Chapter XV: The Way of the Snow-Burner

In the morning, before the time for beginning the day's work, Toppy went to the stockade; and with one of his English-speaking Slavs acting an interpreter hunted up the Torta brothers and returned to them the stolen money which he had won from Reivers. He did not consider it necessary to go into the full details of how the money came to be in his possession, or attempt to explain the prejudice of his kind against keeping stolen goods.

"Just tell them that Sheedy gave up the money, and that it's theirs again; and they'd better hide it in their shoes so they won't lose it," he directed the interpreter.

Whereat the latter, a garrulous young man who had been telling the camp all about the wonderful new "bahss" in the quarry--a "bahss" who saved men's lives--whenever he could get any one to listen, broke forth into a wonderful tale of how the money came to be returned, and of the wonderful "bahss" that stood before them, whom they should all take off their caps to and worship.

For this was no ordinary man, this "bahss." No, he was far above all other men. It was an honour to work under him. For instance, as to this money: the "bahss" had heard how the red-haired one--Sheedy--had stolen, how he oppressed many poor men and broke the noses of those who dared to stand up against him.

The "bahss" had the interests of poor men at heart. What had he done? He had struck the red-haired one such a mighty blow in the stomach that the red-haired one had flown high in the air, and alighting on the ground had been moved by the fear of death and disgorged the stolen money that his conscience might be easy.

The story of how Toppy had propped up the roof of the stone quarry, and saved the limbs and possibly lives of his workmen; how he had driven the shotgun guard away, and how he had smitten Sheedy and laid him low before all men, had circulated through the camp by this time. Everybody knew that the new straw-boss, though fully as big and strong as the Snow-Burner himself, was a man who considered the men under him as something more than cattle and treated them accordingly. True, he drove men hard; but they went willingly for him, whereas under the Snow-Burner they hurried merely because of the chill fear that his eyes drove into their hearts. In short, Toppy was just such a boss as all men wished to work under--strong but just, firm but not inhuman.

Even Sheedy was loyal to him.

"He laid me out, all right," he grumbled to a group of "white men," "but, give him credit for it, he give me a chanct to get up me guard. There won't be any breaking yer bones when yuh ain't lookin' from him. And he wouldn't graft on yuh, either. He's right. That other ----, he--he ain't human."

The fact that he had been humane enough, and daring enough, to prop up the roof of the quarry had no effect on the "white men" toward developing a respect for Toppy. They despised the Slavs too thoroughly to be conscious of any brotherhood with them. But that he could put Bill Sheedy away with a single punch, that he could warn Bill to put up his guard and then knock him out with one blow, that was something to wring respect even from that hard-bitten crew.

The Snow-Burner never had done anything like that. He had laid low the biggest men in camp, but it was usually with a kick or with a blow that was entirely unexpected. The Snow-Burner never warned any body. He smiled, threw them off their guard, then smote like a flash of lightning. He had whipped half a dozen men at once in a stand-up fight, but they had been poor Bohunks, fools who couldn't fight unless they had knives in their hands. But to tell a seasoned bruiser like Bill, the best man with his fists in camp, to put up his hands and then beat him to the knockout punch--that was something that not even the Snow-Burner had attempted to do.

That was taking a chance, that was; and the Snow-Burner never took chances. That was why these cruel-fierce "white men," though they admired and applauded him for his dominance and his ruthlessness toward the Slavs, hated Reivers with a hatred that sprang from the Northern man's instinctive liking for fair play in a fight. They began naturally to compare him with Toppy, who had played fair and yet won. And, naturally, because such were the standards they lived and died by, they began to predict that some day the Snow-Burner and Toppy must fight, and they hoped that they might be there to see the battle.

So Toppy, this morning, as he came to the stockade, was in the position of something of a hero to most of the rough men who slouched past him in the gloom to their day's work. He had felt it before, this hero-worship, and he recognised it again. Though the surroundings were vastly different and the men about him of a strange breeding, the sense of it was much the same as that he had known at school when, a sweater thrown across his huge shoulders, he had ploughed his way through the groups of worshipping undergrads on to the gridiron. It was much the same here. Men looked up to him. They nudged one another as they passed, lowered their voices when he was near, studied him appraisingly. Toppy had felt it before, too often to be mistaken; and the youth in his veins responded warmly. The respect of these men was a harder thing to win than the other. He thought of how he had arrived in camp, shaky from Harvey Duncombe's champagne, with no purpose in life, no standing among men who were doing men's work. Grimly also he thought of how Miss Pearson, that first evening, had called him a "nice boy." Would she call him that now, he wondered, if she could see how these rough, tired men looked up to him? Would Reivers treat him as a thing to experiment with after this?

