WHEN the autocrat of the Noda strode away, a stalwart young man instantly obeyed Flagg’s command—seizing the occasion to follow then and there. He had been standing on the outskirts of the throng, surveying the happenings with great interest. The men who were in his immediate vicinity, lumberjacks who were strangers in the Noda region, were plainly of his appanage and had obeyed his advice to keep out of the mÊlÉe that had been provoked by Flagg’s methods of selection.

When the big fellow hurried in pursuit of Flagg a bystander put a question to one of the strangers.

“You ought to know who he is,” returned the questioned. “That’s Ward Latisan.”

And just then, apart from the crowd, having overtaken the autocrat, the young man was informing Flagg to that same effect.

Flagg halted, swung around, and rammed his cant dog into the ground. “You’ve changed from a sapling into fair-sized timber since I saw you last. You look like old John, and that’s compliment enough, I reckon. How do you happen to be over in the Noda country?”

“I don’t happen! I heard of the word you sent out. I came here on purpose, sir.”

“What for?”“To hire with you.”

Flagg looked Latisan up and down and showed no enthusiasm. “Yes, I heard that you and your father had let the Three C’s slam you flat. And what makes you think I want that kind of a quitter in my crew?”

Ward met the disparaging stare with a return display of undaunted challenge. “Because I belong in the crew of a man who is proposing to fight the Three C’s.”

Flagg grunted.

Latisan kept on. “You have been hiring men because they have been parading a lot of little grouches against the Comas folks. You need a man who has a real reason for going up against that outfit. And I’m the man.”

“What you think about yourself and what I may think about you are two different things,” retorted Flagg, with insolence. “Looks to me like you had got the Big Laugh over in your section. You have probably noticed what I just did in a case of that sort.”

“I took it all in, sir.”

“Well, what then?”

“They are not laughing with us or against us over in the Tomah, Mr. Flagg. They all know what happened, and that we fought the Comas fair and square as long as we could keep on our feet. It was a trick that licked us. Craig held out the Walpole heir on us.”

“I know about it; I manage to get most of the news.” Flagg started to go on his way, but Ward put his clutch on the autocrat’s arm.

“Pardon me, Mr. Flagg, but you’re going to hear what I have to ask of you.”Mere apologetic suit would not have served with Flagg. He found this bold young man patterning after the Flagg methods in dealings with men. The boldness of the grip on his arm gained more effectively than pleading.

“Ask it. I’m in a hurry.”

“You have fired Kyle. I want his place.”

“Well, I’ll be——”

“You needn’t be, sir. I’m a Latisan and I have bossed our drives. I have brought along a bunch of my own men who have bucked white water with me and are with me now in standing up for the principle of the independents. Allow me to say that luck is with you. Here’s your chance to get hold of a man who can put heart and soul into this fight you’re going to make.”

“And now go on and tell me how much you admire me,” suggested Flagg, sarcastically.

“I can’t do that, sir. I’m going to tell you frankly I don’t relish what I have heard about you. It’s for no love of you that I’m asking for a chance to go up against the Comas people. It’s because you’re hard—hard enough to suit me—hard enough to let me go to it and show the Three C’s they can’t get away with what they’re trying to do up here through Rufus Craig.”

“All right. You’re hired. You’ve got Ben Kyle’s job,” stated Flagg.

Latisan was not astonished by this precipitate come-about. He was prepared for Flagg’s tactics by what he had set himself to learn about the autocrat’s nature—quick to adjudge, tenacious in his grudges, inflexible in his opinion, bitterly ruthless when he had set himself in the way his prejudices selected.

“You have seen what happened to Kyle. Can you govern yourself accordingly?” Flagg in his turn had set his grip on Ward’s arm.

“Yes, sir!”

“I’ll kick you out just as sudden as I kicked him if anything happens to make men give you the grin. Can you start north with me in the morning?”

“Now or in the morning; it makes no difference to me, sir.”

Flagg shifted his hand from Ward’s arm to the young man’s shoulder and propelled him back a few paces toward the crowd in front of the tavern. “Listen, one and all! Here’s my drive boss. He’s old John Latisan’s grandson. If that isn’t introduction enough, ask questions about old John from those who remember him; this chap is like his grandfather.”

