_ PART II. EIGHT YEARS LATER
CHAPTER III. BULL LEARNS CONDITIONS
The
Myra ploughed her leisurely way up the cove. There was dignity in the steadiness with which she glided through the still waters. The cockleshell of the Atlantic billows had become a thing of pride in the shelter of Farewell Cove. Her predecessor, the
Lizzie, had never risen above her humble station.
Her decks were wide and clean. Her smoke-stack had something purposeful in its proportions. The bridge was set high and possessed a spacious chart house. She had an air of importance not usual to the humble coasting packet.
"Old man" Hardy was at his post now. One of his officers occupied the starboard side of the bridge, while he and another looked out over the port bow.
"It's a deep water channel," the skipper said, with all a sailor's appreciation. "That's the merricle that makes this place. It'ud take a ten-thousand tonner with fathoms to spare right away up to the mooring berth. Guess Nature meant Sachigo for a real port, but got mussed fixing the climate."
Bull Sternford was leaning over the rail. For all summer was at its height the thick pea-jacket he was wearing was welcome enough. His keen eyes were searching, and no detail of the prospect escaped them. He was filled with something akin to amazement.
"It compares with the big harbours of the world," he replied. "And I'd say it's not without advantages many of the finest of 'em lack. Those headlands we passed away back. Why, the Atlantic couldn't blow a storm big enough to more than ripple the surface here inside." He laughed. "What a place to fortify. Think of this in war time, eh?"
The grizzled skipper grinned responsively.
"It's all you reckon," he said. "But she needs humouring. You need to get this place in winter when ice and snow make it tough. This cove freezes right around its shores. You'd maybe lay off days to get inside, only to find yourself snow or fog bound for weeks on end. We make it because we have to with mails. But you can't run cargo bottoms in winter. It's a coasting master's job in snow time. It's a life study. You can get in, and you can get out--if you've nerve. If you're short that way you'll pile up sure as hell."
He turned away to the chart room, and a moment later the engine-room telegraph chimed his orders to those below.
Bull was left with his busy thoughts.
It was a remarkable scene. The forest slopes came right down almost to the water's edge on either hand. They came down from heights that rose mountainously. And there, all along the foreshore were dotted timber-built habitations sufficient to shelter hundreds of workers. Their quality was staunch and picturesque, and pointed much of the climate rigour they were called upon to endure. But they only formed a background to, perhaps, the most wonderful sight of all. A road and trolley car line skirted each foreshore, and the mind behind the searching eyes was filled with admiration for the skill and enterprise that had transplanted one of civilisation's most advanced products here on the desperate coast of Labrador. Many of the forest whispers of Sachigo had been incredible. But this left the onlooker ready to believe anything of it.
The mill, and the township surrounding it, were already within view, a wide-scattered world of buildings, occupying all the lower levels of the territory on both sides of the mouth of the Beaver River before it rose to the heights from which its water power fell.
Bull was amazed. And as he gazed, his wonder and admiration were intensified a hundredfold by his self-interest. This place was to be in his control, possibly his possession if he made good. He thrust back the fur cap pressed low on his forehead.
His thought leapt back on the instant to the man who had sent him down to this Sachigo. Father Adam, with his thin, ascetic features, his long, dark hair and beard, his tall, spare figure. His patient kindliness and sympathy, and yet with the will and force behind it which could fling the muzzle of a gun into a man's face and force obedience. He had sent him. Why? Because--oh, it was all absurd, unreal. And yet here he was on the steamer; and there ahead lay the wonders of Sachigo. Well, time would prove the craziness of it all.
"Makes you wonder, eh?" The coasting skipper was at his side again. "You know these folks needed big nerve to set up this enterprise. It keeps me guessing at the limits where man has to quit. I've spent my life on this darn coast, an' never guessed to see the day when trolley cars 'ud run on Labrador, and the working folk 'ud sit around in their dandy houses, with electric light making things comfortable for them, and electric heat takin' the place of the cordwood stove it seemed to me folk never could do without. Can you beat it? No. You can't. Nor anyone else."
"Who is it? A corporation?" Bull asked, knowing full well the answer. He wanted to hear, he wanted to learn all that this man could tell him.
Hardy shook his head.
"Standing," he said. "That was the guy's name who started it all up. But," he added thoughtfully, "I never rightly knew which feller it was. If it was Standing, or that tough hoboe feller who calls himself Bat Harker. They never talk a heap. But since Leslie Standing passed out o' things eight years back--the time I was first handed command of this kettle--the mill's jumped out of all notion. Those trolleys," he pointed at the foreshore of the cove: "They started in to haul the 'hands' to their work only two years back. I'd say it's Bat Harker. But he looks more like a longshore tough than a--genius."
