Chapter III: Part II: Stories of the Wild Life (2)

Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, but both were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Red chafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied. He could do nothing without the report; and it was too far out to send for another scaler, even if Daly would have given him one.

Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been blue-pencilled across the end. That meant that it had not been scaled; and that in turn meant that he, the Rough Red, would not be paid for his labour in cutting and banking it. At once he began to bellow through the woods.

"Hey! FitzPatrick! Come here, you blank-blanked-blank of a blank! Come here!"

The sealer swung leisurely down the travoy trail and fronted the other with level eyes.

"Well?" said he.

"Why ain't that log marked?"

"I culled it."

"Ain't it sound and good? Is there a mark on it? A streak of punk or rot? Ain't it good timber? What the hell's th' matter with it? You tried to do me out of that, you damn skunk."

A log is culled, or thrown out, when, for any reason, it will not make good timber.

"I'll tell you, Jimmy Bourke," replied FitzPatrick, calmly, "th' stick is sound and good, or was before your murderin' crew got hold of it, but if ye'll take a squint at the butt of it ye'll see that your gang has sawed her on a six-inch slant. They've wasted a good foot of th' log. I spoke of that afore; an' now I give ye warnin' that I cull every log, big or little, punk or sound, that ain't sawed square and true across th' butt."

"Th' log is sound and good, an' ye'll scale it, or I'll know th' reason why!"

"I will not," replied FitzPatrick.

The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose butt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culled another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it closely, then sought the Rough Red.

"It is useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poor log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in th' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I'll cull it wherever I find it, and never will ye get th' scale of that log."

The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away with a curse; whirled back with another, and spat out:

"By God, FitzPatrick, ye go too far! Ye've hounded me and harried me through th' woods all th' year! By God, 'tis a good stick, an' ye shall scale it!"

"Yo' and yore Old Fellows is robbers alike!" cried one of the men.

FitzPatrick turned on his heel and resumed his work. The men ceased theirs and began to talk.

That night was Christmas Eve. After supper the Rough Red went directly from the cook-camp to the men's camp. FitzPatrick, sitting lonely in the little office, heard the sounds of debauch rising steadily like mysterious storm winds in distant pines. He shrugged his shoulders, and tallied his day's scaling, and turned into his bunk wearily, for of holidays there are none in the woods, save Sunday. About midnight someone came in. FitzPatrick, roused from his sleep by aimless blunderings, struck a light, and saw the cook looking uncertainly toward him through blood-clotted lashes. The man was partly drunk, partly hurt, but more frightened.

"They's too big fer me, too big fer me!" he repeated, thickly.

FitzPatrick kicked aside the blankets and set foot on the floor.

"Le' me stay," pleaded the cook, "I won't bother you; I won't even make a noise. I'm skeered!"

"Course you can stay," replied the scaler. "Come here."

He washed the man's forehead, and bound up the cut with surgeon's plaster from the van. The man fell silent, looking at him in wonderment for such kindness.

Four hours later, dimly, through the mist of his broken sleep, FitzPatrick heard the crew depart for the woods in the early dawn. On the crest of some higher waves of consciousness were borne to him drunken shouts, maudlin blasphemies. After a time he arose and demanded breakfast.

The cook, pale and nervous, served him. The man was excited, irresolute, eager to speak. Finally he dropped down on the bench opposite FitzPatrick, and began.

"Fitz," said he, "don't go in th' woods to-day. The men is fair wild wid th' drink, and th' Rough Red is beside hi'self. Las' night I heerd them. They are goin' to skid the butt log again, and they swear that if you cull it again, they will kill you. They mean it. That's all why they wint to th' woods this day."

FitzPatrick swallowed his coffee in silence. In silence he arose and slipped on his mackinaw blanket coat. In silence he thrust his beechwood tablets into his pocket, and picked his pliable scaler's rule from the corner.

"Where are ye goin'?" asked the cook, anxiously.

"I'm goin' to do th' work they pay me to do," answered FitzPatrick.

He took his way down the trail, his face set straight before him, the smoke of his breath streaming behind. The first skidway he scaled with care, laying his rule flat across the face of each log, entering the figures on his many-leaved tablets of beech, marking the timbers swiftly with his blue crayon.

