It was the following Friday that Jim’s attention was called to the scant stock of logs on the skids. He knew that the mill had been eating up more timber than before, and of course was pleased, for that meant an increased production. He knew, too, that the Diversity Hardwood Company had missed sending down a train of logs once or twice when they should have been sent; but other matters had filled his attention to the exclusion of this.
John Beam saw Jim staring at the logs and stepped over to his side.
“I was comin’ up to see you about this to-day,” he said. “Them folks is givin’ us the worst of it, plenty. Look at the logs they’re sendin’ down. Mostly beech, and dozy at that. For a week we’ve been short of maple for veneer. And they’ve been holdin’ back on us. We’re usin’ twice what they’re sendin’ down. I asked the boss of their train crew what was the matter, and he just grinned at me so’s I wanted to land him one, and says we was lucky to be alive.”
“Do you think they’re trying to tie us up?”
“I don’tthinkit,” said John.
Jim turned on his heel and strode back to the office. He called the Diversity Company on the telephone.
“We’re running short of logs,” he said. “You’ve been cutting down on shipments. When can we have another train-load?”
“Things aren’t going just right in the woods,” said a voice. “I don’t believe we can get you more than a small train-load before Tuesday or Wednesday.”
“We’ll be shut down Saturday if we don’t get logs.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ashe, but we’re doing our best.”
“Is Mr. Moran there?”
“He’ll be in on the afternoon train.”
Jim hung up the receiver. He had been feeling too fine; he had grown cocky at his recent successes; now he had a taste of the opposite emotion. His mill was running better—but what good did it do if the log supply failed? He had been able to borrow money to pay bills and to operate—but that only made matters worse if he were unable to get out his product. He had an option on Le Bar’s timber. This might or might not be a profitable matter, but it was of no present help. He must have logs.
That afternoon he was at the depot as the train pulled in. Moran alighted and Jim fastened upon him instantly. “Mr. Moran,” he said, “your men are not getting logs to us.”
“Um! What seems to be wrong?” Moran’s voice was irritating. Jim fancied it was deliberately irritating.
“I’m not here to tell you what’s wrong. That’s your lookout,” Jim said. “Your business is to supply us with logs according to our contract—and if anything interferes it’s your job to see it doesn’t interfere.”
Moran’s eyes glinted.
“You’ll get logs as we’re able to ship them. Our first business is to supply our own mill. You’re a side issue.”
“That’s your attitude, is it? The obligation of contract means very little to you.”
“That contract was none of my making, Ashe. And if you don’t like the way we carry it out, you have your redress. Go to the courts.”
“I guess I’ve smoked out the reason we aren’t getting what we’re entitled to,” said Jim, his voice rising with his anger. “Its name is Moran—a pretty unsavory reason, from all I gather.”
Moran glared.
“You can’t talk to me like that, young man. You can’t bulldoze me.” He started to move away. Jim reached out swiftly, caught the man by the shoulder, and slammed him against the side of the depot.
“I’m not through talking with you,” he said, evenly, his eyes beginning to glow. “When I want to talk to a man I don’t consider it good manners for him to walk off. Now, Mister Man, you stay put till I’ve mentioned a few things to you. If you budge I’ll fetch you back again.”
Moran struggled, cursed, and struck at Jim.
“I don’t want to thrash you, Moran,” said Jim, “but I can—and I may have to. It depends on you. Stand still!”
Moran turned his savage eyes on the young man’s face. What he saw made him hesitate. He ceased to struggle; stood glaring venomously.
“Now listen,” said Jim, unconscious of the knot of Diversity’s citizens who had gathered about. “You’ve been needing to hear a few facts and opinions, and to-day’s the date of delivery. You and your railroad have been a blight on this county. You’re trying to turn the Diversity Company into another blight. So far as I can learn you haven’t a decent hair on your head. You’re never guilty of a fair and decent act if hard work will show you a crooked way out of it. You’ve gouged citizens and shippers with your railroad; you’ve robbed your laborers in the woods. If you have any associates I expect you’ve cheated them.
“Now you’re trying to grab all Diversity and run it as you run your business. You’re trying to steal a well-governed, honest town, and turn it into the sort of thing you admire. You came to me and asked me to help you. You want to make this county a little principality, with you as the autocrat. It would be a sad day for Diversity. If the people of this town have the sense the Almighty gave doodle-bugs they’ll see what you’re up to. You want the courts. You want the machinery of the law, so you can sack the place. Not a man here, not a man in your woods, would be safe in life or property. You could wrong without fear of redress. So far you’ve been able to get away with it, but I’m thinking the folks here will wake up in time. If you’ve been a crook with men you’ve been a miserable brute with women.”
Moran cursed again, but Jim quelled his struggle promptly.
“It’s astonishing,” he went on, “that some woman’s brother or father hasn’t seen to it you got what you deserve. Some day one of them will.”
Jim was surprised into a moment’s silence by the sudden grayness that shaded Moran’s face, by the expression of furtiveness, of fear, that crept into his eyes.
