CHAPTER X
NORTHWARD, HO!
Buck Moncrossen was a big man with a shrunken, maggoty soul, and no conscience.
He had learned logging as his horses learned it—by repetition of unreasoning routine, and after fifteen years' experience in the woods Appleton had made him a camp boss.
His camps varied from year to year in no slightest detail. He made no suggestions for facilitating or systematizing the work, nor would he listen to any. He roared mightily at the substitution of horses for oxen; he openly scoffed at donkey engines, and would have none of them.
During his years as a sawyer, by the very brute strength and doggedness of him, he had established new records for laying down timber. And now, as boss, he bullied the sawyers who could not equal those records—and hated those who could.
Arbitrary, jealous, malignant, he ruled his camps with the bluff and bluster of the born coward.
Among the lumber-jacks, he was known and hated as a hard driver of men and a savage fighter. In the quick, brutish fights of the camps, men went down under the smashing blows of his huge fists as they would go down to the swing of a derrick-boom, and, once down, would be jumped upon with calked boots and spiked into submission.
It was told in the woods that whisky flowed unchallenged in Buck Moncrossen's camps. His crews were known as hard crews; they "hired out for tough hands, and it was up to them to play their string out."
At the first cry of "gillon" (stormy days when the crews cannot work) flat flasks and round black bottles circulated freely in the bunk-house, and the day started, before breakfast, in a wild orgy of rough horse-play, poker, and profanity.
But woe betide the man who allowed overindulgence to interfere with the morrow's work. Evil things were whispered of Moncrossen's man-handling of "hold-overs."
In the office, back in Minneapolis, if these things were known they were winked at. For Moncrossen was a boss who "got out the logs," and the details of his discipline were unquestioned.
On the Appleton holdings along Blood River the pine stood tall and straight and uncut.
In the years of plenty—those wasteful years of frenzied logging, when white pine lumber brought from twelve to twenty dollars a thousand and rival concerns were laying down only the choicest of logs—Appleton's crews were ordered to clean up as they went.
Toothpick logging it was called then, and H. D. Appleton was contemptuously referred to as "the toothpicker."
Twenty years later, with the market clamoring for white pine at any price, Appleton was selling white pine, while in the denuded forest the crews of his rivals were getting out cull timber and Norway.
And this fall Appleton sent Buck Moncrossen into the Blood River country with orders to put ten million feet of logs into the river by spring.
So it was that the few remaining inhabitants of Hilarity were aroused from their habitual apathy one early fall evening by the shrill shrieks of an engine whistle as Moncrossen's ten-car train, carrying crew and supplies for the new camp, came to a stop at the rusty switch. There was something reminiscent in this whistle-sound. It came as a voice from the past.
Time was, some eight or ten years before, when the old No. 9 and her companion engine, No. 11, whistled daily and importantly into Hilarity, pushing long strings of "flats" onto the spurs; and then whistled out again with each car groaning and creaking under its towering pyramid of logs.
But that was in the days of Hilarity's prosperity—in the days when the little town was the chief loading point for two thousand square miles of timber.
It had been a live town then—work and wages and the spirit to spend—quick, hot life, and quick, cold death danced hand in hand to the clink of glasses.
Everything ran wide open, and all night long rough men sinned abysmally in their hell-envied play, and, crowding the saloons, laughed and fought and drank red liquor in front of long pine bars, where the rattle of chips and the click of pool-balls, mingled with lurid profanity, floated out through the open doors and blended with the incessant tintinnabulation of the dance-hall pianos.
These were the days of Hilarity's prosperity, when twenty train-loads of logs were jerked from her spurs by day, and the nights rang loud with false laughter.
A vanished prosperity—for now the little town stood all but deserted in its clearing, with the encircling hills denuded of all vegetation save a tangle of underbrush and a straggling growth of stunted jack pine.
Even the "pig-iron loggers"—the hardwood men—had gleaned the last stick from the ridges, and Hilarity had become but a name on the map.
Only those remained who were old or crippled, and a few—a very few—who had undertaken to grub out tiny farms among the stumps.
Each evening these forlorn remnants were wont to forsake their stolid-faced wives and yammering offspring and pick their way through the solitary stump-dotted street, past windowless, deserted buildings which were the saloons and dance-halls of better days, to foregather around the huge stove in the rear of Hod Burrage's general store, which was decrepit Hilarity's sole remaining enterprise, and there to brag and maunder over the dead town's former glory.
The fact that certain of Hod's jugs never tilted to the filling of the vinegar bottles or molasses pails of the women, not only served to insure unflagging attendance, but the sale of their contents afforded the storekeeper a small but steady income which more than offset any loss incident to the preoccupied inroads upon his cracker barrel.
