In the morning, before the time for beginning the day’s work, Toppy went to the stockade; and with one of his English-speaking Slavs acting an interpreter hunted up the Torta brothers and returned to them the stolen money which he had won from Reivers. He did not consider it necessary to go into the full details of how the money came to be in his possession, or attempt to explain the prejudice of his kind against keeping stolen goods.
“Just tell them that Sheedy gave up the money, and that it’s theirs again; and they’d better hide it in their shoes so they won’t lose it,” he directed the interpreter.
Whereat the latter, a garrulous young man who had been telling the camp all about the wonderful new “bahss” in the quarry—a “bahss” who saved men’s lives—whenever he could get any one to listen, broke forth into a wonderful tale of how the money came to be returned, and of the wonderful “bahss” that stood before them, whom they should all take off their caps to and worship.
For this was no ordinary man, this “bahss.” No, he was far above all other men. It was an honour to work under him. For instance, as to this money: the “bahss” had heard how the red-haired one—Sheedy—had stolen, how he oppressed many poor men and broke the noses of those who dared to stand up against him.
The “bahss” had the interests of poor men at heart. What had he done? He had struck the red-haired one such a mighty blow in the stomach that the red-haired one had flown high in the air, and alighting on the ground had been moved by the fear of death and disgorged the stolen money that his conscience might be easy.
The story of how Toppy had propped up the roof of the stone quarry, and saved the limbs and possibly lives of his workmen; how he had driven the shotgun guard away, and how he had smitten Sheedy and laid him low before all men, had circulated through the camp by this time. Everybody knew that the new straw-boss, though fully as big and strong as the Snow-Burner himself, was a man who considered the men under him as something more than cattle and treated them accordingly. True, he drove men hard; but they went willingly for him, whereas under the Snow-Burner they hurried merely because of the chill fear that his eyes drove into their hearts. In short, Toppy was just such a boss as all men wished to work under—strong but just, firm but not inhuman.
Even Sheedy was loyal to him.
“He laid me out, all right,” he grumbled to a group of “white men,” “but, give him credit for it, he give me a chanct to get up me guard. There won’t be any breaking yer bones when yuh ain’t lookin’ from him. And he wouldn’t graft on yuh, either. He’s right. That other ——, he—he ain’t human.”
The fact that he had been humane enough, and daring enough, to prop up the roof of the quarry had no effect on the “white men” toward developing a respect for Toppy. They despised the Slavs too thoroughly to be conscious of any brotherhood with them. But that he could put Bill Sheedy away witha single punch, that he could warn Bill to put up his guard and then knock him out with one blow, that was something to wring respect even from that hard-bitten crew.
The Snow-Burner never had done anything like that. He had laid low the biggest men in camp, but it was usually with a kick or with a blow that was entirely unexpected. The Snow-Burner never warned any body. He smiled, threw them off their guard, then smote like a flash of lightning. He had whipped half a dozen men at once in a stand-up fight, but they had been poor Bohunks, fools who couldn’t fight unless they had knives in their hands. But to tell a seasoned bruiser like Bill, the best man with his fists in camp, to put up his hands and then beat him to the knockout punch—that was something that not even the Snow-Burner had attempted to do.
That was taking a chance, that was; and the Snow-Burner never took chances. That was why these cruel-fierce “white men,” though they admired and applauded him for his dominance and his ruthlessness toward the Slavs, hated Reivers with a hatred that sprang from the Northern man’s instinctive liking for fair play in a fight. They began naturally to compare him with Toppy, who had played fair and yet won. And, naturally, because such were the standards they lived and died by, they began to predict that some day the Snow-Burner and Toppy must fight, and they hoped that they might be there to see the battle.
So Toppy, this morning, as he came to the stockade, was in the position of something of a hero to most of the rough men who slouched past him in the gloom to their day’s work. He had felt it before, this hero-worship, and he recognised it again. Though the surroundings were vastly different and the men abouthim of a strange breeding, the sense of it was much the same as that he had known at school when, a sweater thrown across his huge shoulders, he had ploughed his way through the groups of worshipping undergrads on to the gridiron. It was much the same here. Men looked up to him. They nudged one another as they passed, lowered their voices when he was near, studied him appraisingly. Toppy had felt it before, too often to be mistaken; and the youth in his veins responded warmly. The respect of these men was a harder thing to win than the other. He thought of how he had arrived in camp, shaky from Harvey Duncombe’s champagne, with no purpose in life, no standing among men who were doing men’s work. Grimly also he thought of how Miss Pearson, that first evening, had called him a “nice boy.” Would she call him that now, he wondered, if she could see how these rough, tired men looked up to him? Would Reivers treat him as a thing to experiment with after this?
Thus it was a considerably elated Toppy, though not a big-headed one, who led his men out of the stockade, to the quarry—to the blow that Reivers had waiting for him there. His first hint that something was wrong was when the foremost men, whistling and tool-laden, made for the pit in the first grey light of day and paused with exclamations and curses at its very mouth. Others crowded around them. They looked within. Then, with fallen jaws, they turned and looked to the “bahss” for an explanation, for help.
Toppy shouldered his way through the press and stepped inside. Then he saw what had halted his men and made their faces turn white. To the last stick the shoring-timbers had been removed from the pit, and the roof, threatening and sharp-edged, hung readyto drop on the workmen below, as it had before Toppy had wrought a change.
The daylight came creeping up the river and a wind began to blow. So still was it there before the pit-mouth that Toppy was conscious of these things as he stepped outside. The men were standing about with their wheelbarrows and tools in their hands. They looked to him. His was the mind and will to determine what they should do. They depended upon him; they trusted him; they would obey his word confidently.
Toppy felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He wanted to take off his cap, to bare his head to the chill morning wind, to draw his hand across his eyes, to do something to ease himself and gather his wits. He did none of these things. The instinct of leadership arose strong within him. He could not show these men who looked up to him as their unquestioned leader that he had been dealt a blow that had taken the mastery from him.
For Toppy, in that agonised second when he glanced up at the unsupported roof and knew what those loose rocks meant to any men working beneath, realised that he could not drive his men in there to certain injury for many, possibly death for some. It wasn’t in him. He wasn’t bred that way. The unfeeling brute had been removed from his big body and spirit by generations of men and women who had played fair with inferiors, and by a lifetime of training and education.
He understood plainly the significance of the thing. Reivers had done it; no one else would have dared. He had lifted Toppy up to a tiny elevation above the other men in camp; now he was knocking him down. It was another way for Reivers to show his mastery. The men who had begun to look up to Toppy wouldnow see how easily the Snow-Burner could show himself his superior. Miss Pearson would hear of it. He would appear in the light of a “nice boy” whom the Snow-Burner had played with.
