The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Snow-BurnerThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Snow-BurnerAuthor: Henry OyenRelease date: May 16, 2011 [eBook #36121]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SNOW-BURNER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Snow-BurnerAuthor: Henry OyenRelease date: May 16, 2011 [eBook #36121]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Snow-Burner
Author: Henry Oyen
Author: Henry Oyen
Release date: May 16, 2011 [eBook #36121]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SNOW-BURNER ***
THE SNOW-BURNER TOPPLED AND FELL FACE DOWNWARD ON THE GROUNDTHE SNOW-BURNER TOPPLED AND FELL FACE DOWNWARD ON THE GROUND
THESNOW-BURNERBYHENRY OYENAUTHOR OFTHE MAN-TRAILemblemNEW YORKGROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERSCopyright, 1916,By George H. Doran CompanyPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICACOPYRIGHT 1914, 1915, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
THESNOW-BURNER
BYHENRY OYEN
AUTHOR OFTHE MAN-TRAIL
emblem
NEW YORKGROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916,By George H. Doran Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT 1914, 1915, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE NATURAL MAN
PART TWO: THE SUPER MAN
PART ONE: THE NATURAL MAN
The brisk November sunrise, breaking over the dark jack-pines, lighted up the dozen snow-covered frame buildings comprising the so-called town of Rail Head, and presently reached in through the uncurtained windows of the Northern Light saloon, where it shone upon the curly head of young Toppy Treplin as, pillowed on his crossed forearms, it lay in repose on one of the saloon tables.
It was a sad, strange place to find Toppy Treplin, one-time All-American halfback, but for the last four years all-around moneyed loafer and waster. Rail Head was far from the beaten path. It lay at the end of sixty miles of narrow-gauge track that rambled westward into the Big Woods from the Iron Range Railroad line, and it consisted mainly of a box-car depot, an alleged hotel and six saloons—none of the latter being in any too good repute with the better element round about.
The existence of the saloons might have explained Toppy’s presence in Rail Head had their character and wares been of a nature to attract one of his critical tastes; but in reality Toppy was there because the Iron Range Limited, bearing Harvey Duncombe’s private hunting-car, had stopped for a moment thenight before out where the narrow-gauge met the Iron Range Railroad tracks.
Toppy, at that fated moment, was out on the observation platform alone. There had been a row and Toppy had rushed out in a black rage. Within, the car reeked with the mingled odours of cigarette-smoke and spilled champagne. Out of doors the first snowfall of the season, faintly tinted by a newly risen moon, lay unmarked, undefiled.
A girl—small, young, brisk and business-like—alighted from the car ahead and walked swiftly across the station platform to the narrow-gauge train that stood waiting. The anger and champagne raging in him had moved Toppy to one of those wild pranks which had made his name among his fellows synonymous with irresponsibility.
He would get away from it all, away from Harvey Duncombe and his champagne, and all that sort of thing. He would show them!
Toppy had stepped off. The Limited suddenly glided away. Toppy lurched over to the narrow gauge, and that was the last thing he had remembered of that memorable night.
As the sun now revealed him, Mr. Robert Lovejoy Treplin, in spite of his deplorable condition, was a figure to win attention of a not entirely unfavourable sort. Still clad in mackinaw and hunting-clothes, his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle and just a little too much fat were sprawled picturesquely over the chair and table, the six-foot gracefulness of him being obvious despite his rough apparel and awkward position.
His cap had fallen off and the sun glinted on a head of boyish brown curls. It was only in the lazy, good-natured face, puffy and loose-lipped, that one might read how recklessly Toppy Treplin had livedsince achieving his football honours four years before.
The sun crept up and found his eyes, and Toppy stirred. Slowly, even painfully, he raised his head from the table and looked around him. The crudeness of his surroundings made him sit up with a start. He looked first out of the window at the snow-covered “street.” Across the way he saw a small, unpainted building bearing a scraggly sign, “Hotel.” Beyond this the jack-pines loomed in a solid wall.
Toppy shuddered. He turned his face toward the man behind the bar, who had been regarding him for some time with a look of mingled surprise and amusement. Toppy shuddered again.
The man was a half-breed, and he wore a red woollen shirt. Worse, there was not a sign of a mirror behind the bar. It was distressing.
“Good morning, brother,” said Toppy, concealing his repugnance. “Might I ask you for a little information this pleasant morning?”
The half-breed grinned appreciatively but sceptically.
“Little drink, I guess you mean, don’t you?” said he. “Go ’head.”
Toppy bowed courteously.
“Thank you, brother, thank you. I am sorely puzzled about two little matters—where am I anyway, and if so, how did I get here?”
The grin on the half-breed’s face broadened. He pointed at the table in front of Toppy.
“You been sleeping there since ‘bout midnight las’ night,” he exclaimed.
Toppy waved his left hand to indicate his displeasure at the inadequacy of the bartender’s reply.