He shrugged expressively. Then he shook his head.
"No," he went on. "I don't know a thing but what any guy can learn who comes along up this coast. I've thought a heap. An', like you, I've ast questions all the time. But you don't learn a thing of this enterprise but the things you see. Bat Harker don't ever talk." He laughed in quiet enjoyment. "He's most like a clam mussed up in a cement bar'l. There don't seem any clear reason either. The only thing queer to me was Standing's 'get out.' There was talk then when that happened along. But it was jest talk. Canteen talk. Something sort of happened. No one seemed rightly to know. They guessed Bat was a tough guy who'd boosted him out--some way. Then I heard his wife had quit and he was all broke up. Then they said he'd made losses of millions on stock market gambles. But the yarns don't fit. You see, the mill's gone right ahead. The capital's there, sure. They've just built and built. There's more than twice the 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the 'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the
Myra and they scrapped the
Lizzie, I never guessed to get a full cargo. Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast. It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving all the time. They're bright folk, sure."
The old seaman laughed and moved off again to his telegraphs. The business of running in to the quayside was beginning in earnest.
* * * * *
The hawsers creaked and strained at the bollards. The vessel yawed. Then she settled at her berth. The engine-room telegraph chimed its final order, and the vessel's busy heart came to rest. Instantly activity reigned upon the deck, and the discharge of cargo was in full swing.
Bull Sternford was one of the first to pass down the gangway. Clad in the pleasant tweeds of civilisation, part hidden under a close-buttoned pea-jacket, he bulked enormously. His more than six feet of height was lost against his massive breadth of shoulder. Then, too, his keen face under a beaver cap, and his shapely head with its mane of hair, were things to deny his body that attention it might otherwise have attracted.
For all that, at least one pair of critical eyes lost no detail of his personality. Bat Harker was unobtrusively standing amongst the piled bales of groundwood that stacked the wharf from end to end. There was nothing about him to single him out from those who stood on the quay. The rough clothing of his original calling was very dear to him, and he clung to it tenaciously. He seemed to have aged not one whit in the added eight years. His iron-grey hair was just as thick and colourful as before. There was no added line in his hard face. His girth was no less and no more. And his eyes, penetrating, steady, had the same spirit shining in them.
He had laboured something desperately in the past eight years. With the passing of Leslie Standing from the life of Sachigo he had realized a terrible loss. His loss had more than embarrassed him. There was even a moment when it shook his purpose. But with him Sachigo was a religion, and his faith saved him. For a while, in both letter and spirit, he obeyed his orders, and Sachigo stood still. Then his philosophy carried the day. It was his dictum that no one could stand still on Labrador without freezing to death. He saw the application of it to his beloved mill. It must be "forward" or decay. So he scrapped his original orders, and drove with all his force.
Bull stared about him for the fascination of his journey up the cove was still on him. His pre-occupation left him watching the hurried, orderly movement going on about him.
"That all your baggage?"
The demand was harsh, and Bull swung round with a start. He was gazing down into the upturned face of Bat Harker, who was pointing at the suit case he was carrying.
"Guess I've a trunk back there in the hold somewhere," Bull replied indifferently, taking his interrogator for a quayside porter.
"That's all right. I'll have one of the boys tote it up. Best come right along. It's quite a piece up to the office. You've a letter for me?"
"I've a letter for Mr. Bat Harker."
The doubt in Bull's tone set a genuine grin in the other's eyes.
"Sure. That's me. Bat Harker. Maybe you don't guess I look it. Don't worry. Just pass it over."
Bull groped in an inner pocket, surprise affording him some amusement. His interest in Sachigo had abruptly focussed itself on this man.
"I'm kind of sorry," he said. "I surely took you for some sort of--porter."
Bat laughed outright, and glanced down at his work-stained clothing.
"Wal, that ain't new," he said. Then his eyes resumed their keen regard. "We don't need to wait around though. The skitters are mighty thick down here. Sachigo's gettin' a special breed I kind o' hate. That letter, an'--we'll get along."
Bull drew out Father Adam's letter and waited while the other tore it open. Bat glanced at the contents and jumped to the signature. Then he thrust out a gnarled and powerful hand.
"Shake," he cried. And there could be no doubting his good will. "Glad to have you around, Mr. Bull Sternford."
* * * * *
Bull Sternford was seated in the luxurious chair that had once known Leslie Standing. His pea-jacket was removed and his cap was gone. The room was warm, and the sun beyond the window was radiant. Beyond the desk Bat was seated, where his wandering gaze could drift to the one object of which it never tired. He was at the window which looked out upon the mill below.
He was reading Father Adam's letter. Sternford was silently regarding his squat figure. He was waiting and wondering, speculating as to the hard-faced, uncultured creature who had built up all the amazing details that made up an industrial city in a territory that was outlawed by Nature.
