Читать книгу Wild Geese Calling - Stewart Edward White - Страница 5

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THE WOODS

NATURE always gets her way. Men, and the destinies of men, must move along her course. No price too high to pay. She creates and destroys a million individuals that one may carry her purpose. She safeguards him and sacrifices to him freely and is his fairy godmother of unblemished fortune, as long as he follows freely her urge. She spares him no spur of suffering or tragedy if he lags or strays. But when his impetus is spent she turns from him in divine disregard.

One of each generation, since old John Murdock had so unaccountably turned his face westward, had inherited and must forsake and go. He felt and was stirred by the first quiver of the waters; he was borne irresistibly forward with the wave; he rested only when the wave was spent. To this John had become the attunement. For ten years he had eddied with the indecisive whirls until the urge had defined its direction. He had lifted at last to it, and it had borne him here: and here, it seemed, he was content to rest. His nature was fulfilled. He had the woman, and the work that best suited him. It appeared to John that here, in the lumber woods, he had found all that he needed in life. For the moment he was too happily concerned with the immediate to think far ahead; but vaguely he saw himself, in time, and with more experience, making his way, first as a foreman, then maybe as owner and boss of an outfit like this, or better. Bull Kirby made good money. Decidedly he had here every opportunity any man could ask to better his condition; and that, be it remembered, had ever been, for the Murdocks, the shining star in the western sky.

He was satisfied; but the forces of his destiny were not.

Of a morning in early September John and Sally sat at breakfast. It was just turned daylight, for the days were shortening, and work began at seven o’clock. The door stood open. Sally liked to look out and hear the few birds still singing and drink the cool air after the stove. But it was John who caught sight of an approaching figure.

“Here comes Mel Carter,” he told Sally. “Wonder what he wants.”

Sally started to her feet, upsetting her chair.

“Clara!” she cried. “You don’t suppose ... ?” She ran out to meet Mel. John followed more slowly. Sally was all excited, but John was sure there was nothing seriously wrong. If there had been, Mel would have come on the jump. He was just kind of dragging along Look at him, John grinned in secret amusement, the only other critter in the universe that could look that worried and mournful is an old-fashioned hound dog. You’d think this was the first baby ever borned. Good thing if it would get borned, thought John, then maybe Mel would stop being such a total loss.

John’s reasoning was accurate. Everything was going all right. But Mel was ashamed and embarrassed at his errand. Clara wanted them to come on over. She must see them right away. Wouldn’t give no reason. Just notional. But she’s all stirred up, and——

“Of course I’ll go,” agreed Sally soothingly. “Don’t you fret for a minute.”

The young man’s sallow face reddened slowly, and he shifted boyishly from one foot to the other.

“Lord!” he blurted at length, “I feel like a fool!”

“You look just a little like one right now,” agreed John with a grin.

“She wants to see you, too,” said Mel.

“Me!” John was plainly appalled. “What she want me for?”

“I don’t know—well, it’s a notion she has. It’s just crazy. I told her it was crazy, but she took on so I got scared she’d have hysterics or something and that the baby might——” He appealed to Sally wistfully, “Is it always like this, Mis’ Murdock?”

“Sometimes—not always—I don’t know. Clara’s high strung.”

“Well, it ain’t no fun,” said Mel pathetically. He hesitated. “Would you mind coming over, just for a minute?” he asked.

“Of course he’ll go,” Sally answered for him. John looked uncomfortable and a trifle furtive. He would have liked to get out of this. He would not know what to do. This was woman’s business.

“Sure! Sure!” he agreed with what heartiness he could summon. Sally disappeared. “I’ll bring my work,” she flung over her shoulder. “Just a minute.”

“What seems to be the notion?” John wanted to know a little of what was ahead of him.

“She wants me to lay off work today.”

“Why?” asked John.

“It’s just crazy, I tell you.”

“Don’t she give no reason?”

“Nothing sensible.”

“Well, what did she say?”

“Last night she asked me what I was doing today”—it came out at last—“and when I told her I was going to rig the blocks on the new chute way she near threw a fit.”

“Why?” John was puzzled. “What’s there about that?”

“I tell you it’s crazy,” protested Mel, “but you remember along last spring how Billy Miller was killed by getting smashed in the head by a block? Well, that was enough for her.”

