"It is. But I fail to see how you can make it any part of your business and mine."

"It happens to belong in my business." He put his hand to his breast pocket as if to reassure himself. He proceeded with more confidence. "Are you afraid of the truth, Mr. Latisan—scared to meet it face to face in a showdown?"

"I'm in the habit of going after the truth, no matter where it hides itself."

"Then I guess you'd better come along with me. I've got to the point where I've got to have the truth, too, or else fetch up in a crazy house."

Crowley's determination was set definitely on his mind's single track. If a man had an urgent reason for doing a certain thing and the compelling reason were removed, he might naturally be expected to do something else, Crowley figured.

If Latisan proposed to go back to work because his love and allegiance caused him to obey a girl's commands, he would do the opposite of what she asked if his love and confidence were destroyed. It seemed to be a case of two and two making four, as Crowley viewed the thing. He was done with tangled subtleties.

He put his hand again on his breast pocket as he walked with the drive master down the hill. There was a letter in that pocket; Crowley had purloined it from the girl's bureau that day when he had so quickly returned from following her. And he also had a telegram in that pocket; the wire had come along that morning, addressed to Miss Patsy Jones, in his care.

The job, as Crowley understood orders, was to keep Latisan off the river that season. Crowley saw a way of doing that job and of getting the credit for the performance.

The girl, staring through the window with strained attention, noting every detail of the meeting, seeing the appearance of amity and of understanding, beholding Crowley put his hand on Latisan's shoulder in the pose of friendly adviser, suspected the worst; she was stricken with anguished certainty when Latisan strode toward the tavern; according to her belief, two men were now arrayed against her. The drive master's haste indicated that she had been betrayed by the sullen botcher of methods.

In that room she felt like a creature that had been run to cover—cornered. She wanted to escape into the open. There was honesty outside, anyway, under the sky, at the edge of the forest, where the thunder of the great falls made human voices and mortal affairs so petty by contrast.

She ran through the tavern office and faced Latisan in the yard; there were curious spectators on the porch, the loungers of the hamlet, but she paid no attention to them; she was searching the countenance of Latisan, avidly anxious, fearfully uncertain regarding what mischief had been wrought in him.

He smiled tenderly, flourishing a salute. "All serene in the big house!"

The white was succeeded by a flush in her cheeks. She looked up into his honest eyes and was thrilled by an emotion that was new to her. It was impossible not to answer back to that earnest affection he was expressing. Gratitude glowed in her—and gratitude is a sister of love!

"I beg your pardon," put in Crowley, "But can't the three of us step inside and have a little private talk?"

He made a gesture to indicate the gallery of listeners on the tavern porch.

Once that morning Lida had found protection by handling an important crisis in a public place. She was having no time just then to think clearly. She was feeling sure of Latisan, after his look into her eyes. She mustered a smile and shook her head when the drive master mutely referred the matter to her, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.

"You'd better," warned Crowley, bridling.

The girl felt that she had no option except to keep on in the bold course she had marked for herself. She could not conceive that the operative would prejudice the Vose-Mern proposition in public. "I cannot understand what private matters we three have in common, sir. I have no desire to listen. Mr. Latisan has no time, I'm sure. He is leaving for the north country."

"That's true," agreed Latisan, under the spell of her gaze, won by her, loyal in all his fiber, determined to exclude all others in the world from the partnership of two. He had put aside his anxiety to know what she had been in the city, as Crowley knew her; that quest seemed to be disloyalty to her. "I'm starting mighty sudden! Sorry, sir! Let Brophy put your business with us in his refrigerator till the drive is down."

Careless of the onlookers, the girl patted his cheek, encouraging his stand. "Till our drive is down. Remember, it's ours!" she whispered.

"Harness in my horses," Latisan called to Brophy's nephew in the door of the tavern stable.

She was human; she was a girl; Latisan's manner assured her that she had won her battle with Crowley, whatever might have been the methods by which he had tried to prevail over the drive master. She could not resist the impulse to give the Vose-Mern operative a challenging look of triumph that was lighted by the joy of her victory.

Crowley's slow mind speeded up on its one track; he opened the throttle, smash or no smash! He marched up to Latisan and displayed a badge, dredging it from his trousers pocket. "That's what I am, mister, an operative for a detective agency. So is she!"

"I am not," she declared defiantly.

"Maybe not, after your flop in this case. But you were when you struck this place, if your word means anything!"

"You're a liar," shouted Latisan. He doubled his fist and drew it back; the girl seized the hand and unclasped the knotted grip and braided her fingers with his.

"I don't blame you, Latisan. It's natural for you to feel that way toward me right now," agreed Crowley. "She has slipped the cross-tag onto you. But you're no fool. I don't ask you to take my word. Go down to that railroad station and wire to an address I'll give you in New York. Ask her if she dares to have you do it."

There was no longer a smolder in Latisan—it was all a red flame!

He had not realized till then how penetratingly deep had been his conviction that this girl was something other than she assumed to be.

Crowley pulled a letter from his pocket, flapped it open, and shoved it under Latisan's nose.

There was no further attempt to deal behind doors with the affair. It was in Crowley's mind, then, that spreading the situation wide open before the gaping throng, which was increasing, crowding about in a narrowing circle, would assist his plan to make intolerable Latisan's stay in that region.

"Look at the letterhead—Vose-Mern Agency! Look and you'll see that it's addressed to Miss Patsy Jones, Adonia. Take it and read it! It's orders to her from the chief!"

Latisan was plainly in no state of mind to read; he crumpled the letter in his hand and stuffed the paper into his trousers pocket.

"Here's a telegram," continued the operative. "It's for her to go back to New York. It hasn't been enough for her to double-cross you; she's doing the same thing to the folks who have hired her. Nice kind of dame, eh? I don't know just what her game is, friend! But I'm coming across to you and tell you that the big idea is to keep you off the drive this season. Good money has been put up to turn the trick."

In the midst of the whirling torches which made up his thoughts just then, Latisan was not able to give sane consideration to her zeal in urging him to duty; he was conscious only of the revelation of her character. Out of the city had come some kind of a design to undo him!

The village was still agog with the news of his engagement; the news bureaus on legs had gone north to tattle the thing among all the camps; and she was a detective sent to beguile him! The faces of the bystanders were creasing into grins.

"Ask her!" urged Crowley, relentlessly. "Or ask New York."

Postponement of the truth was futile; denial was dangerous; a confession forced by an appeal to New York would discredit her motives; she had not formally severed her connection with the agency. She determined to meet this man of the woods on his own plane of honesty.

"Come with me where we can talk privately," she urged; her demeanor told Latisan that she was not able to back the defiant stand he had taken with Crowley a moment before.

"It's too late now," he objected, getting his emotions partly under control. "The thing has been advertised too much to have any privacy about it now. When they are left to guess things in this section the guessing is awful! I'm never afraid to face men with the truth. He has said you came here as a detective. Those men standing around heard him. What have you to say?"

"Won't you let me talk to you alone?"

"If I'm to stand up here before men after this, the facts will have to come out later; they may as well come out now."

He spoke mildly, but his manner afforded her no opportunity for further appeal; he was a man of the square edge and he was acting according to the code of the Open Places. She put away womanly weakness as best she was able and continued with him on his own ground.

"There is a plot to keep you away from your duty on the drive this season. You know as well as I do what interests furnished the money for such a purpose."

"And you know about it, do you, because you are one of the detective gang?"

"I have worked for the Vose-Mern agency."

She could not deny the evidence of that letter which he had shoved deep down into his pocket. He had reminded her of it by whacking his hand against his thigh.

"So that's what you are!" Again he was losing control of himself.

Men in the crowd snickered. They were perceiving much humor in the situation.

"I can explain later." She, too, was breaking down under the strain. She whimpered, pleading with him. "After you have brought down the drive I can explain and——"

"Now! It must be now! I can't bring down any drive till you do explain."

She did not understand.

But he knew all too bitterly under what a sword of Damocles he was standing. Ridicule was ready to slay him! The Big Laugh was already gurgling deep in the throats of all the folks. The news of his engagement had gone ahead of him to the north country; the Big Laugh would roar along in the wake of that news.

"The truth! It must come out now!" he shouted. "All the truth—the whole truth about yourself!"