These thoughts ran through Toppy’s mind as he stood outside the pit, with his white-faced men looking up to him, and groped for a way out of his dilemma. Within he was sickened with the sense of a catastrophe; outside he remained calm and confident to the eye. He stepped farther out, to where he could see the end of the dam where he had secured the props for the roof. It was as he had expected; the big pile of timbers that had lain there was gone to the last stick. He turned slowly back, and then in the grey light of coming day he looked into the playfully smiling face of Reivers, who had emerged, it seemed, from nowhere.
“Looking for your humanitarian props, Treplin?” laughed the Snow-Burner. “Oh, they’re gone; they’re valuable; they served a purpose which nothing else would fill—quite so conveniently. I used them for a corduroy road in the swamp. Between men and timbers, Treplin, always save your timbers.” His manner changed like a flash to one hurried and business-like. “What’re you waiting for?” he snarled. “Why don’t you get ’em in there? Mean to say you’re wasting company money because one of these cattle might get a broken back?”
They looked each other full in the eyes, but Toppy knew that for the time being Reivers had the whiphand.
“I mean to say just that,” he said evenly. “I’m not sending any men in there until I get that roof propped up again.”
“Bah!” Reivers’ disgust was genuine. “I thoughtyou were a man; I find you’re a suit of clothes full of emotions, like all the rest!”
He seemed to drive away his anger by sheer will-force and bring the cold, sneering smile back to his lips.
“So we’re up against a situation that’s too strong for us, are we, Mr. Humanitarian?” he laughed. “In spite of our developed intelligence, we lay down cold in the face of a little proposition like this! Good-bye to our dreams of learning how to handle men! It isn’t in us to do it; we’re a weak sister.”
His bantering mood fled with the swiftness of all his changes. Toppy and his aspirations as a leader—that was another incident of the day’s work that was over and done with.
“Go back to the shop, to Scotty, Treplin,” he said quietly. “You’re not responsible for your limitations. Scotty says you make a pretty fair helper. Be consoled. He’s waiting for you.”
He turned instantly toward the men. Toppy, with the hot blood rushing in his throat, but helpless as he was, swung away from the pit without a word. As he did so he saw that the hawk-faced shotgun guard had appeared and taken his position on the little rise where his gun bore slantwise on the huddled men before the pit, and he hurried to get out of sight of the scene. His tongue was dry and his temples throbbing with rage, but the cool section of his mind urged him away from the pit in silence.
Between clenched teeth he cursed his injured ankle. It was the ankle that made him accept without return the shame which Reivers had put upon him. The canny sense within him continued to whisper that until the ankle was sound he must bide his time. Reivers and he were too nearly a pair to give himthe slightest chance for success if he essayed defiance at even the slightest disadvantage.
Choking back as well as he could the anger that welled up within him, he made his way swiftly to the blacksmith-shop. Campbell, bending over the anvil, greeted Toppy cheerily as he heard the heavy tread behind him.
“The Snow-Burner promised he’d send you here, and——Losh, mon!” he gasped as he turned around and saw Toppy’s face. “What’s come o’er ye? You look like you’re ripe for murder.”
“There’ll probably be murder done in this camp before the day’s over, but I won’t do it,” replied Toppy.
As he threw off his mackinaw preparatory to starting work he snapped out the story of the situation at the quarry. Campbell, leaning on his hammer, grew grim of lips and eyes as he listened.
“Aye; I thought at the time it were better for you had ye lost at poker last night,” he said slowly. “He’s taking revenge. But they will put out his light for him. Human flesh and blood won’t stand it. The Snow-Burner goes too far. He’ll——Hark! Good Heavens! Hear that!”
For a moment they stood near the open doorway of the shop staring at one another in horrified, mute questioning. The crisp stillness of the morning rang and echoed with the sharp roar of a shotgun. The sound came from the direction of the quarry. Across the street they heard the door of the office-building open sharply. The girl, without hat or coat, her light hair flying about her head, came running like a deer to the door of the shop.
“Mr. Campbell, Mr. Campbell!” she called tremblingly, peering inside. Then she saw Toppy.
“Oh!” she gasped. She started back a little. Therewere surprise and relief in her exclamation, in her eyes, in her movement.
“I was afraid—I thought maybe——” She drew away from the door in confusion. “I only wanted to know—to know—what that noise was.”
But Toppy had stepped outside the shop and followed closely after her.
“What did you think it was, Miss Pearson?” he asked. “What were you afraid of when you heard that shot? That something had happened between Reivers and myself?”
“I—I meant to warn you,” she said, greatly flustered. “Tilly told me all about—a lot of things last night. She told me that she had told Reivers all she heard you say to me that first night here, and that he—Mr. Reivers, she said, was your enemy, and that he would—would surely hurt you.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t want to see you get hurt, because I felt it was because of me that you came here. I—I don’t want any one hurt because of me.”
“That’s all?” he asked.
She looked surprised.
“Why, yes.”
Toppy nodded curtly.
“Then Tilly told you that Mr. Reivers had a habit of hurting people?”
At this the red in her cheeks rose to a flush. Her blue eyes looked at him waveringly, then dropped to the ground.
“It isn’t true! It can’t be true!” she stammered.
“Did Tilly tell you—about herself?” he persisted mercilessly.
The next instant he wished the words unsaid, for she shrank as if he had struck her. She looked verysmall just then. Her proud, self-reliant bearing was gone. She was very much all alone.
“Yes.” The word was scarcely more than a whisper and she did not look up. “But it—it can not be so; I know it can not.”
Toppy was no student of feminine psychology, but he saw plainly that just then she was a woman who did not wish to believe, therefore would not believe, anything ill of the man who had fascinated her. He saw that Reivers had fascinated her; that in spite of herself she was drawn toward him, dominated by him. Her mind told her that what she had heard of the man was true, but her heart refused to let her believe. Toppy saw that she was very unhappy and troubled, and unselfishly he forgot himself and his enmity toward Reivers in a desire to help her.
“Miss Pearson!—Miss Pearson!” he cried eagerly. “Is there anything I can do for you—anything in the world?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Tell me that it isn’t so—what Mr. Campbell and Tilly have said about Mr. Reivers.”
“I——” He was about to say that he could do nothing of the sort, but something made him halt. “Has Reivers broken his word to you—about leaving you alone?”
“No, no! He’s—he’s left me alone. He’s scarcely spoken to me half a dozen times.”
Toppy looked down at her for several seconds.
“But you’ve begun to care for Reivers, haven’t you?” he said.
The girl looked up at him uncertainly.
“I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know! I don’t seem to have any will of my own toward him. I seem to see him as a different man. I know I shouldn’t; but I can’t help it, I can help it! He—he looks at me,and I feel as if—as if—” her voice died down to a horrified whisper—“I were nothing, and his wishes were the only things in the world.”
Toppy bowed his head.
“Then I guess there’s nothing for me to say.”
“Don’t!” she cried, stretching out her hand to restrain him as he turned away. “Don’t leave me—like that. You’re so rude to me lately. I feel so terribly alone when you—aren’t nice to me.”
“What difference can I make?” he said bitterly. “I’m not Reivers.”
She looked up at him again.