Thus it was a considerably elated Toppy, though not a big-headed one, who led his men out of the stockade, to the quarry--to the blow that Reivers had waiting for him there. His first hint that something was wrong was when the foremost men, whistling and tool-laden, made for the pit in the first grey light of day and paused with exclamations and curses at its very mouth. Others crowded around them. They looked within. Then, with fallen jaws, they turned and looked to the "bahss" for an explanation, for help.

Toppy shouldered his way through the press and stepped inside. Then he saw what had halted his men and made their faces turn white. To the last stick the shoring-timbers had been removed from the pit, and the roof, threatening and sharp-edged, hung ready to drop on the workmen below, as it had before Toppy had wrought a change.

The daylight came creeping up the river and a wind began to blow. So still was it there before the pit-mouth that Toppy was conscious of these things as he stepped outside. The men were standing about with their wheelbarrows and tools in their hands. They looked to him. His was the mind and will to determine what they should do. They depended upon him; they trusted him; they would obey his word confidently.

Toppy felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He wanted to take off his cap, to bare his head to the chill morning wind, to draw his hand across his eyes, to do something to ease himself and gather his wits. He did none of these things. The instinct of leadership arose strong within him. He could not show these men who looked up to him as their unquestioned leader that he had been dealt a blow that had taken the mastery from him.

For Toppy, in that agonised second when he glanced up at the unsupported roof and knew what those loose rocks meant to any men working beneath, realised that he could not drive his men in there to certain injury for many, possibly death for some. It wasn't in him. He wasn't bred that way. The unfeeling brute had been removed from his big body and spirit by generations of men and women who had played fair with inferiors, and by a lifetime of training and education.

He understood plainly the significance of the thing. Reivers had done it; no one else would have dared. He had lifted Toppy up to a tiny elevation above the other men in camp; now he was knocking him down. It was another way for Reivers to show his mastery. The men who had begun to look up to Toppy would now see how easily the Snow-Burner could show himself his superior. Miss Pearson would hear of it. He would appear in the light of a "nice boy" whom the Snow-Burner had played with.

These thoughts ran through Toppy's mind as he stood outside the pit, with his white-faced men looking up to him, and groped for a way out of his dilemma. Within he was sickened with the sense of a catastrophe; outside he remained calm and confident to the eye. He stepped farther out, to where he could see the end of the dam where he had secured the props for the roof. It was as he had expected; the big pile of timbers that had lain there was gone to the last stick. He turned slowly back, and then in the grey light of coming day he looked into the playfully smiling face of Reivers, who had emerged, it seemed, from nowhere.

"Looking for your humanitarian props, Treplin?" laughed the Snow-Burner. "Oh, they're gone; they're valuable; they served a purpose which nothing else would fill--quite so conveniently. I used them for a corduroy road in the swamp. Between men and timbers, Treplin, always save your timbers." His manner changed like a flash to one hurried and business-like. "What're you waiting for?" he snarled. "Why don't you get 'em in there? Mean to say you're wasting company money because one of these cattle might get a broken back?"

They looked each other full in the eyes, but Toppy knew that for the time being Reivers had the whiphand.

"I mean to say just that," he said evenly. "I'm not sending any men in there until I get that roof propped up again."

"Bah!" Reivers' disgust was genuine. "I thought you were a man; I find you're a suit of clothes full of emotions, like all the rest!"

He seemed to drive away his anger by sheer will-force and bring the cold, sneering smile back to his lips.

"So we're up against a situation that's too strong for us, are we, Mr. Humanitarian?" he laughed. "In spite of our developed intelligence, we lay down cold in the face of a little proposition like this! Good-bye to our dreams of learning how to handle men! It isn't in us to do it; we're a weak sister."

His bantering mood fled with the swiftness of all his changes. Toppy and his aspirations as a leader--that was another incident of the day's work that was over and done with.