The woods were empty. No ring of the axe, no shout of the driver, no fall of the tree broke the silence. FitzPatrick comprehended. He knew that at the next skidway the men were gathered, waiting to see what he would do; gathered openly at last in that final hostility which had been maturing all winter. He knew, besides, that most of them were partly drunk and wholly reckless, and that he was alone. Nevertheless, after finishing conscientiously skidway number one, he moved on to skidway number two.

There, as he had expected, the men were waiting in ominous silence, their eyes red with debauch and hate. FitzPatrick paid them no heed, but set about his business.

Methodically, deliberately, he did the work. Then, when the last pencil-mark had been made, and the tablets had been closed with a snap of finality, the Rough Red stepped forward.

"Ye have finished with this skidway?" asked the foreman in soft cat-tones.

"I have," answered FitzPatrick, briefly.

"Yo' have forgot to scale one stick."

"No."

"There is a stick still not marked."

"I culled it."

"Why?"

"It was not sawed straight."

FitzPatrick threw his head back proudly, answering his man at ease, as an accomplished swordsman. The Rough Red shifted his feet, almost awed in spite of himself. One after another the men dropped their eyes and stood ill at ease. The scaler turned away; his heel caught a root; he stumbled; instantly the pack was on him, for the power of his eye was broken.

Mad with rage they kicked and beat and tore at FitzPatrick's huddled form long after consciousness had left it. Then an owl hooted from the shadow of the wood, or a puff of wind swept by, or a fox barked, or some other little thing happened, so that in blind unreasoning panic they fled. The place was deserted, save for the dark figure against the red-and-white snow.

FitzPatrick regained his wits in pain, and so knew he was still on earth. Every movement cost him a moan, and some agency outside himself inflicted added torture. After a long time he knew it was the cook, who was kindly kneading his limbs and knuckling his hair. The man proved to be in a maze of wonderment over his patient's tenacity of life.

"I watched ye," he murmured soothingly, "I did not dare interfere. But I kem to yo' 's soon as I could. See, here's a fire that I built for ye, and some tea. Take a little. And no bones broke! True for ye, ye're a hearty man, and strong with th' big muscles on ye fit to fight th' Rough Red man to man. Get th' use of yere legs, darlint, an' I'll tak' ye to camp, for its fair drunk they are by now. Sure an' I tole ye they'd kill ye!"

"But they didn't," muttered FitzPatrick with a gleam of humour.

"Sure 'twas not their fault--nor yer own!"

Hours later, as it seemed, they moved slowly in the direction of camp. The cold had stiffened FitzPatrick's cuts and bruises. Every step shot a red wave of torture through his arteries to his brain. They came in sight of camp. It was silent. Both knew that the men had drunk themselves into a stupor.

"I'd like t' kill th' whole lay-out as she sleeps," snarled the cook, shaking his fist.

"So would I," replied FitzPatrick.

Then as they looked, a thin wreath of smoke curled from under the open doorway and spread lazily in the frosty air. Another followed; another; still another. The cabin was afire.

"They've kicked over th' stove again," said FitzPatrick, seating himself on a stump. His eyes blazed with wrath and bitterness.

"What yo' goin' to do?" asked the cook.

"Sit here," replied FitzPatrick, grimly.

The cook started forward.

"Stop!" shouted the scaler, fiercely; "if you move a step, I'll break your back!"

The cook stared at him through saucer eyes.

"But they'd be burnt alive!" he objected, wildly.

"They ought to be," snarled the scaler; "it ain't their fault I'm here to help them. 'Tis their own deed that I'm now lyin' beyant there in th' forest, unable to help myself. Do you understand? I'm yet out there in th' woods!"

"Ah, wirra, wirra!" wailed the cook, wringing his hands. "Th' poor lads!" He began to weep.

FitzPatrick stared straight in front of him for a moment. Then he struck his forehead, and with wonderful agility, considering the injuries he had but just received, tore down the hill in the direction of the smouldering cabin. The cook followed him joyfully. Together they put out the fire. The men snored like beasts, undisturbed by all the tumult.

"'Tis th' soft heart ye have after all, Fitz," said the cook, delightedly, as the two washed their hands in preparation for a lunch. "Ye could not bear t' see th' lads burn."

FitzPatrick glowered at him for an instant from beneath his square brows.