“Obvious, my dear Watson, obvious,” he said. “I know that I’m at this table, because here I am; andI know I’ve been sleeping here because I just woke up. Let’s broaden the range of our information. What town is this, if it is a town, and if it is, how did I happen to come here, may I ask?”
The half-breed’s grin disappeared, gradually to give place to an expression of amazement.
“You mean to say you come to this town and don’t know what town it is?” he demanded. “Then why you come? What you do here?”
Toppy’s brow corrugated in an expression of deep puzzlement.
“That’s another thing that’s rather puzzling, too, brother,” he replied. “Why did I come? I’d like to know that, too. Like very, very much to know that. Where am I, how did I come here, and why? Three questions I’d like very, very much to have answered.”
He sat for a moment in deep thought, then turned toward the bartender with the pleased look of a man who has found an inspiration.
“I tell you what you do, brother—you answer the first two questions and in the light of that information I’ll see if I can’t ponder out the third.”
The half-breed leaned heavily across the single-plank bar and watched Toppy closely.
“This town is Rail Head,” he said slowly, as if speaking to some one of whose mental capacity he had great doubts. “You come here by last night’s train. You bring the train-crew over to have a drink; then you fall asleep. You been sleeping ever since. Now you remember?”
“Ah!”
The puzzled look went out of Toppy’s eyes.
“Now I remember. Row with Harvey Duncombe. Wanted me to drink two to his one. Stepped outside. Saw little train. Saw little girl. Stepped offbig train, got on little train, and here I am. Fine little business.”
“You went to sleep in the train coming up, the conductor told me,” volunteered the half-breed. “You told them you wanted to go as far as you could, so they took you up here to the end of the line. You remember now, eh, why you come here?”
“Only too well, brother,” replied Toppy wearily. “I—I just came to see your beautiful little city.”
The bartender laughed bitterly.
“You come to a fine place. Didn’t you ever hear ‘bout Rail Head?” he asked. “I guess not, or you wouldn’t have come. This town’s the jumping-off place, that’s what she is. It’s the most God-forsaken, hopeless excuse for a town in the whole North Country. There’s only two kind of business here—shipping men out to Hell Camp and skinning them when they come back. That’s all. What you think of that for a fine town you’ve landed in, eh?”
“Fine,” said Toppy. “I see you love it dearly, indeed.”
The half-breed nodded grimly.
“It’s all right for me; I own this place. Anybody else is sucker to come here, though. You ain’t a Bohunk fool, so I don’t think you come to hire out for Hell Camp. You just got too drunk, eh?”
“I suppose so,” said Toppy, yawning. “What’s this Hell Camp thing? Pleasant little name.”
“An’ pleasant little place,” supplemented the man mockingly. “Ain’t you never heard ‘bout Hell Camp? ‘Bout its boss—Reivers—the ‘Snow-Burner’? Huh! Perhaps you want hire out there for job?”
“Perhaps,” agreed Toppy. “What is it?”
“Oh, it ain’t nothing so much. Just big log-camp run by man named Reivers—that’s all. Indians call him Snow-Burner. Twenty-five, thirty miles out inthe bush, at Cameron Dam. That’s all. Very big camp. Everybody who comes to this town is going out there to work, or else hiding out.”
“I see. But why the name?”
“Hell Camp?” The bartender’s grin appeared again; then, as if a second thought on the matter had occurred to him, he assumed a noncommittal expression and yawned. “Oh, that’s just nickname the boys give it. You see, the boys from camp come to town here in the Spring. Then sometimes they raise ——. That’s why some people call it Hell Camp. That’s all. Cameron Dam Camp is the right name.”
“I see.” Toppy was wondering why the man should take the trouble to lie to him. Of course he was lying. Even Toppy, with his bleared eyes, could see that the man had started to berate Hell Camp even as he had berated Rail Head and had suddenly switched and said nothing. It hurt Toppy’s head. It wasn’t fair to puzzle him this morning. “I see. Just—just a nickname.”
“That’s all,” said the bartender. Briskly changing the subject he said: “Well, how ’bout it, stranger? You going to have eye-opener this morning?”
“I suppose so,” said Toppy absently. He again turned his attention to the view from the window. On the low stairs of the hotel were seated half a dozen men whose flat, ox-like faces and foreign clothing marked them for immigrants, newly arrived, of the Slavic type. Some sat on wooden trunks oddly marked, others stood with bundles beneath their arms. They waited stolidly, blankly, with their eyes on the hotel door, as oxen wait for the coming of the man who is going to feed them. Toppy looked on with idle interest.
“I didn’t think you could see anything like that thisfar away from Ellis Island,” he said. “What are those fellows, brother?”
“Bohunks,” said the bartender with a contemptuous jerk of the head. “They waiting to hire out for the Cameron Dam Camp. The agent he comes to the hotel. Well, what you going to have?”
“Bring me a whisky sour,” said Toppy, without taking his eyes off the group across the street. The half-breed grinned and placed before him a bottle of whisky and a glass. Toppy frowned.