"I can't tell you!" wailed Lida Kennard, turning her back fearsomely on the big house on the ledges.

"You've got a mouthful of truth out of me. Can't you see how it is?" growled Crowley.

"So that's what you are, is it?" Latisan dwelt on the subject, twisting the handle that Crowley had given him.

"Mr. Latisan, listen to me! I implore you to forget me—what I am! Go to your work."

"My work has nothing to do with this matter between you and me. So that's what you are!" he repeated, insistent on his one idea, looking her up and down. "A detective sneak!"

"I am done with the work. I am a human being, at any rate, and you promised me——"

He sliced his hand through the air. "That's all off! You lied to me. It must have been a lie, seeing what you are. But I believed, and I stood up and took you for mine. The word has gone out. Every man on the Noda will know about it. I had no rights over your life till you met me. But when a woman lies to a man to make him do this or that she is laughing at him behind his back. You have played me for a poor fool in the tall timber. That's the word that's starting now."

"If you have found out how worthless I am," she sobbed, "you can go on with your work and be a real man."

He loosed the leash on himself. He mocked her with bitter irony, his face working hideously. "'Go on with your work!' Don't you have any idea what men are up these woods? Who'll take orders from me after this? They'll hoot me off the river! I'm done. You have put me down and under!"

More than the spirit of sacrifice was actuating her then. Her impulses were inextricably mingled, but they all tended to one end, to save him from error. His scorn had touched her heart; meeting him on his own plane—on the level of honesty—woman with man, she was conscious of bitter despair because he was leaving her life. She was fighting for her own—for the old man in the big house, for the new love that was springing up out of her sympathy for this champion from whom, without realizing the peril of her procedure, she had filched the weapons of his manhood at the moment when he needed them most.

"The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!" he cried.

"I swear before our God that I'll be straight with you from now on. Won't it put heart in you if I'm your wife, standing by you through everything?" She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the limits of appeal. "I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I urged you on to your duty. I'm willing to say it here before all. Take me, and let's fight together."

In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of her pride; she was making passionate, primitive appeal to the chosen mate.

But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this man's fortunes, as Latisan viewed the situation. Ridicule, the taunt that he had been fooled by a girl from the city, was waiting for him all along the river. Echford Flagg would be the first to deny the worth of a man who had received the Big Laugh. No man on the Noda had ever incurred mock to such a degree. And he had vaunted his engagement to her!

She went toward him, her hands outstretched; he had been backing away from her.

"Look out!" he warned. "I never struck a woman!" He spread his big hand. All the fury of his forebears was rioting in him.

He was not swayed by rage, merely; there would have been something petty in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that way—to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency's sake. And a mere liquid had been able to put them into that temper!

But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!

He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a man; he had never tasted the stuff.

Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else—he knew that he was drunk—and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told himself, and he was only a woodsman; the hellions of the world were not allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning faces around him!

Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was "the Latisan lallyloo"! It had echoed among the hills in the old days when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.

The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of despair!

Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove down his cap.

"Lie there, drive master!" he shouted.

The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out of the station; a succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned prospective passengers.

Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of the passenger car, he shook his fists at assembled Adonia and yelled again.

Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had thrown away.

She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant proprietorship.

"How come?" sneered Brophy. "Latest bulletin seemed to be that the engagement was broke!" He was suddenly hostile.

She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was triumphant. "It's understood that I get the credit for this job," he informed her, sotto voce. His air suggested that he was convinced that the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.

All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan—the breaking of her grandfather's last prop. She had intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault, involuntary though that fault was.

Brophy stood before her. "I reckon you ain't going to be very popular hereabout as a hash-slinger, Miss Whatever-your-name is." He snapped his fingers and stretched his hand to command the transfer of the jacket and cap. "I'll take 'em and put 'em in Ward's room."

But she clung to what she had retrieved as if she felt that she held a hostage of fortune. Brophy refrained from laying violent hands on the articles, and to save his face and create a diversion he turned on Crowley.

"Let's see! You have bragged about being a detective! We don't stand for your kind or tricks in this neck o' woods."

There was the menace of growls in the crowd. The mob spirit was stirring. A man said something about a rail and tar and feathers.

"I'll argue with the boys and try to give you a fair start," stated the landlord. "But you'd better pack up in a hurry. You can't wait for to-morrow's train under my roof. I'll furnish you a livery hitch to the junction. Take the woman with you."

It was an ugly crowd; the landlord was obliged to push back men when Crowley followed Lida into the tavern.

Miss Elsham was just inside the door, where she had posted herself as a spectator and listener. "There's no telling what they'll do; they're bound to find out that I'm an operative," she quavered. "You must take me with you, Buck."

He had been appointed her guardian and he could not refuse. But he glowered at Lida, white and trembling.

Brophy came in after a struggle at the door; he slammed the portal and bolted it.

"They're usually pretty genteel up here where wimmen are concerned," he told Lida, "but they're laying it all to you. They'll let you go, Crowley, if you'll go in a hurry. Are you one of 'em, too?" he bluntly asked Miss Elsham, ready to suspect all strangers.

She nodded. "I'm going with Crowley."

"Understanding that you give me full credit," her associate told her, his lips close to her ear.

"I ain't sure but what I'd better hide you till night," the landlord informed Lida. "As I said, they're naturally genteel, but——" He hesitated when he heard the growing grumble of voices.

"I've got trouble enough in getting away without taking you on for an extra load," was Crowley's rough repudiation of Lida. "You have double-crossed——"

"I'll accept your opinion as an expert in that line," she said, lashing her courage back to meet the situation. "I am not asking any favors from Vose-Mern or their operatives. Nor from you," she informed the landlord.

She settled Ward's cap and jacket more securely in the clutch of her arms. "Unbar and open the door, if you please, Mr. Brophy."

He demurred.

"It's the door of a public inn. You must open it."

He obeyed, standing ready to repel intruders.

She walked straight out and through the crowd of hostile natives, who parted to allow her to pass; her chin was up and her eyes were level in meeting the gaze of any man who stared at her.

She had made up her mind where she was going, and the thought of that intended destination put some of the spirit of old Echford Flagg in her.

When she was free from the crowd she began to run; instinct of the homing sort impelled her to hasten. She had not settled in her mind what she would say or do when she got there, but there seemed to be no other place in all the world for her right then except the big house on the ledges.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Lida did not wait to be admitted to her grandfather's house in the conventional manner; she did not dare to test her new resolution by a pause on the steps, and she was afraid that Rickety Dick would enforce the Flagg injunction against a woman.

Gasping for breath after her run across the ledges, she flung herself into the presence of her grandfather.

Dick was holding a flaming splint of wood to the bowl of Flagg's pipe. Startled, he dropped the splint, and the fire burned out unheeded on the bare floor.

She held on to the cap and the jacket and with her free hand she beat upon her breast and tried to pour out a confession of her part in the mischief which had been done. She could not tell Flagg who she was; she was telling him what she was. She made herself a part of the Vose-Mern conspiracy; that seemed to be the best way. She did not try to make herself better than her associates; she admitted that she was an operative; in no other way could she account for her presence in the north country; and the old man's keen eyes warned her that a less plausible statement would endanger her secret. Therefore, she arraigned herself bitterly as the cause of Latisan's undoing, and to explain her new attitude she pleaded love and resulting repentance. There seemed to be no other way of giving Flagg a good reason why she was interested in speeding the fortunes of Latisan and the Flagg drive.

She began to babble rather incoherently. His silence troubled her. His gaze was intent.

After a time, allowing her to talk on, he ordered Dick to bring more fire for the pipe, and then he puffed and listened a little longer.

At last he jabbed his pipe stem toward the door, and Dick obeyed the silent command and left the room.

"Now, my girl, hold up a moment and get your breath. Sit down!" She obeyed.

"I see that you're hanging on to Latisan's cap and jacket. Did he pull himself out of the jacket whilst you were clinging to his collar?" In spite of the seriousness of the news which she had brought to him, there was a touch of dry humor in his tone. "He must have had a pretty desperate change of heart to run away from such a girl, after what he told me of his feelings this morning."