"They can go to hell for all of me," he answered, finally, "but my people want these logs put in this winter, an' there's nobody else to put them in."

IV

THE RIVER-BOSS

"Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out peaceably if you can, but _get them out_." He does not need a field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up river, he called in Jimmy.

Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly impassive.

Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black, extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other. Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged. Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him, and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving the tags of Spearhead tobacco. Whatever you said to him sank without splash into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps after a time he might do something about it, but always without explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he never explained himself, even to his employers.

Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

"I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the big man; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty good crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over."

When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream.

Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task. Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.

The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream. They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" the rollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fashion, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land. The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, they jumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling around them--and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood upright on single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while the ice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.

As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which "wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe, too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew. Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a tent.

It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures the progress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles a day--and often do--but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy stayed at the rear.

Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a hat--any "bully boy" would qualify there--but also he had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where to place his men--in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the rollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; three days for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there must be no hitches in the programme.

Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned, however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river was peculiar and very trying.

The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred a rise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled and tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy's three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.

"She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"

Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

Jimmy appeared calm.

"We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.

"Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't _got_ all the summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they're no _good_ to us!"

"You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.

Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

"Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows," he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."

"I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."

"Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell _me_! I've been on the river all my life. I _know_ you can't get them off inside of a week."

"I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little something," asserted Jimmy, calmly.

Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city, where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless" tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper. After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.

At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern, touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose without comment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then the little band filed silently down river under the stars.

Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing white steam-clouds at regular intervals from his "meerschaum" pipe. After twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of Canal Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning them to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed, swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his march at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the fact that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night silence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end of the power-dam.

The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars. Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another. More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long, arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place.

When the supports had reached out over half of the river's span, and the water was dotted with the shoulders of men gracefully slanted against the current, Jimmy gave orders to begin placing the flash-boards. Heavy planks were at once slid across the supports, where the weight of the racing water at once clamped them fast. Spikes held the top board beyond the possibility of a wrench loose. The smooth, quiet river, interrupted at last, murmured and snarled and eddied back, only to rush with increased vehemence around the end of the rapidly growing obstruction.

The policeman, passing back and forth on Canal Street, heard no sound of the labour going on. If he had been an observant policeman, he would have noted an ever-changing tone in the volume of sound roaring up from the eddy below the dam. After a time even he remarked on a certain obvious phenomenon.

"Sure!" said he; "now, that's funny!"

He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were, after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, east side; and Canal Street, east side, seemed peaceful.

The river had fallen absolutely silent. The last of Jimmy's flash-boards was in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce's Tower struck two.

Jimmy and his men, having thus raised the level of the dam a good three feet, emerged dripping from the west-side canal, and cheerfully took their way northward to where, in the chilly dawn, their companions were sleeping the sleep of the just. As they passed the riffles they paused. A heavy grumbling issued from the logs jammed there, a grumbling brutish and sullen, as though the reluctant animals were beginning to stir. The water had already backed up from the raised dam.

Of course the affair, from a river-driver's standpoint, at once became exceedingly simple. The slumbering fifteen were aroused to astounded drowsiness. By three, just as the dawn was beginning to differentiate the east from the west, the regular _clank, clank, clink_ of the peavies proclaimed that due advantage of the high water was being seized. From then until six was a matter of three hours more. A great deal can be accomplished in three hours with flood-water. The last little jam "pulled" just about the time the first citizen of the west side discovered that his cellar was full of water. When that startled freeman opened the front door to see what was up, he uttered a tremendous ejaculation; and so, shortly, came to the construction of a raft.

Well, the papers got out an extra edition with scare-heads about "Outrages" and "High-handed Lawlessness!" and factory owners by the canals raised up their voices in bitterness over flooded fire-rooms; and property owners of perishable cellar goods howled about damage suits; and the ordinary citizen took to bailing out the hollow places of his domain. Toward nine o'clock, after the first excitement had died, and the flash-boards had been indignantly yanked from their illegal places, a squadron of police went out to hunt up the malefactor. The latter they discovered on a boom-pole directing the sluicing. From this position he declined to stir. One fat policeman ventured a toppling yard or so on the floating timber, threw his hands aloft in loss of equilibrium, and with a mighty effort regained the shore, where he sat down, panting. To the appeals of the squad to come and be arrested, Jimmy paid not the slightest heed. He puffed periodically on his "meerschaum" pipe, and directed the sluicing. Through the twenty-foot gate about a million feet an hour passed. Thus it happened that a little after noon Jimmy came peaceably ashore and gave himself up.

