The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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The men straggled to shore, the young fellow just described
bringing up the rear. He walked as though tired out, hanging his
head and dragging his feet. When, however, the boarding-house door
had closed on the last of those who preceded him, and the town lay
deserted in the dawn, he suddenly became transformed. Casting a
keen glance right and left to be sure of his opportunity, he turned
and hurried recklessly back over the logs to the center booms.
There he knelt and busied himself with the chains.

In his zigzag progression over the jam he so blended with the
morning shadows as to seem one of them, and he would have escaped
quite unnoticed had not a sudden shifting of the logs under his
feet compelled him to rise for a moment to his full height. So
Wallace Carpenter, passing from his bedroom, along the porch, to
the dining room, became aware of the man on the logs.

His first thought was that something demanding instant attention
had happened to the boom. He therefore ran at once to the man's
assistance, ready to help him personally or to call other aid as
the exigency demanded. Owing to the precarious nature of the
passage, he could not see beyond his feet until very close to the
workman. Then he looked up to find the man, squatted on the boom,
contemplating him sardonically.

"Dyer!" he exclaimed

"Right, my son," said the other coolly.

"What are you doing?"

"If you want to know, I am filing this chain."

Wallace made one step forward and so became aware that at last
firearms were taking a part in this desperate game.

"You stand still," commanded Dyer from behind the revolver. "It's
unfortunate for you that you happened along, because now you'll have
to come with me till this little row is over. You won't have to stay
long; your logs'll go out in an hour. I'll just trouble you to go
into the brush with me for a while."

The scaler picked his file from beside the weakened link.

"What have you against us, anyway, Dyer?" asked Wallace. His quick
mind had conceived a plan. At the moment, he was standing near the
outermost edge of the jam, but now as he spoke he stepped quietly to
the boom log.

Dyer's black eyes gleamed at him suspiciously, but the movement
appeared wholly natural in view of the return to shore.

"Nothing," he replied. "I didn't like your gang particularly, but
that's nothing."

"Why do you take such nervy chances to injure us?" queried Carpenter.

"Because there's something in it," snapped the scaler. "Now about
face; mosey!"

Like a flash Wallace wheeled and dropped into the river, swimming
as fast as possible below water before his breath should give out.
The swift current hurried him away. When at last he rose for air,
the spit of Dyer's pistol caused him no uneasiness. A moment later
he struck out boldly for shore.

What Dyer's ultimate plan might be, he could not guess. He had
stated confidently that the jam would break "in an hour." He might
intend to start it with dynamite. Wallace dragged himself from the
water and commenced breathlessly to run toward the boarding-house.

Dyer had already reached the shore. Wallace raised what was left
of his voice in a despairing shout. The scaler mockingly waved
his hat, then turned and ran swiftly and easily toward the shelter
of the woods. At their border he paused again to bow in derision.
Carpenter's cry brought men to the boarding-house door. From the
shadows of the forest two vivid flashes cut the dusk. Dyer
staggered, turned completely about, seemed partially to recover,
and disappeared. An instant later, across the open space where the
scaler had stood, with rifle a-trail, the Indian leaped in pursuit.

Chapter LV

"What is it?" "What's the matter?" "What's happened?" burst on
Wallace in a volley.

"It's Dyer," gasped the young man. "I found him on the boom! He
held me up with a gun while he filed the boom chains between the
center piers. They're just ready to go. I got away by diving.
Hurry and put in a new chain; you haven't much time!"

"He's a gone-er now," interjected Solly grimly.--"Charley is on his
trail--and he is hit."

Thorpe's intelligence leaped promptly to the practical question.

"Injin Charley, where'd he come from? I sent him up Sadler &
Smith's. It's twenty miles, even through the woods."

As though by way of colossal answer the whole surface of the jam
moved inward and upward, thrusting the logs bristling against the
horizon.

"She's going to break!" shouted Thorpe, starting on a run towards
the river. "A chain, quick!"

The men followed, strung high with excitement. Hamilton, the
journalist, paused long enough to glance up-stream. Then he, too,
ran after them, screaming that the river above was full of logs. By
that they all knew that Injin Charley's mission had failed, and that
something under ten million feet of logs were racing down the river
like so many battering rams.

At the boom the great jam was already a-tremble with eagerness to
spring. Indeed a miracle alone seemed to hold the timbers in their
place.

"It's death, certain death, to go out on that boom," muttered
Billy Mason.