“Oh!” she cried suddenly. “Won’t you help me, Mr. Treplin? Can’t you help me?”
“Help you?” gasped Toppy. “May I? Can I? What can I do?”
He leaned toward her eagerly.
“What can I do” he repeated.
“Oh, I don’t know!” she murmured in anguish. “But if you—if you leave me—Oh! What was that?”
From the direction of the quarry had come a great scream of terror, as if many men suddenly had cried out in fear of their lives. Then, almost ere the echoes had died away, came another sound, of more sinister significance to Toppy. There was a sudden low rumble; the earth under their feet trembled; then the noise of a crash and a thud. Then it was still again.
A chill seemed to pass over the entire camp. Men began running toward the quarry with swift steps, their faces showing that they dreaded what they expected to see. Toppy and Campbell looked silently at one another.
“Go into the office,” he said quietly to the girl. “Come on, Scotty; that roof’s caved in.” And without another word they ran swiftly toward the quarry.As they reached the river-bank they heard Reivers’ voice quietly issuing orders.
“You guards pick those two fellows up and carry them to their bunks. You scum that’s left, pick up your tools and dig into that fallen rock. Hustle now! Get right back to work!”
The first thing that Toppy saw as he turned the shoulder of the ledge was that two of the older Slavs were lying groaning on the ground to one side of where the pit mouth had been. Then he saw what was left of the pit. The entire side of the ledge had caved down, and where the pit had been was only a jumbled pile of jagged rock. Reivers stood in his old position before the pile. The hawk-nosed shotgun guard stood up on the little rise, his weapon ready. The remaining workmen were huddled together before the pile of fallen stone. The terror in their faces was unspeakable. They were like lost, driven cattle facing the butcher’s hammer.
“Grab those tools there! Get at it! The rock’s right in front of you now! Get busy!”
Reivers’ voice in no way admitted that anything startling had occurred. He glared at the cowering men, and in terror they began hastily to resume their interrupted work, filling their wheelbarrows from the pile of stone before them. Reivers turned toward Toppy who had bent over the injured men. “Hello, Dr. Treplin,” he laughed lightly. “A couple of jobs there for you to experiment on. Get ’em out of here—to their bunks; they’re in the way. Patch ’em up if you can. If you can’t they’re not much loss, anyhow. They’re rather older than I like ’em.”
The last words came carelessly over his shoulder as he turned back toward the men who were toiling at the rock. A string of curses rolled coldly from his lips. They leaped to obey him. He smiled contemptuously.
Toppy was relieved to see that the two men on the ground were apparently not fatally hurt. With the aid of Campbell and two guards who had run up he hurried to have the men placed in their bunks in the stockade. One of the guards produced a surgeon’s kit. Toppy rolled up his sleeves. It wasn’t as bad as he had feared it would be, apparently; only two injured, where he had looked for some surely to be killed. One of the men was growing faint from loss of blood from a wound in his right leg. Toppy, turning his attention to him first, swiftly slit open the trousers-leg and bared the injured limb.
“What—what the devil?” he cried aghast. The calf of the man’s leg was half torn away, and from knee to ankle the flesh was sprinkled with buckshot-holes.
“They shot you?” he asked as he fashioned a tourniquet.
“Yes, bahass. Snow-Burner say, ‘Get t’ ‘ell in there.’ Rocks fall; we no go in. Snow-Burner hold up hand. Man with gun shoot. I fall. Other men go in. Pretty soon rocks fall. Other men come out. He shoot me. I no do anything; he shoot me.”
Toppy choked back the curse that rose to his lips, dressed the man’s wound to the best of his slight ability, and turned to the other, who had been caught in the cave-in of the quarry-roof. His right leg and arm were broken, and the side was crushed in a way that suggested broken ribs. Toppy filled a hypodermic syringe and went to work to make the two as comfortable as he knew how. That was all he could pretend to do. Yet when he left the stockade it was with a feeling of relief that he looked back over the morning. The worst had happened; the danger to the men was over; and, so far as Toppy knew, the consequences were represented in the two men whom he hadtreated and who, so far as he could see, were sure to live. It hadn’t turned out as badly as he was afraid it would.
As he passed the carpenter-shop he saw the “wood-butcher” sawing two boards to make a cover for a long, narrow box. Toppy looked at him idly, trying to think of what such a box could be used for around the camp. It was too narrow for its length to be of ordinary use as a box.
“What are you making there?” asked Toppy carelessly.
The “wood-butcher” looked up from his sawing.
“Didn’t you ever see a logging-camp coffin?” he asked. “We always keep a few ready. This one is for that Bohunk that’s down there under the rocks.”
“Under the rocks!” cried Toppy. “You don’t mean to say there was anybody under that cave-in!”
“Is yet,” was the laconic reply. “One of ’em was caught ’way inside. Whole roof on top of him. Won’t find him till the pit’s emptied.”
Toppy struggled a moment to speak quietly.
“Which one was it, do you know?” he asked.
“Oh, it was that old brown-complected fellow,” said the carpenter. “That old Bohunk guy with the big rings in his ears.”
Reivers came to the shop at his customary time in the evening, nothing in his manner containing a hint that anything unusual had happened during the day. He found a solemn and silent pair, for Campbell had sought relief from the day’s tragedy in his customary manner and sat in the light of the student-lamp steadily reading his Bible, while Toppy, in a dark corner, sat with his great shoulders hunched forward, his folded hands before him, and stared at the floor. Reivers paused in the doorway, his cold smile broadening as he surveyed the pair.
“Poker to-night—doctor?” he said softly, and the slur in his tones was like blasphemy toward all that men hold sacred.
“No, by ——, no!” growled Toppy.
Laughing lightly, Reivers closed the door and came across the room.
“What? Aren’t you going to give me my revenge—doctor?” The manner in which he accented “doctor” was worse than an open insult.
Old Campbell peered over his thick glasses.
“The sword of judgment is sharpening for you, Mr. Reivers,” he said solemnly. “You ha’ this day sealed your own doom. A life for a life; and you have taken a life to-day unnecessarily. It is the holy law; you will pay. It is so written.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” laughed Reivers in great amusement. “But you’ve said that so many times before in just that same way, Scotty. Can’t you evolve a new idea? Or at least sing it in a different key?”
The old Scot looked at him without wavering or changing his expression.
“You are the smartest man I have ever known, Mr. Reivers, and the domdest fool,” he said in the same tone. “Do you fancy yourself more than mortal? Losh, man! A knife in the bowels, or a bullet or ax in the head will as readily make you a bit of poor clay as you’ve this day made yon poor old Bohunk.”
Reivers listened courteously to the end, waiting even a moment to be sure that Campbell had had his say.
“And you—doctor?” he said turning to Toppy. “What melancholy thoughts have you to utter?”
Toppy said nothing.
“Oh, come, Treplin!” said Reivers lightly. “Surely you’re not letting a little thing like that quarry-incident give you a bad evening? Where’s your philosophy,man? Consider the thing intelligently instead of sentimentally. There was so much rock to go into that dam in a day—and incidentally to-day finished the job. That was a useful, necessary work.
