Joan of Arc of the North Woods - Holman Day (best book recommendations .txt) 📗

of that breath could be heard.
"But Ward Latisan did not run away with me from his duty. My being here answers that lie. And I have even a better answer--a reason why I would be the last one in the world to interfere willingly with his work this spring." She stepped close to them, nearer the fire, so that they could see what she held forth, tightly clutched in both hands. "This is Echford Flagg's cant dog--he told me it would be known by all his men. He gave it into my keeping for a sign that he has sent me north. And I have a right to carry it. I am Lida Kennard. I am Echford Flagg's granddaughter."
Behind her came crowding the Tarratines.
"Men have deserted from your crew. Here are others to take their places," she announced with pride.
She was dealing with men who were bashed by utter stupefaction; she noted it and her self-reliance grew steadier. She drove the point of the cant dog into the soft duff with a manner after the heart of Flagg himself. She spread her freed hands to them in appeal. "I have come here to tell you the truth."


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Latisan had pitched the tune for that drive when he started it.
It was a tune in quick tempo, with the staccato clangor of the kettle drums of the dynamite when he burst the icy sheathing of the waters in order to dump the first logs in.
When he was on the job the directing wand of his pick pole kept everything jumping.
Even when he was away for a few days his men toiled with the spirit that he had left with them. They had adopted his cause and shared his righteous resentment against the tactics of the Three C's.
They were able to work on without his guidance, after a fashion, but for the fight that was ahead of them down the river they had depended on his captainship. Therefore, Kyle with his scandals and reports and his urging had been in a way to break down their morale. When they reflected, they realized it. And it had been a wicked thing to face--the prospect that they might quit! With Latisan of the Latisans present with them, pursuing an honest vengeance, there were lift and sweep and swing which made their toil an adventure rather than plain drudgery.
Then that day when rumor and Kyle and Latisan's protracted absence had nigh killed courage!
But then, the inspiring night which had brought the granddaughter of Echford Flagg with her story, her confession, her plea, and her still strong faith in the awakening of Ward Latisan when he was able to know the truth! She did not gloss her own involuntary fault; she was frank in the statement that she loved the man whom she had harmed by her mistake. She knew it was the truth; she took them into her confidence. Then there was more than mere courage in the men of the drive--they were sharers in the spirit of romance which put the dynamic zeal of fanatics behind those logs. The girl's cause was linked with Latisan's and was a compelling force.
* * * * *
Like racing horses the Flagg timber rushed along, crowding the river from side to side.
The stream drives, breaking the bonds of the ice, had caught the top pitch of the floods and were hurled into the boiling rapids.
But there was more than the mere thrust of the roaring waters behind those tumbling logs.
The Flagg drive had a soul that year!
It was what the Comas corporation lacked.
Behind the Flagg logs were honest men, pityingly loyal--still to Latisan--and behind the toilers was a dominating spirit that was a combination of courage, wild enthusiasm, loyalty, and devotion in a campaign that now was entered upon with tempestuous fervor in the presence of Lida Kennard. When that fervor went smashing against the Three C's crowd the men who were animated only by a corporation's wages became cowards and stepped aside and gave the champions the right of way.
The slogan of Flagg men was, "Gangway for the girl!"
They had taken up her cause; they had enrolled themselves with a perfect abandon of all considerations of self; for them, getting down that timber was merely a means to a much-desired end.
They were recklessly determined to help the girl make good! That was the urgeful sentiment which their thoughts inscribed on the invisible oriflamme of the warfare that was waged for the new Joan along the waters of the Noda.
It was not especially because she was the granddaughter of Echford Flagg. His wages had never bought more than perfunctory service from crews. She was herself--and she had confessed her debts.
When she told them why she was wearing Latisan's cap and jacket, when she owned to her error and laid the blame on herself, when she pleaded with them to help her in undoing the bitter mischief, she won a devotion that questioned nothing.
"Men, he will come back. He will understand it all when he is himself again. And if you and I are able to show him that we have done his work well he will hold up his head once more as he has a right to do."
"God bless ye, girl, ye can't keep yourself apart from Latisan in this thing," declared an old man. "It's for the two o' ye that we do our work from now on! And it's for all of us, as well! For we'll ne'er draw happy breaths till we can stand by and see you meet him on the level--eye to eye--like one who has squared all accounts between you two! And the old grands'r, as well. What say, boys?"
