Chapter X: Introduction: BY (10)

There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California—this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the chaplain’s chandelier. Waters was seized with a convulsion of sneezing. Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And I, as master of the feast, had to say—

“Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back’s curious account of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome?”

After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as best he could his self-appointed punishment—rather less social, perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious, apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.

* * * * *

Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from Danforth, who is on board the _Levant_, a letter which gives an account of Nolan’s last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.

To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader should remember that after 1817, the position of every officer who had Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The government had failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do? Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What, then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southward, and I have reason to think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means, “If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be disavowed.” Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence of the very revelation I am making.

Here is the letter:—

“_Levant_, 2° 2´ S. at 131° W.

“DEAR FRED:—I try to find heart and life to tell you that it
is all over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this
voyage more than I ever was, and I can understand wholly now
the way in which you used to speak of the dear old fellow. I
could see that he was not strong, but I had no idea the end
was so near. The doctor has been watching him very carefully,
and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was
not so well, and had not left his state-room—a thing I never
remember before. He had let the doctor come and see him
as he lay there—the first time the doctor had been in the
state-room—and he said he should like to see me. O dear! do you
remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about his room,
in the old _Intrepid_ days? Well, I went in, and there, to be
sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as
he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help
a glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had
made of the box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were
triced up above and around a picture of Washington, and he had
painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak
and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which his wings
overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my glance, and said, with
a sad smile, ‘Here, you see, I have a country!’ And then he
pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before a
great map of the United States, as he had drawn it from memory,
and which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer
old names were on it, in large letters: ‘Indiana Territory,’
‘Mississippi Territory,’ and ‘Louisiana Territory,’ as I
suppose our fathers learned such things; but the old fellow
had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his western boundary
all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had defined
nothing.

“‘O Danforth,’ he said, ‘I know I am dying. I cannot get home.
Surely you will tell me something now?—Stop! stop! Do not speak
till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this
ship, that there is not in America—God bless her!—A more loyal
man than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag as I
do, or prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There
are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for
that, though I do not know what their names are. There has
never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by
that that there has never been any successful Burr. O Danforth,
Danforth,’ he sighed out, ‘how like a wretched night’s dream a
boy’s idea of personal fame or of separate sovereignty seems,
when one looks back on it after such a life as mine! But tell
me—tell me something—tell me everything, Danforth, before I
die!’

“Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had
not told him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy
or no delicacy, who was I, that I should have been acting the
tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had
years ago expiated, in his whole manhood’s life, the madness
of a boy’s treason? ‘Mr. Nolan,’ said I, ‘I will tell you
everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?’

“O the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he
pressed my hand and said, ‘God bless you!’ ‘Tell me their
names,’ he said, and he pointed to the stars on the flag. The
last I know is Ohio. My father lived in Kentucky. But I have
guessed Michigan and Indiana and Mississippi—that was where
Fort Adams is—they make twenty. But where are your other
fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I hope?’

“Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names in as
good order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful
map and draw them in as best I could with my pencil. He was
wild with delight about Texas, told me how his cousin died
there; he had marked a gold cross near where he supposed
his grave was; and he had guessed at Texas. Then he was
delighted as he saw California and Oregon;—that, he said, he
had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to
land on that shore, though the ships were there so much. ‘And
the men,’ said he, laughing, ‘brought off a good deal besides
furs.’ Then he went back—heavens, how far!—to ask about the
_Chesapeake_, and what was done to Barron for surrendering
her to the _Leopard_, and whether Burr ever tried again—and
he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed. But in
a moment that was over, and he said, ‘God forgive me, for I
am sure I forgive him.’ Then he asked about the old war—told
me the true story of his serving the gun the day we took the
_Java_—asked about dear old David Porter, as he called him.
Then he settled down more quietly, and very happily, to hear me
tell in an hour the history of fifty years.

“How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I
did as well as I could. I told him of the English war. I told
him about Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about
old Scott, and Jackson; told him all I could think of about
the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas, and his own old
Kentucky. And do you think, he asked who was in command of
the ‘Legion of the West.’ I told him it was a very gallant
officer named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about
to establish his headquarters at Vicksburg. Then, ‘Where is
Vicksburg?’ I worked that out on the map; it was about a
hundred miles, more or less, above his old Fort Adams; and I
thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. ‘It must be at old
Vick’s plantation, at Walnut Hills,’ said he: ‘well, that is a
change!’

“I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the
history of half a century into that talk with a sick man. And I
do not now know what I told him—of emigration, and the means of
it—of steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs—of inventions,
and books, and literature—of the colleges, and West Point,
and the Naval School—but with the queerest interruptions that
ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the
accumulated questions of fifty-six years!