“Oh, you’re a bit afraid of that, eh? You ought to be. Now for personal matters. You think the Ashe Clothespin Company would be a fine property to add to your holdings, so you mixed up with Welliver and his gang to break me. You hired the Kowterskis to spike my logs and to tamper with my machinery, and you saw what happened to one Kowterski. You’ve tried to hold back cars so I couldn’t ship; now you’re planning to cut me off on timber. Well, you aren’t going to do it.” He thought of Marie Ducharme. “And there’s another matter, which we won’t discuss publicly. If you think hard perhaps you’ll guess. That’s what made me despise you first. I don’t suppose it matters to you how many decent folks despise you, Moran, but it gives me some satisfaction to tell you there are a lot of them. I guess that’s about all, except that I’ve got to have logs—and I’m going to have them.” He loosened his hold. Moran moved his head in his released collar, drew a long breath.
“Through, are you? Well, Ashe, see if you’re man enough to listen to me without using the strong arm. You’ve made your talk. Maybe you think you can talk that way to Michael Moran and get away with it. I’ve a few things to settle with you, and this isn’t the least.” His partially restrained passion burst its bonds in fury. “I’ll get you!” he shouted. “I’ll bust you if it takes every dollar I own. Logs! See how many logs you get. Where’ll you be by the time the courts give you damages—and by that time the courts will belong to me. You’ve started in to crowd me, too, you infernal fool. What good do you think that Le Bar option is going to do you? Do you think I’ll buy from you? Don’t you suppose I can stop a sale to anybody else? You just lose your thousand, that’s all. And that last thing that you didn’t describe. I know what it is, Ashe, and take a warning from me. Change your boarding-house and get out of my way.” He turned, pushed his way violently through the little crowd, and almost ran down the street.
As Jim followed more slowly he heard a man say: “Gosh! I wouldn’t be him for consid’able. Wait till Moran gits at him.”
Jim rather longed for that moment. He went at once to Grierson’s desk.
“Where’s our log contract?” he asked. Grierson got it from the safe. Jim jerked it open, read it quickly. His eyes lighted, his teeth clicked. “Listen to this,” he said. “Does it mean what it says—legally? ‘If for any reason the said Diversity Hardwood Company shall fail to deliver to the said Ashe Clothespin Company logs according to the terms of this contract in sufficient number to fill the requirements of the said Ashe Clothespin Company, then the said Clothespin Company shall have the right to go upon the lands of the Hardwood Company at the most convenient place to them, and to cut timber, take logs from skidways, make use of all tools and appliances belonging to the Hardwood Company which shall be necessary to such logging operations, and this shall include the use of camps, railroads, teams, tools, and any equipment which is available. The cost of such operations shall be faithfully noted and shall be deducted from the contract price of the timber taken in such manner.’”
Grierson peered at Jim through his glasses. “It’s a usual clause in such contracts,” he said, “and I guess it’s legal. But that’s as strong a clause as I ever saw. I don’t know as I ever heard of one that was enforced.”
“This one is going to be,” said Jim, shortly. “Go out to the log-yard,” he said to Grierson’s assistant, “and send Tim Bennett here.”
“Tim,” said Jim, when the cant-dog man appeared, “there was a time when lumberjacks would fight for their boss.”
“Who says I won’t?” Tim demanded, belligerently.
“Just wanted to find out,” said Jim, with a smile that Tim answered broadly. “Know where there are any more like you?”
“Lumberjacks—real ones—is leavin’ this county as fast as they kin go. But there’s some left. Shouldn’t be s’prised if I could dig up a couple of dozen.”
“I want clean men—no boozers—on duty. I want men to depend on in a pinch, who will keep their mouths shut. And I’d just as soon they wouldn’t be friends of Michael Moran.”
“Mike Moran, is it?” Tim asked, his eyes gleaming. “Are you goin’ after him? ’Tis a glad day for Tim Bennett. Friends of Mike’s—there hain’t no sich animal, Mr. Ashe.”
“Find all you can. Don’t tell ’em what’s up—because you don’t know,” Jim said, with a twinkle. “Don’t get ’em together in a gang, but have ’em meet to-morrow night in that bunch of cedar this side the red bridge. If they happen to have peavey handles they might bring them along.”
“To use for canes where the walkin’s bad,” grinned Tim. “I’ll have them there.”
Jim was not satisfied. He wired a friend in the old home town:
Go down Patsy’s have him send twenty good boys. Ten on afternoon, ten on morning train to-morrow. With peavey handles.
Go down Patsy’s have him send twenty good boys. Ten on afternoon, ten on morning train to-morrow. With peavey handles.
He knew this would be enough; that Patsy Garrity would send him the men he needed.
Jim wanted advice, but hesitated to ask it. He knew Zaanan Frame was his friend, but the old man was on the side of law and order. He might frown on Jim’s intention, for, lawful as it was, it might, probably would, turn out to be anything but orderly or peaceful. Still, he decided to go.
Zaanan listened to him quietly, let him finish without comment.