“For that old man to continue in this life was not useful or necessary. He was far down in the order of human development; centuries below you and me. Do you think it made the slightest difference whether he returned to the old cosmic mud whence he came, and from which he had not come far, in to-day’s little cave-in, or in a dirty bed, say ten years from now?
“He accomplished a tiny speck of useful work, through my direction. He has gone, as the wood will soon be gone that is heating that stove. There was no spirit there; only a body that has ceased to stand upright. And you grow moody over it! Well, well! I’m more and more disappointed in you—doctor.”
Toppy said nothing. He was biding his time.
That night came the heavy snow for which the loggers had been waiting, and a rush of activity followed in Hell Camp. The logs which had lain in the woods for want of sleighing now were accessible. Following the snow came hard, freezing nights, and the main ice-roads which Reivers had driven into the timber for miles became solid beds of ice over which a team could haul log loads to the extent of a carload weight. It was ideal logging-weather, and the big camp began to hum.
The mastery of Reivers once more showed itself in the way in which he drove his great crew at top speed and beyond. The feeling against him on the part of the men had risen to silent, tight-lipped heat as the news went around of how the old Magyar with the ear-rings had met his death. Each man in camp knew that he might have been in the old man’s shoes; each knew that Reivers’ anger might fall on him next. In the total of a hundred and fifty men in camp there was probably not one who did not curse Reivers and rage against his rule, and there were few who, if the opportunity had offered, would not cheerfully have taken his life.
The feeling against him had unified itself. Before, the men had been split into various groups on the subject of the boss. They remained divided now, but on one thing they were unanimous: the Snow-Burnerhad gone too far to bear. Men sat on the bunk-edges in the stockade and cursed as they thought of the boss and the shotgun guards that rendered them helpless. Reivers permitted no firearms of any kind in camp save those that were carried by his gunmen.
The gunmen when not on guard kept to their quarters, in the building just outside of the stockade gate, where Reivers also lived. When armed, they were ordered to permit no man to approach nearer than ten feet to them—this to prevent a possible rushing and wresting the weapons from their hands. So long as the guards were there in possession of their shotguns the men knew that they were helpless. Driven to desperation now, they prayed for the chance to get those guns into their own hands. After that they promised themselves that the score of brutality would be made even.
Then came the time for rush work, and under the lash of Reivers’ will the outraged men, carried off their feet, were driven with a ferocity that told how completely Reivers ignored the spirit of revolt which he knew was fomenting against him. He quit playing with them, as he expressed it; he began to drive.
Long before daylight began to grey the sky above the eastern timber-line the men were out at their posts, waiting for sufficient light to begin the day’s work. Once the work began it went ahead with a fury that seemed to carry all men with it. Reivers was everywhere that a man dared to pause for a moment to shirk his job. He used his hands now, for a broken leg or rib laid a man up, and he had use for the present for every man he could muster. He scarcely looked at the men he hit, breaking their faces with a sudden, treacherous blow, cursing them coldly until, despite their injuries, they leaped at their work, thenwhirling away to fall upon some other luckless one elsewhere.
He was a fury, a merciless elemental force, with no consideration for the strength and endurance of men; sparing no one any more than he spared himself, and rushing his whole force along at top speed by sheer power of the spirit of leadership that possessed him. Men ceased for the time being to growl and pray that the Snow-Burner would get his just due. They had no thought nor energies for anything but keeping pace in the whirlwind rush of work through which the Snow-Burner drove them.
In the blacksmith-shop the same condition prevailed as elsewhere in the camp. The extra hurry of the work in the timber meant extra accidents, which meant breakages. There were chain-links to be forged and fitted to broken chains; sharp two-inch calks to be driven into the horses’ shoes, peaveys and cant-hooks to be repaired. Besides the regular blacksmith-work of the camp, which was quite sufficient to keep Campbell and one helper comfortably employed, there was now added each day a bulk of extra work due to the strain under which men, horses and tools were working.
Old Campbell, grimly resolute that Reivers should have no excuse to fall foul of him, drove himself and his helper at a speed second only to that with which he had so roughly greeted Toppy to the rough world of bodily labour. But the Toppy who now hammered and toiled at Campbell’s side was a different man from the champagne-softened youth who had come into camp a little while before. The puffiness was gone from under his eyes, the looseness from his lips and the fat from around the middle. Through his veins the blood now surged with no taint ofcumbering poison; his tissues tingled with life and healthiness.
Day by day he did his share and more in the shop-work, and instead of the old feeling of fatigue, which before had followed any prolonged exertion, felt his muscles spring with hardness and new life at each demand made upon them. The old joy of a strong man in his strength came back in him. Stripped to the waist he stretched himself and filled his great lungs with deep drafts, his arms like beams stretched out and above his head. Under the clean skin, rosy and moist from exertion, the muscles bunched and relaxed, tautened instantly to iron hardness or rippled softly as they were called upon, in the perfect co-ordination which results in great athletes. Old Campbell, similarly stripped, stared at the marvel of a giant’s perfect torso, beside which his own work-wrought body was ugly in its unequal development.
“Losh, man! But you’re full grown!” he growled in admiration. “I’ve seen but one man who could strip anywhere near to you.”
“Who was he?” asked Toppy.
“The Snow-Burner.”
Day by day Toppy hammered and laboured at Campbell’s side, holding his end up against the grim old smith, and day by day he felt his muscles growing toward that iron condition in which there is no tiring. Presently, to Scotty’s vexation, he was doing more than his share, ending the day with a laugh and waking up in the morning as fresh as if he had not taxed his energies the day before.
At first he continued to favour his injured ankle, lest a sudden strain delay its recovery. Each night he massaged and bandaged it scientifically. Later on, when he felt that it was stronger, he began to exercise it, slowly raising and lowering himself on the ballsof his feet. In a couple of weeks the old spring and strength had largely come back, and Campbell snorted in disgust at the antics indulged in by his helper when the day’s work was done.
“Skipping a rope one, twa hundred times! What brand o’ silliness do ye call that?” he grumbled. “Ha’ ye nothing useful to do wi’ them long legs of yourn, that you have to make a jumping-jack out o’ yourself?”
At which Toppy smiled grimly and continued his training.
The rush of work had its compensations. Reivers, driving his force like mad, had no time to waste either in bantering Toppy and Campbell in the evening or in paying attention to Miss Pearson. All the power that was in the Snow-Burner was concentrated upon the problem of getting out every stick of timber possible while the favourable weather continued. He spent most of his time in the timber up-river where the heaviest logging was going on.
By day he raged in the thick of the men with only one thought or aim—to get out the logs as fast as human and horse-power could do it. At night the road-crews, repairing with pick and shovel and sprinkling-tanks the wear and tear of the day’s hauling, worked under Reivers’ compelling eyes. All night long the sprinkling-tanks went up and down the ice-coated roads, and the drivers, freezing on the seats, were afraid to stop or nod, not knowing when the Snow-Burner might step out from the shadows and catch them in the act.