“But”—John was patently amazed—“that hadn’t anything to do with rigging! That was just a snapback when the cable busted hauling logs!”

“I know it. I told her all that. But it was a block done it. That’s enough.” Mel’s voice was bitter.

“It’s just a notion.” John repeated the word. “She’ll get over it.”

“She don’t get over it,” said Mel. “She was at it all last night. We didn’t get hardly any sleep. I never saw her like that. It got me scared, I tell you, for fear she’d——I had to halfway promise her——Anyway, I wish you’d talk to her and see if you can’t——”

“Can’t what?” John was now looking at him with curious attention.

But Mel couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. Sally rejoined them, carrying a bag of sewing. They ploughed through the light dust to the Carter’s shanty.

Clara sat rigidly in the center of the little living room, a figure of tragedy. The table had not been cleared of an almost untouched breakfast. Sally crossed swiftly to her. The two men hung back near the door.

“I’ve come to keep you company a while, Clara,” she greeted her cheerfully. “I’ve brought my work.”

But Clara looked past her.

“Where’s John? I want to talk to John.” She paid no attention to the other woman’s greeting.

“He’s here.” Sally impatiently motioned the reluctant men forward.

“Hullo, Clara!” John responded with a forced heartiness. He fumbled his cap and shifted his feet; but one eyebrow was quirked higher than the other, and his head was tilted the least bit to one side. Sally knew these symptoms of secret relish and appraisal. She cast upon John a glance full of warning that he must take this seriously. The eyebrow slowly subsided. “What’s on your mind, Clara?” he asked. There was sympathy in his voice now. Sally flashed at him her appreciation of this. My sympathy is for Mel, you poor prune, he grimaced back. John and Sally did a great deal of this talking together without words. But he listened gravely enough to Clara.

“You’re getting excited about nothing, Clara,” said he. “There’s no danger in this rigging job at all. None whatever. Why, all you do is to trim down small trees into poles and then splice the blocks to them for the cable return. They aren’t even tall trees.”

“There was Billy Miller,” she choked on the words.

“But that wasn’t the least bit like this. Then they were hauling on the chutes, and the strain was too much, so that a lashing parted, and the block snapped down.” Patiently he continued to explain, showing logically and clearly that this job of Mel’s and the accident to Miller had not one element in common except the presence in each of a block. “Like saying a jack rabbit’s just as dangerous as a grizzly bear just because they’ve both got four legs!” he concluded with a laugh.

Clara uttered a low wail. “He’ll be killed; I know he will be killed.” Her voice was stifled.

Good lord! What did the woman want? He’d made it clear enough! And what was the matter with Sally? Why did she look at him that way? He knew that look of comical despair when she thought him exceptionally dense. And then he had his inspiration. Anyway, at the moment it seemed to him his inspiration. It might have been Sally’s silent conveyance to him of what she expected. At least, almost with the first words he spoke, he felt distinctly in her mind an annoyance at his density change to a satisfaction.

“Look here, Clara”—he stooped to take the woman’s two hands so that she must look up at him—“there’s absolutely no danger in that job, as I told you. But if you feel that way about it, I tell you what let’s do. I was going over today to the new chute we’re putting in on Forty. You know the place. The chute logs are all hauled, and I was going to notch them. Well, Mel can do that just as well as I can, mebbe a little better. He can do that today; and I’ll just rig those blocks. How’s that? That suit you?”

“Oh, for Chris’ sake!” Mel burst out, reddening angrily, but subsided under the sudden fierce pressure of Sally’s hand.

“How about it, Clara? That suit you? Mel won’t come to much grief on that job—unless he tries to cut his foot off with his own ax.” Even Clara had to smile faintly at the absurdity, for these men were real woodsmen. “All right, that’s all fixed!” cried John breezily. “Now you and Sally eat you some breakfast.” Though apparently he had had eyes only for the forlorn figure in the chair, he must have noted every detail in the little room.

“Oh, haven’t you had your breakfast?” For the first time the woman’s tension relaxed in a pathetic concern of hospitality.

