II
Hammond gained much of his information about the limits from his shack-mate, Sandy Macdougal, the cook, who in the evening over a bottle of rye whiskey became quite loquacious. It was through Macdougal he learned of the presence of the girl with the high-arched eyebrows on Amethyst Island, a bit of information that brought about a secret determination to somehow or other come in contact with her, much as the mere idea of again meeting her face to face perturbed him.
Of Acey Smith he saw little, caught only occasional glimpses of him now and then as he went in and out of his office. No one seemed to know where he kept himself a large part of the time. Actual operation of the camps and dealings with the men were carried on almost entirely by the assistant superintendent, a rawboned, hatchet-faced young man named Mooney, who was as uncommunicative as a slab of trap rock.
Ogima Bush, the Indian medicine man, seemed to have the freedom of the camp, to which he paid frequent visits, mixing with the workers of his own race of whom there were several hundred employed in breaking up jams in the river and tending the booms in the bay. They were what was known as the “white water” men because of their hazardous work in the foaming rapids.
Rev. Nathan Stubbs, the camp preacher, journeyed back and forth from one camp to the other. He did not sleep in any of the camps but repaired each night to some isolated shack he had fixed up for himself somewhere in the fastnesses of Nannabijou Mountain. He seemed to purposely avoid Hammond, as he did most of the executives of the limits, and a feature that struck the young man as rather odd was that he never saw Ogima Bush or the Rev. Nathan Stubbs and Acey Smith together or even in the camp at the one time, though the Medicine Man frequently inquired as to the superintendent’s whereabouts and on such occasions immediately struck off as though he had an appointment with him some-where. It was plain that Acey Smith looked upon the preacher as a pest and insisted on him making himself scarce when he was about camp; as for the Medicine Man, there seemed to be some understanding between him and the superintendent whereby the former was quite confident of his status and privileges anywhere on the limits.
There was something queer—so queer as to be absolutely uncanny—about this gigantic pulp camp. Hammond could see that every intelligent worker in it sensed this, but nobody understood it or could tangibly grasp a glimmer of what it was. The morale among the cutting gangs, teamsters and boom workers could scarcely be improved upon. Men who shirked their work lost the regard of their fellows and either soon learned to put their best into their efforts or left camp. The North Star Company held the reputation of paying and feeding their employés better than any other outfit in the north country. There were camp hospitals with camp doctors and competent men nurses; it was even said that no man was docked for lost time while he was really sick. Incidentally, there were no evidences of iron discipline or slave-driving methods. But everywhere among the men and their petty executives there was an undercurrent of something akin to superstitious awe of the company and those who directed its affairs.
Acey Smith himself seemed to be obsessed with this same haunting apprehension. When he issued orders he did so more like one who is interpreting definite commands from elsewhere. As Sandy Macdougal analysed it to Hammond after his own peculiar fashion, “one felt as though the whole show was being run by some one or something that didn’t cast a shadow.”
III
His enforced idleness brought a notion to the young ex-newspaper man that he could improve his time by writing, even if it were only a diary of his experiences. He felt he must have something to occupy his time besides roaming over the tote roads and riding around in the fussy little gasoline tugs of the boom-tenders, so, early one morning he presented himself at Acey Smith’s office and boldly asked if he might have some loose writing paper. Acey Smith quite readily complied with his wishes, going to the rear of his office and bringing to Hammond several pads of blank sheets.
“I had been expecting you to come around for this,” he said, the ghost of an exultant flicker playing at the corners of his mouth. “The ruling hobby will force itself to the surface sooner or later, won’t it, Mr. Hammond?”
“Meaning just what?”
“Just this: Set a man at doing nothing long enough and habit will drive him back to the haunts of his old rut—especially if that rut is writing for publication.”
Hammond illy-suppressed a start at this broad hint at knowledge of his identity. “I have no designs for writing anything for publication, if that’s what you’re driving at,” he, however, came back frankly.