The number of accidents, always too plentiful in logging-camps, multiplied, but Reivers permitted nothing short of broken bones to send a man to his bunk. Toppy, besides his work in the shop, cared as best he could for the disabled. Reivers had no time to wastethat way now. The two men hurt at the quarry were recovering rapidly. One day a tall, lean “white man,” a Yankee top-loader, came hobbling out of the woods with his foot dangling at the ankle, and mumbling curses through a smashed jaw.
“How did you get this?” asked Toppy, as he dressed the cruelly crushed foot.
“Pinched between two logs,” mumbled the man. “They let one come down the skids when I wasn’t lookin’. No fault of mine; I didn’t have time to jump. And then, when I’m standin’ there leanin’ against a tree, that devil Reivers comes up and hands me this.” He pointed to his cracked jaw. “He’ll teach me to get myself hurt, he says. ——! That ain’t no man; he’s a devil! By ——! I know what I’d ruther have than the wages comin’ to me, and that’s a rifle with one good cattridge in it and that —— standin’ afore me.”
Yet that evening, when Reivers came to the top-loader’s bunk and demanded how long he expected to lie there eating his head off, the man cringed and whimpered that he would be back on the job as soon as his foot was fit to stand on. In Reivers’ presence the men were afraid to call their thoughts their own, but behind his back the mumblings and grumblings of hatred were growing to a volume which inevitably soon must break out in the hell-yelp of a mob ripe for murder.
Reivers knew it better than any man in camp. To indicate how it affected him he turned the screws on tighter than ever. Once, at least, “they had him dead,” as they admitted, when he stood ankle-deep in the river with the saw-logs thundering over the rollways to the brink of the bluff above his head. One cunning twist of a peavey would have sent a dozen logs tumbling over the brink on his head. Reivers sensed his danger and looked up. He smiled. Then he turnedand deliberately stood with his back to the men. And no man dared to give his peavey that one cunning twist.
During these strenuous days Toppy tried in vain to muster up sufficient courage to reopen the conversation with Miss Pearson which had been so suddenly interrupted by the cave-in at the quarry. He saw her every day. She had changed greatly from the high-spirited, self-reliant girl who had stood on the steps of the hotel back at Rail Head and told the whole world by her manner that she was accustomed and able to take care of herself. A stronger will than hers had entered her scheme of life.
Although she knew now that Reivers had tricked her into coming to Hell Camp because he was confident of winning her, the knowledge made no difference. The will of the man dominated and fascinated her. She feared him, yet she was drawn toward him despite her struggles. She fought hard against the inclination to yield to the stronger will, to let her feelings make her his willing slave, as she knew he wished. The pain of the struggle shone in her eyes. Her cheeks lost their bloom; there were lines about the little mouth.
Toppy saw it, but an unwonted shyness had come upon him. He could no longer speak to her with the frank friendliness of their previous conversations. Something which he could not place had, he felt, set them apart.
Perhaps it was the fact that he saw the fascinations which Reivers had for her. Reivers was his enemy. They had been enemies from the moment when they first had measured each other eye to eye. He felt that he had one aim in life now, and one only; that was to prove to himself and to Reivers that Reivers was not his master.
Beyond that he had no plans. He knew that thismeant a grapple which must end with one of them broken and helpless. The unfortunate one might be himself. In that case there would be no need to think of the future, and it would be just as well not to have spoken any more with the girl.
It might be Reivers. Then he would be guilty in her eyes of having injured the man for whom the girl now obviously had feelings which Toppy could construe in but one way. She cared for Reivers, in spite of herself; and she would not be inclined to friendliness toward the man who had conquered him, if conquered he should be.
The more Toppy thought it over the less enviable, to his notion, became his standing with the girl. He ended by resolutely determining to put her out of his thoughts. After all, he was no girl’s man. He had no business trying to be. For the present he saw one task laid out before him as inevitable as a revealed fate—to prove himself with Reivers, to get to grips with the cold-blooded master-man who had made him feel, with every man in camp, that the place veritably was a Hell Camp.
Reivers’ brutal dominance lay like a tangible weight upon Toppy’s spirit. He longed for only one thing—for the opportunity to stand up eye to eye with him and learn who was the better man. Beyond that he did not see, nor care. He had given up any thought that the girl might ever care for him.
November passed, and the first half of December. The shortest days of the year were approaching, and still the cold, crisp weather, ideal for logging, continued without a break. Hell Camp continued to hum with its abnormal activity. A thaw which would spoil the sleighing and ice-roads for the time being was long over-due. With the coming of the thaw would come a temporary lull in the work of the camp.
The men prayed for the thaw; Reivers asked that the cold weather continue. It had continued now longer than he had expected or hoped, and the output of the camp already was double that of what would have been successful logging at that season. But Reivers was not satisfied. The record that he was setting served only to spur his ambition to desperation.
The longer the cold spell hung on the harder he drove. Each day, as he looked at the low, grey sky and saw that there were no signs of a break-up, he turned to and set the pace a little faster than the day before. The madness of achievement, the passion to use his powers to accomplish the impossible, the characteristics which had won him the name of Snow-Burner, were in possession. He was doing the impossible; he was accomplishing what no other man could do, what all men said was impossible; and the feat only created a hunger to do more.
The men were past grumbling now, too tired of body and too crushed of mind to give expression to their feelings. So long as the rush of work continued they were as harmless as harnessed and driven cattle, incapable of anything more than keeping step in the mad march that the Snow-Burner was leading. But all men knew that with the coming of a thaw and the cessation of work would come an explosion of the murderous hatred which Reivers’ tactics had driven into the hearts of the men. Now and then a man, driven to a state of desperation which excluded the possibility of fear, stopped and rebelled. One day a young swamper, a gangling lad of twenty, raging and weeping, threw himself upon Reivers like a cat upon a bear. Reivers, with a laugh, thrust him off and kicked him out of the way. Another time a huge Slav sprang at him with his razor-edged ax up-raised, and, quailing before Reivers’ calm look, hurled the ax away with a scream and ran blindly away into the trackless woods. Three days later, starving and with frozen hands and feet, he came stumbling up to the stockade and fell in a lump.
“Feed him up,” ordered Reivers, smiling. “I’ve got a little use for him when he’s fixed up so he can feel. You see, Treplin,” he continued to Toppy, who had been called to bring the man back to life, “I’m not all cruelty. When I want to save a man to amuse myself with I’m almost as much of a humanitarian as you are.”
He hurried on his way, but before he was out of hearing he flung back——
“You remember how carefully I had Tilly nurse you, don’t you—doctor?”
It was only the guards that Reivers did not make enemies of. He knew that he had need of their loyalty. At night the “white men” sat on the edgesof their bunks and tried to concoct feasible schemes for securing possession of the shotguns of the guards.
