King Spruce, A Novel

by Holman Day

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  "'TWAS DONE BY TOMMY THUNDER"

  "Twenty a month for daring death--or fighting from dawn to dark-- Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public park. We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry crew-- A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes through."

  --Ballad of the Drive.

  Wade's poor beast was staggering when at last he topped the horsebackoverlooking Enchanted valley. He himself plodded behind the jumper,clinging to it, walking to keep awake. He had started in the dusk, hehad been nearly twenty-four hours on the road from Castonia, and it wasgrowing dusk again. He was too utterly weary to be surprised when TommyEye came hurrying down from a knoll that commanded a long view of thetote road. The light of a little camp-fire glowed on the knoll, and hesaw that a horse was tethered there.

  "I'm gettin' to be a worse outlaw than ever, Mr. Wade," declared theteamster. "I've stole one of your hosses, and grub and hay from thestore camp, and I'm livin' here in the woods. I've been waitin' foryou," he added, wistfully. "I might have slept a little last night whenI didn't know, but I reckon I didn't. I figgered you'd come. I've beenwaitin' for you. They can't say I'm one of your men, Mr. Wade. I'mlivin' here in the woods."

  "Look here, Eye," blurted his employer, roughly, "I haven't any time nortaste for fool talk just now. You take the horse back to camp and get onyour job." He started on.

  "You don't sound as though you'd got what you went after," cried Tommy,unabashed. He came trotting behind. "You didn't get satisfaction, then,Mr. Wade! Injunction still there, hey? You didn't get--"

  "What did you suppose I'd get from Pulaski Britt, you infernal fool?"His own brutality towards the faithful servitor made him ashamed. Butthe spirit of evil that had taken possession of him was speaking throughlips that he surrendered in weariness of body and bitterness of soul.And when a shade of repentance smote him at sight of Tommy trottingsorrowfully at his side, he gasped out of his woe. "He has dynamited ourbooms, Tommy. Did it with his own hands. And now"--he threw up his armstowards Blunder Lake--"wait till to-morrow!"

  Tommy Eye stopped without a word and let Wade go on.

  "Wait till to-morrow?" he mumbled, as he scrambled back up the knoll."Wait till to-morrow, when I've got a two-hoss load of canned thunderplanted under Blunder dam, and the devil helpin' me by puttin' them twoto sleep ev'ry night, snorin' like quill-pigs?" He waited until Wade hadstumbled out of sight, then cinched upon his horse the blankets that hadserved for couch during his vigil, mounted, and urged the animal throughthe woods, kicking heels into its flanks.

  There were men of the crew who heard an unwonted sound in the midnighthush of the Enchanted camp. It was a dull, heavy, earth-thudding noisethat swept down from the north over the tree-tops and travelled onthrough the forest. Men awoke and asked themselves what had awakenedthem, and went to sleep again, and knew not what it meant.

  Wade did not hear the sound. Exhaustion had fettered his senses when hecrawled into his bunk in the office camp. What he did hear, as he rousedhimself in the gray of early dawn to set his hand to the desperate taskhe was resolved upon, was the splattering rush of a horse's feet in thespring ooze of the tote road and a human voice that shrieked,hysterically: "Man the river, damn ye! Man the river!"

  It was Tommy Eye. He was crouched on the back of his horse when the mencame tumbling out. His little eyes were like fire-points. The wattles ofhis neck were blood-gorged. He spat froth as he raved at them.

  "Man the river, I tell ye! She's b'ilin' full from bank to bank. BenRodliff's injunction busted to blazes and the Enchanted drive startedslam-whoopin', and it's me that's done it!"

  "You hellion, have you blowed Blunder dam?" shouted the chopping-boss,while Dwight Wade was still gasping for words.