“She was just sitting down,” put in John hastily. “Oh sure, I’ve et. I always eat first. Come on, you better get stepping. Whistle ought to go any minute now. So long, Clara. Don’t let ’em get you down!” He made a great flourish of departure. The room was filled with bustle and heartiness. “What say?” he asked.

“I feel such a fool!” said Clara in a small voice. “I know you must think me such a fool! But it’s just today. Just to get by today. Today is such a bad day.” She began to cry a little, but softly and easily.

“That’s all right. Don’t you think about it. Easy as falling off a greased log. Safe now as a covered bridge.” Under cover of these irrelevancies he made good his retreat. Outside the door he drew his sleeve across his forehead. “Whew!” he commented to himself. He felt the touch of Sally’s hand on his arm. She had slipped out quietly after him. She squeezed the arm. Her eyes were shining.

“I’m proud of you!” she whispered.

He looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. “Shucks!” said he. He grinned maliciously. “Go back and eat your breakfast,” he mocked. “You must be hungry—you’ve only had eight hot cakes this morning—that I saw.”

“I love it in you,” said she.

She flitted back into the house. John stared after her. Now what did she mean by that? Then he hurried to overtake Mel. They trudged along together in silence.

“Jees, I feel like a fool!” broke out Mel at last. “Of all the goddam——As if I was a kid with a sharp knife ...”

John listened to him for a few moments.

“Cuss ahead,” he said at last, “if it does you any good. Get it out of your system.” Mel muttered off into silence. “Well,” said John after a while, “there’s your trail. Be good.”

The other hesitated. “Don’t think I’m not grateful—to you and Sally,” he blurted out at last. “You’re white folks, both of you.”

“Oh, go to hell,” said John.

Sally stayed for an hour or so, then, as Clara seemed quite recovered and calm, she returned to her own work at home. She finished and was examining her few books with an idea that perhaps she might find something suited to Clara’s amusement. Thus her back was to the door. John’s voice startled her.

“Why, John!” she cried. “What on earth?”

“Mel Carter’s dead,” said John curtly. “Killed.”

She stared at him.

“Dead—killed. Come. You got to tell Clara—before—they bring him in.”

Sally snapped into control of herself now. She moved swiftly toward the door.

“What was it? What happened?”

They were hurrying together down the dusty road, Sally trotting to keep up with the man’s long strides.

“What happened?” she panted.

“It was the darnedest thing I ever heard tell of. I wasn’t there. The boys told me. Bat Hitchcock and Dick Barnes were felling an old stub. A hundred yards off the trail. Getting it out of the way for the new skidway. When it fell, near as we can make out, it flicked against a tree, and one of its rotten limbs snapped off, and the hard knot tore loose and came sailing through the air like someone had throwed it—like a bullet—and took Mel right behind the ear. He dropped like he was shot.”

“Where is he?” she gasped, out of breath with the pace.

“The boys are bringing him in. They sent for me to——”

“Yes, yes, hurry! You must stop them—she mustn’t see him until I——”

“They understand that.” He indicated a little group waiting at the forest’s edge.

After a little they moved slowly forward bearing their burden. Other men emerged from the office and store and from the mess house. The mill itself fell silent, and its crew appeared, one by one or in small groups, making their way up the road. Ordinarily an accident, even a fatal accident, could not have justified this wholesale desertion of the job. The work must go on. But already the extraordinary circumstances had become known. The men, gathered now in a group about the blanketed form, discussed it, low voiced. Hitchcock and Barnes, the eyewitnesses, had to tell over and over again what they had seen. It was hard to believe. They shook their heads, muttering, still half incredulous. “And him absolutely the only man on the trail—and twenty rod or more off!” “I never heerd of sich a thing!” One man bethought himself, looked right and left, half shamefacedly slid off his cap. One by one the others bared their heads. They waited, shifting uneasily, watching the closed door.

They stiffened slightly, half in apprehension, half in defiance, as a burly figure thrust from the forest and strode down toward them. This was Bull Kirby, the foreman, the driver of men and the work. How would he take this desertion of their jobs? But Bull Kirby’s face had no anger in it, only concern. Somehow this unexpected and unprecedented forbearance deepened in the men’s minds the unreal and fatal character of the tragedy. He spoke, low voiced, to the fallers and to John. “Mis’ Murdock’s in there,” someone volunteered. Bull Kirby nodded. He, too, removed his narrow-brimmed felt hat and ran his fingers through his stiff short curls.

