Timber Part Three

 CHAPTER XXV

About the time that Goddard was putting Taylor through his ordeal, the sheriff of Blueberry dropped into the Banner office. The editor was in the back room cutting paper for a handbill job when the officer thrust his head through the open doorway.

"Howdy, Hump," he said.

"Many of 'em, Joe! Anything special?"

"I'll leave it on your desk.

He disappeared and Bryant went on with his work, but something in the sheriff's tone lingered as a disturbing echo and presently he went into the front office and picked up the folded document. He scanned the outside carefully and his lips worked slowly in the white beard. He opened it, turning it up so he could read. When he had read he sat down quite suddenly, as though weary all at once. After a time his printer came to the door and asked about the paper.

"I started cutting it; finish her up, Will," he said.

He rose and climbed the stairs to his rooms above. He took off his vest, for it was hot, and unbuttoned the neck-band of his stiff-bosomed shirt.

"Oh, dear," he sighed.

He drew out his own rocker to the window and then brought the other chair from its corner. He sat down, but did not rock. His pudgy legs sprawled awkwardly, giving to his posture a significant listlessness. When he did move it was to stretch out a hand and stroke the arm of that other rocker as though he touched the arm of a dear friend for assurance and sympathy and comfort.

It was there that Helen Foraker found him. She was well within the room before he was aware that her car had halted below and her feet sounded on the stairs. He started up and summoned a smile.

"You're a ray of sunshine," he said wearily, "in a sunny but dreary day.

"Why, Helen!" looking sharply. "What's—"

She turned away quickly and he moved toward her. But she faced him with a sharp movement and said:

"Nothing much—but trouble!"

Her voice was hard and flat and her eyes were dry but he read that in her which she held back by heroic effort. He stood there a moment.

"Let's have it now—It's hurting you."

And, sitting in his wife's rocker, she told the story of Rowe's coming, in short sentences, hands clasped tightly in her lap, not looking once at her listener. She finished.

"Luke Taylor? His—father?"

"Yes, his father," dully.

The old man leaned closer and put a timid hand on her clenched fists. "And—he knew?"

"He knew, Humphrey—Oh, he knew!"

And with these words the flatness went out of her voice. It was the cry of wretched pain!

An hour later: "I have trusted so few people in my life and of them there has been only one worthy. That is you, Humphrey. I'm depending on you so, now!" His eyes shifted from her face uneasily. "It's make or break right now. I'm at the end of my rope and whether I let go or can climb back depends so much on you."

"There can be no dodging of anything now," he said. "At times it has been easier to trust Providence and put aside thoughts of threatening influences and to think only of the present. But the present and the future are too closely linked today, Helen. I have tried to be your helper. I will try so long as my bones and spirit hold together, but, to be an influence for good, one must have standing, authority or security—I have had little standing among the men of this county, but I have had authority and security because I've kept my hands clean while they fingered the mire of political degredation. Until now I have been an influence because no man has dared question my integrity. They've dared everything but that—until now."

"Now?"

The old man drew the paper the sheriff had left from his pocket, as if it required great physical effort.

"This," he said, after an interminable pause and in a voice which was husked, "is an order to appear in Probate Court Thursday and show cause why I should not be removed from my guardianship of Bobby and Bessy Kildare."

A flash of rage showed in the girl's eyes. "Be removed!"

"Removed—They have looked over my annual inventory and find that I've loaned fifteen thousand dollars of the children's money on four sections of your land. They are now calling on me to prove that I have not mishandled the funds left to my keeping."

"But you can. Fifteen thousand—and for four sections!"

He smiled wistfully.

"I have not betrayed my trust; I have not made unwise investments. I can show that. Although our national idea of justice is to consider the accused innocent until he is proved guilty, in practice the accused is damned forever. He may escape legal punishment, he may prove that he has been besmirched by foul hands for despicable reasons, but he can never quite live down the question that was raised.

"I have trod upon the toes of a great power, of Chief Pontiac himself, and this is his method of fighting back. It's a good one—questioning the guardianship of a man over orphans!"

He cleared his throat rather vehemently.

"There is no charge that could be brought which would be more likely to ruin a man's influence. It may cost me my hold over the board in this matter of your taxation. It may cost me my seat in the senate."

"Oh, not that! Why, it may not even be Harris who is behind it."

He shook his head gravely.

"None else, my dear. The complaining witness is Lucius Kildare, the children's only living relative. It is immaterial to comment on the mental calibre of Lucius."

"But, Humphrey, if you prove—"

"Vindication is not the important thing, my dear. When you say that you have relied on me, you are right. When you say that I am your only trustworthy friend, perhaps you are nearly right again. You do need friends, but you need friends with influence, and if this matter ever reaches a hearing, my influence, I'm afraid, is gone. I will be scoffed at as a betrayer of orphans.

"A great missile to hurl—a betrayer of orphans!"

"But what can we do?" she asked.

The old man rose. "Do?" he murmured and, drawing down his spectacles, walked to the high walnut bookcase. He opened the glass door and took down a huge volume, bound in black leather, stamped with gold. He returned to the window and riffled the thin pages. Pausing with a thick finger on the passage sought, he looked at her with something like a smile in his eyes. "Do? Fight! Fight, my dear! Fight as the men of Henry the Fifth fought at Agincourt! Fight—because it is an honorable battle. Fight with the spirit that Shakespeare poured into the ruler of Britain. Listen!

⁠"'—he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart ...
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us. ...
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, ...
Will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day." '"

His voice was profound, speech slow; he recited more than read those lines which reek with courage; his eyes snapped, his frame seemed straighter.

"—'And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, ...
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.'"

He closed the book and dropped it to the table.

The girl rose. Her face was flushed and she breathed rapidly. The call to battle was in her blood!

"I'm not afraid of scars!" she said unsteadily. "With you, Humphrey—I will fight with you!"

He held out his arms and she swung into them and shuddered against his body; his hands stroked her hair; his old lips went to her forehead in a gentle kiss and he lifted his eyes in a flash of suffering, for he knew that upon her heart that day were scars of which she never could be proud.

CHAPTER XXVI

And there Agincourt fell upon them!

The weekly newspaper from a neighboring county made its appearance with an article on the front page which began as follows:

"We understand that our good neighbors in Blueberry County are being ham-strung by certain interests which want to take money out of the county and put nothing back in the shape of taxes. It is said that underground political forces have been so successful in their blackguard activities that their new court house, badly needed for years, and road improvements are halted for the time being.

"Our people may congratulate themselves on being free from selfish and reactionary interests. It is a stain on the fair name of any community to have the presence of such leeches, etc."

Copies of this journal appeared in numbers. Within twenty-four hours farmers up and down the river and in the far corners of remote townships found marked copies of the paper in mail boxes and did not need rapidly running rumors to establish the identity of the "reactionary interests" as Foraker's Folly. Rumors and grumbling and discontent spread quickly and when Helen Foraker drove the sand roads she was followed by black looks and talked about sourly by men who had hoped to profit at her expense.

Humphrey Bryant had taken advantage of an unexplained loophole in the law, the story had it, to enable Foraker's Folly to grow rich at the expense of the rest of the county. But wait—wait! was the word passed by the supervisors, who had said little and looked wise, for Harris again had them in hand.

And another sly story crept about: That young John Taylor, son of the great and remembered Luke, was no idle son of a rich man. He had been at work for weeks to get possession of the Folly. He had come for that purpose, he had wormed his way into the girl's confidence and had then come into the open. That was why he was living in Pancake, boarding with the widow Holmquist and awaiting the ripening of plans that would mean much to the town and the county.

When men came to Jim Harris for confirmation of this story he shrugged and said little; but he said enough and his eyes carried a fine twinkle when he said—just enough.

Milt Goddard heard this and carried it to Helen.

"Rowe is making his cracks that Taylor was here all the time like a—a spy," he said.

She turned away so abruptly that the gesture was more stinging than any reply she might have made. Goddard's hour of triumph had been brief, indeed. He had dismayed John Taylor, but it had gained him nothing—for the present. He could wait, though; he could wait. He told himself that as the flush which Helen's wordless rebuke had caused began to fade.

Other happenings: For instance, Rowe and Harris drove out toward Seven Mile Creek, turned off before reaching the mill and followed a pair of dim ruts along the edge of the swamp until they came to a small clearing with an ancient log cabin squatted among the balsams. There they halted and Harris sounded his horn until its hoarse voice startled birds in the forest.

Inside the cabin, a stirring, a shuffling step, and Charley Stump appeared in the doorway.

"Hello, Charley."

"Hello," falteringly. "Who are ye?"

"It's me, Jim Harris. We come out to have a talk." He chuckled. "We want to settle, Charley!"

The old man's face showed indecision. He was not sure whether to be flattered or frightened, but the two visitors entered the house with so much good nature that he was put at ease.

The three sat down in the foul smelling room and talked for long, quite earnestly, in low voices, and now and then Rowe or Harris went to the doorway and looked out.

Charley stood beside the car when Harris started the motor.

"An' when it's all over will you give me a set of tires for my safety, too, Jim?"

"Tires? You bet, Charley!"

Both men laughed.

The second day after Rowe's visit to her house, a letter mailed from Pancake came to Helen. It read:

"You will do well to clear out of this county. We have stood for your ways long enough and do not want you for a neighbor at any price. If you do not go of your own will, things will happen which will make you clear out anyhow.—Citizens' Committee."

With an impatient exclamation she tore the sheet in half, but arrested the gesture to throw it into the waste basket, smoothed it out, and later that day carried it to the office of the Banner. Humphrey read it slowly; then snorted:

"Citizens' Committee! It's not hard to guess where this came from!"

He paced the office with the greatest show of rage Helen had ever seen him exhibit.

"I'd be willing to bet my last penny that Harris wrote that note himself and that Rowe looked over his rascally shoulder while he did it. They're thicker than thieves!"

"Could we prove that?"

"No. Give the devil his due, Helen, they're slicker than eels! This is blackmail and they'll take no chances, just as they're taking no chances in trying to ruin me!

"I've haunted the court house, I've tapped every underground wire of information I have, but they've cut me off. Not a soul knows a word outside the rascals who have planned it and the rascals who are going to execute their orders. They're saving this thing for a knockout blow and they're taking no chances of spoiling it by letting the plan leak. By keeping quiet they have everything to gain and not a whisper to lose."

Closeted in Jim Harris' room in the Commercial House that night, Jim and Phil Rowe and the Judge of Probate talked in half tones over their cigars.

"If there's a leak we'll spot it," said Harris. "The three of us, the kid and the sheriff are the only ones who know, except Bryant himself. He won't squeak, so that if anything does get around we'll know where it comes from."

His hand on the table clenched and his eyes showed no humor as they fixed a penetrating gaze on the nervous little judge.

"If she comes off all right, we'll be able to answer the old question about who cracked cock robin, an' when I'm through with him he can squawk as loud as he wants about Chief Pontiac's valuation and they'll laugh him out of the country. I'm afraid of no robber of orphans!" He mouthed the words in satisfaction.

And so while the county buzzed with hostility against Helen Foraker, that little group waited for the hour when Bryant, her only support, would walk from the court house a discredited man, for they knew, as well as the editor himself knew, that for their purposes the charge was as good as conviction.

Humphrey was to have gone to Detroit Monday night to find an investor to take up the mortgage which Wilcox, the new cashier of the Pancake Bank, had informed Helen by mail must be met at the end of the month, when it was due. But the serving of that notice to appear in court Thursday altered all plans.

It was on Tuesday morning that John Taylor entered the Banner office and confronted the editor. The old man looked up from his desk with a searching stare instead of his usual smile.

"You've heard, of course, about me," John said after a brief exchange.

Humphrey pushed up his spectacles and nodded "Everything."

"And you think that I'm—"

He did not finish. The other examined his pencil tip carefully; then looked up once more.

"Helen has been like my daughter since her father died. I have no children of my own. I have no kin. I'm a lonely old man and in her I've found an outlet for all the sentiment that old men have. What harms her, harms me. In rational processes I might differ with her, in purely natural reactions—I don't care to discuss them."

"You believe, then, that—"

"I don't want to be unjust or hard, Taylor, but in this matter you'll have to excuse me. You wouldn't try to argue with a father whose impulses and sentiment were strong, would you?"

A warning flash of unreasonable but natural temper was in his face and John went out, standing a long time on the edge of the sidewalk, staring across the street.

He had gone about in a half daze since leaving the forest yesterday. He felt numb and heartless and guilty and hurt. His mind would not stay on his affairs. He tried to put it there by a trip to the mill at Seven Mile the next day, but he was in a panic for fear Helen would come and he would be forced to confront her. He was glad to be back in Pancake that night, but his room in Mrs. Holmquist's house, where he had sought refuge from Rowe and Harris, was stifling so he walked down First Street slowly and sought an isolated chair on the hotel verandah.

The night was sultry. Preceding nights had been warm after scorching days. Each evening clouds gathered and rain was promised, but no rains came. Day after day the brisk, dry wind had fanned the country, browning the brakes, bleaching ripening June grass, wilting the foliage of aspens.

John saw the lights go out in the office of the Banner, saw the old editor come outside and toil up the stairway to his rooms above. The light came on there and Humphrey stood in his living room and took off his stiff bosomed shirt and stood motionless an interval. Then he did a strange thing. He drew up two rockers to the window for all the world as though he expected a visitor. For a time he rocked, then he rose and turned off the light and Taylor imagined he sat down again beside that empty chair in the darkness.

Lucius came along the street, smoking a cigar with a deal of manner. There was that in his bearing which indicated stimulants.

"Hello, Mr. Taylor!"

"Hello, Lucius."

"Hot night."

"Yes. Hot."

Pause.

Taylor hoped the boy would go on but he mounted the steps and dragged up a chair, propping his feet pompously on the rail.

"Hot an' dusty an' dead," he said ponderously. "Pancake's as—as flat as a pancake!"

His silly giggle confirmed the suspicion that he had been drinking.

"Well she won't bother me much more b' God. It may be hotter in Detroit but it ain't so dead, I'll tell the world."

"Going to Detroit, are you?"

"I'll say I am! Just as soon as I get this here, now, case off my mind I'll be on my way." He wagged his head and hitched his chair even closer and whispered. "You know, Taylor, we got old Hump sunk."

"Sunk?"

"I'll say we have! Leave it to Jim—Besides," brandishing his cigar, "I ain't no man to go off an leave th' kids in a hole. That stuff don't go down y' know, Taylor. Business 's business, but when it's stealin' from orphans, why that ain't business."

Taylor sat silent, every muscle tensing, letting these ambling suggestions sink in—Harris—Bryant—orphans—this case—

"Sure not," he said watching the youth.

"Course, you know all about it," went on Lucius. "Rowe says you're his friend an' so does Jim. Fine feller, Jim.' He give this advice for nothin' an' even agrees to slip me a little change so's I can go to Detroit when it's all over." He giggled. "An' he slips me a little now so a feller can enjoy himself in a town as flat as a pancake."

Taylor managed to hold his voice steady.

"You'll be pulling stakes soon, then."

"Yup," lowering his voice. "After tomorr' a.m. prob'ly. Y'see, the case comes up at ten in the mornin'. Jim says that's all there'll be to it, just have th' old devil appear in court an' answer my complaint that he ain't done right by Bobby an' Bessy when he lends their money to the Foraker girl."

He rolled the cigar in his lips and nodded importantly.

"Then it'll all be over tomorrow? That will end it?"

"So far's I give a damn it will. It'll ruin Hump', Jim says an' that's all we want. He won't be hornin' into other folk's business, then—"

Lucius giggled. "Tha's all. I don't give damn about th' kids. I don' care what they do to old Bryant. I'm out after th' jack, I am! So's I can get to Detroit an' a real town."

He nudged John with his elbow. "I'm from Pancake, but I'll show 'em a step or two when I land there with fifty dollars!"

"Fifty dollars is a lot of money," said Taylor.

"Not a cent too much! I told Jim it wasn't when he offered it to me to sign th' complaint over in th' judge's office. It won't last long, but then, I can get a job easy, I can—"

He ambled on with his puerile boasts while Taylor's mind worked like lightning.

"Have you seen Jim tonight?" he asked, to bring the boy back to those pregnant facts.

"Nope. Don't 'tend to, neither. He give me five on th' promise that I wouldn't get jingled—But, hell, Pancake's too dead for a sober man. Besides I ain't told nobody but you—an' you know it already. It's all fixed, anyhow. We'll have old Hump sunk an' I'm th' complainin' witness, ain't I?"

He sat up in his chair and swayed to peer closely into Taylor's face.

"Can't do nothin' without me, can they? Can't turn a wheel, can they? Huh! Guess I got a right to get jingled a little on your money! I ain't any damn fool, Taylor. I know what's goin' oh. All you fellers want is to get Bryant out of th' way so you can razee this Foraker girl back into th' brush an' you an' Rowe get her pine." Spit. Wipe of hand across an uncouth chin. "B' God I ain't so damn dumb!"

No, he was not damned dumb! He saw through Harris' scheme and his words brought order and reason to Taylor.

So they were after Bryant, were they? They were framing him? And then, with him out of the way, Helen Foraker would be at the mercy of Luke Taylor! This was Jim Harris' plotting, but he knew that Rowe's hand and mind had not been idle. John sat up.

"Suppose, " he said, "that the case should be postponed. Suppose they should hold you here a long time? Wouldn't you expect more than your fifty?"

"I'll tell a man I would. But they won't. The probate judge's fixed an' old Bryant can't turn a wheel to save himself. My part's done in ten minutes tomorra. Tha's all. Night after next I'll be steppin' out among 'em!"

In the poolroom across the street appeared the figure of Jim Harris, walking behind the tables, looking among the loafers in the far end of the room.

"There's Harris," said Taylor.

