_ PART II. EIGHT YEARS LATER
CHAPTER XXIV. THE COMING OF SPRING
It had been a hard day. Bull Sternford had spent it dealing with complicated financial schedules, an amazing, turbulent sea of figures, until his powers and patience had temporarily exhausted themselves.
In a final fit of irritation he had flung his work aside, and risen from his desk. The insufferable heat of the room, and the reek of his own pipe disgusted him. So he had moved over to the window where the cold air of early spring drifted in through the open ventilating slot in the storm sash.
His gaze was on the Cove below, where the snow-laden ice was discoloured by the moist slush of thaw, and the open waters, far down towards the distant headlands, had so deeply encroached upon the claims of winter.
A great, premature thaw had set in. It was the real spring thaw a month or more early. Skert Lawton, who controlled the water power of the mill, had warned him of its coming. Bat too had spoken out of his years of experience of the moods of Labrador's seasons. But somehow the sight of it all gave him none of the joy with which it had inspired the others.
The evil night of threatened disaster had become only a memory. Nearly six weeks had passed since Nancy McDonald had craved the privilege of caring for the man who had so nearly given his life in the saving of the mill and all the great purpose it represented. Now he was mercifully returned to health and strength under the devoted care that had been bestowed upon him. The mill was again in full work. And the human army it employed had returned to their peace-time labours in the full determination to undo the grievous hurt which the mischief of the Skandinavia's agents and their own folly had inflicted. In the relief of reaction, they, no less than their employers, had redoubled their efforts.
All outward sign of the trouble through which the mill had passed had long since been cleared away under the driving power of the forceful Bat Harker. The scars of fire remained here and there. But they were no more than a reminder for those who were ready to forget the folly they had once committed.
Everything was moving on now as Bull and his comrades would have had it. Only that morning word had come through that Ray Birchall was on his way from London for the purpose of his report, and expected to reach Sachigo in three weeks' time. Could anything, then, be better than this early thaw? It was a veritable act of Providence that the London man's inspection of the mills, and all the property involved would take place under the most active conditions.
It should have been a time of rejoicing and mental ease. It should have been a time of stirring hope. A moment for complaisant contemplation of a great purpose achieved. But the man at the window regarded the thing he looked upon without any display of pleasurable feeling. The sight of it literally seemed to deepen the unease which looked out of his eyes.
In the midst of Bull's pre-occupation the door from the outer office was thrust open, and Bat Harker's harsh voice jarred the silence of the room.
"Gettin' a peek at things," he cried, stumping heavily across the thick carpet. "Well, it looks good to me, too. Say, if this lasts just one week we'll be as clear of snow as hell's sidewalks." Then he flung open his rough pea-jacket and pushed his cap back from his lined forehead. "Gee, it's hot!"
The lumberman was standing at Bull's side, and his deep-set eyes were following the other's gaze with twinkling satisfaction. Bull nodded and moved away.
"Yep," he ejaculated. "It should be good for us."
He passed over to the radiators and shut them off. Then he went over to the wood-stove and closed down the dampers. Then, with a curious absent-mindedness, he stood up and held out his hands to the warmth radiating from the stove.
Bat was watching him interestedly. And at sight of his final attitude he broke into one of his infrequent chuckles and flung himself into a chair.
"Say, what in--? Feeling cold?" he demanded.
Bull's hands were promptly withdrawn, and, in spite of his mood, a half smile at his own expense lit his troubled eyes.
"That's all right," he said. "It's on me, sure. I guess my head must be full of those figures still."
He returned to the window and stood with his back to his companion. Bat watched him for some moments.
Bull had changed considerably in the last few weeks. The lumberman had been swift to observe it. Somehow the old enthusiasm had faded out. The keen fighting nature he had become accustomed to, with its tendency to swift, almost reckless action, had become less marked. The man was altogether less buoyant.
At first it had seemed to Bat's searching mind as if the effects of that desperate trip through the forests, and the subsequent battle down at the mill, had left its mark upon him, had somehow wrought one of those curious, weakening changes in the spirit of the man which seemed so unaccountable. Later, however, he dismissed the idea for a shrewder and better understanding.
He helped himself to a chew of tobacco and kicked a cuspidore within his reach.
"The fire-bugs are out," he said. "The last of 'em. I jest got word through. It's the seventh. An' it's the tally."
It was a sharp, matter-of-fact statement. He was telling of a human killing, and there was no softening.
Bull nodded. He glanced over his shoulder.
"You mean--?"
"They shot five of 'em to death. The last two they hanged." A grim set of the jaws, as Bat made the announcement, was his only expression of feeling.