The door opened. Sally’s face was very grave. She beckoned to John.

“Have them bring him in,” she told him, low voiced, “and then all of you clear out. If I need any help I’ll call for it. I’m taking Clara over to my house.”

Thankfully they left the matter to her. The men went back to work. Only John and Bull Kirby and Hugh Barkley waited, seated on the edge of the narrow veranda. They did not talk. They had little to say to one another until Sally should return to them.

At the end of nearly two hours the door opened behind them. They looked up expectantly. Sally shook her head in warning. They walked away together out of hearing.

“She’s quieted down,” said Sally. “But she’s in a daze.”

“What she want done with Mel?” This from Bull Kirby.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we got to do something. You’ll have to ask her soon as you can.”

“It won’t do any good. She wouldn’t understand. I tell you she’s dazed.”

“You mean off her head?” translated Bull Kirby bluntly. Sally nodded. Kirby pondered. “Know anything about Carter?” he asked the bookkeeper. “Where he come from or anything?” Barkley shook his head. “Well, inquire round, among the men.”

“Clara has a sister in Seattle,” volunteered Sally.

“Know her name?”

“What I came out here to say,” Sally cut across him, “is that I think the sooner Mrs Carter gets down the mountain to where she can be taken care of, the better.”

Bull Kirby’s small eyes examined hers. “I see,” said he. He pondered further, running his hand back and forth through his thick curls. They waited without suggestions.

“All right,” said he presently. His voice was crisp with command. He knew what must be done. He was telling them. “Take her down in my light buckboard. You go along and take care of her, Mrs Murdock. John, you drive ’em down. Leave the team at Guffy’s livery. Then you telegraph this sister at Seattle and start on the next train. Get the hospital telephone number from Hugh, here, case you don’t make connection with the sister. Marshall House is decent and reasonable and will treat you right. It’s on Second Street. Come back and pick up the buckboard when you get done, but not before. Hugh’ll give you some money. That’s all.”

“And—and poor Mel?” Sally gestured toward the other house.

“We’ll tend to that,” said Bull Kirby shortly. “Pack your duds. Get going.”

Sally slipped away. Barkley started toward the office.

“Well?” Kirby challenged John’s delay.

“It struck me——Sally’s pretty smart. She could get on all right after I got her to the railroad——We’re kind of short handed. I could——”

“You’ll do nothing of the goddam sort,” snapped Bull, without waiting to hear. “You ain’t so goddam much I can’t get along without you—or a dozen more like you. If I find you around here an hour from now, by God, I’ll skin you!”

They drove down the mountain in Bull Kirby’s buckboard. Sally, her arm about Clara, sat in the back seat. John drove alone. It was a long hard ride to the rails, which was one reason Bull Kirby did not make more money. The heavy lumber wagons had pulverized the road. The dust was terrible, for it was still alive with the day’s heat. They breathed through handkerchiefs, and their skins turned gray; and they saw the forest in dim flat planes of slate blue, as through a fog. But evening arose from the valley, and its chill quieted the dust like a cool hand. They were more comfortable then; but the way was tense and long.

They drove in silence. Only once did Clara’s apathy break for a moment. She turned on Sally, seizing her arm in a grip that hurt.

“He isn’t dead!” she denied insistently. “He’ll be coming in a minute!” She stared intently into Sally’s eyes, as though trying to see through clouded glass. Then her own eyes dulled.

Darkness had fallen before they arrived. The air was clear, and the trappings of the night were of velvet and silver.

Fortunately the sister had received the telegram. She and a competent-looking husband met the train and took charge. But it was nearly four o’clock before John and Sally at last tumbled into bed at the Marshall House, numbed by the fatigues and emotions of the day.

Nevertheless, John slipped out of bed soon after seven. By habit of years he knew he would not sleep again. Moving softly, he dressed without disturbing Sally, scribbled two words for her reassurance—“back soon”—and so, shortly, found himself on Second Street. The sky was deep blue. From it came a taut vibrant wind, pungent as crab apples with a flavor strange to John’s nostrils. He did not know the redolence of the sea. John was not wholly ignorant of cities, for occasion had once or twice brought him to Portland, and he had seen Salt Lake. But the substance of his life had been the open. He set off down Second Street, and everything he saw or heard or smelled delighted him.

