The Blazed Trail

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Blazed Trail

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The car-ferry finally landed them on the southern peninsula. Thorpe
descended at Mackinaw City to find that the noon train had gone. He
ate lunch at the hotel,--borrowed a hundred dollars from the agent
of Louis Sands, a lumberman of his acquaintance; and seated himself
rigidly in the little waiting room, there to remain until the nine-
twenty that night. When the cars were backed down from the siding,
he boarded the sleeper. In the doorway stood a disapproving colored
porter.

"Yo'll fin' the smokin' cab up fo'wu'd, suh," said the latter, firmly
barring the way.

"It's generally forward," answered Thorpe.

"This yeah's th' sleepah," protested the functionary. "You pays
extry."

"I am aware of it," replied Thorpe curtly. "Give me a lower."

"Yessah!" acquiesced the darkey, giving way, but still in doubt. He
followed Thorpe curiously, peering into the smoking room on him from
time to time. A little after twelve his patience gave out. The
stolid gloomy man of lower six seemed to intend sitting up all night.

Yo' berth is ready, sah," he delicately suggested.

Thorpe arose obediently, walked to lower six, and, without undressing,
threw himself on the bed. Afterwards the porter, in conscientious
discharge of his duty, looked diligently beneath the seat for boots
to polish. Happening to glance up, after fruitless search he
discovered the boots still adorning the feet of their owner.

"Well, for th' LANDS sake!" ejaculated the scandalized negro, beating
a hasty retreat.

He was still more scandalized when, the following noon, his strange
fare brushed by him without bestowing the expected tip.

Thorpe descended at Twelfth Street in Chicago without any very clear
notion of where he was going. For a moment he faced the long park-
like expanse of the lake front, then turned sharp to his left and
picked his way south up the interminable reaches of Michigan Avenue.
He did this without any conscious motive--mainly because the reaches
seemed interminable, and he proved the need of walking. Block after
block he clicked along, the caulks of his boots striking fire from
the pavement. Some people stared at him a little curiously. Others
merely glanced in his direction, attracted more by the expression of
his face than the peculiarity of his dress. At that time rivermen
were not an uncommon sight along the water front.

After an interval he seemed to have left the smoke and dirt behind.
The street became quieter. Boarding-houses and tailors' shops
ceased. Here and there appeared a bit of lawn, shrubbery, flowers.
The residences established an uptown crescendo of magnificence.
Policemen seemed trimmer, better-gloved. Occasionally he might have
noticed in front of one of the sandstone piles, a besilvered pair
champing before a stylish vehicle. By and by he came to himself
to find that he was staring at the deep-carved lettering in a stone
horse-block before a large dwelling.

His mind took the letters in one after the other, perceiving them
plainly before it accorded them recognition. Finally he had
completed the word "Farrad." He whirled sharp on his heel, mounted
the broad white stone steps, and rang the bell.

It was answered almost immediately by a cleanshaven, portly and
dignified man with the most impassive countenance in the world.
This man looked upon Thorpe with lofty disapproval.

"Is Miss Hilda Farrand at home?" he asked.

"I cannot say," replied the man. "If you will step to the back door,
I will ascertain."

"The flowers will do. Now see that the south room is ready, Annie,"
floated a voice from within.

Without a word, but with a deadly earnestness, Thorpe reached
forward, seized the astonished servant by the collar, yanked him
bodily outside the door, stepped inside, and strode across the hall
toward a closed portiere whence had come the voice. The riverman's
long spikes cut little triangular pieces from the hardwood floor.
Thorpe did not notice that. He thrust aside the portiere.

Before him he saw a young and beautiful girl. She was seated, and
her lap was filled with flowers. At his sudden apparition, her
hands flew to her heart, and her lips slightly parted. For a second
the two stood looking at each other, just as nearly a year before
their eyes had crossed over the old pole trail.

To Thorpe the girl seemed more beautiful than ever. She exceeded
even his retrospective dreams of her, for the dream had persistently
retained something of the quality of idealism which made the vision
unreal, while the woman before him had become human flesh and blood,
adorable, to be desired. The red of this violent unexpected encounter
rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell in a fluttering catch
for breath; but her eyes were steady and inquiring.

Then the butter pounced on Thorpe from behind with the intent to do
great bodily harm.

"Morris!" commanded Hilda sharply, "what are you doing?"

The man cut short his heroism in confusion.

"You may go," concluded Hilda.

