King Spruce, A Novel, Page 4

  CHAPTER III

  THE MAKING OF A "CHANEY MAN"

  "We're bound for the choppin's at Chamberlain Lake, And we're lookin' for trouble and suthin' to take. We reckon we'll manage this end of the train, And we'll leave a red streak up the centre of Maine."

  --Murphy's "Come-all-ye."

  A company of reserves posted in a thicket, after valiantly withstandingthe hammering of a battery, were suddenly routed by wasps. They brokeand ran like the veriest knaves.

  Dwight Wade had determined to face John Barrett's battery ofpersecution. But at the end of a week he realized that the little cityof Stillwater was looking askance at him. He knew that gossip attendedhis steps and stood ever at his shoulders, as one from the tail of theeye sees shadowy visions and, turning suddenly, finds them gone.

  That John Barrett would deliberately start stories in which hisdaughter's affairs were concerned seemed incredible to the lover who,for the sake of her fair fame and her peace of mind, had resolved tomake fetish of duty, realizing even better than she herself that ElvaBarrett's sense of justice would weigh well her duties as daughterbefore she could be won to the duties of wife.

  Yet Wade could hardly tell why he determined to stay in Stillwater. Hewanted to console himself with the belief that a sudden departure wouldgive gossip the proof it wanted. For gossip, as he caught its vaguewhispers, said that John Barrett had kicked--actually and violentlykicked--the principal of the Stillwater high-school out of his mansion.Wade did not like to think that Barrett, by himself or a servant,started that story. Yet the thought made Wade suspect that thebitterness of the night at "Oaklands" still rankled, and that he wasremaining in Stillwater for the sake of defying John Barrett, and wasnot simply crucifying his spirit for the sake of the peace of JohnBarrett's daughter.

  For he confessed that his stay there would be martyrdom. He had resolvedthat he would not try to see her; that would only mean grief for her andhumiliation for him. He was proud of his love for Elva Barrett, in spiteof her father's contempt and insults. He found no reproach for himselfbecause he had loved her and had told her so. But for the role of aLochinvar his New England nature had no taste. He realized, withoutarguing the question with himself, that Elva Barrett was not to be wonby the impetuous folly that demanded blind sacrifice of name andposition and father and friends.

  There was no cowardice in this realization. It was rather a patheticsacrifice on the part of simple loyalty and a love that was absolutedevotion. In deciding to remain in Stillwater he kept his love alightlike a flame before a shrine. But beyond his daily work and theunflinching purpose of his great love he could not see his way.

  It was because his way was so obscure that the wasps found him an easiervictim.

  He heard the buzzings at street corners as he passed. There were stingsof glances and of half-heard words.

  Like the pastor of a church in a small place, the principal ofa high-school is one in whom the community feels a sense ofproprietorship, with full right to canvass his goings and comingsand liberty to circumscribe and control. For is he not the one thatshould "set example"?

  The wasps would not accept his silent surrender. They suspectedsomething hidden, and their imaginings saw the worst. They buzzed morebusily every day. That they would not allow him the peace and thepathetic liberty of renunciation drove Wade frantic. With all thecourage of his conscience, he still faced John Barrett's battery. Butthe wasps he could not face.

  And he fled. In the end it was nothing but that--he was put to flight!The people of Stillwater accepted it as flight, for he placed hisresignation in the hands of the school board barely a week before thedate for the opening of the autumn term. And on the train on which hefled was the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, still unconscious that the wordof gossip he had dropped was the match that lighted a fuse, and that thefuse was briskly burning.

  Above the rumble of the starting car-wheels Wade heard the mills ofStillwater screaming their farewell taunt at him.

  Then the Honorable Pulaski Britt came and sat down in his seat, penninghim next to the window.

  "Yes, sir," said Britt, with keen memory as to where he had left off inhis previous conversation and with dogged determination to have his sayout, "a man that reads a book written by a perfesser that don't know thedifference between a ramdown and a dose of catnip tea, and then thinkshe understands forestry of the kind that there's a dollar in, needs tohave his head examined for hollows. Do you find anything in them booksabout how to get the best figgers on dressed beef?--and when you arebuyin' it in fifty-ton lots for a dozen camps a half a cent on a poundmeans something! Is there anything about hirin' men and makin' 'em stayand work, gettin' cooks and saw-filers that know their business, chasin'thieves away from depot-camps, keepin' crews from losin' half thetools? Forestry! Making trees grow! Gawd-amighty, young man, Nature willattend to the tree-growin'. That's all Nature has got to do. She wasdoin' it before we got here, and doin' it well, and do you reckon wehave any right to set up and tell Nature her business? I've gotsomething else to think of besides tellin' Nature how to run her end.I'd like to know how to grow men instead of trees. My Jerusalem boss,MacLeod, writes me he has been two weeks getting together his hundredmen for that operation. He'll meet me at the Umcolcus junction, up theline here a hundred miles. And I've been tryin' most of that time to gethold of the right sort of a 'chaney man.'"

  Wade, in his resentment at Britt's intrusion on his thoughts, was in nomood for philological research, but sudden and rather idle curiosityimpelled him to ask what a "chaney man" was.

  "Why, a clerk--a camp clerk, time-keeper, wangan store overseer, supplyaccountant, and all that," snapped Britt, with small patience for theyoung man's ignorance.