“I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now;
and when I told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin
Lincoln’s son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was
quite a boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old
Abe was a Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of
what family; he had worked up from the ranks. ‘Good for him!’
cried Nolan; ‘I’m glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered,
I have thought our danger was in keeping up those regular
successions in the first families.’

“Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told him
of meeting the Oregon congressman, Harding; I told him about
the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about
the Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and Crawford’s
Liberty, and Greenough’s Washington: Ingham, I told him
everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his
country and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth
to tell him a word about this infernal Rebellion!

“And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He
grew more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired
or faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his
lips, and told me not to go away. Then he asked me to bring
the Presbyterian ‘Book of Public Prayer,’ which lay there, and
said, with a smile that it would open at the right place—and so
it did.

“There was his double red mark down the page; and I knelt down
and read, and he repeated with me, ‘For ourselves and our
country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding
our manifold transgressions for Thy holy laws, Thou hast
continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,’—and so to the end of
that thanksgiving.

“Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the
words more familiar to me: ‘Most heartily we beseech Thee with
Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the
United States, and all others in authority,’—and the rest of
the Episcopal collect. ‘Danforth,’ said he, ‘I have repeated
those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five years.’
And then he said he would go to sleep.

“He bent me down over him and kissed me; and he said, ‘Look in
my Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.’ And I went away.

“But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired
and would sleep. I knew he was happy and I wanted him to be
alone.

“But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found
Nolan had breathed his life away with a smile. He had something
pressed close to his lips. It was his father’s badge of the
Order of the Cincinnati.

“We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the
place where he had marked the text:—

“‘They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not
ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a
city.’

“On this slip of paper he had written:—

“‘Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But
will not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or
at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to
bear? Say on it:—

“‘_In Memory of_

“‘PHILIP NOLAN,

“‘_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States_.

“‘He loved his country as no other man has loved her, but no
man deserved less at her hands.’”

THE FOREMAN

By Stewart Edward White

A man is one thing; a man _plus_ his work is another, entirely different. You can learn this anywhere, but in the lumber woods best of all.

Especially is it true of the camp boss, the foreman. A firm that knows its business knows this and so never considers merely what sort of a character a candidate may bear in town. He may drink or abstain, may exhibit bravery or cowardice, strength or weakness—it is all one to the lumbermen who employ him. In the woods his quality must appear. So often the man most efficient and trusted in the especial environment of his work is the most disreputable outside it. The mere dignifying quality of labor raises his value to the _n_th power. In it he discovers the self-respect which, in one form or another, is absolutely necessary to the man who counts. His resolution to succeed has back of it this necessity of self-respect, and so is invincible. A good boss gives back before nothing which will further his job.

Most people in the North Country understand this double standard; but occasionally someone, either stupid or inexperienced or unobservant, makes the mistake of concluding that the town-character and the woods-character are necessarily the same. If he acts in accordance with that erroneous idea, he gets into trouble. Take the case of Silver Jack and the walking boss of Morrison & Daly, for instance. Silver Jack imagined his first encounter with Richard Darrell in Bay City indicated the certainty of like results to his second encounter with that individual in Camp Thirty. His mistake was costly; but almost anybody could have told him better. To understand the case, you must first meet Richard Darrell.

The latter was a man about five feet six inches in height, slenderly built, yet with broad, hanging shoulders. His face was an exact triangle, beginning with a mop of red-brown hair, and ending with a pointed chin. Two level quadrilaterals served him as eyebrows, beneath which a strong hooked nose separated his round, brown, chipmunk’s eyes. When he walked, he threw his heavy shoulders slightly forward. This, in turn, projected his eager, nervous countenance. The fact that he was accustomed to hold his hands half open, with the palms square to the rear, lent him a peculiarly ready and truculent air. His name, as has been said, was Richard Darrell; but men called him Roaring Dick.

For upward of fifteen years he had been woods foreman for Morrison & Daly, the great lumber firm of the Beeson Lake district. That would make him about thirty-eight years old. He did not look it. His firm thought everything of him in spite of the fact that his reputation made it exceedingly difficult to hire men for his camps. He had the name of a “driver.” But this little man, in some mysterious way of his own, could get in the logs. There was none like him. About once in three months he would suddenly appear, worn and haggard, at Beeson Lake, where he would drop into an iron bed, which the Company maintained for that especial purpose. Tim Brady, the care-taker, would bring him food at stated intervals. After four days of this, he would as suddenly disappear into the forest, again charged with the vital, restless energy which kept him on his feet fourteen hours a day until the next break down. When he looked directly at you, this nerve-force seemed to communicate itself to you with the physical shock of an impact.