“Blood’s young,” he said at the end, and wagged his head. “But this time I calc’late there hain’t no other way. Moran hain’t got no use for law, but he’ll go rushin’ off for a temp’rary injunction. That’ll tie you up till he kin collect his army. If I was doin’ this I calc’late I’d git there first. Eh? See young Bob Allen that’s runnin’ for prosecutor. He’ll draw the bill for you. You’re startin’ in on a real job, Jim. Better be reasonable sure you’re ready to finish it ’fore you start in. G’-by, Jim.”
Jim went to Bob Allen. The young lawyer’s eyes shone as he listened.
“It’s coming to him,” he said. “Moran’s been needing somebody to handle him without tongs. Mr. Ashe, if I get to be prosecutor, and you’ll back me, I’ll chase him round in circles. I’ll do it whether you back me or not. We want to handle this right. When do you plan to land your invasion?”
“About midnight to-morrow.”
“Then Judge Scudder’s due to have his rest broken. I’ll be at his house at midnight with the papers—and a deputy. He’ll issue the injunction, all right. By that time you’ll be in full blossom. The deputy will slide off to serve the restraining order. Gosh! I’d like to be along with you.”
“I’d like to have you,” said Jim, heartily. “We’ve never had time to get acquainted, but I guess we’re going to. Eh?”
“You bet you!” said Allen. “This place has been drifting along to the graveyard. It’s a godsend to have somebody come along that’s sudden. From what I hear you’re sudden enough to suit anybody—judging from your little love-feast with Moran this afternoon.”
“I suppose the citizens are holding a funeral over me.”
“Yes. But they’re thinking, too. You mentioned a few things that gave them something to think about. I don’t figure you did Peleg Goodwin’s campaign a heap of good. It’s going to be a fight, though. Moran’s spending money.”
“The next prosecutor ought to have legal evidence of it,” said Jim.
“By Jove!” Allen exclaimed, “that’s something I overlooked. If evidence is to be had I’ll get it.”
Jim went back to the office to study a map of the section and to lay the plans for his campaign.
That night Tim Bennett’s lumberjacks began to drift in. There were Danes, Frenchmen, Irish, a sprinkling of Indians. They did not linger in Diversity, nor did they congregate, but passed quickly through with a cheerful air. There was exhilaration, anticipation, in their eyes, whether of Scandinavian blue or of aboriginal black. Old times were back again. For a moment a decadent age of which they despaired was returning to better manners, and there was to be a fight. Peavey handles! There was joy to be had from the very sound of it. In the morning a scattering of big men, predominantly Irish, got off the train and straggled away. In the afternoon another group arrived. They came so quietly, so unostentatiously, that Diversity was hardly aware of them. A full fifty were on hand—fifty fighting-men such as no other set of conditions has produced, men who fought and worked for the joy of it. A race of men who worked, not for pay, but because they loved the work, is worthy of chronicle. They live no more. Men whose highest wage was the knowledge that their camp or crew, or they individually, had done more and harder and better work than some other camp or crew or individual have resident in them something that should be handed down through time for other generations to admire. They possessed vices, but they were brief, flaming, roaring safety-valve vices, almost epic in themselves. For months they were accustomed to live austere, laborious, loyal lives in the ramps. Then for a day, a week, they appeared among their fellows, and their fellows received them and robbed them and plied them with liquor and directed their splendid energies into ways of debauchery. On the scales of justice the robust virtue of them outweighs their brief, primitive descents into the depths. They were men.
Tim Bennett reported to Jim Ashe. “They’re here, fair bustin’ with the thought of it. The taste of a fight is in their mouths and they’re rollin’ it under their tongues.”
“Good men?”
“Mr. Ashe,” said Tim, joyously, “I’d undertake to drive logs through hell with ’em—and the devil throwin’ rocks from the shore.”
“Any talk in town?”
“Not a peep. Them boys sneaked through like the shadow of a flock of hummin’-birds. They’re keepin’ quiet where they are without even a bit of a song. By night there’ll be so much deviltry penned up in ’ere lookin’ for a place to bust out, that when it does come Moran’ll think a herd of boilers is blowin’ up round him.”
“Go out, then, and keep them quiet. I’ll be along by ten to-night.”
It was not Jim’s intention to descend upon the Diversity Hardwood Company with his men blindly and to seize what might by good fortune fall into his hands. He had planned well, as a good general plans. Simultaneously he would strike at several points, so that in a single moment, if all went well, the machinery he needed to move logs would be in his hands. He was ready.
Satisfied he had done all he could do to make success certain, Jim went home to the widow’s to supper. He was excited. Appetite was lacking. He felt inside very much like a countryman descending for the first time in a swift elevator. It was not fear; it was not excitement; it was all the nerves of his body setting and bracing themselves, making ready to respond to strain.
He scarcely touched his food; sat silently reviewing his plans to make sure every point was checked up, that there would be no omissions, no mistake. The widow watched him out of the corner of her shrewd eye; Marie Ducharme watched him, too, less shrewdly, with a different sort of glance. Marie’s eyes were dark with much brooding; were circled by drab shadows drawn by the finger of mental anguish. If Jim had looked at her he would have seen again that hungry look with which she followed the departing train—but now it was bent upon himself.
