Holman Day

“Here’s a good health to you, family man,
From the depths of our hearts and the woods;
Boughs for our bunks and salt hoss in junks
Ain’t hefty in way o’ world’s goods.
Keep your neck near her arms and your cheek near her kiss,
And don’t ever come here to the troubles o’ This!
We’ve tasted of This and we know what it lacks—
We lonesome old baches—
Of peavies and patches,
Bills, Tommies, and Jacks of the Axe.”

—The Family Man.

Barrett was at the table, his back towards the door. He was filling a pannikin with whiskey from a silver-mounted flask. The cook, who had been silently admiring his smart suit of corduroy, was now more intently and longingly regarding the amber trickle from the mouth of the flask. But John Barrett was not a man to ask menials to share his bowl with him. His shaven cheeks looked too hard even to permit the growth of beard.

The cook, whirling at the sound of Lane’s moccasins on the chip dirt, was officious according to his promulgated code of politeness.

“Here’s the warden from Jerusalem, Mr. Barrett. I done the honors of camp the best I could, seein’ that you and Mr. Withee wa’n’t here.” In mentioning honors, the cook had one lingering hope that the stumpage-king would share his flask with a State employÉ, and that he himself might participate as one present and one willing.

But the timber baron did not turn his head. He stirred sugar in his whiskey and growled.

“Do fire wardens up this way earn their pay, sleeping, like cats, in the daytime?”

Lane had stepped just inside the door, his moccasins noiseless on the shaved poles.

“How near is that fire to the black growth, and how are they fighting it?” demanded Barrett.

“It started on Misery”—Lane began, in the same tone that had characterized his former reports.

But at his first word Barrett jerked his head around, stared wildly, stood up, and then sat down astride the wooden bench. With his eyes still on the man at the door, he fumbled for the pannikin of whiskey and gulped it down. Lane went on talking.

“And if they can get enough men ahead of it perhaps they can stop it in Pogey Notch,” Lane concluded.

The hands that clutched the gun trembled, but his eyes were steady, with a red sparkle in them. The lumber king endured that stare for a few moments, like one writhing under the torture of a focussed sun-glass. He glanced to right and left, as though seeking a chance for flight. The only exit was the door, and the tall, grim man stood there with his rifle across his arm.

“Say it, Lane! Say it!” hoarsely cried Barrett, at last, unable to endure the silence and the doubt.

“I have nothing to say—not now,” said Lane. “I’ll wait here until you eat your supper. My lantern is hanging on the nail there, cook. Will you fill it and light it?”

There was a subtle, strange menace in his bearing that the cook and Withee, staring, their mouths gaping, could not understand. But it was plain that the man at the table understood all too well.

“Why didn’t you take it when I sent you the offer?” asked Barrett, his voice beginning to tremble. “I wanted to settle. It was up to me to settle. It was a bad business, Lane, but I—”

“It’s a private matter you’re opening up here before listeners, Mr. Barrett,” broke in Lane. “It’s my business with you, and you haven’t got the right to do it. Just now you go ahead and eat your supper. You’ll need it, for you’re going to take a walk with me.”

In his perturbation, forced to eat, as it seemed, by the quiet insistence of the warden, Barrett swallowed a few mouthfuls of food. But he cowered, with side glances at the grim man by the door. Then he pushed his plate away, choking. Maddened by the silent watchfulness, he stood up.

“I’ll see you in the office,” he muttered. “I’ll tell you now and before witnesses that I’m ready to settle. I’ve always been ready to settle. It would have been settled long ago if you had let my man talk with you. Now, let’s not have any trouble, Lane, over what’s past and gone. I’ll do anything that’s reasonable.”

He shot an appealing glance at Withee.

“We’ll take Withee with us,” he declared. “We’ll talk in the office.”