Richard Darrell usually finished banking his season’s cut a month earlier than anybody else. Then he drew his pay at Beeson Lake, took the train for Bay City, and set out to have a good time. Whiskey was its main element. On his intensely nervous organization it acted like poison. He would do the wildest things. After his money was all spent, he started up river for the log-drive, hollow-eyed, shaking. In twenty-four hours he was himself again, dominant, truculent, fixing his brown chipmunk eyes on the delinquents with the physical shock of an impact, coolly balancing beneath the imminent ruin of a jam.

Silver Jack, on the other hand, was not nervous at all, but very tall and strong, with bronze-red skin, and flaxen white hair, mustache and eyebrows. The latter peculiarity earned him his nickname. He was at all times absolutely fearless and self-reliant in regard to material conditions, but singularly unobservant and stupid when it was a question of psychology. He had been a sawyer in his early experience, but later became a bartender in Muskegon.

He was in general a good-humored animal enough, but fond of a swagger, given to showing off, and exceedingly ugly when his passions were aroused.

His first hard work, after arriving in Bay City, was, of course, to visit the saloons. In one of these he came upon Richard Darrell. The latter was enjoying himself noisily by throwing wine-glasses at a beer advertisement. As he always paid liberally for the glasses, no one thought of objecting.

“Who’s th’ bucko?” inquired Silver Jack of a man near the stove.

“That’s Roaring Dick Darrell, walkin’ boss for M. & D.,” replied the other.

Silver Jack drew his flax-white eyebrows together.

“Roaring Dick, eh? Roaring Dick? Fine name fer a bad man. I s’pose he thinks he’s perticular reckless, don’t he?”

“I do’no. Guess he is. He’s got th’ name fer it.”

“Well,” said Silver Jack, drawing his powerful back into a bow, “I ain’t much; but I don’t like noise—’specially roaring.”

With the words he walked directly across the saloon to the foreman.

“My name is Silver Jack,” said he, “I come from Muskegon way. I don’t like noise. Quit it.”

“All right,” replied Dick.

The other was astonished. Then he recovered his swagger and went on:

“They tell me you’re the old he-coon of this neck of th’ woods. P’r’aps you _were_. But I’m here now. Ketch on? I’m th’ boss of this shebang now.”

Dick smiled amiably. “All right,” he repeated.

This second acquiescence nonplussed the newcomer. But he insisted on his fight.

“You’re a bluff,” said he, insultingly.

“Ah! get out!” replied Dick with disgust.

“What’s that?” shouted the stranger, towering with threatening bulk over the smaller man.

And then to his surprise Dick Darrell began to beg.

“Don’t you hit me!” he cried, “I ain’t done nothing to you. You let me alone! Don’t you let him touch me!” he called beseechingly to the barkeeper. “I don’t want to get hurt. Stop it! Let me be!”

Silver Jack took Richard Darrell by the collar and propelled him rapidly to the door. The foreman hung back like a small boy in the grasp of a schoolmaster, whining, beseeching, squirming, appealing for help to the barkeeper and the bystanders. When finally he was energetically kicked into the gutter, he wept a little with nervous rage.

“Roaring Dick! Rats!” said Silver Jack. “Anybody can do him proper. If that’s your ‘knocker,’ you’re a gang of high bankers.”

The other men merely smiled in the manner of those who know. Incidentally Silver Jack was desperately pounded by Big Dan, later in the evening, on account of that “high-banker” remark.

Richard Darrell, soon after, went into the woods with his crew, and began the tremendous struggle against the wilderness. Silver Jack and Big Dan took up the saloon business at Beeson Lake, and set themselves to gathering a clientèle which should do them credit.

The winter was a bad one for everybody. Deep snows put the job behind; frequent storms undid the work of an infinitely slow patience. When the logging roads were cut through, the ground failed to freeze because of the thick white covering that overlaid it. Darrell in his mysterious compelling fashion managed somehow. Everywhere his thin eager triangle of a face with the brown chipmunk eyes was seen, bullying the men into titanic exertions by the mere shock of his nervous force. Over the thin crust of ice cautious loads of a few thousand feet were drawn to the banks of the river. The road-bed held. Gradually it hardened and thickened. The size of the loads increased. Finally Billy O’Brien drew up triumphantly at the rollway.

“There’s a rim-racker!” he exclaimed. “Give her all she’ll stand, Jimmy.”

Jimmy Hall, the scaler, laid his flexible rule over the face of each log. The men gathered, interested in this record load.

“Thirteen thousand two hundred and forty,” announced the scaler at last.

“Whoopee!” crowed Billy O’Brien, “that’ll lay out Rollway Charley by two thousand feet!”

The men congratulated him on his victory over the other teamster, Rollway Charley. Suddenly Darrell was among them, eager, menacing, thrusting his nervous face and heavy shoulders here and there in the crowd, bullying them back to the work which they were neglecting. When his back was turned they grumbled at him savagely, threatening to disobey, resolving to quit. Some of them did quit: but none of them disobeyed.