The widow withdrew to the kitchen, not obviously, but with sufficient pretext. She sensed a quarrel; she saw in Jim’s silence and lack of appetite an ailment of the heart, not a business worry. She fancied Marie’s face spoke of willingness to be reconciled—and eliminated herself to give the difficulty a chance to right itself. Widows have a way of seeing more love-affairs than are visible to other eyes—more, in fact, than are in being.
Presently Marie spoke:
“Jim,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first name. “Jim, I want to go somewhere, do something, to-night. I want to get away from this house.”
Jim looked at her a moment, and she was hurt to see he was not thinking of her, had hardly understood her words. Perhaps she, too, had put on his silence the same interpretation as the widow.
“Go somewhere?” he said, vaguely, then flushed at his awkwardness. “I’m sorry, Marie. I was a long way off when you spoke. It was rude, wasn’t it? But I’ve had such a heap of things to think about these last days that some of them insist on hanging round outside of business hours. Has something happened? Any trouble with Mrs. Stickney?”
“No. No trouble. I just want to get away. I want you to talk to me and keep me from thinking about myself—and some things. I—I’m afraid tonight, Jim.”
Jim bit his lip boyishly.
“Confound it!” he said. “I simply can’t get away to-night. Business. But don’t I wish I could go with you some place—and talk to you. There are things I wanted to say to you the other night, Marie, that—well, I guess it took time for me to think of. I want to talk to you about the same thing, for I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I was too abrupt. You were right to give me the answer you did—but I’ve got some more arguments now, a lot of them.”
Marie’s face softened. How boyish, how eagerly boyish he was!
“You mustn’t talk about that,” she said, gently. “I can’t change. Your work is here. You’re tied to it. And I must get away from it—to stay. Can’t you understand? Don’t misunderstand me, Jim. It wasn’t to give you a chance to ask me to reconsider that I asked you to go out with me. No. No. It was to have you to talk to. To have the consciousness that I was with a man—a man who—was—a human being.” Her voice faltered. “I wanted you to say to me some of the things you have said before—about people being good, about the world being good, about faith and trustworthiness and honor. I don’t know those things, but I want to hear about them—to-night. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of—myself. I talked to you that first day we met—more than I should. So you know me. I am the same girl I was then, but I am not the same girl. Then I knew it would be possible for me to choose the—bitter way. To choose it deliberately as a way of escape. But I did not know then how bitter that way would be. Now I know I should not choose it deliberately, but be forced into it by—by myself.”
“You mustn’t talk that way, I won’t have you say that sort of thing about—my girl.”
“It’s true, and I am afraid. Can’t your business step aside for to-night?”
“It can’t, Marie. If it were an ordinary night or an ordinary matter that calls me, I would stay.” He stopped, considered. It was his nature to speak little of his affairs, to offer few confidences. To tell Marie the truth seemed his only honorable way of escape from the dilemma. “I’ll tell you about it,” he said, with sudden decision, “and you will understand.”
Then he told her, from the beginning in his father’s library. He described his difficulties, his war with the Clothespin Club, his bitterer war with Michael Moran. He told her what Moran had done and was seeking to do. He told her his measures of defense and of counter-attack, and particularly the plan for to-night. “And so you see,” he ended, “I must go.”
“Yes,” she said, slowly, “you must go. And Michael Moran has done those things? You must hate him!”
“Yes,” said Jim, “but not for what he has done to me. I hate him because—” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to utter the thought in connection with Marie.
“Because?” Marie questioned.
“Because,” said Jim, between his teeth, “he is planning and working to make you take the choice you have talked about without appreciating what you were saying.”
“Yes,” said Marie, her eyes shut as though to hide from her a painful sight—“yes, he is doing that. And I have known what I was saying, Jim. I know what I am saying now. I wish you could have stayed with me to-night, Jim. I’m afraid—afraid.” She arose and ran from the room.
When Jim left the house it was with a troubled mind. He did not understand Marie; she was not fathomable by him. The evening’s zest of adventure lay cold within him.
Shortly after eight o’clock he drove away from the livery barn. As he drove past the Widow Stickney’s street he glanced toward the house and saw Michael Moran entering the yard. What he did not see was Marie Ducharme leaving by the back way, hurrying as though pursued, making her way to the edge of town and beyond—beyond until she arrived at the hummock where she and Jim had first spoken. And there she crouched, looking off to the southwest where a silver gleam of the great lake was visible between the trees. It grew darker, but she did not move; dew fell upon her shoulders, chilling her; the lake breeze penetrated her thin garments, but she replied only with a shiver. Her hands were clenched on her breast. “Help me! Help me!” she whispered her soul crying to a Power outside herself.
The moon lighted Jim Ashe to the spot where Tim Bennett and his company of lumberjacks waited. It must be confessed that Jim’s thoughts on the way had more to do with Marie Ducharme than with the enterprise of the night. He thought of Michael Moran, too; hoped in a vague sort of way that the night might bring him face to face with Moran in not peaceful circumstances, for he was young enough to feel the need of settling scores in a physical manner.
