King Spruce, A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  THE BOSS OF THE "BUSTERS"

  "If you don't like our looks nor ain't stuck on our kind, Git back with the dames in the next car behind."

  On and on went the yelping staccato of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt.The Honorable Pulaski D. was discoursing on his favorite topic, and hisvoice was heard above the rattle and jangle of the shaky oldpassenger-coach that jolted behind some freight-cars.

  "Forty years ago I rolled nigh onto a million feet into that brookthere!" shouted the lumber baron of the Umcolcus. His knotted, hairyfist wagged under the young man's nose as he pointed at the carwindow, his unwholesome breath fanned warmly on Wade's cheek, andwhen he crowded over to look into the summer-dried stream his bristlychin-whiskers tickled his seat-mate's ear. The September day was muggyand human contact disquieting. Wade shrank nearer the open window. TheHonorable Pulaski did not notice the shrinking. He was accustomed tocrowd folks. His self-assertiveness expected them to get out of the way.

  "Yes, sir, nigh onto a million in one spring, and half of it 'down pine'and sounder'n a hound's tooth. Nothing here now but sleeper stuff. It'sa good many miles to the nearest saw-log, and that's where I'm cuttingon Jerusalem. I tell you, I've peeled some territory in forty years,young man."

  Wade looked at the red tongue licking lustfully between blue lips, andthen gazed on the ragged, bush-grown wastes on either side. While he hadbeen crowding men the Honorable Pulaski had been just as industriouslycrowding the forest off God's acres. The "chock" of the axe sounded inhis abrupt sentences, the rasp of saws in his voice.

  "We left big stumps those days." The hairy fist indicated the rottenmonuments of moss-covered punk shouldering over the dwarfed bushes."There was a lot of it ahead of us. Didn't have to be economical. Getit down and yanked to the landings--that was the game! We're cuttingas small as eight-inch spruce at Jerusalem. Ain't a mouthful for agang-saw, but they taste good to pulp-grinders."

  The train began to groan and jerk to a stand-still, and the old mandove out of his seat and staggered down the aisle, holding to thebacks of the seats. At the last station he had spent ten minutes ofhand-brandishing colloquy on the platform with a shingle-mill bosswhom he had summoned to the train by wire. He was to meet a birch-millforeman here. Wade looked out at the struggling cedars and the whitebirches, "the ladies of the forest," pathetic aftermath which was nowfalling victim to axe and saw, and wondered with a flicker of grim humorin his thoughts why the Honorable Pulaski did not set crews at workcutting the bushes for hoop-poles and then clean up the last remnantinto toothpicks.

  "He's a driver, ain't he?" sounded a voice in his ear. An old manbehind him hung his grizzled whiskers over the seat-back and pointedan admiring finger at the retreating back of the lumber baron.

  Wade wished that people would let him alone. He had some thoughts--somevery bitter thoughts--to think alone, and the world jarred on him. Theyelp of the Honorable Pulaski's monologue, that everlasting, insistentbellow of voices in the smoking-car ahead, where the ingoing crew ofBritt's hundred men were trying to sing with drunken lustiness, and nowthis amiable old fool of the grizzled whiskers, stung the dull pain ofhis resentment at deeper troubles into sudden and almost childish anger.

  "Once when I was swamping for him on Telos stream, he says to me, 'Man,'he says, 'remember that the time that's lost when an axe is slicin' airain't helping me to pay you day's wages!' And I says to him, 'MisterBritt,' says I--"

  Dwight Wade, college graduate, former high-school principal, and at alltimes in the past a cultured and courteous young gentleman, did thefirst really rude and unpardonable act of his life. He twisted his chinover his shoulder, scowled into the mild, dim, and watery eyes of hisinterlocutor, and growled:

  "Oh, cut it short! What in--" He checked the expletive, and snappedhimself up and across the aisle, and slammed down into another seat. Thered came over his face. He did not dare to look back at the old man. Hehearkened to the rip-roaring chorus in the smoking-car, and reflectedthat as the new time-keeper he was now one of "Britt's Busters," andthat the demoralizing license of the great north woods must have enteredinto his nature thus early. He grunted his disgust at himself under hisbreath, and hunched his head down between his shoulders.

