The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Caroline Lockhart

  XXII

  THE GENERAL MANAGER

  Jennings and Woods were now sworn enemies and the stringing of the wiresbecame a matter of intense interest, as this was the test which wouldprove the truth or fallacy of Jennings' cantankerous harping that thecross-arms were too light.

  In isolated camps where there is no outside diversion such tests ofopinion become momentous matters, and the present instance was noexception. Mrs. Jennings, too, had taken sides--her husband's,naturally--and the anti-Jennings faction was made to realize fully thepossibilities for revenge which lie within the jurisdiction of the cook.

  The alacrity with which Jennings's bride stepped into Toy's shoesconvinced Bruce that the Chinaman had been correct in his assertion, buthe was helpless in the circumstances, and accepted the inevitable, beingable for the first time to understand why there are wife-beaters.

  Jennings had opined that his bride was "lasty." She looked it. "Bertha"stood six feet in her moccasins and lifted a sack of flour as the weakerof her sex toy with a fan. She had an undershot jaw and a nose soretrousse that the crew asserted it was possible to observe theconvolutions of her brain and see what she had planned for the nextmeal. Be that as it may, Bertha had them cowed to a man, with thepossible exception of Porcupine Jim, whose hide no mere sarcasm couldpenetrate. There was general envy of the temerity which enabled Jim toask for more biscuits when the plate was empty. Even Smaltz shrankinvoluntarily when she came toward him with her mouth on the bias and alook in her deep-set eyes which said that she would as soon, or sooner,pour the steaming contents of the coffee-pot down the back of his neckthan in his cup, while Woods averred that "Doc" Tanner who fasted fortydays didn't have anything on him.

  Nobody but Jennings shared Bertha's hallucination that she could cook,and he was the recipient of special dishes, such delicacies ascup-custard, and toast. This in no wise added to Jennings's popularitywith the crew and when Bruce suggested as much to the unblushing brideshe told him, with arms akimbo and her heels well planted some threefeet apart, that if they "didn't like it let 'em come and tell her so."

  Bertha was looking like a gargoyle when the men filed in for supper thenight before the stringing of the wires was to begin. The fact that menantagonistic to her husband dared walk in before her eyes and eat,seemed like bravado, a challenge, and filled her with such blackresentment that Bruce trembled for the carpenter when she hovered overhim like a Fury, with a platter of bacon.

  Woods, too, felt his peril, and intrepid soul though he was, seemed tocontract, withdraw like a turtle into his flannel collar, as thoughalready he felt the sizzling grease on his unprotected pate.

  Conversation was at a standstill in the atmosphere charged with Bertha'sdisapproval. Only Porcupine Jim, quite unconscious, unabashed, heapedhis plate and ate with all the loud abandon of a Berkshire Red.Emboldened by the pangs of hunger a long way from satisfied, JohnJohnson tried to "palm" a fourth biscuit while surreptitiously reachingfor a third. Unfortunately John was not sufficiently practised in theart of legerdemain and the biscuit slipped from his fingers. It fell offthe table and rolled like a cartwheel to Bertha's feet.

  "Shan't I bring you in the shovel, Mr. Johnson?" she inquired in a toneof deadly politeness as she polished the biscuit on her lip and returnedit to the plate.

  John's ears flamed, also his neck and face. The honest Swede looked likea sheep-killing dog caught in the act. He dared not answer, and sheadded:

  "There's three apiece."

  "Mrs. Jennings, I haven't put the camp on half-rations yet." Bruce wasmutinous at last.

  The bride drew herself up and reared back from the waist-line until shelooked all of seven feet tall. The row of short locks that hung downlike a row of fish-hooks beneath a knob of black hair seemed to standout straight and the window rattled in its casing as she swarmed down onBruce.

  "Look a here, young feller, I don't need no boss to tell me how much tocook!"

  Jennings protested mildly:

  "Now don't you go and git upset, Babe."

  "Babe" turned upon him savagely:

  "And don't you go to takin' sides! I'm used to livin' good an' when Ithink what I give up to come down here to this hole--"

  "I know 'taint what you're used to," Jennings agreed in a conciliatorytone.

  Smaltz took this occasion to ostentatiously inspect a confection theupper and lower crusts of which stuck together like two pieces ofadhesive plaster.

  "Looks like somebudy's been high-gradin' this here pie."

  The criticism might have touched even a mild-tempered cook; it made ademon of Bertha. She started around the table with the obvious intentionof doing Smaltz bodily harm, but at the moment, Porcupine Jim, whoseroving eye had been searching the table for more food, lighted upon oneof the special dishes set before Jennings' plate.

  It _looked_ like rice pudding with raisins in it! If there was onedelicacy which appealed to James's palate more than another it was ricepudding with raisins in it. He arose from the bench in all the pristinesplendor of the orange-colored cotton undershirt in which he worked anddined, and reached for the pudding. It was a considerable distance andhe was unable to reach it by merely stretching himself over the table,so James, unhampered by the rules of etiquette prescribed by a finicalSociety, put his knee on the table and buried his thumb in the puddingas he dragged it toward him by the rim.

  Without warning he sat down so hard and so suddenly that his feet flewup and kicked the table underneath.

