Colonel Seth Pennington looked up sourly as a clerk entered his private office. “Well?” he demanded brusquely. When addressing his employees, the Colonel seldom bothered to assume his pontifical manner.
“Mr. Bryce Cardigan is waiting to see you, sir.”
“Very well. Show him in.”
Bryce entered. “Good morning, Colonel,” he said pleasantly and brazenly thrust out his hand.
“Not for me, my boy,” the Colonel assured him. “I had enough of that last night. We'll just consider the hand-shaking all attended to, if you please. Have a chair; sit down and tell me what I can do to make you happy.”
“I'm delighted to find you in such a generous frame of mind, Colonel. You can make me genuinely happy by renewing, for ten years on the same terms as the original contract, your arrangement to freight the logs of the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company from the woods to tidewater.”
Colonel Pennington cleared his throat with a propitiatory “Ahem-m-m!” Then he removed his gold spectacles and carefully wiped them with a silk handkerchief, as carefully replaced them upon his aristocratic nose, and then gazed curiously at Bryce.
“Upon my soul!” he breathed.
“I realized, of course, that this is reopening an issue which you have been pleased to regard as having been settled in the last letter my father had from you, and wherein you named terms that were absolutely prohibitive.”
“My dear young friend! My very dear young friend! I must protest at being asked to discuss this matter. Your father and I have been over it in detail; we failed to agree, and that settles it. As a matter of fact, I am not in position to handle your logs with my limited rolling-stock, and that old hauling contract which I took over when I bought the mills, timber-lands, and logging railroad from the late Mr. Henderson and incorporated into the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, has been an embarrassment I have longed to rid myself of. Under those circumstances you could scarcely expect me to saddle myself with it again, at your mere request and solely to oblige you.”
“I did not expect you to agree to my request. I am not quite that optimistic,” Bryce replied evenly.
“Then why did you ask me?”
“I thought that possibly, if I reopened negotiations, you might have a reasonable counter-proposition to suggest.”
“I haven't thought of any.”
“I suppose if I agreed to sell you that quarter-section of timber in the little valley over yonder” (he pointed to the east) “and the natural outlet for your Squaw Creek timber, you'd quickly think of one,” Bryce suggested pointedly.
“No, I am not in the market for that Valley of the Giants, as your idealistic father prefers to call it. Once I would have purchased it for double its value, but at present I am not interested.”
“Nevertheless it would be an advantage for you to possess it.”
“My dear boy, the possession of that big timber is an advantage I expect to enjoy before I acquire many more gray hairs. But I do not expect to pay for it.”
“Do you expect me to offer it to you as a bonus for renewing our hauling contract?”
The Colonel snapped his fingers. “By George,” he declared, “that's a bright idea, and a few months ago I would have been inclined to consider it very seriously. But now—”
“You figure you've got us winging, eh?” Bryce was smiling pleasantly.
“I am making no admissions,” Pennington responded enigmatically “—nor any hauling contracts for my neighbour's logs,” he added.
“You may change your mind.”
“Never.”
“I suppose I'll have to abandon logging in Township Nine and go back to the San Hedrin,” Bryce sighed resignedly.
“If you do, you'll go broke. You can't afford it. You're on the verge of insolvency this minute.”
“I suppose, since you decline to haul our logs, after the expiration of our present contract, and in view of the fact that we are not financially able to build our own logging railroad, that the wisest course my father and I could pursue would be to sell our timber in Township Nine to you. It adjoins your holdings in the same township”
“I had a notion the situation would begin to dawn upon you.” The Colonel was smiling now; his handsome face was gradually assuming the expression pontifical. “I'll give you a dollar a thousand feet stumpage for it.”
“On whose cruise?”
“Oh, my own cruisers will estimate it.”
“I'm afraid I can't accept that offer. We paid a dollar and a half for it, you know, and if we sold it to you at a dollar, the sale would not bring us sufficient money to take up our bonded indebtedness; we'd only have the San Hedrin timber and the Valley of the Giants left, and since we cannot log either of these at present, naturally we'd be out of business.”
“That's the way I figured it, my boy.”
“Well—we're not going out of business.”
“Pardon me for disagreeing with you. I think you are.”
“Not much! We can't afford it.”
The Colonel smiled benignantly. “My dear boy, my very dear young friend, listen to me. Your paternal ancestor is the only human being who has ever succeeded in making a perfect monkey of me. When I wanted to purchase from him a right of way through his absurd Valley of the Giants, in order that I might log my Squaw Creek timber, he refused me. And to add insult to injury, he spouted a lot of rot about his big trees, how much they meant to him, and the utter artistic horror of running a logging-train through the grove—particularly since he planned to bequeath it to Sequoia as a public park. He expects the city to grow up to it during the next twenty years.
“My boy, that was the first bad break your father made. His second break was his refusal to sell me a mill-site. He was the first man in this county, and he had been shrewd enough to hog all the water-front real estate and hold onto it. I remember he called himself a progressive citizen, and when I asked him why he was so assiduously blocking the wheels of progress, he replied that the railroad would build in from the south some day, but that when it did, its builders would have to be assured of terminal facilities on Humboldt Bay. 'By holding intact the spot where rail and water are bound to meet,' he told me, 'I insure the terminal on tidewater which the railroad must have before consenting to build. But if I sell it to Tom, Dick, and Harry, they will be certain to gouge the railroad when the latter tries to buy it from them. They may scare the railroad away.'”
“Naturally!” Bryce replied. “The average human being is a hog, and merciless when he has the upper hand. He figures that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. My father, on the contrary, has always planned for the future. He didn't want that railroad blocked by land-speculators and its building delayed. The country needed rail connection with the outside world, and moreover his San Hedrin timber isn't worth a hoot until that feeder to a transcontinental road shall be built to tap it.”
“But he sold Bill Henderson the mill-site on tidewater that he refused to sell me, and later I had to pay Henderson's heirs a whooping price for it. And I haven't half the land I need.”
“But he needed Henderson then. They had a deal on together. You must remember, Colonel, that while Bill Henderson held that Squaw Creek timber he later sold you, my father would never sell him a mill-site. Can't you see the sporting point of view involved? My father and Bill Henderson were good-natured rivals; for thirty years they had tried to outgame each other on that Squaw Creek timber. Henderson thought he could force my father to buy at a certain price, and my father thought he could force Henderson to sell at a lesser price; they were perfectly frank about it with each other and held no grudges. Of course, after you bought Henderson out, you foolishly took over his job of trying to outgame my father. That's why you bought Henderson out, isn't it? You had a vision of my father's paying you a nice profit on your investment, but he fooled you, and now you're peeved and won't play.”
