Читать книгу Flower of the North - James Oliver Curwood - Страница 4

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For a moment the two men stood in silence, listening to the sullen beat of surf beyond the black edge of forest. Then Philip led the way back into the cabin.

Gregson followed. In the light of the big oil-lamp which hung suspended from the ceiling he noticed something in Whittemore's face he had not observed before, a tenseness about the muscles of his mouth, a restlessness in his eyes, rigidity of jaw, an air of suppressed emotion which puzzled him. He was keenly observant of details, and knew that these things had been missing a short time before. The pleasure of their meeting that afternoon, after a separation of nearly two years, had dispelled for a time the trouble which he now saw revealing itself in his companion's face and attitude, and the lightness of Whittemore's manner in beginning his explanation for inducing him to come into the north had helped to complete the mask. There occurred to him, for an instant, a picture which he had once drawn of Whittemore as he had known him in certain stirring times still fresh in the memory of each—a picture of the old, cool, irresistible Whittemore, smiling in the face of danger, laughing outright at perplexities, always ready to fight with a good-natured word on his lips. He had drawn that picture for Burke's, and had called it "The Fighter." Burke himself had criticized it because of the smile. But Gregson knew his man. It was Whittemore.

There was a change now. He had grown older, surprisingly older. There were deeper lines about his eyes. His face was thinner. He saw, now, that Philip's lightness had been but a passing flash of his old buoyancy, that the old life and sparkle had gone from him. Two years, he judged, had woven things into Philip's life which he could not understand, and he wondered if this was why in all that time he had received no word from his old college chum.

They had seated themselves at opposite sides of the table, and from an inside pocket Philip produced a small bundle of papers. From these he drew forth a map, which he smoothed out under his hands.

"Yes, there are possibilities—and more, Greggy," he said. "I didn't ask you up here to help me fight air and moonshine. And I've promised you a fight. Have you ever seen a rat in a trap with a blood-thirsty terrier guarding the little door that is about to be opened? Thrilling sport for the prisoner, isn't it? But when the rat happens to be human—"

"I thought it was a fish," protested Gregson, mildly. "Pretty soon you'll be having it a girl in a trap—or at the end of a fish-line—"

"And if I should?" interrupted Philip, looking steadily at him. "What if I should say there is a girl—a woman—in this trap—not only one, but a score, a hundred of them? What then, Greggy?"

"I'd say there was going to be a glorious scrap."

"And so there is, the biggest and most unusual scrap of its kind you ever heard of, Greggy. It's going to be a queer kind of fight—and queer fighting. And it's possible—very probable—that you and I will get lost in the shuffle somewhere. We're two, no more. And we're going up against forces which would make a dozen South American revolutions look like thirty cents. More than that, it's likely we'll be in the wrong locality when certain people rise in a wrath which a Helen of Troy aroused in another people some centuries ago. See here—"

He turned the map to Gregson, pointing with his finger.

"See that red line? That's the new railroad to Hudson's Bay. It is well above Le Pas now, and its builders plan to complete it by next spring. It is the most wonderful piece of railroad building on the American continent, Greggy—wonderful because it has been neglected so long. Something like a hundred million people have been asleep to its enormous value, and they're just waking up now. That road, cutting across four hundred miles of wilderness, is opening up a country half as big as the United States, in which more mineral wealth will be dug during the next fifty years than will ever be taken from Yukon or Alaska. It is shortening the route from Montreal, Duluth, Chicago, and the Middle West to Liverpool and other European ports by a thousand miles. It means the making of a navigable sea out of Hudson's Bay, cities on its shores, and great steel-foundries close to the Arctic Circle—where there is coal and iron enough to supply the world for hundreds of years. That's only a small part of what this road means, Greggy. Two years ago—you remember I asked you to join me in the adventure—I came up seeking opportunity. I didn't dream then—"

Whittemore paused, and a flash of his old smile passed over his face.

"I didn't dream that fate had decreed me to stir up what I'm going to tell you about, Greggy. I followed the line of the proposed railroad, looking for chances. All Canada was asleep, or too much interested in its west, and gave me no competition. I was alone west of the surveyed line; east of it steel-corporation men had optioned mountains of iron and another interest had a grip on coal-fields. Six months I spent among the Indians, French, and half-breeds. I lived with them, trapped and hunted with them, and picked up a little Cree and French. The life suited me. I became a northerner in heart and soul, if not quite yet in full experience. Clubs and balls and cities grew to be only memories. You know how I have always hated that hothouse sort of existence, and you know that same world of clubs and balls and cities has gripped at my throat, downing me again and again, as though it returned my sentiment with interest. Up here I learned to hate it more than ever. I was completely happy. And then—"

He had refolded the map, and drew another from the bundle of papers. It was drawn in pencil.

"And then, Greggy," he went on, smoothing out this map where the other had been, "I struck my chance. It fairly clubbed me into recognizing it. It came in the middle of the night, and I sat up with a camp-fire laughing at me through the flap in my tent, stunned by the knockout it had given me. It seemed, at first, as though a gold-mine had walked up and laid itself down at my feet, and I wondered how there could be so many silly fools in this world of ours. Take a look at that map, Greggy. What do you see?"