Bat thrust the letter away and looked up.
"Father Adam didn't write that letter for you? He just handed it out to you to bring along?"
"That's how," Bull nodded.
"Sure." Bat's tone became reflective. "He must have wrote that letter years, and held it against the time he located you. He's queer."
Bull laughed.
"Maybe he is," he said, "I don't know about that. But he's one hell of a good man," he went on warmly. "Do you know him? But of course you do. Say, he's just father and mother to every darn lumber-jack that haunts the forests of Quebec, and it don't worry him if his children are hellhound or honest. There's that to him sets me just crazy. I'd like to see his thin, tired face, always smiling." He stirred. And the warmth died abruptly out of his manner. "Say, you knew me--at the wharf?"
"Sure. I knew you before you came along. We've a wireless out on the headland."
"I see. Father Adam warned you I was coming. He told you--"
"The whole darn yarn. Sure."
Bull laughed grimly.
"That he guessed to shoot me to small meat if I didn't do as he said?"
"If you didn't cut out homicide from your notions of--sport."
"Yes. It was tough," Bull regretted. "But I'm glad--now."
"Yep. Guess any straight sort of feller would feel that way--after."
The lumberman's regret was unnoticed by the other.
Suddenly Bull leant forward in his chair. A smile, half whimsical, half incredulous, lit his eyes. He thrust his elbows on the desk and supported his face in his hands.
"It just beats hell!" he cried. "It certainly does. Oh, I'm awake all right. Sure, I am. One time I wasn't sure. Two months back I was lying around a lousy summer camp getting ready to take a hand in the winter cut for the Skandinavia Corporation. I was within two seconds of breaking a man's life--the rotten camp boss. And now? Why, now I'm sitting around in dandy tweeds in the boss chair of a swell office, with a crazy notion back of my head I'm here to beat the game with the greatest groundwood mill in the world, and ten million dollars capital behind me. Maybe there's folks wouldn't guess I'm awake, but I allow I am. But the whole thing sets me thinking of the fairy stories I used to read when I was a kid, and never could see the horse sense in wasting time over."
Bat helped himself to a chew from a fragment of plug tobacco.
"Here, listen," Bull went on, after the briefest pause. "It's my 'show down.' I don't understand a thing. I'm mostly a kid from college with a yearning for fight. So far I've learned some of the things the forest can teach the feller who wants to learn. They're the rough things. And I like rough things. I've some grip on groundwood. And the making of groundwood's the main object of my life. That, and the notion of licking hell out of the other feller. That's me, and those are the things made Father Adam send me along down to Sachigo. Well, it's up to you." He spread out his hands, "Where do I stand? How do I stand? And why in the name of all that's crazy am I sitting in this boss chair--right now?"
Bat swung one trunk-like leg across the other. His movement suggested an easing of mind and a measure of enjoyment. He pointed at the window and nodded in its direction.
"Quite a place," he said, in a tone and with a pride that had no relation to the other's demands. "Makes you feel man ain't the bum sort of inseck in the scheme of things some highbrows ain't happy not tellin' you. There's folks who guess it's Nature the proposition that matters. It's her does it all, an' keeps on doin' it all the time. But Nature's most like one mighty foolish, extravagant female. That sort o' woman who don't care but to please the notion of the moment. And when that's done, goes right on to please the next. Wal, anyway I guess she's got her uses if it's only to hand chances to the guy that's lookin' on. Take a look right down there below," he went on. "That's the truck the guy lookin' on has sweppen up in Nature's trail. It's taken most of fifteen years collectin' it. We've had to push that broom hard. And now I guess you're going to boost your weight behind it too. There's other things to collect, and that's what we want from you. You got nerve. You got big muscle, and education, too. Well, you'll handle the biggest sweeper of us all. Does it scare you?"
"Not a thing." Bull was smiling confidently.
Bat chuckled. His eyes were sparkling as he ruthlessly masticated his tobacco. This man pleased him mightily.
