Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 9

"You can depend on me just as far as I can stretch my ability."

"But you told me you didn't like me for myself. You said you were joining drives with me because I was proposing to fight. Now I can't fight. No man will do my fighting for me unless he likes me for myself."

"I'll do it for you, sir," insisted Ward, determinedly. "It's right in line with my plans. I'll take your orders. I'll come to you regularly at Adonia. You shall know every move. I'll be merely your right hand to do what you want done."

"I'm a hard man with my help, Latisan. You have agreed with me on that point. I shall be ugly when I'm chained up. I shall say something to you, and then you'll quit."

Latisan had been looking the situation squarely in the eye on his own account. He was confronted by something wholly outside all his calculations. He had enlisted merely as a lieutenant and had never considered that he would be called on to a.s.sume authority as chief in the field. He had been led to serve with Flagg because the old man was the personification of permanency in the north country--seemed to be something that could not be shaken by the a.s.saults of the Comas--a man who impressed all as being above the hazards of death and accident.

Somehow, after all the years and because he had been there as a fixture through so many changes, Echford Flagg was viewed as something perennial--as sure as sunrise, as solid and everlasting as the peak of Jerusalem k.n.o.b, which overshadowed the big house on the ledges at Adonia; he was a reality to tie to in a fight against a common foe.

But right then he was a whimpering old man who plucked and fumbled at a dead right hand.

He was as helpless as a little man whom Latisan had plucked from a brutal clutch of an a.s.sailant in front of a bulletin board. Craig was still able enough. Craig was man size. Craig would be even more vicious when the news of Flagg's condition reached him; he would perceive his opportunity.

"It's sort of the code up where I come from. There's no objection to a clean fight. But if you don't pick your bigness you must expect that your bigness will offer himself mighty sudden." Latisan was not recollecting what he had said to the chaps of Tech; he was putting before his mind one of his fundamental principles as he listened to the laments of the stricken giant and urged the horses down the tote road.

Craig would keep on fighting; but Flagg was no longer of Craig's bigness. There was only one thing for Latisan to do--so that was why he put so much of determination and warmth into his pledges to a man whom he did not like from a personal standpoint. Flagg could not understand why this stranger should be loyal; the old man's wits were numbed along with his body.

"I'll be ripping at you with my tongue, because it's been my style--and I'll be worse when I'm penned up." Flagg could not seem to hope for any reform in himself. He was accepting his nature as something forged permanently in the fires of his experience, not to be remolded.

"I'm not thin-skinned, sir. If you can't keep from abusing me about business details, go ahead and abuse. It will ease your feelings and the abuse will not hurt me, because I don't propose to do anything knowingly to justify abuse. Twitting on real facts is what hurts. You hired me because you knew I had good reasons for fighting the Comas on account of the principle involved in the stand of the independents; you know that I still have the reasons, no matter how much your tongue may run away with you about foolish details."

He was looking forward to an opportunity to place himself even more definitely on record in the hearing of Flagg. After the sun was up Latisan expected to be able to grasp that opportunity at almost any turn of the tote road. He knew he would meet the upcoming crew. Flagg's horses on the trip north had made twice the speed of the plodding woods teams, and the crew had been ordered to spend the night at any camp where darkness overtook them.

Latisan heard, long before he came in sight of them, the shrill yells with which sled load interchanged repartee with sled load; everlastingly there was the monotone of the singers. It was plain that the same spirit of gay adventure was inspiring the men.

The tote road was a one-track thoroughfare; Latisan picked a cleared knoll at one side for his turnout switch and swung his horses up there in order to give the heavy sleds pa.s.sage.

"How the h.e.l.l can they come singing? Stop 'em," moaned Flagg.

There were half a dozen sleds in close procession, and Ward's upflung hand halted them when the leading sled came abreast.

By his own efforts Flagg propped himself into a sitting posture, braced by his left arm.

Men leaped off the sleds and crowded forward in a phalanx, cupping with their ranks the sledge where their master was couched. Voices were hushed and eyes were wide.

"I've been hit a wallop, boys," quavered the old man. "Overnight it has. .h.i.t me. Shock. It ain't surprising at my age. Mother had the same."

For that moment Flagg had put aside the sh.e.l.l of his nature; he found instant sympathy in the gaze which rough men of the forest bestowed on a stricken one of their ilk. He was responding to that sympathy. There were tears in his eyes.

