There are some combatants who, seeing a crisis approaching, feel that it is their best policy to sit down and wait until the crisis comes to them. This implies the calculation that perhaps the crisis may go around the other way, but it is not the policy for the intrepid. In his present mood Dwight Wade decided to go to meet the crisis, with head erect and shoulders back.
He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving Association, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was the fault of Dwight Wade’s resolute determination to face the issue.
The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt.
Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer’s cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which had pounded emphasis.
In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John Barrett’s office in “Castle Cut ’Em.”
On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June, and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the days between himself and the free life out-of-doors.
“Mr. Ide was tellin’ me why you are goin’ and where you are goin’,” said MacLeod, with simple earnestness. Kate Arden was sitting with her head on his knee, and he was smoothing her hair gently. “I wanted the little girl to stay here while I talked this to you. I told you about my dream once, man-fashion. I’ve told her about it. I ain’t excusin’ or screenin’ myself. I didn’t know, that’s all. I never tried to fool this little girl, Mr. Wade. They lied who said I did. I pitied her, Mr. Wade. But it’s a hard place to start in lovin’ a girl where I saw her first—and I’d seen some one else before I saw her. But I know now, sir. I’ve told her so all these days that she’s been with me, so true and tender. I reckon I never was in love before. I wouldn’t have acted that way with you, sir, if I really was in love and trusted. But there ain’t no mistake this time, Mr. Wade!” He gulped, a sob in his throat and a smile in his eyes. “I’m her man for ever and ever. She knows it and she’s glad. And I know she’s all mine, and I’m the happiest man in the whole north country.”
He broke in upon Wade’s eager burst of congratulation.
“There’s just one more word I wanted to say—sort of in the way of business, Mr. Wade.” There was a peculiar expression upon his face. “Maybe when you’re outside some one—some one may drop a word or inquire about her business—you know—something about her.” His look of strange significance became deeper, and Wade understood. “All is, you might say that she and Colin MacLeod are goin’ to get married, and Colin MacLeod ain’t askin’ anybody for her—only herself and God. God ain’t denyin’ His Fathership to a girl as good as she is. Colin MacLeod ain’t askin’ anything else—ain’t allowin’ anything else. Say that to ’em. He’s got his own two hands and eleven hundred dollars saved, and the big woods for her and for him. She and I wouldn’t be happy outside the big woods, Mr. Wade. Say it all to ’em, sir, if any one drops a word to you—and they probably will, because you’ve had words with them. You’ll know how to say it. But make it plain that it will be dangerous business for any man to reach out his hand to her or to me with anything in it—and tell ’em it’s Colin MacLeod says that,” he added, bitterly.