The sound of the once familiar whistle brought the men tumbling from Burrage's door, while up and down the deserted street aproned forms stood framed in the doorways, beflanked by tousled heads which gazed wonder-eyed from behind tight-gripped skirts.
Not a person in town, except the very newest citizens, and they were too young to care—for nobody ever came to Hilarity except by the stork route—but recognized old No. 9's whistle.
Strange, almost apologetic, it sounded after its years of silence; not at all like the throaty bellow of derision with which the long, vestibuled coast trains thundered through the forsaken village.
A brakeman leaped from the cab and ran ahead. Stooping, he cursed the corroded lock of the unused switch which creaked and jarred to the pull of the lever as old No. 9 headed wheezily onto the rust-eaten rails of the rotting spur.
An hour later she puffed noisily away, leaving Moncrossen's crew encamped in the deserted cabins and dilapidated saloons of the worn-out town.
Moncrossen, by making use of old tote-roads, saved about forty of the eighty miles of road building which lay between Hilarity and the Blood River.
Toward the end of October the work was completed, the camp buildings erected, and a brush and log dam thrown across the river at the narrows of a white water rapid.
Swampers and axe-men set to work building skidways and cross-hauls, and the banks of the river were cleared for the roll-ways. The ground was still bare of snow, but the sawyers were "laying them down," and the logs were banked at the skidways.
Then one morning the snow came.
Quietly it fell, in big, downy flakes that floated lazily to earth from the even gray of the cloud-spread sky, tracing aimless, zigzag patterns against the dark green background of the pines, and covering the brown needles of the forest floor and the torn mold of the skidways with a soft blanket of white.
The men sprang eagerly to their work—heartened by the feel of the snow. The tingling air was filled with familiar man-sounds—the resonant stroke of axes, and the long crash of falling trees, the metallic rattle of chains, the harsh rasp of saws, and the good-natured calls of men in rude banter; sounds that rang little and thin through the mighty silence of the forest.
Gradually the flakes hardened and the zigzag patterns resolved themselves into long, threadlike lines which slanted earthward with a soft, hissing sound.
Fast it fell, and faster, until the background disappeared, and all the world was a swift-moving riot of white.
It was a real snow now—a snow of value which buried the soft blanket of the feathery flakes under a stable covering which would pack hard under the heavy runners of the wide log sleds.
It lodged in thick masses in the trees whose limbs bent under the weight, and the woods rang to the cries of the sawyers when the tottering of a mighty pine sent a small avalanche hurtling through the lower branches, half-burying them in its white smother.
As the early darkness of the North country settled about them the men plowed heavily to the bunk-house through a foot and a half of fresh-fallen snow—and still it snowed.
CHAPTER XI
BILL HITS THE TRAIL
In a long-abandoned shack midway between Moncrossen's Blood River camp and Hilarity, Bill Carmody hugged close the rusty, broken stove.
All day he had tramped northward, guided through the maze of abandoned roads by the frozen ruts of Moncrossen's tote wagons, and it was long after dark when he camped in the northernmost of the old shacks with civilization, as represented by Hilarity's deserted buildings and the jug-tilting, barrel-head conclave of Hod Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward.
It had been a hard day—this first day of his new life in the Northland. And now, foot-sore, dog-tired, and dispirited, he sat close and fed sticks to his guttering fire which burned sullenly and flared red for want of draft.
The chinking had long since fallen from between the logs and the night wind whipped the smoke in stinging volleys from gaping holes in the rust-eaten jacket of the dilapidated air-tight.
Tears streamed from the man's smoke-tortured eyes, every muscle of his body ached horribly from the unaccustomed trail-strain, and his feet, unused to the coarse woolen socks beneath heavy boots, were galled and blistered until the skin hung in rolls from the edges of raw scalds.
He removed his foot-gear and the feel of the cold wind was good to his burning feet. He scowled resentfully at the galling newness of his high-laced boots and with a tentative finger explored his hurts.
Unbuckling his pack, he drew forth the ready prepared food with which he had supplied himself at the store. The pack had seemed trifling when he swung lightly into the trail that morning, but twelve hours later, when he stumbled painfully into the disused shack, it had borne upon his aching shoulders as the burden of Atlas.
Hungry as he was, he glared disgustedly at the flaunting label of the salmon can and the unappetizing loaf of coarse bread dried hard, rather than baked, from sodden dough, by Hod Burrage's slovenly spouse.