"You won't have no more trouble below," he observed to McGann, his lieutenant, watching reflectively the last logs shoot through the gate. "Just tie right into her and keep her hustling." Then he refilled his pipe, lit it, and approached the expectant squad.

At the station-house he was interviewed by reporters. That is, they asked questions. To only one of them did they elicit a reply.

"Didn't you know you were breaking the law?" inquired the _Eagle_ man. "Didn't you know you'd be arrested?"

"Sure!" replied Jimmy, with obvious contempt.

The next morning the court-room was crowded. Jimmy pleaded guilty, and was fined five hundred dollars or ninety days in jail. To the surprise of everybody he fished out a tremendous roll and paid the fine. The spectators considered it remarkable that a river-boss should carry such an amount. They had not been present at the interview between Jimmy and his principal the night before.

The latter stood near the door as the little man came out.

"Jimmy," said Mr. Daly, distinctly, so that everyone could hear, "I am extremely sorry to see you in this trouble; but perhaps it may prove a lesson to you. Next time you must understand that you are not supposed to exceed your instructions."

Thus did the wily Daly publicly disclaim his liability.

"Yes, sir," said Jimmy, meekly. "Did you get the logs in time, Mr. Daly?"

They looked at each other steadily. Then, for the first and only time, the black and white mask of Jimmy's inscrutability melted away. In his left eye appeared a faint glimmer. Then the left eyelid slowly descended.

V

THE FIFTH WAY

The prophet confessed four things as beyond his understanding--the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid--but we of modern times must add a fifth, and that is the way of justice. For often a blunderer caught red-handed escapes with slight punishment, while the clever man who transgresses, yet conceals his transgression craftily, pays at the end of a devious sequence with his life. Of this fashion was the death of Regis Brugiere.

It happened that in the fall of the year two strangers came to Ste. Jeanne for the purpose of shooting grouse, and Regis Brugiere hired himself to them as guide. His duties were not many. He had simply to drive them from one hardwood belt to another. But in his leisure he often followed them about, and so fell in love with Jim.

Jim was a black-and-white setter dog. Regis Brugiere watched him as he trotted carefully through the woods, his four legs working like pistons, his head high, his soft, intelligent eyes spying for the likely cover. Then when he caught a faint whiff of the game, he would stop short, and look around, and wag his tail. Not one step would he take toward assuring his point until the man had struggled through the thicket to his side. Thus his master obtained many shots at birds flushing wild before the dog which otherwise he would not have had.

But when the bird lay well, then Jim would tread carefully forward as though on eggs, until, his nostrils filled with the warm body-scent, he stood rigid, a living statue of beauty. A moment of breathless excitement ensued. With a burst of sound the bird roared away. There followed the quick crack of the fowling-piece, a cloud of feathers in the air, a long slanting fall. Jim looked up, eager but self-controlled.

"Fetch, Jim," said the man.

At once the dog bounded away, to return after a moment in the pride of an army with banners, carrying the grouse daintily between his jaws.

Or the shot failed. Jim waited until he heard the click of the gun as its breech closed after reloading, then moved forward with well-bred restraint to sniff long and inquiringly where the bird had been.

These things Regis Brugiere saw, following the hunt through the thickets, so that he broke the tenth commandment and coveted Jim with a great love. He worshipped the dog's aloof dignity, his gentlemanly demeanour of unhasting grace in the woods, his well-bred far-away gaze as he sat on his haunches staring into the distance.

So Regis Brugiere stole Jim, the black-and-white setter, and concealed him well. To him it was a little thing to do. He did not know Jim's value, for in the north country a dog is a dog. After the strangers had gone, bewailing their loss, Regis Brugiere loaded a toboggan with supplies and traps and set out into the northwest on his annual trapping excursion. He took with him Jim, by now entirely accustomed to his new master.

