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diff --git a/old/11223-8.txt b/old/11223-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07897f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11223-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9462 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Big Timber, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Big Timber + A Story of the Northwest + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG TIMBER *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. + + + + + +[Illustration: She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + + + BIG TIMBER + + A Story of the Northwest + + By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + + + + + + With Frontispiece + By DOUGLAS DUER + + + 1916 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + +I. GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW +II. MR. ABBEY ARRIVES +III. HALFWAY POINT +IV. A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME +V. THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER +VI. THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL +VII. SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE +VIII. DURANCE VILE +IX. JACK FYFE'S CAMP +X. ONE WAY OUT +XI. THE PLUNGE +XII. AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED +XIII. IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME +XIV. A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE +XV. A RESURRECTION +XVI. THE CRISIS +XVII. IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH +XVIII. THE OPENING GUN +XIX. FREE AS THE WIND +XX. ECHOES +XXI. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING +XXII. THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE +XXIII. A RIDE BY NIGHT +XXIV. "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW + +The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve +of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,--narrow on its +floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,--down +which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river +that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, +roaring through the granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range, took a +wider channel and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen from it as +haste falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his destination near +at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for now it was but +threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved placidly--as an +old man moves when all the headlong urge of youth is spent and his race +near run. + +On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella Benton +nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her elbow on the +window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening valley instead of a +bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to see wooded heights lift +green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against +the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown +tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of +interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and dry +and still. + +She was near the finish of her journey. Pensively she considered the end +of the road. How would it be there? What manner of folk and country? +Between her past mode of life and the new that she was hurrying toward +lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class even. It was bound to +be crude, to be full of inconveniences and uncouthness. Her brother's +letters had partly prepared her for that. Involuntarily she shrank from +it, had been shrinking from it by fits and starts all the way, as +flowers that thrive best in shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude +winds. Not that Estella Benton was particularly flower-like. On the +contrary she was a healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to be +described as beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a daughter +of the well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes in +families to which American politicians unctuously refer as the backbone +of the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty pane, she +bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was full of misgivings. + +Four days of lonely travel across a continent, hearing the drumming +clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely +conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles +between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, +or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of view, +upon conditioning circumstances and previous experience. + +Estella Benton's experience along such lines was chiefly a blank and the +conditioning circumstances of her present journey were somber enough to +breed thought that verged upon the melancholy. Save for a natural +buoyancy of spirit she might have wept her way across North America. She +had no tried standard by which to measure life's values for she had +lived her twenty-two years wholly shielded from the human maelstrom, +fed, clothed, taught, an untried product of home and schools. Her head +was full of university lore, things she had read, a smattering of the +arts and philosophy, liberal portions of academic knowledge, all tagged +and sorted like parcels on a shelf to be reached when called for. Buried +under these externalities the ego of her lay unaroused, an incalculable +quantity. + +All of which is merely by way of stating that Miss Estella Benton was a +young woman who had grown up quite complacently in that station of life +in which--to quote the Philistines--it had pleased God to place her, and +that Chance had somehow, to her astonished dismay, contrived to thrust a +spoke in the smooth-rolling wheels of destiny. Or was it Destiny? She +had begun to think about that, to wonder if a lot that she had taken for +granted as an ordered state of things was not, after all, wholly +dependent upon Chance. She had danced and sung and played +lightheartedly accepting a certain standard of living, a certain +position in a certain set, a pleasantly ordered home life, as her +birthright, a natural heritage. She had dwelt upon her ultimate destiny +in her secret thoughts as foreshadowed by that of other girls she knew. +The Prince would come, to put it in a nutshell. He would woo gracefully. +They would wed. They would be delightfully happy. Except for the matter +of being married, things would move along the same pleasant channels. + +Just so. But a broken steering knuckle on a heavy touring car set things +in a different light--many things. She learned then that death is no +respecter of persons, that a big income may be lived to its limit with +nothing left when the brain force which commanded it ceases to function. +Her father produced perhaps fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year in +his brokerage business, and he had saved nothing. Thus at one stroke she +was put on an equal footing with the stenographer in her father's +office. Scarcely equal either, for the stenographer earned her bread and +was technically equipped for the task, whereas Estella Benton had no +training whatsoever, except in social usage. She did not yet fully +realize just what had overtaken her. Things had happened so swiftly, to +ruthlessly, that she still verged upon the incredulous. Habit clung +fast. But she had begun to think, to try and establish some working +relation between herself and things as she found them. She had +discovered already that certain theories of human relations are not +soundly established in fact. + +She turned at last in her seat. The Limited's whistle had shrilled for +a stop. At the next stop--she wondered what lay in store for her just +beyond the next stop. While she dwelt mentally upon this, her hands were +gathering up some few odds and ends of her belongings on the berth. + +Across the aisle a large, smooth-faced young man watched her with covert +admiration. When she had settled back with bag and suitcase locked and +strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted and gloved, he leaned over +and addressed her genially. + +"Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring Springs?" + +Miss Benton's gray eyes rested impersonally on the top of his head, +traveled slowly down over the trim front of his blue serge to the +polished tan Oxfords on his feet, and there was not in eyes or on +countenance the slightest sign that she saw or heard him. The large +young man flushed a vivid red. + +Miss Benton was partly amused, partly provoked. The large young man had +been her vis-à-vis at dinner the day before and at breakfast that +morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation each time, but it +had been diplomatically confined to salt and other condiments, the +weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no objection to young men in +general, quite the contrary. But she did not consider it quite the thing +to countenance every amiable stranger. + +Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the blast of +the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave the train. +Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object down an aisle +slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss Estella Benton stood +on the plank platform of Hopyard station. Northward stretched a flat, +unlovely vista of fire-blackened stumps. Southward, along track and +siding, ranged a single row of buildings, a grocery store, a shanty with +a huge sign proclaiming that it was a bank, dwelling, hotel and +blacksmith shop whence arose the clang of hammered iron. A dirt road ran +between town and station, with hitching posts at which farmers' nags +stood dispiritedly in harness. + +To the Westerner such spots are common enough; he sees them not as +fixtures, but as places in a stage of transformation. By every side +track and telegraph station on every transcontinental line they spring +up, centers of productive activity, growing into orderly towns and +finally attaining the dignity of cities. To her, fresh from trim +farmsteads and rural communities that began setting their houses in +order when Washington wintered at Valley Forge, Hopyard stood forth +sordid and unkempt. And as happens to many a one in like case, a wave of +sickening loneliness engulfed her, and she eyed the speeding Limited as +one eyes a departing friend. + +"How could one live in a place like this?" she asked herself. + +But she had neither Slave of the Lamp at her beck, nor any Magic Carpet +to transport her elsewhere. At any rate, she reflected, Hopyard was not +her abiding-place. She hoped that her destination would prove more +inviting. + +Beside the platform were ranged two touring cars. Three or four of +those who had alighted entered these. Their baggage was piled over the +hoods, buckled on the running boards. The driver of one car approached +her. "Hot Springs?" he inquired tersely. + +She affirmed this, and he took her baggage, likewise her trunk check +when she asked how that article would be transported to the lake. She +had some idea of route and means, from her brother's written +instruction, but she thought he might have been there to meet her. At +least he would be at the Springs. + +So she was whirled along a country road, jolted in the tonneau between a +fat man from Calgary and a rheumatic dame on her way to take hot sulphur +baths at St. Allwoods. She passed seedy farmhouses, primitive in +construction, and big barns with moss plentifully clinging on roof and +gable. The stretch of charred stumps was left far behind, but in every +field of grain and vegetable and root great butts of fir and cedar rose +amid the crops. Her first definitely agreeable impression of this land, +which so far as she knew must be her home, was of those huge and +numerous stumps contending with crops for possession of the fields. +Agreeable, because it came to her forcibly that it must be a sturdy +breed of men and women, possessed of brawn and fortitude and high +courage, who made their homes here. Back in her country, once beyond +suburban areas, the farms lay like the squares of a chess board, trim +and orderly, tamely subdued to agriculture. Here, at first hand, she saw +how man attacked the forest and conquered it. But the conquest was +incomplete, for everywhere stood those stubborn roots, six and eight and +ten feet across, contending with man for its primal heritage, the soil, +perishing slowly as perish the proud remnants of a conquered race. + +Then the cleared land came to a stop against heavy timber. The car +whipped a curve and drove into what the fat man from Calgary facetiously +remarked upon as the tall uncut. Miss Benton sighted up these noble +columns to where a breeze droned in the tops, two hundred feet above. +Through a gap in the timber she saw mountains, peaks that stood bold as +the Rockies, capped with snow. For two days she had been groping for a +word to define, to sum up the feeling which had grown upon her, had been +growing upon her steadily, as the amazing scroll of that four-day +journey unrolled. She found it now, a simple word, one of the simplest +in our mother tongue--bigness. Bigness in its most ample sense,--that +was the dominant note. Immensities of distance, vastness of rolling +plain, sheer bulk of mountain, rivers that one crossed, and after a +day's journey crossed again, still far from source or confluence. And +now this unending sweep of colossal trees! + +At first she had been overpowered with a sense of insignificance utterly +foreign to her previous experience. But now she discovered with an +agreeable sensation of surprise she could vibrate to such a keynote. And +while she communed with this pleasant discovery the car sped down a +straight stretch and around a corner and stopped short to unload sacks +of mail at a weather-beaten yellow edifice, its windows displaying +indiscriminately Indian baskets, groceries, and hardware. Northward +opened a broad scope of lake level, girt about with tremendous peaks +whose lower slopes were banked with thick forest. + +Somewhere distant along that lake shore was to be her home. As the car +rolled over the four hundred yards between store and white-and-green St. +Allwoods, she wondered if Charlie would be there to meet her. She was +weary of seeing strange faces, of being directed, of being hustled +about. + +But he was not there, and she recalled that he never had been notable +for punctuality. Five years is a long time. She expected to find him +changed--for the better, in certain directions. He had promised to be +there; but, in this respect, time evidently had wrought no appreciable +transformation. + +She registered, was assigned a room, and ate luncheon to the melancholy +accompaniment of a three-man orchestra struggling vainly with Bach in an +alcove off the dining room. After that she began to make inquiries. +Neither clerk nor manager knew aught of Charlie Benton. They were both +in their first season there. They advised her to ask the storekeeper. + +"MacDougal will know," they were agreed. "He knows everybody around +here, and everything that goes on." + +The storekeeper, a genial, round-bodied Scotchman, had the information +she desired. + +"Charlie Benton?" said he. "No, he'll be at his camp up the lake. He was +in three or four days back. I mind now, he said he'd be down Thursday; +that's to-day. But he isn't here yet, or his boat'd be by the wharf +yonder." + +"Are there any passenger boats that call there?" she asked. + +MacDougal shook his head. + +"Not reg'lar. There's a gas boat goes t' the head of the lake now an' +then. She's away now. Ye might hire a launch. Jack Fyfe's camp tender's +about to get under way. But ye wouldna care to go on her, I'm thinkin'. +She'll be loaded wi' lumberjacks--every man drunk as a lord, most like. +Maybe Benton'll be in before night." + +She went back to the hotel. But St. Allwoods, in its dual capacity of +health-and-pleasure resort, was a gilded shell, making a brave outward +show, but capitalizing chiefly lake, mountains, and hot, mineral +springs. Her room was a bare, cheerless place. She did not want to sit +and ponder. Too much real grief hovered in the immediate background of +her life. It is not always sufficient to be young and alive. To sit +still and think--that way lay tears and despondency. So she went out and +walked down the road and out upon the wharf which jutted two hundred +yards into the lake. + +It stood deserted save for a lone fisherman on the outer end, and an +elderly couple that preceded her. Halfway out she passed a slip beside +which lay moored a heavily built, fifty-foot boat, scarred with usage, a +squat and powerful craft. Lakeward stretched a smooth, unrippled +surface. Overhead patches of white cloud drifted lazily. Where the +shadows from these lay, the lake spread gray and lifeless. Where the +afternoon sun rested, it touched the water with gleams of gold and pale, +delicate green. A white-winged yacht lay offshore, her sails in slack +folds. A lump of an island lifted two miles beyond, all cliffs and +little, wooded hills. And the mountains surrounding in a giant ring +seemed to shut the place away from all the world. For sheer wild, rugged +beauty, Roaring Lake surpassed any spot she had ever seen. Its quiet +majesty, its air of unbroken peace soothed and comforted her, sick with +hurry and swift-footed events. + +She stood for a time at the outer wharf end, mildly interested when the +fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at her own +subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her like a virtuoso +on his violin. And this was something that she did not recall as a trait +in her own character. She had never inclined to the volatile--perhaps +because until the motor accident snuffed out her father's life she had +never dealt in anything but superficial emotions. + +After a time she retraced her steps. Nearing the halfway slip, she saw +that a wagon from which goods were being unloaded blocked the way. A +dozen men were stringing in from the road, bearing bundles and bags and +rolls of blankets. They were big, burly men, carrying themselves with a +reckless swing, with trousers cut off midway between knee and ankle so +that they reached just below the upper of their high-topped, heavy, +laced boots. Two or three were singing. All appeared unduly happy, +talking loudly, with deep laughter. One threw down his burden and +executed a brief clog. Splinters flew where the sharp calks bit into the +wharf planking, and his companions applauded. + +It dawned upon Stella Benton that these might be Jack Fyfe's drunken +loggers, and she withdrew until the way should be clear, vitally +interested because her brother was a logging man, and wondering if these +were the human tools he used in his business, if these were the sort of +men with whom he associated. They were a rough lot--and some were very +drunk. With the manifestations of liquor she had but the most shadowy +acquaintance. But she would have been little less than a fool not to +comprehend this. + +Then they began filing down the gangway to the boat's deck. One slipped, +and came near falling into the water, whereat his fellows howled +gleefully. Precariously they negotiated the slanting passage. All but +one: he sat him down at the slip-head on his bundle and began a +quavering chant. The teamster imperturbably finished his unloading, two +men meanwhile piling the goods aboard. + +The wagon backed out, and the way was clear, save for the logger sitting +on his blankets, wailing his lugubrious song. From below his fellows +urged him to come along. A bell clanged in the pilot house. The exhaust +of a gas engine began to sputter through the boat's side. From her after +deck a man hailed the logger sharply, and when his call was unheeded, he +ran lightly up the slip. A short, squarely-built man he was, light on +his feet as a dancing master. + +He spoke now with authority, impatiently. + +"Hurry aboard, Mike; we're waiting." + +The logger rose, waved his hand airily, and turned as if to retreat down +the wharf. The other caught him by the arm and spun him face to the +slip. + +"Come on, Slater," he said evenly. "I have no time to fool around." + +The logger drew back his fist. He was a fairly big man. But if he had in +mind to deal a blow, it failed, for the other ducked and caught him with +both arms around the middle. He lifted the logger clear of the wharf, +hoisted him to the level of his breast, and heaved him down the slip as +one would throw a sack of bran. + +The man's body bounced on the incline, rolled, slid, tumbled, till at +length he brought up against the boat's guard, and all that saved him a +ducking was the prompt extension of several stout arms, which clutched +and hauled him to the flush after deck. He sat on his haunches, +blinking. Then he laughed. So did the man at the top of the slip and the +lumberjacks clustered on the boat. Homeric laughter, as at some +surpassing jest. But the roar of him who had taken that inglorious +descent rose loudest of all, an explosive, "Har--har--har!" + +He clambered unsteadily to his feet, his mouth expanded in an amiable +grin. + +"Hey, Jack," he shouted. "Maybe y' c'n throw m' blankets down too, while +y'r at it." + +The man at the slip-head caught up the roll, poised it high, and cast it +from him with a quick twist of his body. The woolen missile flew like a +well-put shot and caught its owner fair in the breast, tumbling him +backwards on the deck--and the Homeric laughter rose in double strength. +Then the boat began to swing, and the man ran down and leaped the +widening space as she drew away from her mooring. + +Stella Benton watched the craft gather way, a trifle shocked, her breath +coming a little faster. The most deadly blows she had ever seen struck +were delivered in a more subtle, less virile mode, a curl of the lip, an +inflection of the voice. These were a different order of beings. This, +she sensed was man in a more primitive aspect, man with the conventional +bark stripped clean off him. And she scarcely knew whether to be amused +or frightened when she reflected that among such her life would +presently lie. Charlie had written that she would find things and people +a trifle rougher than she was used to. She could well believe that. +But--they were picturesque ruffians. + +Her interested gaze followed the camp tender as it swung around the +wharf-end, and so her roaming eyes were led to another craft drawing +near. This might be her brother's vessel. She went back to the outer +landing to see. + +Two men manned this boat. As she ranged alongside the piles, one stood +forward, and the other aft with lines to make fast. She cast a look at +each. They were prototypes of the rude crew but now departed, +brown-faced, flannel-shirted, shod with calked boots, unshaven for days, +typical men of the woods. But as she turned to go, the man forward and +almost directly below her looked her full in the face. + +"Stell!" + +She leaned over the rail. + +"Charlie Benton--for Heaven's sake." + +They stared at each other. + +"Well," he laughed at last. "If it were not for your mouth and eyes, +Stell, I wouldn't have known you. Why, you're all grown up." + +He clambered to the wharf level and kissed her. The rough stubble of his +beard pricked her tender skin and she drew back. + +"My word, Charlie, you certainly ought to shave," she observed with +sisterly frankness. "I didn't know you until you spoke. I'm awfully glad +to see you, but you do need _some one_ to look after you." + +Benton laughed tolerantly. + +"Perhaps. But, my dear girl, a fellow doesn't get anywhere on his +appearance in this country. When a fellow's bucking big timber, he +shucks off a lot of things he used to think were quite essential. By +Jove, you're a picture, Stell. If I hadn't been expecting to see you, I +wouldn't have known you." + +"I doubt if I should have known you either," she returned drily. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +MR. ABBEY ARRIVES + +Stella accompanied her brother to the store, where he gave an order for +sundry goods. Then they went to the hotel to see if her trunks had +arrived. Within a few yards of the fence which enclosed the grounds of +St. Allwoods a man hailed Benton, and drew him a few steps aside. Stella +walked slowly on, and presently her brother joined her. + +The baggage wagon had brought the trunks, and when she had paid her +bill, they were delivered at the outer wharf-end, where also arrived at +about the same time a miscellaneous assortment of supplies from the +store and a Japanese with her two handbags. So far as Miss Estella +Benton could see, she was about to embark on the last stage of her +journey. + +"How soon will you start?" she inquired, when the last of the stuff was +stowed aboard the little steamer. + +"Twenty minutes or so," Benton answered. "Say," he went on casually, +"have you got any money, Stell? I owe a fellow thirty dollars, and I +left the bank roll and my check book at camp." + +Miss Benton drew the purse from her hand bag and gave it to him. He +pocketed it and went off down the wharf, with the brief assurance that +he would be gone only a minute or so. + +The minute, however, lengthened to nearly an hour, and Sam Davis had his +blow-off valve hissing, and Stella Benton was casting impatient glances +shoreward before Charlie strolled leisurely back. + +"You needn't fire up quite so strong, Sam," he called down. "We won't +start for a couple of hours yet." + +"Sufferin' Moses!" Davis poked his fiery thatch out from the engine +room. "I might 'a' known better'n to sweat over firin' up. You generally +manage to make about three false starts to one get-away." + +Benton laughed good-naturedly and turned away. + +"Do you usually allow your men to address you in that impertinent way?" +Miss Benton desired to know. + +Charlie looked blank for a second. Then he smiled, and linking his arm +affectionately in hers, drew her off along the wharf, chuckling to +himself. + +"My dear girl," said he, "you'd better not let Sam Davis or any of Sam's +kind hear you pass remarks like that. Sam would say exactly what he +thought about such matters to his boss, or King George, or to the first +lady of the land, regardless. Sabe? We're what you'll call primitive out +here, yet. You want to forget that master and man business, the servant +proposition, and proper respect, and all that rot. Outside the English +colonies in one or two big towns, that attitude doesn't go in B.C. +People in this neck of the woods stand pretty much on the same class +footing, and you'll get in bad and get me in bad if you don't remember +that. I've got ten loggers working for me in the woods. Whether they're +impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the job +properly. They're men, you understand, not servants. None of them would +hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything I do. If I don't +like it, I can fight him or fire him. They won't stand for the sort of +airs you're accustomed to. They have the utmost respect for a woman, but +a man is merely a two-legged male human like themselves, whether he +wears mackinaws or broadcloth, has a barrel of money of none at all. +This will seem odd to you at first, but you'll get used to it. You'll +find things rather different out here." + +"I suppose so," she agreed. "But it sounds queer. For instance, if one +of papa's clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he'd have been +discharged on the spot." + +"The logger's a different breed," Benton observed drily. "Or perhaps +only the same breed manifesting under different conditions. He isn't +servile. He doesn't have to be." + +"Why the delay, though?" she reverted to the point. "I thought you were +all ready to go." + +"I am," Charlie enlightened. "But while I was at the store just now, +Paul Abbey 'phoned from Vancouver to know if there was an up-lake boat +in. His people are big lumber guns here, and it will accommodate him and +won't hurt me to wait a couple of hours and drop him off at their camp. +I've got more or less business dealings with them, and it doesn't hurt +to be neighborly. He'd have to hire a gas-boat otherwise. Besides, +Paul's a pretty good head." + +This, of course, being strictly her brother's business, Stella forbore +comment. She was weary of travel, tired with the tension of eternally +being shunted across distances, anxious to experience once more that +sense of restful finality which comes with a journey's end. But, in a +measure her movements were no longer dependent upon her own volition. + +They walked slowly along the broad roadway which bordered the lake until +they came to a branchy maple, and here they seated themselves on the +grassy turf in the shadow of the tree. + +"Tell me about yourself," she said. "How do you like it here, and how +are you getting on? Your letters home were always chiefly remarkable for +their brevity." + +"There isn't a great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just beginning +to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to learn and +unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here five years, +and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and what I'm not. +I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a lot easier if the +governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He was going to put in +some money this fall. But I think I'll make it, anyway, though it will +keep me digging and figuring. I have a contract for delivery of a +million feet in September and another contract that I could take if I +could see my way clear to finance the thing. I could clean up thirty +thousand dollars net in two years if I had more cash to work on. As it +is, I have to go slow, or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the +skin of my teeth. But I've got one good one practically for an annual +pittance. If I make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's +plain sailing. That about sizes up my prospects, Sis." + +"You speak a language I don't understand," she smiled. "What does a +million feet mean? And what's a limit?" + +"A limit is one square mile--six hundred and forty acres more or +less--of merchantable timber land," he explained. "We speak of timber as +scaling so many board feet. A board foot is one inch thick by twelve +inches square. Sound fir timber is worth around seven dollars per +thousand board feet in the log, got out of the woods, and boomed in the +water ready to tow to the mills. The first limit I got--from the +government--will scale around ten million feet. The other two are nearly +as good. But I got them from timber speculators, and it's costing me +pretty high. They're a good spec if I can hang on to them, though." + +"It sounds big," she commented. + +"It _is_ big," Charlie declared, "if I could go at it right. I've been +trying ever since I got wise to this timber business to make the +governor see what a chance there is in it. He was just getting properly +impressed with the possibilities when the speed bug got him. He could +have trimmed a little here and there at home and put the money to work. +Ten thousand dollars would have done the trick, given me a working +outfit along with what I've got that would have put us both on Easy +Street. However, the poor old chap didn't get around to it. I suppose, +like lots of other business men, when he stopped, everything ran down. +According to Lander's figures, there won't be a thing left when all +accounts are squared." + +"Don't talk about it, Charlie," she begged. "It's too near, and I was +through it all." + +"I would have been there too," Benton said. "But, as I told you, I was +out of reach of your wire, and by the time I got it, it was all over. I +couldn't have done any good, anyway. There's no use mourning. One way +and another we've all got to come to it some day." + +Stella looked out over the placid, shimmering surface of Roaring Lake +for a minute. Her grief was dimming with time and distance, and she had +all her own young life before her. She found herself drifting from +painful memories of her father's sudden death to a consideration of +things present and personal. She found herself wondering critically if +this strange, rude land would work as many changes in her as were patent +in this bronzed and burly brother. + +He had left home a slim, cocksure youngster, who had proved more than a +handful for his family before he was half through college, which +educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was +complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had discussed +in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a hopeful experiment, and in +the West that abounding spirit which manifested itself in one continual +round of minor escapades appeared to have found a natural outlet. She +recalled that latterly their father had taken to speaking of Charlie in +accents of pride. He was developing the one ambition that Benton senior +could thoroughly understand and properly appreciate, the desire to get +on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve material success, to make money. + +Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business before +her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable ultimate, so now +Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his speech. In her +father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a man's personal life did +not seem to matter in comparison with getting on and making money. And +it was with that personal side of existence that Stella Benton was now +chiefly concerned. She had never been required to adjust herself to an +existence that was wholly taken up with getting on to the complete +exclusion of everything else. Her work had been to play. She could +scarce conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion +from his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not, +what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found to +offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of towering +woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake appeared to be +mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude speech and strong +drink. + +"Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. "It is +surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would be a summer +cottage on every hundred yards of shore." + +"Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton returned. "And +scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got Europe backed off the +map for tourist attractions, if they only knew it. No, about the only +summer home in this locality is the Abbey place at Cottonwood Point. +They come up here every summer for two or three months. Otherwise I +don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel people, and +they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan +outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand +loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake. +That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and +eight wide." + +"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked. + +Benton grinned widely. + +"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the +hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except +Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past +forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is +concerned, Stell." + +"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such +a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I +don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you +do with yourself when you're not working?" + +"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've +got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm +going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no +time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to +muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and +then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a +run for his money." + +"If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap to you, +am I not?" + +"Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get rested up +from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds." + +She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked up +to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and paddle to +where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile westward, to kill +the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train. + +The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back. By +the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse man and +reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine sounded down the +road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the abutting wharf. The +driver handed two suitcases off the burdened hood of his machine. From +out the tonneau clambered a large, smooth-faced young man. He wore an +expansive smile in addition to a blue serge suit, white Panama, and +polished tan Oxfords, and he bestowed a hearty greeting upon Charlie +Benton. But his smile suffered eclipse, and a faint flush rose in his +round cheeks, when his eyes fell upon Benton's sister. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +HALFWAY POINT + +Miss Benton's cool, impersonal manner seemed rather to heighten the +young man's embarrassment. Benton, apparently observing nothing amiss, +introduced them in an offhand fashion. + +"Mr. Abbey--my sister." + +Mr. Abbey bowed and murmured something that passed for acknowledgment. +The three turned up the wharf toward where Sam Davis had once more got +up steam. As they walked, Mr. Abbey's habitual assurance returned, and +he directed part of his genial flow of conversation to Miss Benton. To +Stella's inner amusement, however, he did not make any reference to +their having been fellow travelers for a day and a half. + +Presently they were embarked and under way. Charlie fixed a seat for her +on the after deck, and went forward to steer, whither he was straightway +joined by Paul Abbey. Miss Benton was as well pleased to be alone. She +was not sure she should approve of young men who made such crude efforts +to scrape acquaintance with women on trains. She was accustomed to a +certain amount of formality in such matters. It might perhaps be laid to +the "breezy Western manner" of which she had heard, except that Paul +Abbey did not impress her as a Westerner. He seemed more like a type of +young man she had encountered frequently in her own circle. At any rate, +she was relieved when he did not remain beside her to emit polite +commonplaces. She was quite satisfied to sit by herself and look over +the panorama of woods and lake--and wonder more than a little what +Destiny had in store for her along those silent shores. + +The Springs fell far behind, became a few white spots against the +background of dusky green. Except for the ripples spread by their wake, +the water laid oily smooth. Now, a little past four in the afternoon, +she began to sense by comparison the great bulk of the western +mountains,--locally, the Chehalis Range,--for the sun was dipping behind +the ragged peaks already, and deep shadows stole out from the shore to +port. Beneath her feet the screw throbbed, pulsing like an overdriven +heart, and Sam Davis poked his sweaty face now and then through a window +to catch a breath of cool air denied him in the small inferno where he +stoked the fire box. + +The _Chickamin_ cleared Echo Island, and a greater sweep of lake opened +out. Here the afternoon wind sprang up, shooting gustily through a gap +between the Springs and Hopyard and ruffling the lake out of its noonday +siesta. Ripples, chop, and a growing swell followed each other with that +marvellous rapidity common to large bodies of fresh water. It broke the +monotony of steady cleaving through dead calm. Stella was a good sailor, +and she rather enjoyed it when the _Chickamin_ began to lift and yaw off +before the following seas that ran up under her fantail stern. + +After about an hour's run, with the south wind beginning to whip the +crests of the short seas into white foam, the boat bore in to a landing +behind a low point. Here Abbey disembarked, after taking the trouble to +come aft and shake hands with polite farewell. Standing on the float, +hat in hand, he bowed his sleek blond head to Stella. + +"I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as Benton +jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to stop over +awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's in too big a +hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon." + +Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom this bland +friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off their talk. As +the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white come down toward the +float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little farther out through an +opening in the woods, she saw a white and green bungalow, low and +rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock three hundred yards back +from shore. There was an encircling area of smooth lawn, a place +restfully inviting. + +Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was smitten with +a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had assailed her fitfully +in the last four days. And while the _Chickamin_ was still plowing the +inshore waters on an even keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and +joined her brother in the pilot house. + +"Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she remarked. + +"Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie +grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,--up-to-date cottage, gardeners, +tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, and all that. +But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what they want to do. +They've made it in timber, as I expect to make mine. You didn't +particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, did you?" + +"I? Of course not," she responded. + +"Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," Charlie +drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any tentative advances. +The women put on lots of side, they say. If they want to hunt us up and +cultivate you, all right. But I've got too much to do to butt into +society. Anyway, I didn't want to run up against any critical females +looking like I do right now." + +Stella smiled. + +"Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this +country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and be-yutiful +sister?" + +"He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie retorted. +"Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't mine--not yet. Here, you +take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever +helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger." + +She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In twenty +minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair +sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted +with whitecaps. The _Chickamin_ would hang on the crest of a wave and +shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller +would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in the trough. + +It began to grow insufferably hot in the pilot house. The wind drove +with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box into the +forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the wheel. There were +puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to ply it with fuel. All +the sour smells that rose from an unclean bilge eddied about them. The +heat and the smell and the surging motion began to nauseate Stella. + +"I must get outside where I can breathe," she gasped, at length. "It's +suffocating. I don't see how you stand it." + +"It does get stuffy in here when we run with the wind," Benton admitted. +"Cuts off our ventilation. I'm used to it. Crawl out the window and sit +on the forward deck. Don't try to get aft. You might slip off, the way +she's lurching." + +Curled in the hollow of a faked-down hawser with the clean air fanning +her, Stella recovered herself. The giddiness left her. She pitied Sam +Davis back in that stinking hole beside the fire box. But she supposed +he, like her brother, was "used to it." Apparently one could get used to +anything, if she could judge by the amazing change in Charlie. + +Far ahead loomed a ridge running down to the lake shore and cutting off +in a bold promontory. That was Halfway Point, Charlie had told her, and +under its shadow lay his camp. Without any previous knowledge of camps, +she was approaching this one with less eager anticipation than when she +began her long journey. She began to fear that it might be totally +unlike anything she had been able to imagine, disagreeably so. Charlie, +she decided, had grown hard and coarsened in the evolution of his +ambition to get on, to make his pile. She was but four years younger +than he, and she had always thought of herself as being older and wiser +and steadier. She had conceived the idea that her presence would have a +good influence on him, that they would pull together--now that there +were but the two of them. But four hours in his company had dispelled +that illusion. She had the wit to perceive that Charlie Benton had +emerged from the chrysalis stage, that he had the will and the ability +to mold his life after his elected fashion, and that her coming was a +relatively unimportant incident. + +In due course the _Chickamin_ bore in under Halfway Point, opened out a +sheltered bight where the watery commotion outside raised but a faint +ripple, and drew in alongside a float. + +The girl swept lake shore, bay, and sloping forest with a quickening +eye. Here was no trim-painted cottage and velvet lawn. In the waters +beside and lining the beach floated innumerable logs, confined by +boomsticks, hundreds of trunks of fir, forty and sixty feet long, four +and six feet across the butt, timber enough, when it had passed through +the sawmills, to build four such towns as Hopyard. Just back from the +shore, amid stumps and littered branches, rose the roofs of divers +buildings. One was long and low. Hard by it stood another of like type +but of lesser dimension. Two or three mere shanties lifted level with +great stumps,--crude, unpainted buildings. Smoke issued from the pipe of +the larger, and a white-aproned man stood in the doorway. + +Somewhere in the screen of woods a whistle shrilled. Benton looked at +his watch. + +"We made good time, in spite of the little roll," said he. "That's the +donkey blowing quitting time--six o'clock. Well, come on up to the +shack, Sis. Sam, you get a wheelbarrow and run those trunks up after +supper, will you?" + +Away in the banked timber beyond the maples and alder which Stella now +saw masked the bank of a small stream flowing by the cabins, a faint +call rose, long-drawn: + +"Tim-ber-r-r-r!" + +They moved along a path beaten through fern and clawing blackberry vine +toward the camp, Benton carrying the two grips. A loud, sharp crack +split the stillness; then a mild swishing sound arose. Hard on the heels +of that followed a rending, tearing crash, a thud that sent tremors +through the solid earth under their feet. The girl started. + +"Falling gang dropped a big fir," Charlie laughed. "You'll get used to +that. You'll hear it a good many times a day here." + +"Good Heavens, it sounded like the end of the world," she said. + +"Well, you can't fell a stick of timber two hundred feet high and six or +eight feet through without making a pretty considerable noise," her +brother remarked complacently. "I like that sound myself. Every big tree +that goes down means a bunch of money." + +He led the way past the mess-house, from the doorway of which the +aproned cook eyed her with frank curiosity, hailing his employer with +nonchalant air, a cigarette resting in one corner of his mouth. Benton +opened the door of the second building. Stella followed him in. + +It had the saving grace of cleanliness--according to logging-camp +standards. But the bareness of it appalled her. There was a rusty box +heater, littered with cigar and cigarette stubs, a desk fabricated of +undressed boards, a homemade chair or two, sundry boxes standing about. +The sole concession to comfort was a rug of cheap Axminster covering +half the floor. The walls were decorated chiefly with miscellaneous +clothing suspended from nails, a few maps and blue prints tacked up +askew. Straight across from the entering door another stood ajar, and +she could see further vistas of bare board wall, small, dusty +window-panes, and a bed whereon gray blankets were tumbled as they fell +when a waking sleeper cast them aside. + +Benton crossed the room and threw open another door. + +"Here's a nook I fixed up for you, Stella," he said briskly. "It isn't +very fancy, but it's the best I could do just now." + +She followed him in silently. He set her two bags on the floor and +turned to go. Then some impulse moved him to turn back, and he put both +hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently. + +"You're home, anyway," he said. "That's something, if it isn't what +you're used to. Try to overlook the crudities. We'll have supper as soon +as you feel like it." + +He went out, closing the door behind him. + +Miss Estella Benton stood in the middle of the room fighting against a +swift heart-sinking, a terrible depression that strove to master her. + +"Good Lord in Heaven," she muttered at last. "What a place to be +marooned in. It's--it's simply impossible." + +Her gaze roved about the room. A square box, neither more nor less, +fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapered. +There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes in +one corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the other +room lay on the floor. On an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a +tin washbasin. That was all. + +She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of sickening +rebellion against everything swept over her. To herself she seemed as +irrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the depths of the dark +timber that rose on every hand. And sitting there she heard at length +the voices of men. Looking out through a window curtained with +cheesecloth she saw her brother's logging gang swing past, stout +woodsmen all, big men, tall men, short-bodied men with thick necks and +shoulders, sunburned, all grimy with the sweat of their labors, +carrying themselves with a free and reckless swing, the doubles in type +of that roistering crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat. + +In so far as she had taken note of those who labored with their hands in +the region of her birth, she had seen few like these. The chauffeur, the +footman, the street cleaner, the factory workers--they were all +different. They lacked something,--perhaps nothing in the way of +physical excellence; but these men betrayed in every movement a subtle +difference that she could not define. Her nearest approximation and the +first attempt she made at analysis was that they looked like pirates. +They were bold men and strong; that was written in their faces and the +swing of them as they walked. And they served the very excellent purpose +of taking her mind off herself for the time being. + +She watched them cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble their +faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously on towels, +sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, hauling it back +and forth in rude play. + +All about that cookhouse dooryard spread a confusion of empty tin cans, +gaudily labeled, containers of corn and peas and tomatoes. Dishwater and +refuse, chips, scraps, all the refuse of the camp was scattered there in +unlovely array. + +But that made no more than a passing impression upon her. She was +thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer angles come +now and then to the human mind. She wondered why she should be +sufficiently interested in her brother's hired men to drive off a +compelling attack of the blues in consideration of them as men. +Nevertheless, she found herself unable to view them as she had viewed, +say, the clerks in her father's office. + +She began to brush her hair and to wonder what sort of food would be +served for supper. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME + +Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a table +that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth. Chairs there were none. +A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table furnished seating +capacity for twenty men, provided none objected to an occasional nudging +from his neighbor's elbow. The dishes, different from any she had ever +eaten from, were of enormously thick porcelain, dead white, variously +chipped and cracked with fine seams. But the food, if plain, was of +excellent quality, tastily cooked. She discovered herself with an +appetite wholly independent of silver and cut glass and linen. The tin +spoons and steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without +impairing her ability to satisfy hunger. + +They had the dining room to themselves. Through a single shiplap +partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew loafed +in their bunkhouse. The cook served them without any ceremony, putting +everything on the table at once,--soup, meat, vegetables, a bread +pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin pot. Benton introduced him to +his sister. He withdrew hastily to the kitchen, and they saw no more of +him. + +"Charlie," the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed the door +behind him, "I don't quite fathom your social customs out here. Is one +supposed to know everybody that one encounters?" + +"Just about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in +general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in this +neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive,--at least, +nobody who lives here any length of time. You can't tell when you may +have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter +of life and death almost. A man couldn't possibly maintain the same +attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be +considered proper back where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my +case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out +here. I'd get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in +the hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was +done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks on +end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working +for a man that meets them on an equal footing--why, they'll go to hell +and back again for him. They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag. +They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks, +and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this +country,--loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're +what they term 'all right,' you can do anything, and they'll back you +up. If you go to putting on airs and trying to assert yourself as a +superior being, they'll go out of their way to hand you packages of +trouble." + +"I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by circumstances to +practice democracy." + +"Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on eating his +supper. + +"Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, Charlie?" +she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. "I suppose it +suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but it's bare as a +barn." + +"It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I haven't +had it to spend on knickknacks." + +"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and curtains +and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The cost wouldn't +amount to anything." + +Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he essayed +reply. + +"Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably strikes you +as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to pretty soft +surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you wanted whenever you +expressed a wish for it. Things that you've grown into the way of +considering necessities _are_ luxuries. And they're out of the question +for us at present. I got a pretty hard seasoning the first two years I +was in this country, and when I set up this camp it was merely a place +to live. I never thought anything about it as being comfortable or +otherwise until you elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for +trimmings. Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this +summer. I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I +make delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that +million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of these +men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me with their +wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses that must be met +with cash--and I've got all my funds figured down to nickels. If I get +by on this contract, I'll have a few hundred to squander on house +things. Until then, it's the simple life for us. You can camp for three +or four months, can't you, without finding it completely unbearable?" + +"Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the way +things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to fix up a +little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I didn't know +you were practically compelled to live like this as a matter of +economy." + +"Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a place +away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but an +inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm after a +bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and suggested it, you +could have spent five or six hundred, and I wouldn't have missed it. But +this contract came my way, and gave me a chance to clean up three +thousand dollars clear profit in four months. I grabbed it, and I find +it's some undertaking. I'm dealing with a hard business outfit, hard as +nails. I might get the banks or some capitalist to finance me, because +my timber holdings are worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed +that when a logger starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes +broke. The financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to +sail as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get +this timber out--but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for me to be +buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for their wages till +September?" + +"I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively remarked. +"Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, instead of being a +drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I can do. I could keep +house--only you haven't any house to keep, therefore no need of a +housekeeper. Why, who's that?" + +Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, outside. She +looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression remained absent, as of +one concentrated upon his own problems. She repeated the question. + +"That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. "Siwash +bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing for us now +and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or something." + +Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, plump-bodied +girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she conformed to none of +Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the aboriginal inhabitant. If she +had been pinned down, she would probably have admitted that she +expected to behold an Indian maiden garbed in beaded buckskin and brass +ornaments. Instead, Katy John wore a white sailor blouse, a brown +pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair. + +"Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as fragments of +the girl's speech floated over to her. + +"Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?" + +"Well--er--I suppose my notion of Indians is rather vague," Stella +admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?" + +"Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. Say, +Stell, can you cook?" + +"A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's really +pretty, isn't she?" + +"They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they are old +and tubby by the time they're thirty." + +Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from +the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand. +Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked +away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against +the bunkhouse wall. + +"Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the girl +vanished in the brush. + +"Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in +reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron +and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's about due to go on a +tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about his limit. The first man +that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and +head for town. I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang +from starving to death if that happened. The last time I had to get in +and cook for two weeks myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the +cook shanty very well." + +"I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This seems to be +a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at +all times and in public?" + +"It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled tolerantly. "I +guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this +North American continent. Only a man here gets drunk openly and +riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered +anything but a natural lapse. That's one thing you'll have to get used +to out here, Stell--I mean, that what vices men have are all on the +surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a +taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not +break out for weeks." + +He yawned openly. + +"Sleepy?" Stella inquired. + +"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can +go to sleep any time after supper." + +"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly. + +"All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though." + +She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found +herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still +dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale. At her feet +surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. Far through the woods +behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir +and cedar. There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor +resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing +stuff along the shore. Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in +immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy +always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the +wood-sprites' feet. Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a +range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and +across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water's +edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle +crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind. + +Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some responsive +chord in her. If only one could live amid such surrounding with a +contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of +its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that +had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing +factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready +standards of the woods with much equanimity--not as she had that day +seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily +life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of +speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so +far encountered. + +She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not see how +it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must stay there. +She had no friends to go elsewhere, or training in the harsh business of +gaining a livelihood if she did go. For the first time she began dully +to resent the manner of her upbringing. Once she had desired to enter +hospital training, had been properly enthusiastic for a period of months +over a career in this field of mercy. Then, as now, marriage, while +accepted as the ultimate state, was only to be considered through a haze +of idealism and romanticism. She cherished certain ideals of a possible +lover and husband, but always with a false sense of shame. The really +serious business of a woman's life was the one thing to which she made +no attempt to apply practical consideration. But her parents had had +positive ideas on that subject, even if they were not openly expressed. +Her yearnings after a useful "career" were skilfully discouraged,--by +her mother because that worthy lady thought it was "scarcely the thing, +Stella dear, and so unnecessary"; by her father because, as he bluntly +put it, it would only be a waste of time and money, since the chances +were she would get married before she was half through training, and +anyway a girl's place was at home till she did get married. That was his +only reference to the subject of her ultimate disposition that she +could recall, but it was plain enough as far as it went. + +It was too late to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she did wish +there was some one thing she could do and do well, some service of value +that would guarantee self-support. If she could only pound a typewriter +or keep a set of books, or even make a passable attempt at sewing, she +would have felt vastly more at ease in this rude logging camp, knowing +that she could leave it if she desired. + +So far as she could see things, she looked at them with measurable +clearness, without any vain illusions concerning her ability to march +triumphant over unknown fields of endeavor. Along practical lines she +had everything to learn. Culture furnishes an excellent pair of wings +wherewith to soar in skies of abstraction, but is a poor vehicle to +carry one over rough roads. She might have remained in Philadelphia, a +guest among friends. Pride forbade that. Incidentally, such an +arrangement would have enabled her to stalk a husband, a moneyed +husband, which did not occur to her at all. There remained only to join +Charlie. If his fortunes mended, well and good. Perhaps she could even +help in minor ways. + +But it was all so radically different--brother and all--from what she +had pictured that she was filled with dismay and not a little foreboding +of the future. Sufficient, however, unto the day was the evil thereof, +she told herself at last, and tried to make that assurance work a change +of heart. She was very lonely and depressed and full of a futile wish +that she were a man. + +Over across the bay some one was playing an accordeon, and to its +strains a stout-lunged lumberjack was roaring out a song, with all his +fellows joining strong in the chorus: + + "Oh, the Saginaw Kid was a cook in a camp, way up on the Ocon-to-o-o. + And the cook in a camp in them old days had a damn hard row to hoe-i-oh! + Had a damn hard row to hoe." + +There was a fine, rollicking air to it. The careless note in their +voices, the jovial lilt of their song, made her envious. They at least +had their destiny, limited as it might be and cast along rude ways, +largely under their own control. + +Her wandering gaze at length came to rest on a tent top showing in the +brush northward from the camp. She saw two canoes drawn up on the beach +above the lash of the waves, two small figures playing on the gravel, +and sundry dogs prowling alongshore. Smoke went eddying away in the +wind. The Siwash camp where Katy John hailed from, Miss Benton supposed. + +She had an impulse to skirt the bay and view the Indian camp at closer +range, a notion born of curiosity. She debated this casually, and just +as she was about to rise, her movement was arrested by a faint crackle +in the woods behind. She looked away through the deepening shadow among +the trees and saw nothing at first. But the sound was repeated at odd +intervals. She sat still. Thoughts of forest animals slipped into her +mind, without making her afraid. At last she caught sight of a man +striding through the timber, soundlessly on the thick moss, coming +almost straight toward her. + +He was scarcely fifty yards away. Across his shoulders he bore a +reddish-gray burden, and in his right hand was a gun. She did not move. +Bowed slightly under the weight, the man passed within twenty feet of +her, so close that she could see the sweat-beads glisten on that side of +his face, and saw also that the load he carried was the carcass of a +deer. + +Gaining the beach and laying the animal across a boulder, he +straightened himself up and drew a long breath. Then he wiped the sweat +off his face. She recognized him as the man who had thrown the logger +down the slip that day at noon,--presumably Jack Fyfe. A sturdily built +man about thirty, of Saxon fairness, with a tinge of red in his hair and +a liberal display of freckles across nose and cheek bones. He was no +beauty, she decided, albeit he displayed a frank and pleasing +countenance. That he was a remarkably strong and active man she had seen +for herself, and if the firm round of his jaw counted for anything, an +individual of considerable determination besides. Miss Benton conceived +herself to be possessed of considerable skill at character analysis. + +He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his hat, and +strode off toward the camp. Her attention now diverted from the +Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother's quarters, stand +in the door a minute, then go back to the beach accompanied by Charlie. + +In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his deer +aboard, and pulled away north along the shore. + +She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a point, +rowing with strong, even strokes. Then she walked home. Benton was +poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil and paper when +she entered. + +"You had a visitor, I see," she remarked. + +"Yes, Jack Fyfe. He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here and +borrowed a boat to get home." + +"I saw him come out of the woods," she said. "His camp can't be far from +here, is it? He only left the Springs as you came in. Does he hunt deer +for sport?" + +"Hardly. Oh, well, I suppose it's sport for Jack, in a way. He's always +piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod," Benton +returned. "But we kill 'em to eat mostly. It's good meat and cheap. I +get one myself now and then. However, you want to keep that under your +hat--about us fellows hunting--or we'll have game wardens nosing around +here." + +"Are you not allowed to hunt them?" she asked. + +"Not in close season. Hunting season's from September to December." + +"If it's unlawful, why break the law?" she ventured hesitatingly. "Isn't +that rather--er--" + +"Oh, bosh," Charlie derided. "A man in the woods is entitled to venison, +if he's hunter enough to get it. The woods are full of deer, and a few +more or less don't matter. We can't run forty miles to town and back and +pay famine prices for beef every two or three days, when we can get it +at home in the woods." + +Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that this mild +sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the +environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law +and order visible anywhere. The characteristic attitude of these +woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency. +It had colored her brother's point of view. She perceived that whereas +all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them, +he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that +proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply. + +"And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or Mr. +Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?" + +"We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told her. "But +they don't catch us." + +He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to +smoke. + +Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons +gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank arose +the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and still, was +riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight +swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse +had died. The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the +northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray +revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the +horizon. + +"Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. "Pleasant +dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the bank roll. You +won't have much use for money up here, anyway." + +He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his bedroom. +Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount Douglas a few +minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like room, the bare +discomfort of which chilled her merely to behold. + +With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding +almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she +stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung +it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair. + +"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about +anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's +letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly +the last clause." + +In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now +reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER + +Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook, +roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece +of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her +brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she +remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself +responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which +slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding +in the lead, when she entered the mess-house. + +She killed time with partial success till noon. Several times she was +startled to momentary attention by the prolonged series of sharp cracks +which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. There were other +sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in the near-by forest,--the +ringing whine of saw blades, the dull stroke of the axe, voices calling +distantly. + +She tried to interest herself in the camp and the beach and ended up by +sitting on a log in a shady spot, staring dreamily over the lake. She +thought impatiently of that homely saw concerning Satan and idle hands, +but she reflected also that in this isolation even mischief was +comparatively impossible. There was not a soul to hold speech with +except the cook, and he was too busy to talk, even if he had not been +afflicted with a painful degree of diffidence when she addressed him. +She could make no effort at settling down, at arranging things in what +was to be her home. There was nothing to arrange, no odds and ends +wherewith almost any woman can conjure up a homelike effect in the +barest sort of place. She beheld the noon return of the crew much as a +shipwrecked castaway on a desert shore might behold a rescuing sail, and +she told Charlie that she intended to go into the woods that afternoon +and watch them work. + +"All right," said he. "Just so you don't get in the way of a falling +tree." + +A narrow fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the +actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four +hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a +straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, made +by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over +the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to +side, the outer sticks half their thickness above the inner, they formed +a continuous trough the bottom and sides worn smooth with friction of +sliding timbers. Stella had crossed it the previous evening and wondered +what it was. Now, watching them at work, she saw. Also she saw why the +great stumps that rose in every clearing in this land of massive trees +were sawed six and eight feet above the ground. Always at the base the +firs swelled sharply. Wherefore the falling gangs lifted themselves +above the enlargement to make their cut. + +Two sawyers attacked a tree. First, with their double-bitted axes, each +drove a deep notch into the sapwood just wide enough to take the end of +a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the +end,--the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business +lies among the biggest timber on God's footstool. Each then clambered up +on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, +and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the +tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was +the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would +fall. That done, they swung the ends of their springboards, or if it +were a thick trunk, made new holding notches on the other side, and the +long saw would eat steadily through the heart of the tree toward that +yellow, gashed undercut, stroke upon stroke, ringing with a thin, +metallic twang. Presently there would arise an ominous cracking. High in +the air the tall crest would dip slowly, as if it bowed with manifest +reluctance to the inevitable. The sawyers would drop lightly from their +springboards, crying: + +"Tim-ber-r-r-r!" + +The earthward swoop of the upper boughs would hasten till the air was +full of a whistling, whishing sound. Then came the rending crash as the +great tree smashed prone, crushing what small timber stood in its path, +followed by the earth-quivering shock of its impact with the soil. The +tree once down, the fallers went on to another. Immediately the +swampers fell upon the prone trunk with axes, denuding it of limbs; the +buckers followed them to saw it into lengths decreed by the boss logger. +When the job was done, the brown fir was no longer a stately tree but +saw-logs, each with the square butt that lay donkeyward, trimmed a +trifle rounding with the axe. + +Benton worked one falling gang. The falling gang raced to keep ahead of +the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep ahead of the +hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last trio moved the logs +from woods to water, once they were down and trimmed. Terrible, +devastating forces of destruction they seemed to Stella Benton, wholly +unused as she was to any woodland save the well-kept parks and little +areas of groomed forest in her native State. All about in the ravaged +woods lay the big logs, scores of them. They had only begun to pull with +the donkey a week earlier, Benton explained to her. With his size gang +he could not keep a donkey engine working steadily. So they had felled +and trimmed to a good start, and now the falling crew and the swampers +and buckers were in a dingdong contest to see how long they could keep +ahead of the puffing Seattle yarder. + +Stella sat on a stump, watching. Over an area of many acres the ground +was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent and broken +younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their fall. Huge stumps +upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, massive butts. From all +the ravaged wood rose a pungent smell of pitch and sap, a resinous, +pleasant smell. Radiating like the spokes of a wheel from the head of +the chute ran deep, raw gashes in the earth, where the donkey had hauled +up the Brobdingnagian logs on the end of an inch cable. + +"This is no small boy's play, is it, Stell?" Charlie said to her once in +passing. + +And she agreed that it was not. Agreed more emphatically and with +half-awed wonder when she saw the donkey puff and quiver on its anchor +cable, as the hauling line spooled up on the drum. On the outer end of +that line snaked a sixty-foot stick, five feet across the butt, but it +came down to the chute head, brushing earth and brush and small trees +aside as if they were naught. Once the big log caromed against a stump. +The rearward end flipped ten feet in the air and thirty feet sidewise. +But it came clear and slid with incredible swiftness to the head of the +chute, flinging aside showers of dirt and small stones, and leaving one +more deep furrow in the forest floor. Benton trotted behind it. Once it +came to rest well in the chute, he unhooked the line, freed the choker +(the short noosed loop of cable that slips over the log's end), and the +haul-back cable hurried the main line back to another log. Benton +followed, and again the donkey shuddered on its foundation skids till +another log laid in the chute, with its end butted against that which +lay before. One log after another was hauled down till half a dozen +rested there, elongated peas in a wooden pod. + +Then a last big stick came with a rush, bunted these others powerfully +so that they began to slide with the momentum thus imparted, slowly at +first then, gathering way and speed, they shot down to the lake and +plunged to the water over the ten-foot jump-off like a school of +breaching whales. + +All this took time, vastly more time than it takes in the telling. The +logs were ponderous masses. They had to be maneuvered sometimes between +stumps and standing timber, jerked this way and that to bring them into +the clear. By four o'clock Benton and his rigging-slinger had just +finished bunting their second batch of logs down the chute. Stella +watched these Titanic labors with a growing interest and a dawning +vision of why these men walked the earth with that reckless swing of +their shoulders. For they were palpably masters in their environment. +They strove with woodsy giants and laid them low. Amid constant dangers +they sweated at a task that shamed the seven labors of Hercules. +Gladiators they were in a contest from which they did not always emerge +victorious. + +When Benton and his helper followed the haul-back line away to the +domain of the falling gang the last time, Stella had so far unbent as to +strike up conversation with the donkey engineer. That greasy individual +finished stoking his fire box and replied to her first comment. + +"Work? You bet," said he. "It's real graft, this is. I got the easy end +of it, and mine's no snap. I miss a signal, big stick butts against +something solid; biff! goes the line and maybe cuts a man plumb in two. +You got to be wide awake when you run a loggin' donkey. These woods is +no place for a man, anyway, if he ain't spry both in his head and feet." + +"Do many men get hurt logging?" Stella asked. "It looks awfully +dangerous, with these big trees falling and smashing everything. Look at +that. Goodness!" + +From the donkey they could see a shower of ragged splinters and broken +limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar that stood in +the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the pieces strike against +brush and trees like the patter of shot on a tin wall. + +The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough. + +"Them flyin' chunks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. "Oh, yes, +now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you got to take a +chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb drops on you, or you +get in the way of a breakin' line,--though a man ain't got any business +in the bight of a line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a +inch 'n' a quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller +on Howe Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's +the worst, though. That generally gets the riggin' slinger, but a piece +of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks the +haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a snatch +block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an angle to get a +log out the way you want. Suppose the block breaks when I'm givin' it to +her? Chunks uh that broken cast iron'll fly like bullets. Yes, sir, +broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you noticed the boys used the +snatch block two or three times this afternoon? We've been lucky in this +camp all spring. Nobody so much as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks +in the gear don't come very often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class +shape. We got good gear an' a good crew--about as _skookum_ a bunch as I +ever saw in the woods." + +Two hundred yards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stump and semaphored +with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the +main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he +shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled +faster, the line tautened like a fiddle-string, and the ponderous +machine vibrated with the strain of its effort. + +Suddenly the line came slack. Stella, watching for the log to appear, +saw her brother leap backward off the stump, saw the cable whip +sidewise, mowing down a clump of saplings that stood in the bight of the +line, before the engineer could cut off the power. In that return of +comparative silence there rose above the sibilant hiss of the blow-off +valve a sudden commotion of voices. + +"Damn!" the donkey engineer peered over the brush. "That don't sound +good. I guess somebody got it in the neck." + +Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running. + +"What's up?" the engineer called as they passed on a dog trot. + +"Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. "Piece of it near took +a leg off Jim Renfrew." + +Stella stood a moment, hesitating. + +"I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said. + +"Better not," the engineer warned. "Liable to run into something +that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken +block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll +bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a +doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'." + +Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with +Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton +introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after +the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her +brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and +bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a +stretcher. + +Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving +signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Renfrew lay on +his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a +silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and +Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground was smeared with blood. Stella +looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of +the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. +She drew back. + +Benton looked up. + +"Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can be +done." + +She retreated a little and sat down on a root, half-sickened. The other +two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work done, and rolled a +cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off to one side she saw the +fallers climb up on their springboards. Presently arose the ringing +whine of the thin steel blade, the chuck of axes where the swampers +attacked a fallen tree. No matter, she thought, that injury came to one, +that death might hover near, the work went on apace, like action on a +battlefield. + +A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis +returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. They +laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket. Then +four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella heard one say to her +brother: + +"Matt's jagged." + +"What?" Benton exploded. "Where'd it come from?" + +"One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters's in camp," the logger +answered. "Maybe he brought a bottle. I didn't stop to see. But Matt's +sure got a tank full." + +Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away down +the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at +the wrathful set of his features. She barely kept in sight, so rapidly +did he move. + +Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the _Chickamin's_ stack, but the +kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to five o'clock. +Benton made straight for the cookhouse. Stella followed, a trifle +uncertainly. A glimpse past Charlie as he came out showed her Matt +staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, red-eyed, scowling, muttering +to himself. Benton hurried to the bunkhouse door, much as a hound might +follow a scent, peered in, and went on to the corner. + +On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook's +intoxication. A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his haunches, +gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a _klootchman_ and a wizen-featured +old Siwash. The Indian woman was drunk beyond any mistaking, affably +drunk. She looked up at Benton out of vacuous eyes, grinned, and +extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim gin. The logger rose to +his feet. + +"H'lo, Benton," he greeted thickly. "How's every-thin'?" + +Benton's answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab of his +clenched fist. The blow stretched the logger on his back, with blood +streaming from both nostrils. But he was a hardy customer, for he +bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously +before he was well set on his feet. This time Benton snarled a curse and +kicked him as he lay. + +"Charlie, Charlie!" Stella screamed. + +If he heard her, he gave no heed. + +"Hit the trail, you," he shouted at the logger. "Hit it quick before I +tramp your damned face into the ground. I told you once not to come +around here feeding booze to my cook. I do all the whisky-drinking +that's done in this camp, and don't you forget it. Damn your eyes, I've +got troubles enough without whisky." + +The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand to his +bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float. + +"G'wan home," Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes. "Get drunk at your own +camp, not in mine. _Sabe?_ Beat it." + +They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat +_klootch_ along her uncertain way. Down on the lake the chastised logger +stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to shake a fist at +Benton. Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and outraged sister. + +"Good Heavens!" she burst out. "Is it necessary to be so downright +brutal in actions as well as speech?" + +"I'm running a logging camp, not a kindergarten," he snapped angrily. "I +know what I'm doing. If you don't like it, go in the house where your +hyper-sensitive tastes won't be offended." + +"Thank you," she responded cuttingly and swung about, angry and +hurt--only to have a fresh scare from the drunken cook, who came reeling +forward. + +"I'm gonna quit," he loudly declared. "I ain't goin' to stick 'round +here no more. The job's no good. I want m' time. Yuh hear me, Benton. +I'm through. Com-pletely, ab-sho-lutely through. You bet I am. Gimme m' +time. I'm a gone goose." + +"Quit, then, hang you," Benton growled. "You'll get your check in a +minute. You're a fine excuse for a cook, all right--get drunk right on +the job. You don't need to show up here again, when you've had your jag +out." + +"'S all right," Matt declared largely. "'S other jobs. You ain't the +whole Pacific coast. Oh, way down 'pon the Swa-a-nee ribber--" + +He broke into dolorous song and turned back into the cookhouse. Benton's +hard-set face relaxed. He laughed shortly. + +"Takes all kinds to make a world," he commented. "Don't look so +horrified, Sis. This isn't the regular order of events. It's just an +accumulation--and it sort of got me going. Here's the boys." + +The four stretcher men set down their burden in the shade of the +bunkhouse. Renfrew was conscious now. + +"Tough luck, Jim," Benton sympathized. "Does it pain much?" + +Renfrew shook his head. White and weakened from shock and loss of blood, +nevertheless he bravely disclaimed pain. + +"We'll get you fixed up at the Springs," Benton went on. "It's a nasty +slash in the meat, but I don't think the bone was touched. You'll be on +deck before long. I'll see you through, anyway." + +They gave him a drink of water and filled his pipe, joking him about +easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. The drunken +cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began maudlin sympathy, and +was promptly squelched, whereupon he retreated to the float, emitting +conversation to the world at large. Then they carried Renfrew down to +the float, and Davis began to haul up the anchor to lay the _Chickamin_ +alongside. + +While the chain was still chattering in the hawse pipe, the squat black +hull of Jack Fyfe's tender rounded the nearest point. + +"Whistle him up, Sam," Benton ordered. "Jack can beat our time, and this +bleeding must be stopped quick." + +The tender veered in from her course at the signal. Fyfe himself was at +the wheel. Five minutes effected a complete arrangement, and the +_Panther_ drew off with the drunken cook singing atop of the pilot +house, and Renfrew comfortable in her cabin, and Jack Fyfe's promise to +see him properly installed and attended in the local hospital at Roaring +Springs. + +Benton heaved a sigh of relief and turned to his sister. + +"Still mad, Stell?" he asked placatingly and put his arm over her +shoulders. + +"Of course not," she responded instantly to this kindlier phase. "Ugh! +Your hands are all bloody, Charlie." + +"That's so, but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good +woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse. +Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and lend me a hand +in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no matter what +happens." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL + +By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, Stella +took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a unit in the +human mechanism which he operated skilfully and relentlessly at top +speed to achieve his desired end--one million feet of timber in +boomsticks by September the first. + +From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a drunken +cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her shoulders. For a week +Benton daily expected and spoke of the arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had +wired a Vancouver employment agency to send one, the day he took Jim +Renfrew down. But either cooks were scarce, or the order went astray, +for no rough and ready kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime +ceased to look for one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself, +unsparing of others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen +fire, roused Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to +his day in the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait +on the table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella +certain simple tricks of cooking that she did not know. + +Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever she set +her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as the days +passed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left the job to her +as a matter of course. + +"You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he said to her +at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your time. I'd have +to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws twenty-five. You can +credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay off when the contract +money comes in. We might as well keep the coin in the family. I'll feel +easier, because you won't get drunk and jump the job in a pinch. What do +you say?" + +She said the only possible thing to say under the circumstances. But she +did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of gratitude. It was +hard work, and she and hard work were utter strangers. Her feet ached +from continual standing on them. The heat and the smell of stewing meat +and vegetables sickened her. Her hands were growing rough and red from +dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of +food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung +continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a +hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to +hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a +precious boon. + +Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her brother. She +saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage behind. She +perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to have her wishes +readily gratified was not an inherent right--that some one must foot +the bill--that now for all she received she must return equitable value. +At home she had never thought of it in that light; in fact, she had +never thought of it at all. Now that she was beginning to get a +glimmering of her true economic relation to the world at large, she had +no wish to emulate the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have +secured a continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her +fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was therefore a +certain personal satisfaction to have achieved self-support at a stroke, +insofar as that in the sweat of her brow,--all too literally,--she +earned her bread and a compensation besides. But there were times when +that solace seemed scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the +endless routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and +irritations it brought upon her. + +For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is no mean +undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the conveniences of a +hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in buckets from the creek near +by, and wood brought in armfuls from the pile of sawn blocks outside. +The low-roofed kitchen shanty was always like an oven. The flies swarmed +in their tens of thousands. As the men sweated with axe and saw in the +woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours +before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done. +She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of +bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its +din in the cool morning. + +"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her +one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You +wasn't cut out for a cook." + +"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I +don't wonder that men cooks take to drink." + +Katy laughed. + +"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like +to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice +to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work." + +"You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite so +much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply. + +There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. Paul Abbey +had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere +neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to +hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail +fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to +any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He +brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She +proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during +the hour of her stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With +no hint of condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to +arouse in Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable +pongee silk, simple and costly, and _her_ hands had evidently never +known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton +straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her +reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul did not +bring Linda again. + +But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. Charlie +was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which offended and +irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was +a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration +of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her +imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of +young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her +that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She +could be friends with the Paul Abbey kind of man, but when she tried to +consider him as a possible lover, she found herself unresponsive, even +amused. She was forced to consider it, because Abbey was fast +approaching that stage. It was heralded in the look of dumb appeal that +she frequently surprised in his gaze, by various signs and tokens, that +Stella Benton was too sophisticated to mistake. One of these days he +would lay his heart, and hand at her feet. + +Sometimes she considered what her life might be if she should marry him. +Abbey was wealthy in his own right and heir to more wealth. But--she +could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love +would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the +tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound--sold +for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself +when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of +passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that +men and women did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted no +shackles, she wanted to be free to face the great adventure when it +came. + +Yet there were times during the weeks that flitted past when it seemed +to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily +slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love +and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and +sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her +face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been +spoiled in the making for so sordid an existence. Sometimes she would +sit amid the array of dishes and pans and cooking food and wonder if she +really were the same being whose life had been made up of books and +music, of teas and dinners and plays, of light, inconsequential chatter +with genial, well-dressed folk. There was no one to talk to here and +less time to talk. There was nothing to read except a batch of +newspapers filtering into camp once a week or ten days. There was not +much in this monster stretch of giant timber but heat and dirt and flies +and hungry men who must be fed. + +If Paul Abbey had chanced to ask her to marry him during a period of +such bodily and spiritual rebellion, she would probably have committed +herself to that means of escape in sheer desperation. For she did not +harden to the work; it steadily sapped both her strength and patience. +But he chose an ill time for his declaration. Stella had overtaken her +work and snared a fleeting hour of idleness in mid-afternoon of a hot +day in early August. Under a branchy alder at the cook-house-end she +piled all the pillows she could commandeer in their quarters and curled +herself upon them at grateful ease. Like a tired animal, she gave +herself up to the pleasure of physical relaxation, staring at a perfect +turquoise sky through the whispering leaves above. She was not even +thinking. She was too tired to think, and for the time being too much at +peace to permit thought that would, in the very nature of things, be +disturbing. + +Abbey maintained for his own pleasure a fast motorboat. He slid now into +the bay unheard, tied up beside the float, walked to the kitchen, +glanced in, then around the corner, and smilingly took a seat on the +grass near her. + +"It's too perfect a day to loaf in the shade," he observed, after a +brief exchange of commonplaces. "Won't you come out for a little spin on +the lake? A ride in the _Wolf_ will put some color in your cheeks." + +"If I had time," she said, "I would. But loggers must eat though the +heavens fall. In about twenty minutes I'll have to start supper. I'll +have color enough, goodness knows once I get over that stove." + +Abbey picked nervously at a blade of grass for a minute. + +"This is a regular dog's life for you," he broke out suddenly. + +"Oh, hardly that," she protested. "It's a little hard on me because I +haven't been used to it, that's all." + +"It's Chinaman's work," he said hotly. "Charlie oughtn't to let you stew +in that kitchen." + +Stella said nothing; she was not moved to the defence of her brother. +She was loyal enough to her blood, but not so intensely loyal that she +could defend him against criticism that struck a responsive chord in her +own mind. She was beginning to see that, being useful, Charlie was +making use of her. His horizon had narrowed to logs that might be +transmuted into money. Enslaved himself by his engrossing purposes, he +thought nothing of enslaving others to serve his end. She had come to a +definite conclusion about that, and she meant to collect her wages when +he sold his logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had +coolly appropriated, and try a different outlet. If one must work, one +might at least seek work a little to one's taste. She therefore +dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly: + +"Some one has to do it." + +A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He looked at +her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in his expression +gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been that peculiar +psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are pleased to call +intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was coming and would have +forestalled it by rising. He prevented that move by catching her hands. + +"Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death to see +you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. Won't you +marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end good chums." + +She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement, +Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his +own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the +sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite +sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She +had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge in a +flippant manner. + +"Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really I +couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that +offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could resign +the job of chef, would you?" + +"Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively. + +"Not that way," she answered positively. + +"You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy about you. +I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't want any greater +privilege than to marry you and take you away from this sort of thing. +You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of sudden, but I know my own +mind. Can't you take a chance with me?" + +"I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. "It isn't +a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I haven't got any +feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I married you, it would +only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm not made that way. Can't +you see how impossible it would be?" + +"You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the next man." + +His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again. + +"That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said he. +"But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you could +like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good to you." + +"I daresay you would," she said quietly. "But I couldn't be good to you. +I don't want to marry you, Mr. Abbey. That's final. All the feeling I +have for you isn't enough for any woman to marry on." + +"Maybe not," he said dolefully. "I suppose that's the way it goes. Hang +it, I guess I was a little too sudden. But I'm a stayer. Maybe you'll +change your mind some time." + +He was standing very near her, and they were both so intent upon the +momentous business that occupied them that neither noticed Charlie +Benton until his hail startled them to attention. + +"Hello, folks," he greeted and passed on into the cook shanty, bestowing +upon Stella, over Abbey's shoulder, a comprehensive grin which nettled +her exceedingly. Her peaceful hour had been disturbed to no purpose. She +did not want to love or be loved. For the moment she felt old beyond her +years, mature beyond the comprehension of any man. If she had voiced her +real attitude toward Paul Abbey, she would have counseled him to run and +play, "like a good little boy." + +Instead she remarked: "I must get to work," and left her downcast +suitor without further ceremony. + +As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat himself +upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom. He was +presently joined by her brother. Glancing out, now and then, she made a +guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled slightly. She saw +them walk down to Abbey's launch, and Charlie delivered an encouraging +slap on Paul's shoulder as he embarked. Then the speedy craft tore out +of the bay at a headlong gait, her motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust, +wide wings of white spray arching off her flaring bows. + +"The desperate recklessness of thwarted affection--fiddlesticks!" Miss +Benton observed in sardonic mood. Her hands were deep in pie dough. She +thumped it viciously. The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it +rasped at her nerves again. + +Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin box where +such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a corner of the +table, eying her critically while he munched. + +"So you turned Paul down, eh?" he said at last. "You're the prize chump. +You've missed the best chance you'll ever have to put yourself on Easy +Street." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE + +For a week thereafter Benton developed moods of sourness, periods of +scowling thought. He tried to speed up his gang, and having all spring +driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their +patience, and Stella heard some sharp interchanges of words. He quelled +one incipient mutiny through sheer dominance, but it left him more short +of temper, more crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his ill-nature +broke out against Stella over some trifle, and she--being herself an +aggrieved party to his transactions--surprised her own sense of the +fitness of things by retaliating in kind. + +"I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work I +despise, and you can't even speak decently to me," she flared up. "You +act like a perfect brute lately. What's the matter with you?" + +Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence. + +"Hang it, I guess you're right," he admitted at last. "But I can't help +having a grouch. I'm going to fall behind on this contract, the best I +can do." + +"Well," she replied tartly. "I'm not to blame for that. I'm not +responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me?" + +"I don't, particularly," he answered. "Only--can't you _sabe_? A man +gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about +to come to nothing." + +"So does a woman," she made pointed retort. + +Benton chose to ignore the inference. + +"If I fall down on this, it'll just about finish me," he continued +glumly. "These people are not going to allow me an inch leeway. I'll +have to deliver on that contract to the last stipulated splinter before +they'll pay over a dollar. If I don't have a million feet for 'em three +weeks from to-day, it's all off, and maybe a suit for breach of contract +besides. That's the sort they are. If they can wiggle out of taking my +logs, they'll be to the good, because they've made other contracts down +the coast at fifty cents a thousand less. And the aggravating thing +about it is that if I could get by with this deal, I can close a +five-million-foot contract with the Abbey-Monohan outfit, for delivery +next spring. I must have the money for this before I can undertake the +bigger contract." + +"Can't you sell your logs if these other people won't take them?" she +asked, somewhat alive now to his position--and, incidentally, her own +interest therein. + +"In time, yes," he said. "But when you go into the open market with +logs, you don't always find a buyer right off the reel. I'd have to hire +'em towed from here to Vancouver, and there's some bad water to get +over. Time is money to me right now, Stell. If the thing dragged over +two or three months, by the time they were sold and all expenses paid, I +might not have anything left. I'm in debt for supplies, behind in +wages. When it looks like a man's losing, everybody jumps him. That's +business. I may have my outfit seized and sold up if I fall down on this +delivery and fail to square up accounts right away. Damn it, if you +hadn't given Paul Abbey the cold turn-down, I might have got a boost +over this hill. You were certainly a chump." + +"I'm not a mere pawn in your game yet," she flared hotly. "I suppose +you'd trade me for logs enough to complete your contract and consider it +a good bargain." + +"Oh, piffle," he answered coolly. "What's the use talking like that. +It's your game as much as mine. Where do you get off, if I go broke? You +might have done a heap worse. Paul's a good head. A girl that hasn't +anything but her looks to get through the world on hasn't any business +overlooking a bet like that. Nine girls out of ten marry for what there +is in it, anyhow." + +"Thank you," she replied angrily. "I'm not in the market on that basis." + +"All this stuff about ideal love and soul communion and perfect mating +is pure bunk, it seems to me," Charlie tacked off on a new course of +thought. "A man and a woman somewhere near of an age generally hit it +off all right, if they've got common horse sense--and income enough so +they don't have to squabble eternally about where the next new hat and +suit's coming from. It's the coin that counts most of all. It sure is, +Sis. It's me that knows it, right now." + +He sat a minute or two longer, again preoccupied with his problems. + +"Well," he said at last, "I've got to get action somehow. If I could get +about thirty men and another donkey for three weeks, I'd make it." + +He went outside. Up in the near woods the whine of the saws and the +sounds of chopping kept measured beat. It was late in the forenoon, and +Stella was hard about her dinner preparations. Contract or no contract, +money or no money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily +schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff +over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight +of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to +be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, +working harder than any of his men. + +A little later she saw him put off from the float in the _Chickamin's_ +dinghy. When the crew came to dinner, he had not returned. Nor was he +back when they went out again at one. + +Near mid-afternoon, however, he strode into the kitchen, wearing the +look of a conqueror. + +"I've got it fixed," he announced. + +Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was +stirring in a pan. + +"Got what fixed?" she asked. + +"Why, this log business," he said. "Jack Fyfe is going to put in a crew +and a donkey, and we're going to everlastingly rip the innards out of +these woods. I'll make delivery after all." + +"That's good," she remarked, but noticeably without enthusiasm. The +heat of that low-roofed shanty had taken all possible enthusiasm for +anything out of her for the time being. Always toward the close of each +day she was gripped by that feeling of deadly fatigue, in the face of +which nothing much mattered but to get through the last hours somehow +and drag herself wearily to bed. + +Benton playfully tweaked Katy John's ear and went whistling up the +trail. It was plain sailing for him now, and he was correspondingly +elated. + +He tried to talk to Stella that evening when she was through, all about +big things in the future, big contracts he could get, big money he could +see his way to make. It fell mostly on unappreciative ears. She was +tired, so tired that his egotistical chatter irritated her beyond +measure. What she would have welcomed with heartfelt gratitude was not +so much a prospect of future affluence in which she might or might not +share as a lightening of her present burden. So far as his conversation +ran, Benton's sole concern seemed to be more equipment, more men, so +that he might get out more logs. In the midst of this optimistic talk, +Stella walked abruptly into her room. + +Noon of the next day brought the _Panther_ coughing into the bay, +flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron +monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. To starboard was made +fast a like scow. That was housed over, a smoking stovepipe stuck +through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the +window sill as they floated in. Men to the number of twenty or more +clustered about both scows and the _Panther's_ deck, busy with pipe and +cigarette and rude jest. The clatter of their voices uprose through the +noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the +beach, the chaff and laughter died into silent, capable action. + +"A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a tree," +Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own machine. + +It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at work. +Steam was up in the donkey. They carried a line from its drum through a +snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the +scow in a matter of minutes. Then the same cable was made fast to a +sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponderous machine slid +forward on its own skids, like an up-ended barrel on a sled, down off +the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that +stood in its path, drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable +spooled up on the drum. + +A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore the loose +end away up the path. Presently one stood clear, waving a signal. Again +the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began to roll up on the +drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope under its own power, a +locomotive unneedful of rails, making its own right of way. Upon the +platform built over the skids were piled the tools of the crew, sawed +blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, grindstones, all that was necessary +in their task. At one o'clock they made their first move. At two the +donkey was vanished into that region where the chute-head lay, and the +great firs stood waiting the slaughter. + +By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in the logs +that came hurtling lakeward. Now at shorter intervals arose the grinding +sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as each leaped to the +water. It was a good thing, she surmised--for Charlie Benton. She could +not see where it made much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a +hundred came down to the boomsticks. + +Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic visits to the +camp of her kindred around the point. Bred out of doors, of a tribe +whose immemorial custom it is that the women do all the work, the Siwash +girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as bovine in temperament and +movements. She could lift with ease a weight that taxed Stella's +strength, and Stella Benton was no weakling, either. It was therefore a +part of Katy's routine to keep water pails filled from the creek and the +wood box supplied, in addition to washing dishes and carrying food to +the table. Katy slighted these various tasks occasionally. She needed +oversight, continual admonition, to get any job done in time. She was +slow to the point of exasperation. Nevertheless, she lightened the day's +labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or +assume the entire burden herself. This time Katy thoughtlessly left with +both water pails empty. + +Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow darkened the +door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe. + +"How d' do," he greeted. + +He had seemed a short man. Now, standing within four feet of her, she +perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and +thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and +Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a +cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor +embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing +her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him +for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to +match his manner. She flushed. Fyfe smiled, a broad, friendly grin, in +which a wide mouth opened to show strong, even teeth. + +"I'm after a drink," he said quite impersonally, and coolly taking the +pails out of her hands, walked through the kitchen and down to the +creek. He was back in a minute, set the filled buckets in their place, +and helped himself with a dipper. + +"Say," he asked easily, "how do you like life in a logging camp by this +time? This is sure one hot job you've got." + +"Literally or slangily?" she asked in a flippant tone. Fyfe's +reputation, rather vividly colored, had reached her from various +sources. She was not quite sure whether she cared to countenance him or +not. There was a disturbing quality in his glance, a subtle suggestion +of force about him that she felt without being able to define in +understandable terms. In any case she felt more than equal to the task +of squelching any effort at familiarity, even if Jack Fyfe were, in a +sense, the convenient god in her brother's machine. Fyfe chuckled at +her answer. + +"Both," he replied shortly and went out. + +She saw him a little later out on the bay in the _Panther's_ dink, +standing up in the little boat, making long, graceful casts with a +pliant rod. She perceived that this manner of fishing was highly +successful, insomuch as at every fourth or fifth cast a trout struck his +fly, breaking water with a vigorous splash. Then the bamboo would arch +as the fish struggled, making sundry leaps clear of the water, gleaming +like silver each time he broke the surface, but coming at last tamely to +Jack Fyfe's landing net. Of outdoor sports she knew most about angling, +for her father had been an ardent fly-caster. And she had observed with +a true angler's scorn the efforts of her brother's loggers to catch the +lake trout with a baited hook, at which they had scant success. Charlie +never fished. He had neither time nor inclination for such fooling, as +he termed it. Fyfe stopped fishing when the donkeys whistled six. It +happened that when he drew in to his cookhouse float, Stella was +standing in her kitchen door. Fyfe looked up at her and held aloft a +dozen trout strung by the gills on a stick, gleaming in the sun. + +"Vanity," she commented inaudibly. "I wonder if he thinks I've been +admiring his skill as a fisherman?" + +Nevertheless she paid tribute to his skill when ten minutes later he +sent a logger with the entire catch to her kitchen. They looked +toothsome, those lakers, and they were. She cooked one for her own +supper and relished it as a change from the everlasting bacon and ham. +In the face of that million feet of timber, Benton hunted no deer. True, +the Siwashes had once or twice brought in some venison. That, with a +roast or two of beef from town, was all the fresh meat she had tasted in +two months. There were enough trout to make a breakfast for the crew. +She ate hers and mentally thanked Jack Fyfe. + +Lying in her bed that night, in the short interval that came between +undressing and wearied sleep, she found herself wondering with a good +deal more interest about Jack Fyfe than she had ever bestowed +upon--well, Paul Abbey, for instance. + +She was quite positive that she was going to dislike Jack Fyfe if he +were thrown much in her way. There was something about him that she +resented. The difference between him and the rest of the rude crew among +which she must perforce live was a question of degree, not of kind. +There was certainly some compelling magnetism about the man. But along +with it went what she considered an almost brutal directness of speech +and action. Part of this conclusion came from hearsay, part from +observation, limited though her opportunities had been for the latter. +Miss Stella Benton, for all her poise, was not above jumping at +conclusions. There was something about Jack Fyfe that she resented. She +irritably dismissed it as a foolish impression, but the fact remained +that the mere physical nearness of him seemed to put her on the +defensive, as if he were in reality a hunter and she the hunted. + +Fyfe joined Charlie Benton about the time she finished work. The three +of them sat on the grass before Benton's quarters, and every time Jack +Fyfe's eyes rested on her she steeled herself to resist--what, she did +not know. Something intangible, something that disturbed her. She had +never experienced anything like that before; it tantalized her, roused +her curiosity. There was nothing occult about the man. He was nowise +fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. +Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly +about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from +her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to +comparing him with other men she knew. + +She had, in a way, unconsciously been prepared for just such a measure +of concentration upon Jack Fyfe. For he was a power on Roaring Lake, and +power,--physical, intellectual or financial,--exacts its own tribute of +consideration. He was a fighter, a dominant, hard-bitten woodsman, so +the tale ran. He had gathered about him the toughest crew on the Lake, +himself, upon occasion, the most turbulent of all. He controlled many +square miles of big timber, and he had gotten it all by his own effort +in the eight years since he came to Roaring Lake as a hand logger. He +was slow of speech, chain-lightning in action, respected generally, +feared a lot. All these things her brother and Katy John had sketched +for Stella with much verbal embellishment. + +There was no ignoring such a man. Brought into close contact with the +man himself, Stella felt the radiating force of his personality. There +it was, a thing to be reckoned with. She felt that whenever Jack Fyfe's +gray eyes rested impersonally on her. His pleasant, freckled face +hovered before her until she fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed +again of him throwing that drunken logger down the Hot Springs slip. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +DURANCE VILE + +By September first a growing uneasiness hardened into distasteful +certainty upon Stella. It had become her firm resolve to get what money +was due her when Charlie marketed his logs and try another field of +labor. That camp on Roaring Lake was becoming a nightmare to her. She +had no inherent dislike for work. She was too vibrantly alive to be +lazy. But she had had an overdose of unaccustomed drudgery, and she was +growing desperate. If there had been anything to keep her mind from +continual dwelling on the manifold disagreeableness she had to cope +with, she might have felt differently, but there was not. She ate, +slept, worked,--ate, slept, and worked again,--till every fibre of her +being cried out in protest against the deadening round. She was like a +flower striving to attain its destiny of bloom in soil overrun with rank +weeds. Loneliness and hard, mean work, day after day, in which all that +had ever seemed desirable in life had neither place nor consideration, +were twin evils of isolation and flesh-wearying labor, from which she +felt that she must get away, or go mad. + +But she did not go. Benton left to make his delivery to the mill +company, the great boom of logs gliding slowly along in the wake of a +tug, the _Chickamin_ in attendance. Benton's crew accompanied the boom. +Fyfe's gang loaded their donkey and gear aboard the scow and went home. +The bay lay all deserted, the woods silent. For the first time in three +months she had all her hours free, only her own wants to satisfy. Katy +John spent most of her time in the smoky camp of her people. Stella +loafed. For two days she did nothing, gave herself up to a physical +torpor she had never known before. She did not want to read, to walk +about, or even lift her eyes to the bold mountains that loomed massive +across the lake. It was enough to lie curled among pillows under the +alder and stare drowsily at the blue September sky, half aware of the +drone of a breeze in the firs, the flutter of birds' wings, and the lap +of water on the beach. + +Presently, however, the old restless energy revived. The spring came +back to her step and she shed that lethargy like a cast-off garment. And +in so doing her spirit rose in hot rebellion against being a prisoner to +deadening drudgery, against being shut away from all the teeming life +that throve and trafficked beyond the solitude in which she sat immured. +When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated +that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in +the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and +then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of +plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but +she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling +which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. +She had passed through what she termed a culinary inferno. Nothing, she +considered, could be beyond her after that unremitting drudgery. + +But Benton failed to come back on the appointed day. The four days +lengthened to a week. Then the _Panther_, bound up-lake, stopped to +leave a brief note from Charlie, telling her business had called him to +Vancouver. + +Altogether it was ten days before the _Chickamin_ whistled up the bay. +She slid in beside the float, her decks bristling with men like a +passenger craft. Stella, so thoroughly sated with loneliness that she +temporarily forgot her grievances, flew to meet her brother. But one +fair glimpse of the disembarking crew turned her back. They were all in +varying stages of liquor--from two or three who had to be hauled over +the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were +so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was +some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the +cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of +spirits--speaking truly in the double sense. + +"Hello, lady," he hailed jovially. "How did you fare all by your +lonesome this long time? I didn't figure to be gone so long, but there +was a lot to attend to. How are you, anyway?" + +"All right," she answered coolly. "You evidently celebrated your log +delivery in the accepted fashion." + +"Don't you believe it," he grinned amiably. "I had a few drinks with the +boys on the way up, that's all. No, sir, it was straight business with +a capital B all the time I was gone. I've got a good thing in hand, +Sis--big money in sight. Tell you about it later. Think you and Katy can +rustle grub for this bunch by six?" + +"Oh, I suppose so," she said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to +tell him then and there that she was through,--like Matt, the cook, that +memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She +refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken crowd +looked formidable in numbers. + +"How many extra?" she asked mechanically. + +"Thirty men, all told," Benton returned briskly. "I tell you I'm sure +going to rip the heart out of this limit before spring. I've signed up a +six-million-foot contract for delivery as soon as the logs'll go over +Roaring Rapids in the spring. Remember what I told you when you came? +You stick with me, and you'll wear diamonds. I stand to clean up twenty +thousand on the winter's work." + +"In that case, you should be able to hire a real cook," she suggested, a +spice of malice in her tone. + +"I sure will, when it begins to come right," he promised largely. "And +I'll give you a soft job keeping books then. Well, I'll lend you a hand +for to-night. Where's the Siwash maiden?" + +"Over at the camp; there she comes now," Stella replied. "Will you start +a fire, Charlie, while I change my dress?" + +"You look like a peach in that thing." He stood off a pace to admire. +"You're some dame, Stell, when you get on your glad rags." + +She frowned at her image in the glass behind the closed door of her +room as she set about unfastening the linen dress she had worn that +afternoon. Deep in her trunk, along with much other unused finery, it +had reposed all summer. That ingrained instinct to be admired, to be +garbed fittingly and well, came back to her as soon as she was rested. +And though there were none but squirrels and bluejays and occasionally +Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, it had pleased her for a week +to wear her best, and wander about the beaches and among the dusky +trunks of giant fir, a picture of blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She +took off the dress and threw it on the bed with a resentful rush of +feeling. The treadmill gaped for her again. But not for long. She was +through with that. She was glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He +could not call on her to help him out of a hole now. She would tell him +her decision to-night. And as soon as he could get a cook to fill her +place, then good-by to Roaring Lake, good-by to kitchen smells and flies +and sixteen hours a day over a hot stove. + +She wondered why such a loathing of the work afflicted her; if all who +earned their bread in the sweat of their brow were ridden with that +feeling,--woodsmen, cooks, chauffeurs, the slaves of personal service +and the great industrial mills alike? Her heart went out to them if they +were. But she was quite sure that work could be otherwise than +repellent, enslaving. She recalled that cooks and maids had worked in +her father's house with no sign of the revolt that now assailed her. But +it seemed to her that their tasks had been light compared with the job +of cooking in Charlie Benton's camp. + +Curiously enough, while she changed her clothes, her thoughts a jumble +of present things she disliked and the unknown that she would have to +face alone in Vancouver, she found her mind turning on Jack Fyfe. During +his three weeks' stay, they had progressed less in the direction of +acquaintances than she and Paul Abbey had done in two meetings. Fyfe +talked to her now and then briefly, but he looked at her more than he +talked. Where his searching gaze disturbed, his speech soothed, it was +so coolly impersonal. That, she deemed, was merely another of his odd +contradictions. He was contradictory. Stella classified Jack Fyfe as a +creature of unrestrained passions. She recognized, or thought she +recognized, certain dominant, primitive characteristics, and they did +not excite her admiration. Men admired him--those who were not afraid of +him. If he had been of more polished clay, she could readily have +grasped this attitude. But in her eyes he was merely a rude, masterful +man, uncommonly gifted with physical strength, dominating other rude, +strong men by sheer brute force. And she herself rather despised sheer +brute force. The iron hand should fitly be concealed beneath the velvet +glove. + +Yet in spite of the bold look in his eyes that always confused and +irritated her, Fyfe had never singled her out for the slightest +attention of the kind any man bestows upon an attractive woman. Stella +was no fool. She knew that she was attractive, and she knew why. She had +been prepared to repulse, and there had been nothing to repulse. Once +during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the +beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was +not back. He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after +all. Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind. Or +perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think +about that one could not escape the personal element. As if any one ever +could. As if life were made up of anything but the impinging of one +personality upon another. That was something Miss Stella Benton had yet +to learn. She was still mired in the rampant egotism of untried youth, +as yet the sublime individualist. + +That side of her suffered a distinct shock later in the evening. When +supper was over, the work done, and the loggers' celebration was slowly +subsiding in the bunkhouse, she told Charlie with blunt directness what +she wanted to do. With equally blunt directness he declared that he +would not permit it. Stella's teeth came together with an angry little +click. + +"I'm of age, Charlie," she said to him. "It isn't for you to say what +you will or will not _permit_ me to do. I want that money of mine that +you used--and what I've earned. God knows I _have_ earned it. I can't +stand this work, and I don't intend to. It isn't work; it's slavery." + +"But what can you do in town?" he countered. "You haven't the least idea +what you'd be going up against, Stell. You've never been away from home, +and you've never had the least training at anything useful. You'd be on +your uppers in no time at all. You wouldn't have a ghost of a chance." + +"I have such a splendid chance here," she retorted ironically. "If I +could get in any position where I'd be more likely to die of sheer +stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this forsaken +hole, I'd like to know how. I don't think it's possible." + +"You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it," Benton +returned grumpily. "If you haven't got any sense about things, I have. I +know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other seaport town is for a +girl alone. I won't let you make any foolish break like that. That's +flat." + +From this position she failed to budge him. Once angered, partly by her +expressed intention and partly by the outspoken protest against the +mountain of work imposed on her, Charlie refused point-blank to give her +either the ninety dollars he had taken out of her purse or the three +months' wages due. Having made her request, and having met with this--to +her--amazing refusal, Stella sat dumb. There was too fine a streak in +her to break out in recrimination. She was too proud to cry. + +So that she went to bed in a ferment of helpless rage. Virtually she was +a prisoner, as much so as if Charlie had kidnaped her and held her so by +brute force. The economic restraint was all potent. Without money she +could not even leave the camp. And when she contemplated the daily +treadmill before her, she shuddered. + +At least she could go on strike. Her round cheek flushed with the +bitterest anger she had ever known, she sat with eyes burning into the +dark of her sordid room, and vowed that the thirty loggers should die of +slow starvation if they did not eat until she cooked another meal for +them. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +JACK FYFE'S CAMP + +She was still hot with the spirit of mutiny when morning came, but she +cooked breakfast. It was not in her to act like a petulant child. +Morning also brought a different aspect to things, for Charlie told her +while he helped prepare breakfast that he was going to take his crew and +repay in labor the help Jack Fyfe had given him. + +"While we're there, Jack's cook will feed all hands," said he. "And by +the time we're through there, I'll have things fixed so it won't be such +hard going for you here. Do you want to go along to Jack's camp?" + +"No," she answered shortly. "I don't. I would much prefer to get away +from this lake altogether, as I told you last night." + +"You might as well forget that notion," he said stubbornly. "I've got a +little pride in the matter. I don't want my sister drudging at the only +kind of work she'd be able to earn a living at." + +"You're perfectly willing to have me drudge here," she flashed back. + +"That's different," he defended. "And it's only temporary. I'll be +making real money before long. You'll get your share if you'll have a +little patience and put your shoulder to the wheel. Lord, I'm doing the +best I can." + +"Yes--for yourself," she returned. "You don't seem to consider that I'm +entitled to as much fair play as you'd have to accord one of your men. I +don't want you to hand me an easy living on a silver salver. All I want +of you is what is mine, and the privilege of using my own judgment. I'm +quite capable of taking care of myself." + +If there had been opportunity to enlarge on that theme, they might have +come to another verbal clash. But Benton never lost sight of his primary +object. The getting of breakfast and putting his men about their work +promptly was of more importance to him than Stella's grievance. So the +incipient storm dwindled to a sullen mood on her part. Breakfast over, +Benton loaded men and tools aboard a scow hitched beside the boat. He +repeated his invitation, and Stella refused, with a sarcastic reflection +on the company she would be compelled to keep there. + +The _Chickamin_ with her tow drew off, and she was alone again. + +"Marooned once more," Stella said to herself when the little steamboat +slipped behind the first jutting point. "Oh, if I could just be a man +for a while." + +Marooned seemed to her the appropriate term. There were the two old +Siwashes and their dark-skinned brood. But they were little more to +Stella than the insentient boulders that strewed the beach. She could +not talk to them or they to her. Long since she had been surfeited with +Katy John. If there were any primitive virtues in that dusky maiden they +were well buried under the white man's schooling. Katy's demand upon +life was very simple and in marked contrast to Stella Benton's. Plenty +of grub, no work, some cheap finery, and a man white or red, no matter, +to make eyes at. Her horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission +at Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of Stella's loneliness. + +Nevertheless Stella resigned herself to make the best of it, and it +proved a poor best. She could not detach herself sufficiently from the +sordid realities to lose herself in day-dreaming. There was not a book +in the camp save some ten-cent sensations she found in the bunkhouse, +and these she had exhausted during Charlie's first absence. The uncommon +stillness of the camp oppressed her more than ever. Even the bluejays +and squirrels seemed to sense its abandonment, seemed to take her as +part of the inanimate fixtures, for they frisked and chattered about +with uncommon fearlessness. The lake lay dead gray, glassy as some great +irregular window in the crust of the earth. Only at rare intervals did +sail or smoke dot its surface, and then far offshore. The woods stood +breathless in the autumn sun. It was like being entombed. And there +would be a long stretch of it, with only a recurrence of that deadly +grind of kitchen work when the loggers came home again. + +Some time during the next forenoon she went southerly along the lake +shore on foot without object or destination, merely to satisfy in some +measure the restless craving for action. Colorful turns of life, the +more or less engrossing contact of various personalities, some new thing +to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a part of her existence +ever since she could remember. None of this touched her now. A dead +weight of monotony rode her hard. There was the furtive wild life of the +forest, the light of sun and sky, and the banked green of the forest +that masked the steep granite slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it +indeed, but she could not satisfy her being with scenic effects alone. +She craved, without being wholly aware of it, or altogether admitting it +to herself, some human distraction in all that majestic solitude. + +It was forthcoming. When she returned to camp at two o'clock, driven in +by hunger, Jack Fyfe sat on the doorstep. + +"How-de-do. I've come to bring you over to my place," he announced quite +casually. + +"Thanks. I've already declined one pressing invitation to that effect," +Stella returned drily. His matter-of-fact assurance rather nettled her. + +"A woman always has the privilege of changing her mind," Fyfe smiled. +"Charlie is going to be at my camp for at least three weeks. It'll rain +soon, and the days'll be pretty gray and dreary and lonesome. You might +as well pack your war-bag and come along." + +She stood uncertainly. Her tongue held ready a blunt refusal, but she +did not utter it; and she did not know why. She did have a glimpse of +the futility of refusing, only she did not admit that refusal might be +of no weight in the matter. With her mind running indignantly against +compulsion, nevertheless her muscles involuntarily moved to obey. It +irritated her further that she should feel in the least constrained to +obey the calmly expressed wish of this quiet-spoken woodsman. Certain +possible phases of a lengthy sojourn in Jack Fyfe's camp shot across her +mind. He seemed of uncanny perception, for he answered this thought +before it was clearly formed. + +"Oh, you'll be properly chaperoned, and you won't have to mix with the +crew," he drawled. "I've got all kinds of room. My boss logger's wife is +up from town for a while. She's a fine, motherly old party, and she +keeps us all in order." + +"I haven't had any lunch," she temporized. "Have you?" + +He shook his head. + +"I rowed over here before twelve. Thought I'd get you back to camp in +time for dinner. You know," he said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, "a +logger never eats anything but a meal. A lunch to us is a snack that you +put in your pocket. I guess we lack tone out here. We haven't got past +the breakfast-dinner-supper stage yet; too busy making the country fit +to live in." + +"You have a tremendous job in hand," she observed. + +"Oh, maybe," he laughed. "All in the way you look at it. Suits some of +us. Well, if we get to my camp before three, the cook might feed us. +Come on. You'll get to hating yourself if you stay here alone till +Charlie's through." + +Why not? Thus she parleyed with herself, one half of her minded to stand +upon her dignity, the other part of her urging acquiescence in his wish +that was almost a command. She was tempted to refuse just to see what he +would do, but she reconsidered that. Without any logical foundation for +the feeling, she was shy of pitting her will against Jack Fyfe's. +Hitherto quite sure of herself, schooled in self-possession, it was a +new and disturbing experience to come in contact with that subtle, +analysis-defying quality which carries the possessor thereof straight to +his or her goal over all opposition, which indeed many times stifles all +opposition. Force of character, overmastering personality, emanation of +sheer will, she could not say in what terms it should be described. +Whatever it was, Jack Fyfe had it. It existed, a factor to be reckoned +with when one dealt with him. For within twenty minutes she had packed a +suitcase full of clothes and was embarked in his rowboat. + +He sent the lightly built craft easily through the water with regular, +effortless strokes. Stella sat in the stern, facing him. Out past the +north horn of the bay, she broke the silence that had fallen between +them. + +"Why did you make a point of coming for me?" she asked bluntly. + +Fyfe rested on his oars a moment, looking at her in his direct, +unembarrassed way. + +"I wintered once on the Stickine," he said. "My partner pulled out +before Christmas and never came back. It was the first time I'd ever +been alone in my life. I wasn't a much older hand in the country than +you are. Four months without hearing the sound of a human voice. Stark +alone. I got so I talked to myself out loud before spring. So I +thought--well, I thought I'd come and bring you over to see Mrs. Howe." + +Stella sat gazing at the slow moving panorama of the lake shore, her +chin in her hand. + +"Thank you," she said at last, and very gently. + +Fyfe looked at her a minute or more, a queer, half-amused expression +creeping into his eyes. + +"Well," he said finally, "I might as well tell the whole truth. I've +been thinking about you quite a lot lately, Miss Stella Benton, or I +wouldn't have thought about you getting lonesome." + +He smiled ever so faintly, a mere movement of the corners of his mouth, +at the pink flush which rose quickly in her cheeks, and then resumed his +steady pull at the oars. + +Except for a greater number of board shacks and a larger area of stump +and top-littered waste immediately behind it, Fyfe's headquarters, +outwardly, at least, differed little from her brother's camp. Jack led +her to a long, log structure with a shingle roof, which from its more +substantial appearance she judged to be his personal domicile. A plump, +smiling woman of forty greeted her on the threshold. Once within, Stella +perceived that there was in fact considerable difference in Mr. Fyfe's +habitation. There was a great stone fireplace, before which big +easy-chairs invited restful lounging. The floor was overlaid with thick +rugs which deadened her footfalls. With no pretense of ornamental +decoration, the room held an air of homely comfort. + +"Come in here and lay off your things," Mrs. Howe beamed on her. "If +I'd 'a' known you were livin' so close, we'd have been acquainted a week +ago; though I ain't got rightly settled here myself. My land, these men +are such clams. I never knowed till this mornin' there was any white +woman at this end of the lake besides myself." + +She showed Stella into a bedroom. It boasted an enamel washstand with +taps which yielded hot and cold water, neatly curtained windows, and a +deep-seated Morris chair. Certainly Fyfe's household accommodation was +far superior to Charlie Benton's. Stella expected the man's home to be +rough and ready like himself, and in a measure it was, but a comfortable +sort of rough and readiness. She took off her hat and had a critical +survey of herself in a mirror, after which she had just time to brush +her hair before answering Mrs. Howe's call to a "cup of tea." + +The cup of tea resolved itself into a well-cooked and well-served meal, +with china and linen and other unexpected table accessories which +agreeably surprised, her. Inevitably she made comparisons, somewhat +tinctured with natural envy. If Charlie would fix his place with a few +such household luxuries, life in their camp would be more nearly +bearable, despite the long hours of disagreeable work. As it was--well, +the unrelieved discomforts were beginning to warp her out-look on +everything. + +Fyfe maintained his habitual sparsity of words while they ate the food +Mrs. Howe brought on a tray hot from the cook's outlying domain. When +they finished, he rose, took up his hat and helped himself to a handful +of cigars from a box on the fireplace mantel. + +"I guess you'll be able to put in the time, all right," he remarked. +"Make yourself at home. If you take a notion to read, there's a lot of +books and magazines in my room. Mrs. Howe'll show you." + +He walked out. Stella was conscious of a distinct relief when he was +gone. She had somehow experienced a recurrence of that peculiar feeling +of needing to be on her guard, as if there were some curious, latent +antagonism between them. She puzzled over that a little. She had never +felt that way about Paul Abbey, for instance, or indeed toward any man +she had ever known. Fyfe's more or less ambiguous remark in the boat had +helped to arouse it again. His manner of saying that he had "thought a +lot about her" conveyed more than the mere words. She could quite +conceive of the Jack Fyfe type carrying things with a high hand where a +woman was concerned. He had that reputation in all his other dealings. +He was aggressive. He could drink any logger in the big firs off his +feet. He had an uncanny luck at cards. Somehow or other in every +undertaking Jack Fyfe always came out on top, so the tale ran. There +must be, she reasoned, a wide streak of the brute in such a man. It was +no gratification to her vanity to have him admire her. It did not dawn +upon her that so far she had never got over being a little afraid of +him, much less to ask herself why she should be afraid of him. + +But she did not spend much time puzzling over Jack Fyfe. Once out of her +sight she forgot him. It was balm to her lonely soul to have some one +of her own sex for company. What Mrs. Howe lacked in the higher culture +she made up in homely perception and unassuming kindliness. Her husband +was Fyfe's foreman. She herself was not a permanent fixture in the camp. +They had a cottage at Roaring Springs, where she spent most of the time, +so that their three children could be in school. + +"I was up here all through vacation," she told Stella. "But Lefty he got +to howlin' about bein' left alone shortly after school started again, so +I got my sister to look after the kids for a spell, while I stay. I'll +be goin' down about the time Mr. Benton's through here." + +Stella eventually went out to take a look around the camp. A hard-beaten +path led off toward where rose the distant sounds of logging work, the +ponderous crash of trees, and the puff of the donkeys. She followed that +a little way and presently came to a knoll some three hundred yards +above the beach. There she paused to look and wonder curiously. + +For the crest of this little hillock had been cleared and graded level +and planted to grass over an area four hundred feet square. It was +trimmed like a lawn, and in the center of this vivid green block stood +an unfinished house foundation of gray stone. No stick of timber, no +board or any material for further building lay in sight. The thing stood +as if that were to be all. And it was not a new undertaking temporarily +delayed. There was moss creeping over the thick stone wall, she +discovered when she walked over it. Whoever had laid that foundation had +done it many a moon before. Yet the sward about was kept as if a +gardener had it in charge. + +A noble stretch of lake and mountain spread out before her gaze. +Straight across the lake two deep clefts in the eastern range opened on +the water, five miles apart. She could see the white ribbon of foaming +cascades in each. Between lifted a great mountain, and on the lakeward +slope of this stood a terrible scar of a slide, yellow and brown, rising +two thousand feet from the shore. A vaporous wisp of cloud hung along +the top of the slide, and above this aërial banner a snow-capped +pinnacle thrust itself high into the infinite blue. + +"What an outlook," she said, barely conscious that she spoke aloud. "Why +do these people build their houses in the bush, when they could live in +the open and have something like this to look at. They would, if they +had any sense of beauty." + +"Sure they haven't? Some of them might have, you know, without being +able to gratify it." + +She started, to find Jack Fyfe almost at her elbow, the gleam of a +quizzical smile lighting his face. + +"I daresay that might be true," she admitted. + +Fyfe's gaze turned from her to the huge sweep of lake and mountain +chain. She saw that he was outfitted for fishing, creel on his shoulder, +unjointed rod in one hand. By means of his rubber-soled waders he had +come upon her noiselessly. + +"It's truer than you think, maybe," he said at length. "You don't want +to come along and take a lesson in catching rainbows, I suppose?" + +"Not this time, thanks," she shook her head. + +"I want to get enough for supper, so I'd better be at it," he remarked. +"Sometimes they come pretty slow. If you should want to go up and watch +the boys work, that trail will take you there." + +He went off across the grassy level and plunged into the deep timber +that rose like a wall beyond. Stella looked after. + +"It is certainly odd," she reflected with some irritation, "how that man +affects me. I don't think a woman could ever be just friends with him. +She'd either like him a lot or dislike him intensely. He isn't anything +but a logger, and yet he has a presence like one of the lords of +creation. Funny." + +Then she went back to the house to converse upon domestic matters with +Mrs. Howe until the shrilling of the donkey whistle brought forty-odd +lumberjacks swinging down the trail. + +Behind them a little way came Jack Fyfe with sagging creel. He did not +stop to exhibit his catch, but half an hour later they were served hot +and crisp at the table in the big living room, where Fyfe, Stella and +Charlie Benton, Lefty Howe and his wife, sat down together. + +A flunkey from the camp kitchen served the meal and cleared it away. For +an hour or two after that the three men sat about in shirt-sleeved ease, +puffing at Jack Fyfe's cigars. Then Benton excused himself and went to +bed. When Howe and his wife retired, Stella did likewise. The long +twilight had dwindled to a misty patch of light sky in the northwest, +and she fell asleep more at ease than she had been for weeks. Sitting in +Jack Fyfe's living room through that evening she had begun to formulate +a philosophy to fit her enforced environment--to live for the day only, +and avoid thought of the future until there loomed on the horizon some +prospect of a future worth thinking about. The present looked passable +enough, she thought, if she kept her mind strictly on it alone. + +And with that idea to guide her, she found the days slide by smoothly. +She got on famously with Mrs. Howe, finding that woman full of virtues +unsuspected in her type. Charlie was in his element. His prospects +looked so rosy that they led him into egotistic outlines of what he +intended to accomplish. To him the future meant logs in the water, big +holdings of timber, a growing bank account. Beyond that,--what all his +concentrated effort should lead to save more logs and more timber,--he +did not seem to go. Judged by his talk, that was the ultimate, economic +power,--money and more money. More and more as Stella listened to him, +she became aware that he was following in his father's footsteps; save +that he aimed at greater heights and that he worked by different +methods, juggling with natural resources where their father had merely +juggled with prices and tokens of product, their end was the same--not +to create or build up, but to grasp, to acquire. That was the game. To +get and to hold for their own use and benefit and to look upon men and +things, in so far as they were of use, as pawns in the game. + +She wondered sometimes if that were a characteristic of all men, if that +were the big motif in the lives of such men as Paul Abbey and Jack +Fyfe, for instance; if everything else, save the struggle of getting and +keeping money, resolved itself into purely incidental phases of their +existence? For herself she considered that wealth, or the getting of +wealth, was only a means to an end. + +Just what that end might be she found a little vague, rather hard to +define in exact terms. It embraced personal leisure and the good things +of life as a matter of course, a broader existence, a large-handed +generosity toward the less fortunate, an intellectual elevation entirely +unrelated to gross material things. Life, she told herself pensively, +ought to mean something more than ease and good clothes, but what more +she was chary of putting into concrete form. It hadn't meant much more +than that for her, so far. She was only beginning to recognize the +flinty facts of existence. She saw now that for her there lay open only +two paths to food and clothing: one in which, lacking all training, she +must earn her bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage. That, +she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't +pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along +living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The +morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of +mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be +thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within +her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses +bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source nor their +ultimate fruits. + +Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she +wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his +brief sentences or slow smile. Latterly her feeling about him, that +involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his personality, +left her. Fyfe seemed to be more or less self-conscious of her presence +as a guest in his house. His manner toward her remained always casual, +as if she were a man, and there was no question of sex attraction or +masculine reaction to it between them. She liked him better for that; +and she did admire his wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested +in his magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without +caring to fondle the beast. + +Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks. Autumn's gorgeous +paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and alder and birch +that lined the lake shore. The fall run of the salmon was on, and every +stream was packed with the silver horde, threshing through shoal and +rapid to reach the spawning ground before they died. Off every creek +mouth and all along the lake the seal followed to prey on the salmon, +and sea-trout and lakers alike swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon +the roe. The days shortened. Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for +hours on end, and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking +the lake would stand out all freshly robed in white,--a mantle that +crept lower on the fir-clad slopes after each storm. The winds that +whistled off those heights nipped sharply. + +Early in October Charlie Benton had squared his neighborly account with +Jack Fyfe. With crew and equipment he moved home, to begin work anew on +his own limit. + +Katy John and her people came back from the salmon fishing. Jim Renfrew, +still walking with a pronounced limp, returned from the hospital. +Charlie wheedled Stella into taking up the cookhouse burden again. +Stella consented; in truth she could do nothing else. Charlie spent a +little of his contract profits in piping water to the kitchen, in a few +things to brighten up and make more comfortable their own quarters. + +"Just as soon as I can put another boom over the rapids, Stell," he +promised, "I'll put a cook on the job. I've got to sail a little close +for a while. With this crew I ought to put a million feet in the water +in six weeks. Then I'll be over the hump, and you can take it easy. But +till then--" + +"Till then I may as well make myself useful," Stella interrupted +caustically. + +"Well, why not?" Benton demanded impatiently. "Nobody around here works +any harder than I do." + +And there the matter rested. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +ONE WAY OUT + +That was a winter of big snow. November opened with rain. Day after day +the sun hid his face behind massed, spitting clouds. Morning, noon, and +night the eaves of the shacks dripped steadily, the gaunt limbs of the +hardwoods were a line of coursing drops, and through all the vast +reaches of fir and cedar the patter of rain kept up a dreary monotone. +Whenever the mist that blew like rolling smoke along the mountains +lifted for a brief hour, there, creeping steadily downward, lay the +banked white. + +Rain or shine, the work drove on. From the peep of day till dusk +shrouded the woods, Benton's donkey puffed and groaned, axes thudded, +the thin, twanging whine of the saws rose. Log after log slid down the +chute to float behind the boomsticks; and at night the loggers trooped +home, soaked to the skin, to hang their steaming mackinaws around the +bunkhouse stove. When they gathered in the mess-room they filled it with +the odor of sweaty bodies and profane grumbling about the weather. + +Early in December Benton sent out a big boom of logs with a hired +stern-wheeler that was no more than out of Roaring Lake before the snow +came. The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned to great, moist +flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless night. At daybreak it +lay a foot deep and snowing hard. Thenceforth there was no surcease. The +white, feathery stuff piled up and piled up, hour upon hour and day +after day, as if the deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves +before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm +came a bright, cold sky and frost,--not the bitter frost of the high +latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a +thin scum of ice on every patch of still water. + +Necessarily, all work ceased. The donkey was a shapeless mound of white, +all the lines and gear buried deep. A man could neither walk on that +yielding mass nor wallow through it. The logging crew hailed the +enforced rest with open relief. Benton grumbled. And then, with the +hours hanging heavy on his hands, he began to spend more and more of his +time in the bunkhouse with the "boys," particularly in the long +evenings. + +Stella wondered what pleasure he found in their company, but she never +asked him, nor did she devote very much thought to the matter. There was +but small cessation in her labors, and that only because six or eight of +the men drew their pay and went out. Benton managed to hold the others +against the thaw that might open up the woods in twenty-four hours, but +the smaller size of the gang only helped a little, and did not assist +her mentally at all. All the old resentment against the indignity of her +position rose and smoldered. To her the days were full enough of things +that she was terribly weary of doing over and over, endlessly. She was +always tired. No matter that she did, in a measure, harden to her work, +grow callously accustomed to rising early and working late. Always her +feet were sore at night, aching intolerably. Hot food, sharp knives, and +a glowing stove played havoc with her hands. Always she rose in the +morning heavy-eyed and stiff-muscled. Youth and natural vigor alone kept +her from breaking down, and to cap the strain of toil, she was soul-sick +with the isolation. For she was isolated; there was not a human being in +the camp, Katy John included, with whom she exchanged two dozen words a +day. + +Before the snow put a stop to logging, Jack Fyfe dropped in once a week +or so. When work shut down, he came oftener, but he never singled Stella +out for any particular attention. Once he surprised her sitting with her +elbows on the kitchen table, her face buried in her palms. She looked up +at his quiet entrance, and her face must have given him his cue. He +leaned a little toward her. + +"How long do you think you can stand it?" he asked gently. + +"God knows," she answered, surprised into speaking the thought that lay +uppermost in her mind, surprised beyond measure that Be should read that +thought. + +He stood looking down at her for a second or two. His lips parted, but +he closed them again over whatever rose to his tongue and passed +silently through the dining room and into the bunkhouse, where Benton +had preceded him a matter of ten minutes. + +It lacked a week of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men had gone +in the _Chickamin_ to Roaring Springs for supplies. They had returned in +mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new note of hilarity in the +bunkhouse that part of the supplies had been liquid. This had happened +more than once since the big snow closed in. She remembered Charlie's +fury at the logger who started Matt the cook on his spree, and she +wondered at this relaxation, but it was not in her province, and she +made no comment. + +Jack Fyfe stayed to supper that evening. Neither he nor Charlie came +back to Benton's quarters when the meal was finished. While she stacked +up the dishes, Katy John observed: + +"Goodness sakes, Miss Benton, them fellers was fresh at supper. They was +half-drunk, some of them. I bet they'll be half a dozen fights before +mornin'." + +Stella passed that over in silence, with a mental turning up of her +nose. It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It was a +disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. She kept +harking back to it, though, when she was in her own quarters, and Katy +John had vanished for the night into her little room off the kitchen. +Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse +disturbing sounds welled now and then into the cold, still +night,--incoherent snatches of song, voices uproariously raised, bursts +of laughter. Once, as she looked out the door, thinking she heard +footsteps crunching in the snow, some one rapped out a coarse oath that +drove her back with burning face. + +As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to know in +what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor +riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and +still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices. + +Suddenly there rose a brief clamor. In the dead silence that followed, +she heard a thud and the clinking smash of breaking glass, a panted +oath, sounds of struggle. + +Stella slipped on a pair of her brother's gum boots and an overcoat, and +ran out on the path beaten from their cabin to the shore. It led past +the bunkhouse, and on that side opened two uncurtained windows, yellow +squares that struck gleaming on the snow. The panes of one were broken +now, sharp fragments standing like saw teeth in the wooden sash. + +She stole warily near and looked in. Two men were being held apart; one +by three of his fellows, the other _by_ Jack Fyfe alone. Fyfe grinned +mildly, talking to the men in a quiet, pacific tone. + +"Now you know that was nothing to scrap about," she heard him say, +"You're both full of fighting whisky, but a bunkhouse isn't any place to +fight. Wait till morning. If you've still got it in your systems, go +outside and have it out. But you shouldn't disturb our game and break up +the furniture. Be gentlemen, drunk or sober. Better shake hands and call +it square." + +"Aw, let 'em go to it, if they want to." + +Charlie's voice, drink-thickened, harsh, came from a earner of the room +into which she could not see until she moved nearer. By the time she +picked him out, Fyfe resumed his seat at the table where three others +and Benton waited with cards in their hands, red and white chips and +money stacked before them. + +She knew enough of cards to realize that a stiff poker game was on the +board when she had watched one hand dealt and played. It angered her, +not from any ethical motive, but because of her brother's part in it. He +had no funds to pay a cook's wages, yet he could afford to lose on one +hand as much as he credited her with for a month's work. She could slave +at the kitchen job day in and day out to save him forty-five dollars a +month. He could lose that without the flicker of an eyelash, but he +couldn't pay her wages on demand. Also she saw that he had imbibed too +freely, if the redness of his face and the glassy fixedness of his eyes +could be read aright. + +"Pig!" she muttered. "If that's his idea of pleasure. Oh, well, why +should I care? I don't, so far as he's concerned, if I could just get +away from this beast of a place myself." + +Abreast of her a logger came to the broken window with a sack to bar out +the frosty air. And Stella, realizing suddenly that she was shivering +with the cold, ran back to the cabin and got into her bed. + +But she did not sleep, save in uneasy periods of dozing, until midnight +was long past. Then Fyfe and her brother came in, and by the sounds she +gathered that Fyfe was putting Charlie to bed. She heard his deep, +drawly voice urging the unwisdom of sleeping with calked boots on, and +Beaton's hiccupy response. The rest of the night she slept fitfully, +morbidly imagining terrible things. She was afraid, that was the sum +and substance of it. Over in the bunkhouse the carousal was still at its +height. She could not rid herself of the sight of those two men +struggling to be at each other like wild beasts, the bloody face of the +one who had been struck, the coarse animalism of the whole +whisky-saturated gang. It repelled and disgusted and frightened her. + +The night frosts had crept through the single board walls of Stella's +room and made its temperature akin to outdoors when the alarm wakened +her at six in the morning. She shivered as she dressed. Katy John was +blissfully devoid of any responsibility, for seldom did Katy rise first +to light the kitchen fire. Yet Stella resented less each day's bleak +beginning than she did the enforced necessity of the situation; the fact +that she was enduring these things practically under compulsion was what +galled. + +A cutting wind struck her icily as she crossed the few steps of open +between cabin and kitchen. Above no cloud floated, no harbinger of +melting rain. The cold stars twinkled over snow-blurred forest, struck +tiny gleams from stumps that were now white-capped pillars. A night +swell from the outside waters beat, its melancholy dirge on the frozen +beach. And, as she always did at that hushed hour before dawn, she +experienced a physical shrinking from those grim solitudes in which +there was nothing warm and human and kindly, nothing but vastness of +space upon which silence lay like a smothering blanket, in which she, +the human atom, was utterly negligible, a protesting mote in the +inexorable wilderness. She knew this to be merely a state of mind, but +situated as she was, it bore upon her with all the force of reality. She +felt like a prisoner who above all things desired some mode of escape. + +A light burned in the kitchen. She thanked her stars that this bitter +cold morning she would not have to build a fire with freezing fingers +while her teeth chattered, and she hurried in to the warmth heralded by +a spark-belching stovepipe. But the Siwash girl had not risen to the +occasion. Instead, Jack Fyfe sat with his feet on the oven door, a cigar +in one corner of his mouth. The kettle steamed. Her porridge pot bubbled +ready for the meal. + +"Good morning," he greeted. "Mind my preempting your job?" + +"Not at all," she answered. "You can have it for keeps if you want." + +"No, thanks," he smiled. "I'm sour on my own cooking. Had to eat too +much of it in times gone by. I wouldn't be stoking up here either, only +I got frozen out. Charlie's spare bed hasn't enough blankets for me +these cold nights." + +He drew his chair aside to be out of the way as she hurried about her +breakfast preparations. All the time she was conscious that his eyes +were on her, and also that in them lurked an expression of keen +interest. His freckled mask of a face gave no clue to his thoughts; it +never did, so far as she had ever observed. Fyfe had a gambler's +immobility of countenance. He chucked the butt of his cigar in the stove +and sat with hands clasped over one knee for some time after Katy John +appeared and began setting the dining room table with a great clatter +of dishes. + +He arose to his feet then. Stella stood beside the stove, frying bacon. +A logger opened the door and walked in. He had been one to fare ill in +the night's hilarity, for a discolored patch encircled one eye, and his +lips were split and badly swollen. He carried a tin basin. + +"Kin I get some hot water?" he asked. + +Stella silently indicated the reservoir at one end of the range. The man +ladled his basin full. The fumes of whisky, the unpleasant odor of his +breath offended her, and she drew back. Fyfe looked at her as the man +went out. + +"What?" he asked. + +She had muttered something, an impatient exclamation of disgust. The +man's appearance disagreeably reminded her of the scene she had observed +through the bunkhouse window. It stung her to think that her brother was +fast putting himself on a par with them--without their valid excuse of +type and training. + +"Oh, nothing," she said wearily, and turned to the sputtering bacon. + +Fyfe put his foot up on the stove front and drummed a tattoo on his +mackinaw clad knee. + +"Aren't you getting pretty sick of this sort of work, these more or less +uncomfortable surroundings, and the sort of people you have to come in +contact with?" he asked pointedly. + +"I am," she returned as bluntly, "but I think that's rather an +impertinent question, Mr. Fyfe." + +He passed imperturbably over this reproof, and his glance turned +briefly toward the dining room. Katy John was still noisily at work. + +"You hate it," he said positively. "I know you do. I've seen your +feelings many a time. I don't blame you. It's a rotten business for a +girl with your tastes and bringing up. And I'm afraid you'll find it +worse, if this snow stays long. I know what a logging camp is when work +stops, and whisky creeps in, and the boss lets go his hold for the time +being." + +"That may be true," she returned gloomily, "but I don't see why you +should enumerate these disagreeable things for my benefit." + +"I'm going to show you a way out," he said softly. "I've been thinking +it over for quite a while. I want you to marry me." + +Stella gasped. + +"Mr. Fyfe." + +"Listen," he said peremptorily, leaning closer to her and lowering his +voice. "I have an idea that you're going to say you don't love me. Lord, +_I_ know that. But you _hate_ this. It grates against every inclination +of yours like a file on steel. I wouldn't jar on you like that. I +wouldn't permit you to live in surroundings that would. That's the +material side of it. Nobody can live on day dreams. I like you, Stella +Benton, a whole lot more than I'd care to say right out loud. You and I +together could make a home we'd be proud of. I want you, and you want to +get away from this. It's natural. Marry me and play the game fair, and I +don't think you'll be sorry. I'm putting it as baldly as I can. You +stand to win everything with nothing to lose--but your domestic +chains--" the gleam of a smile lit up his features for a second. "Won't +you take a chance?" "No," she declared impulsively. "I won't be a party +to any such cold-blooded transaction." + +"You don't seem to understand me," he said soberly. "I don't want to +hand out any sentiment, but it makes me sore to see you wasting yourself +on this sort of thing. If you must do it, why don't you do it for +somebody who'll make it worth while? If you'd use the brains God gave +you, you know that lots of couples have married on flimsier grounds than +we'd have. How can a man and a woman really know anything about each +other till they've lived together? Just because we don't marry with our +heads in the fog is no reason we shouldn't get on fine. What are you +going to do? Stick here at this till you go crazy? You won't get away. +You don't realize what a one-idea, determined person this brother of +yours is. He has just one object in life, and he'll use everything and +everybody in sight to attain that object. He means to succeed and he +will. You're purely incidental; but he has that perverted, middle-class +family pride that will make him prevent you from getting out and trying +your own wings. Nature never intended a woman like you to be a celibate, +any more than I was so intended. And sooner or late you'll marry +somebody--if only to hop out of the fire into the frying pan." + +"I hate you," she flashed passionately, "when you talk like that." + +"No, you don't," he returned quietly. "You hate what I say, because +it's the truth--and it's humiliating to be helpless. You think I don't +_sabe?