  In his nasty state of mind he glowered at a passenger who came into thecar at the front. It was a girl, and a pretty girl at that. She nodded acheery greeting to the old man of the grizzled whiskers, and with asmile still dimpling her cheeks flashed one glance at Wade. It was nota bold look, and yet there was the least bit of challenge in it. Thesudden pout on her lips might have been at thought of confiding herfresh, crisp skirts to the dusty seat; and yet, when she turned and shotone more quick glance at the young man's sour countenance, the poutcurled into something like disdain, and a little shrug of her shouldershinted that she had not met the response that she was accustomed to findon the faces of young men who saw her for the first time.

  While Wade was gazing gloomily and abstractedly at the fair profileand the nose, tip-tilted a wee bit above the big white bow of her veiltied under her chin, one of the crew lurched from the door of thesmoking-car, caught off his hat, and bowed extravagantly. It was TommyEye. He had to clutch the brake-wheel to keep himself from falling. Buthis voice was still his own. He broke out lustily:

  "Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me. I'm all cut loose for to wrassle with the spruce, Way up where she can't find me. Oh, there ain't no--"

  An angry face appeared over his shoulder in the door of the smoker, twobig hands clutched his throat, jammed the melody into a hoarse squawk,and then the songster went tumbling backward into the car and out ofsight.

  Almost immediately his muscular suppressor crossed the platform and cameinto the coach, snatching the little round hat off the back of his headas he entered. Wade knew him. His employer had introduced them at thejunction as two who should know each other. It was Colin MacLeod, the"boss."

  "And Prince Edward's Island never turned out a smarter," the HonorablePulaski had said, not deigning to make an aside of his remarks. "Landedfour million of the Umcolcus logs on the ice this spring, busted herwith dynamite, let hell and the drive loose, licked every pulp-wood bossthat got in his way with their kindlings, and was the first into PeaCove boom with every log on the scale-sheet. That's this boy!" And hefondled the young giant's arm like a butcher appraising beef.

  Wade paid little attention to him then. With his ridged jaw muscles, hishard gray eyes, and the bullying cock of his head, he was only a part ofthe ruthlessness of the woods.

  But now, as he came up the car aisle, his face flushed, his eyes eager,his embarrassment wrinkling on his forehead, Wade looked at him with thesudden thought that the boss of the "Busters" was merely a boy, afterall.

  "It was only Tommy Eye, Miss Nina," explained MacLeod, his voicetrembling, his abashed admiration shining in his face. "He's justout of jail, you know." He looked at Wade and then at the old manof the grizzled whiskers, and raised his voice as though to gain aself-possession he did not feel. "Tommy always gets into jail afterthe drive is down. He's spent seventeen summers in jail, and isproud of it."

  "But there ain't no better teamster ever pushed on the webbin's," saidthe old man, admiration for all the folks of the woods still unflagging.

  The girl did not display the same enthusiasm, either for Tommy Eye'smishaps or for the bashful giant who stood shifting from foot to footbeside her seat.

  "Crews going into the woods ought to be nailed up in box-cars, that'swhat father says. And when they go through Castonia settlement I wishthey were in crates, the same as they ship bears."

  "How is your father since spring?" asked the young boss, stammeringly,trying to appear unconscious of her scorn.

  "Oh, he's all right," she returned, carelessly, patting her hand on herlips to repress a yawn.

  "And is every one in Castonia all right?"

  "You can ask them when you get there," she replied, a bit un
graciously.

  "I tell you, I was pretty surprised to see you get aboard the train downhere at Bomazeen. I--"

  She canted her head suddenly, and looked sidewise at him with anexpression half satiric, half indignant.

  "Do you think that all the folks who ever go anywhere in this world areriver drivers and"--she shot a quick and disparaging glance at the stillglowering Wade--"drummers?"

  MacLeod noticed the look and its scorn with delight, and grasped at thisopportunity to get outside the platitudes of conversation. But in hiseagerness to be news-monger he did not soften his "out-door voice,"deepened by many years of bellowing above the roar of white water.