"Where?" Lucius started sharply. "Say, I better shake a leg! If he thought I'd been drinkin'—"

He rose. Harris was talking to the proprietor behind his counter. Taylor got to his feet.

"You'd better clear out, " he said. "He'll see you sure. Here, come along!"

Half shoving the confused boy he left the porch, whisked around the corner and was out of sight when Harris, scratching his head, appeared outside the pool-room and scanned the deserted street.

"Close shave!" whispered Taylor, slapping Lucius on the back. "But we're safe now."

A plan was forming in his mind, forming, oh, so slowly! He flattered the boy, directed a stream of inane banter into his ears as he led him down the dark street, keeping his tongue wagging while his mind drove along in search of a workable scheme.

"You got any hooch left?" he asked finally.

He could see Lucius wink heavily.

"HI say I have. Want a touch?"

"You know it!"

They made their way by circuitous route to the rear of the livery stable, careful not to show themselves to Jim, who still stood in the street, watching stray passers. Lucius entered the red barn, fumbled under the cushions' of his rattle-trap car and brought out a bottle.

"Here Jack, ole kid, touch her off!"

He was exceedingly familiar and rested an arm across Taylor's shoulders and John tasted the concoction. That was enough; one taste. Its vile strength gave him assurance; liquor like that fitted well with his maturing plan. He wiped his lips and passed the bottle to Lucius.

"Drink hearty!" The silhouette before him tipped the bottle up and the liquor gurgled.

They went out, taking the whiskey, and wandered to the railroad track where they sat on a pile of ties.

"Don't take too much," Taylor warned. "That's stiff stuff."

"Nev' min' me. I c'n carry m' hooch! Why, Jack, I ben drinkin' ev' since I wus so high—here, have touch."

Again John tasted and held the bottle in his hands for a long interval thereafter while he talked, humoring the boy, laughing at his tawdry boasting, edging the talk further away from Harris.

In the distance the south-bound night train whistled. The little town was asleep and dark. A light in the Commercial House and one in the bank made the only relief in the close night.

"Lucius, what if Harris throws you down? What if he gets you into court and then holds out on you?"

"Think he would?" The youth seemed sobered for the moment by the prospect. "If he did, I'd get him, b' God! Don' give damn 'bout th' case—all I wan' 's a crack at Detroit."

"Let's move on."

They rose and went toward the station. They were the only people astir. The train whistled nearer and they could hear its distant rumble when the uneasy breeze died.

"Lucius, let's not wait for Jim! Let's make sure of this—go on down to Detroit tonight!"

They were on the station platform, face to face, and Taylor took the boy's arm as he planted this suggestion.

"You 'n' me? Sure—" Then he shook off Taylor's hands groggily. "Sa-ay what you wan' me to go tonigh' for?" an ugly note in his thick voice.

"For company. I'm going down the line tonight. It'll be all right. I'll tell Jim all about it. You've done your share and if they've got anything on Bryant they can get along without you. Besides you're not sure of your fifty yet, and I'll buy your ticket."

Far off a blue-white glare in the sky told that the train was swinging around the big bend, rushing down on Pancake, which was not a schedule stop.

"You 'n' me? Lucius an' Jack."

"I'll promise you a job if you go—tonight."

"Tha' righ'? Gimme a job? Say, Jack, you're all to the candy—you—"

He said more but Taylor did not hear. He drew a folded newspaper from his pocket and struck a match. The train was very near, the ray of its headlight swinging in towards them, throwing buildings into sharp relief. He held the match to the paper. The torch flared and he waved it. The locomotive whistle barked twice and fire streamed from the brake shoes—

In the cindery seat of the smoker Lucius settled himself with a satisfied grin. He fumbled in his coat for the bottle, drained it with no offer of hospitality and then, tossing it into the night, pillowed his head on the window sill and, passed into oblivion.

"One to Peerless and one to Detroit," said Taylor to the conductor.

Peerless was the first stop.

Dirty, uncomfortable men slept or smoked stupidly in the car. None paid attention to Taylor. He joggled Lucius, drew his head up from the sill and it fell against the seat-back, but the boy gave no indication of awakening.

Quickly John searched the other's pockets, taking every penny of change except a lone dime. Then he took an envelope from his own pocket and wrote on it:

"Go to Mr. Richard Mason, Mason Auto Wheel Company. Tell him who your are and that John Taylor sent you. He will take care of you and give you a job."

This he thrust into the boy's pocket and sat back, lighting a cigarette with unsteady hands.

The brakeman came out of the smoky vestibule.

"Next stop Peerless!—Peerless—"

Taylor lurched down the rocking aisle.

"Listen, Charley," taking the trainman by the arm. "My drunken friend has just street car fare. The address he is going to is in a note in his pants' pocket. Tell him about it, and keep this for yourself."

He shoved a bill into the other's hand and went down the car steps.

"All right, boss, good-night."

The man smiled and waved a farewell as the locomotive snorted to be under way again.

Peerless, too, was asleep but not so soundly as Pancake. There were a half dozen street lights and one upstairs window of a business block showed life. The metal sign of a telephone company reflected the glow within.

John knocked and parleyed with a feminine voice on the other side. For some time entrance was refused, but finally a frightened little girl plucked aside the shade, peered out and with misgivings allowed him to enter.

For three hours he sat beside her switchboard while she worked to rouse rural operators and get a wire into Detroit. He did not let her rest and was rewarded finally by a sleepy voice in his ear.

"Hello, John; what the devil's up?"

"You're up—and I'm up—Listen, Dick, I'm sending a man down for a job."

"Don't need any men; turning 'em off every day."

"Makes no difference—His name is Kildare, Lucius Kildare, and he's on the way down with just enough money to get his hangover and appetite to your plant.

"Give him a job and keep money away from him—Yes—Ball and chain, if necessary—A job at your house would be fine!"

"What's the game?"

"A big one. Do as I say because it's more important than anything I've ever asked of you before. If you let this kid get back into this country in a month I'll never ask another favor of you as long as I live!"

A laugh came over the wire.

"If it's that serious I'll put him up at the club! Or how about a straight jacket?"

"Good idea and night. Go back to bed. Many thanks, until I can explain."

He walked out of the telephone exchange unmindful of the wondering stare of the operator. He strolled to the small station and sat down on a baggage truck to smoke and wait for a north-bound morning train. The cigarette glowed idly and the coal shrank into its shell of ash. He leaned his head back against the wall of the building and fixed his eyes on a faint star, low in the north.

He reflected.

This was the thing he could do. He could fight his father, Phil Rowe, Jim Harris; all these other men and influences that were aligned against Helen Foraker. He could put his best into that fight and make a courageous attempt to drive away the menace he had brought upon her. He owed her that; he would square his account.

He felt just the least bit heroic as he planned that fight and a tinge of bitterness crept into his attitude toward the girl. She had professed to give him her love, but when the crisis came the forest was uppermost in her mind. Her life, she had said it was, and perhaps that had been truth because she had shown no willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt—after she had given him her caresses. Her ready defiance which he had once thought splendid seemed a weakness, now.

And yet before the north-bound train stopped for him he became cold and lonely and was prompted to go to her and plead his case. But he could not do that, he told himself. He had been wrong, he had dodged and twisted and failed to meet the issue, when it concerned this girl who never dodged! He was small, small beside her, and her consequence seemed even greater as he pictured her, backed in a corner, fighting these powerful forces which sought to overwhelm her.

Until midnight Helen had been out with Goddard and Black Joe watching a ground fire run itself into a wet marsh. She undressed very slowly and sat on the edge of her bed. Watch Pine whispered restlessly above her house this night and struck a responsive chord in her heart. Until now she had thought of John Taylor only with anger. He had come to her, she had helped him, she had loved him, only to have him strike at the vital thing for which she lived and worked. But tonight her weariness could rally no resentment and her thoughts persisted in straying back to sweet moments. When he had fished with her at evening, when he had been beside her desk at night learning the things she had to teach; when he had talked of his father; when he had pledged his allegiance—and when his lips had first touched hers. Now, there was no wrath to think that he had come so close to her heart, but only a sense of emptiness, loneliness. Was her forest all that mattered? she asked herself.

CHAPTER XXVII

It was an agitated little county official who sat in the office of the judge of probate of Blueberry County and whispered into a telephone.

"I tell you, Jim, there ain't nothin' I can do if the complainin' witness don't show up. No—no—I can't—I'm helpless. Can't you come down and talk it over?" glancing at the clock. "It's only nine-thirty; we got a half hour."

"No, I can't come. This thing looks like a fliv, and if it does, the less anybody knows about it, includin' J. H., the better." A grit came into his lowered voice. "And if—get out, Central!—any stories get around we'll know damned well where they come from."

"But, Jim, what can I do?"

"Stall, you poor simp! Stall and give us a chance to dig up our party!"

At ten o'clock Humphrey Bryant entered the court room, trying to keep the droop from his shoulders.

"Say, Hump, I made a mistake in th' time; Come back at eleven, will you?" the judge asked.

And at eleven the editor was there—and waited until twelve and the judge made excuses and went out and darted into the Commercial House and inquired frantically for Harris.

"He said," said Henry, coughing into his pallid cigar, "he said if you called that he couldn't keep his engagement this mornin'. He said you'd understand."

Ten minutes later Humphrey Bryant walked back to the Banner office. It required no effort, now, to keep the droop from his shoulders!

It was evening before Jim Harris returned to Pancake. He was bland and good-natured so far as a casual observer might have known, but rage seethed, in his breast. He entered Howe's room and flung off his vest irritably.

"Damned if things don't pinch out!" he grumbled. "I'd've sworn that kid would stay put."

"No word of him?"

"Not a whisper. He may be dead for all I know. I didn't dare raise a stink for fear—"

His gray eyes flickered with baffled rage.

Rowe paced the room.

"That's one hold on her that slipped," he said. "We've got to get busy, Harris. The old man won't wait all summer, and young John—"

He stopped shortly. "Say, you don't suppose—"

Harris looked up.

"Dah! Hell, no!—Huh?—" he seemed startled, but relaxed and shook his head again. "I guess not, Rowe. He's quick in the head, but I don't think—"

He did not say what he thought. His glowering look went out the window to the office of the Banner and rested there blackly. In the rooms above Humphrey Bryant was packing his bag. Tonight he could take up Helen's fight again!

It was after supper at the Commercial House. Harris and Rowe were on the porch smoking, conversing in casual tones, trying not to appear confidential when John Taylor came down the street. His face was drawn and pinched.

"Hello Taylor," said Harris as he came up the steps. Jim had never ceased to be genial with this particular enemy. "How's tricks? Understand your cut's about finished."

"Yes, two or three days more."

"You'll be pulling out, then?"

Taylor stopped beside him; there was something in his gaze, a direct, penetrating quality, which caused Harris' eyes to narrow ever so slightly when John left off scrutinizing him and looked hard at Rowe.

"I don't expect to leave right away," he said. "Fact is, I intend to stay right here until another matter is cleaned up—as one of the preliminary steps I want to turn some of your money back to you."

"My money?" Harris asked.

"Yes, this." Taylor took a bill and some coins from his pocket and counted deliberately. "A dollar and sixty-eight cents; that's right."

He held out his hand to Harris who made no move to accept it.

"What's the idea, Taylor? You don't owe me a nickel."

"I'm beginning to think that I owe you a great deal—you and Phil Rowe," Taylor replied. "This, though, is not on our account. This is the money turned back to you from young Kildare. I took it from him when he was leaving town last night, to escape charges of conspiracy and perjury—This will make fifty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents that you have saved on this little flier, Harris—Take it, you rat!"

His words bit savagely as he took that one quick step which brought him close to Harris. The man reached out, almost involuntarily, for the change. It clinked in his palm.

Taylor stood a moment, looking down upon them.

"Now," he said, "maybe we understand each other a little better. I said, Rowe, that I was going to fight you. This is the beginning!"

He turned and walked quickly away.

"Well I'll go to hell!" muttered Phil Rowe.

"And I'll keep you company," whispered Harris huskily.

CHAPTER XXVIII

During those hot June days no cloud obscured the sun, but its light came hampered to the parched barrens through strata of smoke from many fires. Far and near the country was patched with blaze; flames running through brush and dry grass, hot and greedy for an hour, to be baffled by some sandy road which it could not leap, or a lake or marsh which balked it; other fires, in the depths of swamp, smouldered for days, sending up vast quantities of dense smoke; hot blazes in slashings licked up logging litter and reduced the soil itself to ash by the fierce heat.

The supervisors, who are local fire officers, met the situation with all the variability of mankind. "Let her burn," said some. "It'll make it easier to clear," while others slaved at the deadening drudgery of checking fires in cut-over land.

The district warden, red of eyes, skin grimed by smoke, voice hoarse from days in it, covered his counties in frantic drives to touch the worst spots and keep his deputies at the grind.

Fire! At once man's best servant and worst enemy! Ah, you city dwellers, who explain so casually the faint pall that drifts on roaming winds as smoke from burning forests! It is remote, it does not touch you; you know none of the terror men know who watch its crimson ring close on their forests, their homes, their future, their very lives!

Within the boundaries of Foraker's Folly was efficient preparedness. In the open shed where Helen's car stood, hung a rack of brass fire extinguishers, with drums of soda and tight cans of water. It could be lowered in a moment to the body of the car and clamped firmly there to be hastened to any point in the forest. This was a recently adopted idea, suggested by New England methods. At a half-dozen points through her property small sheds housed two-wheeled carts laden with similar apparatus, and shovels and axes. Also, three telephones were placed in strategic points so word of danger might be sent to the house without delay for there is but one way to control forest fire: Get there quick! As Black Joe sagely instructed the new patrolmen, "Get that when you c'n spit her out!"

All day long a look-out swung in the top of Watch Pine, but when the smoke was dense that vigilance was not enough and from three to a dozen men patroled the outer fire lines. Some of these rode horses which were harnessed and ready to be galloped to one of the equipment stations and drag the apparatus to action.

It was racking work. With evening came relief, because fire in the open loses its vigor with dusk; but each night which brought no rain only promised increased tension for the morrow and Helen Foraker felt her nerves stretching taut. The smoke cloud was enough to think about, let alone that other cloud which hung over her—or the emptiness in her heart!

There was emptiness there, and it grew with the days and this afternoon as she felt herself rocked gently by the wind—for she was on lookout herself—the girl stared out across the forest that had been her whole life and was struck by its inadequacy. There was something lacking, something vital had gone, and its passing dated to the hour of John Taylor's departure.

She had known too little sympathy, had had too little support in those years she had been forced to fight with men like Sim Bums, she had put up with ridicule and feeble attempts at double dealing and with the burden of her work, but she had always met them with a stout fighting spirit. They had stirred her temper and left her heart untouched, but now she seemed only to be making fighting gestures, with no spirit behind them.

Bobby Kildare appeared below and called in his high treble that he wanted to come up. Bobby always wanted to come up! He begged throughout the summer to be in the crow's nest and, taken there, begged to be left alone with the responsibility of watching for smoke.

"All right; come slowly, Bobby," she warned and, eager hands and feet and eyes all alert, he came up the ladder, held to slow progress only by her repeated caution.

"There!" he sighed as he set foot on the platform and Helen dropped the trap closed. "There, I am!"

His face was very bright, lips parted eagerly as he took the field glass and stared to south and west.

"No fires in sight," he said. "Huh!" and looked at her and shifted his feet and Helen laughed at his enthusiastic happiness.

"No fires near, Bobby—where were you this morning?"

"To the—at the mill, playin' with the Injun boys and Henny Raymer.

"Aunt Helen, are you going away?"

"Away? No. Why?"

"Oh, Henny said his father told his mother that you were going away. He said it was a party."

"Party?"

"Well, Henry said you'd been invited to go away by the voters—who is voters, Aunt Helen?"

She answered him absently and took the glass to stare with unseeing eyes out across the smoke-screened land.

That first warning from the anonymous Citizens' Committee had come on Tuesday. Wednesday brought another which she had not opened at once because she received it with other mail at the mill just as the saw struck a railroad spike buried in a log and scattered in ringing bits.

Raymer had scratched his head and looked at her with startled, owlish eyes.

"Somebody done that," he said dully. "An' this mornin' th' weights had been taken out of th' idler box an' she wouldn't saw. We lost two hours."

Later, as she read the curt warning, she saw connection.

Today was Thursday and the relief which had followed the call from Humphrey Bryant, telling her that the case against him in probate court had been dropped for lack of witnesses, was dissipated by the arrival of another warning.

She saw again Phil Rowe's ruthless smile; heard again his oblique threats.

Goddard came in that evening.

"What's the weather report?" he asked, eyeing her steadily, as though his mind were not on his question or the fire menace.

"Continued fair," she answered and did not look up.

She was strangely uneasy with Goddard now, a new reaction to him, born with the events of Monday morning when he had confronted Taylor with his charge.

"Saw Sim Burns today." He fussed with his hat as though reluctant to go on, but Helen said, "Yes?" and he proceeded: "He says he's got some cedar he's sold to Chief Pontiac. Wants to drive it down and says he'll serve notice on you to open the boom at Seven Mile unless you do it yourself."

"How much cedar has he?"

"I don't know. They got out some posts last winter. I recollect some poles, too, but there couldn't be over a carload."

"We can put it over the boom for him cheaper than we can tear it out."

"Yeah. I said that, but he wouldn't listen. Wants the river open."

The girl tapped her desk with a pencil.

"So that's another item, is it?"

"Looks that way. He's doin' it to make trouble. The county's pretty well stirred up, Helen," looking at her closely. "They're talking nasty!"

"Talk is easy to stand."

"But there's more than talk. Those warnings you get; what's happened at the mill—I tell you, Helen, they're too many for you."

"You'd have me quit?"

His eyes shifted.

"I don't want to see you—broken." His eyes raised again to her face, dog-like, and she knew the plea that was in them, the plea which she had forbidden him to speak. "You won't listen to me," he said heavily, "an' I was right once, wasn't I? Wasn't I right—about Taylor?"