Latisan went into the tavern after Flagg had marched away to the big house on the ledges. The crowd made way for the new drive boss; those in his path stared at him with interest; mumble of comment followed as the men closed in behind him. When he sat down in a corner of the tavern office and lighted his pipe his subalterns showed him deference by leaving him to himself. That isolation gave Landlord Brophy his opportunity to indulge his bent in gossip unheard by interlopers.

Brophy plucked a cigar from a box in the little case on the desk and sat down beside Ward. “I sympathize with you,” he said by way of backhanded congratulation.“Thank you.”

“I was born in this tavern; my father built it and run it before me,” said Brophy, tucking his cigar through the shrubbery of his gray mustache. “And so I’ve had the chance to know Ech Flagg a good many years. He’s a turk.”

“I have heard so.”

“He has always had a razor edge to his temper. Maybe you know what put the wire edge onto it?” It was query with the cock of an eyebrow accompanying.

“What I know about Mr. Flagg is only a general reputation of being a hard man. I can say that much to you because I told him the same thing. And that’s as far as I care to gossip about an employer,” stated Ward, stiffly.

“That’s a safe stand,” said Brophy, unperturbed. “Keep to it and they can’t be running to him with stories about what you have said. But he don’t pay me wages and I can say what I feel like saying. A new boss ought to know a few things about the man who hires him. It’s my disposition to set a good chap on the right road with a tip. Whatever you may say to Flagg in the way of chat, don’t you ever try to bring up the subject of his family affairs.”

“I’m not at all likely to,” snapped Latisan, with asperity.

“Oh, such a subject is easy out when folks get to going confidential,” pursued the persistent Brophy. The suggestion that he would ever be on confidential terms with Flagg provoked an ill-tempered rebuke from Ward, but Brophy paid no attention.“If you lose your job with him, as you probably will, Latisan, let it be in the straight way of business, as he conducts it, instead of being by some fool slip of your tongue about family matters.” He puffed at his cigar complacently and still was giving no heed to Ward’s manifest repugnance at being made the repository of gossip.

“Eck’s wife died when the daughter Sylvia was small, and he sent the girl off to school somewheres when she was big enough to be sent. And she fell in with a dude kind of a fellow and came back home married to him. She was so much in love that she dared to do a thing like that with Eck Flagg—and that’s being in love a whole lot, I’ll say. Well, none of us knew what was said back and forth in the family circle, but we figured that the new husband’s cheeks didn’t tingle with any kisses that Eck gave him. At any rate, Eck set Kennard to work—that was the name, Alfred Kennard. Eck was never much good at ciphering. Office had been in his hip pocket, where he carried his timebook and his scale sheet. Kennard had an education and it came about that Eck let Alf do the ciphering; then he let him keep the books; then he let him handle contracts and the money; then he gave him power of attorney so that Alf wouldn’t be hampered whilst Eck was away in the woods. Just handed everything over for the first and the only time in his life, figuring that it was all in the family. I guess that Alf went to figuring the same way, seeing that he was good at figures; felt that what was Eck’s was his, or would be later—and Alf proceeded to cash in. Stole right and left, that was the amount of it. Prob’ly reckoned he’d rather have a sore conscience than have his feelings all ripped to pieces when he asked Eck for money.

“We all knew when Eck found out that he had been properly trimmed by the only man he had ever trusted.

“It happened in the dooryard of the big house up there, when Eck came home, wised up, and tackled Alf. Eck felt that the inside of the house might get mussed up by his language, so he stood in the yard and hollered for Alf to come out. We all went up and stood around; it seemed to be a free show, all welcome. We got the full facts in the case from Eck.

“Sylvia came out on the heels of Alf, and she had with her the little Lida, Eck’s granddaughter. And after Eck had had his say to Alf and had thrown him over the fence, he gave Sylvia her choice—stay with her father or go away with Alf. Well, she had loved Alf well enough to come home and face Eck with him; she loved Alf enough to turn her back on Eck and face the world with her husband. Natural, of course! Eck tried to grab the little girl away—to save his own from the thieves, so he said. Sylvia fought him off and hung to the girl. It was a tough sight, Latisan! And he stood there and shook his fists and cast ’em all off for ever and aye. That’s his nature—no allowance made if anybody does him dirt.