"Go back to the shop, to Scotty, Treplin," he said quietly. "You're not responsible for your limitations. Scotty says you make a pretty fair helper. Be consoled. He's waiting for you."

He turned instantly toward the men. Toppy, with the hot blood rushing in his throat, but helpless as he was, swung away from the pit without a word. As he did so he saw that the hawk-faced shotgun guard had appeared and taken his position on the little rise where his gun bore slantwise on the huddled men before the pit, and he hurried to get out of sight of the scene. His tongue was dry and his temples throbbing with rage, but the cool section of his mind urged him away from the pit in silence.

Between clenched teeth he cursed his injured ankle. It was the ankle that made him accept without return the shame which Reivers had put upon him. The canny sense within him continued to whisper that until the ankle was sound he must bide his time. Reivers and he were too nearly a pair to give him the slightest chance for success if he essayed defiance at even the slightest disadvantage.

Choking back as well as he could the anger that welled up within him, he made his way swiftly to the blacksmith-shop. Campbell, bending over the anvil, greeted Toppy cheerily as he heard the heavy tread behind him.

"The Snow-Burner promised he'd send you here, and----Losh, mon!" he gasped as he turned around and saw Toppy's face. "What's come o'er ye? You look like you're ripe for murder."

"There'll probably be murder done in this camp before the day's over, but I won't do it," replied Toppy.

As he threw off his mackinaw preparatory to starting work he snapped out the story of the situation at the quarry. Campbell, leaning on his hammer, grew grim of lips and eyes as he listened.

"Aye; I thought at the time it were better for you had ye lost at poker last night," he said slowly. "He's taking revenge. But they will put out his light for him. Human flesh and blood won't stand it. The Snow-Burner goes too far. He'll----Hark! Good Heavens! Hear that!"

For a moment they stood near the open doorway of the shop staring at one another in horrified, mute questioning. The crisp stillness of the morning rang and echoed with the sharp roar of a shotgun. The sound came from the direction of the quarry. Across the street they heard the door of the office-building open sharply. The girl, without hat or coat, her light hair flying about her head, came running like a deer to the door of the shop.

"Mr. Campbell, Mr. Campbell!" she called tremblingly, peering inside. Then she saw Toppy.

"Oh!" she gasped. She started back a little. There were surprise and relief in her exclamation, in her eyes, in her movement.

"I was afraid--I thought maybe----" She drew away from the door in confusion. "I only wanted to know--to know--what that noise was."

But Toppy had stepped outside the shop and followed closely after her.

"What did you think it was, Miss Pearson?" he asked. "What were you afraid of when you heard that shot? That something had happened between Reivers and myself?"

"I--I meant to warn you," she said, greatly flustered. "Tilly told me all about--a lot of things last night. She told me that she had told Reivers all she heard you say to me that first night here, and that he--Mr. Reivers, she said, was your enemy, and that he would--would surely hurt you."

"Yes?"

"I didn't want to see you get hurt, because I felt it was because of me that you came here. I--I don't want any one hurt because of me."

"That's all?" he asked.

She looked surprised.

"Why, yes."

Toppy nodded curtly.

"Then Tilly told you that Mr. Reivers had a habit of hurting people?"

At this the red in her cheeks rose to a flush. Her blue eyes looked at him waveringly, then dropped to the ground.

"It isn't true! It can't be true!" she stammered.

"Did Tilly tell you--about herself?" he persisted mercilessly.

The next instant he wished the words unsaid, for she shrank as if he had struck her. She looked very small just then. Her proud, self-reliant bearing was gone. She was very much all alone.

"Yes." The word was scarcely more than a whisper and she did not look up. "But it--it can not be so; I know it can not."

Toppy was no student of feminine psychology, but he saw plainly that just then she was a woman who did not wish to believe, therefore would not believe, anything ill of the man who had fascinated her. He saw that Reivers had fascinated her; that in spite of herself she was drawn toward him, dominated by him. Her mind told her that what she had heard of the man was true, but her heart refused to let her believe. Toppy saw that she was very unhappy and troubled, and unselfishly he forgot himself and his enmity toward Reivers in a desire to help her.

"Miss Pearson!--Miss Pearson!" he cried eagerly. "Is there anything I can do for you--anything in the world?"

"Yes," she said slowly. "Tell me that it isn't so--what Mr. Campbell and Tilly have said about Mr. Reivers."