"Yes" she said. "Yes, you were right," in a tone suddenly thin, and which rose alarmingly in pitch.

Helen dreamed as she slept that night. Taylor came to her and said as he had said one other time, using the words of Bobby: "And if I try hard to learn all that you will teach me—when I know as much as you, will you marry me?"

He seemed to be standing very close to her. He held out his arms and, staring into his face, trying to rebell, her feet had carried her forward. He had smiled as his arms closed about her, imprisoning her, her forest, her life, making her helpless—Then his lips had lowered to hers and as their mouths touched her heart raced, her cheeks took fire, and in her ears was a strange ringing, ringing—a ringing which grew louder and more insistent.

She found herself in the middle of the room, bewildered by a glow in the sky and by the sound of the insistent telephone bell. She ran barefooted down the stairs to lift the receiver.

"This is Raymer," a voice said. "A deck of logs is on fire and the others are in danger."

"Is your pump working?" faculties clearing.

"The hose had been cut. We need help!"

"Coming!"

She called to Goddard out the door, dressed and flew to the garage where men were clamping the platform of fire extinguishers on the body of the car. They raced through the night, with the stain of fire growing brilliant before them and came out at Seven Mile to see the mill in sharp silhouette and flames leaping high from one bank of her pine logs, the next one to it smoking threateningly.

The chemicals went into play and the fire was held to the one place, but it was daylight before buckets, used when the worst heat was over, could drench out the last embers.

The hose, which was on its reel in the mill, had been carefully cut in a half dozen places.

That day came another warning:

"What happened last night is only a start. Unless you make a move to clear out, we will show you what real vengeance is.—Citizens' Committee."

It had been mailed twenty-four hours before the fire broke out.

That noon John Taylor, walking between two of his lumber piles at Seven Mile siding, stopped shortly and then squatted and eyed the ground, touching it here and there lightly. Some one had been sitting there and moving his feet restlessly—not many hours ago, either. And in the sand was another mark, perhaps like that made by a bicycle—

John walked back along the edge of the swamp later. The road was little used and grass grew rank in it. But here and there where the ruts ran through black muck the imprint of an automobile tire was set in perfect pattern. The car had stopped at Charley Stump's cabin and turned about there. He returned to Pancake on the afternoon freight and before going to his room at Mrs. Holmquist's he stopped a moment before the Commercial House and eyed the tires on Jim Harris' automobile.

It may be recorded here that the next evening the Widow Holmquist was talking with her neighbor as she watered her garden.

"Yah, he ees a funny man," she said. "He ben out all hours of de night. Nefer see nodding like it, an' yust to tank that he'd bring that old Charley Stump to my house yust to give him a cigar an' set mit him in my house! Yim Harris, he was askin' me about him today, too. Dere's somethin' funny!"

That night Jim Harris, Phil Rowe and Wes Hubbard sat in Rowe's room. Harris was writing with a pencil laboriously, disguising his hand. He chuckled and then, as he finished, muttered: "Signed, Citizens' Committee!"

The others smiled. They did not see the face which had peered at them over the transom lower nor hear the man move stealthily away down the hall, carrying the chair on which he had stood.

CHAPTER XXIX

The house party at Windigo Lodge was breaking up Friday. Dick Mason himself had been gone a week, but his guests lingered on. Those who had stayed were now bound for other retreats: the St. Clair Flats, the Huron shore, Lake Michigan resorts, Canada and a variety of places. But Marcia Murray had no place to go. She had hung on at Windigo because leaving meant a return to the none-too-comfortable apartment in Detroit, with her summer broken only when invitations called her out of town.

She had let drop, a detail at a time, the change that had taken place in John Taylor; not the change in his attitude toward her, but his new idealism, his new interest, which was foreign to the understanding of those who knew him. They listened, incredulous at first, but Marcia, keyed to save her face, was sharply clever and her suggestions had the intended effect.

"Of course, that's all very fine." Fan Huston had commented, "but, my dear, what has he to offer you?"

"Everything," said Marcia and smiled lightly.

"Everything! Why, he has nothing, unless his father—"

"He offers everything he has," Marcia corrected, "and that of course, is very splendid, but—quite intangible."

She forced a fresh gaiety, her eyes seemed brighter, her laugh more ready and on occasion she put forth a stressed mockery which gave them to understand that it was John Taylor who was now being kept impatiently waiting. So much, to preserve her standing.

Phil Rowe telephoned daily. He had come once for an afternoon and the visit had caused the lifting of eyebrows and a deal of whispering, but Marcia had been cryptic in response to attempts to draw her out and they learned little. But to Phil Rowe she gave her lips again and laughed close in his face, with her arms about his neck.

Rowe was as keen and ruthless in love as he was in business. He wanted this girl with all the intensity of a selfish heart; he saw through her, knew that she would go to any one of a score of men who might bid the highest, knew that she had favored John Taylor above himself. But there were two things in life he wanted: control of the Taylor millions and possession of Marcia Murray. The latter was dependent on the first and he was bound to have them both.

He learned soon that John Taylor had slipped through her wily fingers and knew, therefore, that her one hope of marrying the Taylor fortune was in marrying him. Marcia was not wholly aware of this factor. For a time she believed she had succeeded in making Rowe think that John still regarded her as his promised wife and she held to this lie while she told herself again and again that Taylor was a fool and that she was well rid of him.

But there were nights when she lay sleepless and miserable and even desperate. Give her credit for this: beneath her exterior, which was as hard and cold as glass, there was a sense of human values and when she saw that her appeal had not been able to compete with the wholesome womanhood of the girl of the forest, she had her periods of heartache and tears. And something else which was now and again almost regret that John Taylor, changed, poor, without the ambition she demanded of men, was no longer bound to her.

She was to drive back to Detroit and was taking Fan and Tom Huston with her. She wanted one more hour with Rowe and so, before leaving, she indicated that they must start early to provide for a few hours in Pancake where she could have some work done on her car. They could make Saginaw by night and finish the trip the next day. Fortunately for Marcia, misfortune in the shape of a severe headache visited Fan Huston and as soon as they reached Pancake she took to a lumpy bed in the Commercial House while Tom engaged in a Kelly pool game with three drummers.

Marcia inquired for Rowe and learned that he was out of town but would be back before noon. She bought a magazine and settled herself in the parlor of the hotel to await impatiently his coming. Her eyes were on the pages, her mind occupied with other things; she was inattentive to the comings and goings in the office across the hall until she became conscious that some one was staring at her.

She looked up quickly. John Taylor was standing just outside the doorway.

"Hello, Marcia," he said.

She did not move or reply for an instant, nor did he advance; just stood there, framed in the white door casing, while the girl's mind spun, trying to identify this man with the one she had known and held and planned to possess. On their former meeting she had been too desperately engaged with the game she played to take much notice of the change that had occurred in him, but now, seeing him so unexpectedly, it was as though she beheld a man remade.

He seemed larger; he was rough and unfinished. His shoes were heavy and scuffed; his pants were khaki, he wore a white cotton shirt open at the throat and no coat; a soiled straw hat was in his hand, the big, brown toil-stained hand which hung at his thigh. There was roughness in his face, too; he had not shaved this day, but there was no hint of uncouthness in his neglect, for the skin of cheeks and chin was bronzed by sun and wind, and seemed to be shaped in new lines. There was a different set in his mouth, a gravity, a maturity that had not been in John Taylor two months ago. His blue eyes, though they smiled, now, seemed steadier, more grave, and very serious.

"Why, John!"

Her cool voice was low and she rose quickly, half frightened.

"I didn't know whether you'd want to see me or not." He was embarrassed as he advanced and looked into her flushing face.

"That shouldn't have been hard to determine," she said coldly.

"I suppose not. I guess we have said everything to each other that can be said, haven't we?"

"We have!"

She tried to breathe normally, but the leap of her heart would not let her. She felt her knees tremble and averted her gaze from his steady scrutiny.

"I'm sorry, " he said. "I told you that once. I say it again, Marcia. I'm so sorry—but it was better this way than—going on, wasn't it?"

She looked into his face again as in all friendliness without the suggestion of a whimper, he said the things from which most men would shrink.

She heard her voice saying:

"Yes. Anything was better than going on." She tried to put sarcasm into the tone, wanted to wither him with her scorn, but somehow those mercenary impulses in her were weakening, breaking down, those maxims and values that had been nursed and cultivated to stifle the Marcia Murray who might have been, were giving way, and with that release of something finer and gentler went her self-possession and her ability to fence with words. For the moment, she was genuine and burst out impetuously, saying the things she had said to herself during wakeful hours at Windigo, things she had told herself—but the truth of which she had denied.

"John, I made a fool of myself that day. I—you see—I have been badly mistaken; I've said and done the wrong thing for long—there are a great many things I regret and one of them is the scene I made before that girl—I must have hurt her."

"We all change, Marcia," he said with a grave smile. "I'm glad if you're sorry. It was unworthy of you. As for Miss Foraker, though, you waste time feeling for her. Not that she's thick-skinned. It might have disturbed her a great deal, but she's used to unpleasantness. She's had more than her share."

She said: "You think a lot of her, John?"

She pulled the straw sailor tighter over her golden hair, and in her eyes was something rueful as though she wanted him to make denial.

"Yes—a lot."

Marcia drew an unsteady breath and though she was in tumult now, that self-possession she had practiced for so long was her salvation.

"And she—"

A hurt crossed his face. It was an ordeal to tell the truth to this girl, but he could not evade.

"She thinks I'm her worst enemy."

For an instant a flicker as of hope showed in the girl's blue eyes but as she looked at his face, saw the lines of pain deepen, caught the sorrow reflected there, that hope departed and its tenderness, the genuine quality of it, was replaced by something sharp and hot; as natural, but far from gentle: jealousy.

"That's too had," she said.

She meant that; but within her was confusion, a ferment, started by that injection of jealousy. Those good impulses lingered, struggling for a hold, but the other Marcia, the one who had first loved John Taylor for the sake of his father's money, who had played him against Phil Rowe, using both as markers in a mercenary game, slowly dominated, covering the anguish in her heart with a sort of joy at his pain.

And yet there was enough of that transient self remaining to wish this man kindness. She did not want him to stay until she lost her temper, until she should taunt him. Already the jealousy was changing to the acid of temper.

She held out her hand.

"Good-bye, John," she said, with something of the old indifference in her voice. "I wish you well. I must go look after Fan, now; we'll be leaving at noon."

She slipped past him into the hall. Her chin was up, her eyes were cool and calculating. On the floor above she stopped and heard him go out. She looked about. The doors of unoccupied rooms were open, shades drawn, rickety iron beds decked in grimy coverlets. She slipped into the nearest, closed the door and bolted it softly.

Marcia stood there a moment, hand still on the knob. The other went to her face and formed a cup over her mouth. Her head tipped back against the door panel; her eyes closed. The trembling of her body shook the rickety transom and then the tears came. She moved to the bed and buried her face in the pillow. For a long time she was there, gradually quieting. When she rose she spent many minutes at the wash stand repairing the damage her outburst had wrought.

Fan Huston was picking up her things preparatory to departure. Rowe and Marcia stood in the shadow of the hotel. The man was listening very closely to what his companion had to say, with a queer twitching of his lips. She talked rapidly, earnestly.

"I've been a waster," she concluded. "I've wasted the finest things that were in me; I've wasted my appreciation, my best ambition, my intelligence. It's too late now to turn back so long as there's a goal in sight. I haven't the courage. I'm twenty-five, but being twenty-five and thinking as I have since I was in my 'teens means more than just being twenty-five.

"Don't misunderstand me, Phil. I can give you a certain happiness in return for the luxury I want. Without that luxury—no.

"This is your chance. If you fail, perhaps my chance will come later."

Her voice husked for the first time.

"Your chance?" he asked.

"My chance! I'm bound to you by my habit of thinking, now. I have some confidence that you will be able to give me the things I have sought for years. But if you should fail I don't believe that I could begin over, hunting fortune like a cat stalks its food. I'm weak—weak enough to want you to win; but if you should fail it might be necessary for me to try something else. I might be a nurse or an office woman or any number of things if necessary; and sometimes, lately, I've hoped it might be necessary!

"There, I mustn't cry! I'm sunburned enough, and it makes me weak. It's a long drive ahead. Here comes Fan."

When she was gone in a cloud of dust, whipped away by the hot wind Rowe stood at the curb a long interval, head cocked, watching her roadster disappear into the jack pines. When he turned back into the hotel he was scratching his chin and his crafty eyes showed a strange bafflement. He had found that thing in Marcia Murray which had staggered him in John Taylor, honesty and genuine impulse. In her, however, it had been but a flash, to revive again only in case he failed in the game he played.

He snapped his thumb and laughed—somewhat uncertainly.

CHAPTER XXX

Tuesday. Still the sun glared through the smoke of fires. Clouds appeared, banked in the west, broke and disappeared. Each noon the wind dropped and hauled from southwest to the north and for a few moments its draft was cooled; then it came again from the other quarter, hot and dry.

Humphrey Bryant came back on the morning train and, without changing from his best suit of black, drove in a buggy to Foraker's Folly.

Helen read failure in his face even before he spoke.

"This credit situation isn't a newspaper flurry," he said. "It's real. Nobody wants this loan, Helen—not for the present. And the Lord alone knows how long it'll take us to sober up financially."

She sat down weakly and for an hour he talked, trying to be optimistic but without much success.

And then the girl talked, told of what had happened at the mill, told of the daily letters of threat. The butcher in Pancake had refused her check and that stung her despite the fact that the garage man had gone out of his way to be nice to her. Dr. Pelly had driven in to tell her that there were friends left her, no matter how great the bitterness that her enemies stirred against her.

Thad Parker had walked over from his farm where the sprouting crops were burned by the hot sun and cut to death by sand blown by tireless winds. He stumblingly told how he himself had lain in wait at the mill at night. ("I don't sleep much, now—since Jenny's sleeping out there under the oak tree.") He enumerated some of those in the community who were up in arms at the organized campaign against her. They were people of little influence.

That night Thad did not watch the mill. Raymer sat in the doorway of his tar-paper house, a shot gun handy, until the approach of dawn, when he went inside.

He had not seen a slowly-moving hulk come up to the edge of the brush and squat and wait, wait for hours, scarcely moving. But when Raymer went within the hulk moved back into the brush, wriggled prostrate on the far side of a charred log and went through the intrinsically innocent operation of lighting a cigar.

It crept forward again and waited; then rose and skulked in the shelter of the mill and appeared again on the dam, glow of the cigar hidden in the curve of a gnarled and unsteady hand—A crowbar prodded the earth, working down into the mud and muck. From his shirt bosom the man extracted very carefully a bundle of greasy cylinders and tamped them down into the opening his bar had made, keeping the long white tail which extended from the packet dry. He looked about and listened. His head bowed down, and with both hands he shielded the glow of the cigar, held it against that white tail—a sputter, a careful scuttling across the clearing and into the brush.

The sleepy chirping of the first birds was stilled by the heavy, muffled detonation. Mud and dry earth were thrown high. The gravel of the road which crossed the dam was broken and cracked. Water filled the crevices, began spilling through on the far side; the seep became a rush; the rush washed out a gutter. This breach widened and before half-dressed men ran from the shanties the pond was roaring through the broken dam, lowering rapidly as its own escape made drainage faster. The birds picked up their chirping again and broke into song, but before they began to fly against the orange heavens to the eastward the pond was drained and half the dam washed away.

On the carriage in the mill was found a soiled envelope addressed to Helen.

"So far we've gone easy. If you don't clear out at once we will show you what we can do.—Citizens' Committee."

It was hot in Detroit that morning as well, with a steady breeze from the southwest which kicked up white caps in the river and made the pines in Luke Taylor's garden moan steadily. The old man sat in his library with the photographs of the Foraker timber that Rowe had taken spread about him on the table, holding a telephone receiver to his ear.

"Hello—Hello—You, Rowe?"

He hitched forward as an assuring voice came into his ear.

"What the devil's wrong with you?"

"We've been delayed a bit, Mr. Taylor."

"Delayed? My God, ain't you got authority and money? What's delayed you?"

"The party isn't quite ready to close."

"Not ready! What's holdin' it up? Money?"

"Well, no—they haven't made up their minds."

"Oh, they haven't made up their minds they want to sell what I want to buy? I want to buy! Are you a dummy, Rowe, or just a dead one?"

"Money doesn't seem to be much of an object—"

"No object! My God, Rowe, now I know you're a dead one! You're no good; come on home. I'll go up and close the thing myself—no, stay there! I'll be up tomorrow—tomorrow—hear that?"

Phil Rowe emerged from the telephone booth in the Commercial House with the pallor of his face accentuated. To buy this pine had been to him the entry into his own, but Luke Taylor would not give him time. To have the old man close the deal himself would rob Rowe of his coveted glory. And so much depended on that! The drawing of the new will—his future—Marcia Murray—

He stood on the hotel steps. Helen's car was across the way and while he eyed it surlily the girl herself crossed the street. She moved slowly and her face beneath the hat of brown straw was dark and troubled. She disappeared through the door of the bank. Rowe remained there some time. For the days he had put in at Pancake, for his scheming, his duplicity, he had nothing* to show but the troubled look on that girl's face. He was in doubt, with desperation mounting quickly. Oh, for another fortnight, a week—a few days! But he could delay no longer. He started along the wooden sidewalk.

Jim Harris sat beside Wilcox the cashier and as Helen entered they stopped their talk and looked at the girl and then at one another. The sheriff was writing a check. Sim Burns lounged in a chair. Wes Hubbard scanned a calendar in obvious effort to appear unconscious of Helen's presence, and a farmer from down river watched her curiously.