He talked on, allowing her to recover. "Your words have been tumbling along like logs coming down the Hulling Machine Falls, but I reckon I understand that a detective agency sent you up here to Delilah my Samson. I've just been reading about that case in the Old Testament. And you're sorry, eh? It's a start in the right direction—being sorry. He told me this morning that he was going back to the drive in spite of me—he said it was because you had torched him on to do so. I'll admit I haven't got over being thankful to you for that help. And now it's all tipped upside down, eh? I'm not surprised. It's the Latisan nature to blow up! I knew his grandfather well—and I remember! We seem to have made a bad mess of it, you and I. I'll own to it that I haven't been careful in the management of my tongue where he's concerned. If I had, all the girls this side o' Tophet couldn't have made him jump his job in this style. You see, I'm willing to admit my mistake, and that makes me feel kinder toward you, now that you admit yours."

Her courage was coming back to her. Only a veritable frenzy of despair had forced her into the presence of that old man who had declared his unalterable hostility to her and hers. She found him singularly and surprisingly mild in this crisis. Wreathed in the tobacco smoke, his countenance was full of sympathy. It was an amazing alteration in Echford Flagg, so those who knew him would have stated, had they been there to behold.

"I suppose you have to slap on a lot of deceit in that detective business."

"I'm done with deceit. I've left that work forever."

"So I reckoned whilst I looked at you and heard you talk. I've got quite an eye for a change of heart in persons. I hate to see young folks in trouble. 'Most always I'm pretty hard on people. I've grown to be that way. Had good reasons! But you seem to have caught me to-day in a different frame of mind. I didn't get a good look at you last evening. I've just been telling myself that you remind me very much of somebody I used to know. There was a time," he went on, wrinkling his forehead, "when I would have ordered you out of this house, simply on your looks. But to-day, somehow, I like to keep my eyes on you. Old age has a lot of whims, you know."

She did not venture to speak. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

"It's too bad, sis! Too bad! 'Tis a tough thing to work out, this Latisan matter. You have started the old John devil a-roaring in him! And I reckon that now you're falling in love with the fool, even if you did come up-country to do something mean to him!"

She nodded; her emotions were too deeply stirred to permit evasion or more deceit.

"I have to depend on hired help, sis. And the trouble with any other drive master than Latisan is that the opposition crowd can hire away what Latisan wouldn't sell—I'll say that for the boy! It's a matter of principle with him—this fight for the independents."

"But your men will keep on working, won't they, sir?"

"They'll work—yes! But they won't fight without Latisan to lead 'em. That's why the Three C's folks are so hot on the trail of one man. They're going to trig my drive at the Skulltree dam unless we are through ahead of 'em. Conservation of water, that's what they will call it when they make their play for a court order," he snarled. "But it's only devilish theft of the rights I hold in common—and that's where lawyers have their chance to argue, when rights are common." He found himself becoming garrulous in his emotion. He frowned. "But why talk such matters to you; you can't understand!"

"No," she admitted, sadly. "I haven't any knowledge about drives. I can only understand that through me a great mischief has been done."

"Well, it might have been worse for young Latisan if they hadn't got rid of him by this underhand way. Now that he has quit and has gone larruping off on his own hook, you may as well get what comfort out of it you can," he said, trying to ameliorate her distress. "There's no telling what they might have been savage enough to do to him if he had stayed to make the fight as he intended to make it."

"Do you give up the fight?"

With the left hand he lifted his helpless right arm across his knees. "It's a two-fisted proposition this year. I guess I'm licked. They'll buy in my logs at what price they have a mind to pay and will turn 'em into paper. The sawmills will have to shut down, and the chap who wants to build a home will keep on cussing the price of lumber. I have made a good try of it, sis, but the big combinations are bound to have their way in the end."

"It isn't right for anybody to have his own way without giving the other man a square deal," she cried, adding, with bitterness, "though I'm the last person entitled to preach on that subject."

"It's all in the way of progress, so the syndicate fellows tell us," he remarked, dryly. "Maybe they know. Whilst they're grabbing in all the money, they may be getting control of all the brains, too."

She flung up her arms and accused herself, passionately: "I have been a fool. I'd give my very heart to make matters right again!"

"I think so," he admitted. "I reckon you're in earnest."

Again his fixed, appraising stare was disturbing her.

"About Mr. Latisan——" she hurried on. "I can't believe that he'll stay away long."

"I guess you know as little about the ways of men up here as you know about the drives, my girl. There's plenty of iron in their natures, but there isn't much brass in their cheeks. He's done—he can't face the Big Laugh. He's seen what it has done to others. But you city folks don't understand woods ways and notions!"

She set her firm teeth over her lower lip to control its quivering. Then she ventured. It was a resolve born out of her desperate desire to redeem, if she were able. There was one thing she could do—it seemed a natural thing to do, in that extremity.

"I have something to ask of you. Please don't be angry! I'm trying to square myself!"

"Go ahead! I'm ready now to be pretty easy natured when somebody is really in earnest about helping me."

"Give me your permission to go north and explain to your men why Mr. Latisan isn't on the drive! I'll tell them everything. I'll open my soul to those men. They'll understand."

"It's not a girl's job," he declared, sternly.

"I have been trained in a hard school, sir. I have been forced to study men and to deal with men. I have been sorry because I have been obliged to do the things I have done. But my knowledge of men may help your affairs. I am glad I have been through my trials. Let me go north to your crews! I beg it of you!"

"I don't want to have you messing into any such business. There's something about you—something that makes me want to put a safeguard over you, sis, instead of sending you into danger."

"You'll make the danger worse for me if you don't give me that permission—a word from you to them that I'm your agent." She arose, flaming with her resolution. "I am going anyway, sir! You can't stop me from going where I will in the woods."

"You're right!" he admitted, sadly. "I'm so old and helpless that I can't even boss a girl."

She stood in front of him and put Latisan's cap on her head; she pulled on the belted jacket. "They'll know this jacket and cap! I'll tell the story! Do you think it is folly? No! I can see in your face that you know what those men will do!"

"Yes, I do know! I have been a woodsman in my time, too! After they have listened to you they'll hammer hell out of anything that gets in front of 'em."

His face lighted up. He beamed on her. "I told you that old age has its whims. A minute ago a whim made me want to keep you away from trouble. Now, by the gods! the same whim makes me want to send you north. You will stand for Eck Flagg, saying what he'd like to say to his men! The right spirit is in you! I ain't afraid that you won't make good!"

He pointed to an object on the wall of the room. It was a stout staff of ash tipped with a steel nose and provided with a hook of steel; it was the Flagg cant dog. The ash staff was banded with faded red stripes and there was a queer figure carved on the wood.

"Lift it down and bring it here and lay it across my knees," he commanded.

She ran and brought it.

"They know that stick along the Noda waters," he told her, caressing the staff with his hale hand. "I carried it at the head of the drive for many a year, my girl. You won't need letters of introduction if you go north with that stick in your hand. I would never give it into the hands of a man. It has propped the edge of my shelter tent, to keep the spring snow off my face when I caught a few winks of sleep; that steel dog has rattled nigh my ear when I couldn't afford to sleep and kept walking. Tell 'em your story, with that stick in your hand when you tell it! Take it and stand up in front of me!"

Her face was white; she trembled when she lifted the staff from his knees.

An old man's whim! The girl believed that she understood better than he the instinct which was prompting him to deliver over the scepter which he had treasured for so long.

And some sort of instinct, trickling in the blood from that riverman forebear, prompted her strike a pose, which brought a yelp of admiration from the old man. She had set the steel nose close to her right foot and propped the staff, with right arm fully extended, swinging the stick with a man-fashion sweep.

"Sis, where did ye learn the twist of the Flagg wrist when ye set that staff?" It was a compliment rather than a question, and the girl did not reply. She was not able to speak; a sob was choking her. Her grip on that badge of the family authority thrilled her; here was the last of her kin; he was intrusting to her, as his sole dependence, the mission of saving his pride and his fortunes. Her tear-wet eyes pledged him her devoted loyalty.

"God bless you!" he said.

"And may God help me," she added fervently. Impulse was irresistible. She succumbed. She dropped the staff and ran to the old man and threw her arms convulsively about his neck and kissed him.

"I'm sorry," she faltered, stepping back. "I'm afraid I startled you."