Gregson had listened like one under a spell. It was one of his careless boasts that situations could not faze him, that he was immune to outward betrayals of sensation. This seeming indifference—his light-toned attitude in the face of most serious affairs would have made a failure of him in many things. But his tense interest did not hide itself now. A cigarette remained unlighted between his fingers. His eyes never took themselves for an instant from his companion's face. Something that Whittemore had not yet said thrilled him. He looked at the map.

"There's not much to see," he said, "but lakes and rivers."

"You're right," exclaimed Philip, jumping suddenly from his chair and beginning to walk back and forth across the cabin. "Lakes and rivers—hundreds of them—thousands of them! Greggy, there are more than three thousand lakes between here and civilization and within forty miles of the new railroad. And nine out of ten of those lakes are so full of fish that the bears along 'em smell fishy. Whitefish, Gregson—whitefish and trout. There is a fresh-water area represented on that map three times as large as the whole of the five Great Lakes, and yet the Canadians and the government have never wakened up to what it means. There's a fish supply in this northland large enough to feed the world, and that little rim of lakes that I've mapped out along the edge of the coming railroad represents a money value of millions. That was the idea that came to me in the middle of the night, and then I thought—if I could get a corner on a few of these lakes, secure fishing privileges before the road came—"

"You'd be a millionaire," said Gregson.

"Not only that," replied Philip, pausing for a moment in his restless pacing. "I didn't think of money, at first; at least, it was a secondary consideration after that night beside the camp-fire. I saw how this big vacant north could be made to strike a mighty blow at those interests which make a profession of cornering meatstuffs on the other side, how it could be made to fight the fight of the people by sending down an unlimited supply of fish that could be sold at a profit in New York, Boston, or Chicago for a half of what the trust demands. My scheme wasn't aroused entirely by philanthropy, mind you. I saw in it a chance to get back at the very people who brought about my father's ruin, and who kept pounding him after he was in a corner until he broke down and died. They killed him. They robbed me a few years later. They made me hate what I was once, a moving, joyous part of—life down there. I went from the north, first to Ottawa, then to Toronto and Winnipeg. After that I went to Brokaw, my father's old partner, with the scheme. I've told you of Brokaw—one of the deepest, shrewdest old fighters in the Middle West. It was only a year after my father's death that he was on his feet again, as strong as ever. Brokaw drew in two or three others as strong as himself, and we went after the privileges. It was a fight from the beginning. Hardly were our plans made public before we were met by powerful opposition. A combination of Canadian capital quickly organized and petitioned for the same privileges. Old Brokaw knew what it meant. It was the hand of the trust—disguised under a veneer of Canadian promoters. They called us 'aliens'—American 'money-grabbers' robbing Canadians of what justly belonged to them. They aroused two-thirds of the press against us, and yet—"

The lines in Whittemore's face softened. He chuckled as he pulled out his pipe and began filling it.

"They had to go some to beat the old man, Greggy. I don't know just how Brokaw pulled the thing off, but I do know that when we won out three members of parliament and half a dozen other politicians were honorary members of our organization, and that it cost Brokaw a hundred thousand dollars! Our opponents had raised such a howl, calling upon the patriotism of the country and pointing out that the people of the north would resent this invasion of foreigners, that we succeeded in getting only a provisional license, subject to withdrawal by the government at any time conditions seemed to warrant it. I saw in this no blow to my scheme, for I was certain that we could carry the thing along on such a square basis that within a year the whole country would be in sympathy with us. I expressed my views with enthusiasm at our final meeting, when the seven of us met to complete our plans. Brokaw and the other five were to direct matters in the south; I was to have full command of affairs in the north. A month later I was at work. Over here"—he leaned over Gregson's shoulder and placed a forefinger on the map—"I established our headquarters, with MacDougall, a Scotch engineer, to help me. Within six months we had a hundred and fifty men at Blind Indian Lake, fifty canoemen bringing in supplies, and another gang putting in stations over a stretch of more than a hundred miles of lake country. Everything was working smoothly, better than I had expected. At Blind Indian Lake we had a shipyard, two warehouses, ice-houses, a company store, and a population of three hundred, and had nearly completed a ten-mile roadbed for narrow-gauge steel, which would connect us with the main line when it came up to us. I was completely lost in my work. At times I almost forgot Brokaw and the others. I was particularly careful of the funds sent up to me, and had accomplished my work at a cost of a little under a hundred thousand. At the end of the six months, when I was about to make a visit into the south, one of our warehouses and ten thousand dollars' worth of supplies went up in smoke. It was our first misfortune, and it was a big one. It was about the first matter that I brought up after I had shaken hands with Brokaw."

Philip's face was set and white as he stood in the middle of the room looking at Gregson.

"And what do you think was his reply, Greggy? He looked at me for a moment, a peculiar twitching around the corners of his mouth, and then said, 'Don't allow a trivial matter like that to worry you, Philip. Why—we've already cleaned up a million on this little fish deal!'"

Gregson sat up with a jerk.

"A million! Great Scott—"

"Yes, a million, Greggy," said Philip, softly, with his old fighting smile. "There was a hundred thousand dollars to my credit in a First National Bank. Pleasant surprise, eh?"

Gregson had dropped his cigarette. His slim hands gripped the edges of the table. He made no reply as he waited for Whittemore to continue.