"I----" He was about to say that he could do nothing of the sort, but something made him halt. "Has Reivers broken his word to you--about leaving you alone?"

"No, no! He's--he's left me alone. He's scarcely spoken to me half a dozen times."

Toppy looked down at her for several seconds.

"But you've begun to care for Reivers, haven't you?" he said.

The girl looked up at him uncertainly.

"I don't know. Oh, I don't know! I don't seem to have any will of my own toward him. I seem to see him as a different man. I know I shouldn't; but I can't help it, I can help it! He--he looks at me, and I feel as if--as if--" her voice died down to a horrified whisper--"I were nothing, and his wishes were the only things in the world."

Toppy bowed his head.

"Then I guess there's nothing for me to say."

"Don't!" she cried, stretching out her hand to restrain him as he turned away. "Don't leave me--like that. You're so rude to me lately. I feel so terribly alone when you--aren't nice to me."

"What difference can I make?" he said bitterly. "I'm not Reivers."

She looked up at him again.

"Oh!" she cried suddenly. "Won't you help me, Mr. Treplin? Can't you help me?"

"Help you?" gasped Toppy. "May I? Can I? What can I do?"

He leaned toward her eagerly.

"What can I do" he repeated.

"Oh, I don't know!" she murmured in anguish. "But if you--if you leave me--Oh! What was that?"

From the direction of the quarry had come a great scream of terror, as if many men suddenly had cried out in fear of their lives. Then, almost ere the echoes had died away, came another sound, of more sinister significance to Toppy. There was a sudden low rumble; the earth under their feet trembled; then the noise of a crash and a thud. Then it was still again.

A chill seemed to pass over the entire camp. Men began running toward the quarry with swift steps, their faces showing that they dreaded what they expected to see. Toppy and Campbell looked silently at one another.

"Go into the office," he said quietly to the girl. "Come on, Scotty; that roof's caved in." And without another word they ran swiftly toward the quarry. As they reached the river-bank they heard Reivers' voice quietly issuing orders.

"You guards pick those two fellows up and carry them to their bunks. You scum that's left, pick up your tools and dig into that fallen rock. Hustle now! Get right back to work!"

The first thing that Toppy saw as he turned the shoulder of the ledge was that two of the older Slavs were lying groaning on the ground to one side of where the pit mouth had been. Then he saw what was left of the pit. The entire side of the ledge had caved down, and where the pit had been was only a jumbled pile of jagged rock. Reivers stood in his old position before the pile. The hawk-nosed shotgun guard stood up on the little rise, his weapon ready. The remaining workmen were huddled together before the pile of fallen stone. The terror in their faces was unspeakable. They were like lost, driven cattle facing the butcher's hammer.

"Grab those tools there! Get at it! The rock's right in front of you now! Get busy!"

Reivers' voice in no way admitted that anything startling had occurred. He glared at the cowering men, and in terror they began hastily to resume their interrupted work, filling their wheelbarrows from the pile of stone before them. Reivers turned toward Toppy who had bent over the injured men. "Hello, Dr. Treplin," he laughed lightly. "A couple of jobs there for you to experiment on. Get 'em out of here--to their bunks; they're in the way. Patch 'em up if you can. If you can't they're not much loss, anyhow. They're rather older than I like 'em."

The last words came carelessly over his shoulder as he turned back toward the men who were toiling at the rock. A string of curses rolled coldly from his lips. They leaped to obey him. He smiled contemptuously.

Toppy was relieved to see that the two men on the ground were apparently not fatally hurt. With the aid of Campbell and two guards who had run up he hurried to have the men placed in their bunks in the stockade. One of the guards produced a surgeon's kit. Toppy rolled up his sleeves. It wasn't as bad as he had feared it would be, apparently; only two injured, where he had looked for some surely to be killed. One of the men was growing faint from loss of blood from a wound in his right leg. Toppy, turning his attention to him first, swiftly slit open the trousers-leg and bared the injured limb.

"What--what the devil?" he cried aghast. The calf of the man's leg was half torn away, and from knee to ankle the flesh was sprinkled with buckshot-holes.

"They shot you?" he asked as he fashioned a tourniquet.

"Yes, bahass. Snow-Burner say, 'Get t' 'ell in there.' Rocks fall; we no go in. Snow-Burner hold up hand. Man with gun shoot. I fall. Other men go in. Pretty soon rocks fall. Other men come out. He shoot me. I no do anything; he shoot me."