"No," he told her, after a moment of reflection, "I guess I rather expected you'd do that before you went away. Some more of that whim, maybe! When do you think of leaving?"

"I'd like to go at once. I cannot stay any longer in this village."

"You'd best get to my drivers as soon as the Three C's slander does."

He shouted at a door and old Dick appeared.

"Move spry now!" commanded the master. "Have Jeff hitch the big bays into the jumper. And Jeff will be able to tend and do for me whilst you're away. For here's the job I'm sending you on. Take this young woman north to the drive. She's tending to some business for me. See to it that she's taken good care of. And bring her back when she feels that she's ready to come."

"Am I to come here—back to your house to-to——" she faltered.

"To report? Of course you are!" He was suddenly curt and cold after his softness of the moment before. He looked as if he were impatient for her to be gone.

"Have Dick stop at the tavern for your belongings."

"There's only a small bag, sir."

"If you're short of clothes—well, I advise you to wear Latisan's cap and jacket. They'll keep you warm—and they'll keep you—reminded!" He put much meaning in his emphasis of the last word.

She bowed her head humbly; the clutch at her throat would not permit her to reply to him. Then, bearing with her the Flagg scepter, she went out to where the horses were being put to the jumper.

When he was alone the old man laid his hand on the Bible at his side. For a long time he gazed straight ahead, deep in his ponderings. Then he opened the volume and leaved the pages until he came to the family register, midway in the book. After the New England custom, there were inscribed in faded ink the names of the Flaggs who had been born, the names of those who had died, the records of the marriages. Echford Flagg's father had begun the register; the son had continued it. Across the marriage record of Alfred Kennard and Sylvia Flagg were rude penstrokes. On the page of births was the name of Lida Kennard, and he slowly ran his finger under it. When he gazed down at the floor again in meditation he met the stare of the cat that Rickety Dick loved and petted.

The cat was bestowing no friendly look on Flagg. He had often cuffed her whenever she ventured to leap into his lap. He had repulsed the cat as he repelled human beings who had sought to make up to him. Now he called to her softly, inviting her with his hand. She backed away with apprehensive haste.

"I'm starting late, pussy," he muttered. "And I was never much of a hand at coaxing anybody to come to me. But I wish you'd hop up here on my knee. Come, kitty! Please come!"

It was a long time before he was able to gain her confidence. He heard the big bays go trampling away down the ledges. At last the cat came cautiously, climbing up his leg, and sat on his knees and stared up at his face in a questioning way.

"She's too much like her mother for me not to know her—like her mother looked when she went away," he informed the cat. "I reckon I'm a whole lot different right now than I ever was before. I'm old and sick—and I'm different. I don't blame you for looking hard at me, kitty. I'm so lonesome that I'm glad to have a cat to talk to. She's got her mother's looks—and the Flagg grit. She wants to do it her own way—like I'd want to do it my way, without being bothered. And I'm letting her do it. It wouldn't be a square deal if I didn't let her. And she'll do it! It's in her! She's trying to pay back. It's the style of the Flaggs. She didn't come up here to smash me or Latisan. I didn't believe what she said—a Flagg knows when another Flagg is lying. She came to help—and she'll do it yet! She's Lida, kitty, Lida!" His tone caressed the name. His hand caressed the written name.

Then he turned the pages slowly, going forward in the volume—to the New Testament.

And after a time he found words which fitted his new mood and he read aloud to his feline auditor.

"'Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another——'"

Jeff, the servitor, hearing the mumble of the old man's voice, tiptoed to the door and peeped in. He goggled at the tableau and listened to the words. He was in the state of mind of that oft-quoted doubter who spat on the giraffe's hoof and remarked to the bystanders, "Hell! There ain't no such animile!"



CHAPTER NINETEEN

Brophy was distinctly inhospitable when Lida walked into the tavern.

She curtly stated her errand as she passed him on her way to the stairs, and when she returned with her bag he allowed her to leave without opening his mouth. She took the money he offered and put it in her pocket without counting it.

The men who were about the place were silent, too. The fact that Flagg was sending her away in his own hitch stirred their curiosity and had considerable to do with keeping their rude tongues off a person who had evidently come to an understanding with the master of the big house.

"Where are ye headed, Dick?" asked a bystander while the girl was in the tavern.

"Up and down," stated the old man, cryptically.

"Well, if you want to overtake them chums of hers you'll have to lay on the braid pretty smart! If they kept on going at the rate they started off they're halfway to the junction by now."

When the girl was in her seat Dick sent the bays along at a sharp clip down the highway by which Crowley and his companion had departed.

Lida had conferred with Dick on the way down from the big house and had decided on a bit of guile to divert the attention of the gossips of Adonia from her real objective. According to all appearances she was in full flight toward the city, or else was chasing up Ward Latisan; the cynics, after that affair in the street when she had pleaded with the young man, opined that she was brazen enough to do almost anything that a girl should not.

Brophy watched her out of sight.

"If it ain't one thing it's another with these table girls," was his sour comment. "I don't know what I'm liable to draw next; the Queen of Sheby, maybe!"

When a hill shut off the view from Adonia the bays swung into a side lane which connected with the tote road leading north along the Noda waters.

A girl who wore for her armor Latisan's jacket and his cap, and carried as credentials the woods baton of the last of the independent timber barons of the Noda, was hastening on her mission with the same sort of fervent zeal that made Joan of Arc a conqueror.

Family fealty, the eager desire to right in some measure the wrong done by her father, anxious determination to repair her own fault—all these were animating impulses in this Joan of the Northland. But now especially was she aware that she was seeking by service to absolve herself in the estimation of a poor chap whose love for her had made him forget his duty.

There was no talk between the girl and her charioteer. She had plenty of thought to occupy her, and he drove on with his gaze straight between the ears of the nigh horse.

The road was crooked; when she glanced behind, the woods seemed to be shutting doors on her, closing out the world with which she had been familiar; and ahead, as the road turned, she was looking into vistas which led to the unknown—to a duty of tremendous import—to a task which seemed too great for a girl to accomplish. One knowledge comforted her—it was a knowledge which came from her childhood memories—she could trust those rough men of the woods to treat a girl with respect if she deserved it; but would she be able to convince them that the girl who wrought such mischief to Ward Latisan deserved respect? They might, as her grandfather said, ridicule a man who had been fooled by a girl, if that man appeared to them and tried to make good his authority; but there would be no laugh in the north country behind Latisan's back, now that he had fled desperately from the wreck of his prospects.

She perceived only silent rebuke, even resentment, in Dick's countenance when she stole glances at the hard profile above the old man's knitted scarf. It was plain that he did not relish his job. She wondered whether he believed that her errand was useless. When, after a time, she tried to draw some opinion out of him he gave her no replies that aided her.

She felt acutely that she needed sympathy—something for her encouragement. The old man's taciturnity hinted that he could be trusted with a secret so far as outsiders were concerned; as to Flagg, she was not sure of Dick's reliability in keeping anything away from a master to whom he was devoted. But if the old man were kept away from Adonia——

"Do I understand that you're to stay north until I'm ready to go back?"

"I've got to. It's orders."

She was choking with the desire to tell him who she was. The lie which she had told him in the tavern was a rankling memory—he had been such a pitiful figure that day.

Again she looked behind. There were many miles between her and Adonia, and the doors of the woods kept closing.

"I need all your help in this thing. I must have a faithful friend. It is the one great effort of my life. You can understand so well! I—I am Lida Kennard!"

Rickety Dick threw up his arms. The reins fell from his hands. "Praise the Lord!" he yelled. The discarded reins slapped the big bays, the shout in that silence caused them to leap wildly. The tote road was rough and rocky and the equipage was light. Almost instantly the horses tore the tongue from the jumper, which was trigged by a bowlder. The animals crashed around in a circle through the underbrush, leaped into the tote road, and went galloping back toward Adonia, seeking their stalls and safety.

Dick rose from where he had fallen and rushed to the girl, who was clinging to the seat of the jumper. He took her in his arms, comforting her as he would have soothed a child. He wept frankly and babbled incoherently. A part of his emotion was concern for her, but more especially was it joy because she had discovered herself to him.

"It was in me—the hope that it was you. But I buried it; I buried it," he sobbed.

