CHAPTER SEVEN—HOW “THE FRESH-WATER CORSAIRS” CAME TO SUNKHAZE
In the morning Parker's foreman was waiting for him in the men's room of the tavern. It was so early that the smoky kerosine lamp was still struggling with the red glow of the dawn.
“Mr. Parker,” said the foreman earnestly, “have you go it figured what the old chap is goin' to do to us?”
“That is hardly a fair question to put to me Mank,” said the engineer, pulling on his mittens. “You knew him up this way better than I. Now you tell me what you expect him to do.”
But the foreman shook his head dubiously.
“It'll never come at a man twice alike,” he said.
“Sometimes he just snorts and folks just run. Sometimes he kicks, sometimes he bites, sometimes he rears and smashes things all to pieces. But the idea is, you can depend on him to do something and do it quick and do it mighty hard. We've known Gideon Ward a good many years up this way and we've never seen him so mad before nor have better reason for being mad. The men are worrying. I thought it right to tell you that much.”
“Well, I'm worrying, too,” said Parker. He tried to speak jestingly, but the heaviness of the night's foreboding was still upon him and the foreman detected the nervousness in his voice. The man now showed his own depression plainly.
“I was in hopes I could tell the men that you could see your way all free and clear” he said.
“Then the men are worrying?”
“That they are, sir. A good many of us own houses here in Sunkhaze and there's more than one way for Colonel Gideon Ward to get back at us. Several of the boys came to me last night and wanted to quit. I understand that the postmaster has been talking to you and he must have told you some of the things that the old man done and hasn't been troubled about, either by his conscience or the law. You see what kind of a position that puts us in.”
“You don't mean that the crew is going to strike, or rather slip out from under, do you, Mank?” asked Parker, struck by the man's demeanor.
“Well, I'd hardly like to say that. I ain't commissioned to put it that strong. But we've got to remember the fact that we'll probably want to live here a number of years yet, and railroad building won't last forever. Still, it's hardly about future jobs that we're thinking now. It's what is liable to happen to us in the next few days. It will be tough times for Sunkhaze settlement if the Gideonites swoop down on us, Mr. Parker.”
The engineer threw out his arms impetuously.
“But I'm in no position, Mank, to guarantee safety to the men who are working for the company,” he cried. “It looks to me as tho I were standing here pretty nigh single-handed. If I understand your meaning, I can't depend on my crew to back me up if it comes to a clinch with the old bear?”
“The boys here are not cowards,” replied the foreman with some spirit. “They're good, rugged chaps with grit in 'em. Turn 'em loose in a woods clearing a hundred miles from home and I'd match 'em man for man with any crowd that Gid Ward could herd together. I don't say they wouldn't fight here in their own door yards, Mr. Parker. They'd fight before they'd see their houses pulled down or their families troubled. But as to fighting for the property of this railroad company and then taking chances with the Gideonites afterward—well, I don't know about that! It's too near home!” Again the foreman shook his head dubiously. “As long as you can reckon safely that the old one is goin' to do something, the boys thought perhaps you'd notify the sheriff.”
But Parker remembered his instructions. Reporting his predicament to the sheriff would mean sowing news of the Sunkhaze situation broadcast in the papers.
“It isn't a matter for the sheriffs,” he replied shortly. “We'll consider that the men are hired to transport material and not to fight. We can only wait and see what will happen. But, Mank, I think that when the pinch comes you will find that my men can be as loyal to me, even if I am a stranger, as Ward's men are to the infernal old tyrant who has abused them all these years. I'm going to believe so at any rate.”
He turned away and started out of doors into the crisp morning. “I'm going to believe that last as long as I can,” he muttered.
“It'll help to keep me from running away.”
He found his crew gathered in the railroad yard near the heaps of unloaded material for construction. The men eyed him a bit curiously and rather sheepishly.
“I know how you stand, men,” he said cheerily. “I don't ask you to undertake any impossibilities. I simply want help in getting this stuff across Spinnaker Lake. Let's at it!”
His tone inspired them momentarily.
They were at least dauntless toilers, even if they professed to be indifferent soldiers.
The sleds or skids were drawn up into the railroad yard by hand and loaded there. Then they were snubbed down to the lake over the steep bank. On the ice the “train” was made up.
Even Parker himself was surprised to find what a load the little locomotive could manage. He made four trips the first day and at dusk had the satisfaction of beholding many tons of rails, fish-plates and spikes unloaded and neatly piled in the yarding place at the Spinnaker end of the carry.
Between trips, while the men were unloading, he had opportunity to extend his right-of-way lines for his swampers and attend to other details of his engineering problem.