“A whisky sour, I said,” he protested.
“When you get this far in the woods,” laughed the man, “they all come out of one bottle. Drink up.”
Once more Toppy shuddered. He was bored by this time.
“Your jokes up here are worse than your booze,” he said wearily.
He poured out a scant drink and sat with the glass in his hand while his eyes were upon the group across the street. He was about to drink when a stir among the men drew his attention. The door of the hotel opened briskly. Toppy suddenly set down his glass.
The girl who had got on the narrow-gauge out at the junction the night before had come out and was standing on the stairs, looking about her with an expression which to Toppy seemed plainly to spell, “Help!”
Toppy sat and stared across the street at her with a feeling much like awe. The girl was standing forth in the full morning sunlight, and Toppy’s first impulse was to cross the street to her, his second to hide his face. She was small and young, the girl, and beautiful. She was a blonde, such a blonde as is found only in the North. The sun lighted up the aureole of light hair surrounding her head, so that even Toppy behind the windows of the Northern Light caught a vision of its fineness. Her cheeks bore the red of perfect health showing through a perfect, fair complexion, and even the thick red mackinaw which she wore did not hide the trimness of the figure beneath.
“What in the dickens is she doing here?” gasped Toppy. “She doesn’t belong in a place like this.”
But if this were true the girl apparently was entirely unconscious of it. Among that group of ox-like Slavs she stood with her little chin in the air, as much at home, apparently, as if those men were all her good friends. Only she looked about her now and then as if anxiously seeking a way out of a dilemma.
“What can she be doing here?” mused Toppy. “A little, pretty thing like her! She ought to be back home with mother and father and brother and sister, going to dancing-school, and all the rest of it.”
Toppy was no stranger to pretty girls. He had met pretty girls by the score while at college. He had been adored by dozens. After college he had met still more. None of them had interested him to any inconvenient extent. After all, a man’s friends are all men.
But this girl, Toppy admitted, struck him differently. He had never seen a girl that struck him like this before. He pushed his glass to one side. He was bored no longer. For the first time in four years the full shame of his mode of living was driven home to him, for as he feasted his eyes on the sun-kissed vision across the street his decent instincts whispered that a man who squandered and swilled his life away just because he had money had no right to raise his eyes to this girl.
“You’re a waster, that’s what you are,” said Toppy to himself, “and she’s one of those sweet——”
He was on his feet before the sentence was completed. In her perplexity the girl had turned to the men about her and apparently had asked a question. At first their utter unresponsiveness indicated that they did not understand.
Then they began to smile, looking at one another and at the girl. The brutal manner in which they fixed their eyes upon her sent the blood into Toppy’s throat. White men didn’t look at a woman that way.
Then one of the younger men spoke to the girl. Toppy saw her start and look at him with parted lips. The group gathered more closely around. The young man spoke again, grimacing and smirking bestially, and Toppy waited for no more. He was a waster and half drunk; but after all he was a white man, of the same breed as the girl on the stairs, and he knew his job.
He came across the snow-covered street like ToppyTreplin of old bent upon making a touchdown. Into the group he walked, head up, shouldering and elbowing carelessly. Toppy caught the young speaker by both shoulders and hurled him bodily back among his fellows. For an instant they faced Toppy, snarling, their hands cautiously sliding toward hidden knives. Then they grovelled, cringing instinctively before the better breed.
Toppy turned to the girl and removed his cap. She had not cried out nor moved, and now she looked Toppy squarely in the eye. Toppy promptly hung his head. He had been thinking of her as something of a child. Now he saw his mistake. She was young, it is true—little over twenty perhaps—but there was an air of self-reliance and seriousness about her as if she had known responsibilities beyond her years. And her eyes were blue, Toppy saw—the perfect blue that went with her fair complexion.
“I beg pardon,” stammered Toppy. “I just happened to see—it looked as if they were getting fresh—so I thought I’d come across and—and see if there was anything—anything I could do.”
“Thank you,” said the girl a little breathlessly. “Are—are you the agent?”
Toppy shook his head. The look of perplexity instantly returned to the girl’s face.
“I’m sorry; I wish I was,” said Toppy. “If you’ll tell me who the agent is, and so on—” he included most of the town of Rail Head in a comprehensive glance—“I’ll probably be able to find him in a hurry.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of troubling you. Thank you ever so much, though,” she said hastily. “They told me in the hotel that he was outside here some place. I’ll find him myself, thank you.”
She stepped off the stairs into the snow of the street, every inch and line of her, from her solid tanboots to her sensible tassel cap, expressing the self-reliance and independence of the girl who is accustomed and able to take care of herself under trying circumstances.
The bright sun smote her eyes and she blinked, squinting deliciously. She paused for a moment, threw back her head and filled her lungs to the full with great drafts of the invigorating November air. Her mackinaw rose and fell as she breathed deeply, and more colour came rushing into the roses of her cheeks. Apparently she had forgotten the existence of the Slavs, who still stood glowering at her and Toppy.