  "Blowed Blunder dam!" shrieked Tommy, "Why, I've blowed Blunder dam sohigh that Ben Rodliff's injunction can't get to it in a balloon. I'veblowed a gouge ten feet deep in the bed-rock. I've let the innards outof Blunder Lake. She's runnin' valley-full, ice-cakes dancin' jigs onthe black water! And when they ask who done it, tell 'em it wasme--Tommy Eye, the outlaw! Tommy Eye, with a two-hoss load of cannedthunder!" He tried to shake his fists above his head, but groaned, andone arm dropped as though it were helpless. Blood was caked on his handand wrist. He did not wait for Wade to ask the question.

  "It's the pay I got for wakin' 'em up in time to run, Mr. Wade. I give'em a chance. They give me a thirty-thirty! They'd have give me more ifthey could have shot straighter. I'm an outlaw, but there ain't no bloodon my head, Mr. Wade."

  He slid off the horse and staggered towards the cook camp.

  "Gimme mine in my hand, cook!" he called. "I'll eat it while I'mrunnin'. For it's man the river, boys!"

  And the rest of them ate running, too. Wade led them, determined that noone should head him in the race. He heard the husky breathing of thehundred runners at his back when he swept around the granite dome ofEnchanted and came in view of the valley. They stopped, panting, andsurveyed the scene for a moment. They saw the tumbling waters, yeastyand brown. They heard the groan and grunt of dissolving log-piles as thefierce tide tore at them and bore away the logs. And each man took a newgrip on his cant-dog handle and loped on.

  It was plain that Tommy Eye had spoken the truth. That flood was not themere outrush through shattered dam-gates. Blunder Lake was emptyingitself through a rent deeper than nature had set in its side. In astream-bed of intervales and broad levels the Enchanted drive would havebeen scattered to its own disaster. But Blunder valley was slashed deepbetween the hills. The turbid flood that raced there was penned. Thelog-herds could only butt the granite cliffs and surge on. There was butone outlet--the mad current of Blunder Stream pouring down to itsjunction with the Umcolcus.

  They "manned the river," scattering along, one man posted at a curve insight of another. A hat waved meant that a jam was forming and calledfor help. And when timber jack-strawed too wildly to be readily loosenedby cant-dog and pick-pole they dynamited. There was no time for"knittin'-work" on that drive.

  Tommy Eye, with meal-sack slung over his shoulder, made himselfcustodian of the "canned thunder." It was Larry Gorman, woodsman poet,who first called him "Tommy Thunder." If you go into the north countryyou can probably find some one to sing you the song that Larry Gormancomposed, the first verse running:

  "Come, listen, good white-water chaps. Who was that man, I wonder, Who turned himself to an outlaw bold and put the bang-juice under? Who was it cracked the neck of her, 'way up at old Lake Blunder, When hell broke loose and sluiced our spruce? 'Twere done by Tommy Thunder!"

  His was the recklessness of mania. Men who saw him coming along theshore with his horrid burden dodged into the woods. Where and when heslept no one knew. Daytime and night-time he was racing to where logshad cob-piled. Roars that boomed among the hills told that he hadarrived. In the first gray of morning men saw him warming his dynamiteover a camp-fire, and shuddered and hurried away. To find the king logof a jam and drop his cartridge where it would have instant effect, hetook chances that made men turn their backs. It isn't pleasant to see aman macerated by grinding logs or scattered across the sky.

  No word passed between Tommy Eye and Dwight Wade. Those days and nightswhen the Enchanted drive was on its roaring way down Blunder Streamtowards the Umcolcus River were not the sort of days that invitedconversation. On the ordinary stream-drives to the main river, in thedesperate hurry of the driving-pitch, men work as many hours as they canstand up. With the drive under control, they can at least stop sluicingin the dead hours of the night. But the Enchanted drive that spring wasa wild beast that never closed its eyes. As it raged along they did notdare to leave it alone for an hour. Men raced beside it, clutched at it,clung as long as they were able, and dropped off, stunned by the stuporof exhaustion.

  After a few hours some one's prodding foot stirred them back towakefulness, and they stumb
led up and began the fight once more. Outsideof a charge in battle, there is no place where individual rivalry is sokeen and eager as in a driving-crew on hard waters. Men do not requireto be urged to do their utmost. "Coward" and "shirk" are sneers that cutdeeply down-river.