Now the big loads were coming in regularly, and the rollways became choked with the logs dumped down on them from the sleighs. There were not enough men to roll them down to the river, nor to “deck” them there in piles. Work accumulated. The cant-hook men became discouraged. What was the use of trying? They might as well take it easy. They did take it easy. As a consequence the teamsters had often to wait two, three hours to be unloaded. They were out until long after dark, feeling their way homeward through hunger and cold.

Dick Darrell, walking boss of all the camps, did the best he could. He sent message after message to Beeson Lake demanding more men. If the rollways could be definitely cleared once, the work would lighten all along the line. Then the men would regain their content. More help was promised, but it was slow in coming. The balance hung trembling. At any moment the foreman expected the crisis, when the men, discouraged by the accumulation of work, would begin to “jump,” would ask for their “time” and quit, leaving the job half finished in the woods. This catastrophe must not happen. Darrell himself worked like a demon until dark, and then, ten to one, while the other men rested, would strike feverishly across to Camp Twenty-eight or Camp Forty, where he would consult with Morgan or Scotty Parsons until far into the night. His pale, triangular face showed the white lines of exhaustion, but his chipmunk eyes and his eager movements told of a determination stronger than any protest of a mere nature.

Now fate ordained that Silver Jack for the purposes of his enlightenment should select just this moment to drum up trade. He was, in his way, as anxious to induce the men to come out of the woods as Richard Darrell was to keep them in. Beeson Lake at this time of year was very dull. Only a few chronic loafers, without money, ornamented the saloon walls. On the other hand, at the four camps of Morrison & Daly were three hundred men each with four months’ pay coming to him. In the ordinary course of events these men would not be out for sixty days yet, but Silver Jack and Big Dan perfectly well knew that it only needed the suggestion, the temptation, to arouse the spirit of restlessness. That a taste or so of whiskey will shiver the patience of men oppressed by long monotony is as A B C to the North Country saloon-keeper. Silver Jack resolved to make the rounds of the camps sure that the investment of a few jugs of whiskey would bring down to Beeson Lake at least thirty or forty woods-wearied men.

Accordingly he donned many clothes, and drove out into the wilderness a cutter containing three jugs and some cigars in boxes. He anticipated trouble. Perhaps he would even have to lurk in the woods, awaiting his opportunity to smuggle his liquor to the men.

However, luck favored him. At Camp Twenty-eight he was able to dodge unseen into the men’s camp. When Morgan, the camp foreman, finally discovered his presence, the mischief had been done. Everybody was smoking cigars, everybody was happily conscious of a warm glow at the pit of the stomach, everybody was firmly convinced that Silver Jack was the best fellow on earth. Morgan could do nothing. An attempt to eject Silver Jack, an expostulation even, would, he knew, lose him his entire crew. The men, their heads whirling with the anticipated delights of a spree, would indignantly champion their new friend. Morgan retired grimly to the “office.” There, the next morning, he silently made out the “time” of six men, who had decided to quit. He wondered what would become of the rollways.

Silver Jack, for the sake of companionship, took one of the “jumpers” in the cutter with him. He was pleased over his success, and intended now to try Camp Thirty, Darrell’s headquarters. In regard to Morgan he had been somewhat uneasy, for he had never encountered that individual; but Darrell he thought he knew. The trouble at Bay City had inspired him with a great contempt for the walking boss. That is where his mistake came in.

It was very cold. The snow was up to the horses’ bellies, so Silver Jack had to drive at a plunging walk. Occasionally one or the other of the two stood up and thrashed his arms about. At noon they ate sandwiches of cold fried bacon, which the frost rendered brittle as soon as it left the warmth of their inside pockets. Underfoot the runners of the cutter shrieked loudly. They saw the tracks of deer and wolves and partridge, and encountered a few jays, chickadees, and woodpeckers. Otherwise the forest seemed quite empty. By half-past two they had made nine miles, and the sun, in this high latitude, was swinging lower. Silver Jack spoke angrily to his struggling animals. The other had fallen into silence of numbness.

They did not know that across the reaches of the forest a man was hurrying to intercept them, a man who hastened to cope with this new complication as readily as he would have coped with the emergency of a lack of flour or the sickness of horses. They drove confidently.

Suddenly from nowhere a figure appeared in the trail before them. It stood, silent and impassive, with forward-drooping, heavy shoulders, watching the approaching cutter through inscrutable chipmunk eyes. When the strangers had approached to within a few feet of this man, the horses stopped of their own accord.

