Читать книгу The Snow-Burner - Henry Oyen - Страница 7

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In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side. These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building was larger than the other six combined—was built of huge logs, apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great double door.

Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, “Office and Store.” Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the sign, “Blacksmith Shop,” and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith’s hammer in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably this was the man for whom he was to work.

“Hey, Jerry,” greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.

“Hey, Scotty,” replied the hunchback.

“Did ye bring me a helper?”

“Yes,” grunted Jerry.

“Good!” said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.

The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a standstill.

“This is where you go,” he said, indicating the office with a nod. “You,” he grunted to Toppy, “sit right where you are till we go see the boss.”

An Indian squaw, nearly as broad as she was tall, came waddling out of the store as Miss Pearson stepped stiffly from the sleigh. Toppy wished for courage to get out and carry the girl’s suitcase, but he feared that his action would be misinterpreted; so he sat still, eagerly watching out of the corner of his eyes.

“I carry um,” said the squaw as the girl dragged forth her baggage. “You go in.”

Then the sleigh drove abruptly ahead toward the great building at the end of the road, and Toppy’s final view of the scene was Miss Pearson stumping stiffly into the office-building with the squaw, the suitcase held in her arms, waddling behind. Miss Pearson did not look in his direction.

And now Toppy had his first shock. For he saw that the building toward which they were hurrying was not a building at all, but merely a stockade-wall, which seemed to surround all of the camp except the six buildings which were outside. What he had thought a huge doorway was in reality a great gate.

This gate swung open at their approach, and Toppy’s second shock came when he saw that the two hard-faced men who opened it carried in the crooks of their arms wicked-looking, short-barrelled repeating shotguns. One of the men caught the horses by the head as soon as they were through the gate, and brought them to a dead stop, while the other closed the gate behind them.

“Can’t you see the boss is busy?” snapped the man who had stopped the team. “You wait right here till he’s through.”

Toppy now saw that they had driven into a quadrangle, three sides of which were composed of long, low, log buildings with doors and windows cut at frequent intervals, the fourth side being formed by the stockade-wall through which they had just passed. The open space which thus lay between four walls of solid logs was perhaps fifty yards long by twenty-five yards wide. In his first swift sight of the place Toppy saw that, with the stockade-gate closed and two men with riot-guns on guard, the place was nothing more nor less than an effective prison. Then his attention was riveted spellbound by what was taking place in the yard.

On the sunny side of the yard a group of probably a dozen men were huddled against the log wall. Two things struck Toppy as he looked at them—their similarity to the group of Slavs he had seen back in Rail Head, and the complete terror in their faces as they cringed tightly against the log wall. Perhaps ten feet in front of them, and facing them, stood a man alone. And Toppy, as he beheld the terror with which the dozen shrank back from the one, and as he looked at the man, knew that he was looking upon Hell-Camp Reivers, the man who was called The Snow-Burner.

Toppy Treplin was not an impressionable young man. He had lived much and swiftly and among many kinds of men, and it took something remarkable in the man-line to surprise him. But the sight of Reivers brought from him a start, and he sat staring, completely fascinated by the Manager’s presence.

It was not the size of Reivers that held him, for Toppy at first glance judged correctly that Reivers and himself might have come from the same mold so far as height and weight were concerned. Neither was it the terrible physical power which fairly reeked from the man; for though Reivers’ rough clothing seemed merely light draperies on the huge muscles that lay beneath, Toppy had played with strong men, professionals and amateurs, enough to be blasé in the face of a physical Colossus. It was the calm, ghastly brutality of the man, the complete brutality of an animal, dominated by a human intelligence, that held Toppy spellbound.

Reivers, as he stood there alone, glowering at the poor wretches who cowered from him like pygmies, was like a tiger preparing to spring and carefully calculating where his claws and fangs might sink in with most damage to his victims. He stood with his feet close together, his thumbs hooked carelessly in his trousers pockets, his head thrust far forward. Toppy had a glimpse of a long, thin nose, thin lips parted in a sneer, heavily browed eyes, and, beneath the back-thrust cap, a mass of curly light hair—hair as light as the girl’s! Then Reivers spoke.

“Rosky!” he said in a voice that was half snarl, half bellow.

There was a troubled movement among the dozen men huddled against the wall, but there came no answer.

“Rosky! Step out!” commanded Reivers in a tone whose studied ferocity made Toppy shudder.

In response, a tall, broad-shouldered Slav, the oldest and largest man in the group, stepped sullenly out and stood a yard in front of his fellows. He had taken off his cap and held it tightly in his clenched right hand, and the expression on his flat face as he stood with hanging head and scowled at Reivers was one half of fear and half of defiance.

“You no can hit me,” he muttered doggedly. “I citizen; I got first papers.”

Reivers’s manner underwent a change.