Tim Shearer stepped forward coolly, ready as always to assume the
perilous duty. He was thrust back by Thorpe, who seized the chain,
cold-shut and hammer which Scotty Parsons brought, and ran lightly
out over the booms, shouting,

"Back! back! Don't follow me, on your lives! Keep 'em back, Tim!"

The swift water boiled from under the booms. BANG! SMASH! BANG!
crashed the logs, a mile upstream, but plainly audible above the
waters and the wind. Thorpe knelt, dropped the cold-shut through on
either side of the weakened link, and prepared to close it with his
hammer. He intended further to strengthen the connection with the
other chain.

"Lem' me hold her for you. You can't close her alone," said an
unexpected voice next his elbow.

Thorpe looked up in surprise and anger. Over him leaned Big Junko.
The men had been unable to prevent his following. Animated by the
blind devotion of the animal for its master, and further stung to
action by that master's doubt of his fidelity, the giant had
followed to assist as he might.

"You damned fool," cried Thorpe exasperated, then held the hammer
to him, "strike while I keep the chain underneath," he commanded.

Big Junko leaned forward to obey, kicking strongly his caulks into
the barked surface of the boom log. The spikes, worn blunt by the
river work already accomplished, failed to grip. Big Junko slipped,
caught himself by an effort, overbalanced in the other direction,
and fell into the stream. The current at once swept him away, but
fortunately in such a direction that he was enabled to catch the
slanting end of a "dead head" log whose lower end was jammed in the
crib. The dead head was slippery, the current strong; Big Junko had
no crevice by which to assure his hold. In another moment he would
be torn away.

"Let go and swim!" shouted Thorpe.

"I can't swim," replied Junko in so low a voice as to be scarcely
audible.

For a moment Thorpe stared at him.

"Tell Carrie," said Big Junko.

Then there beneath the swirling gray sky, under the frowning jam,
in the midst of flood waters, Thorpe had his second great Moment of
Decision. He did not pause to weigh reasons or chances, to discuss
with himself expediency, or the moralities of failure. His actions
were foreordained, mechanical. All at once the great forces which
the winter had been bringing to power, crystallized into something
bigger than himself or his ideas. The trail lay before him; there
was no choice.

Now clearly, with no shadow of doubt, he took the other view: There
could be nothing better than Love. Men, their works, their deeds
were little things. Success was a little thing; the opinion of men
a little thing. Instantly he felt the truth of it.

And here was Love in danger. That it held its moment's habitation
in clay of the coarser mould had nothing to do with the great
elemental truth of it. For the first time in his life Thorpe
felt the full crushing power of an abstraction. Without thought,
instinctively, he threw before the necessity of the moment all that
was lesser. It was the triumph of what was real in the man over
that which environment, alienation, difficulties had raised up
within him.

At Big Junko's words, Thorpe raised his hammer and with one mighty
blow severed the chains which bound the ends of the booms across
the opening. The free end of one of the poles immediately swung
down with the current in the direction of Big Junko. Thorpe like
a cat ran to the end of the boom, seized the giant by the collar,
and dragged him through the water to safety.

"Run!" he shouted. "Run for your life!"

The two started desperately back, skirting the edge of the logs
which now the very seconds alone seemed to hold back. They were
drenched and blinded with spray, deafened with the crash of timbers
settling to the leap. The men on shore could no longer see them for
the smother. The great crush of logs had actually begun its first
majestic sliding motion when at last they emerged to safety.

At first a few of the loose timbers found the opening, slipping
quietly through with the current; then more; finally the front of
the jam dove forward; and an instant later the smooth, swift motion
had gained its impetus and was sweeping the entire drive down
through the gap.

Rank after rank, like soldiers charging, they ran. The great
fierce wind caught them up ahead of the current. In a moment the
open river was full of logs jostling eagerly onward. Then suddenly,
far out above the uneven tossing skyline of Superior, the strange
northern "loom," or mirage, threw the specters of thousands of
restless timbers rising and falling on the bosom of the lake.

Chapter LVI

They stood and watched them go.

"Oh, the great man! Oh, the great man! murmured the writer,
fascinated.

The grandeur of the sacrifice had struck them dumb. They did not
understand the motives beneath it all; but the fact was patent.
Big Junko broke down and sobbed.

After a time the stream of logs through the gap slackened. In a
moment more, save for the inevitably stranded few, the booms were
empty. A deep sigh went up from the attentive multitude.