  "Oh, that ain't a drummer! That's Britt's new chaney man--thetime-keeper and the wangan store clerk." MacLeod knew that a girl bornand bred in Castonia settlement, on the edge of the great forest, neededno explanation of "chaney man," the only man in a logging crew who couldsleep till daylight, and didn't come out in the spring with callousmarks on his hands as big as dimes. But he seemed to be hungry for anexcuse to stay beside her, where he could gaze down on the brown hairlooped over her forehead and her radiantly fair face, and could catcha glimpse of the white teeth. "Britt was tellin' me on the side thathe's been teachin' school or something like that, and--say, you'veheard of old Barrett, who controls all the stumpage on the Chamberlainwaters--that rich old feller? Well, Britt, being hitched up withBarrett more or less, and knowin' all about it--"

  Wade was now upright in his seat, but the absorbed foreman, catching atlast a gleam of interest in the gray eyes upraised to his, did notnotice.

  "--Britt says that Mister School-teacher there went to work and fell inlove with Barrett's girl, and now she's goin' to marry a rich feller inthe lumberin' line that her dad picked out for her, and instead of goin'to war or to sea, like--"

  Wade, maddened, sick at heart, furious at the old tattler who had thuscanvassed his poor secret with his boss, had tried twice to cry aninterruption. But his voice stuck in his throat.

  Now he leaped up, leaned far over the seat-back in front of him, andshouted, with face flushed and eyes like shining steel:

  "That's enough of that, you pup!"

  In the sudden, astonished silence the old man dragged his fingersthrough his grizzled whiskers and whined plaintively:

  "Ain't he peppery, though, about anybody talking? He shet me up, too!"

  "It's my business you're talking!" shouted Wade, beating time withclinched fist. "Drop it."

  MacLeod, primordial in his instincts, lost sight of the provocation, andfelt only the rebuff in the presence of the girl he was seeking toattract. He had no apology on his tongue or in his heart.

  "It will take a better man than you to trig talk that I'm makin'," heretorted. "This isn't a district school, where you are licked if youwhisper!" He sneered as he said it, and took one step up the aisle.

  With the bitter anger that had been burning in him for many days nowfanned into the white-heat of Berserker rage, Wade leaped out of hisseat. Between them sat the girl, looking from one to the other, hercheeks paling, her lips apart.

  At the moment, with a drunken man's instinctive knowledge of ripeoccasions, Tommy Eye lurched out once more on the smoker platform andbegan to carol the lay that had consoled him on so many trips from town:

  "Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me."

  There sounded the clang of the engine bell far to the front. There wasthe premonitory and approaching jangle of shacklings, as car after cartook up its slack.

  "Look after your man there, MacLeod!" cried the girl. "The yank willthrow him off."

  "Let him go, then!" gritted the foreman. The flame in Wade's eyes waslike the red torch of battle to him. Not for years had a man dared togive him that look.

  Suddenly the car sprang forward under their feet as the last shacklesnapped taut. The boss was driven towards Wade, and let himself bedriven. The other braced himself, blind in his fury, realizing at lastthe nature of the blood lust.

  A squall, fairly demoniac in intensity, stopped them. MacLeod recognizedthe voice, and even his passion for battle yielded. When the HonorablePulaski D. Britt, baron of the Umcolcus, yelled in that fashion it meantobedience, and on this occasion the squall was reinforced by a shriekfrom the girl. And MacLeod whirled, dropping his fists.

  There on the platform stood Britt, clutching the limp and soggy TommyEye by the slack of his jacket. The Honorable Pulaski, jealous of everysecond of time, had remained in conversation to the last with his birchforeman. He stepped aboard just as Tommy, jarred from his feet, waspitching off the other side of the platform. The Honorable Pulaskisnatched for him and held on, at the imminent risk of his own life.Already both of them were leaning far out, for Tommy Eye, in theblissful calm of his spirit, was making no effort to help himself.

  In an instant MacLeod was down the car aisle and had pulled both back tosafety.

  "Why in blastnation ain't you staying in this hog-car here, where youbelong, you long-legged P.I. steer?" roared the old man, his anger readythe moment his fright subsided. "What do I hire you for? You came nearletting me lose the best teamster in my whole crew. Now get into thatcar and stay in that car till we get to the end of this railroad."