“I have not the remotest notion that you will,” Acey Smith assured him with a tinge of sarcasm in his tones. “In fact, I am quite confident that for the present you won’t reach a publisher.”
He stared strangely at Hammond for a silent second, his black eyes glazing in a weird fixidity. Hammond was conscious Acey Smith was speaking now more as one trying to interpret a whim of the back mind: “Now, if I were a novelist, which I am not, and in the mood, likewise absent, I might make myself the author of the queerest tale ever written. It’s a pity the world gets most of its literature second-hand and consequently garbled; the man who lives things doesn’t write, and the man who writes never seems able to live the things he writes about.
“Real writers then must be men born twice who never touched pen to paper till their second existence, don’t you think so, Mr. Hammond?”
“I have never considered it from that angle,” replied the younger man. “Thank you for the paper, Mr. Smith.”
“Think it over,” urged Acey Smith enigmatically as he whirled on a heel and returned to his desk.
Hammond went away inwardly as chagrined as a disguised man who has had his wig and false beard suddenly whisked from his head and face. His attempt to conceal his identity from Acey Smith surely had been a ridiculous farce. Perhaps the pulp camp superintendent knew more than he did himself about what purpose lay behind his being sent to the limits.
The situation was a humiliating one, Hammond bitterly conceded as he sat alone in the cabin he shared with the cook. It would be bad enough to be found out and know what one was found out for, but it was infinitely more exasperating to feel that he was a marked man without knowing the exact nature of the predicament he had allowed himself to be dropped into. Acey Smith had a manner of making Hammond feel like a mere outsider every time they came in contact, and the latter, completely in the dark as to the objects of his own mission, was as impotent to meet and parry the other’s stinging thrusts as a man who fences with a blindfold on. Smith did not exactly despise him; he had reason to believe that. It was Smith’s lightly-concealed exultation over knowledge of his helplessness that galled him so.
Hammond longed to meet the other on fair ground—in a battle of wits or fists, he was not particular which, so long as he could exact satisfaction for his hurt pride. But this fighting in the dark was a hopeless business, and he was becoming weary of it.
Yet—what did Smith know? What did he know?
With this conjecture came an inspiration that brought Hammond a newer and a brighter viewpoint. When he more calmly mulled the situation over in the seclusion of his quarters, it struck him Acey Smith was merely guessing. He had not definitely referred to him as an ex-newspaper man, but had merely insinuated he knew him to be a writer. This was a thing one so shrewd of observation as the pulp camp master might easily surmise when Hammond asked for writing paper. That subsequent drifting of his onto the status of fiction writers was a cast for information, his reference to the genius of writing men an obvious attempt at flattery—and the hook was baited with a hint that he himself had a life-story that would be worth while getting hold of.
The whole thing seemed so clear now that Hammond accused himself of stupidity in not seeing through it before. Hammond’s plan therefore would be to follow the plane of the least resistance and let Smith go on thinking what he pleased. Even better still, why not approach Smith for that “queerest tale” he had referred to and make a play to his vanity? No doubt egotism was Acey Smith’s most vulnerable point and the open sesame to his confidence, as Hammond in his journalistic experience had found it to be with most despotic executives, high or low.
But no, that would not do. There was one thing in the way still. If he only knew what he was here for he could act. As things stood, he feared to take the initiative lest he blunder into something that would upset the plan Norman T. Gildersleeve had in mind that night on the train when he had engaged Hammond at a thousand dollars a month to stay at the pulp camp till he received further orders. No matter how he theorised and tried to prop it up with possible purposes, it appealed more and more to him as a crazy assignment. Bagsful of mail was brought over daily on the tugs, and, so far as Hammond could see, the mail was delivered direct and with considerable despatch all over the camps. It should therefore be an easy matter for Gildersleeve to write him, if it were only a few lines, to let him know whether or not things were progressing as they should. Why didn’t Gildersleeve communicate with him?