Bryce hitched his chair farther toward the Colonel. “Why shouldn't my dad be nice to Bill Henderson after the feud ended?” he continued. “They could play the game together then, and they did. Colonel, why can't you be as sporty as Henderson and my father? They fought each other, but they fought fairly and in the open, and they never lost the respect and liking each had for the other.”
“I will not renew your logging contract. That is final, young man. No man can ride me with spurs and get away with it.”
“Oh, I knew that yesterday.”
“Then why have you called on me to-day, taking up my time on a dead issue?”
“I wanted to give you one final chance to repent. I know your plan. You have it in your power to smash the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company, acquire it at fifty per cent. of its value, and merge its assets with your Laguna Grande Lumber Company. You are an ambitious man. You want to be the greatest redwood manufacturer in California, and in order to achieve your ambitions, you are willing to ruin a competitor: you decline to play the game like a thoroughbred.”
“I play the game of business according to the rules of the game; I do nothing illegal, sir.”
“And nothing generous or chivalrous. Colonel, you know your plea of a shortage of rolling-stock is that the contract for hauling our logs has been very profitable and will be more profitable in the future if you will accept a fifty-cent-per-thousand increase on the freight-rate and renew the contract for ten years.”
“Nothing doing, young man. Remember, you are not in a position to ask favours.”
“Then I suppose we'll have to go down fighting?”
“I do not anticipate much of a fight.”
“You'll get as much as I can give you.”
“I'm not at all apprehensive.”
“And I'll begin by running your woods-boss out of the country.”
“Ah-h!”
“You know why, of course—those burl panels in your dining room. Rondeau felled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl for you, Colonel Pennington.”
Pennington flushed. “I defy you to prove that,” he almost shouted.
“Very well. I'll make Rondeau confess; perhaps he'll even tell me who sent him after the burl. Upon my word, I think you inspired that dastardly raid. At any rate, I know Rondeau is guilty, and you, as his employer and the beneficiary of his crime, must accept the odium.”
The Colonel's face went white. “I do not admit anything except that you appear to have lost your head, young man. However, for the sake of argument: granting that Rondeau felled that tree, he did it under the apprehension that your Valley of the Giants is a part of my Squaw Creek timber adjoining.”
“I do not believe that. There was malice in the act—brutality even; for my mother's grave identified the land as ours, and Rondeau felled the tree on her tombstone.”
“If that is so, and Rondeau felled that tree—I do not believe he did—I am sincerely sorry, Cardigan, Name your price and I will pay you for the tree. I do not desire any trouble to develop over this affair.”
“You can't pay for that tree,” Bryce burst forth. “No pitiful human being can pay in dollars and cents for the wanton destruction of God's handiwork. You wanted that burl and when my father was blind and could no longer make his Sunday pilgrimage up to that grove, your woods-boss went up and stole that which you knew you could not buy.”
“That will be about all from you, young man. Get out of my office. And by the way, forget that you have met my niece.”
“It's your office—so I'll get out. As for your second command”—he snapped his fingers in Pennington's face—“fooey!”
When Bryce had gone, the Colonel hurriedly called his logging-camp on the telephone and asked for Jules Rondeau, only to be informed, by the timekeeper who answered the telephone, that Rondeau was up in the green timber with the choppers and could not be gotten to the telephone in less than two hours.
“Do not send for him, then,” Pennington commanded. “I'm coming up on the eleven-fifteen train and will talk to him when he comes in for his lunch.”
At eleven o'clock, and just as the Colonel was leaving to board the eleven-fifteen logging-train bound empty for the woods, Shirley Sumner made her appearance in his office.
“Uncle Seth,” she complained, “I'm lonesome. The bookkeeper tells me you're going up to the logging-camp. May I go with you?”
“By all means. Usually I ride in the cab with the engineer and fireman; but if you're coming, I'll have them hook on the caboose. Step lively, my dear, or they'll be holding the train for us and upsetting our schedule.”
By virtue of their logging-contract with Pennington, the Cardigans and their employees were transported free over Pennington's logging railroad; hence, when Bryce Cardigan resolved to wait upon Jules Rondeau in the matter of that murdered Giant, it was characteristic of him to choose the shortest and most direct route to his quarry, and as the long string of empty logging-trucks came crawling off the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's log-dump, he swung over the side, quite ignorant of the fact that Shirley and her precious relative were riding in the little caboose in the rear.
At twelve-ten the train slid in on the log landing of the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's main camp, and Bryce dropped off and approached the engineer of the little donkey-engine used for loading the logs.
“Where's Rondeau?” he asked.
The engineer pointed to a huge, swarthy man approaching across the clearing in which the camp was situated. “That's him,” he replied. And without further ado, Bryce strode to meet his man.
“Are you Jules Rondeau?” he demanded as he came up to the woods-boss. The latter nodded. “I'm Bryce Cardigan,” his interrogator announced, “and I'm here to thrash you for chopping that big redwood tree over in that little valley where my mother is buried.”
“Oh!” Rondeau smiled. “Wiz pleasure, M'sieur.” And without a moment's hesitation he rushed. Bryce backed away from him warily, and they circled.
“When I get through with you, Rondeau,” Bryce said distinctly, “it'll take a good man to lead you to your meals. This country isn't big enough for both of us, and since you came here last, you've got to go first.”
Bryce stepped in, feinted for Rondeau's jaw with his right, and when the woods-boss quickly covered, ripped a sizzling left into the latter's midriff. Rondeau grunted and dropped his guard, with the result that Bryce's great fists played a devil's tattoo on his countenance before he could crouch and cover.
“This is a tough one,” thought Bryce. His blows had not, apparently, had the slightest effect on the woods-boss. Crouched low and with his arms wrapped around his head, Rondeau still came on unfalteringly, and Bryce was forced to give way before him; to save his hands, he avoided the risk of battering Rondeau's hard head and sinewy arms.
Already word that the woods-boss was battling with a stranger had been shouted into the camp dining room, and the entire crew of that camp, abandoning their half-finished meal, came pouring forth to view the contest. Out of the tail of his eye Bryce saw them coming, but he was not apprehensive, for he knew the code of the woodsman: “Let every man roll his own hoop.” It would be a fight to a finish, for no man would interfere; striking, kicking, gouging, biting, or choking would not be looked upon as unsportsmanlike; and as Bryce backed cautiously away from the huge, lithe, active, and powerful man before him, he realized that Jules Rondeau was, as his father had stated, “top dog among the lumberjacks.”
