CHAPTER XVI

IN THE PATH OF THE BIG WIND

"So we fellers of the camp, when the wind-spooks rave and ramp, We fasten up the dingle-door with spike and extry clamp; For it ain't a mite against 'em if the boldest chaps do hide When the big old trees go tumblin', crash and bang, on ev'ry side."

--_Ha'nt of Pamola._

John Barrett, millionaire, realized rather vaguely that he had left something on the bald poll of Jerusalem Knob. It was after he had grasped Dwight Wade's hand, both of them standing shelterless under the skies, the welcome rains beating into their faces.

John Barrett, millionaire, stumbling weariedly to shelter at the foot of Jerusalem Knob, having left something in that upper vastness where soul forgot the petty things, realized--vaguely again--that he had found what he had left. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt seemed to pass it to him in a hand-clasp.

On Jerusalem, John Barrett had left much of his insolence, more of his selfishness, and all of his vindictiveness. Dwight Wade, generous in his own triumph, had shamed the baser feelings out of him. And yet that new poise of a sincerer manliness seemed to be charmed away suddenly by the mere touch of Pulaski Britt's big hand. That hand represented the brutal tyranny of the barons of the woods. It was thrust out in welcome over the threshold of the wangan camp, and Britt hauled in his fellow-baron with boisterous greeting.

"It's been hell for all of us, John, but I reckon you've been in the hottest corner of it if what they tell me is true. I didn't have time to ask for any details, not with that infernal fire on my hands, but it isn't the first time that rascals have poked up fools in these woods to pay off old grudges against timber-land owners. I've hit back hard a few times myself. This time we'll hit hard enough to teach 'em a lesson that will stick awhile." He put his head out of the door and yelled an order to the cook.

"It--it may not be best to push things too hard," faltered Barrett, spreading his wet, blue hands to the blaze of the Franklin stove. "Things have come up that--"

"They've tried the same bluff on me," blustered the host. "They loaded old Lane up with threats of what he'd do. It's all conspiracy and blackmail. There's more behind it than we realize now. But we'll dig 'em out, Barrett. We've got to smash the whole thing now or they'll have us on the run. I didn't suppose Barnum Withee was the kind of man to work out a grudge the way he did, but it shows us the danger in bein' too easy with any of 'em. Old Lane is only crazy. It's this Wade we want to bang the hardest. I'll tell you what I believe, John. I'll bet cents to saw-logs he's been hired to come up here and start a rebellion. There are interests in this State that will do it. By Judas, in twenty-four hours I'll show 'em!"

The tacit partnership of honorable reparation bound by hand-clasp on Jerusalem had not the elements to make it endure in Pulaski Britt's domains, with Pulaski Britt to sound his old-time rallying call of greed and tyranny. That earlier partnership, sealed by the arms f Old King Spruce, had never been dissolved, and Barrett was once more becoming "Stumpage John," cold and hard and calculating.

"Look here, Pulaski," he blurted out, in sudden confidence, "there's a little more to this than you understand just now. I'm in a devil of a position. I--I--" He hesitated, staring into the fire and waving his hands slowly in the steam that rose from his sodden garments.

"I haven't done just right, I suppose, but there are reasons why, that a man like you will understand. I just left that Wade fellow up on the top of Jerusalem. We've had a talk. He didn't understand very well."

"Did he offer to trade something for the sake of gettin' that daughter of yours that he's in love with?" demanded Britt, maliciously.

"I don't know," confessed the other. "I'm under obligations to him, Pulaski. He cut me loose from a tree to-day in Pogey Notch. In another ten minutes the fire would have got me."

"Great Jehosaphat!" exploded the host. "Tried to kill you! A timber grudge carried that far!" He stamped about the little camp. His face wrinkled with apprehension and fury. He had a sudden vivid mind-picture of his own reign of tyranny, and realized that if John Barrett had been attacked, Pulaski Britt had more reason to fear. "It's a call for a lynchin', John," he said, hoarsely. "And I've got a crew that will do it."

"It was Lane that tied me--the fire-station warden," Barrett went on.

"And Withee turned you over to him, knowin' he'd do it!" stormed the baron. "His men blabbed it that Lane had taken you. Withee, Wade--we'll clean out the whole coop of 'em!"