"She's GONE!" said one man, with the emphasis of a novel discovery;
and groaned.

Then the awe broke from about their minds, and they spoke many
opinions and speculations. Thorpe had disappeared. They respected
his emotion and did not follow him.

"It was just plain damn foolishness;--but it was great!" said
Shearer. "That no-account jackass of a Big Junko ain't worth as
much per thousand feet as good white pine."

Then they noticed a group of men gathering about the office steps,
and on it someone talking. Collins, the bookkeeper, was making a
speech.

Collins was a little hatchet-faced man, with straight, lank hair,
nearsighted eyes, a timid, order-loving disposition, and a great
suitability for his profession. He was accurate, unemotional, and
valuable. All his actions were as dry as the saw-dust in the burner.
No one had ever seen him excited. But he was human; and now his
knowledge of the Company's affairs showed him the dramatic contrast.
HE KNEW! He knew that the property of the firm had been mortgaged
to the last dollar in order to assist expansion, so that not another
cent could be borrowed to tide over present difficulty. He knew that
the notes for sixty thousand dollars covering the loan to Wallace
Carpenter came due in three months; he knew from the long table of
statistics which he was eternally preparing and comparing that the
season's cut should have netted a profit of two hundred thousand
dollars--enough to pay the interest on the mortgages, to take up the
notes, and to furnish a working capital for the ensuing year. These
things he knew in the strange concrete arithmetical manner of the
routine bookkeeper. Other men saw a desperate phase of firm rivalry;
he saw a struggle to the uttermost. Other men cheered a rescue: he
thrilled over the magnificent gesture of the Gambler scattering his
stake in largesse to Death.

It was the simple turning of the hand from full breathed prosperity
to lifeless failure.

His view was the inverse of his master's. To Thorpe it had suddenly
become a very little thing in contrast to the great, sweet elemental
truth that the dream girl had enunciated. To Collins the affair was
miles vaster than the widest scope of his own narrow life.

The firm could not take up its notes when they came due; it could
not pay the interest on the mortgages, which would now be foreclosed;
it could not even pay in full the men who had worked for it--that
would come under a court's adjudication.

He had therefore watched Thorpe's desperate sally to mend the
weakened chain, in all the suspense of a man whose entire universe
is in the keeping of the chance moment. It must be remembered that
at bottom, below the outer consciousness, Thorpe's final decision had
already grown to maturity. On the other hand, no other thought than
that of accomplishment had even entered the little bookkeeper's head.
The rescue and all that it had meant had hit him like a stroke of
apoplexy, and his thin emotions had curdled to hysteria. Full of
the idea he appeared before the men.

With rapid, almost incoherent speech he poured it out to them.
Professional caution and secrecy were forgotten. Wallace Carpenter
attempted to push through the ring for the purpose of stopping him.
A gigantic riverman kindly but firmly held him back.

"I guess it's just as well we hears this," said the latter.

It all came out--the loan to Carpenter, with a hint at the motive:
the machinations of the rival firm on the Board of Trade; the
notes, the mortgages, the necessity of a big season's cut; the
reasons the rival firm had for wishing to prevent that cut from
arriving at the market; the desperate and varied means they had
employed. The men listened silent. Hamilton, his eyes glowing
like coals, drank in every word. Here was the master motive he
had sought; here was the story great to his hand!

"That's what we ought to get," cried Collins, almost weeping, "and
now we've gone and bust, just because that infernal river-hog had
to fall off a boom. By God, it's a shame! Those scalawags have
done us after all!"

Out from the shadows of the woods stole Injin Charley. The whole
bearing and aspect of the man had changed. His eye gleamed with a
distant farseeing fire of its own, which took no account of anything
but some remote vision. He stole along almost furtively, but with
a proud upright carriage of his neck, a backward tilt of his fine
head, a distention of his nostrils that lent to his appearance a
panther-like pride and stealthiness. No one saw him. Suddenly he
broke through the group and mounted the steps beside Collins.

"The enemy of my brother is gone," said he simply in his native
tongue, and with a sudden gesture held out before them--a scalp.

The medieval barbarity of the thing appalled them for a moment. The
days of scalping were long since past, had been closed away between
the pages of forgotten histories, and yet here again before them
was the thing in all its living horror. Then a growl arose. The
human animal had tasted blood.