“Hit you?” he repeated softly. “Who wants to hit you? I just want to talk with you. I hear you’re thinking of quitting. I hear you’ve planned to take these fellows with you when you go. How about it, Rosky?”

“I got papers,” said the man sullenly. “I citizen; I quit job when I want.”

“Yes?” said Reivers gently. It was like a tiger playing with a hedgehog, and Toppy sickened. “But you signed to stay here six months, didn’t you?”

The gentleness of the Manager had deceived the thick-witted Slav and he grew bold.

“I drunk when I sign,” he said loudly. “All these fellow drunk when they sign. I quit. They quit. You no can keep us here if we no want stay.”

“I can’t?” Still Reivers saw fit to play with his victim.

“No,” said the man. “And you no dare hit us again, no.”

“No?” purred Reivers softly. “No, certainly not; I wouldn’t hit you. You’re quite right, Rosky. I won’t hit you; no.”

He was standing at least seven feet from his man, his feet close together, his thumbs still hooked in his trousers pockets. Suddenly, and so swiftly that Rosky did not have time to move, Reivers took a step forward and shot out his right foot. His boot seemed barely to touch the shin-bone of Rosky’s right leg, but Toppy heard the bone snap as the Slav, with a shriek of pain and terror, fell face downward, prone in the trampled snow at Reivers’ feet.

And Reivers did not look at him. He was standing as before, as if nothing had happened, as if he had not moved. His eyes were upon the other men, who, appalled at their leader’s fate, huddled more closely against the log wall.

“Well, how about it?” demanded Reivers icily after a long silence. “Any more of you fellows think you want to quit?”

Half of the dozen cried out in terror:

“No, no! We no quit. Please, boss; we no quit.”

A smile of complete contempt curled Reivers’ thin upper lip.

“You poor scum, of course you ain’t going to quit,” he sneered. “You’ll stay here and slave away until I’m through with you. And don’t you even dare think of quitting. Rosky thought he’d kept his plans mighty secret—thought I wouldn’t know what he was planning. You see what happened to him.

“I know everything that’s going on in this camp. If you don’t believe it, try it out and see. Now pick this thing up—” he stirred the groaning Rosky contemptuously with his foot—“and carry him into his bunk. I’ll be around and set his leg when I get ready. Then get back to the rock-pile and make up for the time it’s taken to teach you this lesson.”

The brutality of the thing had frozen Toppy motionless where he sat in the sleigh. At the same time he was conscious of a thrill of admiration for the dominant creature who had so contemptuously crippled a fellow man. A brute Reivers certainly was, and well he deserved the name of Hell-Camp Reivers; but a born captain he was, too, though his dominance was of a primordial sort.

Turning instantly from his victim as from a piece of business that is finished, Reivers looked around and came toward the sleigh. Some primitive instinct prompted Toppy to step out and stretch himself leisurely, his long arms above his head, his big chest inflated to the limit. At the sight of him a change came over Reivers’ face. The brutality and contempt went out of it like a flash. His eyes lighted up with pleasure at the sight of Toppy’s magnificent proportions, and he smiled a quick smile of comradeship, such as one smiles when he meets a fellow and equal, and held out his hand to Toppy.

“University man, I’ll wager,” he said, in the easy voice of a man of culture. “Glad to see you; more than glad! These beasts are palling on me. They’re so cursed physical—no mind, no spirit in them. Nothing but so many pounds of meat and bone. Old Campbell, my blacksmith, is the only other intelligent being in camp, and he’s Scotch and believes in predestination and original sin, so his conversation’s rather trying for a steady diet.”

Toppy shook hands, amazed beyond expression. Except for his shaggy eyebrows—brows that somehow reminded Toppy of the head of a bear he had once shot—Reivers now was the sort of man one would expect to meet in the University Club rather than in a logging-camp. The brute had vanished, the gentleman had appeared; and Toppy was forced to smile in answer to Reivers’ genial smile of greeting. And yet, somewhere back in Reivers’ blue eyes Toppy saw lurking something which said, “I am your master—doubt it if you dare.”

“I hired out as blacksmith’s helper,” he explained. “My name’s Treplin.”

He did not take his eyes from Reivers’. Somehow he had the sensation that Reivers’ will and his own had leaped to a grapple.

Reivers laughed aloud in friendly fashion.

“Blacksmith’s helper, eh?” he said. “That’s good; that’s awfully good! Well, old man, I don’t care what you hired out for, or what your right name is; you’re a developed human being and you’ll be somebody to talk to when these brutes grow too tiresome.” He turned to Jerry, the driver. “Well?” he said curtly.

“She’s in the office now,” he said.

“All right.” Reivers turned and went briskly toward the gate. “Turn Mr. Treplin over to Campbell. You’ll live with Campbell, Treplin,” he called over his shoulder, as he went through the gate. “And you hit the back trail, Jerry, right away.”

As Jerry swung the team around Toppy saw that Reivers was going toward the office with long, eager strides.