Rondeau, it was apparent, had no stomach for Bryce's style of combat. He wanted a rough-and-tumble fight and kept rushing, hoping to clinch; if he could but get his great hands on Bryce, he would wrestle him down, climb him, and finish the fight in jig-time. But a rough-and-tumble was exactly what Bryce was striving to avoid; hence when Rondeau rushed, Bryce side-stepped and peppered the woodsman's ribs. But the woods-crew, which by now was ringed around them, began to voice disapproval of this style of battle.
“Clinch with him, dancing-master,” a voice roared.
“Tie into him, Rondeau,” another shouted.
“It's a fair match,” cried another, “and the red one picked on the main push. He was looking for a fight, an' he ought to get it; but these fancy fights don't suit me. Flop him, stranger, flop him.”
“Rondeau can't catch him,” a fourth man jeered. “He's a foot-racer, not a fighter.”
Suddenly two powerful hands were placed between Bryce's shoulders, effectually halting his backward progress; then he was propelled violently forward until he collided with Rondeau. With a bellow of triumph, the woods-boss's gorilla-like arms were around Bryce, swinging him until he faced the man who had forced him into that terrible grip. This was no less a personage than Colonel Seth Pennington, and it was obvious he had taken charge of what he considered the obsequies.
“Stand back, you men, and give them room,” he shouted. “Rondeau will take care of him now. Stand back, I say. I'll discharge the man that interferes.”
With a heave and a grunt Rondeau lifted his antagonist, and the pair went crashing to the earth together, Bryce underneath. And then something happened. With a howl of pain, Rondeau rolled over on his back and lay clasping his left wrist in his right hand, while Bryce scrambled to his feet.
“The good old wrist-lock does the trick,” he announced; and stooping, he grasped the woods-boss by the collar with his left hand, lifted him, and struck him a terrible blow in the face with his right. But for the arm that upheld him, Rondeau would have fallen. To have him fall, however, was not part of Bryce's plan. Jerking the fellow toward him, he passed his arm around Rondeau's neck, holding the latter's head as in a vise with the crook of his elbow. And then the battering started. When it was finished, Bryce let his man go, and Rondeau, bloody, sobbing, and semi-conscious, sprawled on the ground.
Bryce bent over him. “Now, damn you,” he roared, “who felled that tree in Cardigan's Redwoods?”
“I did, M'sieur. Enough—I confess!” The words were a whisper.
“Did Colonel Pennington suggest it to you?”
“He want ze burl. By gar, I do not want to fell zat tree—”
“That's all I want to know.” Stooping, Bryce seized Rondeau by the nape of the neck and the slack of his overalls, lifted him shoulder-high and threw him, as one throws a sack of meal, full at Colonel Pennington.
“You threw me at him. Now I throw him at you. You damned, thieving, greedy, hypocritical scoundrel, if it weren't for your years and your gray hair, I'd kill you.”
The helpless hulk of the woods-boss descended upon the Colonel's expansive chest and sent him crashing earthward. Then Bryce, war-mad, turned to face the ring of Laguna Grande employees about him.
“Next!” he roared. “Singly, in pairs, or the whole damned pack!”
“Mr. Cardigan!”
He turned. Colonel Pennington's breath had been knocked out of his body by the impact of his semi-conscious woods-boss, and he lay inert, gasping like a hooked fish. Beside him Shirley Sumner was kneeling, her hands clasping her uncle's, but with her violet eyes blazing fiercely on Bryce Cardigan.
“How dare you?” she cried. “You coward! To hurt my uncle!”
He gazed at her a moment, fiercely, defiantly, his chest rising and falling from his recent exertions, his knotted fists gory with the blood of his enemy. Then the light of battle died, and he hung his head. “I'm sorry,” he murmured, “not for his sake, but yours. I didn't know you were here. I forgot—myself.”
“I'll never speak to you again so long as I live,” she burst out passionately.
He advanced a step and stood gazing down upon her. Her angry glance met his unflinchingly; and presently for him the light went out of the world.
“Very well,” he murmured. “Good-bye.” And with bowed head he turned and made off through the green timber toward his own logging-camp five miles distant.
With the descent upon his breast of the limp body of his big woods-bully, Colonel Pennington had been struck to earth as effectively as if a fair-sized tree had fallen on him. Indeed, with such force did his proud head collide with terra firma that had it not been for the soft cushion of ferns and tiny redwood twigs, his neck must have been broken by the shock. To complete his withdrawal from active service, the last whiff of breath had been driven from his lungs; and for the space of a minute, during which Jules Rondeau lay heavily across his midriff, the Colonel was quite unable to get it back. Pale, gasping, and jarred from soul to suspenders, he was merely aware that something unexpected and disconcerting had occurred.
While the Colonel fought for his breath, his woodsmen remained in the offing, paralyzed into inactivity by reason of the swiftness and thoroughness of Bryce Cardigan's work; then Shirley motioned to them to remove the wreckage, and they hastened to obey.
Freed from the weight on the geometric centre of his being, Colonel Pennington stretched his legs, rolled his head from side to side, and snorted violently several times like a buck. After the sixth snort he felt so much better that a clear understanding of the exact nature of the catastrophe came to him; he struggled and sat up, looking around a little wildly.
“Where—did—Cardigan—go?” he gasped.
One of his men pointed to the timber into which the enemy had just disappeared.
“Surround him—take him,” Pennington ordered. “I'll give—a month's pay—to each of—the six men that bring—that scoundrel to me. Get him—quickly! Understand?”
Not a man moved. Pennington shook with fury. “Get him,” he croaked. “There are enough of you to do—the job. Close in on him—everybody. I'll give a month's pay to—everybody.”
A man of that indiscriminate mixture of Spaniard and Indian known in California as cholo swept the circle of men with an alert and knowing glance. His name was Flavio Artelan, but his straight black hair, dark russet complexion, beady eyes, and hawk nose gave him such a resemblance to a fowl that he was known among his fellows as the Black Minorca, regardless of the fact that this sobriquet was scarcely fair to a very excellent breed of chicken. “That offer's good enough for me,” he remarked in businesslike tones. “Come on—everybody. A month's pay for five minutes' work. I wouldn't tackle the job with six men, but there are twenty of us here.”
“Hurry,” the Colonel urged them.
Shirley Sumner's flashing glance rested upon the Black Minorca. “Don't you dare!” she cried. “Twenty to one! For shame!”
“For a month's pay,” he replied impudently, and grinned evilly. “And I'm takin' orders from my boss.” He started on a dog-trot for the timber, and a dozen men trailed after him.
Shirley turned helplessly on her uncle, seized his arm and shook it frantically. “Call them back! Call them back!” she pleaded.