"Makes you wonder," he went on, after a pause. "Makes you think of the days when locomotives didn't run. Makes you think of the days when life was just a pretty mean gamble with most of the odds dead against you. It don't sound like these Sunday School days when the world sits around, framed in a fancy-coloured halo, that couldn't stand for any wash-tub, talkin' brotherhood an' human sympathy. It's tough when you think of the bunch that sent those boys to fire our limits. They knew the full crime of it, and knew the thing it would mean if we got hands on 'em. Well, there it is. We got 'em. An' now ther' ain't a mother's son of 'em left alive to tell the yarn of it all. It's been just cold, bloody murder. An' the murder ain't on us. No, I guess the darn savage eatin' hashed missioner ain't as bad a proposition as the civilised guys who paid the price to get those toughs killed up in our forests. I can't feel no sort of regret. It won't hand me a half-hour nightmare. But it makes me wonder. It surely does."
He spat accurately into the cuspidore.
"Does the report hand you anything else?" Bull asked, without turning. The other noticed the complete lack of real interest. He shrugged.
"The camps are all in full cut. They're not a cord behind."
Bat looked for a word, the lighting of an eye. There was none. And he stirred in his chair, and exasperation drove him.
"Don't it make you feel good?" he demanded sharply. "It's the last guess answered, unless there's a guess when that boy, Birchall, comes along. Anyway, you don't figger ther's much guess to that, with the mill runnin' full, an' every boom crashed full of logs. No. Here, Bull!" he cried, with sudden vehemence. "Turn around, man. Turn right around an' get a grip on it all. The game's won to the last detail. Can't you feel good? Can't you feel like a feller gettin' out into the light after years of the darkest hell? Don't it make you want to holler? Ain't there a thing I can say to boost you? The boys down at the mill are hoggin' work. The groundwood's on the quays like mountains. The mills are roaring like blast furnaces. Can you beat it? Spring. The flies an' skitters, an' shipping. Why, in a week I guess Father Adam'll be hittin the trail for the forests, an'--"
"Nancy McDonald will be sailing for Quebec."
Bat was no longer gazing on the other's broad back and the mane of hair which did its best to conceal his massive neck. Bull had turned. His strong face was flushed. His fine eyes were hot. There could be no mistaking the passionate emotion which the other had stirred.
The two men gazed into each other's eyes. Then with a curiously expressive gesture of his great hands Bull turned to the chair standing near, and flung himself into it.
The lumberman's eyes twinkled. He had done the thing he desired. "An' you don't want her to?" he said deliberately.
Just for a moment it looked as though a headlong outburst was about to reply to him. Then, quite suddenly, the hot light in Bull's eyes died out and he smiled. He shook his head.
"No," he said in simple denial. "If she goes it means the end of Sachigo for me."
"You reckon you'll quit?"
In a moment the lumberman remembered a scene which had been enacted years ago on the high ground on the north shore of the Cove. He would never forget it. It had been the final decision of another to quit Sachigo. And the reason had been not dissimilar.
There was no reply. Bull sat staring blankly in front of him. His eyes were on the wintry sky which was still broad with the light of day beyond the window.
Presently his gaze lost its abstraction and came again to the strong, lined face of the older man. "Yes, Bat," he said calmly, almost coldly, "I'd have to quit. I just couldn't stand for it. Nancy's got right into my life. She's the only thing I can see--now."
"Fer all she's a kind of prisoner right here, caught red-hand doin' the damnedest she knows to break us in favour of the outfit that pays her?"
Bat smiled as he flung his challenge. But his tone, his words, were no indication of his mood, or of the rapid thought passing behind his shrewd eyes. A great sense of pleasure was asurge within him. He wanted to tell of it. He wanted to reach out and grip the other's hand, and tell him all that his words meant to him. But he refrained. Another man's secret was involved, and that was sufficient. His lips were sealed.
Bull stirred restlessly.