At this hour the streets were not yet in full activity. Shops were opening, but not as yet settled into the day’s business. John looked into their windows and was amazed and delighted at many of the things he saw, but remembered in time that Sally was funny about buying things. He came to a saloon on the corner and went in and had a glass of beer, which tasted very good even at this hour of the morning, and ate a handful of pretzels and had a few words with the barkeeper. The barkeeper told him to come back later and get a decent handout when the free lunch was going, and that in his opinion Sharkey was going to punch hell outta Fitzsimmons, and how was things in the woods; and John replied that he wouldn’t bet on it, and that things were fine. There were more people in the street when he came out, all going in one direction; and a few wagons loaded with produce; and some wide, low drays drawn by massive horses. The drays one by one turned down a steep side street, and the air was rent by a shrieking of brakes. All these people and things were hurrying purposefully. They were going to work. John sauntered in a luxury of leisure. He was expansive with leisure. His narrow-brimmed lumberjack’s felt hat had just a little cock to it. His movements were loose and slow and flowing with the indolence of trained muscles on vacation. His eyes roved speculatively and humorously. They met full those of the men hurrying. Some of the latter grinned a half response; others bristled like dogs, resenting differences and strangeness.

John came to a cross street. Looking down it, he caught a glint of blue. He turned toward it.

Two girls, on their way home from a dance hall, bent forward against the grade as they climbed the hill. They were wearied, drained of life. But the sight of John’s tall figure plunging merrily down the steep slope brought a spark of interest to their eyes. They stopped short and looked at him, and when he had passed, with no more than an incurious glance, they turned and gazed after him. And then suddenly, seized by impulse, one took the other’s hand, and they raced down the hill after him and separated either side of him, seizing him by the arms, so that all three were projected forward by the momentum, and John had considerable to do to keep his feet and bring them all to a halt. He swung them in front of him and looked down into their laughing faces.

“What you trying to do?” he asked. “Scare a man to death?”

“We like your looks,” said the one with the frizzed yellow hair.

“Thanks,” said John. He raised one eyebrow. “And what’s your system when you catch ’em on level ground? Use a club?”

“Aw, go on!” giggled the one with the smooth yellow hair.

“You girls don’t really need no such strong-arm stuff.” John looked them over appraisingly from head to foot. “Just give ’em an eyeful and let nature take its course. I’m tellin’ you in hopes of saving human lives. You mighty nigh jerked my head off!”

The two girls dissolved toward each other delightedly. There was nothing professional in their light-heartedness. Somehow their weariness was lifted. They were having a good time.

“I bet you’re strong,” said frizzed-hair, “the way you fetched us up.” She laid her fingers on his upper arm. “Gawd, you’ve got muscle!” she cried. “Feel of that, Eloise. Like iron. What’s your job—fishing?”

“No,” said John, “my job’s to get out mornings and hunt up little girls that get lost out and tell ’em to go straight on home and go to bed.”

“Well, come on then,” said Eloise. “Sounds all right to me.” She took his arm with an air of proprietorship, warning off the other with her eyes. But John only laughed and disengaged her hand.

“You’ve got me all wrong, sister,” said he. “I forgot to tell you: I’m a reformed character.”

He gave them each a broad grin, and without other farewell, plunged on down the steep sidewalk, his body swinging back loosely in check of descent. The girls looked after him. They turned and resumed their climb.

John followed the street to its end and so came to the water front. Here were great warehouses. The wide-planked space between the warehouses and the city itself was crisscrossed by a network of railroad tracks. A stubby switch engine snorted back and forth on them, shunting freight cars. Before the warehouses stood the trucks, backed against their closed doors, waiting. The great horses dozed without attention to the puffing engine: the teamsters sat on the tails of the trucks, smoking. Over the roofs John could see the masts of ships. This excited him: he had never seen a ship. But the warehouses presented a blank front of wall and closed doors. John spoke to the teamsters. They answered him civilly enough, but briefly. They had no interest in John. Work began at eight o’clock. He could get out on the wharves when they opened up.