The two journeyed far through the forest, over many rivers and muskegs, through many swamps and ranges of hills. Regis Brugiere drew the toboggan after him. The task should have been Jim's, but to the trapper that would have seemed like harnessing Ignace St. Cloud, the seigneur of Ste. Jeanne, to an apple-cart. So Jim ranged at large in diagonals having a good time, while the man enjoyed himself by watching the animal. In due course they came to a glade through which ran a soggy, choked, little spring-creek. Here Regis Brugiere kicked off his snow-shoes with an air of finality. Here he erected a cabin, and established himself and Jim.

Over a circumference of forty miles then he set his traps, for the beaver, the mink, the fox, the fisher, the muskrat, and the other fur-bearing animals of the north. At regular intervals he visited these traps one after the other, crunching swiftly along on his snow-shoes. Jim always accompanied him. When the snow was deep, he wallowed painfully after in the tracks made by Regis Brugiere. When it was not so deep, he looked for grouse or ptarmigan, investigated many strange things, or ran at large over the frozen surfaces of the little lakes.

At the trapping-places Jim had to stay behind. The man left with him his capote and snow-shoes, which Jim imagined himself to be guarding faithfully. Thus he was satisfied.

Then on the return journey the two had fun. Regis Brugiere liked to pick Jim up and throw him bodily into the deepest snow. Jim liked to have him do so, and would disappear with an ecstatic yelp. In a moment he would burst out of the drift and would dance about on the tips of his toes growling fiercely in mock deprecation of a repetition for which he hoped. These were the only occasions in which Jim relaxed his solemnity. At all other times his liquid brown eyes were mournful with the tempered, delicious sorrow of affection.

In the woods Jim acquired bad habits. He reverted to the original dog. Finding that Regis Brugiere paid little attention to the grouse so carefully pointed, Jim resolved to hunt on his own account. At first his conscience hurt him so that the act amounted to sin. But afterward the delighted applause of his new master reassured him. He crouched, he trailed, he flushed, he chased, he broke all the commandments of a sporting-dog's morality. In this was demoralisation, but also great profit. For Jim came to be an adept at surprising game in the snow. His point now became exactly what it used to be in the primordial dog--a pause of preparation before the spring. Jim was beautifully independent. Except in the matter of delicacies, he supported himself.

But one thing he knew not, and that was the deer. To him they were as horses or sheep. He could not understand, nor did he care greatly, why they should flee so suddenly when he appeared. So Regis Brugiere tried to teach him, but vainly. Thus it happened that often Jim had to be left at home, for to a solitary trapper the deer is a necessity. There is in him food and clothing.

At such times Regis Brugiere was accustomed to pile high the fireplace with wood in order that his friend might be comfortable during his absence. Then he would leave the dog disconsolate. On the first of these occasions Jim effected an escape, and rejoined his master at a distance with every symptom of delight. Regis Brugiere, returning disgusted, found the cabin-door sprawled wide: Jim had learned to pull it toward him with his teeth. Shortly the trapper was forced to make a latch so that the dog could not pull it ajar by the strength of his jaws and legs. Perhaps it is well here to explain that ordinarily such a cabin-door merely jams shut against the spring of a wand of hickory.

Now mark you this: If Regis Brugiere had not coveted and stolen the dog Jim, he would not have been forced to construct the latch; without the latch, he could easily have pushed open the door by leaning against it; if he could have pushed open the door, all would have been well with both himself and Jim. And in this we admire the wonder of the fifth way--the way of justice by which a man's life is bartered for a fault.

One morning in the midwinter, when it was very cold with seventy degrees of frost, Regis Brugiere resolved to hunt the deer. As usual, he filled the fireplace, spread a robe for Jim's accommodation, thrust the latch-string through the small hole bored for that purpose, and set out in the forest. When he reached the swamp edge, he removed his snow-shoes and began carefully to pick his way along the fallen tops. Mounting on a snow-covered root, he thrust his right foot down into an unsuspected crevice, stumbled, and fell forward on his face.

When the blur of pain had cleared away, and he was able to take stock of what had happened, Regis Brugiere found that he had snapped the bones of his leg short off below the knee.

The first part of his journey home to the cabin was one of profanity; the second of prayer; the third of grim silence. In the first he lost his rifle; in the second his courage; in the third his knowledge of what was about him. Like a crippled rabbit he dragged himself over the snow, a single black spot against the whiteness. The dark forest-trees gathered curiously about his wavering consciousness to look down on him in aloof compassion. And over him, invisible, palpable, hovered the dreadful north-country cold, waiting to stoop.