All at once like wine their wrongs mounted to their heads. They
remembered their dead comrades. They remembered the heart-breaking
days and nights of toil they had endured on account of this man and
his associates. They remembered the words of Collins, the little
bookkeeper. They hated. They shook their fists across the skies.
They turned and with one accord struck back for the railroad right-
of-way which led to Shingleville, the town controlled by Morrison
& Daly.

The railroad lay for a mile straight through a thick tamarack swamp,
then over a nearly treeless cranberry plain. The tamarack was a
screen between the two towns. When half-way through the swamp,
Red Jacket stopped, removed his coat, ripped the lining from it,
and began to fashion a rude mask.

"Just as well they don't recognize us," said he.

"Somebody in town will give us away," suggested Shorty, the chore-boy.

"No, they won't; they're all here," assured Kerlie.

It was true. Except for the women and children, who were not yet
about, the entire village had assembled. Even old Vanderhoof, the
fire-watcher of the yard, hobbled along breathlessly on his rheumatic
legs. In a moment the masks were fitted. In a moment more the
little band had emerged from the shelter of the swamp, and so came
into full view of its objective point.

Shingleville consisted of a big mill; the yards, now nearly empty
of lumber; the large frame boarding-house; the office; the stable;
a store; two saloons; and a dozen dwellings. The party at once
fixed its eyes on this collection of buildings, and trudged on down
the right-of-way with unhastening grimness.

Their approach was not unobserved. Daly saw them; and Baker, his
foreman, saw them. The two at once went forth to organize opposition.
When the attacking party reached the mill-yard, it found the boss
and the foreman standing alone on the saw-dust, revolvers drawn.

Daly traced a line with his toe.

"The first man that crosses that line gets it," said he.

They knew he meant what he said. An instant's pause ensued, while
the big man and the little faced a mob. Daly's rivermen were still
on drive. He knew the mill men too well to depend on them. Truth
to tell, the possibility of such a raid as this had not occurred to
him; for the simple reason that he did not anticipate the discovery
of his complicity with the forces of nature. Skillfully carried out,
the plan was a good one. No one need know of the weakened link, and
it was the most natural thing in the world that Sadler & Smith's
drive should go out with the increase of water.

The men grouped swiftly and silently on the other side of the
sawdust line. The pause did not mean that Daly's defense was good.
I have known of a crew of striking mill men being so bluffed down,
but not such men as these.

"Do you know what's going to happen to you?" said a voice from the
group. The speaker was Radway, but the contractor kept himself well
in the background. "We're going to burn your mill; we're going to
burn your yards; we're going to burn your whole shooting match, you
low-lived whelp!"

"Yes, and we're going to string you to your own trestle!" growled
another voice harshly.

"Dyer!" said Injin Charley, simply, shaking the wet scalp arm's
length towards the lumbermen.

At this grim interruption a silence fell. The owner paled slightly;
his foreman chewed a nonchalant straw. Down the still and deserted
street crossed and recrossed the subtle occult influences of a half-
hundred concealed watchers. Daly and his subordinate were very much
alone, and very much in danger. Their last hour had come; and they
knew it.

With the recognition of the fact, they immediately raised their
weapons in the resolve to do as much damage as possible before
being overpowered.

Then suddenly, full in the back, a heavy stream of water knocked
them completely off their feet, rolled them over and over on the
wet sawdust, and finally jammed them both against the trestle,
where it held them, kicking and gasping for breath, in a choking
cataract of water. The pistols flew harmlessly into the air. For
an instant the Fighting Forty stared in paralyzed astonishment.
Then a tremendous roar of laughter saluted this easy vanquishment
of a formidable enemy.

Daly and Baker were pounced upon and captured. There was no
resistance. They were too nearly strangled for that. Little
Solly and old Vanderhoof turned off the water in the fire hydrant
and disconnected the hose they had so effectively employed.

"There, damn you!" said Rollway Charley, jerking the millman to
his feet. "How do YOU like too much water? hey?"

The unexpected comedy changed the party's mood.

It was no longer a question of killing. A number broke into the
store, and shortly emerged, bearing pails of kerosene with which
they deluged the slabs on the windward side of the mill. The flames
caught the structure instantly. A thousand sparks, borne by the
off-shore breeze, fastened like so many stinging insects on the
lumber in the yard.

It burned as dried balsam thrown on a camp fire. The heat of it
drove the onlookers far back in the village, where in silence they
watched the destruction. From behind locked doors the inhabitants
watched with them.

