ordinary use as a box.
"What are you making there?" asked Toppy carelessly.
The "wood-butcher" looked up from his sawing.
"Didn't you ever see a logging-camp coffin?" he asked. "We always keep a
few ready. This one is for that Bohunk that's down there under the
rocks."
"Under the rocks!" cried Toppy. "You don't mean to say there was anybody
under that cave-in!"
"Is yet," was the laconic reply. "One of 'em was caught 'way inside.
Whole roof on top of him. Won't find him till the pit's emptied."
Toppy struggled a moment to speak quietly.
"Which one was it, do you know?" he asked.
"Oh, it was that old brown-complected fellow," said the carpenter. "That
old Bohunk guy with the big rings in his ears."
Reivers came to the shop at his customary time in the evening, nothing
in his manner containing a hint that anything unusual had happened
during the day. He found a solemn and silent pair, for Campbell had
sought relief from the day's tragedy in his customary manner and sat in
the light of the student-lamp steadily reading his Bible, while Toppy,
in a dark corner, sat with his great shoulders hunched forward, his
folded hands before him, and stared at the floor. Reivers paused in the
doorway, his cold smile broadening as he surveyed the pair.
"Poker to-night--doctor?" he said softly, and the slur in his tones was
like blasphemy toward all that men hold sacred.
"No, by ----, no!" growled Toppy.
Laughing lightly, Reivers closed the door and came across the room.
"What? Aren't you going to give me my revenge--doctor?" The manner in
which he accented "doctor" was worse than an open insult.
Old Campbell peered over his thick glasses.
"The sword of judgment is sharpening for you, Mr. Reivers," he said
solemnly. "You ha' this day sealed your own doom. A life for a life; and
you have taken a life to-day unnecessarily. It is the holy law; you will
pay. It is so written."
"Yes, yes, yes!" laughed Reivers in great amusement. "But you've said
that so many times before in just that same way, Scotty. Can't you
evolve a new idea? Or at least sing it in a different key?"
The old Scot looked at him without wavering or changing his expression.
"You are the smartest man I have ever known, Mr. Reivers, and the
domdest fool," he said in the same tone. "Do you fancy yourself more
than mortal? Losh, man! A knife in the bowels, or a bullet or ax in the
head will as readily make you a bit of poor clay as you've this day made
yon poor old Bohunk."
Reivers listened courteously to the end, waiting even a moment to be
sure that Campbell had had his say.
"And you--doctor?" he said turning to Toppy. "What melancholy thoughts
have you to utter?"
Toppy said nothing.
"Oh, come, Treplin!" said Reivers lightly. "Surely you're not letting a
little thing like that quarry-incident give you a bad evening? Where's
your philosophy, man? Consider the thing intelligently instead of
sentimentally. There was so much rock to go into that dam in a day--and
incidentally to-day finished the job. That was a useful, necessary work.
"For that old man to continue in this life was not useful or necessary.
He was far down in the order of human development; centuries below you
and me. Do you think it made the slightest difference whether he
returned to the old cosmic mud whence he came, and from which he had not
come far, in to-day's little cave-in, or in a dirty bed, say ten years
from now?
"He accomplished a tiny speck of useful work, through my direction. He
has gone, as the wood will soon be gone that is heating that stove.
There was no spirit there; only a body that has ceased to stand upright.
And you grow moody over it! Well, well! I'm more and more disappointed
in you--doctor."
Toppy said nothing. He was biding his time.
CHAPTER XVI--THE SCREWS TIGHTEN
That night came the heavy snow for which the loggers had been waiting,
and a rush of activity followed in Hell Camp. The logs which had lain in
the woods for want of sleighing now were accessible. Following the snow
came hard, freezing nights, and the main ice-roads which Reivers had
driven into the timber for miles became solid beds of ice over which a
team could haul log loads to the extent of a carload weight. It was
ideal logging-weather, and the big camp began to hum.