Regis Brugiere, by the grace of a woodsman's perseverance and the instinct of a wild creature, gained at last the clearing in which his cabin stood. Behind him wavered a long, deep-gouged furrow-trail, pitiful attest of suffering. His strength was water, but he was home. After a long time he reached the door, and rested. The incident was cruel, but it was only one of many in a cruel way of life.

The twilight was coming down with thronging mysterious voices. Among them clamoured fiercely the voice of the cold. Regis Brugiere felt its breath on his heart, and, in alarm, broke through the apathy of his condition. It was time to recall his forces, to enter where could be found provisions and warmth. Painfully he turned on his right side and prepared to reach the latch-string. His first movement brought him an agony to be endured only with teeth and eyes closed, only by summoning to the minute task of thrusting his hand upward along the rough door all the forces of his being down to the last shred of vitality. At once the indomitable spirit of the woods-runner answered the call. Regis Brugiere concentrated his will on a pinpoint. Like a sprinter his volition was fixed on a goal, beyond which lay collapse.

Inch by inch the hand kept on, blindly groping. It reached the latch-string; passed it by.

Then, like a flame before it expires, the spirit of Regis Brugiere blazed out. With strange contortions of the body and writhings of the face his form came upright, the arm still reaching. So it swayed for a moment, then fell. The man's will-power ran from him in a last supreme effort. Twice more he struggled blindly, but the efforts were feeble. At last with a sigh he gave himself to the cold, which had been waiting. And the cold was kind. Regis Brugiere fell asleep.

Five days later Jim, the black-and-white setter-dog, ceased his restless wanderings to and fro, ceased trying to leap to the oiled window beyond which lay the forest and food in abundance, ceased vain clawings below the shelf-high supplies of flour and bacon, to curl himself by the door as near as possible to the master who lay without. There he starved, dreaming in a merciful torpor of partridges in the snow. Thus was the way of justice fulfilled in the case of Regis Brugiere and the setter-dog Jim.

VI

THE LIFE OF THE WINDS OF HEAVEN

I

Barbara hesitated long between the open-work stockings and the plain-silk, but finally decided on the former. Then she vouchsafed a pleased little smile to her pleasant little image in the mirror, and stepped through the door into the presence of her aunt. The aunt was appropriately astonished. This was the first time Barbara had spread her dainty chiffon wings in the air of the great north woods. Strangely, daintily incongruous she looked now against the rough walls of the cabin, against the dark fringe of the forest beyond the door.

Barbara was a petite little body with petite little airs of babylike decision. She knew that her greatest attraction lay in the strange backward poise of her head, bringing her chin, pointed and adorable, to the tilt of maddening charm. She was perfectly aware, too, of her very full red lips, the colour of cherries, but with the satiny finish of the peach; and she could not remain blind to the fact that her light hair and her velvet-black eyes were in rare and delicious contrast. All these things, and more, Barbara knew because a dozen times a day her mirror swore them true. That she was elusively, teasingly, judicially, calmly distracting she knew because, ever since she could remember, men had told her so with varying degrees of bitter humour. She accepted the fact, and carried herself in all circumstances as a queen surrounded by an indefinite number of rights matured to her selection.

After her plain old backwoods aunt had admired and exclaimed over the butterfly so unexpectedly developed from the brown tailor-made chrysalis, Barbara determined to take a walk. She knew that over through that cool, fascinating forest, only a half-mile away, dwelt the Adamses. The Adamses, too, were only of the woods people, but they were human, and chiffon was chiffon, in the wilderness as in the towns. So Barbara announced her intention, and stepped into the sunlight.

The parasol completed her sense of happiness. She raised it, and slanted it over her shoulder, and drew one of its round tips across her face, playing out to herself a pretty little comedy as she sauntered deliberately down the trail between the stumps and tangled blackberry vines of the clearing. She tilted her chin, and glanced shyly from beneath the brim of her big hat at the solemn stumps, and looked just as pretty as she possibly could for the benefit of the bold, noisy finches. With her light summer dress and her picture-hat and her open-work stockings and her absurd little high-heeled, silver-buckled shoes she had somehow regained the feminine self-confidence which her thick boots and sober brown woods dress had filched from her. For the first time in this whimsical visit to a new environment she was completely happy. Dear little Barbara; she was only eighteen.