_ But I'm putting a weapon into your hand. Let's put it +differently; leave out the sentiment for a minute. We'll say that I want +a housekeeper, preferably an ornamental one, because I like beautiful +things. You want to get away from this drudgery. That's what it is, +simple drudgery. You crave lots of things you can't get by yourself, but +that you could help me get for you. There's things lacking in your life, +and so is there in mine. Why shouldn't we go partners? You think about +it." + +"I don't need to," she answered coolly. "It wouldn't work. You don't +appear to have any idea what it means for a woman to give herself up +body and soul to a man she doesn't care for. For me it would be plain +selling myself. I haven't the least affection for you personally. I +might even detest you." + +"You wouldn't," he said positively. + +"What makes you so sure of that?" she demanded. + +"It would sound conceited if I told you why," he drawled. "Listen. We're +not gods and goddesses, we human beings. We're not, after all, in our +real impulses, so much different from the age when a man took his club +and went after a female that looked good to him. They mated, and raised +their young, and very likely faced on an average fewer problems than +arise in modern marriages supposedly ordained in Heaven. You'd have the +one big problem solved,--the lack of means to live decently,--which +wrecks more homes than anything else, far more than lack of love. +Affection doesn't seem to thrive on poverty. What is love?" + +His voice took on a challenging note. + +Stella shook her head. He puzzled her, wholly serious one minute, a +whimsical smile twisting up the corners of his mouth the next. And he +surprised her too by his sureness of utterance on subjects she had not +supposed would enter such a man's mind. + +"I don't know," she answered absently, turning over strips of bacon with +the long-handled fork. + +"There you are," he said. "I don't know either. We'd start even, then, +for the sake of argument. No, I guess we wouldn't either, because you're +the only woman I've run across so far with whom I could calmly +contemplate spending the rest of my life in close contact. That's a +fact. To me it's a highly important fact. You don't happen to have any +such feeling about me, eh?" + +"No. I hadn't even thought of you in that way," Stella answered +truthfully. + +"You want to think about me," he said calmly. "You want to think about +me from every possible angle, because I'm going to come back and ask you +this same question every once in a while, so long as you're in reach and +doing this dirty work for a thankless boss. You want to think of me as a +possible refuge from a lot of disagreeable things. I'd like to have you +to chum with, and I'd like to have some incentive to put a big white +bungalow on that old foundation for us two," he smiled. "I'll never do +it for myself alone. Go on. Take a gambling chance and marry me, Stella. +Say yes, and say it now." + +But she shook her head resolutely, and as Katy John came in just then, +Fyfe took his foot off the stove and went out of the kitchen. He threw a +glance over his shoulder at Stella, a broad smile, as if to say that he +harbored no grudge, and nursed no wound in his vanity because she would +have none of him. + +Katy rang the breakfast gong. Five minutes later the tattoo of knives +and forks and spoons told of appetites in process of appeasement. +Charlie came into the kitchen in the midst of this, bearing certain +unmistakable signs. His eyes were inflamed, his cheeks still bearing the +flush of liquor. His demeanor was that of a man suffering an intolerable +headache and correspondingly short-tempered. Stella barely spoke to him. +It was bad enough for a man to make a beast of himself with whisky, but +far worse was his gambling streak. There were so many little ways in +which she could have eased things with a few dollars; yet he always +grumbled when she spoke of money, always put her off with promises to be +redeemed when business got better. + +Stella watched him bathe his head copiously in cold water and then seat +himself at the long table, trying to force food upon an aggrieved and +rebellious stomach. Gradually a flood of recklessness welled up in her +breast. + +"For two pins I would marry Jack Fyfe," she told herself savagely. +"_Anything_ would be better than this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +THE PLUNGE + +Stella went over that queer debate a good many times in the ten days +that followed. It revealed Jack Fyfe to her in a new, inexplicable +light, at odd variance with her former conception of the man. She could +not have visualized him standing with one foot on the stove front +speaking calmly of love and marriage if she had not seen him with her +own eyes, heard him with somewhat incredulous ears. She had continued to +endow him with the attributes of unrestrained passion, of headlong +leaping to the goal of his desires, of brushing aside obstacles and +opposition with sheer brute force; and he had shown unreckoned qualities +of restraint, of understanding. She was not quite sure if this were +guile or sensible consideration. He had put his case logically, +persuasively even. She was very sure that if he had adopted emotional +methods, she would have been repelled. If he had laid siege to her hand +and heart in the orthodox fashion, she would have raised that siege in +short order. As it stood, in spite of her words to him, there was in her +own mind a lack of finality. As she went about her daily tasks, that +prospect of trying a fresh fling at the world as Jack Fyfe's wife +tantalized her with certain desirable features. + +Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some time +to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of +environment? At best, she could only get away from Charlie's camp and +begin along new lines that might perhaps be little better, that must +inevitably lie among strangers in a strange land. To what end? What did +she want of life, anyway? She had to admit that she could not say fully +and explicitly what she wanted. When she left out her material wants, +there was nothing but a nebulous craving for--what? Love, she assumed. +And she could not define love, except as some incomprehensible transport +of emotion which irresistibly drew a man and a woman together, a divine +fire kindled in two hearts. It was not a thing she could vouch for by +personal experience. It might never touch and warm her, that divine +fire. Instinct did now and then warn her that some time it would wrap +her like a flame. But in the meantime--Life had her in midstream of its +remorseless, drab current, sweeping her along. A foothold offered. Half +a loaf, a single slice of bread even, is better than none. + +Jack Fyfe did not happen in again for nearly two weeks and then only to +pay a brief call, but he stole an opportunity, when Katy John was not +looking, to whisper in Stella's ear: + +"Have you been thinking about that bungalow of ours?" + +She shook her head, and he went out quietly, without another word. He +neither pleaded nor urged, and perhaps that was wisest, for in spite of +herself Stella thought of him continually. He loomed always before her, +a persistent, compelling factor. + +She knew at last, beyond any gainsaying, that the venture tempted, +largely perhaps because it contained so great an element of the unknown. +To get away from this soul-dwarfing round meant much. She felt herself +reasoning desperately that the frying pan could not be worse than the +fire, and held at least the merit of greater dignity and freedom from +the twin evils of poverty and thankless domestic slavery. + +While she considered this, pro and con, shrinking from such a step one +hour, considering it soberly the next, the days dragged past in +wearisome sequence. The great depth of snow endured, was added to by +spasmodic flurries. The frosts held. The camp seethed with the +restlessness of the men. In default of the daily work that consumed +their superfluous energy, the loggers argued and fought, drank and +gambled, made "rough house" in their sleeping quarters till sometimes +Stella's cheeks blanched and she expected murder to be done. Twice the +_Chickamin_ came back from Roaring Springs with whisky aboard, and a +protracted debauch ensued. Once a drunken logger shouldered his way into +the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at Stella, and, himself inflamed by +liquor and the affront, Charlie Benton beat the man until his face was a +mass of bloody bruises. That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents. +All the routine discipline of the woods seemed to have slipped out of +Benton's hands. When the second whisky consignment struck the camp, +Stella stayed in her room, refusing to cook until order reigned again. +Benton grumblingly took up the burden himself. With Katy's help and that +of sundry loggers, he fed the roistering crew, but for his sister it was +a two-day period of protesting disgust. + +That mood, like so many of her moods, relapsed into dogged endurance. +She took up the work again when Charlie promised that no more whisky +should be allowed in the camp. + +"Though it's ten to one I won't have a corporal's guard left when I want +to start work again," he grumbled. "I'm well within my rights if I put +my foot down hard on any jinks when there's work, but I have no license +to set myself up as guardian of a logger's morals and pocketbook when I +have nothing for him to do. These fellows are paying their board. So +long as they don't make themselves obnoxious to you, I don't see that +it's our funeral whether they're drunk or sober. They'd tell me so quick +enough." + +To this pronouncement of expediency Stella made no rejoinder. She no +longer expected anything much of Charlie, in the way of consideration. +So far as she could see, she, his sister, was little more to him than +one of his loggers; a little less important than, say, his donkey +engineer. In so far as she conduced to the well-being of the camp and +effected a saving to his credit in the matter of preparing food, he +valued her and was willing to concede a minor point to satisfy her. +Beyond that Stella felt that he did not go. Five years in totally +different environments had dug a great gulf between them. He felt an +arbitrary sense of duty toward her, she knew, but in its manifestations +it never lapped over the bounds of his own immediate self-interest. + +And so when she blundered upon knowledge of a state of affairs which +must have existed under her very nose for some time, there were few +remnants of sisterly affection to bid her seek extenuating +circumstances. + +Katy John proved the final straw. Just by what means Stella grew to +suspect any such moral lapse on Benton's part is wholly irrelevant. Once +the unpleasant likelihood came to her notice, she took measures to +verify her suspicion, and when convinced she taxed her brother with it, +to his utter confusion. + +"What kind of a man are you?" she cried at last in shamed anger. "Is +there nothing too low for you to dabble in? Haven't you any respect for +anything or anybody, yourself included?" + +"Oh, don't talk like a damned Puritan," Benton growled, though his +tanned face was burning. "This is what comes of having women around the +camp. I'll send the girl away." + +"You--you beast!" she flared--and ran out of the kitchen to seek refuge +in her own room and cry into her pillow some of the dumb protest that +surged up within her. For her knowledge of passion and the workings of +passion as they bore upon the relations of a man and a woman were at +once vague and tinctured with inflexible tenets of morality, the +steel-hard conception of virtue which is the bulwark of middle-class +theory for its wives and daughters and sisters--with an eye consistently +blind to the concealed lapses of its men. + +Stella Benton passed that morning through successive stages of shocked +amazement, of pity, and disgust. As between her brother and the Siwash +girl, she saw little to choose. From her virtuous pinnacle she abhorred +both. If she had to continue intimate living with them, she felt that +she would be utterly defiled, degraded to their level. That was her +first definite conclusion. + +After a time she heard Benton come into their living room and light a +fire in the heater. She dried her eyes and went out to face him. + +"Charlie," she declared desperately, "I can't stay here any longer. It's +simply impossible." + +"Don't start that song again. We've had it often enough," he answered +stubbornly. "You're not going--not till spring. I'm not going to let you +go in the frame of mind you're in right now, anyhow. You'll get over +that. Hang it, I'm not the first man whose foot slipped. It isn't your +funeral, anyway. Forget it." + +The grumbling coarseness of this retort left her speechless. Benton got +the fire going and went out. She saw him cross to the kitchen, and later +she saw Katy John leave the camp with all her belongings in a bundle +over her shoulder, trudging away to the camp of her people around the +point. + +Kipling's pregnant line shot across her mind: + +"For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins." + +"I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor, +little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. She +doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem to +care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn't +right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him to--to +use." + +She looked out along the shores piled high with broken ice and snow, +through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted themselves +imperiously aloof, white spires against the sky,--over a forest all +draped in winter robes; shore, mountains, and forest alike were chill +and hushed and desolate. The lake spread its forty-odd miles in a +boomerang curve from Roaring Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifeless +gray. She sat a long time looking at that, and a dead weight seemed to +settle upon her heart. For the second time that day she broke down. Not +the shamed, indignant weeping of an hour earlier, but with the essence +of all things forlorn and desolate in her choked sobs. + +She did not hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was there, +until she felt his hand gently on her shoulder and looked up. And so +deep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving for some human +sympathy, some measure of understanding, that she made no effort to +remove his hand. She was in too deep a spiritual quagmire to refuse any +sort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in analytical self-fathoming. +She had a dim sense of being oddly comforted by his presence, as if she, +afloat on uncharted seas, saw suddenly near at hand a safe anchorage and +welcoming hands. Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked up +at Fyfe and hid her wet face in her hands again. He stood silent a few +seconds. When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation in his +voice. + +"What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?" + +Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept aside +before the essentially human need to share a burden that has grown too +great to bear alone. + +"Oh, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any place +for you at all." + +He slid his arm across her shoulders and tilted her face with his other +hand so that her eyes met his. And she felt no desire to draw away or +any of that old instinct to be on her guard against him. For all she +knew--indeed, by all she had been told--Jack Fyfe was tarred with the +same stick as her brother, but she had no thought of resisting him, no +feeling of repulsion. + +"Will you marry me, Stella?" he asked evenly. "I can free you from this +sort of thing forever." + +"How can I?" she returned. "I don't want to marry anybody. I don't love +you. I'm not even sure I like you. I'm too miserable to think, even. I'm +afraid to take a step like that. I should think you would be too." + +He shook his head. + +"I've thought a lot about it lately," he said. "It hasn't occurred to me +to be afraid of how it may turn out. Why borrow trouble when there's +plenty at hand? I don't care whether you love me or not, right now. You +couldn't possibly be any worse off as my wife, could you?" + +"No," she admitted. "I don't see how I could." + +"Take a chance then," he urged. "I'll make a fair bargain with you. I'll +make life as pleasant for you as I can. You'll live pretty much as +you've been brought up to live, so far as money goes. The rest we'll +have to work out for ourselves. I won't ask you to pretend anything you +don't feel. You'll play fair, because that's the way you're +made,--unless I've sized you up wrong. It'll simply be a case of our +adjusting ourselves, just as mating couples have been doing since the +year one. You've everything to gain and nothing to lose." + +"In some ways," she murmured. + +"Every way," he insisted. "You aren't handicapped by caring for any +other man." + +"How do you know?" she asked. + +"Just a hunch," Fyfe smiled. "If you did, he'd have beaten me to the +rescue long ago--if he were the sort of man you _could_ care for." + +"No," she admitted. "There isn't any other man, but there might be. +Think how terrible it would be if it happened--afterward." + +Fyfe shrugged his shoulders. + +"Sufficient unto the day," he said. "There is no string on either of us +just now. We start even. That's good enough. Will you?" + +"You have me at a disadvantage," she whispered. "You offer me a lot that +I want, everything but a feeling I've somehow always believed ought to +exist, ought to be mutual. Part of me wants to shut my eyes and jump. +Part of me wants to hang back. I can't stand this thing I've got into +and see no way of getting out of. Yet I dread starting a new train of +wretchedness. I'm afraid--whichever way I turn." + +Fyfe considered this a moment. + +"Well," he said finally, "that's a rather unfortunate attitude. But I'm +going into it with my eyes open. I know what I want. You'll be making a +sort of experiment. Still, I advise you to make it. I think you'll be +the better for making it. Come on. Say yes." + +Stella looked up at him, then out over the banked snow, and all the +dreary discomforts, the mean drudgery, the sordid shifts she had been +put to for months rose up in disheartening phalanx. For that moment Jack +Fyfe loomed like a tower of refuge. She trusted him now. She had a +feeling that even if she grew to dislike him, she would still trust him. +He would play fair. If he said he would do this or that, she could bank +on it absolutely. + +She turned and looked at him searchingly a long half-minute, wondering +what really lay behind the blue eyes that met her own so steadfastly. He +stood waiting patiently, outwardly impassive. But she could feel through +the thin stuff of her dress a quiver in the fingers that rested on her +shoulder, and that repressed sign of the man's pent-up feeling gave her +an odd thrill, moved her strangely, swung the pendulum of her impulse. + +"Yes," she said. + +Fyfe bent a little lower. + +"Listen," he said in characteristically blunt fashion. "You want to get +away from here. There is no sense in our fussing or hesitating about +what we're going to do, is there?" + +"No, I suppose not," she agreed. + +"I'll send the _Panther_ down to the Springs for Lefty Howe's wife," he +outlined his plans unhesitatingly. "She'll get up here this evening. +To-morrow we will go down and take the train to Vancouver and be +married. You have plenty of good clothes, good enough for Vancouver. I +know,"--with a whimsical smile,--"because you had no chance to wear them +out. Then we'll go somewhere, California, Florida, and come back to +Roaring Lake in the spring. You'll have all the bad taste of this out of +your mouth by that time." + +Stella nodded acquiescence. Better to make the plunge boldly, since she +had elected to make it. + +"All right. I'm going to tell Benton," Fyfe said. "Good-by till +to-morrow." + +She stood up. He looked at her a long time earnestly, searchingly, one +of her hands imprisoned tight between his two big palms. Then, before +she was quite aware of his intention, he kissed her gently on the mouth, +and was gone. + + * * * * * + +This turn of events left Benton dumbfounded, to use a trite but +expressive phrase. He came in, apparently to look at Stella in amazed +curiosity, for at first he had nothing to say. He sat down beside his +makeshift desk and pawed over some papers, running the fingers of one +hand through his thick brown hair. + +"Well, Sis," he blurted out at last. "I suppose you know what you're +doing?" + +"I think so," Stella returned composedly. + +"But why all this mad haste?" he asked. "If you're going to get married, +why didn't you let me know, so I could give you some sort of decent +send-off." + +"Oh, thanks," she returned dryly. "I don't think that's necessary. Not +at this stage of the game, as you occasionally remark." + +He ruminated upon this a minute, flushing slightly. + +"Well, I wish you luck," he said sincerely enough. "Though I can hardly +realize this sudden move. You and Jack Fyfe may get on all right. He's a +good sort--in his way." + +"His way suits me," she said, spurred to the defensive by what she +deemed a note of disparagement in his utterance. "If you have any +objections or criticisms, you can save your breath--or address them +direct to Mr. Fyfe." + +"No, thank you," he grinned. "I don't care to get into any argument with +_him_, especially as he's going to be my brother-in-law. Fyfe's all +right. I didn't imagine he was the sort of man you'd fancy, that's all." + +Stella refrained from any comment on this. She had no intention of +admitting to Charlie that marriage with Jack Fyfe commended itself to +her chiefly as an avenue of escape from a well-nigh intolerable +condition which he himself had inflicted upon her. Her pride rose in +arms against any such belittling admission. She admitted it frankly to +herself,--and to Fyfe,--because Fyfe understood and was content with +that understanding. She desired to forget that phase of the +transaction. She told herself that she meant honestly to make the best +of it. + +Benton turned again to his papers. He did not broach the subject again +until in the distance the squat hull of the _Panther_ began to show on +her return from the Springs. Then he came to where Stella was putting +the last of her things into her trunk. He had some banknotes in one +hand, and a check. + +"Here's that ninety I borrowed, Stell," he said. "And a check for your +back pay. Things have been sort of lean around here, maybe, but I still +think it's a pity you couldn't have stuck it out till it came smoother. +I hate to see you going away with a chronic grouch against me. I suppose +I wouldn't even be a welcome guest at the wedding?" + +"No," she said unforgivingly. "Some things are a little too--too +recent." + +"Oh," he replied casually enough, pausing in the doorway a second on his +way out, "you'll get over that. You'll find that ordinary, everyday +living isn't any kid-glove affair." + +She sat on the closed lid of her trunk, looking at the check and money. +Three hundred and sixty dollars, all told. A month ago that would have +spelled freedom, a chance to try her luck in less desolate fields. Well, +she tried to consider the thing philosophically; it was no use to bewail +what might have been. In her hands now lay the sinews of a war she had +forgone all need of waging. It did not occur to her to repudiate her +bargain with Jack Fyfe. She had given her promise, and she considered +she was bound, irrevocably. Indeed, for the moment, she was glad of +that. She was worn out, all weary with unaccustomed stress of body and +mind. To her, just then, rest seemed the sweetest boon in the world. Any +port in a storm, expressed her mood. What came after was to be met as it +came. She was too tired to anticipate. + +It was a pale, weary-eyed young woman, dressed in the same plain +tailored suit she had worn into the country, who was cuddled to Mrs. +Howe's plump bosom when she went aboard the _Panther_ for the first +stage of her journey. + +A slaty bank of cloud spread a somber film across the sky. When the +_Panther_ laid her ice-sheathed guard-rail against the Hot Springs wharf +the sun was down. The lake spread gray and lifeless under a gray sky, +and Stella Benton's spirits were steeped in that same dour color. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED + +Spring had waved her transforming wand over the lake region before the +Fyfes came home again. All the low ground, the creeks and hollows and +banks, were bright green with new-leaved birch and alder and maple. The +air was full of those aromatic exudations the forest throws off when it +is in the full tide of the growing time. Shores that Stella had last +seen dismal and forlorn in the frost-fog, sheathed in ice, banked with +deep snow, lay sparkling now in warm sunshine, under an unflecked arch +of blue. All that was left of winter was the white cap on Mount Douglas, +snow-filled chasms on distant, rocky peaks. Stella stood on the Hot +Springs wharf looking out across the emerald deep of the lake, thinking +soberly of the contrast. + +Something, she reflected, some part of that desolate winter, must have +seeped to the very roots of her being to produce the state of mind in +which she embarked upon that matrimonial voyage. A little of it clung to +her still. She could look back at those months of loneliness, of +immeasurable toil and numberless indignities, without any qualms. There +would be no repetition of that. The world at large would say she had +done well. She herself in her most cynical moments could not deny that +she had done well. Materially, life promised to be generous. She was +married to a man who quietly but inexorably got what he wanted, and it +was her good fortune that he wanted her to have the best of everything. + +She saw him now coming from the hotel, and she regarded him +thoughtfully, a powerful figure swinging along with light, effortless +steps. He was back on his own ground, openly glad to be back. Yet she +could not recall that he had ever shown himself at a disadvantage +anywhere they had been together. He wore evening clothes when occasion +required as unconcernedly as he wore mackinaws and calked boots among +his loggers. She had not yet determined whether his equable poise arose +from an unequivocal democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any +rate, where she had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit +that socially, at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of +the game. Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. In +fact, so far as Jack Fyfe's breeding and antecedents were concerned, she +knew little more than before their marriage. He was not given to +reminiscence. His people--distant relatives--lived in her own native +state of Pennsylvania. He had an only sister who was now in South +America with her husband, a civil engineer. Beyond that Fyfe did not go, +and Stella made no attempt to pry up the lid of his past. She was not +particularly curious. + +Her clearest judgment of him was at first hand. He was a big, virile +type of man, generous, considerate, so sure of himself that he could be +tolerant of others. She could easily understand why Roaring Lake +considered Jack Fyfe "square." The other tales of him that circulated +there she doubted now. The fighting type he certainly was, aggressive in +a clash, but if there were any downright coarseness in him, it had never +manifested itself to her. She was not sorry she had married him. If they +had not set out blind in a fog of sentiment, as he had once put it, +nevertheless they got on. She did not love him,--not as she defined that +magic word,--but she liked him, was mildly proud of him. When he kissed +her, if there were no mad thrill in it, there was at least a passive +contentment in having inspired that affection. For he left her in no +doubt as to where he stood, not by what he said, but wholly by his +actions. + +He joined her now. The _Panther_, glossy black as a crow's wing with +fresh paint, lay at the pier-end with their trunks aboard. Stella +surveyed those marked with her initials, looking them over with a +critical eye, when they reached the deck. + +"How in the world did I ever manage to accumulate so much stuff, Jack?" +she asked quizzically. "I didn't realize it. We might have been doing +Europe with souvenir collecting our principal aim, by the amount of our +baggage." + +Fyfe smiled, without commenting. They sat on a trunk and watched Roaring +Springs fall astern, dwindle to a line of white dots against the great +green base of the mountain that rose behind it. + +"It's good to get back here," he said at last. "To me, anyway. How about +it, Stella? You haven't got so much of a grievance with the world in +general as you had when we left, eh?" + +"No, thank goodness," she responded fervently. + +"You don't look as if you had," he observed, his eyes admiringly upon +her. + +Nor had she. There was a bloom on the soft contour of her cheek, a +luminous gleam in her wide, gray eyes. All the ill wrought by months of +drudging work and mental revolt had vanished. She was undeniably good to +look at, a woman in full flower, round-bodied, deep-breasted, aglow with +the unquenched fires of youth. She was aware that Jack Fyfe found her so +and tolerably glad that he did so find her. She had revised a good many +of her first groping estimates of him that winter. And when she looked +over the port bow and saw in behind Halfway Point the huddled shacks of +her brother's camp where so much had overtaken her, she experienced a +swift rush of thankfulness that she was--as she was. She slid her gloved +hand impulsively into Jack Fyfe's, and his strong fingers shut down on +hers closely. + +They sat silent until the camp lay abeam. About it there was every sign +of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve hissing, stood +by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving back and forth across +the swifters, making all ready for a tow. Stella marked a new bunkhouse. +Away back on the logging ground in a greater clearing she saw the +separate smoke of two donkey engines. Another, a big roader, Fyfe +explained, puffed at the water's edge. She could see a string of logs +tearing down the skid-road. + +"He's going pretty strong, that brother of yours," Fyfe remarked. "If +he holds his gait, he'll be a big timberman before you know it." + +"He'll make money, I imagine," Stella admitted, "but I don't know what +good that will do him. He'll only want more. What is there about +money-making that warps some men so, makes them so grossly +self-centered? I'd pity any girl who married Charlie. He used to be +rather wild at home, but I never dreamed any man could change so." + +"You use the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband answered, +with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe his ways are +pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a competence--which is what +we're all after--out of pretty crude material. And he's just a kid, +after all, with a kid's tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda +like the beggar's ambition and energy." + +"But he hasn't the least consideration for anybody or anything," Stella +protested. "He rides rough-shod over every one. That isn't either right +or decent." + +"It's the only way some men can get to the top," Fyfe answered quietly. +"They concentrate on the object to be attained. That's all that counts +until they're in a secure position. Then, when they stop to draw their +breath, sometimes they find they've done lots of things they wouldn't do +again. You watch. By and by Charlie Benton will cease to have those +violent reactions that offend you so. As it is--he's a youngster, +bucking a big game. Life, when you have your own way to hew through it, +with little besides your hands and brain for capital, is no silk-lined +affair." + +She fell into thought over this reply. Fyfe had echoed almost her +brother's last words to her. And she wondered if Jack Fyfe had attained +that degree of economic power which enabled him to spend several +thousand dollars on a winter's pleasuring with her by the exercise of a +strong man's prerogative of overriding the weak, bending them to his own +inflexible purposes, ruthlessly turning everything to his own advantage? +If women came under the same head! She recalled Katy John, and her face +burned. Perhaps. But she could not put Jack Fyfe in her brother's +category. He didn't fit. Deep in her heart there still lurked an abiding +resentment against Charlie Benton for the restraint he had put upon her +and the license he had arrogated to himself. She could not convince +herself that the lapses of that winter were not part and parcel of her +brother's philosophy of life, a coarse and material philosophy. + +Presently they were drawing in to Cougar Point, with the +weather-bleached buildings of Fyfe's camp showing now among the +upspringing second-growth scrub. Fyfe went forward and spoke to the man +at the wheel. The _Panther_ swung offshore. + +"Why are we going out again?" Stella asked. + +"Oh, just for fun," Fyfe smiled. + +He sat down beside her and slipped one arm around her waist. In a few +minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away across the lake, +at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a mountain range in twain. + +"Look around," said he, "and tell me what you think of the House of +Fyfe." + +There it stood, snow-white, broad-porched, a new house reared upon the +old stone foundation she remembered. The noon sun struck flashing on the +windows. About it spread the living green of the grassy square, behind +that towered the massive, darker-hued background of the forest. + +"Oh," she exclaimed. "What wizard of construction did the work. _That_ +was why you fussed so long over those plans in Los Angeles. I thought it +was to be this summer or maybe next winter. I never dreamed you were +having it built right away." + +"Well, isn't it rather nice to come home to?" he observed. + +"It's dear. A homey looking place," she answered. "A beautiful site, and +the house fits,--that white and the red tiles. Is the big stone +fireplace in the living room, Jack?" + +"Yes, and one in pretty nearly every other room besides," he nodded. +"Wood fires are cheerful." + +The _Panther_ turned her nose shoreward at Fyfe's word. + +"I wondered about that foundation the first time I saw it," Stella +confessed, "whether you built it, and why it was never finished. There +was moss over the stones in places. And that lawn wasn't made in a +single season. I know, because dad had a country place once, and he was +raging around two or three summers because the land was so hard to get +well-grassed." + +"No, I didn't build the foundation or make the lawn," Fyfe told her. "I +merely kept it in shape. A man named Hale owned the land that takes in +the bay and the point when I first came to the lake. He was going to be +married. I knew him pretty well. But it was tough going those days. He +was in the hole on some of his timber, and he and his girl kept waiting. +Meantime he cleared and graded that little hill, sowed it to grass, and +laid the foundation. He was about to start building when he was killed. +A falling tree caught him. I bought in his land and the timber limits +that lie back of it. That's how the foundation came there." + +"It's a wonder it didn't grow up wild," Stella mused. "How long ago was +that?" + +"About five years," Fyfe said. "I kept the grass trimmed. It didn't seem +right to let the brush overrun it after the poor devil put that labor of +love on it. It always seemed to me that it should be kept smooth and +green, and that there should be a big, roomy bungalow there. You see my +hunch was correct, too." + +She looked up at him in some wonder. She hadn't accustomed herself to +associating Jack Fyfe with actions based on pure sentiment. He was too +intensely masculine, solid, practical, impassive. He did not seem to +realize even that sentiment had influenced him in this. He discussed it +too matter-of-factly for that. She wondered what became of the +bride-to-be. But that Fyfe could not tell her. + +"Hale showed me her picture once," he said, "but I never saw her. Oh, I +suppose she's married some other fellow long ago. Hale was a good sort. +He was out-lucked, that's all." + +The _Panther_ slid in to the float. Jack and Stella went ashore. Lefty +Howe came down to meet them. Thirty-five or forty men were stringing +away from the camp, back to their work in the woods. Some waved greeting +to Jack Fyfe, and he waved back in the hail-fellow fashion of the camps. + +"How's the frau, Lefty?" he inquired, after they had shaken hands. + +"Fine. Down to Vancouver. Sister's sick," Howe answered laconically. +"House's all shipshape. Wanta eat here, or up there?" + +"Here at the camp, until we get straightened around," Fyfe responded. +"Tell Pollock to have something for us in about half an hour. We'll go +up and take a look." + +Howe went in to convey this message, and the two set off up the path. A +sudden spirit of impishness made Jack Fyfe sprint. Stella gathered up +her skirt and raced after him, but a sudden shortness of breath overtook +her, and she came panting to where Fyfe had stopped to wait. + +"You'll have to climb hills and row and swim so you'll get some wind," +Fyfe chuckled. "Too much easy living, lady." + +She smiled without making any reply to this sally, and they entered the +house--the House of Fyfe, that was to be her home. + +If the exterior had pleased her, she went from room to room inside with +growing amazement. Fyfe had finished it from basement to attic without a +word to her that he had any such undertaking in hand. Yet there was +scarcely a room in which she could not find the visible result of some +expressed wish or desire. Often during the winter they had talked over +the matter of furnishings, and she recalled how unconsciously she had +been led to make suggestions which he had stored up and acted upon. For +the rest she found her husband's taste beyond criticism. There were +drapes and rugs and prints and odds and ends that any woman might be +proud to have in her home. + +"You're an amazing sort of a man, Jack," she said thoughtfully. "Is +there anything you're not up to? Even a Chinese servant in the kitchen. +It's perfect." + +"I'm glad you like it," he said. "I hoped you would." + +"Who wouldn't?" she cried impulsively. "I love pretty things. Wait till +I get done rearranging." + +They introduced themselves to the immobile-featured Celestial when they +had jointly and severally inspected the house from top to bottom. Sam +Foo gazed at them, listened to their account of themselves, and +disappeared. He re-entered the room presently, bearing a package. + +"Mist' Chol' Bentlee him leave foh yo'." + +Stella looked at it. On the outer wrapping was written: + + _From C.A. Benton to Mrs. John Henderson Fyfe_ + _A Belated Wedding Gift_ + +She cut the string, and delved into the cardboard box, and gasped. Out +of a swathing of tissue paper her hands bared sundry small articles. A +little cap and jacket of knitted silk--its double in fine, fleecy +yarn--a long silk coat--a bonnet to match,--both daintily embroidered. +Other things--a shoal of them--baby things. A grin struggled for +lodgment on Fyfe's freckled countenance. His blue eyes twinkled. + +"I suppose," he growled, "that's Charlie's idea of a joke, huh?" + +Stella turned away from the tiny garments, one little, hood crumpled +tight in her hand. She laid her hot face against his breast and her +shoulders quivered. She was crying. + +"Stella, Stella, what's the matter?" he whispered. + +"It's no joke," she sobbed. "It's a--it's a reality." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME + +From that day on Stella found in her hands the reins over a smooth, +frictionless, well-ordered existence. Sam Foo proved himself such a +domestic treasure as only the trained Oriental can be. When the labor of +an eight-room dwelling proved a little too much for him, he urbanely +said so. Thereupon, at Fyfe's suggestion, he imported a fellow +countryman, another bland, silent-footed model of efficiency in personal +service. Thereafter Stella's task of supervision proved a sinecure. + +A week or so after their return, in sorting over some of her belongings, +she came across the check Charlie had given her: that two hundred and +seventy dollars which represented the only money she had ever earned in +her life. She studied it a minute, then went out to where her husband +sat perched on the verandah rail. + +"You might cash this, Jack," she suggested. + +He glanced at the slip. + +"Better have it framed as a memento," he said, smiling. "You'll never +earn two hundred odd dollars so hard again, I hope. No, I'd keep it, if +I were you. If ever you should need it, it'll always be good--unless +Charlie goes broke." + +There never had been any question of money between them. From the day +of their marriage Fyfe had made her a definite monthly allowance, a +greater sum than she needed or spent. + +"As a matter of fact," he went on, "I'm going to open an account in your +name at the Royal Bank, so you can negotiate your own paper and pay your +own bills by check." + +She went in and put away the check. It was hers, earned, all too +literally, in the sweat of her brow. For all that it represented she had +given service threefold. If ever there came a time when that hunger for +independence which had been fanned to a flame in her brother's kitchen +should demand appeasement--she pulled herself up short when she found +her mind running upon such an eventuality. Her future was ordered. She +was married--to be a mother. Here lay her home. All about her ties were +in process of formation, ties that with time would grow stronger than +any shackles of steel, constraining her to walk in certain ways,--ways +that were pleasant enough, certain of ease if not of definite purpose. + +Yet now and then she found herself falling into fits of abstraction in +which Roaring Lake and Jack Fyfe, all that meant anything to her now, +faded into the background, and she saw herself playing a lone hand +against the world, making her individual struggle to be something more +than the petted companion of a dominant male and the mother of his +children. She never quite lost sight of the fact that marriage had been +the last resort, that in effect she had taken the avenue her personal +charm afforded to escape drudgery and isolation. There was still +deep-rooted in her a craving for something bigger than mere ease of +living. She knew as well as she knew anything that in the natural +evolution of things marriage and motherhood should have been the big +thing in her life. And it was not. It was too incidental, too +incomplete, too much like a mere breathing-place on life's highway. +Sometimes she reasoned with herself bluntly, instead of dreaming, was +driven to look facts in the eye because she did dream. Always she +encountered the same obstacle, a feeling that she had been defrauded, +robbed of something vital; she had forgone that wonderful, passionate +drawing together which makes the separate lives of the man and woman who +experiences it so fuse that in the truest sense of the word they become +one. + +Mostly she kept her mind from that disturbing introspection, because +invariably it led her to vague dreaming of a future which she told +herself--sometimes wistfully--could never be realized. She had shut the +door on many things, it seemed to her now. But she had the sense to know +that dwelling on what might have been only served to make her morbid, +and did not in the least serve to alter the unalterable. She had chosen +what seemed to her at the time the least of two evils, and she meant to +abide steadfast by her choice. + +Charlie Benton came to visit them. Strangely enough to Stella, who had +never seen him on Roaring Lake, at least, dressed otherwise than as his +loggers, he was sporting a natty gray suit, he was clean shaven, Oxford +ties on his feet, a gentleman of leisure in his garb. If he had started +on the down grade the previous winter, he bore no signs of it now, for +he was the picture of ruddy vigor, clear-eyed, brown-skinned, alert, +bubbling over with good spirits. + +"Why, say, you look like a tourist," Fyfe remarked after an appraising +glance. + +"I'm making money, pulling ahead of the game, that's all," Benton +retorted cheerfully. "I can afford to take a holiday now and then. I'm +putting a million feet a month in the water. That's going some for small +fry like me. Say, this house of yours is all to the good, Jack. It's got +class, outside and in. Makes a man feel as if he had to live up to it, +eh? Mackinaws and calked boots don't go with oriental rugs and oak +floors." + +"You should get a place like this as soon as possible then," Stella put +in drily, "to keep you up to the mark, on edge aesthetically, one might +put it." + +"Not to say morally," Benton laughed. "Oh, maybe I'll get to it by and +by, if the timber business holds up." + +Later, when he and Stella were alone together, he said to her: + +"You're lucky. You've got everything, and it comes without an effort. +You sure showed good judgment when you picked Jack Fyfe. He's a +thoroughbred." + +"Oh, thank you," she returned, a touch of irony in her voice, a subtlety +of inflection that went clean over Charlie's head. + +He was full of inquiries about where they had been that winter, what +they had done and seen. Also he brimmed over with his own affairs. He +stayed overnight and went his way with a brotherly threat of making +the Fyfe bungalow his headquarters whenever he felt like it. + +"It's a touch of civilization that looks good to me," he declared. "You +can put my private mark on one of those big leather chairs, Jack. I'm +going to use it often. All you need to make this a social center is a +good-looking girl or two--unmarried ones. You watch. When the summer +flock comes to the lake, your place is going to be popular." + +That observation verified Benton's shrewdness. The Fyfe bungalow did +become popular. Two weeks after Charlie's visit, a lean, white cruiser, +all brass and mahogany above her topsides, slid up to the float, and two +women came at a dignified pace along the path to the house. Stella had +met Linda Abbey once, reluctantly, under the circumstances, but it was +different now--with the difference that money makes. She could play +hostess against an effective background, and she did so graciously. Nor +was her graciousness wholly assumed. After all, they were her kind of +people: Linda, fair-haired, perfectly gowned, perfectly mannered, +sweetly pretty; Mrs. Abbey, forty-odd and looking thirty-five, with that +calm self-assurance which wealth and position confer upon those who hold +it securely. Stella found them altogether to her liking. It pleased her, +too, that Jack happened in to meet them. He was not a scintillating +talker, yet she had noticed that when he had anything to say, he never +failed to attract and hold attention. His quiet, impersonal manner never +suggested stolidness. And she was too keen an observer to overlook the +fact that from a purely physical standpoint Jack Fyfe made an +impression always, particularly on women. Throughout that winter it had +not disturbed her. It did not disturb her now, when she noticed Linda +Abbey's gaze coming back to him with a veiled appraisal in her blue eyes +that were so like Fyfe's own in their tendency to twinkle and gleam with +no corresponding play of features. + +"We'll expect to see a good deal of you this summer," Mrs. Abbey said +cordially at leave-taking. "We have a few people up from town now and +then to vary the monotony of feasting our souls on scenery. Sometimes we +are quite a jolly crowd. Don't be formal. Drop in when you feel the +inclination." + +When Stella reminded Jack of this some time later, in a moment of +boredom, he put the _Panther_ at her disposal for the afternoon. But he +would not go himself. He had opened up a new outlying camp, and he had +directions to issue, work to lay out. + +"You hold up the social end of the game," he laughed. "I'll hustle +logs." + +So Stella invaded the Abbey-Monohan precincts by herself and enjoyed +it--for she met a houseful of young people from the coast, and in that +light-hearted company she forgot for the time being that she was married +and the responsible mistress of a house. Paul Abbey was there, but he +had apparently forgotten or forgiven the blow she had once dealt his +vanity. Paul, she reflected, was not the sort to mourn a lost love long. + +She had the amused experience too of beholding Charlie Benton appear an +hour or so before she departed and straightway monopolize Linda Abbey in +his characteristically impetuous fashion. Charlie was no diplomat. He +believed in driving straight to any goal he selected. + +"So _that's_ the reason for the outward metamorphosis," Stella +reflected. "Well?" + +Altogether she enjoyed the afternoon hugely. The only fly in her +ointment was a greasy smudge bestowed upon her dress--a garment she +prized highly--by some cordage coiled on the _Panther's_ deck. The black +tender had carried too many cargoes of loggers and logging supplies to +be a fit conveyance for persons in party attire. She exhibited the +soiled gown to Fyfe with due vexation. + +"I hope you'll have somebody scrub down the _Panther_ the next time I +want to go anywhere in a decent dress," she said ruefully. "That'll +never come out. And it's the prettiest thing I've got too." + +"Ah, what's the odds?" Fyfe slipped one arm around her waist. "You can +buy more dresses. Did you have a good time? That's the thing!" + +That ruined gown, however, subsequently produced an able, forty-foot, +cruising launch, powerfully engined, easy in a sea, and comfortably, +even luxuriously fitted as to cabin. With that for their private use, +the _Panther_ was left to her appointed service, and in the new boat +Fyfe and Stella spent many a day abroad on Roaring Lake. They fished +together, explored nooks and bays up and down its forty miles of length, +climbed hills together like the bear of the ancient rhyme, to see what +they could see. And the _Waterbug_ served to put them on intimate terms +with their neighbors, particularly the Abbey crowd. The Abbeys took to +them wholeheartedly. Fyfe himself was highly esteemed by the elder +Abbey, largely, Stella suspected, for his power on Roaring Lake. Abbey +_père_ had built up a big fortune out of timber. He respected any man +who could follow the same path to success. Therefore he gave Fyfe double +credit,--for making good, and for a personality that could not be +overlooked. He told Stella that once; that is to say, he told her +confidentially that her husband was a very "able" young man. Abbey +senior was short and double-chinned and inclined to profuse perspiration +if he moved in haste over any extended time. Paul promised to be like +him, in that respect. + +Summer slipped by. There were dances, informal little hops at the Abbey +domicile, return engagements at the Fyfe bungalow, laughter and music +and Japanese lanterns strung across the lawn. There was tea and tennis +and murmuring rivers of small talk. And amid this Stella Fyfe flitted +graciously, esteeming it her world, a fair measure of what the future +might be. Viewed in that light, it seemed passable enough. + +Later, when summer was on the wane, she withdrew from much of this +activity, spending those days when she did not sit buried in a book out +on the water with her husband. When October ushered in the first of the +fall rains, they went to Vancouver and took apartments. In December her +son was born. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE + +With the recurrence of spring, Fyfe's household transferred itself to +the Roaring Lake bungalow again. Stella found the change welcome, for +Vancouver wearied her. It was a little too crude, too much as yet in the +transitory stage, in that civic hobbledehoy period which overtakes every +village that shoots up over-swiftly to a city's dimensions. They knew +people, to be sure, for the Abbey influence would have opened the way +for them into any circle. Stella had made many friends and pleasant +acquaintances that summer on the lake, but part of that butterfly clique +sought pleasanter winter grounds before she was fit for social activity. +Apart from a few more or less formal receptions and an occasional +auction party, she found it pleasanter to stay at home. Fyfe himself had +spent only part of his time in town after their boy was born. He was +extending his timber operations. What he did not put into words, but +what Stella sensed because she experienced the same thing herself, was +that town bored him to death,--such town existence as Vancouver +afforded. Their first winter had been different, because they had sought +places where there was manifold variety of life, color, amusement. She +was longing for the wide reach of Roaring Lake, the immense +amphitheater of the surrounding mountains, long before spring. + +So she was quite as well pleased when a mild April saw them domiciled at +home again. In addition to Sam Foo and Feng Shu, there was a nurse for +Jack Junior. Stella did not suggest that; Fyfe insisted on it. He was +quite proud of his boy, but he did not want her chained to her baby. + +"If the added expense doesn't count, of course a nurse will mean a lot +more personal freedom," Stella admitted. "You see, I haven't the least +idea of your resources, Jack. All I know about it is that you allow me +plenty of money for my individual expenses. And I notice we're acquiring +a more expensive mode of living all the time." + +"That's so," Fyfe responded. "I never have gone into any details of my +business with you. No reason why you shouldn't know what limits there +are to our income. You never happened to express any curiosity before. +Operating as I did up till lately, the business netted anywhere from +twelve to fifteen thousand a year. I'll double that this season. In +fact, with the amount of standing timber I control, I could make it +fifty thousand a year by expanding and speeding things up. I guess you +needn't worry about an extra servant or two." + +So, apart from voluntary service on behalf of Jack Junior, she was free +as of old to order her days as she pleased. Yet that small morsel of +humanity demanded much of her time, because she released through the +maternal floodgates a part of that passionate longing to bestow love +where her heart willed. Sometimes she took issue with herself over that +wayward tendency. By all the rules of the game, she should have loved +her husband. He was like a rock, solid, enduring, patient, kind, and +generous. He stood to her in the most intimate relation that can exist +between a man and a woman. But she never fooled herself; she never had +so far as Jack Fyfe was concerned. She liked him, but that was all. He +was good to her, and she was grateful. + +Sometimes she had a dim sense that under his easy-going exterior lurked +a capacity for tremendously passionate outbreak. If she had been +compelled to modify her first impression of him as an arrogant, dominant +sort of character, scarcely less rough than the brown firs out of which +he was hewing a fortune, she knew likewise that she had never seen +anything but the sunny side of him. He still puzzled her a little at +times; there were odd flashes of depths she could not see into, a +quality of unexpectedness in things he would do and say. Even so, +granting that in him was embodied so much that other men she knew +lacked, she did not love him; there were indeed times when she almost +resented him. + +Why, she could not perhaps have put into words. It seemed too fantastic +for sober summing-up, when she tried. But lurking always in the +background of her thoughts was the ghost of an unrealized dream, a +nebulous vision which once served to thrill her in secret. It could +never be anything but a vision, she believed now, and believing, +regretted. The cold facts of her existence couldn't be daydreamed away. +She was married, and marriage put a full stop to the potential +adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at the opposite pole +from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed to that. She took for +her guiding-star--theoretically--the twin concepts of morality and duty +as she had been taught to construe them. So she saw no loophole, and +seeing none, felt cheated of something infinitely precious. Marriage and +motherhood had not come to her as the fruits of love, as the +passionately eager fulfilling of her destiny. It had been thrust upon +her. She had accepted it as a last resort at a time when her powers of +resistance to misfortune were at the ebb. + +She knew that this sort of self-communing was a bad thing, that it was +bound to sour the whole taste of life in her mouth. As much as possible +she thrust aside those vague, repressed longings. Materially she had +everything. If she had foregone that bargain with Jack Fyfe, God only +knew what long-drawn agony of mind and body circumstances and Charlie +Benton's subordination of her to his own ends might have inflicted upon +her. That was the reverse of her shield, but one that grew dimmer as +time passed. Mostly, she took life as she found it, concentrating upon +Jack Junior, a sturdy boy with blue eyes like his father, and who grew +steadily more adorable. + +Nevertheless she had recurring periods when moodiness and ill-stifled +discontent got hold of her. Sometimes she stole out along the cliffs to +sit on a mossy boulder, staring with absent eyes at the distant hills. +And sometimes she would slip out in a canoe, to lie rocking in the lake +swell,--just dreaming, filled with a passive sort of regret. She could +not change things now, but she could not help wishing she could. + +Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. Roaring Lake, +pent in the shape of a boomerang between two mountain ranges, was +subject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot down its length +like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew that; she had seen the +glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten minutes, but she was not +afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She was hard and strong. The +open, the clean mountain air, and a measure of activity, had built her +up physically. She swam like a seal. Out in that sixteen-foot Peterboro +she could detach herself from her world of reality, lie back on a +cushion, and lose herself staring at the sky. She paid little heed to +Fyfe's warning beyond a smiling assurance that she had no intention of +courting a watery end. + +So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack Junior, crowing in +his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the +north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to +dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. +A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a +snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A +party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till +after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant +logging point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and breakfasted with him. +She was tired, drowsy, content to lie there in pure physical +relaxation. Lying so, before she was aware of it, her eyes closed. + +She wakened with a start at a cold touch of moisture on her face,--rain, +great pattering drops. Overhead an ominously black cloud hid the face of +the sun. The shore, when she looked, lay a mile and a half abeam. To the +north and between her and the land's rocky line was a darkening of the +lake's surface. Stella reached for her paddle. The black cloud let fall +long, gray streamers of rain. There was scarcely a stirring of the air, +but that did not deceive her. There was a growing chill, and there was +that broken line sweeping down the lake. Behind that was wind, a summer +gale, the black squall dreaded by the Siwashes. + +She had to buck her way to shore through that. She drove hard on the +paddle. She was not afraid, but there rose in her a peculiar tensed-up +feeling. Ahead lay a ticklish bit of business. The sixteen-foot canoe +dwarfed to pitiful dimensions in the face of that snarling line of +wind-harried water. She could hear the distant murmur of it presently, +and gusty puffs of wind began to strike her. + +Then it swept up to her, a ripple, a chop, and very close behind that +the short, steep, lake combers with a wind that blew off the tops as +each wave-head broke in white, bubbling froth. Immediately she began to +lose ground. She had expected that, and it did not alarm her. If she +could keep the canoe bow on, there was an even chance that the squall +would blow itself out in half an hour. But keeping the canoe bow on +proved a task for stout arms. The wind would catch all that forward +part which thrust clear as she topped a sea and twist it aside, tending +always to throw her broadside into the trough. Spray began to splash +aboard. The seas were so short and steep that the Peterboro would rise +over the crest of a tall one and dip its bow deep in the next, or leap +clear to strike with a slap that made Stella's heart jump. She had never +undergone quite that rough and tumble experience in a small craft. She +was being beaten farther out and down the lake, and her arms were +growing tired. Nor was there any slackening of the wind. + +The combined rain and slaps of spray soaked her thoroughly. A puddle +gathered about her knees in the bilge, sloshing fore and aft as the +craft pitched, killing the natural buoyancy of the canoe so that she +dove harder. Stella took a chance, ceased paddling, and bailed with a +small can. She got a tossing that made her head swim while she lay in +the trough. And when she tried to head up into it again, one comber +bigger than its fellows reared up and slapped a barrel of water inboard. +The next wave swamped her. + +Sunk to the clamps, Stella held fast to the topsides, crouching on her +knees, immersed to the hips in water that struck a chill through her +flesh. She had the wit to remember and act upon Jack Fyfe's coaching, +namely, to sit tight and hang on. No sea that ever ran can sink a canoe. +Wood is buoyant. So long as she could hold on, the submerged craft would +keep her head and shoulders above water. But it was numbing cold. Fed by +glacial streams, Roaring Lake is icy in hottest midsummer. + +What with paddling and bailing and the excitement of the struggle, +Stella had wasted no time gazing about for other boats. She knew that if +any one at the camp saw her, rescue would be speedily effected. Now, +holding fast and sitting quiet, she looked eagerly about as the swamped +canoe rose loggily on each wave. Almost immediately she was heartened by +seeing distinctly some sort of craft plunging through the blow. She had +not long to wait after that, for the approaching launch was a lean-lined +speeder, powerfully engined, and she was being forced. Stella supposed +it was one of the Abbey runabouts. Even with her teeth chattering and +numbness fastening itself upon her, she shivered at the chances the man +was taking. It was no sea for a speed boat to smash into at thirty miles +an hour. She saw it shoot off the top of one wave and disappear in a +white burst of spray, slash through the next and bury itself deep again, +flinging a foamy cloud far to port and starboard. Stella cried futilely +to the man to slow down. She could hang on a long time yet, but her +voice carried no distance. + +After that she had not long to wait. In four minutes the runabout was +within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a machine gun. And +then the very thing she expected and dreaded came about. Every moment +she expected to see him drive bows under and go down. Here and there at +intervals uplifted a comber taller than its fellows, standing, just as +it broke, like a green wall. Into one such hoary-headed sea the white +boat now drove like a lance. Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade, +saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch +and smash the low windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the +roaring exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of +broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into +the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she had +taken. + +The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth. + +"Can you hang on a while longer?" he shouted. "Till I can get my boat +bailed?" + +"I'm all right," she called back. + +She saw him heave up the engine hatch. For a minute or two he bailed +rapidly. Then he spun the engine, without result. He straightened up at +last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his coat. + +The launch lay heavily in the trough. The canoe, rising and clinging on +the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet at a time, taking +the run of the sea faster than the disabled motorboat. So now only a +hundred-odd feet separated them, but they could come no nearer, for the +canoe was abeam and slowly drifting past. + +Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his hand. +Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged overboard in +a beautiful, arching dive. A second later his head showed glistening +above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand +stroke. It seemed an age--although the actual time was brief +enough--before he reached her. She saw then that there was method in +his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the +launch. He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, +smiling broadly at her. + +"Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission," he said at last. +"I'd have had you ashore by now. Hang on for a minute." + +He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow. Holding fast with one +hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch. In that continuous +roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they managed it, and +presently she sat shivering in the cockpit, watching the man spill the +water out of the Peterboro till it rode buoyantly again. Then he went to +work at his engine methodically, wiping dry the ignition terminals, all +the various connections where moisture could effect a short circuit. At +the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple +cylinders fired with a roar. + +He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering gear +stood. + +"Well, Miss Ship-wrecked Mariner," said he lightly, "where do you wish +to be landed?" + +"Over there, if you please." Stella pointed to where the red roof of the +bungalow stood out against the green. "I'm Mrs. Fyfe." + +"Ah!" said he. An expression of veiled surprise flashed across his face. +"Another potential romance strangled at birth. You know, I hoped you +were some local maiden before whom I could pose as a heroic rescuer. +Such is life. Odd, too. Linda Abbey--I'm the Monohan tail to the Abbey +business kite, you see--impressed me as pilot for a spin this afternoon +and backed out at the last moment. I think she smelled this blow. So I +went out for a ride by myself. I was glowering at that new house through +a glass when I spied you out in the thick of it." + +He had the clutch in now, and the launch was cleaving the seas, even at +half speed throwing out wide wings of spray. Some of this the wind +brought across the cockpit. "Come up into this seat," Monohan commanded. +"I don't suppose you can get any wetter, but if you put your feet +through this bulkhead door, the heat from the engine will warm you. By +Jove, you're fairly shivering." + +"It's lucky for me you happened along," Stella remarked, when she was +ensconced behind the bulkhead. "I was getting so cold. I don't know how +much longer I could have stood it." + +"Thank the good glasses that picked you out. You were only a speck on +the water, you know, when I sighted you first." + +He kept silent after that. All his faculties were centered on the seas +ahead which rolled up before the sharp cutwater of the launch. He was +making time and still trying to avoid boarding seas. When a big one +lifted ahead, he slowed down. He kept one hand on the throttle control, +whistling under his breath disconnected snatches of song. Stella studied +his profile, clean-cut as a cameo and wholly pleasing. He was almost as +big-bodied as Jack Fyfe, and full four inches taller. The wet shirt +clinging close to his body outlined well-knit shoulders, ropy-muscled +arms. He could easily have posed for a Viking, so strikingly blond was +he, with fair, curly hair. She judged that he might be around thirty, +yet his face was altogether boyish. + +Sitting there beside him, shivering in her wet clothes, she found +herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about a man that +focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed it or no. Why +should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the mere physical nearness +of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There was no debating that. And +she wondered--wondered if a bolt of that lightning she had dreaded ever +since her marriage was about to strike her now. She hoped not. All her +emotions had lain fallow. If Jack Fyfe had no power to stir her,--and +she told herself Jack had so failed, without asking herself why,--then +some other man might easily accomplish that, to her unutterable grief. +She had told herself many a time that no more terrible plight could +overtake her than to love and be loved and sit with hands folded, +foregoing it all. She shrank from so tragic an evolution. It meant only +pain, the ache of unfulfilled, unattainable desires. If, she reflected +cynically, this man beside her stood for such a motif in her life, he +might better have left her out in the swamped canoe. + +While she sat there, drawn-faced with the cold, thinking rather amazedly +these things which she told herself she had no right to think, the +launch slipped into the quiet nook of Cougar Bay and slowed down to the +float. + +Monohan helped her out, threw off the canoe's painter, and climbed back +into the launch. + +"You're as wet as I am," Stella said. "Won't you come up to the house +and get a change of clothes? I haven't even thanked you." + +"Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please remember +not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy the next +time--and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming sex. All smiles one +minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay this time, thanks. A little +wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the water long enough to get chilled, you +know. I'll be home in half an hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs. +Fyfe, and drink something hot to drive that chill away. Good-by." + +Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting grip. +Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy vision of a +greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of soul-affinity, of +irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into +reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always +viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile +natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her, +nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute. +She had never undergone any such experience, and she puzzled over it +now. A chance stranger, and his touch could make her pulse leap. It +filled her with astonished dismay. + +Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack Junior +cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the natural +reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came home, she +told him lightly of her rescue. + +He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, his eyes +steady on her. + +"That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you +remember not to drift offshore again?" + +"I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant +experience." + +"Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on Roaring +Lake again." + +"Do you know him?" she asked. + +"Yes," he replied briefly. + +For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its habitual +impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer sort of +intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly surprised. It +wasn't quite in his usual manner. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +A RESURRECTION + +It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a discovery which +profoundly affected the whole current of her thought. The long twilight +was just beginning. She was curled on the living-room floor, playing +with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie Benton sat by a window, smoking, +conversing, as they frequently did, upon certain phases of the timber +industry. A draft from an open window fluttered some sheet music down +off the piano rack, and Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny, +clawing hands. Some of the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One +bit of music was a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it +soared above her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without +any premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began to +run over the accompaniment. She could play passably. + +"That doesn't seem so very hard," she thought aloud. Benton turned at +sound of her words. + +"Say, did you never get any part of your voice back, Stell?" he asked. +"I never hear you try to sing." + +"No," she answered. "I tried and tried long after you left home, but it +was always the same old story. I haven't sung a note in five years." + +"Linda fell down hard on that song last night," he went on. "There was a +time when that wouldn't have been a starter for you, eh? Did you know +Stella used to warble like a prima donna, Jack?" + +Fyfe shook his head. + +"Fact. The governor spent a pot of money cultivating her voice. It was +some voice, too. She--" + +He broke off to listen. Stella was humming the words of the song, her +fingers picking at the melody instead of the accompaniment. + +"Why, you can," Benton cried. + +"Can what?" She turned on the stool. + +"Sing, of course. You got that high trill that Linda had to screech +through. You got it perfectly, without effort." + +"I didn't," she returned. "Why, I wasn't singing, just humming it over." + +"You let out a link or two on those high notes just the same, whether +you knew you were doing it or not," her brother returned impatiently. +"Go on. Turn yourself loose. Sing that song." + +"Oh, I couldn't," Stella said ruefully. "I haven't tried for so long. +It's no use. My voice always cracks, and I want to cry." + +"Crack fiddlesticks!" Benton retorted. "I know what it used to be. +Believe me, it sounded natural, even if you were just lilting. Here." + +He came over to the piano and playfully edged her off the stool. + +"I'm pretty rusty," he said. "But I can fake what I can't play of this. +It's simple enough. You stand up there and sing." + +She only stood looking at him. + +"Go on," he commanded. "I believe you can sing anything. You have to +show me, if you can't." + +Stella fingered the sheets reluctantly. Then she drew a deep breath and +began. + +It was not a difficult selection, merely a bit from a current light +opera, with a closing passage that ranged a trifle too high for the +ordinary untrained voice to take with ease. Stella sang it effortlessly, +the last high, trilling notes pouring out as sweet and clear as the +carol of a lark. Benton struck the closing chord and looked up at her. +Fyfe leaned forward in his chair. Jack Junior, among his pillows on the +floor, waved his arms, kicking and gurgling. + +"You did pretty well on that," Charlie remarked complacently. "Now +_sing_ something. Got any of your old pieces?" + +"I wonder if I could?" Stella murmured. "I'm almost afraid to try." + +She hurried away to some outlying part of the house, reappearing in a +few minutes with a dog-eared bundle of sheets in her hand. From among +these she selected three and set them on the rack. + +Benton whistled when he glanced over the music. + +"The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, look at +the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from the 'Flying +Dutchman.' Some stunt." + +"Marchand composed it for the express purpose of trying out voices," +Stella said. "It _is_ a stunt." + +"You'll have to play your own accompaniment," Charlie grinned. "That's +too much for me." + +"Oh, just so you give me a little support here and there," Stella told +him. "I can't sing sitting on a piano stool." + +Benton made a face at the music and struck the keys. + +It seemed to Stella nothing short of a miracle. She had been mute so +long. She had almost forgotten what a tragedy losing her voice had been. +And to find it again, to hear it ring like a trumpet. It did! It was too +big for the room. She felt herself caught up in a triumphant ecstasy as +she sang. She found herself blinking as the last note died away. Her +brother twisted about on the piano stool, fumbling for a cigarette. + +"And still they say they can't come back," he remarked at last. "Why, +you're better than you ever were, Stella. You've got the old sweetness +and flexibility that dad used to rave about. But your voice is bigger, +somehow different. It gets under a man's skin." + +She picked up the baby from the floor, began to play with him. She +didn't want to talk. She wanted to think, to gloat over and hug to +herself this miracle of her restored voice. She was very quiet, very +much absorbed in her own reflections until it was time--very shortly--to +put Jack Junior in his bed. That was a function she made wholly her own. +The nurse might greet his waking whimper in the morning and minister to +his wants throughout the day, but Stella "tucked him in" his crib every +night. And after the blue eyes were closed, she sat there, very still, +thinking. In a detached way she was conscious of hearing Charlie leave. + +Later, when she was sitting beside her dressing table brushing her hair, +Fyfe came in. He perched himself on the foot rail of the bed, looking +silently at her. She had long grown used to that. It was a familiar +trick of his. + +"How did it happen that you've never tried your voice lately?" he asked +after a time. + +"I gave it up long ago," she said. "Didn't I ever tell you that I used +to sing and lost my voice?" + +"No," he answered. "Charlie did just now. You rather took my breath +away. It's wonderful. You'd be a sensation in opera." + +"I might have been," she corrected. "That was one of my little dreams. +You don't know what a grief it was to me when I got over that throat +trouble and found I couldn't sing. I used to try and try--and my voice +would break every time. I lost all heart to try after a while. That was +when I wanted to take up nursing, and they wouldn't let me. I haven't +thought about singing for an age. I've crooned lullabies to Jacky +without remembering that I once had volume enough to drown out an +accompanist. Dad was awfully proud of my voice." + +"You've reason to be proud of it now," Fyfe said slowly. "It's a voice +in ten thousand. What are going to do with it?" + +Stella drew the brush mechanically through her heavy hair. She had been +asking herself that. What could she do? A long road and a hard one lay +ahead of her or any other woman who essayed to make her voice the basis +of a career. Over and above that she was not free to seek such a career. +Fyfe himself knew that, and it irritated her that he should ask such a +question. She swung about on him. + +"Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that my voice +is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in the East or +abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of such an undertaking? +To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to your logs?" + +"So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little reflected glory +as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," he replied slowly. +"Well, I can't say that's a particularly pleasing prospect." + +"Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back +impatiently. "It'll be an asset--like my looks--and--and--" + +She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary sob. Fyfe +crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her. + +"Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool." + +"D--don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm sorry. I simply +can't help it. You don't understand." + +"Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's the +devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,--to feed her soul with +illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look here." + +He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, facing him. +There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together of his lips that +frightened her a little. + +"Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you realize what +sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You married me under more +or less compulsion,--compulsion of circumstances,--and gradually you're +beginning to get dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate +things you maybe don't dream of now, if you keep on. Damn it, I didn't +create the circumstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It +satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't any +more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going to make +your life full of misery." + +"I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions +that--that--Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not complaining. I +don't even know what gave me this black mood, just now. I suppose that +queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. I feel--well, as if I +were a different person, somehow; as if I had forfeited any right to +have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. But it's there. I can't help my +feeling--or my lack of it." + +Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her shoulders. + +"Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially that +last. We've been married some little time now, and if anything, we're +farther apart in the essentials of mating than we were at the +beginning. You've committed yourself to an undertaking, yet more and +more you encourage yourself to wish for the moon. If you don't stop +dreaming and try real living, don't you see a lot of trouble ahead for +yourself? It's simple. You're slowly hardening yourself against me, +beginning to resent my being a factor in your life. It's only a matter +of time, if you keep on, until your emotions center about some other +man." + +"Why do you talk like that?" she said bitterly. "Do you think I've got +neither pride nor self-respect?" + +"Yes. Both a-plenty," he answered. "But you're a woman, with a rather +complex nature even for your sex. If your heart and your head ever clash +over anything like that, you'll be in perfect hell until one or the +other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, and high-strung as +thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides three meals a day and +plenty of good clothes to complete your existence. If I can't make it +complete, some other man will make you think he can. Why don't you try? +Haven't I got any possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little +halo of romance about me, for your own sake--if not for mine?" + +He drew her up close to him, stroking tenderly the glossy brown hair +that flowed about her shoulders. + +"Try it, Stella," he whispered passionately. "Try wanting to like me, +for a change. I can't make love by myself. Shake off that infernal +apathy that's taking possession of you where I'm concerned. If you can't +love me, for God's sake fight with me. Do _something_!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +THE CRISIS + +Looking back at that evening as the summer wore on, Stella perceived +that it was the starting point of many things, no one of them definitely +outstanding by itself but bulking large as a whole. Fyfe made his +appeal, and it left her unmoved save in certain superficial aspects. She +was sorry, but she was mostly sorry for herself. And she denied his +premonition of disaster. If, she said to herself, they got no raptures +out of life, at least they got along without friction. In her mind their +marriage, no matter that it lacked what she no less than Fyfe deemed an +essential to happiness, was a fixed state, final, irrevocable, not to be +altered by any emotional vagaries. + +No man, she told herself, could make her forget her duty. If it should +befall that her heart, lacking safe anchorage, went astray, that would +be her personal cross--not Jack Fyfe's. _He_ should never know. One +might feel deeply without being moved to act upon one's feelings. So she +assured herself. + +She never dreamed that Jack Fyfe could possibly have foreseen in Walter +Monohan a dangerous factor in their lives. A man is not supposed to have +uncanny intuitions, even when his wife is a wonderfully attractive +woman who does not care for him except in a friendly sort of way. +Stella herself had ample warning. From the first time of meeting, the +man's presence affected her strangely, made an appeal to her that no man +had ever made. She felt it sitting beside him in the plunging launch +that day when Roaring Lake reached its watery arms for her. There was +seldom a time when they were together that she did not feel it. And she +pitted her will against it, as something to be conquered and crushed. + +There was no denying the man's personal charm in the ordinary sense of +the word. He was virile, handsome, cultured, just such a man as she +could easily have centered her heart upon in times past,--just such a +man as can set a woman's heart thrilling when he lays siege to her. If +he had made an open bid for Stella's affection, she, entrenched behind +all the accepted canons of her upbringing, would have recoiled from him, +viewed him with wholly distrustful eyes. + +But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he became +so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a continual +informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and Abbey's. +Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common knowledge on +Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the Abbey-Monohan +combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the lake that summer. +There had grown up a genuine intimacy between Linda and Stella. There +were always people at the Abbeys'; sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe +bungalow. Stella's marvellous voice served to heighten her popularity. +The net result of it all was that in the following three months source +three days went by that she did not converse with Monohan. + +She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They stood +out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. Where Fyfe +was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, save for that +whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes, +Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face. +He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had +been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner +something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as +any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man. + +What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never determine. +She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He had the gift of +quick, sympathetic perception,--but so too had Jack Fyfe, she reminded +herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice could raise a flutter in her +breast, make a faint flush glow in her cheeks, while Monohan could do +that. He did not need to be actively attentive. It was only necessary +for him to be near. + +It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when the first +cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores flamed again with +the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she had been playing with +fire--and that fire burns. + +This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had steeled +herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer folk, to +take himself out of her life. She admitted that there would be a gap. +But that had to be. No word other than friendly ones would ever pass +between them. He would go away, and she would go on as before. That was +all. She was scarcely aware how far they had traveled along that road +whereon travelers converse by glance of eye, by subtle intuitions, +eloquent silences. Monohan himself delivered the shock that awakened her +to despairing clearness of vision. + +He had come to bring her a book, he and Linda Abbey and Charlie +together,--a commonplace enough little courtesy. And it happened that +this day Fyfe had taken his rifle and vanished into the woods +immediately after luncheon. Between Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton +matters had so far progressed that it was now the most natural thing for +them to seek a corner or poke along the beach together, oblivious to all +but themselves. This afternoon they chatted a while with Stella and then +gradually detached themselves until Monohan, glancing through the +window, pointed them out to his hostess. They were seated on a log at +the edge of the lawn, a stone's throw from the house. + +"They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain sailing +for them." + +There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that stabbed +Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. Something rose +chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against a slow welling of +tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was betraying herself, +Monohan was holding both her hands fast between his own, gripping them +with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking in a passionate undertone. + +"Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like this?" +he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved and been +happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I felt it that day +I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing on me ever since. I've +struggled against it, and it's no use. It's something stronger than I +am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me to see you chafing in your +chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it have been different?" + +"You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You mustn't. It +isn't right." + +"I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, when +your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do you think +I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. I know you're +the kind of woman who goes through hell for her conceptions of right and +wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, oh, the pity of it. Why should +it have to be? Life could have held so much that is fine and true for +you and me together. For you do care, don't you?" + +"What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What difference can it +make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I mustn't listen. I +mustn't." + +"But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look at me, +Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do anything that +might bring the least shadow on you. I know the pitiful hopelessness of +it. You're fettered, and there's no apparent loophole to freedom. I know +it's best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something +precious and sorrowful. I never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't +always equal to the task the spirit imposes." + +She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on +herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry +her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will that she +possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that +racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone. But she +faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face. + +"Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm neither +little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's big and clean. +I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it--if you can understand that. +But that's neither here nor there. I know what I have to do. I married +without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price. So +you must never talk to me of love. You mustn't even see me, if it can be +avoided. It's better that way. We can't make over our lives to suit +ourselves--at least I can't. I must play the game according to the only +rules I know. We daren't--we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling. +With you--footloose, and all the world before you--it'll die out +presently." + +"No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I know +myself." + +He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the pain of +it ran to her elbows. Then his fingers relaxed a little. + +"Oh, I know," he said haltingly. "I know it's got to be that way. I have +to go my road and leave you to yours. Oh, the blank hopelessness of it, +the useless misery of it. We're made for each other, and we have to grin +and say good-by, go along our separate ways, trying to smile. What a +devilish state of affairs! But I love you, dear, and no matter--I--ah--" + +His voice flattened out. His hands released hers, he straightened +quickly. Stella turned her head. Jack Fyfe stood in the doorway. His +face was fixed in its habitual mask. He was biting the end off a cigar. +He struck a match and put it to the cigar end with steady fingers as he +walked slowly across the big room. + +"I hear the kid peeping," he said to Stella quite casually, "and I +noticed Martha outside as I came in. Better go see what's up with him." + +Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to obey, +for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge of command. +Her heart apparently ceased to beat. She tried to smile, but she knew +that her face was tear-wet. She knew that Jack Fyfe had seen and +understood. She had done no wrong, but a terrible apprehension of +consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her own making might +stalk grimly in that room. + +In this extremity she banked with implicit faith on the man she had +married rather than the man she loved. For the moment she felt +overwhelmingly glad that Jack Fyfe was iron--cool, unshakable. He would +never give an inch, but he would never descend to any sordid scene. She +could not visualize him the jealous, outraged husband, breathing the +conventional anathema, but there were elements unreckonable in that +room. She knew instinctively that Fyfe once aroused would be deadly in +anger and she could not vouch for Monohan's temper under the strain of +feeling. That was why she feared. + +So she lingered a second or two outside the door, quaking, but there +arose only the sound of Fyfe's heavy body settling into a leather chair, +and following that the low, even rumble of his voice. She could not +distinguish words. The tone sounded ordinary, conversational. She prayed +that his intent was to ignore the situation, that Monohan would meet him +halfway in that effort. Afterward there would be a reckoning. But for +herself she neither thought nor feared. It was a problem to be faced, +that was all. And so, the breath of her coming in short, quick +respirations, she went to her room. There was no wailing from the +nursery. She had known that. + +Sitting beside a window, chin in hand, her lower lip compressed between +her teeth, she saw Fyfe, after the lapse of ten minutes, leave by the +front entrance, stopping to chat a minute with Linda and Charlie Benton, +who were moving slowly toward the house. Stella rose to her feet and +dabbed at her face with a powdered chamois. She couldn't let Monohan go +like that; her heart cried out against it. Very likely they would never +meet again. + +She flew down the hall to the living room. Monohan stood just within +the front door, gazing irresolutely over his shoulder. He took a step or +two to meet her. His clean-cut face was drawn into sullen lines, a deep +flush mantled his cheek. + +"Listen," he said tensely. "I've been made to feel like--like--Well, I +controlled myself. I knew it had to be that way. It was unfortunate. I +think we could have been trusted to do the decent thing. You and I were +bred to do that. I've got a little pride. I can't come here again. And I +want to see you once more before I leave here for good. I'll be going +away next week. That'll be the end of it--the bitter finish. Will you +slip down to the first point south of Cougar Bay about three in the +afternoon to-morrow? It'll be the last and only time. He'll have you for +life; can't I talk to you for twenty minutes?" + +"No," she whispered forlornly. "I can't do that. I--oh, +good-by--good-by." + +"Stella, Stella," she heard his vibrant whisper follow after. But she +ran away through dining room and hall to the bedroom, there to fling +herself face down, choking back the passionate protest that welled up +within her. She lay there, her face buried in the pillow, until the +sputtering exhaust of the Abbey cruiser growing fainter and more faint +told her they were gone. + +She heard her husband walk through the house once after that. When +dinner was served, he was not there. It was eleven o'clock by the +time-piece on her mantel when she heard him come in, but he did not come +to their room. He went quietly into the guest chamber across the hall. + +She waited through a leaden period. Then, moved by an impulse she did +not attempt to define, a mixture of motives, pity for him, a craving for +the outlet of words, a desire to set herself right before him, she +slipped on a dressing robe and crossed the hall. The door swung open +noiselessly. Fyfe sat slumped in a chair, hat pulled low on his +forehead, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He did not even look up. His +eyes stared straight ahead, absent, unseeingly fixed on nothing. He +seemed to be unconscious of her presence or to ignore it,--she could not +tell which. + +"Jack," she said. And when he made no response she said again, +tremulously, that unyielding silence chilling her, "Jack." + +He stirred a little, but only to take off his hat and lay it on a table +beside him. With one hand pushing back mechanically the straight, +reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her and said briefly, +in a tone barren of all emotion: + +"Well?" + +She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was much to +be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on with a cloud +like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated in the crucible +of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a prolonged silence, +seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he began to speak, cutting +straight to the heart of his subject, after his fashion. + +"It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. "But now +that you're face to face with something definite, what do you propose to +do about it?" + +"Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's there. +But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it didn't exist. +There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. I'm sorry, Jack." + +"So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we took,--or I took, +rather. I seem to have made a mistake or two, in my estimate of both you +and myself. That is human enough, I suppose. You're making a bigger +mistake than I did though, to let Monohan sweep you off your feet." + +There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It stung +her. + +"He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. "Good +Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? I've never +forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect left yet, if I +was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me in the beginning. I +was honest with you then. I'm trying to be honest with you now." + +"I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a damnably +unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw something of the +sort when we were married. You were candid enough about your attitude. +But I told myself like a conceited fool that I could make your life so +full that in a little while I'd be the only possible figure on your +horizon. I've failed. I've known for some time that I was going to fail. +You're not the thin-blooded type of woman that is satisfied with +pleasant surroundings and any sort of man. You're bound to run the gamut +of all the emotions, sometime and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought +in my conceit I could make myself the man, the one man who would mean +everything to you." + +"Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't see how +you can avoid paying the penalty for folly." + +"What do you mean?" she asked. + +"You haven't tried to play the game," he answered tensely. "For months +you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been clanking your +chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike +them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. It isn't a +thing--marriage, I mean--that you hold lightly. That being the case, you +would have been wise to try making the best of it, instead of making the +worst of it. But you let yourself drift into a state of mind where +you--well, you see the result. I saw it coming. I didn't need to happen +in this afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling +swirling about. And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty. If +you let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you'll pay bigger +in the end." + +"I can't help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings," she said +wearily. + +"You think you love him," Fyfe made low reply. "As a matter of fact, you +love what you think he is. I daresay that he has sworn his affection by +all that's good and great. But if you were convinced that he didn't +really care, that his flowery protestations had a double end in view, +would you still love him?" + +"I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do love +him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a +way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid. But--but +I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want +this to make us both miserable. I don't want it to generate an +atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd only be fighting about a +shadow. I never cheated at anything in my life. You can trust me still, +can't you?" + +"Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation. + +"Then that's all there is to it," she replied, "unless--unless you're +ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder +along the best I can." + +He shook his head. + +"I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's unwise of +me to say this,--it will probably antagonize you,--but I know Monohan +better than you do. I'd go pretty far to keep you two apart--now--for +your sake." + +"It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. "I can +understand that feeling in you. It's so--so typically masculine." + +"No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a +self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll only +live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with a man that +I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my pocket and let you +go. If you cared enough for him to break every tie, to face the +embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were entitled to your +freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But Monohan--hell, I +don't want to talk about him. I trust you, Stella. I'm banking on your +own good sense. And along with that good, natural common sense, you've +got so many illusions. About life in general, and about men. They seem +to have centered about this one particular man. I can't open your eyes +or put you on the right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do +is to sit back and wait." + +His voice trailed off huskily. + +Stella put a hand on his shoulder. + +"Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in spite +of what you know?" + +"For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing in my +life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm getting +hopeless." + +"I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. +I didn't love you to begin with--" + +"And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged that +ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the real +romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't found it yet. +I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could convince you." + +"Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love you--that I was +worn out and desperate and clutching at the life line you threw. In +spite of that,--well, if I fight down this love, or fascination, or +infatuation, or whatever it is,--I'm not sure myself, except that it +affects me strongly,--can't we be friends again?" + +"Friends! Oh, hell!" Fyfe exploded. + +He came up out of his chair with a blaze in his eyes that startled her, +caught her by the arm, and thrust her out the door. + +"Friends? You and I?" He sank his voice to a harsh whisper. "My +God--friends! Go to bed. Good night." + +He pushed her into the hall, and the lock clicked between them. For one +confused instant Stella stood poised, uncertain. Then she went into her +bedroom and sat down, her keenest sensation one of sheer relief. Already +in those brief hours emotion had well-nigh exhausted her. To be alone, +to lie still and rest, to banish thought,--that was all she desired. + +She lay on her bed inert, numbed, all but her mind, and that traversed +section by section in swift, consecutive progress all the amazing turns +of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. There was neither +method nor inquiry in this back-casting--merely a ceaseless, involuntary +activity of the brain. + +A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went into the +adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and took him to her +own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her breast, she lay there +fighting against that interminable, maddening buzzing in her brain. She +prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers stroking the silky, baby hair. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH + +One can only suffer so much. Poignant feeling brings its own +anaesthetic. When Stella Fyfe fell into a troubled sleep that night, the +storm of her emotions had beaten her sorely. Morning brought its +physical reaction. She could see things clearly and calmly enough to +perceive that her love for Monohan was fraught with factors that must be +taken into account. All the world loves a lover, but her world did not +love lovers who kicked over the conventional traces. She had made a +niche for herself. There were ties she could not break lightly, and she +was not thinking of herself alone when she considered that, but of her +husband and Jack Junior, of Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton, of each and +every individual whose life touched more or less directly upon her own. + +She had known always what a woman should do in such case, what she had +been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, and take her +medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had made that clear. +But her heart cried out in rebellion against the necessity. To her, +trying to think logically, the most grievous phase of the doing was the +fact that nothing could ever be the same again. She could go on. Oh, +yes. She could dam up the wellspring of her impulses, walk steadfast +along the accustomed ways. But those ways would not be the old ones. +There would always be the skeleton at the feast. She would know it was +there, and Jack Fyfe would know, and she dreaded the fruits of that +knowledge, the bitterness and smothered resentment it would breed. But +it had to be. As she saw it, there was no choice. + +She came down to breakfast calmly enough. It was nothing that could be +altered by heroics, by tears and wailings. Not that she was much given +to either. She had not whined when her brother made things so hard for +her that any refuge seemed alluring by comparison. Curiously enough, she +did not blame her brother now; neither did she blame Jack Fyfe. + +She told herself that in first seeking the line of least resistance she +had manifested weakness, that since her present problem was indirectly +the outgrowth of that original weakness, she would be weak no more. So +she tried to meet her husband as if nothing had happened, in which she +succeeded outwardly very well indeed, since Fyfe himself chose to ignore +any change in their mutual attitude. + +She busied herself about the house that forenoon, seeking deliberately a +multitude of little tasks to occupy her hands and her mind. + +But when lunch was over, she was at the end of her resources. Jack +Junior settled in his crib for a nap. Fyfe went away to that area back +of the camp where arose the crash of falling trees and the labored +puffing of donkey engines. She could hear faint and far the voices of +the falling gangs that cried: "Tim-ber-r-r-r." She could see on the +bank, a little beyond the bunkhouse and cook-shack, the big roader +spooling up the cable that brought string after string of logs down to +the lake. Rain or sun, happiness or sorrow, the work went on. She found +it in her heart to envy the sturdy loggers. They could forget their +troubles in the strain of action. Keyed as she was to that high pitch, +that sense of their unremitting activity, the ravaging of the forest +which produced the resources for which she had sold herself irritated +her. She was very bitter when she thought that. + +She longed for some secluded place to sit and think, or try to stop +thinking. And without fully realizing the direction she took, she walked +down past the camp, crossed the skid-road, stepping lightly over main +line and haul-back at the donkey engineer's warning, and went along the +lake shore. + +A path wound through the belt of brush and hardwood that fringed the +lake. Not until she had followed this up on the neck of a little +promontory south of the bay, did she remember with a shock that she was +approaching the place where Monohan had begged her to meet him. She +looked at her watch. Two-thirty. She sought the shore line for sight of +a boat, wondering if he would come in spite of her refusal. But to her +great relief she saw no sign of him. Probably he had thought better of +it, had seen now as she had seen then that no good and an earnest chance +of evil might come of such a clandestine meeting, had taken her stand as +final. + +She was glad, because she did not want to go back to the house. She did +not want to make the effort of wandering away in the other direction to +find that restful peace of woods and water. She moved up a little on the +point until she found a mossy boulder and sat down on that, resting her +chin in her palms, looking out over the placid surface of the lake with +somber eyes. + +And so Monohan surprised her. The knoll lay thick-carpeted with moss. He +was within a few steps of her when a twig cracking underfoot apprised +her of some one's approach. She rose, with an impulse to fly, to escape +a meeting she had not desired. And as she rose, the breath stopped in +her throat. + +Twenty feet behind Monohan came Jack Fyfe with his hunter's stride, +soundlessly over the moss, a rifle drooping in the crook of his arm. A +sunbeam striking obliquely between two firs showed her his face plainly, +the faint curl of his upper lip. + +Something in her look arrested Monohan. He glanced around, twisted +about, froze in his tracks, his back to her. Fyfe came up. Of the three +he was the coolest, the most rigorously self-possessed. He glanced from +Monohan to his wife, back to Monohan. After that his blue eyes never +left the other man's face. + +"What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at last. "But +then I might have known I was wasting my breath on you!" + +"Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do about it? +This isn't the Stone Age." + +Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. + +"Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. "No, it +takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as you." + +A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward Fyfe, his +hands clenched. + +"You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted hoarsely. + +"No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic clink +against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort of a +yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. That's +why it stings you to be told so." + +Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was crimson. + +"By God, I'll teach you something," he snarled. + +He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for Fyfe's +face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the balls of his +feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped Monohan across the +mouth with the open palm of his hand. + +"Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It." + +Monohan pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by inches. +Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again, +launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance. +Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him +sprawling on the moss. + +Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come +about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had visualized it +when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of her husband that +she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to understand. She could +have understood him beating Monohan senseless, if he could. A murderous +fury of jealousy would not have surprised her. This did. He had not +struck a blow, did not attempt to strike. + +She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with Monohan, +making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of height and reach. +Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond Monohan's vengeful blows, +slipping under those driving fists to slap his adversary, to trip him, +mocking him with the futility of his effort. + +She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was not a +fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something +else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and +now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a +struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other, +which had little or nothing to do with her. She foresaw, watching the +odd combat with a feeling akin to fascination, that it was a losing game +for Monohan. Fyfe was his master at every move. + +Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but that +humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his foot that +plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold grimace that +reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of his features. +Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered at his purpose, how +it would end. + +The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of +those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the +rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with +his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body. + +Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohan +was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landed +near his heart, and while he staggered from that, clamped one thick arm +about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bent +backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically choked +him; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and his +eyes bulged glassily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from his +gaping mouth. + +"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him." + +Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirred +him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. Stella could not +tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling a +dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regain +his breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice. + +"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you that you +can't." + +With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stood +silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out a +slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set off +down the lake. + +"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone. +"The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose." + +"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly. + +He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now that his +face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew harder together +as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for the storm that broke. +She did not comprehend the tempest that raged within him until he had +her by the shoulders, his fingers crushing into her soft flesh like the +jaws of a trap, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat, till the +heavy coils of hair cascaded over her shoulders, and for a second fear +tugged at her heart. For she thought he meant to kill her. + +When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms that sent +her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her being, though +not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot protest against his brute +strength, against his passionate outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were +against her, she knew. Even so, she revolted against his cave-man +roughness. She was amazed to find herself longing for the power to +strike him. + +She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring at him +in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she looked. He +drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his rifle. When he +faced about with that in his hand, the old mask of immobility was in +place. He waited while Stella gathered up her scattered hairpins and +made shift to coil her hair into a semblance of Order. Then he said +gently: + +"I won't break out like that again." + +"Once is enough." + +"More than enough--for me," he answered. + +She disdained reply. Striking off along the path that ran to the camp, +she walked rapidly, choking a rising flood of desperate thought. With +growing coolness paradoxically there burned hotter the flame of an +elemental wrath. What right had he to lay hands on her? Her shoulders +ached, her flesh was bruised from the terrible grip of his fingers. The +very sound of his footsteps behind her was maddening. To be suspected +and watched, to be continually the target of jealous fury! No, a +thousand times, no. She wheeled on him at last. + +"I can't stand this," she cried. "It's beyond endurance. We're like +flint and steel to each other now. If to-day's a sample of what we may +expect, it's better to make a clean sweep of everything. I've got to get +away from here and from you--from everybody." + +Fyfe motioned her to a near-by log. + +"Sit down," said he. "We may as well have it out here." + +For a few seconds he busied himself with a cigar, removing the band with +utmost deliberation, biting the end off, applying the match, his brows +puckered slightly. + +"It's very unwise of you to meet Monohan like that," he uttered finally. + +"Oh, I see," she flashed. "Do you suggest that I met him purposely--by +appointment? Even if I did--" + +"That's for you to say, Stella," he interrupted gravely. "I told you +last night that I trusted you absolutely. I do, so far as really vital +things are concerned, but I don't always trust your judgment. I merely +know that Monohan sneaked along shore, hid his boat, and stole through +the timber to where you were sitting. I happened to see him, and I +followed him to see what he was up to, why he should take such measures +to keep under cover." + +"The explanation is simple," she answered stiffly. "You can believe it +or not, as you choose. My being there was purely unintentional. If I had +seen him before he was close, I should certainly not have been there. I +have been at odds with myself all day, and I went for a walk, to find a +quiet place where I could sit and think." + +"It doesn't matter now," he said. "Only you'd better try to avoid things +like that in the future. Would you mind telling me just exactly what you +meant a minute ago? Just what you propose to do?" + +He asked her that as one might make any commonplace inquiry, but his +quietness did not deceive Stella. + +"What I said," she began desperately. "Wasn't it plain enough? It seems +to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if we try to live +it together. I--I'm sorry, but you know how I feel. It may be unwise, +but these things aren't dictated by reason. You know that. If our +emotions were guided by reason and expediency, we'd be altogether +different. Last night I was willing to go on and make the best of +things. To-day,--especially after this,--it looks impossible. You'll +look at me, and guess what I'm thinking, and hate me. And I'll grow to +hate you, because you'll be little better than a jailer. Oh, don't you +see that the way we'll feel will make us utterly miserable? Why should +we stick together when no good can come of it? You've been good to me. +I've appreciated that and liked you for it. I'd like to be friends. But +I--I'd hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on +the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while +ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe. I could +gladly have killed you when you were jerking me about back yonder." + +"I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive being than +I've supposed?" + +Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes--eyes that were +bright with unshed tears. + +"And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I didn't +want to horrify you with anything like brutality," he went on +thoughtfully. "You think I grinned and made a monkey of _him_ because it +pleased me to do that? Why, I could have--and ached to--break him into +little bits, to smash him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in +looking at him again. And I didn't, simply and solely because I didn't +want to let you have even a glimpse of what I'm capable of when I get +started. I wonder if I made a mistake? It was merely the reaction from +letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so. I wonder--well, +never mind. Go on." + +"I think it's better that I should go away," Stella said. "I want you to +agree that I should; then there will be no talk or anything disagreeable +from outside sources. I'm strong, I can get on. It'll be a relief to +have to work. I won't have to be the kitchen drudge Charlie made of me. +I've got my voice. I'm quite sure I can capitalize that. But I've got to +go. Anything's better than this; anything that's clean and decent. I'd +despise myself if I stayed on as your wife, feeling as I do. It was a +mistake in the beginning, our marriage." + +"Nevertheless," Fyfe said slowly, "I'm afraid it's a mistake you'll have +to abide by--for a time. All that you say may be true, although I don't +admit it myself. Offhand, I'd say you were simply trying to welch on a +fair bargain. I'm not going to let you do it blindly, all wrought up to +a pitch where you can scarcely think coherently. If you are fully +determined to break away from me, you owe it to us both to be sure of +what you're doing before you act. I'm going to talk plain. You can +believe it and disdain it if you please. If you were leaving me for a +man, a real man, I think I could bring myself to make it easy for you +and wish you luck. But you're not. He's--" + +"Can't we leave him out of it?" she demanded. "I want to get away from +you both. Can you understand that? It doesn't help you any to pick _him_ +to pieces." + +"No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of +idealization you've wrapped around him," Fyfe observed patiently. "It's +not a job I have much stomach for however, even if you were willing to +let me try. But to come back. You've got to stick it out with me, +Stella. You'll hate me for the constraint, I suppose. But until--until +things shape up differently--you'll understand what I'm talking about +by and by, I think--you've got to abide by the bargain you made with me. +I couldn't force you to stay, I know. But there's one hold you can't +break--not if I know you at all." + +"What is that?" she asked icily. + +"The kid's," he murmured. + +Stella buried her face in her hands for a minute. + +"I'd forgotten--I'd forgotten," she whispered. + +"You understand, don't you?" he said hesitatingly. "If you leave--I keep +our boy." + +"Oh, you're devilish--to use a club like that," she cried. "You know I +wouldn't part from my baby--the only thing I've got that's worth +having." + +"He's worth something to me too," Fyfe muttered. "A lot more than you +think, maybe. I'm not trying to club you. There's nothing in it for me. +But for him; well, he needs you. It isn't his fault he's here, or that +you're unhappy. I've got to protect him, see that he gets a fair shake. +I can't see anything to it but for you to go on being Mrs. Jack Fyfe +until such time as you get back to a normal poise. Then it will be time +enough to try and work out some arrangement that won't be too much of a +hardship on him. It's that--or a clean break in which you go your own +way, and I try to mother him to the best of my ability. You'll +understand sometime why I'm showing my teeth this way." + +"You have everything on your side," she admitted dully, after a long +interval of silence. "I'm a fool. I admit it. Have things your way. But +it won't work, Jack. This flare-up between us will only smoulder. I +think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan. It isn't that I love +him so much as that I don't love you at all. I can live without +him--which I mean to do in any case--far easier than I can live with +you. It won't work." + +"Don't worry," he replied. "You won't be annoyed by me in person. I'll +have my hands full elsewhere." + +They rose and walked on to the house. On the porch Jack Junior was being +wheeled back and forth in his carriage. He lifted chubby arms to his +mother as she came up the steps. Stella carried him inside, hugging the +sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast. She did not want to cry, but +she could not help it. It was as if she had been threatened with +irrevocable loss of that precious bit of her own flesh and blood. She +hugged him to her, whispering mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly +tender. + +Fyfe stood aside for a minute. Then he came up behind her and stood +resting one hand on the back of her chair. + +"Stella." + +"Yes." + +"I got word from my sister and her husband in this morning's mail. They +will very likely be here next week for a three days' stay. Brace up. +Let's try and keep our skeleton from rattling while they're here. Will +you?" + +"All right, Jack. I'll try." + +He patted her tousled hair lightly and left the room. Stella looked +after him with a surge of mixed feeling. She told herself she hated him +and his dominant will that always beat her own down; she hated him for +his amazing strength and for his unvarying sureness of himself. And in +the same breath she found herself wondering if,--with their status +reversed,--Walter Monohan would be as patient, as gentle, as +self-controlled with a wife who openly acknowledged her affection for +another man. And still her heart cried out for Monohan. She flared hot +against the disparaging note, the unconcealed contempt Fyfe seemed to +have for him. + +Yet in spite of her eager defence of him, there was something ugly about +that clash with Fyfe in the edge of the woods, something that jarred. It +wasn't spontaneous. She could not understand that tigerish onslaught of +Monohan's. It was more the action she would have expected from her +husband. + +It puzzled her, grieved her, added a little to the sorrowful weight that +settled upon her. They were turbulent spirits both. The matter might not +end there. + +In the next ten days three separate incidents, each isolated and +relatively unimportant, gave Stella food for much puzzled thought. + +The first was a remark of Fyfe's sister in the first hours of their +acquaintance. Mrs. Henry Alden could never have denied blood kinship +with Jack Fyfe. She had the same wide, good-humored mouth, the blue eyes +that always seemed to be on the verge of twinkling, and the same fair, +freckled skin. Her characteristics of speech resembled his. She was +direct, bluntly so, and she was not much given to small talk. Fyfe and +Stella met the Aldens at Roaring Springs with the _Waterbug_. Alden +proved a genial sort of man past forty, a big, loose-jointed individual +whose outward appearance gave no indication of what he was +professionally,--a civil engineer with a reputation that promised to +spread beyond his native States. + +"You don't look much different, Jack," his sister observed critically, +as the _Waterbug_ backed away from the wharf in a fine drizzle of rain. +"Except that as you grow older, you more and more resemble the pater. +Has matrimony toned him down, my dear?" she turned to Stella. "The last +time I saw him he had a black eye!" + +Fyfe did not give her a chance to answer. + +"Be a little more diplomatic, Dolly," he smiled. "Mrs. Jack doesn't +realize what a rowdy I used to be. I've reformed." + +"Ah," Mrs. Alden chuckled, "I have a vision of you growing meek and +mild." + +They talked desultorily as the launch thrashed along. Alden's profession +took him to all corners of the earth. That was why the winter of Fyfe's +honeymoon had not made them acquainted. Alden and his wife were then in +South America. This visit was to fill in the time before the departure +of a trans-Pacific liner which would land the Aldens at Manila. + +Presently the Abbey-Monohan camp and bungalow lay abeam. Stella told +Mrs. Alden something of the place. + +"That reminds me," Mrs. Alden turned to her brother. "I was quite sure I +saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting for the hotel car +in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out here. Is he this Monohan?" + +Fyfe nodded. + +"How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same region. Do you +still maintain the ancient feud?" + +Fyfe shot her a queer look. + +"We've grown up, Dolly," he said drily. Then: "Do you expect to get back +to God's country short of a year, Alden?" + +That was all. Neither of them reverted to the subject again. But Stella +pondered. An ancient feud? She had not known of that. Neither man had +ever dropped a hint. + +For the second incident, Paul Abbey dropped in to dinner a few days +later and divulged a bit of news. + +"There's been a shake-up in our combination," he remarked casually to +Fyfe. "Monohan and dad have split over a question of business policy. +Walter's taking over all our interests on Roaring Lake. He appears to be +going to peel off his coat and become personally active in the logging +industry. Funny streak for Monohan to take, isn't it? He never seemed +to care a hoot about the working end of the business, so long as it +produced dividends." + +Lastly, Charlie Benton came over to eat a farewell dinner with the +Aldens the night before they left. He followed Stella into the nursery +when she went to tuck Jack Junior in his crib. + +"Say, Stella" he began, "I have just had a letter from old man Lander; +you remember he was dad's legal factotum and executor." + +"Of course," she returned. + +"Well, do you recall--you were there when the estate was wound up, and I +was not--any mention of some worthless oil stock? Some California +wildcat stuff the governor got bit on? It was found among his effects." + +"I seem to recall something of the sort," she answered. "But I don't +remember positively. What about it?" + +"Lander writes me that there is a prospect of it being salable. The +company is reviving. And he finds himself without legal authority to do +business, although the stock certificates are still in his hands. He +suggests that we give him a power of attorney to sell this stuff. He's +an awfully conservative old chap, so there must be a reasonable prospect +of some cash, or he wouldn't bother. My hunch is to give him a power of +attorney and let him use his own judgment." + +"How much is it worth?" she asked. + +"The par value is forty thousand dollars," Benton grinned. "But the +governor bought it at ten cents on the dollar. If we get what he paid, +we'll be lucky. That'll be two thousand apiece. I brought you a blank +form. I'm going down with you on the _Bug_ to-morow to send mine. I'd +advise you to have yours signed up and witnessed before a notary at +Hopyard and send it too." + +"Of course I will," she said. + +"It isn't much," Benton mused, leaning on the foot of the crib, watching +her smooth the covers over little Jack. "But it won't come amiss--to me, +at least. I'm going to be married in the spring." + +Stella looked up. + +"You are?" she murmured. "To Linda Abbey?" + +He nodded. A slight flush crept over his tanned face at the steady look +she bent on him. + +"Hang it, what are you thinking?" he broke out. "I know you've rather +looked down on me because I acted like a bounder that winter. But I +really took a tumble to myself. You set me thinking when you made that +sudden break with Jack. I felt rather guilty about that--until I saw how +it turned out. I know I'm not half good enough for Linda. But so long as +she thinks I am and I try to live up to that, why we've as good a chance +to be happy as anybody. We all make breaks, us fellows that go at +everything roughshod. Still, when we pull up and take a new tack, you +shouldn't hold grudges. If we could go back to that fall and winter, I'd +do things a lot differently." + +"If you're both really and truly in love," Stella said quietly, "that's +about the only thing that matters. I hope you'll be happy. But you'll +have to be a lot different with Linda Abbey than you were with me." + +"Ah, Stella, don't harp on that," he said shame-facedly. "I was rotten, +it's true. But we're all human. I couldn't see anything then only what I +wanted myself. I was like a bull in a china shop. It's different now. +I'm on my feet financially, and I've had time to draw my breath and take +a squint at myself from a different angle. I did you a good turn, +anyway, even if I was the cause of you taking a leap before you looked. +You landed right." + +Stella mustered a smile that was purely facial. It maddened her to hear +his complacent justification of himself. And the most maddening part of +it was her knowledge that Benton was right, that in many essential +things he had done her a good turn, which her own erratic inclinations +bade fair to wholly nullify. + +"I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world," she said gently. +"And I don't bear a grudge, believe me, Charlie. Now, run along. We'll +keep baby awake, talking." + +"All right." He turned to go and came back again. + +"What I really came in to say, I've hardly got nerve enough for." He +sank his voice to a murmur. "Don't fly off at me, Stell. But--you +haven't got a trifle interested in Monohan, have you? I mean, you +haven't let him think you are?" + +Stella's hands tightened on the crib rail. For an instant her heart +stood still. A wholly unreasoning blaze of anger seized her. But she +controlled that. Pride forbade her betraying herself. + +"What a perfectly ridiculous question," she managed to reply. + +He looked at her keenly. + +"Because, if you have--well, you might be perfectly innocent in the +matter and still get in bad," he continued evenly. "I'd like to put a +bug in your ear." + +She bent over Jack Junior, striving to inject an amused note into her +reply. + +"Don't be so absurd, Charlie." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it is. Only, darn it, I've seen him look at you in +a way--Pouf! I was going to tell you something. Maybe Jack has--only +he's such a close-mouthed beggar. I'm not very anxious to peddle +things." Benton turned again. "I guess you don't need any coaching from +me, anyhow." + +He walked out. Stella stared after him, her eyes blazing, hands clenched +into hard-knuckled little fists. She could have struck him. + +And still she wondered over and over again, burning with a consuming +fire to know what that "something" was which he had to tell. All the +slumbering devils of a stifled passion awoke to rend her, to make her +rage against the coil in which she was involved. She despised herself +for the weakness of unwise loving, even while she ached to sweep away +the barriers that stood between her and love. Mingled with that there +whispered an intuition of disaster to come, of destiny shaping to +peculiar ends. In Monohan's establishing himself on Roaring Lake she +sensed something more than an industrial shift. In his continued +presence there she saw incalculable sources of trouble. She stood +leaning over the bed rail, staring wistfully at her boy for a few +minutes. When she faced the mirror in her room, she was startled at the +look in her eyes, the nervous twitch of her lips. There was a physical +ache in her breast. + +"You're a fool, a fool," she whispered to her image. "Where's your will, +Stella Fyfe? Borrow a little of your husband's backbone. +Presently--presently it won't matter." + +One can club a too assertive ego into insensibility. A man may smile and +smile and be a villain still, as the old saying has it, and so may a +woman smile and smile when her heart is tortured, when every nerve in +her is strained to the snapping point. Stella went back to the living +room and sang for them until it was time to go to bed. + +The Aldens went first, then Charlie. Stella left her door ajar. An hour +afterward, when Fyfe came down the hall, she rose. It had been her +purpose to call him in, to ask him to explain that which her brother had +hinted he could explain, what prior antagonism lay between him and +Monohan, what that "something" about Monohan was which differentiated +him from other men where she was concerned. Instead she shut the door, +slid the bolt home, and huddled in a chair with her face in her hands. + +She could not discuss Monohan with him, with any one. Why should she +ask? she told herself. It was a closed book, a balanced account. One +does not revive dead issues. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +THE OPENING GUN + +The month of November slid day by day into the limbo of the past. The +rains washed the land unceasingly. Gray veilings of mist and cloud +draped the mountain slopes. As drab a shade colored Stella Fyfe's daily +outlook. She was alone a great deal. Even when they were together, she +and her husband, words did not come easily between them. He was away a +great deal, seeking, she knew, the old panacea of work, hard, +unremitting work, to abate the ills of his spirit. She envied him that +outlet. Work for her there was none. The two Chinamen and Martha the +nurse left her no tasks. She could not read, for all their great store +of books and magazines; the printed page would lie idle in her lap, and +her gaze would wander off into vacancy, into that thought-world where +her spirit wandered in distress. The Abbeys were long gone; her brother +hard at his logging. There were no neighbors and no news. The savor was +gone out of everything. The only bright spot in her days was Jack +Junior, now toddling precociously on his sturdy legs, a dozen steps at a +time, crowing victoriously when he negotiated the passage from chair to +chair. + +From the broad east windows of their house she saw all the traffic that +came and went on the upper reaches of Roaring Lake, Siwashes in dugouts +and fishing boats, hunters, prospectors. But more than any other she saw +the craft of her husband and Monohan, the powerful, black-hulled +_Panther_, the smaller, daintier _Waterbug_. + +There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, that she +knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, inching its +downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast up-lake without a tow. +Monohan had abandoned work on the old Abbey-Monohan logging-grounds. The +camps and the bungalow lay deserted, given over to a solitary watchman. +The lake folk had chattered at this proceeding, and the chatter had come +to Stella's ears. He had put in two camps at the lake head, so she heard +indirectly: one on the lake shore, one on the Tyee River, a little above +the mouth. He had sixty men in each camp, and he was getting the name of +a driver. Three miles above his Tyee camp, she knew, lay the camp her +husband had put in during the early summer to cut a heavy limit of +cedar. Fyfe had only a small crew there. + +She wondered a little why he spent so much time there, when he had +seventy-odd men working near home. But of course he had an able +lieutenant in Lefty Howe. And she could guess why Jack Fyfe kept away. +She was sorry for him--and for herself. But being sorry--a mere +semi-neutral state of mind--did not help matters, she told herself +gloomily. + +Lefty Howe's wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional visits. +Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a Siwash whom he had +engaged to catch and smoke a winter's supply of salmon for the camps. +Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella bundled Jack Junior into +warm clothing and went with them for the ride. + +Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new +mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass and +leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp +shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. Behind these again the +beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,--a slashing +different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight +back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut +all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his +donkey from the water. It was not more than two miles from their house. + +"What new camp is that?" she asked Howe. + +"Monohan's," he answered casually. + +"I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" she said. + +Howe shook his head. + +"Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's got a +freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles straight back +from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the ham in a sandwich. +Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin piece uh ham. About the +poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno why the Sam Hill he's cuttin' +it. But then he's doin' a lot uh things no practical logger would do." + +Stella laid down the glasses. It was nothing to her, she told herself. +She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked him, and then +only to exchange the barest civilities--and to feel her heart flutter at +the message his eyes telegraphed. + +When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and Charlie +Benton with him. She crossed the heavy rugs on the living room floor +noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior asleep in her arms. +And so in passing the door of Fyfe's den, she heard her brother say: + +"But, good Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to try such +fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he brings himself +within the law first crack; and the most he could do would be to annoy +you." + +"You underestimate Monohan," Fyfe returned. "He'll play safe, +personally, so far as the law goes. He's foxy. I advise you to sell if +the offer comes again. If you make any more breaks at him, he'll figure +some way to get you. It isn't your fight, you know. You unfortunately +happen to be in the road." + +"Damned if I do," Benton swore. "I'm all in the clear. There's no way he +can get me, and I'll tell him what I think of him again if he gives me +half a chance. I never liked him, anyhow. Why should I sell when I'm +just getting in real good shape to take that timber out myself? Why, I +can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years on that block +of timber. Besides, without being a sentimental sort of beggar, I don't +lose sight of the fact that you helped pull me out of a hole when I sure +needed a pull. And I don't like his high-handed style. No, if it comes +to a showdown, I'm with you, Jack, as far as I can go. What the hell +_can_ he do?" + +"Nothing--that I can see." Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. "But he'll try. He +has dollars to our cents. He could throw everything he's got on Roaring +Lake into the discard and still have forty thousand a year fixed income. +Sabe? Money does more than talk in this country. I think I'll pull that +camp off the Tyee." + +"Well, maybe," Benton said. "I'm not sure--" + +Stella passed on. She wanted to hear, but it went against her grain to +eavesdrop. Her pause had been purely involuntary. When she became +conscious that she was eagerly drinking in each word, she hurried by. + +Her mind was one urgent question mark while she laid the sleeping +youngster in his bed and removed her heavy clothes. What sort of +hostilities did Monohan threaten? Had he let a hopeless love turn to the +acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed her? Stella could +scarcely credit that. It was too much at variance with her idealistic +conception of the man. He would never have recourse to such littleness. +Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe's voice when he said to Benton: "You +underestimate Monohan. He'll play safe ... he's foxy." That stung her to +the quick. That was not said for her benefit; it was Fyfe's profound +conviction. Based on what? He did not form judgments on momentary +impulse. She recalled that only in the most indirect way had he ever +passed criticism on Monohan, and then it lay mostly in a tone, suggested +more than spoken. Yet he knew Monohan, had known him for years. They had +clashed long before she was a factor in their lives. + +When she went into the big room, Benton and Fyfe were gone outdoors. She +glanced into Fyfe's den. It was empty, but a big blue-print unrolled on +the table where the two had been seated caught her eye. She bent over +it, drawn by the lettered squares along the wavy shore line and the +marked waters of creeks she knew. + +She had never before possessed a comprehensive idea of the various +timber holdings along the west shore of Roaring Lake, since it had not +been a matter of particular interest to her. She was not sure why it now +became a matter of interest to her, unless it was an impression that +over these squares and oblongs which stood for thousands upon thousands +of merchantable logs there was already shaping a struggle, a clash of +iron wills and determined purposes directly involving, perhaps arising +because of her. + +She studied the blue-print closely. Its five feet of length embraced all +the west shore of the lake, from the outflowing of Roaring River to the +incoming Tyee at the head. Each camp was lettered in with pencil. But +her attention focussed chiefly on the timber limits ranging north and +south from their home, and she noted two details: that while the limits +marked A-M Co. were impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the +squares marked J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid block about Cougar Bay,--save +for that long tongue of a limit where she had that day noted the new +camp. That thrust like the haft of a spear into the heart of Fyfe's +timberland. + +There was the Abbey-Monohan cottage, the three limits her brother +controlled lying up against Fyfe's southern boundary. Up around the +mouth of the Tyee spread the vast checkerboard of Abbey-Monohan limits, +and beyond that, on the eastern bank of the river, a single +block,--Fyfe's cedar limit,--the camp he thought he would close down. + +Why? Immediately the query shaped in her mind. Monohan was concentrating +his men and machinery at the lake head. Fyfe proposed to shut down a +camp but well-established; established because cedar was climbing in +price, an empty market clamoring for cedar logs. Why? + +Was there aught of significance in that new camp of Monohan's so near +by; that sudden activity on ground that bisected her husband's property? +A freak limit of timber so poor that Lefty Howe said it could only be +logged at a loss. + +She sighed and went out to give dinner orders to Sam Foo. If she could +only go to her husband and talk as they had been able to talk things +over at first. But there had grown up between them a deadly restraint. +She supposed that was inevitable. Both chafed under conditions they +could not change or would not for stubbornness and pride. + +It made a deep impression on her, all these successive, disassociated +finger posts, pointing one and all to things under the surface, to +motives and potentialities she had not glimpsed before and could only +guess at now. + +Fyfe and Benton came to dinner more or less preoccupied, an odd mood for +Charlie Benton. Afterwards they went into session behind the closed door +of Fyfe's den. An hour or so later Benton went home. While she listened +to the soft _chuff-a-chuff-a-chuff_ of the _Chickamin_ dying away in the +distance, Fyfe came in and slumped down in a chair before the fire where +a big fir stick crackled. He sat there silent, a half-smoked cigar +clamped in one corner of his mouth, the lines of his square jaw in +profile, determined, rigid. Stella eyed him covertly. There were times, +in those moods of concentration, when sheer brute power seemed his most +salient characteristic. Each bulging curve of his thick upper arm, his +neck rising like a pillar from massive shoulders, indicated his power. +Yet so well-proportioned was he that the size and strength of him was +masked by the symmetry of his body, just as the deliberate immobility of +his face screened the play of his feelings. Often Stella found herself +staring at him, fruitlessly wondering what manner of thought and feeling +that repression overlaid. Sometimes a tricksy, half-provoked desire to +break through the barricade of his stoicism tempted her. She told +herself that she ought to be thankful for his aloofness, his +acquiescence in things as they stood. Yet there were times when she +would almost have welcomed an outburst, a storm, anything rather than +that deadly chill, enduring day after day. He seldom spoke to her now +except of most matter-of-fact things. He played his part like a +gentleman before others, but alone with her he withdrew into his shell. + +Stella was sitting back in the shadow, still studying him, measuring him +in spite of herself by the Monohan yardstick. There wasn't much basis +for comparison. It wasn't a question of comparison; the two men stood +apart, distinctive, in every attribute. The qualities in Fyfe that she +understood and appreciated, she beheld glorified in Monohan. Yet it was +not, after all, a question of qualities. It was something more subtle, +something of the heart which defied logical analysis. + +Fyfe had never been able to set her pulse dancing. She had never craved +physical nearness to him, so that she ached with the poignancy of that +craving. She had been passively contented with him, that was all. And +Monohan had swept across her horizon like a flame. Why couldn't Jack +Fyfe have inspired in her that headlong sort of passion? She smiled +hopelessly. The tears were very close to her eyes. She loved Monohan; +Monohan loved her. Fyfe loved her in his deliberate, repressed fashion +and possessed her, according to the matrimonial design. And although now +his possession was a hollow mockery, he would never give her up--not to +Walter Monohan. She had that fatalistic conviction. + +How would it end in the long run? + +She leaned forward to speak. Words quivered on her lips. But as she +struggled to shape them to utterance, the blast of a boat whistle came +screaming up from the water, near and shrill and imperative. + +Fyfe came out of his chair like a shot. He landed poised on his feet, +lips drawn apart, hands clenched. He held that pose for an instant, then +relaxed, his breath coming with a quick sigh. + +Stella stared at him. Nerves! She knew the symptoms too well. Nerves at +terrible tension in that big, splendid body. A slight quiver seemed to +run over him. Then he was erect and calmly himself again, standing in a +listening attitude. + +"That's the _Panther_?" he said. "Pulling in to the _Waterbug's_ +landing. Did I startle you when I bounced up like a cougar, Stella?" he +asked, with a wry smile. "I guess I was half asleep. That whistle jolted +me." + +Stella glanced out the shaded window. + +"Some one's coming up from the float with a lantern," she said. "Is +there--is there likely to be anything wrong, Jack?" + +"Anything wrong?" He shot a quick glance at her. Then casually: "Not +that I know of." + +The bobbing lantern came up the path through the lawn. Footsteps +crunched on the gravel. + +"I'll go see what he wants," Fyfe remarked, "Calked boots won't be good +for the porch floor." + +She followed him. + +"Stay in. It's cold." He stopped in the doorway. + +"No. I'm coming," she persisted. + +They met the lantern bearer at the foot of the steps. + +"Well, Thorsen?" Fyfe shot at him. There was an unusual note of +sharpness in his voice, an irritated expectation. + +Stella saw that it was the skipper of the _Panther_, a big and burly +Dane. He raised the lantern a little. The dim light on his face showed +it bruised and swollen. Fyfe grunted. + +"Our boom is hung up," he said plaintively. "They've blocked the river. +I got licked for arguin' the point." + +"How's it blocked?" Fyfe asked. + +"Two swifters uh logs strung across the channel. They're drivin' piles +in front. An' three donkeys buntin' logs in behind." + +"Swift work. There wasn't a sign of a move when I left this morning," +Fyfe commented drily. "Well, take the _Panther_ around to the inner +landing. I'll be there." + +"What's struck that feller Monohan?" the Dane sputtered angrily. "Has he +got any license to close the Tyee? He says he has--an' backs his +argument strong, believe me. Maybe you can handle him. I couldn't. Next +time I'll have a cant-hook handy. By jingo, you gimme my pick uh Lefty's +crew, Jack, an' I'll bring that cedar out." + +"Take the _Panther_ 'round," Fyfe replied. "We'll see." + +Thorsen turned back down the slope. In a minute the thrum of the boat's +exhaust arose as she got under way. + +"Come on in. You'll get cold standing here," Fyfe said to Stella. + +She followed him back into the living room. He sat on the arm of a big +leather chair, rolling the dead cigar thoughtfully between his lips, +little creases gathering between his eyes. + +"I'm going up the lake," he said at last, getting up abruptly. + +"What's the matter, Jack?" she asked. "Why, has trouble started up +there?" + +"Part of the logging game," he answered indifferently. "Don't amount to +much." + +"But Thorsen has been fighting. His face was terrible. And I've heard +you say he was one of the most peaceable men alive. Is it--is Monohan--" + +"We won't discuss Monohan," Fyfe said curtly. "Anyway, there's no danger +of _him_ getting hurt." + +He went into his den and came out with hat and coat on. At the door he +paused a moment. + +"Don't worry," he said kindly. "Nothing's going to happen." + +But she stood looking out the window after he left, uneasy with a +prescience of trouble. She watched with a feverish interest the stir +that presently arose about the bunkhouses. That summer a wide space had +been cleared between bungalow and camp. She could see moving lanterns, +and even now and then hear the voices of men calling to each other. Once +the _Panther's_ dazzling eye of a searchlight swung across the landing, +and its beam picked out a file of men carrying their blankets toward the +boat. Shortly after that the tender rounded the point. Close behind her +went the _Waterbug_, and both boats swarmed with men. + +Stella looked and listened until there was but a faint thrum far up the +lake. Then she went to bed, but not to sleep. What ugly passions were +loosed at the lake head she did not know. But on the face of it she +could not avoid wondering if Monohan had deliberately set out to cross +and harass Jack Fyfe. Because of her? That was the question which had +hovered on her lips that evening, one she had not brought herself to +ask. Because of her, or because of some enmity that far preceded her? +She had thought him big enough to do as she had done, as Fyfe was +tacitly doing,--make the best of a grievous matter. + +But if he had allowed his passions to dictate reprisals, she trembled +for the outcome. Fyfe was not a man to sit quiet under either affront or +injury. He would fight with double rancor if Monohan were his adversary. + +"If anything happens up there, I'll hate myself," she whispered, when +the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost unendurable. "I was +a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan know I cared. And I'll +hate him too if he makes me a bone of contention. I elected to play the +game the only decent way there is to play it. So did he. Why can't he +abide by that?" + +Noon of the next day saw the _Waterbug_ heave to a quarter mile abeam of +Cougar Point to let off a lone figure in her dinghy, and then bore on, +driving straight and fast for Roaring Springs. Stella flew to the +landing. Mother Howe came puffing at her heels. + +"Land's sake, I been worried to death," the older woman breathed. "When +men git to quarrellin' about timber, you never can tell where they'll +stop, Mrs. Jack. I've knowed some wild times in the woods in the past." + +The man in the dink was Lefty Howe. He pulled in beside the float. When +he stepped up on the planks, he limped perceptibly. + +"Land alive, what happened yuh, Lefty?" his wife cried. + +"Got a rap on the leg with a peevy," he said. "Nothin' much." + +"Why did the _Waterbug_ go down the lake?" Stella asked breathlessly. +The man's face was serious. "What happened up there?" + +"There was a fuss," he answered quietly. "Three or four of the boys got +beat up so they need patchin'. Jack's takin' 'em down to the hospital. +Damn that yeller-headed Monohan!" his voice lifted suddenly in +uncontrollable anger. "Billy Dale was killed this mornin', mother." + +Stella felt herself grow sick. Death is a small matter when it strikes +afar, among strangers. When it comes to one's door! Billy Dale had +piloted the _Waterbug_ for a year, a chubby, round-faced boy of twenty, +a foster-son, of Mother Howe's before she had children of her own. +Stella had asked Jack to put him on the _Waterbug_ because he was such a +loyal, cheery sort of soul, and Billy had been a part of every +expedition they had taken around the lake. She could not think of him as +a rigid, lifeless lump of clay. Why, only the day before he had been +laughing and chattering aboard the cruiser, going up and down the cabin +floor on his hands and knees, Jack Junior perched triumphantly astride +his back. + +"What happened?" she cried wildly. "Tell me, quick." + +"It's quick told," Howe said grimly. "We were ready at daylight. +Monohan's got a hard crew, and they jumped us as soon as we started to +clear the channel. So we cleared them, first. It didn't take so long. +Three of our men was used bad, and there's plenty of sore heads on both +sides. But we did the job. After we got them on the run, we blowed up +their swifters an' piles with giant. Then we begun to put the cedar +through. Billy was on the bank when somebody shot him from across the +river. One mercy, he never knew what hit him. An' you'll never come so +close bein' a widow again, Mrs. Fyfe, an' not be. That bullet was meant +for Jack, I figure. He was sittin' down. Billy was standin' right behind +him watchin' the logs go through. Whoever he was, he shot high, that's +all. There, mother, don't cry. That don't help none. What's done's +done." + +Stella turned and walked up to the house, stunned. She could not credit +bloodshed, death. Always in her life both had been things remote. And as +the real significance of Lefty Howe's story grew on her, she shuddered. +It lay at her door, equally with her and Monohan, even if neither of +their hands had sped the bullet,--an indirect responsibility but +gruesomely real to her. + +God only knows to what length she might have gone in reaction. She was +quivering under that self-inflicted lash, bordering upon hysteria when +she reached the house. She could not shut out a too-vivid picture of +Billy Dale lying murdered on the Tyee's bank, of the accusing look with +which Fyfe must meet her. Rightly so, she held. She did not try to +shirk. She had followed the line of least resistance, lacked the dour +courage to pull herself up in the beginning, and it led to this. She +felt Billy Dale's blood wet on her soft hands. She walked into her own +house panting like a hunted animal. + +And she had barely crossed the threshold when back in the rear Jack +Junior's baby voice rose in a shrill scream of pain. + + * * * * * + +Stella scarcely heard her husband and the doctor come in. For a weary +age she had been sitting in a low rocker, a pillow across her lap, and +on that the little, tortured body swaddled with cotton soaked in olive +oil, the only dressing she and Mrs. Howe could devise to ease the pain. +All those other things which had so racked her, the fight on the Tyee, +the shooting of Billy Dale, they had vanished somehow into thin air +before the dread fact that her baby was dying slowly before her +anguished eyes. She sat numbed with that deadly assurance, praying +without hope for help to come, hopeless that any medical skill would +avail when it did come. So many hours had been wasted while a man rowed +to Benton's camp, while the _Chickamin_ steamed to Roaring Springs, +while the _Waterbug_ came driving back. Five hours! And the skin, yes, +even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior's +clothing when she took it off. She bent over him, fearful that every +feeble breath would be his last. + +She looked up at the doctor. Fyfe was beside her, his calked boots +biting into the oak floor. + +"See what you can do, doc," he said huskily. Then to Stella: "How did it +happen?" + +"He toddled away from Martha," she whispered. "Sam Foo had set a pan of +boiling water on the kitchen floor. He fell into it. Oh, my poor little +darling." + +They watched the doctor bare the terribly scalded body, examine it, +listen to the boy's breathing, count his pulse. In the end he re-dressed +the tiny body with stuff from the case with which a country physician +goes armed against all emergencies. He was very deliberate and +thoughtful. Stella looked her appeal when he finished. + +"He's a sturdy little chap," he said, "and we'll do our best. A child +frequently survives terrific shock. It would be mistaken kindness for me +to make light of his condition simply to spare your feelings. He has an +even chance. I shall stay until morning. Now, I think it would be best +to lay him on a bed. You must relax, Mrs. Fyfe. I can see that the +strain is telling on you. You mustn't allow yourself to get in that +abnormal condition. The baby is not conscious of pain. He is not +suffering half so much in his body as you are in your mind, and you +mustn't do that. Be hopeful. We'll need your help. We should have a +nurse, but there was no time to get one." + +They laid Jack Junior amid downy pillows on Stella's bed. The doctor +stood looking at him, then drew a chair beside the bed. + +"Go and walk about a little, Mrs. Fyfe," he advised, "and have your +dinner. I'll want to watch the boy a while." + +But Stella did not want to walk. She did not want to eat. She was +scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her long +vigil in the chair. She was not conscious of herself and her problems, +any more. Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the little mite +she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured with bitterness +that was left her. The bare chance that those little feet might never +patter across the floor again, that little voice never wake her in the +morning crying "Mom-mom," drove her distracted. + +She went out into the living room, walked to a window, stood there +drumming on the pane with nervous fingers. Dusk was falling outside; a +dusk was creeping over her. She shuddered. + +Fyfe came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and turned her +so that she faced him. + +"I wish I could help, Stella," he whispered. "I wish I could make you +feel less forlorn. Poor little kiddies--both of you." + +She shook off his hands, not because she rebelled against his touch, +against his sympathy, merely because she had come to that nervous state +where she scarce realized what she did. + +"Oh," she choked, "I can't bear it. My baby, my little baby boy. The one +bright spot that's left, and he has to suffer like that. If he dies, +it's the end of everything for me." + +Fyfe stared at her. The warm, pitying look on his face ebbed away, +hardened into his old, mask-like absence of expression. + +"No," he said quietly, "it would only be the beginning. Lord God, but +this has been a day." + +He whirled about with a quick gesture of his hands, a harsh, raspy laugh +that was very near a sob, and left her. Twenty minutes later, when +Stella was irresistibly drawn back to the bedroom, she found him sitting +sober and silent, looking at his son. + +A little past midnight Jack Junior died. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +FREE AS THE WIND + +Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the asphalt, the +muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A forlorn sighing of wind +in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that stood before her window reminded +her achingly of the wind drone among the tall firs. + +A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little life +blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she could keep +him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief seldom kills. +Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a greater or less +revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella Fyfe, although she was +not keenly aware of any forthright metamorphosis. She was, for the +present, too actively involved in material changes. + +The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the lure of +Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped her of all +emotional reaction. When they had performed the last melancholy service +for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar Point, she was as +physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed endurance in mind and +body as it is possible for a young and healthy woman to become. And +when a measure of her natural vitality re-asserted itself, she laid her +course. She could no more abide the place where she was than a pardoned +convict can abide the prison that has restrained him. It was empty now +of everything that made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant +reminder of her loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby +voice, for those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang +that she would never hear them again. + +The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the gulf +between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and preoccupied. +They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had meant a lot to +him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit with folded hands and +think until thought drove him into the bogs of melancholy. + +And so the break came. With desperate abruptness Stella told him that +she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised herself for +unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give nothing in +return, that the original mistake of their marriage would never be +rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake. + +"What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made that we +can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or we have to +part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old way of living. I +don't want to; I can't. I could never be complaisant and agreeable +again. We might as well come to a full stop, and each go his own way." + +She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. Fyfe +listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the end made a +quick, impatient gesture with his hands. + +"Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the kid's no +longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to do? Have you +made any plans?" + +"I have to live, naturally," she replied. "Since I've got my voice back, +I feel sure I can turn that to account. I should like to go to Seattle +first and look around. It can be supposed I have gone visiting, until +one or the other of us takes a decisive legal step." + +"That's simple enough," he returned, after a minute's reflection. "Well, +if it has to be, for God's sake let's get it over with." + +And now it was over with. Fyfe remarked once that with them luckily it +was not a question of money. But for Stella it was indeed an economic +problem. When she left Roaring Lake, her private account contained over +two thousand dollars. Her last act in Vancouver was to re-deposit that +to her husband's credit. Only so did she feel that she could go free of +all obligation, clean-handed, without stultifying herself in her own +eyes. She had treasured as a keepsake the only money she had ever earned +in her life, her brother's check for two hundred and seventy dollars, +the wages of that sordid period in the cookhouse. She had it now. Two +hundred and seventy dollars capital. She hadn't sold herself for that. +She had given honest value, double and treble, in the sweat of her brow. +She was here now, in a five-dollar-a-week housekeeping room, foot-loose, +free as the wind. That was Fyfe's last word to her. He had come with +her to Seattle and waited patiently at a hotel until she found a place +to live. Then he had gone away without protest. + +"Well, Stella," he had said, "I guess this is the end of our experiment. +In six months,--under the State law,--you can be legally free by a +technicality. So far as I'm concerned, you're free as the wind right +now. Good luck to you." + +He turned away with a smile on his lips, a smile that his eyes belied, +and she watched him walk to the corner through the same sort of driving +rain that now pelted in gray lines against her window. + +She shook herself impatiently out of that retrospect. It was done. Life, +as her brother had prophesied, was no kid-glove affair. The future was +her chief concern now, not the past. Yet that immediate past, bits of +it, would now and then blaze vividly before her mental vision. The only +defense against that lay in action, in something to occupy her mind and +hands. If that motive, the desire to shun mental reflexes that brought +pain, were not sufficient, there was the equally potent necessity to +earn her bread. Never again would she be any man's dependent, a pampered +doll, a parasite trading on her sex. They were hard names she called +herself. + +Meantime she had not been idle; neither had she come to Seattle on a +blind impulse. She knew of a singing teacher there whose reputation was +more than local, a vocal authority whose word carried weight far beyond +Puget Sound. First she meant to see him, get an impartial estimate of +the value of her voice, of the training she would need. Through him she +hoped to get in touch with some outlet for the only talent she +possessed. And she had received more encouragement than she dared hope. +He listened to her sing, then tested the range and flexibility of her +voice. + +"Amazing," he said frankly. "You have a rare natural endowment. If you +have the determination and the sense of dramatic values that musical +discipline will give you, you should go far. You should find your place +in opera." + +"That's my ambition," Stella answered. "But that requires time and +training. And that means money. I have to earn it." + +The upshot of that conversation was an appointment to meet the manager +of a photoplay house, who wanted a singer. Stella looked at her watch +now, and rose to go. Money, always money, if one wanted to get anywhere, +she reflected cynically. No wonder men struggled desperately for that +token of power. + +She reached the Charteris Theater, and a doorman gave her access to the +dim interior. There was a light in the operator's cage high at the rear, +another shaded glow at the piano, where a young man with hair brushed +sleekly back chewed gum incessantly while he practiced picture +accompaniments. The place looked desolate, with its empty seats, its +bald stage front with the empty picture screen. Stella sat down to wait +for the manager. He came in a few minutes; his manner was very curt, +business-like. He wanted her to sing a popular song, a bit from a Verdi +opera, Gounod's Ave Maria, so that he could get a line on what she +could do. He appeared to be a pessimist in regard to singers. + +"Take the stage right there," he instructed. "Just as if the spot was on +you. Now then." + +It wasn't a heartening process to stand there facing the gum-chewing +pianist, and the manager's cigar glowing redly five rows back, and the +silent emptinesses beyond,--much like singing into the mouth of a gloomy +cave. It was more or less a critical moment for Stella. But she was +keenly aware that she had to make good in a small way before she could +grasp the greater opportunity, so she did her best, and her best was no +mediocre performance. She had never sung in a place designed to show +off--or to show up--a singer's quality. She was even a bit astonished +herself. + +She elected to sing the Ave Maria first. Her voice went pealing to the +domed ceiling as sweet as a silver bell, resonant as a trumpet. When the +last note died away, there was a momentary silence. Then the accompanist +looked up at her, frankly admiring. + +"You're _some_ warbler," he said emphatically, "believe _me_." + +Behind him the manager's cigar lost its glow. He remained silent. The +pianist struck up "Let's Murder Care," a rollicking trifle from a +Broadway hit. Last of all he thumped, more or less successfully, through +the accompaniment to an aria that had in it vocal gymnastics as well as +melody. + +"Come up to the office, Mrs. Fyfe," Howard said, with a singular change +from his first manner. + +"I can give you an indefinite engagement at thirty a week," he made a +blunt offer. "You can sing. You're worth more, but right now I can't pay +more. If you pull business,--and I rather think you will,--have to sing +twice in the afternoon and twice in the evening." + +Stella considered briefly. Thirty dollars a week meant a great deal more +than mere living, as she meant to live. And it was a start, a move in +the right direction. She accepted; they discussed certain details. She +did not care to court publicity under her legal name, so they agreed +that she should be billed as Madame Benton,--the Madame being Howard's +suggestion,--and she took her leave. + +Upon the Monday following Stella stood for the first time in a fierce +white glare that dazzled her and so shut off partially her vision of the +rows and rows of faces. She went on with a horrible slackness in her +knees, a dry feeling in her throat; and she was not sure whether she +would sing or fly. When she had finished her first song and bowed +herself into the wings, she felt her heart leap and hammer at the +hand-clapping that grew and grew till it was like the beat of ocean +surf. + +Howard came running to meet her. + +"You've sure got 'em going," he laughed. "Fine work. Go out and give 'em +some more." + +In time she grew accustomed to these things, to the applause she never +failed to get, to the white beam that beat down from the picture cage, +to the eager, upturned faces in the first rows. Her confidence grew; +ambition began to glow like a flame within her. She had gone through +the primary stages of voice culture, and she was following now a method +of practice which produced results. She could see and feel that herself. +Sometimes the fear that her voice might go as it had once gone would +make her tremble. But that, her teacher assured her, was a remote +chance. + +So she gained in those weeks something of her old poise. Inevitably, she +was very lonely at times. But she fought against that with the most +effective weapon she knew,--incessant activity. She was always busy. +There was a rented piano now sitting in the opposite corner from the gas +stove on which she cooked her meals. Howard kept his word. She "pulled +business," and he raised her to forty a week and offered her a contract +which she refused, because other avenues, bigger and better than singing +in a motion-picture house, were tentatively opening. + +December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following weeks her +only contact with the past, beyond the mill of her own thoughts, was an +item in the _Seattle Times_ touching upon certain litigation in which +Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the +Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the +loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of +the Tyee River. There was appended an account of the clash over the +closed channel and the killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to +book for that yet. Any one of sixty men might have fired the shot. + +It made Stella wince, for it took her back to that dreadful day. She +could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, +neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that something more +grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at least she had done +what she could. If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the +powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before she +left. If aggression came, it must come from one direction. + +They were both abstractions now, she tried to assure herself. The +glamour of Monohan was fading, and she could not say why. She did not +know if his presence would stir again all that old tumult of feeling, +but she did know that she was cleaving to a measure of peace, of +serenity of mind, and she did not want him or any other man to disturb +it. She told herself that she had never loved Jack Fyfe. She recognized +in him a lot that a woman is held to admire, but there were also +qualities in him that had often baffled and sometimes frightened her. +She wondered sometimes what he really thought of her and her actions, +why, when she had been nerved to a desperate struggle for her freedom, +if she could gain it no other way, he had let her go so easily? + +After all, she reflected cynically, love comes and goes, but one is +driven to pursue material advantages while life lasts. And she wondered, +even while the thought took form in her mind, how long she would retain +that point of view. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +ECHOES + +In the early days of February Stella had an unexpected visitor. The +landlady called her to the common telephone, and when she took up the +receiver, Linda Abbey's voice came over the wire. + +"When can I see you?" she asked. "I'll only be here to-day and +to-morrow." + +"Now, if you like," Stella responded. "I'm free until two-thirty." + +"I'll be right over," Linda said. "I'm only about ten minutes drive from +where you are." + +Stella went back to her room both glad and sorry: glad to hear a +familiar, friendly voice amid this loneliness which sometimes seemed +almost unendurable; sorry because her situation involved some measure of +explanation to Linda. That hurt. + +But she was not prepared for the complete understanding of the matter +Linda Abbey tacitly exhibited before they had exchanged a dozen +sentences. + +"How did you know?" Stella asked. "Who told you?" + +"No one. I drew my own conclusions when I heard you had gone to +Seattle," Linda replied. "I saw it coming. My dear, I'm not blind, and +I was with you a lot last summer. I knew you too well to believe you'd +make a move while you had your baby to think of. When he was gone--well, +I looked for anything to happen." + +"Still, nothing much has happened," Stella remarked with a touch of +bitterness, "except the inevitable break between a man and a woman when +there's no longer any common bond between them. It's better so. Jack has +a multiplicity of interests. He can devote himself to them without the +constant irritation of an unresponsive wife. We've each taken our own +road. That's all that has happened." + +"So far," Linda murmured. "It's a pity. I liked that big, silent man of +yours. I like you both. It seems a shame things have to turn out this +way just because--oh, well. Charlie and I used to plan things for the +four of us, little family combinations when we settled down on the lake. +Honestly, Stella, do you think it's worth while? I never could see you +as a sentimental little chump, letting a momentary aberration throw your +whole life out of gear." + +"How do you know that I have?" Stella asked gravely. + +Linda shrugged her shoulders expressively. + +"I suppose it looks silly, if not worse, to you," Stella said. "But I +can't help what you think. My reason has dictated every step I've taken +since last fall. If I'd really given myself up to sentimentalism, the +Lord only knows what might have happened." + +"Exactly," Linda responded drily. "Now, there's no use beating around +the bush. We get so in that habit as a matter of politeness,--our sort +of people,--that we seldom say in plain English just what we really +mean. Surely, you and I know each other well enough to be frank, even if +it's painful. Very likely you'll say I'm a self-centered little beast, +but I'm going to marry your brother, my dear, and I'm going to marry him +in the face of considerable family opposition. I _am_ selfish. Can you +show me any one who isn't largely swayed by motives of self-interest, if +it comes to that? I want to be happy. I want to be on good terms with my +own people, so that Charlie will have some of the opportunities dad can +so easily put in his way. Charlie isn't rich. He hasn't done anything, +according to the Abbey standard, but make a fair start. Dad's +patronizing as sin, and mother merely tolerates the idea because she +knows that I'll marry Charlie in any case, opposition or no opposition. +I came over expressly to warn you, Stella. Anything like scandal now +would be--well, it would upset so many things." + +"You needn't be uneasy," Stella answered coldly. "There isn't any +foundation for scandal. There won't be." + +"I don't know," Linda returned, "Walter Monohan came to Seattle a boat +ahead of me. In fact, that's largely why I came." + +Stella flushed angrily. + +"Well, what of that?" she demanded. "His movements are nothing to me." + +"I don't know," Linda rejoined. She had taken off her gloves and was +rolling them nervously in a ball. Now she dropped them and impulsively +grasped Stella's hands. + +"Stella, Stella," she cried. "Don't get that hurt, angry look. I don't +like to say these things to you, but I feel that I have to. I'm worried, +and I'm afraid for you and your husband, for Charlie and myself, for all +of us together. Walter Monohan is as dangerous as any man who's +unscrupulous and rich and absolutely self-centered can possibly be. I +know the glamour of the man. I used to feel it myself. It didn't go very +far with me, because his attention wandered away from me before my +feelings were much involved, and I had a chance to really fathom them +and him. He has a queer gift of making women care for him, and he trades +on it deliberately. He doesn't play fair; he doesn't mean to. Oh, I know +so many cruel things, despicable things, he's done. Don't look at me +like that, Stella. I'm not saying this just to wound you. I'm simply +putting you on your guard. You can't play with fire and not get burned. +If you've been nursing any feeling for Walter Monohan, crush it, cut it +out, just as you'd have a surgeon cut out a cancer. Entirely apart from +any question of Jack Fyfe, don't let this man play any part whatever in +your life. You'll be sorry if you do. There's not a man or woman whose +relations with Monohan have been intimate enough to enable them to +really know the man and his motives who doesn't either hate or fear or +despise him, and sometimes all three." + +"That's a sweeping indictment," Stella said stiffly. "And you're very +earnest. Yet I can hardly take your word at its face value. If he's so +impossible a person, how does it come that you and your people +countenanced him socially? Besides, it's all rather unnecessary, Linda. +I'm not the least bit likely to do anything that will reflect on your +prospective husband, which is what it simmers down to, isn't it? I've +been pulled and hauled this way and that ever since I've been on the +coast, simply because I was dependent on some one else--first Charlie +and then Jack--for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual +affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that marriage is +supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she +receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, clinging to a man for +what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've been rather painfully frank; +so will I be. One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me. Looking back, +I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me +which I don't deny,--but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some +time ago,--I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting all +the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have +to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been schooled to think +unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves. It would have come +about a little more gradually, that's all. But I have broken away, and +I'm going to live my own life after a fashion, and I'm going to achieve +independence of some sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again +until I'm sure of myself--and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as +simply as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right +now I couldn't muster up the least shred of passion of any sort. I seem +to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge that's +been squeezed dry." + +"I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's heart is a +queer thing, though. When you compare the two men--Oh, well, I know +Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You couldn't ever have cared much +for Jack." + +"That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still his +wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. There +won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free personally to +work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is engrossing enough +for me." + +Linda sat a minute, thoughtful. + +"So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth much," +she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I don't think I +shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I don't think you're +quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a natural gossip. Aside from +that, he's quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good. He +never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind. In +this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have +said a word to you, but he certainly knows Monohan. They've clashed +before, so I've been told. Jack probably saw what was growing on you, +and I don't think he'd hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around. If +he did,--or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm rather in +the dark,--he'd go to any length to play even with. Fyfe. When Monohan +wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his +vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital part. He never rests then +until he's paid the score. Father was always a little afraid of him. I +think that's the chief reason for selling out his Roaring Lake interests +to Monohan. He didn't want to be involved in whatever Monohan +contemplated doing. He has a wholesome respect for your husband's rather +volcanic ability. Monohan has, too. But he has always hated Jack Fyfe. +To my knowledge for three years,--prior to pulling you out of the water +that time,--he never spoke of Jack Fyfe without a sneer. He hates any +one who beats him at anything. That ruction on the Tyee is a sample. +He'll spend money, risk lives, all but his own, do anything to satisfy a +grudge. That's one of the things that worries me. Charlie will be into +anything that Fyfe is, for Fyfe's his friend. I admire the spirit of the +thing, but I don't want our little applecart upset in the sort of +struggle Fyfe and Monohan may stage. I don't even know what form it will +ultimately take, except that from certain indications he'll try to make +Fyfe spend money faster than he can make it, perhaps in litigation over +timber, over anything that offers, by making trouble in his camps, +harassing him at every turn. He can, you know. He has immense resources. +Oh, well, I'm satisfied, Stella, that you're a much wiser girl than I +thought when I knew you'd left Jack Fyfe. I'm quite sure now you aren't +the sort of woman Monohan could wind around his little finger. But I'm +sure he'll try. You'll see, and remember what I tell you. There, I think +I'd better run along. You're not angry, are you, Stella?" + +"You mean well enough, I suppose," Stella answered. "But as a matter of +fact, you've made me feel rather nasty, Linda. I don't want to talk or +even think of these things. The best thing you and Charlie and Jack Fyfe +could do is to forget such a discontented pendulum as I ever existed." + +"Oh, bosh!" Linda exclaimed, as she drew on her gloves. "That's sheer +nonsense. You're going to be my big sister in three months. Things will +work out. If you felt you had to take this step for your own good, no +one can blame you. It needn't make any difference in our friendship." + +On the threshold she turned on her heel. "Don't forget what I've said," +she repeated. "Don't trust Monohan. Not an inch." + +Stella flung herself angrily into a chair when the door closed on Linda +Abbey. Her eyes snapped. She resented being warned and cautioned, as if +she were some moral weakling who could not be trusted to make the most +obvious distinctions. Particularly did she resent having Monohan flung +in her teeth, when she was in a way to forget him, to thrust the strange +charm of the man forever out of her thoughts. Why, she asked bitterly, +couldn't other people do as Jack Fyfe had done: cut the Gordian knot at +one stroke and let it rest at that? + +So Monohan was in Seattle? Would he try to see her? + +Stella had not minced matters with herself when she left Roaring Lake. +Dazed and shaken by suffering, nevertheless she knew that she would not +always suffer, that in time she would get back to that normal state in +which the human ego diligently pursues happiness. In time the legal tie +between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to exist. If Monohan cared for +her as she thought he cared, a year or two more or less mattered little. +They had all their lives before them. In the long run, the errors and +mistakes of that upheaval would grow dim, be as nothing. Jack Fyfe would +shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter +mate, one as loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never +loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the +fire into the frying-pan? + +So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song, +so that she would never again be buffeted by material urgencies in a +material world, Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of +her mind, so to speak, for a word from Monohan to say that he +understood, and that all was well. + +Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in Seattle, +away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in +Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had only followed the cue she +had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget +Billy Dale. If the motive behind that bloody culmination were thwarted +love, it was a thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing +herself to reason with cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less +than he hated Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added +factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two +diverse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot +of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its boiling +over. + +"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, +but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it +seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in +a man's life, after all." + +She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about to +begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy flow, periods of calm are +succeeded by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife insisted that +Stella join them at supper after the show. They were decent folk who +accorded frank admiration to her voice and her personality. They had +been kind to her in many little ways, and she was glad to accept. + +At eleven a taxi deposited them at the door of Wain's. The Seattle of +yesterday needs no introduction to Wain's, and its counterpart can be +found in any cosmopolitan, seaport city. It is a place of subtle +distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill streets, where +after-theater parties and nighthawks with an eye for pretty women, an +ear for sensuous music, and a taste for good food, go when they have +money to spend. + +Ensconced behind a potted palm, with a waiter taking Howard's order, +Stella let her gaze travel over the diners. She brought up with a +repressed start at a table but four removes from her own, her eyes +resting upon the unmistakable profile of Walter Monohan. He was dining +vis-à-vis with a young woman chiefly remarkable for a profusion of +yellow hair and a blazing diamond in the lobe of each ear,--a plump, +blond, vivacious person of a type that Stella, even with her limited +experience, found herself instantly classifying. + +A bottle of wine rested in an iced dish between them. Monohan was toying +with the stem of a half-emptied glass, smiling at his companion. The +girl leaned toward him, speaking rapidly, pouting. Monohan nodded, +drained his glass, signaled a waiter. When she got into an elaborate +opera cloak and Monohan into his Inverness, they went out, the plump, +jeweled hand resting familiarly on Monohan's arm. Stella breathed a sigh +of relief as they passed, looking straight ahead. She watched through +the upper half of the café window and saw a machine draw against the +curb, saw the be-scarfed yellow head enter and Monohan's silk hat +follow. Then she relaxed, but she had little appetite for her food. A +hot wave of shamed disgust kept coming over her. She felt sick, +physically revolted. Very likely Monohan had put her in _that_ class, in +his secret thought. She was glad when the evening ended, and the Howards +left her at her own doorstep. + +On the carpet where it had been thrust by the postman under the door, a +white square caught her eye, and she picked it up before she switched on +the light. And she got a queer little shock when the light fell on the +envelope, for it was addressed in Jack Fyfe's angular handwriting. + +She tore it open. It was little enough in the way of a letter, a couple +of lines scrawled across a sheet of note-paper. + + "_Dear Girl:_ + + "I was in Seattle a few days ago and heard you sing. Here's hoping + good luck rides with you. + + "JACK." + +Stella sat down by the window. Outside, the ever-present Puget Sound +rain drove against wall and roof and sidewalk, gathered in wet, +glistening pools in the street. Through that same window she had watched +Jack Fyfe walk out of her life three months ago without a backward look, +sturdily, silently, uncomplaining. He hadn't whined, he wasn't whining +now,--only flinging a cheerful word out of the blank spaces of his own +life into the blank spaces of hers. Stella felt something warm and wet +steal down her cheeks. + +She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of her hand. +A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the light switch and +threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry in the dusky quiet. +And she could not have told why, except that she had been overcome by a +miserably forlorn feeling; all the mental props she relied upon were +knocked out from under her. Somehow those few scrawled words had flung +swiftly before her, like a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby +toddling uncertainly across the porch of the white bungalow. And she +could not bear to think of that! + + * * * * * + +When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden winter +skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, Stella was +singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house that boasted a +"big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery richness of her voice +had carried her name already beyond local boundaries, as the singing +master under whom she studied prophesied it would. In proof thereof she +received during April a feminine committee of two from Vancouver bearing +an offer of three hundred dollars for her appearance in a series of +three concerts under the auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be +given in the ballroom of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the +Granada. The date was mid-July. She took the offer under advisement, +promising a decision in ten days. + +The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,--not for her +daily bread, but for an accumulated fund that would enable her to reach +New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the most direct route to +her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it now. Confidence came to +abide with her. She throve on work; and with increasing salary, her fund +grew. Coming from any other source, she would have accepted this further +augmentation of it without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, +it was a liberal offer. + +But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many people knew +her; the local papers would feature her. She did not know how Fyfe would +take it; she did not even know if there had been any open talk of their +separation. Money, she felt, was a small thing beside opening old sores. +For herself, she was tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social +estimate of her or her acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's +name, she did not feel free to make herself a public figure there +without his sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the +offer and asked point-blank if it mattered to him. + +His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail connection had +been made on the minute. + + "If it is to your advantage to sing here," he wrote, "by all means + accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come and + hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings and + useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, they + are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a glass case. + Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling about + your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command + public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and + fine a thing to remain obscure. + + "JACK." + +He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy postscript: + + "I wish you would do something next month, not as a favor to me + particularly, but to ease things along for Charlie and Linda. They + are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up your + little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion of + your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But it + doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very little + different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded + youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean is + that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the + sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly + because--I've flattered myself--I talked to him like a Dutch uncle, + and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut mold + that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with him. + He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a good + deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think. + + "I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own + failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a + bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an + undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like + Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her + people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly + conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public + would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, they + are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family pride, + intend to give Linda a big wedding. + + "Now, no one outside of you and me and--well you and me--knows that + there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been quizzed--naturally. It + got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera as + a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I + fostered that rumor--simply to keep gossip down until things shaped + themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have + started--Abbey _père_ and _mère_ will then be unable to frown on + Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a + divorce case. + + "I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after those + concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house of + Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation--a myth that you've taken no + measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be a + sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way--one amazed yelp + from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over. + + "Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope + you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the + game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and + I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It + is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard + against a bomb from the Abbey fortress. + + "Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would be + very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her + folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her + matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe + to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her + whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she pretty + clearly guesses the breach in our rampart--not the original mistake + in our over-hasty plunge--but the wedge that divided us for good. If + she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good stuff, + because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because + Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of + Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way and + another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your + absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch + him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the + point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute + generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've + got it all off my chest now, or pretty near. + + "J.H.F." + +Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time. + +"I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice galvanized +her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the mellow spring +sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her feet carried her +to a little park that overlooked the far reach of the Sound and gave +westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary and aloof to a perfect +sky, like their brother peaks that ringed Roaring Lake. And all the time +her mind kept turning on a question whose asking was rooted neither in +fact nor necessity, an inquiry born of a sentiment she had never +expected to feel. + +Should she go back to Jack Fyfe? + +She shook her head impatiently when she faced that squarely. Why tread +the same bitter road again? But she put that self-interested phase of it +aside and asked herself candidly if she _could_ go back and take up the +old threads where they had been broken off and make life run smoothly +along the old, quiet channels? She was as sure as she was sure of the +breath she drew that Fyfe wanted her, that he longed for and would +welcome her. But she was equally sure that the old illusions would never +serve. She couldn't even make him happy, much less herself. +Monohan--well, Monohan was a dead issue. He had come to the Charteris to +see her, all smiles and eagerness. She had been able to look at him and +through him--and cut him dead--and do it without a single flutter of her +heart. + +That brief and illuminating episode in Wain's had merely confirmed an +impression that had slowly grown upon her, and her outburst of feeling +that night had only been the overflowing of shamed anger at herself for +letting his magnetic personality make so deep an impression on her that +she could admit to him that she cared. She felt that she had belittled +herself by that. But he was no longer a problem. She wondered now how he +ever could have been. She recalled that once Jack Fyfe had soberly told +her she would never sense life's real values while she nursed so many +illusions. Monohan had been one of them. + +"But it wouldn't work," she whispered to herself. "I couldn't do it. +He'd know I only did it because I was sorry, because I thought I should, +because the old ties, and they seem so many and so strong in spite of +everything, were harder to break than the new road is to follow alone. +He'd resent anything like pity for his loneliness. And if Monohan has +made any real trouble, it began over me, or at least it focussed on me. +And he might resent that. He's ten times a better man than I am a woman. +He thinks about the other fellow's side of things. I'm just what he said +about Charlie, self-centered, a profound egotist. If I really and truly +loved Jack Fyfe, I'd be a jealous little fury if he so much as looked at +another woman. But I don't, and I don't see why I don't. I want to be +loved; I want to love. I've always wanted that so much that I'll never +dare trust my instincts about it again. I wonder why people like me +exist to go blundering about in the world, playing havoc with themselves +and everybody else?" + +Before she reached home, that self-sacrificing mood had vanished in the +face of sundry twinges of pride. Jack Fyfe hadn't asked her to come +back; he never would ask her to come back. Of that she was quite sure. +She knew the stony determination of him too well. Neither hope or +heaven nor fear of hell would turn him aside when he had made a +decision. If he ever had moments of irresolution, he had successfully +concealed any such weakness from those who knew him best. No one ever +felt called upon to pity Jack Fyfe, and in those rocked-ribbed +qualities, Stella had an illuminating flash, perhaps lay the secret of +his failure ever to stir in her that yearning tenderness which she knew +herself to be capable of lavishing, which her nature impelled her to +lavish on some one. + +"Ah, well," she sighed, when she came back to her rooms and put Fyfe's +letter away in a drawer. "I'll do the decent thing if they ask me. I +wonder what Jack would say if he knew what I've been debating with +myself this afternoon? I wonder if we were actually divorced and I'd +made myself a reputation as a singer, and we happened to meet quite +casually sometime, somewhere, just how we'd really feel about each +other?" + +She was still musing on that, in a detached, impersonal fashion, when +she caught a car down to the theater for the matinée. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +AN UNEXPECTED MEETING + +The formally worded wedding card arrived in due course. Following close +came a letter from Linda Abbey, a missive that radiated friendliness and +begged Stella to come a week before the date. + + "You're going to be pretty prominent in the public eye when you sing + here," Linda wrote. "People are going to make a to-do over you. Ever + so many have mentioned you since the announcement was made that + you'll sing at the Granada concerts. I'm getting a lot of reflected + glory as the future sister-in-law of a rising singer. So you may as + well come and get your hand into the social game in preparation for + being fussed over in July." + +In the same mail was a characteristic note from Charlie which ran: + + "_Dear Sis:_ + + "As the Siwashes say, long time I see you no. I might have dropped a + line before, but you know what a punk correspondent I am. They tell + me you're becoming a real noise musically. How about it? + + "Can't you break away from the fame and fortune stuff long enough to + be on hand when Linda and I get married? I wasn't invited to your + wedding, but I'd like to have you at mine. Jack says it's up to you + to represent the Fyfe connection, as he's too busy. I'll come over + to Seattle and get you, if you say so." + +She capitulated at that and wrote saying that she would be there, and +that she did not mind the trip alone in the least. She did not want +Charlie asking pertinent questions about why she lived in such grubby +quarters and practiced such strict economy in the matter of living. + +Then there was the detail of arranging a break in her engagements, which +ran continuously to the end of June. She managed that easily enough, for +she was becoming too great a drawing card for managers to curtly +override her wishes. + +Almost before she realized it, June was at hand. Linda wrote again +urgently, and Stella took the night boat for Vancouver a week before the +wedding day. Linda met her at the dock with a machine. Mrs. Abbey was +the essence of cordiality when she reached the big Abbey house on +Vancouver's aristocratic "heights," where the local capitalists, all +those fortunate climbers enriched by timber and mineral, grown wealthy +in a decade through the great Coast boom, segregated themselves in +"Villas" and "Places" and "Views," all painfully new and sometimes +garish, striving for an effect in landscape and architecture which the +very intensity of the striving defeated. They were well-meaning folk, +however, the Abbeys included. + +Stella could not deny that she enjoyed the luxury of the Abbey ménage, +the little festive round which was shaping about Linda in these last +days of her spinsterhood. She relished the change from unremitting +work. It amused her to startle little groups with the range and quality +of her voice, when they asked her to sing. They made a much ado over +that, a genuine admiration that flattered Stella. It was easy for her to +fall into the swing of that life; it was only a lapsing back to the old +ways. + +But she saw it now with a more critical vision. It was soft and +satisfying and eminently desirable to have everything one wanted without +the effort of striving for it, but a begging wheedling game on the part +of these women. They were, she told herself rather harshly, an +incompetent, helpless lot, dependent one and all upon some man's favor +or affection, just as she herself had been all her life until the past +few months. Some man had to work and scheme to pay the bills. She did +not know why this line of thought should arise, neither did she so far +forget herself as to voice these social heresies. But it helped to +reconcile her with her new-found independence, to put a less formidable +aspect on the long, hard grind that lay ahead of her before she could +revel in equal affluence gained by her own efforts. All that they had +she desired,--homes, servants, clothes, social standing,--but she did +not want these things bestowed upon her as a favor by some man, the +emoluments of sex. + +She expected she would have to be on her guard with her brother, even to +dissemble a little. But she found him too deeply engrossed in what to +him was the most momentous event of his career, impatiently awaiting the +day, rather dreading the publicity of it. + +"Why in Sam Hill can't a man and a woman get married without all this +fuss?" he complained once. "Why should we make our private affairs a +spectacle for the whole town?" + +"Principally because mamma has her heart set on a spectacle," Linda +laughed. "She'd hold up her hands in horror if she heard you. Decorated +bridal bower, high church dignitary, bridesmaids, orange blossoms, rice, +and all. Mamma likes to show off. Besides, that's the way it's done in +society. _And_ the honeymoon." + +They both giggled, as at some mirthful secret. + +"Shall we tell her?" Linda nodded toward Stella. + +"Sure," Benton said. "I thought you had." + +"The happy couple will spend their honeymoon on a leisurely tour of the +Southern and Eastern States, remaining for some weeks in Philadelphia, +where the groom has wealthy and influential connections. It's all +prepared for the pay-a-purs," Linda whispered with exaggerated secrecy +behind her hand. + +Benton snorted. + +"Can you beat that?" he appealed to Stella. + +"And all the time," Linda continued, "the happy couple, unknown to every +one, will be spending their days in peace and quietness in their shanty +at Halfway Point. My, but mamma would rave if she knew. Don't give us +away, Stella. It seems so senseless to squander a lot of money gadding +about on trains and living in hotels when we'd much rather be at home by +ourselves. My husband's a poor young man, Stella. 'Pore but worthy.' He +has to make his fortune before we start in spending it. I'm sick of all +this spreading it on because dad has made a pile of money," she broke +out impatiently. "Our living used to be simple enough when I was a kid. +I think I can relish a little simplicity again for a change. Mamma's +been trying for four years to marry me off to her conception of an +eligible man. It didn't matter a hang about his essential qualities so +long as he had money and an assured social position." + +"Forget that," Charlie counseled slangily. "I have all the essential +qualities, and I'll have the money and social position too; you watch my +smoke." + +"Conceited ninny," Linda smiled. But there was no reproof in her tone, +only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so openly and +unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a pang of envy, a +dull little ache in her heart. She had missed that. It had passed her +by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two personalities in the biggest +passion life holds. Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the +flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, +but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of +living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed +her out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that +tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them, +that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her woman's +heritage. + +She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked the +thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit seeking the +outlet of action. + +"Thank the Lord I've got something to do, something that's worth doing," +she whispered savagely. "If I can't have what I want, I can make my life +embrace something more than just food and clothes and social trifling. +If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring what it would, I believe +I'd go clean mad." + +A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one had called +her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the library. She wasn't +prepared for the voice that came over the line, but she recognized it +instantly as Fyfe's. + +"Listen, Stella," he said. "I'm sorry this has happened, but I can't +very well avoid it now, without causing comment. I had no choice about +coming to Vancouver. It was a business matter I couldn't neglect. And as +luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I got off the train. On account +of your being there, of course, he insisted that I come out for dinner. +It'll look queer if I don't, as I can't possibly get a return train for +the Springs before nine-thirty this evening. I accepted without +stuttering rather than leave any chance for the impression that I wanted +to avoid you. Now, here's how I propose to fix it. I'll come out about +two-thirty and pay a hurry-up five-minute call. Then I'll excuse myself +to Mrs. Abbey for inability to join them at dinner--press of important +business takes me to Victoria and so forth. That'll satisfy the +conventions and let us both out. I called you so you won't be taken by +surprise. Do you mind?" + +"Of course not," she answered instantly. "Why should I?" + +There was a momentary silence. + +"Well," he said at last, "I didn't know how you'd feel about it. Anyway, +it will only be for a few minutes, and it's unlikely to happen again." + +Stella put the receiver back on the hook and looked at her watch. It +lacked a quarter of two. In the room adjoining, Charlie and Linda were +jubilantly wading through the latest "rag" song in a passable soprano +and baritone, with Mrs. Abbey listening in outward resignation. Stella +sat soberly for a minute, then joined them. + +"Jack's in town," she informed them placidly, when the ragtime spasm +ended. "He telephoned that he was going to snatch a few minutes between +important business confabs to run out and see me." + +"I could have told you that half an hour ago, my dear," Mrs. Abbey +responded with playful archness. "Mr. Fyfe will dine with us this +evening." + +"Oh," Stella feigned surprise. "Why, he spoke of going to Victoria on +the afternoon boat. He gave me the impression of mad haste--making a +dash out here between breaths, as you might say." + +"Oh, I hope he won't be called away on such short notice as that," Mrs. +Abbey murmured politely. + +She left the room presently. Out of one corner of her eye Stella saw +Linda looking at her queerly. Charlie had turned to the window, staring +at the blue blur of the Lions across the Inlet. + +"It's a wonder Jack would leave the lake," he said suddenly, "with +things the way they are. I've been hoping for rain ever since I've been +down. I'll be glad when we're on the spot again, Linda." + +"Wishing for rain?" Stella echoed. "Why?" + +"Fire," he said shortly. "I don't suppose you realize it, but there's +been practically no rain for two months. It's getting hot. A few weeks +of dry, warm weather, and this whole country is ready to blow away. The +woods are like a pile of shavings. That would be a fine wedding +present--to be cleaned out by fire. Every dollar I've got's in timber." + +"Don't be a pessimist," Linda said sharply. + +"What makes you so uneasy now?" Stella asked thoughtfully. "There's +always the fire danger in the dry months. That's been a bugaboo ever +since I came to the lake." + +"Yes, but never like it is this summer," Benton frowned. "Oh, well, no +use borrowing trouble, I suppose." + +Stella rose. + +"When Jack comes, I'll be in the library," she said. "I'm going to read +a while." + +But the book she took up lay idle in her lap. She looked forward to that +meeting with a curious mixture of reluctance and regret. She could not +face it unmoved. No woman who has ever lain passive in a man's arms can +ever again look into that man's eyes with genuine indifference. She may +hate him or love him with a degree of intensity according to her nature, +be merely friendly, or nurse a slow resentment. But there is always that +intangible something which differentiates him from other men. Stella +felt now a shyness of him, a little dread of him, less sureness of +herself, as he swung out of the machine and took the house steps with +that effortless lightness on his feet that she remembered so well. + +She heard him in the hall, his deep voice mingling with the thin, +penetrating tones of Mrs. Abbey. And then the library door opened, and +he came in. Stella had risen, and stood uncertainly at one corner of a +big reading table, repressing an impulse to fly, finding herself +stricken with a strange recurrence of the feeling she had first disliked +him for arousing in her,--a sense of needing to be on her guard, of +impending assertion of a will infinitely more powerful than her own. + +But that was, she told herself, only a state of mind, and Fyfe put her +quickly at her ease. He came up to the table and seated himself on the +edge of it an arm's length from her, swinging one foot free. He looked +at her intently. There was no shadow of expression on his face, only in +his clear eyes lurked a gleam of feeling. + +"Well, lady," he said at length, "you're looking fine. How goes +everything?" + +"Fairly well," she answered. + +"Seems odd, doesn't it, to meet like this?" he ventured. "I'd have +dodged it, if it had been politic. As it is, there's no harm done, I +imagine. Mrs. Abbey assured me we'd be free from interruption. If the +exceedingly cordial dame had an inkling of how things stand between us, +I daresay she'd be holding her breath about now." + +"Why do you talk like that, Jack?" Stella protested nervously. + +"Well, I have to say something," he remarked, after a moment's +reflection. "I can't sit here and just look at you. That would be rude, +not to say embarrassing." + +Stella bit her lip. + +"I don't see why we can't talk like any other man and woman for a few +minutes," she observed. + +"I do," he said quietly. "You know why, too, if you stop to think. I'm +the same old Jack Fyfe, Stella. I don't think much where you are +concerned; I just feel. And that doesn't lend itself readily to +impersonal chatter." + +"How do you feel?" she asked, meeting his gaze squarely. "If you don't +hate me, you must at least rather despise me." + +"Neither," he said slowly. "I admire your grit, lady. You broke away +from everything and made a fresh start. You asserted your own +individuality in a fashion that rather surprised me. Maybe the incentive +wasn't what it might have been, but the result is, or promises to be. I +was only a milestone. Why should I hate or despise you because you +recognized that and passed on? I had no business setting myself up for +the end of your road instead of the beginning. I meant to have it that +way until the kid--well, Fate took a hand there. Pshaw," he broke off +with a quick gesture, "let's talk about something else." + +Stella laid one hand on his knee. Unbidden tears were crowding up in her +gray eyes. + +"You were good to me," she whispered. "But just being good wasn't +enough for a perverse creature like me. I couldn't be a sleek pussy-cat, +comfortable beside your fire. I'm full of queer longings. I want wings. +I must be a variation from the normal type of woman. Our marriage didn't +touch the real me at all, Jack. It only scratched the surface. And +sometimes I'm afraid to look deep, for fear of what I'll see. Even if +another man hadn't come along and stirred up a temporary tumult in me, I +couldn't have gone on forever." + +"A temporary tumult," Fyfe mused. "Have you thoroughly chucked that +illusion? I knew you would, of course, but I had no idea how long it +would take you." + +"Long ago," she answered. "Even before I left you, I was shaky about +that. There were things I couldn't reconcile. But pride wouldn't let me +admit it. I can't even explain it to myself." + +"I can," he said, a little sadly. "You've never poured out that big, +warm heart of yours on a man. It's there, always has been there, those +concentrated essences of passion. Every unattached man's a possible +factor, a potential lover. Nature has her own devices to gain her end. I +couldn't be the one. We started wrong. I saw the mistake of that when it +was too late. Monohan, a highly magnetic animal, came along at a time +when you were peculiarly and rather blindly receptive. That's all. +Sex--you have it in a word. It couldn't stand any stress, that sort of +attraction. I knew it would only last until you got one illuminating +glimpse of the real man of him. But I don't want to talk about him. +He'll keep. Sometime you'll really love a _man_, Stella, and he'll be a +very lucky mortal. There's an erratic streak in you, lady, but there's a +bigger streak that's fine and good and true. You'd have gone through +with it to the bitter end, if Jack Junior hadn't died. The weaklings +don't do that. Neither do they cut loose as you did, burning all their +economic bridges behind them. Do you know that it was over a month +before I found out that you'd turned your private balance back into my +account? I suppose there was a keen personal satisfaction in going on +your own and making good from the start. Only I couldn't rest +until--until--" + +His voice trailed huskily off into silence. The gloves in his left hand +were doubled and twisted in his uneasy fingers. Stella's eyes were +blurred. + +"Well, I'm going," he said shortly. "Be good." + +He slipped off the table and stood erect, a wide, deep-chested man, +tanned brown, his fair hair with its bronze tinge lying back in a smooth +wave from his forehead, blue eyes bent on her, hot with a slumbering +fire. + +Without warning, he caught her close in his arms so that she could feel +the pounding of his heart against her breast, kissed her cheeks, her +hair, the round, firm white neck of her, with lips that burned. Then he +held her off at arm's length. + +"That's how _I_ care," he said defiantly. "That's how I want you. No +other way. I'm a one-woman man. Some time you may love like that, and if +you do, you'll know how I feel. I've watched you sleeping beside me and +ached because I couldn't kindle the faintest glow of the real thing in +you. I'm sick with a miserable sense of failure, the only thing I've +ever failed at, and the biggest, most complete failure I can conceive +of,--to love a woman in every way desirable; to have her and yet never +have her." + +He caught up his hat, and the door clicked shut behind him. A minute +later Stella saw him step into the tonneau of the car. He never looked +back. + +And she fled to her own room, stunned, half-frightened, wholly amazed at +this outburst. Her face was damp with his lip-pressure, damp and warm. +Her arms tingled with the grip of his. The blood stood in her cheeks +like a danger signal, flooding in hot, successive waves to the roots of +her thick, brown hair. + +"If I thought--I could," she whispered into her pillow, "I'd try. But I +daren't. I'm afraid. It's just a mood, I know it is. I've had it before. +A--ah! I'm a spineless jellyfish, a weathercock that whirls to every +emotional breeze. And I won't be. I'll stand on my own feet if I can--so +help me God, I will!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE + +This is no intimate chronicle of Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey, save in +so far as they naturally furnish a logical sequence in what transpired. +Therefore the details of their nuptials is of no particular concern. +They were wedded, ceremonially dined as befitted the occasion, and +departed upon their hypothetical honeymoon, surreptitiously abbreviated +from an extravagant swing over half of North America to seventy miles by +rail and twenty by water,--and a month of blissful seclusion, which +suited those two far better than any amount of Pullman touring, besides +leaving them money in pocket. + +When they were gone, Stella caught the next boat for Seattle. She had +drawn fresh breath in the meantime, and while she felt tenderly, almost +maternally, sorry for Jack Fyfe, she swung back to the old attitude. +Even granting, she argued, that she could muster courage to take up the +mantle of wifehood where she laid it off, there was no surety that they +could do more than compromise. There was the stubborn fact that she had +openly declared her love for another man, that by her act she had +plunged her husband into far-reaching conflict. Such a conflict existed. +She could put her finger on no concrete facts, but it was in the air. +She heard whispers of a battle between giants--a financial duel to the +death--with all the odds against Jack Fyfe. + +Win or lose, there would be scars. And the struggle, if not of and by +her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity through her. Men, +she told herself, do not forget these things; they rankle. Jack Fyfe was +only human. No, Stella felt that they could only come safe to the old +port by virtue of a passion that could match Fyfe's own. And she put +that rather sadly beyond her, beyond the possibilities. She had felt +stirrings of it, but not to endure. She was proud and sensitive and +growing wise with bitterly accumulated experience. It had to be all or +nothing with them, a cleaving together complete enough to erase and +forever obliterate all that had gone before. And since she could not see +that as a possibility, there was nothing to do but play the game +according to the cards she held. Of these the trump was work, the inner +glow that comes of something worth while done toward a definite, +purposeful end. She took up her singing again with a distinct relief. + +Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding day and +the date of her Granada engagement. It seemed a mere breathing space +before the middle of July rolled around, and she was once more aboard a +Vancouver boat. In the interim, she had received a letter from the +attorney who had wound up her father's estate, intimating that there was +now a market demand for that oil stock, and asking if he should sell or +hold for a rise in price which seemed reasonably sure? Stella +telegraphed her answer. If that left-over of a speculative period would +bring a few hundred dollars, it would never be of greater service to her +than now. + +All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, +the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted +sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range +lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the +international boundary, the _Charlotte_ drove her twenty-knot way into a +thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that +line those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of +Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open gulf again, a vast bank +of smoke flung up blue and gray, a rolling mass. The air was pungent, +oppressive. When the _Charlotte_ spanned the thirty-mile gap between +Vancouver Island and the mainland shore, she nosed into the Lion's Gate +under a slow bell, through a smoke pall thick as Bering fog. Stella's +recollection swung back to Charlie's uneasy growl of a month earlier. +Fire! Throughout the midsummer season there was always the danger of +fire breaking out in the woods. Not all the fire-ranger patrols could +guard against the carelessness of fishermen and campers. + +"It's a tough Summer over here for the timber owners," she heard a man +remark. "I've been twenty years on the coast and never saw the woods so +dry." + +"Dry's no name," his neighbor responded. "It's like tinder. A cigarette +stub'll start a blaze forty men couldn't put out. It's me that knows it. +I've got four limits on the North Arm, and there's fire on two sides of +me. You bet I'm praying for rain." + +"They say the country between Chehalis and Roaring Lake is one big +blaze," the first man observed. + +"So?" the other replied. "Pity, too. Fine timber in there. I came near +buying some timber on the lake this spring. Some stuff that was on the +market as a result of that Abbey-Monohan split. Glad I didn't now. I'd +just as soon have _all_ my money out of timber this season." + +They moved away in the press of disembarking, and Stella heard no more +of their talk. She took a taxi to the Granada, and she bought a paper in +the foyer before she followed the bell boy to her room. She had scarcely +taken off her hat and settled down to read when the telephone rang. +Linda's voice greeted her when she answered. + +"I called on the chance that you took the morning boat," Linda said. +"Can I run in? I'm just down for the day. I won't be able to hear you +sing, but I'd like to see you, dear." + +"Can you come right now?" Stella asked. "Come up, and we'll have +something served up here. I don't feel like running the gauntlet of the +dining room just now." + +"I'll be there in a few minutes," Linda answered. + +Stella went back to her paper. She hadn't noticed any particular stress +laid on forest fires in the Seattle dailies, but she could not say that +of this Vancouver sheet. The front page reeked of smoke and fire. She +glanced through the various items for news of Roaring Lake, but found +only a brief mention. It was "reported" and "asserted" and "rumored" +that fire was raging at one or two points there, statements that were +overshadowed by positive knowledge of greater areas nearer at hand +burning with a fierceness that could be seen and smelled. The local +papers had enough feature stuff in fires that threatened the very +suburbs of Vancouver without going so far afield as Roaring Lake. + +Linda's entrance put a stop to her reading, without, however, changing +the direction of her thought. For after an exchange of greetings, Linda +divulged the source of her worried expression, which Stella had +immediately remarked. + +"Who wouldn't be worried," Linda said, "with the whole country on fire, +and no telling when it may break out in some unexpected place and wipe +one out of house and home." + +"Is it so bad as that at the lake?" Stella asked uneasily. "There's not +much in the paper. I was looking." + +"It's so bad," Linda returned, with a touch of bitterness, "that I've +been driven to the Springs for safety; that every able-bodied man on the +lake who can be spared is fighting fire. There has been one man killed, +and there's half a dozen loggers in the hospital, suffering from burns +and other hurts. Nobody knows where it will stop. Charlie's limits have +barely been scorched, but there's fire all along one side of them. A +change of wind--and there you are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a +dozen places. We've been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a +week." + +Stella looked out the north window. From the ten-story height she could +see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky pall that +shrouded the harbor. + +"I'm sorry," she whispered. + +"It's devilish," Linda went on. "Like groping in the dark and being +afraid--for me. I've been married a month, and for ten days I've only +seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes down in the launch for +supplies, or to bring an injured man. And he doesn't tell me anything +except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything. I sit there at +the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and +wonder what goes on up there. And at night there's the red glow, very +faint and far. That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to +help out and to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only +for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be +obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the +evening train back." + +"I'm sorry," Stella repeated. + +She said it rather mechanically. Her mind was spinning a thread, upon +which, strung like beads, slid all the manifold succession of things +that had happened since she came first to Roaring Lake. Linda's voice, +continuing, broke into her thoughts. + +"I suppose I shouldn't be croaking into your ear like a bird of ill +omen, when you have to throw yourself heart and soul into that concert +to-morrow," she said contritely. "I wonder why that Ancient Mariner way +of seeking relief from one's troubles by pouring them into another ear +is such a universal trait? You aren't vitally concerned, after all, and +I am. Let's have that tea, dear, and talk about less grievous things. I +still have one or two trifles to get in the shops too." + +After they had finished the food that Stella ordered sent up, they went +out together. Later Stella saw her off on the train. + +"Good-by, dear," Linda said from the coach window. "I'm just selfish +enough to wish you were going back with me; I wish you could sit with me +on the bank of the lake, aching and longing for your man up there in the +smoke as I ache and long for mine. Misery loves company." + +Stella's eyes were clouded as the train pulled out. Something in Linda +Benton's parting words made her acutely lonely, dispirited, out of joint +with the world she was deliberately fashioning for herself. Into Linda's +life something big and elemental had come. The butterfly of yesterday +had become the strong man's mate of to-day. Linda's heart was +unequivocally up there in the smoke and flame with her man, fighting for +their mutual possessions, hoping with him, fearing for him, longing for +him, secure in the knowledge that if nothing else was left them, they +had each other. It was a rare and beautiful thing to feel like that. And +beyond that sorrowful vision of what she lacked to achieve any real and +enduring happiness, there loomed also a self-torturing conviction that +she herself had set in motion those forces which now threatened ruin for +her brother and Jack Fyfe. + +There was no logical proof of this. Only intuitive, subtle suggestions +gleaned here and there, shadowy finger-posts which pointed to Monohan +as a deadly hater and with a score chalked up against Fyfe to which she +had unconsciously added. He had desired her, and twice Fyfe had treated +him like an urchin caught in mischief. She recalled how Monohan sprang +at him like a tiger that day on the lake shore. She realized how bitter +a humiliation it must have been to suffer that sardonic cuffing at +Fyfe's hands. Monohan wasn't the type of man who would ever forget or +forgive either that or the terrible grip on his throat. + +Even at the time she had sensed this and dreaded what it might +ultimately lead to. Even while her being answered eagerly to the +physical charm of him, she had fought against admitting to herself what +desperate intent might have lain back of the killing of Billy Dale,--a +shot that Lefty Howe declared was meant for Fyfe. She had long outgrown +Monohan's lure, but if he had come to her or written to make out a case +for himself when she first went to Seattle, she would have accepted his +word against anything. Her heart would have fought for him against the +logic of her brain. + +But--she had had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that +she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to +the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total +gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his +desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most +fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would +be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted +him. She could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like +Jack Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a +torch to Fyfe's timber would be a likely enough counterstroke. + +She shrank from the thought. Yet it lingered until she felt guilty. +Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe might or might +not face ruin, she could not, before her own conscience, evade +responsibility. The powder might have been laid, but her folly had +touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it. That seared her like a pain +far into the night. For every crime a punishment; for every sin a +penance. Her world had taught her that. She had never danced; she had +only listened to the piper and longed to dance, as nature had fashioned +her to do. But the piper was sending his bill. She surveyed it wearily, +emotionally bankrupt, wondering in what coin of the soul she would have +to pay. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +A RIDE BY NIGHT + +Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind +the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few +hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening. +She sang her way straight into the heart of that audience with her +opening number. This was on Wednesday. Friday she sang again, and +Saturday afternoon. + +When she came back to her room after that last concert, wearied with the +effort of listening to chattering women and playing the gracious lady to +an admiring contingent which insisted upon making her last appearance a +social triumph, she found a letter forwarded from Seattle. She slit the +envelope. A typewritten sheet enfolded a green slip,--a check. She +looked at the figures, scarcely comprehending until she read the letter. + + "We take pleasure in handing you herewith," Mr. Lander wrote for the + firm, "our check for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars, + proceeds of oil stock sold as per your telegraphed instructions, + less brokerage charges. We sold same at par, and trust this will be + satisfactory." + +She looked at the check again. Nineteen thousand, five hundred--payable +to her order. Two years ago such a sum would have lifted her to +plutocratic heights, filled her with pleasurable excitement, innumerable +anticipations. Now it stirred her less than the three hundred dollars +she had just received from the Granada Concert committee. She had earned +that, had given for it due measure of herself. This other had come +without effort, without expectation. And less than she had ever needed +money before did she now require such a sum. + +Yet she was sensibly aware that this windfall meant a short cut to +things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over economic +hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay houses, to +vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial towns. She could +hitch her wagon to a star and go straight up the avenue that led to a +career, if it were in her to achieve greatness. Pleasant dreams in which +the buoyant ego soared, until the logical interpretation of her +ambitions brought her to a more practical consideration of ways and +means, and that in turn confronted her with the fact that she could +leave the Pacific coast to-morrow morning if she so chose. + +Why should she not so choose? + +She was her own mistress, free as the wind. Fyfe had said that. She +looked out into the smoky veil that shrouded the water front and the +hills across the Inlet, that swirled and eddied above the giant fir in +Stanley Park, and her mind flicked back to Roaring Lake where the Red +Flower of Kipling's _Jungle Book_ bloomed to her husband's ruin. Did it? +She wondered. She could not think of him as beaten, bested in any +undertaking. She had never been able to think of him in those terms. +Always to her he had conveyed the impression of a superman. Always she +had been a little in awe of him, of his strength, his patient, +inflexible determination, glimpsing under his habitual repression +certain tremendous forces. She could not conceive him as a broken man. + +Staring out into the smoky air, she wondered if the fires at Roaring +Lake still ravaged that noble forest; if Fyfe's resources, like her +brother's, were wholly involved in standing timber, and if that timber +were doomed? She craved to know. Secured herself by that green slip in +her hand against every possible need, she wondered if it were ordained +that the two men whose possession of material resources had molded her +into what she was to-day should lose all, be reduced to the same stress +that had made her an unwilling drudge in her brother's kitchen. Then she +recalled that for Charlie there was an equivalent sum due,--a share like +her own. At the worst, he had the nucleus of another fortune. + +Curled among the pillows of her bed that night, she looked over the +evening papers, read with a swift heart-sinking that the Roaring Lake +fire was assuming terrific proportions, that nothing but a deluge of +rain would stay it now. And more significantly, except for a minor blaze +or two, the fire raged almost wholly upon and around the Fyfe block of +limits. She laid aside the papers, switched off the lights, and lay +staring wide-eyed at the dusky ceiling. + +At twenty minutes of midnight she was called to the door of her room to +receive a telegram. It was from Linda, and it read: + + "Charlie badly hurt. Can you come?" + +Stella reached for the telephone receiver. The night clerk at the C.P.R. +depot told her the first train she could take left at six in the +morning. That meant reaching the Springs at nine-thirty. Nine and a half +hours to sit with idle hands, in suspense. She did not knew what tragic +dénouement awaited there, what she could do once she reached there. She +knew only that a fever of impatience burned in her. The message had +strung her suddenly taut, as if a crisis had arisen in which willy-nilly +she must take a hand. + +So, groping for the relief of action, some method of spanning that nine +hours' wait, her eye fell upon a card tucked beside the telephone case. +She held it between, finger and thumb, her brows puckered. + + TAXIS AND TOURING CARS + Anywhere . . . Anytime + +She took down the receiver again and asked for Seymour 9X. + +"Western Taxi," a man's voice drawled. + +"I want to reach Roaring Hot Springs in the shortest time possible," she +told him rather breathlessly. "Can you furnish me a machine and a +reliable chauffeur?" + +"Roaring Springs?" he repeated. "How many passengers?" + +"One. Myself." + +"Just a minute." + +She heard a faint burble of talk away at the other end of the wire. Then +the same voice speaking crisply. + +"We gotta big six roadster, and a first-class driver. It'll cost you +seventy-five dollars--in advance." + +"Your money will be waiting for you here," she answered calmly. "How +soon can you bring the car around to the Hotel Granada?" + +"In ten minutes, if you say so." + +"Say twenty minutes, then." + +"All right." + +She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, instructed the +night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send it by express to +Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. Then she walked out to +the broad-stepped carriage entrance. + +A low-hung long-hooded, yellow car stood there, exhaust purring faintly. +She paid the driver, sank into the soft upholstering beside him, and the +big six slid out into the street. There was no traffic. In a few minutes +they were on the outskirts of the city, the long asphalt ribbon of +King's Way lying like a silver band between green, bushy walls. They +crossed the last car track. The driver spoke to her out of one corner of +his mouth. + +"Wanna make time, huh?" + +"I want to get to Roaring Lake as quickly as you can drive, without +taking chances." + +"I know the road pretty well," he assured her. "Drove a party clear to +Rosebud day before yesterday. I'll do the best I can. Can't drive too +fast at night. Too smoky." + +She could not gage his conception of real speed if the gait he struck +was not "too fast." They were through New Westminster and rolling across +the Fraser bridge before she was well settled in the seat, breasting the +road with a lurch and a swing at the curves, a noise under that long +hood like giant bees in an empty barrel. + +Ninety miles of road good, bad and indifferent, forest and farm and +rolling hill, and the swamps of Sumas Prairie, lies between Vancouver +and Roaring Lake. At four in the morning, with dawn an hour old, they +woke the Rosebud ferryman to cross the river. Twenty minutes after that +Stella was stepping stiffly out of the machine before Roaring Springs +hospital. The doctor's Chinaman was abroad in the garden. She beckoned +him. + +"You sabe Mr. Benton--Charlie Benton?" she asked. "He in doctor's +house?" + +The Chinaman pointed across the road. "Mist Bentle obah dah," he said. +"Velly much sick. Missa Bentle lib dah, all same gleen house." + +Stella ran across the way. The front door of the green cottage stood +wide. An electric drop light burned in the front room, though it was +broad day. When she crossed the threshold, she saw Linda sitting in a +chair, her arms folded on the table-edge, her head resting on her hands. +She was asleep, and she did not raise her head till Stella shook her +shoulder. + +Linda Abbey had been a pretty girl, very fair, with apple-blossom skin +and a wonderfully expressive face. It gave Stella a shock to see her +now, to gage her suffering by the havoc it had wrought. Linda looked +old, haggard, drawn. There was a weary droop to her mouth, her eyes were +dull, lifeless, just as one might look who is utterly exhausted in mind +and body. Oddly enough, she spoke first of something irrelevant, +inconsequential. + +"I fell asleep," she said heavily. "What time is it?" + +Stella looked at her watch. + +"Half-past four," she answered. "How is Charlie? What happened to him?" + +"Monohan shot him." + +Stella caught her breath. She hadn't been prepared for that. + +"Is he--is he--" she could not utter the words. + +"He'll get better. Wait." Linda rose stiffly from her seat. A door in +one side of the room stood ajar. She opened it, and Stella, looking over +her shoulder, saw her brother's tousled head on a pillow. A nurse in +uniform sat beside his bed. Linda closed the door silently. + +"Come into the kitchen where we won't make a noise," she whispered. + +A fire burned in the kitchen stove. Linda sank into a willow rocker. + +"I'm weary as Atlas," she said. "I've been fretting for so long. Then +late yesterday afternoon they brought him home to me--like that. The +doctor was probing for the bullet when I wired you. I was in a panic +then, I think. Half-past four! How did you get here so soon? How could +you? There's no train." + +Stella told her. + +"Why should Monohan shoot him?" she broke out. "For God's sake, talk, +Linda!" + +There was a curious impersonality in Linda's manner, as if she stood +aloof from it all, as if the fire of her vitality had burned out. She +lay back in her chair with eyelids drooping, speaking in dull, lifeless +tones. + +"Monohan shot him because Charlie came on him in the woods setting a +fresh fire. They've suspected him, or some one in his pay, of that, and +they've been watching. There were two other men with Charlie, so there +is no mistake. Monohan got away. That's all I know. Oh, but I'm tired. +I've been hanging on to myself for so long. About daylight, after we +knew for sure that Charlie was over the hill, something seemed to let go +in me. I'm awful glad you came, Stella. Can you make a cup of tea?" + +Stella could and did, but she drank none of it herself. A dead weight of +apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience pointed a +deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, sandwiched in +between, the loosed fire furies which were taking toll in bodily injury +and ruinous loss. + +Yet she was helpless. The matter was wholly out of her hands, and she +stood aghast before it, much as the small child stands aghast before the +burning house he has fired by accident. + +Fyfe next. That was the ultimate, the culmination, which would leave her +forever transfixed with remorseful horror. The fact that already the +machinery of the law which would eventually bring Monohan to book for +the double lawlessness of arson and attempted homicide must be in +motion, that the Provincial police would be hard on his trail, did not +occur to her. She could only visualize him progressing step by step from +one lawless deed to another. And in her mind every step led to Jack +Fyfe, who had made a mock of him. She found her hands clenching till the +nails dug deep. + +Linda's head drooped over the teacup. Her eyelids blinked. + +"Dear," Stella said tenderly, "come and lie down. You're worn out." + +"Perhaps I'd better," Linda muttered. "There's another room in there." + +Stella tucked the weary girl into the bed, and went back to the kitchen, +and sat down in the willow rocker. After another hour the nurse came out +and prepared her own breakfast. Benton was still sleeping. He was in no +danger, the nurse told Stella. The bullet had driven cleanly through his +body, missing as by a miracle any vital part, and lodged in the muscles +of his back, whence the surgeon had removed it. Though weak from shock, +loss of blood, excitement, he had rallied splendidly, and fallen into a +normal sleep. + +Later the doctor confirmed this. He made light of the wound. One +couldn't kill a young man as full of vitality as Charlie Benton with an +axe, he informed Stella with an optimistic smile. Which lifted one +burden from her mind. + +The night nurse went away, and another from the hospital took her place. +Benton slept; Linda slept. The house was very quiet. To Stella, brooding +in that kitchen chair, it became oppressive, that funeral hush. When it +was drawing near ten o'clock, she walked up the road past the corner +store and post-office, and so out to the end of the wharf. + +The air was hot and heavy, pungent, gray with the smoke. Farther along, +St. Allwoods bulked mistily amid its grounds. The crescent of shore line +half a mile distant was wholly obscured. Up over the eastern mountain +range the sun, high above the murk, hung like a bloody orange, rayless +and round. No hotel guests strolled by pairs and groups along the bank. +She could understand that no one would come for pleasure into that +suffocating atmosphere. Caught in that great bowl of which the lake +formed the watery bottom, the smoke eddied and rolled like a cloud of +mist. + +She stood a while gazing at the glassy surface of the lake where it +spread to her vision a little way beyond the piles. Then she went back +to the green cottage. + +Benton lifted alert, recognizing eyes when she peeped in the bedroom +door. + +"Hello, Sis," he greeted in strangely subdued tones. "When did you blow +in? I thought you'd deserted the sinking ship completely. Come on in." + +She winced inwardly at his words, but made no outward sign, as she came +up to his bedside. The nurse went out. + +"Perhaps you'd better not talk?" she said. + +"Oh, nonsense," he retorted feebly. "I'm all right. Sore as the mischief +and weak. But I don't feel as bad as I might. Linda still asleep?" + +"I think so," Stella answered. + +"Poor kid," he breathed; "it's been tough on her. Well, I guess it's +been tough on everybody. He turned out to be some bad actor, this +Monohan party. I never did like the beggar. He was a little too +high-handed in his smooth, kid-glove way. But I didn't suppose he'd try +to burn up a million dollars' worth of timber to satisfy a grudge. Well, +he put his foot in it proper at last. He'll get a good long jolt in the +pen, if the boys don't beat the constables to him and take him to +pieces." + +"He did start the fire then?" Stella muttered. + +"I guess so," Benton replied. "At any rate, he kept it going. Did it by +his lonesome, too. Jack suspected that. We were watching for him as well +as fighting fire. He'd come down from the head of the lake in that speed +boat of his, and this time daylight caught him before he could get back +to where he had her cached, after starting a string of little fires in +the edge of my north limit. He had it in for me, too, you know; I batted +him over the head with a pike-pole here at the wharf one day this +spring, so he plunked me as soon as I hollered at him. I wish he'd done +it earlier in the game. We might have saved a lot of good timber. As it +was, we couldn't do much. Every time the wind changed, it would break +out in a new place--too often to be accidental. Damn him!" + +"How is it going to end, the fire?" Stella forced herself to ask. "Will +you and Jack be able to save any timber?" + +"If it should rain hard, and if in the meantime the boys keep it from +jumping the fire-trails we've cut, I'll get by with most of mine," he +said. "But Jack's done for. He won't have anything but his donkeys and +gear and part of a cedar limit on the Tyee which isn't paid for. He had +practically everything tied up in that big block of timber around the +Point. Monohan made him spend money like water to hold his own. Jack's +broke." + +Stella's head drooped. Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, all +grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered her soft +fingers that rested on his bed. + +"It's a pity everything's gone to pot like that, Stell," he said softly. +"I've grown a lot wiser in human ways the last two years. You taught me +a lot, and Jack a lot, and Linda the rest. It seems a blamed shame you +and Jack came to a fork in the road. Oh, he never chirped. I've just +guessed it the last few weeks. I owe him a lot that he'll never let me +pay back in anything but good will. I hate to see him get the worst of +it from every direction. He grins and doesn't say anything. But I know +it hurts. There can't be anything much wrong between you two. Why don't +you forget your petty larceny troubles and start all over again?" + +"I can't," she whispered. "It wouldn't work. There's too many scars. Too +much that's hard to forget." + +"Well, you know about that better than I do," Benton said thoughtfully. +"It all depends on how you _feel_." + +The poignant truth of that struck miserably home to her. It was not a +matter of reason or logic, of her making any sacrifice for her +conscience sake. It depended solely upon the existence of an emotion she +could not definitely invoke. She was torn by so many emotions, not one +of which she could be sure was the vital, the necessary one. Her heart +did not cry out for Jack Fyfe, except in a pitying tenderness, as she +used to feel for Jack Junior when he bumped and bruised himself. She had +felt that before and held it too weak a crutch to lean upon. + +The nurse came in with a cup of broth for Benton, and Stella went away +with a dumb ache in her breast, a leaden sinking of her spirits, and +went out to sit on the porch steps. The minutes piled into hours, and +noon came, when Linda wakened. Stella forced herself to swallow a cup of +tea, to eat food; then she left Linda sitting with her husband and went +back to the porch steps again. + +As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw trousers +and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the road, a burly +woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's crew. + +"Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. Say--ah--" + +He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an uneasiness, a +hesitation in his manner. + +"What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly. "How is everything up the +lake?" + +It was common enough in her experience, that temporary embarrassment of +a logger before her. She knew them for men with boyish souls, boyish +instincts, rude simplicities of heart. Long ago she had revised those +first superficial estimates of them as gross, hulking brutes who worked +hard and drank harder, coarsened and calloused by their occupation. They +had their weaknesses, but their virtues of abiding loyalty, their +reckless generosity, their simple directness, were great indeed. They +took their lives in their hands on skid-road and spring-board, that such +as she might flourish. They did not understand that, but she did. + +"What is it, Barlow?" she repeated. "Have you just come down the lake?" + +"Yes'm," he answered. "Say, Jack don't happen to be here, does he?" + +"No, he hasn't been here," she told him. + +The man's face fell. + +"What's wrong?" Stella demanded. She had a swift divination that +something was wrong. + +"Oh, I dunno's anythin's wrong, particular," Barlow replied. +"Only--well, Lefty he sent me down to see if Jack was at the Springs. We +ain't seen him for a couple uh days." + +Her pulse quickened. + +"And he has not come down the lake?" + +"I guess not," the logger said. "Oh, I guess it's all right. Jack's +pretty _skookum_ in the woods. Only Lefty got uneasy. It's desperate hot +and smoky up there." + +"How did you come down? Are you going back soon?" she asked abruptly. + +"I got the _Waterbug_," Barlow told her. "I'm goin' right straight +back." + +Stella looked out over the smoky lake and back at the logger again, a +sudden resolution born of intolerable uncertainty, of a feeling that she +could only characterize as fear, sprang full-fledged into her mind. +"Wait for me," she said. "I'm going with you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" + +The _Waterbug_ limped. Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow +lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. He was satisfied +to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve at all. So the boat +moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at less than half speed. +Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser bore every mark of hard usage. +Her topsides were foul, her decks splintered by the tramping of calked +boots, grimy with soot and cinders. It seemed to Stella that everything +and every one on and about Roaring Lake bore some mark of that holocaust +raging in the timber, as if the fire were some malignant disease +menacing and marring all that it affected, and affecting all that +trafficked within its smoky radius. + +But of the fire itself she could see nothing, even when late in the +afternoon they drew in to the bay before her brother's camp. A heavier +smoke cloud, more pungent of burning pitch, blanketed the shores, lifted +in blue, rolling masses farther back. A greater heat made the air +stifling, causing the eyes to smart and grow watery. That was the only +difference. + +Barlow laid the _Waterbug_ alongside the float. He had already told her +that Lefty Howe, with the greater part of Fyfe's crew, was extending and +guarding Benton's fire-trail, and he half expected that Fyfe might have +turned up there. Away back in the smoke arose spasmodic coughing of +donkey engines, dull resounding of axe-blades. Barlow led the way. They +traversed a few hundred yards of path through brush, broken tops, and +stumps, coming at last into a fairway cut through virgin timber, a +sixty-foot strip denuded of every growth, great firs felled and drawn +far aside, brush piled and burned. A breastwork from which to fight +advancing fire, it ran away into the heart of a smoky forest. Here and +there blackened, fire-scorched patches abutted upon its northern flank, +stumps of great trees smoldering, crackling yet. At the first such +place, half a dozen men were busy with shovels blotting out streaks of +fire that crept along in the dry leaf mold. No, they had not seen Fyfe. +But they had been blamed busy. He might be up above. + +Half a mile beyond that, beside the first donkey shuddering on its +anchored skids as it tore an eighteen-inch cedar out by the roots, they +came on Lefty Howe. He shook his head when Stella asked for Fyfe. + +"He took twenty men around to the main camp day before yesterday," said +Lefty. "There was a piece uh timber beyond that he thought he could +save. I--well, I took a shoot around there yesterday, after your brother +got hurt. Jack wasn't there. Most of the boys was at camp loadin' gear +on the scows. They said Jack's gone around to Tumblin' Creek with one +man. He wasn't back this mornin'. So I thought maybe he'd gone to the +Springs. I dunno's there's any occasion to worry. He might 'a' gone to +the head uh the lake with them constables that went up last night. +How's Charlie Benton?" + +She told him briefly. + +"That's good," said Lefty. "Now, I'd go around to Cougar Bay, if I was +you, Mrs. Jack. He's liable to come in there, any time. You could stay +at the house to-night. Everything around there, shacks 'n' all, was +burned days ago, so the fire can't touch the house. The crew there has +grub an' a cook. I kinda expect Jack'll be there, unless he fell in with +them constables." + +She trudged silently back to the _Waterbug_. Barlow started the engine, +and the boat took up her slow way. As they skirted the shore, Stella +began to see here and there the fierce havoc of the fire. Black trunks +of fir reared nakedly to the smoky sky, lay crisscross on bank and +beach. Nowhere was there a green blade, a living bush. Nothing but +charred black, a melancholy waste of smoking litter, with here and there +a pitch-soaked stub still waving its banner of flame, or glowing redly. +Back of those seared skeletons a shifting cloud of smoke obscured +everything. + +Presently they drew in to Cougar Bay. Men moved about on the beach; two +bulky scows stood nose-on to the shore. Upon them rested half a dozen +donkey engines, thick-bellied, upright machines, blown down, dead on +their skids. About these in great coils lay piled the gear of logging, +miles of steel cable, blocks, the varied tools of the logger's trade. +The _Panther_ lay between the scows, with lines from each passed over +her towing bitts. + +Stella could see the outline of the white bungalow on its grassy knoll. +They had saved only that, of all the camp, by a fight that sent three +men to the hospital, on a day when the wind shifted into the northwest +and sent a sheet of flame rolling through the timber and down on Cougar +Bay like a tidal wave. So Barlow told her. He cupped his hands now and +called to his fellows on the beach. + +No, Fyfe had not come back yet. + +"Go up to the mouth of Tumbling Creek," Stella ordered. + +Barlow swung the _Waterbug_ about, cleared the point, and stood up along +the shore. Stella sat on a cushioned seat at the back of the pilot +house, hard-eyed, struggling against that dead weight that seemed, to +grow and grow in her breast. That elemental fury raging in the woods +made her shrink. Her own hand had helped to loose it, but her hands were +powerless to stay it; she could only sit and watch and wait, eaten up +with misery of her own making. She was horribly afraid, with a fear she +would not name to herself. + +Behind that density of atmosphere, the sun had gone to rest. The first +shadows of dusk were closing in, betokened by a thickening of the +smoke-fog into which the _Waterbug_ slowly plowed. To port a dimming +shore line; to starboard, aft, and dead ahead, water and air merged in +two boat lengths. Barlow leaned through the pilot-house window, one hand +on the wheel, straining his eyes on their course. Suddenly he threw out +the clutch, shut down his throttle control with one hand, and yanked +with the other at the cord which loosed the _Waterbug's_ shrill whistle. + +Dead ahead, almost upon them, came an answering toot. + +"I thought I heard a gas-boat," Barlow exclaimed. "Sufferin' Jerusalem! +Hi, there!" + +He threw his weight on the wheel, sending it hard over. The cruiser +still had way on; the momentum of her ten-ton weight scarcely had +slackened, and she answered the helm. Out of the deceptive thickness +ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another forty-footer, sheering +quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was upon them, and abreast, and +gone, with a watery purl of her bow wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust, +passing so near than an active man could have leaped the space between. + +"Sufferin' Jerusalem!" Barlow repeated, turning to Stella. "Did you see +that, Mrs. Jack? They got him." + +Stella nodded. She too had seen Monohan seated on the after deck, his +head sunk on his breast, irons on his wrists. A glimpse, no more. + +"That'll help some," Barlow grunted. "Quick work. But they come blame +near cuttin' us down, beltin' along at ten knots when you can't see +forty feet ahead." + +An empty beach greeted them at Tumbling Creek. Reluctantly Stella bade +Barlow turn back. It would soon be dark, and Barlow said he would be +taking chances of piling on the shore before he could see it, or getting +lost in the profound black that would shut down on the water with +daylight's end. + +Less than a mile from Cougar Bay, the _Waterbug's_ engine gave a few +premonitory gasps and died. Barlow descended to the engine room, hooked +up the trouble lamp, and sought for the cause. He could not find it. +Stella could hear him muttering profanity, turning the flywheel over, +getting an occasional explosion. + +An hour passed. Dark of the Pit descended, shrouding the lake with a +sable curtain, close-folded, impenetrable. The dead stillness of the day +vanished before a hot land breeze, and Stella, as she felt the launch +drift, knew by her experience on the lake that they were moving +offshore. Presently this was confirmed, for out of the black wall on the +west, from which the night wind brought stifling puffs of smoke, there +lifted a yellow effulgence that grew to a red glare as the boat drifted +out. Soon that red glare was a glowing line that rose and fell, dipping +and rising and wavering along a two-mile stretch, a fiery surf beating +against the forest. + +Down in the engine room Barlow finally located the trouble, and the +motor took up its labors, spinning with a rhythmic chatter of valves. +The man came up into the pilot house, wiping the sweat from his grimy +face. + +"Gee, I'm sorry, Mrs. Fyfe," he said. "A gas-engine man would 'a' fixed +that in five minutes. Took me two hours to find out what was wrong. +It'll be a heck of a job to fetch Cougar Bay now." + +But by luck Barlow made his way back, blundering fairly into the landing +at the foot of the path that led to the bungalow, as if the cruiser knew +the way to her old berth. And as he reached the float, the front +windows on the hillock broke out yellow, pale blurs in the smoky night. + +"Well, say," Barlow pointed. "I bet a nickel Jack's home. See? Nobody +but him would be in the house." + +"I'll go up," Stella said. + +"All right, I guess you know the path better'n I do," Barlow said. "I'll +take the _Bug_ around into the bay." + +Stella ran up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and leaned +against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her step was +noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the _Waterbug_ she had +found an old pair of her own shoes, rubber-soled, and she had put them +on to ease the ache in her feet born of thirty-six hours' encasement in +leather. She gained the door without a sound. It was wide open, and in +the middle of the big room Jack Fyfe stood with hands thrust deep in his +pockets, staring absently at the floor. + +She took a step or two inside. Fyfe did not hear her; he did not look +up. + +"Jack." + +He gave ever so slight a start, glanced up, stood with head thrown back +a little. But he did not move, or answer, and Stella, looking at him, +seeing the flame that glowed in his eyes, could not speak. Something +seemed to choke her, something that was a strange compound of relief and +bewilderment and a slow wonder at herself,--at the queer, unsteady +pounding of her heart. + +"How did you get way up here?" he asked at last. + +"Linda wired last night that Charlie was hurt. I got a machine to the +Springs. Then Barlow came down this afternoon looking for you. He said +you'd been missing for two days. So I--I--" + +She broke off. Fyfe was walking toward her with that peculiar, +lightfooted step of his, a queer, tense look on his face. + +"Nero fiddled when Rome was burning," he said harshly. "Did you come to +sing while _my_ Rome goes up in smoke?" + +A little, half-strangled sob escaped her. She turned to go. But he +caught her by the arm. + +"There, lady," he said, with a swift change of tone, "I didn't mean to +slash at you. I suppose you mean all right. But just now, with +everything gone to the devil, to look up and see you here--I've really +got an ugly temper, Stella, and it's pretty near the surface these days. +I don't want to be pitied and sympathized with. I want to fight. I want +to hurt somebody." + +"Hurt me then," she cried. + +He shook his head sadly. + +"I couldn't do that," he said. "No, I can't imagine myself ever doing +that." + +"Why?" she asked, knowing why, but wishful to hear in words what his +eyes shouted. + +"Because I love you," he said. "You know well enough why." + +She lifted her one free hand to his shoulder. Her face turned up to his. +A warm wave of blood dyed the round, white neck, shot up into her +cheeks. Her eyes were suddenly aglow, lips tremulous. + +"Kiss me, then," she whispered. "That's what I came for. Kiss me, Jack." + +If she had doubted, if she had ever in the last few hours looked with +misgiving upon what she felt herself impelled to do, the pressure of +Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill +of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to +feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the +uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come +to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite +comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, +straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words +against his breast. + +"And so--and so, after all, you do care." Fyfe held her off a little +from him, his sinewy fingers gripping gently the soft flesh of her arms. +"And you were big enough to come back. Oh, my dear, you don't know what +that means to me. I'm broke, and I'd just about reached the point where +I didn't give a damn. This fire has cleaned me out. I've--" + +"I know," Stella interrupted. "That's why I came back. I wouldn't have +come otherwise, at least not for a long time--perhaps never. It seemed +as if I ought to--as if it were the least I could do. Of course, it +looks altogether different, now that I know I really want to. But you +see I didn't know that for sure until I saw you standing here. Oh, Jack, +there's such a lot I wish I could wipe out." + +"It's wiped out," he said happily. "The slate's clean. Fair weather +didn't get us anywhere. It took a storm. Well, the storm's over." + +She stirred uneasily in his arms. + +"Haven't you got the least bit of resentment, Jack, for all this trouble +I've helped to bring about?" she faltered. + +"Why, no" he said thoughtfully. "All you did was to touch the fireworks +off. And they might have started over anything. Lord no! put that idea +out of your head." + +"I don't understand," she murmured. "I never have quite understood why +Monohan should attack you with such savage bitterness. That trouble he +started on the Tyee, then this criminal firing of the woods. I've had +hints, first from your sister, then from Linda. I didn't know you'd +clashed before. I'm not very clear on that yet. But you knew all the +time what he was. Why didn't you tell me, Jack?" + +"Well, maybe I should have," Fyfe admitted. "But I couldn't very well. +Don't you see? He wasn't even an incident, until he bobbed up and +rescued you that day. I couldn't, after that, start in picking his +character to pieces as a mater of precaution. We had a sort of an armed +truce. He left me strictly alone. I'd trimmed his claws once or twice +already. I suppose he was acute enough to see an opportunity to get a +whack at me through you. You were just living from day to day, creating +a world of illusions for yourself, nourishing yourself with dreams, +smarting under a stifled regret for a lot you thought you'd passed up +for good. _He_ wasn't a factor, at first. When he did finally stir in +you an emotion I had failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say +anything. If I'd tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your +idol's clay feet, you'd have despised me, as well as refused to believe. +I couldn't do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you to +find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on. I purposely +refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first +time,--partly on the kid's account, partly because I could hardly bear +to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show +his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able to size him up. + +"You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing would +afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared +for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to +check-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really +started him properly. After that, you--as something to be desired and +possessed--ran second to his feeling against me. He was bound to try and +play even, regardless of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee, +I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life--for my own +life, if he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about +to you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me. +Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me. I +had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge against life, +and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never kissed me once in all +those two years like you kissed me just now." + +She pulled his head down and kissed him again. + +"So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own advantage," +he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I wanted to put a +brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex individual, Stella. +Along with certain fixed, fundamental principles, you've got a streak of +divine madness in you, a capacity for reckless undertakings. You'd never +have married me if you hadn't. I trusted you absolutely. But, I was +afraid in spite of my faith. You had draped such an idealistic mantle +around Monohan. I wanted to rend that before it came to a final +separation between us. It worked out, because he couldn't resist trying +to take a crack at me when the notion seized him. + +"So," he continued, after a pause, "you aren't responsible, and I've +never considered you responsible for any of this. It's between him and +me, and it's been shaping for years. Whenever our trails crossed there +was bound to be a clash. There's always been a natural personal +antagonism between us. It began to show when we were kids, you might +say. Monohan's nature is such that he can't acknowledge defeat, he can't +deny himself a gratification. He's a supreme egotist. He's always had +plenty of money, he's always had whatever he wanted, and it never +mattered to him how he gratified his desires. + +"The first time we locked horns was in my last year at high school. +Monohan was a star athlete. I beat him in a pole vault. That irked him +so that he sulked and sneered, and generally made himself so insulting +that I slapped him. We fought, and I whipped him. I had a temper that I +hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I +had nothing but contempt for him, anyway, because even then, when he +wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I +don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find +him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at +the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,--a girl he'd +picked up on a trip to Georgia,--like any confirmed rounder. + +"Well, from that time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance to sting +me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, so hard that +when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me home and read the +riot act so strong that I flared up and left. Then I came to the coast +here and got a job in the woods, got to be a logging boss, and went into +business on my own hook eventually. I'd just got nicely started when I +ran into Monohan again. He'd got into timber himself. I was hand logging +up the coast, and I'd hate to tell you the tricks he tried. He kept it +up until I got too big to be harassed in a petty way. Then he left me +alone. But he never forgot his grudge. The stage was all set for this +act long before you gave him his cue, Stella. You weren't to blame for +that, or if you were in part, it doesn't matter now. I'm satisfied. +Paradoxically I feel rich, even though it's a long shot that I'm broke +flat. I've got something money doesn't buy. And he has overreached +himself at last. All his money and pull won't help him out of this jack +pot. Arson and attempted murder is serious business." + +"They caught him," Stella said. "The constables took him down the lake +to-night. I saw him on their launch as they passed the _Waterbug_." + +"Yes?" Fyfe said. "Quick work. I didn't even know about the shooting +till I came in here to-night about dark. Well," he snapped his fingers, +"exit Monohan. He's a dead issue, far as we're concerned. Wouldn't you +like something to eat, Stella? I'm hungry, and I was dog-tired when I +landed here. Say, you can't guess what I was thinking about, lady, +standing there when you came in." + +She shook her head. + +"I had a crazy notion of touching a match to the house," he said +soberly, "letting it go up in smoke with the rest. Yes, that's what I +was thinking I would do. Then I'd take the _Panther_ and what gear I +have on the scows and pull off Roaring Lake. It didn't seem as if I +could stay. I'd laid the foundation of a fortune here and tried to make +a home--and lost it all, everything that was worth having. And then all +at once there you were, like a vision in the door. Miracles _do_ +happen!" + +Her arms tightened involuntarily about him. + +"Oh," she cried breathlessly. "Our little, white house!" + +"Without you," he replied softly, "it was just an empty shell of boards +and plaster, something to make me ache with loneliness." + +"But not now," she murmured. "It's home, now." + +"Yes," he agreed, smiling. + +"Ah, but it isn't quite." She choked down a lump in her throat. "Not +when I think of those little feet that used to patter on the floor. Oh, +Jack--when I think of my baby boy! My dear, my dear, why did all this +have to be, I wonder?" + +Fyfe stroked her glossy coils of hair. + +"We get nothing of value without a price," he said quietly. "Except by +rare accident, nothing that's worth having comes cheap and easy. We've +paid the price, and we're square with the world and with each other. +That's everything." + +"Are you completely ruined, Jack?" she asked after an interval. "Charlie +said you were." + +"Well," he answered reflectively, "I haven't had time to balance +accounts, but I guess I will be. The timber's gone. I've saved most of +the logging gear. But if I realized on everything that's left, and +squared up everything, I guess I'd be pretty near strapped." + +"Will you take me in as a business partner, Jack?" she asked eagerly. +"That's what I had in mind when I came up here. I made up my mind to +propose that, after I'd heard you were ruined. Oh, it seems silly now, +but I wanted to make amends that way; at least, I tried to tell myself +that. Listen. When my father died, he left some supposedly worthless oil +stock. But it proved to have a market value. I got my share of it the +other day. It'll help us to make a fresh start--together." + +She had the envelope and the check tucked inside her waist. She took it +out now and pressed the green slip into his hand. + +Fyfe looked at it and at her, a little chuckle deep in his throat. + +"Nineteen thousand, five hundred," he laughed. "Well, that's quite a +stake for you. But if you go partners with me, what about your singing?" + +"I don't see how I can have my cake and eat it, too," she said lightly. +"I don't feel quite so eager for a career as I did." + +"Well, we'll see," he said. "That light of yours shouldn't be hidden +under a bushel. And still, I don't like the idea of you being away from +me, which a career implies." + +He put the check back in the envelope, smiling oddly to himself, and +tucked it back in her bosom. She caught and pressed his hand there, +against the soft flesh. + +"Won't you use it, Jack?" she pleaded. "Won't it help? Don't let any +silly pride influence you. There mustn't ever be anything like that +between us again." + +"There won't be," he smiled. "Frankly, if I need it, I'll use it. But +that's a matter there's plenty of time to decide. You see, although +technically I may be broke, I'm a long way from the end of my tether. I +think I'll have my working outfit clear, and the country's full of +timber. I've got a standing in the business that neither fire nor +anything else can destroy. No, I haven't any false pride about the +money, dear. But the money part of our future is a detail. With the +incentive I've got now to work and plan, it won't take me five years to +be a bigger toad in the timber puddle than I ever was. You don't know +what a dynamo I am when I get going." + +"I don't doubt that," she said proudly. "But the money's yours, if you +need it." + +"I need something else a good deal more right now," he laughed. "That's +something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Stella? Wouldn't you like a cup of +coffee?" + +"I'm famished," she admitted--the literal truth. The vaulting uplift of +spirit, that glad little song that kept lilting in her heart, filled her +with peace and contentment, but physically she was beginning to +experience acute hunger. She recalled that she had eaten scarcely +anything that day. + +"We'll go down to the camp," Fyfe suggested. "The cook will have +something left. We're camping like pioneers down there. The shacks were +all burned, and somebody sank the cookhouse scow." + +They went down the path to the bay, hand in hand, feeling their way +through that fire-blackened area, under a black sky. + +A red eye glowed ahead of them, a fire on the beach around which men +squatted on their haunches or lay stretched on their blankets, +sooty-faced fire fighters, a weary group. The air was rank with smoke +wafted from the burning woods. + +The cook's fire was dead, and that worthy was humped on his bed-roll +smoking a pipe. But he had cold meat and bread, and he brewed a pot of +coffee on the big fire for them, and Stella ate the plain fare, sitting +in the circle of tired loggers. + +"Poor fellows, they look worn out," she said, when they were again +traversing that black road to the bungalow. + +"We've slept standing up for three weeks," Fyfe said simply. "They've +done everything they could. And we're not through yet. A north wind +might set Charlie's timber afire in a dozen places." + +"Oh, for a rain," she sighed. + +"If wishing for rain brought it," he laughed, "we'd have had a second +flood. We've got to keep pegging away till it does rain, that's all. We +can't do much, but we have to keep doing it. You'll have to go back to +the Springs to-morrow, I'm afraid, Stella. I'll have to stay on the +firing line, literally." + +"I don't want to," she cried rebelliously. "I want to stay up here with +you. I'm not wax. I won't melt." + +She continued that argument into the house, until Fyfe laughingly +smothered her speech with kisses. + + * * * * * + +An oddly familiar sound murmuring in Stella's ear wakened her. At first +she thought she must be dreaming. It was still inky dark, but the air +that blew in at the open window was sweet and cool, filtered of that +choking smoke. She lifted herself warily, looked out, reached a hand +through the lifted sash. Wet drops spattered it. The sound she heard was +the drip of eaves, the beat of rain on the charred timber, upon the +dried grass of the lawn. + +Beside her Fyfe was a dim bulk, sleeping the dead slumber of utter +weariness. She hesitated a minute, then shook him. + +"Listen, Jack," she said. + +He lifted his head. + +"Rain!" he whispered. "Good night, Mister Fire. Hooray!" + +"I brought it," Stella murmured sleepily. "I wished it on Roaring Lake +to-night." + +Then she slipped her arm about his neck, and drew his face down to her +breast with a tender fierceness, and closed her eyes with a contented +sigh. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Big Timber, by Bertrand W. 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Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Big Timber + A Story of the Northwest + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG TIMBER *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<br> +<p style="text-align: center;"><img style= +"width: 400px; height: 628px;" alt="Cover" src= +"images/bt001.jpg"></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<h1>BIG TIMBER</h1> +<h2>A Story of the Northwest</h2> +<br> +<h3>By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR</h3> +<br> +<br> +<h3>With Frontispiece</h3> +<h3>By DOUGLAS DUER</h3> +<br> +<h4>1916</h4> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONTENTS"></a> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<div class="content"> +<ol> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES +NEW</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>MR. ABBEY ARRIVES</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>HALFWAY POINT</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO +COME</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>THE DIGNITY (?) OF +TOIL</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>SOME NEIGHBORLY +ASSISTANCE</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>DURANCE VILE</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>JACK FYFE'S CAMP</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>ONE WAY OUT</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>THE PLUNGE</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>AND SO THEY WERE +MARRIED</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>IN WHICH EVENTS MARK +TIME</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW +ACQUAINTANCE</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>A RESURRECTION</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>THE CRISIS</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER +CLASH</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>THE OPENING GUN</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>FREE AS THE WIND</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>ECHOES</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>AN UNEXPECTED +MEETING</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>THE FIRE BEHIND THE +SMOKE</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>A RIDE BY NIGHT</b></a><br></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS +ME"</b></a><br></li> +</ol> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<br> +<h3>GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW</h3> +<p>The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last +hairpin curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered +valley,—narrow on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but +nevertheless a valley,—down which the rails lay straight and +shining on an easy grade. The river that for a hundred miles had +boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, roaring through the +granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range, took a wider channel +and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen from it as haste +falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his destination near +at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for now it was +but threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved +placidly—as an old man moves when all the headlong urge of +youth is spent and his race near run.</p> +<p>On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella +Benton nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her +elbow on the window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening +valley instead of a bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to +see wooded heights lift green in place of barren cliffs, to watch +banks of fern massed against the right of way where for a day and a +night parched sagebrush, brown tumble-weed, and such scant growth +as flourished in the arid uplands of interior British Columbia had +streamed in barren monotony, hot and dry and still.</p> +<p>She was near the finish of her journey. Pensively she considered +the end of the road. How would it be there? What manner of folk and +country? Between her past mode of life and the new that she was +hurrying toward lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class +even. It was bound to be crude, to be full of inconveniences and +uncouthness. Her brother's letters had partly prepared her for +that. Involuntarily she shrank from it, had been shrinking from it +by fits and starts all the way, as flowers that thrive best in +shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude winds. Not that Estella +Benton was particularly flower-like. On the contrary she was a +healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to be described as +beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a daughter of the +well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes in families +to which American politicians unctuously refer as the backbone of +the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty pane, she +bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was full of +misgivings.</p> +<p>Four days of lonely travel across a continent, hearing the +drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on +end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its +due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either +an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the +individual point of view, upon conditioning circumstances and +previous experience.</p> +<p>Estella Benton's experience along such lines was chiefly a blank +and the conditioning circumstances of her present journey were +somber enough to breed thought that verged upon the melancholy. +Save for a natural buoyancy of spirit she might have wept her way +across North America. She had no tried standard by which to measure +life's values for she had lived her twenty-two years wholly +shielded from the human maelstrom, fed, clothed, taught, an untried +product of home and schools. Her head was full of university lore, +things she had read, a smattering of the arts and philosophy, +liberal portions of academic knowledge, all tagged and sorted like +parcels on a shelf to be reached when called for. Buried under +these externalities the ego of her lay unaroused, an incalculable +quantity.</p> +<p>All of which is merely by way of stating that Miss Estella +Benton was a young woman who had grown up quite complacently in +that station of life in which—to quote the +Philistines—it had pleased God to place her, and that Chance +had somehow, to her astonished dismay, contrived to thrust a spoke +in the smooth-rolling wheels of destiny. Or was it Destiny? She had +begun to think about that, to wonder if a lot that she had taken +for granted as an ordered state of things was not, after all, +wholly dependent upon Chance. She had danced and sung and played +lightheartedly accepting a certain standard of living, a certain +position in a certain set, a pleasantly ordered home life, as her +birthright, a natural heritage. She had dwelt upon her ultimate +destiny in her secret thoughts as foreshadowed by that of other +girls she knew. The Prince would come, to put it in a nutshell. He +would woo gracefully. They would wed. They would be delightfully +happy. Except for the matter of being married, things would move +along the same pleasant channels.</p> +<p>Just so. But a broken steering knuckle on a heavy touring car +set things in a different light—many things. She learned then +that death is no respecter of persons, that a big income may be +lived to its limit with nothing left when the brain force which +commanded it ceases to function. Her father produced perhaps +fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year in his brokerage +business, and he had saved nothing. Thus at one stroke she was put +on an equal footing with the stenographer in her father's office. +Scarcely equal either, for the stenographer earned her bread and +was technically equipped for the task, whereas Estella Benton had +no training whatsoever, except in social usage. She did not yet +fully realize just what had overtaken her. Things had happened so +swiftly, to ruthlessly, that she still verged upon the incredulous. +Habit clung fast. But she had begun to think, to try and establish +some working relation between herself and things as she found them. +She had discovered already that certain theories of human relations +are not soundly established in fact.</p> +<p>She turned at last in her seat. The Limited's whistle had +shrilled for a stop. At the next stop—she wondered what lay +in store for her just beyond the next stop. While she dwelt +mentally upon this, her hands were gathering up some few odds and +ends of her belongings on the berth.</p> +<p>Across the aisle a large, smooth-faced young man watched her +with covert admiration. When she had settled back with bag and +suitcase locked and strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted +and gloved, he leaned over and addressed her genially.</p> +<p>"Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring +Springs?"</p> +<p>Miss Benton's gray eyes rested impersonally on the top of his +head, traveled slowly down over the trim front of his blue serge to +the polished tan Oxfords on his feet, and there was not in eyes or +on countenance the slightest sign that she saw or heard him. The +large young man flushed a vivid red.</p> +<p>Miss Benton was partly amused, partly provoked. The large young +man had been her vis-à-vis at dinner the day before and at +breakfast that morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation +each time, but it had been diplomatically confined to salt and +other condiments, the weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no +objection to young men in general, quite the contrary. But she did +not consider it quite the thing to countenance every amiable +stranger.</p> +<p>Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the +blast of the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave +the train. Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object +down an aisle slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss +Estella Benton stood on the plank platform of Hopyard station. +Northward stretched a flat, unlovely vista of fire-blackened +stumps. Southward, along track and siding, ranged a single row of +buildings, a grocery store, a shanty with a huge sign proclaiming +that it was a bank, dwelling, hotel and blacksmith shop whence +arose the clang of hammered iron. A dirt road ran between town and +station, with hitching posts at which farmers' nags stood +dispiritedly in harness.</p> +<p>To the Westerner such spots are common enough; he sees them not +as fixtures, but as places in a stage of transformation. By every +side track and telegraph station on every transcontinental line +they spring up, centers of productive activity, growing into +orderly towns and finally attaining the dignity of cities. To her, +fresh from trim farmsteads and rural communities that began setting +their houses in order when Washington wintered at Valley Forge, +Hopyard stood forth sordid and unkempt. And as happens to many a +one in like case, a wave of sickening loneliness engulfed her, and +she eyed the speeding Limited as one eyes a departing friend.</p> +<p>"How could one live in a place like this?" she asked +herself.</p> +<p>But she had neither Slave of the Lamp at her beck, nor any Magic +Carpet to transport her elsewhere. At any rate, she reflected, +Hopyard was not her abiding-place. She hoped that her destination +would prove more inviting.</p> +<p>Beside the platform were ranged two touring cars. Three or four +of those who had alighted entered these. Their baggage was piled +over the hoods, buckled on the running boards. The driver of one +car approached her. "Hot Springs?" he inquired tersely.</p> +<p>She affirmed this, and he took her baggage, likewise her trunk +check when she asked how that article would be transported to the +lake. She had some idea of route and means, from her brother's +written instruction, but she thought he might have been there to +meet her. At least he would be at the Springs.</p> +<p>So she was whirled along a country road, jolted in the tonneau +between a fat man from Calgary and a rheumatic dame on her way to +take hot sulphur baths at St. Allwoods. She passed seedy +farmhouses, primitive in construction, and big barns with moss +plentifully clinging on roof and gable. The stretch of charred +stumps was left far behind, but in every field of grain and +vegetable and root great butts of fir and cedar rose amid the +crops. Her first definitely agreeable impression of this land, +which so far as she knew must be her home, was of those huge and +numerous stumps contending with crops for possession of the fields. +Agreeable, because it came to her forcibly that it must be a sturdy +breed of men and women, possessed of brawn and fortitude and high +courage, who made their homes here. Back in her country, once +beyond suburban areas, the farms lay like the squares of a chess +board, trim and orderly, tamely subdued to agriculture. Here, at +first hand, she saw how man attacked the forest and conquered it. +But the conquest was incomplete, for everywhere stood those +stubborn roots, six and eight and ten feet across, contending with +man for its primal heritage, the soil, perishing slowly as perish +the proud remnants of a conquered race.</p> +<p>Then the cleared land came to a stop against heavy timber. The +car whipped a curve and drove into what the fat man from Calgary +facetiously remarked upon as the tall uncut. Miss Benton sighted up +these noble columns to where a breeze droned in the tops, two +hundred feet above. Through a gap in the timber she saw mountains, +peaks that stood bold as the Rockies, capped with snow. For two +days she had been groping for a word to define, to sum up the +feeling which had grown upon her, had been growing upon her +steadily, as the amazing scroll of that four-day journey unrolled. +She found it now, a simple word, one of the simplest in our mother +tongue—bigness. Bigness in its most ample sense,—that +was the dominant note. Immensities of distance, vastness of rolling +plain, sheer bulk of mountain, rivers that one crossed, and after a +day's journey crossed again, still far from source or confluence. +And now this unending sweep of colossal trees!</p> +<p>At first she had been overpowered with a sense of insignificance +utterly foreign to her previous experience. But now she discovered +with an agreeable sensation of surprise she could vibrate to such a +keynote. And while she communed with this pleasant discovery the +car sped down a straight stretch and around a corner and stopped +short to unload sacks of mail at a weather-beaten yellow edifice, +its windows displaying indiscriminately Indian baskets, groceries, +and hardware. Northward opened a broad scope of lake level, girt +about with tremendous peaks whose lower slopes were banked with +thick forest.</p> +<p>Somewhere distant along that lake shore was to be her home. As +the car rolled over the four hundred yards between store and +white-and-green St. Allwoods, she wondered if Charlie would be +there to meet her. She was weary of seeing strange faces, of being +directed, of being hustled about.</p> +<p>But he was not there, and she recalled that he never had been +notable for punctuality. Five years is a long time. She expected to +find him changed—for the better, in certain directions. He +had promised to be there; but, in this respect, time evidently had +wrought no appreciable transformation.</p> +<p>She registered, was assigned a room, and ate luncheon to the +melancholy accompaniment of a three-man orchestra struggling vainly +with Bach in an alcove off the dining room. After that she began to +make inquiries. Neither clerk nor manager knew aught of Charlie +Benton. They were both in their first season there. They advised +her to ask the storekeeper.</p> +<p>"MacDougal will know," they were agreed. "He knows everybody +around here, and everything that goes on."</p> +<p>The storekeeper, a genial, round-bodied Scotchman, had the +information she desired.</p> +<p>"Charlie Benton?" said he. "No, he'll be at his camp up the +lake. He was in three or four days back. I mind now, he said he'd +be down Thursday; that's to-day. But he isn't here yet, or his +boat'd be by the wharf yonder."</p> +<p>"Are there any passenger boats that call there?" she asked.</p> +<p>MacDougal shook his head.</p> +<p>"Not reg'lar. There's a gas boat goes t' the head of the lake +now an' then. She's away now. Ye might hire a launch. Jack Fyfe's +camp tender's about to get under way. But ye wouldna care to go on +her, I'm thinkin'. She'll be loaded wi' lumberjacks—every man +drunk as a lord, most like. Maybe Benton'll be in before +night."</p> +<p>She went back to the hotel. But St. Allwoods, in its dual +capacity of health-and-pleasure resort, was a gilded shell, making +a brave outward show, but capitalizing chiefly lake, mountains, and +hot, mineral springs. Her room was a bare, cheerless place. She did +not want to sit and ponder. Too much real grief hovered in the +immediate background of her life. It is not always sufficient to be +young and alive. To sit still and think—that way lay tears +and despondency. So she went out and walked down the road and out +upon the wharf which jutted two hundred yards into the lake.</p> +<p>It stood deserted save for a lone fisherman on the outer end, +and an elderly couple that preceded her. Halfway out she passed a +slip beside which lay moored a heavily built, fifty-foot boat, +scarred with usage, a squat and powerful craft. Lakeward stretched +a smooth, unrippled surface. Overhead patches of white cloud +drifted lazily. Where the shadows from these lay, the lake spread +gray and lifeless. Where the afternoon sun rested, it touched the +water with gleams of gold and pale, delicate green. A white-winged +yacht lay offshore, her sails in slack folds. A lump of an island +lifted two miles beyond, all cliffs and little, wooded hills. And +the mountains surrounding in a giant ring seemed to shut the place +away from all the world. For sheer wild, rugged beauty, Roaring +Lake surpassed any spot she had ever seen. Its quiet majesty, its +air of unbroken peace soothed and comforted her, sick with hurry +and swift-footed events.</p> +<p>She stood for a time at the outer wharf end, mildly interested +when the fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at +her own subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her +like a virtuoso on his violin. And this was something that she did +not recall as a trait in her own character. She had never inclined +to the volatile—perhaps because until the motor accident +snuffed out her father's life she had never dealt in anything but +superficial emotions.</p> +<p>After a time she retraced her steps. Nearing the halfway slip, +she saw that a wagon from which goods were being unloaded blocked +the way. A dozen men were stringing in from the road, bearing +bundles and bags and rolls of blankets. They were big, burly men, +carrying themselves with a reckless swing, with trousers cut off +midway between knee and ankle so that they reached just below the +upper of their high-topped, heavy, laced boots. Two or three were +singing. All appeared unduly happy, talking loudly, with deep +laughter. One threw down his burden and executed a brief clog. +Splinters flew where the sharp calks bit into the wharf planking, +and his companions applauded.</p> +<p>It dawned upon Stella Benton that these might be Jack Fyfe's +drunken loggers, and she withdrew until the way should be clear, +vitally interested because her brother was a logging man, and +wondering if these were the human tools he used in his business, if +these were the sort of men with whom he associated. They were a +rough lot—and some were very drunk. With the manifestations +of liquor she had but the most shadowy acquaintance. But she would +have been little less than a fool not to comprehend this.</p> +<p>Then they began filing down the gangway to the boat's deck. One +slipped, and came near falling into the water, whereat his fellows +howled gleefully. Precariously they negotiated the slanting +passage. All but one: he sat him down at the slip-head on his +bundle and began a quavering chant. The teamster imperturbably +finished his unloading, two men meanwhile piling the goods +aboard.</p> +<p>The wagon backed out, and the way was clear, save for the logger +sitting on his blankets, wailing his lugubrious song. From below +his fellows urged him to come along. A bell clanged in the pilot +house. The exhaust of a gas engine began to sputter through the +boat's side. From her after deck a man hailed the logger sharply, +and when his call was unheeded, he ran lightly up the slip. A +short, squarely-built man he was, light on his feet as a dancing +master.</p> +<p>He spoke now with authority, impatiently.</p> +<p>"Hurry aboard, Mike; we're waiting."</p> +<p>The logger rose, waved his hand airily, and turned as if to +retreat down the wharf. The other caught him by the arm and spun +him face to the slip.</p> +<p>"Come on, Slater," he said evenly. "I have no time to fool +around."</p> +<p>The logger drew back his fist. He was a fairly big man. But if +he had in mind to deal a blow, it failed, for the other ducked and +caught him with both arms around the middle. He lifted the logger +clear of the wharf, hoisted him to the level of his breast, and +heaved him down the slip as one would throw a sack of bran.</p> +<p>The man's body bounced on the incline, rolled, slid, tumbled, +till at length he brought up against the boat's guard, and all that +saved him a ducking was the prompt extension of several stout arms, +which clutched and hauled him to the flush after deck. He sat on +his haunches, blinking. Then he laughed. So did the man at the top +of the slip and the lumberjacks clustered on the boat. Homeric +laughter, as at some surpassing jest. But the roar of him who had +taken that inglorious descent rose loudest of all, an explosive, +"Har—har—har!"</p> +<p>He clambered unsteadily to his feet, his mouth expanded in an +amiable grin.</p> +<p>"Hey, Jack," he shouted. "Maybe y' c'n throw m' blankets down +too, while y'r at it."</p> +<p>The man at the slip-head caught up the roll, poised it high, and +cast it from him with a quick twist of his body. The woolen missile +flew like a well-put shot and caught its owner fair in the breast, +tumbling him backwards on the deck—and the Homeric laughter +rose in double strength. Then the boat began to swing, and the man +ran down and leaped the widening space as she drew away from her +mooring.</p> +<p>Stella Benton watched the craft gather way, a trifle shocked, +her breath coming a little faster. The most deadly blows she had +ever seen struck were delivered in a more subtle, less virile mode, +a curl of the lip, an inflection of the voice. These were a +different order of beings. This, she sensed was man in a more +primitive aspect, man with the conventional bark stripped clean off +him. And she scarcely knew whether to be amused or frightened when +she reflected that among such her life would presently lie. Charlie +had written that she would find things and people a trifle rougher +than she was used to. She could well believe that. But—they +were picturesque ruffians.</p> +<p>Her interested gaze followed the camp tender as it swung around +the wharf-end, and so her roaming eyes were led to another craft +drawing near. This might be her brother's vessel. She went back to +the outer landing to see.</p> +<p>Two men manned this boat. As she ranged alongside the piles, one +stood forward, and the other aft with lines to make fast. She cast +a look at each. They were prototypes of the rude crew but now +departed, brown-faced, flannel-shirted, shod with calked boots, +unshaven for days, typical men of the woods. But as she turned to +go, the man forward and almost directly below her looked her full +in the face.</p> +<p>"Stell!"</p> +<p>She leaned over the rail.</p> +<p>"Charlie Benton—for Heaven's sake."</p> +<p>They stared at each other.</p> +<p>"Well," he laughed at last. "If it were not for your mouth and +eyes, Stell, I wouldn't have known you. Why, you're all grown +up."</p> +<p>He clambered to the wharf level and kissed her. The rough +stubble of his beard pricked her tender skin and she drew back.</p> +<p>"My word, Charlie, you certainly ought to shave," she observed +with sisterly frankness. "I didn't know you until you spoke. I'm +awfully glad to see you, but you do need <i>some one</i> to look +after you."</p> +<p>Benton laughed tolerantly.</p> +<p>"Perhaps. But, my dear girl, a fellow doesn't get anywhere on +his appearance in this country. When a fellow's bucking big timber, +he shucks off a lot of things he used to think were quite +essential. By Jove, you're a picture, Stell. If I hadn't been +expecting to see you, I wouldn't have known you."</p> +<p>"I doubt if I should have known you either," she returned +drily.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<br> +<h3>MR. ABBEY ARRIVES</h3> +<p>Stella accompanied her brother to the store, where he gave an +order for sundry goods. Then they went to the hotel to see if her +trunks had arrived. Within a few yards of the fence which enclosed +the grounds of St. Allwoods a man hailed Benton, and drew him a few +steps aside. Stella walked slowly on, and presently her brother +joined her.</p> +<p>The baggage wagon had brought the trunks, and when she had paid +her bill, they were delivered at the outer wharf-end, where also +arrived at about the same time a miscellaneous assortment of +supplies from the store and a Japanese with her two handbags. So +far as Miss Estella Benton could see, she was about to embark on +the last stage of her journey.</p> +<p>"How soon will you start?" she inquired, when the last of the +stuff was stowed aboard the little steamer.</p> +<p>"Twenty minutes or so," Benton answered. "Say," he went on +casually, "have you got any money, Stell? I owe a fellow thirty +dollars, and I left the bank roll and my check book at camp."</p> +<p>Miss Benton drew the purse from her hand bag and gave it to him. +He pocketed it and went off down the wharf, with the brief +assurance that he would be gone only a minute or so.</p> +<p>The minute, however, lengthened to nearly an hour, and Sam Davis +had his blow-off valve hissing, and Stella Benton was casting +impatient glances shoreward before Charlie strolled leisurely +back.</p> +<p>"You needn't fire up quite so strong, Sam," he called down. "We +won't start for a couple of hours yet."</p> +<p>"Sufferin' Moses!" Davis poked his fiery thatch out from the +engine room. "I might 'a' known better'n to sweat over firin' up. +You generally manage to make about three false starts to one +get-away."</p> +<p>Benton laughed good-naturedly and turned away.</p> +<p>"Do you usually allow your men to address you in that +impertinent way?" Miss Benton desired to know.</p> +<p>Charlie looked blank for a second. Then he smiled, and linking +his arm affectionately in hers, drew her off along the wharf, +chuckling to himself.</p> +<p>"My dear girl," said he, "you'd better not let Sam Davis or any +of Sam's kind hear you pass remarks like that. Sam would say +exactly what he thought about such matters to his boss, or King +George, or to the first lady of the land, regardless. Sabe? We're +what you'll call primitive out here, yet. You want to forget that +master and man business, the servant proposition, and proper +respect, and all that rot. Outside the English colonies in one or +two big towns, that attitude doesn't go in B.C. People in this neck +of the woods stand pretty much on the same class footing, and +you'll get in bad and get me in bad if you don't remember that. +I've got ten loggers working for me in the woods. Whether they're +impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the +job properly. They're men, you understand, not servants. None of +them would hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything +I do. If I don't like it, I can fight him or fire him. They won't +stand for the sort of airs you're accustomed to. They have the +utmost respect for a woman, but a man is merely a two-legged male +human like themselves, whether he wears mackinaws or broadcloth, +has a barrel of money of none at all. This will seem odd to you at +first, but you'll get used to it. You'll find things rather +different out here."</p> +<p>"I suppose so," she agreed. "But it sounds queer. For instance, +if one of papa's clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he'd +have been discharged on the spot."</p> +<p>"The logger's a different breed," Benton observed drily. "Or +perhaps only the same breed manifesting under different conditions. +He isn't servile. He doesn't have to be."</p> +<p>"Why the delay, though?" she reverted to the point. "I thought +you were all ready to go."</p> +<p>"I am," Charlie enlightened. "But while I was at the store just +now, Paul Abbey 'phoned from Vancouver to know if there was an +up-lake boat in. His people are big lumber guns here, and it will +accommodate him and won't hurt me to wait a couple of hours and +drop him off at their camp. I've got more or less business dealings +with them, and it doesn't hurt to be neighborly. He'd have to hire +a gas-boat otherwise. Besides, Paul's a pretty good head."</p> +<p>This, of course, being strictly her brother's business, Stella +forbore comment. She was weary of travel, tired with the tension of +eternally being shunted across distances, anxious to experience +once more that sense of restful finality which comes with a +journey's end. But, in a measure her movements were no longer +dependent upon her own volition.</p> +<p>They walked slowly along the broad roadway which bordered the +lake until they came to a branchy maple, and here they seated +themselves on the grassy turf in the shadow of the tree.</p> +<p>"Tell me about yourself," she said. "How do you like it here, +and how are you getting on? Your letters home were always chiefly +remarkable for their brevity."</p> +<p>"There isn't a great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just +beginning to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to +learn and unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here +five years, and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and +what I'm not. I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a +lot easier if the governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He +was going to put in some money this fall. But I think I'll make it, +anyway, though it will keep me digging and figuring. I have a +contract for delivery of a million feet in September and another +contract that I could take if I could see my way clear to finance +the thing. I could clean up thirty thousand dollars net in two +years if I had more cash to work on. As it is, I have to go slow, +or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the skin of my teeth. +But I've got one good one practically for an annual pittance. If I +make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's plain +sailing. That about sizes up my prospects, Sis."</p> +<p>"You speak a language I don't understand," she smiled. "What +does a million feet mean? And what's a limit?"</p> +<p>"A limit is one square mile—six hundred and forty acres +more or less—of merchantable timber land," he explained. "We +speak of timber as scaling so many board feet. A board foot is one +inch thick by twelve inches square. Sound fir timber is worth +around seven dollars per thousand board feet in the log, got out of +the woods, and boomed in the water ready to tow to the mills. The +first limit I got—from the government—will scale around +ten million feet. The other two are nearly as good. But I got them +from timber speculators, and it's costing me pretty high. They're a +good spec if I can hang on to them, though."</p> +<p>"It sounds big," she commented.</p> +<p>"It <i>is</i> big," Charlie declared, "if I could go at it +right. I've been trying ever since I got wise to this timber +business to make the governor see what a chance there is in it. He +was just getting properly impressed with the possibilities when the +speed bug got him. He could have trimmed a little here and there at +home and put the money to work. Ten thousand dollars would have +done the trick, given me a working outfit along with what I've got +that would have put us both on Easy Street. However, the poor old +chap didn't get around to it. I suppose, like lots of other +business men, when he stopped, everything ran down. According to +Lander's figures, there won't be a thing left when all accounts are +squared."</p> +<p>"Don't talk about it, Charlie," she begged. "It's too near, and +I was through it all."</p> +<p>"I would have been there too," Benton said. "But, as I told you, +I was out of reach of your wire, and by the time I got it, it was +all over. I couldn't have done any good, anyway. There's no use +mourning. One way and another we've all got to come to it some +day."</p> +<p>Stella looked out over the placid, shimmering surface of Roaring +Lake for a minute. Her grief was dimming with time and distance, +and she had all her own young life before her. She found herself +drifting from painful memories of her father's sudden death to a +consideration of things present and personal. She found herself +wondering critically if this strange, rude land would work as many +changes in her as were patent in this bronzed and burly +brother.</p> +<p>He had left home a slim, cocksure youngster, who had proved more +than a handful for his family before he was half through college, +which educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop +before it was complete. He had been a problem that her father and +mother had discussed in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a +hopeful experiment, and in the West that abounding spirit which +manifested itself in one continual round of minor escapades +appeared to have found a natural outlet. She recalled that latterly +their father had taken to speaking of Charlie in accents of pride. +He was developing the one ambition that Benton senior could +thoroughly understand and properly appreciate, the desire to get +on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve material success, to make +money.</p> +<p>Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business +before her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable +ultimate, so now Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his +speech. In her father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a +man's personal life did not seem to matter in comparison with +getting on and making money. And it was with that personal side of +existence that Stella Benton was now chiefly concerned. She had +never been required to adjust herself to an existence that was +wholly taken up with getting on to the complete exclusion of +everything else. Her work had been to play. She could scarce +conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion from +his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not, +what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found +to offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of +towering woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake +appeared to be mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude +speech and strong drink.</p> +<p>"Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. +"It is surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would +be a summer cottage on every hundred yards of shore."</p> +<p>"Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton +returned. "And scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got +Europe backed off the map for tourist attractions, if they only +knew it. No, about the only summer home in this locality is the +Abbey place at Cottonwood Point. They come up here every summer for +two or three months. Otherwise I don't know of any lilies of the +field, barring the hotel people, and they, being purely transient, +don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan outfit with two big logging +camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand loggers on the east shore, +and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake. That's the +population—and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and eight +wide."</p> +<p>"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked.</p> +<p>Benton grinned widely.</p> +<p>"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs +and the hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the +lake except Lefty Howe's wife,—Lefty's Jack Fyfe's +foreman,—and she's fat and past forty. I told you it was a +God-forsaken hole as far as society is concerned, Stell."</p> +<p>"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize +such a—such a social blankness, until one actually +experiences it. Anyway, I don't know but I'll appreciate utter +quiet for awhile. But what do you do with yourself when you're not +working?"</p> +<p>"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, +Stella, I've got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to +shoot at, and I'm going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and +high water. I have no time to play, and there's no place to play if +I had. I don't intend to muddle along making a pittance like a hand +logger. I want a stake; and then it'll be time to make a splurge in +a country where a man can get a run for his money."</p> +<p>"If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap +to you, am I not?"</p> +<p>"Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get +rested up from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear +diamonds."</p> +<p>She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they +walked up to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe +and paddle to where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a +mile westward, to kill the time that must elapse before the +three-thirty train.</p> +<p>The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came +back. By the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse +man and reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine +sounded down the road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the +abutting wharf. The driver handed two suitcases off the burdened +hood of his machine. From out the tonneau clambered a large, +smooth-faced young man. He wore an expansive smile in addition to a +blue serge suit, white Panama, and polished tan Oxfords, and he +bestowed a hearty greeting upon Charlie Benton. But his smile +suffered eclipse, and a faint flush rose in his round cheeks, when +his eyes fell upon Benton's sister.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<br> +<h3>HALFWAY POINT</h3> +<p>Miss Benton's cool, impersonal manner seemed rather to heighten +the young man's embarrassment. Benton, apparently observing nothing +amiss, introduced them in an offhand fashion.</p> +<p>"Mr. Abbey—my sister."</p> +<p>Mr. Abbey bowed and murmured something that passed for +acknowledgment. The three turned up the wharf toward where Sam +Davis had once more got up steam. As they walked, Mr. Abbey's +habitual assurance returned, and he directed part of his genial +flow of conversation to Miss Benton. To Stella's inner amusement, +however, he did not make any reference to their having been fellow +travelers for a day and a half.</p> +<p>Presently they were embarked and under way. Charlie fixed a seat +for her on the after deck, and went forward to steer, whither he +was straightway joined by Paul Abbey. Miss Benton was as well +pleased to be alone. She was not sure she should approve of young +men who made such crude efforts to scrape acquaintance with women +on trains. She was accustomed to a certain amount of formality in +such matters. It might perhaps be laid to the "breezy Western +manner" of which she had heard, except that Paul Abbey did not +impress her as a Westerner. He seemed more like a type of young man +she had encountered frequently in her own circle. At any rate, she +was relieved when he did not remain beside her to emit polite +commonplaces. She was quite satisfied to sit by herself and look +over the panorama of woods and lake—and wonder more than a +little what Destiny had in store for her along those silent +shores.</p> +<p>The Springs fell far behind, became a few white spots against +the background of dusky green. Except for the ripples spread by +their wake, the water laid oily smooth. Now, a little past four in +the afternoon, she began to sense by comparison the great bulk of +the western mountains,—locally, the Chehalis Range,—for +the sun was dipping behind the ragged peaks already, and deep +shadows stole out from the shore to port. Beneath her feet the +screw throbbed, pulsing like an overdriven heart, and Sam Davis +poked his sweaty face now and then through a window to catch a +breath of cool air denied him in the small inferno where he stoked +the fire box.</p> +<p>The <i>Chickamin</i> cleared Echo Island, and a greater sweep of +lake opened out. Here the afternoon wind sprang up, shooting +gustily through a gap between the Springs and Hopyard and ruffling +the lake out of its noonday siesta. Ripples, chop, and a growing +swell followed each other with that marvellous rapidity common to +large bodies of fresh water. It broke the monotony of steady +cleaving through dead calm. Stella was a good sailor, and she +rather enjoyed it when the <i>Chickamin</i> began to lift and yaw +off before the following seas that ran up under her fantail +stern.</p> +<p>After about an hour's run, with the south wind beginning to whip +the crests of the short seas into white foam, the boat bore in to a +landing behind a low point. Here Abbey disembarked, after taking +the trouble to come aft and shake hands with polite farewell. +Standing on the float, hat in hand, he bowed his sleek blond head +to Stella.</p> +<p>"I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as +Benton jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to +stop over awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's +in too big a hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again +soon."</p> +<p>Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom +this bland friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off +their talk. As the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white +come down toward the float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little +farther out through an opening in the woods, she saw a white and +green bungalow, low and rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock +three hundred yards back from shore. There was an encircling area +of smooth lawn, a place restfully inviting.</p> +<p>Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was +smitten with a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had +assailed her fitfully in the last four days. And while the +<i>Chickamin</i> was still plowing the inshore waters on an even +keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and joined her brother in +the pilot house.</p> +<p>"Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she +remarked.</p> +<p>"Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie +grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,—up-to-date cottage, +gardeners, tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, +and all that. But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what +they want to do. They've made it in timber, as I expect to make +mine. You didn't particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, +did you?"</p> +<p>"I? Of course not," she responded.</p> +<p>"Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," +Charlie drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any +tentative advances. The women put on lots of side, they say. If +they want to hunt us up and cultivate you, all right. But I've got +too much to do to butt into society. Anyway, I didn't want to run +up against any critical females looking like I do right now."</p> +<p>Stella smiled.</p> +<p>"Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this +country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and +be-yutiful sister?"</p> +<p>"He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie +retorted. "Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't +mine—not yet. Here, you take the wheel a minute. I want to +smoke. I don't suppose you ever helmed a forty-footer, but you'll +never learn younger."</p> +<p>She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In +twenty minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the +south had a fair sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the +roughened surface was spotted with whitecaps. The <i>Chickamin</i> +would hang on the crest of a wave and shoot forward like a racer, +her wheel humming, and again the roller would run out from under +her, and she would labor heavily in the trough.</p> +<p>It began to grow insufferably hot in the pilot house. The wind +drove with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box +into the forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the +wheel. There were puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to +ply it with fuel. All the sour smells that rose from an unclean +bilge eddied about them. The heat and the smell and the surging +motion began to nauseate Stella.</p> +<p>"I must get outside where I can breathe," she gasped, at length. +"It's suffocating. I don't see how you stand it."</p> +<p>"It does get stuffy in here when we run with the wind," Benton +admitted. "Cuts off our ventilation. I'm used to it. Crawl out the +window and sit on the forward deck. Don't try to get aft. You might +slip off, the way she's lurching."</p> +<p>Curled in the hollow of a faked-down hawser with the clean air +fanning her, Stella recovered herself. The giddiness left her. She +pitied Sam Davis back in that stinking hole beside the fire box. +But she supposed he, like her brother, was "used to it." Apparently +one could get used to anything, if she could judge by the amazing +change in Charlie.</p> +<p>Far ahead loomed a ridge running down to the lake shore and +cutting off in a bold promontory. That was Halfway Point, Charlie +had told her, and under its shadow lay his camp. Without any +previous knowledge of camps, she was approaching this one with less +eager anticipation than when she began her long journey. She began +to fear that it might be totally unlike anything she had been able +to imagine, disagreeably so. Charlie, she decided, had grown hard +and coarsened in the evolution of his ambition to get on, to make +his pile. She was but four years younger than he, and she had +always thought of herself as being older and wiser and steadier. +She had conceived the idea that her presence would have a good +influence on him, that they would pull together—now that +there were but the two of them. But four hours in his company had +dispelled that illusion. She had the wit to perceive that Charlie +Benton had emerged from the chrysalis stage, that he had the will +and the ability to mold his life after his elected fashion, and +that her coming was a relatively unimportant incident.</p> +<p>In due course the <i>Chickamin</i> bore in under Halfway Point, +opened out a sheltered bight where the watery commotion outside +raised but a faint ripple, and drew in alongside a float.</p> +<p>The girl swept lake shore, bay, and sloping forest with a +quickening eye. Here was no trim-painted cottage and velvet lawn. +In the waters beside and lining the beach floated innumerable logs, +confined by boomsticks, hundreds of trunks of fir, forty and sixty +feet long, four and six feet across the butt, timber enough, when +it had passed through the sawmills, to build four such towns as +Hopyard. Just back from the shore, amid stumps and littered +branches, rose the roofs of divers buildings. One was long and low. +Hard by it stood another of like type but of lesser dimension. Two +or three mere shanties lifted level with great stumps,—crude, +unpainted buildings. Smoke issued from the pipe of the larger, and +a white-aproned man stood in the doorway.</p> +<p>Somewhere in the screen of woods a whistle shrilled. Benton +looked at his watch.</p> +<p>"We made good time, in spite of the little roll," said he. +"That's the donkey blowing quitting time—six o'clock. Well, +come on up to the shack, Sis. Sam, you get a wheelbarrow and run +those trunks up after supper, will you?"</p> +<p>Away in the banked timber beyond the maples and alder which +Stella now saw masked the bank of a small stream flowing by the +cabins, a faint call rose, long-drawn:</p> +<p>"Tim-ber-r-r-r!"</p> +<p>They moved along a path beaten through fern and clawing +blackberry vine toward the camp, Benton carrying the two grips. A +loud, sharp crack split the stillness; then a mild swishing sound +arose. Hard on the heels of that followed a rending, tearing crash, +a thud that sent tremors through the solid earth under their feet. +The girl started.</p> +<p>"Falling gang dropped a big fir," Charlie laughed. "You'll get +used to that. You'll hear it a good many times a day here."</p> +<p>"Good Heavens, it sounded like the end of the world," she +said.</p> +<p>"Well, you can't fell a stick of timber two hundred feet high +and six or eight feet through without making a pretty considerable +noise," her brother remarked complacently. "I like that sound +myself. Every big tree that goes down means a bunch of money."</p> +<p>He led the way past the mess-house, from the doorway of which +the aproned cook eyed her with frank curiosity, hailing his +employer with nonchalant air, a cigarette resting in one corner of +his mouth. Benton opened the door of the second building. Stella +followed him in.</p> +<p>It had the saving grace of cleanliness—according to +logging-camp standards. But the bareness of it appalled her. There +was a rusty box heater, littered with cigar and cigarette stubs, a +desk fabricated of undressed boards, a homemade chair or two, +sundry boxes standing about. The sole concession to comfort was a +rug of cheap Axminster covering half the floor. The walls were +decorated chiefly with miscellaneous clothing suspended from nails, +a few maps and blue prints tacked up askew. Straight across from +the entering door another stood ajar, and she could see further +vistas of bare board wall, small, dusty window-panes, and a bed +whereon gray blankets were tumbled as they fell when a waking +sleeper cast them aside.</p> +<p>Benton crossed the room and threw open another door.</p> +<p>"Here's a nook I fixed up for you, Stella," he said briskly. "It +isn't very fancy, but it's the best I could do just now."</p> +<p>She followed him in silently. He set her two bags on the floor +and turned to go. Then some impulse moved him to turn back, and he +put both hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently.</p> +<p>"You're home, anyway," he said. "That's something, if it isn't +what you're used to. Try to overlook the crudities. We'll have +supper as soon as you feel like it."</p> +<p>He went out, closing the door behind him.</p> +<p>Miss Estella Benton stood in the middle of the room fighting +against a swift heart-sinking, a terrible depression that strove to +master her.</p> +<p>"Good Lord in Heaven," she muttered at last. "What a place to be +marooned in. It's—it's simply impossible."</p> +<p>Her gaze roved about the room. A square box, neither more nor +less, fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and +unpapered. There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude +closet for clothes in one corner. A duplicate of the +department-store bargain rug in the other room lay on the floor. On +an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a tin washbasin. That +was all.</p> +<p>She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of +sickening rebellion against everything swept over her. To herself +she seemed as irrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the +depths of the dark timber that rose on every hand. And sitting +there she heard at length the voices of men. Looking out through a +window curtained with cheesecloth she saw her brother's logging +gang swing past, stout woodsmen all, big men, tall men, +short-bodied men with thick necks and shoulders, sunburned, all +grimy with the sweat of their labors, carrying themselves with a +free and reckless swing, the doubles in type of that roistering +crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat.</p> +<p>In so far as she had taken note of those who labored with their +hands in the region of her birth, she had seen few like these. The +chauffeur, the footman, the street cleaner, the factory +workers—they were all different. They lacked +something,—perhaps nothing in the way of physical excellence; +but these men betrayed in every movement a subtle difference that +she could not define. Her nearest approximation and the first +attempt she made at analysis was that they looked like pirates. +They were bold men and strong; that was written in their faces and +the swing of them as they walked. And they served the very +excellent purpose of taking her mind off herself for the time +being.</p> +<p>She watched them cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble +their faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously +on towels, sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, +hauling it back and forth in rude play.</p> +<p>All about that cookhouse dooryard spread a confusion of empty +tin cans, gaudily labeled, containers of corn and peas and +tomatoes. Dishwater and refuse, chips, scraps, all the refuse of +the camp was scattered there in unlovely array.</p> +<p>But that made no more than a passing impression upon her. She +was thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer +angles come now and then to the human mind. She wondered why she +should be sufficiently interested in her brother's hired men to +drive off a compelling attack of the blues in consideration of them +as men. Nevertheless, she found herself unable to view them as she +had viewed, say, the clerks in her father's office.</p> +<p>She began to brush her hair and to wonder what sort of food +would be served for supper.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<br> +<h3>A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME</h3> +<p>Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a +table that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth. Chairs there +were none. A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table +furnished seating capacity for twenty men, provided none objected +to an occasional nudging from his neighbor's elbow. The dishes, +different from any she had ever eaten from, were of enormously +thick porcelain, dead white, variously chipped and cracked with +fine seams. But the food, if plain, was of excellent quality, +tastily cooked. She discovered herself with an appetite wholly +independent of silver and cut glass and linen. The tin spoons and +steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without +impairing her ability to satisfy hunger.</p> +<p>They had the dining room to themselves. Through a single shiplap +partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew +loafed in their bunkhouse. The cook served them without any +ceremony, putting everything on the table at once,—soup, +meat, vegetables, a bread pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin +pot. Benton introduced him to his sister. He withdrew hastily to +the kitchen, and they saw no more of him.</p> +<p>"Charlie," the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed +the door behind him, "I don't quite fathom your social customs out +here. Is one supposed to know everybody that one encounters?"</p> +<p>"Just about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in +general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in +this neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be +exclusive,—at least, nobody who lives here any length of +time. You can't tell when you may have to call on your neighbor or +the fellow working for you in a matter of life and death almost. A +man couldn't possibly maintain the same attitude toward a bunch of +loggers working under him that would be considered proper back +where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my case is no +different from any man operating on a moderate scale out here. I'd +get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in the +hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was +done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks +on end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll +working for a man that meets them on an equal footing—why, +they'll go to hell and back again for him. They're as loyal as +soldiers to the flag. They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent +lot, these lumberjacks, and that goes for most everybody knocking +about in this country,—loggers, prospectors, miners, +settlers, and all. If you're what they term 'all right,' you can do +anything, and they'll back you up. If you go to putting on airs and +trying to assert yourself as a superior being, they'll go out of +their way to hand you packages of trouble."</p> +<p>"I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by +circumstances to practice democracy."</p> +<p>"Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on +eating his supper.</p> +<p>"Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, +Charlie?" she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. +"I suppose it suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but +it's bare as a barn."</p> +<p>"It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I +haven't had it to spend on knickknacks."</p> +<p>"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and +curtains and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The +cost wouldn't amount to anything."</p> +<p>Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he +essayed reply.</p> +<p>"Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably +strikes you as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to +pretty soft surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you +wanted whenever you expressed a wish for it. Things that you've +grown into the way of considering necessities <i>are</i> luxuries. +And they're out of the question for us at present. I got a pretty +hard seasoning the first two years I was in this country, and when +I set up this camp it was merely a place to live. I never thought +anything about it as being comfortable or otherwise until you +elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for trimmings. +Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this summer. +I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I make +delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that +million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of +these men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me +with their wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses +that must be met with cash—and I've got all my funds figured +down to nickels. If I get by on this contract, I'll have a few +hundred to squander on house things. Until then, it's the simple +life for us. You can camp for three or four months, can't you, +without finding it completely unbearable?"</p> +<p>"Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the +way things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to +fix up a little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I +didn't know you were practically compelled to live like this as a +matter of economy."</p> +<p>"Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a +place away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but +an inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm +after a bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and +suggested it, you could have spent five or six hundred, and I +wouldn't have missed it. But this contract came my way, and gave me +a chance to clean up three thousand dollars clear profit in four +months. I grabbed it, and I find it's some undertaking. I'm dealing +with a hard business outfit, hard as nails. I might get the banks +or some capitalist to finance me, because my timber holdings are +worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed that when a logger +starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes broke. The +financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to sail +as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get +this timber out—but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for +me to be buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for +their wages till September?"</p> +<p>"I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively +remarked. "Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, +instead of being a drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I +can do. I could keep house—only you haven't any house to +keep, therefore no need of a housekeeper. Why, who's that?"</p> +<p>Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, +outside. She looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression +remained absent, as of one concentrated upon his own problems. She +repeated the question.</p> +<p>"That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. +"Siwash bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing +for us now and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or +something."</p> +<p>Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, +plump-bodied girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she +conformed to none of Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the +aboriginal inhabitant. If she had been pinned down, she would +probably have admitted that she expected to behold an Indian maiden +garbed in beaded buckskin and brass ornaments. Instead, Katy John +wore a white sailor blouse, a brown pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a +bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair.</p> +<p>"Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as +fragments of the girl's speech floated over to her.</p> +<p>"Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?"</p> +<p>"Well—er—I suppose my notion of Indians is rather +vague," Stella admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?"</p> +<p>"Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. +Say, Stell, can you cook?"</p> +<p>"A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's +really pretty, isn't she?"</p> +<p>"They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they +are old and tubby by the time they're thirty."</p> +<p>Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some +sally from the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in +one hand. Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, +and she walked away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with +their backs against the bunkhouse wall.</p> +<p>"Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the +girl vanished in the brush.</p> +<p>"Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and +digging in reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to +get on your apron and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's +about due to go on a tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about +his limit. The first man that comes along with a bottle of whisky, +Matt will get it and quit and head for town. I was wondering if you +and Katy John could keep the gang from starving to death if that +happened. The last time I had to get in and cook for two weeks +myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the cook shanty very +well."</p> +<p>"I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This +seems to be a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing +to get drunk at all times and in public?"