She passed on to the one teller's window, made a deposit, took a packet of papers from her skirt pocket and went into the tiny customers' room. Soon a step sounded on the threshold of the room and she looked up to face Philip Rowe as he removed his hat. His black hair glistened, his mohair suit was sleek, his black eyes glittered; his white skin seemed to shine, with smoothness, with slipperiness.

"Miss Foraker," he said and bowed, "may I come in?"

He did not wait for a reply but entered, drawing the door closed behind him and settled into the chair on the other side of the small table.

"I was going to call on you today," he said. "Then I heard about the accident last night and thought you might not have time. But since you are in town we may as well talk."

A pause. Her silence challenged him. He moistened his lips, picking at the blotter, eyes on his uneasy fingers.

"Perhaps I, being a stranger, am better able to judge your situation than you are—because I have perspective. I have seen people in similar circumstances, but I have never seen any one so hard pressed by public sentiment as you are—through no fault of your own, probably," with suavity.

"One cannot help admiring your pluck, but did you ever stop to consider that the line which divides pluck from—shall we say foolhardiness?—is not very distinct? It is courageous to fight not only your neighbors, but the laws of the state and the financial depression, but is it wise, Miss Foraker? Be honest with yourself. Do you hope to beat the game?"

He leaned forward, eyes on her face, steady and betraying none of the misgiving that the latent hostility in her stirred in him. She gave no indication of replying, so he went on.

"I came to you in good faith and asked for an option. Had my intentions not been of the best I would have waited, for every one knew of the storm that was gathering about you. I didn't want to take advantage of misfortune. I come to you again. Miss Foraker, asking you only to name a figure. It will mean a fortune to you. It will enable you to seek happiness and peace of mind in more congenial surroundings. We will not be niggardly. We will pay for value received."

The suggestion of a bitter smile moved the girl's lips.

"And if I hold out? If I tell you again that my forest is not for sale? What then?"

He settled back in his chair and laughed shortly.

"Then the trouble may become a little—rougher. You have been warned of that."

His insinuation broke through her growing temper, touching suspicion.

"That is your guess, you mean," watching him closely.

"Not a guess!" he flashed. "I happen to know!"

"You are bluffing," she challenged. "You are working in the dark." He leaned forward again.

"I know what you know, that you have been warned repeatedly that, step by step, the warnings have proved to have foundation, that—"

"What warnings?"

She laughed tantalizingly and he flashed: "Warnings of a committee of—"

He saw the triumphant smile sweep into her eyes with the leaping rage as she stood up quickly and cried: "So you know what no one else knows! I know of these warnings, my foreman knows, Humphrey Bryant, Doctor Pelly and a few others know, and for days they have tried to find who else knows. No one knows, but you and the other skulkers who have everything to gain by scaring me out!"

Guilt crimsoned his face. He stammered something which she did not hear as she stepped past him and opened the door. The sheriff, Hubbard, Burns and Harris were grouped about the cashier's desk; as she came out they looked at her and drew apart.

Rowe was beside her. "I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered, "but you're making a grave charge."

She wheeled to face him. "Grave is it? I hope the time will come when you'll realize how grave it is, when I can bring you to answer it!"

She stopped. Her scorching gaze ran from Rowe to that other group, to the three countrymen at the teller's window who had turned to watch. She was unaware that the street door had opened and another man stood behind her, staring at the scene.

"You, Citizens' Committee!" she said. "You blackmailers!"

They were all there, the interests which had schemed to undo her and the agencies they had used. For the first time she confronted them and all the pain and suspense which they had aroused was crystallized in righteous anger.

There was a stirring in the group, a muttering, but with a gesture, made imperious by her rage, she stilled them. She had not lifted her voice. She had spoken her charge lowly and it was the poignancy of her wrath which gave her control over those men—that, and the consciousness of their guilt!

"No, I'm going to talk now!" as Rowe stepped toward her and began to speak. "You've worked in the dark, you've struck from behind but don't flatter yourselves that you've covered your tracks. You men—Jim Harris and his tools—you are the ones I mean, and let there be no misunderstanding! You have made a joke of law and justice in this county. You have stooped to the use of dynamite and fire to drive me out so Pontiac Power might profit and so Luke Taylor might make worthless slashings out of a growing forest! That speaks well for you, doesn't it?" She laughed mirthlessly, "Chief Pontiac Power and a millionaire lumberman using bomb and torch and blackmail against a penniless girl!"

Harris stepped forward.

"You're putting yourself pretty thoroughly on record, young lady," he said. "You're going too far with your talk about lawlessness. You may find out that there's a law which will protect the good name of—"

"Good name!" she scoffed under her breath. "Good name? Is it your good name, Jim Harris? Is your name good, Mr. Rowe?"

"Hold your tongue!" Rowe cried in a shaking voice and his viciousness staggered her for the moment. "You will have an opportunity to prove these things you have said about these men, about me, about Mr. Taylor."

The leap of light in the eyes of the man behind Helen Foraker snapped Rowe's gaze from her face and as he stared over her shoulder the sinister quality in his expression deepened.

"There are limits—" he began.

A step sounded beside Helen. Breathing rapidly, she turned and saw John Taylor standing there. She did not see the glare he gave Phil Rowe, did not detect the bewilderment in Rowe's face. Her heart paused in its wild measure. This was the man who had betrayed her, who had done more, even, than menace her forest. He belonged with these others—he, whose lips had been on hers!

Then he spoke.

"There are, Phil; you're right. There are limits to endurance. You've overstepped them."

His manner was quite easy, almost tolerant.

"So you—" Rowe began again.

"You will keep still now." John interrupted. "You will keep still," voice rising, "or I'll thrash you until you grovel on your knees before Miss Foraker!"

Rowe drew back. A choking sound came from his throat and he shook his head.

"If you know what's best for you, you'll keep out of this!" he cried, beside himself. "You've done enough now to damn you forever in the old man's eyes! You've blocked me for the last time, Taylor!"

John's hand was on his shoulder, gripping into the flesh. Rowe winced and twisted to be away from that grip, away from the blazing eyes.

He struck a quick blow, which glanced from John's cheek bone and then cried aloud as he was lifted from his feet and slammed against the wall. He felt fierce breath in his face as he struggled and cursed, felt hard fingers at his throat, felt a fist like a knot of wood bash into one eye, felt his lips burst like grapes at another blow and found himself bruised and bleeding on the floor while men scuffled about him and Taylor struck again and again and cried: "I'll break your spine—I'll kill you, Rowe!"

They were on Taylor, trying to hold him, scrambling and shouting as he flung them off to be at Rowe again. And then the sheriff, drawing his revolver, brought it down smartly on John's head—and the fight stopped.

John stood up, the sheriff holding his arm, shaking him.

"That ought to be pretty good," said Harris with a laugh. "You all heard him say, 'I'll kill you, Rowe,' And look at Rowe's face! That ought to be about assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than the crime of murder, hadn't it?" to the sheriff. "We don't want to bear down too hard!"

Taylor felt his head and blinked as clear consciousness came back. He was being led down the street, up the court house steps, through the echoing hall; a barred door was closing.

Helen Foraker had heard, had seen the enmity between Taylor and Rowe. She stared at John and as he dodged that first blow she turned and stumbled through the doorway and ran across the street, leaping into her car, fleeing for the sanctity of her forest where she could think and reason and try to straighten this thing out for herself.

She had driven him out, yet he had blocked Rowe in his purpose. He had betrayed her and today he had been her defender. The throbbing of her heart almost choked her: wild hope and abject misery blinded her.

CHAPTER XXXI

Pancake does not figure largely in the schedule of passenger trains, but the next morning the five o'clock north-bound stopped at the station, let off a pair of sleepy passengers, moved slowly ahead, stopped and backed into the switch, where the last car with "Private" lettered on its doors was uncoupled.

A curtain went up behind a screen and the thin face of Luke Taylor peered out from his stateroom. His lips moved and his old eyes roved the visible portion of the little town eagerly.

The chef and porter were astir, very busy, very quiet.

Luke's arrival had been watched. Phil Rowe, hastening into his clothes, stopped long enough to peer out anxiously and then went on, arriving at the precise adjustment of his cravat with dispatch.

Jim Harris rolled over, half hung out of bed, saw the car at the station and lolled back on his pillow, stretching and grinning.

John Taylor, in a stinking cell of the jail, pressed his face against the steel bars of his small window to see. He had not slept, but had paced the floor all night. His hair was rumpled, face drawn and his blue eyes blazed with helpless fury as he watched Phil Rowe hasten down the street and mount the brass railed platform of his father's private car.

Rowe spoke quietly to the porter who replied in a cautious whisper, but before the caller could sit down a muffled voice reached them.

"You, Rowe?"

"Yes, Mr. Taylor," he replied outside the stateroom door.

"Well, come in! Don't stand there palaverin'!"

From his rumpled bed Luke stared hard at his secretary, the chronic irritability which had been in his eyes yielding to amazement. For a long moment he studied the broken lips, the purple patch below one eye, the lump on a cheek bone.

"Who the devil did that?"

Rowe made a grimace.

"Your son," he said simply. A gleam of something like satisfaction leaped into the half closed eye and its normal mate. "We had a slight argument as to the advisability of your going ahead and buying this pine. It ended—this way."

For a moment Luke said nothing and Rowe thought the thin lips moved in a half smile of sardonic pride. But a flush came into the face and anger showed in the old eyes.

"He went that far? You're sure that was the trouble? He fought you to stop this deal?"

"And that's only part of it, sir. He has raised—quite a disturbance."

"Where is he now?"

"In jail."

Luke set his feet on the floor and stood up, night-shirt dangling about his shrunken calves. He was a stooped gaunt, scare-crow of a figure.

"In jail, eh? For what?"

"Assault."

For a moment the other stared at him, lips open.

"You're not lyin' to me, Rowe?" Impulses were in conflict within him; he breathed faster. "It was that, was it? It wasn't anything else? He did that because of me?"

"Yes, sir."

Rowe maintained his composure by effort. He saw the strange admiration in the old man's face, mingling with paternal instinct, with rage.

"No. You wouldn't lie—" a sharp hiss of impatience slipped from Luke and rage alone remained in his face. "Jail, eh? Lucky for him—th'cub. Lucky he don't have to face me this mornin'—after puttin' that face on you—for trying to carry out my orders!"

It was nine o'clock when young Wilcox, flattered and flustered, drove his automobile down to the station and backed it in beside the Taylor car. He cleared his throat nervously as Rowe helped the great Luke down the steps and got out of his seat to remove his hat and self-consciously acknowledge the introduction.

Luke merely grunted at Wilcox and settled into the seat. He had nothing to say as the car rolled out of town and took up the twisting trail to the northward. He had on a linen duster, his hat was drawn low, amber glasses protected his eyes, and as soon as they were settled Rowe tucked a robe about his ankles. Within a mile, however, Luke kicked this protection irritably aside and glared at his secretary as though the accustomed precaution against chill were an affront.

They topped a high ridge, made bald by repeated fires, and away before them spread the country, like a tinted carpet. Dried grass gave to lavender in the distance; the wilted foliage of the brush and small trees took on a counterfeit vividness; far to the north and westward a veil of smoke hazed the horizon. But it was not the expanse of devastation, not the ominous smoke veil, that caused Luke to sit forward sharply. It was the long, blue-green line of the pine trees, Foraker's Folly, standing there in the middle distance.

"Pine?" he asked tersely and Rowe answered and talked volubly. But Luke did not listen. He sank back when they dipped into the valley, straightened again when they could see the forest, this time with the crowns of dominant trees distinct against the sky.

And then they were in the protecting cool of its shade, crossing the outside fire line, leaving the fringe of oak brush behind, driving into the clear stand of white pine.

From afar their progress had been watched. Black Joe, perched in Watch Pine, had caught a reflected flash of light. He followed the progress with his glass, dividing his attention between it and the fire to the northward. He called down to Helen:

"Big car makin' in toward Snipe Meadow."

He offered to go over himself and watch, but the girl shook her head. In a moment she shoved her canoe into the river, paddled down stream, rounded two bends, beached and went ashore, stopping to listen, but hearing at first only the sough of wind in the tops.

Wilcox looked around to smile into Luke's face.

"It isn't the kind of pine you know, Mr. Taylor, but—"

The slight gesture of a bony hand cut him off. Luke was leaning forward, goggles off, staring down the fire line which cleft the forest for half a mile before it disappeared over a low swell. His lips were parted, his breath fast.

"Tolman says this is probably the best of it," volunteered Rowe. "This was where the first photographs were taken and—"

The old man did not care what Rowe had to say. He reached for the door of the car, shoved it open and stepped to the ground. He stood there, looking up and about, leaning on his gold headed stick.

"Pine!" he muttered and cocked his head to listen to the talk of a thousand trees. He moved a few steps.

"White Pine," under his breath. "Michigan Pine—babies—baby pine!"

No, it was not he pine he had known, not the massive poles, not the clean timber, not the ragged, high tops. It was brushy, with trunks still retaining dead branches. There were no four or five-log trees; there were few that his men would have respected. It was baby pine, but it was uniform. There were trees that would yield two good logs, as saw-logs go today; there were a few that would make three. And it was thick! It was solid, without a Norway, without a hardwood tree in sight. It was straight, like straight, slim children, and it talked as the pine he had known and loved and mastered had talked!

Oh, that whispering! It quickened his heart; it refreshed memories that had been dormant for years; it tapped wells of emotion that he had forgotten; it sent a flush to his cheeks, a bright light of greed to his old eyes. He panted.

Rowe was beside him and Wilcox was leaving the car.

"There's ten thousand acres like this," Phil began, but again that arresting gesture silenced him.

At Luke's feet was a section stake. He half stumbled on it as he took a step and looked down. He lifted his face high, then, that he might see the sun. Impatiently he handed Rowe his stick and moved to the north edge of the line. He brought his heels together and looked ahead and began to pace. Ten lengthy steps he took and came to a halt, looking to his left, counting with soundless movements of his lips; to the right, and counting again, checking each enumeration with fingers that trembled. Another ten yards; more counting. Another ten, and again the checking of trees that stood to right and left.

Rowe and Wilcox stood in the fire line watching him, waiting, for Philip knew that this was no moment to interrupt. He watched his master disappear in the forest going toward the river ten yards at a time, now and then putting out a hand against a solid trunk for support because his limbs, though stronger than they had been in years, trembled with excitement.

Fifty-five yards Luke went, and he had estimated the timber on a quarter of an acre. Tolman was right; Tolman had been conservative! His heart rapped his ribs as it had not done in years. There was no distress in its measure; joy only, joy such as he had not known in years, joy, the taste of which was sweet in his mouth; joy which gave him strength.

Another ten—twenty—fifty-five—

"Pine!" he whispered; and then aloud, "Michigan Pine!"

He ceased his counting. He tilted his head to the talk in the tops above him.

Another sound was manifest; the murmur of the Blueberry, and he moved on, emerging suddenly from the thick forest to the high bank of the river and there he stopped. It ran below him, crystal clear, emerald water over golden sand, swirling into a violet pool at his right. Across the way was a fringe of reeds, freshness itself caught in color and behind them was a stretch of swamp, dead cedar and vivid tamarack against the background of more pine on the high land.

He did not see the canoe beached above him, did not notice the figure just starting into the forest, which stopped dead still behind trees to watch him. For a moment the wind abated and the talk of the trees ran into the faintest breath while across the way a white throated sparrow broke into his sweet, sweet song, as clear as the waters of the river themselves.

"O-o-o-oh, dear, dear, d-d-dear, d-d-dear, dear—"

Again his hand went out to the trunk of a tree, fingers gripping the bark this time with the tensity of a strange emotion. His face lifted to the clean sky and his heart opened to the song of the bird.

"O-o-o-oh, dear, dear, d-d-dear, d-d-dear, dear—"

He looked up at the crowns above him, the whispering tops of the pine trees; he turned to see the ranks of trees through which he had come, the trees he had counted. Something broke within him and light went from his eyes. Board feet! Always, he had looked at forests in the terms of board feet; today it was something else. There was more to this stand of baby pine than lumber, more than wealth.

A breath caught in his throat and his eyes dimmed. He listened again and heard that time in the whispers of the tops an echo of his lost youth; the trees, the river, the wind, the birds—it was a symphony of all that he had ever held dearest, of all that he had been denied, but even then he did not know that sentiment had broken down the wall that long years of effort, that great material triumphs, that final disillusionment had built as its prison. He moved toward the nearest tree and put out his hand as though for support; but he did not need help to stand. His palms pressed the bark on either side the trunk; then stroked, gently, as a man will stroke some dear possession.

"Pine!" he muttered—"Michigan Pine! Oh, God—I thank you—thank you!—"

He stood a moment watching, listening, feeling, smelling, letting his senses play with this great blessing which was within his grasp. Then he turned and started back into the forest, stride feeble but with returning strength, the strength of hope, of satisfaction—He went faster, with the haste of greed.

Once again the forest was so many board feet—

Helen Foraker watched him go. Then she sat down on the bank, legs dangling over the brink and slowly broke dead needles into bits as she stared abstractedly before her. There was in her eyes, behind the trouble, something like hope—a vision of an incredible opportunity.

"Where's the girl?" Luke asked as he emerged from the forest.

"At her home, likely," Rowe responded, startled by the eagerness of the query and by the light in the old man's face.

"Let's see her now. By God, Rowe, Tolman was right!"

"If you think it best, Mr. Taylor. There are things—"

"What things?"

He paused, with a foot on the running board, but as he turned Rowe saw that this was no rebuke, that it was all interest and caution.

"It might be best to have you go over the local situation, let me explain what we have done, call in Harris and perhaps some others. It—it's likely to be quite difficult."

Seated in the car Luke said:

"Maybe you're right, Rowe. We won't take any chances. Let's go at it—

"Mr.—Mr., whatever your name is, you don't have to go so damned slow for me. I can stand a bump or two!"