Thorpe stood straight and unwinking by the straight portiere. After
a moment he spoke.

"I have come to tell you that you were right and I was wrong,"
said he steadily. "You told me there could be nothing better than
love. In the pride of my strength I told you this was not so. I
was wrong."

He stood for another instant, looking directly at her, then turned
sharply, and head erect walked from the room.

Before he had reached the outer door the girl was at his side.

"Why are you going?" she asked.

"I have nothing more to say."

"NOTHING?"

"Nothing at all."

She laughed happily to herself.

"But I have--much. Come back."

They returned to the little morning room, Thorpe's caulked boots
gouging out the little triangular furrows in the hardwood floor.
Neither noticed that. Morris, the butler, emerged from his hiding
and held up the hands of horror.

"What are you going to do now?" she catechised, facing him in the
middle of the room. A long tendril of her beautiful corn-silk
hair fell across her eyes; her red lips parted in a faint wistful
smile; beneath the draperies of her loose gown the pure slender
lines of her figure leaned toward him.

"I am going back," he replied patiently.

"I knew you would come," said she. "I have been expecting you."

She raised one hand to brush back the tendril of hair, but it was
a mechanical gesture, one that did not stir even the surface
consciousness of the strange half-smiling, half-wistful, starry
gaze with which she watched his face.

"Oh, Harry," she breathed, with a sudden flash of insight, "you
are a man born to be much misunderstood."

He held himself rigid, but in his veins was creeping a molten fire,
and the fire was beginning to glow dully in his eye. Her whole being
called him. His heart leaped, his breath came fast, his eyes swam.
With almost hypnotic fascination the idea obsessed him--to kiss her
lips, to press the soft body of the young girl, to tumble her hair
down about her flower face. He had not come for this. He tried to
steady himself, and by an effort that left him weak he succeeded.
Then a new flood of passion overcame him. In the later desire was
nothing of the old humble adoration. It was elemental, real, almost
a little savage. He wanted to seize her so fiercely as to hurt her.
Something caught his throat, filled his lungs, weakened his knees.
For a moment it seemed to him that he was going to faint.

And still she stood there before him, saying nothing, leaning
slightly towards him, her red lips half parted, her eyes fixed
almost wistfully on his face.

"Go away!" he whispered hoarsely at last. The voice was not his
own. "Go away! Go away!"

Suddenly she swayed to him.

"Oh, Harry, Harry," she whispered, "must I TELL you? Don't you SEE?"

The flood broke through him. He seized her hungrily. He crushed her
to him until she gasped; he pressed his lips against hers until she
all but cried out with the pain of it, he ran his great brown hands
blindly through her hair until it came down about them both in a
cloud of spun light.

"Tell me!" he whispered. "Tell me!"

"Oh! Oh!" she cried. "Please! What is it?"

"I do not believe it," he murmured savagely.

She drew herself from him with gentle dignity.

"I am not worthy to say it," she said soberly, "but I love you with
all my heart and soul!"

Then for the first and only time in his life Thorpe fell to weeping,
while she, understanding, stood by and comforted him.

Chapter LVIII

The few moments of Thorpe's tears eased the emotional strain under
which, perhaps unconsciously, he had been laboring for nearly a year
past. The tenseness of his nerves relaxed. He was able to look
on the things about him from a broader standpoint than that of the
specialist, to front life with saving humor. The deep breath after
striving could at last be taken.

In this new attitude there was nothing strenuous, nothing demanding
haste; only a deep glow of content and happiness. He savored
deliberately the joy of a luxurious couch, rich hangings, polished
floor, subdued light, warmed atmosphere. He watched with soul-deep
gratitude the soft girlish curves of Hilda's body, the poise of her
flower head, the piquant, half-wistful, half-childish set of her red
lips, the clear starlike glimmer of her dusky eyes. It was all near
to him; his.

"Kiss me, dear," he said.

She swayed to him again, deliciously graceful, deliciously
unselfconscious, trusting, adorable. Already in the little
nothingnesses of manner, the trifles of mental and bodily attitude,
she had assumed that faint trace of the maternal which to the
observant tells so plainly that a woman has given herself to a man.

She leaned her cheek against her hand, and her hand against his
shoulder.

"I have been reading a story lately," said she, "that has interested
me very much. It was about a man who renounced all he held most dear
to shield a friend."

"Yes," said Thorpe.

"Then he renounced all his most valuable possessions because a poor
common man needed the sacrifice."