Her uncle got uncertainly to his feet. “Not on your life!” he growled, and in his cold gray eyes there danced the lights of a thousand devils. “I told you the fellow was a ruffian. Now, perhaps, you'll believe me. We'll hold him until Rondeau revives, and then—”
Shirley guessed the rest, and she realized that it was useless to plead—that she was only wasting time. “Bryce! Bryce!” she called. “Run! They're after you. Twenty of them! Run, run—for my sake!”
His voice answered her from the timber: “Run? From those cattle? Not from man or devil.” A silence. Then: “So you've changed your mind, have you? You've spoken to me again!” There was triumph, exultation in his voice. “The timber's too thick, Shirley. I couldn't get away anyhow—so I'm coming back.”
She saw him burst through a thicket of alder saplings into the clearing, saw half a dozen of her uncle's men close in around him like wolves around a sick steer; and at the shock of their contact, she moaned and hid her face in her trembling hands.
Half man and half tiger that he was, the Black Minorca, as self-appointed leader, reached Bryce first. The cholo was a squat, powerful little man, with more bounce to him than a rubber ball; leading his men by a dozen yards, he hesitated not an instant but dodged under the blow Bryce lashed out at him and came up inside the latter's guard, feeling for Bryce's throat. Instead he met Bryce's knee in his abdomen, and forthwith he folded up like an accordion.
The next instant Bryce had stooped, caught him by the slack of the trousers and the scruff of the neck and thrown him, as he had thrown Rondeau, into the midst of the men advancing to his aid. Three of them went down backward; and Bryce, charging over them, stretched two more with well-placed blows from left and right, and continued on across the clearing, running at top speed, for he realized that for all the desperation of his fight and the losses already inflicted on his assailants, the odds against him were insurmountable.
Seeing him running away, the Laguna Grande woods-men took heart and hope and pursued him. Straight for the loading donkey at the log-landing Bryce ran. Beside the donkey stood a neat tier of firewood; in the chopping block, where the donkey-fireman had driven it prior to abandoning his post to view the contest between Bryce and Jules Rondeau, was a double-bitted axe. Bryce jerked it loose, swung it, whirled on his pursuers, and rushed them. Like turkeys scattering before the raid of a coyote they fled in divers directions and from a safe distance turned to gaze apprehensively upon this demon they had been ordered to bring in.
Bryce lowered the axe, removed his hat, and mopped his moist brow. From the centre of the clearing men were crawling or staggering to safety—with the exception of the Black Minorca, who lay moaning softly. Colonel Pennington, seeing his fondest hopes expire, lost his head completely.
“Get off my property, you savage,” he shrilled.
“Don't be a nut, Colonel,” Bryce returned soothingly. “I'll get off—when I get good and ready, and not a second sooner. In fact, I was trying to get off as rapidly as I could when you sent your men to bring me back. Prithee why, old thing? Didst crave more conversation with me, or didst want thy camp cleaned out?”
He started toward Pennington, who backed hastily away. Shirley stood her ground, bending upon Bryce, as he approached her, a cold and disapproving glance. “I'll get you yet,” the Colonel declared from the shelter of an old stump behind which he had taken refuge.
“Barking dogs never bite, Colonel. And that reminds me: I've heard enough from you. One more cheep out of you, my friend, and I'll go up to my own logging-camp, return here with a crew of bluenoses and wild Irish and run your wops, bohunks, and cholos out of the county. I don't fancy the class of labour you're importing into this county, anyhow.”
The Colonel, evidently deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, promptly subsided, although Bryce could see that he was mumbling threats to himself, though not in an audible voice.
The demon Cardigan halted beside Shirley and stood gazing down at her. He was smiling at her whimsically. She met his glance for a few seconds; then her lids were lowered and she bit her lip with vexation.
“Shirley,” he said.
“You are presumptuous,” she quavered.
“You set me an example in presumption,” he retorted good humouredly. “Did you not call ME by MY first name a minute ago?” He glanced toward Colonel Pennington and observed the latter with his neck craned across his protecting stump. He was all ears. Bryce pointed sternly across the clearing, and the Colonel promptly abandoned his refuge and retreated hastily in the direction indicated.
The heir to Cardigan's Redwoods bent over the girl. “You spoke to me—after your promise not to, Shirley,” he said gently. “You will always speak to me.”
She commenced to cry softly. “I loathe you,” she sobbed.
“For you I have the utmost respect and admiration,” he replied.
“No, you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't hurt my uncle—the only human being in all this world who is dear to me.”
“Gosh!” he murmured plaintively. “I'm jealous of that man. However, I'm sorry I hurt him. He is no longer young, while I—well, I forgot the chivalry my daddy taught me. I give you my word I came here to fight fairly—”
“He merely tried to stop you from fighting.”
“No, he didn't, Shirley. He interfered and fouled me. Still, despite that, if I had known you were a spectator I think I should have controlled myself and refrained from pulling off my vengeance in your presence. I shall never cease to regret that I subjected you to such a distressing spectacle. I do hope, however, that you will believe me when I tell you I am not a bully, although when there is a fight worth while, I never dodge it. And this time I fought for the honour of the House of Cardigan.”
“If you want me to believe that, you will beg my uncle's pardon.”
“I can't do that. He is my enemy and I shall hate him forever; I shall fight him and his way of doing business until he reforms or I am exhausted.”
She looked up at him, showing a face in which resentment, outrage, and wistfulness were mirrored.
“You realize, of course, what your insistence on that plan means, Mr. Cardigan?”
“Call me Bryce,” he pleaded. “You're going to call me that some day anyhow, so why not start now?”
“You are altogether insufferable, sir. Please go away and never presume to address me again. You are quite impossible.”
He shook his head. “I do not give up that readily, Shirley. I didn't know how dear—what your friendship meant to me, until you sent me away; I didn't think there was any hope until you warned me those dogs were hunting me—and called me Bryce.” He held out his hand. “'God gave us our relations,'” he quoted, “'but thank God, we can choose our friends.' And I'll be a good friend to you, Shirley Sumner, until I have earned the right to be something more. Won't you shake hands with me? Remember, this fight to-day is only the first skirmish in a war to the finish—and I am leading a forlorn hope. If I lose—well, this will be good-bye.”
“I hate you,” she answered drearily. “All our fine friendship—smashed—and you growing stupidly sentimental. I didn't think it of you. Please go away. You are distressing me.”
He smiled at her tenderly, forgivingly, wistfully, but she did not see it. “Then it is really good-by,” he murmured with mock dolorousness.