“I’ll admit that Eck did make an allowance later, after Alf died and the news of it got back here to Adonia. Lida was grown up to around sixteen by that time. I got this from Rickety Dick. Know him?”Latisan, relighting his pipe, shook his head with an indifferent wag.

“Well, you soon will. He cooks and waits and tends on Eck. Looks up to Eck. Loves Eck—and that’s going some! Dick told me about the allowance Eck made for once in his life after I had touched Dick up by telling him that Eck Flagg never made an allowance to anybody. Eck allowed to Dick that Lida was too young to choose the right way that day in the yard. When she had grown up Eck sent old Dick to hunt for her in the city, to tell her she could come back to him, now that she was old enough to make her choice. Said Sylvia couldn’t come back. Now that was a devil of a position to put a girl in. What? Hey?”

Latisan nodded, displaying faint interest.

“And Sylvia right then was in bed with her never-get-over, so Dick told me. Of course Lida wouldn’t come back. And she was working her fingers to the bone to take care of her mother. Old Dick cried like a baby when he was telling me. He cries pretty easy, anyway. He never dared to give to Eck the word that Lida sent back. She’s got the spirit of the Flaggs, so I judge from what Dick told me. She wouldn’t even take the eggs and the truck Dick lugged down, though Dick had bought ’em with his own money; she thought the stuff came from her grandfather. Dick had to hide ’em under the table when he came away. And so Eck has crossed Lida off for ever and aye. Now that’s some story, ain’t it?”

“I haven’t enjoyed it,” said Ward, brusquely.

“Prob’ly not. I wasn’t telling it thinking you’d give three cheers when I finished. But I’ve been warning you not to make a foolish break by stubbing your toe over the family topic. I’ve heard what has happened to the Latisans over Tomah way. You’re our real sort, and I’m blasted sorry for you. I reckon you need a job and I’m trying to help you hold it. I like your looks, young Latisan. I hate the Comas crowd. Craig has never set down to my table but what he has growled about the grub. The cheap rowdies he hires for his operations on these waters come through here with bootleg booze and try to wreck my house. I’d like to be friends with you, young Latisan, and if you feel that way about it, put it there!”

Brophy held out a fat hand and Latisan grasped it cordially.

“In my position I hear all the news,” stated the landlord. “I’ll sift the wheat out of the chaff and hand you what’s for your own good. And now you’ll have to excuse me whilst I go and pound steak and dish up dinner and wait on the table. That’s the trouble with running a tavern up here in the woods. I can’t keep help of the girl kind. They either get homesick or get married.”

There was an ominous crash in the dining room.

Brophy swore roundly and extricated his rotund haunches from the arms of his chair. “There goes Dirty-Shirt Sam! I have to double him as hostler and waiter. He’d smash the feed pails in the stable if they wasn’t galvanized iron.”

He pounded with heavy gait across the office and flung open the dining-room door, disclosing a lop-sided youth who was listlessly kicking broken dishes into a pile.

“You’re fourteen dollars behind your wages, already, with dishes you’ve dropped and smashed,” shouted Brophy. “I’d give a thousand dollars for the right kind of a girl to stay here and wait on tables if she wouldn’t get married or homesick. I’ll make it a standing offer.” He cuffed the youth in a circle around the heap of broken crockery and went on his way to the kitchen.

Latisan smoked and reflected on the nature of Echford Flagg as Brophy had exposed it from the family standpoint.

Then he looked at the sullen youth who was sweeping up the fragments of the dishes. The whimsical notion occurred to Ward that he might post Brophy on the advantages of a cafeteria plan of operating his hostelry. But he had by these thoughts summoned the memory of one certain cafeteria, and of a handsome girl who sat across from him and who had so suddenly been swallowed up in the vortex of the city throngs—gone forever—only a memory that troubled him so much and so often that he was glad when his own Tomah men appeared to him, asking for commands and taking his mind off a constantly nagging regret.