"Sounds like a medieval story," said he with unconscious humor.

"It happened recently," rejoined Hilda. "I read it in the papers."

"Well, he blazed a good trail," was Thorpe's sighing comment.
"Probably he had his chance. We don't all of us get that. Things
go crooked and get tangled up, so we have to do the best we can. I
don't believe I'd have done it."

"Oh, you are delicious!" she cried.

After a time she said very humbly: "I want to beg your pardon for
misunderstanding you and causing you so much suffering. I was very
stupid, and didn't see why you could not do as I wanted you to."

"That is nothing to forgive. I acted like a fool."

"I have known about you," she went on. "It has all come out in
the Telegram. It has been very exciting. Poor boy, you look tired."

He straightened himself suddenly. "I have forgotten,--actually
forgotten," he cried a little bitterly. "Why, I am a pauper, a
bankrupt, I---"

"Harry," she interrupted gently, but very firmly, "you must not
say what you were going to say. I cannot allow it. Money came
between us before. It must not do so again. Am I not right, dear?"

She smiled at him with the lips of a child and the eyes of a woman.

"Yes," he agreed after a struggle, "you are right. But now I must
begin all over again. It will be a long time before I shall be able
to claim you. I have my way to make."

"Yes," said she diplomatically.

"But you!" he cried suddenly. "The papers remind me. How about
that Morton?"

"What about him?" asked the girl, astonished. "He is very happily
engaged."

Thorpe's face slowly filled with blood.

"You'll break the engagement at once," he commanded a little harshly.

"Why should I break the engagement?" demanded Hilda, eying him with
some alarm.

"I should think it was obvious enough."

"But it isn't," she insisted. "Why?"

Thorpe was silent--as he always had been in emergencies, and as he
was destined always to be. His was not a nature of expression, but
of action. A crisis always brought him, like a bull-dog, silently
to the grip.

Hilda watched him puzzled, with bright eyes, like a squirrel. Her
quick brain glanced here and there among the possibilities, seeking
the explanation. Already she knew better than to demand it of him.

"You actually don't think he's engaged to ME!" she burst out finally.

"Isn't he?" asked Thorpe.

"Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's
sister. Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?"

"I saw it in the paper."

"And you believe all you see! Why didn't you ask Wallace--but of
course you wouldn't! Harry, you are the most incoherent dumb old
brute I ever saw! I could shake you! Why don't you say something
occasionally when it's needed, instead of sitting dumb as a sphinx
and getting into all sorts of trouble? But you never will. I know
you. You dear old bear! You NEED a wife to interpret things for
you. You speak a different language from most people." She said
this between laughing and crying; between a sense of the ridiculous
uselessness of withholding a single timely word, and a tender
pathetic intuition of the suffering such a nature must endure. In
the prospect of the future she saw her use. It gladdened her and
filled her with a serene happiness possible only to those who feel
themselves a necessary and integral part in the lives of the ones
they love. Dimly she perceived this truth. Dimly beyond it she
glimpsed that other great truth of nature, that the human being is
rarely completely efficient alone, that in obedience to his greater
use he must take to himself a mate before he can succeed.

Suddenly she jumped to her feet with an exclamation.

"Oh, Harry! I'd forgotten utterly!" she cried in laughing
consternation. "I have a luncheon here at half-past one! It's
almost that now. I must run and dress. Just look at me; just
LOOK! YOU did that!"

"I'll wait here until the confounded thing is over," said Thorpe.

"Oh, no, you won't," replied Hilda decidedly. "You are going down
town right now and get something to put on. Then you are coming
back here to stay."

Thorpe glanced in surprise at his driver's clothes, and his spiked
boots.

"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed, "I should think so! How am I to
get out without ruining the floor?"

Hilda laughed and drew aside the portiere.

"Don't you think you have done that pretty well already?" she asked.
"There, don't look so solemn. We're not going to be sorry for a
single thing we've done today, are we?" She stood close to him
holding the lapels of his jacket in either hand, searching his face
wistfully with her fathomless dusky eyes.

"No, sweetheart, we are not," replied Thorpe soberly.

Chapter LIX

Surely it is useless to follow the sequel in detail, to tell how
Hilda persuaded Thorpe to take her money. She aroused skillfully
his fighting blood, induced him to use one fortune to rescue another.
To a woman such as she this was not a very difficult task in the
long run. A few scruples of pride; that was all.