"Oh, psha!" he cried at last, with a force that displayed the tremendous feeling he could no longer deny. "I know what you think, Bat. I'm crazy. Well, maybe I am. Most men get crazy one time in their lives when a woman gets around. It's no use. I just can't help it. I know all you're thinking. Nancy McDonald belongs to our enemies. As you say she's done her damnedest to break us. Maybe you reckon I ought to feel for her like the devil does about holy water. Well, I don't. I'm plumb crazy for her, and when spring clears up the waters of the Cove, and the
Myra comes alongside, she's going right aboard, and will pass out of Labrador and out of my life. I'm never going to get another sight of her. I'm never going to get another sound of her dandy voice, or a sight of her pretty eyes, and--Hell! What's the use. Oh, I know it all. You've no need to tell me. We've made good. We've fought and won out. My contract's complete, and everything's looking just as good for us as it knows how--now. This mill. It's ours. Yours, and mine, and that other's, who I don't know about. All I've to do is to sit around with the plums lying in my lap. Well, I don't want those plums without Nancy. That's all. I don't want a thing--without Nancy. All the dollars in America can burn in hell for all I care, and as for groundwood pulp it's a damp mess of fool stuff that don't signify to me if it finds its way to the bottom of the North Atlantic. An added month of open season? What does it mean to me? Work. Only work, and flies, and skitters. An added month of 'em. Father Adam's a whole man again now, thanks to that dandy child. He'll pull right out to the forests again, and--she'll pull out too. I--"
"That's all right," Bat broke in drily. "I get all that. But why not marry the gal? Marry her an' quit all this darn argument. I guess this mill's goin' to hand you all you need to keep a wife on. That seems to me the natural answer to the stuff that's worryin' you."
His eyes twinkled as he regarded the other's troubled face.
"Is it?"
Bull was on his feet. Hot, desperate irritation lay behind the retort which Bat's gentle sarcasm had drawn forth. His eyes were alight, and he passed an unsteady hand across his forehead in a superlatively impatient gesture.
"Marry her?" he exploded. "Say, are you every sort of darn fool on God's earth, man? How can I hope to marry her? What sort of use can a girl like that have for the man who's beat her right out of everything she ever hoped to achieve? I've had to treat her like any old criminal, and hold her prisoner. I've brought her right down here leaving her in a man's household without another woman in sight. Say, these cursed mills have made it so I've had to commit every sort of rotten act a man can commit against a high-spirited girl. And you ask me why I don't marry her? You've been too long in the forests, Bat. Guess you've lost your perspective. Nancy McDonald's no sort of chattel to be dealt with any way we fancy. Get sense, man, an' talk it."
Bat's regard was unwavering before the other's angry eyes.
"Sense is a hell of a good thing to have an' talk," he said quietly. "I most generally notice the feller yearnin' for someone else to get it an' talk that way, mostly has least use for the thing he's preachin'. Maybe Nancy feels the way you reckon. But that don't seem to me to worry a deal. Still, maybe things have changed around since the days when I hadn't sense to keep out of gunshot of a pair of dandy eyes. And anyway I don't seem to remember the boys bein' worried with the sort of argument you're handing out. If my memory's as good as I reckon, the boys most gener'ly married the gal first, an' got busy wonderin' about things after. All of which seems like so much hoss sense, seem' the natur' of things is that most gals needs their minds made up for 'em. You see, Bull, I kind o' fancy womenfolk ain't just ord'nary. They got a bug that makes 'em think queer wher' men are concerned. Now Nancy's all sorts of a gal, an' that bein' so I don't reckon she sees the hell-fire crimes you've committed against her just the way you see 'em. I allow they're pretty darn tough. Shootin' up her outfit an' dumpin' her into a snowdrift up on Labrador's mighty hard sort of courtin'. Grabbin' her up an' settin' her hospital nurse to her enemies, in a house full of a bunch of tough men don't seem the surest way to make her smile on the feller that did it. Then most generally beatin' the game she set out to play looks like makin' fer trouble plenty. It sure seems that way. But you never can tell with a woman, Bull. You just can't."
Bat shook his grizzled head in solemn denial, but his eyes were laughing. Bull smothered his resentment. He, too, shook his head, and somehow caught the infection of the other's smile.
"But she's ambitious," he said. "And she isn't the sort of girl to take that easily. No."
Bat nodded and rose from his chair. Something of his purpose had been achieved and he was satisfied. He felt he had said all that was needed for the moment. So he prepared to take his departure.
"Maybe that's so, boy," he agreed readily. "But ambition's a thing that changes with most every wind. That don't worry me a thing. Say, you've sort of opened out about this thing to me, an' I ain't sure why. But I kind of feel good about it. You're younger than me by years I don't fancy reckonin'. I feel like I was an elder brother, an' I'm glad. Well, that bein' so, I'd like to say right here ther's just one ambition in a woman's life that counts. And she mostly gits it when she hits up against the feller that's got the guts to make her think his way. When that happens I guess you can roll up every other old schedule, an' pass it into the beater to make new paper. It's the only use for it. See? But I 'low I don't know women like I do groundwood, which was the stuff that fetched me here right now. You see, I was feelin' good about things, an' I fancied handin' you the news of them 'fire-bugs' myself. Guess it hasn't handed you any sort of delirium so far, Bull, but it will later. I allow ther' ain't room for two fevers at the same time in a man's body. When you've set Nancy McDonald figgerin' your way, your temperature's liable to go up on the other. So long, boy." _