_ PART II. EIGHT YEARS LATER
CHAPTER XIX. THE HOLD-UP
Ole Porson took a final glance round his shanty. The last of the daylight was rapidly fading. There was still sufficient penetrating the begrimed double window, however, to reveal the littered, unswept condition of the place. But he saw none of it. It was the place he knew and understood. It was at once his office, and his living quarters; a shanty with a tumbled sleeping bunk, a wood stove, and a table littered with the books and papers of his No. 10 camp. He was a rough creature, as hard of soul as he was of head, who could never have found joy in surroundings of better condition.
He solemnly loaded the chambers of a pair of heavy guns. Then he bestowed them in the capacious pockets of his fur pea-jacket. He also dropped in beside them a handful of spare cartridges. In his lighter moments he was apt to say that these weapons were his only friends. And those who knew him best readily agreed. Drawing up the storm-collar about his face, he passed out into the snow which was falling in flakes the size of autumn leaves. There was not a breath of wind to disturb the deathly stillness of the winter night.
Minutes later he was lounging heavily against the rough planked counter of Abe Risdon's store. He was talking to the suttler over a deep "four-fingers" of neat Rye, while his searching eyes scanned the body of the ill-lit room. The place was usually crowded with drinkers when the daylight passed, but just now it was almost empty.
"Who's that guy in the tweed pea-jacket an' looks like a city man?" he asked his host in an undertone, pointing at one of the tables where a stranger sat surrounded by four of the forest men.
Abe's powerful arms were folded as he leant on the counter.
"Blew in about noon," he said. "Filled his belly with good hash an' sat around since."
"He's a bunch o' the boys about him now, anyway. An' I guess he's talking quite a lot, an' they're doing most o' the listening. Seems like he's mostly enjoying hisself."
Abe shrugged. But the glance he flung at the man sitting at the far-off table was without approval.
"It's mostly that way now," he said, with an air of indifference his thoughtful eyes denied. "There's too many guys come along an' sell truck, an' set around, an' talk, an' then pass along. Things are changing around this lay out, an' I don't get its meanin'. Time was I had a bunch of boys ready most all the time to hand me the news going round. Time was you'd see a stranger once in a month come along in an' buy our food. Time was they mostly had faces we knew by heart, and we knew their business, and where they came from. Tain't that way now. You couldn't open the boys' faces fer news of the forest with a can-opener. These darn guys are always about now. They come, an' feed the boys' drink, an' talk with 'em most all the time. An' they're mostly strangers, an' the boys mostly sit around with their faces open like fool men listenin' to fairy tales. How's the cut goin'?"
Porson laughed. There was no light in his hard eyes.
"At a gait you couldn't change with a trail whip."
The other nodded.
'"That's how 'nigger' Pilling said. He guessed the cut was down by fifty. What is it? A buck? Wages?"
Porson's hand was fingering one of the guns in his pocket. His eyes were snapping.
"Curse 'em," he cried at last. "I just don't get it. They're goin' slow."
He pushed his empty glass at the suttler who promptly re-filled it.
"Young Pete Cust," Abe went on confidentially, "handed me a good guess only this mornin'. He'd had his sixth Rye before startin' out to work. Maybe he was rattled and didn't figger the things he said. He was astin' fer word up from the mills. I didn't worry to think, and just said I hadn't got. I ast 'why'? The boy took a quick look round, kind o' scared. He said, 'jest nothin'.' He reckoned he'd a dame somewhere around Sachigo. She'd wrote him things wer' kind of bad with the mills. They were beat fer dollars, and looked like a crash. He'd heard the same right there, an' it had him rattled. He thought of quittin' and goin' over to the Skandinavia. Maybe it's the sort o' talk that's got 'em all rattled. Maybe they're goin' slow on the cut, worryin' for their pay-roll. You can't tell. They don't say a thing. Seems to me we want Sternford right here to queer these yarns. Father Adam's around an' talked some. But--"
Porson drank down his liquor, and his glass hit the counter with angry force.
"They're mush-faced hoodlams anyway," he cried fiercely. "Ther' ain't a thing wrong with the mills. I'd bet a million on it."