'Twas a swift pace he set!
He dared to trust no one else in the cab of the panting “Swamp Swogon” as engineer, and rushed back from his lines when the fireman signalled with the whistle that they were ready for a return trip. It may readily be imagined that with duties pressing on him in that fashion Parker had little time in which to worry about the next move of Colonel Ward. And the men worked as zealously as tho they too had forgotten the menace that threatened in the north.
In three days fully half the weight of material had been safely landed across the lake.
But on the evening of the third day Parker was more seriously alarmed by the weather-frowns than he had been by the threats of Gideon Ward himself.
The postmaster presaged it, sniffing into the dusk with upturned nose and wagging his head ominously.
“I reckon old Gid has got one more privilege of these north woods into his clutch and is now handlin' the weather for the section,” he said. “For if we ain't goin' to have a spell of the soft and moist that will put you out of business for a while, then I miss my guess.”
It began with a fog and ended in a driving rainstorm that converted the surface of the lake into an expanse of slush that there was no dealing with.
Parker's experience had been with climatic conditions in lower latitudes and in his alarm he believed that spring had come swooping in on him and that the storm meant the breaking up of the ice or at least would weaken it so that it would not bear his engine.
But the postmaster, who could be a comforter as well as a prophet of ill, took him into the little enclosure of his inner office and showed him a long list of records pencilled on the slide of his wicket.
“Ice was never known to break up in Spinnaker earlier than the first week in May,” said Dodge, “and this rain-spitting won't open so much as a riffle. You just keep cool and wait.”
At the end of the rain-storm the weather helped Parker to keep cool. He heard the wind roaring from the northwest in the night. The frame of the little tavern shuddered. Ice fragments, torn from eaves and gables, went spinning away into the darkness over the frozen crust with the sound of the bells of fairy sleighs.
When Parker, fully awakening in the early dawn, looked out upon the frosty air, his breath was as visibly voluminous as the puff from an escape-valve of the “Swogon.” With his finger-nail he scratched the winter enameling from his window-pane, and through that peep-hole gazed out upon the lake. The frozen expanse stretched steel-white, glary and glistening, a solid sheet of ice.
“There's a surface,” cried Parker, in joyous soliloquy, “that will enable the Swogon to haul as much as a P. K. & R. mogul! Jack Frost is certainly a great engineer.”
He at once put a crew at work getting out more saplings for sleds. In two more trips, with his extra “cars” and with that glassy surface, he believed that every ounce of railroad material could be “yarded” at the Po-quette Carry. When the sun went down redly, spreading its broad bands of radiance across ice-sheeted Spinnaker, the Swogon stood bravely at the head of twenty heavily loaded sleds. The start for the Carry was scheduled to occur at daybreak.
The moon was round and full that evening, and Parker before turning in went out and remained at the edge of the lake a moment, looking across Spinnaker's vast expanse of silvery glory.
“You could take that train acrost the lake to-night, Mr. Parker,” suggested the foreman, who had followed him from the post-office. “It's as light as day.”
“Do you know,” admitted the young man, “I just came out with the uneasy feeling, somehow, that I ought to fire up and start out. I suppose the old women would call it a presentiment. But the men have worked too hard to-day to be called out for a night job. With a freeze like that we haven't got to hurry on account of the weather.”
The foreman patted his ears briskly, for the night wind was sweeping down the lake and squalling shrewishly about the corners of buildings in the little settlement. Suddenly the man shot out a mittened hand, and pointed up the lake.
“What's that?” he ejaculated.
Parker gazed. Far up Spinnaker a dim white bulk seemed to hover above the ice. It was almost wraith-like in the moonlight. It flitted on like a huge bird, and seemed to be rapidly advancing toward Sunkhaze.
“If it were summer-time and this were Sandy Hook,” said Parker, with a smile, “I should think that perhaps the cup-race might be on.”
“I should say, rather, it is the ghost of Gid Ward's boom gunlow,” returned the man, not to be outdone in jest. “He's got an old scow with a sail like that.”
Both men surveyed the dim whiteness with increasing interest.
“Are there any ice-boats on the lake?” inquired the engineer.
“I never heard of any such thing hereabouts.”
“Well, I have made that out to be an iceboat of some description. And with that spread of sail it is making great progress.” Parker rolled up his coat collar and pulled down his fur cap. A feeling of disquiet pricked him. “I think I'll stay here a little while and watch that fellow,” he said.
“So will I,” agreed his employé.
The approaching sail grew rapidly. Soon the craft was to be descried more in detail. Under the sail was a flat, black mass. And now on the breeze came swelling a chorus of rude songs, the melody of which was shot through with howls and bellows of uproarious men.