“We’ll talk under no roof of yours and on no land belonging to you,” answered Lane, firmly. “We’ll talk private matters before no third party. If you’re done your supper, Mr. Barrett, you’ll come with me where we can stand out man to man in God’s open country with no peekers and listeners—and that’s more for your sake than it is for mine. I’ve done nothing in this life that I’m ashamed of.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” roared the land baron, hiding fear under an assumption of his usual manner. “Do you think I’m going into the woods alone with you?”

“You are, Mr. Barrett.”

“By ——, I won’t!”

“I’m no hand for a threat,” grated Lane, in a low, strange voice, “but you’ll come with me. You know why you’ll come with me, because you know what I’m likely to do to you if you don’t come.”

Barrett looked past the man at the door. The dingle was full of crowding faces, for the altercation had called every man out. There was some consolation for Barrett in the spectacle of this silent, wondering mob. After all, he was on his own land, and these men must acknowledge him as their master.

“Here! a hundred dollars apiece to the men who grab that lunatic and take that rifle away from him!” he shouted, darting a quivering finger at the warden. But before any one made a move Withee stepped forward into the lamplight. With open, waving palm he imposed non-interference on his crew.

“Hold on, Mr. Barrett,” said he. “Before we run into trouble by arresting a man that’s an officer, we want to know whys and wherefores.”

“Don’t you know why he wants to make me go away into the woods?” bawled the lumber king.

“We can’t very well know without bein’ told,” replied Withee, and an answering grumble from his men indorsed him.

“He wants to murder me—murder me in cold blood!” Barrett fairly screamed this. “I know what his reason is,” he added, seeing that their faces showed no conviction.

“I’ve known Linus Lane ever since he came into this region,” said Withee, breaking the awed hush that followed the baron’s startling words. “I never knew him to be anything but peaceable and square. A little speck odd, maybe, but quiet and peaceable and square. Most of the men here know him that way, too.”

Another answering mumble of assent.

“Odd!” echoed Barrett, grasping at the suggestion. “You’ve said it. He’s a lunatic. He will kill me.”

“What for?” called the chopping-boss, bluntly. His natural desire to get at the meat of things quickly was stimulated by ardent curiosity.

“You are all sticking your noses into a matter that doesn’t belong to you!” cried Lane, his well-known crustiness showing itself, though it was evident that he was hiding some deeper emotion. “I want this man to go with me. It’s business. And he’s going!” His voice was almost a snarl, but there was a resoluteness in the tone that awed them more than violence would have done.

“Are you going to give me up to a murderer?” bleated Barrett, for his study of the faces in the lamplight did not reassure him.

“Hadn’t you better let us step out, and you talk your business over with him right here, Linus?” inquired Withee, conciliatingly.

“He’s going with me, and he’s going now!” shouted Lane, his repression breaking. “The man that gets in our way will get hurt.”

He banged his rifle-butt on the floor, and those who looked on him shrank before his awful rage.

“Put on your hat, Barrett, and walk out!” he shrilled. “Make way, there! This is my man, by —— and he knows in his dirty heart why he’s mine.”

But Barnum Withee’s quiet woodsman’s soul was not of a nature to be intimidated, and his instincts of fairness, when it was between man and man, had been made acute by many years of woods adjudication.

“Hold on a minute, Linus!” he entreated, stepping between the two men with upraised hand. “You are both under my roof, and you’ve both eaten my bread to-day. I never got between men in a fair, square quarrel. I won’t now. But you’ve got a gun, and he hasn’t. I don’t want to know your business. But if there’s trouble between you it’s got to be settled fair. You can’t drag a man out of my camp to do him dirty—and it would be the same if it was only young Harry there that you were tryin’ to take.”

“Good talk!” yelled the boss.

“I’ll give a hundred dollars—” began Barrett, seeing the advantage swinging his way; but Withee broke in with indignation.

“No more of that talk, Mr. Barrett!” he cried. “I’ll run my own crew when it comes to pay or to orders. Now, Warden Lane, what are you going to do with this man when you get him where you want to take him?”