“Hello, Darrell,” greeted Silver Jack, tugging at one of the stone jugs beneath the seat, “you’re just the man I wanted to see.”

The figure made no reply.

“Have a drink,” offered the big man, finally extricating the whiskey.

“You can’t take that whiskey into camp,” said Darrell.

“Oh, I guess so,” replied Silver Jack, easily, hoping for the peaceful solution. “There ain’t enough to get anybody full. Have a taster, Darrell; it’s pretty good stuff.”

“I mean it,” repeated Darrell. “You got to go back.” He seized the horses’ bits and began to lead them in the reversing circle.

“Hold on there!” cried Silver Jack. “You let them horses alone! You old little runt! Let them alone I say!” The robe was kicked aside, and Silver Jack prepared to descend.

Richard Darrell twisted his feet out of his snow-shoe straps. “You can’t take that whiskey into camp,” he repeated simply.

“Now look here, Darrell,” said the other in even tones, “don’t you make no mistake. I ain’t selling this whiskey; I’m _giving_ it away. The law can’t touch me. You ain’t any right to say where I’ll go, and I’m going where I please!”

“You got to go back with that whiskey,” replied Darrell.

Silver Jack threw aside his coat, and advanced. “You get out of my way, or I’ll kick you out, like I done at Bay City.”

In an instant two blows were exchanged. The first marked Silver Jack’s bronze-red face just to the left of his white eyebrow. The second sent Richard Darrell gasping and sobbing into the snow-bank ten feet away. He arose with the blood streaming from beneath his mustache. His eager, nervous face was white; his chipmunk eyes narrowed; his great hands, held palm backward, clutched spasmodically. With the stealthy motion of a cat he approached his antagonist, and sprang. Silver Jack stood straight and confident, awaiting him. Three times the aggressor was knocked entirely off his feet. The fourth he hit against the cutter body, and his fingers closed on the axe which all voyagers through the forest carry as a matter of course.

“He’s gettin’ ugly. Come on, Hank!” cried Silver Jack.

The other man, with a long score to pay the walking boss, seized the iron starting-bar, and descended. Out from the inscrutable white forest murder breathed like a pestilential air. The two men talked about it easily, confidently.

“You ketch him on one side, and I’ll come in on the other,” said the man named Hank, gripping his short, heavy bar.

The forest lay behind; the forest, easily penetrable to a man in moccasins. Richard Darrell could at any moment have fled beyond the possibility of pursuit. This had become no mere question of a bar-room fisticuff, but of life and death. He had begged abjectly from the pain of a cuff on the ear; now he merely glanced over his shoulder toward the safety that lay beyond. Then, with a cry, he whirled the axe about his head and threw it directly at the second of his antagonists. The flat of the implement struck heavily, full on the man’s forehead. He fell, stunned. Immediately the other two precipitated themselves on the weapons. This time Silver Jack secured the axe, while Darrell had to content himself with the short, heavy bar. The strange duel recommenced, while the horses, mildly curious, gazed through the steam of their nostrils at their warring masters.

Overhead the ravens of the far north idled to and fro. When the three men lay still on the trampled snow, they stooped, nearer and nearer. Then they towered. One of the men had stirred.

Richard Darrell painfully cleared his eyes and dragged himself to a sitting position, sweeping the blood of his shallow wound from his forehead. He searched out the axe. With it he first smashed in the whiskey jugs. Then he wrecked the cutter, chopping it savagely until it was reduced to splinters and twisted iron. By the time this was done, his antagonists were in the throes of returning consciousness. He stood over them, dominant, menacing.

“You hit th’ back trail,” said he, “very quick! Don’t you let me see you ’round these diggings again.”

Silver Jack, bewildered, half stunned, not understanding this little cowardly man who had permitted himself to be kicked from the saloon, rose slowly.

“You stand there!” commanded Darrell. He opened a pocket-knife, and cut the harness to bits, leaving only the necessary head-stalls intact.

“Now git!” said he. “Pike out!—fer Beeson Lake. Don’t you stop at no Camp Twenty-eight!”

Appalled at the prospect of the long journey through the frozen forest, Silver Jack and his companion silently led the horses away. As they reached the bend in the trail, they looked back. The sun was just setting through the trees, throwing the illusion of them gigantic across the eye. And he stood there huge, menacing, against the light—the dominant spirit, Roaring Dick of the woods, the incarnation of Necessity, the Man defending his Work, the Foreman!

THE GRAY COLLIE

By Georgia Wood Pangborn

The steam had retired, clanking, from the radiator, withdrawing to the cellar like the dragging chain of Marley’s ghost. The blue flame of a Bunsen burner was the only light and heat left. Now and then the wind flung handfuls of spiteful sleet at the window.