The billow of white smoke filled the northern sky. A whirl of gray
wood ashes, light as air, floated on and ever on over Superior. The
site of the mill, the squares where the piles of lumber had stood,
glowed incandescence over which already a white film was forming.

Daly and his man were slapped and cuffed hither and thither at the
men's will. Their faces bled, their bodies ached as one bruise.

"That squares us," said the men. "If we can't cut this year,
neither kin you. It's up to you now!"

Then, like a destroying horde of locusts, they gutted the office
and the store, smashing what they could not carry to the fire. The
dwellings and saloons they did not disturb. Finally, about noon,
they kicked their two prisoners into the river, and took their way
stragglingly back along the right-of-way.

"I surmise we took that town apart SOME!" remarked Shorty with
satisfaction.

"I should rise to remark," replied Kerlie. Big Junko said nothing,
but his cavernous little animal eyes glowed with satisfaction. He
had been the first to lay hands on Daly; he had helped to carry the
petroleum; he had struck the first match; he had even administered
the final kick.

At the boarding-house they found Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton
seated on the veranda. It was now afternoon. The wind had abated
somewhat, and the sun was struggling with the still flying scuds.

"Hello, boys," said Wallace, "been for a little walk in the woods?"

"Yes, sir," replied Jack Hyland, "we---"

"I'd rather not hear," interrupted Wallace. "There's quite a fire
over east. I suppose you haven't noticed it."

Hyland looked gravely eastward.

"Sure 'nough!" said he.

"Better get some grub," suggested Wallace.

After the men had gone in, he turned to the journalist.

"Hamilton," he began, "write all you know about the drive, and
the break, and the rescue, but as to the burning of the mill---"

The other held out his hand.

"Good," said Wallace offering his own.

And that was as far as the famous Shingleville raid ever got. Daly
did his best to collect even circumstantial evidence against the
participants, but in vain. He could not even get anyone to say that
a single member of the village of Carpenter had absented himself
from town that morning. This might have been from loyalty, or it
might have been from fear of the vengeance the Fighting Forty would
surely visit on a traitor. Probably it was a combination of both.
The fact remains, however, that Daly never knew surely of but one
man implicated in the destruction of his plant. That man was Injin
Charley, but Injin Charley promptly disappeared.

After an interval, Tim Shearer, Radway and Kerlie came out again.

"Where's the boss?" asked Shearer.

"I don't know, Tim," replied Wallace seriously.

"I've looked everywhere. He's gone. He must have been all cut up.
I think he went out in the woods to get over it. I am not worrying.
Harry has lots of sense. He'll come in about dark."

"Sure!" said Tim.

"How about the boy's stakes?" queried Radway. "I hear this is a
bad smash for the firm."

"We'll see that the men get their wages all right," replied
Carpenter, a little disappointed that such a question should be
asked at such a time.

"All right," rejoined the contractor. "We're all going to need
our money this summer."

Chapter LVII

Thorpe walked through the silent group of men without seeing
them. He had no thought for what he had done, but for the
triumphant discovery he had made in spite of himself. This he
saw at once as something to glory in and as a duty to be fulfilled.

It was then about six o'clock in the morning. Thorpe passed the
boarding-house, the store, and the office, to take himself as far
as the little open shed that served the primitive town as a railway
station. There he set the semaphore to flag the east-bound train
from Duluth. At six thirty-two, the train happening on time, he
climbed aboard. He dropped heavily into a seat and stared straight
in front of him until the conductor had spoken to him twice.

"Where to, Mr. Thorpe?" he asked.

The latter gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

"Oh! Mackinaw City," he replied at last.

"How're things going up your way?" inquired the conductor by way of
conversation while he made out the pay-slip.

"Good!" responded Thorpe mechanically.

The act of paying for his fare brought to his consciousness that he
had but a little over ten dollars with him. He thrust the change
back into his pocket, and took up his contemplation of nothing. The
river water dripped slowly from his "cork" boots to form a pool on
the car floor. The heavy wool of his short driving trousers steamed
in the car's warmth. His shoulders dried in a little cloud of vapor.
He noticed none of these things, but stared ahead, his gaze vacant,
the bronze of his face set in the lines of a brown study, his strong
capable hands hanging purposeless between his knees. The ride to
Mackinaw City was six hours long, and the train in addition lost some
ninety minutes; but in all this distance Thorpe never altered his
pose nor his fixed attitude of attention to some inner voice.

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