But John Barrett did not seem to warm up to this plan of vengeance. He still kept his eyes on the fire. His shoulders were hunched forward with something of abjectness in their droop.

"You haven't got some whiskey handy, have you, Pulaski?" he asked, plaintively. "I don't feel well. I've had an awful night and day."

Britt brought the liquor from a cupboard, cursing soulfully and urging vengeance. But after Barrett drank from the pannikin he leaned his face to the blaze again and broke upon the Honorable Pulaski's vicious monologue.

"I've told the wrong end first--but there are some things easier to say than others. It was Linus Lane who tied me to that tree and left me to die there, but"--Barrett rolled his head sideways and gave Britt a queer glance from his eye-corners--"did you ever see my daughter Elva, Pulaski?"

Britt blinked as though trying to understand this sudden shifting of topic, and wagged slow nod of assent.

"Have you ever seen that girl of the Skeet settlement--the one that doesn't belong to them?" Barrett half choked over the question.

"Have I seen her?" roared the Honorable Pulaski, no longer paying attention to incongruity of questions. "Why, that's the draggle-tailed lightnin'-bug that set this fire that we've been fightin' for forty-eight hours, and that only this rain stopped from bein' a fifty-thousand-acre crown-fire! Have I seen her! I was there when she set it, and only the grace o' God and that Wade's fist saved her from bein' shot, and shot by me! I would have killed her like I'd kill a quill-pig!"

Barrett did not look up from the fire.

"Then you've seen both those girls, you say? I haven't seen this one in the woods here. But this Wade told me to-day that they very much resemble each other. He has heard some gossip and is making threats. He seems to think I ought to take the girl and care for her."

Britt began a bitter diatribe, coupling the name of Wade and the girl as examples of all that is inimical to timber interests and timber owners--but he checked himself suddenly as soon as his native shrewdness mastered his passion. A flicker in his eyes showed that a light had burst upon his mind. He strode back and forth behind Barrett's stool, and gazed down upon the stumpage king's bent back.

"Look here, John," he demanded, bluffly, at last, "was there any truth in the story that was limpin' round in these woods about you almost twenty years ago? There was a woman in it--somebody's wife. I've forgotten who."

"It was Lane's wife," admitted Barrett, finding confession good for the soul of one who stood bitterly in need of practical advice--and Pulaski Britt was nothing if not practical. "I was up here prospecting, and she was bound to follow me up to camp, and I was infernal fool enough to let her. And when it came time for me to go out of the woods I couldn't take her--you can see that for yourself! I thought I had provided for her--I would have done it, but she dropped out of sight, and I couldn't go hunting around and stirring up gossip. Same way about the child."

"Young one has had a nice, genteel bringin'-up," remarked the Honorable Pulaski, sarcastically. Hard though his nature was, he had the sincerity of the woods, and he felt sudden contempt for this man who had uprooted for one brief sniff of its perfume a woods blossom that he could not wear.

"I didn't realize it until Lane told me at Withee's camp. I had hoped she had fallen into good hands. It's a devil of a position to be in," the other mourned, returning to his prior lament.

"Well," remarked Britt, inexorably, "you can't exactly complain because you are now gettin' only a little of what Lane and the girl have been gettin' a whole lot of all these years. It ain't any use to whine to me, John. I don't pity you much. I've been hard with men, but, by Cephas, I've never been soft with women! It don't pay."

"It seems as though you ought to be willin' to advise me a little," pleaded Barrett. "I'm ready to do what I can for the girl, now that I've found out about her. But Lane insisted on my taking her out with me and declaring her to the world as my daughter. And when I refused he tied me to the tree."

"Oh, ho! It wasn't just for the old original revenge, then?" queried Pulaski, his expression indicating a more charitable view of "Ladder" Lane's assault on the vested timber interests as represented by Stumpage John Barrett. "Well, if the girl is your young one she ought to have a chance!"

In his turn, Barrett got up and paced the floor. "Such a thing would kill my chances of being the next governor of this State, and you and the whole timber crowd have got a lot at stake there."