She nodded her bowed head. “Yes,” she whispered. “After all, I have some pride, you know. You mustn't presume to be the butterfly preaching contentment to the toad in the dust.”
“As you will it, Shirley.” He turned away. “I'll send your axe back with the first trainload of logs from my camp, Colonel,” he called to Pennington.
Once more he strode away into the timber. Shirley watched him pass out of her life, and gloried in what she conceived to be his agony, for she had both temper and spirit, and Bryce Cardigan calmly, blunderingly, rather stupidly (she thought) had presumed flagrantly on brief acquaintance. Her uncle was right. He was not of their kind of people, and it was well she had discovered this before permitting herself to develop a livelier feeling of friendship for him. It was true he possessed certain manly virtues, but his crudities by far outweighed these.
The Colonel's voice broke in upon her bitter reflections. “That fellow Cardigan is a hard nut to crack—I'll say that for him.” He had crossed the clearing to her side and was addressing her with his customary air of expansiveness. “I think, my dear, you had better go back into the caboose, away from the prying eyes of these rough fellows. I'm sorry you came, Shirley. I'll never forgive myself for bringing you. If I had thought—but how could I know that scoundrel was coming here to raise a disturbance? And only last night he was at our house for dinner!”
“That's just what makes it so terrible, Uncle Seth,” she quavered.
“It IS hard to believe that a man of young Cardigan's evident intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley. However, I, for one, am not surprised. You will recall that I warned you he might be his father's son. The best course to pursue now is to forget that you have ever met the fellow.”
“I wonder what could have occurred to make such a madman of him?” the girl queried wonderingly. “He acted more like a demon than a human being.”
“Just like his old father,” the Colonel purred benevolently. “When he can't get what he wants, he sulks. I'll tell you what got on his confounded nerves. I've been freighting logs for the senior Cardigan over my railroad; the contract for hauling them was a heritage from old Bill Henderson, from whom I bought the mill and timber-lands; and of course as his assignee it was incumbent upon me to fulfill Henderson's contract with Cardigan, even though the freight-rate was ruinous.
“Well, this morning young Cardigan came to my office, reminded me that the contract would expire by limitation next year and asked me to renew it, and at the same freight-rate. I offered to renew the contract but at a higher freight-rate, and explained to him that I could not possibly continue to haul his logs at a loss. Well, right away he flew into a rage and called me a robber; whereupon I informed him that since he thought me a robber, perhaps we had better not attempt to have any business dealings with each other—that I really didn't want his contract at any price, having scarcely sufficient rolling-stock to handle my own logs. That made him calm down, but in a little while he lost his head again and grew snarly and abusive—to such an extent, indeed, that finally I was forced to ask him to leave my office.”
“Nevertheless, Uncle Seth, I cannot understand why he should make such a furious attack upon your employee.”
The Colonel laughed with a fair imitation of sincerity and tolerant amusement. “My dear, that is no mystery to me. There are men who, finding it impossible or inadvisable to make a physical attack upon their enemy, find ample satisfaction in poisoning his favourite dog, burning his house, or beating up one of his faithful employees. Cardigan picked on Rondeau for the reason that a few days ago he tried to hire Rondeau away from me—offered him twenty-five dollars a month more than I was paying him, by George! Of course when Rondeau came to me with Cardigan's proposition, I promptly met Cardigan's bid and retained Rondeau; consequently Cardigan hates us both and took the earliest opportunity to vent his spite on us.”
The Colonel sighed and brushed the dirt and leaves from his tweeds. “Thunder,” he continued philosophically, “it's all in the game, so why worry over it? And why continue to discuss an unpleasant topic, my dear?”
A groan from the Black Minorca challenged her attention. “I think that man is badly hurt, Uncle,” she suggested.
“Serves him right,” he returned coldly. “He tackled that cyclone full twenty feet in advance of the others; if they'd all closed in together, they would have pulled him down. I'll have that cholo and Rondeau sent down with the next trainload of logs to the company hospital. They're a poor lot and deserve manhandling—”
They paused, facing toward the timber, from which came a voice, powerful, sweetly resonant, raised in song. Shirley knew that half-trained baritone, for she had heard it the night before when Bryce Cardigan, faking his own accompaniment at the piano, had sung for her a number of carefully expurgated lumberjack ballads, the lunatic humour of which had delighted her exceedingly. She marvelled now at his choice of minstrelsy, for the melody was hauntingly plaintive—the words Eugene Field's poem of childhood, “Little Boy Blue.”
“The little toy dog is covered with dust,But sturdy and stanch he stands;And the little toy soldier is red with rust,And his musket molds in his hands.Time was when the little toy dog was new,And the soldier was passing fair;And that was the time when our little boy blue,Kissed them and put them there.”
“Light-hearted devil, isn't he?” the Colonel commented approvingly. “And his voice isn't half bad. Just singing to be defiant, I suppose.”
Shirley did not answer. But a few minutes previously she had seen the singer a raging fury, brandishing an axe and driving men before him. She could not understand. And presently the song grew faint among the timber and died away entirely.
Her uncle took her gently by the arm and steered her toward the caboose. “Well, what do you think of your company now?” he demanded gayly.
“I think,” she answered soberly, “that you have gained an enemy worth while and that it behooves you not to underestimate him.”
Through the green timber Bryce Cardigan strode, and there was a lilt in his heart now. Already he had forgotten the desperate situation from which he had just escaped; he thought only of Shirley Sumner's face, tear-stained with terror; and because he knew that at least some of those tears had been inspired by the gravest apprehensions as to his physical well-being, because in his ears there still resounded her frantic warning, he realized that however stern her decree of banishment had been, she was nevertheless not indifferent to him. And it was this knowledge that had thrilled him into song and which when his song was done had brought to his firm mouth a mobility that presaged his old whimsical smile—to his brown eyes a beaming light of confidence and pride.
The climax had been reached—and passed; and the result had been far from the disaster he had painted in his mind's eye ever since the knowledge had come to him that he was doomed to battle to a knockout with Colonel Pennington, and that one of the earliest fruits of hostilities would doubtless be the loss of Shirley Sumner's prized friendship. Well, he had lost her friendship, but a still small voice whispered to him that the loss was not irreparable—whereat he swung his axe as a bandmaster swings his baton; he was glad that he had started the war and was now free to fight it out unhampered.
Up hill and down dale he went. Because of the tremendous trees he could not see the sun; yet with the instinct of the woodsman, an instinct as infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the loading crew were piling logs on Pennington's logging-trucks.
Bryce looked at his watch. It was two o'clock; at two-fifteen Pennington's locomotive would appear, to back in and couple to the long line of trucks. And the train was only half loaded.
