When Titans Drive

by Burt L. Standish

Mr. Wolcott Sears continued his fishing trip along the route the lumbermen were following, and began frequently to appear in camp for an evening pipe with Bainbridge. One evening they had a private conference, which lasted until the small hours, and the Boston capitalist finally departed, leaving Bainbridge apparently much gratified.

The crew was with Bob to a man. By this time they had gathered an inkling of the plot against the firm, and of the stakes involved. Men had strayed into camp telling of the extraordinary reductions made by the trust in the price of manufactured lumber. Large sales had resulted to various parties, report said, thus preventing Bainbridge & Tweedy, as well as several other small independents, from disposing of a single plank.

The lumberjacks were not slow in putting two and two together. They remembered rumors current in the big woods for many months of the fight which had started between the trust and this man who was their boss. It was a fight to the finish, people said, in which one side or the other must go under, From all appearances it looked to these earnest, simple-minded woodsmen as if Bainbridge would be vanquished unless he could get that drive safely into the mill booms; and to that end they strained every nerve. They toiled from dawn to dark, staggering into camp each night so utterly weary that they sometimes fell asleep with their supper half eaten before them; only to be up before daybreak to do it all over again.

It was a period of stress and strain, but it ended at last when the drive was ushered into the Penobscot, to be seized by the strong current and urged on toward the mills at Lancaster, that goal which had seemed a little while ago so unattainable, yet which was now so near.

That very afternoon was perpetrated the crowning outrage. Bainbridge was shot at from the bushes—shot at deliberately with an intent to kill which was defeated only by the miracle of chance which made him bend over to tighten a shoe lace at the precise moment of firing.

Wild with fury, the men who were present dashed in pursuit of the would-be assassins, but to no purpose. They were in the land of civilization now, where there were motor cars. By the time the crowd of rivermen had surged up the bank and plunged through the undergrowth, the rascally tools of the trust were well away, leaving their pursuers to rage impotently that there was not a gun in the party with which the tires could be punctured and the car stopped.

The most angry of them all was Curly Kollock. He had double cause for wrath, having received that morning a letter from the very town of Lancaster toward which they were striving so hard to push the drive. Brief it was, and to the point. He had played the traitor, Bill wrote scathingly. There was only one way by which he could rid himself of the stigma, and return to the good graces of the gang. He must come at once to a certain house on the outskirts of the town, prepared to place himself absolutely in his brother’s hands.

When the younger Kollock read those lines he swore roundly. That even Bill should dare write in such a manner made him rage. He was no man’s slave, and there were bounds beyond which even a brother could step. He was on the point of asking for time off to come to a definite, final settlement with the crowd when the attempted shooting occurred. At first this cowardly deed only added to his rage, but swiftly in its wake came unwonted gravity.

Disagreeable, even serious, as all those other persecutions had been, not one of them held the weight of this last culminating effort to put Bob Bainbridge out of the running. That Bill was mixed up in it Curly had no doubt, and the realization frightened him. He had always looked up to his older brother with admiration and a little awe, and he could not bear now to think of him mixed up in anything so contemptible. There was the danger involved, too, and altogether the youngster felt as if he must see Bill at once and try to make him cut the gang and get away. His efforts might have no effect, but there was at least a chance.

That night—or rather early in the morning, while it was still pitch black—he slipped quietly out of camp without a word to any one. He reached Lancaster at four in the afternoon, having made most of the journey in a scow doing about six miles an hour. Going at once to the address given in the letter, he found that his brother had gone out not fifteen minutes before.