He stood up from the counter and thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. He was a powerful figure with legs like the tree trunks it was his work to see cut. Quite abruptly he moved away, and Abe's questioning eyes followed him.
He strode down amongst the scattered tables and came to a halt before the tweed-coated stranger. All the men looked up, and their talk died out.
"Say, what's your bizness around here?"
Ole Person's manner was threatening as he made his demand. The stranger dived at the bag lying on the floor beside his chair. He picked it up and flung it open.
"Why, I got right here the dandiest outfit of swell jewellery," he cried, grinning amiably up at the man's threatening eyes. "There's just everything here," he went on, with irrepressible volubility, "to suit you gents of the forest, an' make you the envy of every jack way down at Sachigo. Here, there's a be-autiful Prince Albert for your watch. This ring. It's full o' diamonds calculated to set Kimberly hollerin'. Maybe you fancy a locket with it. It'll take a whole bunch of your dame's--"
"You'll light right out of this camp with daylight to-morrow!"
The tone of the camp-boss banished the last shadow of the pedlar's cast-iron smile.
"Oh, yes?" he said, his eyes hardening.
"That's wot I said. This camp's private property an' you'll light out. You get that? Daylight. If you don't, we've a way of dealing with Jew drummers that'll likely worry you. Get it. An' get it good."
For a moment they looked into each other's eyes. There was not the flicker of an eyelid between them. Then Porson turned and strode away.
He passed down the store re-fastening his coat. He paused at the door as a chorus of rough laughter reached him from the little gathering at the table. But it was only for an instant. He looked back. No face was turned in his direction. So he passed out.
* * * * *
The night outside was inky black. The heavy falling snow made progress almost a blind groping. But Porson knew every inch of the way. He passed down the lines of huts and paused outside each bunkhouse. His reason was obvious. There was a question in his mind as to the whereabouts of the crowd of his men who usually thronged the liquor store at this hour of the evening.
It was at the last bunkhouse he paused longest. He stood for quite a while listening under the double glassed window. Then he passed on and stood beside the tightly closed storm-door. The signs and sounds he heard were apparently sufficient. For, after a while, he turned back and set out to return to his quarters.
For many minutes he groped his way through the blinding snow, his mind completely given up to the things his secret watch had revealed. His brutish nature, being what it was, left him concerned only for the forceful manner by which he could restore that authority which he felt to be slipping away from him under the curious change which had come over the camp. His position depended on the adequate output of his winter's cut and on nothing else. That, he knew, was desperately falling, and--
But in a moment, all concern was swept from his mind. A sound leapt at him out of the stillness of the night. It was the whimper of dogs and the sharp command of a man's voice. He shouted a challenge and waited. And presently a dog train pulled up beside him.
* * * * *
Bull Sternford was standing before the wood stove in the camp-boss's shanty. He had removed his snow-laden fur coat. He had kicked the damp snow from his moccasins. Now he was wiping the moisture out of his eyes, and the chill in his limbs was easing under the warmth which the stove radiated.
Ole Porson's grim face was alight with a smile of genuine welcome, as he stood surveying his visitor across the roaring stove.
"It's surely the best thing happened in years, Mr. Sternford," he was saying. "I'm more glad you made our camp this night than any other. Maybe I'd ha' got through someways, but I don't know just how. We're down over fifty on our cut, an', by the holy snakes, I can't hand you why."
Bull put his coloured handkerchief away, and removed the pea-jacket which he had worn under his furs.
"Don't worry," he said with apparent unconcern. "I can hand it you. That's why I'm here."
The camp-boss waited. He eyed his chief with no little anxiety. He had looked for an angry outburst.
Bull pulled up a chair. He flung the litter of books it supported on to the already crowded table and sat down. Then he filled his pipe and lit it with a hot coal from the stove.
"Here," he said, "I'll tell you. I've been the round of four camps. I've been over a month on the trail, and I've heard just the same tale from every camp-boss we employ. I've three more camps to visit besides yours, and when I've made them maybe I'll get the sleep I'm about crazy for. Night and day I've been on the dead jump for a month following the trail of a red-hot gang that's going through our forests. If I come up with them there's going to be murder."
He spoke quietly without a sign of emotion. But the light in his hot eyes was almost desperate.