And as he glared he pondered the words of advice offered by the old man with the twisted leg who sat upon Burrage's counter and punctuated his remarks with quick, jerky stabs of his stout, home-made crutch.
"Tha' cann't fish ben't no good f'r trail grub, son. Ye're a greener, you be. Better ye lay in what'll stay by ye—a bit o' bacon, like, or some bologny—an' a little tin coffee-pot yonder.
"Ye'll be thinkin' o' steppin' out the door wi' ye're new boots an' ye're pack an' trippin' up to Blood River in maybe it's two walks, wi' naught in ye're belly but a can o' cold fish an' a stun weight o' Mary Burrage's bread, which there ain't no more raisin' into it nor a toggle-chain.
"'Tis plain ye're a greener, son; but take an old fool's advice an' get ye a pair o' the shoe-packs yonder to spell off the boots. Bran' new, they be, an' they'll gald ye're feet till ye'll be walkin' ankle-deep in hell again' night. F'r Oi'll be tellin' ye Blood River lays a fine two walks f'r agoodman, an' his boots broke in to the wear."
Now Bill Carmody was, by environment, undemocratic, and he resented being called a greener. Also the emphasis which old Daddy Dunnigan had placed upon the words "good man," in evident contrast to himself, rankled.
How he wished, as he sat in the cold discomfort of the shack, that he had heeded the timely and well-meant advice. His was not an arrogant nature, nor a surly—but the change in his environment had been painfully abrupt. All his life he had chosen for companions men whom he looked upon as his social equals, and he knew no others except as paid hirelings to do his bidding. And all his life money had removed from his pathway the physical discomforts incident to existence.
But all this was in the past. Unconsciously he was learning a lesson and this first lesson would be hard—but very thorough, and the next time he met Daddy Dunnigan he would take him by the hand. For here was a man—a good man—in the making. But a man new to his surroundings. A man who would learn hard—but quickly—and who would fight hard against the very conditions which were to make him.
His perspective must first be broken on the wheel of experience, that he might know human nature, and the relative worth of men. His unplastic nature would one day be his chief bulwark; as now, it was his chief stumbling block. For in his chosen life-work he must take men—many men—rough men—of diverse codes and warring creeds, and with them build an efficient unit for the conquering of nature in her own fastnesses. And this thing requires not only knowledge and strength, but courage, and the will to do or die.
Alighting from the caboose of the local freight train on the previous evening, he entered Hod Burrage's door as he had entered the doors of trades-places all his life. To him, Hod Burrage was not a personality, but a menial existing for the sole purpose of waiting upon and attending to the wants of him, Bill Carmody. The others—the old men, and the crippled ones, and the hard-handed grubbers of stumps, who sat about in faded mackinaws and patched overalls—he regarded not at all.
He deposited his pack-sack on the floor where its canvas sides, outbulging with blankets and duffel, fairly shrieked their newness.
After some minutes of silence—a silence neither friendly nor hostile, during which Bill was conscious that all eyes were turned upon him in frank curiosity, he spoke—and in speaking, inadvertently antagonized the entire male population of Hilarity. For in his speech was no word of greeting.
He addressed no one in particular, but called peremptorily, and with a trace of irritation, for a salesman.
Now, Hod Burrage was anything but a salesman. His goods either sold themselves or remained on their shelves, and to Mr. Burrage it was a matter of supreme indifference which. He was wont to remark to hesitating or undecided customers that "if folks didn't know what they wanted when they come into the store, they better keep away till they find out."
So, in answer to the newcomer's demand, Hod shifted his quid and, with exasperating deliberation, spat in the direction of a sawdust-filled box near which the other was standing.
Without rising from his seat in the one undamaged chair, he answered: "If it's the storekeeper you mean, I'm him." Then, as an after-thought. "Was they somethin' you wanted?"
Bill resented the implied rebuke in the storekeeper's words even more than he resented the bombardment of tobacco juice which barely missed his boots. Take it all in all he was having a rather rough time of it.
The railway people had refused to stop their fast train at Hilarity for his special benefit, and he had been compelled to get off at the nearest division point, some forty miles to the westward, and continue his journey in the evil-smelling caboose of the local freight-train which crawled jerkily over the rails, and stopped to shunt cars at every siding.
Nearly the whole day had been consumed for the trip, during which time he had sat in the stuffy, superheated car, whose foul air reeked of cheap tobacco and drying garments, and listened to the guffaws of the train-crew as they regaled each other with vile stories and long accounts of revolting personal experiences among the dives of cities.
So now, tired, grimy, and with his head aching dully from the long breathing of foul air, he was in no humor for comprehensive amiability.
