“Twenty a month for daring death—or fighting from dawn to dark—
Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God’s great public park.
We roofless go, with the cook’s bateau to follow our hungry crew—
A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes through.”
—Ballad of the Drive.
Wade’s poor beast was staggering when at last he topped the horseback overlooking Enchanted valley. He himself plodded behind the jumper, clinging to it, walking to keep awake. He had started in the dusk, he had been nearly twenty-four hours on the road from Castonia, and it was growing dusk again. He was too utterly weary to be surprised when Tommy Eye came hurrying down from a knoll that commanded a long view of the tote road. The light of a little camp-fire glowed on the knoll, and he saw that a horse was tethered there.
“I’m gettin’ to be a worse outlaw than ever, Mr. Wade,” declared the teamster. “I’ve stole one of your hosses, and grub and hay from the store camp, and I’m livin’ here in the woods. I’ve been waitin’ for you,” he added, wistfully. “I might have slept a little last night when I didn’t know, but I reckon I didn’t. I figgered you’d come. I’ve been waitin’ for you. They can’t say I’m one of your men, Mr. Wade. I’m livin’ here in the woods.”
“Look here, Eye,” blurted his employer, roughly, “I haven’t any time nor taste for fool talk just now. You take the horse back to camp and get on your job.” He started on.
“You don’t sound as though you’d got what you went after,” cried Tommy, unabashed. He came trotting behind. “You didn’t get satisfaction, then, Mr. Wade! Injunction still there, hey? You didn’t get—”
“What did you suppose I’d get from Pulaski Britt, you infernal fool?” His own brutality towards the faithful servitor made him ashamed. But the spirit of evil that had taken possession of him was speaking through lips that he surrendered in weariness of body and bitterness of soul. And when a shade of repentance smote him at sight of Tommy trotting sorrowfully at his side, he gasped out of his woe. “He has dynamited our booms, Tommy. Did it with his own hands. And now”—he threw up his arms towards Blunder Lake—“wait till to-morrow!”
Tommy Eye stopped without a word and let Wade go on.
“Wait till to-morrow?” he mumbled, as he scrambled back up the knoll. “Wait till to-morrow, when I’ve got a two-hoss load of canned thunder planted under Blunder dam, and the devil helpin’ me by puttin’ them two to sleep ev’ry night, snorin’ like quill-pigs?” He waited until Wade had stumbled out of sight, then cinched upon his horse the blankets that had served for couch during his vigil, mounted, and urged the animal through the woods, kicking heels into its flanks.