"I want to hand you the story so you'll get it all clear," he went on after a moment. "So I'll start by telling you how we stand at the mill. Get this, an' hold it tight in your head, and the rest'll come clear as day. Sachigo's right on top. We've boosted it sky high on to the top of the world's pulp trade. In less than twelve months we'll have grabbed well-nigh the whole of this country's pulp industry, and we'll beat the foreigners right back over the sea to their own country. The Skandinavia folk are rattled. They know all about us and they've done their best to buy us out of the game. We turned 'em down cold, and they're mad--mad as hell. It means they're in for the fight of their lives. So are we. And we know Peterman an' his gang well enough to know what that means. It's 'rough an' tough.' Everything goes. If they can't gouge our eyes they'll do their best to chew us to small meat. But we've got 'em every way. This forest gang is sent by the Skandinavia. If they can't smash us by fire or labour trouble next year'll see us floated into a seventy million dollar corporation with the whole Canadian wood-pulp industry lying right in the palms of our hands. That's the reason for the things doing."
He paused, and the camp-boss nodded his rough head. It was a story he could clearly understand. Then there were those figures. Seventy million dollars! They swept the last shadow of doubt from his mind.
"That's the position," Bull went on. "Now for the trouble as it is in the forests right now. The thing that's had me travelling night an' day for a month. There's an outfit going right through these forests. I can't locate its extent. Only the way it works. There's two objects in view. One is to fire our limits. The other reckons to paralyse our cut. So far these folks have failed against the fire-guard organisation, and I guess they'll likely miss most of their fire-bugs when they call the roll. The other's different."
Bull knocked out his pipe on the stove and gazed thoughtfully at the streak of brilliant light under the edge of the front damper.
"I've a notion there's an outfit of pedlars at work, as well as others," he went on presently.
The camp-boss nodded.
"Sure," he said.
Bull looked up.
"You think that way?" he asked. Then he nodded. "Yes, I guess we're right. They're handing the boys dope to keep 'em guessing--worrying. They're telling 'em we're on the edge of a big smash at Sachigo. That we can't see the winter through. We're cleaned out for cash, and the mill folk are shouting for their wages and starting in to riot. It's a swell yarn. It's the sort of yarn I'd tell 'em myself if I was working for the Skandinavia. It's the sort of dope these crazy forest-jacks are ready to swallow the same as if it was Rye. Do you see? These fools are being told they won't get their pay for their winter's cut. So, being what they are, the boys are going slow. They're going slow, and drawing goods at the store against each cord they cut. Well, do you see what's going to happen if the game succeeds? With our forests ablaze, and our cut fifty down, and the whole outfit on the buck, when spring comes, Skandinavia reckons our British financiers, when they come along to look our land over will turn the whole proposition of the flotation down, and quit us cold. But that's not just all. No, sir. Elas Peterman isn't the boy to leave it that way. He's handing out the story that when Sachigo smashes the Skandinavia's going to jump right in and collect the wreckage cheap. Then they'll start up the mill, and sign on all hands on their own pay-roll, only stipulating that they won't pay one single cent of what Sachigo owes for their cut. So, if they're such almighty fools as to cut, it's going to be their dead loss and the Skandinavia's gain. Do you get it? It's smart. I guess there's a bigger brain behind it than Peterman's."
The camp-boss spat into the stove. It was his one expression of disgust.
Bull rose from his chair.
"Here, I need food. So does my boy out there with the dogs. We'll take it after I'm through with the men. It's snowing like hell, but I pull out two hours from now. You see, I'm on a hot trail, an' don't fancy losing a minute."
"You're goin' to talk to 'em--the boys?" Porson's eyes lit with a gleam of satisfaction. "Can you--twist 'em?"
Bull thrust a hand into his breast pocket and drew out a sealed packet. He held it up before the other's questioning eyes.
