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

Adonia. He realized that Craig would have arranged for tote teams to be waiting at Adonia, as he had had a special waiting at the junction, and was by that time far on his way toward Skulltree dam.
Latisan beat the flanks of the old horse with the extinguished lantern and made what speed he could along the blazed trail that would take him to the tote road of the Noda basin.


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The flare of the Flagg camp fires painted the mists luridly; the vapor rolled sluggishly through the tree tops and faded into the blackness of the night.
Lida was seated apart from the men of the crew, knowing that they mercifully wished to spare her from hearing the plans for the morrow.
The logs were down the deadwater to a point where the supremacy at Skulltree dam must be settled.
She could hear the mumble of the voices of those who were in conference around the fires.
Across a patch of radiance she beheld the swaggering promenade of one of the young cookees; he brandished a hatchet truculently. Old Vittum reached out and swept the weapon from the youngster's grasp.
Lida heard Vittum's rebuke, for it was voiced sharply. "None o' that! We don't fight that way. And I'm believing that there are still enough honest rivermen in the Comas crowd to make it a square fight, like we've always had on the Noda when a fight had to be!"
Unreconciled, all her woman's nature protesting, she had come to a settled realization that the fight must happen; Vittum was putting it in words. Now that the struggle was imminent--on the eve of it--she wanted to go down on her knees and beg them to give up the project; but she did not dare to weaken their determination or wound their pride. She crouched on her cot of spruce boughs in anguished misery.
"Nobody has got to the point of using hatchets and guns on this river," corroborated a man on the other side of the fire from Vittum.
Other men pitched their voices higher then, giving up the cautious monotone of the preceding conference.
"Is any man afeard?" asked Vittum.
They assured him with confidence and gay courage that no man was afraid.
"I didn't hear any of you Injuns pipe up," said Vittum. "You ain't very strong on talk, anyway. But I'd kind of like to know how you feel in this matter. We all understood--all of us regulars--that we was coming up here to fight when it got to that point. You have grabbed in later and perhaps didn't understand it. We ain't asking you to do anything you don't want to do."
The Indians were silent. Even Felix Lapierre said nothing when Vittum questioned him with a glance. The French Canadian turned to Frank Orono, squatting within arm's reach, and patted him on the shoulder. It became plain that there was an understanding which did not require words.
Orono rose slowly; he grinned. From the breast of his leather jacket he brought forth a cow's horn and shook it over his head, and its contents rattled sharply. The other Indians leaped up. They were grinning, too.
Orono began a slow march around the camp fire, lifting his knees high, stepping slowly, beating the rattling horn into the palm of his hand. Behind him in single file, imitating his step, marched the other Indians. The smiles faded out of their countenances; their jaws were set, and deep in their throats they growled a weird singsong.
"My Gawd!" yelped Vittum. "It's the old Tarratine war dance and it just fits my notions right now, and I'm in on it!"
He scrambled to his feet and fell into line at the rear of the Indians. Every man in the Flagg crew followed suit. They imitated the Indian singsong as best they were able, their voices constantly giving forth greater volume until they were yelling their defiance to the Three C's company and all its works.
The men far out on the deadwater, pushing against the bars of the capstan, heard the tumult on the shore and shouted the chorus of their challenging chantey.
Between Lida and the men who were circling the fire there was a veil of mist, and in the halation her champions loomed with heroic stature. She did not want them to suppose that she was indifferent; courage of her own leaped in her. The campaign which she had waged with them had given her an experience which had fortified the spirit of the Flaggs. She stepped forth from her little tent and walked down and stood in the edge of the light cast by the camp fire. They cheered her, and she put aside her qualms and her fears as best she was able.
When she was back in her tent she did not shield her ears from the challenging chantey, as she had done before, and she heard with fortitude the vociferous pledges of faith in the morrow.
The dawn came so sullenly and so slowly that the day seemed merely a faded copy of the night.
A heavy fog draped the mountains and was packed in stifling masses in the river valley.
Crews in shifts marched tirelessly around the capstans of the headworks. Their voices out in the white opaqueness sounded strangely under the sounding-board of the fog.
It was a brooding, ominous, baleful sort of a day, when shapes were distorted in the mists and all sounds were magnified in queer fashion and the echoes played pranks with distances and locations and directions.
Out of the murky blank came one who had gone a-scouting. He touched his cap to the girl and reported to her and to all who were in hearing.
