King Spruce, A Novel

by Holman Day

On nights when April slept and the trickling slopes were stiffened by the cold, the crew of the Enchanted stole a march on spring. They awoke at sundown with the owls. They ate breakfast in the gloom of early evening. And, with the moon holding her lantern for them in the serene skies, they rushed their logs into the waiting arms of Blunder valley. That those arms would surrender the timber when the time was ripe seemed more certain as the days went by. The word of their zealous young man of law was encouraging. There had been pleas, representations, digging over of old charters, hunt through dusty records, citation of precedents, and some very direct talk regarding a thorough legislative investigation of conditions in the north country to regulate the rights of independent operators.

It was admittedly too big a question to be hurried. Litigation fattens by what it feeds on. Grown ponderous, it marches, slow and dignified, in short stages between terms, and sits and rests and puffs at every cross-road of argument, exception, appeal, and writ of error. Even that exigency of five millions of timber waiting in Blunder valley could not hasten the settlement of the young reformer’s main contention or the big question. But there are in this life some deeper sentiments than enthusiasm in reform. The old college friendship between Dwight Wade, famous centre of Burton’s eleven, and the little quarter-back whom he had shielded was one of those deeper sentiments. And now the lawyer, for the sake of that friendship, was willing to buy Dwight Wade’s success in Blunder valley by honorable compromise on certain points where compromise was honorable.

With a man open to sane reason and moral decency a compromise might have been effected. But after Pulaski D. Britt had craftily drawn out proffer of a truce and proposition of a trade in one phase of the great question of water-rights, he burst into a bellow of “blackmail” that echoed from end to end of the State. The words bristled in the newspapers controlled by the land barons and was rolled on the tongues of gossip. And as humanity in general, selfish in its easy-going way and jealous of resolute activity, likes to believe ill of reformers, men were readier to believe Britt than to give a motive of honest friendship its due. The jeers of the mob make what some people like to call “public opinion.” And sometimes when public opinion is loudly gabbling and can be politely referred to in case of doubt, there can be found judges who will listen with one ear to the voices of the street and with the other to the specious representations of the man in power.

So it came about that the judge presiding at the nisi prius term in the great county dominated by Pulaski D. Britt hearkened in chambers to some very distressing details set before him by that gentleman and certain other “employers of labor” and “developers of the great timber interests.” The judge pursed his lips and with his tongue clucked horrified astonishment at stories of brutal assaults made “on members of Pulaski Britt’s crew” (this being Dwight Wade’s desperate defence of himself, as pictured by Britt), and other tales of lunatics provoked to deeds of violence towards aforesaid “developers”; of incendiaries spirited away from officers; of men stolen out of Britt’s crew (poor Tommy Eye’s rescue from torture, as revamped for evidence by the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt); and, lastly, of that desperate and malignant attempt on the life of Honorable Pulaski D. Britt when a load of timber was sluiced at him from the shoulder of Enchanted Mountain.

Dwight Wade had not put into the hands of his lawyer the details of those pitiful secrets of the woods; for not only his honor as a man set a seal on his lips, but the sacredness of his love imposed higher obligation still. So his lawyer listened, amazed, incredulous, but incapable of refuting these tales in the categorical way that the law demands.

So much, then, for what “the gang” had done for Pulaski D. Britt and his interests. Britt lacked neither words nor will to make the story a black one.

As to what they intended to do, the Honorable Pulaski declaimed, with quivering finger rapping tattoo on the map of the Blunder valley, his voice hoarse with emotion and the perspiration of apprehensiveness streaking his puffy cheeks.

And with past enormities standing undefended, what might not a judge believe as to future atrocities when the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had made the prediction, his chief exhibit of intended outlawry being five millions of timber stranded in Blunder valley, and requiring “stolen water” to move it? His last argument was an uncontradicted allegation of attempted compromise, his last word “Blackmail!” shot at the face of the opposing lawyer while his stubby finger vibrated under the lawyer’s nose.

Therefore, at the end of it all, the clerk of courts wrote, the judge signed, and five minutes after the ink was dry High Sheriff Bennett Rodliff buttoned his coat over the folded paper and set his face towards Enchanted.

Forty-eight hours later, having travelled by train, by stage, by sledge, and on foot, he stood before Dwight Wade in the midst of his crew at the landings in Blunder valley, gave the paper to him, and watched his face while he read it. Being a man who enjoyed his own authority and exulted in the power of the law when it dealt crushing blows, the high sheriff noted with satisfaction that the young man’s face grew pale under its tan.