"Do not consider its being mine," she answered to his objections.
"Remember the lesson we learned so bitterly. Nothing can be greater
than love, not even our poor ideals. You have my love; do not
disappoint me by refusing so little a thing as my money."

"I hate to do it," he replied; "it doesn't look right."

"You must," she insisted. "I will not take the position of rich
wife to a poor man; it is humiliating to both. I will not marry
you until you have made your success."

"That is right," said Thorpe heartily.

"Well, then, are you going to be so selfish as to keep me waiting
while you make an entirely new start, when a little help on my part
will bring your plans to completion?"

She saw the shadow of assent in his eyes.

"How much do you need?" she asked swiftly.

"I must take up the notes," he explained. "I must pay the men. I
may need something on the stock market. If I go in on this thing,
I'm going in for keeps. I'll get after those fellows who have been
swindling Wallace. Say a hundred thousand dollars."

"Why, it's nothing," she cried.

"I'm glad you think so," he replied grimly.

She ran to her dainty escritoire, where she scribbled eagerly for a
few moments.

"There," she cried, her eyes shining, "there is my check book all
signed in blank. I'll see that the money is there."

Thorpe took the book, staring at it with sightless eyes. Hilda,
perched on the arm of his chair, watched his face closely, as later
became her habit of interpretation.

"What is it?" she asked.

Thorpe looked up with a pitiful little smile that seemed to beg
indulgence for what he was about to say.

"I was just thinking, dear. I used to imagine I was a strong man,
yet see how little my best efforts amount to. I have put myself
into seven years of the hardest labor, working like ten men in
order to succeed. I have foreseen all that mortal could foresee.
I have always thought, and think now, that a man is no man unless
he works out the sort of success for which he is fitted. I have
done fairly well until the crises came. Then I have been absolutely
powerless, and if left to myself, I would have failed. At the times
when a really strong man would have used effectively the strength he
had been training, I have fallen back miserably on outer aid. Three
times my affairs have become critical. In the crises I have been
saved, first by a mere boy; then by an old illiterate man; now by
a weak woman!"

She heard him through in silence.

"Harry," she said soberly when he had quite finished, "I agree
with you that God meant the strong man to succeed; that without
success the man hasn't fulfilled his reason for being. But, Harry,
ARE YOU QUITE SURE GOD MEANT HIM TO SUCCEED ALONE?"

The dusk fell through the little room. Out in the hallway a tall
clock ticked solemnly. A noiseless servant appeared in the doorway
to light the lamps, but was silently motioned away.

"I had not thought of that," said Thorpe at last.

"You men are so selfish," went on Hilda. "You would take everything
from us. Why can't you leave us the poor little privilege of the
occasional deciding touch, the privilege of succor. It is all that
weakness can do for strength."

"And why," she went on after a moment, "why is not that, too, a
part of a man's success--the gathering about him of people who can
and will supplement his efforts. Who was it inspired Wallace
Carpenter with confidence in an unknown man? You. What did it?
Those very qualities by which you were building your success. Why
did John Radway join forces with you? How does it happen that your
men are of so high a standard of efficiency? Why am I willing to
give you everything, EVERYTHING, to my heart and soul? Because it
is you who ask it. Because you, Harry Thorpe, have woven us into
your fortune, so that we have no choice. Depend upon us in the
crises of your work! Why, so are you dependent on your ten fingers,
your eyes, the fiber of your brain! Do you think the less of your
fulfillment for that?"

So it was that Hilda Farrand gave her lover confidence, brought him
out from his fanaticism, launched him afresh into the current of
events. He remained in Chicago all that summer, giving orders that
all work at the village of Carpenter should cease. With his affairs
that summer we have little to do. His common-sense treatment of the
stock market, by which a policy of quiescence following an outright
buying of the stock which he had previously held on margins, retrieved
the losses already sustained, and finally put both partners on a
firm financial footing. That is another story. So too is his
reconciliation with and understanding of his sister. It came
about through Hilda, of course. Perhaps in the inscrutable way of
Providence the estrangement was of benefit,--even necessary,for it
had thrown him entirely within himself during his militant years.

Let us rather look to the end of the summer. It now became a
question of re-opening the camps. Thorpe wrote to Shearer and
Radway, whom he had retained, that he would arrive on Saturday
noon, and suggested that the two begin to look about for men.
Friday, himself, Wallace Carpenter, Elizabeth Carpenter, Morton,
Helen Thorpe, and Hilda Farrand boarded the north-bound train.