“I don’t know anything about ghosts,” said Henrietta, plaintively. “I’m as bad in psychology as mathematics. I might tell about the gray collie, but he was real. Don’t let that chocolate boil over, Isabel.”

Isabel poured out three steaming cups, thick and sweet, for in the young twenties and late teens the appetite is still bizarre.

“I’ll tell it as it happened,” sighed Henrietta. “I don’t believe I could make anything up to save my neck.”

She was small and sad-eyed, with a timid manner, and sat on a wolf-skin, leaning one elbow on its head, which had green eyes of sinister slant, and bristling ears.

“You know who Artaxerxes was?”

“Artaxerxes,” they recited, “was your old wolf-hound who was really benevolent, but everybody was afraid of him, and when he wagged his tail it waved like a cat’s, sinuously, instead of swinging in a clubby, careless way, as a dog’s should.”

“He was white with gray spots,” mused Henrietta; “I suppose his family in Siberia looked like that to match the snow when they went out hunting, and he was shaggy and soft.

“We chained him the night the circus came to town. He heard a lion roar as the train went by at three o’clock, and, at first, I thought we had another lion in the barn. Gracious! If he hadn’t been chained he would have been over the wall and chased that lion to the station.

“I went down to soothe him and see if his chain had given in any of its links. I never saw him so out of temper. Finally he consented to lie down, though he grumbled about it, and the tip of his tail kept twitching, not wagging. He hardly ever wagged it.

“He worried all that day. ‘Don’t you know there are bears and lions and tigers and wolves out there?’ he’d say—‘Isn’t it my business to protect you from such things? Do let me go and kill a few. I’ll come right back!’

“We supposed he would stop worrying when the circus went, but instead, he got worse. He explained how it was his business to find out what had become of all those animals. In the evenings, as soon as he was unchained, he would march up and down inside the wall, holding his nose to the wind and every now and then making a low impatient sound in his throat, as if he were worried about something and making plans.

“One morning Farmer Grosman came to our house, very fierce: ‘Your dog’s been killing my sheep.’ We explained that he never got over the six-foot wall, but nothing would do. If he hadn’t done it, who had? If we did not shoot him, he would, and so on.

“Papa was very polite. He said he regretted that he could allow no shooting on the place except what he did himself. ‘You are certainly entitled to shoot any dog or dogs which you may discover molesting your sheep, and I shall exercise the same prerogative in protecting my dog.’

“He said it with that deprecating smile of his—I believe he smiled deprecatingly when he got cut off from his men at Antietam, and fought his way out of a lot of rebels who tried to make him prisoner. He hated Grosman, who was the meanest man in town and starved his horses.

“The man went off growling, and said he’d see the Mayor. We chained Artie up that night. In the morning we found his cat, dead, with a half-eaten piece of poisoned meat beside it. Artie thought everything of that cat. He had carried it around in his mouth ever since it was a little kitten. He always had to have his cat, the way a child has to have a doll. Any other cat he’d have sighted half a mile away and chased. But that one was his own, and anything it did was all right. It’s all in being acquainted. Papa sat up all the next night with a shotgun. We heard that the people from the French quarter of the village insisted that Artie got over the wall at night and roamed around and got into mischief. They said they heard him howling up on Mount Phelim, and talked a great deal about what they were going to do to him and us. Those Canucks would have it that he was a man-wolf, and could change about from one thing to another. You can’t argue with them, when they get a notion like that.

“One morning Pete Lancto, who mows the lawn, said he had seen the devil, and that he was like a shaggy dog.

“‘Probably it _was_ a dog!’ I said. But he told a lot of lies about smelling brimstone and flames coming out of its eyes.

“I said: ‘I guess you were _tenet_’ (that’s their word for ‘tight’).

“But he hadn’t touched a drop, and had only been to get a new salt codfish at the store.

“‘Well, anyway, if it smelt of brimstone, it wasn’t Artie.’

“But that idiot said: ‘The devil, he can smell brimstone when he wants to—_je pense que oui_!’

“So I let him alone. You can’t argue with a man who hasn’t any premises to argue from.

“It was my work to go to the village for the mail. I went after supper, about sunset, or a little later.

“The road curves along the side of Mount Phelim, which is not much of a mountain, but rather too big for a hill. When you look south it is as if the trees stood on each others’ heads, and there are wide, open spaces, like a park, so that you can see between the trunks, only by the road the underbrush is thick like a hedge. But on the north side of the road you don’t want to tumble off, for the Powasket runs below, hidden under the tops of trees, so that you only know it’s there from the sound. When I was little, I used to be afraid of that road, because a Canuck nurse-girl had scared me with stories of bears and catamounts and Indians.