He made his few purchases and replied curtly to the questions of the storekeeper. It is doubtful if he would have replied at all but for the fact that he must have information in regard to the whereabouts of Moncrossen's Blood River camp.
There was a roar of merriment, which he answered with a scowl, when he inquired the location of the hotel.
"Jest help yourself, stranger," said Burrage, with a generous sweep of the arm which included all Hilarity not within the confines of the room. "They's about fifty buildin's, cabins, an' shacks along the street, an' you can take your pick. Rent's the cheapest thing they is in Hilarity—jest kick out the rats an' spread your blankets."
It was when Bill stooped to add the gaudy-labeled cans to his pack that Daddy Dunnigan, of the twisted leg, volunteered the bit of advice that fell upon his ears unheeded.
He was openly resentful now, having detected certain smiles, winks, and nudgings with which the assembled men called each other's attention to various details of his clothing and pack.
During the storekeeper's temporary cessation of vigilance while waiting upon his customer, the others had seized the opportunity to refresh themselves at his expense.
A thick, heavy tumbler, so cloudy and begrimed as to be almost opaque, was filled from a large jug placed conveniently upon a sack of potatoes, and passed from one to the other, each absorbing little or much as the thirst was upon him, and passing it on to his neighbor.
Daddy Dunnigan offered it to Bill along with the advice; but the latter ungraciously refused and, turning abruptly away, shouldered his pack and proceeded to select his "hotel."
"Wonder who's he?" remarked Hod Burrage as he lazily resumed his seat.
"Too damned upity to suit me!" vociferated Creed, Hilarity's self-alleged bad man, with a fierce exhalation that dislodged a thin volley of cracker-crumbs from his overhanging mustache. "A heap too damned upity for this camp, says I."
He shook a hairy fist menacingly toward the door through which the man had departed. "It's lucky for him it was old Daddy there 'stead of me he wouldn't drink with or I'd of went to the floor with him an' teached him his manners."
"Naw ye wouldn't, Creed," said the old man. "Ye'd done jest loike ye done—set there atop yer barr'l an' blinked. An' when he'd went out ye'd blowed an' bragged an' blustered, an' then fizzled out like a wet fuse. 'Stead of which Oi predic' that the young feller's a real man—once he gets strung out. Anyways, Oi bet he does his foightin' whiles the other feller's there 'stead of settin' 'round an' snortin' folks' whisky full o' cracker-crumbs."
He gazed ruefully into his half-filled glass.
"Throw it out, Daddy, an' have one on me," offered Burrage, reaching for the jug.
With a sly wink toward the others, the old man drained the glass at a gulp and passed it innocently to be refilled.
"I'll let him go this time," rumbled Creed with a frown. "He's headin' for Buck Moncrossen's camp—Moncrossen'll break him!"
"Or he'll break Moncrossen!" interrupted Daddy, bringing his crutch down upon the floor. "The one camp'll not hold the two o' thim f'r long. Heed ye now, Oi predic' there'll be hell a poppin' on Blood River, an' be this time a year fr' now one o' thim two'll be broke f'r good an' all, an', not to mention no names, it won't be yon stranger."
The strong liquor had loosened the tongue of the ordinarily silent old man and he continued:
"Oi catched his eye fair; an' 'tis the eye of a foightin' man—an eye, the loike o' which Oi ain't seen since Oi looked f'r the last time in the dead eyes o' Captain Fronte McKim, in the second outbreak o' the wild Boh, Hira Kal, in the brown hills o' the Punjab."
The men listened expectantly, for when the liquor was right the old man could tell of strange wars in far climes.
"One night the little hillmen sneaked up on Captain Barkley's flyin' battery. They left his head an' his men's stickin' atop a row o' stakes an' dragged the guns to a hilltop overlookin' the pass. An' in the mornin' they unlimbered, sweepin' our left wing.
"Fronte McKim was captain o' the Lights an' Oi was a corp'l. All that mornin' the Boh kep' pepperin' away, wi' 'Miss Fanny,' the colonel he was, an' his parade-groun' staff o' book sogers, wi' tables o' figgers an' the book o' rules an' maps an' a pair o' dividers, tryin' to figger out how to chase a bad Boh offen a hilltop wi'out clim'in' the same.
"An' he lived a long time after, did Miss Fanny, to die in his bed o' some nice, fine disease, wi' his fambly an' his Scotch an' sody gathered about him.
"An' he was put in a foine, big coffin wi' a bran' new flag spread atop to keep off the dust, an' carried back to Englan' in a war-ship, wi' the harbor guns firin' salutes—the whiles Fronte McKim lays back among the hills o' Punjab, wropped in his powder-burnt, shot-tore blanket.