"I haven't failed yet," he said quietly. "In nine of our camps back on the river the work's running full already. I've a whole big yarn for our boys. But right here I've got what's better. It's the only thing that'll clinch the yarn I'm going to hand 'em. This," he went on, indicating the parcel in his hand, "is the bunch of dollars representing the price of this camp's full winter cut, and the price of a bonus for making up all leeway already lost. I'm going to have the boys count it. Then I'm going to have them hand it right over to Abe Risdon to set in his safe, with a written order from me to pay out in full the moment the winter cut is complete. Is it good? Can the Skandinavia's junk stand in face of it? No, sir. And so I've proved right along. I don't hold much of a brief for the intelligence of the forest-jack, but his belly rules him all the time. You see, he's human, and no more dishonest than the rest of us. Have him guessing and worried and you'll get trouble right along. Show him the lies the Skandinavia's been doping him with, and he'll work out of sheer spite to beat their game. You get right out and collect the gang."
* * * * *
The snowfall had ceased. And with its passing the temperature had fallen to something far below its average winter level. The clouds had vanished miraculously, and in their place was a night sky ablaze with the light of myriad stars, and the soft splendour of a brilliant moon.
It was a scene of frigid desolation. Away on the southern horizon lay the black line which marked the tremendous forest limits of the Beaver River. For the rest it was a world of snow that hid up the rugged undulations of a sterile territory.
The dog train was moving at a reckless gait over the untracked, hardening snow. The man Gouter was driving under imperative orders such as he loved. Bull Sternford had told him when he left the shelter of No. 10 Camp: "Get there! Get there quick! There's dogs and to spare at all our camps, and I don't care a curse if you run the outfit to death."
To a man of Gouter's breed the order was sufficient. Half Eskimo, half white man, he was a savage of the wild, born and bred to the fierce northern trail, one of Labrador's hereditary fur hunters by sea and land. Speed on the fiercest trail was the dream of his vanity. Relays of dogs, such as he could never afford, and something accomplished which he could tell of over the camp fire to his less fortunate brethren. So he accepted the white man's order and drove accordingly.
Bull Sternford sat huddled in the back of the sled under the fur robes which alone made life possible. His work at No. 10 Camp had left him satisfied, but every nerve in his body was alert for the final coup he contemplated. He was weary in mind as well as body. And in his heart he knew that the need of his physical resources was not so very far off. But he was beyond care. He had said he was crazy for sleep, but the words gave no indication of his real condition. His eyes ached. His head throbbed. There were moments, even, when the things he beheld, the things he thought became distorted. But he knew that somewhere ahead a ghostly outfit of strangers was pursuing its evil work against him, and he meant to come up with it, and to wreak his vengeance in merciless, summary fashion. His purpose had become an obsession in the long sleepless days and nights he had endured.
It was war. It was bitter ruthless war on the barren hinterland of Labrador, where civilisation was unknown. Mercy? Nature never designed that terrible wilderness as a setting for mercy.
The dogs had been running for hours when Gouter's voice came sharply back over his shoulder.
"Dog!" he cried, in the laconic fashion habitual to him.
Bull knelt up. His movement suggested the nervous strain he was enduring. It was almost electrical.
"Where?" he demanded, peering out into the shining night over the man's furry shoulder.
The half-breed raised a pointing whip ahead and to the south.
"Sure," he said. "I hear him."
Bull had heard nothing. Nothing but the hiss of the snow under their own runners, and the whimper of their own dogs.
"It wouldn't be a wolf or fox?" he demurred.
The half-breed clucked his tongue. His vanity was outraged.
Bull gazed intently in the direction the whip had pointed. He could see only the far-off forest line, and the soft whiteness of the world of snow.
"Hark!"
The half-breed again held up his whip. This time it was for attention. Bull listened. Still he could hear nothing, nothing at all but the sounds of their own progress.
"Man! Him speak with dog. Oh, yes."
Gouter had turned. His beady black eyes were shining with a smile of triumph into the white man's face.
"By the forest?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then in God's name swing over and run to head them off!"
Gouter obeyed with alacrity. He had impressed his white chief. It was good. A series of unintelligible ejaculations and the dogs swung away to the south. Then the whip rolled out and fell with cruel accuracy. The rawhide tugs strained under a mighty effort, as the great dogs were set racing with their lean bellies low to the ground.
Bull wiped the icicles from about his mouth and nose.
"Now have your guns ready," he cried. "The driver of that team is your man. The other's mine. If he shows fight kill him. There's five hundred dollars for you if you get 'em."
"I get 'em."