  "Leggo!" he gurgled.

  For answer Bertha took another twist around the stout neck-band of hisorange undergarment.

  "I'll learn you rough-necks some manners!" she panted. "I'll git therespect that's comin' to a lady if I have to clean out this here camp!"

  "You quit, now!" He rolled a pair of wild, beseeching eyes around thetable. "Somebudy take her off!"

  "Coward--to fight a woman!" She fell back with a section of James'sshirt in one hand, with the other reaching for his hair.

  He clapped the crook of his elbow over his ear and started to slideunder the table when the special Providence that looks after Swedesintervened. A long, plump, shining bull-snake took that particularmoment to slip off one of the log beams and bounce on the bride's head.

  She threw herself on Jennings emitting sounds like forty catamounts tiedin a bag. The flying crew jammed in the doorway, burst through and neverstopped to look behind until they were well outside.

  "Hy-sterics," said the carpenter who was married--"she's took a fit."

  "Hydrophoby--she must a bit herself!" Porcupine Jim was vigorouslymassaging his neck.

  The bride was sitting on the floor beating her heels, when Bruce put hishead in the door cautiously:

  "If there's anything I can do--"

  Bertha renewed her screams at sight of him.

  "They is--" she shrieked--"Git out!"

  "You don't want to go near 'em when they're in a tantrum," advised thecarpenter in an experienced tone. "But that's about the hardest one Iever see."

  Jennings, staggering manfully under his burden, bore the hystericalAmazon to her tent and it remained for Bruce to do her work.

  "That's a devil of a job for a General Manager," commented John Johnsonsympathetically, as he stood in the doorway watching Bruce, with hissleeves rolled up, scraping assiduously at the bottom of a frying-pan.

  Bruce smiled grimly but made no reply. He had been thinking the samething himself.

  Bruce often had watched an ant trying to move a bread-crumb many timesits size, pushing with all its feet braced, rushing it with its head,backing off and considering and going at it again. Failing, runningfrantically around in front to drag and pull and tug. Trying it this wayand that, stopping to rest for an instant then tackling it in freshfrenzy--and getting nowhere, until, out of pity, he gave it a lift.

  Bruce felt that this power-plant was his bread-crumb, and tug and pushand struggle as he would he could not make it budge. The thought, too,was becoming a conviction that Jennings, who sh
ould have helped himpush, was riding on the other side.

  "I wouldn't even mind his riding," Bruce said to himself ironically, "ifhe wouldn't drag his feet."

  He was hoping with all his heart that the much discussed cross-armswould hold, for when the wires were up and stretched across the river hewould feel that the bread-crumb had at least _moved_.

  When Bruce crossed to the work the next morning, the "come-along" wasclamped to the transmission wire and hooked to the block-and-tackle.Naturally Jennings had charge of the stretching of the wire and heselected Smaltz as his assistant.

  All the crew, intensely interested in the test, stood around asJennings, taciturn and sour and addressing no one but Smaltz, putteredabout his preparations.

  Finally he cried:

  "Ready-O!"

  The wire tightened and the slack disappeared under Smaltz's steady pull.The carpenter and the crew watched the cross-arm anxiously as the straincame upon it under the taut wire. Their faces brightened as it held.

  Smaltz looked at Jennings quizzically.

  "More?"

  "You ain't heard me tell you yet to stop," was the snarling answer.

  "Here goes, then." Smaltz's face wore an expressive grin as he put hisstrength on the rope of the block-and-tackle, which gave him the pull ofa four-horse team.

  Bruce heard the cross-arm splinter as he came up the trail through thebrush.

  Jennings turned to Woods and said offensively:

  "Old as you are, I guess I kin learn you somethin' yet."

  The carpenter's face had turned white. With a gesture Bruce stopped hisbelligerent advance.

  "Try the next one, Jennings," he said quietly.

  Once more the slack was taken up and the wire grew taut--so taut itwould have twanged like a fiddle-string if it had been struck. Jenningsdid not give Smaltz the sign to stop even when the cross-arm cracked.Without a word of protest Bruce watched the stout four-by-five splinterand drop off.

  "There--you see--I told you so! I knowed!" Jennings looked triumphantlyat the carpenter as he spoke. Then, turning to the crew: "Knock 'emoff--every one. _Now_ I'll do it right!"

  Not a man moved and for an instant Bruce dared not trust himself tospeak. When he did speak it was in a tone that made Jennings look upstartled:

  "You'll come across the river and get your time." His surprise wasgenuine as Bruce went on--"Do you imagine," he asked savagely, trying tosteady his voice, "that I haven't intelligence enough to know thatyou've got to allow for the swaying of the trees in the wind, for thecontraction and expansion of heat and cold, for the weight of snow andsleet? Do you think I haven't brains enough to see when you'redeliberately destroying another man's work? I've been trying to makemyself believe in you--believe that in spite of your faults you werehonest. Now I know that you've been drawing pay for months for work youdon't know how to do. I can't see any difference between you and anycommon thief who takes what doesn't belong to him. Right here you quit!Vamoose!" Bruce made a sweeping gesture--"You go up that hill as quickas the Lord will let you."