King Spruce, A Novel

by Holman Day

“Jump, Mr. Wade! Jump!” gasped the teamster. But Wade drove the peak of his cant-dog into a log and clung to the upright handle. He looked back. The great hawser spun itself off the spindle of the post and chased down the hill in spirals, utterly loose and free.

It was no dare-devil spirit that held him on the load. His soul was sick with horrible fear. It was something that was almost subconsciousness that kept him there. Perhaps it was pity—pity for Tommy Eye, so brave a martyr at his post of duty. In the flash of that instant when the great load gathered speed he stiffened himself to leap, then he looked at Tommy’s patched coat and remembered his oft-repeated little boast: “I’ve never left my hosses yet!” And so if Tommy could stay with his horses, he, Dwight Wade, could stay with Tommy! There was a queer thrill in his breast and the sting of sudden tears in his eyes as he decided.

The first rush of the descent was along an incline, steep but even. There were benches below—each shelf ten feet or so of jutting level—that broke the descent. Wade saw the jumper of Pulaski Britt strike the first bench. The old man went off the seat into the air, and when he fell he dropped his reins, clutched the seat, and kneeled, facing the pursuers, his face ghastly with terror. He crouched there, not daring to turn. Even if he had held his reins they would have been as useless in his hands as strips of fog. Ledges and trees hemmed either side. There was only the narrow road for his flying horses, and they ran straight on, needing neither whip nor admonitions.

The groan of five thousand feet of timber chafing the bind-chains when their great load struck the shelf was like the groan of an animal in agony. The chains held. It was Tommy who had seen to every link and every loop. Then, for the first time in his life, Wade heard the scream of horses in mortal fear. The lurch of the forward sled lifted the pole, and for one dreadful instant both animals kicked free and clear in air.

Tommy Eye shot two words at them like bullets. “Steady, boys!” he yelled. His head was hunched between his shoulders. His arms were out-stretched and rigid. Tommy Eye, master of horses! It was his lift on the bits at just the fraction of a second when they needed it that set them on their feet when the pole dropped. And down the next descent they swooped.

From his height Wade looked straight into the eyes of Pulaski Britt. It seemed that with every plunge of their hoofs Tommy Eye’s horses would smash that puffy face. The checks of the benches, when the huge load struck and staggered from time to time, allowed Britt’s lighter equipage a little start. But the mighty projectile that drove on him down the smooth slopes gained with every yard, for the thrusting pole swept the horses off their feet in plunge after plunge. And then it was Tommy Eye’s desperate coolness that helped them to their infrequent footing. All of the man’s face that Wade could see was a ridged jaw muscle above the faded collar of his coat. The peak of his cap hid all but that.

There was a curve at the foot of the snub slope. The wall of trees that closed the vista was disaster spelled by bolled trunk and sturdy limb. There stood the nether millstone: the upper was rushing down, and the grist would be flesh of horses and men. No man could see any other alternative. That horses, shaken every now and then on the up-cocked pole as helplessly as kittens, could bring that load around the curve was not a hope; it could be nothing but a dream of desperation.

As to what Tommy Eye dreamed or thought, his passenger had no hint. There was only the patch of cheek showing under the tilted cap. But the reins were just as tight, the out-stretched arms just as steady. Wade crouched low, his eyes on that rigid jaw muscle.

Suddenly, with a yell like the cry of something wild, Eye sprang to his feet, bestriding the logs, bracing himself for some mighty effort. They were at the Curve of Death! There came a surge on the tight reins, eight hoofs dug the snow in one frantic thrust, and they went around—they went around! With horses and driver straining to one side the great load pitched, swerved, and, after one breathless instant, swept on in the road around the curve.