King Spruce Part 9

MacLeod stood up, and tugged the collar of his wool jacket away from his throat.

"I ain't much of a man to talk my business over with any one, Mr.

Britt," he said. "But you are putting this thing on a business basis, and you don't have the right to do it. I ain't engaged to Nina Ide, and I 'ain't asked her to be engaged to me, for the time 'ain't come right yet. But there ain't n.o.body else in G.o.d's world goin' to have her but me. She ain't too good for me, even if her father is old Rod Ide. I'll have money some day myself. I've got some now. I can buy the clothes when I need 'em, if that's all that a girl likes. But it ain't all they like--not the kind of a girl like Nina Ide is. She knows a man when she sees him. She knows that I'm a man, square and straight, and one that loves her well enough to let her walk on him, and that's the kind of a man for a girl born and bred on the edge of the woods."

He drew up his lithe, tall body, and snapped his head to one side with almost a click of the rigid neck.

"Along comes that college dude," he snarled, "just thrown over by a city girl and lookin' for some one else to make love to, and he cuts in"--his voice broke--"you see what he done, Mr. Britt! He helped her off the train before I could get there. He put her on the stage, and rode away with her while you were makin' me handle the men. And he's ridin' with her now, d.a.m.n him, and he's a-talkin' with her and laughin' at me behind my back!" He shook both fists at the road to Castonia settlement, winding over the hill, and there were tears on his cheeks.

"He probably isn't laughing very much," replied Britt, dryly. "Not since you plugged that spike boot of yours down on his foot there on the depot platform. A nasty trick, MacLeod, that was."

"I wish I'd 'a' ground it off," muttered the boss. He struck his spikes against the bowlder with such force that a stream of fire followed the kick.

"He can't do it--he can't do it, Mr. Britt! He can't steal her! I've loved her too long, and I'll have her. You just gave off your orders to me about fighting. You don't say anything to those cattle down there fighting about nothin'. You let them settle their troubles. Here I am!"

He struck his breast. "For five years, first up in the dark of the mornin', last to bed in the dark of the night. I've sweat and swore and frozen in the slush and snow and sleet, driving your crew to make money for you. And I've waded from April till September, I've broken jams and taken the first chance in the white water, so that I could get your drive down ahead of the rest. And now, when it comes to a matter of h.e.l.l and heaven for me, you tell me I can't stand like a man for my own. You call it wastin' time!"

He bent over the Honorable Pulaski, his face purple, his eyes red. Britt took out his cigar and held it aside to blink up at this disconcerting young madman.

"I tell you, you are taking chances, Mr. Britt. You have bradded me on, and told me that a man of the woods always gets what he wants if he goes after it right. Twice to-day you have stood between me and what I want.

You've let a college dude take the sluice ahead of me. I know you pay me my money, but don't you do that again. I'm going to have that girl, I say! The man that steps in ahead of me, he's goin' to die, Mr. Britt, and the man that steps between me and that man, when I'm after him, he dies, too. And if that sounds like a bluff, then you haven't got Colin MacLeod sized up right, that's all!"

The Honorable Pulaski winked rapidly under the other's savage regard. He knew when to bl.u.s.ter and he knew when to palter.

"MacLeod," he said, at last, getting up off the rack with a grunt, "what a man that works for me does in the girl line is none of my business.

But after that kind of brash talk I might suggest to you that a cell in state-prison isn't going to be like G.o.d's out-doors that you're roaming around in now."

The boss sneered contemptuously.

"Furthermore, this college dude, that you are talking about as though he were a water-logged jill-poke, was something in the football line when he was in college--I don't know what, for I don't know anything about such foolishness--but, anyway, from what I hear, it was up to him to break the most arms and legs, and he did it, I understand. This is only in advice, MacLeod--only in advice," he cried, flapping a big hand to check impatient interruption. "You saw when Tommy Eye, the drunken fool, fell under the train at the junction to-day, as he is always doing, that feller Wade picked him up with one hand and lugged him like a pound of sausage-meat--saved the fool's life, and didn't turn a hair over it. So, talk a little softer about killing, my boy, and, best of all, wait till you find out that he wants the girl or the girl wants _you_!"

He walked down the hill.

"Go to blazes with your advice, you old fool!" growled MacLeod, under his breath. "He's lookin' for it; he's achin' for it! He gave me a look to-day that no man has given me in ten years and had eyes left open to look a second time. He'll get it!"

As he turned to follow his employer he saw the rec.u.mbent Tommy, and went out of his way far enough to give him a vicious kick.

"Get onto the wagons, you rum-keg, or you'll walk to Castonia!"

"Be jigged if I won't walk!" groaned Tommy, surveying the retreating back of the boss with sudden weak hatred. "So there was a man who saved my life to-day when I didn't know it! And there was another man who kicked me when I did know it! It's the chaney man he's after, and the chaney man was good to me! I'll make a fair fight of it if my legs hold out, and that's all any man could do."

The horses were still munching fodder, and the gladiators, thankful for an excuse to stop the fray, were stupidly listening to a harangue by the Honorable Pulaski, who was explaining what would be allowed and what would not be allowed in his camps.

