Part 7

"Not much," said Joe. "But now I can tell you that I've been thrown down hard. What you spoke of is very much off." He outlined what had occurred. She listened, indignant but puzzled.

"But--but you seem so cheerful about it. I don't understand. Weren't you fond of her? And if you weren't, why did you tell her you were? And if you were, why----"

"Stop!" cried Joe. "Don't get me in so deep." He became serious. "Jack, most people make mistakes at times. Edith and I made one together. I think we both saw it as soon as it was made, but it took all this time to straighten out. I'm sure she's relieved, and, though it doesn't seem a nice thing to say, I'm just tickled to death."

"Well," said Jack judicially, "I don't approve of flirting, and I never flirt myself. I think she was flirting straight through, and I don't know whether to blame you or not. But, anyway, I'm awfully glad it's all off."

"It's great," said Joe. "Now I can get down to work."

There was, indeed, much to be done. Wright looked after the manufacturing and sales end of the business and looked after it well; McKenna was an excellent walking boss; MacNutt, Deever, and Tobin were good, practical foremen. But the concern lacked a strong, competent executive head who knew the logging business intimately, who could decide at once and finally the questions that must ever arise, and who could command the loyalty and unquestioning obedience of his men in the camps.

For there is a vast difference in the mind of a lumber jack between working for wages merely and working for an employer. For the one he will do a day's work; for the other he will do a day's work and a half, with the pay as an entirely secondary consideration. Just as great commanders have fired their troops with enthusiasm to the point of performing practical impossibilities through pride in them and in themselves and that magic, mystic thing called _esprit du corps_, so there have been employers who, in time of need, command the unswerving, uncomplaining loyalty of the shantyman. For such men he will work without grumbling in all kinds of weather; he will take all manner of chances on land or water; he will fight for them at the drop of a hat; and, finally, he will throw his loyalty into each lick of axe and pull of saw, so that at the end of the season it may be measured in saw logs.

Nor does this depend wholly or even materially upon the treatment accorded him by the "Old Man"--save that he must have a square deal. He may be driven like a mule, cursed in language for which he would kill any one else, fed poorly and housed worse; but if the essential thing is possessed by the boss the lumber jack will not grumble overmuch nor ask for his time.

And this essential is mysterious and hard to define. Much as the shantyman admires physical prowess, it is not a prime requisite. But courage is, and so is firmness in dealing with any situation. The boss must never recede from a position once taken. He may listen to advice, but he must decide for himself and by himself. He must never argue, he must never give reasons. He must hold himself aloof and above his men, and yet not overdo it. He must be approachable but dignified, friendly but not familiar. He must be boss, first, last, and all the time, and from his decisions, right or wrong, there must be no appeal and of them no slackness of enforcement.

William Kent had filled this bill. With his passing a place became vacant. Some of the old hands hired again into the Kent camps; more did not come back, but went to others of renown. New blood drifted in, and a generation arose which literally knew not Joseph--to whom the name of Kent meant nothing. The old hands would have fought at one word uttered against the "Old Man's" son, whom most of them had never seen, but they would have done so on general principles merely, and not because they cherished any particular feeling toward him. Neither walking boss nor foreman could take the place which William Kent had filled.

Thus the work of the camps was no better and no worse than the average. The foremen's capability ensured fair effort. But the something necessary to weld the crews into a supremely efficient machine was lacking.

The winter opened hard and dry, without snowfall. Day after day the wind wailed through the bare arms of the deciduous trees and moaned in the feathery tops of the pines. The ground was frozen to an iron hardness, and the little lakes, creeks, and rivers were bound in black ice, smooth and unbroken.

At the Wind River camp the logging roads--veins leading to main arteries which in turn led to the river and the banking grounds--were useless. By dint of effort and good luck logs could be got to the various skidways located at convenient places beside the roads, and piled there, but they could not be transported farther. The big sleighs with their nine-foot bunks, built to accommodate ten thousand feet and upward of logs at a load, lay idle. MacNutt prayed for snow, or, rather, cursed the lack of it.