  He put his hands against MacLeod's breast and shoved him backward intothe door, where Tommy Eye, grinning in fatuous ignorance of the dangerhe had passed through, had just disappeared ahead of him. The angryshame of a man cruelly humiliated twisted MacLeod's features, but heallowed his imperious despot to push him into the car, casting a lastappealing look at the girl. Britt slammed the door and stood on theplatform, bracing himself by a hand on either side the casing, andpeered through the dingy glass to make sure that his crew was now underproper discipline.

  "He's a driver and a master," piped up Grizzly Whiskers, with theappositeness of a Greek chorus.

  "There's the song about him, ye know:

  "Oh, the night that I was married, The night that I was wed, Up there come Pulaski Britt And stood at my bed-head. Said he, 'Arise, young married man, And come along with me. Where the waters of Umcolcus They do roar along so free.'"

  "I'll bet he went, at that," volunteered a man farther back in the car."When Britt is after men he gits' em, and when he gits 'em he uses 'em."

  "Mr. Britt," he shouted down the car aisle as the old man entered, "thatwas brave work you done in savin' Tommy's life!"

  "Go to the devil with your compliments!" snapped Britt. "If it wasn'tthat I was losing my best teamster I wouldn't have put out my littlefinger to save him from mince-meat."

  He saw the girl, turned over a seat to face her, and began to fire rapidquestions at her regarding her father and mother and the latest news ofCastonia settlement. When the conversation languished, as it did soon onaccount of the inattention of the young woman, the Honorable Pulaskicaught the still flaming eye of Dwight Wade, and crooked his finger tosummon him. Wade merely scowled the deeper. The Honorable Pulaskiserenely disregarded this malevolence as a probable optical illusion,and when Wade did not start beckoned again.

  "Come here, you!" he bellowed. "Can't you see that I want you?"

  With new accession of fury at being thus baited, the young man startedup, resolved to take his employer aside and free his mind on that matterof news-mongering. But the bluff and busy tyrant was first, as he alwayswas in his dealings with men.

  "Here, Wade," he shouted, "you shake hands with the prettiest girlin the north country! This is Miss Nina Ide, and this is my newtime-keeper, Dwight Wade. He's going to find that there's more inlumbering than there is in being a college dude or teaching a school.Sit down, Wade."

  He pulled the young man into the seat.

  "Entertain this young lady," he commanded. "She don't want to talk withold chaps like me. Her father--well, I reckon you know her father! Oh,you don't? Well, he's first assessor of Castonia settlement, runs theroads, the schools, and the town, has the general store and post-off
ice,and this pretty daughter that all the boys are in love with."

  And at the end of this delicate introduction he pushed brusquely betweenthem, and went back to talk with his elderly admirer in the rear of thecar.

  Wade looked into the gray eyes of the girl sullenly. There was an angrysparkle in her gaze.

  "Well, Mr. Wade, you may think from what that old fool said that I'msuffering to be entertained. If you think any such thing you can changeyour mind and go back."

  She had not a city-bred woman's self-poise, he thought. Her manner wasthat of the country belle, spoiled the least bit by flattery andattention. And yet, as he looked at her, he thought that he had neverseen fairer skin to set off the flush of angry beauty. For others therewas something alluring in the absolute whiteness of her teeth, peepingunder the curve of her lip, in the nose (the least bit _retrousse_), inthe looped locks of brown hair crossing her temples. Yet there was noadmiration in his eyes.

  "I hope you won't hold me guilty of being the intruder," he said,coldly.

  "Not if you move your brogans over to some seat where there is more roomfor them," she returned, with a click of her white teeth that showedmild savagery. This young man who was in love with some one else, andwho had scowled at her, was decidedly not to her liking, she thought, inspite of his regular features, his firm chin, his clean-cut mouthunhidden by beard, and his brown eyes.

  Wade flushed, rose, bowed with hat lifted to a rather ironical height,and took his seat alone, well to the front of the car. He saw MacLeod'sbaleful face framed in the little window of the smoking-car's door. Formile after mile, as the train jangled on, it remained there.