But John had a sudden new impulse. He turned to the left and set out more briskly. After a while he passed the last of the warehouses. An incline sloped steeply down to a long narrow float between tall piles. The float was empty, except for a sea gull atop each pile. From here John could see directly out into the Sound.

He paused for some moments to stare across its waters, lively in the breeze. Then he let himself cautiously down the ramp. The tide was low. He had to cling to the rail and catch his heels in the cross cleats. The tops of the piles were tall above him. He looked up at the gulls, amazed at their indifference to him, then walked out to the end of the float, where he knelt to wet his finger in taste of salt water. He got to his feet again and stood, hat in hand, the wind in his hair. Somehow he was deeply stirred; but he could not have told why.

The high prolonged note of a steam whistle brought him to himself. His interest leaped into lively attention. He climbed the incline and hurried down the water front.

Not until two hours later did he return to the hotel. Sally was still asleep. John hated to awaken her. Sally was sure pretty that way with her hair soft on the pillow, and her cheeks that kind of faint pink she never had when she was awake, and one hand curled up under her chin. But the necessity of sharing drove John too hard for more than a moment’s compunction. He snapped up the roller shade, and the sun flooded the room.

“What time is it?” asked Sally sleepily.

John sat on the side of the bed.

“Sally, wake up!” he cried. “Listen here. I want you to hear about this!”

She opened her eyes and saw that he was fully dressed. She sat up.

“What time is it?” she repeated. “Good heavens, it’s late!”

“What of it?” John was impatient.

“Clara!” She leaned forward to snatch at the old-fashioned chain that anchored John’s watch. “I ought to have been there hours ago!” She tried to throw off one side of the coverlet. John firmly replaced it and sat on it to hold it down.

“Clara’s in good hands,” he told Sally. “And it don’t matter one red cent whether you go round there now or this afternoon. You going to behave?”

Sally was going to behave. Now that the sleep was out of her brain she was sorry. John had come in full of enthusiasm about something. Now he was definitely off the boil. Cutting across John’s enthusiasms with some other interest had that effect. Sally would never have done it if she had been fully awake. Now she must restart him.

But curiously enough, it was nothing she said that succeeded in this. She had sat up in bed and shaken loose her hair. Her nightdress had fallen a little way from her shoulders in a straight line just above her breasts. John hardly listened to what she was saying: he was filling his eyes.

“Doggone, Sally,” he broke across what she was saying. “You look just like a little girl!” He stared at her, his appraisal somehow sharpening. “I’m glad your hair is brown,” said he.

It was Sally’s turn to stare. John told her about the two girls, and how they had tried to “kidnap me,” as John expressed it; at which Sally felt a tiny leap of shock that she indignantly repressed as silly; and of what they said, and what John had said back.

“You ought to have seen their faces!” John was relishing his tale and laughing. “They had yellow hair,” he added.

Now he was back easily and warmly on what he had wanted to tell Sally. He mentioned the float, and his sight of the Sound, and of how he had climbed down to the water level. He laughed at himself. “I knew it was salt, but I had to taste it!” But these things he passed over quickly.

“Then that whistle blowed,” said he, “and I looked up. You wouldn’t believe it, but I’d been so wropped up with that water, and all the rest, that I actually hadn’t even seen that mill, laying right there next door, as you might say!”

John spoke of the mill with the same awe he might have felt at first sight of some great cathedral. Probably with more. John knew something of lumber mills.

“I hustled right over there,” he told Sally. “You never saw anything like it!” For an hour he had wandered about, just looking. He tried to tell Sally what he had seen. There was no order or coherence in what he said. He jumped about, seizing upon what, unrelated, thrust to the foreground in his mind. Sally sank back again to her pillow and listened. She gave over trying to understand. Questions checked him. She was content to lie back and watch his face and dream upon the lovableness of John. Merely the surface of her attended his words, and that too only because they were John’s words, and that he brought her his thrill to share. But in spite of that a picture did grow in her mind, drawn a little by John’s words, but more by the leap of Sally’s imagination.

Acres of low roof on posts, but with no walls. And a row of water barrels, against fire, spaced on the flattened roof tree. That was the mill. And under the roof a maze of machinery. Band saws working continuously in gangs to which, in unending procession, head on, came the brown logs and passed through them, without haste but without pause, and fell away on the other side in boards and beams.