“Isn’t it glorious?” she said, looking up at Toppy with her eyes puckered prettily from the sun. “Doesn’t it just make you glad you’re alive?”
“You bet it does!” said Toppy eagerly. He saw his opportunity to continue the conversation and hastened to take advantage. “I never knew air could be as exciting as this. I never felt anything like it. It’s my first experience up here in the woods; I’m an utter stranger around here.”
Having volunteered this information, he waited eagerly. The girl merely nodded.
“Of course. Anybody could see that,” she said simply.
Toppy felt slightly abashed.
“Then you—you’re not a stranger around here?” he asked.
She shook her head, the tassels of her cap and her aureole of light hair tossing gloriously.
“I’m a stranger here in this town,” she said, “but I’ve lived up here in the woods, as you call it, all my life except the two years I was away at school. Not right in the woods, of course, but in small towns around. My father was a timber-estimator beforehe was hurt, and naturally we had to live close to the woods.”
“Naturally,” agreed Toppy, though he knew nothing about it. He tried to imagine any of the girls he knew back East accepting a stranger as a man and a brother who could be trusted at first hand, and he failed.
“I say,” he said as she stepped away. “Just a moment, please. About this agent-thing. Won’t you please let me go and look for him?” He waved his hands at the six saloons. “You see, there aren’t many places here that a lady can go looking for a man in.”
She hesitated, frowning at the lowly groggeries that constituted the major part of Rail Head’s buildings.
“That’s so,” she said with a smile.
“Of course it is,” said Toppy eagerly. “And the chances are that your man is in one of them, no matter who he is, because that’s about the only place he can be here. You tell me who he is, or what he is, and I’ll go hunt him up.”
“That’s very kind of you.” She hesitated for a moment, then accepted his offer without further parley. “It’s the employment agent of the Cameron Dam Company that I’m looking for. I am to meet him here, according to a letter they sent me, and he is to furnish a team and driver to take me out to the Dam.”
Then she added calmly, “I’m going to keep books out there this Winter.”
Toppy gasped. In the first place, he had not been thinking of her as a “working girl.” None of the girls that he knew belonged to that class. The notion that she, with the childish dimple in her chin and the roses in her cheeks, was a girl who made her own living was hard to assimilate; the idea that she was going out to a camp in the woods—out to Hell Camp—to work was absolutely impossible!
“Keep books?” said Toppy, bewildered. “Do they keep books in a—in a logging-camp?”
It was her turn to look surprised.
“Do you know anything about Cameron Dam?” she asked.
“Nothing,” admitted Toppy. “It’s a logging-camp, though, isn’t it?”
“Rather more than that, as I understand it,” she replied. “They are building a town out there, according to my letter. There are over two hundred people there now. At present they’re doing nothing but logging and building the dam; but they say they’ve found ore out there, and in the Spring the railroad is coming and the town will open up.”
“And—and you’re going to keep books there this Winter?”
She nodded. “They pay well. They’re paying me seventy-five dollars a month and my board.”
“And you don’t know anything about the place?”
“Except what they’ve written in the letter engaging me.”
“And still you’re going out there—to work?”
“Of course,” she said cheerfully. “Seventy-five-dollar jobs aren’t to be picked up every day around here.”
“I see,” said Toppy. He remembered Harvey Duncombe’s champagne bill of the night before and grew thoughtful. He himself had shuddered a short while before, at waking in a bar where there was no mirror, and he had planned to wire Harvey for five hundred to take him back to civilisation. And here was this delicate little girl—as delicate to look upon as any of the petted and pampered girls he knew back East—cheerfully, even eagerly, setting her face toward the wilderness because therein lay a job paying the colossal sum of seventy-five dollars a month! And she was going alone!
A reckless impulse swayed Toppy. He decided not to wire Harvey.
“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll go find this agent. You’d better wait inside the hotel.”
He crossed the street and systematically began to search through the six saloons. In the third place he found his man shaking dice with an Indian. The agent was a lean, long-nosed individual who wore thick glasses and talked through his nose.
“Yes, I’m the Cameron Dam agent,” he drawled, curiously eying Toppy from head to toe. “Simmons is my name. What can I do for you?”
“I want a job,” said Toppy. “A job out at Hell Camp.”
The agent laughed shortly at the name.
“You’re wise, are you?” he said. “And still you want a job out there? Well, I’m sorry. That load of Bohunks across the street fills me up. I can’t useany more rough labour just at present. I’m looking for a blacksmith’s helper, but I guess that ain’t you.”
“That’s me,” said Toppy resolutely. “That’s the job I want—blacksmith’s helper. That’s my job.”
The agent looked him over with the critical eye of a man skilfully appraising bone and muscle.
“You’re big enough, that’s sure,” he drawled. “You’ve got the shoulders and arms, too, but—let’s see your hands.”
Toppy held up his hands, huge in size, but entirely innocent of callouses or other signs of wear. The agent grinned.