  The menace of the expression, the challenge in the attitude, and thisinsolent espionage, all following the insults of his gossiping tongue,wrought upon the young man's feelings like a file on metal. As hisresentment gnawed, it was in his mind to go and smash his fist throughthe little window into the middle of that lowering countenance.

  To him came the Honorable Pulaski, bristling and bustling.

  "They're telling me back there, young man, that you and Colin came nearto having some sort of rumpus a little while ago. Now, I can't haveanything of that sort going on among my men. You mind _your_ business.I'll make _him_ mind _his_. But what's it all about, anyway? Why wereyou going to fight like roosters at sight?"

  Wade looked at his pompous red face and into his eyes with theiryellowish sclerotic, and choked back the recrimination he had intended.The thought of opening his heart's poor secret by bandying words withthis man made him quiver.

  "As well to talk to a Durham bull," he reflected.

  "Why, you poor college dude," went on his employer, scornfully, "ColinMacLeod would break you in two and use you to taller his boots, a piecein each hand. You're hired to keep books and peddle wangan stuffaccording to the prices marked! Keep your place, where you belong. Don'tgo to stacking muscle against the boss of the Busters."

  The former centre of Burton College's football eleven stiffened hismuscles and set his nails into his palms to keep from hot retort. Whatwas the use? What did college training avail if it didn't help agentleman to hold his tongue at the right time?

  "Now, remember what I've told you," ordered Britt, "and I'll go and setMacLeod to the right-about, so that you won't have to be afraid of himif you mind your own business."

  He went away into the smoking-car. Between the opening and the closingof the door there puffed out a louder jargon from the orgy. It thensettled into its dull diapason of maudlin voices.

  For the rest of the journey, to the end of the forest railroad spur,Wade sat and looked out into the hopeless and ragged ruin left by theaxes. The sight fitted with his mood. Britt, back from his interviewwith MacLeod, and serene in the power of the conscious autocrat, sat byhimself and figured endlessly with a stubby lead-pencil. Wade lookedaround only once at the girl. When he did he caught her looking at him,and she immediately snapped her eyes away indignantly.

  At last the engine gave a long shriek that wailed away in echoes amongthe stumps. It was a different note from its careless yelps at theinfrequent crossings.

  "Here we are!" bellowed Britt, cheerfully, stuffing away his papers andcoming up the car for his little bag. He stopped opposite Wade.

  "Remember what I told you about minding your business," he commanded,brusquely. "You may be a college graduate, but MacLeod is your boss. Hewon't hurt you if you keep your place!"

  In medicine there are cumulative poisons--the effect of small doses atintervals amounting in the end to a single large dose.

  In matters of heart, temper, and moral restraint there are cumulativepoisons, too. Dwight Wade, struggling up as the train jolted to a halt,felt that this last insult, coming as it did out of that brusque,rough-sneering, culture-despising spirit of the woods, exemplified inPulaski D. Britt, had put an end to self-restraint.

  It was the same brusque, money-worshipping, intolerant spirit of thewoods that sounded in John Barrett's voice when he had sneered at Wade'spretensions to his daughter's hand. There it was now in those roaringvoices in the smoking-car. And yet he had come to it--hating it--fleeingfrom the sight of men of his kind when his little temple of love seemedclosed to him, and the world had jeered at him behind his back! Helooked through the dirty car windows at the little shacks of therailroad terminus, heard the bellow of voices, gritted his teeth inungovernable rage at Britt's last words, and determined to--well, hehardly knew what he did propose to do.

  But it should be something to show them all that he could no longer bebossed and insulted and jeered at--all in that bumptious, braggadocio,bucko spirit of the woods!

  Both platforms of the cars were swarming with men--men rigged in queergarb: wool leggings, wool jackets striped off in bizarre colors orchecked like crazy horse-blankets. Each man in sight carried his heavybrogan shoes hung about his neck.

  They were singing in fairly good time, and Wade listened to the wordsdespite himself:

  "Oh, here I come from the Kay-ni-beck, With my old calk boots slung round my neck Here we come--yas, a-here we come-- A hundred men and a jug of rum. WHOOP-fa-dingo! Old Prong Jones!"