"The hillmen an' their women an' the shiny hill kids give wide berth in passin', an' make low salaams to the grave o' the terrible fightin'sahibthat put the fear o' God in the heart o' the wild Boh. An' it's as Captain Fronte would wished—Oi know'd um well.
"But, as Oi was sayin', the whiles Miss Fanny was tryin'—by nine times six is forty-seven an' traject'ry an' muzzle v'locity an' fours right an' holler squares—to wish the Boh offen the hilltop so he could march us through the pass accordin' to Hoyle, Fronte McKim was off ahead among the rocks, layin' on his belly behint a ant-hill studyin' the hillside through his spyglass.
"Well, 'long 'bout noon he come gallopin' up, wi' his big black horse all a lather, to where we was layin' in the scrub cursin' the flies an' the department an' the outbreaks o' Bohs.
"'Come on, boys!' he hollers, wi' the glitter in his eye; 'Oi found the way! All together now, an' we'll see the top o' yon hill or we'll see hell this day!'
"Wi' that he tears loose a yell 'twould strike a chill to the heart o' an iceberg, an' wheels his horse into the open—an' us in the saddle an' follerin', all yellin' like a hellful o' devils turned loose for recess."
The old man shifted his crutch and sipped at his liquor.
"Most o' us seen the top o' the hill," he resumed, "an' the brown hillmen, what of 'em wasn't layin' limp by the guns, a skitterin' through the scrub after a Boh who'd took off on a stray cavalry horse.
"But they was a many o' us as didn't—layin' sprawled among the rocks o' the bare hillside, an' their horses runnin' wild to keep up wi' the charge. We found Captain Fronte wi' his whole front blow'd out by a shell an' his shoulders kind o' tumbled in where his lungs belonged—but thim eyes was lookin' straight at the hilltop.
"An' Oi looked in 'em long—for Oi loved him—an' was glad. 'Cause Oi know'd Captain Fronte McKim was seein' hell—an' enjoyin' it."
He set down the empty glass and favored Creed with a cold stare: "An' his eyes is likethat—the stranger's—an' yours ain't, nor Moncrossen's."
CHAPTER XII
THE TEST
With only one-half of his journey behind him and the chill night-wind whipping through the unchinked crevices of the deserted shack; with the prospect of an unsavory supper of soggy sock-eye and a lump of frozen bread, Bill Carmody fervently wished himself elsewhere.
His mind lingered upon the long row of squat, fat-footed shoe-packs which the old man had indicated with his gnarled crutch. How good they would feel after the grinding newness of his boots! And coffee—he could see the row of tin pots hanging from their wires, and the long, flat slabs of bacon suspended from the roof-logs of the store.
He found himself, for the first time in his life, absolutely dependent upon his own resources. He cut the top from a can of salmon and thawed out his bread on the top of the dirty stove. He had no cup, so he used the salmon-can, limping in stockinged feet to the spring near the door, whose black waters splashed coldly in a tiny rivulet that found its way under the frozen surface of a small creek. The water was clear and cold, but tasted disgustingly fishy from its contact with the can.
As he entered the shack and closed the sagging door, his glance was arrested by an object half concealed in the cobwebbed niche between the lintel and the sloping roof-logs—an object that gleamed shiny and black in the dull play of the firelight. He reached up and withdrew from its hiding-place a round quart bottle, across whose top was pasted a familiar green stamp which proclaimed that the contents had been bottled in bond.
He carried it to the fire and with the sleeve of his mackinaw removed the accumulated dust from the label. "Old Morden Rye," he read aloud, holding it close to the firelight. And as he read his thoughts flew backward to past delights. Here was an old friend come to cheer him in the wilderness.
He was no longer cold nor hungry, and before his eyes danced the bright, white lights of the man-made night of Broadway. His shoulders straightened and the sparkle came into his eyes. Forgotten was his determination to make good, and the future was a remote thing of no present moment nor concern. Once again he was Broadway Bill, the sport!
Carefully and deliberately he broke the seal and removed the cork-rimmed glass stopper, which he flung to a far corner of the room—for that was Bill's way—to throw away the cork. There was nothing small in his make-up; and for why is whisky, but to drink while it lasts? And one cannot drink through a cork-rimmed stopper. So he threw it away.
Only that day as he had laboriously stepped off the long miles he had thought with virtuous complacence of the completeness of his reformation.
He thought how he had refused to drink with Daddy Dunnigan from the smeared and cloudy glass half-filled with the raw, rank liquor, across the surface of which had trailed the tobacco-stained mustaches of the half-dozen unkempt men.