“Where's McTavish?” Bryce demanded of the donkey-driver.
The man mouthed his quid, spat copiously, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and pointed. “Up at his shanty,” he made answer, and grinned at Bryce knowingly.
Up through the camp's single short street, flanked on each side with the woodsmen's shanties, Bryce went. Dogs barked at him, for he was a stranger in his own camp; children, playing in the dust, gazed upon him owlishly. At the most pretentious shanty on the street Bryce turned in. He had never seen it before, but he knew it to be the woods-boss's home, for unlike its neighbours the house was painted with the coarse red paint that is used on box-cars, while a fence, made of fancy pointed pickets painted white, inclosed a tiny garden in front of the house. As Bryce came through the gate, a young girl rose from where she knelt in a bed of freshly transplanted pansies.
Bryce lifted his hat. “Is Mr. McTavish at home?” he asked.
She nodded. “He cannot see anybody,” she hastened to add. “He's sick.”
“I think he'll see me. And I wonder if you're Moira McTavish.”
“Yes, I'm Moira.”
“I'm Bryce Cardigan.”
A look of fright crept into the girl's eyes. “Are you—Bryce Cardigan?” she faltered, and looked at him more closely. “Yes, you're Mr. Bryce. You've changed—but then it's been six years since we saw you last, Mr. Bryce.”
He came toward her with outstretched hand. “And you were a little girl when I saw you last. Now—you're a woman.” She grasped his hand with the frank heartiness of a man. “I'm mighty glad to meet you again, Moira. I just guessed who you were, for of course I should never have recognized you. When I saw you last, you wore your hair in a braid down your back.”
“I'm twenty years old,” she informed him.
“Stand right where you are until I have looked at you,” he commanded, and backed off a few feet, the better to contemplate her.
He saw a girl slightly above medium height, tanned, robust, simply gowned in a gingham dress. Her hands were soiled from her recent labours in the pansy-bed, and her shoes were heavy and coarse; yet neither hands nor feet were large or ungraceful. Her head was well formed; her hair, jet black and of unusual lustre and abundance, was parted in the middle and held in an old-fashioned coil at the nape of a neck the beauty of which was revealed by the low cut of her simple frock. Moira was a decided brunette, with that wonderful quality of skin to be seen only among brunettes who have roses in their cheeks; her brow was broad and spiritual; in her eyes, large, black, and listrous, there was a brooding tenderness not untouched with sorrow—some such expression, indeed, as da Vinci put in the eyes of his Mona Lisa. Her nose was patrician, her face oval; her lips, full and red, were slightly parted in the adorable Cupid's bow which is the inevitable heritage of a short upper lip; her teeth were white as Parian marble; and her full breast was rising and falling swiftly, as if she laboured under suppressed excitement.
So delightful a picture did Moira McTavish make that Bryce forgot all his troubles in her sweet presence. “By the gods, Moira,” he declared earnestly, “you're a peach! When I saw you last, you were awkward and leggy, like a colt. I'm sure you weren't a bit good-looking. And now you're the most ravishing young lady in seventeen counties. By jingo, Moira, you're a stunner and no mistake. Are you married?”
She shook her head, blushing pleasurably at his unpolished but sincere compliments.
“What? Not married. Why, what the deuce can be the matter with the eligible young fellows hereabouts?”
“There aren't any eligible young fellows hereabouts, Mr. Bryce. And I've lived in these woods all my life.”
“That's why you haven't been discovered.”
“And I don't intend to marry a lumberjack and continue to live in these woods,” she went on earnestly, as if she found pleasure in this opportunity to announce her rebellion. Despite her defiance, however, there was a note of sad resignation in her voice.
“You don't know a thing about it, Moira. Some bright day your Prince Charming will come by, riding the log-train, and after that it will always be autumn in the woods for you. Everything will just naturally turn to crimson and gold.”
“How do you know, Mr Bryce?”
He laughed. “I read about it in a book.”
“I prefer spring in the woods, I think. It seems—It's so foolish of me, I know; I ought to be contented, but it's hard to be contented when it is always winter in one's heart. That frieze of timber on the skyline limits my world, Mr Bryce. Hills and timber, timber and hills, and the thunder of falling redwoods. And when the trees have been logged off so we can see the world, we move back into green timber again.” She sighed.
“Are you lonely, Moira?”
She nodded.
“Poor Moira!” he murmured absently.
The thought that he so readily understood touched her; a glint of tears was in her sad eyes. He saw them and placed his arm fraternally around her shoulders. “Tut-tut, Moira! Don't cry,” he soothed her. “I understand perfectly, and of course we'll have to do something about it. You're too fine for this.” With a sweep of his hand he indicated the camp. He had led her to the low stoop in front of the shanty. “Sit down on the steps, Moira, and we'll talk it over. I really called to see your father, but I guess I don't want to see him after all—if he's sick.”
She looked at him bravely. “I didn't know you at first, Mr. Bryce. I fibbed. Father isn't sick. He's drunk.”
“I thought so when I saw the loading-crew taking it easy at the log-landing. I'm terribly sorry.”
“I loathe it—and I cannot leave it,” she burst out vehemently. “I'm chained to my degradation. I dream dreams, and they'll never come true. I—I—oh Mr. Bryce, Mr. Bryce, I'm so unhappy.”
“So am I,” he retorted. “We all get our dose of it, you know, and just at present I'm having an extra helping, it seems. You're cursed with too much imagination, Moira. I'm sorry about your father. He's been with us a long time, and my father has borne a lot from him for old sake's sake; he told me the other night that he has discharged Mac fourteen times during the past ten years, but to date he hasn't been able to make it stick. For all his sixty years, Moira, your confounded parent can still manhandle any man on the pay-roll, and as fast as Dad put in a new woods-boss old Mac drove him off the job. He simply declines to be fired, and Dad's worn out and too tired to bother about his old woods-boss any more. He's been waiting until I should get back.”
“I know,” said Moira wearily. “Nobody wants to be Cardigan's woods-boss and have to fight my father to hold his job. I realize what a nuisance he has become.”
Bryce chuckled. “I asked Father why he didn't stand pat and let Mac work for nothing; having discharged him, my father was under no obligation to give him his salary just because he insisted on being woods-boss. Dad might have starved your father out of these woods, but the trouble was that old Mac would always come and promise reform and end up by borrowing a couple of hundred dollars, and then Dad had to hire him again to get it back! Of course the matter simmers down to this: Dad is so fond of your father that he just hasn't got the moral courage to work him over—and now that job is up to me. Moira, I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. They tell me your father is a hopeless inebriate.”