“Trouble's coming there, Mr. Parker!” gasped the foreman, apprehensively. “The wind behind 'em an' rum inside 'em.”
“Ward's men, eh?” suggested the engineer.
“That they are! The Gideonites! They can't be anything else.”
“Get our men together!” Parker cried, clapping his gloved hands. “Rout out every man in the settlement.”
The foreman started away on the run, banging on house doors and bawling the cry:
“Whoo-ee! All up! Parker's crew turn out! All hands wanted at the lake!”
In the excitement of the moment Mank did not question the command nor pause to reflect that he might be calling his neighbors into trouble that they would not relish.
CHAPTER EIGHT—THE LOCOMOTIVE THAT WENT SWIMMING AND THE ENGINEER WHO WAS STOLEN
In a few moments the bell of the little chapel was sending its jangling alarm out over the village. Doors banged, men burst out of the houses and poured down to the lake shore, buttoning their jackets as they ran.
They required no explanation. Ever since the incident at Poquette some such irruption of Ward's reckless woods hordes had been anticipated. But this tempestuous night arrival under sail, this sudden and terrifying descent appalled the newly awakened men.
The craft was now close to shore, and was making for the stolid Swogon and its waiting sleds. The stranger's method of construction could now be distinguished, A good half-score of tote-sleds had been lashed together into a sort of runnered raft The sail was the huge canvas used in summer on Ward's lake scow.
As the great boat swung into the wind, a jostling crowd of men poured out on the ice from under the flapping sail. Each man bore a tool of some sort, either ax, cant-dog, iron-shod peavey-stick, or cross-cut saw; and the moonshine flashed on the steel surfaces. It was plain that the party viewed its expedition as an opportunity for reckless roistering, and spirits had added a spur to the natural boisterous belligerency of the woodsmen.
Most of Parker's crew had brought axes, and now as he advanced across the ice toward the locomotive, his men followed with considerable display of valor.
'A giant whiskered woodsman led the onrush of the attacking force; and the gang interposed itself between the railroad property and its defenders.
“Hold up there, right where ye are, all of ye!” the giant shouted.
“What is your business here?” demanded the young man.
“Are you that little railro'd chap that thinks he's runnin' this end of the country on the kid-glove basis?” roared the big man. He swung his ax menacingly.
“My name is Parker,” replied the engineer. “That is my property yonder. You will have to let my men pass to it.”
The giant looked squarely over the engineer's head into the crowd of Sunkhaze men.
“You all know me,” he cried, “an' if ye don't know me ye've heard of me! I reckon Dan Connick is pretty well known hereabouts. Wal, that's me. Never was licked, never was talked back to. These men behind me are all a good deal like me. I know the most o' you men. I should hate to hurt ye. Your wives are up there waitin' for ye to come home. Ye'd better go.”
But the crowd made no movement to retreat. Parker still stood at their head.
“Ye'd better go!” bellowed Connick. “Understand? I said ye'd better go. Go an' mind your business, an' if ye do that, not a man in my crew will step a foot on the Sunk-haze shore. But if ye stay here and meddle, then down come your houses and out go your cook-stoves. You know me! Get back on shore.”
A tremendous roar from his men emphasized his demand.
“If ye want these hearties loose up there, ye can have 'em in about two minutes!” he cried, threateningly.
The Sunkhaze contingent rubbed elbows significantly, mumbled in conference, and scuffled slowly toward the shore.
“Are you going to back down, men?” Parker shouted.
“We've got wives an' children an' houses up there, mister,” said a voice from the crowd, “an' it's a cold night to be turned out-o'-doors. We know these fellers better'n what you do.”
“But, men,” persisted Parker, “they won't dare to sack your village. Such things are not done in these days. The law—”
“Law!” burst from Connick, jeeringly. “Law! Law!” echoed his men, with mocking laughter.
“Why,” yelled Connick, “there ain't deputy sheriffs enough in this county to round us up once we get acrost the Poquette divide! There ain't a deputy sheriff that will dare to poke his nose within ten miles of our camps.”
“That's right, Mr. Parker,” agreed one of the Sunkhaze crowd. “Once a crew burnt a smokin'-car when they were comin' up from—”
“No yarns now, no yarns now!” Connick thrust himself against the Sunkhaze men and roughly elbowed them back. “Get on shore an' stay there.”