Toppy choked back the curse that rose to his lips, dressed the man's wound to the best of his slight ability, and turned to the other, who had been caught in the cave-in of the quarry-roof. His right leg and arm were broken, and the side was crushed in a way that suggested broken ribs. Toppy filled a hypodermic syringe and went to work to make the two as comfortable as he knew how. That was all he could pretend to do. Yet when he left the stockade it was with a feeling of relief that he looked back over the morning. The worst had happened; the danger to the men was over; and, so far as Toppy knew, the consequences were represented in the two men whom he had treated and who, so far as he could see, were sure to live. It hadn't turned out as badly as he was afraid it would.

As he passed the carpenter-shop he saw the "wood-butcher" sawing two boards to make a cover for a long, narrow box. Toppy looked at him idly, trying to think of what such a box could be used for around the camp. It was too narrow for its length to be of ordinary use as a box.

"What are you making there?" asked Toppy carelessly.

The "wood-butcher" looked up from his sawing.

"Didn't you ever see a logging-camp coffin?" he asked. "We always keep a few ready. This one is for that Bohunk that's down there under the rocks."

"Under the rocks!" cried Toppy. "You don't mean to say there was anybody under that cave-in!"

"Is yet," was the laconic reply. "One of 'em was caught 'way inside. Whole roof on top of him. Won't find him till the pit's emptied."

Toppy struggled a moment to speak quietly.

"Which one was it, do you know?" he asked.

"Oh, it was that old brown-complected fellow," said the carpenter. "That old Bohunk guy with the big rings in his ears."

Reivers came to the shop at his customary time in the evening, nothing in his manner containing a hint that anything unusual had happened during the day. He found a solemn and silent pair, for Campbell had sought relief from the day's tragedy in his customary manner and sat in the light of the student-lamp steadily reading his Bible, while Toppy, in a dark corner, sat with his great shoulders hunched forward, his folded hands before him, and stared at the floor. Reivers paused in the doorway, his cold smile broadening as he surveyed the pair.

"Poker to-night--doctor?" he said softly, and the slur in his tones was like blasphemy toward all that men hold sacred.

"No, by ----, no!" growled Toppy.

Laughing lightly, Reivers closed the door and came across the room.

"What? Aren't you going to give me my revenge--doctor?" The manner in which he accented "doctor" was worse than an open insult.

Old Campbell peered over his thick glasses.

"The sword of judgment is sharpening for you, Mr. Reivers," he said solemnly. "You ha' this day sealed your own doom. A life for a life; and you have taken a life to-day unnecessarily. It is the holy law; you will pay. It is so written."

"Yes, yes, yes!" laughed Reivers in great amusement. "But you've said that so many times before in just that same way, Scotty. Can't you evolve a new idea? Or at least sing it in a different key?"

The old Scot looked at him without wavering or changing his expression.

"You are the smartest man I have ever known, Mr. Reivers, and the domdest fool," he said in the same tone. "Do you fancy yourself more than mortal? Losh, man! A knife in the bowels, or a bullet or ax in the head will as readily make you a bit of poor clay as you've this day made yon poor old Bohunk."

Reivers listened courteously to the end, waiting even a moment to be sure that Campbell had had his say.

"And you--doctor?" he said turning to Toppy. "What melancholy thoughts have you to utter?"

Toppy said nothing.

"Oh, come, Treplin!" said Reivers lightly. "Surely you're not letting a little thing like that quarry-incident give you a bad evening? Where's your philosophy, man? Consider the thing intelligently instead of sentimentally. There was so much rock to go into that dam in a day--and incidentally to-day finished the job. That was a useful, necessary work.

"For that old man to continue in this life was not useful or necessary. He was far down in the order of human development; centuries below you and me. Do you think it made the slightest difference whether he returned to the old cosmic mud whence he came, and from which he had not come far, in to-day's little cave-in, or in a dirty bed, say ten years from now?

"He accomplished a tiny speck of useful work, through my direction. He has gone, as the wood will soon be gone that is heating that stove. There was no spirit there; only a body that has ceased to stand upright. And you grow moody over it! Well, well! I'm more and more disappointed in you--doctor."

Toppy said nothing. He was biding his time.