Chapter LX

The train of the South Shore Railroad shot its way across the
broad reaches of the northern peninsula. On either side of the
right-of-way lay mystery in the shape of thickets so dense and
overgrown that the eye could penetrate them but a few feet at
most. Beyond them stood the forests. Thus Nature screened her
intimacies from the impertinent eye of a new order of things.

Thorpe welcomed the smell of the northland. He became almost eager,
explaining, indicating to the girl at his side.

"There is the Canada balsam," he cried. "Do you remember how I
showed it to you first? And yonder the spruce. How stuck up your
teeth were when you tried to chew the gum before it had been heated.
Do you remember? Look! Look there! It's a white pine! Isn't it
a grand tree? It's the finest tree in the forest, by my way of
thinking, so tall, so straight, so feathery, and so dignified. See,
Hilda, look quick! There's an old logging road all filled with
raspberry vines. We'd find lots of partridges there, and perhaps
a bear. Wouldn't you just like to walk down it about sunset?"

"Yes, Harry."

"I wonder what we're stopping for. Seems to me they are stopping
at every squirrel's trail. Oh, this must be Seney. Yes, it is.
Queer little place, isn't it? but sort of attractive. Good deal
like our town. You have never seen Carpenter, have you? Location's
fine, anyway; and to me it's sort of picturesque. You'll like Mrs.
Hathaway. She's a buxom, motherly woman who runs the boarding-house
for eighty men, and still finds time to mend my clothes for me. And
you'll like Solly. Solly's the tug captain, a mighty good fellow,
true as a gun barrel. We'll have him take us out, some still day.
We'll be there in a few minutes now. See the cranberry marshes.
Sometimes there's a good deal of pine on little islands scattered
over it, but it's very hard to log, unless you get a good winter.
We had just such a proposition when I worked for Radway. Oh, you'll
like Radway, he's as good as gold. Helen!"

"Yes," replied his sister.

"I want you to know Radway. He's the man who gave me my start."

"All right, Harry," laughed Helen. "I'll meet anybody or anything
from bears to Indians."

"I know an Indian too--Geezigut, an Ojibwa--we called him Injin
Charley. He was my first friend in the north woods. He helped me
get my timber. This spring he killed a man--a good job, too--and
is hiding now. I wish I knew where he is. But we'll see him some
day. He'll come back when the thing blows over. See! See!"

"What?" they all asked, breathless.

"It's gone. Over beyond the hills there I caught a glimpse of
Superior."

"You are ridiculous, Harry," protested Helen Thorpe laughingly. "I
never saw you so. You are a regular boy!"

"Do you like boys?" he asked gravely of Hilda.

"Adore them!" she cried.

"All right, I don't care," he answered his sister in triumph.

The air brakes began to make themselves felt, and shortly the train
came to a grinding stop.

"What station is this?" Thorpe asked the colored porter.

"Shingleville, sah," the latter replied.

"I thought so. Wallace, when did their mill burn, anyway? I haven't
heard about it."

"Last spring, about the time you went down."

"Is THAT so? How did it happen?"

"They claim incendiarism," parried Wallace cautiously.

Thorpe pondered a moment, then laughed. "I am in the mixed attitude
of the small boy," he observed, "who isn't mean enough to wish
anybody's property destroyed, but who wishes that if there is a
fire, to be where he can see it. I am sorry those fellows had to
lose their mill, but it was a good thing for us. The man who set
that fire did us a good turn. If it hadn't been for the burning of
their mill, they would have made a stronger fight against us in
the stock market."

Wallace and Hilda exchanged glances. The girl was long since aware
of the inside history of those days.

"You'll have to tell them that," she whispered over the back of
her seat. "It will please them."

"Our station is next!" cried Thorpe, "and it's only a little ways.
Come, get ready!"

They all crowded into the narrow passage-way near the door, for the
train barely paused.

"All right, sah," said the porter, swinging down his little step.

Thorpe ran down to help the ladies. He was nearly taken from
his feet by a wild-cat yell, and a moment later that result was
actually accomplished by a rush of men that tossed him bodily onto
its shoulders. At the same moment, the mill and tug whistles began
to screech, miscellaneous fire-arms exploded. Even the locomotive
engineer, in the spirit of the occasion, leaned down heartily on
his whistle rope. The saw-dust street was filled with screaming,
jostling men. The homes of the town were brilliantly draped with
cheesecloth, flags and bunting.

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