"The Three C's chief pirate has got along. Craig is down at the dam. I was able to crawl up mighty close in the fog. I heard him. He's ugly!"
"I reckoned he would be a mite peevish as soon as the news of the social happenings along the river for the past few days got to him," said Vittum. "It's no surprise to me--been expecting him!"
"He's got a special edge on his temper--has been all bunged up by an auto accident, so I heard him giving out to the men he was talking to."
"And what's he saying of particular interest to us?"
"Says he's going to stick right at Skulltree and kill us off singly and in bunches, just as we happen to come along."
"News is news, and it's good or bad according to the way you look at it," declared the old man. "Does that fresh news scare anybody?"
There was a vigorous chorus of denial; when one man averred that the statement only made the fight more worth while he was indorsed with great heartiness.
"All right!" agreed Vittum. "We'll consider that point settled." He drew a long breath; he inquired with anxious solicitude; "Did you overhear him saying anything about Latisan? He might have heard something, coming in fresh from outside."
The scout gave the girl a glance of apology; he was a tactless individual in shading facts. "Of course, all that Three C's bunch is liars, and Craig worst of all. But I did hear him say that Latisan is loafing in New York and is prob'ly in jail by this time."
The girl rose and walked away, and the fog shut her from their sight immediately. She heard the old man cursing the incautious scout. "Why the blazes didn't you smooth it? You've gone to work and hurt her feelings. She made her mistake, and she admits it. We all make our mistakes," said the rebuker. "But she's true blue! I ain't laying up anything against Latisan because he doesn't show up. It's because the girl is here that we are making men of ourselves right now. She's deserving of all we can give her. By gad! say I, she's going to make good with our help."
She was a considerable distance down the river path, but she heard that speech and the shout of the men indorsing the declaration.
Lida hastened as rapidly as she was able along the path that led to Skulltree; she had reconnoitered on the previous day--going as near the dam as she dared, trying to make the lay of the land suggest some method by which battle might be avoided.
While she ran down the path that morning she was arriving at some definite conclusions. The news about Director Craig had put desperate courage into her. The upper and the nether millstones of men and events in the north country had begun their grim revolutions; she resolved to cast herself between those stones in an effort to save faithful men who were innocent of fault.
When the dull rumble of the sluiceway waters informed her that she was near the camp of the enemy she went more cautiously, and when she heard the voices of men she called, announcing that she desired to speak with Director Craig.
Somebody replied, after a pause which indicated that considerable amazement had been roused by a woman's voice.
"Come along, whoever you are! Mr. Craig is on the dam."
A man who kept jerking his head around to stare frankly at her led her along the string piece of the great structure.
Their meeting--she and the Comas director--was like a rencontre in the void of space; on the water side of the dam the mists matched the hue of the glassy surface and the blending masked the water; on the other side, the fog filled the deep gorge where the torrent of the sluiceway thundered.
She was obliged to go close to him in order to emerge from the vapor into his range of vision and to make her voice heard above the roar of the water. His one visible eye surveyed her with blank astonishment; near as she was to him, he did not recognize her at first in her rough garb of the woods.
"Mr. Craig, I _was_"--she stressed the verb significantly--"an employee in the Vose-Mern agency in New York. I met you in their office."
He clasped his hands behind him as if he feared to have them free in front of him; her proximity seemed to invite those hands, but his countenance revealed that he was not in a mood then to give caresses. "Was, eh? May I ask what you are right now?"
"I'm doing my best to help in getting the Flagg drive down the river--without trouble!"
"Trouble!" He was echoing her again; it was as if, in his waxing ire, he did not dare to launch into a topic of his own. "What do you call it, what has been happening upriver?"
"I presume you mean that dams have been blown to get water for our logs."
"Our dams!" he shouted.
"I'm a stranger up here. I don't know whose dams they were. I have heard all kinds of stories about the rights in the dams, sir."
"I can't say to you what I think--and what I want to say! You're a girl, confound it! I'll only make a fool of myself, talking to you about our rights and our property. But I can say to you, about your own work, that you have been paid by our money to do a certain thing."
She opened her eyes on him in offended inquiry.
"I take it that you're the same one who called herself Miss Patsy Jones when you operated at Adonia."
"I did use that name--for personal reasons."
He did not moderate his wrath. "Here I find that Patsy Jones is Miss Kennard of the Vose-Mern agency. We have paid good money to the agency. When I settled for the last job I added two hundred dollars as a present to you."
"I have not received the gift, sir. It does not belong to me.