“Soft as a woman’s,” he said scornfully. “When did you ever do any blacksmithing? Long time ago, wasn’t it? Before you were born, I guess.”
Toppy’s right hand shot out and fell upon the agent’s thin arm. Slowly and steadily he squeezed until the man writhed and grimaced with pain.
“Wow! Leggo!” The agent peered over his thick glasses with something like admiration in his eyes. “Say, you’re there with the grip, all right, big fellow. Where’d you get it?”
“Swinging a sledge,” lied Toppy solemnly. “And I’ve come here to get that job.”
Simmons shook his head.
“I can’t do it,” he protested. “If I should send you out and you shouldn’t make good, Reivers would be sore.”
“Who’s this man Reivers?”
The agent’s eyes over his glasses expressed surprise.
“I thought you were wise to Hell Camp?” he said.
“Oh, I’m wise enough,” said Toppy impatiently. “I know what it is. But who’s this Reivers?”
“He’s the boss,” said Simmons shortly. “D’you mean to say you never heard about Hell-Camp Reivers, the Snow-Burner?”
“No, I haven’t,” replied Toppy impatiently. “But that doesn’t make any difference. You send me out there; I’ll make good, don’t worry.” He paused and sized his man up. “Come over here, Simmons,” he said with a significant wink, leading the way toward the door. “I want that job; I want it badly.” Toppy dived into his pockets. Two bills came to light—two twenties. He slipped them casually into Simmons’ hand. “That’s how bad I want it. Now how about it?”
The fashion in which Simmons’ thin fingers closed upon the money told Toppy that he was not mistaken in the agent’s character.
“You’ll be taking your own chances,” warned Simmons, carefully pocketing the money. “If you don’t make good—well, you’ll have to explain to Reivers, that’s all. You must have an awful good reason for wanting to go out.”
“I have.”
“Hiding from something, mebbe?” suggested Simmons.
“Maybe,” said Toppy. “And, say—there’s a young lady over at the hotel who’s looking for you. Said you were to furnish her with a sleigh to get out to Cameron Dam.”
An evil smile broke over the agent’s thin face as he moved toward the door.
“The new bookkeeper, I suppose,” he said, winking at Toppy. “Aha! Now I understand why you——”
Toppy caught him two steps from the door. His fingers sank into the man’s withered biceps.
“No, you don’t understand,” he hissed grimly. “Get that? You don’t understand anything about it.”
“All right,” snapped the cowed man. “Leggo my arm. I was just joshing. You can take a joke, can’t you? Well, then, come along. As long as you’regoing out you might as well go at once. I’ve got to get a double team, anyhow, for the lady, and you’ve got to start now to make it before dark. Ready to start now?”
“All ready,” said Toppy.
At the door the agent paused.
“Say, you haven’t said anything about wages yet,” he said quizzically.
“That’s so,” said Toppy, as if he had forgotten. “How much am I going to get?”
“Sixty a month.”
The agent couldn’t understand why the new man should laugh. It struck Toppy as funny that a little girl with a baby dimple in her chin should be earning more money than he. Also, he wondered what Harvey Duncombe and the rest of the bunch would have thought had they known.
Toppy followed the agent to the stable behind the hotel, where Simmons routed out an old hunchbacked driver who soon brought forth a team of rangy bays drawing a light double-seated sleigh.
“Company outfit,” explained Simmons. “Have to have a team; one horse can’t make it. You can ride in the front seat with the driver. The lady will ride behind.”
As Toppy clambered in Simmons hurriedly whispered something in the ear of the driver, who was fastening a trace. The hunchback nodded.
“I got this job because I can keep my mouth shut,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry about anybody pumping me.”
He stepped in beside Toppy; and the bays, prancing in the snow, went around to the front of the hotel on the run. There was a wait of a few minutes; then Simmons came out, followed by the girl carrying hersuitcase. Toppy sprang out and took it from her hand.
“You people are going to be together on a long drive, so I’d better introduce you,” said Simmons. “Miss Pearson, Mr. ——”
“Treplin,” said Toppy honestly.
“Treplin,” concluded Simmons. “New bookkeeper, new blacksmith’s helper. Get in the back seat, Miss Pearson. Cover yourself well up with those robes. Bundle in—that’s right. Put the suitcase under your feet. That’s right. All right, Jerry,” he drawled to the driver. “You’d better keep going pretty steady to make it before dark.”
“Don’t nobody need to tell me my business,” said the surly hunchback, tightening the lines; and without any more ado they were off, the snow flying from the heels of the mettlesome bays.
For the first few miles the horses, fresh from the stable and exhilarated to the dancing-point by the sun, air and snow, provided excitement which prevented any attempt at conversation. Then, when their dancing and shying had ceased and they had settled down to a steady, long-legged jog that placed mile after mile of the white road behind them with the regularity of a machine, Toppy turned his eyes toward the girl in the back seat.