A week before he had refused to drink good whisky with Appleton—but that was amid surroundings against which he had fortified himself; surroundings made familiar by a little veneered table in the corner of the tile-floored bar of a well-known hotel, and while the spirit of his determination to quit was strong upon him. Besides, it was good policy.
Therefore, he ordered ginger ale; but Appleton drank whisky and noted that the other eyed the liquor as the little beads rose to the top, and that as he looked he unconsciously moistened his lips with his tongue—just that little thing—as he looked at the whisky in Appleton's glass. By that swift movement Appleton understood, for he knew men—it was his business to know men—and then and there he decided to send Bill to Moncrossen's camp, where it was whispered whisky flowed freely.
Appleton had no son, and he felt strangely drawn toward the young man whose eyes had held him from the time of their first meeting. But he must prove his worth, and the test should be hard—and very thorough.
Appleton realized that to place him in any one of the other camps, where the ban was on whisky, and where each smuggled bottle was ferreted out and smashed, would be no test. It is no credit to a man to refrain from whisky where no whisky is.
But place a man who has created an appetite for whisky among men who drink daily and openly, and enjoy it; who urge and encourage him to do likewise; where whisky is continually before his eyes, and the rich bouquet of it in his nostrils, and thatisa test.
Appleton knew this, and knowing, he sent Bill to Moncrossen, and smiled as he bet with himself on the outcome. But there is one other test—the supreme test of all, of which even Appleton did not know.
Place this same man alone, tired out, hungry, thirsty, and cold, with every muscle of his body crying its protest of aches against the overstrain of a long day's work; surround him with every attribute of physical discomfort; with the future stretching away in a dull gray vista of uncertainty, and the memory strong upon him that the girl—the one girl in all the world—has ceased to believe in him—has ceased to care; add to this the recollection of good times gone—times when good liquor flowed freely among good fellows, and at this particular psychological moment let him come suddenly and unexpectedly upon a bottle of whisky—good whisky, of a brand of which he has always approved—thatis the acid test—and in writing this I know whereof I write.
And that is why Bill Carmody carefully and deliberately broke the seal and threw the cork away, and shook the bottle gently, and breathed deep of its fragrance, and smiled in anticipation as the little beads flew upward.
The fire had died down, and he set the bottle on the floor beside him and reached for the firewood. As he did so a long, sealed envelope, to the outside of which was tightly bound a photograph, fell to the floor from the inner pocket of his mackinaw.
As he stooped to recover it his eyes encountered those of the picture gazing upward through the half-light. A flickering tongue of flame flared brightly for a moment and illumined the features, bringing out their expression with startling distinctness.
It was the face of the girl. The flame died out, leaving the pictured likeness half concealed in the soft semi-darkness of the dying embers.
It seemed hours that the man sat motionless, staring into the upturned eyes—those eyes into which he had so often gazed, but which were now lost to him forever. And as he looked, other thoughts crowded his brain; thoughts of his father, and the scorn of their parting; thoughts of the girl, of her words, and of his own boast: "Ican beat the game! And I will beat it—now!... And some day you will know."
His anger rose against the man whose own flesh and blood he was, who had driven him from home with words of bitter sarcasm, and against the girl and her sneering repudiation of him. He leaped to his feet and shook a clenched fist to the southward:
"I told you I would make good!" he roared, "and, by God, I will! I am a McKim—do you hear? I am a McKim—and I shall make good!"
He reached for the bottle and placed it beside him on the pine table. He did not pour out the whisky, for he did not fear it—only if he drank it need he fear.
Just one little drink, and he was lost—and he knew this. And now he knew that he would never take that drink—and he looked at the bottle and laughed—laughed as the girl had laughed when she sent him from her forever.
"It's no go, old boy," he smiled, apostrophizing John Barleycorn. "I served you long—and well. But I quit. You would not believe that I quit, and came out here to get me. And you almost got me. Almost, but not quite, John, for I have quit for good and all. We can still be friends, only now I am the master and you are the servant, and to start out with, I am going to pour half of you over my blistered feet."
He recovered the packet from the floor and looked long at the picture. "And some day you will know," he repeated, as he returned it to his pocket.
Thus did the lonely girl in a far distant city unconsciously win a silent victory for the man she loved—and who loved her.
CHAPTER XIII
ON THE TOTE-ROAD
Very early in the morning on the day of the storm which had been welcomed by the lumber-jacks of the Blood River camp, old Wabishke started over his trap-line.