Bennett and the men were awaiting him impatiently, though he arrived a full half-hour before his time. They crowded about him, appraising him as a leader, for many of them had never seen him before. He satisfied them. Bennett had told them stories of Sudden Jim which they approved. The result was that they were willing, eager to follow wherever he might lead, careless of consequences to themselves.
“I worked for your dad,” shouted a huge Irishman. “Then you worked for a better man than I,” said Jim.
“It’s a proper son that admits the same,” replied the man.
“Boys,” said Jim, “we may have a tough job this night and we may have an easy one. We’ll figure it at its toughest. You came without knowing why you were coming. I’ll tell you. We’re going to seize the Diversity Hardwood Company’s logging railroad; we’re going to take charge of the rolling stock. We’re going to capture Camp One with all the logs we can get, and enough standing timber to cut what we need. There’s a fair gang in Camp One, but mostly Poles and Hunkies and Italians.”
“L’ave us at ’em!” bellowed the big Irishman. “Shut up and listen,” said Jim, sharply; and the Irishman grinned delightedly. That was the way to speak up to a man.
“The engine is in the roundhouse. Ten trucks stand on the siding near it. There are twenty more trucks at the landings by Camp One. Can anybody here run a locomotive?”
“Me,” said a stocky Dane.
“There’ll be nobody there but a watchman or so. Take ten men and make for town. Land on that roundhouse at eleven o’clock. Hitch on to the trucks and scoot for the woods with them. Pick your own men and start now. The rest of us hike across lots to Camp One. You didn’t forget peavey handles, I see.” Jim grinned down at them and leaped from his buggy.
The parties separated, one moving townward, the other into the woods in the direction of the Diversity Company’s cuttings. With the latter went Jim.
They marched through the moonlit woods gaily as to a merrymaking, but withal as silently as such men could march. They jostled one another, slyly tripped one another, found delight in holding down springy saplings so they would spring back to switch the ears of the man coming behind. It was a picnic of big boys—which would be no picnic when they stripped and got down to business.
For half an hour they stumbled along. An unexpected voice called from the obscurity ahead.
“Mr. Ashe.”
“What is it?” Jim demanded. He knew here was none of his own men; wondered who else was abroad in the woods at that time of night. “Who is it?”
“Gilders,” said the man, stepping into view. The rifle, which seemed as much a part of his usual costume as his floppy hat, was under his arm. He stopped, was surrounded by Jim’s lumberjacks.
“What are you doing here at this time of night?” Jim demanded.
“I am here—many places—at what time of night is best,” said Gilders. “Night or day—what’s the difference?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I cut across from town to catch you. Moran’s warned. He’s got a dozen men at the roundhouse. They’ve telephoned the camps.”
Moran warned! It seemed impossible. Who could have given warning? Jim named over mentally those who knew what was afoot. Zaanan Frame—he had not talked. Allen—he, too, was a safe man. Grierson—oxen could not have drawn a word from him. Marie Ducharme? She knew. Jim had seen Moran going to her but an hour before. Marie Ducharme. He would not believe she could be guilty of such a betrayal of confidence. It was not in her to commit such an act. Yet she had not seemed herself. Something had happened. She had been afraid. Jim closed his eyes, bit his under lip. No one else who knew could have given the warning. The opportunity had been hers. The logic of events bore against her.
Jim turned to Gilders.
“Can you lead me to town the way you came?”
“Yes.”
“Tim Bennett, you’re boss of the gang that goes to the camp. I’ll take ten men away from you. You’ll have thirty—it ought to be enough. You”—he pointed to a man—“come with me, and you and you and you.” He selected his men. “On the jump,” he said to Gilders, and at the heels of their guide they plunged headlong to re-enforce the party that had gone before.
Jim held a match to his watch. It was fifteen minutes past ten. They had three-quarters of an hour to reach a point that could not be reached in less than an hour. When they arrived the battle for the roundhouse would have been on a quarter of an hour. If Moran’s party were strong enough that quarter of an hour might spell defeat for the whole enterprise. If the first attacking party could hold out until Jim arrived—
“Hustle,” Jim said, briefly, and saved his breath for the exertion before him.
The men went silently now, grimly. The smell of imminent battle was in their noses. Ahead of them were comrades facing uneven odds. It was not simply to fight that they hurried, but to succor their friends. Jim’s legs, untrained to woods travel, cried out for rest, but his will compelled them on.
At last lights shone below them, the black tube of the Diversity Company’s smokestack lifted into the star-shimmering sky—ten minutes would take them to it. They heard a sudden, distant shout, other shouts, a babel of sounds subdued by distance. The fight for the roundhouse was on. The attacking party had struck, had met surprising resistance.
“Run!” shouted Jim.
They ran, stumbling, falling headlong. Men’s breath came pantingly; bruised shins were paid for in brief oaths. Each man sought to outdistance his fellows, to be first to add his weight to the tide of battle.