Pretty soon the trail entered the great, cool, green forest. Barbara closed her parasol and carried it under one arm, while with the same hand she swept her skirt clear of the ground. She was now a _grande marquise_ in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Through little round holes in the undergrowth she could see away down between the trees to dashes of sunlight and green shadows. Always Barbara conducted herself as though, in the vista, a cavalier was about to appear, who would sweep off his plumed hat in a bow of knightly adoration. She practised the courtesy in return, sinking on one little high-pointed heel with a downward droop of her pretty head and an upward cast of her pretty eyes.

"Oui, c'est un reve, un reve doux d'amour," she hummed, as the hem of her outspread skirt just swept the ground.

"_Phew!_" came a most terrible, dreadful sound from the thicket close at hand.

Barbara dropped her parasol, and clasped her heart with both hands, and screamed. From the thicket two slender ears pointed inquiringly toward her, two wide brown eyes stared frightened into hers, a delicate nose dilated with terror. "_Phew!_" snorted the deer again, and vanished in a series of elastic stiff-legged springs.

"Oh!" cried Barbara. "You horrid thing! How you frightened me!"

She picked up her parasol, and resumed her journey in some perturbation of mind, reflecting on the utter rudeness of the deer. Gradually the trail seemed to become more difficult. After a time it was obstructed by the top of a fallen basswood. Barbara looked about her. She was not on the trail at all.

This was distinctly annoying. Barbara felt a little resentful on account of it. She gathered her skirts closely about her ankles, and tried to pick her way through the undergrowth to the right. The brush was exceedingly difficult to avoid, and a little patch of briers was worse. Finally an ugly stub ripped a hole in the chiffon skirt. This was unbearable. Barbara stamped her foot in vexation. She wanted to cry; and fully made up her mind to do so as soon as she should have regained the trail. In a little while the high beech-ridge over which she had been travelling ended in a narrow cedar-swamp. Then Barbara did a foolish thing; she tried to cross the swamp.

At first she proceeded circumspectly, with an eye to the chiffon. It was torn in a dozen places. Then she thrust one dear little slipper through the moss into black water. Three times the stiff straight rods of the tamarack whipped her smartly across the face. When finally she emerged on the other side of the hundred feet of that miserable cedar-swamp, she had ceased to hold up the chiffon skirt, and was most vexed.

"I think you're just _mean_!" she cried, pettishly, to the still forest; and then caught her breath in the silence of awe.

The forest had become suddenly unfriendly; its kindliness had somehow vanished. In all directions it looked the same; straight towering trunks, saplings, undergrowth. It had shut her in with a wall of green, and hurry in whatever direction she would, Barbara was always inclosed in apparently the same little cell of leaves.

Frightened, but with determination, she commenced to walk rapidly in the direction she believed would lead her out. The bushes now caught at her unheeded. She tore through briers, popples, moose-maples alike. The chiffon was sadly marred, the picture-hat stained and awry, the brave little shoes with their silver buckles and their pointed high heels were dull with wet. And suddenly, as the sun shadows began to lift in the late afternoon, her determined stock of fortitude quite ran out. She stopped short. All about her were the same straight towering trunks, the saplings, the undergrowth. Nothing had changed. It was useless.

She dropped to the ground and gave way to her wild terror, weeping with the gulping sobs of a frightened child, but even in extremity dabbing her eyes from time to time with an absurd tiny handkerchief of drawn-work border.

Poor little Barbara: she was lost!

II

After a while, subtly, she felt that someone was standing near her. She looked up.

The somebody was a man. He was young. Barbara saw three things--that he had kindly gray eyes, which just now were twinkling at her amusedly; that the handkerchief about his neck was clean; and that the line of his jaw was unusually clear cut and fine. An observant person would have noticed further that the young man carried a rifle and a pack, that he wore a heavily laden belt about his waist, and moccasins on his feet, that his blue-flannel shirt, though clean, was faded, that his skin was as brown as pine-bark. Barbara had no use for such details. The eye was kindly, the jaw was strong, the neatness indicated the gentleman. And a strong, kindly gentleman was just what poor little lost Barbara needed the most. Unconsciously she tilted her pointed chin forward adorably, and smiled.

"Oh, now it's all right, isn't it?" said she.

