CHAPTER XI
The statement took Houston off his feet for a moment; but recovery came just as quickly, a recoil with the red splotches of anger blazing before his eyes, the surge of hot blood sweeping through his veins, the heat of conflict in his brain. His good hand clenched. A leap and he had struck the foreman on the point of the chin, sending him reeling backward, while the other men rushed to his assistance.
"That's my answer to you!" shouted Houston. "This is my flume and—"
"Run tell Thayer!" shouted the foreman, and then with recovering strength, he turned for a cant hook. But Ba'tiste seized it first, and with a great wrench, threw it far out of the way. Then, like some great, human trip hammer, he swung into action, spinning Houston out of the way as he went forward, his big fists churning, his voice bellowing his call of battle:
"Climb up me! Climb up me!"
The foreman stooped for a club,—and rose just in time to be lifted even higher, at the point of Ba'tiste's right fist then to drop in a lump. Then they were all about him, seeking for an opening, fists pounding, heavy shoes kicking at shins, while in the rear, Houston, scrambling around with his one arm, almost happy with the enthusiasm of battle, swung hard and often at every opportunity, then swerved and covered until he could bring his fist into action again.
The fight grew more intense with a last spurt, then died out, as Ba'tiste, seizing the smallest of the men, lifted him bodily and swinging him much after the fashion of a sack of meal, literally used him as a battering ram against the rest of the attacking forces. For a last time, Houston hit a skirmisher and was hit in return. Then Ba'tiste threw his human weapon from him, straight into the mass of men whom he had driven back for a second, tumbling them all in a scrambling, writhing heap at the edge of the flume.
"Climb up me!" he bellowed, as they struggled to their feet. "Ah, oui?" And the big arms moved threateningly. "Climb up me!"
But the invitation was not accepted. Bloody, eyes discolored, mouth and nose steadily swelling, the foreman moved away with his battered crew, finally to disappear in the forest. Ba'tiste reached for the cant hook, and balancing it lightly in one hand, sought a resting place on the edge of the flume. Houston sat beside him.
"What on earth can it all mean?" he asked, after a moment of thought.
"They go back—get more men. Mebbe they think they whip us, oui? Yes? Ba'teese use this, nex' time." He balanced the cant hook, examining it carefully as though for flaws which might cause it to break in contact with a human target. Barry went on:
"I was talking about the flume. You heard what that fellow said—that they had the woods, the lake and the flume to use as they pleased? How—"
"Mebbe they think they jus' take it."
"Which they can't. I'm going back to the camp and get more men."
"No." Ba'tiste grinned. "We got enough—you an' Ba'teese. I catch 'em with this. You take that club. If they get 'round me, you, what-you-say, pickle 'em off."
But the expected attack did not come. An hour they waited, and a hour after that. Still no crowd of burly men came surging toward them from the Blackburn camp, still no attempt was made to wrest from their possession the waterway which they had taken over as their rightful property.
Houston studied the flume.
"We'll have to get some men up here and rip out this connection," came at last. "They've broken off our end entirely."
"Ah, oui! But we will stay here. By'm'by, Medaine come. We will send her for men."
"Medaine? That was she I heard talking?"
"Oui. She had come to ask me if she should bring me food. She was riding. Ba'teese sen' her away. But she say she come back to see if Ba'teese is all right."
Houston shook his head.
"That's good. But I'm afraid that you won't find her doing anything to help me out."
"She will help Ba'teese," came simply from the big man, as the iron-bound cant hook was examined for the fiftieth time. "Why they no come, huh?"
"Search me. Do you suppose they've given it up? It's a bluff on their part, you know, Ba'tiste. They haven't any legal right to this land or flume or anything else; they just figured that my mill was burned and that I wouldn't be in a position to fight them. So they decided to take over the flume and try to force us into letting them have it."
"Here comes somebody!" Ba'tiste's grip tightened about the cant hook and he rose, squaring himself. Houston seized the club and stood waiting a few feet in the rear, in readiness for any one who might evade the bulwark of blows which Ba'tiste evidently intended to set up. Far in the woods showed the shadowy forms of three men, approaching steadily and apparently without any desire for battle. Ba'tiste turned sharply. "Your eye, keep heem open. Eet may be a blind."
But Houston searched the woods in vain. There were no supporters following the three men, no deploying groups seeking to flank them. A moment more, and Ba'tiste, with a sudden exclamation, allowed his cant hook to drop to the ground.
"Wade!"
"Who?" Houston came closer.
"Eet is Thayer and Wade, the sheriff from Montview, and his deputy. Peuff! Have he fool heem too?"
Closer they came, and the sheriff waved a hand in friendly greeting. Ba'tiste returned the gesture. Thayer, scowling, black-faced, dropped slightly to the rear, allowing the two officials to take the lead—and evidently do the talking. The sheriff grinned as he noticed the cant hook on the ground. Then he looked up at Ba'tiste Renaud.
"What's been going on here?"
"This man," Ba'tiste nodded grudgingly toward the angular form of Fred Thayer, "heem a what-you-say a big bomb. This my frien', M'sieu Houston. He own this flume. This Thayer's men, they try to jump it."