</p> +<p>"It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled +tolerantly. "I guess there is no more drinking out here than any +other part of this North American continent. Only a man here gets +drunk openly and riotously without any effort to hide it, and +without it being considered anything but a natural lapse. That's +one thing you'll have to get used to out here, Stell—I mean, +that what vices men have are all on the surface. We don't get drunk +secretly at the club and sneak home in a taxi. Oh, well, we'll +cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not break out for +weeks."</p> +<p>He yawned openly.</p> +<p>"Sleepy?" Stella inquired.</p> +<p>"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And +I can go to sleep any time after supper."</p> +<p>"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said +abruptly.</p> +<p>"All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though."</p> +<p>She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and +found herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved +uneasily, still dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly +gale. At her feet surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. +Far through the woods behind her the wind whistled and hummed among +swaying tops of giant fir and cedar. There was a heady freshness in +that rollicking wind, an odor resinous and pungent mingled with +that elusive smell of green growing stuff along the shore. +Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in immense brown pillars, +running back in great forest naves, shadowy always, floored with +green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the wood-sprites' feet. +Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a range of +saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and +across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the +water's edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, +their pinnacle crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the +south wind.</p> +<p>Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some +responsive chord in her. If only one could live amid such +surrounding with a contented mind, she thought, the wilderness +would have compensations of its own. She had an uneasy feeling that +isolation from everything that had played an important part in her +life might be the least depressing factor in this new existence. +She could not view the rough and ready standards of the woods with +much equanimity—not as she had that day seen them set forth. +These things were bound to be a part of her daily life, and all the +brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of speech and +thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so far +encountered.</p> +<p>She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not +see how it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must +stay there. She had no friends to go elsewhere, or training in the +harsh business of gaining a livelihood if she did go. For the first +time she began dully to resent the manner of her upbringing. Once +she had desired to enter hospital training, had been properly +enthusiastic for a period of months over a career in this field of +mercy. Then, as now, marriage, while accepted as the ultimate +state, was only to be considered through a haze of idealism and +romanticism. She cherished certain ideals of a possible lover and +husband, but always with a false sense of shame. The really serious +business of a woman's life was the one thing to which she made no +attempt to apply practical consideration. But her parents had had +positive ideas on that subject, even if they were not openly +expressed. Her yearnings after a useful "career" were skilfully +discouraged,—by her mother because that worthy lady thought +it was "scarcely the thing, Stella dear, and so unnecessary"; by +her father because, as he bluntly put it, it would only be a waste +of time and money, since the chances were she would get married +before she was half through training, and anyway a girl's place was +at home till she did get married. That was his only reference to +the subject of her ultimate disposition that she could recall, but +it was plain enough as far as it went.</p> +<p>It was too late to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she +did wish there was some one thing she could do and do well, some +service of value that would guarantee self-support. If she could +only pound a typewriter or keep a set of books, or even make a +passable attempt at sewing, she would have felt vastly more at ease +in this rude logging camp, knowing that she could leave it if she +desired.</p> +<p>So far as she could see things, she looked at them with +measurable clearness, without any vain illusions concerning her +ability to march triumphant over unknown fields of endeavor. Along +practical lines she had everything to learn. Culture furnishes an +excellent pair of wings wherewith to soar in skies of abstraction, +but is a poor vehicle to carry one over rough roads. She might have +remained in Philadelphia, a guest among friends. Pride forbade +that. Incidentally, such an arrangement would have enabled her to +stalk a husband, a moneyed husband, which did not occur to her at +all. There remained only to join Charlie. If his fortunes mended, +well and good. Perhaps she could even help in minor ways.</p> +<p>But it was all so radically different—brother and +all—from what she had pictured that she was filled with +dismay and not a little foreboding of the future. Sufficient, +however, unto the day was the evil thereof, she told herself at +last, and tried to make that assurance work a change of heart. She +was very lonely and depressed and full of a futile wish that she +were a man.</p> +<p>Over across the bay some one was playing an accordeon, and to +its strains a stout-lunged lumberjack was roaring out a song, with +all his fellows joining strong in the chorus:</p> +<div class="ind">"Oh, the Saginaw Kid was a cook in a camp, way up +on the Ocon-to-o-o.<br> +And the cook in a camp in them old days had a damn hard row to +hoe-i-oh!<br> +Had a damn hard row to hoe."</div> +<br> +<p>There was a fine, rollicking air to it. The careless note in +their voices, the jovial lilt of their song, made her envious. They +at least had their destiny, limited as it might be and cast along +rude ways, largely under their own control.</p> +<p>Her wandering gaze at length came to rest on a tent top showing +in the brush northward from the camp. She saw two canoes drawn up +on the beach above the lash of the waves, two small figures playing +on the gravel, and sundry dogs prowling alongshore. Smoke went +eddying away in the wind. The Siwash camp where Katy John hailed +from, Miss Benton supposed.</p> +<p>She had an impulse to skirt the bay and view the Indian camp at +closer range, a notion born of curiosity. She debated this +casually, and just as she was about to rise, her movement was +arrested by a faint crackle in the woods behind. She looked away +through the deepening shadow among the trees and saw nothing at +first. But the sound was repeated at odd intervals. She sat still. +Thoughts of forest animals slipped into her mind, without making +her afraid. At last she caught sight of a man striding through the +timber, soundlessly on the thick moss, coming almost straight +toward her.</p> +<p>He was scarcely fifty yards away. Across his shoulders he bore a +reddish-gray burden, and in his right hand was a gun. She did not +move. Bowed slightly under the weight, the man passed within twenty +feet of her, so close that she could see the sweat-beads glisten on +that side of his face, and saw also that the load he carried was +the carcass of a deer.</p> +<p>Gaining the beach and laying the animal across a boulder, he +straightened himself up and drew a long breath. Then he wiped the +sweat off his face. She recognized him as the man who had thrown +the logger down the slip that day at noon,—presumably Jack +Fyfe. A sturdily built man about thirty, of Saxon fairness, with a +tinge of red in his hair and a liberal display of freckles across +nose and cheek bones. He was no beauty, she decided, albeit he +displayed a frank and pleasing countenance. That he was a +remarkably strong and active man she had seen for herself, and if +the firm round of his jaw counted for anything, an individual of +considerable determination besides. Miss Benton conceived herself +to be possessed of considerable skill at character analysis.</p> +<p>He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his +hat, and strode off toward the camp. Her attention now diverted +from the Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother's +quarters, stand in the door a minute, then go back to the beach +accompanied by Charlie.</p> +<p>In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his +deer aboard, and pulled away north along the shore.</p> +<p>She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a +point, rowing with strong, even strokes. Then she walked home. +Benton was poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil +and paper when she entered.</p> +<p>"You had a visitor, I see," she remarked.</p> +<p>"Yes, Jack Fyfe. He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here +and borrowed a boat to get home."</p> +<p>"I saw him come out of the woods," she said. "His camp can't be +far from here, is it? He only left the Springs as you came in. Does +he hunt deer for sport?"</p> +<p>"Hardly. Oh, well, I suppose it's sport for Jack, in a way. He's +always piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod," +Benton returned. "But we kill 'em to eat mostly. It's good meat and +cheap. I get one myself now and then. However, you want to keep +that under your hat—about us fellows hunting—or we'll +have game wardens nosing around here."</p> +<p>"Are you not allowed to hunt them?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Not in close season. Hunting season's from September to +December."</p> +<p>"If it's unlawful, why break the law?" she ventured +hesitatingly. "Isn't that rather—er—"</p> +<p>"Oh, bosh," Charlie derided. "A man in the woods is entitled to +venison, if he's hunter enough to get it. The woods are full of +deer, and a few more or less don't matter. We can't run forty miles +to town and back and pay famine prices for beef every two or three +days, when we can get it at home in the woods."</p> +<p>Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that +this mild sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men +and the environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no +mechanism of law and order visible anywhere. The characteristic +attitude of these woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of +complete self-sufficiency. It had colored her brother's point of +view. She perceived that whereas all her instinct was to know the +rules of the game and abide by them, he, taking his cue from his +environment, inclined to break rules that proved inconvenient, even +to formulate new ones to apply.</p> +<p>"And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or +Mr. Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?"</p> +<p>"We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told +her. "But they don't catch us."</p> +<p>He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, +proceeded to smoke.</p> +<p>Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons +gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank +arose the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and +still, was riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in +evening flight swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk +in the bunkhouse had died. The woods ranged gloomy and +impenetrable, save only in the northwest, where a patch of sky +lighted by diffused pink and gray revealed one mountain higher than +its fellows standing bald against the horizon.</p> +<p>"Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. +"Pleasant dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the +bank roll. You won't have much use for money up here, anyway."</p> +<p>He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his +bedroom. Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount +Douglas a few minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like +room, the bare discomfort of which chilled her merely to +behold.</p> +<p>With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the +proceeding almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a +little time she stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red +lips. Then she flung it contemptuously on the bed and began to take +down her hair.</p> +<p>"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be +finicky about anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of +Charlie Benton's letters. "It would appear to be rather +unpleasantly true. Particularly the last clause."</p> +<p>In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, +there now reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER</h3> +<p>Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the +cook, roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging +on a piece of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella +heard her brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his +sprightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a +confirmed lie-abed. She herself responded none too quickly to the +breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed +away to the day's work, her brother striding in the lead, when she +entered the mess-house.</p> +<p>She killed time with partial success till noon. Several times +she was startled to momentary attention by the prolonged series of +sharp cracks which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. +There were other sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in +the near-by forest,—the ringing whine of saw blades, the dull +stroke of the axe, voices calling distantly.</p> +<p>She tried to interest herself in the camp and the beach and +ended up by sitting on a log in a shady spot, staring dreamily over +the lake. She thought impatiently of that homely saw concerning +Satan and idle hands, but she reflected also that in this isolation +even mischief was comparatively impossible. There was not a soul to +hold speech with except the cook, and he was too busy to talk, even +if he had not been afflicted with a painful degree of diffidence +when she addressed him. She could make no effort at settling down, +at arranging things in what was to be her home. There was nothing +to arrange, no odds and ends wherewith almost any woman can conjure +up a homelike effect in the barest sort of place. She beheld the +noon return of the crew much as a shipwrecked castaway on a desert +shore might behold a rescuing sail, and she told Charlie that she +intended to go into the woods that afternoon and watch them +work.</p> +<p>"All right," said he. "Just so you don't get in the way of a +falling tree."</p> +<p>A narrow fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp +from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine +was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off +on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent. gradient +ran a curious roadway, made by placing two logs in the hollow +scooped by tearing great timbers over the soft earth, and a bigger +log on each side. Butt to butt and side to side, the outer sticks +half their thickness above the inner, they formed a continuous +trough the bottom and sides worn smooth with friction of sliding +timbers. Stella had crossed it the previous evening and wondered +what it was. Now, watching them at work, she saw. Also she saw why +the great stumps that rose in every clearing in this land of +massive trees were sawed six and eight feet above the ground. +Always at the base the firs swelled sharply. Wherefore the falling +gangs lifted themselves above the enlargement to make their +cut.</p> +<p>Two sawyers attacked a tree. First, with their double-bitted +axes, each drove a deep notch into the sapwood just wide enough to +take the end of a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a +single grab-nail in the end,—the springboard of the Pacific +coast logger, whose daily business lies among the biggest timber on +God's footstool. Each then clambered up on his precarious perch, +took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, and cut in to a depth +of a foot or more, according to the size of the tree. Then jointly +they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was the undercut +complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would fall. +That done, they swung the ends of their springboards, or if it were +a thick trunk, made new holding notches on the other side, and the +long saw would eat steadily through the heart of the tree toward +that yellow, gashed undercut, stroke upon stroke, ringing with a +thin, metallic twang. Presently there would arise an ominous +cracking. High in the air the tall crest would dip slowly, as if it +bowed with manifest reluctance to the inevitable. The sawyers would +drop lightly from their springboards, crying:</p> +<p>"Tim-ber-r-r-r!"</p> +<p>The earthward swoop of the upper boughs would hasten till the +air was full of a whistling, whishing sound. Then came the rending +crash as the great tree smashed prone, crushing what small timber +stood in its path, followed by the earth-quivering shock of its +impact with the soil. The tree once down, the fallers went on to +another. Immediately the swampers fell upon the prone trunk with +axes, denuding it of limbs; the buckers followed them to saw it +into lengths decreed by the boss logger. When the job was done, the +brown fir was no longer a stately tree but saw-logs, each with the +square butt that lay donkeyward, trimmed a trifle rounding with the +axe.</p> +<p>Benton worked one falling gang. The falling gang raced to keep +ahead of the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep +ahead of the hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last +trio moved the logs from woods to water, once they were down and +trimmed. Terrible, devastating forces of destruction they seemed to +Stella Benton, wholly unused as she was to any woodland save the +well-kept parks and little areas of groomed forest in her native +State. All about in the ravaged woods lay the big logs, scores of +them. They had only begun to pull with the donkey a week earlier, +Benton explained to her. With his size gang he could not keep a +donkey engine working steadily. So they had felled and trimmed to a +good start, and now the falling crew and the swampers and buckers +were in a dingdong contest to see how long they could keep ahead of +the puffing Seattle yarder.</p> +<p>Stella sat on a stump, watching. Over an area of many acres the +ground was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent +and broken younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their +fall. Huge stumps upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, +massive butts. From all the ravaged wood rose a pungent smell of +pitch and sap, a resinous, pleasant smell. Radiating like the +spokes of a wheel from the head of the chute ran deep, raw gashes +in the earth, where the donkey had hauled up the Brobdingnagian +logs on the end of an inch cable.</p> +<p>"This is no small boy's play, is it, Stell?" Charlie said to her +once in passing.</p> +<p>And she agreed that it was not. Agreed more emphatically and +with half-awed wonder when she saw the donkey puff and quiver on +its anchor cable, as the hauling line spooled up on the drum. On +the outer end of that line snaked a sixty-foot stick, five feet +across the butt, but it came down to the chute head, brushing earth +and brush and small trees aside as if they were naught. Once the +big log caromed against a stump. The rearward end flipped ten feet +in the air and thirty feet sidewise. But it came clear and slid +with incredible swiftness to the head of the chute, flinging aside +showers of dirt and small stones, and leaving one more deep furrow +in the forest floor. Benton trotted behind it. Once it came to rest +well in the chute, he unhooked the line, freed the choker (the +short noosed loop of cable that slips over the log's end), and the +haul-back cable hurried the main line back to another log. Benton +followed, and again the donkey shuddered on its foundation skids +till another log laid in the chute, with its end butted against +that which lay before. One log after another was hauled down till +half a dozen rested there, elongated peas in a wooden pod.</p> +<p>Then a last big stick came with a rush, bunted these others +powerfully so that they began to slide with the momentum thus +imparted, slowly at first then, gathering way and speed, they shot +down to the lake and plunged to the water over the ten-foot +jump-off like a school of breaching whales.</p> +<p>All this took time, vastly more time than it takes in the +telling. The logs were ponderous masses. They had to be maneuvered +sometimes between stumps and standing timber, jerked this way and +that to bring them into the clear. By four o'clock Benton and his +rigging-slinger had just finished bunting their second batch of +logs down the chute. Stella watched these Titanic labors with a +growing interest and a dawning vision of why these men walked the +earth with that reckless swing of their shoulders. For they were +palpably masters in their environment. They strove with woodsy +giants and laid them low. Amid constant dangers they sweated at a +task that shamed the seven labors of Hercules. Gladiators they were +in a contest from which they did not always emerge victorious.</p> +<p>When Benton and his helper followed the haul-back line away to +the domain of the falling gang the last time, Stella had so far +unbent as to strike up conversation with the donkey engineer. That +greasy individual finished stoking his fire box and replied to her +first comment.</p> +<p>"Work? You bet," said he. "It's real graft, this is. I got the +easy end of it, and mine's no snap. I miss a signal, big stick +butts against something solid; biff! goes the line and maybe cuts a +man plumb in two. You got to be wide awake when you run a loggin' +donkey. These woods is no place for a man, anyway, if he ain't spry +both in his head and feet."</p> +<p>"Do many men get hurt logging?" Stella asked. "It looks awfully +dangerous, with these big trees falling and smashing everything. +Look at that. Goodness!"</p> +<p>From the donkey they could see a shower of ragged splinters and +broken limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar +that stood in the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the +pieces strike against brush and trees like the patter of shot on a +tin wall.</p> +<p>The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough.</p> +<p>"Them flyin' chunks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. +"Oh, yes, now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you +got to take a chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb +drops on you, or you get in the way of a breakin' +line,—though a man ain't got any business in the bight of a +line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a inch 'n' a +quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller on Howe +Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's the +worst, though. That generally gets the riggin' slinger, but a piece +of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks +the haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a +snatch block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an +angle to get a log out the way you want. Suppose the block breaks +when I'm givin' it to her? Chunks uh that broken cast iron'll fly +like bullets. Yes, sir, broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you +noticed the boys used the snatch block two or three times this +afternoon? We've been lucky in this camp all spring. Nobody so much +as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks in the gear don't come very +often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class shape. We got good +gear an' a good crew—about as <i>skookum</i> a bunch as I +ever saw in the woods."</p> +<p>Two hundred yards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stump and +semaphored with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to +his levers; the main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. +Another signal, and he shut off. Another signal, after a brief +wait, and the drum rolled faster, the line tautened like a +fiddle-string, and the ponderous machine vibrated with the strain +of its effort.</p> +<p>Suddenly the line came slack. Stella, watching for the log to +appear, saw her brother leap backward off the stump, saw the cable +whip sidewise, mowing down a clump of saplings that stood in the +bight of the line, before the engineer could cut off the power. In +that return of comparative silence there rose above the sibilant +hiss of the blow-off valve a sudden commotion of voices.</p> +<p>"Damn!" the donkey engineer peered over the brush. "That don't +sound good. I guess somebody got it in the neck."</p> +<p>Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running.</p> +<p>"What's up?" the engineer called as they passed on a dog +trot.</p> +<p>"Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. "Piece of it +near took a leg off Jim Renfrew."</p> +<p>Stella stood a moment, hesitating.</p> +<p>"I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said.</p> +<p>"Better not," the engineer warned. "Liable to run into something +that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken +block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. +They'll bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get +him to a doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do +nothin'."</p> +<p>Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working +with Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when +Benton introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone +trotting after the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some +sally of her brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he +should lie mangled and bleeding among the green forest growth, +while his fellows hurried for a stretcher.</p> +<p>Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood +giving signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. +Renfrew lay on his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted +beside him, twisting a silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above +the wound. His hands and Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground +was smeared with blood. Stella looked over his shoulder. The +overalls were cut away. In the thick of the man's thigh stood a +ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. She drew back.</p> +<p>Benton looked up.</p> +<p>"Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can +be done."</p> +<p>She retreated a little and sat down on a root, half-sickened. +The other two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work +done, and rolled a cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off +to one side she saw the fallers climb up on their springboards. +Presently arose the ringing whine of the thin steel blade, the +chuck of axes where the swampers attacked a fallen tree. No matter, +she thought, that injury came to one, that death might hover near, +the work went on apace, like action on a battlefield.</p> +<p>A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis +returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. +They laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a +blanket. Then four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella +heard one say to her brother:</p> +<p>"Matt's jagged."</p> +<p>"What?" Benton exploded. "Where'd it come from?"</p> +<p>"One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters's in camp," the +logger answered. "Maybe he brought a bottle. I didn't stop to see. +But Matt's sure got a tank full."</p> +<p>Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away +down the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden +uneasiness at the wrathful set of his features. She barely kept in +sight, so rapidly did he move.</p> +<p>Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the <i>Chickamin's</i> stack, +but the kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to +five o'clock. Benton made straight for the cookhouse. Stella +followed, a trifle uncertainly. A glimpse past Charlie as he came +out showed her Matt staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, +red-eyed, scowling, muttering to himself. Benton hurried to the +bunkhouse door, much as a hound might follow a scent, peered in, +and went on to the corner.</p> +<p>On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook's +intoxication. A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his +haunches, gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a <i>klootchman</i> and +a wizen-featured old Siwash. The Indian woman was drunk beyond any +mistaking, affably drunk. She looked up at Benton out of vacuous +eyes, grinned, and extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim +gin. The logger rose to his feet.</p> +<p>"H'lo, Benton," he greeted thickly. "How's every-thin'?"</p> +<p>Benton's answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab +of his clenched fist. The blow stretched the logger on his back, +with blood streaming from both nostrils. But he was a hardy +customer, for he bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored +even more viciously before he was well set on his feet. This time +Benton snarled a curse and kicked him as he lay.</p> +<p>"Charlie, Charlie!" Stella screamed.</p> +<p>If he heard her, he gave no heed.</p> +<p>"Hit the trail, you," he shouted at the logger. "Hit it quick +before I tramp your damned face into the ground. I told you once +not to come around here feeding booze to my cook. I do all the +whisky-drinking that's done in this camp, and don't you forget it. +Damn your eyes, I've got troubles enough without whisky."</p> +<p>The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand +to his bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float.</p> +<p>"G'wan home," Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes. "Get drunk at +your own camp, not in mine. <i>Sabe?</i> Beat it."</p> +<p>They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat +<i>klootch</i> along her uncertain way. Down on the lake the +chastised logger stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to +shake a fist at Benton. Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and +outraged sister.</p> +<p>"Good Heavens!" she burst out. "Is it necessary to be so +downright brutal in actions as well as speech?"</p> +<p>"I'm running a logging camp, not a kindergarten," he snapped +angrily. "I know what I'm doing. If you don't like it, go in the +house where your hyper-sensitive tastes won't be offended."</p> +<p>"Thank you," she responded cuttingly and swung about, angry and +hurt—only to have a fresh scare from the drunken cook, who +came reeling forward.</p> +<p>"I'm gonna quit," he loudly declared. "I ain't goin' to stick +'round here no more. The job's no good. I want m' time. Yuh hear +me, Benton. I'm through. Com-pletely, ab-sho-lutely through. You +bet I am. Gimme m' time. I'm a gone goose."</p> +<p>"Quit, then, hang you," Benton growled. "You'll get your check +in a minute. You're a fine excuse for a cook, all right—get +drunk right on the job. You don't need to show up here again, when +you've had your jag out."</p> +<p>"'S all right," Matt declared largely. "'S other jobs. You ain't +the whole Pacific coast. Oh, way down 'pon the Swa-a-nee +ribber—"</p> +<p>He broke into dolorous song and turned back into the cookhouse. +Benton's hard-set face relaxed. He laughed shortly.</p> +<p>"Takes all kinds to make a world," he commented. "Don't look so +horrified, Sis. This isn't the regular order of events. It's just +an accumulation—and it sort of got me going. Here's the +boys."</p> +<p>The four stretcher men set down their burden in the shade of the +bunkhouse. Renfrew was conscious now.</p> +<p>"Tough luck, Jim," Benton sympathized. "Does it pain much?"</p> +<p>Renfrew shook his head. White and weakened from shock and loss +of blood, nevertheless he bravely disclaimed pain.</p> +<p>"We'll get you fixed up at the Springs," Benton went on. "It's a +nasty slash in the meat, but I don't think the bone was touched. +You'll be on deck before long. I'll see you through, anyway."</p> +<p>They gave him a drink of water and filled his pipe, joking him +about easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. +The drunken cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began +maudlin sympathy, and was promptly squelched, whereupon he +retreated to the float, emitting conversation to the world at +large. Then they carried Renfrew down to the float, and Davis began +to haul up the anchor to lay the <i>Chickamin</i> alongside.</p> +<p>While the chain was still chattering in the hawse pipe, the +squat black hull of Jack Fyfe's tender rounded the nearest +point.</p> +<p>"Whistle him up, Sam," Benton ordered. "Jack can beat our time, +and this bleeding must be stopped quick."</p> +<p>The tender veered in from her course at the signal. Fyfe himself +was at the wheel. Five minutes effected a complete arrangement, and +the <i>Panther</i> drew off with the drunken cook singing atop of +the pilot house, and Renfrew comfortable in her cabin, and Jack +Fyfe's promise to see him properly installed and attended in the +local hospital at Roaring Springs.</p> +<p>Benton heaved a sigh of relief and turned to his sister.</p> +<p>"Still mad, Stell?" he asked placatingly and put his arm over +her shoulders.</p> +<p>"Of course not," she responded instantly to this kindlier phase. +"Ugh! Your hands are all bloody, Charlie."</p> +<p>"That's so, but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a +good woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be +worse. Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and +lend me a hand in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no +matter what happens."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL</h3> +<p>By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, +Stella took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a +unit in the human mechanism which he operated skilfully and +relentlessly at top speed to achieve his desired end—one +million feet of timber in boomsticks by September the first.</p> +<p>From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a +drunken cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her +shoulders. For a week Benton daily expected and spoke of the +arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had wired a Vancouver employment agency +to send one, the day he took Jim Renfrew down. But either cooks +were scarce, or the order went astray, for no rough and ready +kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime ceased to look for +one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself, unsparing of +others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen fire, roused +Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to his day in +the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait on the +table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella certain +simple tricks of cooking that she did not know.</p> +<p>Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever +she set her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as +the days passed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left +the job to her as a matter of course.</p> +<p>"You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he +said to her at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your +time. I'd have to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws +twenty-five. You can credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay +off when the contract money comes in. We might as well keep the +coin in the family. I'll feel easier, because you won't get drunk +and jump the job in a pinch. What do you say?"</p> +<p>She said the only possible thing to say under the circumstances. +But she did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of +gratitude. It was hard work, and she and hard work were utter +strangers. Her feet ached from continual standing on them. The heat +and the smell of stewing meat and vegetables sickened her. Her +hands were growing rough and red from dabbling in water, punching +bread dough, handling the varied articles of food that go to make +up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung continually certain +small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a hot range +inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to hang +heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a +precious boon.</p> +<p>Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her +brother. She saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage +behind. She perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to +have her wishes readily gratified was not an inherent +right—that some one must foot the bill—that now for all +she received she must return equitable value. At home she had never +thought of it in that light; in fact, she had never thought of it +at all. Now that she was beginning to get a glimmering of her true +economic relation to the world at large, she had no wish to emulate +the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have secured a +continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her +fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was +therefore a certain personal satisfaction to have achieved +self-support at a stroke, insofar as that in the sweat of her +brow,—all too literally,—she earned her bread and a +compensation besides. But there were times when that solace seemed +scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the endless +routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and +irritations it brought upon her.</p> +<p>For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is +no mean undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the +conveniences of a hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in +buckets from the creek near by, and wood brought in armfuls from +the pile of sawn blocks outside. The low-roofed kitchen shanty was +always like an oven. The flies swarmed in their tens of thousands. +As the men sweated with axe and saw in the woods, so she sweated in +the kitchen. And her work began two hours before their day's labor, +and continued two hours after they were done. She slept, like one +exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of bodily soreness +and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its din in the +cool morning.</p> +<p>"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said +to her one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her +English. "You wasn't cut out for a cook."</p> +<p>"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple +drudgery. I don't wonder that men cooks take to drink."</p> +<p>Katy laughed.</p> +<p>"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. +"He'd like to give you a better job than thees—for life. My, +but it must be nice to have lots of money like that man's got, and +never have to work."</p> +<p>"You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite +so much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply.</p> +<p>There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. +Paul Abbey had grown into the habit of coming there rather more +often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that +he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, +although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his +coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself +was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a +fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly +self-contained young person, whose speech during the hour of her +stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With no hint of +condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to arouse in +Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable pongee +silk, simple and costly, and <i>her</i> hands had evidently never +known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton +straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her +reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul +did not bring Linda again.</p> +<p>But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. +Charlie was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which +offended and irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to +Paul Abbey. He was a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he +might be a concentration of all the manly virtues, but he gave no +fillip to either her imagination or her emotions. He was too much +like a certain type of young fellow she had known in other +embodiments. Her instinct warned her that stripped of his worldly +goods he would be wholly commonplace. She could be friends with the +Paul Abbey kind of man, but when she tried to consider him as a +possible lover, she found herself unresponsive, even amused. She +was forced to consider it, because Abbey was fast approaching that +stage. It was heralded in the look of dumb appeal that she +frequently surprised in his gaze, by various signs and tokens, that +Stella Benton was too sophisticated to mistake. One of these days +he would lay his heart, and hand at her feet.</p> +<p>Sometimes she considered what her life might be if she should +marry him. Abbey was wealthy in his own right and heir to more +wealth. But—she could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. +Some fateful hour love would flash across her horizon, a living +flame. She could visualize the tragedy if it should be too late, if +it found her already bound—sold for a mess of pottage at her +ease. She did not mince words to herself when she reflected on this +matter. She knew herself as a creature of passionate impulses, +consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that men and women +did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted no shackles, +she wanted to be free to face the great adventure when it came.</p> +<p>Yet there were times during the weeks that flitted past when it +seemed to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than +that daily slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent +conceptions of love and marriage were vain details by comparison +with aching feet and sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the +smart of sweat on her face, all the never-ending trifles that so +irritated her. She had been spoiled in the making for so sordid an +existence. Sometimes she would sit amid the array of dishes and +pans and cooking food and wonder if she really were the same being +whose life had been made up of books and music, of teas and dinners +and plays, of light, inconsequential chatter with genial, +well-dressed folk. There was no one to talk to here and less time +to talk. There was nothing to read except a batch of newspapers +filtering into camp once a week or ten days. There was not much in +this monster stretch of giant timber but heat and dirt and flies +and hungry men who must be fed.</p> +<p>If Paul Abbey had chanced to ask her to marry him during a +period of such bodily and spiritual rebellion, she would probably +have committed herself to that means of escape in sheer +desperation. For she did not harden to the work; it steadily sapped +both her strength and patience. But he chose an ill time for his +declaration. Stella had overtaken her work and snared a fleeting +hour of idleness in mid-afternoon of a hot day in early August. +Under a branchy alder at the cook-house-end she piled all the +pillows she could commandeer in their quarters and curled herself +upon them at grateful ease. Like a tired animal, she gave herself +up to the pleasure of physical relaxation, staring at a perfect +turquoise sky through the whispering leaves above. She was not even +thinking. She was too tired to think, and for the time being too +much at peace to permit thought that would, in the very nature of +things, be disturbing.</p> +<p>Abbey maintained for his own pleasure a fast motorboat. He slid +now into the bay unheard, tied up beside the float, walked to the +kitchen, glanced in, then around the corner, and smilingly took a +seat on the grass near her.</p> +<p>"It's too perfect a day to loaf in the shade," he observed, +after a brief exchange of commonplaces. "Won't you come out for a +little spin on the lake? A ride in the <i>Wolf</i> will put some +color in your cheeks."</p> +<p>"If I had time," she said, "I would. But loggers must eat though +the heavens fall. In about twenty minutes I'll have to start +supper. I'll have color enough, goodness knows once I get over that +stove."</p> +<p>Abbey picked nervously at a blade of grass for a minute.</p> +<p>"This is a regular dog's life for you," he broke out +suddenly.</p> +<p>"Oh, hardly that," she protested. "It's a little hard on me +because I haven't been used to it, that's all."</p> +<p>"It's Chinaman's work," he said hotly. "Charlie oughtn't to let +you stew in that kitchen."</p> +<p>Stella said nothing; she was not moved to the defence of her +brother. She was loyal enough to her blood, but not so intensely +loyal that she could defend him against criticism that struck a +responsive chord in her own mind. She was beginning to see that, +being useful, Charlie was making use of her. His horizon had +narrowed to logs that might be transmuted into money. Enslaved +himself by his engrossing purposes, he thought nothing of enslaving +others to serve his end. She had come to a definite conclusion +about that, and she meant to collect her wages when he sold his +logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had coolly +appropriated, and try a different outlet. If one must work, one +might at least seek work a little to one's taste. She therefore +dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly:</p> +<p>"Some one has to do it."</p> +<p>A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He +looked at her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in +his expression gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been +that peculiar psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are +pleased to call intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was +coming and would have forestalled it by rising. He prevented that +move by catching her hands.</p> +<p>"Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death +to see you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. +Won't you marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end +good chums."</p> +<p>She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of +amusement, Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all +flustered at his own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle +precipitate. That was not the sort of wooing to carry her off her +feet. For that matter she was quite sure nothing Paul Abbey could +do or say would ever stir her pulses. She had to put an end to the +situation, however. She took refuge in a flippant manner.</p> +<p>"Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really +I couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that +offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could +resign the job of chef, would you?"</p> +<p>"Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively.</p> +<p>"Not that way," she answered positively.</p> +<p>"You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy +about you. I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't +want any greater privilege than to marry you and take you away from +this sort of thing. You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of +sudden, but I know my own mind. Can't you take a chance with +me?"</p> +<p>"I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. +"It isn't a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I +haven't got any feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I +married you, it would only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm +not made that way. Can't you see how impossible it would be?"</p> +<p>"You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the +next man."</p> +<p>His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again.</p> +<p>"That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said +he. "But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you +could like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good +to you."</p> +<p>"I daresay you would," she said quietly. "But I couldn't be good +to you. I don't want to marry you, Mr. Abbey. That's final. All the +feeling I have for you isn't enough for any woman to marry on."</p> +<p>"Maybe not," he said dolefully. "I suppose that's the way it +goes. Hang it, I guess I was a little too sudden. But I'm a stayer. +Maybe you'll change your mind some time."</p> +<p>He was standing very near her, and they were both so intent upon +the momentous business that occupied them that neither noticed +Charlie Benton until his hail startled them to attention.</p> +<p>"Hello, folks," he greeted and passed on into the cook shanty, +bestowing upon Stella, over Abbey's shoulder, a comprehensive grin +which nettled her exceedingly. Her peaceful hour had been disturbed +to no purpose. She did not want to love or be loved. For the moment +she felt old beyond her years, mature beyond the comprehension of +any man. If she had voiced her real attitude toward Paul Abbey, she +would have counseled him to run and play, "like a good little +boy."</p> +<p>Instead she remarked: "I must get to work," and left her +downcast suitor without further ceremony.</p> +<p>As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat +himself upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom. +He was presently joined by her brother. Glancing out, now and then, +she made a guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled +slightly. She saw them walk down to Abbey's launch, and Charlie +delivered an encouraging slap on Paul's shoulder as he embarked. +Then the speedy craft tore out of the bay at a headlong gait, her +motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust, wide wings of white spray +arching off her flaring bows.</p> +<p>"The desperate recklessness of thwarted +affection—fiddlesticks!" Miss Benton observed in sardonic +mood. Her hands were deep in pie dough. She thumped it viciously. +The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it rasped at her +nerves again.</p> +<p>Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin +box where such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a +corner of the table, eying her critically while he munched.</p> +<p>"So you turned Paul down, eh?" he said at last. "You're the +prize chump. You've missed the best chance you'll ever have to put +yourself on Easy Street."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<br> +<h3>SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE</h3> +<p>For a week thereafter Benton developed moods of sourness, +periods of scowling thought. He tried to speed up his gang, and +having all spring driven them at top speed, the added straw broke +the back of their patience, and Stella heard some sharp +interchanges of words. He quelled one incipient mutiny through +sheer dominance, but it left him more short of temper, more +crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his ill-nature broke out +against Stella over some trifle, and she—being herself an +aggrieved party to his transactions—surprised her own sense +of the fitness of things by retaliating in kind.</p> +<p>"I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at +work I despise, and you can't even speak decently to me," she +flared up. "You act like a perfect brute lately. What's the matter +with you?"</p> +<p>Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence.</p> +<p>"Hang it, I guess you're right," he admitted at last. "But I +can't help having a grouch. I'm going to fall behind on this +contract, the best I can do."</p> +<p>"Well," she replied tartly. "I'm not to blame for that. I'm not +responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me?"</p> +<p>"I don't, particularly," he answered. "Only—can't you +<i>sabe</i>? A man gets on edge when he works and sweats for months +and sees it all about to come to nothing."</p> +<p>"So does a woman," she made pointed retort.</p> +<p>Benton chose to ignore the inference.</p> +<p>"If I fall down on this, it'll just about finish me," he +continued glumly. "These people are not going to allow me an inch +leeway. I'll have to deliver on that contract to the last +stipulated splinter before they'll pay over a dollar. If I don't +have a million feet for 'em three weeks from to-day, it's all off, +and maybe a suit for breach of contract besides. That's the sort +they are. If they can wiggle out of taking my logs, they'll be to +the good, because they've made other contracts down the coast at +fifty cents a thousand less. And the aggravating thing about it is +that if I could get by with this deal, I can close a +five-million-foot contract with the Abbey-Monohan outfit, for +delivery next spring. I must have the money for this before I can +undertake the bigger contract."</p> +<p>"Can't you sell your logs if these other people won't take +them?" she asked, somewhat alive now to his position—and, +incidentally, her own interest therein.</p> +<p>"In time, yes," he said. "But when you go into the open market +with logs, you don't always find a buyer right off the reel. I'd +have to hire 'em towed from here to Vancouver, and there's some bad +water to get over. Time is money to me right now, Stell. If the +thing dragged over two or three months, by the time they were sold +and all expenses paid, I might not have anything left. I'm in debt +for supplies, behind in wages. When it looks like a man's losing, +everybody jumps him. That's business. I may have my outfit seized +and sold up if I fall down on this delivery and fail to square up +accounts right away. Damn it, if you hadn't given Paul Abbey the +cold turn-down, I might have got a boost over this hill. You were +certainly a chump."</p> +<p>"I'm not a mere pawn in your game yet," she flared hotly. "I +suppose you'd trade me for logs enough to complete your contract +and consider it a good bargain."</p> +<p>"Oh, piffle," he answered coolly. "What's the use talking like +that. It's your game as much as mine. Where do you get off, if I go +broke? You might have done a heap worse. Paul's a good head. A girl +that hasn't anything but her looks to get through the world on +hasn't any business overlooking a bet like that. Nine girls out of +ten marry for what there is in it, anyhow."</p> +<p>"Thank you," she replied angrily. "I'm not in the market on that +basis."</p> +<p>"All this stuff about ideal love and soul communion and perfect +mating is pure bunk, it seems to me," Charlie tacked off on a new +course of thought. "A man and a woman somewhere near of an age +generally hit it off all right, if they've got common horse +sense—and income enough so they don't have to squabble +eternally about where the next new hat and suit's coming from. It's +the coin that counts most of all. It sure is, Sis. It's me that +knows it, right now."</p> +<p>He sat a minute or two longer, again preoccupied with his +problems.</p> +<p>"Well," he said at last, "I've got to get action somehow. If I +could get about thirty men and another donkey for three weeks, I'd +make it."</p> +<p>He went outside. Up in the near woods the whine of the saws and +the sounds of chopping kept measured beat. It was late in the +forenoon, and Stella was hard about her dinner preparations. +Contract or no contract, money or no money, men must eat. That fact +loomed biggest on her daily schedule, left her no room to think +overlong of other things. Her huff over, she felt rather sorry for +Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him humped on a log in +the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normally +was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, working harder than +any of his men.</p> +<p>A little later she saw him put off from the float in the +<i>Chickamin's</i> dinghy. When the crew came to dinner, he had not +returned. Nor was he back when they went out again at one.</p> +<p>Near mid-afternoon, however, he strode into the kitchen, wearing +the look of a conqueror.</p> +<p>"I've got it fixed," he announced.</p> +<p>Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was +stirring in a pan.</p> +<p>"Got what fixed?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Why, this log business," he said. "Jack Fyfe is going to put in +a crew and a donkey, and we're going to everlastingly rip the +innards out of these woods. I'll make delivery after all."</p> +<p>"That's good," she remarked, but noticeably without enthusiasm. +The heat of that low-roofed shanty had taken all possible +enthusiasm for anything out of her for the time being. Always +toward the close of each day she was gripped by that feeling of +deadly fatigue, in the face of which nothing much mattered but to +get through the last hours somehow and drag herself wearily to +bed.</p> +<p>Benton playfully tweaked Katy John's ear and went whistling up +the trail. It was plain sailing for him now, and he was +correspondingly elated.</p> +<p>He tried to talk to Stella that evening when she was through, +all about big things in the future, big contracts he could get, big +money he could see his way to make. It fell mostly on +unappreciative ears. She was tired, so tired that his egotistical +chatter irritated her beyond measure. What she would have welcomed +with heartfelt gratitude was not so much a prospect of future +affluence in which she might or might not share as a lightening of +her present burden. So far as his conversation ran, Benton's sole +concern seemed to be more equipment, more men, so that he might get +out more logs. In the midst of this optimistic talk, Stella walked +abruptly into her room.</p> +<p>Noon of the next day brought the <i>Panther</i> coughing into +the bay, flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a +twin to the iron monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. +To starboard was made fast a like scow. That was housed over, a +smoking stovepipe stuck through the roof, and a capped and aproned +cook rested his arms on the window sill as they floated in. Men to +the number of twenty or more clustered about both scows and the +<i>Panther's</i> deck, busy with pipe and cigarette and rude jest. +The clatter of their voices uprose through the noon meal. But when +the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the beach, the chaff +and laughter died into silent, capable action.</p> +<p>"A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a +tree," Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own +machine.</p> +<p>It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at +work. Steam was up in the donkey. They carried a line from its drum +through a snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs +crosswise before the scow in a matter of minutes. Then the same +cable was made fast to a sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the +ponderous machine slid forward on its own skids, like an up-ended +barrel on a sled, down off the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, +branches, dead roots, all that stood in its path, drawing steadily +up to the anchor tree as the cable spooled up on the drum.</p> +<p>A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore +the loose end away up the path. Presently one stood clear, waving a +signal. Again the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began +to roll up on the drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope +under its own power, a locomotive unneedful of rails, making its +own right of way. Upon the platform built over the skids were piled +the tools of the crew, sawed blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, +grindstones, all that was necessary in their task. At one o'clock +they made their first move. At two the donkey was vanished into +that region where the chute-head lay, and the great firs stood +waiting the slaughter.</p> +<p>By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in +the logs that came hurtling lakeward. Now at shorter intervals +arose the grinding sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as +each leaped to the water. It was a good thing, she +surmised—for Charlie Benton. She could not see where it made +much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a hundred came +down to the boomsticks.</p> +<p>Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic +visits to the camp of her kindred around the point. Bred out of +doors, of a tribe whose immemorial custom it is that the women do +all the work, the Siwash girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as +bovine in temperament and movements. She could lift with ease a +weight that taxed Stella's strength, and Stella Benton was no +weakling, either. It was therefore a part of Katy's routine to keep +water pails filled from the creek and the wood box supplied, in +addition to washing dishes and carrying food to the table. Katy +slighted these various tasks occasionally. She needed oversight, +continual admonition, to get any job done in time. She was slow to +the point of exasperation. Nevertheless, she lightened the day's +labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or +assume the entire burden herself. This time Katy thoughtlessly left +with both water pails empty.</p> +<p>Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow +darkened the door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe.</p> +<p>"How d' do," he greeted.</p> +<p>He had seemed a short man. Now, standing within four feet of +her, she perceived that this was an illusion created by the +proportion and thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head +taller than she, and Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met +hers squarely, with a cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was +neither smirk nor embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He +was, in effect, "sizing her up" just as he would have looked +casually over a logger asking him for a job. Stella sensed that, +and resenting it momentarily, failed to match his manner. She +flushed. Fyfe smiled, a broad, friendly grin, in which a wide mouth +opened to show strong, even teeth.</p> +<p>"I'm after a drink," he said quite impersonally, and coolly +taking the pails out of her hands, walked through the kitchen and +down to the creek. He was back in a minute, set the filled buckets +in their place, and helped himself with a dipper.</p> +<p>"Say," he asked easily, "how do you like life in a logging camp +by this time? This is sure one hot job you've got."</p> +<p>"Literally or slangily?" she asked in a flippant tone. Fyfe's +reputation, rather vividly colored, had reached her from various +sources. She was not quite sure whether she cared to countenance +him or not. There was a disturbing quality in his glance, a subtle +suggestion of force about him that she felt without being able to +define in understandable terms. In any case she felt more than +equal to the task of squelching any effort at familiarity, even if +Jack Fyfe were, in a sense, the convenient god in her brother's +machine. Fyfe chuckled at her answer.</p> +<p>"Both," he replied shortly and went out.</p> +<p>She saw him a little later out on the bay in the +<i>Panther's</i> dink, standing up in the little boat, making long, +graceful casts with a pliant rod. She perceived that this manner of +fishing was highly successful, insomuch as at every fourth or fifth +cast a trout struck his fly, breaking water with a vigorous splash. +Then the bamboo would arch as the fish struggled, making sundry +leaps clear of the water, gleaming like silver each time he broke +the surface, but coming at last tamely to Jack Fyfe's landing net. +Of outdoor sports she knew most about angling, for her father had +been an ardent fly-caster. And she had observed with a true +angler's scorn the efforts of her brother's loggers to catch the +lake trout with a baited hook, at which they had scant success. +Charlie never fished. He had neither time nor inclination for such +fooling, as he termed it. Fyfe stopped fishing when the donkeys +whistled six. It happened that when he drew in to his cookhouse +float, Stella was standing in her kitchen door. Fyfe looked up at +her and held aloft a dozen trout strung by the gills on a stick, +gleaming in the sun.</p> +<p>"Vanity," she commented inaudibly. "I wonder if he thinks I've +been admiring his skill as a fisherman?"</p> +<p>Nevertheless she paid tribute to his skill when ten minutes +later he sent a logger with the entire catch to her kitchen. They +looked toothsome, those lakers, and they were. She cooked one for +her own supper and relished it as a change from the everlasting +bacon and ham. In the face of that million feet of timber, Benton +hunted no deer. True, the Siwashes had once or twice brought in +some venison. That, with a roast or two of beef from town, was all +the fresh meat she had tasted in two months. There were enough +trout to make a breakfast for the crew. She ate hers and mentally +thanked Jack Fyfe.</p> +<p>Lying in her bed that night, in the short interval that came +between undressing and wearied sleep, she found herself wondering +with a good deal more interest about Jack Fyfe than she had ever +bestowed upon—well, Paul Abbey, for instance.</p> +<p>She was quite positive that she was going to dislike Jack Fyfe +if he were thrown much in her way. There was something about him +that she resented. The difference between him and the rest of the +rude crew among which she must perforce live was a question of +degree, not of kind. There was certainly some compelling magnetism +about the man. But along with it went what she considered an almost +brutal directness of speech and action. Part of this conclusion +came from hearsay, part from observation, limited though her +opportunities had been for the latter. Miss Stella Benton, for all +her poise, was not above jumping at conclusions. There was +something about Jack Fyfe that she resented. She irritably +dismissed it as a foolish impression, but the fact remained that +the mere physical nearness of him seemed to put her on the +defensive, as if he were in reality a hunter and she the +hunted.</p> +<p>Fyfe joined Charlie Benton about the time she finished work. The +three of them sat on the grass before Benton's quarters, and every +time Jack Fyfe's eyes rested on her she steeled herself to +resist—what, she did not know. Something intangible, +something that disturbed her. She had never experienced anything +like that before; it tantalized her, roused her curiosity. There +was nothing occult about the man. He was nowise fascinating, either +in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the +half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about +him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from +her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to +comparing him with other men she knew.</p> +<p>She had, in a way, unconsciously been prepared for just such a +measure of concentration upon Jack Fyfe. For he was a power on +Roaring Lake, and power,—physical, intellectual or +financial,—exacts its own tribute of consideration. He was a +fighter, a dominant, hard-bitten woodsman, so the tale ran. He had +gathered about him the toughest crew on the Lake, himself, upon +occasion, the most turbulent of all. He controlled many square +miles of big timber, and he had gotten it all by his own effort in +the eight years since he came to Roaring Lake as a hand logger. He +was slow of speech, chain-lightning in action, respected generally, +feared a lot. All these things her brother and Katy John had +sketched for Stella with much verbal embellishment.</p> +<p>There was no ignoring such a man. Brought into close contact +with the man himself, Stella felt the radiating force of his +personality. There it was, a thing to be reckoned with. She felt +that whenever Jack Fyfe's gray eyes rested impersonally on her. His +pleasant, freckled face hovered before her until she fell asleep, +and in her sleep she dreamed again of him throwing that drunken +logger down the Hot Springs slip.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<br> +<h3>DURANCE VILE</h3> +<p>By September first a growing uneasiness hardened into +distasteful certainty upon Stella. It had become her firm resolve +to get what money was due her when Charlie marketed his logs and +try another field of labor. That camp on Roaring Lake was becoming +a nightmare to her. She had no inherent dislike for work. She was +too vibrantly alive to be lazy. But she had had an overdose of +unaccustomed drudgery, and she was growing desperate. If there had +been anything to keep her mind from continual dwelling on the +manifold disagreeableness she had to cope with, she might have felt +differently, but there was not. She ate, slept, worked,—ate, +slept, and worked again,—till every fibre of her being cried +out in protest against the deadening round. She was like a flower +striving to attain its destiny of bloom in soil overrun with rank +weeds. Loneliness and hard, mean work, day after day, in which all +that had ever seemed desirable in life had neither place nor +consideration, were twin evils of isolation and flesh-wearying +labor, from which she felt that she must get away, or go mad.</p> +<p>But she did not go. Benton left to make his delivery to the mill +company, the great boom of logs gliding slowly along in the wake of +a tug, the <i>Chickamin</i> in attendance. Benton's crew +accompanied the boom. Fyfe's gang loaded their donkey and gear +aboard the scow and went home. The bay lay all deserted, the woods +silent. For the first time in three months she had all her hours +free, only her own wants to satisfy. Katy John spent most of her +time in the smoky camp of her people. Stella loafed. For two days +she did nothing, gave herself up to a physical torpor she had never +known before. She did not want to read, to walk about, or even lift +her eyes to the bold mountains that loomed massive across the lake. +It was enough to lie curled among pillows under the alder and stare +drowsily at the blue September sky, half aware of the drone of a +breeze in the firs, the flutter of birds' wings, and the lap of +water on the beach.</p> +<p>Presently, however, the old restless energy revived. The spring +came back to her step and she shed that lethargy like a cast-off +garment. And in so doing her spirit rose in hot rebellion against +being a prisoner to deadening drudgery, against being shut away +from all the teeming life that throve and trafficked beyond the +solitude in which she sat immured. When Charlie came back, there +was going to be a change. She repeated that to herself with +determination. Between whiles she rambled about in the littered +clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and then far +outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of plans. +So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but she +viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling +which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's +camp. She had passed through what she termed a culinary inferno. +Nothing, she considered, could be beyond her after that unremitting +drudgery.</p> +<p>But Benton failed to come back on the appointed day. The four +days lengthened to a week. Then the <i>Panther</i>, bound up-lake, +stopped to leave a brief note from Charlie, telling her business +had called him to Vancouver.</p> +<p>Altogether it was ten days before the <i>Chickamin</i> whistled +up the bay. She slid in beside the float, her decks bristling with +men like a passenger craft. Stella, so thoroughly sated with +loneliness that she temporarily forgot her grievances, flew to meet +her brother. But one fair glimpse of the disembarking crew turned +her back. They were all in varying stages of liquor—from two +or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the +bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under +the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly +antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he +himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of +spirits—speaking truly in the double sense.</p> +<p>"Hello, lady," he hailed jovially. "How did you fare all by your +lonesome this long time? I didn't figure to be gone so long, but +there was a lot to attend to. How are you, anyway?"</p> +<p>"All right," she answered coolly. "You evidently celebrated your +log delivery in the accepted fashion."</p> +<p>"Don't you believe it," he grinned amiably. "I had a few drinks +with the boys on the way up, that's all. No, sir, it was straight +business with a capital B all the time I was gone. I've got a good +thing in hand, Sis—big money in sight. Tell you about it +later. Think you and Katy can rustle grub for this bunch by +six?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I suppose so," she said shortly. It was on the tip of her +tongue to tell him then and there that she was through,—like +Matt, the cook, that memorable afternoon, "completely an' +ab-sho-lutely through." She refrained. There was no use in being +truculent. But that drunken crowd looked formidable in numbers.</p> +<p>"How many extra?" she asked mechanically.</p> +<p>"Thirty men, all told," Benton returned briskly. "I tell you I'm +sure going to rip the heart out of this limit before spring. I've +signed up a six-million-foot contract for delivery as soon as the +logs'll go over Roaring Rapids in the spring. Remember what I told +you when you came? You stick with me, and you'll wear diamonds. I +stand to clean up twenty thousand on the winter's work."</p> +<p>"In that case, you should be able to hire a real cook," she +suggested, a spice of malice in her tone.</p> +<p>"I sure will, when it begins to come right," he promised +largely. "And I'll give you a soft job keeping books then. Well, +I'll lend you a hand for to-night. Where's the Siwash maiden?"</p> +<p>"Over at the camp; there she comes now," Stella replied. "Will +you start a fire, Charlie, while I change my dress?"</p> +<p>"You look like a peach in that thing." He stood off a pace to +admire. "You're some dame, Stell, when you get on your glad +rags."</p> +<p>She frowned at her image in the glass behind the closed door of +her room as she set about unfastening the linen dress she had worn +that afternoon. Deep in her trunk, along with much other unused +finery, it had reposed all summer. That ingrained instinct to be +admired, to be garbed fittingly and well, came back to her as soon +as she was rested. And though there were none but squirrels and +bluejays and occasionally Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, +it had pleased her for a week to wear her best, and wander about +the beaches and among the dusky trunks of giant fir, a picture of +blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She took off the dress and threw +it on the bed with a resentful rush of feeling. The treadmill gaped +for her again. But not for long. She was through with that. She was +glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He could not call on her +to help him out of a hole now. She would tell him her decision +to-night. And as soon as he could get a cook to fill her place, +then good-by to Roaring Lake, good-by to kitchen smells and flies +and sixteen hours a day over a hot stove.</p> +<p>She wondered why such a loathing of the work afflicted her; if +all who earned their bread in the sweat of their brow were ridden +with that feeling,—woodsmen, cooks, chauffeurs, the slaves of +personal service and the great industrial mills alike? Her heart +went out to them if they were. But she was quite sure that work +could be otherwise than repellent, enslaving. She recalled that +cooks and maids had worked in her father's house with no sign of +the revolt that now assailed her. But it seemed to her that their +tasks had been light compared with the job of cooking in Charlie +Benton's camp.</p> +<p>Curiously enough, while she changed her clothes, her thoughts a +jumble of present things she disliked and the unknown that she +would have to face alone in Vancouver, she found her mind turning +on Jack Fyfe. During his three weeks' stay, they had progressed +less in the direction of acquaintances than she and Paul Abbey had +done in two meetings. Fyfe talked to her now and then briefly, but +he looked at her more than he talked. Where his searching gaze +disturbed, his speech soothed, it was so coolly impersonal. That, +she deemed, was merely another of his odd contradictions. He was +contradictory. Stella classified Jack Fyfe as a creature of +unrestrained passions. She recognized, or thought she recognized, +certain dominant, primitive characteristics, and they did not +excite her admiration. Men admired him—those who were not +afraid of him. If he had been of more polished clay, she could +readily have grasped this attitude. But in her eyes he was merely a +rude, masterful man, uncommonly gifted with physical strength, +dominating other rude, strong men by sheer brute force. And she +herself rather despised sheer brute force. The iron hand should +fitly be concealed beneath the velvet glove.</p> +<p>Yet in spite of the bold look in his eyes that always confused +and irritated her, Fyfe had never singled her out for the slightest +attention of the kind any man bestows upon an attractive woman. +Stella was no fool. She knew that she was attractive, and she knew +why. She had been prepared to repulse, and there had been nothing +to repulse. Once during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, +hailed her from the beach, and gone away without disembarking when +she told him Benton was not back. He was something of an enigma, +she confessed to herself, after all. Perhaps that was why he came +so frequently into her mind. Or perhaps, she told herself, there +was so little on Roaring Lake to think about that one could not +escape the personal element. As if any one ever could. As if life +were made up of anything but the impinging of one personality upon +another. That was something Miss Stella Benton had yet to learn. +She was still mired in the rampant egotism of untried youth, as yet +the sublime individualist.</p> +<p>That side of her suffered a distinct shock later in the evening. +When supper was over, the work done, and the loggers' celebration +was slowly subsiding in the bunkhouse, she told Charlie with blunt +directness what she wanted to do. With equally blunt directness he +declared that he would not permit it. Stella's teeth came together +with an angry little click.</p> +<p>"I'm of age, Charlie," she said to him. "It isn't for you to say +what you will or will not <i>permit</i> me to do. I want that money +of mine that you used—and what I've earned. God knows I +<i>have</i> earned it. I can't stand this work, and I don't intend +to. It isn't work; it's slavery."</p> +<p>"But what can you do in town?" he countered. "You haven't the +least idea what you'd be going up against, Stell. You've never been +away from home, and you've never had the least training at anything +useful. You'd be on your uppers in no time at all. You wouldn't +have a ghost of a chance."</p> +<p>"I have such a splendid chance here," she retorted ironically. +"If I could get in any position where I'd be more likely to die of +sheer stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this +forsaken hole, I'd like to know how. I don't think it's +possible."</p> +<p>"You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it," +Benton returned grumpily. "If you haven't got any sense about +things, I have. I know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other +seaport town is for a girl alone. I won't let you make any foolish +break like that. That's flat."</p> +<p>From this position she failed to budge him. Once angered, partly +by her expressed intention and partly by the outspoken protest +against the mountain of work imposed on her, Charlie refused +point-blank to give her either the ninety dollars he had taken out +of her purse or the three months' wages due. Having made her +request, and having met with this—to her—amazing +refusal, Stella sat dumb. There was too fine a streak in her to +break out in recrimination. She was too proud to cry.</p> +<p>So that she went to bed in a ferment of helpless rage. Virtually +she was a prisoner, as much so as if Charlie had kidnaped her and +held her so by brute force. The economic restraint was all potent. +Without money she could not even leave the camp. And when she +contemplated the daily treadmill before her, she shuddered.</p> +<p>At least she could go on strike. Her round cheek flushed with +the bitterest anger she had ever known, she sat with eyes burning +into the dark of her sordid room, and vowed that the thirty loggers +should die of slow starvation if they did not eat until she cooked +another meal for them.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<br> +<h3>JACK FYFE'S CAMP</h3> +<p>She was still hot with the spirit of mutiny when morning came, +but she cooked breakfast. It was not in her to act like a petulant +child. Morning also brought a different aspect to things, for +Charlie told her while he helped prepare breakfast that he was +going to take his crew and repay in labor the help Jack Fyfe had +given him.</p> +<p>"While we're there, Jack's cook will feed all hands," said he. +"And by the time we're through there, I'll have things fixed so it +won't be such hard going for you here. Do you want to go along to +Jack's camp?"</p> +<p>"No," she answered shortly. "I don't. I would much prefer to get +away from this lake altogether, as I told you last night."</p> +<p>"You might as well forget that notion," he said stubbornly. +"I've got a little pride in the matter. I don't want my sister +drudging at the only kind of work she'd be able to earn a living +at."</p> +<p>"You're perfectly willing to have me drudge here," she flashed +back.</p> +<p>"That's different," he defended. "And it's only temporary. I'll +be making real money before long. You'll get your share if you'll +have a little patience and put your shoulder to the wheel. Lord, +I'm doing the best I can."</p> +<p>"Yes—for yourself," she returned. "You don't seem to +consider that I'm entitled to as much fair play as you'd have to +accord one of your men. I don't want you to hand me an easy living +on a silver salver. All I want of you is what is mine, and the +privilege of using my own judgment. I'm quite capable of taking +care of myself."</p> +<p>If there had been opportunity to enlarge on that theme, they +might have come to another verbal clash. But Benton never lost +sight of his primary object. The getting of breakfast and putting +his men about their work promptly was of more importance to him +than Stella's grievance. So the incipient storm dwindled to a +sullen mood on her part. Breakfast over, Benton loaded men and +tools aboard a scow hitched beside the boat. He repeated his +invitation, and Stella refused, with a sarcastic reflection on the +company she would be compelled to keep there.</p> +<p>The <i>Chickamin</i> with her tow drew off, and she was alone +again.</p> +<p>"Marooned once more," Stella said to herself when the little +steamboat slipped behind the first jutting point. "Oh, if I could +just be a man for a while."</p> +<p>Marooned seemed to her the appropriate term. There were the two +old Siwashes and their dark-skinned brood. But they were little +more to Stella than the insentient boulders that strewed the beach. +She could not talk to them or they to her. Long since she had been +surfeited with Katy John. If there were any primitive virtues in +that dusky maiden they were well buried under the white man's +schooling. Katy's demand upon life was very simple and in marked +contrast to Stella Benton's. Plenty of grub, no work, some cheap +finery, and a man white or red, no matter, to make eyes at. Her +horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission at +Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of Stella's +loneliness.</p> +<p>Nevertheless Stella resigned herself to make the best of it, and +it proved a poor best. She could not detach herself sufficiently +from the sordid realities to lose herself in day-dreaming. There +was not a book in the camp save some ten-cent sensations she found +in the bunkhouse, and these she had exhausted during Charlie's +first absence. The uncommon stillness of the camp oppressed her +more than ever. Even the bluejays and squirrels seemed to sense its +abandonment, seemed to take her as part of the inanimate fixtures, +for they frisked and chattered about with uncommon fearlessness. +The lake lay dead gray, glassy as some great irregular window in +the crust of the earth. Only at rare intervals did sail or smoke +dot its surface, and then far offshore. The woods stood breathless +in the autumn sun. It was like being entombed. And there would be a +long stretch of it, with only a recurrence of that deadly grind of +kitchen work when the loggers came home again.</p> +<p>Some time during the next forenoon she went southerly along the +lake shore on foot without object or destination, merely to satisfy +in some measure the restless craving for action. Colorful turns of +life, the more or less engrossing contact of various personalities, +some new thing to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a +part of her existence ever since she could remember. None of this +touched her now. A dead weight of monotony rode her hard. There was +the furtive wild life of the forest, the light of sun and sky, and +the banked green of the forest that masked the steep granite +slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it indeed, but she could not +satisfy her being with scenic effects alone. She craved, without +being wholly aware of it, or altogether admitting it to herself, +some human distraction in all that majestic solitude.</p> +<p>It was forthcoming. When she returned to camp at two o'clock, +driven in by hunger, Jack Fyfe sat on the doorstep.</p> +<p>"How-de-do. I've come to bring you over to my place," he +announced quite casually.</p> +<p>"Thanks. I've already declined one pressing invitation to that +effect," Stella returned drily. His matter-of-fact assurance rather +nettled her.</p> +<p>"A woman always has the privilege of changing her mind," Fyfe +smiled. "Charlie is going to be at my camp for at least three +weeks. It'll rain soon, and the days'll be pretty gray and dreary +and lonesome. You might as well pack your war-bag and come +along."</p> +<p>She stood uncertainly. Her tongue held ready a blunt refusal, +but she did not utter it; and she did not know why. She did have a +glimpse of the futility of refusing, only she did not admit that +refusal might be of no weight in the matter. With her mind running +indignantly against compulsion, nevertheless her muscles +involuntarily moved to obey. It irritated her further that she +should feel in the least constrained to obey the calmly expressed +wish of this quiet-spoken woodsman. Certain possible phases of a +lengthy sojourn in Jack Fyfe's camp shot across her mind. He seemed +of uncanny perception, for he answered this thought before it was +clearly formed.</p> +<p>"Oh, you'll be properly chaperoned, and you won't have to mix +with the crew," he drawled. "I've got all kinds of room. My boss +logger's wife is up from town for a while. She's a fine, motherly +old party, and she keeps us all in order."</p> +<p>"I haven't had any lunch," she temporized. "Have you?"</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"I rowed over here before twelve. Thought I'd get you back to +camp in time for dinner. You know," he said with a twinkle in his +blue eyes, "a logger never eats anything but a meal. A lunch to us +is a snack that you put in your pocket. I guess we lack tone out +here. We haven't got past the breakfast-dinner-supper stage yet; +too busy making the country fit to live in."</p> +<p>"You have a tremendous job in hand," she observed.</p> +<p>"Oh, maybe," he laughed. "All in the way you look at it. Suits +some of us. Well, if we get to my camp before three, the cook might +feed us. Come on. You'll get to hating yourself if you stay here +alone till Charlie's through."</p> +<p>Why not? Thus she parleyed with herself, one half of her minded +to stand upon her dignity, the other part of her urging +acquiescence in his wish that was almost a command. She was tempted +to refuse just to see what he would do, but she reconsidered that. +Without any logical foundation for the feeling, she was shy of +pitting her will against Jack Fyfe's. Hitherto quite sure of +herself, schooled in self-possession, it was a new and disturbing +experience to come in contact with that subtle, analysis-defying +quality which carries the possessor thereof straight to his or her +goal over all opposition, which indeed many times stifles all +opposition. Force of character, overmastering personality, +emanation of sheer will, she could not say in what terms it should +be described. Whatever it was, Jack Fyfe had it. It existed, a +factor to be reckoned with when one dealt with him. For within +twenty minutes she had packed a suitcase full of clothes and was +embarked in his rowboat.</p> +<p>He sent the lightly built craft easily through the water with +regular, effortless strokes. Stella sat in the stern, facing him. +Out past the north horn of the bay, she broke the silence that had +fallen between them.</p> +<p>"Why did you make a point of coming for me?" she asked +bluntly.</p> +<p>Fyfe rested on his oars a moment, looking at her in his direct, +unembarrassed way.</p> +<p>"I wintered once on the Stickine," he said. "My partner pulled +out before Christmas and never came back. It was the first time I'd +ever been alone in my life. I wasn't a much older hand in the +country than you are. Four months without hearing the sound of a +human voice. Stark alone. I got so I talked to myself out loud +before spring. So I thought—well, I thought I'd come and +bring you over to see Mrs. Howe."</p> +<p>Stella sat gazing at the slow moving panorama of the lake shore, +her chin in her hand.</p> +<p>"Thank you," she said at last, and very gently.</p> +<p>Fyfe looked at her a minute or more, a queer, half-amused +expression creeping into his eyes.</p> +<p>"Well," he said finally, "I might as well tell the whole truth. +I've been thinking about you quite a lot lately, Miss Stella +Benton, or I wouldn't have thought about you getting lonesome."</p> +<p>He smiled ever so faintly, a mere movement of the corners of his +mouth, at the pink flush which rose quickly in her cheeks, and then +resumed his steady pull at the oars.</p> +<p>Except for a greater number of board shacks and a larger area of +stump and top-littered waste immediately behind it, Fyfe's +headquarters, outwardly, at least, differed little from her +brother's camp. Jack led her to a long, log structure with a +shingle roof, which from its more substantial appearance she judged +to be his personal domicile. A plump, smiling woman of forty +greeted her on the threshold. Once within, Stella perceived that +there was in fact considerable difference in Mr. Fyfe's habitation. +There was a great stone fireplace, before which big easy-chairs +invited restful lounging. The floor was overlaid with thick rugs +which deadened her footfalls. With no pretense of ornamental +decoration, the room held an air of homely comfort.</p> +<p>"Come in here and lay off your things," Mrs. Howe beamed on her. +"If I'd 'a' known you were livin' so close, we'd have been +acquainted a week ago; though I ain't got rightly settled here +myself. My land, these men are such clams. I never knowed till this +mornin' there was any white woman at this end of the lake besides +myself."</p> +<p>She showed Stella into a bedroom. It boasted an enamel washstand +with taps which yielded hot and cold water, neatly curtained +windows, and a deep-seated Morris chair. Certainly Fyfe's household +accommodation was far superior to Charlie Benton's. Stella expected +the man's home to be rough and ready like himself, and in a measure +it was, but a comfortable sort of rough and readiness. She took off +her hat and had a critical survey of herself in a mirror, after +which she had just time to brush her hair before answering Mrs. +Howe's call to a "cup of tea."</p> +<p>The cup of tea resolved itself into a well-cooked and +well-served meal, with china and linen and other unexpected table +accessories which agreeably surprised, her. Inevitably she made +comparisons, somewhat tinctured with natural envy. If Charlie would +fix his place with a few such household luxuries, life in their +camp would be more nearly bearable, despite the long hours of +disagreeable work. As it was—well, the unrelieved discomforts +were beginning to warp her out-look on everything.</p> +<p>Fyfe maintained his habitual sparsity of words while they ate +the food Mrs. Howe brought on a tray hot from the cook's outlying +domain. When they finished, he rose, took up his hat and helped +himself to a handful of cigars from a box on the fireplace +mantel.</p> +<p>"I guess you'll be able to put in the time, all right," he +remarked. "Make yourself at home. If you take a notion to read, +there's a lot of books and magazines in my room. Mrs. Howe'll show +you."</p> +<p>He walked out. Stella was conscious of a distinct relief when he +was gone. She had somehow experienced a recurrence of that peculiar +feeling of needing to be on her guard, as if there were some +curious, latent antagonism between them. She puzzled over that a +little. She had never felt that way about Paul Abbey, for instance, +or indeed toward any man she had ever known. Fyfe's more or less +ambiguous remark in the boat had helped to arouse it again. His +manner of saying that he had "thought a lot about her" conveyed +more than the mere words. She could quite conceive of the Jack Fyfe +type carrying things with a high hand where a woman was concerned. +He had that reputation in all his other dealings. He was +aggressive. He could drink any logger in the big firs off his feet. +He had an uncanny luck at cards. Somehow or other in every +undertaking Jack Fyfe always came out on top, so the tale ran. +There must be, she reasoned, a wide streak of the brute in such a +man. It was no gratification to her vanity to have him admire her. +It did not dawn upon her that so far she had never got over being a +little afraid of him, much less to ask herself why she should be +afraid of him.</p> +<p>But she did not spend much time puzzling over Jack Fyfe. Once +out of her sight she forgot him. It was balm to her lonely soul to +have some one of her own sex for company. What Mrs. Howe lacked in +the higher culture she made up in homely perception and unassuming +kindliness. Her husband was Fyfe's foreman. She herself was not a +permanent fixture in the camp. They had a cottage at Roaring +Springs, where she spent most of the time, so that their three +children could be in school.</p> +<p>"I was up here all through vacation," she told Stella. "But +Lefty he got to howlin' about bein' left alone shortly after school +started again, so I got my sister to look after the kids for a +spell, while I stay. I'll be goin' down about the time Mr. Benton's +through here."</p> +<p>Stella eventually went out to take a look around the camp. A +hard-beaten path led off toward where rose the distant sounds of +logging work, the ponderous crash of trees, and the puff of the +donkeys. She followed that a little way and presently came to a +knoll some three hundred yards above the beach. There she paused to +look and wonder curiously.</p> +<p>For the crest of this little hillock had been cleared and graded +level and planted to grass over an area four hundred feet square. +It was trimmed like a lawn, and in the center of this vivid green +block stood an unfinished house foundation of gray stone. No stick +of timber, no board or any material for further building lay in +sight. The thing stood as if that were to be all. And it was not a +new undertaking temporarily delayed. There was moss creeping over +the thick stone wall, she discovered when she walked over it. +Whoever had laid that foundation had done it many a moon before. +Yet the sward about was kept as if a gardener had it in charge.</p> +<p>A noble stretch of lake and mountain spread out before her gaze. +Straight across the lake two deep clefts in the eastern range +opened on the water, five miles apart. She could see the white +ribbon of foaming cascades in each. Between lifted a great +mountain, and on the lakeward slope of this stood a terrible scar +of a slide, yellow and brown, rising two thousand feet from the +shore. A vaporous wisp of cloud hung along the top of the slide, +and above this aërial banner a snow-capped pinnacle thrust +itself high into the infinite blue.</p> +<p>"What an outlook," she said, barely conscious that she spoke +aloud. "Why do these people build their houses in the bush, when +they could live in the open and have something like this to look +at. They would, if they had any sense of beauty."</p> +<p>"Sure they haven't? Some of them might have, you know, without +being able to gratify it."</p> +<p>She started, to find Jack Fyfe almost at her elbow, the gleam of +a quizzical smile lighting his face.</p> +<p>"I daresay that might be true," she admitted.</p> +<p>Fyfe's gaze turned from her to the huge sweep of lake and +mountain chain. She saw that he was outfitted for fishing, creel on +his shoulder, unjointed rod in one hand. By means of his +rubber-soled waders he had come upon her noiselessly.</p> +<p>"It's truer than you think, maybe," he said at length. "You +don't want to come along and take a lesson in catching rainbows, I +suppose?"</p> +<p>"Not this time, thanks," she shook her head.</p> +<p>"I want to get enough for supper, so I'd better be at it," he +remarked. "Sometimes they come pretty slow. If you should want to +go up and watch the boys work, that trail will take you there."</p> +<p>He went off across the grassy level and plunged into the deep +timber that rose like a wall beyond. Stella looked after.</p> +<p>"It is certainly odd," she reflected with some irritation, "how +that man affects me. I don't think a woman could ever be just +friends with him. She'd either like him a lot or dislike him +intensely. He isn't anything but a logger, and yet he has a +presence like one of the lords of creation. Funny."</p> +<p>Then she went back to the house to converse upon domestic +matters with Mrs. Howe until the shrilling of the donkey whistle +brought forty-odd lumberjacks swinging down the trail.</p> +<p>Behind them a little way came Jack Fyfe with sagging creel. He +did not stop to exhibit his catch, but half an hour later they were +served hot and crisp at the table in the big living room, where +Fyfe, Stella and Charlie Benton, Lefty Howe and his wife, sat down +together.</p> +<p>A flunkey from the camp kitchen served the meal and cleared it +away. For an hour or two after that the three men sat about in +shirt-sleeved ease, puffing at Jack Fyfe's cigars. Then Benton +excused himself and went to bed. When Howe and his wife retired, +Stella did likewise. The long twilight had dwindled to a misty +patch of light sky in the northwest, and she fell asleep more at +ease than she had been for weeks. Sitting in Jack Fyfe's living +room through that evening she had begun to formulate a philosophy +to fit her enforced environment—to live for the day only, and +avoid thought of the future until there loomed on the horizon some +prospect of a future worth thinking about. The present looked +passable enough, she thought, if she kept her mind strictly on it +alone.</p> +<p>And with that idea to guide her, she found the days slide by +smoothly. She got on famously with Mrs. Howe, finding that woman +full of virtues unsuspected in her type. Charlie was in his +element. His prospects looked so rosy that they led him into +egotistic outlines of what he intended to accomplish. To him the +future meant logs in the water, big holdings of timber, a growing +bank account. Beyond that,—what all his concentrated effort +should lead to save more logs and more timber,—he did not +seem to go. Judged by his talk, that was the ultimate, economic +power,—money and more money. More and more as Stella listened +to him, she became aware that he was following in his father's +footsteps; save that he aimed at greater heights and that he worked +by different methods, juggling with natural resources where their +father had merely juggled with prices and tokens of product, their +end was the same—not to create or build up, but to grasp, to +acquire. That was the game. To get and to hold for their own use +and benefit and to look upon men and things, in so far as they were +of use, as pawns in the game.</p> +<p>She wondered sometimes if that were a characteristic of all men, +if that were the big motif in the lives of such men as Paul Abbey +and Jack Fyfe, for instance; if everything else, save the struggle +of getting and keeping money, resolved itself into purely +incidental phases of their existence? For herself she considered +that wealth, or the getting of wealth, was only a means to an +end.</p> +<p>Just what that end might be she found a little vague, rather +hard to define in exact terms. It embraced personal leisure and the +good things of life as a matter of course, a broader existence, a +large-handed generosity toward the less fortunate, an intellectual +elevation entirely unrelated to gross material things. Life, she +told herself pensively, ought to mean something more than ease and +good clothes, but what more she was chary of putting into concrete +form. It hadn't meant much more than that for her, so far. She was +only beginning to recognize the flinty facts of existence. She saw +now that for her there lay open only two paths to food and +clothing: one in which, lacking all training, she must earn her +bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage. That, she would +have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't pick a +husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along +living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. +The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this +question of mating with anything like critical consideration. It +was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her +to so think. Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of +natural human impulses bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither +their source nor their ultimate fruits.</p> +<p>Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she +wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his +brief sentences or slow smile. Latterly her feeling about him, that +involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his +personality, left her. Fyfe seemed to be more or less +self-conscious of her presence as a guest in his house. His manner +toward her remained always casual, as if she were a man, and there +was no question of sex attraction or masculine reaction to it +between them. She liked him better for that; and she did admire his +wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested in his +magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without +caring to fondle the beast.</p> +<p>Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks. Autumn's +gorgeous paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and +alder and birch that lined the lake shore. The fall run of the +salmon was on, and every stream was packed with the silver horde, +threshing through shoal and rapid to reach the spawning ground +before they died. Off every creek mouth and all along the lake the +seal followed to prey on the salmon, and sea-trout and lakers alike +swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon the roe. The days +shortened. Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for hours on end, +and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking the lake +would stand out all freshly robed in white,—a mantle that +crept lower on the fir-clad slopes after each storm. The winds that +whistled off those heights nipped sharply.</p> +<p>Early in October Charlie Benton had squared his neighborly +account with Jack Fyfe. With crew and equipment he moved home, to +begin work anew on his own limit.</p> +<p>Katy John and her people came back from the salmon fishing. Jim +Renfrew, still walking with a pronounced limp, returned from the +hospital. Charlie wheedled Stella into taking up the cookhouse +burden again. Stella consented; in truth she could do nothing else. +Charlie spent a little of his contract profits in piping water to +the kitchen, in a few things to brighten up and make more +comfortable their own quarters.</p> +<p>"Just as soon as I can put another boom over the rapids, Stell," +he promised, "I'll put a cook on the job. I've got to sail a little +close for a while. With this crew I ought to put a million feet in +the water in six weeks. Then I'll be over the hump, and you can +take it easy. But till then—"</p> +<p>"Till then I may as well make myself useful," Stella interrupted +caustically.</p> +<p>"Well, why not?" Benton demanded impatiently. "Nobody around +here works any harder than I do."</p> +<p>And there the matter rested.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> +<br> +<h3>ONE WAY OUT</h3> +<p>That was a winter of big snow. November opened with rain. Day +after day the sun hid his face behind massed, spitting clouds. +Morning, noon, and night the eaves of the shacks dripped steadily, +the gaunt limbs of the hardwoods were a line of coursing drops, and +through all the vast reaches of fir and cedar the patter of rain +kept up a dreary monotone. Whenever the mist that blew like rolling +smoke along the mountains lifted for a brief hour, there, creeping +steadily downward, lay the banked white.</p> +<p>Rain or shine, the work drove on. From the peep of day till dusk +shrouded the woods, Benton's donkey puffed and groaned, axes +thudded, the thin, twanging whine of the saws rose. Log after log +slid down the chute to float behind the boomsticks; and at night +the loggers trooped home, soaked to the skin, to hang their +steaming mackinaws around the bunkhouse stove. When they gathered +in the mess-room they filled it with the odor of sweaty bodies and +profane grumbling about the weather.</p> +<p>Early in December Benton sent out a big boom of logs with a +hired stern-wheeler that was no more than out of Roaring Lake +before the snow came. The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned +to great, moist flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless +night. At daybreak it lay a foot deep and snowing hard. Thenceforth +there was no surcease. The white, feathery stuff piled up and piled +up, hour upon hour and day after day, as if the deluge had come +again. It stood at the cabin eaves before the break came, six feet +on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and +frost,—not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a +nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum +of ice on every patch of still water.</p> +<p>Necessarily, all work ceased. The donkey was a shapeless mound +of white, all the lines and gear buried deep. A man could neither +walk on that yielding mass nor wallow through it. The logging crew +hailed the enforced rest with open relief. Benton grumbled. And +then, with the hours hanging heavy on his hands, he began to spend +more and more of his time in the bunkhouse with the "boys," +particularly in the long evenings.</p> +<p>Stella wondered what pleasure he found in their company, but she +never asked him, nor did she devote very much thought to the +matter. There was but small cessation in her labors, and that only +because six or eight of the men drew their pay and went out. Benton +managed to hold the others against the thaw that might open up the +woods in twenty-four hours, but the smaller size of the gang only +helped a little, and did not assist her mentally at all. All the +old resentment against the indignity of her position rose and +smoldered. To her the days were full enough of things that she was +terribly weary of doing over and over, endlessly. She was always +tired. No matter that she did, in a measure, harden to her work, +grow callously accustomed to rising early and working late. Always +her feet were sore at night, aching intolerably. Hot food, sharp +knives, and a glowing stove played havoc with her hands. Always she +rose in the morning heavy-eyed and stiff-muscled. Youth and natural +vigor alone kept her from breaking down, and to cap the strain of +toil, she was soul-sick with the isolation. For she was isolated; +there was not a human being in the camp, Katy John included, with +whom she exchanged two dozen words a day.</p> +<p>Before the snow put a stop to logging, Jack Fyfe dropped in once +a week or so. When work shut down, he came oftener, but he never +singled Stella out for any particular attention. Once he surprised +her sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table, her face buried +in her palms. She looked up at his quiet entrance, and her face +must have given him his cue. He leaned a little toward her.</p> +<p>"How long do you think you can stand it?" he asked gently.</p> +<p>"God knows," she answered, surprised into speaking the thought +that lay uppermost in her mind, surprised beyond measure that Be +should read that thought.</p> +<p>He stood looking down at her for a second or two. His lips +parted, but he closed them again over whatever rose to his tongue +and passed silently through the dining room and into the bunkhouse, +where Benton had preceded him a matter of ten minutes.</p> +<p>It lacked a week of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men +had gone in the <i>Chickamin</i> to Roaring Springs for supplies. +They had returned in mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new +note of hilarity in the bunkhouse that part of the supplies had +been liquid. This had happened more than once since the big snow +closed in. She remembered Charlie's fury at the logger who started +Matt the cook on his spree, and she wondered at this relaxation, +but it was not in her province, and she made no comment.</p> +<p>Jack Fyfe stayed to supper that evening. Neither he nor Charlie +came back to Benton's quarters when the meal was finished. While +she stacked up the dishes, Katy John observed:</p> +<p>"Goodness sakes, Miss Benton, them fellers was fresh at supper. +They was half-drunk, some of them. I bet they'll be half a dozen +fights before mornin'."</p> +<p>Stella passed that over in silence, with a mental turning up of +her nose. It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It +was a disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. +She kept harking back to it, though, when she was in her own +quarters, and Katy John had vanished for the night into her little +room off the kitchen. Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, +uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse disturbing sounds welled now and then +into the cold, still night,—incoherent snatches of song, +voices uproariously raised, bursts of laughter. Once, as she looked +out the door, thinking she heard footsteps crunching in the snow, +some one rapped out a coarse oath that drove her back with burning +face.</p> +<p>As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to +know in what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance +to this minor riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven +o'clock passed, and still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated +hum of voices.</p> +<p>Suddenly there rose a brief clamor. In the dead silence that +followed, she heard a thud and the clinking smash of breaking +glass, a panted oath, sounds of struggle.</p> +<p>Stella slipped on a pair of her brother's gum boots and an +overcoat, and ran out on the path beaten from their cabin to the +shore. It led past the bunkhouse, and on that side opened two +uncurtained windows, yellow squares that struck gleaming on the +snow. The panes of one were broken now, sharp fragments standing +like saw teeth in the wooden sash.</p> +<p>She stole warily near and looked in. Two men were being held +apart; one by three of his fellows, the other <i>by</i> Jack Fyfe +alone. Fyfe grinned mildly, talking to the men in a quiet, pacific +tone.</p> +<p>"Now you know that was nothing to scrap about," she heard him +say, "You're both full of fighting whisky, but a bunkhouse isn't +any place to fight. Wait till morning. If you've still got it in +your systems, go outside and have it out. But you shouldn't disturb +our game and break up the furniture. Be gentlemen, drunk or sober. +Better shake hands and call it square."</p> +<p>"Aw, let 'em go to it, if they want to."</p> +<p>Charlie's voice, drink-thickened, harsh, came from a earner of +the room into which she could not see until she moved nearer. By +the time she picked him out, Fyfe resumed his seat at the table +where three others and Benton waited with cards in their hands, red +and white chips and money stacked before them.</p> +<p>She knew enough of cards to realize that a stiff poker game was +on the board when she had watched one hand dealt and played. It +angered her, not from any ethical motive, but because of her +brother's part in it. He had no funds to pay a cook's wages, yet he +could afford to lose on one hand as much as he credited her with +for a month's work. She could slave at the kitchen job day in and +day out to save him forty-five dollars a month. He could lose that +without the flicker of an eyelash, but he couldn't pay her wages on +demand. Also she saw that he had imbibed too freely, if the redness +of his face and the glassy fixedness of his eyes could be read +aright.</p> +<p>"Pig!" she muttered. "If that's his idea of pleasure. Oh, well, +why should I care? I don't, so far as he's concerned, if I could +just get away from this beast of a place myself."</p> +<p>Abreast of her a logger came to the broken window with a sack to +bar out the frosty air. And Stella, realizing suddenly that she was +shivering with the cold, ran back to the cabin and got into her +bed.</p> +<p>But she did not sleep, save in uneasy periods of dozing, until +midnight was long past. Then Fyfe and her brother came in, and by +the sounds she gathered that Fyfe was putting Charlie to bed. She +heard his deep, drawly voice urging the unwisdom of sleeping with +calked boots on, and Beaton's hiccupy response. The rest of the +night she slept fitfully, morbidly imagining terrible things. She +was afraid, that was the sum and substance of it. Over in the +bunkhouse the carousal was still at its height. She could not rid +herself of the sight of those two men struggling to be at each +other like wild beasts, the bloody face of the one who had been +struck, the coarse animalism of the whole whisky-saturated gang. It +repelled and disgusted and frightened her.</p> +<p>The night frosts had crept through the single board walls of +Stella's room and made its temperature akin to outdoors when the +alarm wakened her at six in the morning. She shivered as she +dressed. Katy John was blissfully devoid of any responsibility, for +seldom did Katy rise first to light the kitchen fire. Yet Stella +resented less each day's bleak beginning than she did the enforced +necessity of the situation; the fact that she was enduring these +things practically under compulsion was what galled.</p> +<p>A cutting wind struck her icily as she crossed the few steps of +open between cabin and kitchen. Above no cloud floated, no +harbinger of melting rain. The cold stars twinkled over +snow-blurred forest, struck tiny gleams from stumps that were now +white-capped pillars. A night swell from the outside waters beat, +its melancholy dirge on the frozen beach. And, as she always did at +that hushed hour before dawn, she experienced a physical shrinking +from those grim solitudes in which there was nothing warm and human +and kindly, nothing but vastness of space upon which silence lay +like a smothering blanket, in which she, the human atom, was +utterly negligible, a protesting mote in the inexorable wilderness. +She knew this to be merely a state of mind, but situated as she +was, it bore upon her with all the force of reality. She felt like +a prisoner who above all things desired some mode of escape.</p> +<p>A light burned in the kitchen. She thanked her stars that this +bitter cold morning she would not have to build a fire with +freezing fingers while her teeth chattered, and she hurried in to +the warmth heralded by a spark-belching stovepipe. But the Siwash +girl had not risen to the occasion. Instead, Jack Fyfe sat with his +feet on the oven door, a cigar in one corner of his mouth. The +kettle steamed. Her porridge pot bubbled ready for the meal.</p> +<p>"Good morning," he greeted. "Mind my preempting your job?"</p> +<p>"Not at all," she answered. "You can have it for keeps if you +want."</p> +<p>"No, thanks," he smiled. "I'm sour on my own cooking. Had to eat +too much of it in times gone by. I wouldn't be stoking up here +either, only I got frozen out. Charlie's spare bed hasn't enough +blankets for me these cold nights."</p> +<p>He drew his chair aside to be out of the way as she hurried +about her breakfast preparations. All the time she was conscious +that his eyes were on her, and also that in them lurked an +expression of keen interest. His freckled mask of a face gave no +clue to his thoughts; it never did, so far as she had ever +observed. Fyfe had a gambler's immobility of countenance. He +chucked the butt of his cigar in the stove and sat with hands +clasped over one knee for some time after Katy John appeared and +began setting the dining room table with a great clatter of +dishes.</p> +<p>He arose to his feet then. Stella stood beside the stove, frying +bacon. A logger opened the door and walked in. He had been one to +fare ill in the night's hilarity, for a discolored patch encircled +one eye, and his lips were split and badly swollen. He carried a +tin basin.</p> +<p>"Kin I get some hot water?" he asked.</p> +<p>Stella silently indicated the reservoir at one end of the range. +The man ladled his basin full. The fumes of whisky, the unpleasant +odor of his breath offended her, and she drew back. Fyfe looked at +her as the man went out.</p> +<p>"What?" he asked.</p> +<p>She had muttered something, an impatient exclamation of disgust. +The man's appearance disagreeably reminded her of the scene she had +observed through the bunkhouse window. It stung her to think that +her brother was fast putting himself on a par with +them—without their valid excuse of type and training.</p> +<p>"Oh, nothing," she said wearily, and turned to the sputtering +bacon.</p> +<p>Fyfe put his foot up on the stove front and drummed a tattoo on +his mackinaw clad knee.</p> +<p>"Aren't you getting pretty sick of this sort of work, these more +or less uncomfortable surroundings, and the sort of people you have +to come in contact with?" he asked pointedly.</p> +<p>"I am," she returned as bluntly, "but I think that's rather an +impertinent question, Mr. Fyfe."</p> +<p>He passed imperturbably over this reproof, and his glance turned +briefly toward the dining room. Katy John was still noisily at +work.</p> +<p>"You hate it," he said positively. "I know you do. I've seen +your feelings many a time. I don't blame you. It's a rotten +business for a girl with your tastes and bringing up. And I'm +afraid you'll find it worse, if this snow stays long. I know what a +logging camp is when work stops, and whisky creeps in, and the boss +lets go his hold for the time being."</p> +<p>"That may be true," she returned gloomily, "but I don't see why +you should enumerate these disagreeable things for my benefit."</p> +<p>"I'm going to show you a way out," he said softly. "I've been +thinking it over for quite a while. I want you to marry me."</p> +<p>Stella gasped.</p> +<p>"Mr. Fyfe."</p> +<p>"Listen," he said peremptorily, leaning closer to her and +lowering his voice. "I have an idea that you're going to say you +don't love me. Lord, <i>I</i> know that. But you <i>hate</i> this. +It grates against every inclination of yours like a file on steel. +I wouldn't jar on you like that. I wouldn't permit you to live in +surroundings that would. That's the material side of it. Nobody can +live on day dreams. I like you, Stella Benton, a whole lot more +than I'd care to say right out loud. You and I together could make +a home we'd be proud of. I want you, and you want to get away from +this. It's natural. Marry me and play the game fair, and I don't +think you'll be sorry. I'm putting it as baldly as I can. You stand +to win everything with nothing to lose—but your domestic +chains—" the gleam of a smile lit up his features for a +second. "Won't you take a chance?" "No," she declared impulsively. +"I won't be a party to any such cold-blooded transaction."</p> +<p>"You don't seem to understand me," he said soberly. "I don't +want to hand out any sentiment, but it makes me sore to see you +wasting yourself on this sort of thing. If you must do it, why +don't you do it for somebody who'll make it worth while? If you'd +use the brains God gave you, you know that lots of couples have +married on flimsier grounds than we'd have. How can a man and a +woman really know anything about each other till they've lived +together? Just because we don't marry with our heads in the fog is +no reason we shouldn't get on fine. What are you going to do? Stick +here at this till you go crazy? You won't get away. You don't +realize what a one-idea, determined person this brother of yours +is. He has just one object in life, and he'll use everything and +everybody in sight to attain that object. He means to succeed and +he will. You're purely incidental; but he has that perverted, +middle-class family pride that will make him prevent you from +getting out and trying your own wings. Nature never intended a +woman like you to be a celibate, any more than I was so intended. +And sooner or late you'll marry somebody—if only to hop out +of the fire into the frying pan."</p> +<p>"I hate you," she flashed passionately, "when you talk like +that."</p> +<p>"No, you don't," he returned quietly. "You hate what I say, +because it's the truth—and it's humiliating to be helpless. +You think I don't <i>sabe?</i> But I'm putting a weapon into your +hand. Let's put it differently; leave out the sentiment for a +minute. We'll say that I want a housekeeper, preferably an +ornamental one, because I like beautiful things. You want to get +away from this drudgery. That's what it is, simple drudgery. You +crave lots of things you can't get by yourself, but that you could +help me get for you. There's things lacking in your life, and so is +there in mine. Why shouldn't we go partners? You think about +it."</p> +<p>"I don't need to," she answered coolly. "It wouldn't work. You +don't appear to have any idea what it means for a woman to give +herself up body and soul to a man she doesn't care for. For me it +would be plain selling myself. I haven't the least affection for +you personally. I might even detest you."</p> +<p>"You wouldn't," he said positively.</p> +<p>"What makes you so sure of that?" she demanded.</p> +<p>"It would sound conceited if I told you why," he drawled. +"Listen. We're not gods and goddesses, we human beings. We're not, +after all, in our real impulses, so much different from the age +when a man took his club and went after a female that looked good +to him. They mated, and raised their young, and very likely faced +on an average fewer problems than arise in modern marriages +supposedly ordained in Heaven. You'd have the one big problem +solved,—the lack of means to live decently,—which +wrecks more homes than anything else, far more than lack of love. +Affection doesn't seem to thrive on poverty. What is love?"</p> +<p>His voice took on a challenging note.</p> +<p>Stella shook her head. He puzzled her, wholly serious one +minute, a whimsical smile twisting up the corners of his mouth the +next. And he surprised her too by his sureness of utterance on +subjects she had not supposed would enter such a man's mind.</p> +<p>"I don't know," she answered absently, turning over strips of +bacon with the long-handled fork.</p> +<p>"There you are," he said. "I don't know either. We'd start even, +then, for the sake of argument. No, I guess we wouldn't either, +because you're the only woman I've run across so far with whom I +could calmly contemplate spending the rest of my life in close +contact. That's a fact. To me it's a highly important fact. You +don't happen to have any such feeling about me, eh?"</p> +<p>"No. I hadn't even thought of you in that way," Stella answered +truthfully.</p> +<p>"You want to think about me," he said calmly. "You want to think +about me from every possible angle, because I'm going to come back +and ask you this same question every once in a while, so long as +you're in reach and doing this dirty work for a thankless boss. You +want to think of me as a possible refuge from a lot of disagreeable +things. I'd like to have you to chum with, and I'd like to have +some incentive to put a big white bungalow on that old foundation +for us two," he smiled. "I'll never do it for myself alone. Go on. +Take a gambling chance and marry me, Stella. Say yes, and say it +now."</p> +<p>But she shook her head resolutely, and as Katy John came in just +then, Fyfe took his foot off the stove and went out of the kitchen. +He threw a glance over his shoulder at Stella, a broad smile, as if +to say that he harbored no grudge, and nursed no wound in his +vanity because she would have none of him.</p> +<p>Katy rang the breakfast gong. Five minutes later the tattoo of +knives and forks and spoons told of appetites in process of +appeasement. Charlie came into the kitchen in the midst of this, +bearing certain unmistakable signs. His eyes were inflamed, his +cheeks still bearing the flush of liquor. His demeanor was that of +a man suffering an intolerable headache and correspondingly +short-tempered. Stella barely spoke to him. It was bad enough for a +man to make a beast of himself with whisky, but far worse was his +gambling streak. There were so many little ways in which she could +have eased things with a few dollars; yet he always grumbled when +she spoke of money, always put her off with promises to be redeemed +when business got better.</p> +<p>Stella watched him bathe his head copiously in cold water and +then seat himself at the long table, trying to force food upon an +aggrieved and rebellious stomach. Gradually a flood of recklessness +welled up in her breast.</p> +<p>"For two pins I would marry Jack Fyfe," she told herself +savagely. "<i>Anything</i> would be better than this."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE PLUNGE</h3> +<p>Stella went over that queer debate a good many times in the ten +days that followed. It revealed Jack Fyfe to her in a new, +inexplicable light, at odd variance with her former conception of +the man. She could not have visualized him standing with one foot +on the stove front speaking calmly of love and marriage if she had +not seen him with her own eyes, heard him with somewhat incredulous +ears. She had continued to endow him with the attributes of +unrestrained passion, of headlong leaping to the goal of his +desires, of brushing aside obstacles and opposition with sheer +brute force; and he had shown unreckoned qualities of restraint, of +understanding. She was not quite sure if this were guile or +sensible consideration. He had put his case logically, persuasively +even. She was very sure that if he had adopted emotional methods, +she would have been repelled. If he had laid siege to her hand and +heart in the orthodox fashion, she would have raised that siege in +short order. As it stood, in spite of her words to him, there was +in her own mind a lack of finality. As she went about her daily +tasks, that prospect of trying a fresh fling at the world as Jack +Fyfe's wife tantalized her with certain desirable features.</p> +<p>Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some +time to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the +dreariest sort of environment? At best, she could only get away +from Charlie's camp and begin along new lines that might perhaps be +little better, that must inevitably lie among strangers in a +strange land. To what end? What did she want of life, anyway? She +had to admit that she could not say fully and explicitly what she +wanted. When she left out her material wants, there was nothing but +a nebulous craving for—what? Love, she assumed. And she could +not define love, except as some incomprehensible transport of +emotion which irresistibly drew a man and a woman together, a +divine fire kindled in two hearts. It was not a thing she could +vouch for by personal experience. It might never touch and warm +her, that divine fire. Instinct did now and then warn her that some +time it would wrap her like a flame. But in the meantime—Life +had her in midstream of its remorseless, drab current, sweeping her +along. A foothold offered. Half a loaf, a single slice of bread +even, is better than none.</p> +<p>Jack Fyfe did not happen in again for nearly two weeks and then +only to pay a brief call, but he stole an opportunity, when Katy +John was not looking, to whisper in Stella's ear:</p> +<p>"Have you been thinking about that bungalow of ours?"</p> +<p>She shook her head, and he went out quietly, without another +word. He neither pleaded nor urged, and perhaps that was wisest, +for in spite of herself Stella thought of him continually. He +loomed always before her, a persistent, compelling factor.</p> +<p>She knew at last, beyond any gainsaying, that the venture +tempted, largely perhaps because it contained so great an element +of the unknown. To get away from this soul-dwarfing round meant +much. She felt herself reasoning desperately that the frying pan +could not be worse than the fire, and held at least the merit of +greater dignity and freedom from the twin evils of poverty and +thankless domestic slavery.</p> +<p>While she considered this, pro and con, shrinking from such a +step one hour, considering it soberly the next, the days dragged +past in wearisome sequence. The great depth of snow endured, was +added to by spasmodic flurries. The frosts held. The camp seethed +with the restlessness of the men. In default of the daily work that +consumed their superfluous energy, the loggers argued and fought, +drank and gambled, made "rough house" in their sleeping quarters +till sometimes Stella's cheeks blanched and she expected murder to +be done. Twice the <i>Chickamin</i> came back from Roaring Springs +with whisky aboard, and a protracted debauch ensued. Once a drunken +logger shouldered his way into the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at +Stella, and, himself inflamed by liquor and the affront, Charlie +Benton beat the man until his face was a mass of bloody bruises. +That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents. All the routine +discipline of the woods seemed to have slipped out of Benton's +hands. When the second whisky consignment struck the camp, Stella +stayed in her room, refusing to cook until order reigned again. +Benton grumblingly took up the burden himself. With Katy's help and +that of sundry loggers, he fed the roistering crew, but for his +sister it was a two-day period of protesting disgust.</p> +<p>That mood, like so many of her moods, relapsed into dogged +endurance. She took up the work again when Charlie promised that no +more whisky should be allowed in the camp.</p> +<p>"Though it's ten to one I won't have a corporal's guard left +when I want to start work again," he grumbled. "I'm well within my +rights if I put my foot down hard on any jinks when there's work, +but I have no license to set myself up as guardian of a logger's +morals and pocketbook when I have nothing for him to do. These +fellows are paying their board. So long as they don't make +themselves obnoxious to you, I don't see that it's our funeral +whether they're drunk or sober. They'd tell me so quick +enough."</p> +<p>To this pronouncement of expediency Stella made no rejoinder. +She no longer expected anything much of Charlie, in the way of +consideration. So far as she could see, she, his sister, was little +more to him than one of his loggers; a little less important than, +say, his donkey engineer. In so far as she conduced to the +well-being of the camp and effected a saving to his credit in the +matter of preparing food, he valued her and was willing to concede +a minor point to satisfy her. Beyond that Stella felt that he did +not go. Five years in totally different environments had dug a +great gulf between them. He felt an arbitrary sense of duty toward +her, she knew, but in its manifestations it never lapped over the +bounds of his own immediate self-interest.</p> +<p>And so when she blundered upon knowledge of a state of affairs +which must have existed under her very nose for some time, there +were few remnants of sisterly affection to bid her seek extenuating +circumstances.</p> +<p>Katy John proved the final straw. Just by what means Stella grew +to suspect any such moral lapse on Benton's part is wholly +irrelevant. Once the unpleasant likelihood came to her notice, she +took measures to verify her suspicion, and when convinced she taxed +her brother with it, to his utter confusion.</p> +<p>"What kind of a man are you?" she cried at last in shamed anger. +"Is there nothing too low for you to dabble in? Haven't you any +respect for anything or anybody, yourself included?"</p> +<p>"Oh, don't talk like a damned Puritan," Benton growled, though +his tanned face was burning. "This is what comes of having women +around the camp. I'll send the girl away."</p> +<p>"You—you beast!" she flared—and ran out of the +kitchen to seek refuge in her own room and cry into her pillow some +of the dumb protest that surged up within her. For her knowledge of +passion and the workings of passion as they bore upon the relations +of a man and a woman were at once vague and tinctured with +inflexible tenets of morality, the steel-hard conception of virtue +which is the bulwark of middle-class theory for its wives and +daughters and sisters—with an eye consistently blind to the +concealed lapses of its men.</p> +<p>Stella Benton passed that morning through successive stages of +shocked amazement, of pity, and disgust. As between her brother and +the Siwash girl, she saw little to choose. From her virtuous +pinnacle she abhorred both. If she had to continue intimate living +with them, she felt that she would be utterly defiled, degraded to +their level. That was her first definite conclusion.</p> +<p>After a time she heard Benton come into their living room and +light a fire in the heater. She dried her eyes and went out to face +him.</p> +<p>"Charlie," she declared desperately, "I can't stay here any +longer. It's simply impossible."</p> +<p>"Don't start that song again. We've had it often enough," he +answered stubbornly. "You're not going—not till spring. I'm +not going to let you go in the frame of mind you're in right now, +anyhow. You'll get over that. Hang it, I'm not the first man whose +foot slipped. It isn't your funeral, anyway. Forget it."</p> +<p>The grumbling coarseness of this retort left her speechless. +Benton got the fire going and went out. She saw him cross to the +kitchen, and later she saw Katy John leave the camp with all her +belongings in a bundle over her shoulder, trudging away to the camp +of her people around the point.</p> +<p>Kipling's pregnant line shot across her mind:</p> +<p>"For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their +skins."</p> +<p>"I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if we are? I wonder if that +poor, little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim +as I am. She doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he +doesn't seem to care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, +that's all. It isn't right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. +We're just for him to—to use."</p> +<p>She looked out along the shores piled high with broken ice and +snow, through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted +themselves imperiously aloof, white spires against the +sky,—over a forest all draped in winter robes; shore, +mountains, and forest alike were chill and hushed and desolate. The +lake spread its forty-odd miles in a boomerang curve from Roaring +Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifeless gray. She sat a long time +looking at that, and a dead weight seemed to settle upon her heart. +For the second time that day she broke down. Not the shamed, +indignant weeping of an hour earlier, but with the essence of all +things forlorn and desolate in her choked sobs.</p> +<p>She did not hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was +there, until she felt his hand gently on her shoulder and looked +up. And so deep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving +for some human sympathy, some measure of understanding, that she +made no effort to remove his hand. She was in too deep a spiritual +quagmire to refuse any sort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in +analytical self-fathoming. She had a dim sense of being oddly +comforted by his presence, as if she, afloat on uncharted seas, saw +suddenly near at hand a safe anchorage and welcoming hands. +Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked up at Fyfe and +hid her wet face in her hands again. He stood silent a few seconds. +When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation in his voice.</p> +<p>"What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?"</p> +<p>Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept +aside before the essentially human need to share a burden that has +grown too great to bear alone.</p> +<p>"Oh, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any +place for you at all."</p> +<p>He slid his arm across her shoulders and tilted her face with +his other hand so that her eyes met his. And she felt no desire to +draw away or any of that old instinct to be on her guard against +him. For all she knew—indeed, by all she had been +told—Jack Fyfe was tarred with the same stick as her brother, +but she had no thought of resisting him, no feeling of +repulsion.</p> +<p>"Will you marry me, Stella?" he asked evenly. "I can free you +from this sort of thing forever."</p> +<p>"How can I?" she returned. "I don't want to marry anybody. I +don't love you. I'm not even sure I like you. I'm too miserable to +think, even. I'm afraid to take a step like that. I should think +you would be too."</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"I've thought a lot about it lately," he said. "It hasn't +occurred to me to be afraid of how it may turn out. Why borrow +trouble when there's plenty at hand? I don't care whether you love +me or not, right now. You couldn't possibly be any worse off as my +wife, could you?"</p> +<p>"No," she admitted. "I don't see how I could."</p> +<p>"Take a chance then," he urged. "I'll make a fair bargain with +you. I'll make life as pleasant for you as I can. You'll live +pretty much as you've been brought up to live, so far as money +goes. The rest we'll have to work out for ourselves. I won't ask +you to pretend anything you don't feel. You'll play fair, because +that's the way you're made,—unless I've sized you up wrong. +It'll simply be a case of our adjusting ourselves, just as mating +couples have been doing since the year one. You've everything to +gain and nothing to lose."</p> +<p>"In some ways," she murmured.</p> +<p>"Every way," he insisted. "You aren't handicapped by caring for +any other man."</p> +<p>"How do you know?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Just a hunch," Fyfe smiled. "If you did, he'd have beaten me to +the rescue long ago—if he were the sort of man you +<i>could</i> care for."</p> +<p>"No," she admitted. "There isn't any other man, but there might +be. Think how terrible it would be if it +happened—afterward."</p> +<p>Fyfe shrugged his shoulders.</p> +<p>"Sufficient unto the day," he said. "There is no string on +either of us just now. We start even. That's good enough. Will +you?"</p> +<p>"You have me at a disadvantage," she whispered. "You offer me a +lot that I want, everything but a feeling I've somehow always +believed ought to exist, ought to be mutual. Part of me wants to +shut my eyes and jump. Part of me wants to hang back. I can't stand +this thing I've got into and see no way of getting out of. Yet I +dread starting a new train of wretchedness. I'm +afraid—whichever way I turn."</p> +<p>Fyfe considered this a moment.</p> +<p>"Well," he said finally, "that's a rather unfortunate attitude. +But I'm going into it with my eyes open. I know what I want. You'll +be making a sort of experiment. Still, I advise you to make it. I +think you'll be the better for making it. Come on. Say yes."</p> +<p>Stella looked up at him, then out over the banked snow, and all +the dreary discomforts, the mean drudgery, the sordid shifts she +had been put to for months rose up in disheartening phalanx. For +that moment Jack Fyfe loomed like a tower of refuge. She trusted +him now. She had a feeling that even if she grew to dislike him, +she would still trust him. He would play fair. If he said he would +do this or that, she could bank on it absolutely.</p> +<p>She turned and looked at him searchingly a long half-minute, +wondering what really lay behind the blue eyes that met her own so +steadfastly. He stood waiting patiently, outwardly impassive. But +she could feel through the thin stuff of her dress a quiver in the +fingers that rested on her shoulder, and that repressed sign of the +man's pent-up feeling gave her an odd thrill, moved her strangely, +swung the pendulum of her impulse.</p> +<p>"Yes," she said.</p> +<p>Fyfe bent a little lower.</p> +<p>"Listen," he said in characteristically blunt fashion. "You want +to get away from here. There is no sense in our fussing or +hesitating about what we're going to do, is there?"</p> +<p>"No, I suppose not," she agreed.</p> +<p>"I'll send the <i>Panther</i> down to the Springs for Lefty +Howe's wife," he outlined his plans unhesitatingly. "She'll get up +here this evening. To-morrow we will go down and take the train to +Vancouver and be married. You have plenty of good clothes, good +enough for Vancouver. I know,"—with a whimsical +smile,—"because you had no chance to wear them out. Then +we'll go somewhere, California, Florida, and come back to Roaring +Lake in the spring. You'll have all the bad taste of this out of +your mouth by that time."</p> +<p>Stella nodded acquiescence. Better to make the plunge boldly, +since she had elected to make it.</p> +<p>"All right. I'm going to tell Benton," Fyfe said. "Good-by till +to-morrow."</p> +<p>She stood up. He looked at her a long time earnestly, +searchingly, one of her hands imprisoned tight between his two big +palms. Then, before she was quite aware of his intention, he kissed +her gently on the mouth, and was gone.</p> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +<p>This turn of events left Benton dumbfounded, to use a trite but +expressive phrase. He came in, apparently to look at Stella in +amazed curiosity, for at first he had nothing to say. He sat down +beside his makeshift desk and pawed over some papers, running the +fingers of one hand through his thick brown hair.</p> +<p>"Well, Sis," he blurted out at last. "I suppose you know what +you're doing?"</p> +<p>"I think so," Stella returned composedly.</p> +<p>"But why all this mad haste?" he asked. "If you're going to get +married, why didn't you let me know, so I could give you some sort +of decent send-off."</p> +<p>"Oh, thanks," she returned dryly. "I don't think that's +necessary. Not at this stage of the game, as you occasionally +remark."</p> +<p>He ruminated upon this a minute, flushing slightly.</p> +<p>"Well, I wish you luck," he said sincerely enough. "Though I can +hardly realize this sudden move. You and Jack Fyfe may get on all +right. He's a good sort—in his way."</p> +<p>"His way suits me," she said, spurred to the defensive by what +she deemed a note of disparagement in his utterance. "If you have +any objections or criticisms, you can save your breath—or +address them direct to Mr. Fyfe."</p> +<p>"No, thank you," he grinned. "I don't care to get into any +argument with <i>him</i>, especially as he's going to be my +brother-in-law. Fyfe's all right. I didn't imagine he was the sort +of man you'd fancy, that's all."</p> +<p>Stella refrained from any comment on this. She had no intention +of admitting to Charlie that marriage with Jack Fyfe commended +itself to her chiefly as an avenue of escape from a well-nigh +intolerable condition which he himself had inflicted upon her. Her +pride rose in arms against any such belittling admission. She +admitted it frankly to herself,—and to Fyfe,—because +Fyfe understood and was content with that understanding. She +desired to forget that phase of the transaction. She told herself +that she meant honestly to make the best of it.</p> +<p>Benton turned again to his papers. He did not broach the subject +again until in the distance the squat hull of the <i>Panther</i> +began to show on her return from the Springs. Then he came to where +Stella was putting the last of her things into her trunk. He had +some banknotes in one hand, and a check.</p> +<p>"Here's that ninety I borrowed, Stell," he said. "And a check +for your back pay. Things have been sort of lean around here, +maybe, but I still think it's a pity you couldn't have stuck it out +till it came smoother. I hate to see you going away with a chronic +grouch against me. I suppose I wouldn't even be a welcome guest at +the wedding?"</p> +<p>"No," she said unforgivingly. "Some things are a little +too—too recent."</p> +<p>"Oh," he replied casually enough, pausing in the doorway a +second on his way out, "you'll get over that. You'll find that +ordinary, everyday living isn't any kid-glove affair."</p> +<p>She sat on the closed lid of her trunk, looking at the check and +money. Three hundred and sixty dollars, all told. A month ago that +would have spelled freedom, a chance to try her luck in less +desolate fields. Well, she tried to consider the thing +philosophically; it was no use to bewail what might have been. In +her hands now lay the sinews of a war she had forgone all need of +waging. It did not occur to her to repudiate her bargain with Jack +Fyfe. She had given her promise, and she considered she was bound, +irrevocably. Indeed, for the moment, she was glad of that. She was +worn out, all weary with unaccustomed stress of body and mind. To +her, just then, rest seemed the sweetest boon in the world. Any +port in a storm, expressed her mood. What came after was to be met +as it came. She was too tired to anticipate.</p> +<p>It was a pale, weary-eyed young woman, dressed in the same plain +tailored suit she had worn into the country, who was cuddled to +Mrs. Howe's plump bosom when she went aboard the <i>Panther</i> for +the first stage of her journey.</p> +<p>A slaty bank of cloud spread a somber film across the sky. When +the <i>Panther</i> laid her ice-sheathed guard-rail against the Hot +Springs wharf the sun was down. The lake spread gray and lifeless +under a gray sky, and Stella Benton's spirits were steeped in that +same dour color.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<br> +<h3>AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED</h3> +<p>Spring had waved her transforming wand over the lake region +before the Fyfes came home again. All the low ground, the creeks +and hollows and banks, were bright green with new-leaved birch and +alder and maple. The air was full of those aromatic exudations the +forest throws off when it is in the full tide of the growing time. +Shores that Stella had last seen dismal and forlorn in the +frost-fog, sheathed in ice, banked with deep snow, lay sparkling +now in warm sunshine, under an unflecked arch of blue. All that was +left of winter was the white cap on Mount Douglas, snow-filled +chasms on distant, rocky peaks. Stella stood on the Hot Springs +wharf looking out across the emerald deep of the lake, thinking +soberly of the contrast.</p> +<p>Something, she reflected, some part of that desolate winter, +must have seeped to the very roots of her being to produce the +state of mind in which she embarked upon that matrimonial voyage. A +little of it clung to her still. She could look back at those +months of loneliness, of immeasurable toil and numberless +indignities, without any qualms. There would be no repetition of +that. The world at large would say she had done well. She herself +in her most cynical moments could not deny that she had done well. +Materially, life promised to be generous. She was married to a man +who quietly but inexorably got what he wanted, and it was her good +fortune that he wanted her to have the best of everything.</p> +<p>She saw him now coming from the hotel, and she regarded him +thoughtfully, a powerful figure swinging along with light, +effortless steps. He was back on his own ground, openly glad to be +back. Yet she could not recall that he had ever shown himself at a +disadvantage anywhere they had been together. He wore evening +clothes when occasion required as unconcernedly as he wore +mackinaws and calked boots among his loggers. She had not yet +determined whether his equable poise arose from an unequivocal +democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any rate, where she +had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit that socially, +at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of the game. +Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. In fact, so +far as Jack Fyfe's breeding and antecedents were concerned, she +knew little more than before their marriage. He was not given to +reminiscence. His people—distant relatives—lived in her +own native state of Pennsylvania. He had an only sister who was now +in South America with her husband, a civil engineer. Beyond that +Fyfe did not go, and Stella made no attempt to pry up the lid of +his past. She was not particularly curious.</p> +<p>Her clearest judgment of him was at first hand. He was a big, +virile type of man, generous, considerate, so sure of himself that +he could be tolerant of others. She could easily understand why +Roaring Lake considered Jack Fyfe "square." The other tales of him +that circulated there she doubted now. The fighting type he +certainly was, aggressive in a clash, but if there were any +downright coarseness in him, it had never manifested itself to her. +She was not sorry she had married him. If they had not set out +blind in a fog of sentiment, as he had once put it, nevertheless +they got on. She did not love him,—not as she defined that +magic word,—but she liked him, was mildly proud of him. When +he kissed her, if there were no mad thrill in it, there was at +least a passive contentment in having inspired that affection. For +he left her in no doubt as to where he stood, not by what he said, +but wholly by his actions.</p> +<p>He joined her now. The <i>Panther</i>, glossy black as a crow's +wing with fresh paint, lay at the pier-end with their trunks +aboard. Stella surveyed those marked with her initials, looking +them over with a critical eye, when they reached the deck.</p> +<p>"How in the world did I ever manage to accumulate so much stuff, +Jack?" she asked quizzically. "I didn't realize it. We might have +been doing Europe with souvenir collecting our principal aim, by +the amount of our baggage."</p> +<p>Fyfe smiled, without commenting. They sat on a trunk and watched +Roaring Springs fall astern, dwindle to a line of white dots +against the great green base of the mountain that rose behind +it.</p> +<p>"It's good to get back here," he said at last. "To me, anyway. +How about it, Stella? You haven't got so much of a grievance with +the world in general as you had when we left, eh?"</p> +<p>"No, thank goodness," she responded fervently.</p> +<p>"You don't look as if you had," he observed, his eyes admiringly +upon her.</p> +<p>Nor had she. There was a bloom on the soft contour of her cheek, +a luminous gleam in her wide, gray eyes. All the ill wrought by +months of drudging work and mental revolt had vanished. She was +undeniably good to look at, a woman in full flower, round-bodied, +deep-breasted, aglow with the unquenched fires of youth. She was +aware that Jack Fyfe found her so and tolerably glad that he did so +find her. She had revised a good many of her first groping +estimates of him that winter. And when she looked over the port bow +and saw in behind Halfway Point the huddled shacks of her brother's +camp where so much had overtaken her, she experienced a swift rush +of thankfulness that she was—as she was. She slid her gloved +hand impulsively into Jack Fyfe's, and his strong fingers shut down +on hers closely.</p> +<p>They sat silent until the camp lay abeam. About it there was +every sign of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve +hissing, stood by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving +back and forth across the swifters, making all ready for a tow. +Stella marked a new bunkhouse. Away back on the logging ground in a +greater clearing she saw the separate smoke of two donkey engines. +Another, a big roader, Fyfe explained, puffed at the water's edge. +She could see a string of logs tearing down the skid-road.</p> +<p>"He's going pretty strong, that brother of yours," Fyfe +remarked. "If he holds his gait, he'll be a big timberman before +you know it."</p> +<p>"He'll make money, I imagine," Stella admitted, "but I don't +know what good that will do him. He'll only want more. What is +there about money-making that warps some men so, makes them so +grossly self-centered? I'd pity any girl who married Charlie. He +used to be rather wild at home, but I never dreamed any man could +change so."</p> +<p>"You use the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband +answered, with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe +his ways are pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a +competence—which is what we're all after—out of pretty +crude material. And he's just a kid, after all, with a kid's +tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda like the beggar's +ambition and energy."</p> +<p>"But he hasn't the least consideration for anybody or anything," +Stella protested. "He rides rough-shod over every one. That isn't +either right or decent."</p> +<p>"It's the only way some men can get to the top," Fyfe answered +quietly. "They concentrate on the object to be attained. That's all +that counts until they're in a secure position. Then, when they +stop to draw their breath, sometimes they find they've done lots of +things they wouldn't do again. You watch. By and by Charlie Benton +will cease to have those violent reactions that offend you so. As +it is—he's a youngster, bucking a big game. Life, when you +have your own way to hew through it, with little besides your hands +and brain for capital, is no silk-lined affair."</p> +<p>She fell into thought over this reply. Fyfe had echoed almost +her brother's last words to her. And she wondered if Jack Fyfe had +attained that degree of economic power which enabled him to spend +several thousand dollars on a winter's pleasuring with her by the +exercise of a strong man's prerogative of overriding the weak, +bending them to his own inflexible purposes, ruthlessly turning +everything to his own advantage? If women came under the same head! +She recalled Katy John, and her face burned. Perhaps. But she could +not put Jack Fyfe in her brother's category. He didn't fit. Deep in +her heart there still lurked an abiding resentment against Charlie +Benton for the restraint he had put upon her and the license he had +arrogated to himself. She could not convince herself that the +lapses of that winter were not part and parcel of her brother's +philosophy of life, a coarse and material philosophy.</p> +<p>Presently they were drawing in to Cougar Point, with the +weather-bleached buildings of Fyfe's camp showing now among the +upspringing second-growth scrub. Fyfe went forward and spoke to the +man at the wheel. The <i>Panther</i> swung offshore.</p> +<p>"Why are we going out again?" Stella asked.</p> +<p>"Oh, just for fun," Fyfe smiled.</p> +<p>He sat down beside her and slipped one arm around her waist. In +a few minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away +across the lake, at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a +mountain range in twain.</p> +<p>"Look around," said he, "and tell me what you think of the House +of Fyfe."</p> +<p>There it stood, snow-white, broad-porched, a new house reared +upon the old stone foundation she remembered. The noon sun struck +flashing on the windows. About it spread the living green of the +grassy square, behind that towered the massive, darker-hued +background of the forest.</p> +<p>"Oh," she exclaimed. "What wizard of construction did the work. +<i>That</i> was why you fussed so long over those plans in Los +Angeles. I thought it was to be this summer or maybe next winter. I +never dreamed you were having it built right away."</p> +<p>"Well, isn't it rather nice to come home to?" he observed.</p> +<p>"It's dear. A homey looking place," she answered. "A beautiful +site, and the house fits,—that white and the red tiles. Is +the big stone fireplace in the living room, Jack?"</p> +<p>"Yes, and one in pretty nearly every other room besides," he +nodded. "Wood fires are cheerful."</p> +<p>The <i>Panther</i> turned her nose shoreward at Fyfe's word.</p> +<p>"I wondered about that foundation the first time I saw it," +Stella confessed, "whether you built it, and why it was never +finished. There was moss over the stones in places. And that lawn +wasn't made in a single season. I know, because dad had a country +place once, and he was raging around two or three summers because +the land was so hard to get well-grassed."</p> +<p>"No, I didn't build the foundation or make the lawn," Fyfe told +her. "I merely kept it in shape. A man named Hale owned the land +that takes in the bay and the point when I first came to the lake. +He was going to be married. I knew him pretty well. But it was +tough going those days. He was in the hole on some of his timber, +and he and his girl kept waiting. Meantime he cleared and graded +that little hill, sowed it to grass, and laid the foundation. He +was about to start building when he was killed. A falling tree +caught him. I bought in his land and the timber limits that lie +back of it. That's how the foundation came there."</p> +<p>"It's a wonder it didn't grow up wild," Stella mused. "How long +ago was that?"</p> +<p>"About five years," Fyfe said. "I kept the grass trimmed. It +didn't seem right to let the brush overrun it after the poor devil +put that labor of love on it. It always seemed to me that it should +be kept smooth and green, and that there should be a big, roomy +bungalow there. You see my hunch was correct, too."</p> +<p>She looked up at him in some wonder. She hadn't accustomed +herself to associating Jack Fyfe with actions based on pure +sentiment. He was too intensely masculine, solid, practical, +impassive. He did not seem to realize even that sentiment had +influenced him in this. He discussed it too matter-of-factly for +that. She wondered what became of the bride-to-be. But that Fyfe +could not tell her.</p> +<p>"Hale showed me her picture once," he said, "but I never saw +her. Oh, I suppose she's married some other fellow long ago. Hale +was a good sort. He was out-lucked, that's all."</p> +<p>The <i>Panther</i> slid in to the float. Jack and Stella went +ashore. Lefty Howe came down to meet them. Thirty-five or forty men +were stringing away from the camp, back to their work in the woods. +Some waved greeting to Jack Fyfe, and he waved back in the +hail-fellow fashion of the camps.</p> +<p>"How's the frau, Lefty?" he inquired, after they had shaken +hands.</p> +<p>"Fine. Down to Vancouver. Sister's sick," Howe answered +laconically. "House's all shipshape. Wanta eat here, or up +there?"</p> +<p>"Here at the camp, until we get straightened around," Fyfe +responded. "Tell Pollock to have something for us in about half an +hour. We'll go up and take a look."</p> +<p>Howe went in to convey this message, and the two set off up the +path. A sudden spirit of impishness made Jack Fyfe sprint. Stella +gathered up her skirt and raced after him, but a sudden shortness +of breath overtook her, and she came panting to where Fyfe had +stopped to wait.</p> +<p>"You'll have to climb hills and row and swim so you'll get some +wind," Fyfe chuckled. "Too much easy living, lady."</p> +<p>She smiled without making any reply to this sally, and they +entered the house—the House of Fyfe, that was to be her +home.</p> +<p>If the exterior had pleased her, she went from room to room +inside with growing amazement. Fyfe had finished it from basement +to attic without a word to her that he had any such undertaking in +hand. Yet there was scarcely a room in which she could not find the +visible result of some expressed wish or desire. Often during the +winter they had talked over the matter of furnishings, and she +recalled how unconsciously she had been led to make suggestions +which he had stored up and acted upon. For the rest she found her +husband's taste beyond criticism. There were drapes and rugs and +prints and odds and ends that any woman might be proud to have in +her home.</p> +<p>"You're an amazing sort of a man, Jack," she said thoughtfully. +"Is there anything you're not up to? Even a Chinese servant in the +kitchen. It's perfect."</p> +<p>"I'm glad you like it," he said. "I hoped you would."</p> +<p>"Who wouldn't?" she cried impulsively. "I love pretty things. +Wait till I get done rearranging."</p> +<p>They introduced themselves to the immobile-featured Celestial +when they had jointly and severally inspected the house from top to +bottom. Sam Foo gazed at them, listened to their account of +themselves, and disappeared. He re-entered the room presently, +bearing a package.</p> +<p>"Mist' Chol' Bentlee him leave foh yo'."</p> +<p>Stella looked at it. On the outer wrapping was written:</p> +<div class="ind"><i>From C.A. Benton to Mrs. John Henderson +Fyfe</i><br> +<i>A Belated Wedding Gift</i></div> +<br> +<p>She cut the string, and delved into the cardboard box, and +gasped. Out of a swathing of tissue paper her hands bared sundry +small articles. A little cap and jacket of knitted silk—its +double in fine, fleecy yarn—a long silk coat—a bonnet +to match,—both daintily embroidered. Other things—a +shoal of them—baby things. A grin struggled for lodgment on +Fyfe's freckled countenance. His blue eyes twinkled.</p> +<p>"I suppose," he growled, "that's Charlie's idea of a joke, +huh?"</p> +<p>Stella turned away from the tiny garments, one little, hood +crumpled tight in her hand. She laid her hot face against his +breast and her shoulders quivered. She was crying.</p> +<p>"Stella, Stella, what's the matter?" he whispered.</p> +<p>"It's no joke," she sobbed. "It's a—it's a reality."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<br> +<h3>IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME</h3> +<p>From that day on Stella found in her hands the reins over a +smooth, frictionless, well-ordered existence. Sam Foo proved +himself such a domestic treasure as only the trained Oriental can +be. When the labor of an eight-room dwelling proved a little too +much for him, he urbanely said so. Thereupon, at Fyfe's suggestion, +he imported a fellow countryman, another bland, silent-footed model +of efficiency in personal service. Thereafter Stella's task of +supervision proved a sinecure.</p> +<p>A week or so after their return, in sorting over some of her +belongings, she came across the check Charlie had given her: that +two hundred and seventy dollars which represented the only money +she had ever earned in her life. She studied it a minute, then went +out to where her husband sat perched on the verandah rail.</p> +<p>"You might cash this, Jack," she suggested.</p> +<p>He glanced at the slip.</p> +<p>"Better have it framed as a memento," he said, smiling. "You'll +never earn two hundred odd dollars so hard again, I hope. No, I'd +keep it, if I were you. If ever you should need it, it'll always be +good—unless Charlie goes broke."</p> +<p>There never had been any question of money between them. From +the day of their marriage Fyfe had made her a definite monthly +allowance, a greater sum than she needed or spent.</p> +<p>"As a matter of fact," he went on, "I'm going to open an account +in your name at the Royal Bank, so you can negotiate your own paper +and pay your own bills by check."</p> +<p>She went in and put away the check. It was hers, earned, all too +literally, in the sweat of her brow. For all that it represented +she had given service threefold. If ever there came a time when +that hunger for independence which had been fanned to a flame in +her brother's kitchen should demand appeasement—she pulled +herself up short when she found her mind running upon such an +eventuality. Her future was ordered. She was married—to be a +mother. Here lay her home. All about her ties were in process of +formation, ties that with time would grow stronger than any +shackles of steel, constraining her to walk in certain +ways,—ways that were pleasant enough, certain of ease if not +of definite purpose.</p> +<p>Yet now and then she found herself falling into fits of +abstraction in which Roaring Lake and Jack Fyfe, all that meant +anything to her now, faded into the background, and she saw herself +playing a lone hand against the world, making her individual +struggle to be something more than the petted companion of a +dominant male and the mother of his children. She never quite lost +sight of the fact that marriage had been the last resort, that in +effect she had taken the avenue her personal charm afforded to +escape drudgery and isolation. There was still deep-rooted in her a +craving for something bigger than mere ease of living. She knew as +well as she knew anything that in the natural evolution of things +marriage and motherhood should have been the big thing in her life. +And it was not. It was too incidental, too incomplete, too much +like a mere breathing-place on life's highway. Sometimes she +reasoned with herself bluntly, instead of dreaming, was driven to +look facts in the eye because she did dream. Always she encountered +the same obstacle, a feeling that she had been defrauded, robbed of +something vital; she had forgone that wonderful, passionate drawing +together which makes the separate lives of the man and woman who +experiences it so fuse that in the truest sense of the word they +become one.</p> +<p>Mostly she kept her mind from that disturbing introspection, +because invariably it led her to vague dreaming of a future which +she told herself—sometimes wistfully—could never be +realized. She had shut the door on many things, it seemed to her +now. But she had the sense to know that dwelling on what might have +been only served to make her morbid, and did not in the least serve +to alter the unalterable. She had chosen what seemed to her at the +time the least of two evils, and she meant to abide steadfast by +her choice.</p> +<p>Charlie Benton came to visit them. Strangely enough to Stella, +who had never seen him on Roaring Lake, at least, dressed otherwise +than as his loggers, he was sporting a natty gray suit, he was +clean shaven, Oxford ties on his feet, a gentleman of leisure in +his garb. If he had started on the down grade the previous winter, +he bore no signs of it now, for he was the picture of ruddy vigor, +clear-eyed, brown-skinned, alert, bubbling over with good +spirits.</p> +<p>"Why, say, you look like a tourist," Fyfe remarked after an +appraising glance.</p> +<p>"I'm making money, pulling ahead of the game, that's all," +Benton retorted cheerfully. "I can afford to take a holiday now and +then. I'm putting a million feet a month in the water. That's going +some for small fry like me. Say, this house of yours is all to the +good, Jack. It's got class, outside and in. Makes a man feel as if +he had to live up to it, eh? Mackinaws and calked boots don't go +with oriental rugs and oak floors."</p> +<p>"You should get a place like this as soon as possible then," +Stella put in drily, "to keep you up to the mark, on edge +aesthetically, one might put it."</p> +<p>"Not to say morally," Benton laughed. "Oh, maybe I'll get to it +by and by, if the timber business holds up."</p> +<p>Later, when he and Stella were alone together, he said to +her:</p> +<p>"You're lucky. You've got everything, and it comes without an +effort. You sure showed good judgment when you picked Jack Fyfe. +He's a thoroughbred."</p> +<p>"Oh, thank you," she returned, a touch of irony in her voice, a +subtlety of inflection that went clean over Charlie's head.</p> +<p>He was full of inquiries about where they had been that winter, +what they had done and seen. Also he brimmed over with his own +affairs. He stayed overnight and went his way with a brotherly +threat of making the Fyfe bungalow his headquarters whenever he +felt like it.</p> +<p>"It's a touch of civilization that looks good to me," he +declared. "You can put my private mark on one of those big leather +chairs, Jack. I'm going to use it often. All you need to make this +a social center is a good-looking girl or two—unmarried ones. +You watch. When the summer flock comes to the lake, your place is +going to be popular."</p> +<p>That observation verified Benton's shrewdness. The Fyfe bungalow +did become popular. Two weeks after Charlie's visit, a lean, white +cruiser, all brass and mahogany above her topsides, slid up to the +float, and two women came at a dignified pace along the path to the +house. Stella had met Linda Abbey once, reluctantly, under the +circumstances, but it was different now—with the difference +that money makes. She could play hostess against an effective +background, and she did so graciously. Nor was her graciousness +wholly assumed. After all, they were her kind of people: Linda, +fair-haired, perfectly gowned, perfectly mannered, sweetly pretty; +Mrs. Abbey, forty-odd and looking thirty-five, with that calm +self-assurance which wealth and position confer upon those who hold +it securely. Stella found them altogether to her liking. It pleased +her, too, that Jack happened in to meet them. He was not a +scintillating talker, yet she had noticed that when he had anything +to say, he never failed to attract and hold attention. His quiet, +impersonal manner never suggested stolidness. And she was too keen +an observer to overlook the fact that from a purely physical +standpoint Jack Fyfe made an impression always, particularly on +women. Throughout that winter it had not disturbed her. It did not +disturb her now, when she noticed Linda Abbey's gaze coming back to +him with a veiled appraisal in her blue eyes that were so like +Fyfe's own in their tendency to twinkle and gleam with no +corresponding play of features.</p> +<p>"We'll expect to see a good deal of you this summer," Mrs. Abbey +said cordially at leave-taking. "We have a few people up from town +now and then to vary the monotony of feasting our souls on scenery. +Sometimes we are quite a jolly crowd. Don't be formal. Drop in when +you feel the inclination."</p> +<p>When Stella reminded Jack of this some time later, in a moment +of boredom, he put the <i>Panther</i> at her disposal for the +afternoon. But he would not go himself. He had opened up a new +outlying camp, and he had directions to issue, work to lay out.</p> +<p>"You hold up the social end of the game," he laughed. "I'll +hustle logs."</p> +<p>So Stella invaded the Abbey-Monohan precincts by herself and +enjoyed it—for she met a houseful of young people from the +coast, and in that light-hearted company she forgot for the time +being that she was married and the responsible mistress of a house. +Paul Abbey was there, but he had apparently forgotten or forgiven +the blow she had once dealt his vanity. Paul, she reflected, was +not the sort to mourn a lost love long.</p> +<p>She had the amused experience too of beholding Charlie Benton +appear an hour or so before she departed and straightway monopolize +Linda Abbey in his characteristically impetuous fashion. Charlie +was no diplomat. He believed in driving straight to any goal he +selected.</p> +<p>"So <i>that's</i> the reason for the outward metamorphosis," +Stella reflected. "Well?"</p> +<p>Altogether she enjoyed the afternoon hugely. The only fly in her +ointment was a greasy smudge bestowed upon her dress—a +garment she prized highly—by some cordage coiled on the +<i>Panther's</i> deck. The black tender had carried too many +cargoes of loggers and logging supplies to be a fit conveyance for +persons in party attire. She exhibited the soiled gown to Fyfe with +due vexation.</p> +<p>"I hope you'll have somebody scrub down the <i>Panther</i> the +next time I want to go anywhere in a decent dress," she said +ruefully. "That'll never come out. And it's the prettiest thing +I've got too."</p> +<p>"Ah, what's the odds?" Fyfe slipped one arm around her waist. +"You can buy more dresses. Did you have a good time? That's the +thing!"</p> +<p>That ruined gown, however, subsequently produced an able, +forty-foot, cruising launch, powerfully engined, easy in a sea, and +comfortably, even luxuriously fitted as to cabin. With that for +their private use, the <i>Panther</i> was left to her appointed +service, and in the new boat Fyfe and Stella spent many a day +abroad on Roaring Lake. They fished together, explored nooks and +bays up and down its forty miles of length, climbed hills together +like the bear of the ancient rhyme, to see what they could see. And +the <i>Waterbug</i> served to put them on intimate terms with their +neighbors, particularly the Abbey crowd. The Abbeys took to them +wholeheartedly. Fyfe himself was highly esteemed by the elder +Abbey, largely, Stella suspected, for his power on Roaring Lake. +Abbey <i>père</i> had built up a big fortune out of timber. +He respected any man who could follow the same path to success. +Therefore he gave Fyfe double credit,—for making good, and +for a personality that could not be overlooked. He told Stella that +once; that is to say, he told her confidentially that her husband +was a very "able" young man. Abbey senior was short and +double-chinned and inclined to profuse perspiration if he moved in +haste over any extended time. Paul promised to be like him, in that +respect.</p> +<p>Summer slipped by. There were dances, informal little hops at +the Abbey domicile, return engagements at the Fyfe bungalow, +laughter and music and Japanese lanterns strung across the lawn. +There was tea and tennis and murmuring rivers of small talk. And +amid this Stella Fyfe flitted graciously, esteeming it her world, a +fair measure of what the future might be. Viewed in that light, it +seemed passable enough.</p> +<p>Later, when summer was on the wane, she withdrew from much of +this activity, spending those days when she did not sit buried in a +book out on the water with her husband. When October ushered in the +first of the fall rains, they went to Vancouver and took +apartments. In December her son was born.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<br> +<h3>A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE</h3> +<p>With the recurrence of spring, Fyfe's household transferred +itself to the Roaring Lake bungalow again. Stella found the change +welcome, for Vancouver wearied her. It was a little too crude, too +much as yet in the transitory stage, in that civic hobbledehoy +period which overtakes every village that shoots up over-swiftly to +a city's dimensions. They knew people, to be sure, for the Abbey +influence would have opened the way for them into any circle. +Stella had made many friends and pleasant acquaintances that summer +on the lake, but part of that butterfly clique sought pleasanter +winter grounds before she was fit for social activity. Apart from a +few more or less formal receptions and an occasional auction party, +she found it pleasanter to stay at home. Fyfe himself had spent +only part of his time in town after their boy was born. He was +extending his timber operations. What he did not put into words, +but what Stella sensed because she experienced the same thing +herself, was that town bored him to death,—such town +existence as Vancouver afforded. Their first winter had been +different, because they had sought places where there was manifold +variety of life, color, amusement. She was longing for the wide +reach of Roaring Lake, the immense amphitheater of the surrounding +mountains, long before spring.