“I'm afraid he is, Mr. Bryce.”
“How long has he been drinking to excess?”
“About ten years, I think. Of course, he would always take a few drinks with the men around pay-day, but after Mother died, he began taking his drinks between pay-days. Then he took to going down to Sequoia on Saturday nights and coming back on the mad-train, the maddest of the lot. I suppose he was lonely, too. He didn't get real bad, however, till about two years ago.”
“Just about the time my father's eyes began to fail him and he ceased coming up into the woods to jack Mac up? So he let the brakes go and started to coast, and now he's reached the bottom! I couldn't get him on the telephone to-day or yesterday. I suppose he was down in Arcata, liquoring up.”
She nodded miserably.
“Well, we have to get logs to the mill, and we can't get them with old John Barleycorn for a woods-boss, Moira. So we're going to change woods-bosses, and the new woods-boss will not be driven off the job, because I'm going to stay up here a couple of weeks and break him in myself. By the way, is Mac ugly in his cups?”
“Thank God, no,” she answered fervently. “Drunk or sober, he has never said an unkind word to me.”
“But how do you manage to get money to clothe yourself? Sinclair tells me Mac needs every cent of his two hundred and fifty dollars a month to enjoy himself.”
“I used to steal from him,” the girl admitted. “Then I grew ashamed of that, and for the past six months I've been earning my own living. Mr. Sinclair was very kind. He gave me a job waiting on table in the camp dining room. You see, I had to have something here. I couldn't leave my father. He had to have somebody to take care of him. Don't you see, Mr. Bryce?”
“Sinclair is a fuzzy old fool,” Bryce declared with emphasis. “The idea of our woods-boss's daughter slinging hash to lumberjacks. Poor Moira!”
He took one of her hands in his, noting the callous spots on the plump palm, the thick finger-joints that hinted so of toil, the nails that had never been manicured save by Moira herself. “Do you remember when I was a boy, Moira, how I used to come up to the logging-camps to hunt and fish? I always lived with the McTavishes then. And in September, when the huckleberries were ripe, we used to go out and pick them together. Poor Moira! Why, we're old pals, and I'll be shot if I'm going to see you suffer.”
She glanced at him shyly, with beaming eyes. “You haven't changed a bit, Mr. Bryce. Not one little bit!”
“Let's talk about you, Moira. You went to school in Sequoia, didn't you?”
“Yes, I was graduated from the high school there. I used to ride the log-trains into town and back again.”
“Good news! Listen, Moira. I'm going to fire your father, as I've said, because he's working for old J.B. now, not the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company. I really ought to pension him after his long years in the Cardigan service, but I'll be hanged if we can afford pensions any more—particularly to keep a man in booze; so the best our old woods-boss gets from me is this shanty, or another like it when we move to new cuttings, and a perpetual meal-ticket for our camp dining room while the Cardigans remain in business. I'd finance him for a trip to some State institution where they sometimes reclaim such wreckage, if I didn't think he's too old a dog to be taught new tricks.”
“Perhaps,” she suggested sadly, “you had better talk the matter over with him.”
“No, I'd rather not. I'm fond of your father, Moira. He was a man when I saw him last—such a man as these woods will never see again—and I don't want to see him again until he's cold sober. I'll write him a letter. As for you, Moira, you're fired, too. I'll not have you waiting on table in my logging-camp—not by a jugful! You're to come down to Sequoia and go to work in our office. We can use you on the books, helping Sinclair, and relieve him of the task of billing, checking tallies, and looking after the pay-roll. I'll pay you a hundred dollars a month, Moira. Can you get along on that?”
Her hard hand closed over his tightly, but she did not speak.
“All right, Moira. It's a go, then. Hills and timber—timber and hills—and I'm going to set you free. Perhaps in Sequoia you'll find your Prince Charming. There, there, girl, don't cry. We Cardigans had twenty-five years of faithful service from Donald McTavish before he commenced slipping; after all, we owe him something, I think.”
She drew his hand suddenly to her lips and kissed it; her hot tears of joy fell on it, but her heart was too full for mere words.
“Fiddle-de-dee, Moira! Buck up,” he protested, hugely pleased, but embarrassed withal. “The way you take this, one would think you had expected me to go back on an old pal and had been pleasantly surprised when I didn't. Cheer up, Moira! Cherries are ripe, or at any rate they soon will be; and if you'll just cease shedding the scalding and listen to me, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll advance you two months' salary for—well, you'll need a lot of clothes and things in Sequoia that you don't need here. And I'm glad I've managed to settle the McTavish hash without kicking up a row and hurting your feelings. Poor old Mac! I'm sorry I can't bear with him, but we simply have to have the logs, you know.”
He rose, stooped, and pinched her ear; for had he not known her since childhood, and had they not gathered huckleberries together in the long ago? She was sister to him—just another one of his problems—and nothing more. “Report on the job as soon as possible, Moira,” he called to her from the gate. Then the gate banged behind him, and with a smile and a debonair wave of his hand, he was striding down the little camp street where the dogs and the children played in the dust.
After a while Moira walked to the gate and leaning upon it, looked down the street toward the log-landing where Bryce was ragging the laggard crew into some thing like their old-time speed. Presently the locomotive backed in and coupled to the log tram, and when she saw Bryce leap aboard and seat himself on a top log in such a position that he could not fail to see her at the gate, she waved to him. He threw her a careless kiss, and the train pulled out.
Presently, when Moira lifted her Madonna glance to the frieze of timber on the skyline, there was a new glory in her eyes; and lo, it was autumn in the woods, for over that hill Prince Charming had come to her, and life was all crimson and gold!
When the train loaded with Cardigan logs crawled in on the main track and stopped at the log-landing in Pennington's camp, the locomotive uncoupled and backed in on the siding for the purpose of kicking the caboose, in which Shirley and Colonel Pennington had ridden to the woods, out onto the main line again—where, owing to a slight downhill grade, the caboose, controlled by the brakeman, could coast gently forward and be hooked on to the end of the log-train for the return journey to Sequoia.
Throughout the afternoon Shirley, following the battle royal between Bryce and the Pennington retainers, had sat dismally in the caboose. She was prey to many conflicting emotions; but having had what her sex term “a good cry,” she had to a great extent recovered her customary poise—and was busily speculating on the rapidity with which she could leave Sequoia and forget she had ever met Bryce Cardigan—when the log-train rumbled into the landing and the last of the long string of trucks came to a stop directly opposite the caboose.