When it came, with continued cold weather, it was hard, dry, and powdery. It had no bottom. It gritted like sand beneath the sleigh-shoes, and they went through it to the ground, even without a load. To obviate this and to get going in some way MacNutt put the sprinklers to work. These were huge tank affairs on runners, drawn by from four to six horses. At the top of the tank was a stout, wooden triangle with a block. A wire rope ran through the block. At one end of the rope was a barrel; at the other end was a horse. The horse walked away; the barrel, filled at a water-hole cut in the ice, ran up an inclined, rungless ladder to the top of the tank, where it dumped its contents automatically. The water found its exit from the tank through auger holes bored in the rear, controlled by a closely fitting trap door. Thus the roads were flooded, they froze, and the hauling began.

So far MacNutt had seen nothing of Rough Shan McCane. Occasionally on a Sunday, when work was suspended, one of the latter's men would drift over, but the gang kept very much to themselves. There was no indication of undue sociability. Still MacNutt, on the principle that storms always brew in fine weather, kept a very open pair of eyes and ears. Some of the men, he knew, could not resist liquor; given access to it they would become drunk as certainly as effect ever follows cause. Over these weak vessels, then, he kept watch.

It was shortly after the road went into operation that he found the first sign of trouble. A swamper, named Flett, was trimming the top of a fallen tree. MacNutt observed the listless rise and fall of the man's axe in high displeasure. It fell almost of its own weight; there was no power to the blow, and instead of being recovered and swung up again with vim for another stroke the blade lay for an appreciable instant in the gash.

"You, Flett," rasped MacNutt, "I'll have no sojerin' on this job! Understand?"

The man turned, startled, exhibiting a pair of reddened, bloodshot eyes.

"Who's sojerin'?" he growled.

"Wake up an' work, ye damned lazy dog!" roared MacNutt. "Take a man's pay, eat a man's grub, an' then loaf on the job, would ye, ye slab-mouthed, slouchin' son of sin?" For the first time he noticed the man's eyes, and swore a great oath. "Ye've been drinkin'!"

"I ain't," Flett denied sullenly.

"Ye lie!" barked MacNutt. "Where did ye get it?"

"Go to blazes!" said Flett.

MacNutt caught him by the throat, crooked a knee, and threw him back down across the log with a shock that almost broke his spine.

"Talk, ye dog, or I'll kill ye!" he gritted; and Flett, staring up helpless and half stunned into the savage face of the foreman, gave up.

"Regan and me got a bottle apiece from a man in McCane's camp."

MacNutt jerked him to his feet and turned him loose. "Get yer time to-night and hike in the morning!" he ordered. "You're fired! Not because ye got drunk, but for bein' no use, drunk or sober."

He sought Regan. Regan was doing a man's work, and doing it well.

"I've fired Flett," said MacNutt without preliminary. "I'll have no booze in this camp, Regan."

Regan, who was made of different stuff than his fellow-transgressor, spat on the dry snow and regarded the foreman with a level stare.

"Do I get my time?" he asked.

"Not unless you want it," MacNutt replied. "I can do with ye or without ye. Suit yourself. But I'll have no more of it."

"A drink now an' then hurts no man," said Regan.

"It raises Cain with a camp, and you know it," MacNutt retorted.

"That's true enough," admitted Regan, who was not unreasonable, "but the boys over to McCane's camp shoved it at us. They've plenty there."

MacNutt said no more. He could not forbid his men from strolling on Sunday, when there was nothing else to do, over the few miles which separated the two camps. But he could and did issue a warning that any man bringing liquor into the camp would get his time forthwith.

He saw no man drunk, but the little signs were unmistakable. The percentage of quarrels and fights became higher; the bunk-house at night, usually noisy, was now uproarious; some of the men obeyed with less alacrity and grumbled with a great deal more; and through the entire crew there spread a spirit of devil-may-care slackness very hard indeed upon a foreman.

One Sunday MacNutt shouldered an axe and took the well-marked trail which led through the forest to McCane's camp. Arrived at the compass line dividing the limits, he sat down and lit his pipe. For an hour he waited, smoking thoughtfully, watching the fluffy, impudent whiskey-jacks. At the end of that time three men appeared down the trail from McCane's. One carried a sack over his shoulder, and the sack bulged suggestively in the shape of a two-gallon jug. MacNutt tapped out his pipe and stepped into the trail.

"Where are you men headin' for?" he asked.

"None o' your business," replied the man with the sack.