Upon the edge of Seven Mile Swamp Jim Harris stood in Charley Stump's cabin. He had the old man by the wrist and Charley had sunk whimpering to one knee.

"Afraid are you?" Harris snarled. "Afraid of what?"

"I tell you, he's been watchin' me, Jim! He follered me."

"There's nothing for you to be afraid of but me. He's safe. We've got him locked up. I can lock you up, too, for the rest of your life, you blackmailer! You do as I say—if you throw me down, by God, you'll do time!"

He released his grip on the withered wrist and the old recluse rose, rubbing the flesh where that clutch had been—

"All right, Jim—I'll do as you say—Don't send me to jail, Jim! Don't send me to jail!—I'll do it tomorrow—at dawn, Jim, unless it rains—

"An' Jim—you mean that, about tires for my safety?"

"You'll get your tires, all right—unless you go to jail. And you'll go to jail if you don't make good, or if you get caught!"

That afternoon Rowe and Luke Taylor sat for long in the car on the siding at Pancake, shades drawn tight to keep out the sun, electric fans doing their best with the air. Rowe talked rapidly, careful of sequence and the other followed him closely.

Later Jim Harris came in and the three talked. Before Jim rose to go, he said:

"This feeling against her works for you. I've never seen so much resentment. Public opinion sure is playing into your hands, Mr. Taylor!"

"Public opinion, hell!" snapped Luke. "I knew public opinion before you were born, Harris. Business is business. Sometimes it has to get a little rough, but don't try to fool me, Harris; don't try to pull any wool over my eyes."

With a close approach to confusion Jim made his exit while Phil Rowe covered his embarrassment, for his employer's scornful gaze had included him, by fussing with a broken cigar.

CHAPTER XXXII

The new day dawned ominously, with wind in the west and acrid smoke making the early sun like a huge orange, which faded to a silver disc as it moved upward. Last evening Luke had ordered his secretary to bid Helen Foraker come to him and Rowe had returned from the telephone, chagrined and ill tempered.

"She won't come," he said hotly. "Wants to talk but insists on doing it at home."

"Wants me to come there, eh? Why?"

"Says she has to be there because of the fires all around." He flashed a covert look at the other. "I told her it was impossible for you to come."

"What in hell'd you say that for? Rowe, you're a damned fool. Wants me to come, does she? By God, I'll run that rabbit into her warren. Get a car! We'll be there in time to curl her hair for her!"

And so in the blue-gray dawn Rowe took the old man out of Pancake, toward the forest and the girl who had tossed restlessly through the night.

Since the day before yesterday she had been in turmoil. John Taylor, fighting for her, fighting with his fists, with high rage for her enemies in his face! It knocked her assurance. Could that fight have been a fraud? she asked herself, and for the moment hoped that it had been because such truth would save her from the humiliation of doubting that she had been justified in sending him from her house. If he fought for her now, she had been mistaken; she had jumped at a faulty conclusion; the evidence which had seemed so weighty against him was not above question; she had been wrong when she sent him from her. Or he might have been her enemy and have broken with his conspirators—or he might actually be helping her for some unknown reason—she could not picture him, now, as a deliberate plotter against her well-being—

When she was in the worst of this bewilderment, Humphrey Bryant had telephoned, talking of other matters rather absently; then he had told her that Taylor was under arrest, that his arraignment had been put over a day. "They're fighting among themselves," he said as though, perhaps, he doubted that explanation.

Yesterday she had watched Luke Taylor in her forest, had watched his restless old face find peace; had seen him stop and touch a pine trunk with all the affection that a man could put into a gesture; had heard him thank his God for her forest—His hardness had melted there and inspiration had come to her.

Black Joe had come in from the mill with a message for Aunty May; she had only half listened to that but before he turned to go he said:

"They're holdin' young Taylor in jail, I hear—I told him,"—with a twist of his head—"Jim Harris'd get him—I told him; he's got sand, he has, but not much sense. I'm going in tomorrow if it rains an' get him out."

He walked away and Helen tried to call out to him, tried to make herself beg for an explanation, but she could not, and she did not know whether fear of humiliation or fear that the light hope in her would be blasted kept her silent—

All night she tossed, hearing the clinking of Pauguk's chain as the wolf dog moved restlessly as smoke kept her instinctive fear of fire aroused.

She was up before dawn, finishing breakfast as light and wind grew stronger—

John Taylor sprang from sound sleep in his cell. The sheriff was unbolting the door to bring in a plate of food.

"When are you fellows going to give me a chance to pay a fine and get out of here?" John asked.

"In a rush?" The sheriff tried to be jocose.

"I'm about as crazy to get out as Jim Harris is to keep me in!" the other burst out. "If I'm not loose today there'll be something bitter for a crowd of you to swallow!"

The genuineness of his anger shocked the officer.

"You'll be took care of," he said. "The judge'll get around about nine, I expect."

The men were going on patrol. Black Joe, glass in hand, descended from Watch Pine, shaking his head. It was no use; he could not see forty rods through the smoke.

Pauguk stiffened, ears cocked and then a car came through the murk and stopped before the door of the big house and Philip Rowe got out to confront Helen. He removed his hat and bowed stiffly; his bruised lips and swollen eye made him grotesque and the smile he forced made him hideous.

"Miss Foraker, Mr. Luke Taylor is here."

She looked at the old man, getting to the ground. He leaned heavily on his stick today; he was stooped and his clothing hung loosely about his withered frame. His thin lips were parted and he breathed rapidly, as though this were great effort.

Here stood the great Luke Taylor! Here stood this arch devastator, this man who had made waste of forests, this man who had been ruthless and cruel and greedy; but who yesterday had wept as he listened to a bird singing in Foraker's Folly!

"You may come in," she said, as though she conferred a measurable favor.

They entered the living room silently. Helen turned an arm chair to face her desk and stood by it while Taylor, still without speaking, moved slowly forward and seated himself stiffly. Then she turned to her desk and sat down. She had ignored Rowe completely; she rested her hands on the chair arms and looked directly into the cold blue eyes of the old man.

However, Rowe was the first of the three to speak.

He put down his hat and drew up a chair for himself. He was raging, but he covered that rage; his case was all but lost and he fought humiliation and anger to save what he might of the ruin of his hopes. He cleared his throat nervously.

"In our first talk, Miss Foraker, I outlined Mr. Taylor's wants. I tried to make it clear that we were willing to pay a very fair figure and that the terms would be such as would enable you to realize on your investment and your work."

Helen moved ever so slightly with a suggestion of weariness, and folded her hands as though this was something that must be endured.

"Since that time many things have happened which must be considered factors in the case. It is to be regretted that you have misunderstood my motives, and have seen fit to think that Mr. Taylor comes here as an agressive, unscrupulous enemy. He comes on a straight business proposition."

He hitched his chair forward, indicating that after this preamble they could get down to business. He started to speak, checked himself and rubbed his palms together, as if considering. But before he could proceed the girl spoke. Her voice was low and she directed what she had to say at Taylor himself, who sat eyeing her steadily.

"I have told Mr. Rowe that my forest was not for sale. Evidently, he does not yet understand. I did not ask you here today to talk of selling."

"Not to talk selling!" Rowe cried. "What then?"

Again he was ignored for Helen did not remove her gaze from Luke as she said: "It seems that I have few confidences from the public. Consequently, there are not many things for me to explain. Mr. Rowe," there was in the name the slightest amount of bitterness, "has indicated that I need help and that there is no help in sight. He is right, quite largely. That is why I wanted to talk to you today, Mr. Taylor. I need help. I want you to help me."

Luke's start was confined to the change in his eyes; they blinked once and in that blink their absorption gave way to amazement.

"To help you?" cried Rowe derisively.

Then for the first time the girl turned to him. "Yes, Mr, Rowe; you appear to understand."

"I don't understand at all! You say you are determined not to sell; yet you are asking Mr. Taylor for help!"

The girl looked at Luke as though she hoped he would speak, giving her an opportunity to put her proposal directly to him, not through Rowe; but the old man sat with chin drawn against his chest. His eyes still showed amazement and in their depths was a gleam that might have been admiration—as he would have admired while he planned to undo a man who had braved his wrath. Still, he did not speak and alter a moment Helen addressed Rowe.

"I don't want to sell. I want Mr. Taylor to give me the help I need so I will not be forced to sell. I have come to a parting of the ways. I can no longer go on with my present resources; the financial situation is against me. My property is not taking care of itself yet; obligations are due; I have suffered the loss of my water-power, which cuts off all my income and repairs mean an outlay of money at once."

"And you ask Mr. Taylor to help in this hair-brained adventure?"

"I ask his help in carrying my pine until the investment is ripe, so I may follow through a plan which has been followed for nearly fifty years and needs a few years more."

Rowe sat back with a whiff of amazement. He looked at Luke and smiled, but the old man did not respond. His eyes were still on the girl's face.

Rowe touched his bruised lips absently. "That's amusing," sardonically. "Quite amusing, Miss Foraker. Quite the most preposterous request I have ever heard made!"

"It is unusual, I understand. Mr Taylor seems to be my last chance. I—I don't care much about asking this of him," with a slight hesitancy.

"This is so amusing that it's interesting," said Rowe. "I take it you want a loan. How much—and for how long?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know!"

She shook her head. "Only in a general way. It depends on what happens to me and to the lumber market. I need thirty thousand dollars at once. That is to take care of a mortgage coming due and rebuild my dam and give me a small working capital. I may need as much more next spring; perhaps a greater amount. If my taxes are increased as the township officers have the authority to increase them under the present law, I will need help there. I will need loans from time to time until I can begin to make my regular turn-over—until I can start with a full annual cutting budget."

"A what? Oh, and then you do plan to cut this timber, sometime! When, Miss Foraker?"

"I can't tell you that exactly. It depends on market values and interest rates and how much capital I must put in—The cut begins when the stumpage value on approximately two hundred acres of timber is equal to the current carrying charges."

Rowe drew a hand back over his sleek hair. "Why the two hundred when you have ten thousand?" he asked. "You're sure of decent prices now and—you don't know how many more risks you will have to run in the future—risks and difficulties and unpleasant circumstances, Miss Foraker. Our proposition is to take over the whole block; we're not interested in a little fraction. Why the two hundred, if I may ask?"

"Because I'm trying to establish a forest business, Mr. Rowe, a forest business in which the annual income meets carrying charges and gradually amortizes the capital investment."

She waited. Rowe frowned. Luke blinked again. She sighed briefly, as though this bored her.

"A peculiar business," Rowe laughed, "that heads straight into bankruptcy for the sake of an abstract idea."

"Is it peculiar business to keep the capital invested well invested? Or to expect that the business should yield fair returns on the capital, Mr. Rowe? Is it unusual when the early period of a new business requires increasing investments with a growing burden of compounding interest, all of which are returned and multiplied when the business becomes established and its turn-over regular?"

"Theory, Miss Foraker. You're trying to apply very fine-sounding phrases to an enterprise which hasn't been proven. A real business does not refuse to sell its products when they're ready for market and when the firm is embarrassed by the demands of its creditors, you know."

"Nor does a factory sell its unfinished products, Mr. Rowe. My timber is merchantable, but it is not ripe. If you were a stock grower and owned a good calf which might bring ten dollars for veal, you would resent it if some one insisted that you sell when you knew that by keeping the calf until it matured, even though it cost you for care and feed and involved risk, it would bring ten or twenty times that price as a pure-bred cow. I'm in the position of such a stock grower. My volume growth of timber is increasing, increasing faster than the carrying charges, and real quality increment has just commenced to show. What are northern pine uppers quoted at now, Mr. Rowe? Then there is the increment of price due to the national timber shortage which sent white pine from twenty-five dollars a thousand to over two hundred and fifty. What average annual per cent of increase does that represent? And do you see any signs yet that the up-curve is flattening out? And why is it unreasonable for me to consider these things in my forest business?"

When she began this argument Rowe's eyes had strayed out the window, as if watching for an arrival; he turned his head as though listening for an anticipated sound, but when she stopped Luke Taylor gave a slight twitching gesture to one hand and his secretary plucked at a crease in his pant leg and attempted a superior smile, unconvincing because of the confusion growing in his eyes.

"The head of the class, Miss Foraker," with an ironic nod. "But quite a long ways from our proposition. To get back where we started; what stumpage value do you place on the whole block?"

Helen sighed sharply and looked again at Luke. His cold eyes were on her, lighted with something that might have been interest, that might as well have been scorn.

"I have tried to tell you that this business is not for sale. No offer would be satisfactory, but I shall soon have timber for sale, about two hundred acres each year. I will want to harvest it myself, of course, because no one else would understand the job, any more than a stranger could successfully handle another man's farm without making mistakes. The stumpage value should come to around twenty dollars a thousand. Your cruiser has reported on that, beyond a doubt, and it will increase as the output becomes steady and special markets are developed."

"You can't get away from that idea of continuous output, can you? Honestly, considering everything, what you've been through, what you're going through right now, do you think it practical?"

"I am as insistent on it as you are on scaring me. I know what you've been up to, you and your friends. You've backed me into a corner. There's no place to turn and that is why I have to come to you, Mr. Taylor, for help."

She turned to address Luke, hands on her chair arms, leaning forward eagerly. He did not change a muscle, a line of expression; he waited, and Rowe waited. Her voice was not so steady when she started in again:

"When we commence to turn over, Mr. Taylor, we should produce about four million feet a year—indefinitely. But from the time the cutting starts there will be an increasing amount for fifty years because each year, for fifty years, there will be another year's growth on the balance of the stand, until the last cut of the first rotation would be a hundred years old. That would be very nice pine, Mr. Taylor, even compared to the pine you cut yourself in Michigan—"

The old man's mouth worked briefly and he swallowed otherwise, no movement.

"And during all those years there will be a steady pick-up in quality. Dense pine cleans itself fast after fifty years—and we will be near the peak of the national shortage, then. There should be prices, Mr. Taylor—big prices, to say nothing of the need it will fill—When the last block of the hundred-year-old pine was going through the mill the first block will be back again, fifty years old and ready, and from then on there would always be a fifty-year-old lot ready for the saw—always, Mr. Taylor—always—every year!"

She brought a fist down on her chair arm and shifted her position slightly. In the pause, Rowe stirred.

"And every year the interest keeps piling up, and the risks—You've really considered the risks, Miss Foraker, or do you just talk about them?"

"Risks!" she cried in contempt. "I've lived with risks since I can remember, Mr. Rowe. Lived with risks from fire to moles—and other underground workers! Because of those risks I must provide the forest with a margin of safety, as in any other business. My margin of safety is in the quality growth and increasing markets. If I cut too soon, I cancel my insurance of a future; I can't cut now and keep my capital intact. I will not do either because there is a chance for help left. Mr. Taylor is that chance. He could carry my pine until it is self-supporting; that will be only a few years, and then—forever after—"

She stopped speaking, for her voice had tightened.

Rowe spoke again: "Foraker's Folly! It seems to have been well named! Continuous crops from the same soil without putting anything back? That's considered bad business in agriculture. Anyhow, pine won't follow pine. Or will it, according to your unproven theories?"

The girl looked at him again, forcing herself to remain patient.

"I am reasonably confident it will, Mr. Rowe, and quite sure that the soil will hold up. You see, ninety-seven per cent of pine cellulose comes from the air instead of the soil. If you won't take my word, I can show you," gesturing toward the shelves of books. "Properly tended forest soil gets better for—well, for at least a good many years. Do you know of the Sihlwald at Zurick, for instance, Mr. Rowe? Of course, the Swiss may be wrong; they've only been growing timber on the same land for six or seven centuries," looking down at her hands demurely.

"Pine trees produce pine seed and that seed will grow more pine trees. My books show that we netted over a thousand dollars on seed harvested and sold to the commercial nurseries last year. I hope that this item will almost offset the cost of growing our own seedlings and replanting when we're finally under way."

Rowe's color was rising. He was conscious that Luke was looking at him. He was out of his depth, challenging statements which concerned facts new to him; he was losing his temper. But it was win or lose, now! This was the thing for which he had come to Pancake: to cow this girl. If he lost in this interview, he would lose his standing with Luke and with that, all that he desired would go, as well!

"This gets better and better," he remarked sarcastically. "You are asking Mr. Taylor for help and you don't know how much you need or how long you will need it. And you're asking this because somebody has done something somewhere else. Do you actually know your capital investment, Miss Foraker?"

"Mr. Taylor may check my books. They are complete, from the time my father began."

"In due season, perhaps, should he have—any curiosity." He waved his hand, trying to be casual in his desperation. He could not stop, now. Luke was watching him, the eyes of the girl challenged him. He blundered on.

"Your whole proposition is hinged on higher prices and a purely hypothetical timber shortage. In six months the lumber market will be busted flat. I suppose you'll resurrect the Lumber Trust and ignore the billions of feet left in the South and the thousands of billions out on the Coast. What about that, for instance?"

"There is timber—billions of feet. There was once in Michigan. Perhaps Mr. Taylor used to think there was enough here to last forever. Perhaps he had friends who moved into the southern pineries and who are junking their mills now and getting ready to move into the Pacific Coast States. The market may slump; everything is going to slump for a time; it's natural reaction—

"But the timber is going and in New England they're sawing box wood out of pine trees that stand in fields which were cultivated at the time of the Civil War. Your shoes, your clothes probably were shipped to Detroit in boxes made of that stuff. Why? Because it's grown on the ground and the manufacturers are tired of paying freight rates on material. Why, I can raise and sell white pine at Buffalo for less than the freight alone on Oregon fir and—"

"Oh, freight rates! A socialistic mess! They'll come down; and besides, you've just admitted that there is timber—timber in Canada and all sorts of places. Now let's quit this and get down to our proposition. Will you—"

Luke stirred and hitched himself nearly erect.

"Oh, shut up, Rowe! When you don't make a fool of yourself with your questions, this young woman does with her answers!"