Down the last gully they charged, across the flat before the mills, over the tracks. Before them loomed the roundhouse, now bright with electric light. Before the big doors swayed and writhed a group of men. Other dark figures, two and two, quaintly intertwined, moved and struggled and smote like living silhouettes. Hoarse shouts arose; the thud of blows; the shuffling of feet came to Jim’s ears. Then he was in the midst of it.
Even with the addition of Jim’s reinforcements his party was outnumbered; but Moran’s men, under the shock and surprise of the charge, gave way, but only for an instant. Inside, Jim saw the engine, steam up, a man in the cab. They were getting ready to bring it out. Why? he asked himself, even as the sight of it was shut out and he was hemmed in by fighting men.
It was Jim’s first real fight. It came to him suddenly that he could fight, that he was worthy to stand side by side with these lumberjacks, to give blows where they gave blows, and he was glad.
Again he caught a brief glimpse of the interior of the roundhouse as a man before him went down under a blow from his fist. On the tender he saw Michael Moran—not fighting, but watching, directing. He saw a man break away from the melee and leap toward the engine, recognized Gilders. His teeth were bared, his hands empty. Jim struggled forward, shot another look, saw Moran, his face distorted with rage, raise a chunk of coal above his head and hurl it. Whether it found its mark or not Jim could not tell.
Jim’s men were holding their own. Though outnumbered, they were trained to battle of this sort, with inherited talent for it, against men not bred to fight with their hands. But Moran’s men fought, and fought well. Numbers made them even, if not superior.
It was apparent they had been told to guard the big door, for as best they could they remained solidly before it. They were not men to take the offensive on their own initiative, nor, Jim thought, would they assume it under orders unless the enemy were in actual retreat. It was a point to be taken advantage of. He wormed and wriggled out of the fight, marked the Dane who could drive an engine, and hauled him out, struggling. At random the two of them separated two others from the confusion.
“The engine,” Jim panted. “Side door. Come on!”
They scurried to a small door left unguarded, and plunged through. The engine was before them, Moran still on the tender. On the ground lay Gilders. Moran’s missile had flown true. The Dane with his companions stormed the cab. In an instant they had hurled down the engineer, hurled him so ungently that he did not rise. Jim dodged a lump of coal which Moran hurled, and himself threw a peavey handle which he had picked up somewhere in the fight. It caught Moran amidships so that he crumpled up on the coal, the breath knocked from his overnourished, undertrained body. Jim scrambled to his side, lifted him and dumped him off with scant regard for how or where he fell.
“Toot the whistle!” he yelled. “Back her out.”
The whistle screeched, and in that confined space its voice was the voice of many demons. The wheels began to turn.
“One man up here,” Jim ordered, and when the man came he set an example by lifting his voice in battle-cry, by hurling lumps of coal at the backs of the defenders.
They turned. Taken in the rear by a new enemy, menaced by a down-bearing locomotive, their morale departed, they scattered to each side, broke, some even turned in sudden flight. Jim’s lumberjacks did the rest.
The locomotive moved out on a clear track, backed to the switch where stood the empty trucks. It was Jim who coupled them to the engine.
“We’ve done the job here,” he said to the big Irishman who was his companion on the tender. “Collect the boys and load ’em on the trucks. We’re off for the woods. Maybe Bennett’s gang is chewing on more than it can swallow. Somebody see to Gilders inside there.”
A few moments more saw the little army perched precariously on the trucks. They were bruised, bleeding, clothing was in tatters, eyes were draped in black, clearings appeared where once had grown strong white teeth. But they were jubilant, for victory had been theirs. They celebrated it noisily.
Slowly, with great rattling and jangling, with song and cheer, they moved away from the roundhouse, out of the yard and out upon the narrow-gauge track which led back into the woods. Five miles of uncomfortable travel lay between them and Camp One, but its discomforts were not detectable by them. They had won. It had been a fight worth while, and they had won. Another fight lay before them perhaps. They hoped so.
Perhaps Jim Ashe did not know it, but he had tied these men to him with bonds of admiration. From this day they were his friends, would work for him, fight for him. He had fought shoulder to shoulder with them. His quick thought had turned the day in their favor. He was a man who dared, a man who stood on his two feet and wielded fist or peavey handle like a man—he was one of them.
“What’s the matter with Sudden Jim?” somebody yelled.
“He’s all right,” answered back a tumultuous shout, and Jim was more than pleased. He had been tendered an honor which he knew how to appreciate.
“Look out for Crab Creek Trestle,” the Irishman said. “If Moran was on the job he’d jerk a rail and treat us to a drop into the marsh.”
“Slack down at Crab Creek,” Jim shouted to his engineer. He scrambled forward to the cab, and sat looking forward where the headlight peered ahead, illuminating the track.
“She’s bane joost ahead,” said the engineer. In a moment the trestle came into view. As the light rested on it two black figures emerged from the underbrush to run out upon the structure, where they stopped. The sound of sledge striking steel came back distinctly through the clear air.