For some moments he was too much absorbed to note the plight in which they had been left. Then his laments were so violent that the girl was obliged to soothe him in her turn.

"But when those horses rush into the yard! Think of it! He'll cal'late we're killed. Him penned there in his chair with worry tearing at him! I must get the word to him." In his frantic care for the master's peace of mind he ran away down the road, forgetting that he was abandoning the girl.

But in a few moments he came running back to her. "That's the way it always is with me! Him first! But after this it's you—and I was leaving you here in the lurch. But I don't know what to do!" He looked at her, then at the broken jumper; he gazed to the north and he stared to the south; in that emergency, his emotions stressed by what she had told him, he was as helpless as a child.

Her own concern just then was for her grandfather as well as for herself. Those runaway horses appearing in the yard would rouse his bitter fear; they would also start a hue and cry which would follow her into the north country.

"You must go back, at once!" she urged Dick. "Follow as fast as you can. The horses will quiet down; they'll walk. You may overtake them. You must try."

"But you!" he mourned.

She lifted the cant dog from the floor of the jumper. "I shall keep on toward the drive—somehow—some way. This will protect me; I'm sure of it."

He puckered his face and shook his head and expressed his fears and his doubts.

"Then I'm showing more faith than you in what this stands for," she said, rebukingly. "I believe in it. I trust to it. Haven't you the same kind of loyalty where my grandfather is concerned—after all your years with him?"

She had appealed to zealous, unquestioning devotion, and it replied to her. "I reckon you're right. It wouldn't be showing proper respect if I didn't meet you halfway in the thing." He reached out his hand and patted the staff. "I'm only a poor old bent stick beside that one. I even let the horses run away. Yes, they have run away—and now it's all the long miles to the drive! How'll ye ever get there, Miss Lida?"

"By starting!" she returned, crisply, with something of Flagg's manner.

"There are tote teams going north. Anybody'll be glad to give you a lift. There are bateaus above here, ferrying supplies up the broad water, and you may see a canoeman——" He was wistfully grabbing at hopes.

"I'm not afraid," she assured him bravely.

He helped her with advice while he busied himself by hooking the handle of her bag over the staff; she carried it across her shoulder and had something cheerful to say about poverty making light luggage.

In that fashion she fared toward the north, after she had forced a pledge from the old man that he would keep her secret until her work was done; she was guilelessly unaware that Flagg's perspicacity had penetrated her secret.

Dick plodded toward the south.

There, in the midst of the forest, dwarfed by the big trees, they seemed to be weak reeds for the support of the Flagg fortunes.

Before a bend of the road shut them from sight of each other they turned and waved a farewell which renewed the pledge.



CHAPTER TWENTY

For a time Lida felt unutterably and miserably lonely and helpless. She had stepped out of everything that was familiar in the way of human contact and environment; she was facing the new, the untried, something that was not a woman's job, as her grandfather had declared.

But it was a job for that one of the Flaggs who still had the grit and the strength to perform it!

With that thought came her reaction. She began to realize that as long as Dick had been her companion, her guardian, she had not been conscious of the real exaltation of determination which now glowed in her. She felt courage born of sacred zeal. She was alone, but no longer did that thought trouble her. Because she was alone it was up to her! She walked on with a steadier stride. If she appeared at the drive under the convoy of old Dick she was only a girl sent to whine a confession of fault and to wheedle men to help her repair it. Would it not be well to take those men fully into her confidence? She was resolved to tell them that she loved Ward Latisan; she was admitting this truth to herself and she was in a mood to tell all the truth to honest men who would be able to understand. She was going north to inspire faith and courage and loyalty. Would not the known granddaughter of Echford Flagg be able to exert that compelling moral influence over the crew? Those men were primitive enough to understand the urge of honest love of woman for a man; and there was the spirit of chivalrous romance in the north country. She knew it.

Her heart was bolder as she walked on, but her feet ached and the rough road wearied her. She met no human being; she sat for a time on a wayside bowlder, hoping that some straggling tote team would come up from the south and overtake her.

The road snaked along in the Noda Valley, and from time to time she was close to the turbid flood which swept down ice cakes and flotsam. From her bowlder she could see a broad and calm stretch—a deadwater of which she did not know the name.

Then, close to the shore where she waited, came a canoe headed upriver. Two men were in it, paddling sturdily, taking advantage of eddies and backwash. Fresh from the city as she was, she felt a thrill of sudden terror; the men were Indians and wore the full regalia of tribal dress.

As a child she had seen and remembered well the Tarratines of the region; they had been dressed like other woodsmen. These Indians with feathers and beads put a strange fear into her in that solitude. She slid from the rock and crouched behind it. She grasped the staff of the cant dog more firmly; it was her only weapon of defense. But when her fingers felt the depressions of the totem mark she turned from terror to hope. Latisan, at their first meeting, had referred to the status of Echford Flagg among the Tarratines. Courage was back in her again, along with her new hope. She leaped to her feet and called to the Indians and flourished a salute. They hesitated a moment, then drove their craft to the shore a pebble toss away from her.

She did not speak to them—she held the staff so that the emblem was shown to them. They disembarked, approached slowly, peered at the totem, and saluted with upraised palms.

"I have the right to carry it," she told them. "It is Echford Flagg's. He gave it into my hands. He said it is known along the river and will help me. I want to go north to his drive. He has sent me. It is on his business!"

She received no immediate encouragement from their manner; they looked at each other and turned their gaze again to her.

"Frank Orono," said one, patting his hand on his beaded breast. "Him brother, Louis Orono."

"The drive is up there. If you're going only a little way in that direction won't you take me along in your canoe?" she pleaded, confessing, "I'm so tired. There was an accident to the team—I've had to walk."

"You see!" said Frank Orono, stroking his hand over the feathers of his headdress. "Big time for tribe. All dressed up. Him, me, we go to Olamon Island. Governor live there—Chief Susep Nicola. His girl she marry to-night. Big time!" He grinned. That evidence of human feeling in the countenance which had been so impassive heartened the girl.

"And if I can get as far as Olamon with you——"

They ducked their heads in permission.

"Maybe Chief Susep send you on. Chief he much like him!" Frank Orono pointed to the staff. "Chief cut in totem sign, his own hands. You come. Be all right."

They spread a blanket for her in the middle of the canoe and paddled on.

It was then past midafternoon of her crowded day.

When at last they swung around a wooded point and beheld the Indian village of Olamon the dusk was deepening. Many lights twinkled and a huge bonfire waved flaming tongues.

"Big time!" chuckled Frank Orono. "Pretty girl—nice feller she marry. Chief be glad to see you—you tell him!"

Those who were gathered at the pull-out place surveyed her with curiosity. The bonfire lighted the scene and many were able to see the totem mark on the staff of the cant dog. Those saluted her respectfully and passed the word to others, who came crowding about.

Therefore, when the brothers Orono escorted her into the presence of Sachem Nicola, Lida entertained the confidence of one who was among friends. The chief—or rather, the elected governor of the tribe—dwelt in a modest cottage, and with him was the priest who had come for the wedding ceremony. It was the priest who displayed the liveliest interest in the girl and he promptly began to seek the reason that had brought her north with that emblem of authority. He questioned her with kindness, but with much vigor.

But Susep Nicola asked no questions. He seemed to accept her presence as a quite natural thing. A Tarratine never puts a question to a guest; the guest may explain or state his business in his own good time. The sachem set a chair for her and relieved her of the staff and her bag. He put his finger on the emblem and smiled. There was inquiry in his eyes whether she knew and understood. She bowed her head.

As best she could she parried the questions of the inquisitive priest without making it appear that she was trying to hide anything. "It's an errand, and Mr. Flagg was kind enough to loan the staff as my token in these parts. You know he is ill and cannot go about any more. He must leave certain things to others."

"Well," admitted the priest, plainly struggling with a hankering to ask her bluntly what service a girl could perform for Flagg on the drive, "the ladies in these days are into all the affairs of men as well as on the juries, so we must consider it as quite natural that you have been sent up here by Mr. Flagg. At any rate, we should be grateful that you are here," he declared, gallantly.