He quickly turned them to the front again. Miss Pearson, snuggled down to her chin in the thick sleigh-robes, her eyes squinting deliciously beneath the sharp sun, was studying him with a frankness that was disconcerting, and Toppy, probably for the first time in his life, felt himself gripped by a great shyness and confusion. There was wonderment in the girl’s eyes, and suspicion.
“She’s wise,” thought Toppy sadly. “She knows I’ve been hitting it up, and she knows I made up mymind to come out here after I talked with her. A fine opinion she must have of me! Well, I deserve it. But just the same I’ve got to see the thing through now. I can’t stand for her going out all alone to a place with a reputation like Hell Camp. I’m a dead one with her, all right; but I’ll stick around and see that she gets a square deal.”
Consequently the drive, which Toppy had hoped would lead to more conversation and a closer acquaintance with the girl, resolved itself into a silent, monotonous affair which made him distinctly uncomfortable. He looked back at her again. This time also he caught her eyes full upon him, but this time after an instant’s scrutiny she looked away with a trace of hardness about her lips.
“I’m in bad at the start with her, sure,” groaned Toppy inwardly. “She doesn’t want a thing to do with me, and quite right at that.”
His tentative efforts at opening a conversation with the driver met instant and convincing failure.
“I hear they’ve got quite a place out here,” began Toppy casually.
“None of my business if they have,” grunted the driver.
Toppy laughed.
“You’re a sociable brute! Why don’t you bark and be done with it?”
The driver viciously pulled the team to a dead stop and turned upon Toppy with a look that could come only from a spirit of complete malevolence.
“Don’t try to talk to me, young feller,” he snapped, showing old yellow teeth. “My job is to haul you out there, and that’s all. I don’t talk. Don’t waste your time trying to make me. Giddap!”
He cut viciously at the horses with his whip, pulled his head into the collar of his fur coat with the motionof a turtle retiring into its shell, and for the rest of the drive spoke only to the horses.
Toppy, snubbed by the driver and feeling himself shunned, perhaps even despised, by Miss Pearson, now had plenty of time to think over the situation calmly. The crisp November air whipping his face as the sleigh sped steadily along drove from his brain the remaining fumes of Harvey Buncombe’s champagne. He saw the whole affair clearly now, and he promptly called himself a great fool.
What business was it of his if a girl wanted to go out to work in a place like Hell Camp? Probably it was all right. Probably there was no necessity, no excuse for his having made a fool of himself by going with her. Why had he done it, anyhow? Getting interested in anything because of a girl was strange conduct for him. He couldn’t call to mind a single tangible reason for his actions. He had acted on the impulse, as he had done scores of times before; and, as he had also done scores of times before, he felt that he had made a fool of himself.
He tried to catch the girl’s eyes once more, to read in them some sign of relenting, some excuse for opening a conversation. But as he turned his head Miss Pearson also turned and looked away with uncompromising severity. Toppy studied the purity of her profile, the innocence of the baby dimple in her chin, out of the corner of his eye. And as he turned and glanced at the evil face of the hunchback driver he settled himself with a sigh, and thought—
“Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the fact that I’ve been a fool, I am glad that I’m here.”
At noon the road plunged out of the scant jack-pine forest into the gloom of a hemlock swamp. Toppy shuddered as he contemplated what the fate of a man might be who should be unfortunate enough to getlost in that swamp. A mile in the swamp, on a slight knoll, they came to a tiny cabin guarding a gate across the road. An old, bearded woodsman came out of the cabin and opened the gate, and the hunchback pulled up and proceeded to feed his team.
“Dinner’s waiting inside,” called the gate-tender. “Come in and eat, miss—and you, too; I suppose you’re hungry?” he added to Toppy.
“And hurry up, too,” growled the hunchback. “I give you twenty minutes.”
“Thank you very much,” said the girl, diving into her suitcase. “I’ve brought my own lunch.”
She brought out some sandwiches and proceeded to nibble at them without moving from the sleigh. Toppy tumbled into the cabin in company with the hunchback driver. A rough meal was on the table and they fell to without a word. Toppy noticed that the old woodsman sat on a bench near the door where he could keep an eye on the road. Above the bench hung a pair of field-glasses, a repeating shotgun and a high-power Winchester rifle.
“Any hunting around here?” asked Toppy cheerily.
“Sometimes,” said the old watcher with a smile that made Toppy wonder.
He did not pursue the subject, for there was something about the lonely cabin, the bearded old man, and the rifle on the wall that suggested something much more grim than sport.
The driver soon bolted his meal and went back to the sleigh. Toppy followed, and twenty minutes after pulling up they were on the road again. With each mile that they passed now the swamp grew wilder and the gloom of the wilderness more oppressive. To right and left among the trees Toppy made out stretches of open water, great springs and little creekswhich never froze and which made the swamp even in Winter a treacherous morass.
Toward the end of the short afternoon the swamp suddenly gave way to a rough, untimbered ridge. Red rocks, which Toppy later learned contained iron ore, poked their way like jagged teeth through the snow. The sleigh mounted the ridge, the runners grating on bare rock and dirt, dipped down into a ravine between two ridges, swung off almost at right angles in a cleft in the hills—and before Toppy realised that the end of the drive had come, they were in full view of a large group of log buildings on the edge of a dense pine forest and were listening to the roar of the waters of Cameron Dam.