The mastery of Reivers once more showed itself in the way in which he
drove his great crew at top speed and beyond. The feeling against him on
the part of the men had risen to silent, tight-lipped heat as the news
went around of how the old Magyar with the ear-rings had met his death.
Each man in camp knew that he might have been in the old man's shoes;
each knew that Reivers' anger might fall on him next. In the total of a
hundred and fifty men in camp there was probably not one who did not
curse Reivers and rage against his rule, and there were few who, if the
opportunity had offered, would not cheerfully have taken his life.
The feeling against him had unified itself. Before, the men had been
split into various groups on the subject of the boss. They remained
divided now, but on one thing they were unanimous: the Snow-Burner had
gone too far to bear. Men sat on the bunk-edges in the stockade and
cursed as they thought of the boss and the shotgun guards that rendered
them helpless. Reivers permitted no firearms of any kind in camp save
those that were carried by his gunmen.
The gunmen when not on guard kept to their quarters, in the building
just outside of the stockade gate, where Reivers also lived. When armed,
they were ordered to permit no man to approach nearer than ten feet to
them--this to prevent a possible rushing and wresting the weapons from
their hands. So long as the guards were there in possession of their
shotguns the men knew that they were helpless. Driven to desperation
now, they prayed for the chance to get those guns into their own hands.
After that they promised themselves that the score of brutality would be
made even.
Then came the time for rush work, and under the lash of Reivers' will
the outraged men, carried off their feet, were driven with a ferocity
that told how completely Reivers ignored the spirit of revolt which he
knew was fomenting against him. He quit playing with them, as he
expressed it; he began to drive.
Long before daylight began to grey the sky above the eastern timber-line
the men were out at their posts, waiting for sufficient light to begin
the day's work. Once the work began it went ahead with a fury that
seemed to carry all men with it. Reivers was everywhere that a man dared
to pause for a moment to shirk his job. He used his hands now, for a
broken leg or rib laid a man up, and he had use for the present for
every man he could muster. He scarcely looked at the men he hit,
breaking their faces with a sudden, treacherous blow, cursing them
coldly until, despite their injuries, they leaped at their work, then
whirling away to fall upon some other luckless one elsewhere.
He was a fury, a merciless elemental force, with no consideration for
the strength and endurance of men; sparing no one any more than he
spared himself, and rushing his whole force along at top speed by sheer
power of the spirit of leadership that possessed him. Men ceased for the
time being to growl and pray that the Snow-Burner would get his just
due. They had no thought nor energies for anything but keeping pace in
the whirlwind rush of work through which the Snow-Burner drove them.
In the blacksmith-shop the same condition prevailed as elsewhere in the
camp. The extra hurry of the work in the timber meant extra accidents,
which meant breakages. There were chain-links to be forged and fitted to
broken chains; sharp two-inch calks to be driven into the horses' shoes,
peaveys and cant-hooks to be repaired. Besides the regular
blacksmith-work of the camp, which was quite sufficient to keep Campbell
and one helper comfortably employed, there was now added each day a bulk
of extra work due to the strain under which men, horses and tools were
working.
Old Campbell, grimly resolute that Reivers should have no excuse to fall
foul of him, drove himself and his helper at a speed second only to that
with which he had so roughly greeted Toppy to the rough world of bodily
labour. But the Toppy who now hammered and toiled at Campbell's side was
a different man from the champagne-softened youth who had come into camp
a little while before. The puffiness was gone from under his eyes, the
looseness from his lips and the fat from around the middle. Through his
veins the blood now surged with no taint of cumbering poison; his
tissues tingled with life and healthiness.