“A whole log at a time,” said John. “And the sawyer just stands there with a little row of levers in front of him and sizes up the log as it comes along and sets the saws wide or narrow, every which way. I tell you it’s great!” He laughed, and Sally was fleetingly puzzled at an undernote of scorn. She could not know that John was remembering the dark coolness of the little mill on the mountain, and the carriage, with Charley Matson atop, moving back and forth, back and forth, the entire length of the mill, and a whole round trip for each board sawed.

John reached over to touch Sally impressively on the knee.

“One of these band saws turns out more in a day than Bull Kirby could cut in a month,” said he. “And there are six of them!”

“Think of that!” said Sally. But she was not thinking of that: she was thinking that John was the best-looking thing she had ever seen when he was excited this way.

But she did see, in the corner of her mind’s eye, the thick log, and its passing through the narrow, endless, swift bands of steel, and how it held together in the shape of a log until the last instant of its relinquishment and then suddenly fell apart into shining planks. What became of the planks then? Sally asked one of her few questions. Did men carry them away? Must take a lot of men.

There were no men, no men at all. Iron rollers, always revolving, carried them away unattended. You had to follow them down the whole length of the building, farther than you could see, out into the sunshine of the sorting yard. Here were men, in armor of leather, and flat leather palms strapped to their hands against the splinters. As the endless procession of boards came to them they must shunt each one to its own track of revolving rollers, according to its kind and quality. The tracks fanned out like fingers.

“That’s some job!” marveled John. “You got to know all the grades there are and be able to tell ’em first off. There ain’t much time. The lumber keeps coming. It waits for nobody. And you can’t make a mistake, not and hold your job. Those fellers get high pay.”

You followed the sorted lumber on out along the rollers until you came into the clear open, beyond all the buildings, to where they were piled in the drying yards. Acres of drying yards, as far as you could see, with the square piles of lumber, and streets between like a city, and the sweet shrill wind all through them carrying the spice of fresh pine, and in all the streets iron-rail tracks for flatcars drawn by horses, slow and large, like careful elephants. And over the tops of the lumber piles the masts of ships.

Sally would have liked to have heard about the ships, but John was away off at the other end of the mill. There the wide low opening framed the blue of sky and water. When you went up there and looked out there was an astonishing spread below you of spaced clumps of piles with the long boom poles chained end to end between them, and the pattern of logs floating in the pens thus formed. They lay crowded close in a brown crisscross pattern, content in sleep: but men, small in the distance, ran across them, so that they bobbed and turned, and urged them forward with pike poles, so that a continuous reluctant flow of them drifted toward the mill. Here were two men on the firmer footing of platforms on either side a narrow ramp. Their task it was to nose successive logs against the ramp. The logs obeyed sluggishly, grudgingly. And then all at once some great subaqueous power seized upon them, shook them from lethargy. They came alive. Sally’s imagination was again fired. She saw them, brown and draining, rearing like great beasts out of the deep to follow one another in patient dignity up the incline to their destiny.

At the end of the hour John had, it seemed, fallen in with a man who was some kind of straw boss. At least he was not on any definite job. Name is Snell, Max Snell, said John. Something about John had attracted Max Snell’s interest. He had taken time off to show John around. He had asked John a lot of questions. Finally he had taken John into the office to see the boss.

At this point John stopped short. Sally, raising her eyes to see why, perceived an embarrassment. He was looking at her almost with deprecation, it seemed, as though he had something to say that she was not going to like.

“They offered me a job there,” he said at last in a small voice. “Wait a minute,” he made haste to anticipate her comment. “I didn’t say I was going to take it. I told ’em I was pretty well fixed.”

Sally was startled, but for no more than a moment. Recovered, she examined John in secret amusement.

“Would you like to? Take a job there, I mean?” she asked. He asserted stoutly that he was perfectly satisfied where he was. “John!” She fixed him warningly.

“Well,” he admitted, “some ways it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. A man’d learn a lot there, no doubt of that. And if he expected to come, by and by, into owning his own operation—even if it was a small one—why, that would come in handy. Wages are higher here. And of course in an outfit like that there’s always a chance to work up ...”