The air was heavy with the promise of snow, and one by one the Indian took up his traps and hung them in saplings that they might not be buried.
After the storm, with the Northland lying silent under its mantle of white, and the comings and goings of the fur-bearers recorded in patterns of curious tracery, Wabishke would again fare forth upon the trap-line.
With wise eyes and the cunning of long practice, he would read the sign in the snow, and by means of craftily concealed iron jaws and innocent appearing deadfalls, renew with increased confidence in his "winter set," the world-old battle of skill against instinct.
On the crest of a low ridge at the edge of the old chopping where Moncrossen's new Blood River tote-road made a narrow lane in the forest, the Indian paused.
In the stump-dotted clearing, indistinct in the sullen dimness of the overcast dawn, rotted the buildings of the abandoned log-camp. From one of these smoke rose. Wabishke decided to investigate, for in the Northland no smallest detail may pass unaccounted for. Swiftly he descended the ridge and, gliding silently into the aftergrowth of spindling saplings that reared their sickly heads among the stumps, gained the rear of the shack. Noiselessly he advanced, and, peering between the unchinked logs, surveyed the interior.
A man sat upon the floor near the stove and laboriously applied bandages to his blistered feet. Near by was a new pack-sack against which leaned a pair of new high-laced boots toward which the man shot wrathful glances as he worked.
"Chechako," muttered the Indian, and passed around to the door.
A popular-fiction Indian would have glided stealthily into the shack and, with becoming dignity, have remarked "How."
But Wabishke was just a common Indian—one of the everyday kind, that may be seen any time hanging about the trading-posts of the North-country—unimaginative, undignified—dirty. So he knocked loudly upon the door and waited.
"Come in!" called Carmody, and gazed in surprise at the newcomer, who stared back at him without speaking. Wabishke advanced to the stove, and, fumbling in the pocket of his disreputable mackinaw, produced a very old and black cob-pipe, which he gravely extended toward the other.
"No, thanks!" said Bill hastily. "Got one of my own."
He eyed with disfavor the short, thick stem, about the end of which was wound a bit of filthy rag, which served as a mouthpiece for the grip of the yellow fangs which angled crookedly at the place where a portion of the lip had been torn away in some long-forgotten combat of the wilds.
"T'bacco," grunted the visitor, with a greasy distortion of the features which passed for a smile.
"Oh, that's it? Well, here you are."
Carmody produced a bright-colored tin box, which he handed to the Indian, who squatted upon his heels and regarded its exterior in thoughtful silence for many minutes, turning it over and over in his hand and subjecting every mark and detail of its lettered surface to a minute scrutiny.
Finally with a grunt he raised the lid and contemplated the tobacco, which was packed evenly in thin slices.
He stared long and curiously at his own distorted image, which was reflected from the unpainted tin of the inside of the cover, felt cautiously of the paraffined paper, and, raising the box to his nose, sniffed noisily at the contents.
Apparently satisfied, he removed a dozen or more of the slices and ground them slowly between the palms of his hands. This done, he rammed possibly one-tenth of the mass into the bowl of his ancient pipe and carefully conveyed the remainder to his pocket.
"Match?" he asked. And Bill passed over his monogrammed silver match-box, which received its share of careful examination, evidently, however, not meeting the approval accorded the gaudy tobacco-box.
The Indian abstracted about one-half of the matches, which he transferred to the pocket containing the tobacco. Then, calmly selecting a dry twig from the pile of firewood, thrust the end through a hole in the broken stove, and after much noisy puffing at length succeeded in igniting the tightly tamped tobacco in his pipe-bowl.
"Thank you," said Bill, contemplating his few remaining matches. "You're a bashful soul, aren't you? Did you ever serve a term in the Legislature?"
The Indian's command of English did not include a word Bill had uttered; nevertheless, his mangled lip writhed about the pipe-stem in grotesque grin.
"Boots!" he grunted, eying the bandaged feet. "No good!" and he complacently wriggled the toes in his own soft moccasins. Bill noted the movement, and a sudden desire obsessed him to possess at any cost those same soft moccasins.
Wabishke, like most Indians, was a born trader, and he was quick to note the covetous glance that the whitechechakocast toward his footgear.
"Will you sell those?" asked Bill, pointing toward the moccasins. The Indian regarded them thoughtfully, and again the toes wriggled comfortably beneath the pliable moose-skin covering. Bill tried again.
"How much?" he asked, touching the moccasins with his finger.
The Indian pondered the question through many puffs of his short pipe. He pointed to the new boots, and when Bill handed them to him he carefully studied every stitch and nail of each. Finally he laid them aside and pointed to the tobacco-box, which he again scrutinized and laid with the boots.