Jim leaped from the engine, half a dozen men at his heels. Out upon the trestle they ran, all undesirable risks for an accident insurance company at the minute. The sledge continued to rise and fall, but when Jim was within fifty feet of the men they dropped their implements over the edge and ran. Jim stopped to appraise the damage. His men kept up the pursuit with success, for in a moment he heard a shout of glee and saw a man performing antics in the air as he descended into the marsh muck below.
Moran’s men had been too slow. Another minute or so and a rail would have been loosened, but their few blows had not sufficed. The trestle was safe to pass.
“Four men stop here,” Jim said, and motioned the train on.
Ten minutes more and they were at Camp One. There were noises of frolic, but none of battle.
“Get cheated out of your fight?” Jim asked Tim Bennett as the cant-dog man hurried up to the engine.
“Not what you could notice,” grinned Tim, displaying a split lip and barked knuckles. “But they was Wops or somethin’. We chased ’em into the cook-shanty, where they bide in fear and tremblin’.”
“Is there enough moon to load those trucks?”
Tim looked at Jim and grinned broadly.
“There wouldn’t be for anybody but you, Mr. Ashe, but these here boys ’u’d work for you if it was so dark you couldn’t feel a pin stick into you.”
“Leave enough men to hold the gang in the cook-shanty. Take the rest and load. How many trucks can that engine haul down?”
“Twenty, on a pinch.”
“Pick as much maple as you can,” said Jim. “You’re boss.”
Given landings, twoscore men who know how to use cant-hooks can handle an astonishing number of logs in an hour. Twenty trucks were not filled in sixty minutes, but the train was ready before dawn—twenty trucks carrying thirty-five thousand feet of hardwood logs.
“Now the cook-shanty,” said Jim. “We need it.”
The crew rollicked to the log house which was cook-shanty at one end, bunkhouse at the other. Jim parleyed.
“Come out and we’ll let you go,” he called.
Thoroughly frightened, the foreigners emerged.
“Hit for town,” Jim told them. “Your job’s gone. Start walking and keep it up—we’ll be behind you and it won’t be healthy if we catch up.”
Half an hour later Jim’s crew were breakfasting on Moran’s coffee and salt pork. It was a species of humor they could enjoy. The night, with its incidents, had furnished them a story to be told on many evenings in diverse places.
“Fifteen men on the train,” Jim ordered. “The rest load the other ten trucks. We’ll be back for ’em if Moran doesn’t eat us somewhere along the road.”
Jim rode back in the engine cab, tired, but filled with a notable satisfaction. He knew he had scored heavily, though his victory was by no means permanent. Altogether, perhaps, he was more pleased with himself than the state of affairs quite warranted. The engineer reminded him of this by asking what they were to do for coal when the supply in the tender was exhausted. Jim could give no reply.
However, he gave his reply after the train of logs had passed the Diversity Company’s mills, passed them to an accompaniment of cheers and jeers from the men riding on the trucks. For Jim had seen two cars of coal standing on a siding.
“There’s our coal,” he said to the engineer. “We’ll borrow it on the way back.”
And borrow it they did, calmly, under the noses of the enemy.
One more trip to Camp One and return Jim made that day. Another thirty-odd thousand feet of timber was unloaded in his log-yard. He left Tim Bennett in charge, directing him to handle logs as he had never handled them before, and himself went to his office.
Beam and Nelson followed him gleefully. But the surprise of the day was supplied by Grierson, who emerged from his bookkeeping lair, his eyes not free from a moisture the origin of which was open to suspicion, and grasped Jim’s hand.
“I wish your father could have been here to see it,” he said, and retreated hastily behind his barrier again.
Diversity chattered and gesticulated, surmised and prophesied. It did not know exactly what had happened, but was able to relate much more than had happened. The one protruding fact was that Michael Moran had the worst of the affair. The Ashe Clothespin Company was sawing logs which Moran had intended they should not saw, and young Jim Ashe bounded to local fame—not altogether admirable. The character assigned him was a patchwork of daredevil, Machiavelli, business genius, general, pugilist, bandit, patriot. It depended on whom you talked with which attribute was set foremost.
By night some credit had been subtracted from Jim to be piled up before Zaanan Frame’s door as censure. The idea had been circulated subtlely. A reign of lawlessness was to be inaugurated. Zaanan Frame, the county’s dictator, winked at it, even lent his aid to it. He had debauched the courts themselves, so that, instead of giving their protection to Moran, assailed in his sacred rights of property, they actually issued injunctions forbidding him to interfere with men who, to all intents, were stealing his timber.
Peleg Goodwin made a speech about it from the steps of the hotel, and many good citizens believed him. Jim discovered suddenly he had become an important part of the political issue.
When supper-time came he walked down the road, hesitated in front of the hotel, half of a mind to eat there, for he did not want to meet Marie Ducharme yet. In his office he had been thinking of her, had been trying to argue himself into a belief in her fidelity; but it had been futile. The evidence seemed proof incontrovertible to him. He believed she had betrayed his confidence to Michael Moran.