In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side. These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building was larger than the other six combined—was built of huge logs, apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great double door.
Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, “Office and Store.” Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the sign, “Blacksmith Shop,” and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith’s hammer in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably this was the man for whom he was to work.
“Hey, Jerry,” greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.
“Hey, Scotty,” replied the hunchback.
“Did ye bring me a helper?”
“Yes,” grunted Jerry.
“Good!” said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.
The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a standstill.
“This is where you go,” he said, indicating the office with a nod. “You,” he grunted to Toppy, “sit right where you are till we go see the boss.”
An Indian squaw, nearly as broad as she was tall, came waddling out of the store as Miss Pearson stepped stiffly from the sleigh. Toppy wished for courage to get out and carry the girl’s suitcase, but he feared that his action would be misinterpreted; so he sat still, eagerly watching out of the corner of his eyes.
“I carry um,” said the squaw as the girl dragged forth her baggage. “You go in.”
Then the sleigh drove abruptly ahead toward the great building at the end of the road, and Toppy’s final view of the scene was Miss Pearson stumping stiffly into the office-building with the squaw, the suitcase held in her arms, waddling behind. Miss Pearson did not look in his direction.
And now Toppy had his first shock. For he saw that the building toward which they were hurrying was not a building at all, but merely a stockade-wall, which seemed to surround all of the camp except the six buildings which were outside. What he had thought a huge doorway was in reality a great gate.
This gate swung open at their approach, and Toppy’s second shock came when he saw that the two hard-faced men who opened it carried in the crooks of theirarms wicked-looking, short-barrelled repeating shotguns. One of the men caught the horses by the head as soon as they were through the gate, and brought them to a dead stop, while the other closed the gate behind them.
“Can’t you see the boss is busy?” snapped the man who had stopped the team. “You wait right here till he’s through.”
Toppy now saw that they had driven into a quadrangle, three sides of which were composed of long, low, log buildings with doors and windows cut at frequent intervals, the fourth side being formed by the stockade-wall through which they had just passed. The open space which thus lay between four walls of solid logs was perhaps fifty yards long by twenty-five yards wide. In his first swift sight of the place Toppy saw that, with the stockade-gate closed and two men with riot-guns on guard, the place was nothing more nor less than an effective prison. Then his attention was riveted spellbound by what was taking place in the yard.
On the sunny side of the yard a group of probably a dozen men were huddled against the log wall. Two things struck Toppy as he looked at them—their similarity to the group of Slavs he had seen back in Rail Head, and the complete terror in their faces as they cringed tightly against the log wall. Perhaps ten feet in front of them, and facing them, stood a man alone. And Toppy, as he beheld the terror with which the dozen shrank back from the one, and as he looked at the man, knew that he was looking upon Hell-Camp Reivers, the man who was called The Snow-Burner.
Toppy Treplin was not an impressionable young man. He had lived much and swiftly and among many kinds of men, and it took something remarkable in the man-line to surprise him. But the sight ofReivers brought from him a start, and he sat staring, completely fascinated by the Manager’s presence.
It was not the size of Reivers that held him, for Toppy at first glance judged correctly that Reivers and himself might have come from the same mold so far as height and weight were concerned. Neither was it the terrible physical power which fairly reeked from the man; for though Reivers’ rough clothing seemed merely light draperies on the huge muscles that lay beneath, Toppy had played with strong men, professionals and amateurs, enough to be blasé in the face of a physical Colossus. It was the calm, ghastly brutality of the man, the complete brutality of an animal, dominated by a human intelligence, that held Toppy spellbound.
Reivers, as he stood there alone, glowering at the poor wretches who cowered from him like pygmies, was like a tiger preparing to spring and carefully calculating where his claws and fangs might sink in with most damage to his victims. He stood with his feet close together, his thumbs hooked carelessly in his trousers pockets, his head thrust far forward. Toppy had a glimpse of a long, thin nose, thin lips parted in a sneer, heavily browed eyes, and, beneath the back-thrust cap, a mass of curly light hair—hair as light as the girl’s! Then Reivers spoke.
“Rosky!” he said in a voice that was half snarl, half bellow.
There was a troubled movement among the dozen men huddled against the wall, but there came no answer.
“Rosky! Step out!” commanded Reivers in a tone whose studied ferocity made Toppy shudder.
In response, a tall, broad-shouldered Slav, the oldest and largest man in the group, stepped sullenly out and stood a yard in front of his fellows. He hadtaken off his cap and held it tightly in his clenched right hand, and the expression on his flat face as he stood with hanging head and scowled at Reivers was one half of fear and half of defiance.
“You no can hit me,” he muttered doggedly. “I citizen; I got first papers.”
Reivers’s manner underwent a change.