A moment of silence while Luke glared at Rowe. To ridicule and curse had been habitual, but now there was something new in his face, a fresh bitterness, a disdain, a fading trust, that made the other go cold. The old man turned to the girl, and his gesture marked the collapse of years of scheming and service and hope that Philip Rowe had erected.

"You've been talkin' a lot of moonshine!" Luke said sharply. "Like th' rest of your doddy generation—Moonshine! But you make a case, th' sort of case that'd convince a lot of old women!" He ran a hand over his chin and his eyes flashed.

"You need money all right. It'd do you no good to deny that and try to bluff me, but you've got your cheek, comin' to me for help!"

Helen's head was dropped forward a bit, arms folded. She did not flinch as he made the charge. Her eyes, very somber, gave him stare for stare. "You are the only man I know who can realize the value—and who has the money. That is why I come to you. I would rather go somewhere else—but there is no choice."

"You're high an' mighty for a begger!" he scoffed. "You're brazen!"

"I am only saying what I think, as you are."

He rubbed his chin again and his lips worked.

"And what makes you think you've got a chance with me?" he burst out. "I don't want to back you. I want this stuff myself. That's why I sent Rowe up here, to make a bargain. I come to buy somethin' an' you're in a pinch, where you've got to sell; I offered to do th' right thing an' by the Lord Harry you won't listen—but come askin' favors from me!" His brittle voice was louder.

"Yes, Mr. Taylor, that is it. I do not want to sell, so I ask you to help me past the point where I might be forced to sell."

He sat back, tapping the chair arms briskly with his palms. "You have got cheek! Cheek?—Never seen it before!

"You won't listen to me when I want to buy, but expect me to listen to you when you want my money—an' after you've filled that young cub's head full of moonshine an' turned him against his father—after I thought I'd found something in him!" He lifted his hand and a quick flush came into Helen's cheeks and Rowe, watching her, detected something that was almost fright in her expression. "I sent him up here, a worthless cub; he makes good, where I'd 've said nobody could make good. He makes a fine start an' for th' first time since he was a kid I was—proud of him. And then you pumped moonshine into him until his head's addled. He called on me for backin' in some pine deal and gets me all worked up! I send Rowe here to investigate and find that th' cub don't want to buy, but wants to invest in your damned moonshine!" He was gripping the chair arms now, leaning forward, and his eyes were very pale against the dark mask of his anger.

"He's so full of your theories that he don't even expect he'll have trouble in convincing me—a practical man. And then when he finds out I won't have it, that I won't back him, what does he do? He stands in my way, by damn! He fights his own father when he tries to buy this Pine! He tries to do me at every turn so 's to help you, and ends up in jail because he beats up my—my book-keeper!" He spat out the last words venomously as he glared at Rowe.

One of the girl's hands went slowly to her breast and the made at if to rise from her chair. Her lips were parted and the flush which had gone into her cheeks drained until they were parchment white. "Not that," she said weakly.

"Just that!" The old man's voice was a rasp. "He's fought me to a standstill! He's fought me because you pumped him full of your damned moonshine, but that can't stop me—Nothin' can stop me now. I've had everything I've ever wanted until now. I want this Pine and you can't stop me!"

She had settled back to her chair and sickness swept through her—and a rebound of great strength—and then fresh dismay—His words rang in her ears as she drove back the tumult, crowding all the conflicting factors out of her consciousness, laying bare this one problem. She rose and spoke:

"You have had everything you wanted, Mr. Taylor?—Until now?—And so have I. But it happens now that we both want the same thing. I want it and you want it, but I am not going to let you have it, and you are going to let me keep it, safe—always."

"Eh?" He was stung by her confidence. "I'm going to help you! How's that? What makes you think that?"

"This," she said simply. "You think you have had everything you ever wanted. That is not so. You have missed the biggest thing, Mr. Taylor; you have missed contentment." She was holding to the edge of her desk with one hand to keep her body steady; she spoke slowly, so her voice would be clear; her heart seemed to have been stopped.

"I never saw you before yesterday, but I know a great deal about you. Men still tell stories of your camps. I had a man here only two years ago who worked with you on the Saginaw. Your—your son has told me about you.

"Your—your bookkeeper, here, told me in our first talk that you wanted this pine, because—well, not for the money. You want it because it will take you back to those days when you were happier, when you thought you were contented—"

"Darned moonshine!—Moonshine, like the rest!"

"No, Mr. Taylor." She did not lift her voice beyond its low pitch. "My father felt the same way; all you men who logged off Michigan pine lands felt lost when the last drive went down—I know—I was a little girl with them. And I saw you, yesterday, walking in my forest, walking in Michigan white pine. I think I know something of how you felt—"

His eyes fell away from her face; then flashed back. She took a step nearer him.

"They're gone, the old Michigan stands, Mr. Taylor, but there's a new forest coming on, here—we're in the heart of it. If I should sell to you and you should run twenty million a year, which was big those days, but isn't now—Foraker's Folly wouldn't last long. But if we go through with my father's plan—you and I—we can cut four million and up a year—forever."

"Moonshine! It's—"

"No, it isn't a dream, Mr. Taylor!" voice lifting. "It's real! It's as real as those trees outside my house! The last faller hasn't cried, 'Timber!' for the last Michigan white pine! We haven't seen the last of it going down iced roads to the dumps; we haven't seen the Blueberry bank-full in the winter time with white pine logs for the last time! We haven't seen the last drive; we haven't heard the last pine log going against a saw here in Michigan; we haven't seen the last pond full of them, floating fine and high—cork pine, Mr. Taylor—with the sun bringing on the resin blisters on them so you can smell it—as you can smell the new lumber in the yard—and the big pile of fine sawdust—"

She paused and the uneasy wind soughed in the tops outside. The girl smiled, lips tremulous, as though tears smarted at her eyes. "It isn't a big operation, Mr. Taylor, but it will go on and on forever! There'll never be a Michigan man who is lonesome for white pine who can't walk through a stand of it, who can't watch 'em creeping up the slide, who can't feel the corks in his boots biting into the bark—if he wants to—It could be wiped out in a very few winters, Mr. Taylor. I want it to go on forever—"

She clasped her hands lightly before her and looked down on him with that sweet, confident smile. She saw the amazement in his face, the mist in his eyes. She saw him swallow, and then he snapped: "Damn moonshine, I tell you! Damn—"

Outside, Pauguk whined sharply. A shout. A horse galloping. Black Joe ran past the house calling a question to the patrolman who rode out of the smoke.

"For God's sake get out there! It's south of the old cranberry marsh in the timber and comin' like hell. Somebody smashed the telephone so I couldn't call!"

For a moment the girl poised before Luke Taylor. Then fright came into her eyes and she ran out the door. Phil Rowe started and turned and smiled—as though he had suddenly remembered some pleasurable thing.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Bobby Kildare ran shrieking across the dooryard to the big bell and began ringing furiously. In the garage Joe and the cook lowered the platform of fire extinguishers to the car and clamped it fast. Helen was on the driver's seat, waiting for Aunty May who hurried toward her.

"'Phone Raymer at the mill to turn out everybody. Keep Bobby ringing and Milt will hear the bell. Tell him to send all men to me on lot eighteen—eighteen—south of the old cranberry marsh. Remember that: Eighteen, south of the marsh." She spoke slowly and very distinctly.

"Have Milt get Sim Burns on the wire and make him come here with men. Threaten him if he tries to lie down. You stay by the telephone when he is through and get Humphrey Bryant and have him send help from Pancake, if we send word to you we need it.

"All ready, Joe?"

"Let her go!"

The motor spun; the exhaust roared in the small building; the car shot forward and careening drunkenly rounded the house, throwing sand from the ruts and rocking the chemical tanks on its platform. With throttle open to the last notch the girl, heart racing with her motor, tore into the murk, the smell of burning pine growing strong in her nostrils. They crossed the pole bridge that spanned the river with a bouncing and a terrific clatter, due west, then north, slowing on the turns, into denser smoke with each rod traveled; to the westward again and Helen fancied she could feel the heat of burning wood in her face.

"There she is!" cried Joe.

The brakes set and the car stopped in twice its length.

They were on the ground in an instant. Beauchamp and Joe tugging at the chemical tanks, running along the north-and-south fire line and then plunging into the forest to meet the advancing flames. A muffled shouting behind them; a thwacking of a stick on flesh, and a patrolman galloped up, bringing his apparatus.

"Get in there, Thatcher," Helen said shortly. "There are three others. Take two tanks."

A brass cylinder in either hand the man sped away, the girl behind him. The flames had started from the western boundary of the forest and on this fire line, a half mile in, they could feel their heat, could hear the snap and crackle. The smoke smarted the girl's eyes as she ran forward; it bit her throat and lungs and nostrils.

The forest was a weird company of indistinct tree trunks, the nearest swathed in flowing smoke, those a rod away barely distinguishable. A figure moved before Helen, crouched, going slowly toward the north: Black Joe his tank upended and nozzle playing on the angry tongues of red flame licking along the ground, feeding on dead needles and duff, going swiftly up the stems of small brush, leaping here and there for a hold on a tree trunk, falling back, trying again—the spit of the chemical blotted tongues out, the duff yielded dense smoke instead of flame, the fire sputtered angrily as it was torn loose from its hold on firm wood—

She moved beside Black Joe without speaking, straining her eyes, listening. She heard a shout from beyond and a voice lifted in quick answer. The tank sputtered and went dead. Joe ran back and came with the other fresh one he had brought from the car; but before it could go into play the flames that he had beaten down had found hold again. Their roots were deep in that pitchy duff and he was forced to fight a second time for ground he had already won.

The girl left him and went on. The fire was advancing from west to east, spreading north and south in a fan-shaped area as the wind drove it on. She passed Beauchamp, who coughed as he told her that he, too, had emptied a tank and was covering the same ground for a second time. She came on the patrolman who had reported the fire.

All along she could see those hungry, reaching tongues. One had found hold on a dead branch six feet up a tree and was waxing stalwart on the secreted pitch. She seized a stick and beat it out, shielding her face from the heat with the other arm—and ran on, to see flames crawling up other trees, like nimble devils.

She heard a horse snorting loudly as he came near with a cart of tanks and, a working idea of the size and progress of the fire in her mind, she stumbled back to join the fighters who gathered about.

"Joe, Thatcher, Beauchamp; you handle the chemicals. I'll refill. You," to the other patrolman, "bring in the empties and take out live ones. Make every pint count. It's hot and running fast."

As she tore the lid from the cask of soda and opened the water keg, she planned her battle; three men to fight, one man to carry. A tank was not good for more than a hundred feet of fire front in this heat. Three hundred feet—She shook her head. She needed help!

Another patrolman brought his lathered horse to a stop.

"It's all in this block," Helen said, without stopping her work, "Take your apparatus straight ahead. You'll stay in this east-and-west line. The fire will be north of you and your job is to keep this flank from crossing the line. You'll have help as soon as I can spare men."

The man yelled at his horse. The frightened animal was trying to back and turn and had no terror of the whip. Helen seized the bridle and led him forward, then sprang aside as he lurched on. Her helper emerged. His eyebrows were gone, she saw. He peered close into her face, fright stamped on his features and stared so a moment before he gasped:

"They can't hold it. Soon's they get it knocked down—the wind—the wind throws her along again."

The crackle and pop of burning wood was louder, nearer, the heat more intense, smoke thicker—greenish, yellow smoke, coming in puffs that spread about her and swirled and clung to the ground and then shot upward—or rolled along among the trees.

Black Joe came on a run.

"It's hotter 'n th' hubs of hell! It'll go into the tops if we don't kill it—and up there once, she'll go clear to th' river!"

"I know, Joe. Listen!" From afar off a feeble, thin cry came through the confusion of heavier sounds: the wail of an automobile siren.

It rose and fell, approached and receded in the face of fire Bounds, but it was constant and seemed to be shrieking a warning in words: "Git outta the way! We're a-comin'—we're a-comin'—we couldn't stop if we wanted to—we're a-comin'— a-comin'—now!"

"That's Raymer and help!" the girl cried and laughed excitedly.

They came clanking through the smoke, Raymer and Goddard, Thad Parker and four others from the mill. They clustered about the girl, but before they could question, she was giving orders. One by one she assigned them to their work, Goddard with a crew to backfire from the next fire line eastward, Black Joe to go on a horse and circle the entire burning area. Raymer to the northern flank. They scattered and Helen, relieved of actual labor, turned her car about and drove back a half mile to a vantage point.

The snapping became sharp reports, like pistol shots. A freakish wind, set up by the rising heat, eddied about, slapping downward and up, this way and that, scattering brands as it went. For a moment a strange silence, then the popping again. Along the line of advancing fire the men worked, shirts smoking as they played their chemicals. Their hair singed, their cheeks blistered; lungs became raw and eyes streamed water. They retreated slowly, always retreated. They could not advance, could not even make a stand. Checked here, the fire found an opening there and worked into fresh fuel; subdued in this place, it gathered strength elsewhere, and all the time it became more aspiring, leaping higher on trunks, clinging longer to dead branches, running up the lichen-covered bark, licking for the green needles, falling back, waiting, gathering strength and trying again. On the flanks the advance of flame was slower, the heat not so great, the smoke not so dense. They could hold the fire from progress there— But that center kept on relentlessly!

From the tool cache Goddard brought his equipment and men ran along the first fire line to the eastward of the blaze, igniting the duff and brush until forty rods of fire worked backward against the wind slowly to meet the fire which came on toward it. Men paced the fire line, holding their tortured eyes open to watch for brands that might cross the strip and fall into the timber on the far side to start new fires. To combat this menace they carried wet sacks.

Another car arrived, driven by the clerk of Lincoln township, bringing more aid; men ran to the work on Helen's orders and the car drove off to summon others.

Black Joe came up on a panting horse. He slid to the ground and lifted his red, red eyes to the girl who stood in her car and gasped:

"It's a 'bug' fire! Somebody's set this on us!"

"Set it?"

"It didn't come in from outside, Helen. Somebody drug a lot of dry bresh in offen that hardwood clearin'. One man, by his tracks—must've worked all night. He tetched it off twenty rod from th' outside fire line—That's what made her hot from th' start!"

The girl fought down her rising rage. To yield to such emotion now would play into the hands of this incendiary. She must think of no yesterday, no tomorrow; she must think of one thing: this fire; on time, this hour!—

"Forget that, Joe! We'll get him later. Side lines going to hold? Back fire all right? Milt there? Where's the front of it now?"

He answered her briefly and mounted again but swung his horse back beside the car.

"If it crosses here," indicating the line where the back fire had started—"you've got Burned Dog swale to fight!"

"I know that, Joe—and we can't let it cross!"

"I wasn't tryin' to learn you nothin'," he said apologetically, searching her set face.

Centuries ago when glaciers gouged out this Blueberry country the ridges were laid in strange patterns. Burned Dog Creek, a very small stream, drained a thin ribbon of swamp in the depth of the pine. It ran nearly due east until, meeting the abutment of a ridge that lay between it and the river, it swung sharply to the northward. But from the face of bluff springs seeped and for two-thirds of the way to its pine-crested top the balsam, which lined the creek, grew—If fire should go down that swale, igniting the balsams it would run rapidly, it would shoot up the inflammable cover of that bluff and mount the ridge with a hold in the pine tops that could not be denied; and then it could sweep on to the river, perhaps even across the Blueberry itself, destroying utterly as it went.

If Goddard's back-fire should fail! They could make one more stand, true, but that next line of defense dipped through the first of the balsam itself and if living flame got that far their fighting this morning would have been in vain!

The draft of the conflagration sucked at the back-fire. It moved faster, burning clean as it went, its flame tendrils and smoke banners drawn against the wind by the increasing draft. The crackling had grown to a heavy mutter. The two ragged lines of flame drew nearer. At a hundred yards apart each moved as fast as a man would saunter; at half that distance they reached for one another, fluttering, sweeping across the intervening space, gathering both speed and height. A dull, increasing roar of ascending air sounded beneath the pistol-like reports of burning wood; the yellowish, thick smoke rose as it might through a heated flue—Flame touched flame at the extreme point and that contact seemed to give the strength which swept the laggard portions of the lines forward even faster. A tongue of flame found hold in a pitch deposit on the side of a tree; the draft swept it upward, giving it hold, made it secure there. A long creeper of live fire whipped into the branches dragging heavier flame with it—There was a sound like a great, savage sigh of triumph and a sheet of fire rose from earth to tree crowns and with a ripping, tearing, wailing fury of sound the tops burst into flame—

Trees rocked and twisted in the force of the draft. A mighty column of smoke spouted into the heavens, rising straight up, seeming uninfluenced by the wind and from it rained needles and twigs and small branches, all blazing, and from it came sounds of terror, sounds that went straight through the reason of strong men and touched raw emotions that had been buried for generations. Fire, man's first friend, had turned into his raging enemy, mighty in its wrath, terrible in its manifestation of power.

Men dropped their tools and ran. Goddard raised his hoarse voice in command to call them back, but he could not be heard—they fled, scattering as the fire leaped the break and fastened itself in the tops of the trees they had sought to safeguard! Thad Parker ran down the line and would have gone on into the forest, heedless of all else except the impulse to escape this fiend, but Helen Foraker caught him by the wrist and swung him about to face her.

"Stay here!" she cried, and shook him. "I need you. There's no danger to you and we've got to try again!—Won't you stay?" to another man, "And you? I need you!"

Others came up, singed, shaken men and assembled about the car as Helen started her motor. They recovered some of their balance when they saw that she was not afraid.