On the morning of the shortest day of the year Toppy heard a scratching sound at the window near his bunk and sprang up. It was still pitch dark, long before any one should be stirring around camp save the cook and cookees.
“Who’s there?” demanded Toppy.
“Me. Want talk um with you,” came the low response from without. “You no come out. No make noise. Hear through window. You can hear um when I talk huh?”
“Tilly!” gasped Toppy. “What’s up?”
“You hear um what I talk?” asked the squaw again.
“Yes, yes; I can hear you. What is it?”
“You like um li’l Miss Pearson, huh?” said Tilly bluntly.
“What?” Toppy’s heart was pounding with sudden excitement. “What—what’s up, Tilly? There hasn’t anything happened to Miss Pearson, has there?”
“Uh! You like um Miss Pearson? Tell um Tilly straight or Tilly go ’way and no talk um more with you. You like her? Huh?”
“Yes,” said Toppy breathlessly, after a long pause. “Yes, I like her. What is it?”
“You no like see um Miss Pearson get hurt?”
“No, no; of course not. Who’s going to hurt her?”
“Snow-Burner,” said Tilly. “Tilly tell you this before she go ’way. Tilly going ’way now. Tilly going ’way far off to father’s tepee. Snow-Burner tell um me go. Snow-Burner tell um me go last night. Snow-Burner say he no want Tilly stay in camp longer. Tilly know why Snow-Burner no want her stay in camp. Snow-Burner through with Tilly. Snow-Burner now want um Miss Pearson. So.”
“Tilly! Hold on!” She had already turned away, but she halted at his voice and came close to the window. “What is this? Are you going away at once—because the Snow-Burner says so?”
The squaw nodded, stoically submissive.
“Snow-Burner say ‘go’; Tilly go,” she said. “Snow-Burner say go before any one see um me this morning. I go now. Must go; Snow-Burner say so.”
“And Miss Pearson?” whispered Toppy frantically. “Did he say anything about her?”
Tilly nodded heavily.
“Tell um me long ’go. Tell um me before Miss Pearson come. Tell um me he going marry Miss Pearson for um Christmas present. Christmas Day come soon now. Snow-Burner no want Tilly here then. Send Tilly ’way.”
The breath seemed to leave Toppy’s body for an instant. He swayed and caught at the window-frame.
“Marry her—Christmas Day?” he whispered, horrified.
“Yes. He no tell um Miss Pearson yet. He tell me no tell um her, no tell um anybody. I tell you. Now go.”
Before Toppy had sufficiently recovered his wits to speak again he heard the crunch of her moccasins on the snow dying away in the darkness as the cast-off squaw stolidly started on her journey into the woods.
“Tilly!” called Toppy desperately, but there was no answer.
“What’s matter?” murmured Campbell, disturbed in his deep slumber, and falling to sleep again before he received a reply.
Toppy stood for a long time with his face held close to the window through which he had heard Tilly’s startling news. The shock had numbed him.Although he had been prepared to expect anything of Reivers, he now realised that this was something more than he had thought possible even from him. The Snow-Burner—marry Miss Pearson—for a Christmas present—Christmas Day! He seemed to hear Tilly repeating the words over and over again. And Reivers had not even so much as told Miss Pearson of what he intended to do. He had not even told her that he intended to marry her. So Tilly said, and Tilly knew. What did Reivers intend to do then? How did he know he was going to marry her? How did he know she would have him?
Toppy shivered a little as his wits began to work more clearly, and the full significance of the situation began to grow clear to him. He understood now. Reivers had good reason for making his plans so confidently. He had studied the girl until he had seen that his will had dominated hers; that though she might not love him, might even fear him, she had not the will-power against him to say nay to his wishes.
He knew that she was helplessly fascinated, that she was his for the taking. He had been too busy to take her until now; the serious duties of his position had allowed no time for dalliance. So the girl had been safe and unmolested—until now! And now Reivers was secretly preparing to make her his own!
A sudden thought struck Toppy, and he tiptoed to the door and looked out. Instead of the crisp coldness of recent mornings there was a warm mugginess in the air; and Toppy, bending down, placed his hand on the snow and felt that it had begun to soften. The thaw had come.
“I thought so,” he said to himself. “The work will break up now, and he’s going to amuse himself. Well, he made a mistake when he told Tilly. She’sbeen civilised just enough to make her capable of jealousy.”
He went back to his bunk and dressed.
“What are you stirring around so early for?” grumbled Campbell. “Dinna ye get work enough during the day, to be getting up in the dark?”
“The thaw’s come,” said Toppy, throwing on his cap. “There’ll be something doing besides work now.”
He went out into the dark morning, crossed the road and softly tried the door to the office. He felt much better when he had assured himself that the door was securely locked on the inside. Then he returned to the shop and waited for the daylight to appear.
Old Campbell arose at his usual time, surprised and pleased to find that Toppy had breakfast already cooked and on the table. Being a canny Scot, he did not express his surprise or pleasure, but proceeded to look about for signs to indicate the reason of Toppy’s unwonted conduct. All that he could make out was that Toppy’s eyes were bright with some sort of excitement, and that the grim set of his mouth had given way to an expression of relief. So the Scot sat down to eat, shaking his grey head in puzzled fashion.
“I dinna see that this thaw should be any reason for your parading around before the night’s done,” he grumbled. “Were you so tired of a little useful work that ye maun greet a let-down with such early rising?”
Toppy sat down and proceeded to breakfast without venturing a reply. When they had finished the meal he pushed back his chair and looked across at Campbell. Huge and careless, he sprawled in his chair, the tension and uncertainty gone now that he had made his resolution; and Campbell, studying his face, sensed that something was up and leaned forward eagerly.
“I want to lay off to-day, Scotty,” said Toppy deliberately. “I’ve got a little business that I want to settle with Reivers.”
Old Campbell did not start nor in any way indicate surprise.
“Aye!” he said quietly after a pause. “I ha’ seen from the first it would have to be that in the end. Ye maun settle which is best man. But why to-day?”
“Because now that the thaw has spoiled the sleighing Reivers will have time for deviltry.” And Toppy went on and told all that he had heard from Tilly’s lips that morning. Campbell shook his head angrily as he heard.
“Many things has the Snow-Burner done ill,” he said, “and his sins against men and women cry for punishment; but that—to yon little lass—gi’n he did that, that would be worst of all. What are your plans, lad?”
“Nothing,” said Toppy. “I will go and find him, and we’ll have it out.”
“Not so,” said Campbell swiftly. “Gi’n you did that ‘twould cost you your life did you chance to win o’er him. Do you think those devils with the guns would not murder to win favour of the Snow-Burner, him holding the lives and liberty of all of them in his hands as he does? Nay, lad! Fight ye must; you’re both too big and spirited to meet without coming to grips; but you have aye the need of an old head on your side if you’re to stand up with Reivers on even terms.