"It's on account of the accident to my team that I'm forced to intrude at a time like this," she apologized to Nicola. He was an old man, gaunt and bowed, and his festal trappings seemed rather incongruous decorations.

"But you bring my brother's staff, and it makes you welcome for yourself and stands for him because he cannot come."

He called, and a woman appeared. He gave directions, and the woman offered to conduct Lida to a room in the cottage.

"You are honored guest," said the governor. "In an hour the wedding takes place in the church, and then the wedding supper!"

"To which I beg permission to escort you," said the priest, bowing low as Lida went from the room.

She laid off her woods panoply of cap and jacket and made herself fit for the festival to such an extent as her scanty wardrobe would permit.

Before the wedding procession started for the church she was presented to the bride, Nicola's youngest daughter. The woman who had shown Lida to her room had gossiped a bit. The bride was the fruit of the governor's second marriage and had inherited her French Canadian mother's beauty. And the groom was a French Canadian, a strapping chap, a riverman of repute.

Lida was told that the men of the river, the jacks of the driving crews far and near, were making much of the wedding on account of their liking for Felix Lapierre. She had looked from her window and had seen bateaus come sweeping down, loaded with shouting men, the oars flashing in the light of torches set in the bows of the big boats. She felt more confident in regard to the morrow; those bateaus would be going back to the north and she had determined to make her plea for passage. In her anxiety the halt for the night was irksome. But she concealed her feelings and took her place in the procession, a post of honor that was deferentially assigned to her by the chief.

The flares of moving torches lighted all and the smoke from them wavered above the plumes of the festal costumes and spread the illumination among the swaying boughs of the spruces and the pines.

An Indian brass band of pretensions rather more than modest led the way toward the church. The rear guard was made of rivermen who marched in ragged formation, scuffling, elbowing one another, shouting jokes, making merry after their manner. Their boots, spurred with drivers' spikes, crunched into the hard earth and occasionally struck fire from an outcropping of ledge. They pulled off those boots at the door of the church and went into the place, tiptoeing in their stocking feet.

So Alice and Felix were joined in marriage.

Lida sat beside the girl's mother during the ceremony.

The tears that are shed by womankind at weddings form a baptism for sentiments which cannot be easily translated into exact understanding. It had begun to seem very far away in time and space, that tragedy of the morning in Adonia, that wreck of a man's love, and the blasting of what Lida had admitted to herself was her own fond hope. Now, in this scene, hearing the words which gave lovers the sacred right to face the world hand in hand, her own grievous case came back to her in poignant clearness. She wept frankly; there had been honest tears in the mother's eyes. The two looked at each other and then the mother's hand slid into the girl's and mutely expressed for the stranger what could not be put into words. There were no questions and no replies—the situation required none.

For the more casual guests, the rivermen and others, the supper was spread out of doors near the water. It was a simple feast which had been cooked over coals in the open.

The sachem's party ate in a large room; by day it served the women of the tribe as a workshop. The walls were gay with the handicraft which had been hung up to clear a space for the tables. There were braided or woven baskets of all sizes and every hue; there were beaded skins and frippery of feathered gewgaws and moccasins and miniature canoes and plaques of birch, hand carved. And subordinating all else, even the scents and savors of the food, was the perfume of the sweet grass.

Outdoors, in a circle of torches, the band played merry airs.

"You should not be sad, mam'selle," reproved Father Leroque, who had constituted himself Lida's squire at supper. "This is a very merry occasion."

"I feel all the more as if I were intruding—bringing my troubles here."

The chatter of many voices made a shield for conversation between the two. The priest hesitated for some time; then he made sure that nobody was listening and leaned closer to her.

"I beg your pardon, mam'selle, if I seem presumptuous in touching on a matter regarding which you have not given me your confidence. I may be allowed to mention a bit of news. It came to me just before we sat down to supper. News travels fast in this region, you may know. From mouth to mouth it flies. Bateaus have come up the river, and the men of those bateaus have listened to timber cruisers and have heard from the drivers of tote teams who have come scattering through the woods below. There is the news of an engagement. I trust I may be allowed to speak of the news to you because it is my thought that you are the young lady concerned."

She was not able to reply.

"And there is more news," he persisted. "Pardon me if I mention that, too. It is my province to console those who are in trouble, as best I may. Perhaps there is some way in which I can help you. I think highly of young Latisan. I know him because my duties have taken me into the Tomah region. There has been trouble between you and him—a misunderstanding. Is there any way in which I can be a mediator—as his friend?"

"He has gone away," she choked. "I don't know where he is. It was my fault. If I could have explained, it might have helped, but he would not wait to hear me through."

The priest's gentleness had conquered her resolution to keep her secret till she reached the men of the Flagg drive. He perceived her bitter need of sympathy.

"I respect confidences, even those given me outside the pale of my church's confessional. Young Latisan is like his grandfather—tinder for a stray spark. If I know your fault—if I can tell him, when I see him, what you would have liked to tell him——"

Hurriedly, in low tones, stammering in her eagerness, she did reveal who she was, what she had tried to do, and what she hoped to be able to do.

He was instantly alive to her cause with all the sympathy that was in him—an especially sincere sympathy because as a missionary priest he was close to the hearts of all the folk of the north country, probing their affairs with an innocent but vivid interest and striving always to aid with earnest zeal.

Though Lida had parried his questions at first, protecting her secret, she was now grateful because he had persisted; his manner and his nature removed him from the ranks of mere busybodies. A comforting sense arose from having confided in him.

"In the Tomah I will find young Latisan; I am on my way across the mountains, mam'selle. He must be awake and himself by now; he must have gone home. When I tell him the truth he will lift all the trouble from your shoulders. But till he comes you must be brave. And who knows? You may be able to smooth the path! If you plead your grandfather's cause up here, I believe even the great Comas company will listen and be kind. There are many outside this door who have come down from the drives to have a bit of fun at the wedding. There must be Flagg men. I will find out."

"Let me go with you," she urged, anxiously.

He demurred.

"But I'll not speak to them. If I can see them—only a few of them—the real men of our drive—I believe I shall find courage to go on."

She prevailed, though he was doubtful and warned her that the babbling of the new gossip might be embarrassing.

And so it proved as Father Leroque feared; men perceived only the beguilement of Ward Latisan and had heard only the sordid side of the happenings in Adonia; the girl was glad because she was hid in the gloom outside the circle of light that was the nimbus of the bonfire. They were laughing as they discussed a matter which had eclipsed the interest in the wedding. Her cheeks were hot and she was scarcely restrained by the priest's monitory palm on her shoulder.

Men were feasting and gossiping; they were herded around the fire, squatting Turk fashion, steaming pannikins on the ground by their sides, heaped plates on their knees.

"Fifteen of us," stated a man, answering a question. "And prob'ly more to follow. Ben Kyle has gone up there in a hurry, grudge and all, and is hiring for the Comas. If there ain't going to be any fight we may as well work for the Three C's."

"Stay here!" commanded Father Leroque, patting the girl's arm. "Stay where they can't see you." He stepped forward into the firelight. "Do I understand that the Flagg crew is breaking up?"

"Fifteen of us in this bunch," restated the man, rapping his pannikin to dislodge the tea leaves and holding it out for more of the beverage. "Wedding brought us down—the news we hear is going to keep us going. Flagg is done."

"Yes, if his men desert him. You mustn't do it; it isn't square."

The priest found it easy to locate the recreants among the other rivermen; they shifted their eyes under his rebuking gaze. "Go back to your work. Another will come in young Latisan's place."

"All respect to you, Father! But we can't do it," said the spokesman. "We're Latisan's men. The rest of the gang will laugh us out of the crew if we go back."

"I'll have Latisan himself on the job inside of a few days, my men," declared the priest, stoutly.

He had promised to them another who would take the drive master's place; now he promised Latisan. The men were merely puzzled; they were not convinced.

"Will you go back?"

"We can't go back." It was said with conviction, and a mumble of voices indorsed him. "Still, all respect to you, Father! But Latisan won't fit any longer even if he does go back. He has let himself be goofered."

Father Leroque had set up his temporary altar in many a lumber camp; he knew woodsmen; therefore, he knew that argument with those men would be idle.

"You have heard," he said to Lida when the two walked away deeper into the shadows. "I'm sorry. But so the matter stands."