“That was why papa had me go for the mail. He never could stand cowards. At first he used to sneak along behind me, and when I got hysterical would saunter up as if he were just out for a walk, and show me how pretty the sunset was over toward Canada, or cluck for squirrels to come out and see what we wanted, or take me up into the woods a little to find Indian pipes like caryatides holding up dead leaves. So it wasn’t very long before I grew to love the walk, and the sound of the wind in the trees, even when it was dark. I got quite friendly with the squirrels, and used to leave little piles of nuts as I went to the village, and when I came back they would be all gone. There aren’t many squirrels up there that can afford pecans and Brazil-nuts. I suppose they wondered till their heads ached why I left them around so carelessly.

“But when I grew to like it at night, papa began to object. A good many times when I’ve been sitting on the edge of the road swinging my feet over the Powasket, watching the last color going out beyond Canada, and listening to the owls and frogs and things, he has come to meet me and grumbled about ‘going to extremes.’ But I had him, you see, and only laughed. Hadn’t he trained me to do it?

“So about that time he got me Artaxerxes for a chaperone, and he was a good deal of a nuisance, for the village folk disliked him from the first. When they whistled to their own dogs to get them out of his way, how could he tell they weren’t calling to him? And when he’d turn to see what they wanted, they’d think he was coming after them and run, which was nonsense.

“We were keeping Artie chained that week of the sheep-killing fuss. How he hated it! When I stepped upon the horse-block to mount Pixie—I rode most of that week, and he knew I never took him when I took Pixie, because he had a nasty way of snapping at her nose, not meaning anything, but it got on her nerves dreadfully—and when I mounted Pixie and shook my crop at him, he would stand up at the end of his chain, his fore paws beating the air and his tongue hanging out, because he was choking himself so hard; and I’ve often thought he looked more unattractive that way with his one head than any picture of Cerberus with three.

“It was particularly hard on him now that his cat was dead. We had got him a new kitten, but it wasn’t broken in yet, and couldn’t understand that he didn’t mean anything when he carried it around in his mouth.

“It was that evening that I saw the gray collie the first time. There were long streaks of late sunlight reaching up into the mountain and he was so mixed up in the light and shadow that it was only by chance I saw him at all, he was so like the tree trunks and bowlders; but he happened to be in a place that I knew all about, because it was where papa and I had often sat, and I knew no gray patch of anything belonged just there. It was like finding an animal in one of those old puzzle-pictures, where they’re all mixed up in the branches.

“I reined up and whistled, and called him every name I could think of, but he did not stir, so that I almost thought my eyes were wrong after all; but there was no mistaking those pointed ears cocked toward me. I thought he might be the sheep-killer, though he was such an aristocratic creature, for what can you expect of a dog that’s lost and hungry and unhappy? I’d probably steal something myself if I felt that way. I knew that nobody in our part of the country owned such a dog as that, and I wondered if his master were dead up there on the mountain. There are so many queer accidents—but it was the closed season. The more I wondered, the queerer it seemed.

“All of a sudden, Pixie snorted and plunged so that I was almost thrown, for I wasn’t expecting it, and was leaning over with a loose rein and my arm out toward the collie. I had trusted that mare like my own sister, and had believed her a sensible soul, but she never stopped until she reached the barn, sweating and trembling like anything.

“I was so out of patience that I left her at home with Artie the next time I went for the mail. I planned as I went through the woods how I would make the collie’s acquaintance and bring him home, and how he and Artie would strike up a friendship. They were both such splendid fellows and so lonely. I thought a good deal about it, how I’d manage, for I knew that if I wasn’t careful they’d be more likely to kill each other first—like Balin and Balan, you know—and make up afterward.

“I didn’t meet the collie until I was coming back. It was twilight, and the moon was rather narrow to see by. There was a rustle and snapping in the bushes at the side of the road.

“‘Nice fellow!’ I said, and stopped. I could make out the silhouette of his ears cocked toward me, and a little glimmer where his eyes were. ‘Poor old chap,’ I said, ‘did you lose your folks?’ But he wouldn’t say a word, and backed off when I went toward him, so finally I went on, hoping he would follow, and he did, but slyly, so I could hardly be sure it was he, keeping beside me in the underbrush.

“When I reached the open, and looked back, he was standing in a faint patch of moonlight, in the middle of the road, looking after me with his head down a little, something the way people look at you under their eyebrows when they’re trying to understand.

“I whistled and called, but it was no use. He stood there as long as I did, and I finally went on without him. But I couldn’t get him off my mind. It seemed such a wild, lonesome life for a dog that must have been brought up in a pleasant home, with regular meals and a fireplace to lie in front of, and probably a girl like me to take him walking. And it seemed as if it must be something queer and tragic to send him off that way by himself. I thought more and more how some young fellow might be lying dead up there on the mountain. I made up a whole story about it that evening. And that night I dreamed I had the collie and found a collar hidden in his ruff, and was trying to read his name on it—but you know how hard it is to read anything in a dream; you look at a letter and it changes to something else, or dances off to one side. Then he seemed to be telling me a long story, the way animals do in dreams, but when I woke up it turned into nonsense.