Shirley happened to be looking through the grimy caboose window at that moment. On the top log of the load the object of her unhappy speculations was seated, apparently quite oblivious of the fact that he was back once more in the haunt of his enemies, although knowledge that the double-bitted axe he had so unceremoniously borrowed of Colonel Pennington was driven deep into the log beside him, with the haft convenient to his hand, probably had much to do with Bryce's air of detached indifference. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his chin in his cupped hands, and a pipe thrust aggressively out the corner of his mouth, the while he stared moodily at his feet.
Shirley suspected she knew what he was thinking of; he was less than six feet from her, and a morbid fascination moved her to remain at the window and watch the play of emotions over his strong, stern face. She told herself that should he move, should he show the slightest disposition to raise his head and bring his eyes on a level with hers, she would dodge away from the window in time to escape his scrutiny.
She reckoned without the engine. With a smart bump it struck the caboose and shunted it briskly up the siding; at the sound of the impact Bryce raised his troubled glance just in time to see Shirley's body, yielding to the shock, sway into full view at the window.
With difficulty he suppressed a grin. “I'll bet my immortal soul she was peeking at me,” he soliloquized. “Confound the luck! Another meeting this afternoon would be embarrassing.” Tactfully he resumed his study of his feet, not even looking up when the caboose, after gaining the main track, slid gently down the slight grade and was coupled to the rear logging-truck. Out of the tail of his eye he caught a glimpse of Colonel Pennington passing alongside the log-train and entering the caboose; he heard the engineer shout to the brakeman—who had ridden down from the head of the train to unlock the siding switch and couple the caboose—to hurry up, lock the switch, and get back aboard the engine.
“Can't get this danged key to turn in the lock,” the brakeman shouted presently. “Lock's rusty, and something's gone bust inside.”
Minutes passed. Bryce's assumed abstraction became real, for he had many matters to occupy his busy brain, and it was impossible for him to sit idle without adverting to some of them. Presently he was subconsciously aware that the train was moving gently forward; almost immediately, it seemed to him, the long string of trucks had gathered their customary speed; and then suddenly it dawned upon Bryce that the train had started off without a single jerk—and that it was gathering headway rapidly.
He looked ahead—and his hair grew creepy at the roots. There was no locomotive attached to the train! It was running away down a two per cent. grade, and because of the tremendous weight of the train, it was gathering momentum at a fearful rate.
The reason for the runaway dawned on Bryce instantly. The road, being privately owned, was, like most logging-roads, neglected as to roadbed and rolling-stock; also it was undermanned, and the brake-man, who also acted as switchman, had failed to set the hand-brakes on the leading truck after the engineer had locked the air-brakes. As a result, during the five or six minutes required to “spot in” the caboose, and an extra minute or two lost while the brakeman struggled with the recalcitrant lock on the switch, the air had leaked away through the worn valves and rubber tubing, and the brakes had been released—so that the train, without warning, had quietly and almost noiselessly slid out of the log-landing and started on its mad career. Before the engineer could beat it to the other switch with the locomotive, run out on the main track, let the runaway gradually catch up with him and hold it—no matter how or what happened to him or his engine—the first logging-truck had cleared the switch and blocked pursuit. There was nothing to do now save watch the wild runaway and pray, for of all the mad runaways in a mad world, a loaded logging-train is by far the worst.
For an instant after realizing his predicament, Bryce Cardigan was tempted to jump and take his chance on a few broken bones, before the train could reach a greater speed than twenty miles an hour. His impulse was to run forward and set the handbrake on the leading truck, but a glance showed him that even with the train standing still he could not hope to leap from truck to truck and land on the round, freshly peeled surface of the logs without slipping for he had no calks in his boots. And to slip now meant swift and horrible death.
“Too late!” he muttered. “Even if I could get to the head of the train, I couldn't stop her with the hand-brake; should I succeed in locking the wheels, the brute would be doing fifty miles an hour by that time—the front truck would slide and skid, leave the tracks and pile up with me at the bottom of a mess of wrecked rolling-stock and redwood logs.”
Then he remembered. In the wildly rolling caboose Shirley Sumner rode with her uncle, while less than two miles ahead, the track swung in a sharp curve high up along the hillside above Mad River. Bryce knew the leading truck would never take that curve at high speed, even if the ancient rolling-stock should hold together until the curve was reached, but would shoot off at a tangent into the canyon, carrying trucks, logs, and caboose with it, rolling over and over down the hillside to the river.
“The caboose must be cut out of this runaway,” Bryce soliloquized, “and it must be cut out in a devil of a hurry. Here goes nothing in particular, and may God be good to my dear old man.”
He jerked his axe out of the log, drove it deep into the top log toward the end, and by using the haft to cling to, crawled toward the rear of the load and looked down at the caboose coupling. The top log was a sixteen-foot butt; the two bottom logs were eighteen footers. With a silent prayer of thanks to Providence, Bryce slid down to the landing thus formed. He was still five feet above the coupling, however; but by leaning over the swaying, bumping edge and swinging the axe with one hand, he managed to cut through the rubber hose on the air connection. “The blamed thing might hold and drag the caboose along after I've pulled out the coupling-pin,” he reflected. “And I can't afford to take chances now.”
Nevertheless he took them. Axe in hand, he leaped down to the narrow ledge formed by the bumper in front of the cabooses—driving his face into the front of the caboose; and he only grasped the steel rod leading from the brake-chains to the wheel on the roof in time to avoid falling half stunned between the front of the caboose and the rear of the logging-truck. The caboose had once been a box-car; hence there was no railed front platform to which Bryce might have leaped in safety. Clinging perilously on the bumper, he reached with his foot, got his toe under the lever on the side, jerked it upward, and threw the pin out of the coupling; then with his free hand he swung the axe and drove the great steel jaws of the coupling apart.
The caboose was cut out! But already the deadly curve was in sight; in two minutes the first truck would reach it; and the caboose, though cut loose, had to be stopped, else with the headway it had gathered, it, too, would follow the logging-trucks to glory.
For a moment Bryce clung to the brake-rod, weak and dizzy from the effects of the blow when, leaping down from the loaded truck to the caboose bumper, his face had smashed into the front of the caboose. His chin was bruised, skinned, and bloody; his nose had been broken, and twin rivulets of blood ran from his nostrils. He wiped it away, swung his axe, drove the blade deep into the bumper and left it there with the haft quivering; turning, he climbed swiftly up the narrow iron ladder beside the brake-rod until he reached the roof; then, still standing on the ladder, he reached the brake-wheel and drew it promptly but gradually around until the wheel-blocks began to bite, when he exerted his tremendous strength to the utmost and with his knees braced doggedly against the front of the caboose, held the wheel.