“I don’t know!” snapped Lane, to the amazement of his listeners. And he added, enigmatically, “I can tell better after I’ve asked him some questions.”

“Ain’t you ready to tell us that you’ll use him man-fashion?” persisted Withee.

The deep emotion which “Ladder” Lane had been trying to hide whetted the bitterness of his usual attitude towards mankind.

“I’m not ready to let any fool mix himself into my affairs. We’ve argued this question long enough, John Barrett. Now you—step—out!” He leaped aside from the door, cocked the rifle, and motioned angrily with its muzzle.

“Stay right where you are, Mr. Barrett,” said the old operator, resolutely. “I’ll stand for fair play.”

“And you’ll get your pay for it, Withee, my friend!” stuttered his creditor, eagerly. “I don’t forget favors. You stand by me, and you’ll get your pay.”

“I haven’t anything to sell, Mr. Barrett,” said Withee, doggedly.

“But I’ve got something to give you,” persisted the frightened magnate, edging near him, and striving to hint confidentially. “You stand by me, and when it comes to contracts—”

“I’m not buyin’ anything, Mr. Barrett!” He signalled the lumber king back with protesting palm. “I’m simply tellin’ Lane that he can’t take a man out of my camp to do him dirty. And in that there’s no fear and no favor!”

Lane gazed at the determined face of the operator and at the massing men who crowded at the door, and whose nods gave emphatic approval of Withee’s dictum. No one knew better than he the code of the woods; no one understood more thoroughly the quixotic prejudices and simple impulses which moved the isolated communities of the camps. Just then they would not have surrendered Barrett to an army, and Lane realized it.

The eyes focussed on him saw the tense ridges of his seamed face tighten and the gray of an awful passion settle there.

“After all the rest of it, you’re forcing me to stand here and put it in words, are you, you sneak?” he yelped, thrusting that boding visage towards the timber baron. “You’re hiding behind these men! Well, let’s see how long they’ll stand in front of you! You’ve got to have ’em hear it, eh? Then you listen to it, woodsmen!” His voice broke suddenly into a frightful yell. “He stole my wife! He stole her! I say he stole her! That’s what I want of him, now that he’s here where I can meet him in God’s open country, plain man to plain man!”

“He’s lying to you,” quavered Barrett. But his eyes shifted, and the keen and candid gaze of the woodsmen detected his paltering.

“I was away earning an honest living, and he came along with his airs and his money and fooled her and stole her—stole her and threw her away. It was play for him; it was death for her, and damnation for me. I ain’t blaming her, men”—his voice had a sob in it—“she was too young for me. I ought to have known better. Our little house was on his land that he had stolen from the people of this State. Then he came and stole her!”

He was now close to Barrett, his bony fist slashing the air over the baron’s shrinking head.

“It wasn’t that way,” stammered Barrett. “I was up there with some friends fishing and exploring on my lands. It was years ago. The young woman cooked meals for us. I went farther north to some other townships of mine, and she went along to take care of camp. That’s all there was to it, men!” He spread out his palms and tried to smile.

“You stole her!” iterated Lane. “I came home, men, and she was gone out of our little house. I found just four walls, cold and empty, the key under the rug, and a letter on the table—and I’ve got that letter, John Barrett! And when you were tired of her up there in the woods you tossed her away like you tossed the lemon-skins out of your whiskey-glass. You didn’t wait to see where she fell—she and your child—your child! Curse you, Barrett, I’ve never wanted to meet you! I sent word to you to keep out of these woods. I sent that word by the man you asked to bribe me—as though your money could do everything for you in this world! You thought you could sneak in here after all these years, because I was tied on the top of Jerusalem. But I’m here! What do you think, men? The fire that is roaring up from Misery township was set by this man’s own daughter—the child that he tossed away in the woods. You that know the Skeets and Bushees know her. She set the fire! That’s why I’m here. It’s his child—his and hers. I don’t know whether heaven or hell planned it, but now that I’ve met you, Barrett, you’re going with me!”

