Chapter 23

HEAD-LINES

The brute in Moncrossen held subservient the more human emotions, else he must surely have betrayed his surprise when, twelve hours ahead of schedule, the greener swung the long-geared tote team to a stand in front of the office door.

Not only had he made the trip without mishap, but accomplished the seemingly impossible in persuading Daddy Dunnigan to cook for a log camp, when in all reason the old man should have scorned the proposition in a torrent of Irish profanity.

Moncrossen dealt only in facts. Speculation as to cause and effect found no place in his mental economy. His plan had miscarried. For that Creed must answer later. The fact that concerned him now was that the greener continued to be a menace to his scheme.

Had Creed in some manner bungled the job? Or had he passed it up? He must find out how much the greener knew. The boss guessed that if the other had unearthed the plot, he would force an immediate crisis.

And so he watched narrowly, but with apparent unconcern, while Bill climbed from the sled, followed by Daddy Dunnigan. On the hard-packed snow of the clearing the two big men faced each other, and the expression of each was a perfect mask to his true emotions.

But the greener knew that the boss was masking, while Moncrossen accepted the other's guileless expression at its face value, and his pendulous lips widened into a grin of genuine relief as he greeted the arrivals.

"Hullo! You back a'ready? Hullo, Dunnigan! I'm sure glad you come; we'll have some real grub fer a change.

"Hey, LaFranz!" he called to the passing Frenchman. "Put up this team an' pack the gear to the bunk-house."

As the man drove away in the direction of the stable, Moncrossen regarded the others largely.

"Come on in an' have a drink, boys," he invited, throwing wide the door. "How's the foot?"

"Better," replied Bill. "It will be as good as ever in a week."

"I'm glad of that, 'cause I sure am cramped fer hands. I'll let Fallon break you into sawin' an put Stromberg to teamin'; he's too pot-gutted fer a sawyer."

Moncrossen produced a bottle as the others seated themselves.

"What--don't drink?" he exclaimed, as Bill passed the bottle to Dunnigan. "That's so; b'lieve I did hear some one say you didn't use no booze. Well, every man to his own likin'. Me--about three good, stiff jolts a day, an' a big drunk in the spring an' fall, is about my gait. Have a _see_gar." Bill accepted the proffered weed and bit off the end.

"How!" he said, with a short sweep of the arm; then, scratching a match on the rung of his chair, lighted the unsavory stogie.

Thus each man took measure of the other, and Daddy Dunnigan tilted the bottle and drank deep, the while he took shrewd measure of both.

* * * * *

It was in the early afternoon of the following day that Bill Carmody tossed aside his magazine and yawned drowsily. Alone in the bunk-house, his glance roved idly over the room, with its tiers of empty bunks and racks of drying garments.

It rested for a moment upon his bandaged foot propped comfortably upon Fallon's bunk, directly beneath his own, and strayed to the floor where just under its edge, still wrapped in the soiled newspaper, sat the gallon jug that Fallon suggested in case the greener saw fit to heed his warning.

Bill smiled dreamily. Unconsciously his lips spelled out the words of some head-lines that stared at him from the rounded surface of the jug:

POPULAR MEMBERS OF NEW YORK'S FOUR HUNDRED TO WED.

"Wonder who?" thought Bill. Reaching for his crutch, he slipped the end through the handle of the jug and drew it toward him. He raised it to his lap and the words of the succeeding line struck upon his brain like an electric shock:

_Engagement of Miss Ethel Manton and Gregory St. Ledger Soon to be Announced._

Feverishly his eyes devoured the following lines of the extended heading:

_Time of Wedding Not Set. Will Not Take Place Immediately, 'Tis Said. Prospective Bridegroom to Sail for Europe in Spring._

And then the two lines of the story that appeared at the very bottom, where the paper folded under the edge of the jug:

NEW YORK, February 1. (Special to _Tribune_.)--As a distinct surprise in élite circles will come the announcement of the engage

He tilted the jug in frenzied eagerness to absorb every detail of the bitter news, and was confronted by the rough, stone bottom which had worn through the covering, leaving mangled shreds of paper, whose rolled and mutilated edges were undecipherable.

Vainly he tried to restore the tattered remnants, but soon abandoned the hopeless task and sat staring at the head-lines.

Over and over again he read them as if to grasp their significance, and then, with a full realization of their import, he closed his eyes and sat long amid the crumbled ruin of his hopes.

For he had hoped. In spite of the scorn in her voice as she dismissed him, and the bitter resentment of his own parting words, he loved her; and upon the foundation of this love he had builded the hope of its fulfillment.

A hope that one day he would return to her, clean and strong in the strength of achievement, and that his great passion would beat down the barrier and he would claim her as of right.

Suddenly he realized that as much as upon the solid foundation of his own great love, the hope depended upon the false substructure of her love for him.