His hesitation was brief. With a shrug of his shoulders he went on to the widow’s. As well have the meeting now as any time, he thought. He was young; he had given his heart, his faith wholly, and his spirit was sick with the shock of disillusionment. Where he loved he had been betrayed—wantonly, it seemed to him. So he went grimly to the widow’s table. His face might have borne a far different expression could he have known Marie Ducharme had not closed her eyes through the night, nor till mid-morning brought assurances of his safety. Tenderness and pity might have mingled in his heart could he have known of her struggle on the little hilltop under the moon. But he did not know.
“H’m!” said the widow, as he entered. “Fine carryin’s-on! I’ve had boarders and boarders, but I don’t call to mind none been as like to get hauled out from under my roof by the sheriff as you. What you mean by it, anyhow?”
“I don’t think the sheriff will interfere with me,” said Jim, humorlessly, forgetting or neglecting to greet Marie with even a nod of the head.
“Them that lives by the sword shall die by the sword,” the widow said, seeking the support of the Scriptures.
“And those who live by logs must have logs,” said Jim.
“Folks is sayin’ Zaanan Frame was back of this caper of yours. ’Tain’t so, is it?”
“No.”
“Knew he wouldn’t be lendin’ his countenance to murderin’ and killin’ and maimin’ and injurin’.”
“There would have been no fighting,” said Jim, his eyes on the tablecloth, “if my plans hadn’t been betrayed to Moran.”
“Who done that, I’d like to know?” said the widow, quick to change her front. “Who’d ’a’ done such a miserable, sneakin’, low-down thing as that? You ought to ketch him and teach him sich a lesson he wouldn’t forgit it in a hurry.”
“I can’t,” said Jim, dully. “You see, it wasn’t a man.”
“H’m! Serves you right, then, for lettin’ a woman find out what you was goin’ to do.”
Jim made no reply, did not lift his eyes, so he was unconscious of the look Marie bent upon him. Her eyes were startled, dark with apprehension. His manner toward her, what did it mean? Did he suspect her? She bit her lip and pretended to eat. Presently she excused herself and left the room with lagging steps.
Jim finished his meal silently. He, too, went out, his feet heavy as his heart as he descended the steps and walked along the bricked path to the gate. Marie was waiting for him.
“Jim,” she said, “what did you mean? You acted so—what you said—”
“I meant,” said Jim, dully, “that within an hour from the time I told you what I was going to do, Moran was warned.”
“You believe that I warned him?”
He was silent.
“No!” she cried. “No! I didn’t see Moran last night, Jim. I didn’t see him. I didn’t tell him.”
“You only make it worse,” he said. “Moran was here. I saw him turn in the gate.”
“I wasn’t here, Jim. I didn’t see him. I ran away from him because I was afraid. You don’t know how afraid of him I am, Jim. I begged you to stay home last night—but you couldn’t; so I ran away. He comes, Jim, and shows me the world—out there. He offers it to me—and I want it, I want it! He doesn’t put things into words; but I—I understand him. I—I hate him! But the longing; this awful place—You said you loved me, Jim, and I wouldn’t accept your love. You didn’t love me, you couldn’t love me, or you wouldn’t believe—”
“I loved you and I trusted you. I would have trusted you with everything a man can trust a woman with. And you—you hardly waited till I was out of sight before you told him.”
She looked at him with agony in her eyes.
“I’ll tell you. Yes, I’ll tell you, and then you must believe. I—I did love you, Jim, even when I refused you. It is true. You make me tell you. And last night—out there on that knoll—I found I couldn’t go on without you. I saw things clearly. I understood what love meant. And my fear of him went away, because I was going to let you know, and then I would be safe—safe with you. Oh, Jim, I was not with him one second. I was out there, sending my heart after you. Now you believe me, don’t you, Jim?” Her voice was pitiful.
Each word Jim uttered seemed a bit torn grimly from his heart. He did not believe her. Now that his trust in her was gone, his unbelief grew and multiplied.
“I am a new-comer in your life,” he said. “Moran has been there for years. You—he saw you attracted me. That became useful to him. Last night shows how useful. Why do you say these things to me about love? Love is not a thing to lie about. I know what love is, because you—some one I thought was you—had made it live in me. I don’t believe you now. I shall never believe you again. The thing you have just said is not true. I believe you have said it—in obedience to him. So he might have an eye which would look into my very soul.”
He stopped. She stood silent, pale, her lips parted as in horror. One hand crept upward flutteringly, stopped at her breast, moved outward toward Jim.
“Jim!” she whispered. “Jim! You didn’t say that. Tell me I didn’t hear that. Tell me! Tell me! You don’t know what you’re saying, what you’re doing. I had won. I had struggled and won. Don’t send me back to him.” Suddenly she gave way and threw herself on a bench beside the path, her hands over her ears as though to shut out some dreadful sound. “It’s a lie!” she panted. “A lie! A lie! A lie!”
Jim felt himself near the breaking-point. He turned and hurried, almost ran, out of the widow’s garden, but even as far as the gate he could hear her voice repeating: “A lie! A lie! A lie!”