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’reback 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 breakingyour 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.
“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 himwith 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 outher 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. Asfor 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.”
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 thecook 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? Anenlightened 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 bruteon 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 strangeland. 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 doas 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. Toppygladly 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.”
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 increaseprogressively 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 inhim. 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 sturdyarm 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.
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 todrop 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.”
“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 thingsfor 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.”