"I am glad," he replied, the look of amusement deepening in his gray eyes. "And a moment ago it was all wrong. What was the matter?"

"I am lost," answered Barbara, contentedly, as one would say, "My shoes are a little dusty."

"That's bad," sympathised the other. "Where are you lost from?"

"The Adamses' or the Maxwells', I don't know which. I started to go from one to the other. Then there was the deer, and so I got lost."

"I see," he agreed with entire assurance. "And now what are you going to do?"

"I am not going to do anything. You are to take me home."

"To the Adamses or the Maxwells?"

"To whichever is nearest."

The young man seemed to be debating. Barbara glanced at his thoughtful, strong face from under the edge of her picture-hat, which slyly she had rearranged. She liked his face. It was so good-humoured.

"It is almost sunset," replied the youth at length. "You can see the shadows are low. How do you hope to push through the woods after dark? There are wild animals--wolves!" he added, maliciously.

Barbara looked up again with sudden alarm.

"But what shall we do?" she cried, less composedly. "You _must_ take me home!"

"I can try," said he, with the resignation of the man who can but die.

The tone had its effect.

"What do you advise?" she asked.

"That we camp here," he proposed, calmly, with an air of finality.

"_Oh!_" dissented Barbara in alarm. "Never! I am afraid of the woods! It will be wet and cold! I am hungry! My feet are just sopping!"

"I will watch all night with my rifle," he told her. "I will fix you a tent, and will cook you a supper, and your feet shall not be wet and cold one moment longer than you will."

"Isn't your home nearer?" she asked.

"My home is where night finds me," he replied.

Barbara meditated. It was going to be dreadful. She knew she would catch her death of cold. But what could she do about it?

"You may fix the wet-feet part," she assented at last.

"All right," agreed the young man with alacrity. He unslung the pack from his back, and removed from the straps a little axe. "Now, I am not going to be gone but a moment," he assured her, "and while I am away, you must take off your shoes and stockings and put these on." He had been fumbling in his pack, and now produced a pair of thick woollen lumberman's socks.

Barbara held one at arm's length in each hand, and looked at them. Then she looked up at the young man. Then they both laughed.

While her new protector was away, Barbara not only made the suggested changes, but she did marvels with the chiffon. Really, it did not look so bad, considering.

When the young man returned with an armful of hemlock bark and the slivers of a pine-stump, he found her sitting bolt upright on a log, her feet tucked under her. Before the fire he shortly hung the two webs of gossamer and the two dear little ridiculous little high-heeled shoes, with their silver buckles. Then in a most business-like fashion he pitched a diminutive shelter-tent. With equal expedition he built a second fire between two butternut-logs, produced a frying-pan, and set about supper.

The twilight was just falling. Somehow the great forest had lost its air of unfriendliness. The birds were singing in exactly the same way they used to sing in the tiny woods of the Picnic Grounds. It was difficult to believe in the wilderness. The young man moved here and there with accustomed ease, tending his pot and pan, feeding the fire. Barbara watched him interestedly. Gradually the conviction gained on her that he was worth while, and that he had not once glanced in her direction since he had begun his preparations. At the moment he was engaged in turning over sizzling things in the pan.

"If you please," said Barbara, with her small air of decision, "I am very thirsty."

"You will have to wait until I go to the spring," replied the man without stirring.

Barbara elevated her small nose in righteous indignation. After a long time she just peeped in his direction. He was laughing to himself. She hastily elevated her nose again. After all it was very lonely in the woods.

"Supper is ready," he announced after a time.

"I do not think I care for any," she replied, with dignity. She was very tired and hungry and cross, and her eyes were hot.

"Oh, yes you do," he insisted, carelessly. "Come now, before it gets cold."

"I tell you I do not care for any," she returned, haughtily.

For answer he picked her up bodily, carried her ten feet, and deposited her on another log. Beside her lay a clean bit of bark containing a broiled deer-steak, toasted bread, and a cup of tea. She struggled angrily.

"Don't be a fool," the man commanded, sternly, "you need food. You will eat supper, now!"

Barbara looked up at him with wide eyes. Then she began to eat the venison. By and by she remarked, "You _are_ rather nice," and after she had drained the last drop of tea she even smiled, a trifle humbly. "Thank you," said she.