  The girl passed Wade, going down the aisle before he left his seat. Hecame behind her. But they were obliged to wait at the door. The mencrowded close upon both platforms. Each man had a meal-sack stuffed withhis possessions. They were all elbowing each other, and the result was acongestion that the kicks of the Honorable Pulaski and the cuffings ofColin MacLeod did little to break.

  The boss of the Busters kept stealing glances at the girl, as though tochallenge her notice, and perhaps her admiration, as she saw him thus amaster of men.

  It was then that the spirit of anger and rebellion seething in DwightWade--the cumulative poison of his many insults--stirred him to bitterprovocation in his own turn.

  The girl carried a heavy leather suit-case, and now, waiting for thepress of men to escape from the car, she rested it against a seat, andsighed in weariness and vexation.

  With quiet masterfulness Wade took it from her hand and smiled into theastonished gray eyes that flashed back over her shoulder at him. It wasa smile that not even a maiden, offended as she had been, could resist.

  "I will assist you to--to--I believe it is a stage-coach that takes uson," he said. "Let me do this, so that you won't remember me simply as aman whose own troubles made him a boor."

  MacLeod's look of fury as he saw the act fell full upon them both, andthe girl resented it.

  "I thank you," she returned, smiling at her squire with a littleexaggeration of cordiality. And when at last the platforms were clearedthey stepped out, still talking.

  All about them men were kneeling, fastening the latchets of theirspike-sole shoes.

  "Rod Ide's gal has got a new mash!" hiccoughed one burly chap, leeringat them as they passed. At the instant MacLeod, at their heels, struckthe man brutally across the mouth, shouldered Wade roughly, and spoketo the girl, his round hat cr
umpled in his big fist.

  "Miss Nina," he stammered, "I'm--I'm sorry for forgetting that you werein that car awhile back. But you know I ain't used to takin' talk ofthat sort. So, let me see you safe aboard the stage, like an old friendshould."

  "This gentleman will look after me," said the girl. She tried to becalm, but her voice trembled. A city woman, confident of the regard dueto woman, would not have feared so acutely. But Nina Ide, bred on theedge of the forest, was accustomed to see the brute in man spurnrestraint. The passions flaming in the eyes of these two were familiarto her. She expected little more from the gentleman in the way ofconsideration for her feelings than she did from the lumber-jack. "Yougo along about your business, Colin," she said, hastily. "I can attendto mine."

  "Give me that!" snarled the boss, his eyes red under their meetingbrows. In his rage he forgot the deference due the woman.

  "See if you can take it!" growled back the other. With him the girl wasonly the means to the end that his whole nature now lusted for. Heforgot her.

  Wade looked for the young giant to strike. But the woods duello has itsvagaries.

  MacLeod lifted one heavy shoe and drove its spiked sole down upon Wade'sfoot, the brads puncturing the thin leather. With his foe thus anchored,he clutched for the valise. But ere his victim had time to strike, thefurious, flaming, bristling face of the Honorable Pulaski was betweenthem, and his elbows, hard as pine knots, drove them apart with wickedthrustings. As they staggered back the old lumber baron, used to playingthe tyrant mediator, grabbed an axe from the nearest man of the crew.

  "I'll brain the one that lifts a finger!" he howled. "What did I tellyou about this? Who is running this crew? Whose money is paying you? Getback, you hounds!"

  Once more, though he gasped in the pure madness of his rage, MacLeod wascowed by his despot. He turned and began marshalling the crew aboardgreat wagons that were waiting at the station.

  "You take your seat in that wagon, young man!" roared Britt, shakingthat hateful, hairy fist under Wade's nose. "We'll see about all thislater! Get onto that wagon!"

  At the opposite side of the station was the mail-stage, a dusty, rustyconveyance with a lurching canopy of cracked leather above its fourseats, and four doleful horses waiting the snap of the driver's whip.

  Without a word to Britt, Wade led the way to the coach, and set thesuit-case between the seats. He limped as he walked, and his teeth wereset in pain.

  He gave his hand to the girl, and she silently accepted the assistanceand took her place in the coach.

  Then he turned to meet the fiery gaze of the Honorable Pulaski, who hadfollowed close on their heels, choking with expletives.