  Wade, rushing from point to point, cant-dog in hand, his shoes merepulp, his clothes in tatters, saw men asleep with their faces in the tinplates that the cookee had heaped with food. They had gone to sleep withthe first mouthful, hungry as demons, but overcome the moment their feetstopped moving.

  Some he found asleep where they were posted to "card"[6] certain ledges.He beat them about the head with the flat of his hand, and they awokeand thanked him with wistful smiles that touched his heart. But brutalforce had started the Enchanted drive, brutal force marked its rush, andit had to be brutal force that could keep it going. Brutal force tooktoll in the logs that were splintered by dynamite, but it was a tollthat circumstances demanded. A man unwilling to take the chances thatTommy Eye took would have wasted thousands of feet instead of hundreds,and Wade knew it, and gulped words of gratitude when they met, hurryingon the shore.

  [Footnote 6: To disentangle and set free logs caught in the rocks.]

  Half-way to the Umcolcus, Lazy Tom Stream enters Blunder, and here Wadefound Barnum Withee rushing in his logs and eager to accept aninvitation to join drives. Withee was asking no questions. He did notneed to. He understood. What had been done upstream was none of hisbusiness. He could declare that much when he got his drive down, andcould defend himself from complicity. In the mean time he would takeadvantage of the situation.

  There were now one hundred and sixty herders of the wild flock, withBarnum Withee, one of the best men on the river, to take command of therear.

  So Wade went to the front--to Castonia, sweeping down the swollenUmcolcus in one of Withee's bateaux with four men at the oars. He hadplayed violence against violence in the big game. It was natural tosuppose that Pulaski Britt by this time had his fists clinched ready toretaliate.

  On either side of his bateau as he hurried to Castonia the logs ranfree. But they were all his own logs, this advance-guard, marked withthe double diamond and cross.

  Had Rodburd Ide done his part, and were they being held at Castonia?

  He found the booms set again, Rodburd Ide in command at the sorting-gap,and various members of the "It-'ll-git-ye Club" sitting along the shorewith guns across their knees. Every able-bodied man in Castonia was onthe booms with a pick-pole, and already the double-diamond logs wereswirling and herding in the logan.

  "It's done, and they'll have us into court, but, by ----, we'll havesome ready money to fight 'em with!" screamed the little man, graspingWade's hand as the bateau swung broadside to the sorting-gap platform.And when he had heard the story of "Tommy Thunder, outlaw," that hispartner hurriedly related, his mouth parted in a grin, even though hisforehead puckered with apprehension.

  "But will it let us out, Wade?" he asked. "The man took it on himselfout of his grudge against Britt. But will it let us out?"

  "It's your money that is in this thing, and not mine," returned theyoung man, "and I suppose it's natural for you to think of your propertyfirst. But as for me, Mr. Ide, I'll take what profits are coming to mefrom this operation, and I'll stand in with poor old Tommy Eye, jointlyindicted, jointly in the dock, jointly in jail, till the last dollar isspent. For he did just what I meant to do!"

  For an instant Ide's eyes flickered. Then they became shiny.

  "My boy," he said, "the Enchanted Township Lumber Company isincorporated, and you and I own the stock. With your consent, I'm goin'to make over ten shares of that stock to Thomas Eye before I sleepto-night. I reckon this company stands ready to fight its battles andprotect its members."

  "Mr. Ide," gulped Wade, contritely, "forgive me for that hasty speech.But God help me, partner, I've been in hell since I saw you last, andI'm full of the fires of it! I think you can understand."

  He crouched there in the bateau, clutching the gunwale with hands thattrembled until they shook his body to and fro. His face was streakedwith the grime of days and nights of toil. His eyes were haggard withsleeplessness. Fasting had hollowed his cheeks. Such lines as only thebitter things of life can set in the human countenance were traced deepupon the brown skin. In his rags and his weariness he was as one who hadbeen conquered instead of one who had fulfilled. The little man ofCastonia reached down and patted his shoulder with a hand that had afather's sympathy in its touch.