"What's in that sack?" MacNutt demanded.

"Cold tea," answered the man, and the others laughed. MacNutt shut his lips grimly.

"Go back and take your booze with you," he ordered; "and don't let me catch you this side of that line again."

"Must think you own the woods," said he of the jug, slipping the bag from his shoulder in readiness for trouble. "You go to hell!"

The axe resting on MacNutt's shoulder leaped forward and down in a sweeping stroke. There was a crash of crockery and a sudden strong odour of alcohol; following these a tremendous burst of profanity. The three men rushed at MacNutt.

The foreman was not foolish enough to meet three hardened "bully-boys" with his fists. His axe flashed up and just missed the head of the leader in its descent. There was such evident deadly sincerity in the blow that the men paused. MacNutt gave them no time. He charged them instantly, axe aloft, and, prudence getting the better of anger, they ran for their lives. MacNutt followed for a short distance, shouted a final warning, and returned to camp. He did not think that he had put a stop to the contraband traffic, but he had fired the first gun and made his attitude clear.

The following day, as he was overseeing the work, Rough Shan McCane came striding through the snow.

"What's this I hear about your chasing three of my men with an axe?" he demanded.

"Well, what about it?" asked MacNutt indifferently, and the men near at hand listened with all their ears.

"This much," said Rough Shan truculently. "My men have a right in the woods, an' not you nor anny one else will stop them going where they like."

"Well, I did stop them," retorted MacNutt. "I smashed a jug of booze they were bringing to my camp, and I'd have split their heads if they hadn't run."

This was news to the Kent men. MacNutt rose several notches in their estimation. Regan, who had expected to share the contents of the jug and had been disappointed by its non-arrival, whispered to Devlin:

"Ain't ould Mac th' bully-boy? I'd 'a' give a week's pay to 'a' seen it."

"A jug of booze among fifty men!" sneered Rough Shan. "What's that? Can't ye let the boys have a drink if they want it? An' if it was a bar'l ain't ye man enough to be boss of yer own camp?"

"When I want your help to run it I'll send for you," rasped MacNutt. "There's been booze comin' over from your camp, an' I'm goin' to stop it; an' the way I stop it is my business."

"If you lay out a man of mine I'll take you to pieces," threatened Rough Shan. "I done it once, an' I'll do it again."

MacNutt's eyes blazed. He caught Regan's axe and tossed it on the snow before McCane. Himself he seized Devlin's.

"If you want a fight pick up that axe and go to it!" he cried.

McCane was rough and tough, but he had come to run a bluff rather than to look for serious trouble, and a fight with axes was too cold-blooded a proposition, even for him.

"I'll go ye with fists an' feet in a minute," he offered.

"No," MacNutt refused. "Take an axe. I want to kill ye!"

McCane was bluffed, to the huge delight of the Kent men.

"I'm no damn fool, if you are," he said. "Leave my men alone, an' I'll leave you alone. But if you don't, I'll come over and take you apart."

"Bring your own axe," said MacNutt. "Now you get out o' here."

This conversation, retailed at the camp by Devlin, Regan, and others, with such additions, mainly blasphemous, as the imagination of the individual narrator could suggest, sent MacNutt's stock booming. The lumber jack loves a fighter, and a man who could run three of McCane's crew out of the woods and bluff Rough Shan himself was one after their own hearts. Regan, himself a rough-and-tumble artist of considerable ability, voiced the sentiments of the better men.

"I like me drink as well as anny man; but ould Mac is boss, an' what he says goes wid me, after this. I'll save me thirst till the drive is down, an' then--" An uplifting of the eyes and a licking of the lips expressed more than mere words.

But many of the men did not see it in that way. If they could get liquor they would drink it. Visitors from McCane's camp came empty-handed, and Kent's men seldom went there. And yet there was liquor in the camp!

MacNutt could not account for it. He pondered the problem over many pipes. "They get it somewhere," he said to himself. "For a week not a man has gone to McCane's and not a man of his has been here. There's only one answer. They've got a _cache_."

Having reached this conclusion by the Holmes process of elimination, he began a new line of investigation; and he was struck by the popularity of the tote road as a promenade. There was no reason why the men should not walk on it, and it bore directly away from McCane's camp, but in the light of his deduction the fact had to be explained.