"But if I go now and talk to them—confess to them——"

"They are Latisan's own men, and the story is fresh, and their resentment is hot. You will not prevail, mam'selle. And if you fail to-night with those men you risk failing with all. You must go on to the drive—talk to the others who are still loyal. I fear much, I must warn you, but I will not try to keep you from what seems to be your duty. It would be too great unhappiness for you if you should go back now, feeling that you had not done your best."

The bandsmen had eaten of the wedding feast and were again valorously making gay music outside the workshop building from whose windows poured light and laughter.

"I can't go back in there—I can't!" sobbed Lida. "Right now I want to hide away."

With gentle understanding the priest escorted her to the door of the sachem's cottage. "I will pray for you, that the morning may bring good courage again. I will talk with you then—in the morning."

She stammered broken words of gratitude and escaped to the covert of the little room.

Father Leroque went back to the wedding party and called the governor out into the night. For a long time the two conferred, walking to and fro under the big pines.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sunrise was crystal clear, with frosty crispness, for April in the northern latitudes flirts long with Winter on his way to everlasting snows. Lida saw the sun come quivering over the big trees and sat by her window, continuing the doleful ponderings which had made the night black and dismal. There was no cheer for her in the morning radiance; as she faced what was ahead of her, new fear grew in her; faith in herself was waning after the defection of Latisan's men. Would Echford Flagg's own crew stand by a stricken master or hearken to the appeal of Flagg's kin?

The rivermen guests had departed; there were no bateaus on the shore; faint smoke came wreathing from the black embers of the feast fire.

Early as it was, there was the stir of life in the other rooms of the cottage, and she ventured forth timidly into the presence of the governor's family. The little mirror in her room had revealed to her the pallor of her face and the mournful anxiety in her eyes.

There was no talk at breakfast; the family copied the manner of the governor, who had greeted Lida with a single word, gestured her to her chair, and now ate in silence. All his festal trappings had been laid aside; he was a grave, wrinkled man in the ordinary attire of a woodsman. In her new humility Lida wondered how she would summon courage to ask for canoemen to take her north. The impulse to keep on toward the drive was no longer so keen and courageous and absorbing, she realized. She had dreamed vividly when she stood in the presence of Echford Flagg; but she had begun to face practicality, and the difficulties frightened her.

Before the breakfast was finished, Father Leroque came in; he had lodged in the quarters provided for his visits, a small room in the vestry.

The sisters who taught the boys and girls of the community had brought his food. But he sat at the elbow of the governor's wife and drank the coffee that she poured for him. He was cheery, vivacious, and he smiled consolingly on Lida, who was not able to return his morning optimism. His arrival broke the fetters of silence, and even Susep Nicola joined in the chatter which the priest kept stirring.

Lida kept her gaze on the floor and saw the broad shaft of sunlight shift slowly and relentlessly, marking the passage of precious time.

"I must go," she said, suddenly, looking into the countenance of Nicola.

"Yes."

"I'm afraid I ought to have been on my way before."

"It's for you to say when you go; you are welcome here," he returned. "I have waited for you to say." It was according to his code of hospitality—the guest must indicate desire. He rose. His wife brought to Lida the jacket and the cap. But the chief picked up the Flagg cant dog and carried it when he led the way to the door.

Father Leroque seemed to understand what was in Lida's mind just then. "You are worried about how you are to travel, is it not so? You do not need to ask, mam'selle!" He bowed her to the door.

In front of the sachem's house hung a broad disk of tanned moosehide in a frame. Nicola pounded on the makeshift gong with a mallet. Men assembled quickly in front of him, coming as if they had expected the summons.

"You know. I have told you," said the chief. He stroked his hand over the totem mark on the cant dog handle. "You know how our brother has been the good friend of the Tarratines on this river."

One step in advance of the others of the throng stood Felix Lapierre, the bridegroom.

"How many?" asked the chief.

"Twenty," said Felix. "And all very much happy to do the good service."

The priest smiled into the amazed eyes of the girl. "For your conveyance? Ah no, mam'selle. For your good help on the drive. They are rivermen—the best. Felix Lapierre leads them and you shall see for yourself what a king of the white water he is. He will be your right-hand man on the drive. It is all very fine, eh, mam'selle?"

She was staring from face to face, overwhelmed. She could not reply.

"We talk it over—him and me—last night," said Nicola, indicating the priest by a respectful bow. "It's for my brother, and the blood of my brother." He bowed to her.

"And all so very happy," repeated Felix. His black eyes sparkled and he flung up his hands in the gay spirit of emprise. "You must not care because some have run away. They would not be good in a crew if they feel that way now. We feel good. We shall work for you; we are your men."

The big matter, this astounding making good of her forces, this rallying of volunteers in such chivalrous and unquestioning fashion—she found herself unable to handle the situation in her thoughts or treat it with spoken words just then. But the other—the human thing——

"It's—it's the honeymoon," she stammered. "It will be taking you away from your wife."

"She's my girl," put in Nicola. "She tells him to go."

Father Leroque perceived Lida's distressful inability to pull herself together at that moment, and he employed his ready tact, giving her time for thought. "It's quite a natural thing, this taking away of the new bridegroom for the service of the Flaggs," he declared with a chuckle. "There's even a song—I think it was written by Poet O'Gorman. Do you know it, Felix? I can see by your grin that you do. Very well. Let's have it. As I remember it, it states the case according to the Flagg methods."

Lapierre pulled off his cap; his eyes were alight with merriment; he sang gayly:

The night that I was married—the night that I was wed— Up there came old Echford Flagg and rapped on my bed head. Said he, "Arise, young married man, and come along with me, Where the waters of the Noda they do roar along so free."

"You see!" suggested the priest, archly, smiling, palms spread. "When Flagg calls, the honeymoon must wait. It promises good adventure, and Felix would be sorry if he were not in it."

Cap in hand, Lapierre swept his arm in a broad gesture of respectful devotion. It was a touch of gallantry which raised the affair above the prosaic details of mere business and which made the relations closer than those of employer and employed.

In Lida gratitude was succeeding amazement, and the glow of that gratitude was warming her courage into life again. When she had stepped from Nicola's door a few moments before she felt bitterly alone and helpless and she had no eye for the glory of the day. Suddenly the sunshine seemed transcendently cheery. All the aspects of the case were changed. Now she could go on to the drive as one of the Flaggs should go—with loyal men at her back to replace those who had deserted. She could hearten a broken crew with men, not merely with a strange girl's plaintive story and appeal.

"We're ready, mam'selle," said Felix.

The women of the community were gathered in front of the sachem's house.

Lapierre went smiling to his bride and put his arm about her; but when he started to draw her toward Lida the latter anticipated the coming by running to meet them. She took the little bride in her arms.

The priest, Felix, and the governor swapped looks and nods which indorsed an understanding that was wordless between the young women.

When Lida turned from the governor's daughter she saw the governor himself coming toward her. He held out the cant dog; it lay across his palms and he tendered it respectfully.

She winked the mist of tears from her eyes and struggled with a hysterical desire to babble many words.

"Hush!" warned the priest. "We all know!"

There, in a golden silence, she realized how cheap and base was the clinking metal of speech that had been the currency of herself and others in the crowded town.

The river, slowed by the deadwater, was mute, though its foam streaks showed where it had crashed through the gorges above. A few chickadees chirruped bravely. There were no other sounds while the girl took the Flagg scepter in her own hands.

She walked with Felix to the shore, where the flotilla of canoes lay upturned at the pull-out place. Again the Oronos were assigned to her, and she was comforted much because they no longer seemed like strangers.

"Au revoir!" called Father Leroque when the canoes were afloat on the brown flood. "I'm making haste to the Tomah, mam'selle, to keep my promise!"

He had already accomplished so much for her! In her new thanksgiving spirit she was finding it easy to believe that he could bring about what her self-acknowledged love for Latisan so earnestly desired.

In single file, holding close to the shore, the canoes went toward the north. There was no talk between those who paddled; against the brown shore the canoes were merely moving smudges.

Rufus Craig, coming down the middle of the deadwater in one of the great bateaus of the Comas company, paid no attention to the smudges. The bateau rode high and rapidly on the flood that moved down the channel. Craig was writing in his notebook and four oarsmen were obeying his command to dip deep and pull strong.