And the false substructure had crumbled at the test. She loved another; had suddenly become as unattainable as the stars--and was lost to him forever.

The discovery brought no poignant pain, no stabbing agony of a fresh heart-wound; but worse--the dull, deep, soul-hurt of annihilation; the hurt that damns men's lives.

He smiled with bitter cynicism as his thoughts dwelt upon the little love of women, the shifting love, that rests but lightly on the heart, to change with the changing moon. And upon the constancy of such love he had dared to build his future!

"Fool!" he cried, and laughed aloud, a short, hard laugh--the laugh that makes God frown. From the water-pail at his side he drew the long-handled dipper and removed the cork from the jug and tilted the jug, and watched the red liquor splash noisily from its wide mouth.

From that moment he would play a man's game; would smash Moncrossen and his bird's-eye men; would learn logs and run camps, and among the big men of the rough places would win to the fore by the very force and abandon of him.

He had beaten the whisky game; had demonstrated his ability to best John Barleycorn on his own terms and in his own fastnesses.

And now he would drink whisky--much whisky or little whisky as he saw fit, for there was none to gainsay him--and in his life henceforth no woman could cause him pain.

He raised the dipper to his lips, and the next instant it rang upon the floor, and over the whole front of him splashed the raw liquor, and in his nostrils was the fume and reek of it.

Unmindful of his injury, he leaped to his feet and turned to face Daddy Dunnigan, who was returning his crutch to his armpit.

"Toimes Oi've yanked Captain Fronte from th' road av harm," the old man was saying, and the red-rimmed, rheumy eyes shone bright; "wanst from in front av a char-rge av the hillmen an' wanst beyant Khybar. But Oi'm thinkin' niver befoor was Oi closter to th' roight place at th' roight toime thin a minit agone.

"Whisky is made to be dhrank fer a pastime av enj'ymint--not alone--wid a laugh loike that. Ye've got th' crayther on th' run, but ye must give no quarter. Battles is won not in th' thruse, but in th' foightin'.

"No McKim iver yit raised th' white flag, an' none iver died wid his back to th' front. Set ye down, lad, an' think it over."

He finished speaking and hobbled toward the door, and, passing out, closed it behind him. Alone in the bunk-house Bill Carmody turned again to the jug and fitted the cork to its mouth, and with his crutch pushed it under the edge of Fallon's bunk.

Hours later, when the men stamped in noisily to the wash-bench, he was sitting there in the dark--thinking.

* * * * *

The results of Daddy Dunnigan's cooking were soon evident in the Blood River camp. Men no longer returned to the bunk-house growling and cursing the grub, and Moncrossen noted with satisfaction that the daily cut was steadily climbing toward the eighty-thousand mark.

The boss added a substantial bonus for each day's "top cut," and in the lengthening days an intense rivalry sprang up between the sawyers; not infrequently Bill and Fallon were "in on the money."

It was nearly two weeks after the incident, that Creed came to Moncrossen with his own story of what happened that night at Melton's No. 8, and the boss knew that he lied.

As they talked in the little office the greener, accompanied by Fallon, passed close to the window.

At the sight of the man the spotter's face became pasty, and he shrank trembling and wide-eyed, as from the sight of a ghost, and Moncrossen knew that his abject terror was not engendered by physical fear.

He flew into a rage, cursing and bullying the craven, but failed utterly to dispel the unwholesome fear or to shake the other's repeated statement that at a few minutes past ten o'clock that night he had seen the greener lying hopelessly drunk upon the floor of the shack with the flames roaring about him, and at six o'clock the next evening had seen him hobble into Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward, fresh and apparently unharmed save for his injured foot.

Moncrossen's hatred of the greener rested primarily upon the fear that one day he would expose him to Appleton; added to this was a mighty jealousy of his rapid rise to proficiency and the rankling memory of the scene of their first meeting in the grub-shack.

But his fear of him was a physical fear--a fear born of the certain knowledge that, measured by his own standards, the greener was the better man.

And now came the perplexing question as to how the man had reached Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight hours after the burning of the shack.

The boss had carefully verified so much of Creed's story by a guarded pumping of Dunnigan, and the crafty old Irishman took keen delight in so wording his answers, and interspersing them with knowing winks and quirks of the head, as to add nothing to the boss's peace of mind.

While not sharing Creed's belief in the greener's possession of uncanny powers, nevertheless he knew that, whatever happened that night, the greener knew more than he chose to tell, and as his apprehension deepened his rage increased.

Hate smoldered in the swinish eyes as, in the seclusion of the office, he glowered and planned and rumbled his throaty threats.

"The drive," he muttered. "My Bucko Bill, you're right now picked for the drive, an' I'll see to it myself that you git yourn in the river."