"Well, I've got to admit, havin' played politics myself somewhat," said Britt, unconsolingly, "that a quiet little frost of scandal will nip off a budding leaf that a wind like this wouldn't start."

He tapped the frame of the chattering window. In the hush of their voices they heard the wind volleying through the trees and roaring high overhead among the black clouds. Night had fallen. The crew had long before finished supper, and the cook had twice summoned the inattentive two in the wangan to a second table spread more sumptuously.

"And what kind of a trade is it your friend Wade wants to make with you?" inquired Britt. "Takin' the thing by and large, you must be in for a prime hold-up. If he should say, 'Your daughter or your life--political life!'--I reckon you'd have to change your mind about his qualifications as a son-in-law, wouldn't you?" He eyed Barrett keenly and heard his oaths with relish. "You see," persisted the host, "though old Lane is probably out of this for good, after trying to kill you, and you can handle Barnum Withee and the rest of these woods cattle in one way or another, this Wade chap is sittin' across from you with about every trump in the deck under his thumb. What does he say he wants?"

"He doesn't say," muttered Barrett. "He hasn't asked for anything. He's thinking it over."

"It's the cat and the mouse, and him the cat!" suggested the Honorable Pulaski, with manifest intent to irritate. "I should have most thought you would have thrown your arms around his neck after your rescue and yelled in his ear: 'My daughter is yours, noble man! Take her and my money, and live happy ever after!' These fellows that write novels always have 'em do that sort of thing--and the novel-writers ought to know!"

"There's no novel about this thing!" retorted Barrett, angrily. "My girl knows whom she is expected to marry--and she'll marry him when the right time comes. And it won't be a college dude without one dollar to rub against another! I'm in a devil of a hole, Pulaski, but do you think for one minute that I'm going to let that Wade make a slip-noose of this thing and hang me up with my heels kicking air? I'll either choke him with thousand-dollar bills, or--or--"

He glanced at Britt and forbore to finish the sentence.

The door opened just then and Tommy Eye, teamster, poked in his grizzled head.

"Cook has lost his voice hollerin' 'Beans!' gents," he reported, and Britt whirled on his heel and led the way out.

"After supper, after supper, John!" he snapped, testily, when the other repeated his plea for advice. "We'll come back here and find a plan blossoming in our cigar smoke." They hurried away to the cook-camp, bending against the rush of the wind. "Put some wood on that fire, Tommy," Britt called over his shoulder.

With the scent of the inebriate, Tommy had sniffed whiskey when he opened the camp door; his drunkard's eye caressed the bottle that the Honorable Pulaski had forgotten to replace in the cupboard. He stood dusting from his sleeves the bark litter of the wood he had brought and softly snuffled the moisture at the corners of his mouth as he gazed. One wild impulse suggested that he take the bottle and run into the woods.

"No," said Tommy, aloud, in order that his voice might brace his determination. "It would be stealin', and, bless God, Tommy Eye never stole when he was sober. I may have stole when I was drunk and didn't know it, but I never stole when I was sober." He paused. "I wish I wasn't sober," he sighed. He took up the bottle, turned it in his grimy hands, gustfully studied the streakings of its oil on the glass, and at last sniffed at the open mouth. "Ah-h-h-h, rich men have the best, and they have plenty. Some people don't think it is wrong to steal from rich men. I do. But if he was here he'd probably say: 'Tommy, you have brought the wood--you have mended the fire. It is a cold night, and sure the wind is awful! Tommy, take one drink with me and work the harder for P'laski Britt on the morrer.'"

He took the bottle away from his nose, stared at the window's black outline, listened to the clattering frame, and muttered, again sighing: "Sure and them wor-rds don't sound just like the wor-rds that P'laski Britt would say, but in a night like this it isn't always easy to hear aright. I wouldn't steal--but I'll dream I heard him say 'em. 'One drink, Tommy,' I hear him say."

He set the bottle to his lips, tipped it, closed his eyes, and drank until at last, breathless and choking, he felt the bottle suck dry.