Day by day he did his share and more in the shop-work, and instead of
the old feeling of fatigue, which before had followed any prolonged
exertion, felt his muscles spring with hardness and new life at each
demand made upon them. The old joy of a strong man in his strength came
back in him. Stripped to the waist he stretched himself and filled his
great lungs with deep drafts, his arms like beams stretched out and
above his head. Under the clean skin, rosy and moist from exertion, the
muscles bunched and relaxed, tautened instantly to iron hardness or
rippled softly as they were called upon, in the perfect co-ordination
which results in great athletes. Old Campbell, similarly stripped,
stared at the marvel of a giant's perfect torso, beside which his own
work-wrought body was ugly in its unequal development.
"Losh, man! But you're full grown!" he growled in admiration. "I've seen
but one man who could strip anywhere near to you."
"Who was he?" asked Toppy.
"The Snow-Burner."
Day by day Toppy hammered and laboured at Campbell's side, holding his
end up against the grim old smith, and day by day he felt his muscles
growing toward that iron condition in which there is no tiring.
Presently, to Scotty's vexation, he was doing more than his share,
ending the day with a laugh and waking up in the morning as fresh as if
he had not taxed his energies the day before.
At first he continued to favour his injured ankle, lest a sudden strain
delay its recovery. Each night he massaged and bandaged it
scientifically. Later on, when he felt that it was stronger, he began to
exercise it, slowly raising and lowering himself on the balls of his
feet. In a couple of weeks the old spring and strength had largely come
back, and Campbell snorted in disgust at the antics indulged in by his
helper when the day's work was done.
"Skipping a rope one, twa hundred times! What brand o' silliness do ye
call that?" he grumbled. "Ha' ye nothing useful to do wi' them long legs
of yourn, that you have to make a jumping-jack out o' yourself?"
At which Toppy smiled grimly and continued his training.
The rush of work had its compensations. Reivers, driving his force like
mad, had no time to waste either in bantering Toppy and Campbell in the
evening or in paying attention to Miss Pearson. All the power that was
in the Snow-Burner was concentrated upon the problem of getting out
every stick of timber possible while the favourable weather continued.
He spent most of his time in the timber up-river where the heaviest
logging was going on.
By day he raged in the thick of the men with only one thought or aim--to
get out the logs as fast as human and horse-power could do it. At night
the road-crews, repairing with pick and shovel and sprinkling-tanks the
wear and tear of the day's hauling, worked under Reivers' compelling
eyes. All night long the sprinkling-tanks went up and down the
ice-coated roads, and the drivers, freezing on the seats, were afraid to
stop or nod, not knowing when the Snow-Burner might step out from the
shadows and catch them in the act.
The number of accidents, always too plentiful in logging-camps,
multiplied, but Reivers permitted nothing short of broken bones to send
a man to his bunk. Toppy, besides his work in the shop, cared as best he
could for the disabled. Reivers had no time to waste that way now. The
two men hurt at the quarry were recovering rapidly. One day a tall, lean
"white man," a Yankee top-loader, came hobbling out of the woods with
his foot dangling at the ankle, and mumbling curses through a smashed
jaw.
"How did you get this?" asked Toppy, as he dressed the cruelly crushed
foot.
"Pinched between two logs," mumbled the man. "They let one come down the
skids when I wasn't lookin'. No fault of mine; I didn't have time to
jump. And then, when I'm standin' there leanin' against a tree, that
devil Reivers comes up and hands me this." He pointed to his cracked
jaw. "He'll teach me to get myself hurt, he says. ----! That ain't no man;
he's a devil! By ----! I know what I'd ruther have than the wages comin'
to me, and that's a rifle with one good cattridge in it and that ----
standin' afore me."
Yet that evening, when Reivers came to the top-loader's bunk and
demanded how long he expected to lie there eating his head off, the man
cringed and whimpered that he would be back on the job as soon as his
foot was fit to stand on. In Reivers' presence the men were afraid to
call their thoughts their own, but behind his back the mumblings and
grumblings of hatred were growing to a volume which inevitably soon must
break out in the hell-yelp of a mob ripe for murder.
Reivers knew it better than
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