Parker was left standing alone on the ice. His supporters scuffled away, muttering angry complaints, but offering no resistance. When the giant woodsman returned after hastening their departure, he was faced by the young man, still defiant. Connick cocked his head humorously and looked down on the engineer. Under all the big man's apparent fierceness there had been a flash of rough jocoseness in his tones at times. Parker saw plainly that he and his followers viewed the whole thing as a “lark,” and entertained little respect for their adversaries.
“Connick, I warn you—” Parker began; but the giant chuckled, and said, tauntingly:
“'Cluck, cluck!' said the bear.
“I want to say to you, sir, that you are dealing with a large proposition if you propose to interfere with this railroad property. My backers—”
“'Bow-wow!' said the fish.” The woodsman cried the taunt more insolently, and yet with a jeering joviality that irritated Parker more than downright abuse would have done.
He started toward his engine, but Connick put out his big arm to interpose.
“Poodle,” he said, “I've got a place for you. I'm the champion dog-catcher of the West Branch region.” He reached for Parker's collar, but Parker ducked under his arm, and as he came up struck out with a force that sent the astonished giant reeling backward. Fury and desperation were behind the blow.
“Wal, of all the—” gasped Connick, pushing back his cap and staring in astonishment. His men laughed.
“I'll wring your neck, you bantam!” he bawled; and he came down on Parker with a rush.
On that slippery surface the odds were with the defensive. Moreover, Parker, having an athlete's confidence in his fists, suddenly responded to the instincts of primordial man. He leaped lightly to one side, caught the rushing giant's foot across his instep, and as Connick's moccasined feet went out from under him, the young engineer struck him behind the ear. He fell with a dismal thump of his head on the ice, and lay without motion.
But Parker's panting triumph was shortlived. As he stood over the giant, gallantly waiting for him to rise, he discovered that the rules of scientific combat were not observed in the woods. A half-dozen brawny woodsmen leaped upon him, seized him, threw him down, tied his arms and legs with as little ceremony as if he were a calf, and tossed him upon the ice-boat.
Connick had risen to a sitting posture, and viewed the struggle with mutterings of wrath while he rubbed his bumped head.
He scrambled up as if to interfere, but as his antagonist had by this time been disposed of, he roared a few sharp orders, and his willing crew set at work. Men with axes chopped holes a few feet apart in a circle about the engine. There were many choppers, and although the ice was three feet thick, the water soon came bubbling through. As soon as a hole was cut, other men stuck down their huge cross-cuts and began to saw the ice.
All too soon Parker, craning his neck where he lay on the ice-boat, heard an ominous buckling and crackling of ice, and saw his faithful Swogon disappear below the surface of the lake, her mighty splash sending the water gushing like a silvery geyser into the moonlight. The attached sleds, loaded with the rails and spikes and other material, followed like a line of huge, frightened beavers seeking their hole.
“There,” ejaculated Connick, wiping the sweat from his brow, “when that hole freezes up the Poquette Carry Railro'd will be canned for a time, anyway. Now three cheers for Colonel Gid Ward!”
The cheers were howled vociferously.
He pointed to the men of the settlement, who were now joined by their wives and children, and were watching operations from the bank.
“Three cheers for the brave men and the sweet ladies o' Sunkhaze!”
Loud laughter followed these cheers. The people on the shore remained discreetly silent.
“Three groans for the Poquette Railro'd!”
The hoarse cries rang out on the crisp night wind, and at the close one of those queer, splitting, wide-reaching, booming crackles, heard in the winter on big waters, spread across the lake from shore to shore.
“Even the old lake's with us!” a woodsman shouted.
Connick and his men had finished what they had come to Sunkhaze to do. They climbed aboard the huge ice-craft. The sheet was paid off, and with dragging peavey-sticks instead of centerboard to hold the contrivance into the wind, the boat moved away on its tack across the lake.
“Say good-by to your friend here!” Connick bellowed. “He says he thinks he'll go with us, strange country for to see.”
“Tell inquirin' admirers that his address in futur' will be north pole, shady side,” another rough humorist added.
The men on the shore did not reply. They understood perfectly the uncertain temper of “larking” woodsmen. There had been cases in times past when a taunting word had turned rude jollity into sour hankering for revenge.
The bottle began to go about on the sleds, and the refrain of a lumberman's chorus, with its riotous, “Whoop fa la larry, lo day!” came floating back to Sunkhaze long after the great sail had merged itself with the silvery radiance of the brilliant surface of the lake.
“Apparently there's other folks as have new schemes of travellin' acrost Spinnaker Lake,” observed the postmaster, breaking a long silence in the group of spectators. “Wal, I did all I could to post him on what he might expect when Gid Ward got his temper good an' started. It's too bad to see that property dumped that way, tho.”
