CHAPTER XV

SCOTT HEARS SOME RUMBLINGS OF THE OLD FEUD

Scott stopped for a day in Asheville to make some business arrangements for starting the logging operations in case he was awarded the contract and then hurried back to Caspar. He found Hopwood, who had constituted himself his faithful follower, waiting for him in the corner of the hotel yard.

“I knew you’d come back,” Hopwood remarked in a tone of extreme satisfaction.

“Why?” Scott asked. “Did any one think that I was not coming back?”

Hopwood nodded. “They all said you had run away like all the others, and Foster has been taking most of the credit for it.”

Scott ground his teeth. “I suppose that will set him up in business again with the rest of the family.”

“A lot of them believed it, but now that you have come back he will probably have to leave the country himself. None of them will believe him now.”

“Well, tell them that I have come back, Hopwood, and I’ve come back to stay. They will find out before I am through that I am not very badly scared after all.”

“Has any one taken the logging contract?” Hopwood asked eagerly. “It would help me if I could predict it right,” he added wistfully.

Scott looked at him curiously a moment. The more he saw of Hopwood the harder it was for him to believe him an idiot. In any event it was perfectly clear that he was devoted to him and he decided to make him his confidant. It could not do him much harm if the man of the iron hat did not keep faith in this and it might make him a closer friend.

“Yes, Hopwood, some one has bid on it. You can safely predict that the logging will begin in ten days, for—but you must not publish this part of it—if no one else takes the job I am going to resign and take it myself.”

“Oh!” Hopwood exclaimed with a gasp of satisfaction. “I won’t tell them but you don’t know how much good it will do me to know that.” And without waiting to make his usual mysterious disappearance he walked quickly into the woods to carry the news of Scott’s return.

Scott was not surprised to find that no one had responded to his call for bids. He had found out in Asheville that there was practically no chance of any one showing any interest in it. He hoped no one would. He had to confide his plans to the station agent because he had to send a number of telegrams. Probably Caspar had never done such a business in telegrams before in all its existence, even when the feud was at its height.

For the next week Scott devoted all his time to a careful study of the area which was to be logged. From breakfast till supper-time every day he hiked over the mountains, running out the boundary lines, sketching the topography and tentatively locating the logging roads. This work led him through the territory and by the cabins of many of the Waits but he did not see any of them. They seemed to be sulking in their tents.

It seemed to Scott to be a strange country. Long straight slopes stretched unbroken to the high, level ridges. They were grooved every quarter mile or less with shallow draws and not far below the ridge in these draws were springs which sent tiny, crystal-clear streams of ice-cold water trickling down into the valley. The low places and also many of the higher slopes were covered with a solid mat of rhododendron and laurel, so thick that a man was obliged to break or cut his way through it. It was the densest growth he had ever seen outside of the cane brakes of Florida. The great masses of white flowers made a wonderful sight, but after he had tried to run a line through the stuff for a couple of days he could no longer see the flowers.

But the ridges were the strangest of all. They were narrow but straight and level, so level that the old Indian trails followed them rather than the valleys. And the big red oaks came right up to the top. Only at long intervals did the ridges dip to a low pass; otherwise, they stretched for miles as level as the floor and were clear of underbrush.

It was on one of these level, open trails that Scott had the scare of his life. He had been familiar with razorback hogs in Florida. He had seen one tear a hound to pieces one day and had learned to fear the animals as he feared nothing else in the forest. Tall, thin and capable of great speed, they were entirely different from any hogs he had ever seen at home. Their heads were half as long as their bodies, with large tusks and powerful jaws, and they were fearless. Once they had made up their minds to charge, nothing would turn them. One had to kill them or get out of the way.

One morning as Scott was going out to work he saw an old sow with a litter of very small pigs in a clump of bushes beside the trail, and he gave her a wide berth. That evening on the way home he had forgotten all about her. He was absorbed in his plans for the logging job and wholly oblivious of his surroundings. The razorback never entered his head.

A large red oak three feet in diameter had fallen across the trail and Scott vaulted it mechanically, hardly knowing what he was doing. His feet had scarcely struck the ground when he heard a vicious “woof,” and the old sow darted out from under the other end of the log headed straight for him under a full head of steam.