“Hit you?” he repeated softly. “Who wants to hit you? I just want to talk with you. I hear you’re thinking of quitting. I hear you’ve planned to take these fellows with you when you go. How about it, Rosky?”
“I got papers,” said the man sullenly. “I citizen; I quit job when I want.”
“Yes?” said Reivers gently. It was like a tiger playing with a hedgehog, and Toppy sickened. “But you signed to stay here six months, didn’t you?”
The gentleness of the Manager had deceived the thick-witted Slav and he grew bold.
“I drunk when I sign,” he said loudly. “All these fellow drunk when they sign. I quit. They quit. You no can keep us here if we no want stay.”
“I can’t?” Still Reivers saw fit to play with his victim.
“No,” said the man. “And you no dare hit us again, no.”
“No?” purred Reivers softly. “No, certainly not; I wouldn’t hit you. You’re quite right, Rosky. I won’t hit you; no.”
He was standing at least seven feet from his man, his feet close together, his thumbs still hooked in his trousers pockets. Suddenly, and so swiftly that Rosky did not have time to move, Reivers took a step forward and shot out his right foot. His boot seemed barely to touch the shin-bone of Rosky’s right leg, but Toppy heard the bone snap as the Slav, with a shriekof pain and terror, fell face downward, prone in the trampled snow at Reivers’ feet.
And Reivers did not look at him. He was standing as before, as if nothing had happened, as if he had not moved. His eyes were upon the other men, who, appalled at their leader’s fate, huddled more closely against the log wall.
“Well, how about it?” demanded Reivers icily after a long silence. “Any more of you fellows think you want to quit?”
Half of the dozen cried out in terror:
“No, no! We no quit. Please, boss; we no quit.”
A smile of complete contempt curled Reivers’ thin upper lip.
“You poor scum, of course you ain’t going to quit,” he sneered. “You’ll stay here and slave away until I’m through with you. And don’t you even dare think of quitting. Rosky thought he’d kept his plans mighty secret—thought I wouldn’t know what he was planning. You see what happened to him.
“I know everything that’s going on in this camp. If you don’t believe it, try it out and see. Now pick this thing up—” he stirred the groaning Rosky contemptuously with his foot—“and carry him into his bunk. I’ll be around and set his leg when I get ready. Then get back to the rock-pile and make up for the time it’s taken to teach you this lesson.”
The brutality of the thing had frozen Toppy motionless where he sat in the sleigh. At the same time he was conscious of a thrill of admiration for the dominant creature who had so contemptuously crippled a fellow man. A brute Reivers certainly was, and well he deserved the name of Hell-Camp Reivers; but a born captain he was, too, though his dominance was of a primordial sort.
Turning instantly from his victim as from a piece ofbusiness that is finished, Reivers looked around and came toward the sleigh. Some primitive instinct prompted Toppy to step out and stretch himself leisurely, his long arms above his head, his big chest inflated to the limit. At the sight of him a change came over Reivers’ face. The brutality and contempt went out of it like a flash. His eyes lighted up with pleasure at the sight of Toppy’s magnificent proportions, and he smiled a quick smile of comradeship, such as one smiles when he meets a fellow and equal, and held out his hand to Toppy.
“University man, I’ll wager,” he said, in the easy voice of a man of culture. “Glad to see you; more than glad! These beasts are palling on me. They’re so cursed physical—no mind, no spirit in them. Nothing but so many pounds of meat and bone. Old Campbell, my blacksmith, is the only other intelligent being in camp, and he’s Scotch and believes in predestination and original sin, so his conversation’s rather trying for a steady diet.”
Toppy shook hands, amazed beyond expression. Except for his shaggy eyebrows—brows that somehow reminded Toppy of the head of a bear he had once shot—Reivers now was the sort of man one would expect to meet in the University Club rather than in a logging-camp. The brute had vanished, the gentleman had appeared; and Toppy was forced to smile in answer to Reivers’ genial smile of greeting. And yet, somewhere back in Reivers’ blue eyes Toppy saw lurking something which said, “I am your master—doubt it if you dare.”
“I hired out as blacksmith’s helper,” he explained. “My name’s Treplin.”
He did not take his eyes from Reivers’. Somehow he had the sensation that Reivers’ will and his own had leaped to a grapple.
Reivers laughed aloud in friendly fashion.
“Blacksmith’s helper, eh?” he said. “That’s good; that’s awfully good! Well, old man, I don’t care what you hired out for, or what your right name is; you’re a developed human being and you’ll be somebody to talk to when these brutes grow too tiresome.” He turned to Jerry, the driver. “Well?” he said curtly.
“She’s in the office now,” he said.
“All right.” Reivers turned and went briskly toward the gate. “Turn Mr. Treplin over to Campbell. You’ll live with Campbell, Treplin,” he called over his shoulder, as he went through the gate. “And you hit the back trail, Jerry, right away.”
As Jerry swung the team around Toppy saw that Reivers was going toward the office with long, eager strides.