"From the looks of them," chuckled the sheriff, "you jumped them. They've got a young hospital over at camp. But seriously, Ba'tiste, I think you're on the wrong track. Thayer and Blackburn have a perfect right to this flume and to the use of the lake and what stumpage they want from the Houston woods."
"A right?" Barry went forward. "What right? I haven't given them—"
"You're the owner of the land, aren't you?"
"Yes, in a way. It was left to me conditionally."
"You can let it out and sell the stumpage if you want to?"
"Of course."
"Then, what are you kicking about?"
"I—simply on account of the fact that these men have no right to be on the land, or to use it in any way. I haven't given them permission."
"That's funny," the sheriff scratched his head; "they've just proved in court that you have."
"In court? I—?"
"Yeh. I've got an injunction in my pocket to prevent you from interfering with them. Judge Bardley gave it in Montview about an hour ago, and we came over by automobile."
"But why?"
"Why?" the sheriff stared at him. "When you give a man a lease, you have to live up to it in this country."
"But I've given no one—"
"Oh, show it to him, sheriff." Thayer came angrily forward. "No use to let him stand there and lie."
"That's what I want to see!" Houston squared himself grimly. "If you've got a lease, or anything else, I want to look at it."
"You know your own writing, don't you?" The sheriff was fishing in his pockets.
"Of course."
"You'd admit it if you saw it?"
"I'm not trying to hide anything. But I know that I've not given any lease, and I've not sold any stumpage and—"
"Then, what's this?" The sheriff had pulled two legal documents from his pocket, and unfolding them, had shown Houston the bottom of each. Barry's eyes opened wide.
"That's—that's my signature," came at last.
"This one's the same, isn't it?" The second paper was shoved forward.
"Yes."
"Then I don't see what you're kicking about. Do you know any one named Jenkins, who is a notary public?"
"He works in my office in Boston."
"That's his writing, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And his seal."
"I suppose so." Bewildered, Houston was looking at the papers with glazed eyes. "It looks like it."
"Then," and the sheriff's voice went brusque, "what right have you to try to run these men off of property for which you've given them a bona-fide lease, and to which you've just admitted your signature as genuine?"
"I've—I've given no lease. I—"
"Then look 'em over. If that isn't a lease to the lake and flume and flume site, and if the second one isn't a contract for stumpage at a dollar and a half a thousand feet,—well, then, I can't read."
"But I'm telling you that I didn't give it to them." Houston had reached for the papers with a trembling hand. "There's a fraud about it somewhere!"
"I don't see where there can be any fraud when you admit your signature, and there's a notary's seal attached."
"But there is! I can't tell you why—but—"
"Statements like that don't count in law. There are the papers and they're duly signed and you've admitted your signature. If there's any fraud about it, you've got the right to prove it. But in the meanwhile, the court's injunction stands. You've leased this land to these men, and you can't interfere with them. Understand?"
"All right." Houston moved hazily back, away from the flume site. Ba'tiste stood staring glumly, wondering, at the papers which had been returned to the sheriff. "But I know this, that it's a fakery—somehow—and I'll prove it. I have absolutely no memory of ever signing any such papers as that, or of even talking to any one about selling stumpage at a figure that you should know is ridiculous. Why, you can't even buy the worst kind of timber from the government at that price! I don't remember—"
"Didn't I tell you?" Thayer had turned to the sheriff. "There he goes pulling that loss of memory stunt again. That's one of his best little bets," he added sneering, "to lose his memory."
"I've never lost it yet!"
"No—then you can forget things awfully easy. Such as coming out here and pretending not to know who you were. Guess you forgot your identity for a minute, didn't you? Just like you forgot signing this lease and stumpage contract! Yeh, you're good at that—losing your memory. You never remember anything that happens. You can't even remember the night you murdered your own cousin, can you?"
"That's a—"
"See, sheriff? His memory's bad." All the malice and hate of pent-up enmity was in Fred Thayer's voice now. One gnarled hand went forward in accusation. "He can't even remember how he killed his own cousin. But if he can't, I can. Ask him about the time when he slipped that mallet in his pocket at a prize fight and then went on out with his cousin. Ask him what became of Tom Langdon after they left that prize fight. He won't be able to tell you, of course. He loses his memory; all he will be able to remember is that his father spent a lot of money and hired some good lawyers and got him out of it. He won't be able to tell you a thing about how his own cousin was found with his skull crushed in, and the bloody wooden mallet lying beside him—the mallet that this fellow had stolen the night before at a prize fight! He won't—"
White-hot with anger, Barry Houston lurched forward, to find himself caught in the arms of the sheriff and thrown back. He whirled,—and stopped, looking with glazed, deadened eyes into the blanched, horrified features of a girl who evidently had heard the accusation, a girl who stood poised in revulsion a moment before she turned, and, almost running, hurried to mount her horse and ride away. And the strength of anger left the muscles of Barry Houston. The red flame of indignation turned to a sodden, dead thing. He could only realize that Medaine Robinette now knew the story. That Medaine Robinette had heard him accused without a single statement given in his own behalf; that Medaine, the girl of his smoke-wreathed dreams, now fully and thoroughly believed him—a murderer!