"That's all right," he said. Then he went on after a silent moment while he gazed thoughtfully out of the window. "It's right here," he exclaimed. "Here's a mill, a swell mill that don't lack for a thing to make it well-nigh perfect. I'll tell you about it. Its capacity. Its present limit is six thousand tons dry weight groundwood pulp to the week. That's runnin' full. There's a hundred and twenty grinders feeding a hundred and eighty sheetin' machines. And they're figgered to use up fifty-five thousand horse power of the five hundred thousand we got harnessed on this great little old river that falls off the highlands. That power is ours winter an' summer. It don't matter a shuck the 'freeze up.' It's there for us all the darn time. Then we've forest limits to hand us the cordage for that output that could give us three times what we're needing for a thousand years. Labour? We got it plenty. And later, by closing in our system of foresting, I figger to cut out present costs on a sight bigger output. The plans for all that are fixed in my head. Then we come to the market for our stuff, an' I guess that's the syrup in the pie. The world's market's waitin' on us. It's ours before we start. Why? Our power don't cost us one cent a unit. We're able to hand our folks a standard of living through the nature of things that leaves wages easy. The river's wide, and full, and it's
our own. Then our sea passage to Europe's just eighteen hundred miles instead of three thousand. An' these things mean our costs leave us cutting right under other folks, and Skandinavia beat. There it is," he cried, with a wide gesture of his knotted hands. "It's pie!"
Something of the lumberman's enthusiasm found reflection in Sternford's eyes.
"But Nature's handed us a lemon in the basket of oranges," Bat went on, with a shake of his head. "It's that woman in her again. Y'see, she gives us just four months in the year to get our stuff out. Oh, she don't freeze the cove right up. No. That's the tough of it. The channel's mostly open. But storm, and fog, and ice, beats the ocean-going skipper's power to navigate it with any sort o' safety. The headlands are desperate narrow, and--well, there it is. We've four months in the year to get our stuff out. It's a sum. Figger it yourself. Set us goin' full. Six thousand tons in the week. What is it? Three hundred thousand in the year. How many trips at ten thousand tons? Or put the average tonnage lower. Say eight thousand. Forty trips. Four months. A vessel making two trips on an average turn round. We need a fleet of twenty 'bottoms,' to do it in the time. And they'll need to be our own. You can't help yourself to the world's market, and fix prices, and all the while fight for shipping in the open market. See?"
"Sure--I see."
Bat nodded approval.
"When we get that the rest can go through. Meanwhile there's sixty grinders idle, which leaves us workin' half capacity. As it stands it's a dandy enterprise. We're making a swell balance sheet. But profit ain't the whole purpose. There's the rest."
The super lumber-jack turned again to the window with that fascination that was almost pathetic.
"And the rest?"
Bull Sternford urged the other sharply, and Bat turned at once.
"Canada's groundwood for the Canadian, inside the Empire," he shot at him.
The other nodded.
"The world's market for the country that can and should supply it," he replied.
"The smashing of the darn Skandinavian ring," cried Bat, his deep-set eyes alight.
"And drive them--back over the sea."
Bat suddenly leant across the table.
"That's it, boy," he cried. "That's it! Hellbeam and all his gang. The Skandinavia Corporation. Smash 'em! Drive 'em to Hell! It ain't profit. It's the trade. The A'mighty made Canada an' built the Canadian. He set him right here to help himself to the things He gave him. It's being filched by these foreigners--his birthright. They're fat on it. Did we fight the world war for that? Not by a darn sight. We fought to hold a place on the map for ourselves. And that's a proposition we've all got to get our back teeth into."
"It sure is."
The mill manager sat back in his chair and chewed vigorously.
"That's it," he said. "How?" he went on. "Combination. Finance--and the interest of the little, great old country across the water. It's all planned and laid out by the feller that started up this proposition. It's scheduled for you. Guess you'll find the last word of it writ out in the locked book in this desk. It's clear and straight for the feller with the nerve. That's you. Wal?"
Bat was watching--searching. He was looking for that flicker of an eyelid he had learned to dread in the past. But he failed to discover it. The wide, clear eyes of the younger man returned his regard unwaveringly. The uncultured lumberman had stirred a responsive enthusiasm, and somehow the project no longer seemed the crazy thing it had once appeared to Bull Sternford.
"Guess my back teeth have got it," he said, with a smile. "You needn't worry I'll let go."
Bat drew a deep breath. He stood up and spat his mangled chew into the cuspidore.
"I'm glad. I'm real glad," he cried. "I'm a heap more glad you told me those words without askin' the other things you need to know. But you got to know 'em right away. Say, the day that fixes up the things we been talkin' sees you with me and another masters of this mill an' all it means. And while you're playin' your hand there's one big fat salary for you to draw. This house and office is yours, an' me an' the mill's ready to do all we know all the time, just the way you need it. Down in Abercrombie there's the attorney, Charles Nisson, who's got the outfit of papers that you're goin' to sign. And when you seen him, why you'll get busy. Shake, boy," he cried, thrusting out one knotted hand. "Father Adam sent you, and I don't guess he's made any mistake."
Bull had risen, and his height left him towering over the man across the table.
"Now for the mill," he cried, as their hands fell apart. "The
Myra sails sundown to-morrow and I need to get a swift look around before then. Say, you folk have kind of taken me on a chance--well, that's all right. I'm glad." _