Scott was frightened as he had never been frightened before. With one terrified spring he vaulted back over the log. That would have been sufficient protection from an ordinary pig, but a fallen tree meant nothing to a razorback. She cleared the tree without the slightest hesitation and was close behind him.

This unexpected jump so terrified Scott that he bolted like a frightened horse. He had never been a very fast runner but now he turned straight down the side of the mountain and made a new life record. It seemed to him that his feet were hitting the ground only about every thirty feet. Below him he saw a stream with high, steep banks, and at one point a tree had fallen across it. He made madly for that spot, somehow managed to stay on the log, tripped and fell in a heap on the other side. He scrambled to his feet expecting to find those ugly tusks at his very throat only to find instead that the old sow was fully satisfied with his retreat and was already trotting back up the slope to her babies.

Scott could not help laughing as he thought what a great show it would have been for a spectator. The conqueror of Foster Wait breaking the world’s record in his endeavors to get away from an angry pig. And yet it might have been serious, and he knew that he would run as fast or faster next time.

He was getting himself together for the climb back up the ridge when he noticed a deeply worn trail along the edge of the little creek. He thought at first that it was made by the razorbacks and the cattle which roamed around the mountains in considerable numbers, but he was surprised to find that the tracks were made by men, and some of them very recently.

Where could such a well-worn path as that lead to away up there on the mountainside? It might be a short cut over the ridge into the Tennessee valley, but why should so many people be traveling that way on foot? These people always rode horseback whenever they were going any considerable distance. He determined to follow it up and find out for himself. It was on the forest and it was his business to know about it.

The trail run obliquely upward across the face of the mountain and in the next draw it ducked into a dense patch of rhododendron. There it was very evident that the trail had been built for a purpose. It was cut out clear two feet wide and had been used so long that the stubs had all been worn down smooth.

While he was examining it he was startled by the sound of approaching voices, raised high in argument if not in an actual quarrel. At first the voices were too distant for the words to be distinguished. Scott had no reason to avoid these people whoever they might be, and it never occurred to him to hide till he caught a sentence distinctly.

“I tell you, Foster, it won’t do. You were licked and you are done for, and that is all there is about it.”

Scott did not recognize the voice, but he had every reason to believe that they were talking about him and he wanted to hear the rest of it. He slipped back of a big oak tree beside the trail and listened. The voices came nearer till he could distinguish both sides of the conversation.

“I know it would work.” It was Foster speaking now, and his voice was thick and sullen. “Why wouldn’t it work? If I started a fight, the Morgans would have to fight; and if they fought, the Waits would have to fight, and then we would clean them up. It’s time they were cleaned up. They kept us from getting that logging contract and they’ll keep us from getting anything else. I’m for cleaning them up, I tell you.”

“And I’m telling you that it won’t work,” the other voice answered curtly.

“Why won’t it?” Foster persisted. “Are you afraid of them?”

“Afraid of them?” the other exclaimed contemptuously. “No, but I am not fool enough to fall for your scheme. And neither will the others. You’re down and out. You know it and you think you can get back on your feet by starting a fight. Well, you can’t.”

Scott peeped around the tree and saw them standing at the entrance of the tunnel into the rhododendron. One, as he already knew, was Foster Wait. The other was a short man of medium build, and rather clean-cut features. He seemed wide awake and altogether different from the other Waits he had seen. Instinctively he felt from what Hopwood had said that this man must be Sewall Wait, the brains of the family.

The smaller man was staring silently at Foster with a manner showing both domination and disgust. Foster shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and looked uncertainly about him. He was unable to look Sewall steadily in the eye, but his braggart habit finally came to his rescue.

“Well, it doesn’t matter so much what you think. It is up to me to decide and if I say fight, you will have to fight,” and he swaggered off down the trail up which Scott had come.

Sewall looked after him contemptuously for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and turned into a faint trail which led straight down the mountain.

When they were both out of sight Scott came out of his hiding place. He decided to investigate the trail at some other time, and climbed back to the ridge. What he had just heard gave him something to think about. He knew now that there was nothing neutral about him. His sympathies were all with old Jarred and he hurried home to warn him of his danger.