“I knew he would meet me the next evening, and so I took some of Artie’s dog-biscuit with me, and while the collie padded along the other side of the bushes, tried to reach some through to him, but he wouldn’t touch it, though once he sniffed a little very daintily, and then blew out his breath, as dogs do when they’ve found out all they want to know about a smell. He kept right beside me. As we neared the opening he grew bolder, frisked across the road in front and came up from the other side. As I pretended to pay no attention, he came close behind and touched my elbow, hardly enough to say so, but I felt his breath warm through my sleeve.

“When I came out into the open moonlight he stood as he had before at the edge of the woods, and watched me out of sight. I couldn’t believe that he was the sheep-killer, he seemed so gentle and timid, but I didn’t dare speak of him to any one—it would have seemed like betraying a trust—for I knew that in other people’s minds, if they found out that he was there, it would lie between him and Artie, and as Artie was out of the question, they would take it out in killing the collie anyhow. I felt something the way Southern girls do in novels, when they’re hiding a handsome Union soldier.

“The next evening I started as usual, but just as I got to the woods, Artie came tearing after me, dragging a yard of chain and pretending he thought I wanted him! I could have slapped him, but took it out in being sarcastic, with words he couldn’t understand, and hitched his chain to my belt, so that if he started to be impolite to the other fellow, I could have something to say about it.

“We reached the post-office safely enough, but I was glad he was tight to my belt, for some rough men looked at us in that ugly, suspicious way and said ‘sheep-killer’ once or twice, and ‘loup-garou.’ So I really felt safer when we reached the woods, in spite of dreading the meeting between Artie and the collie.

“But I didn’t hear or see anything of him until we were half-way through, and then, so far off it might have been on top of the mountain, I heard him howl—not exactly a howl, but a queer cry, as if he were calling to something at a distance, kind of sorrowful, but fierce, too. It went down my back like a chip of ice—but I’d hardly heard it when Artie roared in answer, and I was being carried up that mountain at the end of his chain like a cart after a runaway horse.

“And I had thought I could hold him! Gracious! I tried to catch at the branches, but they broke. We went through a patch of blackberries, and there was a mucky little spring, where I fell in the mud and scared the frogs, and I think it must have been half-way up Phelim, where I finally caught tight hold of a tree trunk and my belt broke and Artie went on as if he didn’t know the difference. I don’t know how long it was before I got my breath and began to think. Then I heard them—away off at the top, the frogs singing between as peaceful as could be—but I heard that wicked snarling and knew they were at it—Balin and Balan—and that they were so well matched it was likely to be the death of both, unless I could stop it. I followed the sound and climbed after, though I was all weak and trembling. You can see on my hands now how the thorns had scratched, and my clothes were heavy and sticky with mud. It seemed ages before I got there. I think I was crying.

“I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I picked up the heaviest stick I could find, though all the sticks you can pick up in the woods are as rotten and light as powder. They didn’t seem to know I was there. They were in a little open space, and the moonlight lit up their eyes now and then. I could see that the collie was a more tremendous fellow than I had thought—and then—all of a sudden—I knew!

“And because I knew I didn’t even try to pull Artie away when he got the other fellow by the throat, and held him down, while he got weaker and weaker. I looked at him there in the moonlight, and cried, and wondered how I’d been so stupid.

“While I sat there wringing my hands and waiting for Artie to let go, some men came up and turned a bull’s-eye lantern on me, and seemed so astonished they couldn’t do anything but swear, though each would try to shut the other up, now and then, saying there ‘was a lady present.’

“One of them seemed to think it was funny, and explained what they had said to each other, the way people always do for animals or babies. ‘Siberian wolf and Siberian wolf-hound! Must ’a seemed kin’ o’ natural for them fellers to meet up. ‘Beg pardon,’ says the wolf, ‘ain’t I seen you before?’—and says the pup, ‘I don’t know, but you’re certainly the chap my mammy told me to lick if ever I come acrost you, and, by thunder, I’ll do it!’ Which he did. ‘Will you be so kind, Miss, when your little terrier there has quite finished, to call him off? It’d be rayther indelicate for a stranger to interfere.’

“The other man seemed sorry. ‘Nothing left but his pelt, which is some chewed, but could be mended up into a real elegant rug, which the young lady might be pleased to accept.’”

Henrietta thoughtfully scratched the ears of the rug, and ran her fingers over the rows of beautiful teeth. “This is the collie.”