“Ain't Gid Ward ever goin' to suffer for any of his actions?” demanded Parker's foreman, disgustedly.
“What are we goin' to do?” bleated another man.
“I'll write a letter to the high sheriff,” said the postmaster, and then he added, bitterly, “an' he'll prob'ly wait till it's settled goin' in the spring, same's he did when we sent down that complaint about Ward's men wreckin' Johnson's store. An' by that time he'll forget all about comin'. Talk about kings and emperors! If we hain't got one on West Branch waters, then you can brand me for a liar with one of my own date stamps.”
Parker maintained grim silence as he lay on the sled. No one spoke to him. The men were too busy with songs and rough jests over the business of the evening. The engineer would not confess to himself that he was frightened, but the wantonness and alacrity with which the irresponsible men had destroyed valuable property impressed him with ominous apprehension of what they might do to him. He wondered what revenge Connick was meditating.
It was a strange and tedious ride for the young man. The woodsmen sat jammed so closely about him that he could see only the frosty stars glimmering wanly in the moonlight. When the songs and the roaring conversations were stilled for a moment, he could hear the lisp of the runners on the smooth surface and the slashing grind of the iron-clad peavey-sticks.
Although the bodies of his neighbors had kept the cold blast from him, he staggered on his numb feet when they untied his bonds at Poquette and ordered him to get off the sled. Connick came along and gazed on the young man grimly while they were freeing him.
“Aha, my bantam!” he growled.
Parker braced himself to meet a blow. He felt that the giant would now take satisfactory vengeance for the discomfiture he had suffered before his men at Sunkhaze. Connick raised his hand, that in its big mitten seemed like a cloud against the moon, and brought it down. The young man gathered himself apprehensively, but the expected assault was merely a slap on his shoulder—a slap with such an unmistakable air of friendliness about it that Parker gazed up into the man's face with astonishment. Now he was to experience his first taste of the rude chivalry of the woods, a chivalry often based on sudden whim, but none the less sincere and manly—a chivalry of which he was to have further queer experience.
“My bantam,” said the big man, admiringly, “faith, but that was a tidy bito' footwork ye done down at Sunkhaze.” Good-humored grins and rueful scowls chased one another over his face, according as he patted Parker's back or rubbed the bump on his own head. “Sure, there's a big knob there, my boy. There's only one thing that's harder than your fist, an' that's Spinnaker ice.”
Parker attempted some embarrassed reply in way of apology, for this magnanimity of his foe touched him. The giant put up a protesting hand.
“Ye sartin done it good, my little man, an' I'm glad to know ye better. But Colonel Gid Ward, sure he lied about ye, or I'd never called ye names at Sunkhaze.”
“You didn't expect that man to tell the truth about me, did you?” Parker demanded.
“Why, he said ye was a little white-livered sneak that wouldn't dare to put up your hands to a Sunkhaze mosquito of the June breed, an' that ye were tryin' to come in here an' do business amongst real men. I couldn't stand that, I couldn't!”
“But my business—my reasons for being here—my responsibilities!” cried Parker. “I see he must have lied about that part of it.”
“Ah, I don't know anything about your business, nor care!” Connick growled. “I only know there's something about a Poquette railro'd in it. But all that's between you and Gid Ward. You can talk that over with him.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you and your men have destroyed that railroad property without having any special grudge against the project?”
“Why, railro'ds ain't any of our business,” the giant replied, with his eyes wide open and frank.
“What are you—slaves?” Parker cried, angrily. In addition to his lesson in woods' thivalry he was getting education regarding the irresponsibility of these unconventional children of the wild lands.
The taunt did not seem to anger the men.
“This railro'd is Gid Ward's business,” said Connick. “We work for Gid Ward, He owns the Poquette land, don't he? He said he didn't want any railro'd there. He told us to come down an' dump the thing. We come down, of course it's been dumped. You can fix that with him. But you're a good little fighter, my man. He didn't tell the truth about you.”
The young man groaned. The ethics of the woods were growing more opaque to his understanding.
“I'll introduce myself more formal,” said the woodsman, apparently with affable intent to be better acquainted with this young man who had shown that he possessed the qualities admired in the forest. “My name is Dan Connick, and these here are my hearties from Number 7 cuttin'.” He waved his hand, and the nearest men growled good-humored greetings.
“Well, Mr. Connick,” said Parker, dryly, “I thank you for the evening's entertainment, and now that you have done your duty to Colonel Ward I suppose I may return to Sunkhaze.” His heart sank as he thought of the poor Swogon weltering in the depths of the lake.
“Oh, ye've got to come along with us!” beamed Connick. “Colonel Ward has sent for ye!”