</p> +<p>So she was quite as well pleased when a mild April saw them +domiciled at home again. In addition to Sam Foo and Feng Shu, there +was a nurse for Jack Junior. Stella did not suggest that; Fyfe +insisted on it. He was quite proud of his boy, but he did not want +her chained to her baby.</p> +<p>"If the added expense doesn't count, of course a nurse will mean +a lot more personal freedom," Stella admitted. "You see, I haven't +the least idea of your resources, Jack. All I know about it is that +you allow me plenty of money for my individual expenses. And I +notice we're acquiring a more expensive mode of living all the +time."</p> +<p>"That's so," Fyfe responded. "I never have gone into any details +of my business with you. No reason why you shouldn't know what +limits there are to our income. You never happened to express any +curiosity before. Operating as I did up till lately, the business +netted anywhere from twelve to fifteen thousand a year. I'll double +that this season. In fact, with the amount of standing timber I +control, I could make it fifty thousand a year by expanding and +speeding things up. I guess you needn't worry about an extra +servant or two."</p> +<p>So, apart from voluntary service on behalf of Jack Junior, she +was free as of old to order her days as she pleased. Yet that small +morsel of humanity demanded much of her time, because she released +through the maternal floodgates a part of that passionate longing +to bestow love where her heart willed. Sometimes she took issue +with herself over that wayward tendency. By all the rules of the +game, she should have loved her husband. He was like a rock, solid, +enduring, patient, kind, and generous. He stood to her in the most +intimate relation that can exist between a man and a woman. But she +never fooled herself; she never had so far as Jack Fyfe was +concerned. She liked him, but that was all. He was good to her, and +she was grateful.</p> +<p>Sometimes she had a dim sense that under his easy-going exterior +lurked a capacity for tremendously passionate outbreak. If she had +been compelled to modify her first impression of him as an +arrogant, dominant sort of character, scarcely less rough than the +brown firs out of which he was hewing a fortune, she knew likewise +that she had never seen anything but the sunny side of him. He +still puzzled her a little at times; there were odd flashes of +depths she could not see into, a quality of unexpectedness in +things he would do and say. Even so, granting that in him was +embodied so much that other men she knew lacked, she did not love +him; there were indeed times when she almost resented him.</p> +<p>Why, she could not perhaps have put into words. It seemed too +fantastic for sober summing-up, when she tried. But lurking always +in the background of her thoughts was the ghost of an unrealized +dream, a nebulous vision which once served to thrill her in secret. +It could never be anything but a vision, she believed now, and +believing, regretted. The cold facts of her existence couldn't be +daydreamed away. She was married, and marriage put a full stop to +the potential adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at +the opposite pole from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed +to that. She took for her +guiding-star—theoretically—the twin concepts of +morality and duty as she had been taught to construe them. So she +saw no loophole, and seeing none, felt cheated of something +infinitely precious. Marriage and motherhood had not come to her as +the fruits of love, as the passionately eager fulfilling of her +destiny. It had been thrust upon her. She had accepted it as a last +resort at a time when her powers of resistance to misfortune were +at the ebb.</p> +<p>She knew that this sort of self-communing was a bad thing, that +it was bound to sour the whole taste of life in her mouth. As much +as possible she thrust aside those vague, repressed longings. +Materially she had everything. If she had foregone that bargain +with Jack Fyfe, God only knew what long-drawn agony of mind and +body circumstances and Charlie Benton's subordination of her to his +own ends might have inflicted upon her. That was the reverse of her +shield, but one that grew dimmer as time passed. Mostly, she took +life as she found it, concentrating upon Jack Junior, a sturdy boy +with blue eyes like his father, and who grew steadily more +adorable.</p> +<p>Nevertheless she had recurring periods when moodiness and +ill-stifled discontent got hold of her. Sometimes she stole out +along the cliffs to sit on a mossy boulder, staring with absent +eyes at the distant hills. And sometimes she would slip out in a +canoe, to lie rocking in the lake swell,—just dreaming, +filled with a passive sort of regret. She could not change things +now, but she could not help wishing she could.</p> +<p>Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. +Roaring Lake, pent in the shape of a boomerang between two mountain +ranges, was subject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot +down its length like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew +that; she had seen the glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten +minutes, but she was not afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She +was hard and strong. The open, the clean mountain air, and a +measure of activity, had built her up physically. She swam like a +seal. Out in that sixteen-foot Peterboro she could detach herself +from her world of reality, lie back on a cushion, and lose herself +staring at the sky. She paid little heed to Fyfe's warning beyond a +smiling assurance that she had no intention of courting a watery +end.</p> +<p>So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack Junior, +crowing in his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first +point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, +gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was +scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze +fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. +Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers +cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. +Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging +point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and breakfasted with him. +She was tired, drowsy, content to lie there in pure physical +relaxation. Lying so, before she was aware of it, her eyes +closed.</p> +<p>She wakened with a start at a cold touch of moisture on her +face,—rain, great pattering drops. Overhead an ominously +black cloud hid the face of the sun. The shore, when she looked, +lay a mile and a half abeam. To the north and between her and the +land's rocky line was a darkening of the lake's surface. Stella +reached for her paddle. The black cloud let fall long, gray +streamers of rain. There was scarcely a stirring of the air, but +that did not deceive her. There was a growing chill, and there was +that broken line sweeping down the lake. Behind that was wind, a +summer gale, the black squall dreaded by the Siwashes.</p> +<p>She had to buck her way to shore through that. She drove hard on +the paddle. She was not afraid, but there rose in her a peculiar +tensed-up feeling. Ahead lay a ticklish bit of business. The +sixteen-foot canoe dwarfed to pitiful dimensions in the face of +that snarling line of wind-harried water. She could hear the +distant murmur of it presently, and gusty puffs of wind began to +strike her.</p> +<p>Then it swept up to her, a ripple, a chop, and very close behind +that the short, steep, lake combers with a wind that blew off the +tops as each wave-head broke in white, bubbling froth. Immediately +she began to lose ground. She had expected that, and it did not +alarm her. If she could keep the canoe bow on, there was an even +chance that the squall would blow itself out in half an hour. But +keeping the canoe bow on proved a task for stout arms. The wind +would catch all that forward part which thrust clear as she topped +a sea and twist it aside, tending always to throw her broadside +into the trough. Spray began to splash aboard. The seas were so +short and steep that the Peterboro would rise over the crest of a +tall one and dip its bow deep in the next, or leap clear to strike +with a slap that made Stella's heart jump. She had never undergone +quite that rough and tumble experience in a small craft. She was +being beaten farther out and down the lake, and her arms were +growing tired. Nor was there any slackening of the wind.</p> +<p>The combined rain and slaps of spray soaked her thoroughly. A +puddle gathered about her knees in the bilge, sloshing fore and aft +as the craft pitched, killing the natural buoyancy of the canoe so +that she dove harder. Stella took a chance, ceased paddling, and +bailed with a small can. She got a tossing that made her head swim +while she lay in the trough. And when she tried to head up into it +again, one comber bigger than its fellows reared up and slapped a +barrel of water inboard. The next wave swamped her.</p> +<p>Sunk to the clamps, Stella held fast to the topsides, crouching +on her knees, immersed to the hips in water that struck a chill +through her flesh. She had the wit to remember and act upon Jack +Fyfe's coaching, namely, to sit tight and hang on. No sea that ever +ran can sink a canoe. Wood is buoyant. So long as she could hold +on, the submerged craft would keep her head and shoulders above +water. But it was numbing cold. Fed by glacial streams, Roaring +Lake is icy in hottest midsummer.</p> +<p>What with paddling and bailing and the excitement of the +struggle, Stella had wasted no time gazing about for other boats. +She knew that if any one at the camp saw her, rescue would be +speedily effected. Now, holding fast and sitting quiet, she looked +eagerly about as the swamped canoe rose loggily on each wave. +Almost immediately she was heartened by seeing distinctly some sort +of craft plunging through the blow. She had not long to wait after +that, for the approaching launch was a lean-lined speeder, +powerfully engined, and she was being forced. Stella supposed it +was one of the Abbey runabouts. Even with her teeth chattering and +numbness fastening itself upon her, she shivered at the chances the +man was taking. It was no sea for a speed boat to smash into at +thirty miles an hour. She saw it shoot off the top of one wave and +disappear in a white burst of spray, slash through the next and +bury itself deep again, flinging a foamy cloud far to port and +starboard. Stella cried futilely to the man to slow down. She could +hang on a long time yet, but her voice carried no distance.</p> +<p>After that she had not long to wait. In four minutes the +runabout was within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a +machine gun. And then the very thing she expected and dreaded came +about. Every moment she expected to see him drive bows under and go +down. Here and there at intervals uplifted a comber taller than its +fellows, standing, just as it broke, like a green wall. Into one +such hoary-headed sea the white boat now drove like a lance. Stella +saw the spray leap like a cascade, saw the solid green curl deep +over the forward deck and engine hatch and smash the low +windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the roaring +exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of +broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off +into the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she +had taken.</p> +<p>The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth.</p> +<p>"Can you hang on a while longer?" he shouted. "Till I can get my +boat bailed?"</p> +<p>"I'm all right," she called back.</p> +<p>She saw him heave up the engine hatch. For a minute or two he +bailed rapidly. Then he spun the engine, without result. He +straightened up at last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his +coat.</p> +<p>The launch lay heavily in the trough. The canoe, rising and +clinging on the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet +at a time, taking the run of the sea faster than the disabled +motorboat. So now only a hundred-odd feet separated them, but they +could come no nearer, for the canoe was abeam and slowly drifting +past.</p> +<p>Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his +hand. Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged +overboard in a beautiful, arching dive. A second later his head +showed glistening above the gray water, and he swam toward her with +a slow, overhand stroke. It seemed an age—although the actual +time was brief enough—before he reached her. She saw then +that there was method in his madness, for the line strung out +behind him, fast to a cleat on the launch. He laid hold of the +canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, smiling broadly at +her.</p> +<p>"Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission," he said at +last. "I'd have had you ashore by now. Hang on for a minute."</p> +<p>He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow. Holding fast +with one hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch. In that +continuous roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they +managed it, and presently she sat shivering in the cockpit, +watching the man spill the water out of the Peterboro till it rode +buoyantly again. Then he went to work at his engine methodically, +wiping dry the ignition terminals, all the various connections +where moisture could effect a short circuit. At the end of a few +minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple cylinders fired +with a roar.</p> +<p>He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering +gear stood.</p> +<p>"Well, Miss Ship-wrecked Mariner," said he lightly, "where do +you wish to be landed?"</p> +<p>"Over there, if you please." Stella pointed to where the red +roof of the bungalow stood out against the green. "I'm Mrs. +Fyfe."</p> +<p>"Ah!" said he. An expression of veiled surprise flashed across +his face. "Another potential romance strangled at birth. You know, +I hoped you were some local maiden before whom I could pose as a +heroic rescuer. Such is life. Odd, too. Linda Abbey—I'm the +Monohan tail to the Abbey business kite, you see—impressed me +as pilot for a spin this afternoon and backed out at the last +moment. I think she smelled this blow. So I went out for a ride by +myself. I was glowering at that new house through a glass when I +spied you out in the thick of it."</p> +<p>He had the clutch in now, and the launch was cleaving the seas, +even at half speed throwing out wide wings of spray. Some of this +the wind brought across the cockpit. "Come up into this seat," +Monohan commanded. "I don't suppose you can get any wetter, but if +you put your feet through this bulkhead door, the heat from the +engine will warm you. By Jove, you're fairly shivering."</p> +<p>"It's lucky for me you happened along," Stella remarked, when +she was ensconced behind the bulkhead. "I was getting so cold. I +don't know how much longer I could have stood it."</p> +<p>"Thank the good glasses that picked you out. You were only a +speck on the water, you know, when I sighted you first."</p> +<p>He kept silent after that. All his faculties were centered on +the seas ahead which rolled up before the sharp cutwater of the +launch. He was making time and still trying to avoid boarding seas. +When a big one lifted ahead, he slowed down. He kept one hand on +the throttle control, whistling under his breath disconnected +snatches of song. Stella studied his profile, clean-cut as a cameo +and wholly pleasing. He was almost as big-bodied as Jack Fyfe, and +full four inches taller. The wet shirt clinging close to his body +outlined well-knit shoulders, ropy-muscled arms. He could easily +have posed for a Viking, so strikingly blond was he, with fair, +curly hair. She judged that he might be around thirty, yet his face +was altogether boyish.</p> +<p>Sitting there beside him, shivering in her wet clothes, she +found herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about +a man that focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed +it or no. Why should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the +mere physical nearness of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There +was no debating that. And she wondered—wondered if a bolt of +that lightning she had dreaded ever since her marriage was about to +strike her now. She hoped not. All her emotions had lain fallow. If +Jack Fyfe had no power to stir her,—and she told herself Jack +had so failed, without asking herself why,—then some other +man might easily accomplish that, to her unutterable grief. She had +told herself many a time that no more terrible plight could +overtake her than to love and be loved and sit with hands folded, +foregoing it all. She shrank from so tragic an evolution. It meant +only pain, the ache of unfulfilled, unattainable desires. If, she +reflected cynically, this man beside her stood for such a motif in +her life, he might better have left her out in the swamped +canoe.</p> +<p>While she sat there, drawn-faced with the cold, thinking rather +amazedly these things which she told herself she had no right to +think, the launch slipped into the quiet nook of Cougar Bay and +slowed down to the float.</p> +<p>Monohan helped her out, threw off the canoe's painter, and +climbed back into the launch.</p> +<p>"You're as wet as I am," Stella said. "Won't you come up to the +house and get a change of clothes? I haven't even thanked you."</p> +<p>"Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please +remember not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy +the next time—and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming +sex. All smiles one minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay +this time, thanks. A little wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the +water long enough to get chilled, you know. I'll be home in half an +hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs. Fyfe, and drink something hot +to drive that chill away. Good-by."</p> +<p>Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting +grip. Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy +vision of a greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of +soul-affinity, of irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that +leaped full-blown into reality at the touch of a hand or the glance +of an eye, she had always viewed with distrust, holding them the +weaknesses of weak, volatile natures. But there was something about +this man which had stirred her, nothing that he said or did, merely +some elusive, personal attribute. She had never undergone any such +experience, and she puzzled over it now. A chance stranger, and his +touch could make her pulse leap. It filled her with astonished +dismay.</p> +<p>Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack +Junior cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the +natural reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came +home, she told him lightly of her rescue.</p> +<p>He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, +his eyes steady on her.</p> +<p>"That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you +remember not to drift offshore again?"</p> +<p>"I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant +experience."</p> +<p>"Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on +Roaring Lake again."</p> +<p>"Do you know him?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Yes," he replied briefly.</p> +<p>For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its +habitual impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer +sort of intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly +surprised. It wasn't quite in his usual manner.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<br> +<h3>A RESURRECTION</h3> +<p>It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a +discovery which profoundly affected the whole current of her +thought. The long twilight was just beginning. She was curled on +the living-room floor, playing with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie +Benton sat by a window, smoking, conversing, as they frequently +did, upon certain phases of the timber industry. A draft from an +open window fluttered some sheet music down off the piano rack, and +Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny, clawing hands. Some of +the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One bit of music was +a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it soared above +her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without any +premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began +to run over the accompaniment. She could play passably.</p> +<p>"That doesn't seem so very hard," she thought aloud. Benton +turned at sound of her words.</p> +<p>"Say, did you never get any part of your voice back, Stell?" he +asked. "I never hear you try to sing."</p> +<p>"No," she answered. "I tried and tried long after you left home, +but it was always the same old story. I haven't sung a note in five +years."</p> +<p>"Linda fell down hard on that song last night," he went on. +"There was a time when that wouldn't have been a starter for you, +eh? Did you know Stella used to warble like a prima donna, +Jack?"</p> +<p>Fyfe shook his head.</p> +<p>"Fact. The governor spent a pot of money cultivating her voice. +It was some voice, too. She—"</p> +<p>He broke off to listen. Stella was humming the words of the +song, her fingers picking at the melody instead of the +accompaniment.</p> +<p>"Why, you can," Benton cried.</p> +<p>"Can what?" She turned on the stool.</p> +<p>"Sing, of course. You got that high trill that Linda had to +screech through. You got it perfectly, without effort."</p> +<p>"I didn't," she returned. "Why, I wasn't singing, just humming +it over."</p> +<p>"You let out a link or two on those high notes just the same, +whether you knew you were doing it or not," her brother returned +impatiently. "Go on. Turn yourself loose. Sing that song."</p> +<p>"Oh, I couldn't," Stella said ruefully. "I haven't tried for so +long. It's no use. My voice always cracks, and I want to cry."</p> +<p>"Crack fiddlesticks!" Benton retorted. "I know what it used to +be. Believe me, it sounded natural, even if you were just lilting. +Here."</p> +<p>He came over to the piano and playfully edged her off the +stool.</p> +<p>"I'm pretty rusty," he said. "But I can fake what I can't play +of this. It's simple enough. You stand up there and sing."</p> +<p>She only stood looking at him.</p> +<p>"Go on," he commanded. "I believe you can sing anything. You +have to show me, if you can't."</p> +<p>Stella fingered the sheets reluctantly. Then she drew a deep +breath and began.</p> +<p>It was not a difficult selection, merely a bit from a current +light opera, with a closing passage that ranged a trifle too high +for the ordinary untrained voice to take with ease. Stella sang it +effortlessly, the last high, trilling notes pouring out as sweet +and clear as the carol of a lark. Benton struck the closing chord +and looked up at her. Fyfe leaned forward in his chair. Jack +Junior, among his pillows on the floor, waved his arms, kicking and +gurgling.</p> +<p>"You did pretty well on that," Charlie remarked complacently. +"Now <i>sing</i> something. Got any of your old pieces?"</p> +<p>"I wonder if I could?" Stella murmured. "I'm almost afraid to +try."</p> +<p>She hurried away to some outlying part of the house, reappearing +in a few minutes with a dog-eared bundle of sheets in her hand. +From among these she selected three and set them on the rack.</p> +<p>Benton whistled when he glanced over the music.</p> +<p>"The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, +look at the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from the +'Flying Dutchman.' Some stunt."</p> +<p>"Marchand composed it for the express purpose of trying out +voices," Stella said. "It <i>is</i> a stunt."</p> +<p>"You'll have to play your own accompaniment," Charlie grinned. +"That's too much for me."</p> +<p>"Oh, just so you give me a little support here and there," +Stella told him. "I can't sing sitting on a piano stool."</p> +<p>Benton made a face at the music and struck the keys.</p> +<p>It seemed to Stella nothing short of a miracle. She had been +mute so long. She had almost forgotten what a tragedy losing her +voice had been. And to find it again, to hear it ring like a +trumpet. It did! It was too big for the room. She felt herself +caught up in a triumphant ecstasy as she sang. She found herself +blinking as the last note died away. Her brother twisted about on +the piano stool, fumbling for a cigarette.</p> +<p>"And still they say they can't come back," he remarked at last. +"Why, you're better than you ever were, Stella. You've got the old +sweetness and flexibility that dad used to rave about. But your +voice is bigger, somehow different. It gets under a man's +skin."</p> +<p>She picked up the baby from the floor, began to play with him. +She didn't want to talk. She wanted to think, to gloat over and hug +to herself this miracle of her restored voice. She was very quiet, +very much absorbed in her own reflections until it was +time—very shortly—to put Jack Junior in his bed. That +was a function she made wholly her own. The nurse might greet his +waking whimper in the morning and minister to his wants throughout +the day, but Stella "tucked him in" his crib every night. And after +the blue eyes were closed, she sat there, very still, thinking. In +a detached way she was conscious of hearing Charlie leave.</p> +<p>Later, when she was sitting beside her dressing table brushing +her hair, Fyfe came in. He perched himself on the foot rail of the +bed, looking silently at her. She had long grown used to that. It +was a familiar trick of his.</p> +<p>"How did it happen that you've never tried your voice lately?" +he asked after a time.</p> +<p>"I gave it up long ago," she said. "Didn't I ever tell you that +I used to sing and lost my voice?"</p> +<p>"No," he answered. "Charlie did just now. You rather took my +breath away. It's wonderful. You'd be a sensation in opera."</p> +<p>"I might have been," she corrected. "That was one of my little +dreams. You don't know what a grief it was to me when I got over +that throat trouble and found I couldn't sing. I used to try and +try—and my voice would break every time. I lost all heart to +try after a while. That was when I wanted to take up nursing, and +they wouldn't let me. I haven't thought about singing for an age. +I've crooned lullabies to Jacky without remembering that I once had +volume enough to drown out an accompanist. Dad was awfully proud of +my voice."</p> +<p>"You've reason to be proud of it now," Fyfe said slowly. "It's a +voice in ten thousand. What are going to do with it?"</p> +<p>Stella drew the brush mechanically through her heavy hair. She +had been asking herself that. What could she do? A long road and a +hard one lay ahead of her or any other woman who essayed to make +her voice the basis of a career. Over and above that she was not +free to seek such a career. Fyfe himself knew that, and it +irritated her that he should ask such a question. She swung about +on him.</p> +<p>"Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that +my voice is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in +the East or abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of +such an undertaking? To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to +your logs?"</p> +<p>"So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little +reflected glory as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," +he replied slowly. "Well, I can't say that's a particularly +pleasing prospect."</p> +<p>"Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back +impatiently. "It'll be an asset—like my +looks—and—and—"</p> +<p>She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary +sob. Fyfe crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her.</p> +<p>"Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool."</p> +<p>"D—don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm +sorry. I simply can't help it. You don't understand."</p> +<p>"Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's +the devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,—to feed +her soul with illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look +here."</p> +<p>He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, +facing him. There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together +of his lips that frightened her a little.</p> +<p>"Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you +realize what sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You +married me under more or less compulsion,—compulsion of +circumstances,—and gradually you're beginning to get +dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate things you maybe +don't dream of now, if you keep on. Damn it, I didn't create the +circumstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It +satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't +any more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going +to make your life full of misery."</p> +<p>"I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions +that—that—Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not +complaining. I don't even know what gave me this black mood, just +now. I suppose that queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. +I feel—well, as if I were a different person, somehow; as if +I had forfeited any right to have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. +But it's there. I can't help my feeling—or my lack of +it."</p> +<p>Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her +shoulders.</p> +<p>"Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially +that last. We've been married some little time now, and if +anything, we're farther apart in the essentials of mating than we +were at the beginning. You've committed yourself to an undertaking, +yet more and more you encourage yourself to wish for the moon. If +you don't stop dreaming and try real living, don't you see a lot of +trouble ahead for yourself? It's simple. You're slowly hardening +yourself against me, beginning to resent my being a factor in your +life. It's only a matter of time, if you keep on, until your +emotions center about some other man."</p> +<p>"Why do you talk like that?" she said bitterly. "Do you think +I've got neither pride nor self-respect?"</p> +<p>"Yes. Both a-plenty," he answered. "But you're a woman, with a +rather complex nature even for your sex. If your heart and your +head ever clash over anything like that, you'll be in perfect hell +until one or the other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, +and high-strung as thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides +three meals a day and plenty of good clothes to complete your +existence. If I can't make it complete, some other man will make +you think he can. Why don't you try? Haven't I got any +possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little halo of romance +about me, for your own sake—if not for mine?"</p> +<p>He drew her up close to him, stroking tenderly the glossy brown +hair that flowed about her shoulders.</p> +<p>"Try it, Stella," he whispered passionately. "Try wanting to +like me, for a change. I can't make love by myself. Shake off that +infernal apathy that's taking possession of you where I'm +concerned. If you can't love me, for God's sake fight with me. Do +<i>something</i>!"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE CRISIS</h3> +<p>Looking back at that evening as the summer wore on, Stella +perceived that it was the starting point of many things, no one of +them definitely outstanding by itself but bulking large as a whole. +Fyfe made his appeal, and it left her unmoved save in certain +superficial aspects. She was sorry, but she was mostly sorry for +herself. And she denied his premonition of disaster. If, she said +to herself, they got no raptures out of life, at least they got +along without friction. In her mind their marriage, no matter that +it lacked what she no less than Fyfe deemed an essential to +happiness, was a fixed state, final, irrevocable, not to be altered +by any emotional vagaries.</p> +<p>No man, she told herself, could make her forget her duty. If it +should befall that her heart, lacking safe anchorage, went astray, +that would be her personal cross—not Jack Fyfe's. <i>He</i> +should never know. One might feel deeply without being moved to act +upon one's feelings. So she assured herself.</p> +<p>She never dreamed that Jack Fyfe could possibly have foreseen in +Walter Monohan a dangerous factor in their lives. A man is not +supposed to have uncanny intuitions, even when his wife is a +wonderfully attractive woman who does not care for him except in a +friendly sort of way. Stella herself had ample warning. From the +first time of meeting, the man's presence affected her strangely, +made an appeal to her that no man had ever made. She felt it +sitting beside him in the plunging launch that day when Roaring +Lake reached its watery arms for her. There was seldom a time when +they were together that she did not feel it. And she pitted her +will against it, as something to be conquered and crushed.</p> +<p>There was no denying the man's personal charm in the ordinary +sense of the word. He was virile, handsome, cultured, just such a +man as she could easily have centered her heart upon in times +past,—just such a man as can set a woman's heart thrilling +when he lays siege to her. If he had made an open bid for Stella's +affection, she, entrenched behind all the accepted canons of her +upbringing, would have recoiled from him, viewed him with wholly +distrustful eyes.</p> +<p>But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he +became so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a +continual informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and +Abbey's. Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common +knowledge on Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the +Abbey-Monohan combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the +lake that summer. There had grown up a genuine intimacy between +Linda and Stella. There were always people at the Abbeys'; +sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe bungalow. Stella's marvellous +voice served to heighten her popularity. The net result of it all +was that in the following three months source three days went by +that she did not converse with Monohan.</p> +<p>She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They +stood out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. +Where Fyfe was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, +save for that whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his +keen blue eyes, Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful +expressiveness of face. He was a finished product of courteous +generations. Moreover, he had been everywhere, done a little of +everything, acquired in his manner something of the versatility of +his experience. Physically he was fit as any logger in the camps, a +big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man.</p> +<p>What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never +determine. She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He +had the gift of quick, sympathetic perception,—but so too had +Jack Fyfe, she reminded herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice +could raise a flutter in her breast, make a faint flush glow in her +cheeks, while Monohan could do that. He did not need to be actively +attentive. It was only necessary for him to be near.</p> +<p>It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when +the first cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores +flamed again with the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she +had been playing with fire—and that fire burns.</p> +<p>This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had +steeled herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer +folk, to take himself out of her life. She admitted that there +would be a gap. But that had to be. No word other than friendly +ones would ever pass between them. He would go away, and she would +go on as before. That was all. She was scarcely aware how far they +had traveled along that road whereon travelers converse by glance +of eye, by subtle intuitions, eloquent silences. Monohan himself +delivered the shock that awakened her to despairing clearness of +vision.</p> +<p>He had come to bring her a book, he and Linda Abbey and Charlie +together,—a commonplace enough little courtesy. And it +happened that this day Fyfe had taken his rifle and vanished into +the woods immediately after luncheon. Between Linda Abbey and +Charlie Benton matters had so far progressed that it was now the +most natural thing for them to seek a corner or poke along the +beach together, oblivious to all but themselves. This afternoon +they chatted a while with Stella and then gradually detached +themselves until Monohan, glancing through the window, pointed them +out to his hostess. They were seated on a log at the edge of the +lawn, a stone's throw from the house.</p> +<p>"They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain +sailing for them."</p> +<p>There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that +stabbed Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. +Something rose chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against +a slow welling of tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was +betraying herself, Monohan was holding both her hands fast between +his own, gripping them with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking +in a passionate undertone.</p> +<p>"Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like +this?" he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved +and been happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I +felt it that day I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing +on me ever since. I've struggled against it, and it's no use. It's +something stronger than I am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me +to see you chafing in your chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it +have been different?"</p> +<p>"You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You +mustn't. It isn't right."</p> +<p>"I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, +when your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do +you think I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. +I know you're the kind of woman who goes through hell for her +conceptions of right and wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, +oh, the pity of it. Why should it have to be? Life could have held +so much that is fine and true for you and me together. For you do +care, don't you?"</p> +<p>"What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What +difference can it make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I +mustn't listen. I mustn't."</p> +<p>"But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look +at me, Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do +anything that might bring the least shadow on you. I know the +pitiful hopelessness of it. You're fettered, and there's no +apparent loophole to freedom. I know it's best for me to keep this +locked tight in my heart, as something precious and sorrowful. I +never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't always equal to the +task the spirit imposes."</p> +<p>She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a +grip on herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against +him and cry her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will +that she possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of +emotion that racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, +strained tone. But she faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all +doubt what she had to face.</p> +<p>"Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm +neither little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's +big and clean. I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it—if +you can understand that. But that's neither here nor there. I know +what I have to do. I married without love, with my eyes wide open, +and I have to pay the price. So you must never talk to me of love. +You mustn't even see me, if it can be avoided. It's better that +way. We can't make over our lives to suit ourselves—at least +I can't. I must play the game according to the only rules I know. +We daren't—we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling. +With you—footloose, and all the world before you—it'll +die out presently."</p> +<p>"No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I +know myself."</p> +<p>He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the +pain of it ran to her elbows. Then his fingers relaxed a +little.</p> +<p>"Oh, I know," he said haltingly. "I know it's got to be that +way. I have to go my road and leave you to yours. Oh, the blank +hopelessness of it, the useless misery of it. We're made for each +other, and we have to grin and say good-by, go along our separate +ways, trying to smile. What a devilish state of affairs! But I love +you, dear, and no matter—I—ah—"</p> +<p>His voice flattened out. His hands released hers, he +straightened quickly. Stella turned her head. Jack Fyfe stood in +the doorway. His face was fixed in its habitual mask. He was biting +the end off a cigar. He struck a match and put it to the cigar end +with steady fingers as he walked slowly across the big room.</p> +<p>"I hear the kid peeping," he said to Stella quite casually, "and +I noticed Martha outside as I came in. Better go see what's up with +him."</p> +<p>Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to +obey, for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge +of command. Her heart apparently ceased to beat. She tried to +smile, but she knew that her face was tear-wet. She knew that Jack +Fyfe had seen and understood. She had done no wrong, but a terrible +apprehension of consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her +own making might stalk grimly in that room.</p> +<p>In this extremity she banked with implicit faith on the man she +had married rather than the man she loved. For the moment she felt +overwhelmingly glad that Jack Fyfe was iron—cool, unshakable. +He would never give an inch, but he would never descend to any +sordid scene. She could not visualize him the jealous, outraged +husband, breathing the conventional anathema, but there were +elements unreckonable in that room. She knew instinctively that +Fyfe once aroused would be deadly in anger and she could not vouch +for Monohan's temper under the strain of feeling. That was why she +feared.</p> +<p>So she lingered a second or two outside the door, quaking, but +there arose only the sound of Fyfe's heavy body settling into a +leather chair, and following that the low, even rumble of his +voice. She could not distinguish words. The tone sounded ordinary, +conversational. She prayed that his intent was to ignore the +situation, that Monohan would meet him halfway in that effort. +Afterward there would be a reckoning. But for herself she neither +thought nor feared. It was a problem to be faced, that was all. And +so, the breath of her coming in short, quick respirations, she went +to her room. There was no wailing from the nursery. She had known +that.</p> +<p>Sitting beside a window, chin in hand, her lower lip compressed +between her teeth, she saw Fyfe, after the lapse of ten minutes, +leave by the front entrance, stopping to chat a minute with Linda +and Charlie Benton, who were moving slowly toward the house. Stella +rose to her feet and dabbed at her face with a powdered chamois. +She couldn't let Monohan go like that; her heart cried out against +it. Very likely they would never meet again.</p> +<p>She flew down the hall to the living room. Monohan stood just +within the front door, gazing irresolutely over his shoulder. He +took a step or two to meet her. His clean-cut face was drawn into +sullen lines, a deep flush mantled his cheek.</p> +<p>"Listen," he said tensely. "I've been made to feel +like—like—Well, I controlled myself. I knew it had to +be that way. It was unfortunate. I think we could have been trusted +to do the decent thing. You and I were bred to do that. I've got a +little pride. I can't come here again. And I want to see you once +more before I leave here for good. I'll be going away next week. +That'll be the end of it—the bitter finish. Will you slip +down to the first point south of Cougar Bay about three in the +afternoon to-morrow? It'll be the last and only time. He'll have +you for life; can't I talk to you for twenty minutes?"</p> +<p>"No," she whispered forlornly. "I can't do that. I—oh, +good-by—good-by."</p> +<p>"Stella, Stella," she heard his vibrant whisper follow after. +But she ran away through dining room and hall to the bedroom, there +to fling herself face down, choking back the passionate protest +that welled up within her. She lay there, her face buried in the +pillow, until the sputtering exhaust of the Abbey cruiser growing +fainter and more faint told her they were gone.</p> +<p>She heard her husband walk through the house once after that. +When dinner was served, he was not there. It was eleven o'clock by +the time-piece on her mantel when she heard him come in, but he did +not come to their room. He went quietly into the guest chamber +across the hall.</p> +<p>She waited through a leaden period. Then, moved by an impulse +she did not attempt to define, a mixture of motives, pity for him, +a craving for the outlet of words, a desire to set herself right +before him, she slipped on a dressing robe and crossed the hall. +The door swung open noiselessly. Fyfe sat slumped in a chair, hat +pulled low on his forehead, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He +did not even look up. His eyes stared straight ahead, absent, +unseeingly fixed on nothing. He seemed to be unconscious of her +presence or to ignore it,—she could not tell which.</p> +<p>"Jack," she said. And when he made no response she said again, +tremulously, that unyielding silence chilling her, "Jack."</p> +<p>He stirred a little, but only to take off his hat and lay it on +a table beside him. With one hand pushing back mechanically the +straight, reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her +and said briefly, in a tone barren of all emotion:</p> +<p>"Well?"</p> +<p>She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was +much to be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on +with a cloud like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated +in the crucible of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a +prolonged silence, seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he +began to speak, cutting straight to the heart of his subject, after +his fashion.</p> +<p>"It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. +"But now that you're face to face with something definite, what do +you propose to do about it?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's +there. But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it +didn't exist. There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. +I'm sorry, Jack."</p> +<p>"So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we +took,—or I took, rather. I seem to have made a mistake or +two, in my estimate of both you and myself. That is human enough, I +suppose. You're making a bigger mistake than I did though, to let +Monohan sweep you off your feet."</p> +<p>There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It +stung her.</p> +<p>"He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. +"Good Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? +I've never forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect +left yet, if I was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me +in the beginning. I was honest with you then. I'm trying to be +honest with you now."</p> +<p>"I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a +damnably unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw +something of the sort when we were married. You were candid enough +about your attitude. But I told myself like a conceited fool that I +could make your life so full that in a little while I'd be the only +possible figure on your horizon. I've failed. I've known for some +time that I was going to fail. You're not the thin-blooded type of +woman that is satisfied with pleasant surroundings and any sort of +man. You're bound to run the gamut of all the emotions, sometime +and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought in my conceit I could +make myself the man, the one man who would mean everything to +you."</p> +<p>"Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't +see how you can avoid paying the penalty for folly."</p> +<p>"What do you mean?" she asked.</p> +<p>"You haven't tried to play the game," he answered tensely. "For +months you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been +clanking your chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious +power to strike them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. +It isn't a thing—marriage, I mean—that you hold +lightly. That being the case, you would have been wise to try +making the best of it, instead of making the worst of it. But you +let yourself drift into a state of mind where you—well, you +see the result. I saw it coming. I didn't need to happen in this +afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling swirling +about. And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty. If you +let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you'll pay bigger +in the end."</p> +<p>"I can't help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings," she +said wearily.</p> +<p>"You think you love him," Fyfe made low reply. "As a matter of +fact, you love what you think he is. I daresay that he has sworn +his affection by all that's good and great. But if you were +convinced that he didn't really care, that his flowery +protestations had a double end in view, would you still love +him?"</p> +<p>"I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do +love him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed +me in a way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to +avoid. But—but I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to +misunderstand. I don't want this to make us both miserable. I don't +want it to generate an atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd +only be fighting about a shadow. I never cheated at anything in my +life. You can trust me still, can't you?"</p> +<p>"Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation.</p> +<p>"Then that's all there is to it," she replied, +"unless—unless you're ready to give me up as a hopeless case, +and let me go away and blunder along the best I can."</p> +<p>He shook his head.</p> +<p>"I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's +unwise of me to say this,—it will probably antagonize +you,—but I know Monohan better than you do. I'd go pretty far +to keep you two apart—now—for your sake."</p> +<p>"It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. +"I can understand that feeling in you. It's so—so typically +masculine."</p> +<p>"No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a +self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll +only live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with +a man that I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my +pocket and let you go. If you cared enough for him to break every +tie, to face the embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were +entitled to your freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But +Monohan—hell, I don't want to talk about him. I trust you, +Stella. I'm banking on your own good sense. And along with that +good, natural common sense, you've got so many illusions. About +life in general, and about men. They seem to have centered about +this one particular man. I can't open your eyes or put you on the +right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do is to sit back +and wait."</p> +<p>His voice trailed off huskily.</p> +<p>Stella put a hand on his shoulder.</p> +<p>"Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in +spite of what you know?"</p> +<p>"For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing +in my life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm +getting hopeless."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how +sorry I am. I didn't love you to begin with—"</p> +<p>"And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged +that ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the +real romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't +found it yet. I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could +convince you."</p> +<p>"Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love +you—that I was worn out and desperate and clutching at the +life line you threw. In spite of that,—well, if I fight down +this love, or fascination, or infatuation, or whatever it +is,—I'm not sure myself, except that it affects me +strongly,—can't we be friends again?"</p> +<p>"Friends! Oh, hell!" Fyfe exploded.</p> +<p>He came up out of his chair with a blaze in his eyes that +startled her, caught her by the arm, and thrust her out the +door.</p> +<p>"Friends? You and I?" He sank his voice to a harsh whisper. "My +God—friends! Go to bed. Good night."</p> +<p>He pushed her into the hall, and the lock clicked between them. +For one confused instant Stella stood poised, uncertain. Then she +went into her bedroom and sat down, her keenest sensation one of +sheer relief. Already in those brief hours emotion had well-nigh +exhausted her. To be alone, to lie still and rest, to banish +thought,—that was all she desired.</p> +<p>She lay on her bed inert, numbed, all but her mind, and that +traversed section by section in swift, consecutive progress all the +amazing turns of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. +There was neither method nor inquiry in this +back-casting—merely a ceaseless, involuntary activity of the +brain.</p> +<p>A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went +into the adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and +took him to her own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her +breast, she lay there fighting against that interminable, maddening +buzzing in her brain. She prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers +stroking the silky, baby hair.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<br> +<h3>IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH</h3> +<p>One can only suffer so much. Poignant feeling brings its own +anaesthetic. When Stella Fyfe fell into a troubled sleep that +night, the storm of her emotions had beaten her sorely. Morning +brought its physical reaction. She could see things clearly and +calmly enough to perceive that her love for Monohan was fraught +with factors that must be taken into account. All the world loves a +lover, but her world did not love lovers who kicked over the +conventional traces. She had made a niche for herself. There were +ties she could not break lightly, and she was not thinking of +herself alone when she considered that, but of her husband and Jack +Junior, of Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton, of each and every +individual whose life touched more or less directly upon her +own.</p> +<p>She had known always what a woman should do in such case, what +she had been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, +and take her medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had +made that clear. But her heart cried out in rebellion against the +necessity. To her, trying to think logically, the most grievous +phase of the doing was the fact that nothing could ever be the same +again. She could go on. Oh, yes. She could dam up the wellspring of +her impulses, walk steadfast along the accustomed ways. But those +ways would not be the old ones. There would always be the skeleton +at the feast. She would know it was there, and Jack Fyfe would +know, and she dreaded the fruits of that knowledge, the bitterness +and smothered resentment it would breed. But it had to be. As she +saw it, there was no choice.</p> +<p>She came down to breakfast calmly enough. It was nothing that +could be altered by heroics, by tears and wailings. Not that she +was much given to either. She had not whined when her brother made +things so hard for her that any refuge seemed alluring by +comparison. Curiously enough, she did not blame her brother now; +neither did she blame Jack Fyfe.</p> +<p>She told herself that in first seeking the line of least +resistance she had manifested weakness, that since her present +problem was indirectly the outgrowth of that original weakness, she +would be weak no more. So she tried to meet her husband as if +nothing had happened, in which she succeeded outwardly very well +indeed, since Fyfe himself chose to ignore any change in their +mutual attitude.</p> +<p>She busied herself about the house that forenoon, seeking +deliberately a multitude of little tasks to occupy her hands and +her mind.</p> +<p>But when lunch was over, she was at the end of her resources. +Jack Junior settled in his crib for a nap. Fyfe went away to that +area back of the camp where arose the crash of falling trees and +the labored puffing of donkey engines. She could hear faint and far +the voices of the falling gangs that cried: "Tim-ber-r-r-r." She +could see on the bank, a little beyond the bunkhouse and +cook-shack, the big roader spooling up the cable that brought +string after string of logs down to the lake. Rain or sun, +happiness or sorrow, the work went on. She found it in her heart to +envy the sturdy loggers. They could forget their troubles in the +strain of action. Keyed as she was to that high pitch, that sense +of their unremitting activity, the ravaging of the forest which +produced the resources for which she had sold herself irritated +her. She was very bitter when she thought that.</p> +<p>She longed for some secluded place to sit and think, or try to +stop thinking. And without fully realizing the direction she took, +she walked down past the camp, crossed the skid-road, stepping +lightly over main line and haul-back at the donkey engineer's +warning, and went along the lake shore.</p> +<p>A path wound through the belt of brush and hardwood that fringed +the lake. Not until she had followed this up on the neck of a +little promontory south of the bay, did she remember with a shock +that she was approaching the place where Monohan had begged her to +meet him. She looked at her watch. Two-thirty. She sought the shore +line for sight of a boat, wondering if he would come in spite of +her refusal. But to her great relief she saw no sign of him. +Probably he had thought better of it, had seen now as she had seen +then that no good and an earnest chance of evil might come of such +a clandestine meeting, had taken her stand as final.</p> +<p>She was glad, because she did not want to go back to the house. +She did not want to make the effort of wandering away in the other +direction to find that restful peace of woods and water. She moved +up a little on the point until she found a mossy boulder and sat +down on that, resting her chin in her palms, looking out over the +placid surface of the lake with somber eyes.</p> +<p>And so Monohan surprised her. The knoll lay thick-carpeted with +moss. He was within a few steps of her when a twig cracking +underfoot apprised her of some one's approach. She rose, with an +impulse to fly, to escape a meeting she had not desired. And as she +rose, the breath stopped in her throat.</p> +<p>Twenty feet behind Monohan came Jack Fyfe with his hunter's +stride, soundlessly over the moss, a rifle drooping in the crook of +his arm. A sunbeam striking obliquely between two firs showed her +his face plainly, the faint curl of his upper lip.</p> +<p>Something in her look arrested Monohan. He glanced around, +twisted about, froze in his tracks, his back to her. Fyfe came up. +Of the three he was the coolest, the most rigorously +self-possessed. He glanced from Monohan to his wife, back to +Monohan. After that his blue eyes never left the other man's +face.</p> +<p>"What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at +last. "But then I might have known I was wasting my breath on +you!"</p> +<p>"Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do +about it? This isn't the Stone Age."</p> +<p>Fyfe laughed unpleasantly.</p> +<p>"Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. +"No, it takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as +you."</p> +<p>A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward +Fyfe, his hands clenched.</p> +<p>"You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted +hoarsely.</p> +<p>"No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic +clink against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort +of a yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. +That's why it stings you to be told so."</p> +<p>Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was +crimson.</p> +<p>"By God, I'll teach you something," he snarled.</p> +<p>He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for +Fyfe's face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the +balls of his feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped +Monohan across the mouth with the open palm of his hand.</p> +<p>"Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It."</p> +<p>Monohan pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by +inches. Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He +rushed again, launching another vicious blow that threw him partly +off his balance. Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet +from under him, sent him sprawling on the moss.</p> +<p>Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had +come about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had +visualized it when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of +her husband that she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to +understand. She could have understood him beating Monohan +senseless, if he could. A murderous fury of jealousy would not have +surprised her. This did. He had not struck a blow, did not attempt +to strike.</p> +<p>She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with +Monohan, making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of +height and reach. Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond +Monohan's vengeful blows, slipping under those driving fists to +slap his adversary, to trip him, mocking him with the futility of +his effort.</p> +<p>She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was +not a fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay +something else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's +speech. Here and now, they had forgotten her at the first word. +They were engaged in a struggle for mastery, sheer brute +determination to hurt each other, which had little or nothing to do +with her. She foresaw, watching the odd combat with a feeling akin +to fascination, that it was a losing game for Monohan. Fyfe was his +master at every move.</p> +<p>Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but +that humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his +foot that plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold +grimace that reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of +his features. Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered +at his purpose, how it would end.</p> +<p>The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging +of those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring +the rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood +panting with his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for +Fyfe's body.</p> +<p>Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as +Monohan was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow +that landed near his heart, and while he staggered from that, +clamped one thick arm about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding +him helpless, bent backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly +and systematically choked him; he shut off his breath until +Monohan's tongue protruded, and his eyes bulged glassily, and +horrible, gurgling noises issued from his gaping mouth.</p> +<p>"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing +him."</p> +<p>Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have +stirred him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. +Stella could not tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force +that sent him reeling a dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It +took him a full minute to regain his breath, to rise to unsteady +feet, to find his voice.</p> +<p>"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you +that you can't."</p> +<p>With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe +stood silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan +pushed out a slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging +alders and set off down the lake.</p> +<p>"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal +tone. "The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose."</p> +<p>"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly.</p> +<p>He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now +that his face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew +harder together as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for +the storm that broke. She did not comprehend the tempest that raged +within him until he had her by the shoulders, his fingers crushing +into her soft flesh like the jaws of a trap, shaking her as a +terrier might shake a rat, till the heavy coils of hair cascaded +over her shoulders, and for a second fear tugged at her heart. For +she thought he meant to kill her.</p> +<p>When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms +that sent her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her +being, though not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot +protest against his brute strength, against his passionate +outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were against her, she knew. Even +so, she revolted against his cave-man roughness. She was amazed to +find herself longing for the power to strike him.</p> +<p>She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring +at him in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she +looked. He drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his +rifle. When he faced about with that in his hand, the old mask of +immobility was in place. He waited while Stella gathered up her +scattered hairpins and made shift to coil her hair into a semblance +of Order. Then he said gently:</p> +<p>"I won't break out like that again."</p> +<p>"Once is enough."</p> +<p>"More than enough—for me," he answered.</p> +<p>She disdained reply. Striking off along the path that ran to the +camp, she walked rapidly, choking a rising flood of desperate +thought. With growing coolness paradoxically there burned hotter +the flame of an elemental wrath. What right had he to lay hands on +her? Her shoulders ached, her flesh was bruised from the terrible +grip of his fingers. The very sound of his footsteps behind her was +maddening. To be suspected and watched, to be continually the +target of jealous fury! No, a thousand times, no. She wheeled on +him at last.</p> +<p>"I can't stand this," she cried. "It's beyond endurance. We're +like flint and steel to each other now. If to-day's a sample of +what we may expect, it's better to make a clean sweep of +everything. I've got to get away from here and from you—from +everybody."</p> +<p>Fyfe motioned her to a near-by log.</p> +<p>"Sit down," said he. "We may as well have it out here."</p> +<p>For a few seconds he busied himself with a cigar, removing the +band with utmost deliberation, biting the end off, applying the +match, his brows puckered slightly.</p> +<p>"It's very unwise of you to meet Monohan like that," he uttered +finally.</p> +<p>"Oh, I see," she flashed. "Do you suggest that I met him +purposely—by appointment? Even if I did—"</p> +<p>"That's for you to say, Stella," he interrupted gravely. "I told +you last night that I trusted you absolutely. I do, so far as +really vital things are concerned, but I don't always trust your +judgment. I merely know that Monohan sneaked along shore, hid his +boat, and stole through the timber to where you were sitting. I +happened to see him, and I followed him to see what he was up to, +why he should take such measures to keep under cover."</p> +<p>"The explanation is simple," she answered stiffly. "You can +believe it or not, as you choose. My being there was purely +unintentional. If I had seen him before he was close, I should +certainly not have been there. I have been at odds with myself all +day, and I went for a walk, to find a quiet place where I could sit +and think."</p> +<p>"It doesn't matter now," he said. "Only you'd better try to +avoid things like that in the future. Would you mind telling me +just exactly what you meant a minute ago? Just what you propose to +do?"</p> +<p>He asked her that as one might make any commonplace inquiry, but +his quietness did not deceive Stella.</p> +<p>"What I said," she began desperately. "Wasn't it plain enough? +It seems to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if +we try to live it together. I—I'm sorry, but you know how I +feel. It may be unwise, but these things aren't dictated by reason. +You know that. If our emotions were guided by reason and +expediency, we'd be altogether different. Last night I was willing +to go on and make the best of things. To-day,—especially +after this,—it looks impossible. You'll look at me, and guess +what I'm thinking, and hate me. And I'll grow to hate you, because +you'll be little better than a jailer. Oh, don't you see that the +way we'll feel will make us utterly miserable? Why should we stick +together when no good can come of it? You've been good to me. I've +appreciated that and liked you for it. I'd like to be friends. But +I—I'd hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were +always on the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you +did a while ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, +Jack Fyfe. I could gladly have killed you when you were jerking me +about back yonder."</p> +<p>"I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive +being than I've supposed?"</p> +<p>Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes—eyes +that were bright with unshed tears.</p> +<p>"And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I +didn't want to horrify you with anything like brutality," he went +on thoughtfully. "You think I grinned and made a monkey of +<i>him</i> because it pleased me to do that? Why, I could +have—and ached to—break him into little bits, to smash +him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in looking at him +again. And I didn't, simply and solely because I didn't want to let +you have even a glimpse of what I'm capable of when I get started. +I wonder if I made a mistake? It was merely the reaction from +letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so. I +wonder—well, never mind. Go on."</p> +<p>"I think it's better that I should go away," Stella said. "I +want you to agree that I should; then there will be no talk or +anything disagreeable from outside sources. I'm strong, I can get +on. It'll be a relief to have to work. I won't have to be the +kitchen drudge Charlie made of me. I've got my voice. I'm quite +sure I can capitalize that. But I've got to go. Anything's better +than this; anything that's clean and decent. I'd despise myself if +I stayed on as your wife, feeling as I do. It was a mistake in the +beginning, our marriage."</p> +<p>"Nevertheless," Fyfe said slowly, "I'm afraid it's a mistake +you'll have to abide by—for a time. All that you say may be +true, although I don't admit it myself. Offhand, I'd say you were +simply trying to welch on a fair bargain. I'm not going to let you +do it blindly, all wrought up to a pitch where you can scarcely +think coherently. If you are fully determined to break away from +me, you owe it to us both to be sure of what you're doing before +you act. I'm going to talk plain. You can believe it and disdain it +if you please. If you were leaving me for a man, a real man, I +think I could bring myself to make it easy for you and wish you +luck. But you're not. He's—"</p> +<p>"Can't we leave him out of it?" she demanded. "I want to get +away from you both. Can you understand that? It doesn't help you +any to pick <i>him</i> to pieces."</p> +<p>"No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of +idealization you've wrapped around him," Fyfe observed patiently. +"It's not a job I have much stomach for however, even if you were +willing to let me try. But to come back. You've got to stick it out +with me, Stella. You'll hate me for the constraint, I suppose. But +until—until things shape up differently—you'll +understand what I'm talking about by and by, I think—you've +got to abide by the bargain you made with me. I couldn't force you +to stay, I know. But there's one hold you can't break—not if +I know you at all."</p> +<p>"What is that?" she asked icily.</p> +<p>"The kid's," he murmured.</p> +<p>Stella buried her face in her hands for a minute.</p> +<p>"I'd forgotten—I'd forgotten," she whispered.</p> +<p>"You understand, don't you?" he said hesitatingly. "If you +leave—I keep our boy."</p> +<p>"Oh, you're devilish—to use a club like that," she cried. +"You know I wouldn't part from my baby—the only thing I've +got that's worth having."</p> +<p>"He's worth something to me too," Fyfe muttered. "A lot more +than you think, maybe. I'm not trying to club you. There's nothing +in it for me. But for him; well, he needs you. It isn't his fault +he's here, or that you're unhappy. I've got to protect him, see +that he gets a fair shake. I can't see anything to it but for you +to go on being Mrs. Jack Fyfe until such time as you get back to a +normal poise. Then it will be time enough to try and work out some +arrangement that won't be too much of a hardship on him. It's +that—or a clean break in which you go your own way, and I try +to mother him to the best of my ability. You'll understand sometime +why I'm showing my teeth this way."</p> +<p>"You have everything on your side," she admitted dully, after a +long interval of silence. "I'm a fool. I admit it. Have things your +way. But it won't work, Jack. This flare-up between us will only +smoulder. I think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan. It +isn't that I love him so much as that I don't love you at all. I +can live without him—which I mean to do in any case—far +easier than I can live with you. It won't work."</p> +<p>"Don't worry," he replied. "You won't be annoyed by me in +person. I'll have my hands full elsewhere."</p> +<p>They rose and walked on to the house. On the porch Jack Junior +was being wheeled back and forth in his carriage. He lifted chubby +arms to his mother as she came up the steps. Stella carried him +inside, hugging the sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast. She +did not want to cry, but she could not help it. It was as if she +had been threatened with irrevocable loss of that precious bit of +her own flesh and blood. She hugged him to her, whispering +mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly tender.</p> +<p>Fyfe stood aside for a minute. Then he came up behind her and +stood resting one hand on the back of her chair.</p> +<p>"Stella."</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>"I got word from my sister and her husband in this morning's +mail. They will very likely be here next week for a three days' +stay. Brace up. Let's try and keep our skeleton from rattling while +they're here. Will you?"</p> +<p>"All right, Jack. I'll try."</p> +<p>He patted her tousled hair lightly and left the room. Stella +looked after him with a surge of mixed feeling. She told herself +she hated him and his dominant will that always beat her own down; +she hated him for his amazing strength and for his unvarying +sureness of himself. And in the same breath she found herself +wondering if,—with their status reversed,—Walter +Monohan would be as patient, as gentle, as self-controlled with a +wife who openly acknowledged her affection for another man. And +still her heart cried out for Monohan. She flared hot against the +disparaging note, the unconcealed contempt Fyfe seemed to have for +him.</p> +<p>Yet in spite of her eager defence of him, there was something +ugly about that clash with Fyfe in the edge of the woods, something +that jarred. It wasn't spontaneous. She could not understand that +tigerish onslaught of Monohan's. It was more the action she would +have expected from her husband.</p> +<p>It puzzled her, grieved her, added a little to the sorrowful +weight that settled upon her. They were turbulent spirits both. The +matter might not end there.</p> +<p>In the next ten days three separate incidents, each isolated and +relatively unimportant, gave Stella food for much puzzled +thought.</p> +<p>The first was a remark of Fyfe's sister in the first hours of +their acquaintance. Mrs. Henry Alden could never have denied blood +kinship with Jack Fyfe. She had the same wide, good-humored mouth, +the blue eyes that always seemed to be on the verge of twinkling, +and the same fair, freckled skin. Her characteristics of speech +resembled his. She was direct, bluntly so, and she was not much +given to small talk. Fyfe and Stella met the Aldens at Roaring +Springs with the <i>Waterbug</i>. Alden proved a genial sort of man +past forty, a big, loose-jointed individual whose outward +appearance gave no indication of what he was +professionally,—a civil engineer with a reputation that +promised to spread beyond his native States.</p> +<p>"You don't look much different, Jack," his sister observed +critically, as the <i>Waterbug</i> backed away from the wharf in a +fine drizzle of rain. "Except that as you grow older, you more and +more resemble the pater. Has matrimony toned him down, my dear?" +she turned to Stella. "The last time I saw him he had a black +eye!"</p> +<p>Fyfe did not give her a chance to answer.</p> +<p>"Be a little more diplomatic, Dolly," he smiled. "Mrs. Jack +doesn't realize what a rowdy I used to be. I've reformed."</p> +<p>"Ah," Mrs. Alden chuckled, "I have a vision of you growing meek +and mild."</p> +<p>They talked desultorily as the launch thrashed along. Alden's +profession took him to all corners of the earth. That was why the +winter of Fyfe's honeymoon had not made them acquainted. Alden and +his wife were then in South America. This visit was to fill in the +time before the departure of a trans-Pacific liner which would land +the Aldens at Manila.</p> +<p>Presently the Abbey-Monohan camp and bungalow lay abeam. Stella +told Mrs. Alden something of the place.</p> +<p>"That reminds me," Mrs. Alden turned to her brother. "I was +quite sure I saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting +for the hotel car in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out +here. Is he this Monohan?"</p> +<p>Fyfe nodded.</p> +<p>"How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same region. +Do you still maintain the ancient feud?"</p> +<p>Fyfe shot her a queer look.</p> +<p>"We've grown up, Dolly," he said drily. Then: "Do you expect to +get back to God's country short of a year, Alden?"</p> +<p>That was all. Neither of them reverted to the subject again. But +Stella pondered. An ancient feud? She had not known of that. +Neither man had ever dropped a hint.</p> +<p>For the second incident, Paul Abbey dropped in to dinner a few +days later and divulged a bit of news.</p> +<p>"There's been a shake-up in our combination," he remarked +casually to Fyfe. "Monohan and dad have split over a question of +business policy. Walter's taking over all our interests on Roaring +Lake. He appears to be going to peel off his coat and become +personally active in the logging industry. Funny streak for Monohan +to take, isn't it? He never seemed to care a hoot about the working +end of the business, so long as it produced dividends."</p> +<p>Lastly, Charlie Benton came over to eat a farewell dinner with +the Aldens the night before they left. He followed Stella into the +nursery when she went to tuck Jack Junior in his crib.</p> +<p>"Say, Stella" he began, "I have just had a letter from old man +Lander; you remember he was dad's legal factotum and executor."</p> +<p>"Of course," she returned.</p> +<p>"Well, do you recall—you were there when the estate was +wound up, and I was not—any mention of some worthless oil +stock? Some California wildcat stuff the governor got bit on? It +was found among his effects."</p> +<p>"I seem to recall something of the sort," she answered. "But I +don't remember positively. What about it?"</p> +<p>"Lander writes me that there is a prospect of it being salable. +The company is reviving. And he finds himself without legal +authority to do business, although the stock certificates are still +in his hands. He suggests that we give him a power of attorney to +sell this stuff. He's an awfully conservative old chap, so there +must be a reasonable prospect of some cash, or he wouldn't bother. +My hunch is to give him a power of attorney and let him use his own +judgment."</p> +<p>"How much is it worth?" she asked.</p> +<p>"The par value is forty thousand dollars," Benton grinned. "But +the governor bought it at ten cents on the dollar. If we get what +he paid, we'll be lucky. That'll be two thousand apiece. I brought +you a blank form. I'm going down with you on the <i>Bug</i> +to-morow to send mine. I'd advise you to have yours signed up and +witnessed before a notary at Hopyard and send it too."</p> +<p>"Of course I will," she said.</p> +<p>"It isn't much," Benton mused, leaning on the foot of the crib, +watching her smooth the covers over little Jack. "But it won't come +amiss—to me, at least. I'm going to be married in the +spring."</p> +<p>Stella looked up.</p> +<p>"You are?" she murmured. "To Linda Abbey?"</p> +<p>He nodded. A slight flush crept over his tanned face at the +steady look she bent on him.</p> +<p>"Hang it, what are you thinking?" he broke out. "I know you've +rather looked down on me because I acted like a bounder that +winter. But I really took a tumble to myself. You set me thinking +when you made that sudden break with Jack. I felt rather guilty +about that—until I saw how it turned out. I know I'm not half +good enough for Linda. But so long as she thinks I am and I try to +live up to that, why we've as good a chance to be happy as anybody. +We all make breaks, us fellows that go at everything roughshod. +Still, when we pull up and take a new tack, you shouldn't hold +grudges. If we could go back to that fall and winter, I'd do things +a lot differently."</p> +<p>"If you're both really and truly in love," Stella said quietly, +"that's about the only thing that matters. I hope you'll be happy. +But you'll have to be a lot different with Linda Abbey than you +were with me."</p> +<p>"Ah, Stella, don't harp on that," he said shame-facedly. "I was +rotten, it's true. But we're all human. I couldn't see anything +then only what I wanted myself. I was like a bull in a china shop. +It's different now. I'm on my feet financially, and I've had time +to draw my breath and take a squint at myself from a different +angle. I did you a good turn, anyway, even if I was the cause of +you taking a leap before you looked. You landed right."</p> +<p>Stella mustered a smile that was purely facial. It maddened her +to hear his complacent justification of himself. And the most +maddening part of it was her knowledge that Benton was right, that +in many essential things he had done her a good turn, which her own +erratic inclinations bade fair to wholly nullify.</p> +<p>"I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world," she said +gently. "And I don't bear a grudge, believe me, Charlie. Now, run +along. We'll keep baby awake, talking."</p> +<p>"All right." He turned to go and came back again.</p> +<p>"What I really came in to say, I've hardly got nerve enough +for." He sank his voice to a murmur. "Don't fly off at me, Stell. +But—you haven't got a trifle interested in Monohan, have you? +I mean, you haven't let him think you are?"</p> +<p>Stella's hands tightened on the crib rail. For an instant her +heart stood still. A wholly unreasoning blaze of anger seized her. +But she controlled that. Pride forbade her betraying herself.</p> +<p>"What a perfectly ridiculous question," she managed to +reply.</p> +<p>He looked at her keenly.</p> +<p>"Because, if you have—well, you might be perfectly +innocent in the matter and still get in bad," he continued evenly. +"I'd like to put a bug in your ear."</p> +<p>She bent over Jack Junior, striving to inject an amused note +into her reply.</p> +<p>"Don't be so absurd, Charlie."</p> +<p>"Oh, well, I suppose it is. Only, darn it, I've seen him look at +you in a way—Pouf! I was going to tell you something. Maybe +Jack has—only he's such a close-mouthed beggar. I'm not very +anxious to peddle things." Benton turned again. "I guess you don't +need any coaching from me, anyhow."</p> +<p>He walked out. Stella stared after him, her eyes blazing, hands +clenched into hard-knuckled little fists. She could have struck +him.</p> +<p>And still she wondered over and over again, burning with a +consuming fire to know what that "something" was which he had to +tell. All the slumbering devils of a stifled passion awoke to rend +her, to make her rage against the coil in which she was involved. +She despised herself for the weakness of unwise loving, even while +she ached to sweep away the barriers that stood between her and +love. Mingled with that there whispered an intuition of disaster to +come, of destiny shaping to peculiar ends. In Monohan's +establishing himself on Roaring Lake she sensed something more than +an industrial shift. In his continued presence there she saw +incalculable sources of trouble. She stood leaning over the bed +rail, staring wistfully at her boy for a few minutes. When she +faced the mirror in her room, she was startled at the look in her +eyes, the nervous twitch of her lips. There was a physical ache in +her breast.</p> +<p>"You're a fool, a fool," she whispered to her image. "Where's +your will, Stella Fyfe? Borrow a little of your husband's backbone. +Presently—presently it won't matter."</p> +<p>One can club a too assertive ego into insensibility. A man may +smile and smile and be a villain still, as the old saying has it, +and so may a woman smile and smile when her heart is tortured, when +every nerve in her is strained to the snapping point. Stella went +back to the living room and sang for them until it was time to go +to bed.</p> +<p>The Aldens went first, then Charlie. Stella left her door ajar. +An hour afterward, when Fyfe came down the hall, she rose. It had +been her purpose to call him in, to ask him to explain that which +her brother had hinted he could explain, what prior antagonism lay +between him and Monohan, what that "something" about Monohan was +which differentiated him from other men where she was concerned. +Instead she shut the door, slid the bolt home, and huddled in a +chair with her face in her hands.</p> +<p>She could not discuss Monohan with him, with any one. Why should +she ask? she told herself. It was a closed book, a balanced +account. One does not revive dead issues.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE OPENING GUN</h3> +<p>The month of November slid day by day into the limbo of the +past. The rains washed the land unceasingly. Gray veilings of mist +and cloud draped the mountain slopes. As drab a shade colored +Stella Fyfe's daily outlook. She was alone a great deal. Even when +they were together, she and her husband, words did not come easily +between them. He was away a great deal, seeking, she knew, the old +panacea of work, hard, unremitting work, to abate the ills of his +spirit. She envied him that outlet. Work for her there was none. +The two Chinamen and Martha the nurse left her no tasks. She could +not read, for all their great store of books and magazines; the +printed page would lie idle in her lap, and her gaze would wander +off into vacancy, into that thought-world where her spirit wandered +in distress. The Abbeys were long gone; her brother hard at his +logging. There were no neighbors and no news. The savor was gone +out of everything. The only bright spot in her days was Jack +Junior, now toddling precociously on his sturdy legs, a dozen steps +at a time, crowing victoriously when he negotiated the passage from +chair to chair.</p> +<p>From the broad east windows of their house she saw all the +traffic that came and went on the upper reaches of Roaring Lake, +Siwashes in dugouts and fishing boats, hunters, prospectors. But +more than any other she saw the craft of her husband and Monohan, +the powerful, black-hulled <i>Panther</i>, the smaller, daintier +<i>Waterbug</i>.</p> +<p>There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, +that she knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, +inching its downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast +up-lake without a tow. Monohan had abandoned work on the old +Abbey-Monohan logging-grounds. The camps and the bungalow lay +deserted, given over to a solitary watchman. The lake folk had +chattered at this proceeding, and the chatter had come to Stella's +ears. He had put in two camps at the lake head, so she heard +indirectly: one on the lake shore, one on the Tyee River, a little +above the mouth. He had sixty men in each camp, and he was getting +the name of a driver. Three miles above his Tyee camp, she knew, +lay the camp her husband had put in during the early summer to cut +a heavy limit of cedar. Fyfe had only a small crew there.</p> +<p>She wondered a little why he spent so much time there, when he +had seventy-odd men working near home. But of course he had an able +lieutenant in Lefty Howe. And she could guess why Jack Fyfe kept +away. She was sorry for him—and for herself. But being +sorry—a mere semi-neutral state of mind—did not help +matters, she told herself gloomily.</p> +<p>Lefty Howe's wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional +visits. Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a +Siwash whom he had engaged to catch and smoke a winter's supply of +salmon for the camps. Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella +bundled Jack Junior into warm clothing and went with them for the +ride.</p> +<p>Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and +a new mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass +and leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical +logging-camp shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. +Behind these again the beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the +forest,—a slashing different from the ordinary logging slash, +for it ran narrowly, straight back through the timber; whereas the +first thing a logger does is to cut all the merchantable timber he +can reach on his limit without moving his donkey from the water. It +was not more than two miles from their house.</p> +<p>"What new camp is that?" she asked Howe.</p> +<p>"Monohan's," he answered casually.</p> +<p>"I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" +she said.</p> +<p>Howe shook his head.</p> +<p>"Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's +got a freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles +straight back from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the +ham in a sandwich. Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin +piece uh ham. About the poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno +why the Sam Hill he's cuttin' it. But then he's doin' a lot uh +things no practical logger would do."</p> +<p>Stella laid down the glasses. It was nothing to her, she told +herself. She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked +him, and then only to exchange the barest civilities—and to +feel her heart flutter at the message his eyes telegraphed.</p> +<p>When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and +Charlie Benton with him. She crossed the heavy rugs on the living +room floor noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior +asleep in her arms. And so in passing the door of Fyfe's den, she +heard her brother say:</p> +<p>"But, good Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to +try such fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he +brings himself within the law first crack; and the most he could do +would be to annoy you."</p> +<p>"You underestimate Monohan," Fyfe returned. "He'll play safe, +personally, so far as the law goes. He's foxy. I advise you to sell +if the offer comes again. If you make any more breaks at him, he'll +figure some way to get you. It isn't your fight, you know. You +unfortunately happen to be in the road."</p> +<p>"Damned if I do," Benton swore. "I'm all in the clear. There's +no way he can get me, and I'll tell him what I think of him again +if he gives me half a chance. I never liked him, anyhow. Why should +I sell when I'm just getting in real good shape to take that timber +out myself? Why, I can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next +five years on that block of timber. Besides, without being a +sentimental sort of beggar, I don't lose sight of the fact that you +helped pull me out of a hole when I sure needed a pull. And I don't +like his high-handed style. No, if it comes to a showdown, I'm with +you, Jack, as far as I can go. What the hell <i>can</i> he do?"</p> +<p>"Nothing—that I can see." Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. "But +he'll try. He has dollars to our cents. He could throw everything +he's got on Roaring Lake into the discard and still have forty +thousand a year fixed income. Sabe? Money does more than talk in +this country. I think I'll pull that camp off the Tyee."</p> +<p>"Well, maybe," Benton said. "I'm not sure—"</p> +<p>Stella passed on. She wanted to hear, but it went against her +grain to eavesdrop. Her pause had been purely involuntary. When she +became conscious that she was eagerly drinking in each word, she +hurried by.</p> +<p>Her mind was one urgent question mark while she laid the +sleeping youngster in his bed and removed her heavy clothes. What +sort of hostilities did Monohan threaten? Had he let a hopeless +love turn to the acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed +her? Stella could scarcely credit that. It was too much at variance +with her idealistic conception of the man. He would never have +recourse to such littleness. Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe's +voice when he said to Benton: "You underestimate Monohan. He'll +play safe ... he's foxy." That stung her to the quick. That was not +said for her benefit; it was Fyfe's profound conviction. Based on +what? He did not form judgments on momentary impulse. She recalled +that only in the most indirect way had he ever passed criticism on +Monohan, and then it lay mostly in a tone, suggested more than +spoken. Yet he knew Monohan, had known him for years. They had +clashed long before she was a factor in their lives.</p> +<p>When she went into the big room, Benton and Fyfe were gone +outdoors. She glanced into Fyfe's den. It was empty, but a big +blue-print unrolled on the table where the two had been seated +caught her eye. She bent over it, drawn by the lettered squares +along the wavy shore line and the marked waters of creeks she +knew.</p> +<p>She had never before possessed a comprehensive idea of the +various timber holdings along the west shore of Roaring Lake, since +it had not been a matter of particular interest to her. She was not +sure why it now became a matter of interest to her, unless it was +an impression that over these squares and oblongs which stood for +thousands upon thousands of merchantable logs there was already +shaping a struggle, a clash of iron wills and determined purposes +directly involving, perhaps arising because of her.</p> +<p>She studied the blue-print closely. Its five feet of length +embraced all the west shore of the lake, from the outflowing of +Roaring River to the incoming Tyee at the head. Each camp was +lettered in with pencil. But her attention focussed chiefly on the +timber limits ranging north and south from their home, and she +noted two details: that while the limits marked A-M Co. were +impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the squares marked +J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid block about Cougar Bay,—save for +that long tongue of a limit where she had that day noted the new +camp. That thrust like the haft of a spear into the heart of Fyfe's +timberland.</p> +<p>There was the Abbey-Monohan cottage, the three limits her +brother controlled lying up against Fyfe's southern boundary. Up +around the mouth of the Tyee spread the vast checkerboard of +Abbey-Monohan limits, and beyond that, on the eastern bank of the +river, a single block,—Fyfe's cedar limit,—the camp he +thought he would close down.</p> +<p>Why? Immediately the query shaped in her mind. Monohan was +concentrating his men and machinery at the lake head. Fyfe proposed +to shut down a camp but well-established; established because cedar +was climbing in price, an empty market clamoring for cedar logs. +Why?</p> +<p>Was there aught of significance in that new camp of Monohan's so +near by; that sudden activity on ground that bisected her husband's +property? A freak limit of timber so poor that Lefty Howe said it +could only be logged at a loss.</p> +<p>She sighed and went out to give dinner orders to Sam Foo. If she +could only go to her husband and talk as they had been able to talk +things over at first. But there had grown up between them a deadly +restraint. She supposed that was inevitable. Both chafed under +conditions they could not change or would not for stubbornness and +pride.</p> +<p>It made a deep impression on her, all these successive, +disassociated finger posts, pointing one and all to things under +the surface, to motives and potentialities she had not glimpsed +before and could only guess at now.</p> +<p>Fyfe and Benton came to dinner more or less preoccupied, an odd +mood for Charlie Benton. Afterwards they went into session behind +the closed door of Fyfe's den. An hour or so later Benton went +home. While she listened to the soft <i>chuff-a-chuff-a-chuff</i> +of the <i>Chickamin</i> dying away in the distance, Fyfe came in +and slumped down in a chair before the fire where a big fir stick +crackled. He sat there silent, a half-smoked cigar clamped in one +corner of his mouth, the lines of his square jaw in profile, +determined, rigid. Stella eyed him covertly. There were times, in +those moods of concentration, when sheer brute power seemed his +most salient characteristic. Each bulging curve of his thick upper +arm, his neck rising like a pillar from massive shoulders, +indicated his power. Yet so well-proportioned was he that the size +and strength of him was masked by the symmetry of his body, just as +the deliberate immobility of his face screened the play of his +feelings. Often Stella found herself staring at him, fruitlessly +wondering what manner of thought and feeling that repression +overlaid. Sometimes a tricksy, half-provoked desire to break +through the barricade of his stoicism tempted her. She told herself +that she ought to be thankful for his aloofness, his acquiescence +in things as they stood. Yet there were times when she would almost +have welcomed an outburst, a storm, anything rather than that +deadly chill, enduring day after day. He seldom spoke to her now +except of most matter-of-fact things. He played his part like a +gentleman before others, but alone with her he withdrew into his +shell.</p> +<p>Stella was sitting back in the shadow, still studying him, +measuring him in spite of herself by the Monohan yardstick. There +wasn't much basis for comparison. It wasn't a question of +comparison; the two men stood apart, distinctive, in every +attribute. The qualities in Fyfe that she understood and +appreciated, she beheld glorified in Monohan. Yet it was not, after +all, a question of qualities. It was something more subtle, +something of the heart which defied logical analysis.</p> +<p>Fyfe had never been able to set her pulse dancing. She had never +craved physical nearness to him, so that she ached with the +poignancy of that craving. She had been passively contented with +him, that was all. And Monohan had swept across her horizon like a +flame. Why couldn't Jack Fyfe have inspired in her that headlong +sort of passion? She smiled hopelessly. The tears were very close +to her eyes. She loved Monohan; Monohan loved her. Fyfe loved her +in his deliberate, repressed fashion and possessed her, according +to the matrimonial design. And although now his possession was a +hollow mockery, he would never give her up—not to Walter +Monohan. She had that fatalistic conviction.</p> +<p>How would it end in the long run?</p> +<p>She leaned forward to speak. Words quivered on her lips. But as +she struggled to shape them to utterance, the blast of a boat +whistle came screaming up from the water, near and shrill and +imperative.</p> +<p>Fyfe came out of his chair like a shot. He landed poised on his +feet, lips drawn apart, hands clenched. He held that pose for an +instant, then relaxed, his breath coming with a quick sigh.</p> +<p>Stella stared at him. Nerves! She knew the symptoms too well. +Nerves at terrible tension in that big, splendid body. A slight +quiver seemed to run over him. Then he was erect and calmly himself +again, standing in a listening attitude.</p> +<p>"That's the <i>Panther</i>?" he said. "Pulling in to the +<i>Waterbug's</i> landing. Did I startle you when I bounced up like +a cougar, Stella?" he asked, with a wry smile. "I guess I was half +asleep. That whistle jolted me."</p> +<p>Stella glanced out the shaded window.</p> +<p>"Some one's coming up from the float with a lantern," she said. +"Is there—is there likely to be anything wrong, Jack?"</p> +<p>"Anything wrong?" He shot a quick glance at her. Then casually: +"Not that I know of."</p> +<p>The bobbing lantern came up the path through the lawn. Footsteps +crunched on the gravel.</p> +<p>"I'll go see what he wants," Fyfe remarked, "Calked boots won't +be good for the porch floor."</p> +<p>She followed him.</p> +<p>"Stay in. It's cold." He stopped in the doorway.</p> +<p>"No. I'm coming," she persisted.</p> +<p>They met the lantern bearer at the foot of the steps.</p> +<p>"Well, Thorsen?" Fyfe shot at him. There was an unusual note of +sharpness in his voice, an irritated expectation.</p> +<p>Stella saw that it was the skipper of the <i>Panther</i>, a big +and burly Dane. He raised the lantern a little. The dim light on +his face showed it bruised and swollen. Fyfe grunted.</p> +<p>"Our boom is hung up," he said plaintively. "They've blocked the +river. I got licked for arguin' the point."</p> +<p>"How's it blocked?" Fyfe asked.</p> +<p>"Two swifters uh logs strung across the channel. They're drivin' +piles in front. An' three donkeys buntin' logs in behind."</p> +<p>"Swift work. There wasn't a sign of a move when I left this +morning," Fyfe commented drily. "Well, take the <i>Panther</i> +around to the inner landing. I'll be there."</p> +<p>"What's struck that feller Monohan?" the Dane sputtered angrily. +"Has he got any license to close the Tyee? He says he has—an' +backs his argument strong, believe me. Maybe you can handle him. I +couldn't. Next time I'll have a cant-hook handy. By jingo, you +gimme my pick uh Lefty's crew, Jack, an' I'll bring that cedar +out."</p> +<p>"Take the <i>Panther</i> 'round," Fyfe replied. "We'll see."</p> +<p>Thorsen turned back down the slope. In a minute the thrum of the +boat's exhaust arose as she got under way.</p> +<p>"Come on in. You'll get cold standing here," Fyfe said to +Stella.</p> +<p>She followed him back into the living room. He sat on the arm of +a big leather chair, rolling the dead cigar thoughtfully between +his lips, little creases gathering between his eyes.</p> +<p>"I'm going up the lake," he said at last, getting up +abruptly.</p> +<p>"What's the matter, Jack?" she asked. "Why, has trouble started +up there?"</p> +<p>"Part of the logging game," he answered indifferently. "Don't +amount to much."</p> +<p>"But Thorsen has been fighting. His face was terrible. And I've +heard you say he was one of the most peaceable men alive. Is +it—is Monohan—"</p> +<p>"We won't discuss Monohan," Fyfe said curtly. "Anyway, there's +no danger of <i>him</i> getting hurt."</p> +<p>He went into his den and came out with hat and coat on. At the +door he paused a moment.</p> +<p>"Don't worry," he said kindly. "Nothing's going to happen."</p> +<p>But she stood looking out the window after he left, uneasy with +a prescience of trouble. She watched with a feverish interest the +stir that presently arose about the bunkhouses. That summer a wide +space had been cleared between bungalow and camp. She could see +moving lanterns, and even now and then hear the voices of men +calling to each other. Once the <i>Panther's</i> dazzling eye of a +searchlight swung across the landing, and its beam picked out a +file of men carrying their blankets toward the boat. Shortly after +that the tender rounded the point. Close behind her went the +<i>Waterbug</i>, and both boats swarmed with men.</p> +<p>Stella looked and listened until there was but a faint thrum far +up the lake. Then she went to bed, but not to sleep. What ugly +passions were loosed at the lake head she did not know. But on the +face of it she could not avoid wondering if Monohan had +deliberately set out to cross and harass Jack Fyfe. Because of her? +That was the question which had hovered on her lips that evening, +one she had not brought herself to ask. Because of her, or because +of some enmity that far preceded her? She had thought him big +enough to do as she had done, as Fyfe was tacitly doing,—make +the best of a grievous matter.</p> +<p>But if he had allowed his passions to dictate reprisals, she +trembled for the outcome. Fyfe was not a man to sit quiet under +either affront or injury. He would fight with double rancor if +Monohan were his adversary.</p> +<p>"If anything happens up there, I'll hate myself," she whispered, +when the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost +unendurable. "I was a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan +know I cared. And I'll hate him too if he makes me a bone of +contention. I elected to play the game the only decent way there is +to play it. So did he. Why can't he abide by that?"</p> +<p>Noon of the next day saw the <i>Waterbug</i> heave to a quarter +mile abeam of Cougar Point to let off a lone figure in her dinghy, +and then bore on, driving straight and fast for Roaring Springs. +Stella flew to the landing. Mother Howe came puffing at her +heels.</p> +<p>"Land's sake, I been worried to death," the older woman +breathed. "When men git to quarrellin' about timber, you never can +tell where they'll stop, Mrs. Jack. I've knowed some wild times in +the woods in the past."</p> +<p>The man in the dink was Lefty Howe. He pulled in beside the +float. When he stepped up on the planks, he limped perceptibly.</p> +<p>"Land alive, what happened yuh, Lefty?" his wife cried.</p> +<p>"Got a rap on the leg with a peevy," he said. "Nothin' +much."</p> +<p>"Why did the <i>Waterbug</i> go down the lake?" Stella asked +breathlessly. The man's face was serious. "What happened up +there?"</p> +<p>"There was a fuss," he answered quietly. "Three or four of the +boys got beat up so they need patchin'. Jack's takin' 'em down to +the hospital. Damn that yeller-headed Monohan!" his voice lifted +suddenly in uncontrollable anger. "Billy Dale was killed this +mornin', mother."</p> +<p>Stella felt herself grow sick. Death is a small matter when it +strikes afar, among strangers. When it comes to one's door! Billy +Dale had piloted the <i>Waterbug</i> for a year, a chubby, +round-faced boy of twenty, a foster-son, of Mother Howe's before +she had children of her own. Stella had asked Jack to put him on +the <i>Waterbug</i> because he was such a loyal, cheery sort of +soul, and Billy had been a part of every expedition they had taken +around the lake. She could not think of him as a rigid, lifeless +lump of clay. Why, only the day before he had been laughing and +chattering aboard the cruiser, going up and down the cabin floor on +his hands and knees, Jack Junior perched triumphantly astride his +back.</p> +<p>"What happened?" she cried wildly. "Tell me, quick."</p> +<p>"It's quick told," Howe said grimly. "We were ready at daylight. +Monohan's got a hard crew, and they jumped us as soon as we started +to clear the channel. So we cleared them, first. It didn't take so +long. Three of our men was used bad, and there's plenty of sore +heads on both sides. But we did the job. After we got them on the +run, we blowed up their swifters an' piles with giant. Then we +begun to put the cedar through. Billy was on the bank when somebody +shot him from across the river. One mercy, he never knew what hit +him. An' you'll never come so close bein' a widow again, Mrs. Fyfe, +an' not be. That bullet was meant for Jack, I figure. He was +sittin' down. Billy was standin' right behind him watchin' the logs +go through. Whoever he was, he shot high, that's all. There, +mother, don't cry. That don't help none. What's done's done."</p> +<p>Stella turned and walked up to the house, stunned. She could not +credit bloodshed, death. Always in her life both had been things +remote. And as the real significance of Lefty Howe's story grew on +her, she shuddered. It lay at her door, equally with her and +Monohan, even if neither of their hands had sped the +bullet,—an indirect responsibility but gruesomely real to +her.</p> +<p>God only knows to what length she might have gone in reaction. +She was quivering under that self-inflicted lash, bordering upon +hysteria when she reached the house. She could not shut out a +too-vivid picture of Billy Dale lying murdered on the Tyee's bank, +of the accusing look with which Fyfe must meet her. Rightly so, she +held. She did not try to shirk. She had followed the line of least +resistance, lacked the dour courage to pull herself up in the +beginning, and it led to this. She felt Billy Dale's blood wet on +her soft hands. She walked into her own house panting like a hunted +animal.</p> +<p>And she had barely crossed the threshold when back in the rear +Jack Junior's baby voice rose in a shrill scream of pain.</p> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +<p>Stella scarcely heard her husband and the doctor come in. For a +weary age she had been sitting in a low rocker, a pillow across her +lap, and on that the little, tortured body swaddled with cotton +soaked in olive oil, the only dressing she and Mrs. Howe could +devise to ease the pain. All those other things which had so racked +her, the fight on the Tyee, the shooting of Billy Dale, they had +vanished somehow into thin air before the dread fact that her baby +was dying slowly before her anguished eyes. She sat numbed with +that deadly assurance, praying without hope for help to come, +hopeless that any medical skill would avail when it did come. So +many hours had been wasted while a man rowed to Benton's camp, +while the <i>Chickamin</i> steamed to Roaring Springs, while the +<i>Waterbug</i> came driving back. Five hours! And the skin, yes, +even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior's +clothing when she took it off. She bent over him, fearful that +every feeble breath would be his last.</p> +<p>She looked up at the doctor. Fyfe was beside her, his calked +boots biting into the oak floor.</p> +<p>"See what you can do, doc," he said huskily. Then to Stella: +"How did it happen?"</p> +<p>"He toddled away from Martha," she whispered. "Sam Foo had set a +pan of boiling water on the kitchen floor. He fell into it. Oh, my +poor little darling."</p> +<p>They watched the doctor bare the terribly scalded body, examine +it, listen to the boy's breathing, count his pulse. In the end he +re-dressed the tiny body with stuff from the case with which a +country physician goes armed against all emergencies. He was very +deliberate and thoughtful. Stella looked her appeal when he +finished.</p> +<p>"He's a sturdy little chap," he said, "and we'll do our best. A +child frequently survives terrific shock. It would be mistaken +kindness for me to make light of his condition simply to spare your +feelings. He has an even chance. I shall stay until morning. Now, I +think it would be best to lay him on a bed. You must relax, Mrs. +Fyfe. I can see that the strain is telling on you. You mustn't +allow yourself to get in that abnormal condition. The baby is not +conscious of pain. He is not suffering half so much in his body as +you are in your mind, and you mustn't do that. Be hopeful. We'll +need your help. We should have a nurse, but there was no time to +get one."</p> +<p>They laid Jack Junior amid downy pillows on Stella's bed. The +doctor stood looking at him, then drew a chair beside the bed.</p> +<p>"Go and walk about a little, Mrs. Fyfe," he advised, "and have +your dinner. I'll want to watch the boy a while."</p> +<p>But Stella did not want to walk. She did not want to eat. She +was scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her +long vigil in the chair. She was not conscious of herself and her +problems, any more. Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the +little mite she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured +with bitterness that was left her. The bare chance that those +little feet might never patter across the floor again, that little +voice never wake her in the morning crying "Mom-mom," drove her +distracted.</p> +<p>She went out into the living room, walked to a window, stood +there drumming on the pane with nervous fingers. Dusk was falling +outside; a dusk was creeping over her. She shuddered.</p> +<p>Fyfe came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and +turned her so that she faced him.</p> +<p>"I wish I could help, Stella," he whispered. "I wish I could +make you feel less forlorn. Poor little kiddies—both of +you."</p> +<p>She shook off his hands, not because she rebelled against his +touch, against his sympathy, merely because she had come to that +nervous state where she scarce realized what she did.</p> +<p>"Oh," she choked, "I can't bear it. My baby, my little baby boy. +The one bright spot that's left, and he has to suffer like that. If +he dies, it's the end of everything for me."</p> +<p>Fyfe stared at her. The warm, pitying look on his face ebbed +away, hardened into his old, mask-like absence of expression.</p> +<p>"No," he said quietly, "it would only be the beginning. Lord +God, but this has been a day."</p> +<p>He whirled about with a quick gesture of his hands, a harsh, +raspy laugh that was very near a sob, and left her. Twenty minutes +later, when Stella was irresistibly drawn back to the bedroom, she +found him sitting sober and silent, looking at his son.</p> +<p>A little past midnight Jack Junior died.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<br> +<h3>FREE AS THE WIND</h3> +<p>Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the +asphalt, the muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A +forlorn sighing of wind in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that +stood before her window reminded her achingly of the wind drone +among the tall firs.</p> +<p>A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little +life blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she +could keep him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief +seldom kills. Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a +greater or less revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella +Fyfe, although she was not keenly aware of any forthright +metamorphosis. She was, for the present, too actively involved in +material changes.</p> +<p>The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the +lure of Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped +her of all emotional reaction. When they had performed the last +melancholy service for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar +Point, she was as physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed +endurance in mind and body as it is possible for a young and +healthy woman to become. And when a measure of her natural vitality +re-asserted itself, she laid her course. She could no more abide +the place where she was than a pardoned convict can abide the +prison that has restrained him. It was empty now of everything that +made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant reminder of her +loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby voice, for +those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang that +she would never hear them again.</p> +<p>The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the +gulf between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and +preoccupied. They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had +meant a lot to him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit +with folded hands and think until thought drove him into the bogs +of melancholy.</p> +<p>And so the break came. With desperate abruptness Stella told him +that she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised +herself for unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give +nothing in return, that the original mistake of their marriage +would never be rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake.</p> +<p>"What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made +that we can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or +we have to part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old +way of living. I don't want to; I can't. I could never be +complaisant and agreeable again. We might as well come to a full +stop, and each go his own way."</p> +<p>She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. +Fyfe listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the +end made a quick, impatient gesture with his hands.</p> +<p>"Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the +kid's no longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to +do? Have you made any plans?"</p> +<p>"I have to live, naturally," she replied. "Since I've got my +voice back, I feel sure I can turn that to account. I should like +to go to Seattle first and look around. It can be supposed I have +gone visiting, until one or the other of us takes a decisive legal +step."</p> +<p>"That's simple enough," he returned, after a minute's +reflection. "Well, if it has to be, for God's sake let's get it +over with."</p> +<p>And now it was over with. Fyfe remarked once that with them +luckily it was not a question of money. But for Stella it was +indeed an economic problem. When she left Roaring Lake, her private +account contained over two thousand dollars. Her last act in +Vancouver was to re-deposit that to her husband's credit. Only so +did she feel that she could go free of all obligation, +clean-handed, without stultifying herself in her own eyes. She had +treasured as a keepsake the only money she had ever earned in her +life, her brother's check for two hundred and seventy dollars, the +wages of that sordid period in the cookhouse. She had it now. Two +hundred and seventy dollars capital. She hadn't sold herself for +that. She had given honest value, double and treble, in the sweat +of her brow. She was here now, in a five-dollar-a-week housekeeping +room, foot-loose, free as the wind. That was Fyfe's last word to +her. He had come with her to Seattle and waited patiently at a +hotel until she found a place to live. Then he had gone away +without protest.</p> +<p>"Well, Stella," he had said, "I guess this is the end of our +experiment. In six months,—under the State law,—you can +be legally free by a technicality. So far as I'm concerned, you're +free as the wind right now. Good luck to you."</p> +<p>He turned away with a smile on his lips, a smile that his eyes +belied, and she watched him walk to the corner through the same +sort of driving rain that now pelted in gray lines against her +window.</p> +<p>She shook herself impatiently out of that retrospect. It was +done. Life, as her brother had prophesied, was no kid-glove affair. +The future was her chief concern now, not the past. Yet that +immediate past, bits of it, would now and then blaze vividly before +her mental vision. The only defense against that lay in action, in +something to occupy her mind and hands. If that motive, the desire +to shun mental reflexes that brought pain, were not sufficient, +there was the equally potent necessity to earn her bread. Never +again would she be any man's dependent, a pampered doll, a parasite +trading on her sex. They were hard names she called herself.</p> +<p>Meantime she had not been idle; neither had she come to Seattle +on a blind impulse. She knew of a singing teacher there whose +reputation was more than local, a vocal authority whose word +carried weight far beyond Puget Sound. First she meant to see him, +get an impartial estimate of the value of her voice, of the +training she would need. Through him she hoped to get in touch with +some outlet for the only talent she possessed. And she had received +more encouragement than she dared hope. He listened to her sing, +then tested the range and flexibility of her voice.</p> +<p>"Amazing," he said frankly. "You have a rare natural endowment. +If you have the determination and the sense of dramatic values that +musical discipline will give you, you should go far. You should +find your place in opera."</p> +<p>"That's my ambition," Stella answered. "But that requires time +and training. And that means money. I have to earn it."</p> +<p>The upshot of that conversation was an appointment to meet the +manager of a photoplay house, who wanted a singer. Stella looked at +her watch now, and rose to go. Money, always money, if one wanted +to get anywhere, she reflected cynically. No wonder men struggled +desperately for that token of power.</p> +<p>She reached the Charteris Theater, and a doorman gave her access +to the dim interior. There was a light in the operator's cage high +at the rear, another shaded glow at the piano, where a young man +with hair brushed sleekly back chewed gum incessantly while he +practiced picture accompaniments. The place looked desolate, with +its empty seats, its bald stage front with the empty picture +screen. Stella sat down to wait for the manager. He came in a few +minutes; his manner was very curt, business-like. He wanted her to +sing a popular song, a bit from a Verdi opera, Gounod's Ave Maria, +so that he could get a line on what she could do. He appeared to be +a pessimist in regard to singers.</p> +<p>"Take the stage right there," he instructed. "Just as if the +spot was on you. Now then."</p> +<p>It wasn't a heartening process to stand there facing the +gum-chewing pianist, and the manager's cigar glowing redly five +rows back, and the silent emptinesses beyond,—much like +singing into the mouth of a gloomy cave. It was more or less a +critical moment for Stella. But she was keenly aware that she had +to make good in a small way before she could grasp the greater +opportunity, so she did her best, and her best was no mediocre +performance. She had never sung in a place designed to show +off—or to show up—a singer's quality. She was even a +bit astonished herself.</p> +<p>She elected to sing the Ave Maria first. Her voice went pealing +to the domed ceiling as sweet as a silver bell, resonant as a +trumpet. When the last note died away, there was a momentary +silence. Then the accompanist looked up at her, frankly +admiring.</p> +<p>"You're <i>some</i> warbler," he said emphatically, "believe +<i>me</i>."</p> +<p>Behind him the manager's cigar lost its glow. He remained +silent. The pianist struck up "Let's Murder Care," a rollicking +trifle from a Broadway hit. Last of all he thumped, more or less +successfully, through the accompaniment to an aria that had in it +vocal gymnastics as well as melody.</p> +<p>"Come up to the office, Mrs. Fyfe," Howard said, with a singular +change from his first manner.</p> +<p>"I can give you an indefinite engagement at thirty a week," he +made a blunt offer. "You can sing. You're worth more, but right now +I can't pay more. If you pull business,—and I rather think +you will,—have to sing twice in the afternoon and twice in +the evening."</p> +<p>Stella considered briefly. Thirty dollars a week meant a great +deal more than mere living, as she meant to live. And it was a +start, a move in the right direction. She accepted; they discussed +certain details. She did not care to court publicity under her +legal name, so they agreed that she should be billed as Madame +Benton,—the Madame being Howard's suggestion,—and she +took her leave.</p> +<p>Upon the Monday following Stella stood for the first time in a +fierce white glare that dazzled her and so shut off partially her +vision of the rows and rows of faces. She went on with a horrible +slackness in her knees, a dry feeling in her throat; and she was +not sure whether she would sing or fly. When she had finished her +first song and bowed herself into the wings, she felt her heart +leap and hammer at the hand-clapping that grew and grew till it was +like the beat of ocean surf.</p> +<p>Howard came running to meet her.</p> +<p>"You've sure got 'em going," he laughed. "Fine work. Go out and +give 'em some more."</p> +<p>In time she grew accustomed to these things, to the applause she +never failed to get, to the white beam that beat down from the +picture cage, to the eager, upturned faces in the first rows. Her +confidence grew; ambition began to glow like a flame within her. +She had gone through the primary stages of voice culture, and she +was following now a method of practice which produced results. She +could see and feel that herself. Sometimes the fear that her voice +might go as it had once gone would make her tremble. But that, her +teacher assured her, was a remote chance.</p> +<p>So she gained in those weeks something of her old poise. +Inevitably, she was very lonely at times. But she fought against +that with the most effective weapon she knew,—incessant +activity. She was always busy. There was a rented piano now sitting +in the opposite corner from the gas stove on which she cooked her +meals. Howard kept his word. She "pulled business," and he raised +her to forty a week and offered her a contract which she refused, +because other avenues, bigger and better than singing in a +motion-picture house, were tentatively opening.</p> +<p>December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following +weeks her only contact with the past, beyond the mill of her own +thoughts, was an item in the <i>Seattle Times</i> touching upon +certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, +under the firm name of the Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing +Fyfe for heavy damages for the loss of certain booms of logs blown +up and set adrift at the mouth of the Tyee River. There was +appended an account of the clash over the closed channel and the +killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to book for that +yet. Any one of sixty men might have fired the shot.</p> +<p>It made Stella wince, for it took her back to that dreadful day. +She could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and +Monohan, neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that +something more grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at +least she had done what she could. If she were the flame, she had +removed herself from the powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar +crew off the Tyee before she left. If aggression came, it must come +from one direction.</p> +<p>They were both abstractions now, she tried to assure herself. +The glamour of Monohan was fading, and she could not say why. She +did not know if his presence would stir again all that old tumult +of feeling, but she did know that she was cleaving to a measure of +peace, of serenity of mind, and she did not want him or any other +man to disturb it. She told herself that she had never loved Jack +Fyfe. She recognized in him a lot that a woman is held to admire, +but there were also qualities in him that had often baffled and +sometimes frightened her. She wondered sometimes what he really +thought of her and her actions, why, when she had been nerved to a +desperate struggle for her freedom, if she could gain it no other +way, he had let her go so easily?</p> +<p>After all, she reflected cynically, love comes and goes, but one +is driven to pursue material advantages while life lasts. And she +wondered, even while the thought took form in her mind, how long +she would retain that point of view.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<br> +<h3>ECHOES</h3> +<p>In the early days of February Stella had an unexpected visitor. +The landlady called her to the common telephone, and when she took +up the receiver, Linda Abbey's voice came over the wire.</p> +<p>"When can I see you?" she asked. "I'll only be here to-day and +to-morrow."</p> +<p>"Now, if you like," Stella responded. "I'm free until +two-thirty."</p> +<p>"I'll be right over," Linda said. "I'm only about ten minutes +drive from where you are."</p> +<p>Stella went back to her room both glad and sorry: glad to hear a +familiar, friendly voice amid this loneliness which sometimes +seemed almost unendurable; sorry because her situation involved +some measure of explanation to Linda. That hurt.</p> +<p>But she was not prepared for the complete understanding of the +matter Linda Abbey tacitly exhibited before they had exchanged a +dozen sentences.</p> +<p>"How did you know?" Stella asked. "Who told you?"</p> +<p>"No one. I drew my own conclusions when I heard you had gone to +Seattle," Linda replied. "I saw it coming. My dear, I'm not blind, +and I was with you a lot last summer. I knew you too well to +believe you'd make a move while you had your baby to think of. When +he was gone—well, I looked for anything to happen."</p> +<p>"Still, nothing much has happened," Stella remarked with a touch +of bitterness, "except the inevitable break between a man and a +woman when there's no longer any common bond between them. It's +better so. Jack has a multiplicity of interests. He can devote +himself to them without the constant irritation of an unresponsive +wife. We've each taken our own road. That's all that has +happened."</p> +<p>"So far," Linda murmured. "It's a pity. I liked that big, silent +man of yours. I like you both. It seems a shame things have to turn +out this way just because—oh, well. Charlie and I used to +plan things for the four of us, little family combinations when we +settled down on the lake. Honestly, Stella, do you think it's worth +while? I never could see you as a sentimental little chump, letting +a momentary aberration throw your whole life out of gear."</p> +<p>"How do you know that I have?" Stella asked gravely.</p> +<p>Linda shrugged her shoulders expressively.</p> +<p>"I suppose it looks silly, if not worse, to you," Stella said. +"But I can't help what you think. My reason has dictated every step +I've taken since last fall. If I'd really given myself up to +sentimentalism, the Lord only knows what might have happened."</p> +<p>"Exactly," Linda responded drily. "Now, there's no use beating +around the bush. We get so in that habit as a matter of +politeness,—our sort of people,—that we seldom say in +plain English just what we really mean. Surely, you and I know each +other well enough to be frank, even if it's painful. Very likely +you'll say I'm a self-centered little beast, but I'm going to marry +your brother, my dear, and I'm going to marry him in the face of +considerable family opposition. I <i>am</i> selfish. Can you show +me any one who isn't largely swayed by motives of self-interest, if +it comes to that? I want to be happy. I want to be on good terms +with my own people, so that Charlie will have some of the +opportunities dad can so easily put in his way. Charlie isn't rich. +He hasn't done anything, according to the Abbey standard, but make +a fair start. Dad's patronizing as sin, and mother merely tolerates +the idea because she knows that I'll marry Charlie in any case, +opposition or no opposition. I came over expressly to warn you, +Stella. Anything like scandal now would be—well, it would +upset so many things."</p> +<p>"You needn't be uneasy," Stella answered coldly. "There isn't +any foundation for scandal. There won't be."</p> +<p>"I don't know," Linda returned, "Walter Monohan came to Seattle +a boat ahead of me. In fact, that's largely why I came."</p> +<p>Stella flushed angrily.</p> +<p>"Well, what of that?" she demanded. "His movements are nothing +to me."</p> +<p>"I don't know," Linda rejoined. She had taken off her gloves and +was rolling them nervously in a ball. Now she dropped them and +impulsively grasped Stella's hands.</p> +<p>"Stella, Stella," she cried. "Don't get that hurt, angry look. I +don't like to say these things to you, but I feel that I have to. +I'm worried, and I'm afraid for you and your husband, for Charlie +and myself, for all of us together. Walter Monohan is as dangerous +as any man who's unscrupulous and rich and absolutely self-centered +can possibly be. I know the glamour of the man. I used to feel it +myself. It didn't go very far with me, because his attention +wandered away from me before my feelings were much involved, and I +had a chance to really fathom them and him. He has a queer gift of +making women care for him, and he trades on it deliberately. He +doesn't play fair; he doesn't mean to. Oh, I know so many cruel +things, despicable things, he's done. Don't look at me like that, +Stella. I'm not saying this just to wound you. I'm simply putting +you on your guard. You can't play with fire and not get burned. If +you've been nursing any feeling for Walter Monohan, crush it, cut +it out, just as you'd have a surgeon cut out a cancer. Entirely +apart from any question of Jack Fyfe, don't let this man play any +part whatever in your life. You'll be sorry if you do. There's not +a man or woman whose relations with Monohan have been intimate +enough to enable them to really know the man and his motives who +doesn't either hate or fear or despise him, and sometimes all +three."</p> +<p>"That's a sweeping indictment," Stella said stiffly. "And you're +very earnest. Yet I can hardly take your word at its face value. If +he's so impossible a person, how does it come that you and your +people countenanced him socially? Besides, it's all rather +unnecessary, Linda. I'm not the least bit likely to do anything +that will reflect on your prospective husband, which is what it +simmers down to, isn't it? I've been pulled and hauled this way and +that ever since I've been on the coast, simply because I was +dependent on some one else—first Charlie and then +Jack—for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual +affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that +marriage is supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure +for all she receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, +clinging to a man for what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've +been rather painfully frank; so will I be. One unhappy marriage is +quite enough for me. Looking back, I can see that even if Walter +Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me which I don't +deny,—but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some time +ago,—I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting +all the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most +women have to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been +schooled to think unbreakable, kept me moving along the old +grooves. It would have come about a little more gradually, that's +all. But I have broken away, and I'm going to live my own life +after a fashion, and I'm going to achieve independence of some +sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again until I'm sure of +myself—and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as simply +as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right +now I couldn't muster up the least shred of passion of any sort. I +seem to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge +that's been squeezed dry."</p> +<p>"I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's +heart is a queer thing, though. When you compare the two +men—Oh, well, I know Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You +couldn't ever have cared much for Jack."</p> +<p>"That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still +his wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. +There won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free +personally to work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is +engrossing enough for me."</p> +<p>Linda sat a minute, thoughtful.</p> +<p>"So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth +much," she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I +don't think I shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I +don't think you're quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a +natural gossip. Aside from that, he's quite too busy on Roaring +Lake for it to mean any good. He never gets active like that unless +he has some personal axe to grind. In this case, I can grasp his +motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have said a word to you, +but he certainly knows Monohan. They've clashed before, so I've +been told. Jack probably saw what was growing on you, and I don't +think he'd hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around. If he +did,—or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm +rather in the dark,—he'd go to any length to play even with. +Fyfe. When Monohan wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and +when you wound his vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital +part. He never rests then until he's paid the score. Father was +always a little afraid of him. I think that's the chief reason for +selling out his Roaring Lake interests to Monohan. He didn't want +to be involved in whatever Monohan contemplated doing. He has a +wholesome respect for your husband's rather volcanic ability. +Monohan has, too. But he has always hated Jack Fyfe. To my +knowledge for three years,—prior to pulling you out of the +water that time,—he never spoke of Jack Fyfe without a sneer. +He hates any one who beats him at anything. That ruction on the +Tyee is a sample. He'll spend money, risk lives, all but his own, +do anything to satisfy a grudge. That's one of the things that +worries me. Charlie will be into anything that Fyfe is, for Fyfe's +his friend. I admire the spirit of the thing, but I don't want our +little applecart upset in the sort of struggle Fyfe and Monohan may +stage. I don't even know what form it will ultimately take, except +that from certain indications he'll try to make Fyfe spend money +faster than he can make it, perhaps in litigation over timber, over +anything that offers, by making trouble in his camps, harassing him +at every turn. He can, you know. He has immense resources. Oh, +well, I'm satisfied, Stella, that you're a much wiser girl than I +thought when I knew you'd left Jack Fyfe. I'm quite sure now you +aren't the sort of woman Monohan could wind around his little +finger. But I'm sure he'll try. You'll see, and remember what I +tell you. There, I think I'd better run along. You're not angry, +are you, Stella?"</p> +<p>"You mean well enough, I suppose," Stella answered. "But as a +matter of fact, you've made me feel rather nasty, Linda. I don't +want to talk or even think of these things. The best thing you and +Charlie and Jack Fyfe could do is to forget such a discontented +pendulum as I ever existed."</p> +<p>"Oh, bosh!" Linda exclaimed, as she drew on her gloves. "That's +sheer nonsense. You're going to be my big sister in three months. +Things will work out. If you felt you had to take this step for +your own good, no one can blame you. It needn't make any difference +in our friendship."</p> +<p>On the threshold she turned on her heel. "Don't forget what I've +said," she repeated. "Don't trust Monohan. Not an inch."</p> +<p>Stella flung herself angrily into a chair when the door closed +on Linda Abbey. Her eyes snapped. She resented being warned and +cautioned, as if she were some moral weakling who could not be +trusted to make the most obvious distinctions. Particularly did she +resent having Monohan flung in her teeth, when she was in a way to +forget him, to thrust the strange charm of the man forever out of +her thoughts. Why, she asked bitterly, couldn't other people do as +Jack Fyfe had done: cut the Gordian knot at one stroke and let it +rest at that?</p> +<p>So Monohan was in Seattle? Would he try to see her?</p> +<p>Stella had not minced matters with herself when she left Roaring +Lake. Dazed and shaken by suffering, nevertheless she knew that she +would not always suffer, that in time she would get back to that +normal state in which the human ego diligently pursues happiness. +In time the legal tie between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to +exist. If Monohan cared for her as she thought he cared, a year or +two more or less mattered little. They had all their lives before +them. In the long run, the errors and mistakes of that upheaval +would grow dim, be as nothing. Jack Fyfe would shrug his shoulders +and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter mate, one as +loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never loved +him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the fire +into the frying-pan?</p> +<p>So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift +of song, so that she would never again be buffeted by material +urgencies in a material world, Stella had nevertheless been +listening with the ear of her mind, so to speak, for a word from +Monohan to say that he understood, and that all was well.</p> +<p>Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in +Seattle, away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the +conviction that in Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had +only followed the cue she had given. In all else he had played his +own hand. She couldn't forget Billy Dale. If the motive behind that +bloody culmination were thwarted love, it was a thing to shrink +from. It seemed to her now, forcing herself to reason with +cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less than he hated +Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added factor in +the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two diverse and +dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot of +hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its +boiling over.</p> +<p>"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. +I'm sorry, but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the +least factor, it seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much +more than an incident in a man's life, after all."</p> +<p>She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about +to begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy flow, periods of +calm are succeeded by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife +insisted that Stella join them at supper after the show. They were +decent folk who accorded frank admiration to her voice and her +personality. They had been kind to her in many little ways, and she +was glad to accept.</p> +<p>At eleven a taxi deposited them at the door of Wain's. The +Seattle of yesterday needs no introduction to Wain's, and its +counterpart can be found in any cosmopolitan, seaport city. It is a +place of subtle distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill +streets, where after-theater parties and nighthawks with an eye for +pretty women, an ear for sensuous music, and a taste for good food, +go when they have money to spend.</p> +<p>Ensconced behind a potted palm, with a waiter taking Howard's +order, Stella let her gaze travel over the diners. She brought up +with a repressed start at a table but four removes from her own, +her eyes resting upon the unmistakable profile of Walter Monohan. +He was dining vis-à-vis with a young woman chiefly +remarkable for a profusion of yellow hair and a blazing diamond in +the lobe of each ear,—a plump, blond, vivacious person of a +type that Stella, even with her limited experience, found herself +instantly classifying.</p> +<p>A bottle of wine rested in an iced dish between them. Monohan +was toying with the stem of a half-emptied glass, smiling at his +companion. The girl leaned toward him, speaking rapidly, pouting. +Monohan nodded, drained his glass, signaled a waiter. When she got +into an elaborate opera cloak and Monohan into his Inverness, they +went out, the plump, jeweled hand resting familiarly on Monohan's +arm. Stella breathed a sigh of relief as they passed, looking +straight ahead. She watched through the upper half of the +café window and saw a machine draw against the curb, saw the +be-scarfed yellow head enter and Monohan's silk hat follow. Then +she relaxed, but she had little appetite for her food. A hot wave +of shamed disgust kept coming over her. She felt sick, physically +revolted. Very likely Monohan had put her in <i>that</i> class, in +his secret thought. She was glad when the evening ended, and the +Howards left her at her own doorstep.</p> +<p>On the carpet where it had been thrust by the postman under the +door, a white square caught her eye, and she picked it up before +she switched on the light. And she got a queer little shock when +the light fell on the envelope, for it was addressed in Jack Fyfe's +angular handwriting.</p> +<p>She tore it open. It was little enough in the way of a letter, a +couple of lines scrawled across a sheet of note-paper.</p> +<div class="ind">"<i>Dear Girl:</i><br> +<br> +"I was in Seattle a few days ago and heard you sing. Here's +hoping<br> +good luck rides with you.<br> +<br> +"JACK."</div> +<br> +<p>Stella sat down by the window. Outside, the ever-present Puget +Sound rain drove against wall and roof and sidewalk, gathered in +wet, glistening pools in the street. Through that same window she +had watched Jack Fyfe walk out of her life three months ago without +a backward look, sturdily, silently, uncomplaining. He hadn't +whined, he wasn't whining now,—only flinging a cheerful word +out of the blank spaces of his own life into the blank spaces of +hers. Stella felt something warm and wet steal down her cheeks.</p> +<p>She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of +her hand. A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the +light switch and threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry +in the dusky quiet. And she could not have told why, except that +she had been overcome by a miserably forlorn feeling; all the +mental props she relied upon were knocked out from under her. +Somehow those few scrawled words had flung swiftly before her, like +a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby toddling uncertainly +across the porch of the white bungalow. And she could not bear to +think of that!</p> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +<p>When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden +winter skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, +Stella was singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house +that boasted a "big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery +richness of her voice had carried her name already beyond local +boundaries, as the singing master under whom she studied prophesied +it would. In proof thereof she received during April a feminine +committee of two from Vancouver bearing an offer of three hundred +dollars for her appearance in a series of three concerts under the +auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be given in the ballroom +of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the Granada. The date +was mid-July. She took the offer under advisement, promising a +decision in ten days.</p> +<p>The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,—not +for her daily bread, but for an accumulated fund that would enable +her to reach New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the +most direct route to her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it +now. Confidence came to abide with her. She throve on work; and +with increasing salary, her fund grew. Coming from any other +source, she would have accepted this further augmentation of it +without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, it was a +liberal offer.</p> +<p>But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many +people knew her; the local papers would feature her. She did not +know how Fyfe would take it; she did not even know if there had +been any open talk of their separation. Money, she felt, was a +small thing beside opening old sores. For herself, she was +tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social estimate of her or her +acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's name, she did not +feel free to make herself a public figure there without his +sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the offer +and asked point-blank if it mattered to him.</p> +<p>His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail +connection had been made on the minute.</p> +<div class="ind">"If it is to your advantage to sing here," he +wrote, "by all means<br> +accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come +and<br> +hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings +and<br> +useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, +they<br> +are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a glass +case.<br> +Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling +about<br> +your singing in public other than pride in your ability to +command<br> +public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big +and<br> +fine a thing to remain obscure.<br> +<br> +"JACK."</div> +<br> +<p>He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy +postscript:</p> +<div class="ind">"I wish you would do something next month, not as +a favor to me<br> +particularly, but to ease things along for Charlie and Linda. +They<br> +are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up +your<br> +little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion +of<br> +your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But +it<br> +doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very +little<br> +different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded<br> +youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean +is<br> +that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the<br> +sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly<br> +because—I've flattered myself—I talked to him like a +Dutch uncle,<br> +and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut +mold<br> +that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with +him.<br> +He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a +good<br> +deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think.<br> +<br> +"I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own<br> +failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me +a<br> +bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an<br> +undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like<br> +Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of +her<br> +people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are +hopelessly<br> +conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in +public<br> +would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, +they<br> +are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family +pride,<br> +intend to give Linda a big wedding.<br> +<br> +"Now, no one outside of you and me and—well you and +me—knows that<br> +there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been +quizzed—naturally. It<br> +got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera +as<br> +a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I<br> +fostered that rumor—simply to keep gossip down until things +shaped<br> +themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have<br> +started—Abbey <i>père</i> and <i>mère</i> will +then be unable to frown on<br> +Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a<br> +divorce case.<br> +<br> +"I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after +those<br> +concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house +of<br> +Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation—a myth that you've +taken no<br> +measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be +a<br> +sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way—one amazed +yelp<br> +from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over.<br> +<br> +"Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I +hope<br> +you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing +the<br> +game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, +and<br> +I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. +It<br> +is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a +safeguard<br> +against a bomb from the Abbey fortress.<br> +<br> +"Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would +be<br> +very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with +her<br> +folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for +her<br> +matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't +subscribe<br> +to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her<br> +whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she +pretty<br> +clearly guesses the breach in our rampart—not the original +mistake<br> +in our over-hasty plunge—but the wedge that divided us for +good. If<br> +she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good +stuff,<br> +because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because<br> +Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of<br> +Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way +and<br> +another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your<br> +absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to +squelch<br> +him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside +the<br> +point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of +brute<br> +generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. +I've<br> +got it all off my chest now, or pretty near.<br> +<br> +"J.H.F."</div> +<br> +<p>Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long +time.</p> +<p>"I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice +galvanized her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the +mellow spring sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her +feet carried her to a little park that overlooked the far reach of +the Sound and gave westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary +and aloof to a perfect sky, like their brother peaks that ringed +Roaring Lake. And all the time her mind kept turning on a question +whose asking was rooted neither in fact nor necessity, an inquiry +born of a sentiment she had never expected to feel.</p> +<p>Should she go back to Jack Fyfe?</p> +<p>She shook her head impatiently when she faced that squarely. Why +tread the same bitter road again? But she put that self-interested +phase of it aside and asked herself candidly if she <i>could</i> go +back and take up the old threads where they had been broken off and +make life run smoothly along the old, quiet channels? She was as +sure as she was sure of the breath she drew that Fyfe wanted her, +that he longed for and would welcome her. But she was equally sure +that the old illusions would never serve. She couldn't even make +him happy, much less herself. Monohan—well, Monohan was a +dead issue. He had come to the Charteris to see her, all smiles and +eagerness. She had been able to look at him and through +him—and cut him dead—and do it without a single flutter +of her heart.</p> +<p>That brief and illuminating episode in Wain's had merely +confirmed an impression that had slowly grown upon her, and her +outburst of feeling that night had only been the overflowing of +shamed anger at herself for letting his magnetic personality make +so deep an impression on her that she could admit to him that she +cared. She felt that she had belittled herself by that. But he was +no longer a problem. She wondered now how he ever could have been. +She recalled that once Jack Fyfe had soberly told her she would +never sense life's real values while she nursed so many illusions. +Monohan had been one of them.</p> +<p>"But it wouldn't work," she whispered to herself. "I couldn't do +it. He'd know I only did it because I was sorry, because I thought +I should, because the old ties, and they seem so many and so strong +in spite of everything, were harder to break than the new road is +to follow alone. He'd resent anything like pity for his loneliness. +And if Monohan has made any real trouble, it began over me, or at +least it focussed on me. And he might resent that. He's ten times a +better man than I am a woman. He thinks about the other fellow's +side of things. I'm just what he said about Charlie, self-centered, +a profound egotist. If I really and truly loved Jack Fyfe, I'd be a +jealous little fury if he so much as looked at another woman. But I +don't, and I don't see why I don't. I want to be loved; I want to +love. I've always wanted that so much that I'll never dare trust my +instincts about it again. I wonder why people like me exist to go +blundering about in the world, playing havoc with themselves and +everybody else?"</p> +<p>Before she reached home, that self-sacrificing mood had vanished +in the face of sundry twinges of pride. Jack Fyfe hadn't asked her +to come back; he never would ask her to come back. Of that she was +quite sure. She knew the stony determination of him too well. +Neither hope or heaven nor fear of hell would turn him aside when +he had made a decision. If he ever had moments of irresolution, he +had successfully concealed any such weakness from those who knew +him best. No one ever felt called upon to pity Jack Fyfe, and in +those rocked-ribbed qualities, Stella had an illuminating flash, +perhaps lay the secret of his failure ever to stir in her that +yearning tenderness which she knew herself to be capable of +lavishing, which her nature impelled her to lavish on some one.</p> +<p>"Ah, well," she sighed, when she came back to her rooms and put +Fyfe's letter away in a drawer. "I'll do the decent thing if they +ask me. I wonder what Jack would say if he knew what I've been +debating with myself this afternoon? I wonder if we were actually +divorced and I'd made myself a reputation as a singer, and we +happened to meet quite casually sometime, somewhere, just how we'd +really feel about each other?"</p> +<p>She was still musing on that, in a detached, impersonal fashion, +when she caught a car down to the theater for the +matinée.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<br> +<h3>AN UNEXPECTED MEETING</h3> +<p>The formally worded wedding card arrived in due course. +Following close came a letter from Linda Abbey, a missive that +radiated friendliness and begged Stella to come a week before the +date.</p> +<div class="ind">"You're going to be pretty prominent in the public +eye when you sing<br> +here," Linda wrote. "People are going to make a to-do over you. +Ever<br> +so many have mentioned you since the announcement was made that<br> +you'll sing at the Granada concerts. I'm getting a lot of +reflected<br> +glory as the future sister-in-law of a rising singer. So you may +as<br> +well come and get your hand into the social game in preparation +for<br> +being fussed over in July."</div> +<br> +<p>In the same mail was a characteristic note from Charlie which +ran:</p> +<div class="ind">"<i>Dear Sis:</i><br> +<br> +"As the Siwashes say, long time I see you no. I might have dropped +a<br> +line before, but you know what a punk correspondent I am. They +tell<br> +me you're becoming a real noise musically. How about it?<br> +<br> +"Can't you break away from the fame and fortune stuff long enough +to<br> +be on hand when Linda and I get married? I wasn't invited to +your<br> +wedding, but I'd like to have you at mine. Jack says it's up to +you<br> +to represent the Fyfe connection, as he's too busy. I'll come +over<br> +to Seattle and get you, if you say so."</div> +<br> +<p>She capitulated at that and wrote saying that she would be +there, and that she did not mind the trip alone in the least. She +did not want Charlie asking pertinent questions about why she lived +in such grubby quarters and practiced such strict economy in the +matter of living.</p> +<p>Then there was the detail of arranging a break in her +engagements, which ran continuously to the end of June. She managed +that easily enough, for she was becoming too great a drawing card +for managers to curtly override her wishes.</p> +<p>Almost before she realized it, June was at hand. Linda wrote +again urgently, and Stella took the night boat for Vancouver a week +before the wedding day. Linda met her at the dock with a machine. +Mrs. Abbey was the essence of cordiality when she reached the big +Abbey house on Vancouver's aristocratic "heights," where the local +capitalists, all those fortunate climbers enriched by timber and +mineral, grown wealthy in a decade through the great Coast boom, +segregated themselves in "Villas" and "Places" and "Views," all +painfully new and sometimes garish, striving for an effect in +landscape and architecture which the very intensity of the striving +defeated. They were well-meaning folk, however, the Abbeys +included.</p> +<p>Stella could not deny that she enjoyed the luxury of the Abbey +ménage, the little festive round which was shaping about +Linda in these last days of her spinsterhood. She relished the +change from unremitting work. It amused her to startle little +groups with the range and quality of her voice, when they asked her +to sing. They made a much ado over that, a genuine admiration that +flattered Stella. It was easy for her to fall into the swing of +that life; it was only a lapsing back to the old ways.</p> +<p>But she saw it now with a more critical vision. It was soft and +satisfying and eminently desirable to have everything one wanted +without the effort of striving for it, but a begging wheedling game +on the part of these women. They were, she told herself rather +harshly, an incompetent, helpless lot, dependent one and all upon +some man's favor or affection, just as she herself had been all her +life until the past few months. Some man had to work and scheme to +pay the bills. She did not know why this line of thought should +arise, neither did she so far forget herself as to voice these +social heresies. But it helped to reconcile her with her new-found +independence, to put a less formidable aspect on the long, hard +grind that lay ahead of her before she could revel in equal +affluence gained by her own efforts. All that they had she +desired,—homes, servants, clothes, social standing,—but +she did not want these things bestowed upon her as a favor by some +man, the emoluments of sex.</p> +<p>She expected she would have to be on her guard with her brother, +even to dissemble a little. But she found him too deeply engrossed +in what to him was the most momentous event of his career, +impatiently awaiting the day, rather dreading the publicity of +it.</p> +<p>"Why in Sam Hill can't a man and a woman get married without all +this fuss?" he complained once. "Why should we make our private +affairs a spectacle for the whole town?"</p> +<p>"Principally because mamma has her heart set on a spectacle," +Linda laughed. "She'd hold up her hands in horror if she heard you. +Decorated bridal bower, high church dignitary, bridesmaids, orange +blossoms, rice, and all. Mamma likes to show off. Besides, that's +the way it's done in society. <i>And</i> the honeymoon."</p> +<p>They both giggled, as at some mirthful secret.</p> +<p>"Shall we tell her?" Linda nodded toward Stella.</p> +<p>"Sure," Benton said. "I thought you had."</p> +<p>"The happy couple will spend their honeymoon on a leisurely tour +of the Southern and Eastern States, remaining for some weeks in +Philadelphia, where the groom has wealthy and influential +connections. It's all prepared for the pay-a-purs," Linda whispered +with exaggerated secrecy behind her hand.</p> +<p>Benton snorted.</p> +<p>"Can you beat that?" he appealed to Stella.</p> +<p>"And all the time," Linda continued, "the happy couple, unknown +to every one, will be spending their days in peace and quietness in +their shanty at Halfway Point. My, but mamma would rave if she +knew. Don't give us away, Stella. It seems so senseless to squander +a lot of money gadding about on trains and living in hotels when +we'd much rather be at home by ourselves. My husband's a poor young +man, Stella. 'Pore but worthy.' He has to make his fortune before +we start in spending it. I'm sick of all this spreading it on +because dad has made a pile of money," she broke out impatiently. +"Our living used to be simple enough when I was a kid. I think I +can relish a little simplicity again for a change. Mamma's been +trying for four years to marry me off to her conception of an +eligible man. It didn't matter a hang about his essential qualities +so long as he had money and an assured social position."</p> +<p>"Forget that," Charlie counseled slangily. "I have all the +essential qualities, and I'll have the money and social position +too; you watch my smoke."</p> +<p>"Conceited ninny," Linda smiled. But there was no reproof in her +tone, only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so +openly and unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a +pang of envy, a dull little ache in her heart. She had missed that. +It had passed her by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two +personalities in the biggest passion life holds. Marriage and +motherhood she had known, not as the flowering of love, not as an +eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, but as something +extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of living, a +weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed her +out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that +tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy +them, that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her +woman's heritage.</p> +<p>She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked +the thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit +seeking the outlet of action.</p> +<p>"Thank the Lord I've got something to do, something that's worth +doing," she whispered savagely. "If I can't have what I want, I can +make my life embrace something more than just food and clothes and +social trifling. If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring +what it would, I believe I'd go clean mad."</p> +<p>A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one +had called her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the +library. She wasn't prepared for the voice that came over the line, +but she recognized it instantly as Fyfe's.</p> +<p>"Listen, Stella," he said. "I'm sorry this has happened, but I +can't very well avoid it now, without causing comment. I had no +choice about coming to Vancouver. It was a business matter I +couldn't neglect. And as luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I +got off the train. On account of your being there, of course, he +insisted that I come out for dinner. It'll look queer if I don't, +as I can't possibly get a return train for the Springs before +nine-thirty this evening. I accepted without stuttering rather than +leave any chance for the impression that I wanted to avoid you. +Now, here's how I propose to fix it. I'll come out about two-thirty +and pay a hurry-up five-minute call. Then I'll excuse myself to +Mrs. Abbey for inability to join them at dinner—press of +important business takes me to Victoria and so forth. That'll +satisfy the conventions and let us both out. I called you so you +won't be taken by surprise. Do you mind?"</p> +<p>"Of course not," she answered instantly. "Why should I?"</p> +<p>There was a momentary silence.</p> +<p>"Well," he said at last, "I didn't know how you'd feel about it. +Anyway, it will only be for a few minutes, and it's unlikely to +happen again."</p> +<p>Stella put the receiver back on the hook and looked at her +watch. It lacked a quarter of two. In the room adjoining, Charlie +and Linda were jubilantly wading through the latest "rag" song in a +passable soprano and baritone, with Mrs. Abbey listening in outward +resignation. Stella sat soberly for a minute, then joined them.</p> +<p>"Jack's in town," she informed them placidly, when the ragtime +spasm ended. "He telephoned that he was going to snatch a few +minutes between important business confabs to run out and see +me."</p> +<p>"I could have told you that half an hour ago, my dear," Mrs. +Abbey responded with playful archness. "Mr. Fyfe will dine with us +this evening."</p> +<p>"Oh," Stella feigned surprise. "Why, he spoke of going to +Victoria on the afternoon boat. He gave me the impression of mad +haste—making a dash out here between breaths, as you might +say."</p> +<p>"Oh, I hope he won't be called away on such short notice as +that," Mrs. Abbey murmured politely.</p> +<p>She left the room presently. Out of one corner of her eye Stella +saw Linda looking at her queerly. Charlie had turned to the window, +staring at the blue blur of the Lions across the Inlet.</p> +<p>"It's a wonder Jack would leave the lake," he said suddenly, +"with things the way they are. I've been hoping for rain ever since +I've been down. I'll be glad when we're on the spot again, +Linda."</p> +<p>"Wishing for rain?" Stella echoed. "Why?"</p> +<p>"Fire," he said shortly. "I don't suppose you realize it, but +there's been practically no rain for two months. It's getting hot. +A few weeks of dry, warm weather, and this whole country is ready +to blow away. The woods are like a pile of shavings. That would be +a fine wedding present—to be cleaned out by fire. Every +dollar I've got's in timber."</p> +<p>"Don't be a pessimist," Linda said sharply.</p> +<p>"What makes you so uneasy now?" Stella asked thoughtfully. +"There's always the fire danger in the dry months. That's been a +bugaboo ever since I came to the lake."</p> +<p>"Yes, but never like it is this summer," Benton frowned. "Oh, +well, no use borrowing trouble, I suppose."</p> +<p>Stella rose.</p> +<p>"When Jack comes, I'll be in the library," she said. "I'm going +to read a while."</p> +<p>But the book she took up lay idle in her lap. She looked forward +to that meeting with a curious mixture of reluctance and regret. +She could not face it unmoved. No woman who has ever lain passive +in a man's arms can ever again look into that man's eyes with +genuine indifference. She may hate him or love him with a degree of +intensity according to her nature, be merely friendly, or nurse a +slow resentment. But there is always that intangible something +which differentiates him from other men. Stella felt now a shyness +of him, a little dread of him, less sureness of herself, as he +swung out of the machine and took the house steps with that +effortless lightness on his feet that she remembered so well.</p> +<p>She heard him in the hall, his deep voice mingling with the +thin, penetrating tones of Mrs. Abbey. And then the library door +opened, and he came in. Stella had risen, and stood uncertainly at +one corner of a big reading table, repressing an impulse to fly, +finding herself stricken with a strange recurrence of the feeling +she had first disliked him for arousing in her,—a sense of +needing to be on her guard, of impending assertion of a will +infinitely more powerful than her own.</p> +<p>But that was, she told herself, only a state of mind, and Fyfe +put her quickly at her ease. He came up to the table and seated +himself on the edge of it an arm's length from her, swinging one +foot free. He looked at her intently. There was no shadow of +expression on his face, only in his clear eyes lurked a gleam of +feeling.</p> +<p>"Well, lady," he said at length, "you're looking fine. How goes +everything?"</p> +<p>"Fairly well," she answered.</p> +<p>"Seems odd, doesn't it, to meet like this?" he ventured. "I'd +have dodged it, if it had been politic. As it is, there's no harm +done, I imagine. Mrs. Abbey assured me we'd be free from +interruption. If the exceedingly cordial dame had an inkling of how +things stand between us, I daresay she'd be holding her breath +about now."</p> +<p>"Why do you talk like that, Jack?" Stella protested +nervously.</p> +<p>"Well, I have to say something," he remarked, after a moment's +reflection. "I can't sit here and just look at you. That would be +rude, not to say embarrassing."</p> +<p>Stella bit her lip.</p> +<p>"I don't see why we can't talk like any other man and woman for +a few minutes," she observed.</p> +<p>"I do," he said quietly. "You know why, too, if you stop to +think. I'm the same old Jack Fyfe, Stella. I don't think much where +you are concerned; I just feel. And that doesn't lend itself +readily to impersonal chatter."</p> +<p>"How do you feel?" she asked, meeting his gaze squarely. "If you +don't hate me, you must at least rather despise me."</p> +<p>"Neither," he said slowly. "I admire your grit, lady. You broke +away from everything and made a fresh start. You asserted your own +individuality in a fashion that rather surprised me. Maybe the +incentive wasn't what it might have been, but the result is, or +promises to be. I was only a milestone. Why should I hate or +despise you because you recognized that and passed on? I had no +business setting myself up for the end of your road instead of the +beginning. I meant to have it that way until the kid—well, +Fate took a hand there. Pshaw," he broke off with a quick gesture, +"let's talk about something else."</p> +<p>Stella laid one hand on his knee. Unbidden tears were crowding +up in her gray eyes.</p> +<p>"You were good to me," she whispered. "But just being good +wasn't enough for a perverse creature like me. I couldn't be a +sleek pussy-cat, comfortable beside your fire. I'm full of queer +longings. I want wings. I must be a variation from the normal type +of woman. Our marriage didn't touch the real me at all, Jack. It +only scratched the surface. And sometimes I'm afraid to look deep, +for fear of what I'll see. Even if another man hadn't come along +and stirred up a temporary tumult in me, I couldn't have gone on +forever."</p> +<p>"A temporary tumult," Fyfe mused. "Have you thoroughly chucked +that illusion? I knew you would, of course, but I had no idea how +long it would take you."</p> +<p>"Long ago," she answered. "Even before I left you, I was shaky +about that. There were things I couldn't reconcile. But pride +wouldn't let me admit it. I can't even explain it to myself."</p> +<p>"I can," he said, a little sadly. "You've never poured out that +big, warm heart of yours on a man. It's there, always has been +there, those concentrated essences of passion. Every unattached +man's a possible factor, a potential lover. Nature has her own +devices to gain her end. I couldn't be the one. We started wrong. I +saw the mistake of that when it was too late. Monohan, a highly +magnetic animal, came along at a time when you were peculiarly and +rather blindly receptive. That's all. Sex—you have it in a +word. It couldn't stand any stress, that sort of attraction. I knew +it would only last until you got one illuminating glimpse of the +real man of him. But I don't want to talk about him. He'll keep. +Sometime you'll really love a <i>man</i>, Stella, and he'll be a +very lucky mortal. There's an erratic streak in you, lady, but +there's a bigger streak that's fine and good and true. You'd have +gone through with it to the bitter end, if Jack Junior hadn't died. +The weaklings don't do that. Neither do they cut loose as you did, +burning all their economic bridges behind them. Do you know that it +was over a month before I found out that you'd turned your private +balance back into my account? I suppose there was a keen personal +satisfaction in going on your own and making good from the start. +Only I couldn't rest until—until—"</p> +<p>His voice trailed huskily off into silence. The gloves in his +left hand were doubled and twisted in his uneasy fingers. Stella's +eyes were blurred.</p> +<p>"Well, I'm going," he said shortly. "Be good."