"Get aboard, all of you!" she cried and they scrambled up eagerly, for she was headed away from the monster that raged eighty rods from them—

She drove through the smoke, stopping at another tool cache, swinging into the next fire line, half a mile to the eastward. The men ran forward after Goddard, axes and saws and shovels ready for the new attempt. The fire which had leaped upward and swept onward with such initial savagery, hesitated when it entered the trees that stood above cool ground. No draft held it aloft there and a mighty draft dragged from behind. A puff of cooler air slapped downward, driving a point of the fire from the top in which it burned to the ground. It found hold in the duff about the trunk—The crowns about it burned out, the fire dribbled to the dead needles again. Once more men had their chance. The fire was again a ground fire, no longer breaking through the canopy of tops!

Along the new line of defense trees fell, tops into the forest. Axe and saw slashed and bit, leveling the outer rows to make the break from canopy to canopy wider—And to the windward of these axemen others again started fire to burn out and meet and check fire.

Burned Dog tumbled through the pine here and just before it reached the fire line its current slowed as it settled into the head of the swale, and the pine gave up to balsam and spruce.

Men worked like mad. Goddard drove them, tense and ruthless. Once a man hesitated and Milt struck him heavily, knocking him down, kicking him toward the work he had indicated. None noticed. The man got to his feet and went at the task, the frightful sound of advancing fire neutralizing his resentment. Black Joe was there, barking the oaths of rivermen as he drove the others into the work. The hot wind, rushing down the creek, bobbed the stiff balsams, lifted their branches up to expose the pitch blisters—The nodding, the beckoning of those trees, seemed to invite the visitation which would be their death.

Back in the face of the advancing flame where the chemicals had again been tried, men gave up. Human flesh and will could not stand before that blast. Unhampered, the flames leaped higher, ran faster before the wind, spread their front wider and their growing draft again picked up brands and flung them out over the heads of those who worked feverishly. Islands of fire appeared ahead of the main front. Smoke ascended from a dozen fresh points and men ran from place to place beating them out, but their strategy was disorganized, their forces scattered, efficiency lost.

"All hell can't stop it!" shouted Black Joe as he came up to Helen Foraker, who was dispatching fresh arrivals to relieve worn men. "It'll hit that balsam and go down the creek to the bluff. It'll go up that like an explosion!"

He started away. His last words echoed in the girl's consciousness, hammering at some hidden idea—

Explosion!—"Black Joe!" her voice was shrill and he wheeled. "If it goes up like an explosion, can't an explosion stop it?"

"Huh? What's—"

"Dynamite, Joe! Dynamite!"

"Oh, God help you, Miss Helen! God help you," he cried, with a new excitement, the stimulus of a fresh hope in his voice.

A car was there, its owner begging for an errand. He had brought men from Pancake, men who had scorned and scoffed at Foraker's Folly, but fire closes breaches, belittles differences and those he brought were now at work; this man awaited the girl's word.

"Take Joe!" she said to him. "Push him, Joe!"

The man sprang into his seat, glad to obey her orders.

Across the pole bridge they tore, past the big house, on to a dugout in the river bank. Boxes of dynamite were tossed into the car, a coil of fine wire thrown in and, holding a box of percussion caps high, Joe swore as he ordered the other to drive back.

Helen left her post for she could do no good there. Men were wearing out, they were deserting sneaking away under cover of the smoke and she kept among those who remained, a soaked handkerchief over her mouth. The roar of the oncoming fire increased; it commenced to mutter again and the back-fire, feeling the pull of that hot draft, leaped and ate toward its kind—

A sucking sound, a flapping, like an immense flag in a heavy puff of wind, a long-drawn wo-o-o-sh, and a great eddy of fire and smoke was sucked upward and scattered. It left the tops through which it had passed only singed but the brands it had lifted were snatched by the gale and swept along, falling, a thousand of them, into the balsam thicket!

A crackling followed, like a growing, harsh laugh. A million matches scratching; a thousand bull whips popping—A ripping, a tearing—The swale was afire and the flame, bursting from great puffs of thick, greenish smoke, exploding, leaping, swept on down the creek, melting all that stood in its path!

"Get Raymer!" Helen shouted, mouth close to Goddard's ear. "Send him to the top of the bluff—and come yourself—"

Again she sped with her car through the smoke, reckless of others who might be in her path. She went up a rising road, hot ashes falling about her and stopped, leaping out, calling aloud to Black Joe.

As well have whispered! From the crest of the ridge she looked down through the smoke-screened balsams sixty feet below to see the inferno beyond, sending up its torrent of triumphant sounds: the rip and tear of flame banners frazzled out by their own heat, the popping, the snapping, now and again a sound like a gun-shot; a mighty, breathy wailing—and all against the background of savage roar!

Joe was on his knees, driving his crow bar into the brink of the bluff. A half-dozen others were doing likewise, making parallel rows of holes among the roots of those pines that grew above the ladder of balsam tips on which that fire would mount.

Others took up the work and Joe, relieved, ran back to tear open the boxes of powder. His hands trembled and he had no ear for Helen. Now and then he glanced into that furnace blast from below and his lips moved soundlessly—Goddard joined him.

Thad Parker ran up, gibbering, an axe in his hands.

"It'll burn us all!" he screamed. "We can't get out!"

Some one grasped and shook him, but Thad would not listen. His eyes were those of a mad man and the cries that came from his throat grew inarticulate. He bit at the man who held him, tried to lift the axe and swing it at his captor. The other staggered away and Thad turned and fled into the smoke—

Joe and Milt fitted caps to the dynamite and Raymer came up on a gasping horse. He caught the idea at a word from Helen and began setting wires. It was delicate work, painful work under those conditions. Time sped!

The cars were backed out and down the grade, but Helen gave no heed. She followed closely the men who were making this, her last big play. The greasy sticks went into the ground, one by one, tamped carefully in their holes along the brink. For two hundred yards they were planted and when the last cap was being adjusted the furnace blast from below tore at the crowns of the pine trees above them with the strength of a tornado.

The girl was atremble as she settled herself beside Joe and the coil box behind a tree trunk, prostrate on the ground, screening her face with her hands from the heat. She could not speak, could not think, could hear nothing but that crescendoing roar from below. Black Joe crouched on his knees, skin blistering through his shirt, peered over the brink. He saw a streamer of flame leap upward through the broiling heat waves, wrenching at balsams as it seared them, saw another fork stab out, saw a solid wall of fire flutter and hesitate and then wrap about the topmost balsams, clinging there a split instant before it made its last leap—its leap into the pine above.

Through that bedlam of terror, Helen's voice cut like a knife: "Now Joe!"

She was thrown from her knees to her face because as that sheet of flame gathered itself for its jump into the pine tops, the whole bluff belched out to meet it! A thousand tons of loose sand were flung into the face of the fire. Outward and up and down, it struck, more vicious than the heat in its path, more powerful than the flame Trees on the brink rocked as the root holds that had endured throughout their life gave way. They swayed and twisted and three, one after the other, toppled over into that smoking maw!—

Smoking maw! The flame was gone. As a puff of breath will extinguish a candle, so that blast had blown life from the fire. For yards, the balsam that had blazed was smothered with dry sand. For rods, the fire was stripped clean from wood where it had found hold. The point of the fire was broken, gone. It was no longer in the balsam tops, no longer a menace to the pine above. It had consumed as it went; there was nothing left in the path of that which had escaped the full force of the explosion to feed upon. It would burn for days, perhaps, but it was down there, disorganized, where men could seize upon and fight it!

"Oh, God A'mighty!" cried Black Joe. "If Paul Bunion could 'a' saw that!"

"Herd back that crew!" choked Helen. "We can hold it, now!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

Thad Parker had fled frantically from the monster that unbalanced his mind. Axe clutched in his hands he raced through the forest, looking back now and then as though fearful of some terrible presence peering over his shoulder, tripping, stumbling, falling, rising and keeping on, breath making sounds like those from a distressed animal. He came out into a fire line and followed it, turning at an intersection. His flight became a feeble flounder and once when he fell he did not try to rise until he had crawled a dozen yards, clinging to his axe, whimpering. He crossed the bridge and followed the ruts toward the Foraker house. He did not hear Bobby and Bessy crying, did not heed the sharp questions flung at him by Aunty May, did not see Luke Taylor standing at a corner of the building, leaning on his stick and staring into the smoke. He went on along the road that led to Seven Mile, away from the demon that was ever at his heels.

A car rounded a curve and bore down upon him. Parker stopped, swaying in the middle of the road, eyes fast on the figure at the wheel which grew rapidly distinguishable as the car came through the murk. The motor was four lengths away. Its horn sounded impatiently. The man at the wheel made a gesture for Parker to step out of his way and then reached for his emergency brake, bending low and cursing as Thad gave no ground.

Parker moved, but did not step aside. He lurched forward. He swung the axe above his head thrice, as a hammer thrower whirls his weight. He let it go and doubled quickly, with a shriek of crazy mirth. Glass of the wind shield splintered explosively. Wilcox, beside the driver, cried out. Bert Wales and Wes Hubbard, in the back seat, threw up their arms against the glass slivers—then rose and leaned forward.

Jim Harris made no sound. His hand retained its grasp on the brake and he sagged forward over the wheel, a great, limp hulk; the axe dropped to the floor and the purpling patch behind his ear sent out its first thin ooze of blood. The others lifted him out of the seat as a roadster stopped behind them and Dr. Pelly, Humphrey Bryant and John Taylor got out and gathered about the prostrate Harris.

There was little blood, but Harris' breathing was fast and heavy and as the physician, kneeling on the sand, touched the bruise with light fingers they saw the broken bone stir beneath discoloring skin.

"Isn't that bad, doctor?" Wilcox was the first to speak and Pelly nodded.

"As good as dead."

The smoke-laden wind sobbed in the trees above them. For a moment there was no other sound and then Thad Parker's weak, faltering voice rose in a thin wail, half fright, half triumph.

"Dead! Dead? And I killed him? Before God, I killed him with my hands! I killed him, and he killed my wife, my hope—I—I—"

He whirled and would have run again, but hands clutched him. He struggled and shouted and laughed.

"Get him into a car and to town," said the physician. "Stark mad!"

Wales and Hubbard led Thad away and sat beside him on the cushioned seat, holding him there, as he leaned forward and whispered.

Philip Rowe came running from the house and old Luke Taylor himself moved down the road to join the group. A third car stopped and five men got out.

And one more, trundling an ancient bicycle through the forest, halted and made as if to draw back when he came into view of those others. But he did not go back. Charley Stump stood there, stroking the bent handle bars. The group about the unconscious figure shifted; Charley could see Jim Harris' face. He left his safety and moved forward timidly. He stood behind them, listening; he saw the doctor shake his head hopelessly; he heard young Wilcox mutter as he turned away. Charley dropped to his knees, hands clasped, staring down into Harris' face.

"Jim?" His husky voice rose uncertainly. "You ain't dead? Jim?—" He looked about, bewilderment in his pale, witless eyes. "He ain't goin' to die is he?" in appeal to the doctor. "Jim can't die now, doc, can he?—He was goin' to give me tires." He looked anxiously from face to face. "Tires for my safety—Jim, you can't die, Jim!" He lifted trembling, blackened hands and looked about, at Pelly, at Rowe, at Luke Taylor—

A movement, and young John stepped through the group and there was that in his face and manner which was electric, which made men wait for him to speak, there in the smoke of fire and the shadow of death.

"Tires, Charley?" he asked. "He was going to give you tires for what?"

On that question the old man rose. "Nothin'," he whimpered. "He wasn't going to give me nothin'!"

He started to edge away, but John stepped before him, stooping to stare close into his face.

"Yes he was, Charley. Tell these men what you did to earn those tires!"

"No, no!" trying to tear his eyesirom that insistent gaze.

The old man stared about, sniffing, breath very fast, eyes hunted. He looked at John again and shook his head, but there was no conviction about the gesture and as Taylor started to speak he cried out:

"Oh, I didn't want to! He made me—said I'd go to jail if I didn't set that fire." A stir; added tension, as the group became more compact.

"And what else? That's only a part of it. What else, Charley? Where were you the night the logs burned, the night the dam went out?"

"Oh, I didn't—he made me!—he said I'd go to jail! He told me I would if I didn't set fire to her logs an' drive spikes in some an' blow up her dam. He told me that!" He looked down at the unconscious man at his feet and clasped trembling hands. "He made me!" throwing those hands wide for mercy. "I didn't want to, but he made me—he—he—"

Charley looked about again as his voice died to a whisper. His roving gaze set itself on Phil Rowe's face. The man quailed and started to move away.

"Hold on, Phil!" It was Taylor again and after a moment: "What else, Charley? Who else threatened you?"

Slowly one of the withered arms rose, an unsteady, gnarled finger half pointing. The accusation came in a half whisper.

"Him!" halting the finger to indicate Howe. "He come th' first time—they both told me I'd go to jail if I—"

"It's a lie! He's crazy!" Rowe's denial, sharp and panicky, broke the tension. Men moved.

"It is no lie!" Taylor elbowed through them to be near Rowe. "You've gotten away with your last lie, your last piece of blackmail in this deal, Phil! Do you think I've been asleep? I've been just a lap behind you for days, you rat!"

Humphrey Bryant moved to where he could see John's face.

"I've got enough on you Rowe, to keep you busy from now on! Harris, there, may be lucky—" John looked about, breathing deeply in anger and saw Henry Wales and Wes Hubbard staring at him from the car, where they held the mumbling Thad. "And may be others will wish they were dead before I'm through!"

His eyes ran over the faces before him and came to rest on his father's. His shoulders slacked and he shook his head rather sorrowfully. "These are the things you have done," he said, spreading his hands. "This is why I have had to fight you."

His anger was gone; he looked pityingly at his father. For a moment their gazes clung, the old man's sharp and defensive—before something faded in his eyes. He looked from his son to Charley Stump who stood shaking with fright and it seemed as though between the two was more than the bond of age: the communion of trouble, of guilt. Luke caught his breath as though to answer. But he did not speak. He half turned to confront his bookkeeper and then moved away, walking slowly, cane thrusting deep into the sand.

There was shifting, voices lifted; questions, oaths, excited laughter. Humphrey Bryant's hand went out and grasped Taylor's arm, clenching there tightly in a pressure which meant all, but he only said: "We came to help, and we're wasting time—now."

They moved, starting for their cars. And then a heavy detonation broke through the forest, balking the very wind, it seemed. They halted and faced its direction.

"Dynamite!" said somebody. "Let's get on!"

CHAPTER XXXV

It was late afternoon. All day the men who took orders from Helen Foraker had held the fire to the limits set down by the great blast. It burned briskly, hotly, but it was within their grasp and could not get away. The wind blew steadily and there was still danger in letting up until above the shouts and the snap of burning wood, the moan of trees that had been saved, came a heavy shaking boom of thunder. Through the thick smoke scattering rain drops fell, sending up little puffs of dust in the fire line. The wind dropped, the thin shower abated, stopped, and then with a fresh gust it came in a hissing, drenching torrent with lightning gashing the murk and thunder ripping open new clouds heavy with moisture. In ten minutes the ruts of the road ran water.

Drenched, her face streaked with grime, eyes smarting, weak from effort and strain, the girl entered her kitchen. Aunty May met her in the doorway.

"You're a sight!" she cried. "But this rain'll fix it, an' I'm glad you're here!" Helen took off her hat wearily and made no response. "He's in there yet," gesturing toward the front room.

"He?—Who?"

"That old devil!" eyes snapping. "I heard what he had to say this mornin'. He's stayed here all day. All durin' the fire he had Injun kids from th' mill running back an' forth to tell him about it, givin' 'em his dirty dollars!"

Helen's face showed amazement through its weariness.

"I told 'em both to go, but he won't. He made that there Rowe go out and set in th' car in th' rain. He's mad at him, called him awful names! I tried to make him go, too, but he just said he'd go when you come. You'd better send him away, Helen; he makes me uneasy!"

The girl opened the door and looked into the other room. It was dark, like the last of evening twilight. Lightning played through the damp shadows and the roar of rain was terrific. Luke Taylor was in the chair she had drawn out for him that morning. He seemed more shrunken, more feeble as he sat far down on his spine, knees bent sharply. He was not aware that she was there until she stood beside him; then his hands which had been tapping the chair arms stopped upraised. The girl did not speak and Luke rose slowly, peering close into her face as a protracted flicker of lightning showed it in sharp relief.

"That old she-devil tried to drive me out," he said. "Maybe I've got something like that coming, but I wouldn't go—not for her. I've turned hell loose on you, I guess. From what I hear you've got a long story to listen to." He paused and his lips worked.

"You're full of moonshine," he rasped. "This is all damned nonsense, but you're makin' a go of it! You ain't got brass or cheek, like I said—just nerve—nerve!" He paused once more and still she did not speak.

"That matter you spoke to me about, that money you need—it's all nonsense, all moonshine! When you got to have it?"

She was numb; her knees were giving; she said flatly: "Now—soon—within ten days."

He sniffed. "I'll take a chance with you; I'll invest in a little moonshine—because you've got a nerve, and because you—because you're makin' a go of it!" He said that last as though the words hurt him, as though it was gall to admit her success. "I'll let you have the thirty, and I'll fix it so's you can get more—when you need it; whenever you need it. But I've got to get a new bookkeeper first!"

She closed her eyes. She heard him grumbling more as he buttoned his coat close.

"Oh, I thank you—I thank you—"

"Don't thank me!" he snapped. He was at the door, opening it, to let the roar of rain and forest in on them. "You get it—" he moved back a step, "on one condition."

She nodded.

"An' that is that you'll let me come up here when I damn please—an' listen to 'em talk—an' listen—You're full of moonshine, but maybe you're right—about that four million a year—"

Something like a catch of breath checked him. He turned abruptly and went out into the rain. She saw him crawl through the curtains of the car, saw the white face of Phil Rowe as he started the motor. She turned to the mantel and lifted her face to the shadowed photograph of her father.

"All over," she whispered, and laughed shortly. "Saved—Foraker's Folly is respected—We've won father! We've—"

Thunder crashed, the rain abated, as though for breath, and came anew, the downpour rising in spume from the sod outside.