"Match," he said.
"Get a light from the fire like you did before, you old fraud! I only have a few left."
"Match," repeated the Indian, and Bill passed over his match-box, which was placed with the other items. Wabishke pointed toward the pack-sack.
"Look here, you red Yankee!" exclaimed Bill. "Do you want my whole outfit for those things?"
The other merely shrugged and pointed first at the bandaged feet, and then at the boots. One by one, a can of salmon, a sheath-knife, and a blue flannel shirt were added to the pile, and still Wabishke seemed unsatisfied.
While the Indian pawed over the various articles of his pack, Bill found time to put the finished touches on his bandages, and, reaching under the table, drew forth the whisky bottle and poured part of its contents upon the strips of cloth.
At the sight of the bottle the Indian's eyes brightened, and he reached for it quickly. Bill shook his head and set the bottle well out of his reach.
"Me drink," the other insisted, and again Bill shook his head. The Indian seemed puzzled.
"No like?" he asked.
"No like," repeated Bill, and smiled grimly.
Wabishke regarded him in wondering silence. In his life he had seen many strange things, but never a thing like this—a white man who of his own choice drank spring-water from a fish-can and poured good whisky upon his feet!
The Indian's eyes wandered from the pile of goods to the bottle, in which about one-fourth of the contents remained, and realized that he was at a disadvantage, for he knew by experience that a white man and his whisky are hard to part.
Selecting the can of salmon from the pile, he shoved it toward the man, who again shook his head. Then followed the match-box, the sheath-knife, and the shirt, until only the tobacco-box and the boots remained, and still the man shook his head.
Slowly the tobacco-box was handed back, and the Indian was eying the boots. Bill laughed.
"No. You'll need those. Just hand over the moccasins, and you are welcome to the boots and the booze."
The Indian hastily untied the thongs, and the white man thrust his bandaged feet into the soft comfort of the mooseskin moccasins. A few minutes later he took the trail, following the windings of Moncrossen's new tote-road into the North.
The air was filled with a light, feathery snow, and, in spite of the ache of his stiffened muscles, he laughed.
"The first bottle of whiskyIever entered on the right side of the ledger," he said aloud—and again he laughed.
He was in the big timber now. The tall, straight pines of the Appleton holdings stretched away for a hundred miles, and formed a high wall on either side of the tote-road, which bent to the contour of ridge and swamp and crossed small creeks on rough log bridges or corduroy causeways.
Gradually the stiffness left him, and his aching muscles limbered to their work. His moccasins sank noiselessly into the soft snow as mile after mile he traversed the broad ribbon of white.
At noon he camped, and over a tiny fire thawed out his bread and warmed his salmon, which he washed down with copious drafts of snow-water. Then he filled his pipe and blew great lungfuls of fragrant smoke into the air as he rested with his back against a giant pine and watched the fall of the snow.
During the last hour the character of the storm had changed. Cold, dry pellets, hissing earthward had replaced the aimless dance of the feathery flakes, and he could make out but dimly the opposite wall of the rod-wide tote-road.
He returned the remains of his luncheon to his pack, eying with disgust the heel of the loaf of hard bread and the soggy, red mass of sock-eye that remained in the can.
"The first man that mentions canned salmon to me," he growled, "is going to gethurt!"
The snow was ankle-deep when he again took the trail and lowered his head to the sting of the wind-driven particles. On and on he plodded, lifting his feet higher as the snow deepened. As yet, in his ignorance of woodcraft, no thought of danger entered his mind. "It is harder work, that is all," he thought; but, had he known it, his was a situation that no woodsman wise in the ways of the winter trails would have cared to face.
During the morning he had covered but fifteen of the forty miles which lay between the old shack and Moncrossen's camp. Each minute added to the difficulties of the journey, which, in the words of Daddy Dunnigan was "a fine two walks for a good man," and, with the added hardship of a heavy snowfall, would have been a man's-sized job for the best of them equipped, as they would have been, with good grub and snowshoes.
Bill was forced to rest frequently. Not only were his softened muscles feeling the strain—it was getting his wind, this steady bucking the snow—but each time he again faced the storm and plowed doggedly northward.
Darkness found him struggling knee-deep in the cold whiteness, and, as he paused to rest in the shelter of a pile of tops left by the axe-men, the foremost of the gray shadows that for the last two hours had dogged his footsteps, phantom-like, resolved itself into a very tangible pair of wicked eyes which smoldered in greenish points of hate above a very sharp, fang-studded muzzle, from which a long, red tongue licked suggestively at back-curled lips.