MacNutt walked out the tote road. Over a mile from camp he saw a blazed tree. With this as a base he began a systematic search, and finally found beneath the butt of a windfall a small keg containing rye whiskey of peculiarly malignant quality. In the keg was a spigot, so that each visitor might fill a bottle for himself.

MacNutt did not demolish the keg. Instead he made a flying trip to camp. When he returned he carried one bottle of horse liniment, half a pound of cayenne pepper, a tin of mustard, two boxes of "Little Giant" pills, a cake of soap, and a huge plug of black chewing tobacco. All these he introduced to the keg's interior and replaced the spigot. This took time. Afterward he took fifteen minutes' violent exercise in shaking the keg.

Thus it was that Hicks, up-ending Chartrand's bottle with a grin of pure anticipation, suddenly choked and gagged, for he had taken two mighty swallows before the taste reached his toughened palate. Now two swallows may not make a summer, but they may make a very sick lumber jack. The winter forest echoed to the sounds of upheaval. Between paroxysms Hicks cursed Chartrand. The latter regarded him in amazement.

"W'at's de mattaire wit' you, hey?" he queried. "Mo' Gee! I t'ink you eat too moche grub dat you ain't chaw. S'pose you tak one leetle drink, encore, for help hold heem down."

"I'll kill you, you blasted pea-soup!" howled Hicks. "I'll kick your backbone up through your hat; I'll----" Here circumstances over which he had no control interrupted him.

"I' t'ink you go crazee, me," said Chartrand. "You eat lak one dam beeg _cochon_--de pork, de bean, de bread an' molass'--_tous les choses_. All right. I tak heem one leetle drink, _moi-meme_. _A votre sante, mon ami!_"

He grinned pleasantly at Hicks and tilted the bottle to his own mouth, rolling a beatific eye as the liquid gurgled down. Suddenly he choked as Hicks had done.

"_Sacre nom du bon Dieu!_" he shrieked, spitting like a cat. "What is it that it is? Ah, holy Sainte Agathe, I am poison' lak one wolf! Ah, _bon Saint Jean Baptiste, venez mes secours_, for I have been one sinful man! _Sacre dam_, I burn lak hell inside!"

Hicks, sitting weakly on a log, his hands clasped across his outraged epigastrium, watched Chartrand's gyrations with huge satisfaction, and roared vindictive sarcasm at the final catastrophe.

"Eat too much grub that I don't chaw, do I?" he mocked. "Make a pig of meself wid pork an' beans, hey? Take some yerself, me laddybuck. That's right--tie yerself in knots. How would ye like another little drink to help hold her down?"

In the end they sat together on the log, cursing in two languages, and regarding the fragments of the broken bottle balefully. Chartrand rose and picked up a heavy club.

"Bagosh, I bus' up dat keg for sure!" he announced. But Hicks, whose wisdom was of the serpentine variety, demurred.

"Let the boys find it out for themselves," he counselled. "If we give ourselves away we get the dirty laugh."

Therefore there descended upon the camp a sudden sickness amounting to an epidemic; for the effects of MacNutt's concoction, though violent and immediate, were also far-reaching and enduring. The foreman noted the victims of his strategy, issued them chlorodyne from the van, and kept his mouth shut. He had won the first round, but he knew very well it was only a preliminary. Rough Shan was still to be reckoned with.

XI

The east line of Kent's limit butted on the west line of Clancys', and in due course MacNutt began to cut along the line. The snow he had been longing for fell in plenty and the road already bottomed and made became good. A constant stream of logs flowed down it on the big-bunked sleighs, draining the skidways, which were continually replenished by more logs travoyed out of the woods. At the banking grounds the big piles grew. The work was going merrily.

About the time MacNutt began to cut to his line McCane did the same. The crews fraternized to some extent, but the bosses had nothing to say to each other, each keeping to his own side. Hence Kent's foreman was surprised when one morning, after a fresh fall of snow, Rough Shan accompanied by two other men came to him. He noted, also, with an eye experienced in reading signs of trouble, that most of McCane's crew were working, or making a pretence of working, just across the line.

"These men is sawyers, MacNutt," said Rough Shan. "Yesterday, late on, they dropped a tree an' cut her into two lengths. This morning the logs is gone."