  "I reckon I see through this now," he growled. "Tryin' to cut out thecleanest feller in the Umcolcus with your dude airs! But Rod Ide's girlain't to be fooled by city notions. She knows a man when she sees him."He chucked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of MacLeod, busywith the laggard men. "Go aboard, and let this be an end of yourmeddling, young man."

  "You just speak for yourself and attend to your business, Mr. Britt!"cried the girl, with a spirit that cowed even the tyrant's bluster."'Rod Ide's girl,' as you call her, can choose all her own affairs, andyou needn't scowl at me, for I'm not on your pay-roll and I'm notafraid of you!"

  She turned to Wade with real gentleness in her tones.

  "I'm afraid he hurt you. It's a rough country up here. If you hadn'tbeen trying to help me it wouldn't have happened. He had no right to--"She checked herself suddenly, and her cheeks flamed.

  "That wasn't a fair twit about my sticking my nose into your affairs,Miss Nina," protested Britt, and turning from her he visited his ragevicariously on his time-keeper, taking him by the arm and starting todrag him. "I told you to get aboard!" he rasped. "And when my men that Ihire don't do as I tell 'em to do, I kick 'em aboard--and a time-keeperis no better than a swamper with me when he leaves this railroad. Youwant to understand those things and save lots of trouble."

  "You take your hand off my arm, Mr. Britt," said the young man. He didnot speak loudly, but there was something in his voice that impressedthe Honorable Pulaski, who knew men.

  "Now," resumed Wade, "for reasons of my own and that I don't propose toexplain, I am going to ride to Castonia settlement on this mail-stage."

  "It's safe to go on the wagon," persisted Britt, more mildly. "I tellyou, if you mind your own business, I won't let him lick you."

  With face gray and rigid at an insult that the old man couldn'tunderstand, Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, turned his back, andclimbed aboard the coach. The girl moved along to the farther end, andgropingly and blindly, without thought as to where he was sitting, hetook the place beside her.

  He remembered that as they drove away Britt shook that hairy fist athim, and that some rude roisterer on the wagons lilted some doggerelabout "the chaney man." And through a sort of red mist he saw the faceof Colin MacLeod.

  They were miles along the rough road before he looked at the girl. Atthe movement of his head she turned her own, and in the piquant faceabove the big white bow of the veil he saw real sympathy.

  He did not speak, but he looked into her clear eyes--eyes that had thecountry girl's spirit and a resourcefulness beyond her years--and fromthem he drew a certain comfort.

  "Mr. Wade," she said, at last, "I'm only nineteen years old, but up inCastonia settlement we see what men are without the wrappings on them. Idon't know much about real society, but I've read about it, and I guesssociety women get sort of dazzled by the outside polish and don't seethings very clear. But up our way, with what they see of men, girls getto be women young. You are a college graduate and a school-teacher andall that, and I'm only nineteen, but--well, it just seems to me I can'thelp reaching over like this--"

  She patted his arm.

  "--And what I feel like saying is, 'Poor boy!'"

  There was such vibrant sympathy in her voice that though he set histeeth, clinched his hands, and summoned all his resolution, his nervousstrain slackened and the tears came into his eyes--tears that had beenslowly welling ever since he had turned from John Barrett's door.

  It was woman's attempt at consolation that broke through his restraint.

  "I don't blame you much for squizzlin' a little," broke in thestage-driver, who saw this emotion without catching the conversation."He did bring his huck down solid when he stamped. But I've been calkedmyself, and a tobacker poultice allus does the business for me--northin'better for p'isen in a wound."

  The chaney man reached his hand to the girl under the shelter of theseat-back.

  "Shake!" he said, simply. "I've come up here to stay awhile, and it'sgood to feel that I've got one friend that's--that's a woman."

  "And you--" She faltered and paused to listen, lips apart.

  "I've come to stay," he repeated, grimly.

  He listened too.

  Far behind them they heard the dull rumble of the heavy wagons over theledges. The raucous howling of the revellers had something wolf-likeabout it. It seemed to close the line of retreat. Ahead were the bigwoods, looming darkly on the mountain ridges--that vast region of man toman, and the devil take the weak.

  And again he said, not boastingly, but with a quiet setting of his tensejaw muscles:

  "I've come to stay."