In his calculations he had tried to keep prudence to the fore. But he had been waiting so long that at last prudence became dizzy in the swirl of possibilities. He had never intended to make Dwight Wade his mere cat’s-paw. But the vehement courage of that sturdy young man, as displayed in the battle of Castonia, had touched something in Rodburd Ide’s soul. All through his quiet life he had seen might and mastery make money out of the woods. And so at last he himself ventured, trusting much to the might and mastery he found in this self-reliant young gentleman whom Fate had flung into his life. Gasping at the boldness of it, he was willing that the whole winter’s cut of the Enchanted operation should be landed upon Blunder Stream. That there was a way to get their water he admitted to himself, but he did not dare to think much upon the means. Dwight Wade, driven by fierce anger against Pulaski Britt, who blocked his way to the girl whom his own hands could win but for Britt, smote the splint table and declared that there should be a spring flood in Blunder Stream.
“And if you fear lawsuits, being a man of property, Mr. Ide, you should not know what I intend to do. You may be held as a partner. Dissolve that partnership. You may be held as an employer. Discharge me when this log-cut is landed. Protect yourself. I have only my two hands for them to attach.”
The little man blinked at him admiringly, and then patted his shoulder.
“You needn’t tell me what you intend to do. You are the one for this end, and I can trust you. But when it comes to responsibility and the law, Wade, if those thieves try it on, after all they’ve stolen, you’ll find Rod Ide right with you. You’re my partner, and you’ll stay my partner,” declared Ide, stoutly.
He repeated it as they swung around the upper granite dome of Enchanted, and looked down the western slope into Blunder valley.
“There’s the place for your main road, Wade,” he said—“down that shoulder there! Swamp a half-mile of the steep pitch and you’ll come into the Cameron road, and it will take you to the stream. You’ll need about fifteen hundred feet of snub-line for that sharp incline there, and I’ll have it up to you by the time you are ready for it. Put the swale hay to the rest of the pitches. It will trig better than gravel. Don’t let ’em put a chain round a runner. You want to keep your road so smooth that every load of logs will go down there like a boy down a barn rollway. Sprinkle your levels and keep ’em glare ice. By ——, it’s a beauty of an outlook for a landing-job! Cut your high slopes this trip. Keep your logs above the level of that shoulder, and every hoss team will make a four-turn day of it. We’ll save a dollar a thousand on the landing-proposition alone, over and above the Enchanted road chance! And up there—” He gazed to the north up the valley over the wooded ridges, and then hushed his voice, as though there lay somewhere in that blue distance a thing that he feared.
“Up there is a lake of water, Mr. Ide, that God designed to flow down this valley, and it’s going to find its own channel again—somehow! I hope that doesn’t sound like cheap boasting. It’s only my idea of the right.”
He led the way back around the granite dome above the spruce benches, and the old man followed in silence.
Two hours later Rodburd Ide was off and away for Castonia, his jumper-bell jangling its echoes among the trees. He had hope in his heart and a letter in his pocket. The hope was his own. The letter was addressed to John Barrett’s daughter, and the superscription had brought a little scowl to the brows of the magnate of Castonia. Somehow it seemed like communication with the enemy. But Dwight Wade, writing it in the stillness of the night, while the little man snored in his bunk, had seemed in his own imaginings to be putting into that letter, as one lays away for safe keeping in a casket, all that heart and soul held of love and candor and tenderness. It was as though he intrusted those into her hands to preserve for him against the day when he might take them back into life and living once more. Just now they did not seem to belong to this life on Enchanted; they did not harmonize with the bitter conditions. He pressed down the envelope’s seal with the fantastic reflection that he was sending out of the conflict witnesses in whose presence he might stand ashamed.
Therefore, it was not treason that Rodburd Ide bore in the pocket of his big fur coat. Dwight Wade had sent tenderer emotions to the rear. He stood at the front, ready to meet iron with iron and fire with fire.