CHAPTER XXII
IT HAPPENS IN BOOKS
It is said that men remember many things when death is imminent; and for days and days something had been dying hard in Stephen O'Mara's breast. His step was slow that afternoon when he drew apart to take up his position alone upon a bit of higher ground, his shoulders heavy and drooping; yet his brain was feverishly active. Recollection of many long gone days—thoughts of many things—came darting to his mind; but they were not thoughts of desperate, last-minute expedients which might stave off this present crisis. For if he had believed that force alone would win for him; if he had had faith that mere numbers could save his construction, he would not have left Garry Devereau with his scores of laborers, busy five miles to the south. Steve was not thinking of his construction now; it had become a dim and remote consideration. It had lost its importance in his scheme of things.
They came slowly at first—Wickersham's logs—thudding heavily, one by one, into the underpinnings of the bridge, sliding free or lodging cross-current as the case might be; then in a thicker and thicker tide that ground and up-ended and settled with the weight of the coffee-colored flood behind it. In the beginning the handful of men who had put those timbers into place set themselves, doggedly, to save their completed structure, until the man who had worked with them, shoulder to shoulder, through the night called them with a nod back to the bank. Obediently then they collected in a small knot behind him, murmurous, gutterally grumbling; waiting his further word they squatted on their haunches, staring hungrily at their chief who stood in seeming surrender, head bowed before them.
The coming of Wickersham's men was not a thing of degrees. They poured into view through the brush fringe at the north edge of the marsh and halted, but only for an instant.
"Who is your friend at the time when you need a friend?——Harrigan, that's me!"
The maudlin menace of that chorus rocketed from ridge to ridge. Then, a tight-ranked mass of humanity, they had formed and were sweeping forward again, stepping out to the beat of the ragtime which was their marching hymn. And still the man who stood apart from the rest gave no sign that he was aware of their approach. Once he did straighten; when separate faces began to be distinguishable in that reeling mob he turned and gazed, emptily, toward the group a few yards away—Wickersham putty-skinned before this storm which he had brewed; Allison himself pale; and the girl whose eyes were staring back at him with no clear understanding in their depths. He made no move toward action, not even when the singing pack surged up and spread out before him, until a jostling crescent, straggling at the points, half encircled him and swallowed up as well the little knot behind which had come bristling to its feet. Their onslaught had seemed an irresistible thing, bent upon instant violence; and yet little by little their syncopated defiance died away until they, too, were staring uncertainly at that worn and mud-stained figure which seemed to hang its head. His very inertia robbed them of their impetus.
"Harrigan, that's me!" they faltered now, and there came a lull in the valley at Thirty-Mile, broken only by heavy breathing and the crunch of logs jamming beneath the bridge, and the ugly swirl of backed-up water. It held quiet while Steve looked up, mildly, and scanned the ring in front of him and nodded in recognition to a sullen few; then oaths broke that silence, and a command for room to pass. An upheaval disrupted the crescent's centre. Steve saw Big Louie's face high above the heads of his shorter companions; he watched him plow heavily forward. Shayne he glimpsed, automatically, and Fallon, faithful henchmen. And then Harrigan stood forth.
Long arms dangling, palms back, almost to his knees, that red-headed one minced forward on the balls of his feet. Harrigan was redeeming a promise many weeks overdue. It was spring, and Harrigan had come back!