He strode back to the door and stood there, the rifle again across the hook of his arm. His flaming eyes swept the faces in the dingle. Their eyes gave him a message that his woodsman’s soul interpreted.

“There’s the truth for you, men, since you had to have it!” he shouted. “Once more I’m going to say to John Barrett—‘Step out.’ And if there’s still a man among you that wants to keep that hound in this camp I’d like to have that man stand out and say why.”

There was not a whisper from the throng. They stood gazing into the door with lips apart. Silently they crowded back, as though to afford free passage.

Barrett noted the movement and wailed his terror.

“It means trouble for you, Withee, if you let him take me.”

The old operator surveyed him with a lowering and disgusted stare.

“Mr. Barrett,” he said, “I’ve told you that I have nothing to sell. All that I want to buy of you is stumpage, and I’ve got your figures on that and your opinion of me. I don’t ask you to change anything.” He turned away, muttering, “He’ll have to think pretty hard if he can do anything more to me than what he’s already threatened to do.”

Calm once more, and inexorable as fate, Lane motioned towards the door.

“My final word, Barrett: March!”

As he gazed into the faces about him, not one gleam of friendliness anywhere, desperation or a flicker of courage spurred the magnate. In that moment John Barrett had none of the adventitious aids of his autocracy—none of the bulwarks of “Castle Cut ’Em.” He was only a man among them—fairly demanded by another man to settle a matter of the sort where primordial instinct prompts a universal code. He drove his hat on his head and strode through the door, his head bent.

Lane took his lighted lantern from the cook’s hand and followed. He had his teeth set tight, as though resolved to say no more. But at the edge of the camp’s lamplight he whirled and faced the crew. Barrett halted, too, as though hoping for some intervention.

“Look here, men,” said Lane, “I want to thank you for being men in this thing. And seeing that you’ve been square with me I don’t want to go away from here leaving any wrong idea behind me. I don’t know just what’s going to happen between this man and me, for a good deal depends on him. But you’ve known me long enough to know that I’m not the crust-hunting kind that cuts a deer’s throat when he’s helpless. You put your confidence in me when you put this man in my hands. And I’ll say to you, I’ll do the best I know!”

“We ain’t givin’ any advice to you that knows your business better’n we do,” called out the boss of the choppers. “But let it be man to man—good woods style!”

“Good woods style!” echoed the crew, in hoarse chorus. It was plain that their minds were dwelling on only one solution of the difficulty.

Lane stepped back and set the rifle against the log wall. “I was near forgetting,” he said, apologetically. “I’m so used to carrying a rifle. This belongs here.”

“Take it,” suggested Withee, with a touch of grimness in his tones.

“I don’t need it,” Lane answered, quietly. He whirled and started away, and Barrett sullenly preceded him. They clambered up the valley wall, the pale lantern-light tossing against the hemlock boughs. The crew of “Lazy Tom” watched in silence until the last flicker vanished among the trees of the Jerusalem trail.

“Well,” said the chopping-boss, drawing a long breath, “it appears to me that there are some things that money can’t do for old ‘Stumpage John,’ big as he is in this world! One is, he’s found he can’t buy up the ‘Lazy Tom’ crew to back him in a dirty job of woman-stealin’.”

“I’d like to be there when it happens,” panted “Dirty-apron Harry,” excitedly.

“When what happens?” demanded the boss.

“Well—well—I—I dunno!” confessed Harry.

“Umph!” snorted the boss, “now you’re talkin’ as though you know ‘Ladder’ Lane as well as I know him. The man who can stand here and tell what old Lane is goin’ to do next can prophesy earthquakes and have ’em happen.”

He pulled out his watch.

“Nine o’clock!” he roared. “Lights out and turn in!”