  At that instant it came more plainly to Wade that he was a fugitive.When he had left Elva Barrett behind he had let go the strongest cableof hope. A day before--the day after--his manly spirit probably wouldnot have allowed him to become a clerk for Pulaski Britt. This day theimpetuous desire to hide in the woods, to escape the wasps of humanity,to be in some place where sneers and false pity and taunt could notreach him--that desire was coined into performance.

  "Wouldn't I fit into a job of that sort, Mr. Britt?" he asked, blurtingthe question. And when the lumberman stared at him with as muchastonishment as Pulaski Britt ever allowed himself to display, Wadeadded, "I have given up school-teaching because--well, I want to getinto the woods for my health!"

  "It will be healthy, all right, but it won't be dude work," said Britt."You'll have to hump 'round on snow-shoes or a jumper to five camps.Board and thirty-five a month! What's the particular ailment with you?"he demanded, rather suspiciously. "You look rugged enough."

  The young man did not reply, and the Honorable Pulaski stared at him,his eyes narrowing shrewdly. Mr. Britt had no very delicate notions ofrepressing an idea when it occurred to him "Say, look here, young man,"he cried, "I reckon I understand! The Barrett girl, hey? And John gotafter you! Well, he can make it hot for any one he takes a niff at."

  "Can't I have that job, Mr. Britt, without a general discussion of myaffairs?" asked Wade, with temper.

  "You're hired!" There was the click of business in Britt's tone, but hisgossip's nature showed itself in the somewhat humorous drawl in which headded: "I'm glad to know that it's only love that ails you. Outside ofthat, you strike me as bein' a pretty rugged chap, and it's rugged chapswe're lookin' for in 'Britt's Busters.' If it's only love that ails you,I reckon we won't have any trouble about sendin' you out cured in thespring."

  But noting the glitter in Wade's eyes, Mr. Britt chuckled amiably andtook himself off down the car to talk business with a man.

  During the long ride to Umcolcus Junction, Wade sat revelling in thebitterness of his thoughts. He was not disturbed because he had given uphis school. There was a relief in escaping from meddlesome backbiters.The school had been only a means to an end: it afforded revenue toattain certain cherished professional plans that loomed large in Wade'spr
ospects. Money earned honorably in any other fashion would count foras much. But the fact remained that he was fleeing, was hiding. Britt'srough and somewhat contemptuous proprietorship, so instantly displayed,wounded his pride. When he had passed the station to which he hadpurchased his ticket before he met Britt, he offered more pay to theconductor. He had seen Britt talking with the conductor a moment before,brandishing a hairy hand in his direction.

  "It's all settled by Mr. Britt," the train officer stated, passing on."You're one of his men, he says."

  He growled under his breath as he accepted that label--"One of Britt'smen."

  There were one hundred more waiting for them at Umcolcus Junction, wherethey changed to the spur line that ran north.

  Most of the men were in a state of social inebriety. A few fighterswere sitting apart on their dunnage-bags, nursing bruises and grudges.Mindful of the State law that forbade the wearing of calked boots onboard a railroad train, the men who owned only that sort of footgearwere in their stocking feet. They carried their boots strung abouttheir necks by lacings. Many were bareheaded, having thrown away theirhats in their enthusiasm. Wade was not in a frame of mind to see anypicturesqueness in that frowsy crowd. He was one of them; he walkeddutifully behind his master, the Honorable Pulaski Britt.

  A little man, with neck wattled blue and red with queer suggestion ofa turkey's characteristics, lurched out of a group and came at PulaskiBritt with a meek and watery smile of welcome. His knees doubled witha drunkard's limpness, and he had to run to keep from falling. Brittevidently did not propose to serve as dock for this human derelict. Hestepped to one side with an oath, and the man made a dizzy whirl anddove headforemost under the train on the main track, and at that momentthe train started. The man rolled over twice, and lay, serenelyindifferent to death, on the outer rail.

  * * * * *

  After it was all over Wade sourly told himself that he acted as he didsimply to avoid witnessing a hideous spectacle.

  For, in spite of Britt's yells of protest, he went under the car, missedthe grinding wheels by an inch, and rolled out on the other side withthe drunken man in his arms.

  And when the train had drawn out of the station he came back across thetrack, lugging the little man as he would carry a gripsack, tossed himinto the open door of the baggage-car of the waiting train, spatted thedust off his own clothes, and went into the coach, casting surly looksat the sputtering inebriates who attempted to shake hands with him.

  When the train started Britt came again and penned the young man in hisseat against the window-casing.

  "You've started in makin' yourself worth while, even if you are only thechaney man," vouchsafed his employer. "You did an infernal fool trick,but you've saved me Tommy Eye, the best teamster on the Umcolcus waters.As he lies there now he ain't worth half a cent a pound to feed to cats;when he's on a load with the webbin's in his hands I wouldn't take tenthousand dollars for him."

  "Is he a sort of personal property of yours?" asked Wade, sullenly. Hewas venting his own resentment at Pulaski Britt's airs of generalproprietorship over men.

  "Just the same as that," replied Britt, complacently. "I've had him morethan twenty years, and I'd like to see him try to go to work for any oneelse, or any one else try to hire him away." He struck his hand on theyoung man's knee. "Up this way, if you don't make men know you own 'em,you're missin' one of the main points of forestry!" He sneered thisword every time he used it in his talk with Wade. The new chaney manbegan to wonder how much longer he could endure the Honorable Pulaski D.Britt without rising and cuffing those puffy cheeks.