"Won?—Oh, father, I've lost!"

It was there that Aunty May found her, hands clasped, staring blankly before her. She was not crying, had not cried; it would have been better so; the suffering in her face would not have been so terrible had it found the relief of tears. The older woman stopped shortly.

"Helen! What is it?"

But she needed no reply. The old arms which for years had gestured only in irritation went about her hungrily; the old voice which had been so sour and sharp whispered softly in her ear. Helen turned and put her arms about the woman's neck and put her head wearily on a bony shoulder.

"There; there, I heard what he said. It's all over. You've come out on top of th' heap!"

"Oh, Aunty May—it is over—I drove him away; I didn't trust. I didn't take happiness—when it came— He's fought for me even when I suspected him—and I can't ever look into his face again—"

They sat down together in the big chair, Aunty May holding Helen on her lap, talking gently to her, tears in her own eyes, trying to provoke tears for the girl. But Helen talked in short, stiff sentences of her helplessness, the emptiness of her triumph. She had won her big fight but she had lost the joy of life.

The last light faded. Rain continued, a veritable cloudburst. Helen went to her room and bathed and dressed, cleansing herself mechanically. Downstairs Humphrey Bryant waited for her, waited with serious old eyes, leaning downward in his chair, tapping a foot rhythmically. He had so much to tell!

Night.

A lull in the rain.

Aunty May hung up her dishpan and draped the clean cloth over it. When she had wiped her hands she wiped her eyes.

She stood a long time in the doorway, peering at the lights in the men's shanty where a grimed crew talked of that day's fight and of Helen Foraker. A figure moved outside.

"Hey!" she called, in a cracking voice. The figure paused. "Send Joe here."

He came, scuttling through the fresh torrent and paused on the step and looked up at the woman with shock in his eyes.

"Black Joe, come in here!" she said impatiently.

He stepped inside, incredulous; for the first time in two decades she had addressed him!

"You've been wrong," she said. "You've been wrong for twenty years, you stubborn old devil! But I've had a lesson today—I—" brushing angrily at her eyes. "I've saw what misunderstandings lead to. You're wrong, but I give in, Joe. That's a woman's way; to give in, to yield, to take the blame. But I'll do it. I ain't a body to let things run along until they get serious!"

His face grew alive with amazement, with hope. He stared at her as she dabbed at her eyes with an apron corner.

"Well, you old fool, ain't you ever goin' to speak?" she cried.

"May?—May?"

Awkwardly he put a hand to her shoulder and her arms went about him.

For a long time they stood in embrace, hearts racing as they pumped out the bitterness and brought in new life, new hope.

CHAPTER XXXVI

It was the second day after the fire. All yesterday it had rained, but at evening, just as the light was fading, clouds broke and a crimson sunset touched the trees with a blaze of jeweled glory.

This morning had dawned fair, the air was clean from the great fall of rain, wind came in from the northwest, brisk and cool, dazzling white clouds sped across a dazzling blue sky. Only the river was unclean; red and roiled and high, it rushed savagely down its course, swollen beyond precedent.

In Pancake Jim Harris lay in the Commercial House, swimming back to half-consciousness. Dr. Pelly had been constantly at his bedside since the operation. This morning he left, to go home and sleep.

In the office of the hotel he met Humphrey Bryant.

"How's the boss of Blueberry County?" he asked, with a wan grin.

The editor's tongue roved his lips.

"Well, Rowe's out on bail and half the supervisors are scurrying around trying to find out where lightning will strike next." He chuckled and sobered. "How is he?"

The doctor slipped a morsel of plug tobacco into his mouth and winked. "Better'n a hypo, Hump.

"Jim? Well, he's a sick man, but since yesterday I've begun to think that Pelly's a damned good surgeon." He spit at a cuspidor and a smile of pride wrinkled his face. "Another thing, Hump, I'd rather see a live stinker taking his mortal and certain medicine than a dead one going to a hell fire that's largely theoretical!"

They went out together.

"Thad?" asked Pelly as they parted. "He'll clear up all right, so far's his mind goes. His heart though—you can't mend broken hearts like we can a busted skull—That's one reason I want Harris to get well—I'm a vengeful cuss, I guess."

Helen was at her desk, busy with figures—ostensibly. A letter written in Luke Taylor's scrawl was before her, paper limp from much handling. She read his promises of aid again and looked out the window and down the road as she had been looking for an hour, ever since John Taylor telephoned from the mill.

"I am coming for a final settlement," he had said. "The last car of lumber will go out tonight."

His final settlement! With all the relief that should have been in the girl's heart there was no rest. She had won; with Luke Taylor's backing there was no chance for her to lose now; she had put herself into a pinch on a theory; fire had laid waste to a full section of her timber. But there would never be incendiarism again, there would be no lack of working capital to tide her over until Foraker's Folly could function—

And yet there was only pain reflected in her face. She saw him coming down the road, walking slowly. He rapped and she opened the door for him. Confusion was on each and after the greeting they avoided looking at one another.

"Here is the statement from the mill," she said. "Is that right?"

He glanced at the totals.

"Right," he said, and drew out a check book.

He wrote slowly, painstakingly, as though it required effort to hold his hand steady. She watched him, with her heart high in her throat, hampering her breathing. The number—the date—the amount in script—in figures—his name—to the last period.

That was all. It was all over, now, for he was handing the check to her and rising, reaching for his hat. She looked at the slip of paper but could not read.

"That concludes our contract," he was saying, "That and my thanks—"

They faced one another. Her eyes went to his beseechingly.

"Thanks? My thanks are due to you," she said.

"No, I—I feel as though I were testifying in a revival. You have done a great deal for me. I came up here a—I didn't amount to much. I have learned this: that I know very little; and perhaps that is the first step in finding out things.

"I think you are the biggest person I have ever met," very humbly, and almost shyly, as though his words were presumptuous. "You have opened my eyes, you have set me straight.

"I made you so much trouble. I didn't mean to, but it was because I was ignorant and didn't know it. I'm so sorry." He paused and flushed as he mustered his courage. "I was presumptuous. I—I aspired to things that were quite beyond me."

He was letting her out easily, he was doing his best to cover the hurt that her error had caused them both! He was going now. She was conscious that he moved toward the door as though in haste. She followed.

"It was I who made the mistake," she said. "I—Anything that menaced my forest menaced me. I couldn't see—beyond that pine."

They were outside, the girl on the bottom step. He was going out of her life because once she had driven him away unjustly. She looked up at the pine trees which seemed so inconsequential now, to have so little meaning. He was denying what she had said, he was humbling himself to make her suffering easy.

His hand was outstretched and she looked at it vaguely and placed hers in it.

"Good-bye," he said. "Good-bye and good luck."

She could not speak. It was an affront to beg forgiveness; she had done the unpardonable; what she had today he had given her; what he was taking out of her life—she was to blame for that.

"Good-bye," she said.

She could not see his face twitch as he turned away. She stood looking after him, holding her hand outstretched as he had released it.

Pauguk at the end of her chain whined and bared her fangs.

Helen turned into the house. It seemed that there was no warmth in her body—

Milt Goddard, working on the motor of her car, watched. He was at a distance, could not hear their words, but he could see their faces and their postures. That was farewell to them, but the big woodsman knew that it was no farewell. He saw that the impulse which could never be shattered so long as life endures was in their hearts. He knew that though John Taylor was disappearing down the trail that skirted the fringe of swamp and made a short cut to the mill, he was not leaving Helen Foraker. Taylor was gone, but he would be back—that, or the girl would follow him down that trail some day, to the ends of the earth if necessary; she was that sort—

He dropped his wrench. The screen door slammed behind Helen. The wind lulled. Pauguk was whining, straining, eyes on the trail Taylor had taken.

For a long interval Goddard stood there. He tried to resume his work, but could not. The rage in his heart grew unbearable and after a time he moved away toward the house, going slowly, silently, on the balls of his feet. The wolf dog turned a quick look at him and glared back at the way her enemy had gone. He spoke softly to her, snapping his thumb. He grasped, her chain, letting it slip through his fingers as he advanced. His hand rested on her back and his fingers fumbled at the snap.

The wolf was free! She was starting forward, crouching, bewildered by this liberty. She dropped her nose to the ground, she went forward, at a walk, at a trot, she reached the edge of the pine; stopped, circled, started on; the trot gave to a gallop and then through the forest echoed the long-drawn hunting cry of her forebears.

Inside the house, a movement, an exclamation. Helen Foraker appeared in the doorway. She saw Goddard, the chain in his hands, and as she cried out to him that long, curdling cry came again, fainter, reverberating through the trees.

"Milt! What—"

Guilty fright swept his face. "He'd 've come back," he said. "He'd 've come back an' you—"

"Milt, she'll kill him!—You murderer!"

She started toward the trail, calling the dog breathlessly and stopped and faced about. Goddard was running frantically away from her, looking over his shoulder, stumbling across the nursery, seeking the shelter of cover, of distance.

Again the hunting cry—and again, more distant, fading away.

"Oh, God help me!" the girl cried. "I can't let her—I can't—"

And then she knew that while her voice and reason had said farewell to John Taylor her heart expected his return. But now—death sped on his trail!

She looked about wildly. An unrooted tree, caught in the current, was floating past and her eyes followed it with strange fascination as it sped in the white foam. It was going that way—the way he had gone—

She did not cry out again but leaped down the hank to where her canoe lay, bottom up. She lifted it in her slender arms, made mighty by that danger. She dropped it into the current; she dipped the paddle deep. The bow shot out and swung downstream, and kneeling in the bottom, sending the gunwale to the water's edge with every stroke, she drove forward, speeding before the speeding flood.

The trail Taylor had taken kept close to the river for a distance, then swung sharply to the left, shirting a widening area of swamp; for half a mile it circled, edging back toward the stream, coming out at an old rollway and then holding straight through the timber toward the mill as the river swung away.

That was her one chance; to beat the wolf to the landing. If she should fail in that she would be behind them and helpless—and Taylor would be helpless before the savage fangs of that animal. She passed the floating tree, left it behind rapidly, sending her canoe forward with all the skill at her command, with all the strength which fear gave her body. Water boiled about the bow, deep eddies fell backward from her frantic paddle to be swallowed in the froth of the eager current.

She swept down a straight stretch of stream, between ranks of reeds and spires of drowned cedar. Far to her left was the path Taylor had taken, far to the left of her raced Pauguk—How fast? How far? She could not reason, could not calculate. Two days ago she had been keyed to great danger, to great activities. She had been able to think then, with great clarity, great rapidity but the thing at stake that day was her property, her pride, her devotion to her father's ideal. Then it had been timber and its related possessions. Today it was a man and her heart at stake—and there was no ability to think or plan. Her breath was fast and loud in her throat. She prayed brokenly—

She approached a jam, where brush and snags had lodged. She crossed the current toward the opening where water boiled through. She cried out when she saw the stout broken branches of a dead tree in the froth, reaching up to tear the bottom from her canoe. She tried to stop, to back, to make land, but could not fight the pull of the current. She felt the impact, saw the bottom of her frail craft bulge as it struck the half submerged tree; saw the bulge run backward toward her, felt the hard pressure of the snag against her knee—and she was through, gasping, cold—but safe, and only a trickle of water coming through the scratched skin of the canoe—

Time! Time! The current seemed to lose its swiftness. Her canoe lagged; she roused herself to even greater effort and still her progress seemed sluggish. The muscles of back and shoulder were tearing loose under the terrific attain so she changed sides with her paddle and the change helped for a moment—and then she moved on as if propelling an awkward craft in dead water.

She could not realize that she swept past the banks in a magnificent rush; did not know that she was driving that canoe as it had never been driven before; did not understand that, roused to this pitch, all the savagery of the current was in her favor, shoving her, making her skim with incredible speed.

On the far side of the swamp John Taylor walked rapidly, hands driven deep into his pockets, head thrust forward. His mind did not function; it was numb, plastic, and he was conscious only of the heaviness of spirit, the hopelessness that had been on him—forever, it seemed. There had been no glory in his bringing Rowe and Harris and the others to answer for what they had done; there had been no sense of reward in knowing that he had thwarted the menace which he had brought upon Helen Foraker. He owed her that much—and more; so much more that he could never balance the account.

He was going away, he knew not where; he would begin again, with a new sense of values, a better balance, the caution which makes men stable. But he had no heart or strength to plan. He wanted only to be away and forget—

Far behind him came the wolf dog. Her eyes were very bright, her tongue lolled as excitement fevered her blood. Ever since that day when Taylor had struck her the impulse to hunt him down and make him pay had been strong when her nostrils told her that he was near. And now she was free, for the first time since puppyhood, and her senses were functioning in her initial hunt.

She was unschooled in trailing. She lost the easy scent a dozen times before she understood that eyes could help as well as nose and that birds and rabbits which had crossed the trail were of no moment. She had started out at a gallop; her pace slowed to a restrained trot; she ceased leaving the scent of the man; she went faster again; her voice lifted in greater assurance. She became confident, as instinct shaped itself. She broke again into a lope, racing on silent feet along the trail. Her fangs dripped slaver and her breath came in eager hoarseness, for the scent was stronger, in the air, now, as well as on the earth. She was closing for her vengeance!

Out in the river Helen rounded a sharp bend where the current flung itself at an unyielding bank, water boiling as she kept her broaching canoe from the smart eddy against the land. She straightened away and height loomed before her, faced with yellow sand—Along that landing passed the trail.

She cried out again for time—Or was she now too late? Had he passed? Had the wolf passed, too? Were they even then on combat somewhere yonder?

A mist dimmed her eyes and she shook her head to clear them, for she could not waste the movement of a hand. She rode high in the canoe, now; her stroke was ragged. The rollway rushed at her. She lurched forward as the bow touched the sand and the stern swung downstream. She stumbled into the water and floundered up the bank, heedless of her canoe which went on down with the current.

She struggled up the sand bluff, fighting for strength, mounted the overhanging rim of sod at the top, paddle in her hand. The trail was there, pitted by yesterday's deluge.

And a man's footprints, fresh—and none else! She heard her voice screaming for him—And then heard another voice, that hunting cry, coming down the wind. She had been in time—! She started forward as the wolf appeared, racing toward her through the cool shadows.

"Pauguk!" she cried. "Pauguk!"

The animal's sharp nose lifted, her bloodshot eyes met the girl's. The lope dropped to a trot; she faltered, swung off—

"Pauguk! Come here!"

For an instant it was as though her command had struck through the roused impulses of the animal, as though Helen's control through years of captivity would hold now. In that fraction of time the wolf hesitated, one forefoot lifted, nose quirking, and then the fangs which had been covered in that brief period bared again and a ragged snarl of defiance came from the throat.

The dog stiffened, gathered and with a roar rushed toward her mistress to pass between her and the river and be again on that hot trail.

She came on, as the girl ran to head her off, gathering speed swiftly. And then the paddle swung hastily and the blade came down on the creature's head; it slivered and was useless as implement or weapon but it had turned the animal, swung her about and though she scrambled, raging against the impetus of the blow, she went over the rim of sod, down into the sand.

She struck her forefeet down stiffly, gasping as she fought against the slide and turned on the soft footing of the slope.

She faced about, raging, clawing to scramble upward, and as she made her first lunge a shout came to them from down the trail and John Taylor, arrested by Helen's cry, ran through the trees. All sounds from the wolf ceased; all her strength went into those swift short leaps upward. Her eyes showed an orange glare, froth gathered on her lips and hate was there not only for the man, now, but for the girl.

Helen hurled the broken paddle at the wolf and missed. She drew back, screaming a warning to Taylor.

The head of the animal appeared above the rim. She raised herself on her hind legs to scratch with paws for the hold that would bring her to their level, and then Helen, backing in fright, stumbled over the dead branch of a pine. It was as long as her body, as thick as her arm.

"Stay back!" she cried to Taylor. "Stay back!"

Pauguk found hold with her paws. One hind foot clawed for added grip. She strained, head flung back, froth on her breast. She raised herself and quivering with the effort to hold her balance, she heaved forward and was up, turning, drawing her haunches forward for that last rush.

The tough branch lifted high, poised, and driven by all the strength in Helen's body, crashed down.

Its point of contact was the wolf's skull. It cut short the shrill yelp of exultation. It checked flight, it struck the beast down. She tried to hold to the brink as she swayed from her feet, and then went over, head and tail limp, rolling over and over, coming to rest at the bottom, head submerged in the current, a shapeless, lifeless body.

The cudgel dropped from the girl's hands and she lifted them to her face, covering her eyes.

Taylor was beside her. She heard his excited questions, felt his hand on her arm.

"Milt turned her loose," she said brokenly. "He turned her loose on your trail—He said you—He said that you would come back—and he didn't want you to come back—ever—"

He was so still that she lowered her hands and looked up.

"He said that I would come back?" he asked steadily. She nodded, mute before his manner. He took one of her hands in his roughly and something like great rage swept into his eyes. "And you came after me, to save me from Pauguk?"

"Y-yes," very lightly.

"Why did you do that?" hoarse voice rising in pitch.

"She'd have killed you!"

"Yes—And then—?"

"Killed you, John—And then you never could have come back!"

She felt the grip of his hand relax; a great breath slipped from him.

"You wanted me back?" he whispered. "Wanted me back—after all?"

"Oh, I wanted you back because of all, John! Because I—because I—Can't you see that I—"

His arms, binding about her body, drove the word from her lips—against his lips—and she was crying for the first time in those weeks of distress, because there was no distress then, no misgiving, no unhappiness, and she could cry—for the happiness that swelled in her heart.

Behind them the Blueberry hurled itself at the high bank and above, between them and the clouds that sped across the brilliant sky, the canopy of pine trees that would never be of the past spread their peaceful shadow over the two, like a blessing.

The End

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.