  "Bub," he murmured, "I'm goin' to take some other time to tell you whatI think of you. Just now I want you to go down to the house. My Ninawill know what to do for you and what to say to you. She has someletters for you to read before you go to sleep, and I reckon they'llgive you pleasant dreams."

  Kate Arden opened the door and welcomed him with a smile, the first hehad ever seen on her face. His heart came into his mouth at sight ofher. Never had she seemed so like Elva Barrett. But before he had wordwith her Nina Ide came running, floury hands outspread, her face alightabove her housewife's tire. She stood on tiptoe, put her arms around hisneck, and kissed him.

  "Brother Dwight! Brother Dwight!" she half sobbed. "Oh, Brother Dwight,I didn't know--I didn't realize--I didn't understand, or I would haveheld you back until you had torn these two arms from my shoulders. Iprayed for you and watched for you. They buy their logs with blood upthere. But it shall not be with your blood, Dwight. I have hated fatherall these days. He knew what you were going back to, and didn't stopyou!"

  "It was all my own affair, little girl," Wade returned, gently--"myduty, to which I was bound by fair man-promise. And I've got our logsinto the river, but it has been the kind of work that blisters souls,Sister Nina!" His voice had a pathetic quaver of weariness.

  "I was at the sorting-gap when the first one came, and I knelt andkissed it," she said, smiling at him from misty eyes. "And then I wroteto the one of all the world and told her about a hero."

  An hour later he lay asleep in a darkened room, the tense lines gonefrom his face, his lax hand spread over a letter, finding the sweetestsolace in slumber he had known for many a day.

  At the first peep of light next morning he was at the sorting-gap infull command, removing a burden of responsibility from Rodburd Ide whichhad made that little man a quaking wreck of his ordinarily self-reliantself; for in every log that had come spinning around the upper bend ofthe Umcolcus his fears had seen the peak of Pulaski Britt's rushingbateau.

  That the river tyrant would come, furious beyond words, was a factaccepted by Dwight Wade, and Wade was ready to meet him. But every hourthat passed without bringing the drive-master meant so much more towardsthe success of the Enchanted drive.

  The logs came in stampeding droves. Withee's were mixed among the"double diamonds," but there were no delays at the sorting-gap. Twocrews fed them through--one for day and one for night, with a dozenlanterns lighting their work. Wade was resolved that Britt should lackat least one argument in the bitter contention. The sorting should bedone faithfully and promptly, and the down-river drive should be hurriedon its way. But at the end of four days not one of the logs nicked withthe "double hat," Britt's registered mark, had shown up. Nor did Britthimself appear.

  A sullen, suffering man of Britt's crew, who came walking into Castoniawith hand held above his head to ease the agony of a felon, brought thefirst news.

  Blunder Lake dam had been blown up, he reported, and such a chasm hadbeen opened in the bed-rock that the lake had vomited its waters to thewest until the bed of Britt's shallow canal to the east was above thewater-line. Britt had only his splash dams along Jerusalem for adriving-head. In the past years the pour of the canal had given him acurrent in Jerusalem dead-water. Now he was trying to warp his logsacross there with head-works and anchor. But the south wind was howlingagainst him, and no human muscle could turn the windlass, even when theoaths of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt dinned in the ears of histoilers. All this the new-comer related.

  "And it's some
thing awful to hear!" said the man. "He walks the platformof that head-works, back and forth and back and forth. He cusses God andthe angels, the wind and all it blows across. And then when he is wellworked up to cussin', he 'tends to the case of the devil that blowed upBlunder Lake dam. And his face is as red as my shirt, and the veinsstick out on his for'ead as big as a baby's finger. They say that youcan't cuss only about so much without somethin' happenin' to you. I'veread about the cap'n of a ship that done it too much once, and his ghostis still a-sailin'. All I've got to say is that if Pulaski Britt don'tstop, he'll get his."

  The "It-'ll-git-ye Club" had listened to this recital intently. Itagreed forebodingly. In fact, in special session the club passed a voteof dismal prophecy for the whole Jerusalem operation.