"Bless the saints!" he gasped; "it was one drink he said, and sure with my eyes shut I couldn't see how big was the drink." He felt the thrill of the mighty potation from head to toes. His meek spirit became exalted. "If I should go out now," he mumbled, "he would say that I stole it. But I will stay here with the bottle in my hand just as it was when I took the one drink. I will show him. And, after all, it is not much he can do to me--now!" He rubbed a consolatory palm over his glowing stomach. He stood there, beginning at last to rock slowly from heel to toe, until he heard voices and footsteps. The preoccupied barons had not lingered over their repast. "No, I'll not run away. I'll not steal," muttered Tommy Eye, "but--but I'll just crawl under the bunk, here, to think over the snatch of a speech I'll make to him. And a bit later I'll feel more like bein' kicked."

From the safe gloom of his covert he noted that they had brought back with them the boss, Colin MacLeod. Britt turned down the wooden button over the latch of the door and gave his guests cigars.

They smoked in silence for a while, and then Britt spat with a snap of decision into the open fire and spoke.

"MacLeod, a while ago, when we were talkin' about Rodburd Ide's girl, Nina, I told you that I wouldn't interfere in your woman affairs again--or you told me not to interfere--I forgot just which!" There was a little touch of grim irony in his tones--irony that he promptly discarded as he went on. "About that Ide girl--you ought to know that you can't catch her--after what has happened. I know something about women myself. The girl never took to you. If she had cared anything about you she would have run to you and cried over you when you were lying there in the road where Dwight Wade tossed you. That's woman when she's in love with a man. Don't break in on what I'm saying! This isn't any session of cheap men sittin' down to gossip over love questions. It may sound like it, but it's straight business. Don't be a fool any longer. But there's a girl that you have courted and a girl that thinks a lot of you, because I heard her say so one night on Jerusalem Knob. You ought to marry that girl."

The Honorable Pulaski again checked retort by sharp command.

"That girl isn't of the blood of the Skeets and Bushees, and you know it. She is a pretty girl, and once she is away from that gang and dressed in good clothes she will make a wife that you'll be proud of. Now, what do you say, Colin? Will you marry that girl?"

MacLeod stared from the face of his employer to the face of John Barrett, the latter displaying decidedly more interest than the questioner. Then he stood up and dashed his cigar angrily into the fire. Blood flamed on his high cheek-bones and his gray eyes glittered.

"What has marryin' got to do with my job, or what have you got to do with my marryin'?" he asked, in hot anger.

The Honorable Pulaski continued bland and conciliating.

"Keep on all your clothes, Colin, my boy," he counselled. "Don't say anything to me that you'll be sorry for after I've shown you that I'm only doin' you a friendly turn. But I've found out a mighty interesting thing about this girl--Kate Arden, they call her. As a friend of yours I'm givin' you the tip. It would be too bad to have a girl with a nice tidy little sum of money comin' to her slip past you when all you have to do is to reach and take her."

The boss's face was surly.

"You must have been talkin' with some one in Barn Withee's crew," he suggested.

"And what does Withee's crew say?" demanded Britt, with heat.

"It wasn't a sewin'-circle I was attendin' out on that fire-line," retorted MacLeod, with just as much vigor. "There was somethin' bein' talked, but I didn't stop to listen."

"Look here, MacLeod," cried his employer. Britt came close to him and clutched the belt of his wool jacket. "There are some nasty liars in these woods just now. There are some of them that will go to state-prison for attempted blackmail. You are too bright a man not to realize which is your own side. I know you well enough to believe that all the lunatics and slanderers this side of Castonia couldn't turn you against your friends. And you've got no two better friends than John Barrett and I."

"I'm not gainsaying it, Mr. Britt. But what has joinin' this matrimonial agency of yours got to do with your friendship or my work?"

"I've found out, Colin, that this girl has got money comin' to her from her folks. She doesn't know about it yet. No one knows about it, except us here. She never belonged to the Skeets and Bushees. She was stolen. This money has been waitin' for her. Barrett and I are bank-men, and things like this come to our attention when no one else would hear of it. There's--there's--" Britt paused and slid a look at Barrett from under an eyebrow cocked inquiringly. Barrett slyly spread ten fingers. "There's ten thousand dollars comin' to her in clean cash, Colin. Now, what do you think of that?"

"I think it's a ratty kind of a story," said MacLeod, bluntly.

Britt's temper flared.

