XII—STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT
THE men were there in the morning—a mob of them.
They came riding and they footed it into the village. The tavern office was crowded and the yard was full.
The growing buzz of them woke me before sunup, and I wasted no time in dressing and getting down.
It was just as I had expected—the spirit of a lark was in them. They were not like men who had come dragging themselves to work. The men I knew—and I knew a lot of them on account of my early goings and comings about the countryside on my uncle’s affairs—were on my back in a moment, their mouths full of questions.
But I was not ready to talk turkey till I had settled on one point, and I told them to be easy for a few minutes.
I needed one man for a special purpose. I had left the selection of that man for morning, feeling instinctively that I would do better to pick from the crowd than to give away my plans overnight.
I saw him inside of ten seconds. It was as clear a case of the right man for the job as if I had specified and had received the goods.
The man was Henshaw Hook, the best-known man in that section, the town auctioneer. He had the gift of gab, the science of talking all men into good humor, and was as alert in all his doings as a cricket on a hot spider.
I took him by the arm and rushed him up to my room. Mr. Hook had brought no ax to the levee; he told me, by way of explanation, that he had come around out of curiosity. So had a lot of others, I knew well enough.
Dodovah Vose followed us, for I had summoned him by a jerk of my head.
“Now, Mr. Hook, here’s the story short and snappy,” I told him. “I represent a big syndicate which is buying all kinds of property. I have bought Judge Kingsley’s wood-lot for the sake of what is on it—and it must be cleaned off in a hurry. Of course, I can’t hang around town to attend to that part of the business. I need an able man who can attend to it.” I pulled out my papers and inspected my figures. “Mostly we are after hardwood—cord-wood! Do you suppose you can pull a hundred or so good workers out of that crowd downstairs?”
“Yep!” snapped Hook. “Mebbe more.”
He was just as brisk as I was.
The newspaper had given me quotations in its market column, and I had chopped cord-wood in my own young life. Furthermore, in my everlasting scurryings after squirrels and birds I had made many explorations on Judge Kingsley’s domains. I was fully prepared to talk business, therefore.
“Mr. Hook, green cord-wood is selling for five dollars a cord. It’s a poor man with an ax who can’t chop, trim, and pile his cord a day—four-foot length. If you can put two hundred men on that job and will abide by the rules of my syndicate, you can turn a profit of around fifty dollars a day for your own pocket—for I offer you five per cent, on five dollars a cord.”
Mr. Hook promptly showed much interest. “You said rules?”
“I said rules!”
“Spill,” invited Mr. Hook.
“Get out your pencil and make notes—and I’ll ask you to do the same, Mr. Vose, so that there’ll be no comeback!”
They obeyed promptly.
“I am to do all my business with you—you are to do all the business with the choppers. You are the responsible party in all the details. You are to keep the books, measuring each man’s daily cut and giving him due credit. He is to be paid two dollars and fifty cents a cord—a weekly bonus of twenty-five dollars to the man who comes across with the most cords! No payment to be made for two weeks and then one week’s pay will be held back so that the men will not quit on me.”
“Don’t know about their agreeing!”
“Then the syndicate doesn’t want them. There’s no chance for argument. We’ll see how many volunteer when you put the matter up to ’em. I’m going to leave the speechmaking to you!”
“I’m fairly handy with my tongue,” he said, with a grin. “So I know. And I must be sure that you will not quit. That would disorganize the whole thing. All money to the men must go through your hands. Therefore, Mr. Hook, you must deposit with me, so as to cinch your responsibility, the sum of five hundred dollars in cash before axes start this morning.”
That idea did not please Mr. Henshaw Hook—not for a minute! He looked pretty blank.
“I haven’t any option in the matter,” I stated, coldly. “The syndicate makes its rules—but you can see that’s a common-sense one. I couldn’t be jumping around the country, leaving behind a lot of operations running by guess and by gosh, nobody financially responsible for the details.”
“Corporations have to have their rules, Hen,” said helpful Landlord Vose. “We all know how young Sidney, here, has come along in the world!”
“The Sortwells have advertised that all right,” agreed Mr. Hook.
“He isn’t working for dubs, Hen!”
“Probably not! But with the judge out of town I can’t dig up more than three hundred and fifty this morning, not even if I went and robbed my old woman’s work-basket!”
“Needn’t worry about that,” said Dodovah Vose. “I’ve got public spirit and I want to see business get a hump on in this town. I’ll lend you enough to make up the five hundred.”
Mr. Hook devoted thirty seconds to meditation. “Let’s see—what did I understand you to say your concern is?” he queried with assumed innocence.
“I did not say—we are not advertising; we are pussyfooting so that they won’t be boosting land values on us,” I said, serenely.
“But among friends—”
“News travels faster among friends than anywhere else. Mr. Hook, I’m not going to risk my job by shooting off my mouth. You don’t think I’ve come back to my home town to work a flimflam trick, do you?”