“What think you he would fancy, did you go to him with a confident bold challenge as you suggest? That you had a trick up your sleeve, with the men in on it, perhaps; and he’d have the guards there with their guns to see he won as sure as we’re sitting here talking. No; I ha’ seen for weeks ’twas coming on, and I ha’ been using this auld head o’ mine. I may even say I ha’ been doing more than thinking; I ha’ been talking. I have told Reivers that you werebecoming unbearable in this shop, and that I could not stand you much longer as my helper.”
Toppy looked across the table, amazed and pained.
“Why—what’s wrong, Scotty?” he stammered.
“Tush, lad!” snapped the old man. “Dinna think I meant it. I only told Reivers so for the effect.”
Toppy was bewildered.
“I don’t see what you’re driving at, Scotty.”
“Listen, then; I ha’ told Reivers that you were getting the swell head so bad there was no working you. I ha’ told him you were at heart nothing but a fresh young whiffet who needed taming, and gi’n he made me keep you here I mysel’ would do the taming with an ax-handle. Do you begin to get my drift now, lad?”
“I confess I don’t,” admitted Toppy.
“Well, then—Reivers said: ‘That’s how I sized him up, too. But don’t you do the taming, Campbell,’ says he. ‘I am saving him for mysel’,’ he says. ‘But I will not put up with his lip longer,’ said I. ‘Man, Reivers,’ I says, ‘he thinks he’s a fighter, and the other day I slammed him on his back mysel’; and gi’n I had my old wind,’ I says, ‘I would have whipped him then and there.’
“Oh, carried on strong, losing my temper and all. ‘Five year ago I would ha’ broken his back, the big young fool!’ I says. ‘An’ he swaggers around me and thinks he’s a boss man because he licked that bloat Sheedy. Ah!’ I says. ‘I’ll stand it till he gives me lip again; then I’ll lay him out with whatever I have in my hands,’ says I.
“‘Don’t do it,’ says Reivers, smiling to see me so worked up, and surmising, as I intended he should, that I was angry only because I’d discovered that you were a better man than mysel’. ‘Save him for me,’ says he. ‘As soon as I have more time I will ’tend tohim. In the meantime,’ he says, ‘let him go on thinking he is a good man.’
“Lad, he swallowed it all, for it’s four years since he knew me first, and that was the first lie I’d told him at all. ‘I’ll take him under my eye soon as I have more time,’ says he. ‘He’ll not swagger after I’ve tamed him a little.’”
“But I don’t just see——”
“Dolt! Dinna you see that noo he considers you as an overconfident young fool whom he’s going to take the conceit out of? Dinna ye see that noo you’re in the same category as the other men he’s broken down? He’ll not think it worth while to have his shotgun men handy noo when he starts in to do his breaking. He’ll start it, ye understand; not you. ’Twill be proper so. I will go this morning and tell him that the end has come; that I can not stand you longer around me. He’ll give you something to do—under him. Under him, do you see? Then you must e’en watch your chance, and—and happen I’ll manage to be around in case the guards should show up.”
“Better keep out of it altogether,” said Toppy. “They won’t use their guns in an even fight, and you couldn’t do anything with your bare hands if they did.”
“With my bare hands, no,” said Campbell, going to his bunk. “But I am not so bare-handed as you think, lad.” He dug under the blankets and held up a huge black revolver. “Canny by nature!” he said; thrusting the grim weapon under his trousers-band. “I made no idle threat when I told Reivers I would shoot his head off did he ever try to make a broken man out of me. I have had this utensil handy ever since.”
“Scotty,” cried Toppy, deeply moved at the old man’s staunch friendship, “when did you begin to plan this scheme?”
Campbell looked squarely into his eyes.
“The same day that I talked with yon lassie and learned how Reivers had fascinated her.”
“Why?”
“Dinna ye know nothing about women, lad?”
“I——What do you mean?”
“Do you fancy Reivers could carry his will so strong with folks gi’n ye happen to make a beaten man out of him? And do you not think yon lass would come back to her right mind gi’n the Snow-Burner loses his power o’er her? You’re no’ so blind as not to see she’s no liking for him, but the de’il has in a way mesmerised her.”
“Then you mean——”
“That when you and the Snow-Burner put up your mitts ye’ll be fighting for more than just to see who’s best man. Now think that over, lad, while I go and complain to Reivers that I can not stand you an hour longer, and arrange for him to give you your taming.”
It was past sunrise now; the mugginess in the air had fled before the unclouded sun, and the day was pleasantly bright and warm. The sunlight coming in through the eastern window flooded the room. Outside could be heard the steadydrip-dripfrom the melting icicles, and the chirp of the chickadees industriously seeking a breakfast around the door made the morning cheery.
Toppy sat heaved forward in his chair after Campbell had gone on his errand, and looked out of the open door, and waited. From where he sat he could see the office across the way. Presently he saw Miss Pearson come out, stand for a moment in the doorway peering around in puzzled fashion, and go in again.
Toppy did not move. He knew what that signified—that the girl was puzzled and perhaps frightened over the absence of the squaw, Tilly; but he had no impulse to cross the street and break the news to her. The girl, Tilly’s absence, such things were to him only incidentals now. He saw the girl as if far away, as if she were something that did not greatly concern him.
Through his mind there ran recollections of other moments like this—moments of waiting in the training-quarters back at school for the word of the coach to trot out on the field. The same ease of spirit afterthe tension of weeks of hard training; the same sinking of all worry and nervousness in the knowledge that now that the test was on he would do the best that was in him, and that beyond this there was nothing for a man to think or worry about.
Back there at school there had also been that sense of dissociation from all things not involved in the contest before him. The roaring stands, the pretty girls waving the bright-hued banners, the sound of his name shouted far down the field—he had heard them, but they had not affected him. For the time being, then as now, he had become a wonderful human machine, completely concentrated, as machines must be, upon the accomplishment of one task. Then it had been to play a game; now it was to fight. But it was much the same, after all; it was all in the man-game.
A feeling of content was the only emotion that Toppy was conscious of in the long minutes during which he waited for Campbell to return. Thedrip-dripfrom the eaves and the chirp of the chickadees came as music to his ears. The Snow-Burner and he were going to fight; in that knowledge there was relief after the weeks of tension.
Heavy, crunching steps sounded on the snow outside, and Campbell’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. Toppy bent over and carefully tightened a shoe-lace.
“It’s all set,” said Campbell rapidly. “He says send you to him at once. You’re in luck. He’s in the stockade. Get you up and go to him. There is only one guard at the gate. I’ll follow and be handy in case he should interfere.”
That was all. Toppy rose up and strode out without a word. He made his way to the stockade gate with a carelessness of manner that belied his purpose.He noted that the guard stood on the outside of the gate and that the snow already was squashy underfoot. The gate opened and admitted him and closed behind him. Then he was walking across the yard toward Reivers, who stood waiting before the camp kitchen at the far end of the yard.