"Don't you accuse me of lyin'," he roared. "The girl has got the money comin', I say."

"Maybe it _is_ comin'," replied the boss, doggedly; "but has she got any name comin'? Has she got any folks comin'? Has she got anything comin' except somebody's hush-money?"

The woodsman's keen scenting of the trail discomposed the Honorable Pulaski for a moment. But after a husky clearing of his throat he returned to the work in hand.

"Folks, you fool! You can't dig folks up out of a cemetery. If her folks had been alive they'd have hunted up their girl years ago. They were good folks. You needn't worry about that. There's no need now to bother the girl about her folks or the money. She wouldn't know how to handle it if she had it in her own hands. It needs a man to care for her and the cash. We don't want a cheap hyena to fool her and get it. You're the man, Colin. Marry her, and the ten thousand will be put into your fist the day the knot is tied."

"It sounds snide and I won't do it," growled MacLeod, seeming to fairly bristle in his obstinacy. "Not if she was Queen of Sheby."

"Le' him go, then!" murmured a voice under the bunk. "Here's a gen'lum puffick--ick--ly willin'."

The Honorable Pulaski turned to behold the simpering face of drunken Tommy Eye peering wistfully from his retirement.

"I'll do it ch-cheaper, so 'elp me!" said Tommy, pounding down the empty bottle to mark emphasis.

"Yank that drunken hog out o' there, MacLeod!" roared Britt, after a preface of horrible oaths. And when Tommy stood before him, swaying limply in the boss's clutch, he cuffed him repeatedly, first with one hand, then with the other. The smile on the man's face became a sickly grimace, but he did not whimper.

"'Spected kickin'," he murmured. "Jus' soon be cuffed." He held up the empty bottle that he still clung to desperately. "Want to 'splain 'bout one drink--" he began. But Britt wrenched the bottle from his hand, raised it as though to beat out Tommy's brains, and, relenting, smashed it into a corner.

"So you've laid there and listened to our private business," he said, malevolently. "You've heard more than is good for you, Eye."

"Didn't hear nossin'," protested Tommy. "Was thinkin' up speech. Jus' heard him say he wouldn't marry--marry--"

"Marry who?"

"'Queen of Sheby,' says he, with all her di'monds. I'll marry her. I'll settle down wiz Queen of Sheby."

"He's too drunk to know anything," said MacLeod. "Open the door, Mr. Britt, and I'll toss him out."

And he flung the soggy Tommy out on the carpet of pine-needles with as little consideration as though he were a bag of oats.

He turned at the door and looked from Britt to Barrett.

"You've put a big thing up to me, gents, and you've sprung it on me like a crack with a sled-stake. If I got dizzy and answered you short it was your own fault. Give me a night to sleep on it."

Outside he twisted his hand into the collar of Tommy Eye and started towards the main camp, dragging the inebriate. "I'll see that he keeps his mouth shut, gents," he called back to them.

"You needn't worry, John," announced Britt, closing the door and pulling out another cigar. "He'll do it." He waited for the sulphur to burn from the match, and lighted his tobacco, a smile of triumph wrinkling under his beard.

"You don't usually tackle Pulaski D. Britt for good, practical advice without gettin' it," he went on. "The girl is crazy after MacLeod. You'll find MacLeod square when he makes a promise. He's got fool notions about those things. And when she's married to him and settled down here in these woods, where she belongs, the chap that wants to make her Exhibit A in a slander against John Barrett will find himself up against a mighty tough proposition. You see that, don't you? Now the next thing is to get her out of the hands of that gang that want to use her against you."

He mused a moment.

"All that we need to do is to send a man up to Jerusalem to-morrow, and say that you're all ready to start for outside and propose to take the girl along. If any one in this world has any rights over her, you have. They can't refuse. And now we'll go to bed, John, for if ever two men needed sleep, I reckon we're the ones."

But it was not unbroken slumber that came to them. The big winds outside roared with the sound of a bursting avalanche. Over the camp the sawing limbs of the interlaced crowns shrieked and groaned. There were deeper, further, and more mystic sounds, like mighty 'cellos. And when the great blow was at its height the wangan camp, built upon the roots of the splay-foot spruces, swayed with the writhing of the roots, creaked in its timbers, and seemed to toss like a craft on a crazy sea. There were noises near at hand in the woods like the detonations of heavy guns. Every now and then the earth shivered, and thunderous echoes boomed down the forest aisles.