But cheers could not serve their emotions then. They pulled off their caps and scrubbed their rough hands across their jackets and walked to her in single file and shook her hand in pregnant silence.
And then the timber went through; the drive was beating all the past records.
When they needed water they took it. They blew their own dams and were very careless with dynamite when they came upon other dams of whose ownership they were not so sure.
"You see, miss, rights are well mixed up all through this region," said old Vittum, who had been spokesman for his fellows on her first meeting with them. He gave her a demure wink. "The main idea is, God is making this water run downhill just now, and it doesn't seem right for mortal man to stop it from running."
They "manned the river," as the drivers say. That meant overlapping crews, day and night.
No squad was out of sight of another; a yell above the roar of the flood or a cap brandished on the end of a pike pole summoned help to break a forming jam or to card logs off ledges or to dislodge "jillpokes" which had stabbed their ends into the soggy banks of the river. Men ate as they ran and they slept as they could. Some of them, snatching time to eat, sitting on the shore, went sound asleep after a few mouthfuls and slumbered with their faces in their plates till a companion kicked them back into wakefulness. They grinned and were up again!
As for Lida Kennard, she was treated with as much tender care as if she were a reigning princess on tour. She protested indignantly because they would not allow her to rough it along with them. They made soft beds of spruce tips at their camping sites and they gave her the post of honor in a big bateau.
In the rush of affairs she did not pause to wonder whether she was offending any of the proprieties by staying on with the drive; she had become the Flagg spirit incarnate and was not troubling herself with petty matters.
Old Vittum and Felix were her advisers, and they prized her presence as an asset of inestimable value; she allowed them to think for her in that crisis.
"It's a tough life, miss, the best we can make it for you," admitted Vittum. "But if you can stick and hang till Skulltree is passed it means that the boys will keep the glory of doing in 'em!"
From rendering service according to her ability they could not prevent her, though the men protested. She helped the cooks. Hurrying here and there, following the scattered men of the crews, she tugged great cans of hot coffee. When the toilers saw her coming and heard her voice they took desperate chances on the white water, jousting with their pike poles like knights in a tourney.
She put into the hearts of the crew the passion of derring do!
The drive that spring was not a sordid task--it was high emprise, it was a joyous adventure!
Then the logs which had raced in the rapids came to the upper reaches of the slow deadwater of the flowage of the Skulltree dam; the flowage reached far back that year.
At Skulltree was the crux of the situation, as Flagg had insisted, ragefully.
From the early days there had been a dam at that point; it was common property and conserved the water to be loosed to drive logs over the shallow rapids below.
The Three C's had spent more money on that dam, claiming that bigger drives needed extra water. The dam had been raised. The flowage vastly increased the extent of the deadwater, slowing the logs of the independents, whose towage methods were crude. The changes which had been made needed the sanction of impending legislation, required the authority of a charter for which application had been made. In the meantime the Three C's were holding the water and would be impounding logs; these logs were to be diverted through the new, artificial canal.
In asserting their rights the corporation folks were endangering the independent drives which were destined for the sawmills of the Noda.
Day by day, as the drive went on, the girl listened to the talk among her men until she understood, in some measure, the situation. All the reckless haste was made of no account unless their logs were to be permitted to pass the Skulltree dam.
Vittum explained to her that the law was still considering the question of "natural flowage." The dam had been changed from time to time in past years until the matter was in doubt.
"But the way the thing stands now there ain't much of that nat'ral flowage," he told her. "I claim that we have the right to go through, law or no law. Word was served early on Latisan that he must hold up at Skulltree this year and wait for the law."
"Did he say what he proposed to do?" she asked.
"Yes, miss! I'll have to be excused from repeating what he said, in the way he said it, but the gist of it was that he was going through. He said he would use some kind of flowage, and hoped that when the lawyers got done talking in court it would be decided that the aforesaid nat'ral flowage was the kind that had been used by him."
She pulled off Ward's cap and turned it about in her hand, surveying it judiciously. "I can seem to see just how he looked when he said it."
"He said it loud, miss, because the man he was talking to was a good ways off. He was a sheriff. He couldn't get very nigh to Latisan. We was holding the man off with our pick poles because he was trying to serve