Here and there Toppy saw men in the bunkhouses, perhaps fifty in all, and realised that the sudden thaw had at once enforced a period of idleness for some of the men. He nodded lightly in response to the greeting from one of the men whom he had doctored; then he was standing before Reivers, and Reivers was looking at him as he had looked at Rosky the day when he broke the Bohunk’s leg. Toppy looked back, unmoved. For a moment the two stood silent, eye measuring eye. Then Reivers spoke savagely, enraged at finding a will that braved his own.
“What kind of a game are you trying to play, Treplin?”
“Game?” repeated Toppy innocently.
“Come, come!” Reivers’ brows were drawing down over his eyes, and again Toppy for some reason was reminded of a bear. “You don’t suppose I’m as innocent as Campbell, do you? You’ve been raising —— in the shop, I hear. You’re doing that with an object. You’re trying some game. I don’t care what it is; it doesn’t go. There doesn’t anybody try any games in this place except myself.”
“How about poker-games?” suggested Toppy quietly.
A man hidden in the darkness of the bunkhouse behind Reivers snickered audibly; for Campbell had told the story of how Toppy had bested the boss at poker and the man understood Toppy’s thrust. Reivers’ eyes flashed and his jaw shot out, but in an instant he had his anger under control again. He smiled.
“Well, well; so we’re playing the wit, are we—doctor?” he sneered softly. “We’re trying to drive that trained mind of ours to be brilliant, are we? Well, I wouldn’t, Treplin; the strain on inferior machinery may be fatal.” Suddenly his whole face seemed to change, convulsed in a spasm of brute threatening. “Get over there in that corner and dig a slop-sink; you hear me?” Reivers’ voice was a snarl as he pointed to the corner near the kitchen, where a pick and shovel lay waiting. “That’s what you’re going to do, my fine buck, with your nerve to dare to come into my camp and think you’re my equal. Dig slop-holes for my Dago cook; that’s what you’re going to do!
“Do you hear? You’re going to be the lowest scavenger in this gang of scum. I’m going to break you. I’m going to keep you here until I’m through with you. I’m going to send you out of here so low down that a saloon scrub-out would kick you on general principles. That’s what’s going to happen to you! I’m going to play with you. I’m going to show you how well it pays to think of yourself as my equal in my own camp. Get over there now—right over there where the whole camp can see you, and dig a hole for the Dago to throw his slops!”
Few men could have faced the sight of the Snow-Burner’s face as the words shot from his iron-like lips without retreating, but Toppy stood still. He began to smile.
“Pardon, Reivers,” he said softly, “I never thought of myself as your equal.”
“Don’t whine now; it’s too late! Go——”
“Because I know I’m a better man than you ever could be.”
It grew very still with great suddenness there in the corner of the big yard. The men within hearing held their breaths. Thedrip-dripfrom the eavessounded loud in the silence. And now Toppy saw the wolf-craft creeping to its own far back in Reivers’ eyes, and without moving he stood tensed for sudden, flash-like action.
“So that’s it?” said Reivers, smiling; and then he struck with serpent-tongue swiftness. And with that blow Toppy knew how desperate would be the battle; for, skilled boxer and on the alert as he was, he had time only to snap his jaw to one side far enough to save himself from certain knockout, while the iron-like fist tore the skin off his cheek as it shot past.
Reivers had not thrown his body behind the blow. He stood upright and ready. He was a little surprised that his man did not go down. Toppy, recovering like a flash, likewise was prepared. A tiny instant they faced each other. Then with simultaneous growls they hurled themselves breast to breast and the fight was on.
Toppy had yielded to the impulse to answer in kind the challenge that had flared in Reivers’ eyes. It wasn’t science; it wasn’t sense. It was the blind, primitive impulse to come into shock with a foe, to stop him, to force him back, to make him break ground. Breast upon breast Reivers and Toppy came together and stopped short, two bodies of equal force suddenly meeting.
Neither gave ground; neither made a pretense at guarding. Toe to toe they stood, head to head, and drove their fists against one another’s iron-strong bodies with a rapidity and a force that only giants like themselves could have withstood for a moment. It was madness, it was murder, and the group of men who were watching held their breaths and waited for one or the other to wilt and go down, the life knocked out of him by those pile-driver blows.
Then, as suddenly as they had come together, thepair leaped apart, rushed together again, gripped into a clinch, struggled in Titan fashion with futile heaving and tripping, flew apart once more, then volleyed each other with vicious punches—a kaleidoscope of springing legs, rushing bodies, and stiffly driven arms.
It was a battle that drove the fear of Reivers from the heart of the men who witnessed and dragged them forth to form a ring around the two fighters. It was a battle to make men roar with frenzy; but not a sound came from the ring that expanded and closed as the battle raged here and there. The men were at first too shocked to cry out at the sight of any one daring to give the Snow-Burner fight; and after the shock had worn away they were too wary to give a sign that might bring the guards. Silently and tight-lipped the ring formed; and each pair of eyes that watched shot nothing but hatred for Reivers.
Toppy was the first to recover from the initial frensied impulse to strive to annihilate in one rush his hated enemy. He shook his head as he was wont to do after a hard scrimmage on the gridiron, and his fighting-wits were clear again. So far he knew he had held his own, but only held it. Perhaps he out-bulked Reivers slightly in body and was a trifle quicker on his feet, but Reivers’ blows were enough heavier than his to even up this advantage.
He had driven his fist flush home on his foreman’s neck under the ear, and the neck had not yielded any more than a column of wood. He had felt Reivers’ fist drive home full on his cheekbone and it seemed that he had been struck by a handful of iron. When they had strained breast against breast in the first clash the fact that they were of equal strength had been apparent to both. Equally matched, and both equally determined to win, Toppy knew that the fight would be long; and he began to circle scientifically,striking and guarding with all his cunning, saving himself while he watched for a slip or an opening that might offer an advantage.
Suddenly the opening came, as Reivers for a second paused, deceived by Toppy’s tactics. Like a bullet to the mark Toppy’s right shot home on the exposed chin; but Reivers, felled to his knees as if shot, was up like a flash, staggering Toppy with a left on the mouth and rushing him around and around in fury at the knockdown. An added grimness to Toppy’s expression told how he appreciated the significance of this incident. He had put all his force, from toes to knuckles, into that blow; and Reivers had merely been staggered. Again Toppy began circling, deliberately saving himself for a drawn-out battle which now to him seemed uphill.
The ring of watchers around the pair grew more close, more eager. All of the men present in the bunkhouses had rushed out to see the fight. As Toppy circled he saw in the foremost ranks the Torta boys and most of the gang that had worked under him in the quarry; and by the looks in their eyes he knew that he was fighting in the presence of friends. In the next second their looks had turned to dismay as Reivers, swiftly feinting with his left, drove home the right against Toppy’s jaw and knocked him to his haunches. But Toppy, rising slowly, caught Reivers as he closed in to follow up his advantage and with a heavy swing to the eye stopped him in his tracks. A low cry escaped the tight lips around the ring. The blood was spurting from a clean cut in Reivers’ brow and a few men called—