“I’ll grab in on this myself rather than see the plan dumped,” stated the landlord.
“I’ll go down and put the thing up to the boys,” offered Hook, hastily. Fifty dollars and over a day had properly baited this Hook.
Our auctioneer was a good talker! When—as he put it to them amidst laughter—he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal that they were ready to go to work.
Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was counting the deposit money—a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready for that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank paper in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my crook acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen.
I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an envelope in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that sandwich by flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the blank paper. I licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed the packet to Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer and slammed it shut.
“I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on a little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will feel all right about our affairs.”
I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of Navarre—providing I remember my Fourth Reader selection. That wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked against my ribs in most comforting manner.
I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash down.
I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for extra profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and there was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special bargains with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also considerable pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a portable-sawmill man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, came hurrying to the village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a sizable deposit; advertising was certainly paying!
One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose to the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He made several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to walk back to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his wagon and I accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was footsore.
“Recorded your deed yet?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” I said, airily.
“Probably not, seeing that you haven’t got any.”
I let it go at that, having no sensible explanation to give a business man like my uncle.
“So, as it stands,” he went on, “it’s a case of neck-and-neck whether he’ll jew you or you’ll jew him. As bad as I hate him I’m getting to hate you worse! I hope he’ll stick you. But I doubt it. A young pirate who can step in here and steal a whole wood-lot right under the noses of men who ought to know better is qualified to give old Judas I-scarrot lessons in deviltry.”
“I don’t blame you for feeling pleased and for praising me, Uncle Deck. I certainly am doing credit to your training.”
“But as first selectman of this town I’ve got a reputation to look after, and where will I get off with one of my blood and name serving time in State prison for grand larceny?”
“Oh, I’m not going to State prison.”
“You will, with that old devil after you, surer’n hell’s down-hill!”
“We’re sort of partners, the judge and I.” I decided that I might as well give him a jolt or two, even if his common sense did tell him that I was lying.
“Oh, bah-h-h!” he yelped.
“And as his partner I want to warn you against trying to trig his business affairs.”
He almost yanked the jaw off his horse, pulling the animal to a standstill.
“Condemn your young tripe! You are about as much a partner of his as a pullet is partner of a polecat! Don’t you talk up to me! If you are trying to cheat him I’ll help you do it. But if you are trying to help him, down goes your house!”
“I propose to help him—help his family,” I said.
To my surprise he held himself in. “Help him how?” he asked.
“Why, by making you quit hounding him, for one thing. It’s time this foolish old row was stopped. I am taking a special interest in Judge Kingsley’s family in these days.”
“Down to brass tacks, now! You mean just what you say, do you?”
“I most certainly do, Uncle Deck!”
“Don’t you dare to call me uncle, you wall-eyed pup! You have gone to leaning up against that girl like a tomcat cuddling a warm brick, have you? You’re letting her fool you along—”
“Shut that dirty mouth of yours!” I shouted.
“Get out of this wagon—out with you!”
I obeyed promptly, for I had had plenty of his society.
He waggled his whip-lash close to my nose when I stood in the road. “When you get into State prison, where you belong,” he snarled, “you’ll have a chum there. For that’s where I’m going to send old Kingsley, so help me the living God!”
And he curled the lash with all his might under the belly of his horse, taking it out on the poor brute, and tore away, with the animal on the dead run.
I trudged along in the dust he left flying. A fine chance I stood of handling my uncle Deck!
A precious lot of fool babbling that talk had been at the front door of the Kingsley house the night before!
Nevertheless, I went to the house again that evening, for I had a business excuse. I told mother and daughter that certain urgent matters called me out of town and that I would be leaving early in the morning. I had a word or two to say about my arrangements for clearing the lot so that their minds might be at ease if any gossip came to them; in country communities there are busybodies who are always guessing at mischief and are trying to make trouble.
I remained with them only a short time, for I was afraid they would try to get consolation out of me regarding my uncle and I was not in the mood to do any more lying. I was in a generally uncomfortable state of mind, anyway, and I knew that Celene was troubled by my manner. There seemed to be sense of impending evil hovering over the three of us. Frankly, my uncle’s threat regarding the judge had thrown a good-sized scare into me; Uncle Deck had truly acted as if he knew what he was talking about. My own conscience was creaking considerably inside me. When I rose to go Celene did not see me to the door. She gazed at me tenderly when I stated that I would be back in a few days, but some sort of reserve kept her at her mother’s side.
The stars were certainly not so bright that night when I walked back to the tavern. In my gloom a memory popped into my mind, queerly enough. I remembered that Dodovah Vose had loaned me ten dollars the night he helped me to escape.
I plucked a bill out of my breast pocket and handed it to him when I walked into the tavern.
“I hope you’ll excuse the delay,” I pleaded.
“I sure will,” he replied, heartily. “You’re an honest chap, young Sidney!”
But I was far from feeling honest that night.