"Men, I'm hurrying Mr. Flagg home where he can be looked after by the doctors. I'm sure he'll soon be all right again," Latisan a.s.sured them, lying for the good of the cause. "In the meantime I'm saying to him for myself that I'm standing by for every ounce that's in me. What do you say to him?"

"The same!" they yelled, in a ragged chorus.

"Fact is," went on Ward, as spokesman for all, "to make up for your not being with us, Mr. Flagg, we've got to put in twice as many licks because you're not on the job, and you can depend on us. What, boys?"

They bellowed promises and shrieked a pledge.

"Get along to headwaters and start to rolling the jackstraws onto the ice," shouted Latisan. "Have the dynamite warmed when I get back there.

If we have to do it, well beat the April rains to the job."

They went on their way, cheering.

"You've heard us. It ought to help some," stated Ward, urging his team along toward Adonia.

"The songs of the angels never will sound any better, and the angels will never look any better than those men did just now," declared the old man, still in his softened mood.

Latisan turned about and grinned at the master.

"I know what you mean," averred Flagg. "Of course I know. I was after pirates and I've got the toughest gang in the north country. Feed 'em raw meat, Latisan!"

Over the snow, which was slushy under the April sun of midday, and finally into Adonia over the rutted grit that the evening chill had frozen, the baron of the Noda was driven to the door of his mansion on the ledges.

Latisan had picked up men at the tavern as helpers.

A hail brought out a little old man whose white, close beard and fluffy hair gave his face the appearance of a likeness set into a frame of cotton batting. It was Rickety d.i.c.k; Brophy had told Latisan about him.

He flung his hands above his head; it was his involuntary action when deep emotion stirred him; and his customary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n was, "Praise the Lord!" It was possible that he would have shouted those words even then without regard to their irrelevance; but he was not able to utter a sound when Brophy and Latisan and the other men came bearing Flagg into the house.

The master stoutly refused to be laid in his bed. There was his big armchair in the middle of the sitting room; he commanded that he be placed there. "I can't fight lying down. If I can't stand up, I can sit up."

"Praise the Lord!" cried old d.i.c.k, finding an opportunity to interject his thanksgiving phrase.

"I'll come to you often, Mr. Flagg," promised Ward, taking leave. "I'll not neglect matters up the river, of course. But I want you to feel that I'm merely your right hand, moving according to your orders."

He went away with a thrill of sympathy inspiring his new resolution in behalf of the master's interests. The spectacle that he closed the door on had pathos in it. The tyrant of the Noda was shut away from the woods where he had ruled--away from the rush of white water under the prow of his great bateau; he could hear only the tantalizing summons of the cataract whose thunder boomed above the village of Adonia.

Latisan had promised to send for the best doctors in the city--he had a messenger already on the way. But he knew well enough that Echford Flagg, if he lived, was doomed to sit in that big chair and wield his scepter vicariously. And Latisan knew, too, what sort of the torments of perdition Flagg would endure on that account.

In the office of Brophy's tavern Rufus Craig, apparently a casual wayfarer, was sitting when Latisan entered after leaving the big house on the ledges.

Craig either felt or a.s.sumed contrite concern. "Excuse me, Latisan, but is it true that Mr. Flagg has suffered a stroke of paralysis?"

"It is true, sir."

"I'm sorry. I'm not on pleasant terms with him, or with you, for that matter. But I hate to see a good fighter struck down."

Latisan went to the desk and wrote his name on a leaf of the dog-eared register. He proposed to stay the night at Brophy's and start north in the morning.

"Go up and take Number Ten," said Brophy, who had been called as a helper and who had walked down from the mansion with Latisan.

When Craig plodded heavily along the upper corridor, on his way to bed a little later, the door of Number Ten was open for ventilation; Latisan was smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper which he had picked up in the tavern office. His stare, directed at Craig over the top of the newspaper, was inhospitable when the Comas man stopped and leaned against the door jamb.

"Latisan, I'm presuming on that frankness of yours; you have bragged about it in the past."

"That was before my experience with you in the Walpole matter, sir. But go ahead! What do you want?"

"You're over here in the Noda region, according to your threat. You may be willing to inform me as to your status in the Flagg proposition, now the old man is on his back."

"Mr. Flagg has put me in full charge of his drive."