"What have I got to do with that?" asked MacNutt.

"That's what I've come to find out," retorted McCane. "Our teamsters never touched them. Logs don't get away by themselves."

MacNutt frowned at him. "If you think we took your logs there's our skidways, and the road is open to the river. Take a look for yourself."

McCane and his men went to the nearest skidway and examined the logs. They passed on to another, and MacNutt thought it advisable to follow. At the second skidway one of the sawyers slapped a stick of timber.

"This is her," he announced. "I know her by this here knot. Yes, an' here's the other length."

Jackson, Ward, and Haggarty, cant-hook men and old employees of the Kents, had been regarding McCane and his followers with scowling disfavour, and Haggarty, from his post on top of the pile where he had been "decking" the logs as they were sent up to him, asked:

"What's wrong wid them sticks?"

"We cut them yesterday on our limit," the man told him.

"Ye lie!" cried Haggarty fiercely, dropping his cant-hook and leaping to the ground. Jackson and Ward sprang forward as one man.

"You keep out o' this," said Rough Shan. "This is log stealin', and a matter for your boss, if he's man enough to talk to me face."

"Man enough? Come over here an' say we stole yer logs, ye dirty----" Haggarty's language became lurid. He was an iron-fisted old-timer and hated McCane.

MacNutt, when he saw Haggarty drop his cant-hook and jump, ran across to the skids. So did other men at hand. A ring of fierce, bearded faces and level, inquiring eyes gathered about the intruders.

"Here is the logs, MacNutt," said Rough Shan. "Now, I want to know how they come here."

MacNutt examined the logs. They had not yet been branded by the marking-iron with the big K which proclaimed Kent ownership. They were in no material particular different from the rest. It was possible that his teamsters had made a mistake. His sawyers could not identify the logs positively; they thought they had cut them, but were not sure. On the other hand, the two teamsters, Laviolette and old Ben Watkins, were very sure they had never drawn those particular sticks to the pile.

"One o' yeez must 'a done it," asserted McCane.

"Not on your say-so," retorted Watkins, whose fighting blood had not cooled with age. "Don't you get gay with the old man, Shan McCane. I'll----"

"Shut up, Ben!" MacNutt ordered. He turned to McCane. "I'll give you the logs because your men are sure and mine ain't. Break them out o' that, Haggarty; and you, Laviolette, hitch on and pull them across the line to wherever they say they laid. All the same I want to tell ye it wasn't my teamsters snaked them here."

"An' do ye think mine did?--a likely t'ing" said Rough Shan. "Mind this, now, MacNutt, you be more careful about whose logs ye take."

MacNutt lit his pipe deliberately before replying.

"The next one ye pull onto our skidways we'll keep," said he.

McCane glowered at him. "Ye've got a gall. Steal our logs, an' tell me I done it meself! I want to tell ye, MacNutt, I won't take that from you nor anny man."

"Go back and boss your gang," said MacNutt coldly, refusing the evident challenge.

He had made up his mind to give no provocation; but he had also determined to push the fight to a finish when it came, as he saw it inevitably must. The occurrence of the morning' confirmed his suspicion that McCane was following out a deliberate plan. He perceived, too, that the matter of the logs was a tactical mistake of the latter's. For, if Rough Shan had confined his activities to supplying the men with whiskey and fomenting discontent, MacNutt would have been forced to discharge half of them, and good hands were scarce. Thus the camp would have been practically crippled. But an accusation of log stealing would weld the men solidly together for the honour of their employer.

Haggarty, the iron-fisted cant-hook man, who had drawn Kent pay for years, took up the matter in the bunk-house that night.

"Nobody knows better nor Rough Shan hisself who put them logs on our skidway," he declared with a tremendous oath. "An' for why did he do it? To pick a row, no less. He thought ould Mac would keep the sticks an' tell him to go to the divil. Mac was too foxy for him that time."

"If he wants a row he can have it," said Regan; "him or anny of his gang. It's the dirty bunch they are. An' I want to say right here," he continued, glaring at the row of men on the "deacon seat," "that the man that fills himself up on rotgut whiskey from McCane's camp after this is a low-lived son of a dog, an' I will beat the head off of him once when he's drunk an' again when he's sober."

A growl of approval ran along the bench.

"That's right."