"Do you hear 'em John?" called Britt, at last. He had long been awake, and had marked the restless stirrings of the other in the bunk below him.

"I've been listening an hour," said Barrett, despondently, "and it's big stuff that's coming down. Our loss by fire was small change to what this means to us, Pulaski. Withee has devilled my lands until there isn't a wind-break left."

A roar like the awful voice of a park of artillery throbbed past them on the volleying wind.

"I feel as though it was kissing a thousand dollars good-bye every time I hear one of those noises," said Britt. "The devil can play jack-straws in the Umcolcus region after this night, and find a new bunch every day."

At last they looked dismally out on the dawn. The great gale had blown overhead and away, the rearguard clouds chasing it, and the hard growth, stripped of every vestige of leaf, gave pathetic testimony to the bitterness of the conflict of the night.

The two lumber barons, staring anxiously up at the slopes of the black growth for signs of ravage, were confronted by Tommy Eye, meek, repentant, and shaky.

"Sure, the witherlicks and the swamp swogons did howl last night, gents, and they all did say as how Tommy Eye ought to be ashamed of the size of his drink. And I've come back to you to get my kick." He turned humbly.

The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt accepted the invitation with alacrity, and dealt the kick with a vigor that fetched a squawk from the teamster. The timber tyrant's mood that morning welcomed such an opportunity, even as a surcharged cloud welcomes a lightning-rod or a farm-house chimney. But once the kick had been dealt the Honorable Pulaski felt less wire on the edge of his meat-axe temper.

"And now I'll take my discharge," said Tommy. "MacLeod gave me an order on you for my pay."

Britt snatched away the paper and tore it up.

"Get into that hovel and look after your horses." But when Tommy turned to go his employer called him back. "I've got another job for you just now, you snake-chaser. You need to chew fresh air, and you'll find a lot of it on top of Jerusalem. I don't know just how much you understood of our business in the wangan camp last night, Eye, and I don't care. You know me well enough to understand that if you ever blab any of it I'll have your ha' slet out of you!" Tommy cringed under a furious glare. "It will depend on how well you do an errand for me now whether or not I feed you to bobcats. You get that, do you?"

Again the teamster bowed his wistful assent.

"I wish I hadn't let Sheriff Rodliff and his men leave," remarked Britt to "Stumpage John," eying Tommy with some disfavor. "But perhaps this fool can do the trick better than a sheriff's posse. Sending the posse might make talk and stir suspicions."

"The quieter it's done the better," suggested Barrett. "After my talk with Wade--which was pretty soft, as I remember it--it will seem natural for me to send after the girl--and by just such a messenger as this."

"So we'll send the fool--you're right!" affirmed Britt. "Tommy," he directed, wagging a thick finger under the man's attentive nose to mark his commands, "you hump up to that fire station on Jerusalem as quick as leg-work will get you there, and you'll find a young girl. There are not enough young girls up there so that you'll make any mistake in the right one. You tell the one that's in charge, or whoever claims to be in charge, that the girl has been sent for. You'll probably find that fellow Dwight Wade takin' the responsibility. Tell him that it's all right, and that the gentleman he made the talk with is prepared to back up all promises. Bring the girl back with you."

"Girls was never much took with me, and I never was handy in makin' up to girls," protested Tommy, his face puckering in alarm. "She prob'ly won't come, and then I'll get kicked again."

"You'll get kicked again mighty sudden if you don't do as I tell you, and do it quick and do it right!" roared Britt, starting off the camp platform. And Tommy, cowed by his tyrant, stood not upon the order of his going. He was trotting with a dog-waddle when he disappeared up the Jerusalem trail.

"He ought to be back by noon," said Britt. "In the mean time we'll eat breakfast and then cruise for blowdowns. And I'm thinkin' it isn't goin' to be a very humorous forenoon for timber-land owners."

Nor was it. Dolefully and silently they traversed wastes of splintered devastation, blocked ram-downs, choked twitch-roads, and hideous snarls of cross-piled timber.