Craig had met Ben Kyle by appointment at the foot of the Oxbow portage and he had found Kyle to be particularly malevolent and entirely willing—and Kyle had gone north to the Flagg drive in the pay of the Three C's.

It had been a profitable interview, as Director Craig viewed it.

Now he was chasing along the trail of rumor to Adonia; the rumor was encouraging. If Latisan really had been pried out of the section, Craig saw an opportunity to run back to New York to make a private settlement with Mern and enjoy a little relaxation before the pressing matters of the drive in full swing claimed all his attention. Right then, according to all appearances, the Comas business up-country was doing very well in the hands of the understrapper bosses. Therefore, Director Craig smiled over the pages of his notebook.

The brown smudges in single file went on and on. Noon at the foot of the portage at Oxbow! Lida sniffed the wood smoke of the cook fire and ate her lunch and drank her tea.

Up the narrow trail of the gorge she followed at the rear of her men; the canoes, upturned on their shoulders, glistened in the sparkling sunshine. She was bringing real aid in a time of stress, as one of the Flaggs should! More and more that consciousness heartened her.

Quiet water at the put-in, then rapids where the canoes were poled, the irons clinking on the rocks over which the turbid waters rolled; more calm stretches where haste was made.

A night in the open at a camping site where a couch of boughs was piled for her under a deftly contrived shelter of braided branches of hemlocks.

And on in the first flush of the morning toward the drive.



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ben Kyle made "his bigness" when he went into Flagg's crew on his mission for Craig. He was not admitting to himself or anybody else that he was traitor. He blustered and bullyragged; he had been their boss and he had been fired without cause, he insisted. Even the loyal men did not presume to answer back; he had been too recently their master and the aura of authority still persisted. He came with a white-hot grudge and with rumors which he embroidered to suit his needs. Kyle had been far on the edge of affairs, and only the ripples of the Adonia events reached him. But his statement that Latisan had run away with a girl seemed to be certified by the drive master's continued absence. And there were those stories of Latisan's former weakness in the city; they had been sleeping; they were not dead.

Kyle was hiring for the Comas company—unabashed, blatantly. He strode from man to man, banging heavy palm on shoulders. "Come with the real folks. What's old Eck Flagg to-day? You might as well be hired by a bottle-sucking brat in a baby carriage. Where's Latisan? You tell me his men went downriver to meet him; they've kept on going. He has hid away, dancing his doxy on his knee. Where's your pay coming from when Eck Flagg goes broke?"

Kyle waded in the shallows where men were rolling logs, shouting to be heard above the roar of the waters.

"We hired for a fight," said the men who hated the Comas. "But it doesn't look like one is going to be made."

"We've always stood behind Eck Flagg," said the old stand-bys of the crew. "But we ain't getting a square chance for honest work."

It was plain that the spirit was being beaten out of them under the hammer of Kyle's harangue—whether it was the adventurous spirit which craved fight or the honest spirit which had sent them north to the job.

When the night came down, after they had cleaned their pannikins of food, steaming hot, from the cook's kettles, while they smoked around the fire which drove away the evening chill, Kyle paced to and fro among the groups, declaiming, detracting, and urging. He knew that he was prevailing, though slowly. Woodsmen in shifting their allegiance are not swayed by sudden impulse. His voice rang among the trees in the silence of the evening.

"Latisan is a sneak—Latisan is a runaway! Eck Flagg is next to a dead man!" Over and over he made those declarations, battering discouragement into their slow comprehension in order to win them to the Comas company. "And Latisan has thrown down real men for the sake of a girl! Do you want to get the Big Laugh when you show yourselves downriver?"

Voyagers who came from the southward, leaving their canoes below the falls, moved silently, after the fashion of the Tarratines. They halted on a shadowed slope within the range of Kyle's raucous voice, and Lida stepped forward to listen. The red flames lighted a circle among the trees, and she beheld the seated groups and saw the swaggering malcontent who paced to and fro.

"I'm with the Three C's now, first, last, and all the time! Their money is waiting for you, men. Come, with the real folks, I tell you!"

And again, with even more fantastic trimmings, he set forth the story of Latisan's flight with a girl who had seduced him from his duty in the north.

Lida snatched the Flagg cant dog from the hands of Felix; he had been the bearer of her scepter. He blinked when he looked at her. The far-flung light of the camp fire, reflected in her eyes, had set veritable torches there. Her lips were apart and her white teeth were clenched and her face was ridged with resolution.

There was no mistaking the intention which righteous anger had stirred in her, but when she started down the slope Felix leaped and ventured to restrain her with a touch on her arm. "Is it well to let the Comas know that you are here or what you are going to do? Pardon, mam'selle, but think!"

"The lies! The lies!"

"Yes, mam'selle, but you can tell them the truth when he is not there to hear."

"But now he is there, and I cannot go to the men."

"In a little while you may go; he will not be there. And if he does not know what is going on up here, after his back is turned, maybe we shall have day after day to push our logs in ahead of all the others," explained the riverman. "They will be days worth much." Then with the imagery of his race he added, "Those days will be gold beads on our rosary, mam'selle!" He smiled into her eyes, from which the fires were departing. "Please wait here with the the others."

He whispered to several of the Indians; when he sauntered down the slope the four summoned Tarratines stole to right and left, masking themselves in the shadows, flanking the champion who was going alone.

Most of the men of the crew recognized Felix Lapierre when he walked into the circle of light. They leaped up, surrounded him, their mouths full of hilarious congratulation, of excuses why they had not attended the wedding, of awkward jokes and questions. They could not understand why he had come north so soon. He shook his head, mildly refusing to satisfy their curiosity.

Kyle stood for a time; then he resumed his pacing. He no longer had listeners. Like children, the rivermen were wholly absorbed in a new toy—a bridegroom who had so suddenly deserted the handsomest girl between Adonia and The Forks.

"Oh, let him alone," advised Kyle, whetting his new grouch. "If they ain't running away with girls in this region, they're running away from 'em!"

Felix swung around and faced the speaker. "Do you speak of me?" he asked, quietly.

"Take it that way if you want to."

"Your tongue seems to be very busy, I have that to say to you. From up there on the hill I heard what you have to say about M'sieu Latisan, that he has run away with a girl."

"And he has."

"You lie!"

That retort snapped the trigger on Kyle's inflamed temper. "You damnation squaw man!" he yelped, and drove a blow at the French Canadian; and Felix, following the fighting custom of his clan of the Laurentian Valley, ducked low, leaped high, and kicked Kyle under the hook of the jaw. It was the coup a pied. Kyle staggered and went down. When he struggled up and weakly attacked again, the antagonist met him face to face and smashed a stunning blow between Kyle's eyes; he fell and remained on his back.

"One for me, and one for my wife he has insult'," cried Felix. He spun around, searching their faces. "Do any of you like to back him up?"

"Not on your life," said a spokesman. "He doesn't belong in this crew."

"I'm much oblige'," said Felix, politely. He whistled, and the four Indians rushed out from the shadows. "If he is not of the crew, then if he goes away it does not matter."

He commanded the Indians, and they lifted Kyle and started off with him.

"He'll not be hurt," Felix assured the men of the crew. "He'll go down the river where it's better for him."

Nobody offered protest. They were glad to be rid of that bellowing, insistent voice of the trouble-maker.

Their attention was wholly engaged with the involuntary departure of Kyle, and they did not observe Lapierre when he walked away; they turned to ask more questions, to be informed what this abduction signified, but Felix was nowhere to be seen. Men called but he did not reply.

Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute's flash of drama against the background of the night, into which they stared with searching eyes while they made clamor like quacking ducks that had been startled from sleep by a prowler! Curiosity was lashing them. They were wonted to their reckless adventure in the white water; it had become dull toil. This affair was something real in the way of excitement, with a mystery which tantalized them. Again they called into the night, seeking an explanation.

The prologue by which the Comas agent had been removed as tempter and tale-bearer had not been staged by Felix for calculated effect; he had thought only of getting Kyle out of the way. But never was an audience in more keenly receptive mood for a sequel than were those men who crowded closely in the patch of camp-fire radiance and asked questions of one another.