The half-breed's confidence was supreme. Bull dropped back into the sled. He sat with a pair of automatic pistols ready to his hand and gazed out over the sled rail.
It was a terrific race and all feeling of weariness had passed under the excitement of it. The dogs were silent now. Every nerve in their muscular bodies were straining. The pace seemed to increase with every passing moment, and up out of the horizon the dark line of the forest leapt at them, deepening and broadening as it came.
For some time the less practised white man saw and heard nothing of his enemies. He was forced to rely on the half-breed. He observed the man closely. He noted his every sign and read it as best he could. Presently Gouter leant forward peering. Then he straightened up and his voice came back triumphantly.
"I see dem," he exclaimed. And pointed almost abreast. "Dogs. One--two--five. Yes. Two man. Now we get him sure."
Down fell the whip on the racing dogs. The man shouted his jargon at them. The sled lurched and swayed with the added spurt, and Bull held fast to the rail. A glad thrill surged through his senses.
It was a moment of tremendous uplift. Bull had yearned for it for weeks. But the short days and long nights of deferred hope had had their effect. He had almost come to feel that this thing that was now at hand was something impossible.
Yes. There was the outfit growing plainer and plainer with every moment. He could see it clearly. He could even count its details as the other's sharper eyes had counted them minutes before. There were five dogs. And they were running hard. They, too, were being flogged, and the man driving them was shouting furiously in his urgency.
Suddenly there was a leap of flame and a shot rang out. It came from the driver of the fleeing dog train. It was replied to on the instant by Gouter who lost not a second. His own shot sped even as the enemy's bullet whistled somewhere past his head. He fired again. A third shot split the air. And with that last shot the enemy's sled seemed to leap in the air. There was a moment of hideous confusion. Then the wreckage dropped away behind the pursuers, sprawled and still in the snow.
A fierce shout from Gouter and his dogs swung round. The sled under him heeled over, and took a desperate chance on a single runner. But the half-breed's skill saved them from catastrophe. It righted itself, and the dogs slowed to a trot. Then they halted. And the occupants of the sled flung themselves prone, with their guns ready for the first sign of movement in the tangled mass of their adversary's outfit.
* * * * *
Two of the dogs lay buried under the overturned sled. Three others were sprawling at the end of their rawhide tugs. They were alive. They were unhurt. They lay there taking full advantage of the situation for rest.
But for the moment interest centred round the body of a white man lying some yards away. A groan of pain came up to the two men standing over him.
Bull dropped on his knees. He reached down and turned the body over. The eyes of the man were visible between the sides of his fur hood. But that was all.
There was a moment of silent contemplation. Then the injured man struggled desperately to rise.
"Sternford?" he ejaculated
Gouter was on him in a moment. He heard the tone of voice, and interpreted the man's movement in his own savage fashion. He knew the man to be the driver of the team, whom his boss had told him was his man. So he threw him back and held him.
Bull stood up. The man's voice told him all he wanted to know.
"Laval, eh?" he said quietly. "A second time. I didn't expect it. No."
Then he laughed and turned away. And the sound of his laugh possessed something terribly mocking in the night silence of the wilderness.
He passed back to the sled. There had been two men in it. He had seen that for himself.
The wreckage looked hopeless. The sled was completely overturned and its gleaming runners caught and reflected the white rays of the moon. It had been thrown by reason of the fallen bodies of the dogs which lay under it, pinned by its weight, and additionally held fast by their own tangled harness.
Bull had no thought for anything but the purpose in his mind. So he reached out and caught the steel runners in his mitted hands and flung the vehicle aside.
Yes, it was there in the midst of a confusion of baggage and lying cheek by jowl with the mangled remains of the dogs. He cleared the debris, and dragged the dogs aside. Then he stood and gazed down at the figure that remained.
It was clad in a voluminous beaver coat. It was hooded, as was every man who faced the fierce Labrador trail. But--
The figure moved. It stirred, and deliberately sat up. Bull's hands had been on his guns at the first movement. But he released them, as the hood fell back from the face which was ghastly pale in the moonlight.
He flung himself on his knees, and tenderly supported the swaying figure.
"God in Heaven!" he cried. "Nancy! You?" _