Under her accusing eye he ran down.

“You do want to,” she brought him back to the point. He rallied.

“I don’t want to do nothing you don’t want to do!” he stated emphatically and with spirit. “And that settles it—no matter what it is!”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t want to do this?” asked Sally.

John was taken aback. It had never occurred to him that Sally would approve a move so soon!

“So soon, what?” Sally was really curious.

The house. After all the fixing up she’d done. Tearing her away from her home. That was the gist of it. But it took a good many more words for John to tell it, and some time for Sally to grasp his conception of an insuperable obstacle. The idea hit her as a shock.

“That—that shanty!” she cried and broke into laughter, a compound of incredulity, relief, amusement and tenderness. A great deal of tenderness. John sat helpless, looking at her, his face slowly reddening.

“I thought it was kinda nice,” he ventured after a while.

She sobered at once.

“It was nice,” she insisted. John was hurt, or at least puzzled; she must reassure John. Nothing else was of importance until she had brought back John. “It was our home, and we could live there and be very happy. But don’t you see,” went on Sally, “that home is where we are, and that where that is isn’t very important as long as we love each other; and after all we haven’t lived there but a few months. And,” continued Sally, shrewdly reading John’s regrets, “we can bring down the things we have bought and have fun fitting them into a new house down here. Everything except the shower bath.” Sally ventured to angle for a smile.

But she did not get it. John still looked doubtful. He was unable to believe that any woman could willingly abandon offhand an abode on which she had lavished such pains, labor and taste to such an incredibly marvelous result. That is how the shanty on the mountain seemed to John. It looked good to him. The contrast to camp, line shack and the stark bare pioneer cabin, Sally, naturally, could not have realized; but she sensed it. She must burn her bridges.

“John,” she said, “look at me. The house was lovely because it was ours, and you and I lived in it, and we had made it as nice as we could with what we had. And we could be happy in it because we are us. But don’t you see we can be even happier here—with people and comforts and stores and shows to go to once in a while and places to go to and things to see and—and libraries——” Her voice died on the last word. She had begun solely in reassurance of John, but somehow the words had released stifled deeps in her own being.

“By God!” cried John, “I believe you’d rather!”

“Why, of course I’d rather!” Sally was almost sobbing with her own emotion. “Of course I’d rather! Oh, John!”

John uttered a great shout.

“Defend yourself, woman!” he cried. “I’m going to tousle you!”

Eagerly, breathlessly, they talked over ways and means. Sally would stay here, in the hotel. John would take the next train back and return the buckboard and fix things up with Bull Kirby.

“But if Mr Kirby needs you?” Sally was stricken. That thought had not before occurred to her. “It wouldn’t be fair ...”

John had not considered that either. It was a sobering idea. Naturally you couldn’t double-cross Bull Kirby. But he did not long remain depressed. He was confident he could handle Bull Kirby. Bull Kirby was a good sort; he wouldn’t stand in a man’s way. John would fix that and pack up all their transportable goods and send them down with one of the lumber teams.

“Somebody’s going to fall heir to a mighty good shower bath!” he grinned in delayed appreciation of Sally’s effort at the shower bath joke. “I’ll get back soon as the Lord’ll let me,” he promised. Shouldn’t take long. Three or four days, maybe.

“Will they hold the mill job for you?” Sally suddenly had another practical thought.

But that was all right. They didn’t want him for two weeks anyway. John was now all afire to get going.

“I’ll look up a train while you’re getting dressed,” said he and was off. In ten minutes he was back, breathless with haste. “There’s one leaves in twenty minutes,” he shouted before he was fairly in the room. “Think I can just make it.”

“Yes, yes!” Sally, too, was afire. “Go!”

He dumped a handful of money on the table. “I got my ticket. I won’t need more!” He kissed her. “You’ll be looking up Clara.”

“But, John,” Sally stopped him. “Suppose that Mr Kirby won’t——”

“He will!” Then John’s exuberance fell momentarily. “Well, then I’ll telegraph you word, and you can come on up.” They eyed each other soberly, afraid to say more. She ran to him and buried her face against his body. “John,” she said in a muffled voice, “I’m going to pray.”