Tommy Eye ducked around the bushes and took the road with a woodsman's lope, his wobbly knees getting stronger as the exercise cleared his brain.

A woodman's lope is not impressive, viewed with a sprinter's eye. Nor is a camel's stride. But either is a great devourer of distance. So it happened that Tommy Eye, sweat-streaked and breathing hard, caught up with the sluggish Castonia stage while it was negotiating the last rock-strewn hill a half-mile outside the settlement.

Dwight Wade, time-keeper of the Busters, heard the stertorous puffing, and looked around to see Tommy Eye clinging to the muddy axle and towing behind. Tommy divided an amiable and apologetic grin between Wade and the girl beside him.

"I'm only--workin' out--the--the budge!" Tommy explained, between the jerks of the wagon. "Don't mind me!"

Down the half-mile of dusty declivity into Castonia, the only smooth road between the railroad and the settlement, the stage made its usual gallant dash with chuckling axle-boxes and the spanking of splay hoofs.

And Tommy Eye came limply slamming on behind.

CHAPTER VI

AS FOUGHT BEFORE THE "IT-'LL-GIT-YE CLUB"

"We dug him out of his blankets, and hauled him out to the light-- His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but now he wanted to fight.

And screaming a string of curses, he struck as he raved and swore-- Floored Joe Lacrosse and the swamping boss and announced he was ready for more."

--The Fight at Damphy's.

Civilization sets her last outpost at Castonia in the plate-gla.s.s windows of Rodburd Ide's store. Civilization had some aggravating experiences in doing this. Four times hairy iconoclasts from the deep woods came down, gazed disdainfully at these windows as an effort to put on airs, and smashed them with rocks dug out of the dusty road. Four times Rodburd Ide collected damages and renewed the windows--and in the end civilization won out.

Those experienced in such things can tell a Castonia man anywhere by the pitch of his voice. Everlastingly, Umcolcus pours its window-jarring white waters through the Hulling Machine's dripping ledges. Here enters Ragm.u.f.f stream, bellowing down the side of Tumbled.i.c.k, a mountain that crowds Castonia close to the river. Most of the men of the settlement do their talking on the platform of Ide's store, with the spray spitting into their faces and the waters roaring at them. And go where he will, a Castonia man carries that sound in his ears and talks like a fog-horn.

The satirists of the section call Ide's store platform "The Blowdown."

In the woods a blowdown is a wreck of trees. On Ide's platform the loafers are the wrecks of men. Here at the edge of the woods, at the jumping-off place, the forest sets out its grim exhibits and mutely calls, "Beware!" There are men with one leg, men with one arm, men with no arms at all; there are men with hands maimed by every vagary of mischievous axe or saw. There are men with shanks like broomsticks--men who survived the agonies of freezing. There is always a fresh subscription-paper hung on the centre post in Ide's store, meekly calling for "sums set against our names" to aid the latest victim.

Wade, looking at this pathetic array of cripples as he slowly swung himself over the wheel of the stage, felt that he was in congenial company; for the foot that MacLeod had so brutally jabbed with his spikes had stiffened in its shoe. It ached with a dull, rancor-stirring pain. When he limped across the platform into the store, carrying the girl's valise, he hobbled ungracefully. The loungers looked after him with fraternal sympathy.

"The boss spiked him down to the deepo," advised Tommy, slatting sweat from his forehead with muddy forefinger. "He's the new time-keeper."

"Never heard of the boss calkin' the chaney man before," remarked Martin McCrackin, rapping his pipe against his peg-leg to dislodge the dottle.

Tommy twisted his face into a prodigious wink, jabbed a thumb over his shoulder towards the store door, and gazed archly around at the circle of faces.

"He cut the boss out with the Ide girl!" He whispered this hoa.r.s.ely.

The listeners looked at the door where Wade and the girl had disappeared, and then stared at one another. They had viewed the arrival of the stage with the dull lethargy of the hopelessly stranded. Now they displayed a reviving interest in life.

"And that was all he done to him--step on his foot?" demanded a thin man, impatiently twitching the stubs of two arms, off at the elbows.

"Old P'laski got in!" said Tommy, with meaning. "Used his old elbows for pick-holes and fended Colin off."

"It will git him, though!" said another. He had shapeless stumps of legs encased in boots like exaggerated whip-sockets.

"You bet it will git him!" agreed McCrackin.

Rodburd Ide, busy, chatty, accommodating little man, trotted out of the store at this instant with a handful of mail to distribute among his crippled patrons.

"That's what the river boys call this crowd here," he said, over his shoulder, to Wade, who followed him. "The 'It-'ll-git-ye Club.' I guess It _will_ get ye some time up in this section! Here's the last one, Mr.

Wade. Aholiah Belmore--that's the man with the hand done up. s.h.i.+ngle-saw took half his fin. Well, 'Liah, don't mind! No one ever saw a whole s.h.i.+ngle-sawyer. It's lucky it wasn't a snub-line that got ye. There's what a snub-line can do, Mr. Wade."