</p> +<p>He slipped off the table and stood erect, a wide, deep-chested +man, tanned brown, his fair hair with its bronze tinge lying back +in a smooth wave from his forehead, blue eyes bent on her, hot with +a slumbering fire.</p> +<p>Without warning, he caught her close in his arms so that she +could feel the pounding of his heart against her breast, kissed her +cheeks, her hair, the round, firm white neck of her, with lips that +burned. Then he held her off at arm's length.</p> +<p>"That's how <i>I</i> care," he said defiantly. "That's how I +want you. No other way. I'm a one-woman man. Some time you may love +like that, and if you do, you'll know how I feel. I've watched you +sleeping beside me and ached because I couldn't kindle the faintest +glow of the real thing in you. I'm sick with a miserable sense of +failure, the only thing I've ever failed at, and the biggest, most +complete failure I can conceive of,—to love a woman in every +way desirable; to have her and yet never have her."</p> +<p>He caught up his hat, and the door clicked shut behind him. A +minute later Stella saw him step into the tonneau of the car. He +never looked back.</p> +<p>And she fled to her own room, stunned, half-frightened, wholly +amazed at this outburst. Her face was damp with his lip-pressure, +damp and warm. Her arms tingled with the grip of his. The blood +stood in her cheeks like a danger signal, flooding in hot, +successive waves to the roots of her thick, brown hair.</p> +<p>"If I thought—I could," she whispered into her pillow, +"I'd try. But I daren't. I'm afraid. It's just a mood, I know it +is. I've had it before. A—ah! I'm a spineless jellyfish, a +weathercock that whirls to every emotional breeze. And I won't be. +I'll stand on my own feet if I can—so help me God, I +will!"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<br> +<h3>THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE</h3> +<p>This is no intimate chronicle of Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey, +save in so far as they naturally furnish a logical sequence in what +transpired. Therefore the details of their nuptials is of no +particular concern. They were wedded, ceremonially dined as +befitted the occasion, and departed upon their hypothetical +honeymoon, surreptitiously abbreviated from an extravagant swing +over half of North America to seventy miles by rail and twenty by +water,—and a month of blissful seclusion, which suited those +two far better than any amount of Pullman touring, besides leaving +them money in pocket.</p> +<p>When they were gone, Stella caught the next boat for Seattle. +She had drawn fresh breath in the meantime, and while she felt +tenderly, almost maternally, sorry for Jack Fyfe, she swung back to +the old attitude. Even granting, she argued, that she could muster +courage to take up the mantle of wifehood where she laid it off, +there was no surety that they could do more than compromise. There +was the stubborn fact that she had openly declared her love for +another man, that by her act she had plunged her husband into +far-reaching conflict. Such a conflict existed. She could put her +finger on no concrete facts, but it was in the air. She heard +whispers of a battle between giants—a financial duel to the +death—with all the odds against Jack Fyfe.</p> +<p>Win or lose, there would be scars. And the struggle, if not of +and by her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity +through her. Men, she told herself, do not forget these things; +they rankle. Jack Fyfe was only human. No, Stella felt that they +could only come safe to the old port by virtue of a passion that +could match Fyfe's own. And she put that rather sadly beyond her, +beyond the possibilities. She had felt stirrings of it, but not to +endure. She was proud and sensitive and growing wise with bitterly +accumulated experience. It had to be all or nothing with them, a +cleaving together complete enough to erase and forever obliterate +all that had gone before. And since she could not see that as a +possibility, there was nothing to do but play the game according to +the cards she held. Of these the trump was work, the inner glow +that comes of something worth while done toward a definite, +purposeful end. She took up her singing again with a distinct +relief.</p> +<p>Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding +day and the date of her Granada engagement. It seemed a mere +breathing space before the middle of July rolled around, and she +was once more aboard a Vancouver boat. In the interim, she had +received a letter from the attorney who had wound up her father's +estate, intimating that there was now a market demand for that oil +stock, and asking if he should sell or hold for a rise in price +which seemed reasonably sure? Stella telegraphed her answer. If +that left-over of a speculative period would bring a few hundred +dollars, it would never be of greater service to her than now.</p> +<p>All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal +midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great +region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and +the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, +somnolent. But nearing the international boundary, the +<i>Charlotte</i> drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening +atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line +those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of +Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open gulf again, a vast +bank of smoke flung up blue and gray, a rolling mass. The air was +pungent, oppressive. When the <i>Charlotte</i> spanned the +thirty-mile gap between Vancouver Island and the mainland shore, +she nosed into the Lion's Gate under a slow bell, through a smoke +pall thick as Bering fog. Stella's recollection swung back to +Charlie's uneasy growl of a month earlier. Fire! Throughout the +midsummer season there was always the danger of fire breaking out +in the woods. Not all the fire-ranger patrols could guard against +the carelessness of fishermen and campers.</p> +<p>"It's a tough Summer over here for the timber owners," she heard +a man remark. "I've been twenty years on the coast and never saw +the woods so dry."</p> +<p>"Dry's no name," his neighbor responded. "It's like tinder. A +cigarette stub'll start a blaze forty men couldn't put out. It's me +that knows it. I've got four limits on the North Arm, and there's +fire on two sides of me. You bet I'm praying for rain."</p> +<p>"They say the country between Chehalis and Roaring Lake is one +big blaze," the first man observed.</p> +<p>"So?" the other replied. "Pity, too. Fine timber in there. I +came near buying some timber on the lake this spring. Some stuff +that was on the market as a result of that Abbey-Monohan split. +Glad I didn't now. I'd just as soon have <i>all</i> my money out of +timber this season."</p> +<p>They moved away in the press of disembarking, and Stella heard +no more of their talk. She took a taxi to the Granada, and she +bought a paper in the foyer before she followed the bell boy to her +room. She had scarcely taken off her hat and settled down to read +when the telephone rang. Linda's voice greeted her when she +answered.</p> +<p>"I called on the chance that you took the morning boat," Linda +said. "Can I run in? I'm just down for the day. I won't be able to +hear you sing, but I'd like to see you, dear."</p> +<p>"Can you come right now?" Stella asked. "Come up, and we'll have +something served up here. I don't feel like running the gauntlet of +the dining room just now."</p> +<p>"I'll be there in a few minutes," Linda answered.</p> +<p>Stella went back to her paper. She hadn't noticed any particular +stress laid on forest fires in the Seattle dailies, but she could +not say that of this Vancouver sheet. The front page reeked of +smoke and fire. She glanced through the various items for news of +Roaring Lake, but found only a brief mention. It was "reported" and +"asserted" and "rumored" that fire was raging at one or two points +there, statements that were overshadowed by positive knowledge of +greater areas nearer at hand burning with a fierceness that could +be seen and smelled. The local papers had enough feature stuff in +fires that threatened the very suburbs of Vancouver without going +so far afield as Roaring Lake.</p> +<p>Linda's entrance put a stop to her reading, without, however, +changing the direction of her thought. For after an exchange of +greetings, Linda divulged the source of her worried expression, +which Stella had immediately remarked.</p> +<p>"Who wouldn't be worried," Linda said, "with the whole country +on fire, and no telling when it may break out in some unexpected +place and wipe one out of house and home."</p> +<p>"Is it so bad as that at the lake?" Stella asked uneasily. +"There's not much in the paper. I was looking."</p> +<p>"It's so bad," Linda returned, with a touch of bitterness, "that +I've been driven to the Springs for safety; that every able-bodied +man on the lake who can be spared is fighting fire. There has been +one man killed, and there's half a dozen loggers in the hospital, +suffering from burns and other hurts. Nobody knows where it will +stop. Charlie's limits have barely been scorched, but there's fire +all along one side of them. A change of wind—and there you +are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a dozen places. We've been +praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a week."</p> +<p>Stella looked out the north window. From the ten-story height +she could see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky +pall that shrouded the harbor.</p> +<p>"I'm sorry," she whispered.</p> +<p>"It's devilish," Linda went on. "Like groping in the dark and +being afraid—for me. I've been married a month, and for ten +days I've only seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes +down in the launch for supplies, or to bring an injured man. And he +doesn't tell me anything except that we stand a fat chance of +losing everything. I sit there at the Springs, and look at that +smoke wall hanging over the water, and wonder what goes on up +there. And at night there's the red glow, very faint and far. +That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to help out and +to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only for a list +of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be obtained +quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the +evening train back."</p> +<p>"I'm sorry," Stella repeated.</p> +<p>She said it rather mechanically. Her mind was spinning a thread, +upon which, strung like beads, slid all the manifold succession of +things that had happened since she came first to Roaring Lake. +Linda's voice, continuing, broke into her thoughts.</p> +<p>"I suppose I shouldn't be croaking into your ear like a bird of +ill omen, when you have to throw yourself heart and soul into that +concert to-morrow," she said contritely. "I wonder why that Ancient +Mariner way of seeking relief from one's troubles by pouring them +into another ear is such a universal trait? You aren't vitally +concerned, after all, and I am. Let's have that tea, dear, and talk +about less grievous things. I still have one or two trifles to get +in the shops too."</p> +<p>After they had finished the food that Stella ordered sent up, +they went out together. Later Stella saw her off on the train.</p> +<p>"Good-by, dear," Linda said from the coach window. "I'm just +selfish enough to wish you were going back with me; I wish you +could sit with me on the bank of the lake, aching and longing for +your man up there in the smoke as I ache and long for mine. Misery +loves company."</p> +<p>Stella's eyes were clouded as the train pulled out. Something in +Linda Benton's parting words made her acutely lonely, dispirited, +out of joint with the world she was deliberately fashioning for +herself. Into Linda's life something big and elemental had come. +The butterfly of yesterday had become the strong man's mate of +to-day. Linda's heart was unequivocally up there in the smoke and +flame with her man, fighting for their mutual possessions, hoping +with him, fearing for him, longing for him, secure in the knowledge +that if nothing else was left them, they had each other. It was a +rare and beautiful thing to feel like that. And beyond that +sorrowful vision of what she lacked to achieve any real and +enduring happiness, there loomed also a self-torturing conviction +that she herself had set in motion those forces which now +threatened ruin for her brother and Jack Fyfe.</p> +<p>There was no logical proof of this. Only intuitive, subtle +suggestions gleaned here and there, shadowy finger-posts which +pointed to Monohan as a deadly hater and with a score chalked up +against Fyfe to which she had unconsciously added. He had desired +her, and twice Fyfe had treated him like an urchin caught in +mischief. She recalled how Monohan sprang at him like a tiger that +day on the lake shore. She realized how bitter a humiliation it +must have been to suffer that sardonic cuffing at Fyfe's hands. +Monohan wasn't the type of man who would ever forget or forgive +either that or the terrible grip on his throat.</p> +<p>Even at the time she had sensed this and dreaded what it might +ultimately lead to. Even while her being answered eagerly to the +physical charm of him, she had fought against admitting to herself +what desperate intent might have lain back of the killing of Billy +Dale,—a shot that Lefty Howe declared was meant for Fyfe. She +had long outgrown Monohan's lure, but if he had come to her or +written to make out a case for himself when she first went to +Seattle, she would have accepted his word against anything. Her +heart would have fought for him against the logic of her brain.</p> +<p>But—she had had a long time to think, to compare, to +digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious +impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from +various sources. The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of +rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got +what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need. +Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of +his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted him. She +could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like Jack +Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a +torch to Fyfe's timber would be a likely enough counterstroke.</p> +<p>She shrank from the thought. Yet it lingered until she felt +guilty. Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe +might or might not face ruin, she could not, before her own +conscience, evade responsibility. The powder might have been laid, +but her folly had touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it. That +seared her like a pain far into the night. For every crime a +punishment; for every sin a penance. Her world had taught her that. +She had never danced; she had only listened to the piper and longed +to dance, as nature had fashioned her to do. But the piper was +sending his bill. She surveyed it wearily, emotionally bankrupt, +wondering in what coin of the soul she would have to pay.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> +<br> +<h3>A RIDE BY NIGHT</h3> +<p>Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, +behind the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn +and a few hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, +expectantly listening. She sang her way straight into the heart of +that audience with her opening number. This was on Wednesday. +Friday she sang again, and Saturday afternoon.</p> +<p>When she came back to her room after that last concert, wearied +with the effort of listening to chattering women and playing the +gracious lady to an admiring contingent which insisted upon making +her last appearance a social triumph, she found a letter forwarded +from Seattle. She slit the envelope. A typewritten sheet enfolded a +green slip,—a check. She looked at the figures, scarcely +comprehending until she read the letter.</p> +<div class="ind">"We take pleasure in handing you herewith," Mr. +Lander wrote for the<br> +firm, "our check for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars,<br> +proceeds of oil stock sold as per your telegraphed +instructions,<br> +less brokerage charges. We sold same at par, and trust this will +be<br> +satisfactory."</div> +<br> +<p>She looked at the check again. Nineteen thousand, five +hundred—payable to her order. Two years ago such a sum would +have lifted her to plutocratic heights, filled her with pleasurable +excitement, innumerable anticipations. Now it stirred her less than +the three hundred dollars she had just received from the Granada +Concert committee. She had earned that, had given for it due +measure of herself. This other had come without effort, without +expectation. And less than she had ever needed money before did she +now require such a sum.</p> +<p>Yet she was sensibly aware that this windfall meant a short cut +to things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over +economic hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay +houses, to vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial +towns. She could hitch her wagon to a star and go straight up the +avenue that led to a career, if it were in her to achieve +greatness. Pleasant dreams in which the buoyant ego soared, until +the logical interpretation of her ambitions brought her to a more +practical consideration of ways and means, and that in turn +confronted her with the fact that she could leave the Pacific coast +to-morrow morning if she so chose.</p> +<p>Why should she not so choose?</p> +<p>She was her own mistress, free as the wind. Fyfe had said that. +She looked out into the smoky veil that shrouded the water front +and the hills across the Inlet, that swirled and eddied above the +giant fir in Stanley Park, and her mind flicked back to Roaring +Lake where the Red Flower of Kipling's <i>Jungle Book</i> bloomed +to her husband's ruin. Did it? She wondered. She could not think of +him as beaten, bested in any undertaking. She had never been able +to think of him in those terms. Always to her he had conveyed the +impression of a superman. Always she had been a little in awe of +him, of his strength, his patient, inflexible determination, +glimpsing under his habitual repression certain tremendous forces. +She could not conceive him as a broken man.</p> +<p>Staring out into the smoky air, she wondered if the fires at +Roaring Lake still ravaged that noble forest; if Fyfe's resources, +like her brother's, were wholly involved in standing timber, and if +that timber were doomed? She craved to know. Secured herself by +that green slip in her hand against every possible need, she +wondered if it were ordained that the two men whose possession of +material resources had molded her into what she was to-day should +lose all, be reduced to the same stress that had made her an +unwilling drudge in her brother's kitchen. Then she recalled that +for Charlie there was an equivalent sum due,—a share like her +own. At the worst, he had the nucleus of another fortune.</p> +<p>Curled among the pillows of her bed that night, she looked over +the evening papers, read with a swift heart-sinking that the +Roaring Lake fire was assuming terrific proportions, that nothing +but a deluge of rain would stay it now. And more significantly, +except for a minor blaze or two, the fire raged almost wholly upon +and around the Fyfe block of limits. She laid aside the papers, +switched off the lights, and lay staring wide-eyed at the dusky +ceiling.</p> +<p>At twenty minutes of midnight she was called to the door of her +room to receive a telegram. It was from Linda, and it read:</p> +<div class="ind">"Charlie badly hurt. Can you come?"</div> +<br> +<p>Stella reached for the telephone receiver. The night clerk at +the C.P.R. depot told her the first train she could take left at +six in the morning. That meant reaching the Springs at nine-thirty. +Nine and a half hours to sit with idle hands, in suspense. She did +not knew what tragic dénouement awaited there, what she +could do once she reached there. She knew only that a fever of +impatience burned in her. The message had strung her suddenly taut, +as if a crisis had arisen in which willy-nilly she must take a +hand.</p> +<p>So, groping for the relief of action, some method of spanning +that nine hours' wait, her eye fell upon a card tucked beside the +telephone case. She held it between, finger and thumb, her brows +puckered.</p> +<div class="ind">TAXIS AND TOURING CARS<br> +Anywhere . . . Anytime</div> +<br> +<p>She took down the receiver again and asked for Seymour 9X.</p> +<p>"Western Taxi," a man's voice drawled.</p> +<p>"I want to reach Roaring Hot Springs in the shortest time +possible," she told him rather breathlessly. "Can you furnish me a +machine and a reliable chauffeur?"</p> +<p>"Roaring Springs?" he repeated. "How many passengers?"</p> +<p>"One. Myself."</p> +<p>"Just a minute."</p> +<p>She heard a faint burble of talk away at the other end of the +wire. Then the same voice speaking crisply.</p> +<p>"We gotta big six roadster, and a first-class driver. It'll cost +you seventy-five dollars—in advance."</p> +<p>"Your money will be waiting for you here," she answered calmly. +"How soon can you bring the car around to the Hotel Granada?"</p> +<p>"In ten minutes, if you say so."</p> +<p>"Say twenty minutes, then."</p> +<p>"All right."</p> +<p>She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, +instructed the night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send +it by express to Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. +Then she walked out to the broad-stepped carriage entrance.</p> +<p>A low-hung long-hooded, yellow car stood there, exhaust purring +faintly. She paid the driver, sank into the soft upholstering +beside him, and the big six slid out into the street. There was no +traffic. In a few minutes they were on the outskirts of the city, +the long asphalt ribbon of King's Way lying like a silver band +between green, bushy walls. They crossed the last car track. The +driver spoke to her out of one corner of his mouth.</p> +<p>"Wanna make time, huh?"</p> +<p>"I want to get to Roaring Lake as quickly as you can drive, +without taking chances."</p> +<p>"I know the road pretty well," he assured her. "Drove a party +clear to Rosebud day before yesterday. I'll do the best I can. +Can't drive too fast at night. Too smoky."</p> +<p>She could not gage his conception of real speed if the gait he +struck was not "too fast." They were through New Westminster and +rolling across the Fraser bridge before she was well settled in the +seat, breasting the road with a lurch and a swing at the curves, a +noise under that long hood like giant bees in an empty barrel.</p> +<p>Ninety miles of road good, bad and indifferent, forest and farm +and rolling hill, and the swamps of Sumas Prairie, lies between +Vancouver and Roaring Lake. At four in the morning, with dawn an +hour old, they woke the Rosebud ferryman to cross the river. Twenty +minutes after that Stella was stepping stiffly out of the machine +before Roaring Springs hospital. The doctor's Chinaman was abroad +in the garden. She beckoned him.</p> +<p>"You sabe Mr. Benton—Charlie Benton?" she asked. "He in +doctor's house?"</p> +<p>The Chinaman pointed across the road. "Mist Bentle obah dah," he +said. "Velly much sick. Missa Bentle lib dah, all same gleen +house."</p> +<p>Stella ran across the way. The front door of the green cottage +stood wide. An electric drop light burned in the front room, though +it was broad day. When she crossed the threshold, she saw Linda +sitting in a chair, her arms folded on the table-edge, her head +resting on her hands. She was asleep, and she did not raise her +head till Stella shook her shoulder.</p> +<p>Linda Abbey had been a pretty girl, very fair, with +apple-blossom skin and a wonderfully expressive face. It gave +Stella a shock to see her now, to gage her suffering by the havoc +it had wrought. Linda looked old, haggard, drawn. There was a weary +droop to her mouth, her eyes were dull, lifeless, just as one might +look who is utterly exhausted in mind and body. Oddly enough, she +spoke first of something irrelevant, inconsequential.</p> +<p>"I fell asleep," she said heavily. "What time is it?"</p> +<p>Stella looked at her watch.</p> +<p>"Half-past four," she answered. "How is Charlie? What happened +to him?"</p> +<p>"Monohan shot him."</p> +<p>Stella caught her breath. She hadn't been prepared for that.</p> +<p>"Is he—is he—" she could not utter the words.</p> +<p>"He'll get better. Wait." Linda rose stiffly from her seat. A +door in one side of the room stood ajar. She opened it, and Stella, +looking over her shoulder, saw her brother's tousled head on a +pillow. A nurse in uniform sat beside his bed. Linda closed the +door silently.</p> +<p>"Come into the kitchen where we won't make a noise," she +whispered.</p> +<p>A fire burned in the kitchen stove. Linda sank into a willow +rocker.</p> +<p>"I'm weary as Atlas," she said. "I've been fretting for so long. +Then late yesterday afternoon they brought him home to +me—like that. The doctor was probing for the bullet when I +wired you. I was in a panic then, I think. Half-past four! How did +you get here so soon? How could you? There's no train."</p> +<p>Stella told her.</p> +<p>"Why should Monohan shoot him?" she broke out. "For God's sake, +talk, Linda!"</p> +<p>There was a curious impersonality in Linda's manner, as if she +stood aloof from it all, as if the fire of her vitality had burned +out. She lay back in her chair with eyelids drooping, speaking in +dull, lifeless tones.</p> +<p>"Monohan shot him because Charlie came on him in the woods +setting a fresh fire. They've suspected him, or some one in his +pay, of that, and they've been watching. There were two other men +with Charlie, so there is no mistake. Monohan got away. That's all +I know. Oh, but I'm tired. I've been hanging on to myself for so +long. About daylight, after we knew for sure that Charlie was over +the hill, something seemed to let go in me. I'm awful glad you +came, Stella. Can you make a cup of tea?"</p> +<p>Stella could and did, but she drank none of it herself. A dead +weight of apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience +pointed a deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, +sandwiched in between, the loosed fire furies which were taking +toll in bodily injury and ruinous loss.</p> +<p>Yet she was helpless. The matter was wholly out of her hands, +and she stood aghast before it, much as the small child stands +aghast before the burning house he has fired by accident.</p> +<p>Fyfe next. That was the ultimate, the culmination, which would +leave her forever transfixed with remorseful horror. The fact that +already the machinery of the law which would eventually bring +Monohan to book for the double lawlessness of arson and attempted +homicide must be in motion, that the Provincial police would be +hard on his trail, did not occur to her. She could only visualize +him progressing step by step from one lawless deed to another. And +in her mind every step led to Jack Fyfe, who had made a mock of +him. She found her hands clenching till the nails dug deep.</p> +<p>Linda's head drooped over the teacup. Her eyelids blinked.</p> +<p>"Dear," Stella said tenderly, "come and lie down. You're worn +out."</p> +<p>"Perhaps I'd better," Linda muttered. "There's another room in +there."</p> +<p>Stella tucked the weary girl into the bed, and went back to the +kitchen, and sat down in the willow rocker. After another hour the +nurse came out and prepared her own breakfast. Benton was still +sleeping. He was in no danger, the nurse told Stella. The bullet +had driven cleanly through his body, missing as by a miracle any +vital part, and lodged in the muscles of his back, whence the +surgeon had removed it. Though weak from shock, loss of blood, +excitement, he had rallied splendidly, and fallen into a normal +sleep.</p> +<p>Later the doctor confirmed this. He made light of the wound. One +couldn't kill a young man as full of vitality as Charlie Benton +with an axe, he informed Stella with an optimistic smile. Which +lifted one burden from her mind.</p> +<p>The night nurse went away, and another from the hospital took +her place. Benton slept; Linda slept. The house was very quiet. To +Stella, brooding in that kitchen chair, it became oppressive, that +funeral hush. When it was drawing near ten o'clock, she walked up +the road past the corner store and post-office, and so out to the +end of the wharf.</p> +<p>The air was hot and heavy, pungent, gray with the smoke. Farther +along, St. Allwoods bulked mistily amid its grounds. The crescent +of shore line half a mile distant was wholly obscured. Up over the +eastern mountain range the sun, high above the murk, hung like a +bloody orange, rayless and round. No hotel guests strolled by pairs +and groups along the bank. She could understand that no one would +come for pleasure into that suffocating atmosphere. Caught in that +great bowl of which the lake formed the watery bottom, the smoke +eddied and rolled like a cloud of mist.</p> +<p>She stood a while gazing at the glassy surface of the lake where +it spread to her vision a little way beyond the piles. Then she +went back to the green cottage.</p> +<p>Benton lifted alert, recognizing eyes when she peeped in the +bedroom door.</p> +<p>"Hello, Sis," he greeted in strangely subdued tones. "When did +you blow in? I thought you'd deserted the sinking ship completely. +Come on in."</p> +<p>She winced inwardly at his words, but made no outward sign, as +she came up to his bedside. The nurse went out.</p> +<p>"Perhaps you'd better not talk?" she said.</p> +<p>"Oh, nonsense," he retorted feebly. "I'm all right. Sore as the +mischief and weak. But I don't feel as bad as I might. Linda still +asleep?"</p> +<p>"I think so," Stella answered.</p> +<p>"Poor kid," he breathed; "it's been tough on her. Well, I guess +it's been tough on everybody. He turned out to be some bad actor, +this Monohan party. I never did like the beggar. He was a little +too high-handed in his smooth, kid-glove way. But I didn't suppose +he'd try to burn up a million dollars' worth of timber to satisfy a +grudge. Well, he put his foot in it proper at last. He'll get a +good long jolt in the pen, if the boys don't beat the constables to +him and take him to pieces."</p> +<p>"He did start the fire then?" Stella muttered.</p> +<p>"I guess so," Benton replied. "At any rate, he kept it going. +Did it by his lonesome, too. Jack suspected that. We were watching +for him as well as fighting fire. He'd come down from the head of +the lake in that speed boat of his, and this time daylight caught +him before he could get back to where he had her cached, after +starting a string of little fires in the edge of my north limit. He +had it in for me, too, you know; I batted him over the head with a +pike-pole here at the wharf one day this spring, so he plunked me +as soon as I hollered at him. I wish he'd done it earlier in the +game. We might have saved a lot of good timber. As it was, we +couldn't do much. Every time the wind changed, it would break out +in a new place—too often to be accidental. Damn him!"</p> +<p>"How is it going to end, the fire?" Stella forced herself to +ask. "Will you and Jack be able to save any timber?"</p> +<p>"If it should rain hard, and if in the meantime the boys keep it +from jumping the fire-trails we've cut, I'll get by with most of +mine," he said. "But Jack's done for. He won't have anything but +his donkeys and gear and part of a cedar limit on the Tyee which +isn't paid for. He had practically everything tied up in that big +block of timber around the Point. Monohan made him spend money like +water to hold his own. Jack's broke."</p> +<p>Stella's head drooped. Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, +all grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered +her soft fingers that rested on his bed.</p> +<p>"It's a pity everything's gone to pot like that, Stell," he said +softly. "I've grown a lot wiser in human ways the last two years. +You taught me a lot, and Jack a lot, and Linda the rest. It seems a +blamed shame you and Jack came to a fork in the road. Oh, he never +chirped. I've just guessed it the last few weeks. I owe him a lot +that he'll never let me pay back in anything but good will. I hate +to see him get the worst of it from every direction. He grins and +doesn't say anything. But I know it hurts. There can't be anything +much wrong between you two. Why don't you forget your petty larceny +troubles and start all over again?"</p> +<p>"I can't," she whispered. "It wouldn't work. There's too many +scars. Too much that's hard to forget."</p> +<p>"Well, you know about that better than I do," Benton said +thoughtfully. "It all depends on how you <i>feel</i>."</p> +<p>The poignant truth of that struck miserably home to her. It was +not a matter of reason or logic, of her making any sacrifice for +her conscience sake. It depended solely upon the existence of an +emotion she could not definitely invoke. She was torn by so many +emotions, not one of which she could be sure was the vital, the +necessary one. Her heart did not cry out for Jack Fyfe, except in a +pitying tenderness, as she used to feel for Jack Junior when he +bumped and bruised himself. She had felt that before and held it +too weak a crutch to lean upon.</p> +<p>The nurse came in with a cup of broth for Benton, and Stella +went away with a dumb ache in her breast, a leaden sinking of her +spirits, and went out to sit on the porch steps. The minutes piled +into hours, and noon came, when Linda wakened. Stella forced +herself to swallow a cup of tea, to eat food; then she left Linda +sitting with her husband and went back to the porch steps +again.</p> +<p>As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw +trousers and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the +road, a burly woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's +crew.</p> +<p>"Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. +Say—ah—"</p> +<p>He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an +uneasiness, a hesitation in his manner.</p> +<p>"What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly. "How is everything up +the lake?"</p> +<p>It was common enough in her experience, that temporary +embarrassment of a logger before her. She knew them for men with +boyish souls, boyish instincts, rude simplicities of heart. Long +ago she had revised those first superficial estimates of them as +gross, hulking brutes who worked hard and drank harder, coarsened +and calloused by their occupation. They had their weaknesses, but +their virtues of abiding loyalty, their reckless generosity, their +simple directness, were great indeed. They took their lives in +their hands on skid-road and spring-board, that such as she might +flourish. They did not understand that, but she did.</p> +<p>"What is it, Barlow?" she repeated. "Have you just come down the +lake?"</p> +<p>"Yes'm," he answered. "Say, Jack don't happen to be here, does +he?"</p> +<p>"No, he hasn't been here," she told him.</p> +<p>The man's face fell.</p> +<p>"What's wrong?" Stella demanded. She had a swift divination that +something was wrong.</p> +<p>"Oh, I dunno's anythin's wrong, particular," Barlow replied. +"Only—well, Lefty he sent me down to see if Jack was at the +Springs. We ain't seen him for a couple uh days."</p> +<p>Her pulse quickened.</p> +<p>"And he has not come down the lake?"</p> +<p>"I guess not," the logger said. "Oh, I guess it's all right. +Jack's pretty <i>skookum</i> in the woods. Only Lefty got uneasy. +It's desperate hot and smoky up there."</p> +<p>"How did you come down? Are you going back soon?" she asked +abruptly.</p> +<p>"I got the <i>Waterbug</i>," Barlow told her. "I'm goin' right +straight back."</p> +<p>Stella looked out over the smoky lake and back at the logger +again, a sudden resolution born of intolerable uncertainty, of a +feeling that she could only characterize as fear, sprang +full-fledged into her mind. "Wait for me," she said. "I'm going +with you."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<br> +<h3>"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME"</h3> +<p>The <i>Waterbug</i> limped. Her engine misfired continuously, +and Barlow lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. +He was satisfied to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve +at all. So the boat moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at +less than half speed. Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser +bore every mark of hard usage. Her topsides were foul, her decks +splintered by the tramping of calked boots, grimy with soot and +cinders. It seemed to Stella that everything and every one on and +about Roaring Lake bore some mark of that holocaust raging in the +timber, as if the fire were some malignant disease menacing and +marring all that it affected, and affecting all that trafficked +within its smoky radius.</p> +<p>But of the fire itself she could see nothing, even when late in +the afternoon they drew in to the bay before her brother's camp. A +heavier smoke cloud, more pungent of burning pitch, blanketed the +shores, lifted in blue, rolling masses farther back. A greater heat +made the air stifling, causing the eyes to smart and grow watery. +That was the only difference.</p> +<p>Barlow laid the <i>Waterbug</i> alongside the float. He had +already told her that Lefty Howe, with the greater part of Fyfe's +crew, was extending and guarding Benton's fire-trail, and he half +expected that Fyfe might have turned up there. Away back in the +smoke arose spasmodic coughing of donkey engines, dull resounding +of axe-blades. Barlow led the way. They traversed a few hundred +yards of path through brush, broken tops, and stumps, coming at +last into a fairway cut through virgin timber, a sixty-foot strip +denuded of every growth, great firs felled and drawn far aside, +brush piled and burned. A breastwork from which to fight advancing +fire, it ran away into the heart of a smoky forest. Here and there +blackened, fire-scorched patches abutted upon its northern flank, +stumps of great trees smoldering, crackling yet. At the first such +place, half a dozen men were busy with shovels blotting out streaks +of fire that crept along in the dry leaf mold. No, they had not +seen Fyfe. But they had been blamed busy. He might be up above.</p> +<p>Half a mile beyond that, beside the first donkey shuddering on +its anchored skids as it tore an eighteen-inch cedar out by the +roots, they came on Lefty Howe. He shook his head when Stella asked +for Fyfe.</p> +<p>"He took twenty men around to the main camp day before +yesterday," said Lefty. "There was a piece uh timber beyond that he +thought he could save. I—well, I took a shoot around there +yesterday, after your brother got hurt. Jack wasn't there. Most of +the boys was at camp loadin' gear on the scows. They said Jack's +gone around to Tumblin' Creek with one man. He wasn't back this +mornin'. So I thought maybe he'd gone to the Springs. I dunno's +there's any occasion to worry. He might 'a' gone to the head uh the +lake with them constables that went up last night. How's Charlie +Benton?"</p> +<p>She told him briefly.</p> +<p>"That's good," said Lefty. "Now, I'd go around to Cougar Bay, if +I was you, Mrs. Jack. He's liable to come in there, any time. You +could stay at the house to-night. Everything around there, shacks +'n' all, was burned days ago, so the fire can't touch the house. +The crew there has grub an' a cook. I kinda expect Jack'll be +there, unless he fell in with them constables."</p> +<p>She trudged silently back to the <i>Waterbug</i>. Barlow started +the engine, and the boat took up her slow way. As they skirted the +shore, Stella began to see here and there the fierce havoc of the +fire. Black trunks of fir reared nakedly to the smoky sky, lay +crisscross on bank and beach. Nowhere was there a green blade, a +living bush. Nothing but charred black, a melancholy waste of +smoking litter, with here and there a pitch-soaked stub still +waving its banner of flame, or glowing redly. Back of those seared +skeletons a shifting cloud of smoke obscured everything.</p> +<p>Presently they drew in to Cougar Bay. Men moved about on the +beach; two bulky scows stood nose-on to the shore. Upon them rested +half a dozen donkey engines, thick-bellied, upright machines, blown +down, dead on their skids. About these in great coils lay piled the +gear of logging, miles of steel cable, blocks, the varied tools of +the logger's trade. The <i>Panther</i> lay between the scows, with +lines from each passed over her towing bitts.</p> +<p>Stella could see the outline of the white bungalow on its grassy +knoll. They had saved only that, of all the camp, by a fight that +sent three men to the hospital, on a day when the wind shifted into +the northwest and sent a sheet of flame rolling through the timber +and down on Cougar Bay like a tidal wave. So Barlow told her. He +cupped his hands now and called to his fellows on the beach.</p> +<p>No, Fyfe had not come back yet.</p> +<p>"Go up to the mouth of Tumbling Creek," Stella ordered.</p> +<p>Barlow swung the <i>Waterbug</i> about, cleared the point, and +stood up along the shore. Stella sat on a cushioned seat at the +back of the pilot house, hard-eyed, struggling against that dead +weight that seemed, to grow and grow in her breast. That elemental +fury raging in the woods made her shrink. Her own hand had helped +to loose it, but her hands were powerless to stay it; she could +only sit and watch and wait, eaten up with misery of her own +making. She was horribly afraid, with a fear she would not name to +herself.</p> +<p>Behind that density of atmosphere, the sun had gone to rest. The +first shadows of dusk were closing in, betokened by a thickening of +the smoke-fog into which the <i>Waterbug</i> slowly plowed. To port +a dimming shore line; to starboard, aft, and dead ahead, water and +air merged in two boat lengths. Barlow leaned through the +pilot-house window, one hand on the wheel, straining his eyes on +their course. Suddenly he threw out the clutch, shut down his +throttle control with one hand, and yanked with the other at the +cord which loosed the <i>Waterbug's</i> shrill whistle.</p> +<p>Dead ahead, almost upon them, came an answering toot.</p> +<p>"I thought I heard a gas-boat," Barlow exclaimed. "Sufferin' +Jerusalem! Hi, there!"</p> +<p>He threw his weight on the wheel, sending it hard over. The +cruiser still had way on; the momentum of her ten-ton weight +scarcely had slackened, and she answered the helm. Out of the +deceptive thickness ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another +forty-footer, sheering quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was +upon them, and abreast, and gone, with a watery purl of her bow +wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust, passing so near than an active +man could have leaped the space between.</p> +<p>"Sufferin' Jerusalem!" Barlow repeated, turning to Stella. "Did +you see that, Mrs. Jack? They got him."</p> +<div class="figure" style="width: 450px;"><img src= +"images/bt002.jpg" height="648" width="450" alt= +"She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck"></div> +<br> +<p>Stella nodded. She too had seen Monohan seated on the after +deck, his head sunk on his breast, irons on his wrists. A glimpse, +no more.</p> +<p>"That'll help some," Barlow grunted. "Quick work. But they come +blame near cuttin' us down, beltin' along at ten knots when you +can't see forty feet ahead."</p> +<p>An empty beach greeted them at Tumbling Creek. Reluctantly +Stella bade Barlow turn back. It would soon be dark, and Barlow +said he would be taking chances of piling on the shore before he +could see it, or getting lost in the profound black that would shut +down on the water with daylight's end.</p> +<p>Less than a mile from Cougar Bay, the <i>Waterbug's</i> engine +gave a few premonitory gasps and died. Barlow descended to the +engine room, hooked up the trouble lamp, and sought for the cause. +He could not find it. Stella could hear him muttering profanity, +turning the flywheel over, getting an occasional explosion.</p> +<p>An hour passed. Dark of the Pit descended, shrouding the lake +with a sable curtain, close-folded, impenetrable. The dead +stillness of the day vanished before a hot land breeze, and Stella, +as she felt the launch drift, knew by her experience on the lake +that they were moving offshore. Presently this was confirmed, for +out of the black wall on the west, from which the night wind +brought stifling puffs of smoke, there lifted a yellow effulgence +that grew to a red glare as the boat drifted out. Soon that red +glare was a glowing line that rose and fell, dipping and rising and +wavering along a two-mile stretch, a fiery surf beating against the +forest.</p> +<p>Down in the engine room Barlow finally located the trouble, and +the motor took up its labors, spinning with a rhythmic chatter of +valves. The man came up into the pilot house, wiping the sweat from +his grimy face.</p> +<p>"Gee, I'm sorry, Mrs. Fyfe," he said. "A gas-engine man would +'a' fixed that in five minutes. Took me two hours to find out what +was wrong. It'll be a heck of a job to fetch Cougar Bay now."</p> +<p>But by luck Barlow made his way back, blundering fairly into the +landing at the foot of the path that led to the bungalow, as if the +cruiser knew the way to her old berth. And as he reached the float, +the front windows on the hillock broke out yellow, pale blurs in +the smoky night.</p> +<p>"Well, say," Barlow pointed. "I bet a nickel Jack's home. See? +Nobody but him would be in the house."</p> +<p>"I'll go up," Stella said.</p> +<p>"All right, I guess you know the path better'n I do," Barlow +said. "I'll take the <i>Bug</i> around into the bay."</p> +<p>Stella ran up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and +leaned against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her +step was noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the +<i>Waterbug</i> she had found an old pair of her own shoes, +rubber-soled, and she had put them on to ease the ache in her feet +born of thirty-six hours' encasement in leather. She gained the +door without a sound. It was wide open, and in the middle of the +big room Jack Fyfe stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, +staring absently at the floor.</p> +<p>She took a step or two inside. Fyfe did not hear her; he did not +look up.</p> +<p>"Jack."</p> +<p>He gave ever so slight a start, glanced up, stood with head +thrown back a little. But he did not move, or answer, and Stella, +looking at him, seeing the flame that glowed in his eyes, could not +speak. Something seemed to choke her, something that was a strange +compound of relief and bewilderment and a slow wonder at +herself,—at the queer, unsteady pounding of her heart.</p> +<p>"How did you get way up here?" he asked at last.</p> +<p>"Linda wired last night that Charlie was hurt. I got a machine +to the Springs. Then Barlow came down this afternoon looking for +you. He said you'd been missing for two days. So +I—I—"</p> +<p>She broke off. Fyfe was walking toward her with that peculiar, +lightfooted step of his, a queer, tense look on his face.</p> +<p>"Nero fiddled when Rome was burning," he said harshly. "Did you +come to sing while <i>my</i> Rome goes up in smoke?"</p> +<p>A little, half-strangled sob escaped her. She turned to go. But +he caught her by the arm.</p> +<p>"There, lady," he said, with a swift change of tone, "I didn't +mean to slash at you. I suppose you mean all right. But just now, +with everything gone to the devil, to look up and see you +here—I've really got an ugly temper, Stella, and it's pretty +near the surface these days. I don't want to be pitied and +sympathized with. I want to fight. I want to hurt somebody."</p> +<p>"Hurt me then," she cried.</p> +<p>He shook his head sadly.</p> +<p>"I couldn't do that," he said. "No, I can't imagine myself ever +doing that."</p> +<p>"Why?" she asked, knowing why, but wishful to hear in words what +his eyes shouted.</p> +<p>"Because I love you," he said. "You know well enough why."</p> +<p>She lifted her one free hand to his shoulder. Her face turned up +to his. A warm wave of blood dyed the round, white neck, shot up +into her cheeks. Her eyes were suddenly aglow, lips tremulous.</p> +<p>"Kiss me, then," she whispered. "That's what I came for. Kiss +me, Jack."</p> +<p>If she had doubted, if she had ever in the last few hours looked +with misgiving upon what she felt herself impelled to do, the +pressure of Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but +an amazing thrill of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, +content to rest there, to feel his heart beating against hers, to +be quit of all the uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a +roundabout way she had come to her own, and it thrilled her to her +finger tips. She could not quite comprehend it, or herself. But she +was glad, weeping with gladness, straining her man to her, kissing +his face, murmuring incoherent words against his breast.</p> +<p>"And so—and so, after all, you do care." Fyfe held her off +a little from him, his sinewy fingers gripping gently the soft +flesh of her arms. "And you were big enough to come back. Oh, my +dear, you don't know what that means to me. I'm broke, and I'd just +about reached the point where I didn't give a damn. This fire has +cleaned me out. I've—"</p> +<p>"I know," Stella interrupted. "That's why I came back. I +wouldn't have come otherwise, at least not for a long +time—perhaps never. It seemed as if I ought to—as if it +were the least I could do. Of course, it looks altogether +different, now that I know I really want to. But you see I didn't +know that for sure until I saw you standing here. Oh, Jack, there's +such a lot I wish I could wipe out."</p> +<p>"It's wiped out," he said happily. "The slate's clean. Fair +weather didn't get us anywhere. It took a storm. Well, the storm's +over."</p> +<p>She stirred uneasily in his arms.</p> +<p>"Haven't you got the least bit of resentment, Jack, for all this +trouble I've helped to bring about?" she faltered.</p> +<p>"Why, no" he said thoughtfully. "All you did was to touch the +fireworks off. And they might have started over anything. Lord no! +put that idea out of your head."</p> +<p>"I don't understand," she murmured. "I never have quite +understood why Monohan should attack you with such savage +bitterness. That trouble he started on the Tyee, then this criminal +firing of the woods. I've had hints, first from your sister, then +from Linda. I didn't know you'd clashed before. I'm not very clear +on that yet. But you knew all the time what he was. Why didn't you +tell me, Jack?"</p> +<p>"Well, maybe I should have," Fyfe admitted. "But I couldn't very +well. Don't you see? He wasn't even an incident, until he bobbed up +and rescued you that day. I couldn't, after that, start in picking +his character to pieces as a mater of precaution. We had a sort of +an armed truce. He left me strictly alone. I'd trimmed his claws +once or twice already. I suppose he was acute enough to see an +opportunity to get a whack at me through you. You were just living +from day to day, creating a world of illusions for yourself, +nourishing yourself with dreams, smarting under a stifled regret +for a lot you thought you'd passed up for good. <i>He</i> wasn't a +factor, at first. When he did finally stir in you an emotion I had +failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say anything. If +I'd tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your idol's clay +feet, you'd have despised me, as well as refused to believe. I +couldn't do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you +to find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on. I +purposely refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the +first time,—partly on the kid's account, partly because I +could hardly bear to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make +him boil over and show his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able +to size him up.</p> +<p>"You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing +would afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a +woman I cared for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than +for me to check-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on +the Point really started him properly. After that, you—as +something to be desired and possessed—ran second to his +feeling against me. He was bound to try and play even, regardless +of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee, I knew it was +going to be a fight for my financial life—for my own life, if +he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about to +you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me. +Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from +me. I had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge +against life, and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never +kissed me once in all those two years like you kissed me just +now."</p> +<p>She pulled his head down and kissed him again.</p> +<p>"So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own +advantage," he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I +wanted to put a brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex +individual, Stella. Along with certain fixed, fundamental +principles, you've got a streak of divine madness in you, a +capacity for reckless undertakings. You'd never have married me if +you hadn't. I trusted you absolutely. But, I was afraid in spite of +my faith. You had draped such an idealistic mantle around Monohan. +I wanted to rend that before it came to a final separation between +us. It worked out, because he couldn't resist trying to take a +crack at me when the notion seized him.</p> +<p>"So," he continued, after a pause, "you aren't responsible, and +I've never considered you responsible for any of this. It's between +him and me, and it's been shaping for years. Whenever our trails +crossed there was bound to be a clash. There's always been a +natural personal antagonism between us. It began to show when we +were kids, you might say. Monohan's nature is such that he can't +acknowledge defeat, he can't deny himself a gratification. He's a +supreme egotist. He's always had plenty of money, he's always had +whatever he wanted, and it never mattered to him how he gratified +his desires.</p> +<p>"The first time we locked horns was in my last year at high +school. Monohan was a star athlete. I beat him in a pole vault. +That irked him so that he sulked and sneered, and generally made +himself so insulting that I slapped him. We fought, and I whipped +him. I had a temper that I hadn't learned to keep in hand those +days, and I nearly killed him. I had nothing but contempt for him, +anyway, because even then, when he wasn't quite twenty, he was a +woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I don't know what his magic +with women is, but it works, until they find him out. He was +playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at the same +time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,—a girl he'd +picked up on a trip to Georgia,—like any confirmed +rounder.</p> +<p>"Well, from that time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance +to sting me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, +so hard that when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me +home and read the riot act so strong that I flared up and left. +Then I came to the coast here and got a job in the woods, got to be +a logging boss, and went into business on my own hook eventually. +I'd just got nicely started when I ran into Monohan again. He'd got +into timber himself. I was hand logging up the coast, and I'd hate +to tell you the tricks he tried. He kept it up until I got too big +to be harassed in a petty way. Then he left me alone. But he never +forgot his grudge. The stage was all set for this act long before +you gave him his cue, Stella. You weren't to blame for that, or if +you were in part, it doesn't matter now. I'm satisfied. +Paradoxically I feel rich, even though it's a long shot that I'm +broke flat. I've got something money doesn't buy. And he has +overreached himself at last. All his money and pull won't help him +out of this jack pot. Arson and attempted murder is serious +business."</p> +<p>"They caught him," Stella said. "The constables took him down +the lake to-night. I saw him on their launch as they passed the +<i>Waterbug</i>."</p> +<p>"Yes?" Fyfe said. "Quick work. I didn't even know about the +shooting till I came in here to-night about dark. Well," he snapped +his fingers, "exit Monohan. He's a dead issue, far as we're +concerned. Wouldn't you like something to eat, Stella? I'm hungry, +and I was dog-tired when I landed here. Say, you can't guess what I +was thinking about, lady, standing there when you came in."</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>"I had a crazy notion of touching a match to the house," he said +soberly, "letting it go up in smoke with the rest. Yes, that's what +I was thinking I would do. Then I'd take the <i>Panther</i> and +what gear I have on the scows and pull off Roaring Lake. It didn't +seem as if I could stay. I'd laid the foundation of a fortune here +and tried to make a home—and lost it all, everything that was +worth having. And then all at once there you were, like a vision in +the door. Miracles <i>do</i> happen!"</p> +<p>Her arms tightened involuntarily about him.</p> +<p>"Oh," she cried breathlessly. "Our little, white house!"</p> +<p>"Without you," he replied softly, "it was just an empty shell of +boards and plaster, something to make me ache with loneliness."</p> +<p>"But not now," she murmured. "It's home, now."</p> +<p>"Yes," he agreed, smiling.</p> +<p>"Ah, but it isn't quite." She choked down a lump in her throat. +"Not when I think of those little feet that used to patter on the +floor. Oh, Jack—when I think of my baby boy! My dear, my +dear, why did all this have to be, I wonder?"</p> +<p>Fyfe stroked her glossy coils of hair.</p> +<p>"We get nothing of value without a price," he said quietly. +"Except by rare accident, nothing that's worth having comes cheap +and easy. We've paid the price, and we're square with the world and +with each other. That's everything."</p> +<p>"Are you completely ruined, Jack?" she asked after an interval. +"Charlie said you were."</p> +<p>"Well," he answered reflectively, "I haven't had time to balance +accounts, but I guess I will be. The timber's gone. I've saved most +of the logging gear. But if I realized on everything that's left, +and squared up everything, I guess I'd be pretty near +strapped."</p> +<p>"Will you take me in as a business partner, Jack?" she asked +eagerly. "That's what I had in mind when I came up here. I made up +my mind to propose that, after I'd heard you were ruined. Oh, it +seems silly now, but I wanted to make amends that way; at least, I +tried to tell myself that. Listen. When my father died, he left +some supposedly worthless oil stock. But it proved to have a market +value. I got my share of it the other day. It'll help us to make a +fresh start—together."</p> +<p>She had the envelope and the check tucked inside her waist. She +took it out now and pressed the green slip into his hand.</p> +<p>Fyfe looked at it and at her, a little chuckle deep in his +throat.</p> +<p>"Nineteen thousand, five hundred," he laughed. "Well, that's +quite a stake for you. But if you go partners with me, what about +your singing?"</p> +<p>"I don't see how I can have my cake and eat it, too," she said +lightly. "I don't feel quite so eager for a career as I did."</p> +<p>"Well, we'll see," he said. "That light of yours shouldn't be +hidden under a bushel. And still, I don't like the idea of you +being away from me, which a career implies."</p> +<p>He put the check back in the envelope, smiling oddly to himself, +and tucked it back in her bosom. She caught and pressed his hand +there, against the soft flesh.</p> +<p>"Won't you use it, Jack?" she pleaded. "Won't it help? Don't let +any silly pride influence you. There mustn't ever be anything like +that between us again."</p> +<p>"There won't be," he smiled. "Frankly, if I need it, I'll use +it. But that's a matter there's plenty of time to decide. You see, +although technically I may be broke, I'm a long way from the end of +my tether. I think I'll have my working outfit clear, and the +country's full of timber. I've got a standing in the business that +neither fire nor anything else can destroy. No, I haven't any false +pride about the money, dear. But the money part of our future is a +detail. With the incentive I've got now to work and plan, it won't +take me five years to be a bigger toad in the timber puddle than I +ever was. You don't know what a dynamo I am when I get going."</p> +<p>"I don't doubt that," she said proudly. "But the money's yours, +if you need it."</p> +<p>"I need something else a good deal more right now," he laughed. +"That's something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Stella? Wouldn't you +like a cup of coffee?"</p> +<p>"I'm famished," she admitted—the literal truth. The +vaulting uplift of spirit, that glad little song that kept lilting +in her heart, filled her with peace and contentment, but physically +she was beginning to experience acute hunger. She recalled that she +had eaten scarcely anything that day.</p> +<p>"We'll go down to the camp," Fyfe suggested. "The cook will have +something left. We're camping like pioneers down there. The shacks +were all burned, and somebody sank the cookhouse scow."</p> +<p>They went down the path to the bay, hand in hand, feeling their +way through that fire-blackened area, under a black sky.</p> +<p>A red eye glowed ahead of them, a fire on the beach around which +men squatted on their haunches or lay stretched on their blankets, +sooty-faced fire fighters, a weary group. The air was rank with +smoke wafted from the burning woods.</p> +<p>The cook's fire was dead, and that worthy was humped on his +bed-roll smoking a pipe. But he had cold meat and bread, and he +brewed a pot of coffee on the big fire for them, and Stella ate the +plain fare, sitting in the circle of tired loggers.</p> +<p>"Poor fellows, they look worn out," she said, when they were +again traversing that black road to the bungalow.</p> +<p>"We've slept standing up for three weeks," Fyfe said simply. +"They've done everything they could. And we're not through yet. A +north wind might set Charlie's timber afire in a dozen places."</p> +<p>"Oh, for a rain," she sighed.</p> +<p>"If wishing for rain brought it," he laughed, "we'd have had a +second flood. We've got to keep pegging away till it does rain, +that's all. We can't do much, but we have to keep doing it. You'll +have to go back to the Springs to-morrow, I'm afraid, Stella. I'll +have to stay on the firing line, literally."</p> +<p>"I don't want to," she cried rebelliously. "I want to stay up +here with you. I'm not wax. I won't melt."</p> +<p>She continued that argument into the house, until Fyfe +laughingly smothered her speech with kisses.</p> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +<p>An oddly familiar sound murmuring in Stella's ear wakened her. +At first she thought she must be dreaming. It was still inky dark, +but the air that blew in at the open window was sweet and cool, +filtered of that choking smoke. She lifted herself warily, looked +out, reached a hand through the lifted sash. Wet drops spattered +it. The sound she heard was the drip of eaves, the beat of rain on +the charred timber, upon the dried grass of the lawn.</p> +<p>Beside her Fyfe was a dim bulk, sleeping the dead slumber of +utter weariness. She hesitated a minute, then shook him.</p> +<p>"Listen, Jack," she said.</p> +<p>He lifted his head.</p> +<p>"Rain!" he whispered. "Good night, Mister Fire. Hooray!"</p> +<p>"I brought it," Stella murmured sleepily. "I wished it on +Roaring Lake to-night."</p> +<p>Then she slipped her arm about his neck, and drew his face down +to her breast with a tender fierceness, and closed her eyes with a +contented sigh.</p> +<br> +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Big Timber, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG TIMBER *** + +***** This file should be named 11223-h.htm or 11223-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/2/2/11223/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Big Timber + A Story of the Northwest + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG TIMBER *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team. + + + + + +[Illustration: She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck. +FRONTISPIECE.] + + + + BIG TIMBER + + A Story of the Northwest + + By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + + + + + + With Frontispiece + By DOUGLAS DUER + + + 1916 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + +I. GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW +II. MR. ABBEY ARRIVES +III. HALFWAY POINT +IV. A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME +V. THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER +VI. THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL +VII. SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE +VIII. DURANCE VILE +IX. JACK FYFE'S CAMP +X. ONE WAY OUT +XI. THE PLUNGE +XII. AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED +XIII. IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME +XIV. A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE +XV. A RESURRECTION +XVI. THE CRISIS +XVII. IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH +XVIII. THE OPENING GUN +XIX. FREE AS THE WIND +XX. ECHOES +XXI. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING +XXII. THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE +XXIII. A RIDE BY NIGHT +XXIV. "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW + +The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve +of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,--narrow on its +floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,--down +which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river +that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, +roaring through the granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range, took a +wider channel and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen from it as +haste falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his destination near +at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for now it was but +threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved placidly--as an +old man moves when all the headlong urge of youth is spent and his race +near run. + +On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella Benton +nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her elbow on the +window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening valley instead of a +bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to see wooded heights lift +green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against +the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown +tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of +interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and dry +and still. + +She was near the finish of her journey. Pensively she considered the end +of the road. How would it be there? What manner of folk and country? +Between her past mode of life and the new that she was hurrying toward +lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class even. It was bound to +be crude, to be full of inconveniences and uncouthness. Her brother's +letters had partly prepared her for that. Involuntarily she shrank from +it, had been shrinking from it by fits and starts all the way, as +flowers that thrive best in shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude +winds. Not that Estella Benton was particularly flower-like. On the +contrary she was a healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to be +described as beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a daughter +of the well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes in +families to which American politicians unctuously refer as the backbone +of the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty pane, she +bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was full of misgivings. + +Four days of lonely travel across a continent, hearing the drumming +clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely +conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles +between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, +or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of view, +upon conditioning circumstances and previous experience. + +Estella Benton's experience along such lines was chiefly a blank and the +conditioning circumstances of her present journey were somber enough to +breed thought that verged upon the melancholy. Save for a natural +buoyancy of spirit she might have wept her way across North America. She +had no tried standard by which to measure life's values for she had +lived her twenty-two years wholly shielded from the human maelstrom, +fed, clothed, taught, an untried product of home and schools. Her head +was full of university lore, things she had read, a smattering of the +arts and philosophy, liberal portions of academic knowledge, all tagged +and sorted like parcels on a shelf to be reached when called for. Buried +under these externalities the ego of her lay unaroused, an incalculable +quantity. + +All of which is merely by way of stating that Miss Estella Benton was a +young woman who had grown up quite complacently in that station of life +in which--to quote the Philistines--it had pleased God to place her, and +that Chance had somehow, to her astonished dismay, contrived to thrust a +spoke in the smooth-rolling wheels of destiny. Or was it Destiny? She +had begun to think about that, to wonder if a lot that she had taken for +granted as an ordered state of things was not, after all, wholly +dependent upon Chance. She had danced and sung and played +lightheartedly accepting a certain standard of living, a certain +position in a certain set, a pleasantly ordered home life, as her +birthright, a natural heritage. She had dwelt upon her ultimate destiny +in her secret thoughts as foreshadowed by that of other girls she knew. +The Prince would come, to put it in a nutshell. He would woo gracefully. +They would wed. They would be delightfully happy. Except for the matter +of being married, things would move along the same pleasant channels. + +Just so. But a broken steering knuckle on a heavy touring car set things +in a different light--many things. She learned then that death is no +respecter of persons, that a big income may be lived to its limit with +nothing left when the brain force which commanded it ceases to function. +Her father produced perhaps fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year in +his brokerage business, and he had saved nothing. Thus at one stroke she +was put on an equal footing with the stenographer in her father's +office. Scarcely equal either, for the stenographer earned her bread and +was technically equipped for the task, whereas Estella Benton had no +training whatsoever, except in social usage. She did not yet fully +realize just what had overtaken her. Things had happened so swiftly, to +ruthlessly, that she still verged upon the incredulous. Habit clung +fast. But she had begun to think, to try and establish some working +relation between herself and things as she found them. She had +discovered already that certain theories of human relations are not +soundly established in fact. + +She turned at last in her seat. The Limited's whistle had shrilled for +a stop. At the next stop--she wondered what lay in store for her just +beyond the next stop. While she dwelt mentally upon this, her hands were +gathering up some few odds and ends of her belongings on the berth. + +Across the aisle a large, smooth-faced young man watched her with covert +admiration. When she had settled back with bag and suitcase locked and +strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted and gloved, he leaned over +and addressed her genially. + +"Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring Springs?" + +Miss Benton's gray eyes rested impersonally on the top of his head, +traveled slowly down over the trim front of his blue serge to the +polished tan Oxfords on his feet, and there was not in eyes or on +countenance the slightest sign that she saw or heard him. The large +young man flushed a vivid red. + +Miss Benton was partly amused, partly provoked. The large young man had +been her vis-a-vis at dinner the day before and at breakfast that +morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation each time, but it +had been diplomatically confined to salt and other condiments, the +weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no objection to young men in +general, quite the contrary. But she did not consider it quite the thing +to countenance every amiable stranger. + +Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the blast of +the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave the train. +Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object down an aisle +slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss Estella Benton stood +on the plank platform of Hopyard station. Northward stretched a flat, +unlovely vista of fire-blackened stumps. Southward, along track and +siding, ranged a single row of buildings, a grocery store, a shanty with +a huge sign proclaiming that it was a bank, dwelling, hotel and +blacksmith shop whence arose the clang of hammered iron. A dirt road ran +between town and station, with hitching posts at which farmers' nags +stood dispiritedly in harness. + +To the Westerner such spots are common enough; he sees them not as +fixtures, but as places in a stage of transformation. By every side +track and telegraph station on every transcontinental line they spring +up, centers of productive activity, growing into orderly towns and +finally attaining the dignity of cities. To her, fresh from trim +farmsteads and rural communities that began setting their houses in +order when Washington wintered at Valley Forge, Hopyard stood forth +sordid and unkempt. And as happens to many a one in like case, a wave of +sickening loneliness engulfed her, and she eyed the speeding Limited as +one eyes a departing friend. + +"How could one live in a place like this?" she asked herself. + +But she had neither Slave of the Lamp at her beck, nor any Magic Carpet +to transport her elsewhere. At any rate, she reflected, Hopyard was not +her abiding-place. She hoped that her destination would prove more +inviting. + +Beside the platform were ranged two touring cars. Three or four of +those who had alighted entered these. Their baggage was piled over the +hoods, buckled on the running boards. The driver of one car approached +her. "Hot Springs?" he inquired tersely. + +She affirmed this, and he took her baggage, likewise her trunk check +when she asked how that article would be transported to the lake. She +had some idea of route and means, from her brother's written +instruction, but she thought he might have been there to meet her. At +least he would be at the Springs. + +So she was whirled along a country road, jolted in the tonneau between a +fat man from Calgary and a rheumatic dame on her way to take hot sulphur +baths at St. Allwoods. She passed seedy farmhouses, primitive in +construction, and big barns with moss plentifully clinging on roof and +gable. The stretch of charred stumps was left far behind, but in every +field of grain and vegetable and root great butts of fir and cedar rose +amid the crops. Her first definitely agreeable impression of this land, +which so far as she knew must be her home, was of those huge and +numerous stumps contending with crops for possession of the fields. +Agreeable, because it came to her forcibly that it must be a sturdy +breed of men and women, possessed of brawn and fortitude and high +courage, who made their homes here. Back in her country, once beyond +suburban areas, the farms lay like the squares of a chess board, trim +and orderly, tamely subdued to agriculture. Here, at first hand, she saw +how man attacked the forest and conquered it. But the conquest was +incomplete, for everywhere stood those stubborn roots, six and eight and +ten feet across, contending with man for its primal heritage, the soil, +perishing slowly as perish the proud remnants of a conquered race. + +Then the cleared land came to a stop against heavy timber. The car +whipped a curve and drove into what the fat man from Calgary facetiously +remarked upon as the tall uncut. Miss Benton sighted up these noble +columns to where a breeze droned in the tops, two hundred feet above. +Through a gap in the timber she saw mountains, peaks that stood bold as +the Rockies, capped with snow. For two days she had been groping for a +word to define, to sum up the feeling which had grown upon her, had been +growing upon her steadily, as the amazing scroll of that four-day +journey unrolled. She found it now, a simple word, one of the simplest +in our mother tongue--bigness. Bigness in its most ample sense,--that +was the dominant note. Immensities of distance, vastness of rolling +plain, sheer bulk of mountain, rivers that one crossed, and after a +day's journey crossed again, still far from source or confluence. And +now this unending sweep of colossal trees! + +At first she had been overpowered with a sense of insignificance utterly +foreign to her previous experience. But now she discovered with an +agreeable sensation of surprise she could vibrate to such a keynote. And +while she communed with this pleasant discovery the car sped down a +straight stretch and around a corner and stopped short to unload sacks +of mail at a weather-beaten yellow edifice, its windows displaying +indiscriminately Indian baskets, groceries, and hardware. Northward +opened a broad scope of lake level, girt about with tremendous peaks +whose lower slopes were banked with thick forest. + +Somewhere distant along that lake shore was to be her home. As the car +rolled over the four hundred yards between store and white-and-green St. +Allwoods, she wondered if Charlie would be there to meet her. She was +weary of seeing strange faces, of being directed, of being hustled +about. + +But he was not there, and she recalled that he never had been notable +for punctuality. Five years is a long time. She expected to find him +changed--for the better, in certain directions. He had promised to be +there; but, in this respect, time evidently had wrought no appreciable +transformation. + +She registered, was assigned a room, and ate luncheon to the melancholy +accompaniment of a three-man orchestra struggling vainly with Bach in an +alcove off the dining room. After that she began to make inquiries. +Neither clerk nor manager knew aught of Charlie Benton. They were both +in their first season there. They advised her to ask the storekeeper. + +"MacDougal will know," they were agreed. "He knows everybody around +here, and everything that goes on." + +The storekeeper, a genial, round-bodied Scotchman, had the information +she desired. + +"Charlie Benton?" said he. "No, he'll be at his camp up the lake. He was +in three or four days back. I mind now, he said he'd be down Thursday; +that's to-day. But he isn't here yet, or his boat'd be by the wharf +yonder." + +"Are there any passenger boats that call there?" she asked. + +MacDougal shook his head. + +"Not reg'lar. There's a gas boat goes t' the head of the lake now an' +then. She's away now. Ye might hire a launch. Jack Fyfe's camp tender's +about to get under way. But ye wouldna care to go on her, I'm thinkin'. +She'll be loaded wi' lumberjacks--every man drunk as a lord, most like. +Maybe Benton'll be in before night." + +She went back to the hotel. But St. Allwoods, in its dual capacity of +health-and-pleasure resort, was a gilded shell, making a brave outward +show, but capitalizing chiefly lake, mountains, and hot, mineral +springs. Her room was a bare, cheerless place. She did not want to sit +and ponder. Too much real grief hovered in the immediate background of +her life. It is not always sufficient to be young and alive. To sit +still and think--that way lay tears and despondency. So she went out and +walked down the road and out upon the wharf which jutted two hundred +yards into the lake. + +It stood deserted save for a lone fisherman on the outer end, and an +elderly couple that preceded her. Halfway out she passed a slip beside +which lay moored a heavily built, fifty-foot boat, scarred with usage, a +squat and powerful craft. Lakeward stretched a smooth, unrippled +surface. Overhead patches of white cloud drifted lazily. Where the +shadows from these lay, the lake spread gray and lifeless. Where the +afternoon sun rested, it touched the water with gleams of gold and pale, +delicate green. A white-winged yacht lay offshore, her sails in slack +folds. A lump of an island lifted two miles beyond, all cliffs and +little, wooded hills. And the mountains surrounding in a giant ring +seemed to shut the place away from all the world. For sheer wild, rugged +beauty, Roaring Lake surpassed any spot she had ever seen. Its quiet +majesty, its air of unbroken peace soothed and comforted her, sick with +hurry and swift-footed events. + +She stood for a time at the outer wharf end, mildly interested when the +fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at her own +subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her like a virtuoso +on his violin. And this was something that she did not recall as a trait +in her own character. She had never inclined to the volatile--perhaps +because until the motor accident snuffed out her father's life she had +never dealt in anything but superficial emotions. + +After a time she retraced her steps. Nearing the halfway slip, she saw +that a wagon from which goods were being unloaded blocked the way. A +dozen men were stringing in from the road, bearing bundles and bags and +rolls of blankets. They were big, burly men, carrying themselves with a +reckless swing, with trousers cut off midway between knee and ankle so +that they reached just below the upper of their high-topped, heavy, +laced boots. Two or three were singing. All appeared unduly happy, +talking loudly, with deep laughter. One threw down his burden and +executed a brief clog. Splinters flew where the sharp calks bit into the +wharf planking, and his companions applauded. + +It dawned upon Stella Benton that these might be Jack Fyfe's drunken +loggers, and she withdrew until the way should be clear, vitally +interested because her brother was a logging man, and wondering if these +were the human tools he used in his business, if these were the sort of +men with whom he associated. They were a rough lot--and some were very +drunk. With the manifestations of liquor she had but the most shadowy +acquaintance. But she would have been little less than a fool not to +comprehend this. + +Then they began filing down the gangway to the boat's deck. One slipped, +and came near falling into the water, whereat his fellows howled +gleefully. Precariously they negotiated the slanting passage. All but +one: he sat him down at the slip-head on his bundle and began a +quavering chant. The teamster imperturbably finished his unloading, two +men meanwhile piling the goods aboard. + +The wagon backed out, and the way was clear, save for the logger sitting +on his blankets, wailing his lugubrious song. From below his fellows +urged him to come along. A bell clanged in the pilot house. The exhaust +of a gas engine began to sputter through the boat's side. From her after +deck a man hailed the logger sharply, and when his call was unheeded, he +ran lightly up the slip. A short, squarely-built man he was, light on +his feet as a dancing master. + +He spoke now with authority, impatiently. + +"Hurry aboard, Mike; we're waiting." + +The logger rose, waved his hand airily, and turned as if to retreat down +the wharf. The other caught him by the arm and spun him face to the +slip. + +"Come on, Slater," he said evenly. "I have no time to fool around." + +The logger drew back his fist. He was a fairly big man. But if he had in +mind to deal a blow, it failed, for the other ducked and caught him with +both arms around the middle. He lifted the logger clear of the wharf, +hoisted him to the level of his breast, and heaved him down the slip as +one would throw a sack of bran. + +The man's body bounced on the incline, rolled, slid, tumbled, till at +length he brought up against the boat's guard, and all that saved him a +ducking was the prompt extension of several stout arms, which clutched +and hauled him to the flush after deck. He sat on his haunches, +blinking. Then he laughed. So did the man at the top of the slip and the +lumberjacks clustered on the boat. Homeric laughter, as at some +surpassing jest. But the roar of him who had taken that inglorious +descent rose loudest of all, an explosive, "Har--har--har!" + +He clambered unsteadily to his feet, his mouth expanded in an amiable +grin. + +"Hey, Jack," he shouted. "Maybe y' c'n throw m' blankets down too, while +y'r at it." + +The man at the slip-head caught up the roll, poised it high, and cast it +from him with a quick twist of his body. The woolen missile flew like a +well-put shot and caught its owner fair in the breast, tumbling him +backwards on the deck--and the Homeric laughter rose in double strength. +Then the boat began to swing, and the man ran down and leaped the +widening space as she drew away from her mooring. + +Stella Benton watched the craft gather way, a trifle shocked, her breath +coming a little faster. The most deadly blows she had ever seen struck +were delivered in a more subtle, less virile mode, a curl of the lip, an +inflection of the voice. These were a different order of beings. This, +she sensed was man in a more primitive aspect, man with the conventional +bark stripped clean off him. And she scarcely knew whether to be amused +or frightened when she reflected that among such her life would +presently lie. Charlie had written that she would find things and people +a trifle rougher than she was used to. She could well believe that. +But--they were picturesque ruffians. + +Her interested gaze followed the camp tender as it swung around the +wharf-end, and so her roaming eyes were led to another craft drawing +near. This might be her brother's vessel. She went back to the outer +landing to see. + +Two men manned this boat. As she ranged alongside the piles, one stood +forward, and the other aft with lines to make fast. She cast a look at +each. They were prototypes of the rude crew but now departed, +brown-faced, flannel-shirted, shod with calked boots, unshaven for days, +typical men of the woods. But as she turned to go, the man forward and +almost directly below her looked her full in the face. + +"Stell!" + +She leaned over the rail. + +"Charlie Benton--for Heaven's sake." + +They stared at each other. + +"Well," he laughed at last. "If it were not for your mouth and eyes, +Stell, I wouldn't have known you. Why, you're all grown up." + +He clambered to the wharf level and kissed her. The rough stubble of his +beard pricked her tender skin and she drew back. + +"My word, Charlie, you certainly ought to shave," she observed with +sisterly frankness. "I didn't know you until you spoke. I'm awfully glad +to see you, but you do need _some one_ to look after you." + +Benton laughed tolerantly. + +"Perhaps. But, my dear girl, a fellow doesn't get anywhere on his +appearance in this country. When a fellow's bucking big timber, he +shucks off a lot of things he used to think were quite essential. By +Jove, you're a picture, Stell. If I hadn't been expecting to see you, I +wouldn't have known you." + +"I doubt if I should have known you either," she returned drily. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +MR. ABBEY ARRIVES + +Stella accompanied her brother to the store, where he gave an order for +sundry goods. Then they went to the hotel to see if her trunks had +arrived. Within a few yards of the fence which enclosed the grounds of +St. Allwoods a man hailed Benton, and drew him a few steps aside. Stella +walked slowly on, and presently her brother joined her. + +The baggage wagon had brought the trunks, and when she had paid her +bill, they were delivered at the outer wharf-end, where also arrived at +about the same time a miscellaneous assortment of supplies from the +store and a Japanese with her two handbags. So far as Miss Estella +Benton could see, she was about to embark on the last stage of her +journey. + +"How soon will you start?" she inquired, when the last of the stuff was +stowed aboard the little steamer. + +"Twenty minutes or so," Benton answered. "Say," he went on casually, +"have you got any money, Stell? I owe a fellow thirty dollars, and I +left the bank roll and my check book at camp." + +Miss Benton drew the purse from her hand bag and gave it to him. He +pocketed it and went off down the wharf, with the brief assurance that +he would be gone only a minute or so. + +The minute, however, lengthened to nearly an hour, and Sam Davis had his +blow-off valve hissing, and Stella Benton was casting impatient glances +shoreward before Charlie strolled leisurely back. + +"You needn't fire up quite so strong, Sam," he called down. "We won't +start for a couple of hours yet." + +"Sufferin' Moses!" Davis poked his fiery thatch out from the engine +room. "I might 'a' known better'n to sweat over firin' up. You generally +manage to make about three false starts to one get-away." + +Benton laughed good-naturedly and turned away. + +"Do you usually allow your men to address you in that impertinent way?" +Miss Benton desired to know. + +Charlie looked blank for a second. Then he smiled, and linking his arm +affectionately in hers, drew her off along the wharf, chuckling to +himself. + +"My dear girl," said he, "you'd better not let Sam Davis or any of Sam's +kind hear you pass remarks like that. Sam would say exactly what he +thought about such matters to his boss, or King George, or to the first +lady of the land, regardless. Sabe? We're what you'll call primitive out +here, yet. You want to forget that master and man business, the servant +proposition, and proper respect, and all that rot. Outside the English +colonies in one or two big towns, that attitude doesn't go in B.C. +People in this neck of the woods stand pretty much on the same class +footing, and you'll get in bad and get me in bad if you don't remember +that. I've got ten loggers working for me in the woods. Whether they're +impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the job +properly. They're men, you understand, not servants. None of them would +hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything I do. If I don't +like it, I can fight him or fire him. They won't stand for the sort of +airs you're accustomed to. They have the utmost respect for a woman, but +a man is merely a two-legged male human like themselves, whether he +wears mackinaws or broadcloth, has a barrel of money of none at all. +This will seem odd to you at first, but you'll get used to it. You'll +find things rather different out here." + +"I suppose so," she agreed. "But it sounds queer. For instance, if one +of papa's clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he'd have been +discharged on the spot." + +"The logger's a different breed," Benton observed drily. "Or perhaps +only the same breed manifesting under different conditions. He isn't +servile. He doesn't have to be." + +"Why the delay, though?" she reverted to the point. "I thought you were +all ready to go." + +"I am," Charlie enlightened. "But while I was at the store just now, +Paul Abbey 'phoned from Vancouver to know if there was an up-lake boat +in. His people are big lumber guns here, and it will accommodate him and +won't hurt me to wait a couple of hours and drop him off at their camp. +I've got more or less business dealings with them, and it doesn't hurt +to be neighborly. He'd have to hire a gas-boat otherwise. Besides, +Paul's a pretty good head." + +This, of course, being strictly her brother's business, Stella forbore +comment. She was weary of travel, tired with the tension of eternally +being shunted across distances, anxious to experience once more that +sense of restful finality which comes with a journey's end. But, in a +measure her movements were no longer dependent upon her own volition. + +They walked slowly along the broad roadway which bordered the lake until +they came to a branchy maple, and here they seated themselves on the +grassy turf in the shadow of the tree. + +"Tell me about yourself," she said. "How do you like it here, and how +are you getting on? Your letters home were always chiefly remarkable for +their brevity." + +"There isn't a great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just beginning +to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to learn and +unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here five years, +and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and what I'm not. +I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a lot easier if the +governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He was going to put in +some money this fall. But I think I'll make it, anyway, though it will +keep me digging and figuring. I have a contract for delivery of a +million feet in September and another contract that I could take if I +could see my way clear to finance the thing. I could clean up thirty +thousand dollars net in two years if I had more cash to work on. As it +is, I have to go slow, or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the +skin of my teeth. But I've got one good one practically for an annual +pittance. If I make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's +plain sailing. That about sizes up my prospects, Sis." + +"You speak a language I don't understand," she smiled. "What does a +million feet mean? And what's a limit?" + +"A limit is one square mile--six hundred and forty acres more or +less--of merchantable timber land," he explained. "We speak of timber as +scaling so many board feet. A board foot is one inch thick by twelve +inches square. Sound fir timber is worth around seven dollars per +thousand board feet in the log, got out of the woods, and boomed in the +water ready to tow to the mills. The first limit I got--from the +government--will scale around ten million feet. The other two are nearly +as good. But I got them from timber speculators, and it's costing me +pretty high. They're a good spec if I can hang on to them, though." + +"It sounds big," she commented. + +"It _is_ big," Charlie declared, "if I could go at it right. I've been +trying ever since I got wise to this timber business to make the +governor see what a chance there is in it. He was just getting properly +impressed with the possibilities when the speed bug got him. He could +have trimmed a little here and there at home and put the money to work. +Ten thousand dollars would have done the trick, given me a working +outfit along with what I've got that would have put us both on Easy +Street. However, the poor old chap didn't get around to it. I suppose, +like lots of other business men, when he stopped, everything ran down. +According to Lander's figures, there won't be a thing left when all +accounts are squared." + +"Don't talk about it, Charlie," she begged. "It's too near, and I was +through it all." + +"I would have been there too," Benton said. "But, as I told you, I was +out of reach of your wire, and by the time I got it, it was all over. I +couldn't have done any good, anyway. There's no use mourning. One way +and another we've all got to come to it some day." + +Stella looked out over the placid, shimmering surface of Roaring Lake +for a minute. Her grief was dimming with time and distance, and she had +all her own young life before her. She found herself drifting from +painful memories of her father's sudden death to a consideration of +things present and personal. She found herself wondering critically if +this strange, rude land would work as many changes in her as were patent +in this bronzed and burly brother. + +He had left home a slim, cocksure youngster, who had proved more than a +handful for his family before he was half through college, which +educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was +complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had discussed +in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a hopeful experiment, and in +the West that abounding spirit which manifested itself in one continual +round of minor escapades appeared to have found a natural outlet. She +recalled that latterly their father had taken to speaking of Charlie in +accents of pride. He was developing the one ambition that Benton senior +could thoroughly understand and properly appreciate, the desire to get +on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve material success, to make money. + +Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business before +her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable ultimate, so now +Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his speech. In her +father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a man's personal life did +not seem to matter in comparison with getting on and making money. And +it was with that personal side of existence that Stella Benton was now +chiefly concerned. She had never been required to adjust herself to an +existence that was wholly taken up with getting on to the complete +exclusion of everything else. Her work had been to play. She could +scarce conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion +from his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not, +what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found to +offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of towering +woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake appeared to be +mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude speech and strong +drink. + +"Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. "It is +surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would be a summer +cottage on every hundred yards of shore." + +"Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton returned. "And +scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got Europe backed off the +map for tourist attractions, if they only knew it. No, about the only +summer home in this locality is the Abbey place at Cottonwood Point. +They come up here every summer for two or three months. Otherwise I +don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel people, and +they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan +outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand +loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake. +That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and +eight wide." + +"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked. + +Benton grinned widely. + +"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the +hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except +Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past +forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is +concerned, Stell." + +"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such +a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I +don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you +do with yourself when you're not working?" + +"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've +got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm +going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no +time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to +muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and +then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a +run for his money." + +"If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap to you, +am I not?" + +"Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get rested up +from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds." + +She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked up +to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and paddle to +where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile westward, to kill +the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train. + +The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back. By +the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse man and +reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine sounded down the +road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the abutting wharf. The +driver handed two suitcases off the burdened hood of his machine. From +out the tonneau clambered a large, smooth-faced young man. He wore an +expansive smile in addition to a blue serge suit, white Panama, and +polished tan Oxfords, and he bestowed a hearty greeting upon Charlie +Benton. But his smile suffered eclipse, and a faint flush rose in his +round cheeks, when his eyes fell upon Benton's sister. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +HALFWAY POINT + +Miss Benton's cool, impersonal manner seemed rather to heighten the +young man's embarrassment. Benton, apparently observing nothing amiss, +introduced them in an offhand fashion. + +"Mr. Abbey--my sister." + +Mr. Abbey bowed and murmured something that passed for acknowledgment. +The three turned up the wharf toward where Sam Davis had once more got +up steam. As they walked, Mr. Abbey's habitual assurance returned, and +he directed part of his genial flow of conversation to Miss Benton. To +Stella's inner amusement, however, he did not make any reference to +their having been fellow travelers for a day and a half. + +Presently they were embarked and under way. Charlie fixed a seat for her +on the after deck, and went forward to steer, whither he was straightway +joined by Paul Abbey. Miss Benton was as well pleased to be alone. She +was not sure she should approve of young men who made such crude efforts +to scrape acquaintance with women on trains. She was accustomed to a +certain amount of formality in such matters. It might perhaps be laid to +the "breezy Western manner" of which she had heard, except that Paul +Abbey did not impress her as a Westerner. He seemed more like a type of +young man she had encountered frequently in her own circle. At any rate, +she was relieved when he did not remain beside her to emit polite +commonplaces. She was quite satisfied to sit by herself and look over +the panorama of woods and lake--and wonder more than a little what +Destiny had in store for her along those silent shores. + +The Springs fell far behind, became a few white spots against the +background of dusky green. Except for the ripples spread by their wake, +the water laid oily smooth. Now, a little past four in the afternoon, +she began to sense by comparison the great bulk of the western +mountains,--locally, the Chehalis Range,--for the sun was dipping behind +the ragged peaks already, and deep shadows stole out from the shore to +port. Beneath her feet the screw throbbed, pulsing like an overdriven +heart, and Sam Davis poked his sweaty face now and then through a window +to catch a breath of cool air denied him in the small inferno where he +stoked the fire box. + +The _Chickamin_ cleared Echo Island, and a greater sweep of lake opened +out. Here the afternoon wind sprang up, shooting gustily through a gap +between the Springs and Hopyard and ruffling the lake out of its noonday +siesta. Ripples, chop, and a growing swell followed each other with that +marvellous rapidity common to large bodies of fresh water. It broke the +monotony of steady cleaving through dead calm. Stella was a good sailor, +and she rather enjoyed it when the _Chickamin_ began to lift and yaw off +before the following seas that ran up under her fantail stern. + +After about an hour's run, with the south wind beginning to whip the +crests of the short seas into white foam, the boat bore in to a landing +behind a low point. Here Abbey disembarked, after taking the trouble to +come aft and shake hands with polite farewell. Standing on the float, +hat in hand, he bowed his sleek blond head to Stella. + +"I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as Benton +jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to stop over +awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's in too big a +hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon." + +Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom this bland +friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off their talk. As +the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white come down toward the +float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little farther out through an +opening in the woods, she saw a white and green bungalow, low and +rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock three hundred yards back +from shore. There was an encircling area of smooth lawn, a place +restfully inviting. + +Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was smitten with +a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had assailed her fitfully +in the last four days. And while the _Chickamin_ was still plowing the +inshore waters on an even keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and +joined her brother in the pilot house. + +"Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she remarked. + +"Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie +grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,--up-to-date cottage, gardeners, +tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, and all that. +But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what they want to do. +They've made it in timber, as I expect to make mine. You didn't +particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, did you?" + +"I? Of course not," she responded. + +"Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," Charlie +drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any tentative advances. +The women put on lots of side, they say. If they want to hunt us up and +cultivate you, all right. But I've got too much to do to butt into +society. Anyway, I didn't want to run up against any critical females +looking like I do right now." + +Stella smiled. + +"Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this +country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and be-yutiful +sister?" + +"He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie retorted. +"Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't mine--not yet. Here, you +take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever +helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger." + +She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In twenty +minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair +sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted +with whitecaps. The _Chickamin_ would hang on the crest of a wave and +shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller +would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in the trough. + +It began to grow insufferably hot in the pilot house. The wind drove +with them, pressing the heat from the boiler and fire box into the +forward portion of the boat, where Stella stood at the wheel. There were +puffs of smoke when Davis opened the fire box to ply it with fuel. All +the sour smells that rose from an unclean bilge eddied about them. The +heat and the smell and the surging motion began to nauseate Stella. + +"I must get outside where I can breathe," she gasped, at length. "It's +suffocating. I don't see how you stand it." + +"It does get stuffy in here when we run with the wind," Benton admitted. +"Cuts off our ventilation. I'm used to it. Crawl out the window and sit +on the forward deck. Don't try to get aft. You might slip off, the way +she's lurching." + +Curled in the hollow of a faked-down hawser with the clean air fanning +her, Stella recovered herself. The giddiness left her. She pitied Sam +Davis back in that stinking hole beside the fire box. But she supposed +he, like her brother, was "used to it." Apparently one could get used to +anything, if she could judge by the amazing change in Charlie. + +Far ahead loomed a ridge running down to the lake shore and cutting off +in a bold promontory. That was Halfway Point, Charlie had told her, and +under its shadow lay his camp. Without any previous knowledge of camps, +she was approaching this one with less eager anticipation than when she +began her long journey. She began to fear that it might be totally +unlike anything she had been able to imagine, disagreeably so. Charlie, +she decided, had grown hard and coarsened in the evolution of his +ambition to get on, to make his pile. She was but four years younger +than he, and she had always thought of herself as being older and wiser +and steadier. She had conceived the idea that her presence would have a +good influence on him, that they would pull together--now that there +were but the two of them. But four hours in his company had dispelled +that illusion. She had the wit to perceive that Charlie Benton had +emerged from the chrysalis stage, that he had the will and the ability +to mold his life after his elected fashion, and that her coming was a +relatively unimportant incident. + +In due course the _Chickamin_ bore in under Halfway Point, opened out a +sheltered bight where the watery commotion outside raised but a faint +ripple, and drew in alongside a float. + +The girl swept lake shore, bay, and sloping forest with a quickening +eye. Here was no trim-painted cottage and velvet lawn. In the waters +beside and lining the beach floated innumerable logs, confined by +boomsticks, hundreds of trunks of fir, forty and sixty feet long, four +and six feet across the butt, timber enough, when it had passed through +the sawmills, to build four such towns as Hopyard. Just back from the +shore, amid stumps and littered branches, rose the roofs of divers +buildings. One was long and low. Hard by it stood another of like type +but of lesser dimension. Two or three mere shanties lifted level with +great stumps,--crude, unpainted buildings. Smoke issued from the pipe of +the larger, and a white-aproned man stood in the doorway. + +Somewhere in the screen of woods a whistle shrilled. Benton looked at +his watch. + +"We made good time, in spite of the little roll," said he. "That's the +donkey blowing quitting time--six o'clock. Well, come on up to the +shack, Sis. Sam, you get a wheelbarrow and run those trunks up after +supper, will you?" + +Away in the banked timber beyond the maples and alder which Stella now +saw masked the bank of a small stream flowing by the cabins, a faint +call rose, long-drawn: + +"Tim-ber-r-r-r!" + +They moved along a path beaten through fern and clawing blackberry vine +toward the camp, Benton carrying the two grips. A loud, sharp crack +split the stillness; then a mild swishing sound arose. Hard on the heels +of that followed a rending, tearing crash, a thud that sent tremors +through the solid earth under their feet. The girl started. + +"Falling gang dropped a big fir," Charlie laughed. "You'll get used to +that. You'll hear it a good many times a day here." + +"Good Heavens, it sounded like the end of the world," she said. + +"Well, you can't fell a stick of timber two hundred feet high and six or +eight feet through without making a pretty considerable noise," her +brother remarked complacently. "I like that sound myself. Every big tree +that goes down means a bunch of money." + +He led the way past the mess-house, from the doorway of which the +aproned cook eyed her with frank curiosity, hailing his employer with +nonchalant air, a cigarette resting in one corner of his mouth. Benton +opened the door of the second building. Stella followed him in. + +It had the saving grace of cleanliness--according to logging-camp +standards. But the bareness of it appalled her. There was a rusty box +heater, littered with cigar and cigarette stubs, a desk fabricated of +undressed boards, a homemade chair or two, sundry boxes standing about. +The sole concession to comfort was a rug of cheap Axminster covering +half the floor. The walls were decorated chiefly with miscellaneous +clothing suspended from nails, a few maps and blue prints tacked up +askew. Straight across from the entering door another stood ajar, and +she could see further vistas of bare board wall, small, dusty +window-panes, and a bed whereon gray blankets were tumbled as they fell +when a waking sleeper cast them aside. + +Benton crossed the room and threw open another door. + +"Here's a nook I fixed up for you, Stella," he said briskly. "It isn't +very fancy, but it's the best I could do just now." + +She followed him in silently. He set her two bags on the floor and +turned to go. Then some impulse moved him to turn back, and he put both +hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently. + +"You're home, anyway," he said. "That's something, if it isn't what +you're used to. Try to overlook the crudities. We'll have supper as soon +as you feel like it." + +He went out, closing the door behind him. + +Miss Estella Benton stood in the middle of the room fighting against a +swift heart-sinking, a terrible depression that strove to master her. + +"Good Lord in Heaven," she muttered at last. "What a place to be +marooned in. It's--it's simply impossible." + +Her gaze roved about the room. A square box, neither more nor less, +fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapered. +There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes in +one corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the other +room lay on the floor. On an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a +tin washbasin. That was all. + +She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of sickening +rebellion against everything swept over her. To herself she seemed as +irrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the depths of the dark +timber that rose on every hand. And sitting there she heard at length +the voices of men. Looking out through a window curtained with +cheesecloth she saw her brother's logging gang swing past, stout +woodsmen all, big men, tall men, short-bodied men with thick necks and +shoulders, sunburned, all grimy with the sweat of their labors, +carrying themselves with a free and reckless swing, the doubles in type +of that roistering crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat. + +In so far as she had taken note of those who labored with their hands in +the region of her birth, she had seen few like these. The chauffeur, the +footman, the street cleaner, the factory workers--they were all +different. They lacked something,--perhaps nothing in the way of +physical excellence; but these men betrayed in every movement a subtle +difference that she could not define. Her nearest approximation and the +first attempt she made at analysis was that they looked like pirates. +They were bold men and strong; that was written in their faces and the +swing of them as they walked. And they served the very excellent purpose +of taking her mind off herself for the time being. + +She watched them cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble their +faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously on towels, +sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, hauling it back +and forth in rude play. + +All about that cookhouse dooryard spread a confusion of empty tin cans, +gaudily labeled, containers of corn and peas and tomatoes. Dishwater and +refuse, chips, scraps, all the refuse of the camp was scattered there in +unlovely array. + +But that made no more than a passing impression upon her. She was +thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer angles come +now and then to the human mind. She wondered why she should be +sufficiently interested in her brother's hired men to drive off a +compelling attack of the blues in consideration of them as men. +Nevertheless, she found herself unable to view them as she had viewed, +say, the clerks in her father's office. + +She began to brush her hair and to wonder what sort of food would be +served for supper. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME + +Half an hour later she sat down with her brother at one end of a table +that was but a long bench covered with oilcloth. Chairs there were none. +A narrow movable bench on each side of the fixed table furnished seating +capacity for twenty men, provided none objected to an occasional nudging +from his neighbor's elbow. The dishes, different from any she had ever +eaten from, were of enormously thick porcelain, dead white, variously +chipped and cracked with fine seams. But the food, if plain, was of +excellent quality, tastily cooked. She discovered herself with an +appetite wholly independent of silver and cut glass and linen. The tin +spoons and steel knives and forks harrowed her aesthetic sense without +impairing her ability to satisfy hunger. + +They had the dining room to themselves. Through a single shiplap +partition rose a rumble of masculine talk, where the logging crew loafed +in their bunkhouse. The cook served them without any ceremony, putting +everything on the table at once,--soup, meat, vegetables, a bread +pudding for dessert, coffee in a tall tin pot. Benton introduced him to +his sister. He withdrew hastily to the kitchen, and they saw no more of +him. + +"Charlie," the girl said plaintively, when the man had closed the door +behind him, "I don't quite fathom your social customs out here. Is one +supposed to know everybody that one encounters?" + +"Just about," he grinned. "Loggers, Siwashes, and the natives in +general. Can't very well help it, Sis. There's so few people in this +neck of the woods that nobody can afford to be exclusive,--at least, +nobody who lives here any length of time. You can't tell when you may +have to call on your neighbor or the fellow working for you in a matter +of life and death almost. A man couldn't possibly maintain the same +attitude toward a bunch of loggers working under him that would be +considered proper back where we came from. Take me, for instance, and my +case is no different from any man operating on a moderate scale out +here. I'd get the reputation of being swell-headed, and they'd put me in +the hole at every turn. They wouldn't care what they did or how it was +done. Ten to one I couldn't keep a capable working crew three weeks on +end. On the other hand, take a bunch of loggers on a pay roll working +for a man that meets them on an equal footing--why, they'll go to hell +and back again for him. They're as loyal as soldiers to the flag. +They're a mighty self-sufficient, independent lot, these lumberjacks, +and that goes for most everybody knocking about in this +country,--loggers, prospectors, miners, settlers, and all. If you're +what they term 'all right,' you can do anything, and they'll back you +up. If you go to putting on airs and trying to assert yourself as a +superior being, they'll go out of their way to hand you packages of +trouble." + +"I see," she observed thoughtfully. "One's compelled by circumstances to +practice democracy." + +"Something like that," he responded carelessly and went on eating his +supper. + +"Don't you think we could make this place a lot more homelike, Charlie?" +she ventured, when they were back in their own quarters. "I suppose it +suits a man who only uses it as a place to sleep, but it's bare as a +barn." + +"It takes money to make a place cosy," Benton returned. "And I haven't +had it to spend on knickknacks." + +"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed. "A comfortable chair or two and curtains +and pictures aren't knickknacks, as you call them. The cost wouldn't +amount to anything." + +Benton stuffed the bowl of a pipe and lighted it before he essayed +reply. + +"Look here, Stella," he said earnestly. "This joint probably strikes you +as about the limit, seeing that you've been used to pretty soft +surroundings and getting pretty nearly anything you wanted whenever you +expressed a wish for it. Things that you've grown into the way of +considering necessities _are_ luxuries. And they're out of the question +for us at present. I got a pretty hard seasoning the first two years I +was in this country, and when I set up this camp it was merely a place +to live. I never thought anything about it as being comfortable or +otherwise until you elected to come. I'm not in a position to go in for +trimmings. Rough as this camp is, it will have to go as it stands this +summer. I'm up against it for ready money. I've got none due until I +make delivery of those logs in September, and I have to have that +million feet in the water in order to make delivery. Every one of these +men but the cook and the donkey engineer are working for me with their +wages deferred until then. There are certain expenses that must be met +with cash--and I've got all my funds figured down to nickels. If I get +by on this contract, I'll have a few hundred to squander on house +things. Until then, it's the simple life for us. You can camp for three +or four months, can't you, without finding it completely unbearable?" + +"Why, of course," she protested. "I wasn't complaining about the way +things are. I merely voiced the idea that it would be nice to fix up a +little cosier, make these rooms look a little homelike. I didn't know +you were practically compelled to live like this as a matter of +economy." + +"Well, in a sense, I am," he replied. "And then again, making a place +away out here homelike never struck me as being anything but an +inconsequential detail. I'm not trying to make a home here. I'm after a +bundle of money. A while ago, if you had been here and suggested it, you +could have spent five or six hundred, and I wouldn't have missed it. But +this contract came my way, and gave me a chance to clean up three +thousand dollars clear profit in four months. I grabbed it, and I find +it's some undertaking. I'm dealing with a hard business outfit, hard as +nails. I might get the banks or some capitalist to finance me, because +my timber holdings are worth money. But I'm shy of that. I've noticed +that when a logger starts working on borrowed capital, he generally goes +broke. The financiers generally devise some way to hook him. I prefer to +sail as close to the wind as I can on what little I've got. I can get +this timber out--but it wouldn't look nice, now, would it, for me to be +buying furniture when I'm standing these boys off for their wages till +September?" + +"I should have been a man," Miss Estella Benton pensively remarked. +"Then I could put on overalls and make myself useful, instead of being a +drone. There doesn't seem to be anything here I can do. I could keep +house--only you haven't any house to keep, therefore no need of a +housekeeper. Why, who's that?" + +Her ear had caught a low, throaty laugh, a woman's laugh, outside. She +looked inquiringly at her brother. His expression remained absent, as of +one concentrated upon his own problems. She repeated the question. + +"That? Oh, Katy John, I suppose, or her mother," he answered. "Siwash +bunch camping around the point. The girl does some washing for us now +and then. I suppose she's after Matt for some bread or something." + +Stella looked out. At the cookhouse door stood a short, plump-bodied +girl, dark-skinned and black-haired. Otherwise she conformed to none of +Miss Benton's preconceived ideas of the aboriginal inhabitant. If she +had been pinned down, she would probably have admitted that she +expected to behold an Indian maiden garbed in beaded buckskin and brass +ornaments. Instead, Katy John wore a white sailor blouse, a brown +pleated skirt, tan shoes, and a bow of baby blue ribbon in her hair. + +"Why, she talks good English," Miss Benton exclaimed, as fragments of +the girl's speech floated over to her. + +"Sure. As good as anybody," Charlie drawled. "Why not?" + +"Well--er--I suppose my notion of Indians is rather vague," Stella +admitted. "Are they all civilized and educated?" + +"Most of 'em," Benton replied. "The younger generation anyhow. Say, +Stell, can you cook?" + +"A little," Stella rejoined guardedly. "That Indian girl's really +pretty, isn't she?" + +"They nearly all are when they're young," he observed. "But they are old +and tubby by the time they're thirty." + +Katy John's teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from +the cook. She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand. +Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked +away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against +the bunkhouse wall. + +"Why were you asking if I could cook?" Stella inquired, when the girl +vanished in the brush. + +"Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in +reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron +and show us what you can do," he laughed. "Matt's about due to go on a +tear. He's been on the water-wagon now about his limit. The first man +that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and +head for town. I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang +from starving to death if that happened. The last time I had to get in +and cook for two weeks myself. And I can't run a logging crew from the +cook shanty very well." + +"I daresay I could manage," Stella returned dubiously. "This seems to be +a terrible place for drinking. Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at +all times and in public?" + +"It's about the only excitement there is," Benton smiled tolerantly. "I +guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this +North American continent. Only a man here gets drunk openly and +riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered +anything but a natural lapse. That's one thing you'll have to get used +to out here, Stell--I mean, that what vices men have are all on the +surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a +taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not +break out for weeks." + +He yawned openly. + +"Sleepy?" Stella inquired. + +"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can +go to sleep any time after supper." + +"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly. + +"All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though." + +She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found +herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still +dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale. At her feet +surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. Far through the woods +behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir +and cedar. There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor +resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing +stuff along the shore. Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in +immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy +always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the +wood-sprites' feet. Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a +range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and +across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water's +edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle +crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind. + +Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some responsive +chord in her. If only one could live amid such surrounding with a +contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of +its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that +had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing +factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready +standards of the woods with much equanimity--not as she had that day +seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily +life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of +speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so +far encountered. + +She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not see how +it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must stay there. +She had no friends to go elsewhere, or training in the harsh business of +gaining a livelihood if she did go. For the first time she began dully +to resent the manner of her upbringing. Once she had desired to enter +hospital training, had been properly enthusiastic for a period of months +over a career in this field of mercy. Then, as now, marriage, while +accepted as the ultimate state, was only to be considered through a haze +of idealism and romanticism. She cherished certain ideals of a possible +lover and husband, but always with a false sense of shame. The really +serious business of a woman's life was the one thing to which she made +no attempt to apply practical consideration. But her parents had had +positive ideas on that subject, even if they were not openly expressed. +Her yearnings after a useful "career" were skilfully discouraged,--by +her mother because that worthy lady thought it was "scarcely the thing, +Stella dear, and so unnecessary"; by her father because, as he bluntly +put it, it would only be a waste of time and money, since the chances +were she would get married before she was half through training, and +anyway a girl's place was at home till she did get married. That was his +only reference to the subject of her ultimate disposition that she +could recall, but it was plain enough as far as it went. + +It was too late to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she did wish +there was some one thing she could do and do well, some service of value +that would guarantee self-support. If she could only pound a typewriter +or keep a set of books, or even make a passable attempt at sewing, she +would have felt vastly more at ease in this rude logging camp, knowing +that she could leave it if she desired. + +So far as she could see things, she looked at them with measurable +clearness, without any vain illusions concerning her ability to march +triumphant over unknown fields of endeavor. Along practical lines she +had everything to learn. Culture furnishes an excellent pair of wings +wherewith to soar in skies of abstraction, but is a poor vehicle to +carry one over rough roads. She might have remained in Philadelphia, a +guest among friends. Pride forbade that. Incidentally, such an +arrangement would have enabled her to stalk a husband, a moneyed +husband, which did not occur to her at all. There remained only to join +Charlie. If his fortunes mended, well and good. Perhaps she could even +help in minor ways. + +But it was all so radically different--brother and all--from what she +had pictured that she was filled with dismay and not a little foreboding +of the future. Sufficient, however, unto the day was the evil thereof, +she told herself at last, and tried to make that assurance work a change +of heart. She was very lonely and depressed and full of a futile wish +that she were a man. + +Over across the bay some one was playing an accordeon, and to its +strains a stout-lunged lumberjack was roaring out a song, with all his +fellows joining strong in the chorus: + + "Oh, the Saginaw Kid was a cook in a camp, way up on the Ocon-to-o-o. + And the cook in a camp in them old days had a damn hard row to hoe-i-oh! + Had a damn hard row to hoe." + +There was a fine, rollicking air to it. The careless note in their +voices, the jovial lilt of their song, made her envious. They at least +had their destiny, limited as it might be and cast along rude ways, +largely under their own control. + +Her wandering gaze at length came to rest on a tent top showing in the +brush northward from the camp. She saw two canoes drawn up on the beach +above the lash of the waves, two small figures playing on the gravel, +and sundry dogs prowling alongshore. Smoke went eddying away in the +wind. The Siwash camp where Katy John hailed from, Miss Benton supposed. + +She had an impulse to skirt the bay and view the Indian camp at closer +range, a notion born of curiosity. She debated this casually, and just +as she was about to rise, her movement was arrested by a faint crackle +in the woods behind. She looked away through the deepening shadow among +the trees and saw nothing at first. But the sound was repeated at odd +intervals. She sat still. Thoughts of forest animals slipped into her +mind, without making her afraid. At last she caught sight of a man +striding through the timber, soundlessly on the thick moss, coming +almost straight toward her. + +He was scarcely fifty yards away. Across his shoulders he bore a +reddish-gray burden, and in his right hand was a gun. She did not move. +Bowed slightly under the weight, the man passed within twenty feet of +her, so close that she could see the sweat-beads glisten on that side of +his face, and saw also that the load he carried was the carcass of a +deer. + +Gaining the beach and laying the animal across a boulder, he +straightened himself up and drew a long breath. Then he wiped the sweat +off his face. She recognized him as the man who had thrown the logger +down the slip that day at noon,--presumably Jack Fyfe. A sturdily built +man about thirty, of Saxon fairness, with a tinge of red in his hair and +a liberal display of freckles across nose and cheek bones. He was no +beauty, she decided, albeit he displayed a frank and pleasing +countenance. That he was a remarkably strong and active man she had seen +for herself, and if the firm round of his jaw counted for anything, an +individual of considerable determination besides. Miss Benton conceived +herself to be possessed of considerable skill at character analysis. + +He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his hat, and +strode off toward the camp. Her attention now diverted from the +Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother's quarters, stand +in the door a minute, then go back to the beach accompanied by Charlie. + +In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his deer +aboard, and pulled away north along the shore. + +She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a point, +rowing with strong, even strokes. Then she walked home. Benton was +poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil and paper when +she entered. + +"You had a visitor, I see," she remarked. + +"Yes, Jack Fyfe. He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here and +borrowed a boat to get home." + +"I saw him come out of the woods," she said. "His camp can't be far from +here, is it? He only left the Springs as you came in. Does he hunt deer +for sport?" + +"Hardly. Oh, well, I suppose it's sport for Jack, in a way. He's always +piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod," Benton +returned. "But we kill 'em to eat mostly. It's good meat and cheap. I +get one myself now and then. However, you want to keep that under your +hat--about us fellows hunting--or we'll have game wardens nosing around +here." + +"Are you not allowed to hunt them?" she asked. + +"Not in close season. Hunting season's from September to December." + +"If it's unlawful, why break the law?" she ventured hesitatingly. "Isn't +that rather--er--" + +"Oh, bosh," Charlie derided. "A man in the woods is entitled to venison, +if he's hunter enough to get it. The woods are full of deer, and a few +more or less don't matter. We can't run forty miles to town and back and +pay famine prices for beef every two or three days, when we can get it +at home in the woods." + +Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that this mild +sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the +environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law +and order visible anywhere. The characteristic attitude of these +woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency. +It had colored her brother's point of view. She perceived that whereas +all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them, +he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that +proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply. + +"And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or Mr. +Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?" + +"We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told her. "But +they don't catch us." + +He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to +smoke. + +Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons +gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank arose +the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and still, was +riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight +swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse +had died. The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the +northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray +revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the +horizon. + +"Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. "Pleasant +dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the bank roll. You +won't have much use for money up here, anyway." + +He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his bedroom. +Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount Douglas a few +minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like room, the bare +discomfort of which chilled her merely to behold. + +With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding +almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she +stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung +it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair. + +"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about +anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's +letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly +the last clause." + +In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now +reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER + +Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook, +roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece +of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her +brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she +remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself +responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which +slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding +in the lead, when she entered the mess-house. + +She killed time with partial success till noon. Several times she was +startled to momentary attention by the prolonged series of sharp cracks +which heralded the thunderous crash of a falling tree. There were other +sounds which betokened the loggers' activity in the near-by forest,--the +ringing whine of saw blades, the dull stroke of the axe, voices calling +distantly. + +She tried to interest herself in the camp and the beach and ended up by +sitting on a log in a shady spot, staring dreamily over the lake. She +thought impatiently of that homely saw concerning Satan and idle hands, +but she reflected also that in this isolation even mischief was +comparatively impossible. There was not a soul to hold speech with +except the cook, and he was too busy to talk, even if he had not been +afflicted with a painful degree of diffidence when she addressed him. +She could make no effort at settling down, at arranging things in what +was to be her home. There was nothing to arrange, no odds and ends +wherewith almost any woman can conjure up a homelike effect in the +barest sort of place. She beheld the noon return of the crew much as a +shipwrecked castaway on a desert shore might behold a rescuing sail, and +she told Charlie that she intended to go into the woods that afternoon +and watch them work. + +"All right," said he. "Just so you don't get in the way of a falling +tree." + +A narrow fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the +actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four +hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a +straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, made +by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over +the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to +side, the outer sticks half their thickness above the inner, they formed +a continuous trough the bottom and sides worn smooth with friction of +sliding timbers. Stella had crossed it the previous evening and wondered +what it was. Now, watching them at work, she saw. Also she saw why the +great stumps that rose in every clearing in this land of massive trees +were sawed six and eight feet above the ground. Always at the base the +firs swelled sharply. Wherefore the falling gangs lifted themselves +above the enlargement to make their cut. + +Two sawyers attacked a tree. First, with their double-bitted axes, each +drove a deep notch into the sapwood just wide enough to take the end of +a two-by-six plank four or five feet long with a single grab-nail in the +end,--the springboard of the Pacific coast logger, whose daily business +lies among the biggest timber on God's footstool. Each then clambered up +on his precarious perch, took hold of his end of the long, limber saw, +and cut in to a depth of a foot or more, according to the size of the +tree. Then jointly they chopped down to this sawed line, and there was +the undercut complete, a deep notch on the side to which the tree would +fall. That done, they swung the ends of their springboards, or if it +were a thick trunk, made new holding notches on the other side, and the +long saw would eat steadily through the heart of the tree toward that +yellow, gashed undercut, stroke upon stroke, ringing with a thin, +metallic twang. Presently there would arise an ominous cracking. High in +the air the tall crest would dip slowly, as if it bowed with manifest +reluctance to the inevitable. The sawyers would drop lightly from their +springboards, crying: + +"Tim-ber-r-r-r!" + +The earthward swoop of the upper boughs would hasten till the air was +full of a whistling, whishing sound. Then came the rending crash as the +great tree smashed prone, crushing what small timber stood in its path, +followed by the earth-quivering shock of its impact with the soil. The +tree once down, the fallers went on to another. Immediately the +swampers fell upon the prone trunk with axes, denuding it of limbs; the +buckers followed them to saw it into lengths decreed by the boss logger. +When the job was done, the brown fir was no longer a stately tree but +saw-logs, each with the square butt that lay donkeyward, trimmed a +trifle rounding with the axe. + +Benton worked one falling gang. The falling gang raced to keep ahead of +the buckers and swampers, and they in turn raced to keep ahead of the +hook tender, rigging slinger, and donkey, which last trio moved the logs +from woods to water, once they were down and trimmed. Terrible, +devastating forces of destruction they seemed to Stella Benton, wholly +unused as she was to any woodland save the well-kept parks and little +areas of groomed forest in her native State. All about in the ravaged +woods lay the big logs, scores of them. They had only begun to pull with +the donkey a week earlier, Benton explained to her. With his size gang +he could not keep a donkey engine working steadily. So they had felled +and trimmed to a good start, and now the falling crew and the swampers +and buckers were in a dingdong contest to see how long they could keep +ahead of the puffing Seattle yarder. + +Stella sat on a stump, watching. Over an area of many acres the ground +was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent and broken +younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their fall. Huge stumps +upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, massive butts. From all +the ravaged wood rose a pungent smell of pitch and sap, a resinous, +pleasant smell. Radiating like the spokes of a wheel from the head of +the chute ran deep, raw gashes in the earth, where the donkey had hauled +up the Brobdingnagian logs on the end of an inch cable. + +"This is no small boy's play, is it, Stell?" Charlie said to her once in +passing. + +And she agreed that it was not. Agreed more emphatically and with +half-awed wonder when she saw the donkey puff and quiver on its anchor +cable, as the hauling line spooled up on the drum. On the outer end of +that line snaked a sixty-foot stick, five feet across the butt, but it +came down to the chute head, brushing earth and brush and small trees +aside as if they were naught. Once the big log caromed against a stump. +The rearward end flipped ten feet in the air and thirty feet sidewise. +But it came clear and slid with incredible swiftness to the head of the +chute, flinging aside showers of dirt and small stones, and leaving one +more deep furrow in the forest floor. Benton trotted behind it. Once it +came to rest well in the chute, he unhooked the line, freed the choker +(the short noosed loop of cable that slips over the log's end), and the +haul-back cable hurried the main line back to another log. Benton +followed, and again the donkey shuddered on its foundation skids till +another log laid in the chute, with its end butted against that which +lay before. One log after another was hauled down till half a dozen +rested there, elongated peas in a wooden pod. + +Then a last big stick came with a rush, bunted these others powerfully +so that they began to slide with the momentum thus imparted, slowly at +first then, gathering way and speed, they shot down to the lake and +plunged to the water over the ten-foot jump-off like a school of +breaching whales. + +All this took time, vastly more time than it takes in the telling. The +logs were ponderous masses. They had to be maneuvered sometimes between +stumps and standing timber, jerked this way and that to bring them into +the clear. By four o'clock Benton and his rigging-slinger had just +finished bunting their second batch of logs down the chute. Stella +watched these Titanic labors with a growing interest and a dawning +vision of why these men walked the earth with that reckless swing of +their shoulders. For they were palpably masters in their environment. +They strove with woodsy giants and laid them low. Amid constant dangers +they sweated at a task that shamed the seven labors of Hercules. +Gladiators they were in a contest from which they did not always emerge +victorious. + +When Benton and his helper followed the haul-back line away to the +domain of the falling gang the last time, Stella had so far unbent as to +strike up conversation with the donkey engineer. That greasy individual +finished stoking his fire box and replied to her first comment. + +"Work? You bet," said he. "It's real graft, this is. I got the easy end +of it, and mine's no snap. I miss a signal, big stick butts against +something solid; biff! goes the line and maybe cuts a man plumb in two. +You got to be wide awake when you run a loggin' donkey. These woods is +no place for a man, anyway, if he ain't spry both in his head and feet." + +"Do many men get hurt logging?" Stella asked. "It looks awfully +dangerous, with these big trees falling and smashing everything. Look at +that. Goodness!" + +From the donkey they could see a shower of ragged splinters and broken +limbs fly when a two-hundred-foot fir smashed a dead cedar that stood in +the way of its downward swoop. They could hear the pieces strike against +brush and trees like the patter of shot on a tin wall. + +The donkey engineer gazed calmly enough. + +"Them flyin' chunks raise the dickens sometimes," he observed. "Oh, yes, +now an' then a man gets laid out. There's some things you got to take a +chance on. Maybe you get cut with an axe, or a limb drops on you, or you +get in the way of a breakin' line,--though a man ain't got any business +in the bight of a line. A man don't stand much show when the end of a +inch 'n' a quarter cable snaps at him like a whiplash. I seen a feller +on Howe Sound cut square in two with a cable-end once. A broken block's +the worst, though. That generally gets the riggin' slinger, but a piece +of it's liable to hit anybody. You see them big iron pulley blocks the +haul-back cable works in? Well, sometimes they have to anchor a snatch +block to a stump an' run the main line through it at an angle to get a +log out the way you want. Suppose the block breaks when I'm givin' it to +her? Chunks uh that broken cast iron'll fly like bullets. Yes, sir, +broken blocks is bad business. Maybe you noticed the boys used the +snatch block two or three times this afternoon? We've been lucky in this +camp all spring. Nobody so much as nicked himself with an axe. Breaks +in the gear don't come very often, anyway, with an outfit in first-class +shape. We got good gear an' a good crew--about as _skookum_ a bunch as I +ever saw in the woods." + +Two hundred yards distant Charlie Benton rose on a stump and semaphored +with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the +main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he +shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled +faster, the line tautened like a fiddle-string, and the ponderous +machine vibrated with the strain of its effort. + +Suddenly the line came slack. Stella, watching for the log to appear, +saw her brother leap backward off the stump, saw the cable whip +sidewise, mowing down a clump of saplings that stood in the bight of the +line, before the engineer could cut off the power. In that return of +comparative silence there rose above the sibilant hiss of the blow-off +valve a sudden commotion of voices. + +"Damn!" the donkey engineer peered over the brush. "That don't sound +good. I guess somebody got it in the neck." + +Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running. + +"What's up?" the engineer called as they passed on a dog trot. + +"Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. "Piece of it near took +a leg off Jim Renfrew." + +Stella stood a moment, hesitating. + +"I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said. + +"Better not," the engineer warned. "Liable to run into something +that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken +block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll +bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a +doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'." + +Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with +Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton +introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after +the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her +brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and +bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a +stretcher. + +Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving +signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Renfrew lay on +his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a +silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and +Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground was smeared with blood. Stella +looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of +the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. +She drew back. + +Benton looked up. + +"Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can be +done." + +She retreated a little and sat down on a root, half-sickened. The other +two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work done, and rolled a +cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off to one side she saw the +fallers climb up on their springboards. Presently arose the ringing +whine of the thin steel blade, the chuck of axes where the swampers +attacked a fallen tree. No matter, she thought, that injury came to one, +that death might hover near, the work went on apace, like action on a +battlefield. + +A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis +returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. They +laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket. Then +four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella heard one say to her +brother: + +"Matt's jagged." + +"What?" Benton exploded. "Where'd it come from?" + +"One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters's in camp," the logger +answered. "Maybe he brought a bottle. I didn't stop to see. But Matt's +sure got a tank full." + +Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away down +the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at +the wrathful set of his features. She barely kept in sight, so rapidly +did he move. + +Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the _Chickamin's_ stack, but the +kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to five o'clock. +Benton made straight for the cookhouse. Stella followed, a trifle +uncertainly. A glimpse past Charlie as he came out showed her Matt +staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, red-eyed, scowling, muttering +to himself. Benton hurried to the bunkhouse door, much as a hound might +follow a scent, peered in, and went on to the corner. + +On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook's +intoxication. A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his haunches, +gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a _klootchman_ and a wizen-featured +old Siwash. The Indian woman was drunk beyond any mistaking, affably +drunk. She looked up at Benton out of vacuous eyes, grinned, and +extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim gin. The logger rose to +his feet. + +"H'lo, Benton," he greeted thickly. "How's every-thin'?" + +Benton's answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab of his +clenched fist. The blow stretched the logger on his back, with blood +streaming from both nostrils. But he was a hardy customer, for he +bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously +before he was well set on his feet. This time Benton snarled a curse and +kicked him as he lay. + +"Charlie, Charlie!" Stella screamed. + +If he heard her, he gave no heed. + +"Hit the trail, you," he shouted at the logger. "Hit it quick before I +tramp your damned face into the ground. I told you once not to come +around here feeding booze to my cook. I do all the whisky-drinking +that's done in this camp, and don't you forget it. Damn your eyes, I've +got troubles enough without whisky." + +The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand to his +bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float. + +"G'wan home," Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes. "Get drunk at your own +camp, not in mine. _Sabe?_ Beat it." + +They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat +_klootch_ along her uncertain way. Down on the lake the chastised logger +stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to shake a fist at +Benton. Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and outraged sister. + +"Good Heavens!" she burst out. "Is it necessary to be so downright +brutal in actions as well as speech?" + +"I'm running a logging camp, not a kindergarten," he snapped angrily. "I +know what I'm doing. If you don't like it, go in the house where your +hyper-sensitive tastes won't be offended." + +"Thank you," she responded cuttingly and swung about, angry and +hurt--only to have a fresh scare from the drunken cook, who came reeling +forward. + +"I'm gonna quit," he loudly declared. "I ain't goin' to stick 'round +here no more. The job's no good. I want m' time. Yuh hear me, Benton. +I'm through. Com-pletely, ab-sho-lutely through. You bet I am. Gimme m' +time. I'm a gone goose." + +"Quit, then, hang you," Benton growled. "You'll get your check in a +minute. You're a fine excuse for a cook, all right--get drunk right on +the job. You don't need to show up here again, when you've had your jag +out." + +"'S all right," Matt declared largely. "'S other jobs. You ain't the +whole Pacific coast. Oh, way down 'pon the Swa-a-nee ribber--" + +He broke into dolorous song and turned back into the cookhouse. Benton's +hard-set face relaxed. He laughed shortly. + +"Takes all kinds to make a world," he commented. "Don't look so +horrified, Sis. This isn't the regular order of events. It's just an +accumulation--and it sort of got me going. Here's the boys." + +The four stretcher men set down their burden in the shade of the +bunkhouse. Renfrew was conscious now. + +"Tough luck, Jim," Benton sympathized. "Does it pain much?" + +Renfrew shook his head. White and weakened from shock and loss of blood, +nevertheless he bravely disclaimed pain. + +"We'll get you fixed up at the Springs," Benton went on. "It's a nasty +slash in the meat, but I don't think the bone was touched. You'll be on +deck before long. I'll see you through, anyway." + +They gave him a drink of water and filled his pipe, joking him about +easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. The drunken +cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began maudlin sympathy, and +was promptly squelched, whereupon he retreated to the float, emitting +conversation to the world at large. Then they carried Renfrew down to +the float, and Davis began to haul up the anchor to lay the _Chickamin_ +alongside. + +While the chain was still chattering in the hawse pipe, the squat black +hull of Jack Fyfe's tender rounded the nearest point. + +"Whistle him up, Sam," Benton ordered. "Jack can beat our time, and this +bleeding must be stopped quick." + +The tender veered in from her course at the signal. Fyfe himself was at +the wheel. Five minutes effected a complete arrangement, and the +_Panther_ drew off with the drunken cook singing atop of the pilot +house, and Renfrew comfortable in her cabin, and Jack Fyfe's promise to +see him properly installed and attended in the local hospital at Roaring +Springs. + +Benton heaved a sigh of relief and turned to his sister. + +"Still mad, Stell?" he asked placatingly and put his arm over her +shoulders. + +"Of course not," she responded instantly to this kindlier phase. "Ugh! +Your hands are all bloody, Charlie." + +"That's so, but it'll wash off," he replied. "Well, we're shy a good +woodsman and a cook, and I'll miss 'em both. But it might be worse. +Here's where you go to bat, Stella. Get on your apron and lend me a hand +in the kitchen, like a good girl. We have to eat, no matter what +happens." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL + +By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, Stella +took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a unit in the +human mechanism which he operated skilfully and relentlessly at top +speed to achieve his desired end--one million feet of timber in +boomsticks by September the first. + +From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a drunken +cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her shoulders. For a week +Benton daily expected and spoke of the arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had +wired a Vancouver employment agency to send one, the day he took Jim +Renfrew down. But either cooks were scarce, or the order went astray, +for no rough and ready kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime +ceased to look for one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself, +unsparing of others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen +fire, roused Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to +his day in the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait +on the table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella +certain simple tricks of cooking that she did not know. + +Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever she set +her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as the days +passed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left the job to her +as a matter of course. + +"You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he said to her +at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your time. I'd have +to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws twenty-five. You can +credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay off when the contract +money comes in. We might as well keep the coin in the family. I'll feel +easier, because you won't get drunk and jump the job in a pinch. What do +you say?" + +She said the only possible thing to say under the circumstances. But she +did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of gratitude. It was +hard work, and she and hard work were utter strangers. Her feet ached +from continual standing on them. The heat and the smell of stewing meat +and vegetables sickened her. Her hands were growing rough and red from +dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of +food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung +continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a +hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to +hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a +precious boon. + +Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her brother. She +saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage behind. She +perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to have her wishes +readily gratified was not an inherent right--that some one must foot +the bill--that now for all she received she must return equitable value. +At home she had never thought of it in that light; in fact, she had +never thought of it at all. Now that she was beginning to get a +glimmering of her true economic relation to the world at large, she had +no wish to emulate the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have +secured a continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her +fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was therefore a +certain personal satisfaction to have achieved self-support at a stroke, +insofar as that in the sweat of her brow,--all too literally,--she +earned her bread and a compensation besides. But there were times when +that solace seemed scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the +endless routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and +irritations it brought upon her. + +For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is no mean +undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the conveniences of a +hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in buckets from the creek near +by, and wood brought in armfuls from the pile of sawn blocks outside. +The low-roofed kitchen shanty was always like an oven. The flies swarmed +in their tens of thousands. As the men sweated with axe and saw in the +woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours +before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done. +She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of +bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its +din in the cool morning. + +"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her +one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You +wasn't cut out for a cook." + +"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I +don't wonder that men cooks take to drink." + +Katy laughed. + +"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like +to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice +to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work." + +"You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite so +much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply. + +There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. Paul Abbey +had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere +neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to +hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail +fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to +any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He +brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She +proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during +the hour of her stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With +no hint of condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to +arouse in Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable +pongee silk, simple and costly, and _her_ hands had evidently never +known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton +straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her +reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul did not +bring Linda again. + +But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. Charlie +was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which offended and +irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was +a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration +of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her +imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of +young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her +that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She +could be friends with the Paul Abbey kind of man, but when she tried to +consider him as a possible lover, she found herself unresponsive, even +amused. She was forced to consider it, because Abbey was fast +approaching that stage. It was heralded in the look of dumb appeal that +she frequently surprised in his gaze, by various signs and tokens, that +Stella Benton was too sophisticated to mistake. One of these days he +would lay his heart, and hand at her feet. + +Sometimes she considered what her life might be if she should marry him. +Abbey was wealthy in his own right and heir to more wealth. But--she +could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love +would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the +tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound--sold +for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself +when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of +passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that +men and women did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted no +shackles, she wanted to be free to face the great adventure when it +came. + +Yet there were times during the weeks that flitted past when it seemed +to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily +slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love +and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and +sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her +face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been +spoiled in the making for so sordid an existence. Sometimes she would +sit amid the array of dishes and pans and cooking food and wonder if she +really were the same being whose life had been made up of books and +music, of teas and dinners and plays, of light, inconsequential chatter +with genial, well-dressed folk. There was no one to talk to here and +less time to talk. There was nothing to read except a batch of +newspapers filtering into camp once a week or ten days. There was not +much in this monster stretch of giant timber but heat and dirt and flies +and hungry men who must be fed. + +If Paul Abbey had chanced to ask her to marry him during a period of +such bodily and spiritual rebellion, she would probably have committed +herself to that means of escape in sheer desperation. For she did not +harden to the work; it steadily sapped both her strength and patience. +But he chose an ill time for his declaration. Stella had overtaken her +work and snared a fleeting hour of idleness in mid-afternoon of a hot +day in early August. Under a branchy alder at the cook-house-end she +piled all the pillows she could commandeer in their quarters and curled +herself upon them at grateful ease. Like a tired animal, she gave +herself up to the pleasure of physical relaxation, staring at a perfect +turquoise sky through the whispering leaves above. She was not even +thinking. She was too tired to think, and for the time being too much at +peace to permit thought that would, in the very nature of things, be +disturbing. + +Abbey maintained for his own pleasure a fast motorboat. He slid now into +the bay unheard, tied up beside the float, walked to the kitchen, +glanced in, then around the corner, and smilingly took a seat on the +grass near her. + +"It's too perfect a day to loaf in the shade," he observed, after a +brief exchange of commonplaces. "Won't you come out for a little spin on +the lake? A ride in the _Wolf_ will put some color in your cheeks." + +"If I had time," she said, "I would. But loggers must eat though the +heavens fall. In about twenty minutes I'll have to start supper. I'll +have color enough, goodness knows once I get over that stove." + +Abbey picked nervously at a blade of grass for a minute. + +"This is a regular dog's life for you," he broke out suddenly. + +"Oh, hardly that," she protested. "It's a little hard on me because I +haven't been used to it, that's all." + +"It's Chinaman's work," he said hotly. "Charlie oughtn't to let you stew +in that kitchen." + +Stella said nothing; she was not moved to the defence of her brother. +She was loyal enough to her blood, but not so intensely loyal that she +could defend him against criticism that struck a responsive chord in her +own mind. She was beginning to see that, being useful, Charlie was +making use of her. His horizon had narrowed to logs that might be +transmuted into money. Enslaved himself by his engrossing purposes, he +thought nothing of enslaving others to serve his end. She had come to a +definite conclusion about that, and she meant to collect her wages when +he sold his logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had +coolly appropriated, and try a different outlet. If one must work, one +might at least seek work a little to one's taste. She therefore +dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly: + +"Some one has to do it." + +A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He looked at +her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in his expression +gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been that peculiar +psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are pleased to call +intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was coming and would have +forestalled it by rising. He prevented that move by catching her hands. + +"Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death to see +you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. Won't you +marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end good chums." + +She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement, +Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his +own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the +sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite +sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She +had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge in a +flippant manner. + +"Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really I +couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that +offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could resign +the job of chef, would you?" + +"Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively. + +"Not that way," she answered positively. + +"You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy about you. +I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't want any greater +privilege than to marry you and take you away from this sort of thing. +You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of sudden, but I know my own +mind. Can't you take a chance with me?" + +"I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. "It isn't +a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I haven't got any +feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I married you, it would +only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm not made that way. Can't +you see how impossible it would be?" + +"You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the next man." + +His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again. + +"That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said he. +"But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you could +like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good to you." + +"I daresay you would," she said quietly. "But I couldn't be good to you. +I don't want to marry you, Mr. Abbey. That's final. All the feeling I +have for you isn't enough for any woman to marry on." + +"Maybe not," he said dolefully. "I suppose that's the way it goes. Hang +it, I guess I was a little too sudden. But I'm a stayer. Maybe you'll +change your mind some time." + +He was standing very near her, and they were both so intent upon the +momentous business that occupied them that neither noticed Charlie +Benton until his hail startled them to attention. + +"Hello, folks," he greeted and passed on into the cook shanty, bestowing +upon Stella, over Abbey's shoulder, a comprehensive grin which nettled +her exceedingly. Her peaceful hour had been disturbed to no purpose. She +did not want to love or be loved. For the moment she felt old beyond her +years, mature beyond the comprehension of any man. If she had voiced her +real attitude toward Paul Abbey, she would have counseled him to run and +play, "like a good little boy." + +Instead she remarked: "I must get to work," and left her downcast +suitor without further ceremony. + +As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat himself +upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom. He was +presently joined by her brother. Glancing out, now and then, she made a +guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled slightly. She saw +them walk down to Abbey's launch, and Charlie delivered an encouraging +slap on Paul's shoulder as he embarked. Then the speedy craft tore out +of the bay at a headlong gait, her motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust, +wide wings of white spray arching off her flaring bows. + +"The desperate recklessness of thwarted affection--fiddlesticks!" Miss +Benton observed in sardonic mood. Her hands were deep in pie dough. She +thumped it viciously. The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it +rasped at her nerves again. + +Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin box where +such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a corner of the +table, eying her critically while he munched. + +"So you turned Paul down, eh?" he said at last. "You're the prize chump. +You've missed the best chance you'll ever have to put yourself on Easy +Street." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE + +For a week thereafter Benton developed moods of sourness, periods of +scowling thought. He tried to speed up his gang, and having all spring +driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their +patience, and Stella heard some sharp interchanges of words. He quelled +one incipient mutiny through sheer dominance, but it left him more short +of temper, more crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his ill-nature +broke out against Stella over some trifle, and she--being herself an +aggrieved party to his transactions--surprised her own sense of the +fitness of things by retaliating in kind. + +"I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work I +despise, and you can't even speak decently to me," she flared up. "You +act like a perfect brute lately. What's the matter with you?" + +Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence. + +"Hang it, I guess you're right," he admitted at last. "But I can't help +having a grouch. I'm going to fall behind on this contract, the best I +can do." + +"Well," she replied tartly. "I'm not to blame for that. I'm not +responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me?" + +"I don't, particularly," he answered. "Only--can't you _sabe_? A man +gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about +to come to nothing." + +"So does a woman," she made pointed retort. + +Benton chose to ignore the inference. + +"If I fall down on this, it'll just about finish me," he continued +glumly. "These people are not going to allow me an inch leeway. I'll +have to deliver on that contract to the last stipulated splinter before +they'll pay over a dollar. If I don't have a million feet for 'em three +weeks from to-day, it's all off, and maybe a suit for breach of contract +besides. That's the sort they are. If they can wiggle out of taking my +logs, they'll be to the good, because they've made other contracts down +the coast at fifty cents a thousand less. And the aggravating thing +about it is that if I could get by with this deal, I can close a +five-million-foot contract with the Abbey-Monohan outfit, for delivery +next spring. I must have the money for this before I can undertake the +bigger contract." + +"Can't you sell your logs if these other people won't take them?" she +asked, somewhat alive now to his position--and, incidentally, her own +interest therein. + +"In time, yes," he said. "But when you go into the open market with +logs, you don't always find a buyer right off the reel. I'd have to hire +'em towed from here to Vancouver, and there's some bad water to get +over. Time is money to me right now, Stell. If the thing dragged over +two or three months, by the time they were sold and all expenses paid, I +might not have anything left. I'm in debt for supplies, behind in +wages. When it looks like a man's losing, everybody jumps him. That's +business. I may have my outfit seized and sold up if I fall down on this +delivery and fail to square up accounts right away. Damn it, if you +hadn't given Paul Abbey the cold turn-down, I might have got a boost +over this hill. You were certainly a chump." + +"I'm not a mere pawn in your game yet," she flared hotly. "I suppose +you'd trade me for logs enough to complete your contract and consider it +a good bargain." + +"Oh, piffle," he answered coolly. "What's the use talking like that. +It's your game as much as mine. Where do you get off, if I go broke? You +might have done a heap worse. Paul's a good head. A girl that hasn't +anything but her looks to get through the world on hasn't any business +overlooking a bet like that. Nine girls out of ten marry for what there +is in it, anyhow." + +"Thank you," she replied angrily. "I'm not in the market on that basis." + +"All this stuff about ideal love and soul communion and perfect mating +is pure bunk, it seems to me," Charlie tacked off on a new course of +thought. "A man and a woman somewhere near of an age generally hit it +off all right, if they've got common horse sense--and income enough so +they don't have to squabble eternally about where the next new hat and +suit's coming from. It's the coin that counts most of all. It sure is, +Sis. It's me that knows it, right now." + +He sat a minute or two longer, again preoccupied with his problems. + +"Well," he said at last, "I've got to get action somehow. If I could get +about thirty men and another donkey for three weeks, I'd make it." + +He went outside. Up in the near woods the whine of the saws and the +sounds of chopping kept measured beat. It was late in the forenoon, and +Stella was hard about her dinner preparations. Contract or no contract, +money or no money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily +schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff +over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight +of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to +be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, +working harder than any of his men. + +A little later she saw him put off from the float in the _Chickamin's_ +dinghy. When the crew came to dinner, he had not returned. Nor was he +back when they went out again at one. + +Near mid-afternoon, however, he strode into the kitchen, wearing the +look of a conqueror. + +"I've got it fixed," he announced. + +Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was +stirring in a pan. + +"Got what fixed?" she asked. + +"Why, this log business," he said. "Jack Fyfe is going to put in a crew +and a donkey, and we're going to everlastingly rip the innards out of +these woods. I'll make delivery after all." + +"That's good," she remarked, but noticeably without enthusiasm. The +heat of that low-roofed shanty had taken all possible enthusiasm for +anything out of her for the time being. Always toward the close of each +day she was gripped by that feeling of deadly fatigue, in the face of +which nothing much mattered but to get through the last hours somehow +and drag herself wearily to bed. + +Benton playfully tweaked Katy John's ear and went whistling up the +trail. It was plain sailing for him now, and he was correspondingly +elated. + +He tried to talk to Stella that evening when she was through, all about +big things in the future, big contracts he could get, big money he could +see his way to make. It fell mostly on unappreciative ears. She was +tired, so tired that his egotistical chatter irritated her beyond +measure. What she would have welcomed with heartfelt gratitude was not +so much a prospect of future affluence in which she might or might not +share as a lightening of her present burden. So far as his conversation +ran, Benton's sole concern seemed to be more equipment, more men, so +that he might get out more logs. In the midst of this optimistic talk, +Stella walked abruptly into her room. + +Noon of the next day brought the _Panther_ coughing into the bay, +flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron +monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. To starboard was made +fast a like scow. That was housed over, a smoking stovepipe stuck +through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the +window sill as they floated in. Men to the number of twenty or more +clustered about both scows and the _Panther's_ deck, busy with pipe and +cigarette and rude jest. The clatter of their voices uprose through the +noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the +beach, the chaff and laughter died into silent, capable action. + +"A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a tree," +Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own machine. + +It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at work. +Steam was up in the donkey. They carried a line from its drum through a +snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the +scow in a matter of minutes. Then the same cable was made fast to a +sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponderous machine slid +forward on its own skids, like an up-ended barrel on a sled, down off +the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that +stood in its path, drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable +spooled up on the drum. + +A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore the loose +end away up the path. Presently one stood clear, waving a signal. Again +the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began to roll up on the +drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope under its own power, a +locomotive unneedful of rails, making its own right of way. Upon the +platform built over the skids were piled the tools of the crew, sawed +blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, grindstones, all that was necessary +in their task. At one o'clock they made their first move. At two the +donkey was vanished into that region where the chute-head lay, and the +great firs stood waiting the slaughter. + +By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in the logs +that came hurtling lakeward. Now at shorter intervals arose the grinding +sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as each leaped to the +water. It was a good thing, she surmised--for Charlie Benton. She could +not see where it made much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a +hundred came down to the boomsticks. + +Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic visits to the +camp of her kindred around the point. Bred out of doors, of a tribe +whose immemorial custom it is that the women do all the work, the Siwash +girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as bovine in temperament and +movements. She could lift with ease a weight that taxed Stella's +strength, and Stella Benton was no weakling, either. It was therefore a +part of Katy's routine to keep water pails filled from the creek and the +wood box supplied, in addition to washing dishes and carrying food to +the table. Katy slighted these various tasks occasionally. She needed +oversight, continual admonition, to get any job done in time. She was +slow to the point of exasperation. Nevertheless, she lightened the day's +labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or +assume the entire burden herself. This time Katy thoughtlessly left with +both water pails empty. + +Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow darkened the +door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe. + +"How d' do," he greeted. + +He had seemed a short man. Now, standing within four feet of her, she +perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and +thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and +Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a +cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor +embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing +her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him +for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to +match his manner. She flushed. Fyfe smiled, a broad, friendly grin, in +which a wide mouth opened to show strong, even teeth. + +"I'm after a drink," he said quite impersonally, and coolly taking the +pails out of her hands, walked through the kitchen and down to the +creek. He was back in a minute, set the filled buckets in their place, +and helped himself with a dipper. + +"Say," he asked easily, "how do you like life in a logging camp by this +time? This is sure one hot job you've got." + +"Literally or slangily?" she asked in a flippant tone. Fyfe's +reputation, rather vividly colored, had reached her from various +sources. She was not quite sure whether she cared to countenance him or +not. There was a disturbing quality in his glance, a subtle suggestion +of force about him that she felt without being able to define in +understandable terms. In any case she felt more than equal to the task +of squelching any effort at familiarity, even if Jack Fyfe were, in a +sense, the convenient god in her brother's machine. Fyfe chuckled at +her answer. + +"Both," he replied shortly and went out. + +She saw him a little later out on the bay in the _Panther's_ dink, +standing up in the little boat, making long, graceful casts with a +pliant rod. She perceived that this manner of fishing was highly +successful, insomuch as at every fourth or fifth cast a trout struck his +fly, breaking water with a vigorous splash. Then the bamboo would arch +as the fish struggled, making sundry leaps clear of the water, gleaming +like silver each time he broke the surface, but coming at last tamely to +Jack Fyfe's landing net. Of outdoor sports she knew most about angling, +for her father had been an ardent fly-caster. And she had observed with +a true angler's scorn the efforts of her brother's loggers to catch the +lake trout with a baited hook, at which they had scant success. Charlie +never fished. He had neither time nor inclination for such fooling, as +he termed it. Fyfe stopped fishing when the donkeys whistled six. It +happened that when he drew in to his cookhouse float, Stella was +standing in her kitchen door. Fyfe looked up at her and held aloft a +dozen trout strung by the gills on a stick, gleaming in the sun. + +"Vanity," she commented inaudibly. "I wonder if he thinks I've been +admiring his skill as a fisherman?" + +Nevertheless she paid tribute to his skill when ten minutes later he +sent a logger with the entire catch to her kitchen. They looked +toothsome, those lakers, and they were. She cooked one for her own +supper and relished it as a change from the everlasting bacon and ham. +In the face of that million feet of timber, Benton hunted no deer. True, +the Siwashes had once or twice brought in some venison. That, with a +roast or two of beef from town, was all the fresh meat she had tasted in +two months. There were enough trout to make a breakfast for the crew. +She ate hers and mentally thanked Jack Fyfe. + +Lying in her bed that night, in the short interval that came between +undressing and wearied sleep, she found herself wondering with a good +deal more interest about Jack Fyfe than she had ever bestowed +upon--well, Paul Abbey, for instance. + +She was quite positive that she was going to dislike Jack Fyfe if he +were thrown much in her way. There was something about him that she +resented. The difference between him and the rest of the rude crew among +which she must perforce live was a question of degree, not of kind. +There was certainly some compelling magnetism about the man. But along +with it went what she considered an almost brutal directness of speech +and action. Part of this conclusion came from hearsay, part from +observation, limited though her opportunities had been for the latter. +Miss Stella Benton, for all her poise, was not above jumping at +conclusions. There was something about Jack Fyfe that she resented. She +irritably dismissed it as a foolish impression, but the fact remained +that the mere physical nearness of him seemed to put her on the +defensive, as if he were in reality a hunter and she the hunted. + +Fyfe joined Charlie Benton about the time she finished work. The three +of them sat on the grass before Benton's quarters, and every time Jack +Fyfe's eyes rested on her she steeled herself to resist--what, she did +not know. Something intangible, something that disturbed her. She had +never experienced anything like that before; it tantalized her, roused +her curiosity. There was nothing occult about the man. He was nowise +fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. +Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly +about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from +her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to +comparing him with other men she knew. + +She had, in a way, unconsciously been prepared for just such a measure +of concentration upon Jack Fyfe. For he was a power on Roaring Lake, and +power,--physical, intellectual or financial,--exacts its own tribute of +consideration. He was a fighter, a dominant, hard-bitten woodsman, so +the tale ran. He had gathered about him the toughest crew on the Lake, +himself, upon occasion, the most turbulent of all. He controlled many +square miles of big timber, and he had gotten it all by his own effort +in the eight years since he came to Roaring Lake as a hand logger. He +was slow of speech, chain-lightning in action, respected generally, +feared a lot. All these things her brother and Katy John had sketched +for Stella with much verbal embellishment. + +There was no ignoring such a man. Brought into close contact with the +man himself, Stella felt the radiating force of his personality. There +it was, a thing to be reckoned with. She felt that whenever Jack Fyfe's +gray eyes rested impersonally on her. His pleasant, freckled face +hovered before her until she fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed +again of him throwing that drunken logger down the Hot Springs slip. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +DURANCE VILE + +By September first a growing uneasiness hardened into distasteful +certainty upon Stella. It had become her firm resolve to get what money +was due her when Charlie marketed his logs and try another field of +labor. That camp on Roaring Lake was becoming a nightmare to her. She +had no inherent dislike for work. She was too vibrantly alive to be +lazy. But she had had an overdose of unaccustomed drudgery, and she was +growing desperate. If there had been anything to keep her mind from +continual dwelling on the manifold disagreeableness she had to cope +with, she might have felt differently, but there was not. She ate, +slept, worked,--ate, slept, and worked again,--till every fibre of her +being cried out in protest against the deadening round. She was like a +flower striving to attain its destiny of bloom in soil overrun with rank +weeds. Loneliness and hard, mean work, day after day, in which all that +had ever seemed desirable in life had neither place nor consideration, +were twin evils of isolation and flesh-wearying labor, from which she +felt that she must get away, or go mad. + +But she did not go. Benton left to make his delivery to the mill +company, the great boom of logs gliding slowly along in the wake of a +tug, the _Chickamin_ in attendance. Benton's crew accompanied the boom. +Fyfe's gang loaded their donkey and gear aboard the scow and went home. +The bay lay all deserted, the woods silent. For the first time in three +months she had all her hours free, only her own wants to satisfy. Katy +John spent most of her time in the smoky camp of her people. Stella +loafed. For two days she did nothing, gave herself up to a physical +torpor she had never known before. She did not want to read, to walk +about, or even lift her eyes to the bold mountains that loomed massive +across the lake. It was enough to lie curled among pillows under the +alder and stare drowsily at the blue September sky, half aware of the +drone of a breeze in the firs, the flutter of birds' wings, and the lap +of water on the beach. + +Presently, however, the old restless energy revived. The spring came +back to her step and she shed that lethargy like a cast-off garment. And +in so doing her spirit rose in hot rebellion against being a prisoner to +deadening drudgery, against being shut away from all the teeming life +that throve and trafficked beyond the solitude in which she sat immured. +When Charlie came back, there was going to be a change. She repeated +that to herself with determination. Between whiles she rambled about in +the littered clearing, prowled along the beaches, and paddled now and +then far outside the bay in a flat-bottomed skiff, restless, full of +plans. So far as she saw, she would have to face some city alone, but +she viewed that prospect with a total absence of the helpless feeling +which harassed her so when she first took train for her brother's camp. +She had passed through what she termed a culinary inferno. Nothing, she +considered, could be beyond her after that unremitting drudgery. + +But Benton failed to come back on the appointed day. The four days +lengthened to a week. Then the _Panther_, bound up-lake, stopped to +leave a brief note from Charlie, telling her business had called him to +Vancouver. + +Altogether it was ten days before the _Chickamin_ whistled up the bay. +She slid in beside the float, her decks bristling with men like a +passenger craft. Stella, so thoroughly sated with loneliness that she +temporarily forgot her grievances, flew to meet her brother. But one +fair glimpse of the disembarking crew turned her back. They were all in +varying stages of liquor--from two or three who had to be hauled over +the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were +so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was +some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the +cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of +spirits--speaking truly in the double sense. + +"Hello, lady," he hailed jovially. "How did you fare all by your +lonesome this long time? I didn't figure to be gone so long, but there +was a lot to attend to. How are you, anyway?" + +"All right," she answered coolly. "You evidently celebrated your log +delivery in the accepted fashion." + +"Don't you believe it," he grinned amiably. "I had a few drinks with the +boys on the way up, that's all. No, sir, it was straight business with +a capital B all the time I was gone. I've got a good thing in hand, +Sis--big money in sight. Tell you about it later. Think you and Katy can +rustle grub for this bunch by six?" + +"Oh, I suppose so," she said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to +tell him then and there that she was through,--like Matt, the cook, that +memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She +refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken crowd +looked formidable in numbers. + +"How many extra?" she asked mechanically. + +"Thirty men, all told," Benton returned briskly. "I tell you I'm sure +going to rip the heart out of this limit before spring. I've signed up a +six-million-foot contract for delivery as soon as the logs'll go over +Roaring Rapids in the spring. Remember what I told you when you came? +You stick with me, and you'll wear diamonds. I stand to clean up twenty +thousand on the winter's work." + +"In that case, you should be able to hire a real cook," she suggested, a +spice of malice in her tone. + +"I sure will, when it begins to come right," he promised largely. "And +I'll give you a soft job keeping books then. Well, I'll lend you a hand +for to-night. Where's the Siwash maiden?" + +"Over at the camp; there she comes now," Stella replied. "Will you start +a fire, Charlie, while I change my dress?" + +"You look like a peach in that thing." He stood off a pace to admire. +"You're some dame, Stell, when you get on your glad rags." + +She frowned at her image in the glass behind the closed door of her +room as she set about unfastening the linen dress she had worn that +afternoon. Deep in her trunk, along with much other unused finery, it +had reposed all summer. That ingrained instinct to be admired, to be +garbed fittingly and well, came back to her as soon as she was rested. +And though there were none but squirrels and bluejays and occasionally +Katy John to cast admiring eyes upon her, it had pleased her for a week +to wear her best, and wander about the beaches and among the dusky +trunks of giant fir, a picture of blooming, well-groomed womanhood. She +took off the dress and threw it on the bed with a resentful rush of +feeling. The treadmill gaped for her again. But not for long. She was +through with that. She was glad that Charlie's prospects pleased him. He +could not call on her to help him out of a hole now. She would tell him +her decision to-night. And as soon as he could get a cook to fill her +place, then good-by to Roaring Lake, good-by to kitchen smells and flies +and sixteen hours a day over a hot stove. + +She wondered why such a loathing of the work afflicted her; if all who +earned their bread in the sweat of their brow were ridden with that +feeling,--woodsmen, cooks, chauffeurs, the slaves of personal service +and the great industrial mills alike? Her heart went out to them if they +were. But she was quite sure that work could be otherwise than +repellent, enslaving. She recalled that cooks and maids had worked in +her father's house with no sign of the revolt that now assailed her. But +it seemed to her that their tasks had been light compared with the job +of cooking in Charlie Benton's camp. + +Curiously enough, while she changed her clothes, her thoughts a jumble +of present things she disliked and the unknown that she would have to +face alone in Vancouver, she found her mind turning on Jack Fyfe. During +his three weeks' stay, they had progressed less in the direction of +acquaintances than she and Paul Abbey had done in two meetings. Fyfe +talked to her now and then briefly, but he looked at her more than he +talked. Where his searching gaze disturbed, his speech soothed, it was +so coolly impersonal. That, she deemed, was merely another of his odd +contradictions. He was contradictory. Stella classified Jack Fyfe as a +creature of unrestrained passions. She recognized, or thought she +recognized, certain dominant, primitive characteristics, and they did +not excite her admiration. Men admired him--those who were not afraid of +him. If he had been of more polished clay, she could readily have +grasped this attitude. But in her eyes he was merely a rude, masterful +man, uncommonly gifted with physical strength, dominating other rude, +strong men by sheer brute force. And she herself rather despised sheer +brute force. The iron hand should fitly be concealed beneath the velvet +glove. + +Yet in spite of the bold look in his eyes that always confused and +irritated her, Fyfe had never singled her out for the slightest +attention of the kind any man bestows upon an attractive woman. Stella +was no fool. She knew that she was attractive, and she knew why. She had +been prepared to repulse, and there had been nothing to repulse. Once +during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the +beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was +not back. He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after +all. Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind. Or +perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think +about that one could not escape the personal element. As if any one ever +could. As if life were made up of anything but the impinging of one +personality upon another. That was something Miss Stella Benton had yet +to learn. She was still mired in the rampant egotism of untried youth, +as yet the sublime individualist. + +That side of her suffered a distinct shock later in the evening. When +supper was over, the work done, and the loggers' celebration was slowly +subsiding in the bunkhouse, she told Charlie with blunt directness what +she wanted to do. With equally blunt directness he declared that he +would not permit it. Stella's teeth came together with an angry little +click. + +"I'm of age, Charlie," she said to him. "It isn't for you to say what +you will or will not _permit_ me to do. I want that money of mine that +you used--and what I've earned. God knows I _have_ earned it. I can't +stand this work, and I don't intend to. It isn't work; it's slavery." + +"But what can you do in town?" he countered. "You haven't the least idea +what you'd be going up against, Stell. You've never been away from home, +and you've never had the least training at anything useful. You'd be on +your uppers in no time at all. You wouldn't have a ghost of a chance." + +"I have such a splendid chance here," she retorted ironically. "If I +could get in any position where I'd be more likely to die of sheer +stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this forsaken +hole, I'd like to know how. I don't think it's possible." + +"You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it," Benton +returned grumpily. "If you haven't got any sense about things, I have. I +know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other seaport town is for a +girl alone. I won't let you make any foolish break like that. That's +flat." + +From this position she failed to budge him. Once angered, partly by her +expressed intention and partly by the outspoken protest against the +mountain of work imposed on her, Charlie refused point-blank to give her +either the ninety dollars he had taken out of her purse or the three +months' wages due. Having made her request, and having met with this--to +her--amazing refusal, Stella sat dumb. There was too fine a streak in +her to break out in recrimination. She was too proud to cry. + +So that she went to bed in a ferment of helpless rage. Virtually she was +a prisoner, as much so as if Charlie had kidnaped her and held her so by +brute force. The economic restraint was all potent. Without money she +could not even leave the camp. And when she contemplated the daily +treadmill before her, she shuddered. + +At least she could go on strike. Her round cheek flushed with the +bitterest anger she had ever known, she sat with eyes burning into the +dark of her sordid room, and vowed that the thirty loggers should die of +slow starvation if they did not eat until she cooked another meal for +them. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +JACK FYFE'S CAMP + +She was still hot with the spirit of mutiny when morning came, but she +cooked breakfast. It was not in her to act like a petulant child. +Morning also brought a different aspect to things, for Charlie told her +while he helped prepare breakfast that he was going to take his crew and +repay in labor the help Jack Fyfe had given him. + +"While we're there, Jack's cook will feed all hands," said he. "And by +the time we're through there, I'll have things fixed so it won't be such +hard going for you here. Do you want to go along to Jack's camp?" + +"No," she answered shortly. "I don't. I would much prefer to get away +from this lake altogether, as I told you last night." + +"You might as well forget that notion," he said stubbornly. "I've got a +little pride in the matter. I don't want my sister drudging at the only +kind of work she'd be able to earn a living at." + +"You're perfectly willing to have me drudge here," she flashed back. + +"That's different," he defended. "And it's only temporary. I'll be +making real money before long. You'll get your share if you'll have a +little patience and put your shoulder to the wheel. Lord, I'm doing the +best I can." + +"Yes--for yourself," she returned. "You don't seem to consider that I'm +entitled to as much fair play as you'd have to accord one of your men. I +don't want you to hand me an easy living on a silver salver. All I want +of you is what is mine, and the privilege of using my own judgment. I'm +quite capable of taking care of myself." + +If there had been opportunity to enlarge on that theme, they might have +come to another verbal clash. But Benton never lost sight of his primary +object. The getting of breakfast and putting his men about their work +promptly was of more importance to him than Stella's grievance. So the +incipient storm dwindled to a sullen mood on her part. Breakfast over, +Benton loaded men and tools aboard a scow hitched beside the boat. He +repeated his invitation, and Stella refused, with a sarcastic reflection +on the company she would be compelled to keep there. + +The _Chickamin_ with her tow drew off, and she was alone again. + +"Marooned once more," Stella said to herself when the little steamboat +slipped behind the first jutting point. "Oh, if I could just be a man +for a while." + +Marooned seemed to her the appropriate term. There were the two old +Siwashes and their dark-skinned brood. But they were little more to +Stella than the insentient boulders that strewed the beach. She could +not talk to them or they to her. Long since she had been surfeited with +Katy John. If there were any primitive virtues in that dusky maiden they +were well buried under the white man's schooling. Katy's demand upon +life was very simple and in marked contrast to Stella Benton's. Plenty +of grub, no work, some cheap finery, and a man white or red, no matter, +to make eyes at. Her horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission +at Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of Stella's loneliness. + +Nevertheless Stella resigned herself to make the best of it, and it +proved a poor best. She could not detach herself sufficiently from the +sordid realities to lose herself in day-dreaming. There was not a book +in the camp save some ten-cent sensations she found in the bunkhouse, +and these she had exhausted during Charlie's first absence. The uncommon +stillness of the camp oppressed her more than ever. Even the bluejays +and squirrels seemed to sense its abandonment, seemed to take her as +part of the inanimate fixtures, for they frisked and chattered about +with uncommon fearlessness. The lake lay dead gray, glassy as some great +irregular window in the crust of the earth. Only at rare intervals did +sail or smoke dot its surface, and then far offshore. The woods stood +breathless in the autumn sun. It was like being entombed. And there +would be a long stretch of it, with only a recurrence of that deadly +grind of kitchen work when the loggers came home again. + +Some time during the next forenoon she went southerly along the lake +shore on foot without object or destination, merely to satisfy in some +measure the restless craving for action. Colorful turns of life, the +more or less engrossing contact of various personalities, some new thing +to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a part of her existence +ever since she could remember. None of this touched her now. A dead +weight of monotony rode her hard. There was the furtive wild life of the +forest, the light of sun and sky, and the banked green of the forest +that masked the steep granite slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it +indeed, but she could not satisfy her being with scenic effects alone. +She craved, without being wholly aware of it, or altogether admitting it +to herself, some human distraction in all that majestic solitude. + +It was forthcoming. When she returned to camp at two o'clock, driven in +by hunger, Jack Fyfe sat on the doorstep. + +"How-de-do. I've come to bring you over to my place," he announced quite +casually. + +"Thanks. I've already declined one pressing invitation to that effect," +Stella returned drily. His matter-of-fact assurance rather nettled her. + +"A woman always has the privilege of changing her mind," Fyfe smiled. +"Charlie is going to be at my camp for at least three weeks. It'll rain +soon, and the days'll be pretty gray and dreary and lonesome. You might +as well pack your war-bag and come along." + +She stood uncertainly. Her tongue held ready a blunt refusal, but she +did not utter it; and she did not know why. She did have a glimpse of +the futility of refusing, only she did not admit that refusal might be +of no weight in the matter. With her mind running indignantly against +compulsion, nevertheless her muscles involuntarily moved to obey. It +irritated her further that she should feel in the least constrained to +obey the calmly expressed wish of this quiet-spoken woodsman. Certain +possible phases of a lengthy sojourn in Jack Fyfe's camp shot across her +mind. He seemed of uncanny perception, for he answered this thought +before it was clearly formed. + +"Oh, you'll be properly chaperoned, and you won't have to mix with the +crew," he drawled. "I've got all kinds of room. My boss logger's wife is +up from town for a while. She's a fine, motherly old party, and she +keeps us all in order." + +"I haven't had any lunch," she temporized. "Have you?" + +He shook his head. + +"I rowed over here before twelve. Thought I'd get you back to camp in +time for dinner. You know," he said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, "a +logger never eats anything but a meal. A lunch to us is a snack that you +put in your pocket. I guess we lack tone out here. We haven't got past +the breakfast-dinner-supper stage yet; too busy making the country fit +to live in." + +"You have a tremendous job in hand," she observed. + +"Oh, maybe," he laughed. "All in the way you look at it. Suits some of +us. Well, if we get to my camp before three, the cook might feed us. +Come on. You'll get to hating yourself if you stay here alone till +Charlie's through." + +Why not? Thus she parleyed with herself, one half of her minded to stand +upon her dignity, the other part of her urging acquiescence in his wish +that was almost a command. She was tempted to refuse just to see what he +would do, but she reconsidered that. Without any logical foundation for +the feeling, she was shy of pitting her will against Jack Fyfe's. +Hitherto quite sure of herself, schooled in self-possession, it was a +new and disturbing experience to come in contact with that subtle, +analysis-defying quality which carries the possessor thereof straight to +his or her goal over all opposition, which indeed many times stifles all +opposition. Force of character, overmastering personality, emanation of +sheer will, she could not say in what terms it should be described. +Whatever it was, Jack Fyfe had it. It existed, a factor to be reckoned +with when one dealt with him. For within twenty minutes she had packed a +suitcase full of clothes and was embarked in his rowboat. + +He sent the lightly built craft easily through the water with regular, +effortless strokes. Stella sat in the stern, facing him. Out past the +north horn of the bay, she broke the silence that had fallen between +them. + +"Why did you make a point of coming for me?" she asked bluntly. + +Fyfe rested on his oars a moment, looking at her in his direct, +unembarrassed way. + +"I wintered once on the Stickine," he said. "My partner pulled out +before Christmas and never came back. It was the first time I'd ever +been alone in my life. I wasn't a much older hand in the country than +you are. Four months without hearing the sound of a human voice. Stark +alone. I got so I talked to myself out loud before spring. So I +thought--well, I thought I'd come and bring you over to see Mrs. Howe." + +Stella sat gazing at the slow moving panorama of the lake shore, her +chin in her hand. + +"Thank you," she said at last, and very gently. + +Fyfe looked at her a minute or more, a queer, half-amused expression +creeping into his eyes. + +"Well," he said finally, "I might as well tell the whole truth. I've +been thinking about you quite a lot lately, Miss Stella Benton, or I +wouldn't have thought about you getting lonesome." + +He smiled ever so faintly, a mere movement of the corners of his mouth, +at the pink flush which rose quickly in her cheeks, and then resumed his +steady pull at the oars. + +Except for a greater number of board shacks and a larger area of stump +and top-littered waste immediately behind it, Fyfe's headquarters, +outwardly, at least, differed little from her brother's camp. Jack led +her to a long, log structure with a shingle roof, which from its more +substantial appearance she judged to be his personal domicile. A plump, +smiling woman of forty greeted her on the threshold. Once within, Stella +perceived that there was in fact considerable difference in Mr. Fyfe's +habitation. There was a great stone fireplace, before which big +easy-chairs invited restful lounging. The floor was overlaid with thick +rugs which deadened her footfalls. With no pretense of ornamental +decoration, the room held an air of homely comfort. + +"Come in here and lay off your things," Mrs. Howe beamed on her. "If +I'd 'a' known you were livin' so close, we'd have been acquainted a week +ago; though I ain't got rightly settled here myself. My land, these men +are such clams. I never knowed till this mornin' there was any white +woman at this end of the lake besides myself." + +She showed Stella into a bedroom. It boasted an enamel washstand with +taps which yielded hot and cold water, neatly curtained windows, and a +deep-seated Morris chair. Certainly Fyfe's household accommodation was +far superior to Charlie Benton's. Stella expected the man's home to be +rough and ready like himself, and in a measure it was, but a comfortable +sort of rough and readiness. She took off her hat and had a critical +survey of herself in a mirror, after which she had just time to brush +her hair before answering Mrs. Howe's call to a "cup of tea." + +The cup of tea resolved itself into a well-cooked and well-served meal, +with china and linen and other unexpected table accessories which +agreeably surprised, her. Inevitably she made comparisons, somewhat +tinctured with natural envy. If Charlie would fix his place with a few +such household luxuries, life in their camp would be more nearly +bearable, despite the long hours of disagreeable work. As it was--well, +the unrelieved discomforts were beginning to warp her out-look on +everything. + +Fyfe maintained his habitual sparsity of words while they ate the food +Mrs. Howe brought on a tray hot from the cook's outlying domain. When +they finished, he rose, took up his hat and helped himself to a handful +of cigars from a box on the fireplace mantel. + +"I guess you'll be able to put in the time, all right," he remarked. +"Make yourself at home. If you take a notion to read, there's a lot of +books and magazines in my room. Mrs. Howe'll show you." + +He walked out. Stella was conscious of a distinct relief when he was +gone. She had somehow experienced a recurrence of that peculiar feeling +of needing to be on her guard, as if there were some curious, latent +antagonism between them. She puzzled over that a little. She had never +felt that way about Paul Abbey, for instance, or indeed toward any man +she had ever known. Fyfe's more or less ambiguous remark in the boat had +helped to arouse it again. His manner of saying that he had "thought a +lot about her" conveyed more than the mere words. She could quite +conceive of the Jack Fyfe type carrying things with a high hand where a +woman was concerned. He had that reputation in all his other dealings. +He was aggressive. He could drink any logger in the big firs off his +feet. He had an uncanny luck at cards. Somehow or other in every +undertaking Jack Fyfe always came out on top, so the tale ran. There +must be, she reasoned, a wide streak of the brute in such a man. It was +no gratification to her vanity to have him admire her. It did not dawn +upon her that so far she had never got over being a little afraid of +him, much less to ask herself why she should be afraid of him. + +But she did not spend much time puzzling over Jack Fyfe. Once out of her +sight she forgot him. It was balm to her lonely soul to have some one +of her own sex for company. What Mrs. Howe lacked in the higher culture +she made up in homely perception and unassuming kindliness. Her husband +was Fyfe's foreman. She herself was not a permanent fixture in the camp. +They had a cottage at Roaring Springs, where she spent most of the time, +so that their three children could be in school. + +"I was up here all through vacation," she told Stella. "But Lefty he got +to howlin' about bein' left alone shortly after school started again, so +I got my sister to look after the kids for a spell, while I stay. I'll +be goin' down about the time Mr. Benton's through here." + +Stella eventually went out to take a look around the camp. A hard-beaten +path led off toward where rose the distant sounds of logging work, the +ponderous crash of trees, and the puff of the donkeys. She followed that +a little way and presently came to a knoll some three hundred yards +above the beach. There she paused to look and wonder curiously. + +For the crest of this little hillock had been cleared and graded level +and planted to grass over an area four hundred feet square. It was +trimmed like a lawn, and in the center of this vivid green block stood +an unfinished house foundation of gray stone. No stick of timber, no +board or any material for further building lay in sight. The thing stood +as if that were to be all. And it was not a new undertaking temporarily +delayed. There was moss creeping over the thick stone wall, she +discovered when she walked over it. Whoever had laid that foundation had +done it many a moon before. Yet the sward about was kept as if a +gardener had it in charge. + +A noble stretch of lake and mountain spread out before her gaze. +Straight across the lake two deep clefts in the eastern range opened on +the water, five miles apart. She could see the white ribbon of foaming +cascades in each. Between lifted a great mountain, and on the lakeward +slope of this stood a terrible scar of a slide, yellow and brown, rising +two thousand feet from the shore. A vaporous wisp of cloud hung along +the top of the slide, and above this aerial banner a snow-capped +pinnacle thrust itself high into the infinite blue. + +"What an outlook," she said, barely conscious that she spoke aloud. "Why +do these people build their houses in the bush, when they could live in +the open and have something like this to look at. They would, if they +had any sense of beauty." + +"Sure they haven't? Some of them might have, you know, without being +able to gratify it." + +She started, to find Jack Fyfe almost at her elbow, the gleam of a +quizzical smile lighting his face. + +"I daresay that might be true," she admitted. + +Fyfe's gaze turned from her to the huge sweep of lake and mountain +chain. She saw that he was outfitted for fishing, creel on his shoulder, +unjointed rod in one hand. By means of his rubber-soled waders he had +come upon her noiselessly. + +"It's truer than you think, maybe," he said at length. "You don't want +to come along and take a lesson in catching rainbows, I suppose?" + +"Not this time, thanks," she shook her head. + +"I want to get enough for supper, so I'd better be at it," he remarked. +"Sometimes they come pretty slow. If you should want to go up and watch +the boys work, that trail will take you there." + +He went off across the grassy level and plunged into the deep timber +that rose like a wall beyond. Stella looked after. + +"It is certainly odd," she reflected with some irritation, "how that man +affects me. I don't think a woman could ever be just friends with him. +She'd either like him a lot or dislike him intensely. He isn't anything +but a logger, and yet he has a presence like one of the lords of +creation. Funny." + +Then she went back to the house to converse upon domestic matters with +Mrs. Howe until the shrilling of the donkey whistle brought forty-odd +lumberjacks swinging down the trail. + +Behind them a little way came Jack Fyfe with sagging creel. He did not +stop to exhibit his catch, but half an hour later they were served hot +and crisp at the table in the big living room, where Fyfe, Stella and +Charlie Benton, Lefty Howe and his wife, sat down together. + +A flunkey from the camp kitchen served the meal and cleared it away. For +an hour or two after that the three men sat about in shirt-sleeved ease, +puffing at Jack Fyfe's cigars. Then Benton excused himself and went to +bed. When Howe and his wife retired, Stella did likewise. The long +twilight had dwindled to a misty patch of light sky in the northwest, +and she fell asleep more at ease than she had been for weeks. Sitting in +Jack Fyfe's living room through that evening she had begun to formulate +a philosophy to fit her enforced environment--to live for the day only, +and avoid thought of the future until there loomed on the horizon some +prospect of a future worth thinking about. The present looked passable +enough, she thought, if she kept her mind strictly on it alone. + +And with that idea to guide her, she found the days slide by smoothly. +She got on famously with Mrs. Howe, finding that woman full of virtues +unsuspected in her type. Charlie was in his element. His prospects +looked so rosy that they led him into egotistic outlines of what he +intended to accomplish. To him the future meant logs in the water, big +holdings of timber, a growing bank account. Beyond that,--what all his +concentrated effort should lead to save more logs and more timber,--he +did not seem to go. Judged by his talk, that was the ultimate, economic +power,--money and more money. More and more as Stella listened to him, +she became aware that he was following in his father's footsteps; save +that he aimed at greater heights and that he worked by different +methods, juggling with natural resources where their father had merely +juggled with prices and tokens of product, their end was the same--not +to create or build up, but to grasp, to acquire. That was the game. To +get and to hold for their own use and benefit and to look upon men and +things, in so far as they were of use, as pawns in the game. + +She wondered sometimes if that were a characteristic of all men, if that +were the big motif in the lives of such men as Paul Abbey and Jack +Fyfe, for instance; if everything else, save the struggle of getting and +keeping money, resolved itself into purely incidental phases of their +existence? For herself she considered that wealth, or the getting of +wealth, was only a means to an end. + +Just what that end might be she found a little vague, rather hard to +define in exact terms. It embraced personal leisure and the good things +of life as a matter of course, a broader existence, a large-handed +generosity toward the less fortunate, an intellectual elevation entirely +unrelated to gross material things. Life, she told herself pensively, +ought to mean something more than ease and good clothes, but what more +she was chary of putting into concrete form. It hadn't meant much more +than that for her, so far. She was only beginning to recognize the +flinty facts of existence. She saw now that for her there lay open only +two paths to food and clothing: one in which, lacking all training, she +must earn her bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage. That, +she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't +pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along +living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The +morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of +mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be +thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within +her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses +bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source nor their +ultimate fruits. + +Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she +wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his +brief sentences or slow smile. Latterly her feeling about him, that +involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his personality, +left her. Fyfe seemed to be more or less self-conscious of her presence +as a guest in his house. His manner toward her remained always casual, +as if she were a man, and there was no question of sex attraction or +masculine reaction to it between them. She liked him better for that; +and she did admire his wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested +in his magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without +caring to fondle the beast. + +Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks. Autumn's gorgeous +paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and alder and birch +that lined the lake shore. The fall run of the salmon was on, and every +stream was packed with the silver horde, threshing through shoal and +rapid to reach the spawning ground before they died. Off every creek +mouth and all along the lake the seal followed to prey on the salmon, +and sea-trout and lakers alike swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon +the roe. The days shortened. Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for +hours on end, and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking +the lake would stand out all freshly robed in white,--a mantle that +crept lower on the fir-clad slopes after each storm. The winds that +whistled off those heights nipped sharply. + +Early in October Charlie Benton had squared his neighborly account with +Jack Fyfe. With crew and equipment he moved home, to begin work anew on +his own limit. + +Katy John and her people came back from the salmon fishing. Jim Renfrew, +still walking with a pronounced limp, returned from the hospital. +Charlie wheedled Stella into taking up the cookhouse burden again. +Stella consented; in truth she could do nothing else. Charlie spent a +little of his contract profits in piping water to the kitchen, in a few +things to brighten up and make more comfortable their own quarters. + +"Just as soon as I can put another boom over the rapids, Stell," he +promised, "I'll put a cook on the job. I've got to sail a little close +for a while. With this crew I ought to put a million feet in the water +in six weeks. Then I'll be over the hump, and you can take it easy. But +till then--" + +"Till then I may as well make myself useful," Stella interrupted +caustically. + +"Well, why not?" Benton demanded impatiently. "Nobody around here works +any harder than I do." + +And there the matter rested. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +ONE WAY OUT + +That was a winter of big snow. November opened with rain. Day after day +the sun hid his face behind massed, spitting clouds. Morning, noon, and +night the eaves of the shacks dripped steadily, the gaunt limbs of the +hardwoods were a line of coursing drops, and through all the vast +reaches of fir and cedar the patter of rain kept up a dreary monotone. +Whenever the mist that blew like rolling smoke along the mountains +lifted for a brief hour, there, creeping steadily downward, lay the +banked white. + +Rain or shine, the work drove on. From the peep of day till dusk +shrouded the woods, Benton's donkey puffed and groaned, axes thudded, +the thin, twanging whine of the saws rose. Log after log slid down the +chute to float behind the boomsticks; and at night the loggers trooped +home, soaked to the skin, to hang their steaming mackinaws around the +bunkhouse stove. When they gathered in the mess-room they filled it with +the odor of sweaty bodies and profane grumbling about the weather. + +Early in December Benton sent out a big boom of logs with a hired +stern-wheeler that was no more than out of Roaring Lake before the snow +came. The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned to great, moist +flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless night. At daybreak it +lay a foot deep and snowing hard. Thenceforth there was no surcease. The +white, feathery stuff piled up and piled up, hour upon hour and day +after day, as if the deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves +before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm +came a bright, cold sky and frost,--not the bitter frost of the high +latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a +thin scum of ice on every patch of still water. + +Necessarily, all work ceased. The donkey was a shapeless mound of white, +all the lines and gear buried deep. A man could neither walk on that +yielding mass nor wallow through it. The logging crew hailed the +enforced rest with open relief. Benton grumbled. And then, with the +hours hanging heavy on his hands, he began to spend more and more of his +time in the bunkhouse with the "boys," particularly in the long +evenings. + +Stella wondered what pleasure he found in their company, but she never +asked him, nor did she devote very much thought to the matter. There was +but small cessation in her labors, and that only because six or eight of +the men drew their pay and went out. Benton managed to hold the others +against the thaw that might open up the woods in twenty-four hours, but +the smaller size of the gang only helped a little, and did not assist +her mentally at all. All the old resentment against the indignity of her +position rose and smoldered. To her the days were full enough of things +that she was terribly weary of doing over and over, endlessly. She was +always tired. No matter that she did, in a measure, harden to her work, +grow callously accustomed to rising early and working late. Always her +feet were sore at night, aching intolerably. Hot food, sharp knives, and +a glowing stove played havoc with her hands. Always she rose in the +morning heavy-eyed and stiff-muscled. Youth and natural vigor alone kept +her from breaking down, and to cap the strain of toil, she was soul-sick +with the isolation. For she was isolated; there was not a human being in +the camp, Katy John included, with whom she exchanged two dozen words a +day. + +Before the snow put a stop to logging, Jack Fyfe dropped in once a week +or so. When work shut down, he came oftener, but he never singled Stella +out for any particular attention. Once he surprised her sitting with her +elbows on the kitchen table, her face buried in her palms. She looked up +at his quiet entrance, and her face must have given him his cue. He +leaned a little toward her. + +"How long do you think you can stand it?" he asked gently. + +"God knows," she answered, surprised into speaking the thought that lay +uppermost in her mind, surprised beyond measure that Be should read that +thought. + +He stood looking down at her for a second or two. His lips parted, but +he closed them again over whatever rose to his tongue and passed +silently through the dining room and into the bunkhouse, where Benton +had preceded him a matter of ten minutes. + +It lacked a week of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men had gone +in the _Chickamin_ to Roaring Springs for supplies. They had returned in +mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new note of hilarity in the +bunkhouse that part of the supplies had been liquid. This had happened +more than once since the big snow closed in. She remembered Charlie's +fury at the logger who started Matt the cook on his spree, and she +wondered at this relaxation, but it was not in her province, and she +made no comment. + +Jack Fyfe stayed to supper that evening. Neither he nor Charlie came +back to Benton's quarters when the meal was finished. While she stacked +up the dishes, Katy John observed: + +"Goodness sakes, Miss Benton, them fellers was fresh at supper. They was +half-drunk, some of them. I bet they'll be half a dozen fights before +mornin'." + +Stella passed that over in silence, with a mental turning up of her +nose. It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It was a +disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. She kept +harking back to it, though, when she was in her own quarters, and Katy +John had vanished for the night into her little room off the kitchen. +Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse +disturbing sounds welled now and then into the cold, still +night,--incoherent snatches of song, voices uproariously raised, bursts +of laughter. Once, as she looked out the door, thinking she heard +footsteps crunching in the snow, some one rapped out a coarse oath that +drove her back with burning face. + +As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to know in +what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor +riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and +still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices. + +Suddenly there rose a brief clamor. In the dead silence that followed, +she heard a thud and the clinking smash of breaking glass, a panted +oath, sounds of struggle. + +Stella slipped on a pair of her brother's gum boots and an overcoat, and +ran out on the path beaten from their cabin to the shore. It led past +the bunkhouse, and on that side opened two uncurtained windows, yellow +squares that struck gleaming on the snow. The panes of one were broken +now, sharp fragments standing like saw teeth in the wooden sash. + +She stole warily near and looked in. Two men were being held apart; one +by three of his fellows, the other _by_ Jack Fyfe alone. Fyfe grinned +mildly, talking to the men in a quiet, pacific tone. + +"Now you know that was nothing to scrap about," she heard him say, +"You're both full of fighting whisky, but a bunkhouse isn't any place to +fight. Wait till morning. If you've still got it in your systems, go +outside and have it out. But you shouldn't disturb our game and break up +the furniture. Be gentlemen, drunk or sober. Better shake hands and call +it square." + +"Aw, let 'em go to it, if they want to." + +Charlie's voice, drink-thickened, harsh, came from a earner of the room +into which she could not see until she moved nearer. By the time she +picked him out, Fyfe resumed his seat at the table where three others +and Benton waited with cards in their hands, red and white chips and +money stacked before them. + +She knew enough of cards to realize that a stiff poker game was on the +board when she had watched one hand dealt and played. It angered her, +not from any ethical motive, but because of her brother's part in it. He +had no funds to pay a cook's wages, yet he could afford to lose on one +hand as much as he credited her with for a month's work. She could slave +at the kitchen job day in and day out to save him forty-five dollars a +month. He could lose that without the flicker of an eyelash, but he +couldn't pay her wages on demand. Also she saw that he had imbibed too +freely, if the redness of his face and the glassy fixedness of his eyes +could be read aright. + +"Pig!" she muttered. "If that's his idea of pleasure. Oh, well, why +should I care? I don't, so far as he's concerned, if I could just get +away from this beast of a place myself." + +Abreast of her a logger came to the broken window with a sack to bar out +the frosty air. And Stella, realizing suddenly that she was shivering +with the cold, ran back to the cabin and got into her bed. + +But she did not sleep, save in uneasy periods of dozing, until midnight +was long past. Then Fyfe and her brother came in, and by the sounds she +gathered that Fyfe was putting Charlie to bed. She heard his deep, +drawly voice urging the unwisdom of sleeping with calked boots on, and +Beaton's hiccupy response. The rest of the night she slept fitfully, +morbidly imagining terrible things. She was afraid, that was the sum +and substance of it. Over in the bunkhouse the carousal was still at its +height. She could not rid herself of the sight of those two men +struggling to be at each other like wild beasts, the bloody face of the +one who had been struck, the coarse animalism of the whole +whisky-saturated gang. It repelled and disgusted and frightened her. + +The night frosts had crept through the single board walls of Stella's +room and made its temperature akin to outdoors when the alarm wakened +her at six in the morning. She shivered as she dressed. Katy John was +blissfully devoid of any responsibility, for seldom did Katy rise first +to light the kitchen fire. Yet Stella resented less each day's bleak +beginning than she did the enforced necessity of the situation; the fact +that she was enduring these things practically under compulsion was what +galled. + +A cutting wind struck her icily as she crossed the few steps of open +between cabin and kitchen. Above no cloud floated, no harbinger of +melting rain. The cold stars twinkled over snow-blurred forest, struck +tiny gleams from stumps that were now white-capped pillars. A night +swell from the outside waters beat, its melancholy dirge on the frozen +beach. And, as she always did at that hushed hour before dawn, she +experienced a physical shrinking from those grim solitudes in which +there was nothing warm and human and kindly, nothing but vastness of +space upon which silence lay like a smothering blanket, in which she, +the human atom, was utterly negligible, a protesting mote in the +inexorable wilderness. She knew this to be merely a state of mind, but +situated as she was, it bore upon her with all the force of reality. She +felt like a prisoner who above all things desired some mode of escape. + +A light burned in the kitchen. She thanked her stars that this bitter +cold morning she would not have to build a fire with freezing fingers +while her teeth chattered, and she hurried in to the warmth heralded by +a spark-belching stovepipe. But the Siwash girl had not risen to the +occasion. Instead, Jack Fyfe sat with his feet on the oven door, a cigar +in one corner of his mouth. The kettle steamed. Her porridge pot bubbled +ready for the meal. + +"Good morning," he greeted. "Mind my preempting your job?" + +"Not at all," she answered. "You can have it for keeps if you want." + +"No, thanks," he smiled. "I'm sour on my own cooking. Had to eat too +much of it in times gone by. I wouldn't be stoking up here either, only +I got frozen out. Charlie's spare bed hasn't enough blankets for me +these cold nights." + +He drew his chair aside to be out of the way as she hurried about her +breakfast preparations. All the time she was conscious that his eyes +were on her, and also that in them lurked an expression of keen +interest. His freckled mask of a face gave no clue to his thoughts; it +never did, so far as she had ever observed. Fyfe had a gambler's +immobility of countenance. He chucked the butt of his cigar in the stove +and sat with hands clasped over one knee for some time after Katy John +appeared and began setting the dining room table with a great clatter +of dishes. + +He arose to his feet then. Stella stood beside the stove, frying bacon. +A logger opened the door and walked in. He had been one to fare ill in +the night's hilarity, for a discolored patch encircled one eye, and his +lips were split and badly swollen. He carried a tin basin. + +"Kin I get some hot water?" he asked. + +Stella silently indicated the reservoir at one end of the range. The man +ladled his basin full. The fumes of whisky, the unpleasant odor of his +breath offended her, and she drew back. Fyfe looked at her as the man +went out. + +"What?" he asked. + +She had muttered something, an impatient exclamation of disgust. The +man's appearance disagreeably reminded her of the scene she had observed +through the bunkhouse window. It stung her to think that her brother was +fast putting himself on a par with them--without their valid excuse of +type and training. + +"Oh, nothing," she said wearily, and turned to the sputtering bacon. + +Fyfe put his foot up on the stove front and drummed a tattoo on his +mackinaw clad knee. + +"Aren't you getting pretty sick of this sort of work, these more or less +uncomfortable surroundings, and the sort of people you have to come in +contact with?" he asked pointedly. + +"I am," she returned as bluntly, "but I think that's rather an +impertinent question, Mr. Fyfe." + +He passed imperturbably over this reproof, and his glance turned +briefly toward the dining room. Katy John was still noisily at work. + +"You hate it," he said positively. "I know you do. I've seen your +feelings many a time. I don't blame you. It's a rotten business for a +girl with your tastes and bringing up. And I'm afraid you'll find it +worse, if this snow stays long. I know what a logging camp is when work +stops, and whisky creeps in, and the boss lets go his hold for the time +being." + +"That may be true," she returned gloomily, "but I don't see why you +should enumerate these disagreeable things for my benefit." + +"I'm going to show you a way out," he said softly. "I've been thinking +it over for quite a while. I want you to marry me." + +Stella gasped. + +"Mr. Fyfe." + +"Listen," he said peremptorily, leaning closer to her and lowering his +voice. "I have an idea that you're going to say you don't love me. Lord, +_I_ know that. But you _hate_ this. It grates against every inclination +of yours like a file on steel. I wouldn't jar on you like that. I +wouldn't permit you to live in surroundings that would. That's the +material side of it. Nobody can live on day dreams. I like you, Stella +Benton, a whole lot more than I'd care to say right out loud. You and I +together could make a home we'd be proud of. I want you, and you want to +get away from this. It's natural. Marry me and play the game fair, and I +don't think you'll be sorry. I'm putting it as baldly as I can. You +stand to win everything with nothing to lose--but your domestic +chains--" the gleam of a smile lit up his features for a second. "Won't +you take a chance?" "No," she declared impulsively. "I won't be a party +to any such cold-blooded transaction." + +"You don't seem to understand me," he said soberly. "I don't want to +hand out any sentiment, but it makes me sore to see you wasting yourself +on this sort of thing. If you must do it, why don't you do it for +somebody who'll make it worth while? If you'd use the brains God gave +you, you know that lots of couples have married on flimsier grounds than +we'd have. How can a man and a woman really know anything about each +other till they've lived together? Just because we don't marry with our +heads in the fog is no reason we shouldn't get on fine. What are you +going to do? Stick here at this till you go crazy? You won't get away. +You don't realize what a one-idea, determined person this brother of +yours is. He has just one object in life, and he'll use everything and +everybody in sight to attain that object. He means to succeed and he +will. You're purely incidental; but he has that perverted, middle-class +family pride that will make him prevent you from getting out and trying +your own wings. Nature never intended a woman like you to be a celibate, +any more than I was so intended. And sooner or late you'll marry +somebody--if only to hop out of the fire into the frying pan." + +"I hate you," she flashed passionately, "when you talk like that." + +"No, you don't," he returned quietly. "You hate what I say, because +it's the truth--and it's humiliating to be helpless. You think I don't +_sabe?_ But I'm putting a weapon into your hand. Let's put it +differently; leave out the sentiment for a minute. We'll say that I want +a housekeeper, preferably an ornamental one, because I like beautiful +things. You want to get away from this drudgery. That's what it is, +simple drudgery. You crave lots of things you can't get by yourself, but +that you could help me get for you. There's things lacking in your life, +and so is there in mine. Why shouldn't we go partners? You think about +it." + +"I don't need to," she answered coolly. "It wouldn't work. You don't +appear to have any idea what it means for a woman to give herself up +body and soul to a man she doesn't care for. For me it would be plain +selling myself. I haven't the least affection for you personally. I +might even detest you." + +"You wouldn't," he said positively. + +"What makes you so sure of that?" she demanded. + +"It would sound conceited if I told you why," he drawled. "Listen. We're +not gods and goddesses, we human beings. We're not, after all, in our +real impulses, so much different from the age when a man took his club +and went after a female that looked good to him. They mated, and raised +their young, and very likely faced on an average fewer problems than +arise in modern marriages supposedly ordained in Heaven. You'd have the +one big problem solved,--the lack of means to live decently,--which +wrecks more homes than anything else, far more than lack of love. +Affection doesn't seem to thrive on poverty. What is love?" + +His voice took on a challenging note. + +Stella shook her head. He puzzled her, wholly serious one minute, a +whimsical smile twisting up the corners of his mouth the next. And he +surprised her too by his sureness of utterance on subjects she had not +supposed would enter such a man's mind. + +"I don't know," she answered absently, turning over strips of bacon with +the long-handled fork. + +"There you are," he said. "I don't know either. We'd start even, then, +for the sake of argument. No, I guess we wouldn't either, because you're +the only woman I've run across so far with whom I could calmly +contemplate spending the rest of my life in close contact. That's a +fact. To me it's a highly important fact. You don't happen to have any +such feeling about me, eh?" + +"No. I hadn't even thought of you in that way," Stella answered +truthfully. + +"You want to think about me," he said calmly. "You want to think about +me from every possible angle, because I'm going to come back and ask you +this same question every once in a while, so long as you're in reach and +doing this dirty work for a thankless boss. You want to think of me as a +possible refuge from a lot of disagreeable things. I'd like to have you +to chum with, and I'd like to have some incentive to put a big white +bungalow on that old foundation for us two," he smiled. "I'll never do +it for myself alone. Go on. Take a gambling chance and marry me, Stella. +Say yes, and say it now." + +But she shook her head resolutely, and as Katy John came in just then, +Fyfe took his foot off the stove and went out of the kitchen. He threw a +glance over his shoulder at Stella, a broad smile, as if to say that he +harbored no grudge, and nursed no wound in his vanity because she would +have none of him. + +Katy rang the breakfast gong. Five minutes later the tattoo of knives +and forks and spoons told of appetites in process of appeasement. +Charlie came into the kitchen in the midst of this, bearing certain +unmistakable signs. His eyes were inflamed, his cheeks still bearing the +flush of liquor. His demeanor was that of a man suffering an intolerable +headache and correspondingly short-tempered. Stella barely spoke to him. +It was bad enough for a man to make a beast of himself with whisky, but +far worse was his gambling streak. There were so many little ways in +which she could have eased things with a few dollars; yet he always +grumbled when she spoke of money, always put her off with promises to be +redeemed when business got better. + +Stella watched him bathe his head copiously in cold water and then seat +himself at the long table, trying to force food upon an aggrieved and +rebellious stomach. Gradually a flood of recklessness welled up in her +breast. + +"For two pins I would marry Jack Fyfe," she told herself savagely. +"_Anything_ would be better than this." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +THE PLUNGE + +Stella went over that queer debate a good many times in the ten days +that followed. It revealed Jack Fyfe to her in a new, inexplicable +light, at odd variance with her former conception of the man. She could +not have visualized him standing with one foot on the stove front +speaking calmly of love and marriage if she had not seen him with her +own eyes, heard him with somewhat incredulous ears. She had continued to +endow him with the attributes of unrestrained passion, of headlong +leaping to the goal of his desires, of brushing aside obstacles and +opposition with sheer brute force; and he had shown unreckoned qualities +of restraint, of understanding. She was not quite sure if this were +guile or sensible consideration. He had put his case logically, +persuasively even. She was very sure that if he had adopted emotional +methods, she would have been repelled. If he had laid siege to her hand +and heart in the orthodox fashion, she would have raised that siege in +short order. As it stood, in spite of her words to him, there was in her +own mind a lack of finality. As she went about her daily tasks, that +prospect of trying a fresh fling at the world as Jack Fyfe's wife +tantalized her with certain desirable features. + +Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some time +to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of +environment? At best, she could only get away from Charlie's camp and +begin along new lines that might perhaps be little better, that must +inevitably lie among strangers in a strange land. To what end? What did +she want of life, anyway? She had to admit that she could not say fully +and explicitly what she wanted. When she left out her material wants, +there was nothing but a nebulous craving for--what? Love, she assumed. +And she could not define love, except as some incomprehensible transport +of emotion which irresistibly drew a man and a woman together, a divine +fire kindled in two hearts. It was not a thing she could vouch for by +personal experience. It might never touch and warm her, that divine +fire. Instinct did now and then warn her that some time it would wrap +her like a flame. But in the meantime--Life had her in midstream of its +remorseless, drab current, sweeping her along. A foothold offered. Half +a loaf, a single slice of bread even, is better than none. + +Jack Fyfe did not happen in again for nearly two weeks and then only to +pay a brief call, but he stole an opportunity, when Katy John was not +looking, to whisper in Stella's ear: + +"Have you been thinking about that bungalow of ours?" + +She shook her head, and he went out quietly, without another word. He +neither pleaded nor urged, and perhaps that was wisest, for in spite of +herself Stella thought of him continually. He loomed always before her, +a persistent, compelling factor. + +She knew at last, beyond any gainsaying, that the venture tempted, +largely perhaps because it contained so great an element of the unknown. +To get away from this soul-dwarfing round meant much. She felt herself +reasoning desperately that the frying pan could not be worse than the +fire, and held at least the merit of greater dignity and freedom from +the twin evils of poverty and thankless domestic slavery. + +While she considered this, pro and con, shrinking from such a step one +hour, considering it soberly the next, the days dragged past in +wearisome sequence. The great depth of snow endured, was added to by +spasmodic flurries. The frosts held. The camp seethed with the +restlessness of the men. In default of the daily work that consumed +their superfluous energy, the loggers argued and fought, drank and +gambled, made "rough house" in their sleeping quarters till sometimes +Stella's cheeks blanched and she expected murder to be done. Twice the +_Chickamin_ came back from Roaring Springs with whisky aboard, and a +protracted debauch ensued. Once a drunken logger shouldered his way into +the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at Stella, and, himself inflamed by +liquor and the affront, Charlie Benton beat the man until his face was a +mass of bloody bruises. That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents. +All the routine discipline of the woods seemed to have slipped out of +Benton's hands. When the second whisky consignment struck the camp, +Stella stayed in her room, refusing to cook until order reigned again. +Benton grumblingly took up the burden himself. With Katy's help and that +of sundry loggers, he fed the roistering crew, but for his sister it was +a two-day period of protesting disgust. + +That mood, like so many of her moods, relapsed into dogged endurance. +She took up the work again when Charlie promised that no more whisky +should be allowed in the camp. + +"Though it's ten to one I won't have a corporal's guard left when I want +to start work again," he grumbled. "I'm well within my rights if I put +my foot down hard on any jinks when there's work, but I have no license +to set myself up as guardian of a logger's morals and pocketbook when I +have nothing for him to do. These fellows are paying their board. So +long as they don't make themselves obnoxious to you, I don't see that +it's our funeral whether they're drunk or sober. They'd tell me so quick +enough." + +To this pronouncement of expediency Stella made no rejoinder. She no +longer expected anything much of Charlie, in the way of consideration. +So far as she could see, she, his sister, was little more to him than +one of his loggers; a little less important than, say, his donkey +engineer. In so far as she conduced to the well-being of the camp and +effected a saving to his credit in the matter of preparing food, he +valued her and was willing to concede a minor point to satisfy her. +Beyond that Stella felt that he did not go. Five years in totally +different environments had dug a great gulf between them. He felt an +arbitrary sense of duty toward her, she knew, but in its manifestations +it never lapped over the bounds of his own immediate self-interest. + +And so when she blundered upon knowledge of a state of affairs which +must have existed under her very nose for some time, there were few +remnants of sisterly affection to bid her seek extenuating +circumstances. + +Katy John proved the final straw. Just by what means Stella grew to +suspect any such moral lapse on Benton's part is wholly irrelevant. Once +the unpleasant likelihood came to her notice, she took measures to +verify her suspicion, and when convinced she taxed her brother with it, +to his utter confusion. + +"What kind of a man are you?" she cried at last in shamed anger. "Is +there nothing too low for you to dabble in? Haven't you any respect for +anything or anybody, yourself included?" + +"Oh, don't talk like a damned Puritan," Benton growled, though his +tanned face was burning. "This is what comes of having women around the +camp. I'll send the girl away." + +"You--you beast!" she flared--and ran out of the kitchen to seek refuge +in her own room and cry into her pillow some of the dumb protest that +surged up within her. For her knowledge of passion and the workings of +passion as they bore upon the relations of a man and a woman were at +once vague and tinctured with inflexible tenets of morality, the +steel-hard conception of virtue which is the bulwark of middle-class +theory for its wives and daughters and sisters--with an eye consistently +blind to the concealed lapses of its men. + +Stella Benton passed that morning through successive stages of shocked +amazement, of pity, and disgust. As between her brother and the Siwash +girl, she saw little to choose. From her virtuous pinnacle she abhorred +both. If she had to continue intimate living with them, she felt that +she would be utterly defiled, degraded to their level. That was her +first definite conclusion. + +After a time she heard Benton come into their living room and light a +fire in the heater. She dried her eyes and went out to face him. + +"Charlie," she declared desperately, "I can't stay here any longer. It's +simply impossible." + +"Don't start that song again. We've had it often enough," he answered +stubbornly. "You're not going--not till spring. I'm not going to let you +go in the frame of mind you're in right now, anyhow. You'll get over +that. Hang it, I'm not the first man whose foot slipped. It isn't your +funeral, anyway. Forget it." + +The grumbling coarseness of this retort left her speechless. Benton got +the fire going and went out. She saw him cross to the kitchen, and later +she saw Katy John leave the camp with all her belongings in a bundle +over her shoulder, trudging away to the camp of her people around the +point. + +Kipling's pregnant line shot across her mind: + +"For the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins." + +"I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor, +little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. She +doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem to +care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn't +right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him to--to +use." + +She looked out along the shores piled high with broken ice and snow, +through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted themselves +imperiously aloof, white spires against the sky,--over a forest all +draped in winter robes; shore, mountains, and forest alike were chill +and hushed and desolate. The lake spread its forty-odd miles in a +boomerang curve from Roaring Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifeless +gray. She sat a long time looking at that, and a dead weight seemed to +settle upon her heart. For the second time that day she broke down. Not +the shamed, indignant weeping of an hour earlier, but with the essence +of all things forlorn and desolate in her choked sobs. + +She did not hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was there, +until she felt his hand gently on her shoulder and looked up. And so +deep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving for some human +sympathy, some measure of understanding, that she made no effort to +remove his hand. She was in too deep a spiritual quagmire to refuse any +sort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in analytical self-fathoming. +She had a dim sense of being oddly comforted by his presence, as if she, +afloat on uncharted seas, saw suddenly near at hand a safe anchorage and +welcoming hands. Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked up +at Fyfe and hid her wet face in her hands again. He stood silent a few +seconds. When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation in his +voice. + +"What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?" + +Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept aside +before the essentially human need to share a burden that has grown too +great to bear alone. + +"Oh, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any place +for you at all." + +He slid his arm across her shoulders and tilted her face with his other +hand so that her eyes met his. And she felt no desire to draw away or +any of that old instinct to be on her guard against him. For all she +knew--indeed, by all she had been told--Jack Fyfe was tarred with the +same stick as her brother, but she had no thought of resisting him, no +feeling of repulsion. + +"Will you marry me, Stella?" he asked evenly. "I can free you from this +sort of thing forever." + +"How can I?" she returned. "I don't want to marry anybody. I don't love +you. I'm not even sure I like you. I'm too miserable to think, even. I'm +afraid to take a step like that. I should think you would be too." + +He shook his head. + +"I've thought a lot about it lately," he said. "It hasn't occurred to me +to be afraid of how it may turn out. Why borrow trouble when there's +plenty at hand? I don't care whether you love me or not, right now. You +couldn't possibly be any worse off as my wife, could you?" + +"No," she admitted. "I don't see how I could." + +"Take a chance then," he urged. "I'll make a fair bargain with you. I'll +make life as pleasant for you as I can. You'll live pretty much as +you've been brought up to live, so far as money goes. The rest we'll +have to work out for ourselves. I won't ask you to pretend anything you +don't feel. You'll play fair, because that's the way you're +made,--unless I've sized you up wrong. It'll simply be a case of our +adjusting ourselves, just as mating couples have been doing since the +year one. You've everything to gain and nothing to lose." + +"In some ways," she murmured. + +"Every way," he insisted. "You aren't handicapped by caring for any +other man." + +"How do you know?" she asked. + +"Just a hunch," Fyfe smiled. "If you did, he'd have beaten me to the +rescue long ago--if he were the sort of man you _could_ care for." + +"No," she admitted. "There isn't any other man, but there might be. +Think how terrible it would be if it happened--afterward." + +Fyfe shrugged his shoulders. + +"Sufficient unto the day," he said. "There is no string on either of us +just now. We start even. That's good enough. Will you?" + +"You have me at a disadvantage," she whispered. "You offer me a lot that +I want, everything but a feeling I've somehow always believed ought to +exist, ought to be mutual. Part of me wants to shut my eyes and jump. +Part of me wants to hang back. I can't stand this thing I've got into +and see no way of getting out of. Yet I dread starting a new train of +wretchedness. I'm afraid--whichever way I turn." + +Fyfe considered this a moment. + +"Well," he said finally, "that's a rather unfortunate attitude. But I'm +going into it with my eyes open. I know what I want. You'll be making a +sort of experiment. Still, I advise you to make it. I think you'll be +the better for making it. Come on. Say yes." + +Stella looked up at him, then out over the banked snow, and all the +dreary discomforts, the mean drudgery, the sordid shifts she had been +put to for months rose up in disheartening phalanx. For that moment Jack +Fyfe loomed like a tower of refuge. She trusted him now. She had a +feeling that even if she grew to dislike him, she would still trust him. +He would play fair. If he said he would do this or that, she could bank +on it absolutely. + +She turned and looked at him searchingly a long half-minute, wondering +what really lay behind the blue eyes that met her own so steadfastly. He +stood waiting patiently, outwardly impassive. But she could feel through +the thin stuff of her dress a quiver in the fingers that rested on her +shoulder, and that repressed sign of the man's pent-up feeling gave her +an odd thrill, moved her strangely, swung the pendulum of her impulse. + +"Yes," she said. + +Fyfe bent a little lower. + +"Listen," he said in characteristically blunt fashion. "You want to get +away from here. There is no sense in our fussing or hesitating about +what we're going to do, is there?" + +"No, I suppose not," she agreed. + +"I'll send the _Panther_ down to the Springs for Lefty Howe's wife," he +outlined his plans unhesitatingly. "She'll get up here this evening. +To-morrow we will go down and take the train to Vancouver and be +married. You have plenty of good clothes, good enough for Vancouver. I +know,"--with a whimsical smile,--"because you had no chance to wear them +out. Then we'll go somewhere, California, Florida, and come back to +Roaring Lake in the spring. You'll have all the bad taste of this out of +your mouth by that time." + +Stella nodded acquiescence. Better to make the plunge boldly, since she +had elected to make it. + +"All right. I'm going to tell Benton," Fyfe said. "Good-by till +to-morrow." + +She stood up. He looked at her a long time earnestly, searchingly, one +of her hands imprisoned tight between his two big palms. Then, before +she was quite aware of his intention, he kissed her gently on the mouth, +and was gone. + + * * * * * + +This turn of events left Benton dumbfounded, to use a trite but +expressive phrase. He came in, apparently to look at Stella in amazed +curiosity, for at first he had nothing to say. He sat down beside his +makeshift desk and pawed over some papers, running the fingers of one +hand through his thick brown hair. + +"Well, Sis," he blurted out at last. "I suppose you know what you're +doing?" + +"I think so," Stella returned composedly. + +"But why all this mad haste?" he asked. "If you're going to get married, +why didn't you let me know, so I could give you some sort of decent +send-off." + +"Oh, thanks," she returned dryly. "I don't think that's necessary. Not +at this stage of the game, as you occasionally remark." + +He ruminated upon this a minute, flushing slightly. + +"Well, I wish you luck," he said sincerely enough. "Though I can hardly +realize this sudden move. You and Jack Fyfe may get on all right. He's a +good sort--in his way." + +"His way suits me," she said, spurred to the defensive by what she +deemed a note of disparagement in his utterance. "If you have any +objections or criticisms, you can save your breath--or address them +direct to Mr. Fyfe." + +"No, thank you," he grinned. "I don't care to get into any argument with +_him_, especially as he's going to be my brother-in-law. Fyfe's all +right. I didn't imagine he was the sort of man you'd fancy, that's all." + +Stella refrained from any comment on this. She had no intention of +admitting to Charlie that marriage with Jack Fyfe commended itself to +her chiefly as an avenue of escape from a well-nigh intolerable +condition which he himself had inflicted upon her. Her pride rose in +arms against any such belittling admission. She admitted it frankly to +herself,--and to Fyfe,--because Fyfe understood and was content with +that understanding. She desired to forget that phase of the +transaction. She told herself that she meant honestly to make the best +of it. + +Benton turned again to his papers. He did not broach the subject again +until in the distance the squat hull of the _Panther_ began to show on +her return from the Springs. Then he came to where Stella was putting +the last of her things into her trunk. He had some banknotes in one +hand, and a check. + +"Here's that ninety I borrowed, Stell," he said. "And a check for your +back pay. Things have been sort of lean around here, maybe, but I still +think it's a pity you couldn't have stuck it out till it came smoother. +I hate to see you going away with a chronic grouch against me. I suppose +I wouldn't even be a welcome guest at the wedding?" + +"No," she said unforgivingly. "Some things are a little too--too +recent." + +"Oh," he replied casually enough, pausing in the doorway a second on his +way out, "you'll get over that. You'll find that ordinary, everyday +living isn't any kid-glove affair." + +She sat on the closed lid of her trunk, looking at the check and money. +Three hundred and sixty dollars, all told. A month ago that would have +spelled freedom, a chance to try her luck in less desolate fields. Well, +she tried to consider the thing philosophically; it was no use to bewail +what might have been. In her hands now lay the sinews of a war she had +forgone all need of waging. It did not occur to her to repudiate her +bargain with Jack Fyfe. She had given her promise, and she considered +she was bound, irrevocably. Indeed, for the moment, she was glad of +that. She was worn out, all weary with unaccustomed stress of body and +mind. To her, just then, rest seemed the sweetest boon in the world. Any +port in a storm, expressed her mood. What came after was to be met as it +came. She was too tired to anticipate. + +It was a pale, weary-eyed young woman, dressed in the same plain +tailored suit she had worn into the country, who was cuddled to Mrs. +Howe's plump bosom when she went aboard the _Panther_ for the first +stage of her journey. + +A slaty bank of cloud spread a somber film across the sky. When the +_Panther_ laid her ice-sheathed guard-rail against the Hot Springs wharf +the sun was down. The lake spread gray and lifeless under a gray sky, +and Stella Benton's spirits were steeped in that same dour color. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED + +Spring had waved her transforming wand over the lake region before the +Fyfes came home again. All the low ground, the creeks and hollows and +banks, were bright green with new-leaved birch and alder and maple. The +air was full of those aromatic exudations the forest throws off when it +is in the full tide of the growing time. Shores that Stella had last +seen dismal and forlorn in the frost-fog, sheathed in ice, banked with +deep snow, lay sparkling now in warm sunshine, under an unflecked arch +of blue. All that was left of winter was the white cap on Mount Douglas, +snow-filled chasms on distant, rocky peaks. Stella stood on the Hot +Springs wharf looking out across the emerald deep of the lake, thinking +soberly of the contrast. + +Something, she reflected, some part of that desolate winter, must have +seeped to the very roots of her being to produce the state of mind in +which she embarked upon that matrimonial voyage. A little of it clung to +her still. She could look back at those months of loneliness, of +immeasurable toil and numberless indignities, without any qualms. There +would be no repetition of that. The world at large would say she had +done well. She herself in her most cynical moments could not deny that +she had done well. Materially, life promised to be generous. She was +married to a man who quietly but inexorably got what he wanted, and it +was her good fortune that he wanted her to have the best of everything. + +She saw him now coming from the hotel, and she regarded him +thoughtfully, a powerful figure swinging along with light, effortless +steps. He was back on his own ground, openly glad to be back. Yet she +could not recall that he had ever shown himself at a disadvantage +anywhere they had been together. He wore evening clothes when occasion +required as unconcernedly as he wore mackinaws and calked boots among +his loggers. She had not yet determined whether his equable poise arose +from an unequivocal democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any +rate, where she had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit +that socially, at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of +the game. Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. In +fact, so far as Jack Fyfe's breeding and antecedents were concerned, she +knew little more than before their marriage. He was not given to +reminiscence. His people--distant relatives--lived in her own native +state of Pennsylvania. He had an only sister who was now in South +America with her husband, a civil engineer. Beyond that Fyfe did not go, +and Stella made no attempt to pry up the lid of his past. She was not +particularly curious. + +Her clearest judgment of him was at first hand. He was a big, virile +type of man, generous, considerate, so sure of himself that he could be +tolerant of others. She could easily understand why Roaring Lake +considered Jack Fyfe "square." The other tales of him that circulated +there she doubted now. The fighting type he certainly was, aggressive in +a clash, but if there were any downright coarseness in him, it had never +manifested itself to her. She was not sorry she had married him. If they +had not set out blind in a fog of sentiment, as he had once put it, +nevertheless they got on. She did not love him,--not as she defined that +magic word,--but she liked him, was mildly proud of him. When he kissed +her, if there were no mad thrill in it, there was at least a passive +contentment in having inspired that affection. For he left her in no +doubt as to where he stood, not by what he said, but wholly by his +actions. + +He joined her now. The _Panther_, glossy black as a crow's wing with +fresh paint, lay at the pier-end with their trunks aboard. Stella +surveyed those marked with her initials, looking them over with a +critical eye, when they reached the deck. + +"How in the world did I ever manage to accumulate so much stuff, Jack?" +she asked quizzically. "I didn't realize it. We might have been doing +Europe with souvenir collecting our principal aim, by the amount of our +baggage." + +Fyfe smiled, without commenting. They sat on a trunk and watched Roaring +Springs fall astern, dwindle to a line of white dots against the great +green base of the mountain that rose behind it. + +"It's good to get back here," he said at last. "To me, anyway. How about +it, Stella? You haven't got so much of a grievance with the world in +general as you had when we left, eh?" + +"No, thank goodness," she responded fervently. + +"You don't look as if you had," he observed, his eyes admiringly upon +her. + +Nor had she. There was a bloom on the soft contour of her cheek, a +luminous gleam in her wide, gray eyes. All the ill wrought by months of +drudging work and mental revolt had vanished. She was undeniably good to +look at, a woman in full flower, round-bodied, deep-breasted, aglow with +the unquenched fires of youth. She was aware that Jack Fyfe found her so +and tolerably glad that he did so find her. She had revised a good many +of her first groping estimates of him that winter. And when she looked +over the port bow and saw in behind Halfway Point the huddled shacks of +her brother's camp where so much had overtaken her, she experienced a +swift rush of thankfulness that she was--as she was. She slid her gloved +hand impulsively into Jack Fyfe's, and his strong fingers shut down on +hers closely. + +They sat silent until the camp lay abeam. About it there was every sign +of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve hissing, stood +by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving back and forth across +the swifters, making all ready for a tow. Stella marked a new bunkhouse. +Away back on the logging ground in a greater clearing she saw the +separate smoke of two donkey engines. Another, a big roader, Fyfe +explained, puffed at the water's edge. She could see a string of logs +tearing down the skid-road. + +"He's going pretty strong, that brother of yours," Fyfe remarked. "If +he holds his gait, he'll be a big timberman before you know it." + +"He'll make money, I imagine," Stella admitted, "but I don't know what +good that will do him. He'll only want more. What is there about +money-making that warps some men so, makes them so grossly +self-centered? I'd pity any girl who married Charlie. He used to be +rather wild at home, but I never dreamed any man could change so." + +"You use the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband answered, +with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe his ways are +pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a competence--which is what +we're all after--out of pretty crude material. And he's just a kid, +after all, with a kid's tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda +like the beggar's ambition and energy." + +"But he hasn't the least consideration for anybody or anything," Stella +protested. "He rides rough-shod over every one. That isn't either right +or decent." + +"It's the only way some men can get to the top," Fyfe answered quietly. +"They concentrate on the object to be attained. That's all that counts +until they're in a secure position. Then, when they stop to draw their +breath, sometimes they find they've done lots of things they wouldn't do +again. You watch. By and by Charlie Benton will cease to have those +violent reactions that offend you so. As it is--he's a youngster, +bucking a big game. Life, when you have your own way to hew through it, +with little besides your hands and brain for capital, is no silk-lined +affair." + +She fell into thought over this reply. Fyfe had echoed almost her +brother's last words to her. And she wondered if Jack Fyfe had attained +that degree of economic power which enabled him to spend several +thousand dollars on a winter's pleasuring with her by the exercise of a +strong man's prerogative of overriding the weak, bending them to his own +inflexible purposes, ruthlessly turning everything to his own advantage? +If women came under the same head! She recalled Katy John, and her face +burned. Perhaps. But she could not put Jack Fyfe in her brother's +category. He didn't fit. Deep in her heart there still lurked an abiding +resentment against Charlie Benton for the restraint he had put upon her +and the license he had arrogated to himself. She could not convince +herself that the lapses of that winter were not part and parcel of her +brother's philosophy of life, a coarse and material philosophy. + +Presently they were drawing in to Cougar Point, with the +weather-bleached buildings of Fyfe's camp showing now among the +upspringing second-growth scrub. Fyfe went forward and spoke to the man +at the wheel. The _Panther_ swung offshore. + +"Why are we going out again?" Stella asked. + +"Oh, just for fun," Fyfe smiled. + +He sat down beside her and slipped one arm around her waist. In a few +minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away across the lake, +at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a mountain range in twain. + +"Look around," said he, "and tell me what you think of the House of +Fyfe." + +There it stood, snow-white, broad-porched, a new house reared upon the +old stone foundation she remembered. The noon sun struck flashing on the +windows. About it spread the living green of the grassy square, behind +that towered the massive, darker-hued background of the forest. + +"Oh," she exclaimed. "What wizard of construction did the work. _That_ +was why you fussed so long over those plans in Los Angeles. I thought it +was to be this summer or maybe next winter. I never dreamed you were +having it built right away." + +"Well, isn't it rather nice to come home to?" he observed. + +"It's dear. A homey looking place," she answered. "A beautiful site, and +the house fits,--that white and the red tiles. Is the big stone +fireplace in the living room, Jack?" + +"Yes, and one in pretty nearly every other room besides," he nodded. +"Wood fires are cheerful." + +The _Panther_ turned her nose shoreward at Fyfe's word. + +"I wondered about that foundation the first time I saw it," Stella +confessed, "whether you built it, and why it was never finished. There +was moss over the stones in places. And that lawn wasn't made in a +single season. I know, because dad had a country place once, and he was +raging around two or three summers because the land was so hard to get +well-grassed." + +"No, I didn't build the foundation or make the lawn," Fyfe told her. "I +merely kept it in shape. A man named Hale owned the land that takes in +the bay and the point when I first came to the lake. He was going to be +married. I knew him pretty well. But it was tough going those days. He +was in the hole on some of his timber, and he and his girl kept waiting. +Meantime he cleared and graded that little hill, sowed it to grass, and +laid the foundation. He was about to start building when he was killed. +A falling tree caught him. I bought in his land and the timber limits +that lie back of it. That's how the foundation came there." + +"It's a wonder it didn't grow up wild," Stella mused. "How long ago was +that?" + +"About five years," Fyfe said. "I kept the grass trimmed. It didn't seem +right to let the brush overrun it after the poor devil put that labor of +love on it. It always seemed to me that it should be kept smooth and +green, and that there should be a big, roomy bungalow there. You see my +hunch was correct, too." + +She looked up at him in some wonder. She hadn't accustomed herself to +associating Jack Fyfe with actions based on pure sentiment. He was too +intensely masculine, solid, practical, impassive. He did not seem to +realize even that sentiment had influenced him in this. He discussed it +too matter-of-factly for that. She wondered what became of the +bride-to-be. But that Fyfe could not tell her. + +"Hale showed me her picture once," he said, "but I never saw her. Oh, I +suppose she's married some other fellow long ago. Hale was a good sort. +He was out-lucked, that's all." + +The _Panther_ slid in to the float. Jack and Stella went ashore. Lefty +Howe came down to meet them. Thirty-five or forty men were stringing +away from the camp, back to their work in the woods. Some waved greeting +to Jack Fyfe, and he waved back in the hail-fellow fashion of the camps. + +"How's the frau, Lefty?" he inquired, after they had shaken hands. + +"Fine. Down to Vancouver. Sister's sick," Howe answered laconically. +"House's all shipshape. Wanta eat here, or up there?" + +"Here at the camp, until we get straightened around," Fyfe responded. +"Tell Pollock to have something for us in about half an hour. We'll go +up and take a look." + +Howe went in to convey this message, and the two set off up the path. A +sudden spirit of impishness made Jack Fyfe sprint. Stella gathered up +her skirt and raced after him, but a sudden shortness of breath overtook +her, and she came panting to where Fyfe had stopped to wait. + +"You'll have to climb hills and row and swim so you'll get some wind," +Fyfe chuckled. "Too much easy living, lady." + +She smiled without making any reply to this sally, and they entered the +house--the House of Fyfe, that was to be her home. + +If the exterior had pleased her, she went from room to room inside with +growing amazement. Fyfe had finished it from basement to attic without a +word to her that he had any such undertaking in hand. Yet there was +scarcely a room in which she could not find the visible result of some +expressed wish or desire. Often during the winter they had talked over +the matter of furnishings, and she recalled how unconsciously she had +been led to make suggestions which he had stored up and acted upon. For +the rest she found her husband's taste beyond criticism. There were +drapes and rugs and prints and odds and ends that any woman might be +proud to have in her home. + +"You're an amazing sort of a man, Jack," she said thoughtfully. "Is +there anything you're not up to? Even a Chinese servant in the kitchen. +It's perfect." + +"I'm glad you like it," he said. "I hoped you would." + +"Who wouldn't?" she cried impulsively. "I love pretty things. Wait till +I get done rearranging." + +They introduced themselves to the immobile-featured Celestial when they +had jointly and severally inspected the house from top to bottom. Sam +Foo gazed at them, listened to their account of themselves, and +disappeared. He re-entered the room presently, bearing a package. + +"Mist' Chol' Bentlee him leave foh yo'." + +Stella looked at it. On the outer wrapping was written: + + _From C.A. Benton to Mrs. John Henderson Fyfe_ + _A Belated Wedding Gift_ + +She cut the string, and delved into the cardboard box, and gasped. Out +of a swathing of tissue paper her hands bared sundry small articles. A +little cap and jacket of knitted silk--its double in fine, fleecy +yarn--a long silk coat--a bonnet to match,--both daintily embroidered. +Other things--a shoal of them--baby things. A grin struggled for +lodgment on Fyfe's freckled countenance. His blue eyes twinkled. + +"I suppose," he growled, "that's Charlie's idea of a joke, huh?" + +Stella turned away from the tiny garments, one little, hood crumpled +tight in her hand. She laid her hot face against his breast and her +shoulders quivered. She was crying. + +"Stella, Stella, what's the matter?" he whispered. + +"It's no joke," she sobbed. "It's a--it's a reality." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME + +From that day on Stella found in her hands the reins over a smooth, +frictionless, well-ordered existence. Sam Foo proved himself such a +domestic treasure as only the trained Oriental can be. When the labor of +an eight-room dwelling proved a little too much for him, he urbanely +said so. Thereupon, at Fyfe's suggestion, he imported a fellow +countryman, another bland, silent-footed model of efficiency in personal +service. Thereafter Stella's task of supervision proved a sinecure. + +A week or so after their return, in sorting over some of her belongings, +she came across the check Charlie had given her: that two hundred and +seventy dollars which represented the only money she had ever earned in +her life. She studied it a minute, then went out to where her husband +sat perched on the verandah rail. + +"You might cash this, Jack," she suggested. + +He glanced at the slip. + +"Better have it framed as a memento," he said, smiling. "You'll never +earn two hundred odd dollars so hard again, I hope. No, I'd keep it, if +I were you. If ever you should need it, it'll always be good--unless +Charlie goes broke." + +There never had been any question of money between them. From the day +of their marriage Fyfe had made her a definite monthly allowance, a +greater sum than she needed or spent. + +"As a matter of fact," he went on, "I'm going to open an account in your +name at the Royal Bank, so you can negotiate your own paper and pay your +own bills by check." + +She went in and put away the check. It was hers, earned, all too +literally, in the sweat of her brow. For all that it represented she had +given service threefold. If ever there came a time when that hunger for +independence which had been fanned to a flame in her brother's kitchen +should demand appeasement--she pulled herself up short when she found +her mind running upon such an eventuality. Her future was ordered. She +was married--to be a mother. Here lay her home. All about her ties were +in process of formation, ties that with time would grow stronger than +any shackles of steel, constraining her to walk in certain ways,--ways +that were pleasant enough, certain of ease if not of definite purpose. + +Yet now and then she found herself falling into fits of abstraction in +which Roaring Lake and Jack Fyfe, all that meant anything to her now, +faded into the background, and she saw herself playing a lone hand +against the world, making her individual struggle to be something more +than the petted companion of a dominant male and the mother of his +children. She never quite lost sight of the fact that marriage had been +the last resort, that in effect she had taken the avenue her personal +charm afforded to escape drudgery and isolation. There was still +deep-rooted in her a craving for something bigger than mere ease of +living. She knew as well as she knew anything that in the natural +evolution of things marriage and motherhood should have been the big +thing in her life. And it was not. It was too incidental, too +incomplete, too much like a mere breathing-place on life's highway. +Sometimes she reasoned with herself bluntly, instead of dreaming, was +driven to look facts in the eye because she did dream. Always she +encountered the same obstacle, a feeling that she had been defrauded, +robbed of something vital; she had forgone that wonderful, passionate +drawing together which makes the separate lives of the man and woman who +experiences it so fuse that in the truest sense of the word they become +one. + +Mostly she kept her mind from that disturbing introspection, because +invariably it led her to vague dreaming of a future which she told +herself--sometimes wistfully--could never be realized. She had shut the +door on many things, it seemed to her now. But she had the sense to know +that dwelling on what might have been only served to make her morbid, +and did not in the least serve to alter the unalterable. She had chosen +what seemed to her at the time the least of two evils, and she meant to +abide steadfast by her choice. + +Charlie Benton came to visit them. Strangely enough to Stella, who had +never seen him on Roaring Lake, at least, dressed otherwise than as his +loggers, he was sporting a natty gray suit, he was clean shaven, Oxford +ties on his feet, a gentleman of leisure in his garb. If he had started +on the down grade the previous winter, he bore no signs of it now, for +he was the picture of ruddy vigor, clear-eyed, brown-skinned, alert, +bubbling over with good spirits. + +"Why, say, you look like a tourist," Fyfe remarked after an appraising +glance. + +"I'm making money, pulling ahead of the game, that's all," Benton +retorted cheerfully. "I can afford to take a holiday now and then. I'm +putting a million feet a month in the water. That's going some for small +fry like me. Say, this house of yours is all to the good, Jack. It's got +class, outside and in. Makes a man feel as if he had to live up to it, +eh? Mackinaws and calked boots don't go with oriental rugs and oak +floors." + +"You should get a place like this as soon as possible then," Stella put +in drily, "to keep you up to the mark, on edge aesthetically, one might +put it." + +"Not to say morally," Benton laughed. "Oh, maybe I'll get to it by and +by, if the timber business holds up." + +Later, when he and Stella were alone together, he said to her: + +"You're lucky. You've got everything, and it comes without an effort. +You sure showed good judgment when you picked Jack Fyfe. He's a +thoroughbred." + +"Oh, thank you," she returned, a touch of irony in her voice, a subtlety +of inflection that went clean over Charlie's head. + +He was full of inquiries about where they had been that winter, what +they had done and seen. Also he brimmed over with his own affairs. He +stayed overnight and went his way with a brotherly threat of making +the Fyfe bungalow his headquarters whenever he felt like it. + +"It's a touch of civilization that looks good to me," he declared. "You +can put my private mark on one of those big leather chairs, Jack. I'm +going to use it often. All you need to make this a social center is a +good-looking girl or two--unmarried ones. You watch. When the summer +flock comes to the lake, your place is going to be popular." + +That observation verified Benton's shrewdness. The Fyfe bungalow did +become popular. Two weeks after Charlie's visit, a lean, white cruiser, +all brass and mahogany above her topsides, slid up to the float, and two +women came at a dignified pace along the path to the house. Stella had +met Linda Abbey once, reluctantly, under the circumstances, but it was +different now--with the difference that money makes. She could play +hostess against an effective background, and she did so graciously. Nor +was her graciousness wholly assumed. After all, they were her kind of +people: Linda, fair-haired, perfectly gowned, perfectly mannered, +sweetly pretty; Mrs. Abbey, forty-odd and looking thirty-five, with that +calm self-assurance which wealth and position confer upon those who hold +it securely. Stella found them altogether to her liking. It pleased her, +too, that Jack happened in to meet them. He was not a scintillating +talker, yet she had noticed that when he had anything to say, he never +failed to attract and hold attention. His quiet, impersonal manner never +suggested stolidness. And she was too keen an observer to overlook the +fact that from a purely physical standpoint Jack Fyfe made an +impression always, particularly on women. Throughout that winter it had +not disturbed her. It did not disturb her now, when she noticed Linda +Abbey's gaze coming back to him with a veiled appraisal in her blue eyes +that were so like Fyfe's own in their tendency to twinkle and gleam with +no corresponding play of features. + +"We'll expect to see a good deal of you this summer," Mrs. Abbey said +cordially at leave-taking. "We have a few people up from town now and +then to vary the monotony of feasting our souls on scenery. Sometimes we +are quite a jolly crowd. Don't be formal. Drop in when you feel the +inclination." + +When Stella reminded Jack of this some time later, in a moment of +boredom, he put the _Panther_ at her disposal for the afternoon. But he +would not go himself. He had opened up a new outlying camp, and he had +directions to issue, work to lay out. + +"You hold up the social end of the game," he laughed. "I'll hustle +logs." + +So Stella invaded the Abbey-Monohan precincts by herself and enjoyed +it--for she met a houseful of young people from the coast, and in that +light-hearted company she forgot for the time being that she was married +and the responsible mistress of a house. Paul Abbey was there, but he +had apparently forgotten or forgiven the blow she had once dealt his +vanity. Paul, she reflected, was not the sort to mourn a lost love long. + +She had the amused experience too of beholding Charlie Benton appear an +hour or so before she departed and straightway monopolize Linda Abbey in +his characteristically impetuous fashion. Charlie was no diplomat. He +believed in driving straight to any goal he selected. + +"So _that's_ the reason for the outward metamorphosis," Stella +reflected. "Well?" + +Altogether she enjoyed the afternoon hugely. The only fly in her +ointment was a greasy smudge bestowed upon her dress--a garment she +prized highly--by some cordage coiled on the _Panther's_ deck. The black +tender had carried too many cargoes of loggers and logging supplies to +be a fit conveyance for persons in party attire. She exhibited the +soiled gown to Fyfe with due vexation. + +"I hope you'll have somebody scrub down the _Panther_ the next time I +want to go anywhere in a decent dress," she said ruefully. "That'll +never come out. And it's the prettiest thing I've got too." + +"Ah, what's the odds?" Fyfe slipped one arm around her waist. "You can +buy more dresses. Did you have a good time? That's the thing!" + +That ruined gown, however, subsequently produced an able, forty-foot, +cruising launch, powerfully engined, easy in a sea, and comfortably, +even luxuriously fitted as to cabin. With that for their private use, +the _Panther_ was left to her appointed service, and in the new boat +Fyfe and Stella spent many a day abroad on Roaring Lake. They fished +together, explored nooks and bays up and down its forty miles of length, +climbed hills together like the bear of the ancient rhyme, to see what +they could see. And the _Waterbug_ served to put them on intimate terms +with their neighbors, particularly the Abbey crowd. The Abbeys took to +them wholeheartedly. Fyfe himself was highly esteemed by the elder +Abbey, largely, Stella suspected, for his power on Roaring Lake. Abbey +_pere_ had built up a big fortune out of timber. He respected any man +who could follow the same path to success. Therefore he gave Fyfe double +credit,--for making good, and for a personality that could not be +overlooked. He told Stella that once; that is to say, he told her +confidentially that her husband was a very "able" young man. Abbey +senior was short and double-chinned and inclined to profuse perspiration +if he moved in haste over any extended time. Paul promised to be like +him, in that respect. + +Summer slipped by. There were dances, informal little hops at the Abbey +domicile, return engagements at the Fyfe bungalow, laughter and music +and Japanese lanterns strung across the lawn. There was tea and tennis +and murmuring rivers of small talk. And amid this Stella Fyfe flitted +graciously, esteeming it her world, a fair measure of what the future +might be. Viewed in that light, it seemed passable enough. + +Later, when summer was on the wane, she withdrew from much of this +activity, spending those days when she did not sit buried in a book out +on the water with her husband. When October ushered in the first of the +fall rains, they went to Vancouver and took apartments. In December her +son was born. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE + +With the recurrence of spring, Fyfe's household transferred itself to +the Roaring Lake bungalow again. Stella found the change welcome, for +Vancouver wearied her. It was a little too crude, too much as yet in the +transitory stage, in that civic hobbledehoy period which overtakes every +village that shoots up over-swiftly to a city's dimensions. They knew +people, to be sure, for the Abbey influence would have opened the way +for them into any circle. Stella had made many friends and pleasant +acquaintances that summer on the lake, but part of that butterfly clique +sought pleasanter winter grounds before she was fit for social activity. +Apart from a few more or less formal receptions and an occasional +auction party, she found it pleasanter to stay at home. Fyfe himself had +spent only part of his time in town after their boy was born. He was +extending his timber operations. What he did not put into words, but +what Stella sensed because she experienced the same thing herself, was +that town bored him to death,--such town existence as Vancouver +afforded. Their first winter had been different, because they had sought +places where there was manifold variety of life, color, amusement. She +was longing for the wide reach of Roaring Lake, the immense +amphitheater of the surrounding mountains, long before spring. + +So she was quite as well pleased when a mild April saw them domiciled at +home again. In addition to Sam Foo and Feng Shu, there was a nurse for +Jack Junior. Stella did not suggest that; Fyfe insisted on it. He was +quite proud of his boy, but he did not want her chained to her baby. + +"If the added expense doesn't count, of course a nurse will mean a lot +more personal freedom," Stella admitted. "You see, I haven't the least +idea of your resources, Jack. All I know about it is that you allow me +plenty of money for my individual expenses. And I notice we're acquiring +a more expensive mode of living all the time." + +"That's so," Fyfe responded. "I never have gone into any details of my +business with you. No reason why you shouldn't know what limits there +are to our income. You never happened to express any curiosity before. +Operating as I did up till lately, the business netted anywhere from +twelve to fifteen thousand a year. I'll double that this season. In +fact, with the amount of standing timber I control, I could make it +fifty thousand a year by expanding and speeding things up. I guess you +needn't worry about an extra servant or two." + +So, apart from voluntary service on behalf of Jack Junior, she was free +as of old to order her days as she pleased. Yet that small morsel of +humanity demanded much of her time, because she released through the +maternal floodgates a part of that passionate longing to bestow love +where her heart willed. Sometimes she took issue with herself over that +wayward tendency. By all the rules of the game, she should have loved +her husband. He was like a rock, solid, enduring, patient, kind, and +generous. He stood to her in the most intimate relation that can exist +between a man and a woman. But she never fooled herself; she never had +so far as Jack Fyfe was concerned. She liked him, but that was all. He +was good to her, and she was grateful. + +Sometimes she had a dim sense that under his easy-going exterior lurked +a capacity for tremendously passionate outbreak. If she had been +compelled to modify her first impression of him as an arrogant, dominant +sort of character, scarcely less rough than the brown firs out of which +he was hewing a fortune, she knew likewise that she had never seen +anything but the sunny side of him. He still puzzled her a little at +times; there were odd flashes of depths she could not see into, a +quality of unexpectedness in things he would do and say. Even so, +granting that in him was embodied so much that other men she knew +lacked, she did not love him; there were indeed times when she almost +resented him. + +Why, she could not perhaps have put into words. It seemed too fantastic +for sober summing-up, when she tried. But lurking always in the +background of her thoughts was the ghost of an unrealized dream, a +nebulous vision which once served to thrill her in secret. It could +never be anything but a vision, she believed now, and believing, +regretted. The cold facts of her existence couldn't be daydreamed away. +She was married, and marriage put a full stop to the potential +adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at the opposite pole +from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed to that. She took for +her guiding-star--theoretically--the twin concepts of morality and duty +as she had been taught to construe them. So she saw no loophole, and +seeing none, felt cheated of something infinitely precious. Marriage and +motherhood had not come to her as the fruits of love, as the +passionately eager fulfilling of her destiny. It had been thrust upon +her. She had accepted it as a last resort at a time when her powers of +resistance to misfortune were at the ebb. + +She knew that this sort of self-communing was a bad thing, that it was +bound to sour the whole taste of life in her mouth. As much as possible +she thrust aside those vague, repressed longings. Materially she had +everything. If she had foregone that bargain with Jack Fyfe, God only +knew what long-drawn agony of mind and body circumstances and Charlie +Benton's subordination of her to his own ends might have inflicted upon +her. That was the reverse of her shield, but one that grew dimmer as +time passed. Mostly, she took life as she found it, concentrating upon +Jack Junior, a sturdy boy with blue eyes like his father, and who grew +steadily more adorable. + +Nevertheless she had recurring periods when moodiness and ill-stifled +discontent got hold of her. Sometimes she stole out along the cliffs to +sit on a mossy boulder, staring with absent eyes at the distant hills. +And sometimes she would slip out in a canoe, to lie rocking in the lake +swell,--just dreaming, filled with a passive sort of regret. She could +not change things now, but she could not help wishing she could. + +Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. Roaring Lake, +pent in the shape of a boomerang between two mountain ranges, was +subject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot down its length +like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew that; she had seen the +glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten minutes, but she was not +afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She was hard and strong. The +open, the clean mountain air, and a measure of activity, had built her +up physically. She swam like a seal. Out in that sixteen-foot Peterboro +she could detach herself from her world of reality, lie back on a +cushion, and lose herself staring at the sky. She paid little heed to +Fyfe's warning beyond a smiling assurance that she had no intention of +courting a watery end. + +So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack Junior, crowing in +his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the +north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to +dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. +A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a +snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A +party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till +after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant +logging point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and breakfasted with him. +She was tired, drowsy, content to lie there in pure physical +relaxation. Lying so, before she was aware of it, her eyes closed. + +She wakened with a start at a cold touch of moisture on her face,--rain, +great pattering drops. Overhead an ominously black cloud hid the face of +the sun. The shore, when she looked, lay a mile and a half abeam. To the +north and between her and the land's rocky line was a darkening of the +lake's surface. Stella reached for her paddle. The black cloud let fall +long, gray streamers of rain. There was scarcely a stirring of the air, +but that did not deceive her. There was a growing chill, and there was +that broken line sweeping down the lake. Behind that was wind, a summer +gale, the black squall dreaded by the Siwashes. + +She had to buck her way to shore through that. She drove hard on the +paddle. She was not afraid, but there rose in her a peculiar tensed-up +feeling. Ahead lay a ticklish bit of business. The sixteen-foot canoe +dwarfed to pitiful dimensions in the face of that snarling line of +wind-harried water. She could hear the distant murmur of it presently, +and gusty puffs of wind began to strike her. + +Then it swept up to her, a ripple, a chop, and very close behind that +the short, steep, lake combers with a wind that blew off the tops as +each wave-head broke in white, bubbling froth. Immediately she began to +lose ground. She had expected that, and it did not alarm her. If she +could keep the canoe bow on, there was an even chance that the squall +would blow itself out in half an hour. But keeping the canoe bow on +proved a task for stout arms. The wind would catch all that forward +part which thrust clear as she topped a sea and twist it aside, tending +always to throw her broadside into the trough. Spray began to splash +aboard. The seas were so short and steep that the Peterboro would rise +over the crest of a tall one and dip its bow deep in the next, or leap +clear to strike with a slap that made Stella's heart jump. She had never +undergone quite that rough and tumble experience in a small craft. She +was being beaten farther out and down the lake, and her arms were +growing tired. Nor was there any slackening of the wind. + +The combined rain and slaps of spray soaked her thoroughly. A puddle +gathered about her knees in the bilge, sloshing fore and aft as the +craft pitched, killing the natural buoyancy of the canoe so that she +dove harder. Stella took a chance, ceased paddling, and bailed with a +small can. She got a tossing that made her head swim while she lay in +the trough. And when she tried to head up into it again, one comber +bigger than its fellows reared up and slapped a barrel of water inboard. +The next wave swamped her. + +Sunk to the clamps, Stella held fast to the topsides, crouching on her +knees, immersed to the hips in water that struck a chill through her +flesh. She had the wit to remember and act upon Jack Fyfe's coaching, +namely, to sit tight and hang on. No sea that ever ran can sink a canoe. +Wood is buoyant. So long as she could hold on, the submerged craft would +keep her head and shoulders above water. But it was numbing cold. Fed by +glacial streams, Roaring Lake is icy in hottest midsummer. + +What with paddling and bailing and the excitement of the struggle, +Stella had wasted no time gazing about for other boats. She knew that if +any one at the camp saw her, rescue would be speedily effected. Now, +holding fast and sitting quiet, she looked eagerly about as the swamped +canoe rose loggily on each wave. Almost immediately she was heartened by +seeing distinctly some sort of craft plunging through the blow. She had +not long to wait after that, for the approaching launch was a lean-lined +speeder, powerfully engined, and she was being forced. Stella supposed +it was one of the Abbey runabouts. Even with her teeth chattering and +numbness fastening itself upon her, she shivered at the chances the man +was taking. It was no sea for a speed boat to smash into at thirty miles +an hour. She saw it shoot off the top of one wave and disappear in a +white burst of spray, slash through the next and bury itself deep again, +flinging a foamy cloud far to port and starboard. Stella cried futilely +to the man to slow down. She could hang on a long time yet, but her +voice carried no distance. + +After that she had not long to wait. In four minutes the runabout was +within a hundred yards, open exhausts cracking like a machine gun. And +then the very thing she expected and dreaded came about. Every moment +she expected to see him drive bows under and go down. Here and there at +intervals uplifted a comber taller than its fellows, standing, just as +it broke, like a green wall. Into one such hoary-headed sea the white +boat now drove like a lance. Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade, +saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch +and smash the low windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the +roaring exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of +broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into +the trough, deep down by the head with the weight of water she had +taken. + +The man in her stood up with hands cupped over his mouth. + +"Can you hang on a while longer?" he shouted. "Till I can get my boat +bailed?" + +"I'm all right," she called back. + +She saw him heave up the engine hatch. For a minute or two he bailed +rapidly. Then he spun the engine, without result. He straightened up at +last, stood irresolute a second, peeled off his coat. + +The launch lay heavily in the trough. The canoe, rising and clinging on +the crest of each wave, was carried forward a few feet at a time, taking +the run of the sea faster than the disabled motorboat. So now only a +hundred-odd feet separated them, but they could come no nearer, for the +canoe was abeam and slowly drifting past. + +Stella saw the man stoop and stand up with a coil of line in his hand. +Then she gasped, for he stepped on the coaming and plunged overboard in +a beautiful, arching dive. A second later his head showed glistening +above the gray water, and he swam toward her with a slow, overhand +stroke. It seemed an age--although the actual time was brief +enough--before he reached her. She saw then that there was method in +his madness, for the line strung out behind him, fast to a cleat on the +launch. He laid hold of the canoe and rested a few seconds, panting, +smiling broadly at her. + +"Sorry that whopping wave put me out of commission," he said at last. +"I'd have had you ashore by now. Hang on for a minute." + +He made the line fast to a thwart near the bow. Holding fast with one +hand, he drew the swamped canoe up to the launch. In that continuous +roll it was no easy task to get Stella aboard, but they managed it, and +presently she sat shivering in the cockpit, watching the man spill the +water out of the Peterboro till it rode buoyantly again. Then he went to +work at his engine methodically, wiping dry the ignition terminals, all +the various connections where moisture could effect a short circuit. At +the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple +cylinders fired with a roar. + +He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering gear +stood. + +"Well, Miss Ship-wrecked Mariner," said he lightly, "where do you wish +to be landed?" + +"Over there, if you please." Stella pointed to where the red roof of the +bungalow stood out against the green. "I'm Mrs. Fyfe." + +"Ah!" said he. An expression of veiled surprise flashed across his face. +"Another potential romance strangled at birth. You know, I hoped you +were some local maiden before whom I could pose as a heroic rescuer. +Such is life. Odd, too. Linda Abbey--I'm the Monohan tail to the Abbey +business kite, you see--impressed me as pilot for a spin this afternoon +and backed out at the last moment. I think she smelled this blow. So I +went out for a ride by myself. I was glowering at that new house through +a glass when I spied you out in the thick of it." + +He had the clutch in now, and the launch was cleaving the seas, even at +half speed throwing out wide wings of spray. Some of this the wind +brought across the cockpit. "Come up into this seat," Monohan commanded. +"I don't suppose you can get any wetter, but if you put your feet +through this bulkhead door, the heat from the engine will warm you. By +Jove, you're fairly shivering." + +"It's lucky for me you happened along," Stella remarked, when she was +ensconced behind the bulkhead. "I was getting so cold. I don't know how +much longer I could have stood it." + +"Thank the good glasses that picked you out. You were only a speck on +the water, you know, when I sighted you first." + +He kept silent after that. All his faculties were centered on the seas +ahead which rolled up before the sharp cutwater of the launch. He was +making time and still trying to avoid boarding seas. When a big one +lifted ahead, he slowed down. He kept one hand on the throttle control, +whistling under his breath disconnected snatches of song. Stella studied +his profile, clean-cut as a cameo and wholly pleasing. He was almost as +big-bodied as Jack Fyfe, and full four inches taller. The wet shirt +clinging close to his body outlined well-knit shoulders, ropy-muscled +arms. He could easily have posed for a Viking, so strikingly blond was +he, with fair, curly hair. She judged that he might be around thirty, +yet his face was altogether boyish. + +Sitting there beside him, shivering in her wet clothes, she found +herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about a man that +focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed it or no. Why +should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the mere physical nearness +of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There was no debating that. And +she wondered--wondered if a bolt of that lightning she had dreaded ever +since her marriage was about to strike her now. She hoped not. All her +emotions had lain fallow. If Jack Fyfe had no power to stir her,--and +she told herself Jack had so failed, without asking herself why,--then +some other man might easily accomplish that, to her unutterable grief. +She had told herself many a time that no more terrible plight could +overtake her than to love and be loved and sit with hands folded, +foregoing it all. She shrank from so tragic an evolution. It meant only +pain, the ache of unfulfilled, unattainable desires. If, she reflected +cynically, this man beside her stood for such a motif in her life, he +might better have left her out in the swamped canoe. + +While she sat there, drawn-faced with the cold, thinking rather amazedly +these things which she told herself she had no right to think, the +launch slipped into the quiet nook of Cougar Bay and slowed down to the +float. + +Monohan helped her out, threw off the canoe's painter, and climbed back +into the launch. + +"You're as wet as I am," Stella said. "Won't you come up to the house +and get a change of clothes? I haven't even thanked you." + +"Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please remember +not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy the next +time--and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming sex. All smiles one +minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay this time, thanks. A little +wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the water long enough to get chilled, you +know. I'll be home in half an hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs. +Fyfe, and drink something hot to drive that chill away. Good-by." + +Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting grip. +Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy vision of a +greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of soul-affinity, of +irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into +reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always +viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile +natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her, +nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute. +She had never undergone any such experience, and she puzzled over it +now. A chance stranger, and his touch could make her pulse leap. It +filled her with astonished dismay. + +Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack Junior +cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the natural +reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came home, she +told him lightly of her rescue. + +He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, his eyes +steady on her. + +"That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you +remember not to drift offshore again?" + +"I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant +experience." + +"Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on Roaring +Lake again." + +"Do you know him?" she asked. + +"Yes," he replied briefly. + +For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its habitual +impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer sort of +intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly surprised. It +wasn't quite in his usual manner. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +A RESURRECTION + +It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a discovery which +profoundly affected the whole current of her thought. The long twilight +was just beginning. She was curled on the living-room floor, playing +with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie Benton sat by a window, smoking, +conversing, as they frequently did, upon certain phases of the timber +industry. A draft from an open window fluttered some sheet music down +off the piano rack, and Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny, +clawing hands. Some of the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One +bit of music was a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it +soared above her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without +any premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began to +run over the accompaniment. She could play passably. + +"That doesn't seem so very hard," she thought aloud. Benton turned at +sound of her words. + +"Say, did you never get any part of your voice back, Stell?" he asked. +"I never hear you try to sing." + +"No," she answered. "I tried and tried long after you left home, but it +was always the same old story. I haven't sung a note in five years." + +"Linda fell down hard on that song last night," he went on. "There was a +time when that wouldn't have been a starter for you, eh? Did you know +Stella used to warble like a prima donna, Jack?" + +Fyfe shook his head. + +"Fact. The governor spent a pot of money cultivating her voice. It was +some voice, too. She--" + +He broke off to listen. Stella was humming the words of the song, her +fingers picking at the melody instead of the accompaniment. + +"Why, you can," Benton cried. + +"Can what?" She turned on the stool. + +"Sing, of course. You got that high trill that Linda had to screech +through. You got it perfectly, without effort." + +"I didn't," she returned. "Why, I wasn't singing, just humming it over." + +"You let out a link or two on those high notes just the same, whether +you knew you were doing it or not," her brother returned impatiently. +"Go on. Turn yourself loose. Sing that song." + +"Oh, I couldn't," Stella said ruefully. "I haven't tried for so long. +It's no use. My voice always cracks, and I want to cry." + +"Crack fiddlesticks!" Benton retorted. "I know what it used to be. +Believe me, it sounded natural, even if you were just lilting. Here." + +He came over to the piano and playfully edged her off the stool. + +"I'm pretty rusty," he said. "But I can fake what I can't play of this. +It's simple enough. You stand up there and sing." + +She only stood looking at him. + +"Go on," he commanded. "I believe you can sing anything. You have to +show me, if you can't." + +Stella fingered the sheets reluctantly. Then she drew a deep breath and +began. + +It was not a difficult selection, merely a bit from a current light +opera, with a closing passage that ranged a trifle too high for the +ordinary untrained voice to take with ease. Stella sang it effortlessly, +the last high, trilling notes pouring out as sweet and clear as the +carol of a lark. Benton struck the closing chord and looked up at her. +Fyfe leaned forward in his chair. Jack Junior, among his pillows on the +floor, waved his arms, kicking and gurgling. + +"You did pretty well on that," Charlie remarked complacently. "Now +_sing_ something. Got any of your old pieces?" + +"I wonder if I could?" Stella murmured. "I'm almost afraid to try." + +She hurried away to some outlying part of the house, reappearing in a +few minutes with a dog-eared bundle of sheets in her hand. From among +these she selected three and set them on the rack. + +Benton whistled when he glanced over the music. + +"The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, look at +the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from the 'Flying +Dutchman.' Some stunt." + +"Marchand composed it for the express purpose of trying out voices," +Stella said. "It _is_ a stunt." + +"You'll have to play your own accompaniment," Charlie grinned. "That's +too much for me." + +"Oh, just so you give me a little support here and there," Stella told +him. "I can't sing sitting on a piano stool." + +Benton made a face at the music and struck the keys. + +It seemed to Stella nothing short of a miracle. She had been mute so +long. She had almost forgotten what a tragedy losing her voice had been. +And to find it again, to hear it ring like a trumpet. It did! It was too +big for the room. She felt herself caught up in a triumphant ecstasy as +she sang. She found herself blinking as the last note died away. Her +brother twisted about on the piano stool, fumbling for a cigarette. + +"And still they say they can't come back," he remarked at last. "Why, +you're better than you ever were, Stella. You've got the old sweetness +and flexibility that dad used to rave about. But your voice is bigger, +somehow different. It gets under a man's skin." + +She picked up the baby from the floor, began to play with him. She +didn't want to talk. She wanted to think, to gloat over and hug to +herself this miracle of her restored voice. She was very quiet, very +much absorbed in her own reflections until it was time--very shortly--to +put Jack Junior in his bed. That was a function she made wholly her own. +The nurse might greet his waking whimper in the morning and minister to +his wants throughout the day, but Stella "tucked him in" his crib every +night. And after the blue eyes were closed, she sat there, very still, +thinking. In a detached way she was conscious of hearing Charlie leave. + +Later, when she was sitting beside her dressing table brushing her hair, +Fyfe came in. He perched himself on the foot rail of the bed, looking +silently at her. She had long grown used to that. It was a familiar +trick of his. + +"How did it happen that you've never tried your voice lately?" he asked +after a time. + +"I gave it up long ago," she said. "Didn't I ever tell you that I used +to sing and lost my voice?" + +"No," he answered. "Charlie did just now. You rather took my breath +away. It's wonderful. You'd be a sensation in opera." + +"I might have been," she corrected. "That was one of my little dreams. +You don't know what a grief it was to me when I got over that throat +trouble and found I couldn't sing. I used to try and try--and my voice +would break every time. I lost all heart to try after a while. That was +when I wanted to take up nursing, and they wouldn't let me. I haven't +thought about singing for an age. I've crooned lullabies to Jacky +without remembering that I once had volume enough to drown out an +accompanist. Dad was awfully proud of my voice." + +"You've reason to be proud of it now," Fyfe said slowly. "It's a voice +in ten thousand. What are going to do with it?" + +Stella drew the brush mechanically through her heavy hair. She had been +asking herself that. What could she do? A long road and a hard one lay +ahead of her or any other woman who essayed to make her voice the basis +of a career. Over and above that she was not free to seek such a career. +Fyfe himself knew that, and it irritated her that he should ask such a +question. She swung about on him. + +"Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that my voice +is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in the East or +abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of such an undertaking? +To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to your logs?" + +"So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little reflected glory +as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," he replied slowly. +"Well, I can't say that's a particularly pleasing prospect." + +"Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back +impatiently. "It'll be an asset--like my looks--and--and--" + +She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary sob. Fyfe +crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her. + +"Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool." + +"D--don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm sorry. I simply +can't help it. You don't understand." + +"Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's the +devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,--to feed her soul with +illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look here." + +He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, facing him. +There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together of his lips that +frightened her a little. + +"Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you realize what +sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You married me under more +or less compulsion,--compulsion of circumstances,--and gradually you're +beginning to get dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate +things you maybe don't dream of now, if you keep on. Damn it, I didn't +create the circumstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It +satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't any +more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going to make +your life full of misery." + +"I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions +that--that--Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not complaining. I +don't even know what gave me this black mood, just now. I suppose that +queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. I feel--well, as if I +were a different person, somehow; as if I had forfeited any right to +have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. But it's there. I can't help my +feeling--or my lack of it." + +Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her shoulders. + +"Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially that +last. We've been married some little time now, and if anything, we're +farther apart in the essentials of mating than we were at the +beginning. You've committed yourself to an undertaking, yet more and +more you encourage yourself to wish for the moon. If you don't stop +dreaming and try real living, don't you see a lot of trouble ahead for +yourself? It's simple. You're slowly hardening yourself against me, +beginning to resent my being a factor in your life. It's only a matter +of time, if you keep on, until your emotions center about some other +man." + +"Why do you talk like that?" she said bitterly. "Do you think I've got +neither pride nor self-respect?" + +"Yes. Both a-plenty," he answered. "But you're a woman, with a rather +complex nature even for your sex. If your heart and your head ever clash +over anything like that, you'll be in perfect hell until one or the +other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, and high-strung as +thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides three meals a day and +plenty of good clothes to complete your existence. If I can't make it +complete, some other man will make you think he can. Why don't you try? +Haven't I got any possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little +halo of romance about me, for your own sake--if not for mine?" + +He drew her up close to him, stroking tenderly the glossy brown hair +that flowed about her shoulders. + +"Try it, Stella," he whispered passionately. "Try wanting to like me, +for a change. I can't make love by myself. Shake off that infernal +apathy that's taking possession of you where I'm concerned. If you can't +love me, for God's sake fight with me. Do _something_!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +THE CRISIS + +Looking back at that evening as the summer wore on, Stella perceived +that it was the starting point of many things, no one of them definitely +outstanding by itself but bulking large as a whole. Fyfe made his +appeal, and it left her unmoved save in certain superficial aspects. She +was sorry, but she was mostly sorry for herself. And she denied his +premonition of disaster. If, she said to herself, they got no raptures +out of life, at least they got along without friction. In her mind their +marriage, no matter that it lacked what she no less than Fyfe deemed an +essential to happiness, was a fixed state, final, irrevocable, not to be +altered by any emotional vagaries. + +No man, she told herself, could make her forget her duty. If it should +befall that her heart, lacking safe anchorage, went astray, that would +be her personal cross--not Jack Fyfe's. _He_ should never know. One +might feel deeply without being moved to act upon one's feelings. So she +assured herself. + +She never dreamed that Jack Fyfe could possibly have foreseen in Walter +Monohan a dangerous factor in their lives. A man is not supposed to have +uncanny intuitions, even when his wife is a wonderfully attractive +woman who does not care for him except in a friendly sort of way. +Stella herself had ample warning. From the first time of meeting, the +man's presence affected her strangely, made an appeal to her that no man +had ever made. She felt it sitting beside him in the plunging launch +that day when Roaring Lake reached its watery arms for her. There was +seldom a time when they were together that she did not feel it. And she +pitted her will against it, as something to be conquered and crushed. + +There was no denying the man's personal charm in the ordinary sense of +the word. He was virile, handsome, cultured, just such a man as she +could easily have centered her heart upon in times past,--just such a +man as can set a woman's heart thrilling when he lays siege to her. If +he had made an open bid for Stella's affection, she, entrenched behind +all the accepted canons of her upbringing, would have recoiled from him, +viewed him with wholly distrustful eyes. + +But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he became +so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a continual +informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and Abbey's. +Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common knowledge on +Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the Abbey-Monohan +combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the lake that summer. +There had grown up a genuine intimacy between Linda and Stella. There +were always people at the Abbeys'; sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe +bungalow. Stella's marvellous voice served to heighten her popularity. +The net result of it all was that in the following three months source +three days went by that she did not converse with Monohan. + +She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They stood +out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. Where Fyfe +was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, save for that +whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes, +Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face. +He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had +been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner +something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as +any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man. + +What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never determine. +She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He had the gift of +quick, sympathetic perception,--but so too had Jack Fyfe, she reminded +herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice could raise a flutter in her +breast, make a faint flush glow in her cheeks, while Monohan could do +that. He did not need to be actively attentive. It was only necessary +for him to be near. + +It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when the first +cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores flamed again with +the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she had been playing with +fire--and that fire burns. + +This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had steeled +herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer folk, to +take himself out of her life. She admitted that there would be a gap. +But that had to be. No word other than friendly ones would ever pass +between them. He would go away, and she would go on as before. That was +all. She was scarcely aware how far they had traveled along that road +whereon travelers converse by glance of eye, by subtle intuitions, +eloquent silences. Monohan himself delivered the shock that awakened her +to despairing clearness of vision. + +He had come to bring her a book, he and Linda Abbey and Charlie +together,--a commonplace enough little courtesy. And it happened that +this day Fyfe had taken his rifle and vanished into the woods +immediately after luncheon. Between Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton +matters had so far progressed that it was now the most natural thing for +them to seek a corner or poke along the beach together, oblivious to all +but themselves. This afternoon they chatted a while with Stella and then +gradually detached themselves until Monohan, glancing through the +window, pointed them out to his hostess. They were seated on a log at +the edge of the lawn, a stone's throw from the house. + +"They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain sailing +for them." + +There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that stabbed +Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. Something rose +chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against a slow welling of +tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was betraying herself, +Monohan was holding both her hands fast between his own, gripping them +with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking in a passionate undertone. + +"Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like this?" +he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved and been +happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I felt it that day +I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing on me ever since. I've +struggled against it, and it's no use. It's something stronger than I +am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me to see you chafing in your +chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it have been different?" + +"You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You mustn't. It +isn't right." + +"I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, when +your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do you think +I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. I know you're +the kind of woman who goes through hell for her conceptions of right and +wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, oh, the pity of it. Why should +it have to be? Life could have held so much that is fine and true for +you and me together. For you do care, don't you?" + +"What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What difference can it +make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I mustn't listen. I +mustn't." + +"But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look at me, +Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do anything that +might bring the least shadow on you. I know the pitiful hopelessness of +it. You're fettered, and there's no apparent loophole to freedom. I know +it's best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something +precious and sorrowful. I never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't +always equal to the task the spirit imposes." + +She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on +herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry +her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will that she +possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that +racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone. But she +faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face. + +"Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm neither +little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's big and clean. +I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it--if you can understand that. +But that's neither here nor there. I know what I have to do. I married +without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price. So +you must never talk to me of love. You mustn't even see me, if it can be +avoided. It's better that way. We can't make over our lives to suit +ourselves--at least I can't. I must play the game according to the only +rules I know. We daren't--we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling. +With you--footloose, and all the world before you--it'll die out +presently." + +"No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I know +myself." + +He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the pain of +it ran to her elbows. Then his fingers relaxed a little. + +"Oh, I know," he said haltingly. "I know it's got to be that way. I have +to go my road and leave you to yours. Oh, the blank hopelessness of it, +the useless misery of it. We're made for each other, and we have to grin +and say good-by, go along our separate ways, trying to smile. What a +devilish state of affairs! But I love you, dear, and no matter--I--ah--" + +His voice flattened out. His hands released hers, he straightened +quickly. Stella turned her head. Jack Fyfe stood in the doorway. His +face was fixed in its habitual mask. He was biting the end off a cigar. +He struck a match and put it to the cigar end with steady fingers as he +walked slowly across the big room. + +"I hear the kid peeping," he said to Stella quite casually, "and I +noticed Martha outside as I came in. Better go see what's up with him." + +Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to obey, +for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge of command. +Her heart apparently ceased to beat. She tried to smile, but she knew +that her face was tear-wet. She knew that Jack Fyfe had seen and +understood. She had done no wrong, but a terrible apprehension of +consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her own making might +stalk grimly in that room. + +In this extremity she banked with implicit faith on the man she had +married rather than the man she loved. For the moment she felt +overwhelmingly glad that Jack Fyfe was iron--cool, unshakable. He would +never give an inch, but he would never descend to any sordid scene. She +could not visualize him the jealous, outraged husband, breathing the +conventional anathema, but there were elements unreckonable in that +room. She knew instinctively that Fyfe once aroused would be deadly in +anger and she could not vouch for Monohan's temper under the strain of +feeling. That was why she feared. + +So she lingered a second or two outside the door, quaking, but there +arose only the sound of Fyfe's heavy body settling into a leather chair, +and following that the low, even rumble of his voice. She could not +distinguish words. The tone sounded ordinary, conversational. She prayed +that his intent was to ignore the situation, that Monohan would meet him +halfway in that effort. Afterward there would be a reckoning. But for +herself she neither thought nor feared. It was a problem to be faced, +that was all. And so, the breath of her coming in short, quick +respirations, she went to her room. There was no wailing from the +nursery. She had known that. + +Sitting beside a window, chin in hand, her lower lip compressed between +her teeth, she saw Fyfe, after the lapse of ten minutes, leave by the +front entrance, stopping to chat a minute with Linda and Charlie Benton, +who were moving slowly toward the house. Stella rose to her feet and +dabbed at her face with a powdered chamois. She couldn't let Monohan go +like that; her heart cried out against it. Very likely they would never +meet again. + +She flew down the hall to the living room. Monohan stood just within +the front door, gazing irresolutely over his shoulder. He took a step or +two to meet her. His clean-cut face was drawn into sullen lines, a deep +flush mantled his cheek. + +"Listen," he said tensely. "I've been made to feel like--like--Well, I +controlled myself. I knew it had to be that way. It was unfortunate. I +think we could have been trusted to do the decent thing. You and I were +bred to do that. I've got a little pride. I can't come here again. And I +want to see you once more before I leave here for good. I'll be going +away next week. That'll be the end of it--the bitter finish. Will you +slip down to the first point south of Cougar Bay about three in the +afternoon to-morrow? It'll be the last and only time. He'll have you for +life; can't I talk to you for twenty minutes?" + +"No," she whispered forlornly. "I can't do that. I--oh, +good-by--good-by." + +"Stella, Stella," she heard his vibrant whisper follow after. But she +ran away through dining room and hall to the bedroom, there to fling +herself face down, choking back the passionate protest that welled up +within her. She lay there, her face buried in the pillow, until the +sputtering exhaust of the Abbey cruiser growing fainter and more faint +told her they were gone. + +She heard her husband walk through the house once after that. When +dinner was served, he was not there. It was eleven o'clock by the +time-piece on her mantel when she heard him come in, but he did not come +to their room. He went quietly into the guest chamber across the hall. + +She waited through a leaden period. Then, moved by an impulse she did +not attempt to define, a mixture of motives, pity for him, a craving for +the outlet of words, a desire to set herself right before him, she +slipped on a dressing robe and crossed the hall. The door swung open +noiselessly. Fyfe sat slumped in a chair, hat pulled low on his +forehead, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He did not even look up. His +eyes stared straight ahead, absent, unseeingly fixed on nothing. He +seemed to be unconscious of her presence or to ignore it,--she could not +tell which. + +"Jack," she said. And when he made no response she said again, +tremulously, that unyielding silence chilling her, "Jack." + +He stirred a little, but only to take off his hat and lay it on a table +beside him. With one hand pushing back mechanically the straight, +reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her and said briefly, +in a tone barren of all emotion: + +"Well?" + +She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was much to +be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on with a cloud +like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated in the crucible +of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a prolonged silence, +seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he began to speak, cutting +straight to the heart of his subject, after his fashion. + +"It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. "But now +that you're face to face with something definite, what do you propose to +do about it?" + +"Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's there. +But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it didn't exist. +There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. I'm sorry, Jack." + +"So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we took,--or I took, +rather. I seem to have made a mistake or two, in my estimate of both you +and myself. That is human enough, I suppose. You're making a bigger +mistake than I did though, to let Monohan sweep you off your feet." + +There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It stung +her. + +"He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. "Good +Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? I've never +forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect left yet, if I +was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me in the beginning. I +was honest with you then. I'm trying to be honest with you now." + +"I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a damnably +unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw something of the +sort when we were married. You were candid enough about your attitude. +But I told myself like a conceited fool that I could make your life so +full that in a little while I'd be the only possible figure on your +horizon. I've failed. I've known for some time that I was going to fail. +You're not the thin-blooded type of woman that is satisfied with +pleasant surroundings and any sort of man. You're bound to run the gamut +of all the emotions, sometime and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought +in my conceit I could make myself the man, the one man who would mean +everything to you." + +"Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't see how +you can avoid paying the penalty for folly." + +"What do you mean?" she asked. + +"You haven't tried to play the game," he answered tensely. "For months +you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been clanking your +chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike +them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. It isn't a +thing--marriage, I mean--that you hold lightly. That being the case, you +would have been wise to try making the best of it, instead of making the +worst of it. But you let yourself drift into a state of mind where +you--well, you see the result. I saw it coming. I didn't need to happen +in this afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling +swirling about. And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty. If +you let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you'll pay bigger +in the end." + +"I can't help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings," she said +wearily. + +"You think you love him," Fyfe made low reply. "As a matter of fact, you +love what you think he is. I daresay that he has sworn his affection by +all that's good and great. But if you were convinced that he didn't +really care, that his flowery protestations had a double end in view, +would you still love him?" + +"I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do love +him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a +way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid. But--but +I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want +this to make us both miserable. I don't want it to generate an +atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd only be fighting about a +shadow. I never cheated at anything in my life. You can trust me still, +can't you?" + +"Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation. + +"Then that's all there is to it," she replied, "unless--unless you're +ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder +along the best I can." + +He shook his head. + +"I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's unwise of +me to say this,--it will probably antagonize you,--but I know Monohan +better than you do. I'd go pretty far to keep you two apart--now--for +your sake." + +"It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. "I can +understand that feeling in you. It's so--so typically masculine." + +"No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a +self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll only +live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with a man that +I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my pocket and let you +go. If you cared enough for him to break every tie, to face the +embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were entitled to your +freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But Monohan--hell, I +don't want to talk about him. I trust you, Stella. I'm banking on your +own good sense. And along with that good, natural common sense, you've +got so many illusions. About life in general, and about men. They seem +to have centered about this one particular man. I can't open your eyes +or put you on the right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do +is to sit back and wait." + +His voice trailed off huskily. + +Stella put a hand on his shoulder. + +"Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in spite +of what you know?" + +"For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing in my +life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm getting +hopeless." + +"I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. +I didn't love you to begin with--" + +"And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged that +ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the real +romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't found it yet. +I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could convince you." + +"Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love you--that I was +worn out and desperate and clutching at the life line you threw. In +spite of that,--well, if I fight down this love, or fascination, or +infatuation, or whatever it is,--I'm not sure myself, except that it +affects me strongly,--can't we be friends again?" + +"Friends! Oh, hell!" Fyfe exploded. + +He came up out of his chair with a blaze in his eyes that startled her, +caught her by the arm, and thrust her out the door. + +"Friends? You and I?" He sank his voice to a harsh whisper. "My +God--friends! Go to bed. Good night." + +He pushed her into the hall, and the lock clicked between them. For one +confused instant Stella stood poised, uncertain. Then she went into her +bedroom and sat down, her keenest sensation one of sheer relief. Already +in those brief hours emotion had well-nigh exhausted her. To be alone, +to lie still and rest, to banish thought,--that was all she desired. + +She lay on her bed inert, numbed, all but her mind, and that traversed +section by section in swift, consecutive progress all the amazing turns +of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. There was neither +method nor inquiry in this back-casting--merely a ceaseless, involuntary +activity of the brain. + +A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went into the +adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and took him to her +own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her breast, she lay there +fighting against that interminable, maddening buzzing in her brain. She +prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers stroking the silky, baby hair. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH + +One can only suffer so much. Poignant feeling brings its own +anaesthetic. When Stella Fyfe fell into a troubled sleep that night, the +storm of her emotions had beaten her sorely. Morning brought its +physical reaction. She could see things clearly and calmly enough to +perceive that her love for Monohan was fraught with factors that must be +taken into account. All the world loves a lover, but her world did not +love lovers who kicked over the conventional traces. She had made a +niche for herself. There were ties she could not break lightly, and she +was not thinking of herself alone when she considered that, but of her +husband and Jack Junior, of Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton, of each and +every individual whose life touched more or less directly upon her own. + +She had known always what a woman should do in such case, what she had +been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, and take her +medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had made that clear. +But her heart cried out in rebellion against the necessity. To her, +trying to think logically, the most grievous phase of the doing was the +fact that nothing could ever be the same again. She could go on. Oh, +yes. She could dam up the wellspring of her impulses, walk steadfast +along the accustomed ways. But those ways would not be the old ones. +There would always be the skeleton at the feast. She would know it was +there, and Jack Fyfe would know, and she dreaded the fruits of that +knowledge, the bitterness and smothered resentment it would breed. But +it had to be. As she saw it, there was no choice. + +She came down to breakfast calmly enough. It was nothing that could be +altered by heroics, by tears and wailings. Not that she was much given +to either. She had not whined when her brother made things so hard for +her that any refuge seemed alluring by comparison. Curiously enough, she +did not blame her brother now; neither did she blame Jack Fyfe. + +She told herself that in first seeking the line of least resistance she +had manifested weakness, that since her present problem was indirectly +the outgrowth of that original weakness, she would be weak no more. So +she tried to meet her husband as if nothing had happened, in which she +succeeded outwardly very well indeed, since Fyfe himself chose to ignore +any change in their mutual attitude. + +She busied herself about the house that forenoon, seeking deliberately a +multitude of little tasks to occupy her hands and her mind. + +But when lunch was over, she was at the end of her resources. Jack +Junior settled in his crib for a nap. Fyfe went away to that area back +of the camp where arose the crash of falling trees and the labored +puffing of donkey engines. She could hear faint and far the voices of +the falling gangs that cried: "Tim-ber-r-r-r." She could see on the +bank, a little beyond the bunkhouse and cook-shack, the big roader +spooling up the cable that brought string after string of logs down to +the lake. Rain or sun, happiness or sorrow, the work went on. She found +it in her heart to envy the sturdy loggers. They could forget their +troubles in the strain of action. Keyed as she was to that high pitch, +that sense of their unremitting activity, the ravaging of the forest +which produced the resources for which she had sold herself irritated +her. She was very bitter when she thought that. + +She longed for some secluded place to sit and think, or try to stop +thinking. And without fully realizing the direction she took, she walked +down past the camp, crossed the skid-road, stepping lightly over main +line and haul-back at the donkey engineer's warning, and went along the +lake shore. + +A path wound through the belt of brush and hardwood that fringed the +lake. Not until she had followed this up on the neck of a little +promontory south of the bay, did she remember with a shock that she was +approaching the place where Monohan had begged her to meet him. She +looked at her watch. Two-thirty. She sought the shore line for sight of +a boat, wondering if he would come in spite of her refusal. But to her +great relief she saw no sign of him. Probably he had thought better of +it, had seen now as she had seen then that no good and an earnest chance +of evil might come of such a clandestine meeting, had taken her stand as +final. + +She was glad, because she did not want to go back to the house. She did +not want to make the effort of wandering away in the other direction to +find that restful peace of woods and water. She moved up a little on the +point until she found a mossy boulder and sat down on that, resting her +chin in her palms, looking out over the placid surface of the lake with +somber eyes. + +And so Monohan surprised her. The knoll lay thick-carpeted with moss. He +was within a few steps of her when a twig cracking underfoot apprised +her of some one's approach. She rose, with an impulse to fly, to escape +a meeting she had not desired. And as she rose, the breath stopped in +her throat. + +Twenty feet behind Monohan came Jack Fyfe with his hunter's stride, +soundlessly over the moss, a rifle drooping in the crook of his arm. A +sunbeam striking obliquely between two firs showed her his face plainly, +the faint curl of his upper lip. + +Something in her look arrested Monohan. He glanced around, twisted +about, froze in his tracks, his back to her. Fyfe came up. Of the three +he was the coolest, the most rigorously self-possessed. He glanced from +Monohan to his wife, back to Monohan. After that his blue eyes never +left the other man's face. + +"What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at last. "But +then I might have known I was wasting my breath on you!" + +"Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do about it? +This isn't the Stone Age." + +Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. + +"Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. "No, it +takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as you." + +A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward Fyfe, his +hands clenched. + +"You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted hoarsely. + +"No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic clink +against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort of a +yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. That's +why it stings you to be told so." + +Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was crimson. + +"By God, I'll teach you something," he snarled. + +He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for Fyfe's +face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the balls of his +feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped Monohan across the +mouth with the open palm of his hand. + +"Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It." + +Monohan pivoted, and rushing, swung right and left, missing by inches. +Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again, +launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance. +Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him +sprawling on the moss. + +Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come +about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had visualized it +when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of her husband that +she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to understand. She could +have understood him beating Monohan senseless, if he could. A murderous +fury of jealousy would not have surprised her. This did. He had not +struck a blow, did not attempt to strike. + +She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with Monohan, +making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of height and reach. +Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond Monohan's vengeful blows, +slipping under those driving fists to slap his adversary, to trip him, +mocking him with the futility of his effort. + +She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was not a +fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something +else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and +now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a +struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other, +which had little or nothing to do with her. She foresaw, watching the +odd combat with a feeling akin to fascination, that it was a losing game +for Monohan. Fyfe was his master at every move. + +Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but that +humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his foot that +plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold grimace that +reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of his features. +Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered at his purpose, how +it would end. + +The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of +those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the +rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with +his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body. + +Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohan +was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landed +near his heart, and while he staggered from that, clamped one thick arm +about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bent +backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically choked +him; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and his +eyes bulged glassily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from his +gaping mouth. + +"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him." + +Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirred +him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. Stella could not +tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling a +dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regain +his breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice. + +"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you that you +can't." + +With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stood +silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out a +slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set off +down the lake. + +"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone. +"The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose." + +"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly. + +He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now that his +face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew harder together +as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for the storm that broke. +She did not comprehend the tempest that raged within him until he had +her by the shoulders, his fingers crushing into her soft flesh like the +jaws of a trap, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat, till the +heavy coils of hair cascaded over her shoulders, and for a second fear +tugged at her heart. For she thought he meant to kill her. + +When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms that sent +her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her being, though +not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot protest against his brute +strength, against his passionate outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were +against her, she knew. Even so, she revolted against his cave-man +roughness. She was amazed to find herself longing for the power to +strike him. + +She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring at him +in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she looked. He +drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his rifle. When he +faced about with that in his hand, the old mask of immobility was in +place. He waited while Stella gathered up her scattered hairpins and +made shift to coil her hair into a semblance of Order. Then he said +gently: + +"I won't break out like that again." + +"Once is enough." + +"More than enough--for me," he answered. + +She disdained reply. Striking off along the path that ran to the camp, +she walked rapidly, choking a rising flood of desperate thought. With +growing coolness paradoxically there burned hotter the flame of an +elemental wrath. What right had he to lay hands on her? Her shoulders +ached, her flesh was bruised from the terrible grip of his fingers. The +very sound of his footsteps behind her was maddening. To be suspected +and watched, to be continually the target of jealous fury! No, a +thousand times, no. She wheeled on him at last. + +"I can't stand this," she cried. "It's beyond endurance. We're like +flint and steel to each other now. If to-day's a sample of what we may +expect, it's better to make a clean sweep of everything. I've got to get +away from here and from you--from everybody." + +Fyfe motioned her to a near-by log. + +"Sit down," said he. "We may as well have it out here." + +For a few seconds he busied himself with a cigar, removing the band with +utmost deliberation, biting the end off, applying the match, his brows +puckered slightly. + +"It's very unwise of you to meet Monohan like that," he uttered finally. + +"Oh, I see," she flashed. "Do you suggest that I met him purposely--by +appointment? Even if I did--" + +"That's for you to say, Stella," he interrupted gravely. "I told you +last night that I trusted you absolutely. I do, so far as really vital +things are concerned, but I don't always trust your judgment. I merely +know that Monohan sneaked along shore, hid his boat, and stole through +the timber to where you were sitting. I happened to see him, and I +followed him to see what he was up to, why he should take such measures +to keep under cover." + +"The explanation is simple," she answered stiffly. "You can believe it +or not, as you choose. My being there was purely unintentional. If I had +seen him before he was close, I should certainly not have been there. I +have been at odds with myself all day, and I went for a walk, to find a +quiet place where I could sit and think." + +"It doesn't matter now," he said. "Only you'd better try to avoid things +like that in the future. Would you mind telling me just exactly what you +meant a minute ago? Just what you propose to do?" + +He asked her that as one might make any commonplace inquiry, but his +quietness did not deceive Stella. + +"What I said," she began desperately. "Wasn't it plain enough? It seems +to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if we try to live +it together. I--I'm sorry, but you know how I feel. It may be unwise, +but these things aren't dictated by reason. You know that. If our +emotions were guided by reason and expediency, we'd be altogether +different. Last night I was willing to go on and make the best of +things. To-day,--especially after this,--it looks impossible. You'll +look at me, and guess what I'm thinking, and hate me. And I'll grow to +hate you, because you'll be little better than a jailer. Oh, don't you +see that the way we'll feel will make us utterly miserable? Why should +we stick together when no good can come of it? You've been good to me. +I've appreciated that and liked you for it. I'd like to be friends. But +I--I'd hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on +the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while +ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe. I could +gladly have killed you when you were jerking me about back yonder." + +"I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive being than +I've supposed?" + +Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes--eyes that were +bright with unshed tears. + +"And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I didn't +want to horrify you with anything like brutality," he went on +thoughtfully. "You think I grinned and made a monkey of _him_ because it +pleased me to do that? Why, I could have--and ached to--break him into +little bits, to smash him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in +looking at him again. And I didn't, simply and solely because I didn't +want to let you have even a glimpse of what I'm capable of when I get +started. I wonder if I made a mistake? It was merely the reaction from +letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so. I wonder--well, +never mind. Go on." + +"I think it's better that I should go away," Stella said. "I want you to +agree that I should; then there will be no talk or anything disagreeable +from outside sources. I'm strong, I can get on. It'll be a relief to +have to work. I won't have to be the kitchen drudge Charlie made of me. +I've got my voice. I'm quite sure I can capitalize that. But I've got to +go. Anything's better than this; anything that's clean and decent. I'd +despise myself if I stayed on as your wife, feeling as I do. It was a +mistake in the beginning, our marriage." + +"Nevertheless," Fyfe said slowly, "I'm afraid it's a mistake you'll have +to abide by--for a time. All that you say may be true, although I don't +admit it myself. Offhand, I'd say you were simply trying to welch on a +fair bargain. I'm not going to let you do it blindly, all wrought up to +a pitch where you can scarcely think coherently. If you are fully +determined to break away from me, you owe it to us both to be sure of +what you're doing before you act. I'm going to talk plain. You can +believe it and disdain it if you please. If you were leaving me for a +man, a real man, I think I could bring myself to make it easy for you +and wish you luck. But you're not. He's--" + +"Can't we leave him out of it?" she demanded. "I want to get away from +you both. Can you understand that? It doesn't help you any to pick _him_ +to pieces." + +"No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of +idealization you've wrapped around him," Fyfe observed patiently. "It's +not a job I have much stomach for however, even if you were willing to +let me try. But to come back. You've got to stick it out with me, +Stella. You'll hate me for the constraint, I suppose. But until--until +things shape up differently--you'll understand what I'm talking about +by and by, I think--you've got to abide by the bargain you made with me. +I couldn't force you to stay, I know. But there's one hold you can't +break--not if I know you at all." + +"What is that?" she asked icily. + +"The kid's," he murmured. + +Stella buried her face in her hands for a minute. + +"I'd forgotten--I'd forgotten," she whispered. + +"You understand, don't you?" he said hesitatingly. "If you leave--I keep +our boy." + +"Oh, you're devilish--to use a club like that," she cried. "You know I +wouldn't part from my baby--the only thing I've got that's worth +having." + +"He's worth something to me too," Fyfe muttered. "A lot more than you +think, maybe. I'm not trying to club you. There's nothing in it for me. +But for him; well, he needs you. It isn't his fault he's here, or that +you're unhappy. I've got to protect him, see that he gets a fair shake. +I can't see anything to it but for you to go on being Mrs. Jack Fyfe +until such time as you get back to a normal poise. Then it will be time +enough to try and work out some arrangement that won't be too much of a +hardship on him. It's that--or a clean break in which you go your own +way, and I try to mother him to the best of my ability. You'll +understand sometime why I'm showing my teeth this way." + +"You have everything on your side," she admitted dully, after a long +interval of silence. "I'm a fool. I admit it. Have things your way. But +it won't work, Jack. This flare-up between us will only smoulder. I +think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan. It isn't that I love +him so much as that I don't love you at all. I can live without +him--which I mean to do in any case--far easier than I can live with +you. It won't work." + +"Don't worry," he replied. "You won't be annoyed by me in person. I'll +have my hands full elsewhere." + +They rose and walked on to the house. On the porch Jack Junior was being +wheeled back and forth in his carriage. He lifted chubby arms to his +mother as she came up the steps. Stella carried him inside, hugging the +sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast. She did not want to cry, but +she could not help it. It was as if she had been threatened with +irrevocable loss of that precious bit of her own flesh and blood. She +hugged him to her, whispering mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly +tender. + +Fyfe stood aside for a minute. Then he came up behind her and stood +resting one hand on the back of her chair. + +"Stella." + +"Yes." + +"I got word from my sister and her husband in this morning's mail. They +will very likely be here next week for a three days' stay. Brace up. +Let's try and keep our skeleton from rattling while they're here. Will +you?" + +"All right, Jack. I'll try." + +He patted her tousled hair lightly and left the room. Stella looked +after him with a surge of mixed feeling. She told herself she hated him +and his dominant will that always beat her own down; she hated him for +his amazing strength and for his unvarying sureness of himself. And in +the same breath she found herself wondering if,--with their status +reversed,--Walter Monohan would be as patient, as gentle, as +self-controlled with a wife who openly acknowledged her affection for +another man. And still her heart cried out for Monohan. She flared hot +against the disparaging note, the unconcealed contempt Fyfe seemed to +have for him. + +Yet in spite of her eager defence of him, there was something ugly about +that clash with Fyfe in the edge of the woods, something that jarred. It +wasn't spontaneous. She could not understand that tigerish onslaught of +Monohan's. It was more the action she would have expected from her +husband. + +It puzzled her, grieved her, added a little to the sorrowful weight that +settled upon her. They were turbulent spirits both. The matter might not +end there. + +In the next ten days three separate incidents, each isolated and +relatively unimportant, gave Stella food for much puzzled thought. + +The first was a remark of Fyfe's sister in the first hours of their +acquaintance. Mrs. Henry Alden could never have denied blood kinship +with Jack Fyfe. She had the same wide, good-humored mouth, the blue eyes +that always seemed to be on the verge of twinkling, and the same fair, +freckled skin. Her characteristics of speech resembled his. She was +direct, bluntly so, and she was not much given to small talk. Fyfe and +Stella met the Aldens at Roaring Springs with the _Waterbug_. Alden +proved a genial sort of man past forty, a big, loose-jointed individual +whose outward appearance gave no indication of what he was +professionally,--a civil engineer with a reputation that promised to +spread beyond his native States. + +"You don't look much different, Jack," his sister observed critically, +as the _Waterbug_ backed away from the wharf in a fine drizzle of rain. +"Except that as you grow older, you more and more resemble the pater. +Has matrimony toned him down, my dear?" she turned to Stella. "The last +time I saw him he had a black eye!" + +Fyfe did not give her a chance to answer. + +"Be a little more diplomatic, Dolly," he smiled. "Mrs. Jack doesn't +realize what a rowdy I used to be. I've reformed." + +"Ah," Mrs. Alden chuckled, "I have a vision of you growing meek and +mild." + +They talked desultorily as the launch thrashed along. Alden's profession +took him to all corners of the earth. That was why the winter of Fyfe's +honeymoon had not made them acquainted. Alden and his wife were then in +South America. This visit was to fill in the time before the departure +of a trans-Pacific liner which would land the Aldens at Manila. + +Presently the Abbey-Monohan camp and bungalow lay abeam. Stella told +Mrs. Alden something of the place. + +"That reminds me," Mrs. Alden turned to her brother. "I was quite sure I +saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting for the hotel car +in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out here. Is he this Monohan?" + +Fyfe nodded. + +"How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same region. Do you +still maintain the ancient feud?" + +Fyfe shot her a queer look. + +"We've grown up, Dolly," he said drily. Then: "Do you expect to get back +to God's country short of a year, Alden?" + +That was all. Neither of them reverted to the subject again. But Stella +pondered. An ancient feud? She had not known of that. Neither man had +ever dropped a hint. + +For the second incident, Paul Abbey dropped in to dinner a few days +later and divulged a bit of news. + +"There's been a shake-up in our combination," he remarked casually to +Fyfe. "Monohan and dad have split over a question of business policy. +Walter's taking over all our interests on Roaring Lake. He appears to be +going to peel off his coat and become personally active in the logging +industry. Funny streak for Monohan to take, isn't it? He never seemed +to care a hoot about the working end of the business, so long as it +produced dividends." + +Lastly, Charlie Benton came over to eat a farewell dinner with the +Aldens the night before they left. He followed Stella into the nursery +when she went to tuck Jack Junior in his crib. + +"Say, Stella" he began, "I have just had a letter from old man Lander; +you remember he was dad's legal factotum and executor." + +"Of course," she returned. + +"Well, do you recall--you were there when the estate was wound up, and I +was not--any mention of some worthless oil stock? Some California +wildcat stuff the governor got bit on? It was found among his effects." + +"I seem to recall something of the sort," she answered. "But I don't +remember positively. What about it?" + +"Lander writes me that there is a prospect of it being salable. The +company is reviving. And he finds himself without legal authority to do +business, although the stock certificates are still in his hands. He +suggests that we give him a power of attorney to sell this stuff. He's +an awfully conservative old chap, so there must be a reasonable prospect +of some cash, or he wouldn't bother. My hunch is to give him a power of +attorney and let him use his own judgment." + +"How much is it worth?" she asked. + +"The par value is forty thousand dollars," Benton grinned. "But the +governor bought it at ten cents on the dollar. If we get what he paid, +we'll be lucky. That'll be two thousand apiece. I brought you a blank +form. I'm going down with you on the _Bug_ to-morow to send mine. I'd +advise you to have yours signed up and witnessed before a notary at +Hopyard and send it too." + +"Of course I will," she said. + +"It isn't much," Benton mused, leaning on the foot of the crib, watching +her smooth the covers over little Jack. "But it won't come amiss--to me, +at least. I'm going to be married in the spring." + +Stella looked up. + +"You are?" she murmured. "To Linda Abbey?" + +He nodded. A slight flush crept over his tanned face at the steady look +she bent on him. + +"Hang it, what are you thinking?" he broke out. "I know you've rather +looked down on me because I acted like a bounder that winter. But I +really took a tumble to myself. You set me thinking when you made that +sudden break with Jack. I felt rather guilty about that--until I saw how +it turned out. I know I'm not half good enough for Linda. But so long as +she thinks I am and I try to live up to that, why we've as good a chance +to be happy as anybody. We all make breaks, us fellows that go at +everything roughshod. Still, when we pull up and take a new tack, you +shouldn't hold grudges. If we could go back to that fall and winter, I'd +do things a lot differently." + +"If you're both really and truly in love," Stella said quietly, "that's +about the only thing that matters. I hope you'll be happy. But you'll +have to be a lot different with Linda Abbey than you were with me." + +"Ah, Stella, don't harp on that," he said shame-facedly. "I was rotten, +it's true. But we're all human. I couldn't see anything then only what I +wanted myself. I was like a bull in a china shop. It's different now. +I'm on my feet financially, and I've had time to draw my breath and take +a squint at myself from a different angle. I did you a good turn, +anyway, even if I was the cause of you taking a leap before you looked. +You landed right." + +Stella mustered a smile that was purely facial. It maddened her to hear +his complacent justification of himself. And the most maddening part of +it was her knowledge that Benton was right, that in many essential +things he had done her a good turn, which her own erratic inclinations +bade fair to wholly nullify. + +"I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world," she said gently. +"And I don't bear a grudge, believe me, Charlie. Now, run along. We'll +keep baby awake, talking." + +"All right." He turned to go and came back again. + +"What I really came in to say, I've hardly got nerve enough for." He +sank his voice to a murmur. "Don't fly off at me, Stell. But--you +haven't got a trifle interested in Monohan, have you? I mean, you +haven't let him think you are?" + +Stella's hands tightened on the crib rail. For an instant her heart +stood still. A wholly unreasoning blaze of anger seized her. But she +controlled that. Pride forbade her betraying herself. + +"What a perfectly ridiculous question," she managed to reply. + +He looked at her keenly. + +"Because, if you have--well, you might be perfectly innocent in the +matter and still get in bad," he continued evenly. "I'd like to put a +bug in your ear." + +She bent over Jack Junior, striving to inject an amused note into her +reply. + +"Don't be so absurd, Charlie." + +"Oh, well, I suppose it is. Only, darn it, I've seen him look at you in +a way--Pouf! I was going to tell you something. Maybe Jack has--only +he's such a close-mouthed beggar. I'm not very anxious to peddle +things." Benton turned again. "I guess you don't need any coaching from +me, anyhow." + +He walked out. Stella stared after him, her eyes blazing, hands clenched +into hard-knuckled little fists. She could have struck him. + +And still she wondered over and over again, burning with a consuming +fire to know what that "something" was which he had to tell. All the +slumbering devils of a stifled passion awoke to rend her, to make her +rage against the coil in which she was involved. She despised herself +for the weakness of unwise loving, even while she ached to sweep away +the barriers that stood between her and love. Mingled with that there +whispered an intuition of disaster to come, of destiny shaping to +peculiar ends. In Monohan's establishing himself on Roaring Lake she +sensed something more than an industrial shift. In his continued +presence there she saw incalculable sources of trouble. She stood +leaning over the bed rail, staring wistfully at her boy for a few +minutes. When she faced the mirror in her room, she was startled at the +look in her eyes, the nervous twitch of her lips. There was a physical +ache in her breast. + +"You're a fool, a fool," she whispered to her image. "Where's your will, +Stella Fyfe? Borrow a little of your husband's backbone. +Presently--presently it won't matter." + +One can club a too assertive ego into insensibility. A man may smile and +smile and be a villain still, as the old saying has it, and so may a +woman smile and smile when her heart is tortured, when every nerve in +her is strained to the snapping point. Stella went back to the living +room and sang for them until it was time to go to bed. + +The Aldens went first, then Charlie. Stella left her door ajar. An hour +afterward, when Fyfe came down the hall, she rose. It had been her +purpose to call him in, to ask him to explain that which her brother had +hinted he could explain, what prior antagonism lay between him and +Monohan, what that "something" about Monohan was which differentiated +him from other men where she was concerned. Instead she shut the door, +slid the bolt home, and huddled in a chair with her face in her hands. + +She could not discuss Monohan with him, with any one. Why should she +ask? she told herself. It was a closed book, a balanced account. One +does not revive dead issues. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +THE OPENING GUN + +The month of November slid day by day into the limbo of the past. The +rains washed the land unceasingly. Gray veilings of mist and cloud +draped the mountain slopes. As drab a shade colored Stella Fyfe's daily +outlook. She was alone a great deal. Even when they were together, she +and her husband, words did not come easily between them. He was away a +great deal, seeking, she knew, the old panacea of work, hard, +unremitting work, to abate the ills of his spirit. She envied him that +outlet. Work for her there was none. The two Chinamen and Martha the +nurse left her no tasks. She could not read, for all their great store +of books and magazines; the printed page would lie idle in her lap, and +her gaze would wander off into vacancy, into that thought-world where +her spirit wandered in distress. The Abbeys were long gone; her brother +hard at his logging. There were no neighbors and no news. The savor was +gone out of everything. The only bright spot in her days was Jack +Junior, now toddling precociously on his sturdy legs, a dozen steps at a +time, crowing victoriously when he negotiated the passage from chair to +chair. + +From the broad east windows of their house she saw all the traffic that +came and went on the upper reaches of Roaring Lake, Siwashes in dugouts +and fishing boats, hunters, prospectors. But more than any other she saw +the craft of her husband and Monohan, the powerful, black-hulled +_Panther_, the smaller, daintier _Waterbug_. + +There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, that she +knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, inching its +downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast up-lake without a tow. +Monohan had abandoned work on the old Abbey-Monohan logging-grounds. The +camps and the bungalow lay deserted, given over to a solitary watchman. +The lake folk had chattered at this proceeding, and the chatter had come +to Stella's ears. He had put in two camps at the lake head, so she heard +indirectly: one on the lake shore, one on the Tyee River, a little above +the mouth. He had sixty men in each camp, and he was getting the name of +a driver. Three miles above his Tyee camp, she knew, lay the camp her +husband had put in during the early summer to cut a heavy limit of +cedar. Fyfe had only a small crew there. + +She wondered a little why he spent so much time there, when he had +seventy-odd men working near home. But of course he had an able +lieutenant in Lefty Howe. And she could guess why Jack Fyfe kept away. +She was sorry for him--and for herself. But being sorry--a mere +semi-neutral state of mind--did not help matters, she told herself +gloomily. + +Lefty Howe's wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional visits. +Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a Siwash whom he had +engaged to catch and smoke a winter's supply of salmon for the camps. +Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella bundled Jack Junior into +warm clothing and went with them for the ride. + +Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new +mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass and +leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp +shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. Behind these again the +beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,--a slashing +different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight +back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut +all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his +donkey from the water. It was not more than two miles from their house. + +"What new camp is that?" she asked Howe. + +"Monohan's," he answered casually. + +"I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" she said. + +Howe shook his head. + +"Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's got a +freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles straight back +from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the ham in a sandwich. +Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin piece uh ham. About the +poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno why the Sam Hill he's cuttin' +it. But then he's doin' a lot uh things no practical logger would do." + +Stella laid down the glasses. It was nothing to her, she told herself. +She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked him, and then +only to exchange the barest civilities--and to feel her heart flutter at +the message his eyes telegraphed. + +When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and Charlie +Benton with him. She crossed the heavy rugs on the living room floor +noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior asleep in her arms. +And so in passing the door of Fyfe's den, she heard her brother say: + +"But, good Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to try such +fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he brings himself +within the law first crack; and the most he could do would be to annoy +you." + +"You underestimate Monohan," Fyfe returned. "He'll play safe, +personally, so far as the law goes. He's foxy. I advise you to sell if +the offer comes again. If you make any more breaks at him, he'll figure +some way to get you. It isn't your fight, you know. You unfortunately +happen to be in the road." + +"Damned if I do," Benton swore. "I'm all in the clear. There's no way he +can get me, and I'll tell him what I think of him again if he gives me +half a chance. I never liked him, anyhow. Why should I sell when I'm +just getting in real good shape to take that timber out myself? Why, I +can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years on that block +of timber. Besides, without being a sentimental sort of beggar, I don't +lose sight of the fact that you helped pull me out of a hole when I sure +needed a pull. And I don't like his high-handed style. No, if it comes +to a showdown, I'm with you, Jack, as far as I can go. What the hell +_can_ he do?" + +"Nothing--that I can see." Fyfe laughed unpleasantly. "But he'll try. He +has dollars to our cents. He could throw everything he's got on Roaring +Lake into the discard and still have forty thousand a year fixed income. +Sabe? Money does more than talk in this country. I think I'll pull that +camp off the Tyee." + +"Well, maybe," Benton said. "I'm not sure--" + +Stella passed on. She wanted to hear, but it went against her grain to +eavesdrop. Her pause had been purely involuntary. When she became +conscious that she was eagerly drinking in each word, she hurried by. + +Her mind was one urgent question mark while she laid the sleeping +youngster in his bed and removed her heavy clothes. What sort of +hostilities did Monohan threaten? Had he let a hopeless love turn to the +acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed her? Stella could +scarcely credit that. It was too much at variance with her idealistic +conception of the man. He would never have recourse to such littleness. +Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe's voice when he said to Benton: "You +underestimate Monohan. He'll play safe ... he's foxy." That stung her to +the quick. That was not said for her benefit; it was Fyfe's profound +conviction. Based on what? He did not form judgments on momentary +impulse. She recalled that only in the most indirect way had he ever +passed criticism on Monohan, and then it lay mostly in a tone, suggested +more than spoken. Yet he knew Monohan, had known him for years. They had +clashed long before she was a factor in their lives. + +When she went into the big room, Benton and Fyfe were gone outdoors. She +glanced into Fyfe's den. It was empty, but a big blue-print unrolled on +the table where the two had been seated caught her eye. She bent over +it, drawn by the lettered squares along the wavy shore line and the +marked waters of creeks she knew. + +She had never before possessed a comprehensive idea of the various +timber holdings along the west shore of Roaring Lake, since it had not +been a matter of particular interest to her. She was not sure why it now +became a matter of interest to her, unless it was an impression that +over these squares and oblongs which stood for thousands upon thousands +of merchantable logs there was already shaping a struggle, a clash of +iron wills and determined purposes directly involving, perhaps arising +because of her. + +She studied the blue-print closely. Its five feet of length embraced all +the west shore of the lake, from the outflowing of Roaring River to the +incoming Tyee at the head. Each camp was lettered in with pencil. But +her attention focussed chiefly on the timber limits ranging north and +south from their home, and she noted two details: that while the limits +marked A-M Co. were impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the +squares marked J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid block about Cougar Bay,--save +for that long tongue of a limit where she had that day noted the new +camp. That thrust like the haft of a spear into the heart of Fyfe's +timberland. + +There was the Abbey-Monohan cottage, the three limits her brother +controlled lying up against Fyfe's southern boundary. Up around the +mouth of the Tyee spread the vast checkerboard of Abbey-Monohan limits, +and beyond that, on the eastern bank of the river, a single +block,--Fyfe's cedar limit,--the camp he thought he would close down. + +Why? Immediately the query shaped in her mind. Monohan was concentrating +his men and machinery at the lake head. Fyfe proposed to shut down a +camp but well-established; established because cedar was climbing in +price, an empty market clamoring for cedar logs. Why? + +Was there aught of significance in that new camp of Monohan's so near +by; that sudden activity on ground that bisected her husband's property? +A freak limit of timber so poor that Lefty Howe said it could only be +logged at a loss. + +She sighed and went out to give dinner orders to Sam Foo. If she could +only go to her husband and talk as they had been able to talk things +over at first. But there had grown up between them a deadly restraint. +She supposed that was inevitable. Both chafed under conditions they +could not change or would not for stubbornness and pride. + +It made a deep impression on her, all these successive, disassociated +finger posts, pointing one and all to things under the surface, to +motives and potentialities she had not glimpsed before and could only +guess at now. + +Fyfe and Benton came to dinner more or less preoccupied, an odd mood for +Charlie Benton. Afterwards they went into session behind the closed door +of Fyfe's den. An hour or so later Benton went home. While she listened +to the soft _chuff-a-chuff-a-chuff_ of the _Chickamin_ dying away in the +distance, Fyfe came in and slumped down in a chair before the fire where +a big fir stick crackled. He sat there silent, a half-smoked cigar +clamped in one corner of his mouth, the lines of his square jaw in +profile, determined, rigid. Stella eyed him covertly. There were times, +in those moods of concentration, when sheer brute power seemed his most +salient characteristic. Each bulging curve of his thick upper arm, his +neck rising like a pillar from massive shoulders, indicated his power. +Yet so well-proportioned was he that the size and strength of him was +masked by the symmetry of his body, just as the deliberate immobility of +his face screened the play of his feelings. Often Stella found herself +staring at him, fruitlessly wondering what manner of thought and feeling +that repression overlaid. Sometimes a tricksy, half-provoked desire to +break through the barricade of his stoicism tempted her. She told +herself that she ought to be thankful for his aloofness, his +acquiescence in things as they stood. Yet there were times when she +would almost have welcomed an outburst, a storm, anything rather than +that deadly chill, enduring day after day. He seldom spoke to her now +except of most matter-of-fact things. He played his part like a +gentleman before others, but alone with her he withdrew into his shell. + +Stella was sitting back in the shadow, still studying him, measuring him +in spite of herself by the Monohan yardstick. There wasn't much basis +for comparison. It wasn't a question of comparison; the two men stood +apart, distinctive, in every attribute. The qualities in Fyfe that she +understood and appreciated, she beheld glorified in Monohan. Yet it was +not, after all, a question of qualities. It was something more subtle, +something of the heart which defied logical analysis. + +Fyfe had never been able to set her pulse dancing. She had never craved +physical nearness to him, so that she ached with the poignancy of that +craving. She had been passively contented with him, that was all. And +Monohan had swept across her horizon like a flame. Why couldn't Jack +Fyfe have inspired in her that headlong sort of passion? She smiled +hopelessly. The tears were very close to her eyes. She loved Monohan; +Monohan loved her. Fyfe loved her in his deliberate, repressed fashion +and possessed her, according to the matrimonial design. And although now +his possession was a hollow mockery, he would never give her up--not to +Walter Monohan. She had that fatalistic conviction. + +How would it end in the long run? + +She leaned forward to speak. Words quivered on her lips. But as she +struggled to shape them to utterance, the blast of a boat whistle came +screaming up from the water, near and shrill and imperative. + +Fyfe came out of his chair like a shot. He landed poised on his feet, +lips drawn apart, hands clenched. He held that pose for an instant, then +relaxed, his breath coming with a quick sigh. + +Stella stared at him. Nerves! She knew the symptoms too well. Nerves at +terrible tension in that big, splendid body. A slight quiver seemed to +run over him. Then he was erect and calmly himself again, standing in a +listening attitude. + +"That's the _Panther_?" he said. "Pulling in to the _Waterbug's_ +landing. Did I startle you when I bounced up like a cougar, Stella?" he +asked, with a wry smile. "I guess I was half asleep. That whistle jolted +me." + +Stella glanced out the shaded window. + +"Some one's coming up from the float with a lantern," she said. "Is +there--is there likely to be anything wrong, Jack?" + +"Anything wrong?" He shot a quick glance at her. Then casually: "Not +that I know of." + +The bobbing lantern came up the path through the lawn. Footsteps +crunched on the gravel. + +"I'll go see what he wants," Fyfe remarked, "Calked boots won't be good +for the porch floor." + +She followed him. + +"Stay in. It's cold." He stopped in the doorway. + +"No. I'm coming," she persisted. + +They met the lantern bearer at the foot of the steps. + +"Well, Thorsen?" Fyfe shot at him. There was an unusual note of +sharpness in his voice, an irritated expectation. + +Stella saw that it was the skipper of the _Panther_, a big and burly +Dane. He raised the lantern a little. The dim light on his face showed +it bruised and swollen. Fyfe grunted. + +"Our boom is hung up," he said plaintively. "They've blocked the river. +I got licked for arguin' the point." + +"How's it blocked?" Fyfe asked. + +"Two swifters uh logs strung across the channel. They're drivin' piles +in front. An' three donkeys buntin' logs in behind." + +"Swift work. There wasn't a sign of a move when I left this morning," +Fyfe commented drily. "Well, take the _Panther_ around to the inner +landing. I'll be there." + +"What's struck that feller Monohan?" the Dane sputtered angrily. "Has he +got any license to close the Tyee? He says he has--an' backs his +argument strong, believe me. Maybe you can handle him. I couldn't. Next +time I'll have a cant-hook handy. By jingo, you gimme my pick uh Lefty's +crew, Jack, an' I'll bring that cedar out." + +"Take the _Panther_ 'round," Fyfe replied. "We'll see." + +Thorsen turned back down the slope. In a minute the thrum of the boat's +exhaust arose as she got under way. + +"Come on in. You'll get cold standing here," Fyfe said to Stella. + +She followed him back into the living room. He sat on the arm of a big +leather chair, rolling the dead cigar thoughtfully between his lips, +little creases gathering between his eyes. + +"I'm going up the lake," he said at last, getting up abruptly. + +"What's the matter, Jack?" she asked. "Why, has trouble started up +there?" + +"Part of the logging game," he answered indifferently. "Don't amount to +much." + +"But Thorsen has been fighting. His face was terrible. And I've heard +you say he was one of the most peaceable men alive. Is it--is Monohan--" + +"We won't discuss Monohan," Fyfe said curtly. "Anyway, there's no danger +of _him_ getting hurt." + +He went into his den and came out with hat and coat on. At the door he +paused a moment. + +"Don't worry," he said kindly. "Nothing's going to happen." + +But she stood looking out the window after he left, uneasy with a +prescience of trouble. She watched with a feverish interest the stir +that presently arose about the bunkhouses. That summer a wide space had +been cleared between bungalow and camp. She could see moving lanterns, +and even now and then hear the voices of men calling to each other. Once +the _Panther's_ dazzling eye of a searchlight swung across the landing, +and its beam picked out a file of men carrying their blankets toward the +boat. Shortly after that the tender rounded the point. Close behind her +went the _Waterbug_, and both boats swarmed with men. + +Stella looked and listened until there was but a faint thrum far up the +lake. Then she went to bed, but not to sleep. What ugly passions were +loosed at the lake head she did not know. But on the face of it she +could not avoid wondering if Monohan had deliberately set out to cross +and harass Jack Fyfe. Because of her? That was the question which had +hovered on her lips that evening, one she had not brought herself to +ask. Because of her, or because of some enmity that far preceded her? +She had thought him big enough to do as she had done, as Fyfe was +tacitly doing,--make the best of a grievous matter. + +But if he had allowed his passions to dictate reprisals, she trembled +for the outcome. Fyfe was not a man to sit quiet under either affront or +injury. He would fight with double rancor if Monohan were his adversary. + +"If anything happens up there, I'll hate myself," she whispered, when +the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost unendurable. "I was +a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan know I cared. And I'll +hate him too if he makes me a bone of contention. I elected to play the +game the only decent way there is to play it. So did he. Why can't he +abide by that?" + +Noon of the next day saw the _Waterbug_ heave to a quarter mile abeam of +Cougar Point to let off a lone figure in her dinghy, and then bore on, +driving straight and fast for Roaring Springs. Stella flew to the +landing. Mother Howe came puffing at her heels. + +"Land's sake, I been worried to death," the older woman breathed. "When +men git to quarrellin' about timber, you never can tell where they'll +stop, Mrs. Jack. I've knowed some wild times in the woods in the past." + +The man in the dink was Lefty Howe. He pulled in beside the float. When +he stepped up on the planks, he limped perceptibly. + +"Land alive, what happened yuh, Lefty?" his wife cried. + +"Got a rap on the leg with a peevy," he said. "Nothin' much." + +"Why did the _Waterbug_ go down the lake?" Stella asked breathlessly. +The man's face was serious. "What happened up there?" + +"There was a fuss," he answered quietly. "Three or four of the boys got +beat up so they need patchin'. Jack's takin' 'em down to the hospital. +Damn that yeller-headed Monohan!" his voice lifted suddenly in +uncontrollable anger. "Billy Dale was killed this mornin', mother." + +Stella felt herself grow sick. Death is a small matter when it strikes +afar, among strangers. When it comes to one's door! Billy Dale had +piloted the _Waterbug_ for a year, a chubby, round-faced boy of twenty, +a foster-son, of Mother Howe's before she had children of her own. +Stella had asked Jack to put him on the _Waterbug_ because he was such a +loyal, cheery sort of soul, and Billy had been a part of every +expedition they had taken around the lake. She could not think of him as +a rigid, lifeless lump of clay. Why, only the day before he had been +laughing and chattering aboard the cruiser, going up and down the cabin +floor on his hands and knees, Jack Junior perched triumphantly astride +his back. + +"What happened?" she cried wildly. "Tell me, quick." + +"It's quick told," Howe said grimly. "We were ready at daylight. +Monohan's got a hard crew, and they jumped us as soon as we started to +clear the channel. So we cleared them, first. It didn't take so long. +Three of our men was used bad, and there's plenty of sore heads on both +sides. But we did the job. After we got them on the run, we blowed up +their swifters an' piles with giant. Then we begun to put the cedar +through. Billy was on the bank when somebody shot him from across the +river. One mercy, he never knew what hit him. An' you'll never come so +close bein' a widow again, Mrs. Fyfe, an' not be. That bullet was meant +for Jack, I figure. He was sittin' down. Billy was standin' right behind +him watchin' the logs go through. Whoever he was, he shot high, that's +all. There, mother, don't cry. That don't help none. What's done's +done." + +Stella turned and walked up to the house, stunned. She could not credit +bloodshed, death. Always in her life both had been things remote. And as +the real significance of Lefty Howe's story grew on her, she shuddered. +It lay at her door, equally with her and Monohan, even if neither of +their hands had sped the bullet,--an indirect responsibility but +gruesomely real to her. + +God only knows to what length she might have gone in reaction. She was +quivering under that self-inflicted lash, bordering upon hysteria when +she reached the house. She could not shut out a too-vivid picture of +Billy Dale lying murdered on the Tyee's bank, of the accusing look with +which Fyfe must meet her. Rightly so, she held. She did not try to +shirk. She had followed the line of least resistance, lacked the dour +courage to pull herself up in the beginning, and it led to this. She +felt Billy Dale's blood wet on her soft hands. She walked into her own +house panting like a hunted animal. + +And she had barely crossed the threshold when back in the rear Jack +Junior's baby voice rose in a shrill scream of pain. + + * * * * * + +Stella scarcely heard her husband and the doctor come in. For a weary +age she had been sitting in a low rocker, a pillow across her lap, and +on that the little, tortured body swaddled with cotton soaked in olive +oil, the only dressing she and Mrs. Howe could devise to ease the pain. +All those other things which had so racked her, the fight on the Tyee, +the shooting of Billy Dale, they had vanished somehow into thin air +before the dread fact that her baby was dying slowly before her +anguished eyes. She sat numbed with that deadly assurance, praying +without hope for help to come, hopeless that any medical skill would +avail when it did come. So many hours had been wasted while a man rowed +to Benton's camp, while the _Chickamin_ steamed to Roaring Springs, +while the _Waterbug_ came driving back. Five hours! And the skin, yes, +even shreds of flesh, had come away in patches with Jack Junior's +clothing when she took it off. She bent over him, fearful that every +feeble breath would be his last. + +She looked up at the doctor. Fyfe was beside her, his calked boots +biting into the oak floor. + +"See what you can do, doc," he said huskily. Then to Stella: "How did it +happen?" + +"He toddled away from Martha," she whispered. "Sam Foo had set a pan of +boiling water on the kitchen floor. He fell into it. Oh, my poor little +darling." + +They watched the doctor bare the terribly scalded body, examine it, +listen to the boy's breathing, count his pulse. In the end he re-dressed +the tiny body with stuff from the case with which a country physician +goes armed against all emergencies. He was very deliberate and +thoughtful. Stella looked her appeal when he finished. + +"He's a sturdy little chap," he said, "and we'll do our best. A child +frequently survives terrific shock. It would be mistaken kindness for me +to make light of his condition simply to spare your feelings. He has an +even chance. I shall stay until morning. Now, I think it would be best +to lay him on a bed. You must relax, Mrs. Fyfe. I can see that the +strain is telling on you. You mustn't allow yourself to get in that +abnormal condition. The baby is not conscious of pain. He is not +suffering half so much in his body as you are in your mind, and you +mustn't do that. Be hopeful. We'll need your help. We should have a +nurse, but there was no time to get one." + +They laid Jack Junior amid downy pillows on Stella's bed. The doctor +stood looking at him, then drew a chair beside the bed. + +"Go and walk about a little, Mrs. Fyfe," he advised, "and have your +dinner. I'll want to watch the boy a while." + +But Stella did not want to walk. She did not want to eat. She was +scarcely aware that her limbs were cramped and aching from her long +vigil in the chair. She was not conscious of herself and her problems, +any more. Every shift of her mind turned on her baby, the little mite +she had nursed at her breast, the one joy untinctured with bitterness +that was left her. The bare chance that those little feet might never +patter across the floor again, that little voice never wake her in the +morning crying "Mom-mom," drove her distracted. + +She went out into the living room, walked to a window, stood there +drumming on the pane with nervous fingers. Dusk was falling outside; a +dusk was creeping over her. She shuddered. + +Fyfe came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and turned her +so that she faced him. + +"I wish I could help, Stella," he whispered. "I wish I could make you +feel less forlorn. Poor little kiddies--both of you." + +She shook off his hands, not because she rebelled against his touch, +against his sympathy, merely because she had come to that nervous state +where she scarce realized what she did. + +"Oh," she choked, "I can't bear it. My baby, my little baby boy. The one +bright spot that's left, and he has to suffer like that. If he dies, +it's the end of everything for me." + +Fyfe stared at her. The warm, pitying look on his face ebbed away, +hardened into his old, mask-like absence of expression. + +"No," he said quietly, "it would only be the beginning. Lord God, but +this has been a day." + +He whirled about with a quick gesture of his hands, a harsh, raspy laugh +that was very near a sob, and left her. Twenty minutes later, when +Stella was irresistibly drawn back to the bedroom, she found him sitting +sober and silent, looking at his son. + +A little past midnight Jack Junior died. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +FREE AS THE WIND + +Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the asphalt, the +muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A forlorn sighing of wind +in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that stood before her window reminded +her achingly of the wind drone among the tall firs. + +A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little life +blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she could keep +him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief seldom kills. +Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a greater or less +revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella Fyfe, although she was +not keenly aware of any forthright metamorphosis. She was, for the +present, too actively involved in material changes. + +The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the lure of +Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped her of all +emotional reaction. When they had performed the last melancholy service +for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar Point, she was as +physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed endurance in mind and +body as it is possible for a young and healthy woman to become. And +when a measure of her natural vitality re-asserted itself, she laid her +course. She could no more abide the place where she was than a pardoned +convict can abide the prison that has restrained him. It was empty now +of everything that made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant +reminder of her loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby +voice, for those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang +that she would never hear them again. + +The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the gulf +between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and preoccupied. +They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had meant a lot to +him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit with folded hands and +think until thought drove him into the bogs of melancholy. + +And so the break came. With desperate abruptness Stella told him that +she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised herself for +unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give nothing in +return, that the original mistake of their marriage would never be +rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake. + +"What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made that we +can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or we have to +part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old way of living. I +don't want to; I can't. I could never be complaisant and agreeable +again. We might as well come to a full stop, and each go his own way." + +She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. Fyfe +listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the end made a +quick, impatient gesture with his hands. + +"Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the kid's no +longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to do? Have you +made any plans?" + +"I have to live, naturally," she replied. "Since I've got my voice back, +I feel sure I can turn that to account. I should like to go to Seattle +first and look around. It can be supposed I have gone visiting, until +one or the other of us takes a decisive legal step." + +"That's simple enough," he returned, after a minute's reflection. "Well, +if it has to be, for God's sake let's get it over with." + +And now it was over with. Fyfe remarked once that with them luckily it +was not a question of money. But for Stella it was indeed an economic +problem. When she left Roaring Lake, her private account contained over +two thousand dollars. Her last act in Vancouver was to re-deposit that +to her husband's credit. Only so did she feel that she could go free of +all obligation, clean-handed, without stultifying herself in her own +eyes. She had treasured as a keepsake the only money she had ever earned +in her life, her brother's check for two hundred and seventy dollars, +the wages of that sordid period in the cookhouse. She had it now. Two +hundred and seventy dollars capital. She hadn't sold herself for that. +She had given honest value, double and treble, in the sweat of her brow. +She was here now, in a five-dollar-a-week housekeeping room, foot-loose, +free as the wind. That was Fyfe's last word to her. He had come with +her to Seattle and waited patiently at a hotel until she found a place +to live. Then he had gone away without protest. + +"Well, Stella," he had said, "I guess this is the end of our experiment. +In six months,--under the State law,--you can be legally free by a +technicality. So far as I'm concerned, you're free as the wind right +now. Good luck to you." + +He turned away with a smile on his lips, a smile that his eyes belied, +and she watched him walk to the corner through the same sort of driving +rain that now pelted in gray lines against her window. + +She shook herself impatiently out of that retrospect. It was done. Life, +as her brother had prophesied, was no kid-glove affair. The future was +her chief concern now, not the past. Yet that immediate past, bits of +it, would now and then blaze vividly before her mental vision. The only +defense against that lay in action, in something to occupy her mind and +hands. If that motive, the desire to shun mental reflexes that brought +pain, were not sufficient, there was the equally potent necessity to +earn her bread. Never again would she be any man's dependent, a pampered +doll, a parasite trading on her sex. They were hard names she called +herself. + +Meantime she had not been idle; neither had she come to Seattle on a +blind impulse. She knew of a singing teacher there whose reputation was +more than local, a vocal authority whose word carried weight far beyond +Puget Sound. First she meant to see him, get an impartial estimate of +the value of her voice, of the training she would need. Through him she +hoped to get in touch with some outlet for the only talent she +possessed. And she had received more encouragement than she dared hope. +He listened to her sing, then tested the range and flexibility of her +voice. + +"Amazing," he said frankly. "You have a rare natural endowment. If you +have the determination and the sense of dramatic values that musical +discipline will give you, you should go far. You should find your place +in opera." + +"That's my ambition," Stella answered. "But that requires time and +training. And that means money. I have to earn it." + +The upshot of that conversation was an appointment to meet the manager +of a photoplay house, who wanted a singer. Stella looked at her watch +now, and rose to go. Money, always money, if one wanted to get anywhere, +she reflected cynically. No wonder men struggled desperately for that +token of power. + +She reached the Charteris Theater, and a doorman gave her access to the +dim interior. There was a light in the operator's cage high at the rear, +another shaded glow at the piano, where a young man with hair brushed +sleekly back chewed gum incessantly while he practiced picture +accompaniments. The place looked desolate, with its empty seats, its +bald stage front with the empty picture screen. Stella sat down to wait +for the manager. He came in a few minutes; his manner was very curt, +business-like. He wanted her to sing a popular song, a bit from a Verdi +opera, Gounod's Ave Maria, so that he could get a line on what she +could do. He appeared to be a pessimist in regard to singers. + +"Take the stage right there," he instructed. "Just as if the spot was on +you. Now then." + +It wasn't a heartening process to stand there facing the gum-chewing +pianist, and the manager's cigar glowing redly five rows back, and the +silent emptinesses beyond,--much like singing into the mouth of a gloomy +cave. It was more or less a critical moment for Stella. But she was +keenly aware that she had to make good in a small way before she could +grasp the greater opportunity, so she did her best, and her best was no +mediocre performance. She had never sung in a place designed to show +off--or to show up--a singer's quality. She was even a bit astonished +herself. + +She elected to sing the Ave Maria first. Her voice went pealing to the +domed ceiling as sweet as a silver bell, resonant as a trumpet. When the +last note died away, there was a momentary silence. Then the accompanist +looked up at her, frankly admiring. + +"You're _some_ warbler," he said emphatically, "believe _me_." + +Behind him the manager's cigar lost its glow. He remained silent. The +pianist struck up "Let's Murder Care," a rollicking trifle from a +Broadway hit. Last of all he thumped, more or less successfully, through +the accompaniment to an aria that had in it vocal gymnastics as well as +melody. + +"Come up to the office, Mrs. Fyfe," Howard said, with a singular change +from his first manner. + +"I can give you an indefinite engagement at thirty a week," he made a +blunt offer. "You can sing. You're worth more, but right now I can't pay +more. If you pull business,--and I rather think you will,--have to sing +twice in the afternoon and twice in the evening." + +Stella considered briefly. Thirty dollars a week meant a great deal more +than mere living, as she meant to live. And it was a start, a move in +the right direction. She accepted; they discussed certain details. She +did not care to court publicity under her legal name, so they agreed +that she should be billed as Madame Benton,--the Madame being Howard's +suggestion,--and she took her leave. + +Upon the Monday following Stella stood for the first time in a fierce +white glare that dazzled her and so shut off partially her vision of the +rows and rows of faces. She went on with a horrible slackness in her +knees, a dry feeling in her throat; and she was not sure whether she +would sing or fly. When she had finished her first song and bowed +herself into the wings, she felt her heart leap and hammer at the +hand-clapping that grew and grew till it was like the beat of ocean +surf. + +Howard came running to meet her. + +"You've sure got 'em going," he laughed. "Fine work. Go out and give 'em +some more." + +In time she grew accustomed to these things, to the applause she never +failed to get, to the white beam that beat down from the picture cage, +to the eager, upturned faces in the first rows. Her confidence grew; +ambition began to glow like a flame within her. She had gone through +the primary stages of voice culture, and she was following now a method +of practice which produced results. She could see and feel that herself. +Sometimes the fear that her voice might go as it had once gone would +make her tremble. But that, her teacher assured her, was a remote +chance. + +So she gained in those weeks something of her old poise. Inevitably, she +was very lonely at times. But she fought against that with the most +effective weapon she knew,--incessant activity. She was always busy. +There was a rented piano now sitting in the opposite corner from the gas +stove on which she cooked her meals. Howard kept his word. She "pulled +business," and he raised her to forty a week and offered her a contract +which she refused, because other avenues, bigger and better than singing +in a motion-picture house, were tentatively opening. + +December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following weeks her +only contact with the past, beyond the mill of her own thoughts, was an +item in the _Seattle Times_ touching upon certain litigation in which +Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the +Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the +loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of +the Tyee River. There was appended an account of the clash over the +closed channel and the killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to +book for that yet. Any one of sixty men might have fired the shot. + +It made Stella wince, for it took her back to that dreadful day. She +could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, +neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that something more +grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at least she had done +what she could. If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the +powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before she +left. If aggression came, it must come from one direction. + +They were both abstractions now, she tried to assure herself. The +glamour of Monohan was fading, and she could not say why. She did not +know if his presence would stir again all that old tumult of feeling, +but she did know that she was cleaving to a measure of peace, of +serenity of mind, and she did not want him or any other man to disturb +it. She told herself that she had never loved Jack Fyfe. She recognized +in him a lot that a woman is held to admire, but there were also +qualities in him that had often baffled and sometimes frightened her. +She wondered sometimes what he really thought of her and her actions, +why, when she had been nerved to a desperate struggle for her freedom, +if she could gain it no other way, he had let her go so easily? + +After all, she reflected cynically, love comes and goes, but one is +driven to pursue material advantages while life lasts. And she wondered, +even while the thought took form in her mind, how long she would retain +that point of view. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +ECHOES + +In the early days of February Stella had an unexpected visitor. The +landlady called her to the common telephone, and when she took up the +receiver, Linda Abbey's voice came over the wire. + +"When can I see you?" she asked. "I'll only be here to-day and +to-morrow." + +"Now, if you like," Stella responded. "I'm free until two-thirty." + +"I'll be right over," Linda said. "I'm only about ten minutes drive from +where you are." + +Stella went back to her room both glad and sorry: glad to hear a +familiar, friendly voice amid this loneliness which sometimes seemed +almost unendurable; sorry because her situation involved some measure of +explanation to Linda. That hurt. + +But she was not prepared for the complete understanding of the matter +Linda Abbey tacitly exhibited before they had exchanged a dozen +sentences. + +"How did you know?" Stella asked. "Who told you?" + +"No one. I drew my own conclusions when I heard you had gone to +Seattle," Linda replied. "I saw it coming. My dear, I'm not blind, and +I was with you a lot last summer. I knew you too well to believe you'd +make a move while you had your baby to think of. When he was gone--well, +I looked for anything to happen." + +"Still, nothing much has happened," Stella remarked with a touch of +bitterness, "except the inevitable break between a man and a woman when +there's no longer any common bond between them. It's better so. Jack has +a multiplicity of interests. He can devote himself to them without the +constant irritation of an unresponsive wife. We've each taken our own +road. That's all that has happened." + +"So far," Linda murmured. "It's a pity. I liked that big, silent man of +yours. I like you both. It seems a shame things have to turn out this +way just because--oh, well. Charlie and I used to plan things for the +four of us, little family combinations when we settled down on the lake. +Honestly, Stella, do you think it's worth while? I never could see you +as a sentimental little chump, letting a momentary aberration throw your +whole life out of gear." + +"How do you know that I have?" Stella asked gravely. + +Linda shrugged her shoulders expressively. + +"I suppose it looks silly, if not worse, to you," Stella said. "But I +can't help what you think. My reason has dictated every step I've taken +since last fall. If I'd really given myself up to sentimentalism, the +Lord only knows what might have happened." + +"Exactly," Linda responded drily. "Now, there's no use beating around +the bush. We get so in that habit as a matter of politeness,--our sort +of people,--that we seldom say in plain English just what we really +mean. Surely, you and I know each other well enough to be frank, even if +it's painful. Very likely you'll say I'm a self-centered little beast, +but I'm going to marry your brother, my dear, and I'm going to marry him +in the face of considerable family opposition. I _am_ selfish. Can you +show me any one who isn't largely swayed by motives of self-interest, if +it comes to that? I want to be happy. I want to be on good terms with my +own people, so that Charlie will have some of the opportunities dad can +so easily put in his way. Charlie isn't rich. He hasn't done anything, +according to the Abbey standard, but make a fair start. Dad's +patronizing as sin, and mother merely tolerates the idea because she +knows that I'll marry Charlie in any case, opposition or no opposition. +I came over expressly to warn you, Stella. Anything like scandal now +would be--well, it would upset so many things." + +"You needn't be uneasy," Stella answered coldly. "There isn't any +foundation for scandal. There won't be." + +"I don't know," Linda returned, "Walter Monohan came to Seattle a boat +ahead of me. In fact, that's largely why I came." + +Stella flushed angrily. + +"Well, what of that?" she demanded. "His movements are nothing to me." + +"I don't know," Linda rejoined. She had taken off her gloves and was +rolling them nervously in a ball. Now she dropped them and impulsively +grasped Stella's hands. + +"Stella, Stella," she cried. "Don't get that hurt, angry look. I don't +like to say these things to you, but I feel that I have to. I'm worried, +and I'm afraid for you and your husband, for Charlie and myself, for all +of us together. Walter Monohan is as dangerous as any man who's +unscrupulous and rich and absolutely self-centered can possibly be. I +know the glamour of the man. I used to feel it myself. It didn't go very +far with me, because his attention wandered away from me before my +feelings were much involved, and I had a chance to really fathom them +and him. He has a queer gift of making women care for him, and he trades +on it deliberately. He doesn't play fair; he doesn't mean to. Oh, I know +so many cruel things, despicable things, he's done. Don't look at me +like that, Stella. I'm not saying this just to wound you. I'm simply +putting you on your guard. You can't play with fire and not get burned. +If you've been nursing any feeling for Walter Monohan, crush it, cut it +out, just as you'd have a surgeon cut out a cancer. Entirely apart from +any question of Jack Fyfe, don't let this man play any part whatever in +your life. You'll be sorry if you do. There's not a man or woman whose +relations with Monohan have been intimate enough to enable them to +really know the man and his motives who doesn't either hate or fear or +despise him, and sometimes all three." + +"That's a sweeping indictment," Stella said stiffly. "And you're very +earnest. Yet I can hardly take your word at its face value. If he's so +impossible a person, how does it come that you and your people +countenanced him socially? Besides, it's all rather unnecessary, Linda. +I'm not the least bit likely to do anything that will reflect on your +prospective husband, which is what it simmers down to, isn't it? I've +been pulled and hauled this way and that ever since I've been on the +coast, simply because I was dependent on some one else--first Charlie +and then Jack--for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual +affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that marriage is +supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she +receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, clinging to a man for +what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've been rather painfully frank; +so will I be. One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me. Looking back, +I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me +which I don't deny,--but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some +time ago,--I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting all +the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have +to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been schooled to think +unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves. It would have come +about a little more gradually, that's all. But I have broken away, and +I'm going to live my own life after a fashion, and I'm going to achieve +independence of some sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again +until I'm sure of myself--and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as +simply as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right +now I couldn't muster up the least shred of passion of any sort. I seem +to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge that's +been squeezed dry." + +"I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's heart is a +queer thing, though. When you compare the two men--Oh, well, I know +Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You couldn't ever have cared much +for Jack." + +"That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still his +wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. There +won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free personally to +work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is engrossing enough +for me." + +Linda sat a minute, thoughtful. + +"So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth much," +she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I don't think I +shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I don't think you're +quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a natural gossip. Aside from +that, he's quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good. He +never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind. In +this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have +said a word to you, but he certainly knows Monohan. They've clashed +before, so I've been told. Jack probably saw what was growing on you, +and I don't think he'd hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around. If +he did,--or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm rather in +the dark,--he'd go to any length to play even with. Fyfe. When Monohan +wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his +vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital part. He never rests then +until he's paid the score. Father was always a little afraid of him. I +think that's the chief reason for selling out his Roaring Lake interests +to Monohan. He didn't want to be involved in whatever Monohan +contemplated doing. He has a wholesome respect for your husband's rather +volcanic ability. Monohan has, too. But he has always hated Jack Fyfe. +To my knowledge for three years,--prior to pulling you out of the water +that time,--he never spoke of Jack Fyfe without a sneer. He hates any +one who beats him at anything. That ruction on the Tyee is a sample. +He'll spend money, risk lives, all but his own, do anything to satisfy a +grudge. That's one of the things that worries me. Charlie will be into +anything that Fyfe is, for Fyfe's his friend. I admire the spirit of the +thing, but I don't want our little applecart upset in the sort of +struggle Fyfe and Monohan may stage. I don't even know what form it will +ultimately take, except that from certain indications he'll try to make +Fyfe spend money faster than he can make it, perhaps in litigation over +timber, over anything that offers, by making trouble in his camps, +harassing him at every turn. He can, you know. He has immense resources. +Oh, well, I'm satisfied, Stella, that you're a much wiser girl than I +thought when I knew you'd left Jack Fyfe. I'm quite sure now you aren't +the sort of woman Monohan could wind around his little finger. But I'm +sure he'll try. You'll see, and remember what I tell you. There, I think +I'd better run along. You're not angry, are you, Stella?" + +"You mean well enough, I suppose," Stella answered. "But as a matter of +fact, you've made me feel rather nasty, Linda. I don't want to talk or +even think of these things. The best thing you and Charlie and Jack Fyfe +could do is to forget such a discontented pendulum as I ever existed." + +"Oh, bosh!" Linda exclaimed, as she drew on her gloves. "That's sheer +nonsense. You're going to be my big sister in three months. Things will +work out. If you felt you had to take this step for your own good, no +one can blame you. It needn't make any difference in our friendship." + +On the threshold she turned on her heel. "Don't forget what I've said," +she repeated. "Don't trust Monohan. Not an inch." + +Stella flung herself angrily into a chair when the door closed on Linda +Abbey. Her eyes snapped. She resented being warned and cautioned, as if +she were some moral weakling who could not be trusted to make the most +obvious distinctions. Particularly did she resent having Monohan flung +in her teeth, when she was in a way to forget him, to thrust the strange +charm of the man forever out of her thoughts. Why, she asked bitterly, +couldn't other people do as Jack Fyfe had done: cut the Gordian knot at +one stroke and let it rest at that? + +So Monohan was in Seattle? Would he try to see her? + +Stella had not minced matters with herself when she left Roaring Lake. +Dazed and shaken by suffering, nevertheless she knew that she would not +always suffer, that in time she would get back to that normal state in +which the human ego diligently pursues happiness. In time the legal tie +between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to exist. If Monohan cared for +her as she thought he cared, a year or two more or less mattered little. +They had all their lives before them. In the long run, the errors and +mistakes of that upheaval would grow dim, be as nothing. Jack Fyfe would +shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter +mate, one as loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never +loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the +fire into the frying-pan? + +So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song, +so that she would never again be buffeted by material urgencies in a +material world, Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of +her mind, so to speak, for a word from Monohan to say that he +understood, and that all was well. + +Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in Seattle, +away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in +Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had only followed the cue she +had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget +Billy Dale. If the motive behind that bloody culmination were thwarted +love, it was a thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing +herself to reason with cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less +than he hated Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added +factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two +diverse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot +of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its boiling +over. + +"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, +but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it +seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in +a man's life, after all." + +She dressed to go to the Charteris, for her day's work was about to +begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy flow, periods of calm are +succeeded by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife insisted that +Stella join them at supper after the show. They were decent folk who +accorded frank admiration to her voice and her personality. They had +been kind to her in many little ways, and she was glad to accept. + +At eleven a taxi deposited them at the door of Wain's. The Seattle of +yesterday needs no introduction to Wain's, and its counterpart can be +found in any cosmopolitan, seaport city. It is a place of subtle +distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill streets, where +after-theater parties and nighthawks with an eye for pretty women, an +ear for sensuous music, and a taste for good food, go when they have +money to spend. + +Ensconced behind a potted palm, with a waiter taking Howard's order, +Stella let her gaze travel over the diners. She brought up with a +repressed start at a table but four removes from her own, her eyes +resting upon the unmistakable profile of Walter Monohan. He was dining +vis-a-vis with a young woman chiefly remarkable for a profusion of +yellow hair and a blazing diamond in the lobe of each ear,--a plump, +blond, vivacious person of a type that Stella, even with her limited +experience, found herself instantly classifying. + +A bottle of wine rested in an iced dish between them. Monohan was toying +with the stem of a half-emptied glass, smiling at his companion. The +girl leaned toward him, speaking rapidly, pouting. Monohan nodded, +drained his glass, signaled a waiter. When she got into an elaborate +opera cloak and Monohan into his Inverness, they went out, the plump, +jeweled hand resting familiarly on Monohan's arm. Stella breathed a sigh +of relief as they passed, looking straight ahead. She watched through +the upper half of the cafe window and saw a machine draw against the +curb, saw the be-scarfed yellow head enter and Monohan's silk hat +follow. Then she relaxed, but she had little appetite for her food. A +hot wave of shamed disgust kept coming over her. She felt sick, +physically revolted. Very likely Monohan had put her in _that_ class, in +his secret thought. She was glad when the evening ended, and the Howards +left her at her own doorstep. + +On the carpet where it had been thrust by the postman under the door, a +white square caught her eye, and she picked it up before she switched on +the light. And she got a queer little shock when the light fell on the +envelope, for it was addressed in Jack Fyfe's angular handwriting. + +She tore it open. It was little enough in the way of a letter, a couple +of lines scrawled across a sheet of note-paper. + + "_Dear Girl:_ + + "I was in Seattle a few days ago and heard you sing. Here's hoping + good luck rides with you. + + "JACK." + +Stella sat down by the window. Outside, the ever-present Puget Sound +rain drove against wall and roof and sidewalk, gathered in wet, +glistening pools in the street. Through that same window she had watched +Jack Fyfe walk out of her life three months ago without a backward look, +sturdily, silently, uncomplaining. He hadn't whined, he wasn't whining +now,--only flinging a cheerful word out of the blank spaces of his own +life into the blank spaces of hers. Stella felt something warm and wet +steal down her cheeks. + +She crumpled the letter with a sudden, spasmodic clenching of her hand. +A lump rose chokingly in her throat. She stabbed at the light switch and +threw herself on the bed, sobbing her heart's cry in the dusky quiet. +And she could not have told why, except that she had been overcome by a +miserably forlorn feeling; all the mental props she relied upon were +knocked out from under her. Somehow those few scrawled words had flung +swiftly before her, like a picture on a screen, a vision of her baby +toddling uncertainly across the porch of the white bungalow. And she +could not bear to think of that! + + * * * * * + +When the elm before her window broke into leaf, and the sodden winter +skies were transformed into a warm spring vista of blue, Stella was +singing a special engagement in a local vaudeville house that boasted a +"big time" bill. She had stepped up. The silvery richness of her voice +had carried her name already beyond local boundaries, as the singing +master under whom she studied prophesied it would. In proof thereof she +received during April a feminine committee of two from Vancouver bearing +an offer of three hundred dollars for her appearance in a series of +three concerts under the auspices of the Woman's Musical Club, to be +given in the ballroom of Vancouver's new million-dollar hostelry, the +Granada. The date was mid-July. She took the offer under advisement, +promising a decision in ten days. + +The money tempted her; that was her greatest need now,--not for her +daily bread, but for an accumulated fund that would enable her to reach +New York and ultimately Europe, if that seemed the most direct route to +her goal. She had no doubts about reaching it now. Confidence came to +abide with her. She throve on work; and with increasing salary, her fund +grew. Coming from any other source, she would have accepted this further +augmentation of it without hesitation, since for a comparative beginner, +it was a liberal offer. + +But Vancouver was Fyfe's home town; it had been hers. Many people knew +her; the local papers would feature her. She did not know how Fyfe would +take it; she did not even know if there had been any open talk of their +separation. Money, she felt, was a small thing beside opening old sores. +For herself, she was tolerably indifferent to Vancouver's social +estimate of her or her acts. Nevertheless, so long as she bore Fyfe's +name, she did not feel free to make herself a public figure there +without his sanction. So she wrote to him in some detail concerning the +offer and asked point-blank if it mattered to him. + +His answer came with uncanny promptness, as if every mail connection had +been made on the minute. + + "If it is to your advantage to sing here," he wrote, "by all means + accept. Why should it matter to me? I would even be glad to come and + hear you sing if I could do so without stirring up vain longings and + useless regrets. As for the other considerations you mention, they + are of no weight at all. I never wanted to keep you in a glass case. + Even if all were well between us, I wouldn't have any feeling about + your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command + public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and + fine a thing to remain obscure. + + "JACK." + +He added, evidently as an afterthought, a somewhat lengthy postscript: + + "I wish you would do something next month, not as a favor to me + particularly, but to ease things along for Charlie and Linda. They + are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up your + little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion of + your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But it + doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very little + different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded + youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean is + that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the + sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly + because--I've flattered myself--I talked to him like a Dutch uncle, + and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut mold + that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with him. + He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a good + deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think. + + "I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own + failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a + bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an + undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like + Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her + people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly + conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public + would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, they + are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family pride, + intend to give Linda a big wedding. + + "Now, no one outside of you and me and--well you and me--knows that + there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been quizzed--naturally. It + got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera as + a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I + fostered that rumor--simply to keep gossip down until things shaped + themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have + started--Abbey _pere_ and _mere_ will then be unable to frown on + Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a + divorce case. + + "I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after those + concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house of + Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation--a myth that you've taken no + measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be a + sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way--one amazed yelp + from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over. + + "Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope + you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the + game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and + I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It + is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard + against a bomb from the Abbey fortress. + + "Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would be + very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her + folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her + matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe + to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her + whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she pretty + clearly guesses the breach in our rampart--not the original mistake + in our over-hasty plunge--but the wedge that divided us for good. If + she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good stuff, + because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because + Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of + Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way and + another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your + absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch + him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the + point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute + generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've + got it all off my chest now, or pretty near. + + "J.H.F." + +Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time. + +"I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice galvanized +her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the mellow spring +sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her feet carried her +to a little park that overlooked the far reach of the Sound and gave +westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary and aloof to a perfect +sky, like their brother peaks that ringed Roaring Lake. And all the time +her mind kept turning on a question whose asking was rooted neither in +fact nor necessity, an inquiry born of a sentiment she had never +expected to feel. + +Should she go back to Jack Fyfe? + +She shook her head impatiently when she faced that squarely. Why tread +the same bitter road again? But she put that self-interested phase of it +aside and asked herself candidly if she _could_ go back and take up the +old threads where they had been broken off and make life run smoothly +along the old, quiet channels? She was as sure as she was sure of the +breath she drew that Fyfe wanted her, that he longed for and would +welcome her. But she was equally sure that the old illusions would never +serve. She couldn't even make him happy, much less herself. +Monohan--well, Monohan was a dead issue. He had come to the Charteris to +see her, all smiles and eagerness. She had been able to look at him and +through him--and cut him dead--and do it without a single flutter of her +heart. + +That brief and illuminating episode in Wain's had merely confirmed an +impression that had slowly grown upon her, and her outburst of feeling +that night had only been the overflowing of shamed anger at herself for +letting his magnetic personality make so deep an impression on her that +she could admit to him that she cared. She felt that she had belittled +herself by that. But he was no longer a problem. She wondered now how he +ever could have been. She recalled that once Jack Fyfe had soberly told +her she would never sense life's real values while she nursed so many +illusions. Monohan had been one of them. + +"But it wouldn't work," she whispered to herself. "I couldn't do it. +He'd know I only did it because I was sorry, because I thought I should, +because the old ties, and they seem so many and so strong in spite of +everything, were harder to break than the new road is to follow alone. +He'd resent anything like pity for his loneliness. And if Monohan has +made any real trouble, it began over me, or at least it focussed on me. +And he might resent that. He's ten times a better man than I am a woman. +He thinks about the other fellow's side of things. I'm just what he said +about Charlie, self-centered, a profound egotist. If I really and truly +loved Jack Fyfe, I'd be a jealous little fury if he so much as looked at +another woman. But I don't, and I don't see why I don't. I want to be +loved; I want to love. I've always wanted that so much that I'll never +dare trust my instincts about it again. I wonder why people like me +exist to go blundering about in the world, playing havoc with themselves +and everybody else?" + +Before she reached home, that self-sacrificing mood had vanished in the +face of sundry twinges of pride. Jack Fyfe hadn't asked her to come +back; he never would ask her to come back. Of that she was quite sure. +She knew the stony determination of him too well. Neither hope or +heaven nor fear of hell would turn him aside when he had made a +decision. If he ever had moments of irresolution, he had successfully +concealed any such weakness from those who knew him best. No one ever +felt called upon to pity Jack Fyfe, and in those rocked-ribbed +qualities, Stella had an illuminating flash, perhaps lay the secret of +his failure ever to stir in her that yearning tenderness which she knew +herself to be capable of lavishing, which her nature impelled her to +lavish on some one. + +"Ah, well," she sighed, when she came back to her rooms and put Fyfe's +letter away in a drawer. "I'll do the decent thing if they ask me. I +wonder what Jack would say if he knew what I've been debating with +myself this afternoon? I wonder if we were actually divorced and I'd +made myself a reputation as a singer, and we happened to meet quite +casually sometime, somewhere, just how we'd really feel about each +other?" + +She was still musing on that, in a detached, impersonal fashion, when +she caught a car down to the theater for the matinee. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +AN UNEXPECTED MEETING + +The formally worded wedding card arrived in due course. Following close +came a letter from Linda Abbey, a missive that radiated friendliness and +begged Stella to come a week before the date. + + "You're going to be pretty prominent in the public eye when you sing + here," Linda wrote. "People are going to make a to-do over you. Ever + so many have mentioned you since the announcement was made that + you'll sing at the Granada concerts. I'm getting a lot of reflected + glory as the future sister-in-law of a rising singer. So you may as + well come and get your hand into the social game in preparation for + being fussed over in July." + +In the same mail was a characteristic note from Charlie which ran: + + "_Dear Sis:_ + + "As the Siwashes say, long time I see you no. I might have dropped a + line before, but you know what a punk correspondent I am. They tell + me you're becoming a real noise musically. How about it? + + "Can't you break away from the fame and fortune stuff long enough to + be on hand when Linda and I get married? I wasn't invited to your + wedding, but I'd like to have you at mine. Jack says it's up to you + to represent the Fyfe connection, as he's too busy. I'll come over + to Seattle and get you, if you say so." + +She capitulated at that and wrote saying that she would be there, and +that she did not mind the trip alone in the least. She did not want +Charlie asking pertinent questions about why she lived in such grubby +quarters and practiced such strict economy in the matter of living. + +Then there was the detail of arranging a break in her engagements, which +ran continuously to the end of June. She managed that easily enough, for +she was becoming too great a drawing card for managers to curtly +override her wishes. + +Almost before she realized it, June was at hand. Linda wrote again +urgently, and Stella took the night boat for Vancouver a week before the +wedding day. Linda met her at the dock with a machine. Mrs. Abbey was +the essence of cordiality when she reached the big Abbey house on +Vancouver's aristocratic "heights," where the local capitalists, all +those fortunate climbers enriched by timber and mineral, grown wealthy +in a decade through the great Coast boom, segregated themselves in +"Villas" and "Places" and "Views," all painfully new and sometimes +garish, striving for an effect in landscape and architecture which the +very intensity of the striving defeated. They were well-meaning folk, +however, the Abbeys included. + +Stella could not deny that she enjoyed the luxury of the Abbey menage, +the little festive round which was shaping about Linda in these last +days of her spinsterhood. She relished the change from unremitting +work. It amused her to startle little groups with the range and quality +of her voice, when they asked her to sing. They made a much ado over +that, a genuine admiration that flattered Stella. It was easy for her to +fall into the swing of that life; it was only a lapsing back to the old +ways. + +But she saw it now with a more critical vision. It was soft and +satisfying and eminently desirable to have everything one wanted without +the effort of striving for it, but a begging wheedling game on the part +of these women. They were, she told herself rather harshly, an +incompetent, helpless lot, dependent one and all upon some man's favor +or affection, just as she herself had been all her life until the past +few months. Some man had to work and scheme to pay the bills. She did +not know why this line of thought should arise, neither did she so far +forget herself as to voice these social heresies. But it helped to +reconcile her with her new-found independence, to put a less formidable +aspect on the long, hard grind that lay ahead of her before she could +revel in equal affluence gained by her own efforts. All that they had +she desired,--homes, servants, clothes, social standing,--but she did +not want these things bestowed upon her as a favor by some man, the +emoluments of sex. + +She expected she would have to be on her guard with her brother, even to +dissemble a little. But she found him too deeply engrossed in what to +him was the most momentous event of his career, impatiently awaiting the +day, rather dreading the publicity of it. + +"Why in Sam Hill can't a man and a woman get married without all this +fuss?" he complained once. "Why should we make our private affairs a +spectacle for the whole town?" + +"Principally because mamma has her heart set on a spectacle," Linda +laughed. "She'd hold up her hands in horror if she heard you. Decorated +bridal bower, high church dignitary, bridesmaids, orange blossoms, rice, +and all. Mamma likes to show off. Besides, that's the way it's done in +society. _And_ the honeymoon." + +They both giggled, as at some mirthful secret. + +"Shall we tell her?" Linda nodded toward Stella. + +"Sure," Benton said. "I thought you had." + +"The happy couple will spend their honeymoon on a leisurely tour of the +Southern and Eastern States, remaining for some weeks in Philadelphia, +where the groom has wealthy and influential connections. It's all +prepared for the pay-a-purs," Linda whispered with exaggerated secrecy +behind her hand. + +Benton snorted. + +"Can you beat that?" he appealed to Stella. + +"And all the time," Linda continued, "the happy couple, unknown to every +one, will be spending their days in peace and quietness in their shanty +at Halfway Point. My, but mamma would rave if she knew. Don't give us +away, Stella. It seems so senseless to squander a lot of money gadding +about on trains and living in hotels when we'd much rather be at home by +ourselves. My husband's a poor young man, Stella. 'Pore but worthy.' He +has to make his fortune before we start in spending it. I'm sick of all +this spreading it on because dad has made a pile of money," she broke +out impatiently. "Our living used to be simple enough when I was a kid. +I think I can relish a little simplicity again for a change. Mamma's +been trying for four years to marry me off to her conception of an +eligible man. It didn't matter a hang about his essential qualities so +long as he had money and an assured social position." + +"Forget that," Charlie counseled slangily. "I have all the essential +qualities, and I'll have the money and social position too; you watch my +smoke." + +"Conceited ninny," Linda smiled. But there was no reproof in her tone, +only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so openly and +unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a pang of envy, a +dull little ache in her heart. She had missed that. It had passed her +by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two personalities in the biggest +passion life holds. Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the +flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, +but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of +living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed +her out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that +tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them, +that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her woman's +heritage. + +She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked the +thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit seeking the +outlet of action. + +"Thank the Lord I've got something to do, something that's worth doing," +she whispered savagely. "If I can't have what I want, I can make my life +embrace something more than just food and clothes and social trifling. +If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring what it would, I believe +I'd go clean mad." + +A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one had called +her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the library. She wasn't +prepared for the voice that came over the line, but she recognized it +instantly as Fyfe's. + +"Listen, Stella," he said. "I'm sorry this has happened, but I can't +very well avoid it now, without causing comment. I had no choice about +coming to Vancouver. It was a business matter I couldn't neglect. And as +luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I got off the train. On account +of your being there, of course, he insisted that I come out for dinner. +It'll look queer if I don't, as I can't possibly get a return train for +the Springs before nine-thirty this evening. I accepted without +stuttering rather than leave any chance for the impression that I wanted +to avoid you. Now, here's how I propose to fix it. I'll come out about +two-thirty and pay a hurry-up five-minute call. Then I'll excuse myself +to Mrs. Abbey for inability to join them at dinner--press of important +business takes me to Victoria and so forth. That'll satisfy the +conventions and let us both out. I called you so you won't be taken by +surprise. Do you mind?" + +"Of course not," she answered instantly. "Why should I?" + +There was a momentary silence. + +"Well," he said at last, "I didn't know how you'd feel about it. Anyway, +it will only be for a few minutes, and it's unlikely to happen again." + +Stella put the receiver back on the hook and looked at her watch. It +lacked a quarter of two. In the room adjoining, Charlie and Linda were +jubilantly wading through the latest "rag" song in a passable soprano +and baritone, with Mrs. Abbey listening in outward resignation. Stella +sat soberly for a minute, then joined them. + +"Jack's in town," she informed them placidly, when the ragtime spasm +ended. "He telephoned that he was going to snatch a few minutes between +important business confabs to run out and see me." + +"I could have told you that half an hour ago, my dear," Mrs. Abbey +responded with playful archness. "Mr. Fyfe will dine with us this +evening." + +"Oh," Stella feigned surprise. "Why, he spoke of going to Victoria on +the afternoon boat. He gave me the impression of mad haste--making a +dash out here between breaths, as you might say." + +"Oh, I hope he won't be called away on such short notice as that," Mrs. +Abbey murmured politely. + +She left the room presently. Out of one corner of her eye Stella saw +Linda looking at her queerly. Charlie had turned to the window, staring +at the blue blur of the Lions across the Inlet. + +"It's a wonder Jack would leave the lake," he said suddenly, "with +things the way they are. I've been hoping for rain ever since I've been +down. I'll be glad when we're on the spot again, Linda." + +"Wishing for rain?" Stella echoed. "Why?" + +"Fire," he said shortly. "I don't suppose you realize it, but there's +been practically no rain for two months. It's getting hot. A few weeks +of dry, warm weather, and this whole country is ready to blow away. The +woods are like a pile of shavings. That would be a fine wedding +present--to be cleaned out by fire. Every dollar I've got's in timber." + +"Don't be a pessimist," Linda said sharply. + +"What makes you so uneasy now?" Stella asked thoughtfully. "There's +always the fire danger in the dry months. That's been a bugaboo ever +since I came to the lake." + +"Yes, but never like it is this summer," Benton frowned. "Oh, well, no +use borrowing trouble, I suppose." + +Stella rose. + +"When Jack comes, I'll be in the library," she said. "I'm going to read +a while." + +But the book she took up lay idle in her lap. She looked forward to that +meeting with a curious mixture of reluctance and regret. She could not +face it unmoved. No woman who has ever lain passive in a man's arms can +ever again look into that man's eyes with genuine indifference. She may +hate him or love him with a degree of intensity according to her nature, +be merely friendly, or nurse a slow resentment. But there is always that +intangible something which differentiates him from other men. Stella +felt now a shyness of him, a little dread of him, less sureness of +herself, as he swung out of the machine and took the house steps with +that effortless lightness on his feet that she remembered so well. + +She heard him in the hall, his deep voice mingling with the thin, +penetrating tones of Mrs. Abbey. And then the library door opened, and +he came in. Stella had risen, and stood uncertainly at one corner of a +big reading table, repressing an impulse to fly, finding herself +stricken with a strange recurrence of the feeling she had first disliked +him for arousing in her,--a sense of needing to be on her guard, of +impending assertion of a will infinitely more powerful than her own. + +But that was, she told herself, only a state of mind, and Fyfe put her +quickly at her ease. He came up to the table and seated himself on the +edge of it an arm's length from her, swinging one foot free. He looked +at her intently. There was no shadow of expression on his face, only in +his clear eyes lurked a gleam of feeling. + +"Well, lady," he said at length, "you're looking fine. How goes +everything?" + +"Fairly well," she answered. + +"Seems odd, doesn't it, to meet like this?" he ventured. "I'd have +dodged it, if it had been politic. As it is, there's no harm done, I +imagine. Mrs. Abbey assured me we'd be free from interruption. If the +exceedingly cordial dame had an inkling of how things stand between us, +I daresay she'd be holding her breath about now." + +"Why do you talk like that, Jack?" Stella protested nervously. + +"Well, I have to say something," he remarked, after a moment's +reflection. "I can't sit here and just look at you. That would be rude, +not to say embarrassing." + +Stella bit her lip. + +"I don't see why we can't talk like any other man and woman for a few +minutes," she observed. + +"I do," he said quietly. "You know why, too, if you stop to think. I'm +the same old Jack Fyfe, Stella. I don't think much where you are +concerned; I just feel. And that doesn't lend itself readily to +impersonal chatter." + +"How do you feel?" she asked, meeting his gaze squarely. "If you don't +hate me, you must at least rather despise me." + +"Neither," he said slowly. "I admire your grit, lady. You broke away +from everything and made a fresh start. You asserted your own +individuality in a fashion that rather surprised me. Maybe the incentive +wasn't what it might have been, but the result is, or promises to be. I +was only a milestone. Why should I hate or despise you because you +recognized that and passed on? I had no business setting myself up for +the end of your road instead of the beginning. I meant to have it that +way until the kid--well, Fate took a hand there. Pshaw," he broke off +with a quick gesture, "let's talk about something else." + +Stella laid one hand on his knee. Unbidden tears were crowding up in her +gray eyes. + +"You were good to me," she whispered. "But just being good wasn't +enough for a perverse creature like me. I couldn't be a sleek pussy-cat, +comfortable beside your fire. I'm full of queer longings. I want wings. +I must be a variation from the normal type of woman. Our marriage didn't +touch the real me at all, Jack. It only scratched the surface. And +sometimes I'm afraid to look deep, for fear of what I'll see. Even if +another man hadn't come along and stirred up a temporary tumult in me, I +couldn't have gone on forever." + +"A temporary tumult," Fyfe mused. "Have you thoroughly chucked that +illusion? I knew you would, of course, but I had no idea how long it +would take you." + +"Long ago," she answered. "Even before I left you, I was shaky about +that. There were things I couldn't reconcile. But pride wouldn't let me +admit it. I can't even explain it to myself." + +"I can," he said, a little sadly. "You've never poured out that big, +warm heart of yours on a man. It's there, always has been there, those +concentrated essences of passion. Every unattached man's a possible +factor, a potential lover. Nature has her own devices to gain her end. I +couldn't be the one. We started wrong. I saw the mistake of that when it +was too late. Monohan, a highly magnetic animal, came along at a time +when you were peculiarly and rather blindly receptive. That's all. +Sex--you have it in a word. It couldn't stand any stress, that sort of +attraction. I knew it would only last until you got one illuminating +glimpse of the real man of him. But I don't want to talk about him. +He'll keep. Sometime you'll really love a _man_, Stella, and he'll be a +very lucky mortal. There's an erratic streak in you, lady, but there's a +bigger streak that's fine and good and true. You'd have gone through +with it to the bitter end, if Jack Junior hadn't died. The weaklings +don't do that. Neither do they cut loose as you did, burning all their +economic bridges behind them. Do you know that it was over a month +before I found out that you'd turned your private balance back into my +account? I suppose there was a keen personal satisfaction in going on +your own and making good from the start. Only I couldn't rest +until--until--" + +His voice trailed huskily off into silence. The gloves in his left hand +were doubled and twisted in his uneasy fingers. Stella's eyes were +blurred. + +"Well, I'm going," he said shortly. "Be good." + +He slipped off the table and stood erect, a wide, deep-chested man, +tanned brown, his fair hair with its bronze tinge lying back in a smooth +wave from his forehead, blue eyes bent on her, hot with a slumbering +fire. + +Without warning, he caught her close in his arms so that she could feel +the pounding of his heart against her breast, kissed her cheeks, her +hair, the round, firm white neck of her, with lips that burned. Then he +held her off at arm's length. + +"That's how _I_ care," he said defiantly. "That's how I want you. No +other way. I'm a one-woman man. Some time you may love like that, and if +you do, you'll know how I feel. I've watched you sleeping beside me and +ached because I couldn't kindle the faintest glow of the real thing in +you. I'm sick with a miserable sense of failure, the only thing I've +ever failed at, and the biggest, most complete failure I can conceive +of,--to love a woman in every way desirable; to have her and yet never +have her." + +He caught up his hat, and the door clicked shut behind him. A minute +later Stella saw him step into the tonneau of the car. He never looked +back. + +And she fled to her own room, stunned, half-frightened, wholly amazed at +this outburst. Her face was damp with his lip-pressure, damp and warm. +Her arms tingled with the grip of his. The blood stood in her cheeks +like a danger signal, flooding in hot, successive waves to the roots of +her thick, brown hair. + +"If I thought--I could," she whispered into her pillow, "I'd try. But I +daren't. I'm afraid. It's just a mood, I know it is. I've had it before. +A--ah! I'm a spineless jellyfish, a weathercock that whirls to every +emotional breeze. And I won't be. I'll stand on my own feet if I can--so +help me God, I will!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE + +This is no intimate chronicle of Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey, save in +so far as they naturally furnish a logical sequence in what transpired. +Therefore the details of their nuptials is of no particular concern. +They were wedded, ceremonially dined as befitted the occasion, and +departed upon their hypothetical honeymoon, surreptitiously abbreviated +from an extravagant swing over half of North America to seventy miles by +rail and twenty by water,--and a month of blissful seclusion, which +suited those two far better than any amount of Pullman touring, besides +leaving them money in pocket. + +When they were gone, Stella caught the next boat for Seattle. She had +drawn fresh breath in the meantime, and while she felt tenderly, almost +maternally, sorry for Jack Fyfe, she swung back to the old attitude. +Even granting, she argued, that she could muster courage to take up the +mantle of wifehood where she laid it off, there was no surety that they +could do more than compromise. There was the stubborn fact that she had +openly declared her love for another man, that by her act she had +plunged her husband into far-reaching conflict. Such a conflict existed. +She could put her finger on no concrete facts, but it was in the air. +She heard whispers of a battle between giants--a financial duel to the +death--with all the odds against Jack Fyfe. + +Win or lose, there would be scars. And the struggle, if not of and by +her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity through her. Men, +she told herself, do not forget these things; they rankle. Jack Fyfe was +only human. No, Stella felt that they could only come safe to the old +port by virtue of a passion that could match Fyfe's own. And she put +that rather sadly beyond her, beyond the possibilities. She had felt +stirrings of it, but not to endure. She was proud and sensitive and +growing wise with bitterly accumulated experience. It had to be all or +nothing with them, a cleaving together complete enough to erase and +forever obliterate all that had gone before. And since she could not see +that as a possibility, there was nothing to do but play the game +according to the cards she held. Of these the trump was work, the inner +glow that comes of something worth while done toward a definite, +purposeful end. She took up her singing again with a distinct relief. + +Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding day and +the date of her Granada engagement. It seemed a mere breathing space +before the middle of July rolled around, and she was once more aboard a +Vancouver boat. In the interim, she had received a letter from the +attorney who had wound up her father's estate, intimating that there was +now a market demand for that oil stock, and asking if he should sell or +hold for a rise in price which seemed reasonably sure? Stella +telegraphed her answer. If that left-over of a speculative period would +bring a few hundred dollars, it would never be of greater service to her +than now. + +All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, +the day Stella started for Vancouver. That great region of island-dotted +sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range +lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent. But nearing the +international boundary, the _Charlotte_ drove her twenty-knot way into a +thickening atmosphere. Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that +line those inland waterways began to appear blurred. Just north of +Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open gulf again, a vast bank +of smoke flung up blue and gray, a rolling mass. The air was pungent, +oppressive. When the _Charlotte_ spanned the thirty-mile gap between +Vancouver Island and the mainland shore, she nosed into the Lion's Gate +under a slow bell, through a smoke pall thick as Bering fog. Stella's +recollection swung back to Charlie's uneasy growl of a month earlier. +Fire! Throughout the midsummer season there was always the danger of +fire breaking out in the woods. Not all the fire-ranger patrols could +guard against the carelessness of fishermen and campers. + +"It's a tough Summer over here for the timber owners," she heard a man +remark. "I've been twenty years on the coast and never saw the woods so +dry." + +"Dry's no name," his neighbor responded. "It's like tinder. A cigarette +stub'll start a blaze forty men couldn't put out. It's me that knows it. +I've got four limits on the North Arm, and there's fire on two sides of +me. You bet I'm praying for rain." + +"They say the country between Chehalis and Roaring Lake is one big +blaze," the first man observed. + +"So?" the other replied. "Pity, too. Fine timber in there. I came near +buying some timber on the lake this spring. Some stuff that was on the +market as a result of that Abbey-Monohan split. Glad I didn't now. I'd +just as soon have _all_ my money out of timber this season." + +They moved away in the press of disembarking, and Stella heard no more +of their talk. She took a taxi to the Granada, and she bought a paper in +the foyer before she followed the bell boy to her room. She had scarcely +taken off her hat and settled down to read when the telephone rang. +Linda's voice greeted her when she answered. + +"I called on the chance that you took the morning boat," Linda said. +"Can I run in? I'm just down for the day. I won't be able to hear you +sing, but I'd like to see you, dear." + +"Can you come right now?" Stella asked. "Come up, and we'll have +something served up here. I don't feel like running the gauntlet of the +dining room just now." + +"I'll be there in a few minutes," Linda answered. + +Stella went back to her paper. She hadn't noticed any particular stress +laid on forest fires in the Seattle dailies, but she could not say that +of this Vancouver sheet. The front page reeked of smoke and fire. She +glanced through the various items for news of Roaring Lake, but found +only a brief mention. It was "reported" and "asserted" and "rumored" +that fire was raging at one or two points there, statements that were +overshadowed by positive knowledge of greater areas nearer at hand +burning with a fierceness that could be seen and smelled. The local +papers had enough feature stuff in fires that threatened the very +suburbs of Vancouver without going so far afield as Roaring Lake. + +Linda's entrance put a stop to her reading, without, however, changing +the direction of her thought. For after an exchange of greetings, Linda +divulged the source of her worried expression, which Stella had +immediately remarked. + +"Who wouldn't be worried," Linda said, "with the whole country on fire, +and no telling when it may break out in some unexpected place and wipe +one out of house and home." + +"Is it so bad as that at the lake?" Stella asked uneasily. "There's not +much in the paper. I was looking." + +"It's so bad," Linda returned, with a touch of bitterness, "that I've +been driven to the Springs for safety; that every able-bodied man on the +lake who can be spared is fighting fire. There has been one man killed, +and there's half a dozen loggers in the hospital, suffering from burns +and other hurts. Nobody knows where it will stop. Charlie's limits have +barely been scorched, but there's fire all along one side of them. A +change of wind--and there you are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a +dozen places. We've been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a +week." + +Stella looked out the north window. From the ten-story height she could +see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky pall that +shrouded the harbor. + +"I'm sorry," she whispered. + +"It's devilish," Linda went on. "Like groping in the dark and being +afraid--for me. I've been married a month, and for ten days I've only +seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes down in the launch for +supplies, or to bring an injured man. And he doesn't tell me anything +except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything. I sit there at +the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and +wonder what goes on up there. And at night there's the red glow, very +faint and far. That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to +help out and to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only +for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be +obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the +evening train back." + +"I'm sorry," Stella repeated. + +She said it rather mechanically. Her mind was spinning a thread, upon +which, strung like beads, slid all the manifold succession of things +that had happened since she came first to Roaring Lake. Linda's voice, +continuing, broke into her thoughts. + +"I suppose I shouldn't be croaking into your ear like a bird of ill +omen, when you have to throw yourself heart and soul into that concert +to-morrow," she said contritely. "I wonder why that Ancient Mariner way +of seeking relief from one's troubles by pouring them into another ear +is such a universal trait? You aren't vitally concerned, after all, and +I am. Let's have that tea, dear, and talk about less grievous things. I +still have one or two trifles to get in the shops too." + +After they had finished the food that Stella ordered sent up, they went +out together. Later Stella saw her off on the train. + +"Good-by, dear," Linda said from the coach window. "I'm just selfish +enough to wish you were going back with me; I wish you could sit with me +on the bank of the lake, aching and longing for your man up there in the +smoke as I ache and long for mine. Misery loves company." + +Stella's eyes were clouded as the train pulled out. Something in Linda +Benton's parting words made her acutely lonely, dispirited, out of joint +with the world she was deliberately fashioning for herself. Into Linda's +life something big and elemental had come. The butterfly of yesterday +had become the strong man's mate of to-day. Linda's heart was +unequivocally up there in the smoke and flame with her man, fighting for +their mutual possessions, hoping with him, fearing for him, longing for +him, secure in the knowledge that if nothing else was left them, they +had each other. It was a rare and beautiful thing to feel like that. And +beyond that sorrowful vision of what she lacked to achieve any real and +enduring happiness, there loomed also a self-torturing conviction that +she herself had set in motion those forces which now threatened ruin for +her brother and Jack Fyfe. + +There was no logical proof of this. Only intuitive, subtle suggestions +gleaned here and there, shadowy finger-posts which pointed to Monohan +as a deadly hater and with a score chalked up against Fyfe to which she +had unconsciously added. He had desired her, and twice Fyfe had treated +him like an urchin caught in mischief. She recalled how Monohan sprang +at him like a tiger that day on the lake shore. She realized how bitter +a humiliation it must have been to suffer that sardonic cuffing at +Fyfe's hands. Monohan wasn't the type of man who would ever forget or +forgive either that or the terrible grip on his throat. + +Even at the time she had sensed this and dreaded what it might +ultimately lead to. Even while her being answered eagerly to the +physical charm of him, she had fought against admitting to herself what +desperate intent might have lain back of the killing of Billy Dale,--a +shot that Lefty Howe declared was meant for Fyfe. She had long outgrown +Monohan's lure, but if he had come to her or written to make out a case +for himself when she first went to Seattle, she would have accepted his +word against anything. Her heart would have fought for him against the +logic of her brain. + +But--she had had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that +she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to +the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total +gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his +desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most +fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would +be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted +him. She could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like +Jack Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a +torch to Fyfe's timber would be a likely enough counterstroke. + +She shrank from the thought. Yet it lingered until she felt guilty. +Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe might or might +not face ruin, she could not, before her own conscience, evade +responsibility. The powder might have been laid, but her folly had +touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it. That seared her like a pain +far into the night. For every crime a punishment; for every sin a +penance. Her world had taught her that. She had never danced; she had +only listened to the piper and longed to dance, as nature had fashioned +her to do. But the piper was sending his bill. She surveyed it wearily, +emotionally bankrupt, wondering in what coin of the soul she would have +to pay. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +A RIDE BY NIGHT + +Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind +the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few +hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening. +She sang her way straight into the heart of that audience with her +opening number. This was on Wednesday. Friday she sang again, and +Saturday afternoon. + +When she came back to her room after that last concert, wearied with the +effort of listening to chattering women and playing the gracious lady to +an admiring contingent which insisted upon making her last appearance a +social triumph, she found a letter forwarded from Seattle. She slit the +envelope. A typewritten sheet enfolded a green slip,--a check. She +looked at the figures, scarcely comprehending until she read the letter. + + "We take pleasure in handing you herewith," Mr. Lander wrote for the + firm, "our check for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars, + proceeds of oil stock sold as per your telegraphed instructions, + less brokerage charges. We sold same at par, and trust this will be + satisfactory." + +She looked at the check again. Nineteen thousand, five hundred--payable +to her order. Two years ago such a sum would have lifted her to +plutocratic heights, filled her with pleasurable excitement, innumerable +anticipations. Now it stirred her less than the three hundred dollars +she had just received from the Granada Concert committee. She had earned +that, had given for it due measure of herself. This other had come +without effort, without expectation. And less than she had ever needed +money before did she now require such a sum. + +Yet she was sensibly aware that this windfall meant a short cut to +things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over economic +hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay houses, to +vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial towns. She could +hitch her wagon to a star and go straight up the avenue that led to a +career, if it were in her to achieve greatness. Pleasant dreams in which +the buoyant ego soared, until the logical interpretation of her +ambitions brought her to a more practical consideration of ways and +means, and that in turn confronted her with the fact that she could +leave the Pacific coast to-morrow morning if she so chose. + +Why should she not so choose? + +She was her own mistress, free as the wind. Fyfe had said that. She +looked out into the smoky veil that shrouded the water front and the +hills across the Inlet, that swirled and eddied above the giant fir in +Stanley Park, and her mind flicked back to Roaring Lake where the Red +Flower of Kipling's _Jungle Book_ bloomed to her husband's ruin. Did it? +She wondered. She could not think of him as beaten, bested in any +undertaking. She had never been able to think of him in those terms. +Always to her he had conveyed the impression of a superman. Always she +had been a little in awe of him, of his strength, his patient, +inflexible determination, glimpsing under his habitual repression +certain tremendous forces. She could not conceive him as a broken man. + +Staring out into the smoky air, she wondered if the fires at Roaring +Lake still ravaged that noble forest; if Fyfe's resources, like her +brother's, were wholly involved in standing timber, and if that timber +were doomed? She craved to know. Secured herself by that green slip in +her hand against every possible need, she wondered if it were ordained +that the two men whose possession of material resources had molded her +into what she was to-day should lose all, be reduced to the same stress +that had made her an unwilling drudge in her brother's kitchen. Then she +recalled that for Charlie there was an equivalent sum due,--a share like +her own. At the worst, he had the nucleus of another fortune. + +Curled among the pillows of her bed that night, she looked over the +evening papers, read with a swift heart-sinking that the Roaring Lake +fire was assuming terrific proportions, that nothing but a deluge of +rain would stay it now. And more significantly, except for a minor blaze +or two, the fire raged almost wholly upon and around the Fyfe block of +limits. She laid aside the papers, switched off the lights, and lay +staring wide-eyed at the dusky ceiling. + +At twenty minutes of midnight she was called to the door of her room to +receive a telegram. It was from Linda, and it read: + + "Charlie badly hurt. Can you come?" + +Stella reached for the telephone receiver. The night clerk at the C.P.R. +depot told her the first train she could take left at six in the +morning. That meant reaching the Springs at nine-thirty. Nine and a half +hours to sit with idle hands, in suspense. She did not knew what tragic +denouement awaited there, what she could do once she reached there. She +knew only that a fever of impatience burned in her. The message had +strung her suddenly taut, as if a crisis had arisen in which willy-nilly +she must take a hand. + +So, groping for the relief of action, some method of spanning that nine +hours' wait, her eye fell upon a card tucked beside the telephone case. +She held it between, finger and thumb, her brows puckered. + + TAXIS AND TOURING CARS + Anywhere . . . Anytime + +She took down the receiver again and asked for Seymour 9X. + +"Western Taxi," a man's voice drawled. + +"I want to reach Roaring Hot Springs in the shortest time possible," she +told him rather breathlessly. "Can you furnish me a machine and a +reliable chauffeur?" + +"Roaring Springs?" he repeated. "How many passengers?" + +"One. Myself." + +"Just a minute." + +She heard a faint burble of talk away at the other end of the wire. Then +the same voice speaking crisply. + +"We gotta big six roadster, and a first-class driver. It'll cost you +seventy-five dollars--in advance." + +"Your money will be waiting for you here," she answered calmly. "How +soon can you bring the car around to the Hotel Granada?" + +"In ten minutes, if you say so." + +"Say twenty minutes, then." + +"All right." + +She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, instructed the +night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send it by express to +Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. Then she walked out to +the broad-stepped carriage entrance. + +A low-hung long-hooded, yellow car stood there, exhaust purring faintly. +She paid the driver, sank into the soft upholstering beside him, and the +big six slid out into the street. There was no traffic. In a few minutes +they were on the outskirts of the city, the long asphalt ribbon of +King's Way lying like a silver band between green, bushy walls. They +crossed the last car track. The driver spoke to her out of one corner of +his mouth. + +"Wanna make time, huh?" + +"I want to get to Roaring Lake as quickly as you can drive, without +taking chances." + +"I know the road pretty well," he assured her. "Drove a party clear to +Rosebud day before yesterday. I'll do the best I can. Can't drive too +fast at night. Too smoky." + +She could not gage his conception of real speed if the gait he struck +was not "too fast." They were through New Westminster and rolling across +the Fraser bridge before she was well settled in the seat, breasting the +road with a lurch and a swing at the curves, a noise under that long +hood like giant bees in an empty barrel. + +Ninety miles of road good, bad and indifferent, forest and farm and +rolling hill, and the swamps of Sumas Prairie, lies between Vancouver +and Roaring Lake. At four in the morning, with dawn an hour old, they +woke the Rosebud ferryman to cross the river. Twenty minutes after that +Stella was stepping stiffly out of the machine before Roaring Springs +hospital. The doctor's Chinaman was abroad in the garden. She beckoned +him. + +"You sabe Mr. Benton--Charlie Benton?" she asked. "He in doctor's +house?" + +The Chinaman pointed across the road. "Mist Bentle obah dah," he said. +"Velly much sick. Missa Bentle lib dah, all same gleen house." + +Stella ran across the way. The front door of the green cottage stood +wide. An electric drop light burned in the front room, though it was +broad day. When she crossed the threshold, she saw Linda sitting in a +chair, her arms folded on the table-edge, her head resting on her hands. +She was asleep, and she did not raise her head till Stella shook her +shoulder. + +Linda Abbey had been a pretty girl, very fair, with apple-blossom skin +and a wonderfully expressive face. It gave Stella a shock to see her +now, to gage her suffering by the havoc it had wrought. Linda looked +old, haggard, drawn. There was a weary droop to her mouth, her eyes were +dull, lifeless, just as one might look who is utterly exhausted in mind +and body. Oddly enough, she spoke first of something irrelevant, +inconsequential. + +"I fell asleep," she said heavily. "What time is it?" + +Stella looked at her watch. + +"Half-past four," she answered. "How is Charlie? What happened to him?" + +"Monohan shot him." + +Stella caught her breath. She hadn't been prepared for that. + +"Is he--is he--" she could not utter the words. + +"He'll get better. Wait." Linda rose stiffly from her seat. A door in +one side of the room stood ajar. She opened it, and Stella, looking over +her shoulder, saw her brother's tousled head on a pillow. A nurse in +uniform sat beside his bed. Linda closed the door silently. + +"Come into the kitchen where we won't make a noise," she whispered. + +A fire burned in the kitchen stove. Linda sank into a willow rocker. + +"I'm weary as Atlas," she said. "I've been fretting for so long. Then +late yesterday afternoon they brought him home to me--like that. The +doctor was probing for the bullet when I wired you. I was in a panic +then, I think. Half-past four! How did you get here so soon? How could +you? There's no train." + +Stella told her. + +"Why should Monohan shoot him?" she broke out. "For God's sake, talk, +Linda!" + +There was a curious impersonality in Linda's manner, as if she stood +aloof from it all, as if the fire of her vitality had burned out. She +lay back in her chair with eyelids drooping, speaking in dull, lifeless +tones. + +"Monohan shot him because Charlie came on him in the woods setting a +fresh fire. They've suspected him, or some one in his pay, of that, and +they've been watching. There were two other men with Charlie, so there +is no mistake. Monohan got away. That's all I know. Oh, but I'm tired. +I've been hanging on to myself for so long. About daylight, after we +knew for sure that Charlie was over the hill, something seemed to let go +in me. I'm awful glad you came, Stella. Can you make a cup of tea?" + +Stella could and did, but she drank none of it herself. A dead weight of +apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience pointed a +deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, sandwiched in +between, the loosed fire furies which were taking toll in bodily injury +and ruinous loss. + +Yet she was helpless. The matter was wholly out of her hands, and she +stood aghast before it, much as the small child stands aghast before the +burning house he has fired by accident. + +Fyfe next. That was the ultimate, the culmination, which would leave her +forever transfixed with remorseful horror. The fact that already the +machinery of the law which would eventually bring Monohan to book for +the double lawlessness of arson and attempted homicide must be in +motion, that the Provincial police would be hard on his trail, did not +occur to her. She could only visualize him progressing step by step from +one lawless deed to another. And in her mind every step led to Jack +Fyfe, who had made a mock of him. She found her hands clenching till the +nails dug deep. + +Linda's head drooped over the teacup. Her eyelids blinked. + +"Dear," Stella said tenderly, "come and lie down. You're worn out." + +"Perhaps I'd better," Linda muttered. "There's another room in there." + +Stella tucked the weary girl into the bed, and went back to the kitchen, +and sat down in the willow rocker. After another hour the nurse came out +and prepared her own breakfast. Benton was still sleeping. He was in no +danger, the nurse told Stella. The bullet had driven cleanly through his +body, missing as by a miracle any vital part, and lodged in the muscles +of his back, whence the surgeon had removed it. Though weak from shock, +loss of blood, excitement, he had rallied splendidly, and fallen into a +normal sleep. + +Later the doctor confirmed this. He made light of the wound. One +couldn't kill a young man as full of vitality as Charlie Benton with an +axe, he informed Stella with an optimistic smile. Which lifted one +burden from her mind. + +The night nurse went away, and another from the hospital took her place. +Benton slept; Linda slept. The house was very quiet. To Stella, brooding +in that kitchen chair, it became oppressive, that funeral hush. When it +was drawing near ten o'clock, she walked up the road past the corner +store and post-office, and so out to the end of the wharf. + +The air was hot and heavy, pungent, gray with the smoke. Farther along, +St. Allwoods bulked mistily amid its grounds. The crescent of shore line +half a mile distant was wholly obscured. Up over the eastern mountain +range the sun, high above the murk, hung like a bloody orange, rayless +and round. No hotel guests strolled by pairs and groups along the bank. +She could understand that no one would come for pleasure into that +suffocating atmosphere. Caught in that great bowl of which the lake +formed the watery bottom, the smoke eddied and rolled like a cloud of +mist. + +She stood a while gazing at the glassy surface of the lake where it +spread to her vision a little way beyond the piles. Then she went back +to the green cottage. + +Benton lifted alert, recognizing eyes when she peeped in the bedroom +door. + +"Hello, Sis," he greeted in strangely subdued tones. "When did you blow +in? I thought you'd deserted the sinking ship completely. Come on in." + +She winced inwardly at his words, but made no outward sign, as she came +up to his bedside. The nurse went out. + +"Perhaps you'd better not talk?" she said. + +"Oh, nonsense," he retorted feebly. "I'm all right. Sore as the mischief +and weak. But I don't feel as bad as I might. Linda still asleep?" + +"I think so," Stella answered. + +"Poor kid," he breathed; "it's been tough on her. Well, I guess it's +been tough on everybody. He turned out to be some bad actor, this +Monohan party. I never did like the beggar. He was a little too +high-handed in his smooth, kid-glove way. But I didn't suppose he'd try +to burn up a million dollars' worth of timber to satisfy a grudge. Well, +he put his foot in it proper at last. He'll get a good long jolt in the +pen, if the boys don't beat the constables to him and take him to +pieces." + +"He did start the fire then?" Stella muttered. + +"I guess so," Benton replied. "At any rate, he kept it going. Did it by +his lonesome, too. Jack suspected that. We were watching for him as well +as fighting fire. He'd come down from the head of the lake in that speed +boat of his, and this time daylight caught him before he could get back +to where he had her cached, after starting a string of little fires in +the edge of my north limit. He had it in for me, too, you know; I batted +him over the head with a pike-pole here at the wharf one day this +spring, so he plunked me as soon as I hollered at him. I wish he'd done +it earlier in the game. We might have saved a lot of good timber. As it +was, we couldn't do much. Every time the wind changed, it would break +out in a new place--too often to be accidental. Damn him!" + +"How is it going to end, the fire?" Stella forced herself to ask. "Will +you and Jack be able to save any timber?" + +"If it should rain hard, and if in the meantime the boys keep it from +jumping the fire-trails we've cut, I'll get by with most of mine," he +said. "But Jack's done for. He won't have anything but his donkeys and +gear and part of a cedar limit on the Tyee which isn't paid for. He had +practically everything tied up in that big block of timber around the +Point. Monohan made him spend money like water to hold his own. Jack's +broke." + +Stella's head drooped. Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, all +grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered her soft +fingers that rested on his bed. + +"It's a pity everything's gone to pot like that, Stell," he said softly. +"I've grown a lot wiser in human ways the last two years. You taught me +a lot, and Jack a lot, and Linda the rest. It seems a blamed shame you +and Jack came to a fork in the road. Oh, he never chirped. I've just +guessed it the last few weeks. I owe him a lot that he'll never let me +pay back in anything but good will. I hate to see him get the worst of +it from every direction. He grins and doesn't say anything. But I know +it hurts. There can't be anything much wrong between you two. Why don't +you forget your petty larceny troubles and start all over again?" + +"I can't," she whispered. "It wouldn't work. There's too many scars. Too +much that's hard to forget." + +"Well, you know about that better than I do," Benton said thoughtfully. +"It all depends on how you _feel_." + +The poignant truth of that struck miserably home to her. It was not a +matter of reason or logic, of her making any sacrifice for her +conscience sake. It depended solely upon the existence of an emotion she +could not definitely invoke. She was torn by so many emotions, not one +of which she could be sure was the vital, the necessary one. Her heart +did not cry out for Jack Fyfe, except in a pitying tenderness, as she +used to feel for Jack Junior when he bumped and bruised himself. She had +felt that before and held it too weak a crutch to lean upon. + +The nurse came in with a cup of broth for Benton, and Stella went away +with a dumb ache in her breast, a leaden sinking of her spirits, and +went out to sit on the porch steps. The minutes piled into hours, and +noon came, when Linda wakened. Stella forced herself to swallow a cup of +tea, to eat food; then she left Linda sitting with her husband and went +back to the porch steps again. + +As she sat there, a man dressed in the blue shirt and mackinaw trousers +and high, calked boots of the logger turned in off the road, a burly +woodsman that she recognized as one of Jack Fyfe's crew. + +"Well," said he, "if it ain't Mrs. Jack. Say--ah--" + +He broke off suddenly, a perplexed look on his face, an uneasiness, a +hesitation in his manner. + +"What is it, Barlow?" Stella asked kindly. "How is everything up the +lake?" + +It was common enough in her experience, that temporary embarrassment of +a logger before her. She knew them for men with boyish souls, boyish +instincts, rude simplicities of heart. Long ago she had revised those +first superficial estimates of them as gross, hulking brutes who worked +hard and drank harder, coarsened and calloused by their occupation. They +had their weaknesses, but their virtues of abiding loyalty, their +reckless generosity, their simple directness, were great indeed. They +took their lives in their hands on skid-road and spring-board, that such +as she might flourish. They did not understand that, but she did. + +"What is it, Barlow?" she repeated. "Have you just come down the lake?" + +"Yes'm," he answered. "Say, Jack don't happen to be here, does he?" + +"No, he hasn't been here," she told him. + +The man's face fell. + +"What's wrong?" Stella demanded. She had a swift divination that +something was wrong. + +"Oh, I dunno's anythin's wrong, particular," Barlow replied. +"Only--well, Lefty he sent me down to see if Jack was at the Springs. We +ain't seen him for a couple uh days." + +Her pulse quickened. + +"And he has not come down the lake?" + +"I guess not," the logger said. "Oh, I guess it's all right. Jack's +pretty _skookum_ in the woods. Only Lefty got uneasy. It's desperate hot +and smoky up there." + +"How did you come down? Are you going back soon?" she asked abruptly. + +"I got the _Waterbug_," Barlow told her. "I'm goin' right straight +back." + +Stella looked out over the smoky lake and back at the logger again, a +sudden resolution born of intolerable uncertainty, of a feeling that she +could only characterize as fear, sprang full-fledged into her mind. +"Wait for me," she said. "I'm going with you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" + +The _Waterbug_ limped. Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow +lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. He was satisfied +to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve at all. So the boat +moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at less than half speed. +Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser bore every mark of hard usage. +Her topsides were foul, her decks splintered by the tramping of calked +boots, grimy with soot and cinders. It seemed to Stella that everything +and every one on and about Roaring Lake bore some mark of that holocaust +raging in the timber, as if the fire were some malignant disease +menacing and marring all that it affected, and affecting all that +trafficked within its smoky radius. + +But of the fire itself she could see nothing, even when late in the +afternoon they drew in to the bay before her brother's camp. A heavier +smoke cloud, more pungent of burning pitch, blanketed the shores, lifted +in blue, rolling masses farther back. A greater heat made the air +stifling, causing the eyes to smart and grow watery. That was the only +difference. + +Barlow laid the _Waterbug_ alongside the float. He had already told her +that Lefty Howe, with the greater part of Fyfe's crew, was extending and +guarding Benton's fire-trail, and he half expected that Fyfe might have +turned up there. Away back in the smoke arose spasmodic coughing of +donkey engines, dull resounding of axe-blades. Barlow led the way. They +traversed a few hundred yards of path through brush, broken tops, and +stumps, coming at last into a fairway cut through virgin timber, a +sixty-foot strip denuded of every growth, great firs felled and drawn +far aside, brush piled and burned. A breastwork from which to fight +advancing fire, it ran away into the heart of a smoky forest. Here and +there blackened, fire-scorched patches abutted upon its northern flank, +stumps of great trees smoldering, crackling yet. At the first such +place, half a dozen men were busy with shovels blotting out streaks of +fire that crept along in the dry leaf mold. No, they had not seen Fyfe. +But they had been blamed busy. He might be up above. + +Half a mile beyond that, beside the first donkey shuddering on its +anchored skids as it tore an eighteen-inch cedar out by the roots, they +came on Lefty Howe. He shook his head when Stella asked for Fyfe. + +"He took twenty men around to the main camp day before yesterday," said +Lefty. "There was a piece uh timber beyond that he thought he could +save. I--well, I took a shoot around there yesterday, after your brother +got hurt. Jack wasn't there. Most of the boys was at camp loadin' gear +on the scows. They said Jack's gone around to Tumblin' Creek with one +man. He wasn't back this mornin'. So I thought maybe he'd gone to the +Springs. I dunno's there's any occasion to worry. He might 'a' gone to +the head uh the lake with them constables that went up last night. +How's Charlie Benton?" + +She told him briefly. + +"That's good," said Lefty. "Now, I'd go around to Cougar Bay, if I was +you, Mrs. Jack. He's liable to come in there, any time. You could stay +at the house to-night. Everything around there, shacks 'n' all, was +burned days ago, so the fire can't touch the house. The crew there has +grub an' a cook. I kinda expect Jack'll be there, unless he fell in with +them constables." + +She trudged silently back to the _Waterbug_. Barlow started the engine, +and the boat took up her slow way. As they skirted the shore, Stella +began to see here and there the fierce havoc of the fire. Black trunks +of fir reared nakedly to the smoky sky, lay crisscross on bank and +beach. Nowhere was there a green blade, a living bush. Nothing but +charred black, a melancholy waste of smoking litter, with here and there +a pitch-soaked stub still waving its banner of flame, or glowing redly. +Back of those seared skeletons a shifting cloud of smoke obscured +everything. + +Presently they drew in to Cougar Bay. Men moved about on the beach; two +bulky scows stood nose-on to the shore. Upon them rested half a dozen +donkey engines, thick-bellied, upright machines, blown down, dead on +their skids. About these in great coils lay piled the gear of logging, +miles of steel cable, blocks, the varied tools of the logger's trade. +The _Panther_ lay between the scows, with lines from each passed over +her towing bitts. + +Stella could see the outline of the white bungalow on its grassy knoll. +They had saved only that, of all the camp, by a fight that sent three +men to the hospital, on a day when the wind shifted into the northwest +and sent a sheet of flame rolling through the timber and down on Cougar +Bay like a tidal wave. So Barlow told her. He cupped his hands now and +called to his fellows on the beach. + +No, Fyfe had not come back yet. + +"Go up to the mouth of Tumbling Creek," Stella ordered. + +Barlow swung the _Waterbug_ about, cleared the point, and stood up along +the shore. Stella sat on a cushioned seat at the back of the pilot +house, hard-eyed, struggling against that dead weight that seemed, to +grow and grow in her breast. That elemental fury raging in the woods +made her shrink. Her own hand had helped to loose it, but her hands were +powerless to stay it; she could only sit and watch and wait, eaten up +with misery of her own making. She was horribly afraid, with a fear she +would not name to herself. + +Behind that density of atmosphere, the sun had gone to rest. The first +shadows of dusk were closing in, betokened by a thickening of the +smoke-fog into which the _Waterbug_ slowly plowed. To port a dimming +shore line; to starboard, aft, and dead ahead, water and air merged in +two boat lengths. Barlow leaned through the pilot-house window, one hand +on the wheel, straining his eyes on their course. Suddenly he threw out +the clutch, shut down his throttle control with one hand, and yanked +with the other at the cord which loosed the _Waterbug's_ shrill whistle. + +Dead ahead, almost upon them, came an answering toot. + +"I thought I heard a gas-boat," Barlow exclaimed. "Sufferin' Jerusalem! +Hi, there!" + +He threw his weight on the wheel, sending it hard over. The cruiser +still had way on; the momentum of her ten-ton weight scarcely had +slackened, and she answered the helm. Out of the deceptive thickness +ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another forty-footer, sheering +quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was upon them, and abreast, and +gone, with a watery purl of her bow wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust, +passing so near than an active man could have leaped the space between. + +"Sufferin' Jerusalem!" Barlow repeated, turning to Stella. "Did you see +that, Mrs. Jack? They got him." + +Stella nodded. She too had seen Monohan seated on the after deck, his +head sunk on his breast, irons on his wrists. A glimpse, no more. + +"That'll help some," Barlow grunted. "Quick work. But they come blame +near cuttin' us down, beltin' along at ten knots when you can't see +forty feet ahead." + +An empty beach greeted them at Tumbling Creek. Reluctantly Stella bade +Barlow turn back. It would soon be dark, and Barlow said he would be +taking chances of piling on the shore before he could see it, or getting +lost in the profound black that would shut down on the water with +daylight's end. + +Less than a mile from Cougar Bay, the _Waterbug's_ engine gave a few +premonitory gasps and died. Barlow descended to the engine room, hooked +up the trouble lamp, and sought for the cause. He could not find it. +Stella could hear him muttering profanity, turning the flywheel over, +getting an occasional explosion. + +An hour passed. Dark of the Pit descended, shrouding the lake with a +sable curtain, close-folded, impenetrable. The dead stillness of the day +vanished before a hot land breeze, and Stella, as she felt the launch +drift, knew by her experience on the lake that they were moving +offshore. Presently this was confirmed, for out of the black wall on the +west, from which the night wind brought stifling puffs of smoke, there +lifted a yellow effulgence that grew to a red glare as the boat drifted +out. Soon that red glare was a glowing line that rose and fell, dipping +and rising and wavering along a two-mile stretch, a fiery surf beating +against the forest. + +Down in the engine room Barlow finally located the trouble, and the +motor took up its labors, spinning with a rhythmic chatter of valves. +The man came up into the pilot house, wiping the sweat from his grimy +face. + +"Gee, I'm sorry, Mrs. Fyfe," he said. "A gas-engine man would 'a' fixed +that in five minutes. Took me two hours to find out what was wrong. +It'll be a heck of a job to fetch Cougar Bay now." + +But by luck Barlow made his way back, blundering fairly into the landing +at the foot of the path that led to the bungalow, as if the cruiser knew +the way to her old berth. And as he reached the float, the front +windows on the hillock broke out yellow, pale blurs in the smoky night. + +"Well, say," Barlow pointed. "I bet a nickel Jack's home. See? Nobody +but him would be in the house." + +"I'll go up," Stella said. + +"All right, I guess you know the path better'n I do," Barlow said. "I'll +take the _Bug_ around into the bay." + +Stella ran up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and leaned +against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her step was +noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the _Waterbug_ she had +found an old pair of her own shoes, rubber-soled, and she had put them +on to ease the ache in her feet born of thirty-six hours' encasement in +leather. She gained the door without a sound. It was wide open, and in +the middle of the big room Jack Fyfe stood with hands thrust deep in his +pockets, staring absently at the floor. + +She took a step or two inside. Fyfe did not hear her; he did not look +up. + +"Jack." + +He gave ever so slight a start, glanced up, stood with head thrown back +a little. But he did not move, or answer, and Stella, looking at him, +seeing the flame that glowed in his eyes, could not speak. Something +seemed to choke her, something that was a strange compound of relief and +bewilderment and a slow wonder at herself,--at the queer, unsteady +pounding of her heart. + +"How did you get way up here?" he asked at last. + +"Linda wired last night that Charlie was hurt. I got a machine to the +Springs. Then Barlow came down this afternoon looking for you. He said +you'd been missing for two days. So I--I--" + +She broke off. Fyfe was walking toward her with that peculiar, +lightfooted step of his, a queer, tense look on his face. + +"Nero fiddled when Rome was burning," he said harshly. "Did you come to +sing while _my_ Rome goes up in smoke?" + +A little, half-strangled sob escaped her. She turned to go. But he +caught her by the arm. + +"There, lady," he said, with a swift change of tone, "I didn't mean to +slash at you. I suppose you mean all right. But just now, with +everything gone to the devil, to look up and see you here--I've really +got an ugly temper, Stella, and it's pretty near the surface these days. +I don't want to be pitied and sympathized with. I want to fight. I want +to hurt somebody." + +"Hurt me then," she cried. + +He shook his head sadly. + +"I couldn't do that," he said. "No, I can't imagine myself ever doing +that." + +"Why?" she asked, knowing why, but wishful to hear in words what his +eyes shouted. + +"Because I love you," he said. "You know well enough why." + +She lifted her one free hand to his shoulder. Her face turned up to his. +A warm wave of blood dyed the round, white neck, shot up into her +cheeks. Her eyes were suddenly aglow, lips tremulous. + +"Kiss me, then," she whispered. "That's what I came for. Kiss me, Jack." + +If she had doubted, if she had ever in the last few hours looked with +misgiving upon what she felt herself impelled to do, the pressure of +Jack Fyfe's lips on hers left no room for anything but an amazing thrill +of pure gladness. She was happy in his arms, content to rest there, to +feel his heart beating against hers, to be quit of all the +uncertainties, all the useless regrets. By a roundabout way she had come +to her own, and it thrilled her to her finger tips. She could not quite +comprehend it, or herself. But she was glad, weeping with gladness, +straining her man to her, kissing his face, murmuring incoherent words +against his breast. + +"And so--and so, after all, you do care." Fyfe held her off a little +from him, his sinewy fingers gripping gently the soft flesh of her arms. +"And you were big enough to come back. Oh, my dear, you don't know what +that means to me. I'm broke, and I'd just about reached the point where +I didn't give a damn. This fire has cleaned me out. I've--" + +"I know," Stella interrupted. "That's why I came back. I wouldn't have +come otherwise, at least not for a long time--perhaps never. It seemed +as if I ought to--as if it were the least I could do. Of course, it +looks altogether different, now that I know I really want to. But you +see I didn't know that for sure until I saw you standing here. Oh, Jack, +there's such a lot I wish I could wipe out." + +"It's wiped out," he said happily. "The slate's clean. Fair weather +didn't get us anywhere. It took a storm. Well, the storm's over." + +She stirred uneasily in his arms. + +"Haven't you got the least bit of resentment, Jack, for all this trouble +I've helped to bring about?" she faltered. + +"Why, no" he said thoughtfully. "All you did was to touch the fireworks +off. And they might have started over anything. Lord no! put that idea +out of your head." + +"I don't understand," she murmured. "I never have quite understood why +Monohan should attack you with such savage bitterness. That trouble he +started on the Tyee, then this criminal firing of the woods. I've had +hints, first from your sister, then from Linda. I didn't know you'd +clashed before. I'm not very clear on that yet. But you knew all the +time what he was. Why didn't you tell me, Jack?" + +"Well, maybe I should have," Fyfe admitted. "But I couldn't very well. +Don't you see? He wasn't even an incident, until he bobbed up and +rescued you that day. I couldn't, after that, start in picking his +character to pieces as a mater of precaution. We had a sort of an armed +truce. He left me strictly alone. I'd trimmed his claws once or twice +already. I suppose he was acute enough to see an opportunity to get a +whack at me through you. You were just living from day to day, creating +a world of illusions for yourself, nourishing yourself with dreams, +smarting under a stifled regret for a lot you thought you'd passed up +for good. _He_ wasn't a factor, at first. When he did finally stir in +you an emotion I had failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say +anything. If I'd tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your +idol's clay feet, you'd have despised me, as well as refused to believe. +I couldn't do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you to +find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on. I purposely +refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first +time,--partly on the kid's account, partly because I could hardly bear +to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show +his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able to size him up. + +"You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing would +afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared +for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to +check-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really +started him properly. After that, you--as something to be desired and +possessed--ran second to his feeling against me. He was bound to try and +play even, regardless of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee, +I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life--for my own +life, if he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about +to you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me. +Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me. I +had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge against life, +and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never kissed me once in all +those two years like you kissed me just now." + +She pulled his head down and kissed him again. + +"So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own advantage," +he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I wanted to put a +brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex individual, Stella. +Along with certain fixed, fundamental principles, you've got a streak of +divine madness in you, a capacity for reckless undertakings. You'd never +have married me if you hadn't. I trusted you absolutely. But, I was +afraid in spite of my faith. You had draped such an idealistic mantle +around Monohan. I wanted to rend that before it came to a final +separation between us. It worked out, because he couldn't resist trying +to take a crack at me when the notion seized him. + +"So," he continued, after a pause, "you aren't responsible, and I've +never considered you responsible for any of this. It's between him and +me, and it's been shaping for years. Whenever our trails crossed there +was bound to be a clash. There's always been a natural personal +antagonism between us. It began to show when we were kids, you might +say. Monohan's nature is such that he can't acknowledge defeat, he can't +deny himself a gratification. He's a supreme egotist. He's always had +plenty of money, he's always had whatever he wanted, and it never +mattered to him how he gratified his desires. + +"The first time we locked horns was in my last year at high school. +Monohan was a star athlete. I beat him in a pole vault. That irked him +so that he sulked and sneered, and generally made himself so insulting +that I slapped him. We fought, and I whipped him. I had a temper that I +hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I +had nothing but contempt for him, anyway, because even then, when he +wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I +don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find +him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at +the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,--a girl he'd +picked up on a trip to Georgia,--like any confirmed rounder. + +"Well, from that time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance to sting +me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, so hard that +when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me home and read the +riot act so strong that I flared up and left. Then I came to the coast +here and got a job in the woods, got to be a logging boss, and went into +business on my own hook eventually. I'd just got nicely started when I +ran into Monohan again. He'd got into timber himself. I was hand logging +up the coast, and I'd hate to tell you the tricks he tried. He kept it +up until I got too big to be harassed in a petty way. Then he left me +alone. But he never forgot his grudge. The stage was all set for this +act long before you gave him his cue, Stella. You weren't to blame for +that, or if you were in part, it doesn't matter now. I'm satisfied. +Paradoxically I feel rich, even though it's a long shot that I'm broke +flat. I've got something money doesn't buy. And he has overreached +himself at last. All his money and pull won't help him out of this jack +pot. Arson and attempted murder is serious business." + +"They caught him," Stella said. "The constables took him down the lake +to-night. I saw him on their launch as they passed the _Waterbug_." + +"Yes?" Fyfe said. "Quick work. I didn't even know about the shooting +till I came in here to-night about dark. Well," he snapped his fingers, +"exit Monohan. He's a dead issue, far as we're concerned. Wouldn't you +like something to eat, Stella? I'm hungry, and I was dog-tired when I +landed here. Say, you can't guess what I was thinking about, lady, +standing there when you came in." + +She shook her head. + +"I had a crazy notion of touching a match to the house," he said +soberly, "letting it go up in smoke with the rest. Yes, that's what I +was thinking I would do. Then I'd take the _Panther_ and what gear I +have on the scows and pull off Roaring Lake. It didn't seem as if I +could stay. I'd laid the foundation of a fortune here and tried to make +a home--and lost it all, everything that was worth having. And then all +at once there you were, like a vision in the door. Miracles _do_ +happen!" + +Her arms tightened involuntarily about him. + +"Oh," she cried breathlessly. "Our little, white house!" + +"Without you," he replied softly, "it was just an empty shell of boards +and plaster, something to make me ache with loneliness." + +"But not now," she murmured. "It's home, now." + +"Yes," he agreed, smiling. + +"Ah, but it isn't quite." She choked down a lump in her throat. "Not +when I think of those little feet that used to patter on the floor. Oh, +Jack--when I think of my baby boy! My dear, my dear, why did all this +have to be, I wonder?" + +Fyfe stroked her glossy coils of hair. + +"We get nothing of value without a price," he said quietly. "Except by +rare accident, nothing that's worth having comes cheap and easy. We've +paid the price, and we're square with the world and with each other. +That's everything." + +"Are you completely ruined, Jack?" she asked after an interval. "Charlie +said you were." + +"Well," he answered reflectively, "I haven't had time to balance +accounts, but I guess I will be. The timber's gone. I've saved most of +the logging gear. But if I realized on everything that's left, and +squared up everything, I guess I'd be pretty near strapped." + +"Will you take me in as a business partner, Jack?" she asked eagerly. +"That's what I had in mind when I came up here. I made up my mind to +propose that, after I'd heard you were ruined. Oh, it seems silly now, +but I wanted to make amends that way; at least, I tried to tell myself +that. Listen. When my father died, he left some supposedly worthless oil +stock. But it proved to have a market value. I got my share of it the +other day. It'll help us to make a fresh start--together." + +She had the envelope and the check tucked inside her waist. She took it +out now and pressed the green slip into his hand. + +Fyfe looked at it and at her, a little chuckle deep in his throat. + +"Nineteen thousand, five hundred," he laughed. "Well, that's quite a +stake for you. But if you go partners with me, what about your singing?" + +"I don't see how I can have my cake and eat it, too," she said lightly. +"I don't feel quite so eager for a career as I did." + +"Well, we'll see," he said. "That light of yours shouldn't be hidden +under a bushel. And still, I don't like the idea of you being away from +me, which a career implies." + +He put the check back in the envelope, smiling oddly to himself, and +tucked it back in her bosom. She caught and pressed his hand there, +against the soft flesh. + +"Won't you use it, Jack?" she pleaded. "Won't it help? Don't let any +silly pride influence you. There mustn't ever be anything like that +between us again." + +"There won't be," he smiled. "Frankly, if I need it, I'll use it. But +that's a matter there's plenty of time to decide. You see, although +technically I may be broke, I'm a long way from the end of my tether. I +think I'll have my working outfit clear, and the country's full of +timber. I've got a standing in the business that neither fire nor +anything else can destroy. No, I haven't any false pride about the +money, dear. But the money part of our future is a detail. With the +incentive I've got now to work and plan, it won't take me five years to +be a bigger toad in the timber puddle than I ever was. You don't know +what a dynamo I am when I get going." + +"I don't doubt that," she said proudly. "But the money's yours, if you +need it." + +"I need something else a good deal more right now," he laughed. "That's +something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Stella? Wouldn't you like a cup of +coffee?" + +"I'm famished," she admitted--the literal truth. The vaulting uplift of +spirit, that glad little song that kept lilting in her heart, filled her +with peace and contentment, but physically she was beginning to +experience acute hunger. She recalled that she had eaten scarcely +anything that day. + +"We'll go down to the camp," Fyfe suggested. "The cook will have +something left. We're camping like pioneers down there. The shacks were +all burned, and somebody sank the cookhouse scow." + +They went down the path to the bay, hand in hand, feeling their way +through that fire-blackened area, under a black sky. + +A red eye glowed ahead of them, a fire on the beach around which men +squatted on their haunches or lay stretched on their blankets, +sooty-faced fire fighters, a weary group. The air was rank with smoke +wafted from the burning woods. + +The cook's fire was dead, and that worthy was humped on his bed-roll +smoking a pipe. But he had cold meat and bread, and he brewed a pot of +coffee on the big fire for them, and Stella ate the plain fare, sitting +in the circle of tired loggers. + +"Poor fellows, they look worn out," she said, when they were again +traversing that black road to the bungalow. + +"We've slept standing up for three weeks," Fyfe said simply. "They've +done everything they could. And we're not through yet. A north wind +might set Charlie's timber afire in a dozen places." + +"Oh, for a rain," she sighed. + +"If wishing for rain brought it," he laughed, "we'd have had a second +flood. We've got to keep pegging away till it does rain, that's all. We +can't do much, but we have to keep doing it. You'll have to go back to +the Springs to-morrow, I'm afraid, Stella. I'll have to stay on the +firing line, literally." + +"I don't want to," she cried rebelliously. "I want to stay up here with +you. I'm not wax. I won't melt." + +She continued that argument into the house, until Fyfe laughingly +smothered her speech with kisses. + + * * * * * + +An oddly familiar sound murmuring in Stella's ear wakened her. At first +she thought she must be dreaming. It was still inky dark, but the air +that blew in at the open window was sweet and cool, filtered of that +choking smoke. She lifted herself warily, looked out, reached a hand +through the lifted sash. Wet drops spattered it. The sound she heard was +the drip of eaves, the beat of rain on the charred timber, upon the +dried grass of the lawn. + +Beside her Fyfe was a dim bulk, sleeping the dead slumber of utter +weariness. She hesitated a minute, then shook him. + +"Listen, Jack," she said. + +He lifted his head. + +"Rain!" he whispered. "Good night, Mister Fire. Hooray!" + +"I brought it," Stella murmured sleepily. "I wished it on Roaring Lake +to-night." + +Then she slipped her arm about his neck, and drew his face down to her +breast with a tender fierceness, and closed her eyes with a contented +sigh. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Big Timber, by Bertrand W. 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